The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

Merrily said, “When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to Him, and He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.”

‘What’s that?’

‘Matthew’s Gospel, linking healing and deliverance.’

‘You’re not Jesus Christ,’ Lol said. ‘Healing could make you ill.’

‘Do I look ill?’

‘You look tired.’

‘I’m fine. Really.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’m awfully glad you’re here.’

Their shoulders touched. Lol took a long breath.

She laid her head wearily on his shoulder. ‘I’m all mixed up. Rumours — just rumours — of healing, and I’m getting the size of congregation I always dreamed of. And it makes me sweat. A hint of miracle cures, and suddenly you’re on the way to becoming someone with a big voice and disciples.’

‘Scary.’

Yes, it was. It was the very place he would hate for her to go, because of his parents, the born-again Pentecostalists, who used to attend Bible Belt-type healing services conducted by some crazy pastor who shook people till the sickness dropped out of them. But even the pastor, as far as Lol knew, hadn’t sought to heal the living through the dead.

Merrily said, ‘I mean, I really, really want it to happen for people… for the sick. I just don’t want it to be me who’s seen as the significant channel. It’s too early. It’s somehow too early for the women’s ministry. Certainly too early for me. How selfish is that? How cowardly is that?’

Lol felt the wetness on her cheeks and put an arm around her and held her, as chastely as he could bear. He tried to think of something he could say that didn’t sound soothing or patronizing or argumentative. On one level, he simply empathized. The idea of being a Major Artist still scared him, and the thought that he would soon be too old to scale the lowest available peak was almost comforting. But there was a big difference between a career and a calling, where you had to keep asking not what you or the audience needed, but how God wanted you to play it.

It was a lousy, thankless job. Jane would sometimes tell Lol how much she hoped that her mum would one day see the light and, slamming the church door behind her, start running.

Merrily said, ‘Lew Jeavons said this was a very interesting case, and he’s distressingly right. More right than he could know. And it’s all valid, even on a psychological level. I mean, some priests believe that if, say, your great-grandfather was a Satanist or a heretic or even a Freemason a century ago, it could be affecting your health today. Well, yeah, sure… But this case — even if the Requiem is no more than symbolic, it still might help. I mean, look at what it’s brought out tonight.’

‘It’s certainly ruined any chance of Alice getting to sleep.’

‘Reach out, Jeavons said. Embrace.’ Merrily sighed.

‘I really wouldn’t like to think of you embracing Darrin Hook,’ Lol said.

27 Five Barrels

Jane followed Ben down the red-carpeted stairs, aware of dragging her feet. Ben was silent the whole way. He wore a black fleece zipped all the way up and black jeans. He was like his own shadow.

As they came into the lobby Jane saw the build-up of snow on the window ledges and thought, He can fire me, but he can’t send me home in this.

The office behind the reception desk was used mainly by Natalie to monitor incomings and outgoings and to deal with wages for occasional cleaners and waitresses. It had originally been some kind of cloak and boot room. There were still a dozen coat hooks on walls that were cracked, white and windowless. The desk was ebony- coloured, with gold-leaf bits and had come from Ben and Amber’s London flat.

Ben sat behind the desk in a leather swivel chair and nodded at the typist’s chair opposite. A strip light made his thin face white and taut. Jane sat, too. Headmaster’s-study situation.

‘Look, Ben, all I meant—’

He waved her into silence. Above his head was a framed print of one of the etchings from the Strand Magazine. It was almost entirely black, except for a white spurt of flame from a pistol. Beneath the drawing, it said: Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature’s flank.

Ben said, ‘This business of strange forces, curses, hauntings, the mystical powers of the Border, the retentive power of ancient rocks… It’s absolute rubbish, isn’t it?’ He leaned back, his hands clasped on his chest, swivelling a little. ‘Jane, I’m a drama man, always will be, and that’s about using real people and real places to create an illusion.’

Jane nodded.

‘When you’re putting a TV production together,’ Ben said, ‘you have this great tangle of egos — actors, writers, money men. You have time limits, locations, weather conditions. And you have to contain the lot inside a budget that never seems adequate to the task. And then, when it’s all over, you’re competing for just ninety minutes of someone’s attention. Which is fine; it obliges me to’ — Ben unclasped his hands and brought them slowly together in the air — ‘condense.’

‘Make it… controllable?’

Ben smiled.

‘But what are you — I’m sorry — what are you talking about exactly? The documentary or…?’

‘The whole thing. The big picture. Stanner, the enterprise. This place appealed to me as soon as I saw it because it’s pure artifice, built to look like a Gothic manor house, on a lavish scale. A production. And then, thanks to Conan Doyle, it became Baskerville Hall, another creation.’

Jane thought about this. ‘But if The Hound of the Baskervilles was based on an actual legend — a real legend — then there is a kind of reality here, surely.’

‘A real legend?’ Ben looked pained. ‘How real is a legend? What’s the so-called Hound of Hergest now but a half-forgotten local folk tale? Who’s even heard about that outside this immediate area? Whereas the Hound of the Baskervilles — the creation, the artifice — is world-famous, immortal… a hugely powerful image. That’s the power I’m harnessing — I mean, stuff the Hound of Hergest. Its part was over as soon as Doyle’s book was written.’

Typical. Jane’s mouth tightened.

‘What?’ Ben said. ‘Come on, spit it out.’

‘Well, it’s… you know it’s been seen.’

‘What has?’

‘The Hound. Or something. Something that’s killing sheep. The shooters… that’s what they were after.’

Ben nodded slowly.

Jane blinked at him. ‘You knew that?’

‘About Dacre and his pathetic bounty? Of course I knew. Known about it for a while. And naturally, I love the idea of something out there. And I love the idea of people believing in it, and I want to hear their stories. As long as the bastard stays out there… something unknown.’

Ben laughed. Over his head, Sherlock Holmes pumped round after round into the flank of the poor hound, its head and muzzle outlined in white lines of phosphorus.

‘Only Dacre — who I’ve never met, by the way, and have no particular wish to — rather shot himself in the foot. When he heard I was making inquiries about sightings of the Hound, he instructed his tenants, his employees at the farm and the hunt kennels — anybody, in fact, he felt he had authority over — to keep shtum.’ Ben smiled, tongue prodding at the inside of a cheek. ‘Fortunately, in this day and age the feudal flame burns rather lower than it used to.’