The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

Jane stood up, careful to stay within the torch beam, aware of holding on to Mrs Pollen’s tough, sheepskin sleeve and not, under any circumstances, wanting to let go.

‘Where’th…’ The tip of her tongue swelling where she’d bitten it. ‘Where’s Ben?’

‘Gone down to the main road to wait for the fire brigade. In the end, he didn’t need to go all the way up the track to see what had happened. It was pretty obvious.’

‘What was?’

‘It was that old camper van, used by all kinds of people for all kinds of purposes — some idiot had contrived to set it alight, and the petrol tank blew up. Ben doesn’t think anybody was in there, but if they were— Come on, we may as well go and join him; there’s nothing we can do here.’

‘No…’

‘Jane, it’s very cold and I’m—’

‘You didn’t hear it, then?’

Beth Pollen peered at her. ‘What are we talking about?’

Jane was holding on to Mrs Pollen’s arm with both hands, just couldn’t seem to let go. The torch beam was dragged away over the uneven ground. They were on the floor of what had been a quarry, between the snowbound bypass and the sheerest face of Stanner Rocks, going up maybe a hundred feet then some more in jagged stages, before the summit sloped back into the forestry behind.

There was a distant warbling: fire engines. The real world. Jane sagged, relieved for maybe the first time in her life to be slipping back into a place where the arrival of fire engines could make everything all right.

She let go of Beth Pollen’s arm. It occurred to her that this was the first time she and this woman had been alone together, one-to-one. On every other occasion, others had been there — Ben or the White Company, of whom Mrs Pollen was the most… normal.

‘You… know my mother?’

‘I know of your mother,’ Mrs Pollen said.

‘Only Amber said you might want to talk to her.’

‘Did she?’

‘Before you— What’s that?’ Jane grabbed at Mrs Pollen’s arm again.

‘It sounds like the fire brigade at last, thank God. What is the matter with you?’

‘No…’ Steering the torch towards the rocks. ‘That.’

Pointing to an area about ten yards away, an area of white but a different kind of white: the splodgy, pink- spattered white of the butcher’s counter.

‘You really are a tiresome girl,’ Beth Pollen said.

And then she said, ‘Oh my God… Oh my God.’

Part Four

Then, as it would seem, he became as one that hath a devil, for rushing down the stairs into the dining hall, he sprang upon the great table… and he cried aloud before all the company that he would that very night render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if he might but overtake the wench.

From ‘The Baskerville Manuscript’. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

35 Fresh Blood

She hardly recognized the place. It was like some unfinished centre for asylum seekers: cavernous and hollow, echoing with alienation and confusion. Displaced people wandering around, clusters of coppers in uniform and crime-scene technos in coveralls like flimsy snowsuits.

Merrily saw Ben Foley standing near the foot of the baronial stairs with a youngish guy in black-framed glasses and an older man in a suit. Foley had his hands behind his back, hair swept back from his long face, lips compressed. He looked defiant, which suggested that he was deeply worried. Amber Foley came past with a tray of coffees, her hair white under the chandelier.

‘Lovely!’ A policeman taking the tray. Amber didn’t notice Merrily; Amber was keeping busy. But when the copper carried the tray away, Merrily spotted Jane.

There was this lopsided Christmas tree with wan, white lights, and the kid was standing next to it, a video camera dangling from a strap around her neck, as though this was all she possessed. She looked like some stranded backpacker whose passport had been stolen on her first trip abroad.

Merrily was about to go to her when DS Mumford faded up like the house detective in some drab old film noir.

‘Mrs Watkins. How’re you?’

‘Bewildered, Andy.’ If Mumford was here, it suggested Bliss was running the event, therefore care was needed.

‘Remarkable how quick you made it, considering the conditions.’

‘Gomer’s good at snow. And I’m afraid you take risks when you’re worried.’

‘Gomer, eh?’

‘He heard about it from Danny Thomas. Word travels fast in the Radnor Valley. So I thought that with Jane’s involvement, I’d better…’

No need at all to tell Mumford that Jane had managed to ring Lol, and Lol had phoned her at The Nant… which would have meant explaining how she and Gomer had come to be at The Nant and… like Jeremy Berrows didn’t have enough problems.

There had been fire engines and police Land Rovers at the rocks when they’d got here. Warblers and blue beacons in the snow, the son et lumiere of violent death. Gomer had dropped her by the porch, gone to park the truck.

‘Andy, I think I’d better have a word with Jane.’

‘Well, the boss has just sent for her,’ Mumford said. ‘He might be amenable to you going in. Seventeen now, isn’t that right?’

The last legal umbilical slashed — Jane was old enough to be questioned by the police without a responsible adult in attendance. Merrily saw that the kid’s hair was pushed back behind her ears, like it had lost the ribbon. As usual in these extreme situations, she looked about nine.

The door marked lounge opened now, and a woman came out. Late fifties, well- managed white hair, sheepskin coat.

‘Thank you, Mrs Pollen.’ Frannie Bliss was holding the door for her. ‘We may need you again. Sleeping here tonight?’

‘I’ll be here, Inspector, but I can’t see any of us getting much sleep, can you?’

Bliss looked almost sympathetic for a moment. Then he spied Jane, and then Merrily about fifteen feet away. His small teeth glittered through the freckles. Where most police put on a severe front in the face of serious crime, Bliss rarely attempted to disguise extreme glee.

‘Little Jane Watkins. And her mum, valiantly battling through the snow in the old Volvo.’