With a wheeze like an explosion of breath, it sprang back, and there was Jonathan again, the wafting of air lifting a piece of newsprint from one of his eyes as if he’d blinked at the repeated intrusion, and Merrily slammed a foot flat against the door and pushed it hard away from her. Keeping the foot clamped there, on the stained panelling, as if she was holding back a tide of blood, until the door clicked. And then she stood at the top of the steps, with George a few steps below her, and just took in air.
‘Whoever did this…’ George looking up at her, the knuckle-bump in his forehead gleaming like a big pearl, ‘must look like… like a bloody butcher. How can she be walking the streets?’
‘In a long coat.’ She followed him down the steps.
At the bottom they just stood there, and George said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Well, no,’ she said. ‘Not exactly.’
‘Come to my house.’
Merrily sagged. Her lighter fell from the torn pocket of her fleece and bounced on the cobbles.
‘I made a terrible mistake, George.’ She bent to pick up the lighter, but denied herself a cigarette. ‘The worst mistake I’ve ever made, and, by God, I’ve made some.’
‘Mrs Watkins—’
‘I have a qualified, not to say eminent, psychiatrist I’m supposed to work with. And, because I didn’t like him much, I kept him completely in the dark about most of this.’
‘Mrs Watkins, we all kept people out of this. I wanted Bernard to see to it, as a friend, and Bernard passed it on to you. It was all in confidence. I wanted to keep the lid on — that’s the top and bottom of it.’
‘And I resisted’ — putting a hand to the top of her chest to try and stop herself panting — ‘every inclination to think this woman was clinically insane.’
Even as she’d stood clamping the door shut with her foot, she’d been resisting it. Thinking, could this have been someone else? Some enemy from back home in the north? Someone who’d been trying to find him? If his parents’ murder had been contracted…
Oh, sure. And plastered him with Belladonna cuttings. There was no story-book twist here; it was as messy and unfathomable as any open-and-shut killing. The level of rage that could have driven a woman to this was beyond all comprehension, but wasn’t that always the case? Dear God.
‘We’ll go to my house,’ George said, as though he was helping a child to cross the road. ‘Phone the police from there. Come on.’
They came out of the alley into Corve Street, into George Lackland’s town. Plenty of people still around in the powdery dusk, Tesco’s still open. A tourist coach waiting at the lights.
Over the gravelly sound of the coach engine came the church clock chiming eight. Instinctively, Merrily glanced up to the tower and glimpsed movement at the top: a figure in Palmers’ Guild blue moving across from one corner pinnacle to another. Or the distinctive blue of a stockman’s coat.
They had reached the first narrow window of Lackland Modern Furnishings.
‘George,’ she said, casual as she could manage. ‘Do you think
‘I was going to.’
‘I mean without mentioning me. Not yet. Please? I need some time.’
He stared down at her. ‘You’re feeling ill.’
‘No, I’m—’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Do you think I could borrow the keys to the church? I have to… work something out.’
As if she meant she needed to pray. She hoped he would understand that. And anyway, he’d know the truth of it soon enough.
Everybody would.
Lol leaned against the wall outside and knew why Merrily smoked.
He felt faintly sick. He wanted to be on the other side of these walls, looking for her. She would not just have walked off. She would wait. She was good at waiting. He needed her, and the girl needed her, needed someone who could…
… legitimately intercede.
The movements of police and paramedics around the Inner Bailey were becoming shadowed. The Keep, now the gatehouse, was a charcoal monolith.
‘I hope you know what you’ve done, Mr Robinson.’
He didn’t know how long the woman had been standing by his side.
‘Where’s Saltash?’
‘He’s gone.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘I don’t think he’ll be coming back tonight. He suggested I might be wise to leave also. Let Mrs Watkins’ — the name was expelled like prune stones — ‘take over.’
‘You’ve seen her?’
‘No. I thought she might already be here. Or perhaps she’s with the television people. Doing what she does so well.’
Lol looked at her austere profile. The clouds that had suffocated the sun were relaxing into evening, admitting a wafery moon. Her hair was curling up from the collar of her jacket.
‘What is it with you, Ms…’ Couldn’t remember her damn name.
‘Sian will do. What’s up with me, as I think you already know, is that my and Merrily’s attitudes to the practice of Christianity in a secular age are… incompatible. Never made much of a secret of that. Putting it simplistically, I think there’s no room for superstition in what we do, while she appears to nurture it.’
‘In which case — sorry to be so naive — why would you want to be connected with Deliverance? What’s your agenda?’
Sian looked across the enclosure, dark as a stagnant pond now, towards the Keep with its drooping flag. She sighed.
‘It begins to look,’ she said, ‘as if the agenda was Mrs Watkins herself. Doesn’t it? The ubiquitous, self- effacing, photogenic Merrily Watkins.’
‘Had her picture in the paper too often? Well…’ Lol shrugged. ‘That was always going to happen. She hates it. But if you do what she does and… and you look like she looks, then you’re going to get your picture in the papers.’
‘Who wasn’t here when we — the women of Hereford — were battling for the priesthood. Wasn’t out there with her placard. Wasn’t part of the movement. And was then presented with this outdated but inherently sexy role by a rogue bishop, subsequently discredited. Managing to emerge after his inevitable departure smelling of lavender and honeysuckle. And continuing, for heaven’s sake, to get away with it.’
‘Not always. And not undamaged.’
‘And all of it built on superstition.’ Sian finally turned towards Lol. ‘Do you know what really got to me? How, when she restored evensong in Ledwardine Church — evensong with a fashionably esoteric tweak — it became an immediate talking point because some local woman had apparently been cured of a life-threatening condition.’
‘Which she probably hadn’t had in the first place. Misdiagnosis, or the medical records got mixed up.’
‘Doesn’t matter. It was still all over the Internet, apparently, that the mystical vicar of Ledwardine had healing powers. And the following week it was reported — not in the
‘Trebled, I think. But she squashed the rumours and it slumped again. So everyone’s happy. Except I expect you were really pissed off that she hadn’t run with it, gone the way of all the other messianic cranks.’
‘Always one step ahead,’ Sian said.
‘You make it sound political. She doesn’t think like that. She offended you just by being there.’
‘Yes,’ Sian said. ‘I suppose she did.’
‘So when you were approached by the Dean, whose good friend Saltash had decided he should make his skills available to the Church—’
‘No. The approach came from Nigel himself.’
‘What did he tell you just now?’
‘He didn’t have to tell me anything. He’d walked out on a disturbed child. That was enough. Whatever Merrily may think of me, I’m still a Christian. Of sorts.’ She looked down at her hands, crossed on her abdomen. ‘So I’ve
