The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘Does he… still come into the office?’

‘Steve? No, he’s gone on now. We decided, Beth and I, that we ought to try and help him. Which is how we got into the network. You help them to accept their state. They hang around people they used to know and get confused. But if it’s explained to them, they’ll just turn around and see the light — literally. And they’ll see people — usually their relatives who’ve already passed — waiting to welcome them. Which is wonderful. And you’ve got that look again.’

The guy was clearly sincere. ‘Just seems too easy.’

‘It’s not easy, but it’s normal. What was interesting in this case, however, on a more basic level, was that when Steve died he was putting together a file of newly discovered records relating to Hergest and Stanner, and I was able to finish the work for him, with Beth. Which was how I learned about the Windlesham group and the White Company. Sometimes you’re led to things.’

Jane said, ‘You found out about Walter Chancery and everything — from these records?’

‘It connected up.’

The phone on reception started to ring.

‘So what did they do the night Conan Doyle came here?’

‘Hadn’t you better get that?’ Matthew said.

‘Look, I know all about Hattie Chancery…’

Matthew smiled, shaking his head, and walked off. Jane snatched up the phone.

‘Stanner Hall.’

‘Where’s your mobile?’

‘Irene!’

‘You wanna talk, talk,’ Eirion said.

‘Jane…’ Amber came round the corner from the kitchen steps. ‘Oh, sorry…’

Jane held up two fingers, appealing for a couple of minutes, and fished the Brigid Document from her jeans.

‘You do realize we leave in the morning,’ Eirion said when she’d finished reading it out. ‘I kind of thought you were ringing to wish me bon voyage.’

‘Oh hell, I’d forgotten.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘We’re leaving early because of the snow.’

‘Oh well, never mind this, then, I’ll—’

‘I’ll give it half an hour, OK?’

‘You’re awfully obliging, for a Welshman.’

‘Make that fifteen minutes,’ Eirion said.

Amber was nowhere in sight when Jane came off the phone, but Matthew was halfway up the stairs, in conversation with Alistair Hardy.

These guys — it was all so cosy. Forced-cosy, like a nursing home. Did death reduce the intellect to mush? Going to work, wondering why nobody would talk to you, till one day someone like Hardy turned you round, and there were all your dead relatives lined up like for some awful retirement party. Surprise, surprise: all your dead relatives in paper hats, with vacant, dead smiles and party poppers.

‘Jane!’ Amber was standing by the eerie tree, wearing her vinyl apron. Her voice was too light and thin for this place; in Stanner, unless you projected, your words were carried off like dust. ‘Come and help me, would you?’

‘OK.’

But as soon as they reached the kitchen steps, it was, ‘Jane, did you tell your mother what’s happening here?’

‘Well, no, I told you what she’d say.’

‘I said you wouldn’t tell her,’ Amber said with resignation. ‘Ben thought you would, but then he—’

‘Ben? Ben knows you rang my mum?’

‘It was actually Ben’s idea, Jane.’ This time Amber’s words resounded like a smoke alarm. ‘It was Ben who suggested I rang her.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You’d better come down to the kitchen.’ Amber looked over her shoulder and then back at Jane and down at the camera in her hands. ‘Deception’s not my forte, Jane, I’m just a cook.’

The back-porch door was unlocked. Normal enough. Danny went through, with his lambing lamp switched on. The usual stuff in here: shovels, rubber leggings on a peg, hard hat and face guard for the chainsaw.

He banged on the back door. ‘Jeremy!’

The howling stopped. Danny rattled the handle; it turned and the door opened. Not normal, not at night. Danny shone the lamp into the kitchen: old-fashioned, green-painted kitchenette, exposed sink, old brown Rayburn.

‘Jeremy?’

The Rayburn chunnered to itself. A tap dripped. No one here. He went through into the living room, where the lambing lamp found Jesus half in shadow, his face tinted by the olive light of the Garden of Gethsemane. Below the mantelpiece, behind a fireguard, little orange flames were curling quietly out of a tamped-down mix of woodblocks and coal-slack in the range.

Below that, the dog sat on the brown and green rag rug. The dog wasn’t howling no more, only panting slightly, his flanks heaving, his stare on Danny but not moving from the rug that had been here all his life and all Jeremy’s life. This was a good dog, Border Collie crossed with something else. Something that howled.

‘Where’s the boss, Flag?’

The dog didn’t come to him, didn’t howl, didn’t growl, didn’t whimper, just sat. Danny shone the light around, over the pink-flowered wallpaper that Jeremy’s mam had pasted up long, long ago. Over the dresser was a picture plate of what might have been Hereford Cathedral, with a crack through the tower.

On the top of the drawer section of the dresser was a small white envelope.

On the envelope, it said Mr Danny Thomas.

Danny said, ‘Oh God. Oh Jesus Christ.’

The envelope wasn’t sealed. Danny took out the single sheet of folded paper inside and held it under the lambing light.

Danny, I’ve never been one for formality. You been a good friend to me, always. Please take the dog, he knows you. Please deal with the sale of my stock, and see they go to the right kind of place or keep everything yourself for nothing. Natalie will

Danny let the paper fall. Something like a sob came out of him. When he looked up, the face of Jesus had gone into full shadow.

He ran out, through the kitchen, through the porch and into the white yard. Opposite him, the big barn door was shut. The little door in the bottom right-hand corner was not quite closed.

Danny saw a glimmering of light in there.

He stopped outside the door, very afraid. Behind him, the dog was howling again, making the coldest, loneliest sound in all the bloody world. The snow was coming down harder, but he couldn’t feel it. It didn’t feel cold no more; its flakes might have been rose petals.

29 Twist

You forgot how isolating snow could be. At the highest point of the village, the church and the vicarage had become an island of ancient stones and crooked timbers rising out of an arctic sea into a falling sky. Merrily and Lol