The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘Gomer’s truck, in fact,’ Merrily said, clasping Jane.

‘Mum—’ Jane’s lips against her ear. ‘Did Lol…?’

‘Gomer.’ Bliss grinned, like a young dog-fox casing a chicken run. ‘Of course. And me thinking God had parted the snowdrifts for you, like the Red Sea.’

‘A miracle in itself, Gomer Parry Plant Hire.’

‘He’ll do anything for you, won’t he, Merrily? Come through.’ Bliss stepped aside, holding the lounge door wide. ‘It’s not the Ritz, but, hey…’

‘You can handle hardship.’

‘The poor Durex-suits are out playing in the snow. They may be away some time, as someone once said. Dr Grace, the Home Office pathologist, is with them, moaning pitifully. What a night, eh?’

Merrily followed Jane into the lounge.

‘I do like this room,’ Bliss said. ‘Don’t you? It’s like, “I’ve called you all together here in the drawing room…” Who’s that old bugger over the fireplace?’

‘Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,’ Jane said tonelessly. ‘Ben uses this room for his mystery weekends, pretty much like you just said.’

‘Perceptive of me, Jane.’

A single fat log smouldered on a bed of ash in the grate below the blue-tinted blow-up of the great man’s face. Maybe it was the same picture as the one on the White Company’s Web site: Doyle in middle age, his eyes fixed on something the photographer couldn’t see.

‘Mr Foley kindly agreed to us having this as our incident room — for tonight, anyway. We’ll see he’s recompensed, we’re very good about things like that. It’s bloody cold, mind.’ Bliss went to peer at the fire. He was wearing an old blue fleece jacket over jeans.

‘The central heating will have gone off by now,’ Jane said. ‘They weren’t expecting so many late guests.’ She nodded at the fire. ‘All Ben’s logs are still green. He doesn’t know anything about wood-burning. It’s softwood, nicked out of the forestry.’

Bliss glanced back at Jane in curiosity. The kid’s face was expressionless-to-sullen. The boss no longer a hero, then. Bliss grabbed a poker, battering the solitary log in search of heat under there, and Merrily took the opportunity to whisper in Jane’s ear, ‘I came directly from home, OK?’

The kid nodded briefly, maybe brightening a little, possibly even grateful at being gathered into her mum’s confidence. Lol had briefly explained about the video camera, the proposed documentary. Go easy on her, eh? What would you have done at that age?

‘You know, Merrily…’ Bliss stood with his hands on his hips. ‘I realize you’re peripheral to all this — that this is Jane’s show — but when you’re present I always know that other angles I might’ve found a trifle, shall we say, puzzling… will be covered. Mrs Elizabeth Pollen, for instance. Now what on earth would that be about?’

‘Mrs Pollen’s a member of the White Company,’ Jane said.

Merrily said, ‘I don’t know Mrs Pollen personally, but the White Company seems to be a spiritualist group set up to continue the efforts of Arthur Conan Doyle to prove there’s life after death.’

‘Thank you. Do we need proof, Merrily, you and me?’ Bliss rubbed his hands together, kindling energy, and moved over to a mahogany writing table set up in the bay window. It had an unlit repro-Victorian oil lamp on it, with a green shade. There was a hard chair either side of the table. ‘No,’ he said, ‘we’re mates, let’s go and sit by the fire. Statement later, Jane. Just a cosy chat for now. You know me.’

They sat down, mother and daughter, on a sofa. And Merrily, who did know Bliss, too well, became wary, because Bliss didn’t do cosy. All she knew was that there’d been a fire up on the rocks and then a body found below. Found by Jane, this was the problem.

Merrily felt a draught on her ankles; she was still wearing Jane’s duffel coat, her fingers enfolded in the white woolly hat on her knees. Through the window, she could see someone trudging across the sludgy car park towards the porch: Gomer, back from learning what he could from some cop or a fireman; there was always somebody around who Gomer had known for years.

‘So,’ Bliss said. ‘What were you doing at the bottom of Stanner Rocks on a night like this, Jane?’

Jane shrugged. ‘We saw a fire on the rocks. I saw a fire. From the kitchen. Ben and Mrs Pollen went to check it out.’

‘Why you?’

‘Because…’ Jane sighed. ‘Because I was helping them to shoot a video, about Stanner Hall and… stuff. It looked kind of dramatic. And I had the camera with me.’

Merrily watched Jane. The kid had the camera on her lap. She was more subdued than Merrily had ever seen her in the presence of Bliss who, on other occasions, had brought out the worst in her. Merrily sensed a weight of suppressed evidence.

Bliss put his head on one side. ‘And did you get some nice piccies, Jane?’

‘Not really. The fire was more or less out by the time we got there. Because of the snow, I suppose.’

‘Right, then… tell me how you found what you found.’

‘Well, like I… got kind of separated from Ben and Mrs Pollen. Like, you stop to get a good shot of the skyline and stuff, and when you’ve finished they’ve gone. And then I saw a torch beam, and that turned out to be Mrs Pollen. Well, she found me. I like… I hadn’t got a torch and I fell. In the snow. And I suppose she heard me and…’

‘Nobody else about?’

‘Er… no. Not as far as I know.’

‘How long were you separated?’

‘Only a few minutes.’

‘And where was Mr Foley?’

‘He’d like… Mrs Pollen said he’d gone part-way up the path towards the van and saw it was burning out and nobody seemed to be in there. So he just went down to the road to wait for the fire brigade. Would’ve been easy for them to miss the turning, especially with all the snow.’

‘So just you and Mrs Pollen.’

‘She must’ve told you all this.’

‘Just you and Mrs Pollen. You saw nobody else.’

‘No.’

‘OK…’ Bliss leaned back. ‘I realize this is distressing, Jane, but what exactly did you see?’

Jane swallowed. ‘It was like… half-buried in the snow. There was a lot of blood. And it was…’ She looked up towards the cracked cornice around the ceiling. ‘Bits seemed to have been torn away. Bits of…’ Jane shuddered ‘… face. And… like, tissue. Strewn about.’

Merrily put a hand on Jane’s arm. ‘How long had it been there, Frannie?’

‘Foxes,’ Bliss said. ‘We figured foxes had been at it. Or badgers. Doesn’t take them long sometimes. ’Specially on a night like this, if there’s fresh blood.’

‘Do you know who it was yet?’

Bliss stretched his arms. ‘Well, as it happened, I could’ve identified him meself. Except even I wasn’t entirely sure, because, as Jane says, it was all a bit messy.’ He leaned forward, hands on his knees, looked at Jane and then at Merrily. ‘Reason I knew him is I’d had to give evidence a couple of times when he was on the bench.’

‘Oh?’ Jesus.

Bliss paused. He’d be wanting to see if either of them knew the name. Merrily said nothing.

Jane blew it, of course. ‘Dacre?’

‘Sebbie Three Farms, as he’s known,’ Bliss said. He leaned back again, beaming at Jane. ‘So where have you come across him? Not in court, obviously.’

‘Gomer,’ Merrily said quickly.

‘Gomer.’ Bliss beamed. ‘What a useful little feller he is.’

‘However, I don’t suppose Mr Dacre was actually killed by foxes avenging all their relatives,’ Merrily said, wanting a cigarette. ‘Did he fall from the rocks, or what?’