The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

Lol stopped at the entrance to the Close, getting his breath back, brushing the snow from his glasses and the arms of his old army-surplus parka.

Why was he really here? Why was he doing this? Because he’d been unnerved by the face at the window? Even more by what Merrily had told him? Because he couldn’t just sit there doing nothing until he fell asleep in some chair? Because he would otherwise have felt useless?

No — face it — it was essentially because he knew that this was what Merrily would be doing if she was here. Merrily — and he didn’t like to contemplate this too deeply — would be afraid of what little fiery-faced Alice might have said or done and where it might have led.

Because of the relentless snow, he didn’t see the light in the end bungalow until he was halfway along the close. All the others were either in darkness or had outside lamps as a deterrent to burglars. At Alice’s, the light was in either the kitchen or the living room or both. Hard to say; curtains were drawn — cheerful red roses against a yellow trellis.

Both gates were open. A sign on one said Orchard’s End. There was a white truck in the drive, with big tyres and a couple of inches of snow on the bonnet. Dexter? Lol switched off the torch. There was also a light on over a side door next to the truck. He went up and rang the bell, noticing that the snow had been roughly cleared from around the door, that footprints leading around the back were already half whited- out.

He heard the bell ringing inside, an old-fashioned continuous ringing, strident. He stopped and waited. No response. He tried again, keeping his finger on the bell push for about ten seconds.

Inside the bungalow the ringing died away. The lights stayed on. The snow kept on falling in its windless silence.

There was a slim glass panel in the door. When Lol leaned on the door to peer through it, the door swung open, and he wasn’t expecting that at all.

Merrily lit a cigarette from the stub of the last. She never did this: it was chain-smoking, a sin. She hardly noticed until it was done and the smoke was curling up, past the waistcoat of Arthur Conan Doyle, like grey ectoplasm.

‘How long have you known about her?’

‘Me personally? Couple of months,’ Bliss said, ‘maybe longer. It’s a routine thing, notifying the local bobbies when someone of her… status moves into your patch. Social workers and the Probation Service watching their backs.’

‘How long did she serve?’

‘Eight, nine years. The last year in an open prison. They come out, for lengthening periods, to get work experience, and she was taken on at a big guest house, and she did very well, got on with people. Which is how she got the taste for it. Like being on a permanent holiday, and most of the folk you met were on holiday too, or transient workers. Temporary. Passing through.’

‘I suppose after being in one place for so long, it’s hard to settle down.’

‘She wasn’t. She was in about six places all over the country. Different young offenders’ institutions for the first years, and then two adult women’s prisons. I don’t think they knew what to do with her from the start. Smart, outgoing, quite good with people — long way from your usual moody psychos. But one of those young offenders’ joints — Borstals, as was — she was in there with boys, and that could get inflammatory at times. She was a walking challenge for the hard lads — physically very mature for her age — and there were a number of incidents. And then she absconded and got caught quick and moved on. I think everybody was happy when she was old enough for Styall, partly because it was near where she lived but mainly because it was all women.’

Merrily said, ‘Did the temporary employers know who she was?’

She was thinking, Did Jeremy know what Brigid did? But how could he not know? This was a national hate figure whose name, when it appeared in tabloid headlines, was almost invariably preceded by the word ‘evil’: Evil Brigid should never get out, says victim’s mother. And then: Evil Brigid pregnant. Evil Brigid freed in secret. And the media hunt — Where is Evil Brigid?

Here.

‘Not necessarily,’ Bliss said. ‘Some employers prefer not to know. And when she came out, she had a new name and new documents — driving licence, P45, all that. This is her second change of name — the first one, the press rumbled her at some hotel in Cornwall. That was when she dyed her hair. There was a rumour she’d had plastic surgery, but I don’t think so.’

‘The Probation Service are presumably still involved?’

‘Oh yeh, they’ve always been there in the background. And also, in this case, the officer who nicked her, Ellie Maylord, who was my boss for a while when I was a youngster. Later, she became the first female operational DCI on Merseyside, ended up as superintendent. But she was just a little DC when she brought Brigid Parsons in, and she’s always kept in touch with her… Well, I think she was fascinated, the way most people are, even coppers, by someone this… extreme.’

‘Inevitably.’ Merrily fingered her pectoral cross.

‘So it was Ellie who contacted me, on the quiet, in October. My boss already knew, it turned out, but I was well off the need-to-know list. Ellie was worried about why, after managing quite a big hotel in Shropshire, Brigid had wanted to come here, to this’ — Bliss looked around — ‘not terribly prosperous establishment. I said I’d make a few discreet inquiries, keep an eye on her. But, as you know, I’ve been a bit busy with one thing or another these last two months, so it got overlooked. Do you know why she came here?’

Merrily tipped her cigarette into a big metal ashtray, pushing it away. Bliss didn’t know, then, that Brigid Parsons was Hattie Chancery’s granddaughter, Dacre’s cousin. All he knew was that Dacre had been found dead and a convicted murderer was missing.

How come Hattie Chancery had failed to become part of the legend of Brigid Parsons?

Merrily retreated behind smoke; she’d need to think about this before enlightening him. ‘She became pregnant in prison, didn’t she? I remember reading a long piece in the Observer magazine some years ago — about a year after she came out.’

Recalling a photo of a woman’s silhouette, shot from a distance, in a wide, empty field at sunset. A little girl running ahead of her. The little girl who was now Jane’s unlikely best friend.

Jane’s friend, the daughter of Brigid Parsons. No wonder she was quiet.

‘Embarrassing,’ Bliss said. ‘It had to be either one of the male staff or someone she encountered on working days. But she never told, and she insisted on having the child. Toted the kid around with her all over the place. Admirable really, all the high-pressure jobs she managed to hold down and bring up a young baby. Something to prove, I suppose.’

‘I see.’ It all made sense now, what Jane had told her, about them moving from place to place, usually holiday resorts, lost in the anonymous army of migrant seasonal staff. Finally, travelling like gypsies. ‘What about her parents?’

‘The mother died when she was born. Dad supported Brigid, but then he got married again, had a new family. Didn’t see much of her until he was dying himself, not too long ago. After her father died, that was when she came down here.’

‘The head teacher at Moorfield, Robert Morrell — would he know who Clancy’s mother was?’

‘Might. I’m not sure. He’d love it, wouldn’t he, the old namby-pamby liberal.’

‘I’m just surprised he let her go near Jane.’

‘Oh, I think we all tend to misjudge Jane,’ Bliss said. ‘She can be a pain in the bum, but she’s from a nice home. Morrell might think Clancy could have worse friends.’

‘You’re being worryingly laid-back about this, Francis. Personally, I’m shattered.’

‘That’s because I know where I’m going. I’m accumulating background data for when we bring her in.’ He smiled tightly. ‘Which we will. We’ve got officers at the Thomas place.’

‘You’re making a few assumptions.’

‘I’m looking at the evidence. A woman goes missing from work at a hotel just a few hundred yards from the spot where a man is found dead in suspicious circumstances? I mean, even if this wasn’t Brigid Parsons…’

‘Surely they wouldn’t let her out without extensive psychiatric screening. I mean, how old was she when she