The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘Nobody got no time for the boy but me n’more,’ Alice said. ‘He’s had girlfriends, but they drifts away. En’t a good bet, is he?’ She looked at Merrily. ‘What you got in mind then, vicar? You gonner have to spell it out for an ole woman.’

The difficult part. Merrily looked up and saw her own face reflected, warped and stretched and crushed, in shiny things on shelves.

Danny Thomas said, ‘We’ll take him to the hospital in the van. No problem at all.’ He turned to the man with the face like a bloodied waxwork. ‘Nathan, ennit, as I recall?’

The guy grunted something about his mates. Amber, apparently oblivious to the cold and the carnage, had cleaned his wounds the best she could and gone calmly back to the hotel. It was all less disturbing now, in the clearing, with Danny and Gomer there.

‘Looks like your mates didn’t hang about, boy,’ Gomer said. ‘If they got a mobile, we can phone ’em from the hospital and they’ll come and pick you up, mabbe.’

Everything was turned around now. The moment of panic when the hands had come down on Jane’s shoulders, and then the moment of wild relief when Ben had shone the torch on the man’s face and it had a beard and hair like grey seaweed around it and a puzzled expression.

‘Yes, but how—?’ Ben sounded worried again. ‘How’s he going to explain to the hospital what happened?’

‘Stick to the truth, I’d say,’ Gomer said. ‘What happened, he slipped on the ice and snow and come down on that ole broken post with his nose. We’d just parked the van, comin’ to pick Janey up, and we years the poor bugger moaning. Don’t reckon our friend yere’s gonner wanner make n’more of it than that.’

Jane had to smile. For a while, after what happened to his depot and to Nev, it had looked like Gomer’s effective years were over; he’d been erratic, disconnected. Now he was back in gear. And bringing Danny into the business… that had been inspired. Mavericks, both of them.

‘If you got a toilet that en’t too posh, with a basin and an ole pair of jeans, that might help too,’ Danny said to Ben. ‘We’ll stand outside, make sure he don’t get away. All right, Nathan?’

Nathan might have nodded. The blood had stopped flowing, but he was still breathing through his mouth.

‘This is very good of you guys,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t know what you saw—’

‘Not much,’ Gomer assured him. ‘Not much at all. What you wanner do now, Janey? Come with us to the hospital, or I come and pick you up on the way back?’

‘That’d be out of your way,’ Jane said. ‘I’d better come, I suppose.’

Not exactly looking forward to sharing a back seat with the remains of Nathan, but what could she do? She waited with Gomer in the foyer while Danny escorted Nathan into the ground-floor gents and Ben ran upstairs to replace his torn and saturated trousers. There was no sign of the White Company. Were they still in the kitchen? Was she missing Alistair Hardy’s first attempts to reach Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? All that stuff seemed so unreal now. As unreal as the idea of Lucy Devenish floating around her like some pagan angel.

‘What did you really see?’ she asked Gomer.

‘Like I said, not much at all, Janey.’ Gomer got out his tin to roll a ciggy. ‘Starts off when we’re just about to turn up the drive and Danny spots this green Discovery in the lay-by across the road, no lights. Had a run-in with these boys the other night, see.’

‘Clancy told me.’

‘Did she? Well, Danny’s quite keen to discuss a little matter of severe damage to Greta’s runabout, so he pulls in, and we waits a while. Then we sees the three of ’em running up the drive with the gun. Then there’s about three shots. That’s it for Danny — puts the lights on full beam, the ole fog lamps too, goes revving up the drive, windows down, bawling out, “Armed Police, stay where you are!” Seen ’em do it on the box.’

‘Cool.’

‘Bloody worked, too, ennit? They wouldn’t know, that stage. They muster took to the woods, ’cause next thing we seen two of ’em back on the road behind us. Jump straight into the Discovery and off. This one — Nathan — your mate Foley likely had him cornered by then. Time we gets to the top, we years Foley shoutin’ at the feller, Miz Craven trying to calm both of ’em down. He’s saying to the Welshie, Just tell us what this is about, all we wanner know’s what it’s about. Someone payin’ you to make trouble, kind of thing. Then Miz Craven, her says some’ing and then this Welshie — he don’t sound too scared, not then — we years him go, “So what you gonner do about it, you and this nancy boy?” And that’s when I reckon Foley goes for him.’

‘Insult to injury.’ Jane recalled Ben on the last night of the murder weekend. They think I’m soft. They think I’m effete, some arty bastard from London. Then he’d said, Where I come from we have real hard bastards.

Scary.

‘So, what if the hospital ask questions?’

‘Ah, that boy, he en’t gonner say nothin’. Wouldn’t look too good, where he comes from, getting ’isself filled in by — pardon me — a London pansy.’

‘What if the hospital tell the police?’

Gomer shrugged, lighting his ciggy. ‘Could always not bother goin’ all the way to the hospital — kick the bugger out, side o’ the road.’

And, for a few moments, Jane thought that was what they were going to do, when Danny Thomas pulled into the bay fronting a closed and lightless garden centre on the Hereford road and switched off the engine.

‘Right, then,’ Danny said.

He and Nathan were in the front, Jane and Gomer sitting on bags of sand and cement on the deck of the van. Nathan had his shaven head tilted over the back of his seat. He was wearing the jeans that Ben had brought for him. They were too long. And they were white — a last, desperate joke, as Ben had accepted from Danny, with a moue of distaste, the bin liner containing Nathan’s camouflage trousers.

Nathan sat up in a hurry. There was enough moonlight to show that he was very scared.

‘Relax,’ Danny said. ‘What you gotter worry about? All you done is wrecked my wife’s car and nearly put my eye out with a rifle. Do I look like the sorter feller holds a grudge?’

Nathan made a lunge at the door, slamming into it with his shoulder. He cried out.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Danny said. ‘Oughter’ve told you, that door’s knackered, he is — only opens from the outside. You gotter wind down the window, see, lean out and do it that way. You wanner bit o’ help with that, is it?’

Nathan slumped, still breathing hard through his mouth, like he had a very heavy head-cold. ‘Juss fuggig… ged id over.’

‘What — beat the shit out of you? Mess those lovely dinky white jeans? Nathan, we come to your aid, man. We’re your friends.’

‘Fuggoff.’

‘And friends — what does friends do but share a few confidences?’

A lighted bus went past on the Hereford road, and you could see the scar on Danny’s forehead like an angry red slug-trail. Beside Jane, Gomer took out his ciggy tin. Jane began to feel an edge of trepidation about what they were going to do to a man already in need of serious medical attention.

Nathan said, ‘You lemme out now, made, we’ll leave id at thad, eh?’

‘Mate?’ Danny said. ‘Mate? I was a fucking long-haired twat, if you recall, the other night.’ He leaned towards Nathan. ‘Do you recall the other night?’

Nathan said nothing.

‘Well, I recalls it in detail, Nathan, I recalls leavin’ with a whole load o’ questions bobbing around in my head, which also happened to hurt like hell. So where you wanner start? Let’s start with who’s paying you. Let’s start with Mr Sebbie Dacre.’

‘Dacre’s… nod payig us nothig.’

Danny pondered this, nodding rhythmically, like he was at a gig.

‘Nathan, one thing we don’t do is we don’t lie to our friends. Now we can have you all tucked up in Casualty in ten minutes — or at least in the bloody queue — or we can sit yere a while longer, admiring the moonlight over the Wye Valley.’