The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘No, thanks, I can’t stay long.’

‘Well, I’m gonner have one.’

Gomer went to put the kettle on. Jane looked at the crack of night between the drawn curtains. For three nights, she’d lain in bed dwelling, with no pleasurable frissons, upon the beast, the participants in the event in the kitchens at Stanner. And sometimes feeling Lucy Devenish watching her from the corner by the bookcase — this solemn, hawk-nosed figure in a poncho, rebuking her for her lies, deceit and despicable selfishness.

‘Gomer…’ She hesitated. Gomer plugged in the kettle and turned and looked at her. ‘The Hound of Hergest,’ she said.

Gomer came and sat down. His smile was sceptical. ‘I won’t say I en’t never yeard of folk supposed to’ve seen him, Janey. But the ole Hound of Hergest — do he kill ewes, this is the question?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yere’s the situation. Dogs kills sheep. Sheepdogs kills sheep — one o’ your big myths is that stock with their throats ripped out, that’s all down to Mr Fox. Truth is, whole load of lambs gets savaged every year by sheepdogs. Thin line between snappin’ at sheep to round ’em up and picking one off. Point I’m makin’, Janey, if you got a mystery beast preyin’ on ewes, chances are it’s a big sheepdog — mabbe two — that’s got the taste for blood.’

‘So why’s this Sebbie Dacre so scared of going out there himself with a gun?’

‘I say scared?’ Gomer squinted at her.

Also, at night, she’d thought of Nathan. What if he’d died? What if he’d died there in Danny’s van, leaving Ben facing a manslaughter charge, at the very least, and Gomer and Danny and her as accessories?

What if he’d died after they’d got him to the hospital? What if he was dead now?

‘I wouldn’t know why Sebbie’s scared,’ Gomer said. ‘Man like Sebbie, he don’t confide to the likes of we. Don’t confide to nobody, that family. He also don’t scare that easy.’

‘They were related to the Chancerys of Stanner, weren’t they?’

‘Who you year that from, Janey?’

‘Woman who’s booking a conference at Stanner. Mrs Pollen.’

‘From Pembridge?’ Gomer nodded. ‘Me and Nev put her a septic tank in once. Husband used to be County Harchivist for Powys.’

‘So Dacre is related to the Chancerys?’

‘Small world, girl, terrible inbred. Sebbie’s ma was Margery Davies, second daughter of Robert and Hattie Davies — Hattie Chancery as was. After Stanner was sold, Margie ’herited most of the ground on the Welsh side and some money, and her married Richard Dacre, who was the son of a farmer on the English side. So, overnight, like, they become the biggest landowners yereabouts. And they had just the one son and that was Sebbie, and a younger daughter. So when Richard died, Sebbie got the main farms and all the ground and a fair bit of cash. And then he bought up Emrys Morgan’s farm across the valley, when Emrys died, and so that’s why they calls him Sebbie Three Farms. See?’

‘So Dacre is Hattie Chancery’s grandson. And great-grandson of Walter Chance, who built Stanner Hall.’

‘Correct. Hattie, her had two daughters, but Paula, the oldest, got sent away, and Paula was left the Stanner home farm, The Nant, which was leased long-term to Eddie Berrows, Jeremy’s dad, who was Hattie’s farm manager’s son.’

‘So Jeremy’s farm was originally part of the Stanner estate, too.’

‘Not much wasn’t. Now Paula, after what happened with Hattie and Robert, her was brung up by Robert’s sister up in Cheshire. Growed up and married a feller up there and just took the income from the lease. But her died youngish, see, and Richard Dacre, he kept trying to buy The Nant off Paula’s husband, but Paula, her had a soft spot for the Berrows from when her was little, and her husband knew the Berrowses didn’t want the Dacres as their landlords, ’cause the Dacres’d likely have ’em out on their arses first possible opportunity. So he signs another lease with Eddie Berrows — under Richard’s nose, so to speak. And the Dacres was blind bloody furious. So that split the family good and proper. Plus, it explains why Sebbie Dacre got no love for Jeremy.’

‘It’s not short of feuds, is it, this area? You need an up-to-date feud-map just to find your way around.’ Jane was imagining a large-scale plan of the Welsh Border hills, with arteries of hatred linking farms and estates, pockets of old resentment, dotted lines marking tunnels of lingering suspicion.

‘’Course, quite a lot of folk don’t think too highly of Sebbie,’ Gomer said. ‘Do he care? Do he f— No, he don’t, Janey. He don’t care.’

‘So, what happened — I mean I really think I ought to know this, working at Stanner — what exactly happened with Hattie Chancery? Or is that something people don’t talk about?’

‘They don’t talk about it,’ Gomer said, ‘on account there en’t that many folk left round yere remembers it.’

‘What about you?’

‘I was just a boy then. Just a kiddie at the little school.’

‘So you’re saying you don’t remember it either?’

Gomer dug into a pocket of his baggy jeans and slapped his ciggy tin on the kitchen table. ‘’Course I remembers it. All everybody bloody jabbered about for weeks.’

Jane beamed at him. ‘Maybe I will have a cup of tea after all, if that’s all right.’

And she sat quietly and watched Gomer making it. Could tell by the way he was nodding to himself, lips moving, that he was replaying his memories like a videotape, and maybe editing them, too.

While the tea was brewing, Gomer brought down Minnie’s bone-china cups and saucers, and it was touching to watch him laying them out with hands that looked like heavy-duty gardening gloves. Jane waited. If she was going to be of any use to Antony Largo, she needed more background information. This wasn’t simply curiosity, it was need-to-know.

Last night, from the apartment, she’d rung Natalie to ask how things were going, like with Ben. Nat hadn’t been all that forthcoming. ‘He’s all right.’

Jane had pressed on anyway. ‘But is he? That guy thought Ben was going to kill him. He was terrified, he— It’s like… it’s a side of Ben I’ve never seen.’

‘He’s a man,’ Nat had said, offhand. ‘Men can’t be seen to back down. I really don’t think he meant to do that much damage.’

‘Nat, was he—?’

‘It happened very quickly, Jane. I didn’t really see anything.’

‘Well, obviously, that’s what you’d tell the police.’

‘Police?’

‘I mean if the police were involved. If that guy’s injuries—’

‘Jane…’ Nat’s voice had gone low. ‘That really isn’t going to happen. So I think it’s best we all forget about this incident. It was a one-off, and if it gets round… you know what this area’s like. We don’t want Ben to get a reputation. Best if we don’t talk about it any more. All right?’

Nat had sounded nervy. Not herself at all.

And Jane was still hearing, Thick, barbaric yobs. No subtlety… Where I come from, we have real hard bastards.’

Time to investigate Ben’s history. This morning, Jane had got up early, gone down to the scullery, switched on the computer and fed Ben Foley into Google. Hard to remember what life had been like without the Net. Now everybody was a private eye.

The results had been disappointing. All she’d found were references to the various TV series Ben had been involved with, no personal stuff at all. It had been mildly amusing to discover a Web site for The Missing Casebook, his series about what had really happened to Sherlock Holmes post-Reichenbach. It had become a very small cult, the Web site set up by a hard core of fans furious that it hadn’t run to a second series. But the site didn’t seem to have been updated for a while.

Jane also looked up Antony Largo. Most of the references were to his documentary Women of the Midnight. The words most often applied to Antony were committed and tenacious. To understand what drove women to kill without mercy, without pity, inverting