The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (MW6)

by Phil Rickman

  Now the gate was open. Footprints in the snow.

  Jane went through hesitantly, carrying the rubber-covered torch that Amber had given her; there was no great need for it: the moon was out and the ground was bright with virgin snow.

  ‘Careful,’ Amber said, the white canvas first-aid bag over her shoulder. ‘For God’s sake. We don’t know—’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Ben’s voice from some yards away – Ben’s voice like Jane had never heard it before, kind of thin and stringy. ‘It’s all right, Amber. All right, now.’

  Just the other side of the gate was a small clearing. Jane stayed on the edge of it and shone the torch towards Ben’s voice. The beam unrolled a white carpet slicked by the marks of skidding footwear. No sign of the shooters, no voices other than the Foleys’.

  ‘Stay there, Jane.’ Amber put down the first-aid bag and said to Ben, ‘What have you done?’

  It was like she’d asked him to stir the soup and he’d let it boil over. It was always easy to underestimate Amber: she worried about intangibles, but only because she was a practical person, controlled. She’d sent Natalie to the ladies’ loo to get cleaned up and then stand by to call an ambulance.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Ben let out a long, hollow breath that was more than a half-sob. ‘I’m really sorry about this.’

  At the same time she saw Ben, Jane heard these liquid snuffling noises, knowing as he turned into the torchlight that he was not making them. Behind him was a fence post with no fence, only shorn-off twists of barbed wire nailed to it. And a hump on the ground.

  Ben turned fully towards them, rising, and Jane gasped. His Edwardian jacket hung open, exposing his once-white shirt, emblazoned now with a blotch like a red rose.

  ‘Lost it,’ Ben said. ‘I lost it.’ And then he giggled. He was trembling hard. He stumbled. ‘Oh Jesus.’

  ‘Hold the torch a bit steadier, can you, Jane?’ Amber looked at Ben. It was like he’d been fighting a duel and staggered back, rapiered through the heart.

  ‘No, really, I’m all right. Don’t bother about me. I’m really all right. We should see to—’

  He gestured vaguely at the hump on the ground. Jane had been afraid to look at the hump. Hoping it was a dead tree. Or something. Something that didn’t snuffle.

  ‘I’m sorry about this,’ Ben said again.

  The man was lying with his shoulders propped against the fence post. He was wearing camouflage trousers, an army jacket. He was holding his head back against the post. You couldn’t see much of his face through all the blood, but his mouth was hanging open, and there was blood in there, too, and all around his lips and nose, bubbling through a film of dirt and snot. Jane recoiled, swallowing bile. It was like he’d been bobbing for apples in a barrel of blood.

  ‘Called me a nancy boy, you see.’ Ben moved away back, so that Amber could undo the first-aid bag. ‘Nat tried to stop the bleeding. Not very successfully, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He needs to go to a hospital.’ Amber’s voice was crisp as the snow. ‘You’ve broken his nose, for a start.’

  ‘Is that really necess—? I mean, can’t you—?’

  ‘Ben, you’ve smashed his face! I can’t believe you could—’

  ‘It was dark, I couldn’t see what I— For God’s sake, Amber, they were destroying it all. Everything was going so— And then these, these bloody shots, shaking all the glass in the windows. These bast— That’s illegal, that’s—’

  The man on the ground squirmed, as if he was trying to get up, and then he slid back down the post like he was tied to it. He tried to speak, but his voice was like a thick soup. He started to choke.

  Amber said, ‘Jane, leave me the torch and then go back to the house and tell Nat we need an ambulance, will you?’

  ‘Naw!’ The man was prising himself up, his back jammed against the fence post. ‘No abulath!’

  Ben snatched the torch away from Jane, the way he’d grabbed the video camera, and held it up over his shoulder, the way police held their torches, gripping the lighted end, so they could use the thick stem as a club.

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘He said no ambulance.’ Jane retched.

  Amber said, ‘What are you going to do now, Ben – beat all his teeth out?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Ben shone the torch briefly round the clearing. ‘There’s two more of these bastards somewhere. And a gun. One of them’s got a gun.’

  ‘He’s...’ Jane backed away. ‘He’s right. They were at Jeremy’s. They were going to shoot Jeremy’s dog.’

  ‘Then tell Natalie to phone the police as well,’ Amber said. ‘Jane, go!’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jane turned away, grateful for an excuse, and ran blindly across the clearing towards the wooden gate. Couldn’t believe what Ben had done. OK, he was furious at the shooters invading his land, and it had been building up for weeks, and he was frustrated and desperate for something to work out. But this was Ben Foley – artistic, funny, slightly camp. You thought you knew people. You thought you knew—

  She was pulling at the gate when the hands came down on her shoulders.

  TWENTY

  Not About Foxes

  ‘SO HOW DID you find out, vicar?’ Alice Meek said. Resignation there, but no big surprise. ‘Who told you?’

  Merrily shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t be fair. But it was more a question of finding out that there was something to find out. You know?’

  ‘You was guided.’ Alice put a mug of coffee in front of her. ‘See, Dexter, he thought you was just gonner lay your hands on him. He said he wouldn’t mind that. He come back afterwards, he says, that’s it, don’t wanner go n’more. I said, Dexter, I said, nothing comes easy, in this life. You want the Holy Spirit to pay you a visit in all His glory, I said, you gotter play your part, boy.’

  Alice had a bungalow in a new close off Old Barn Lane, not a hundred yards from her chip shop. Alice’s kitchen was bright and shiny and full of chrome. Like a chip shop, in fact. It occurred to Merrily that, of all the women who gave up their time to clean the church, Alice was probably the oldest, the busiest and the richest.

  And no kids. Dexter could be in for a sizeable bequest. Whatever Alice wanted, Dexter would have to listen.

  ‘What I was going to suggest, Alice...’ Nervously, Merrily sipped the coffee. It was, as she’d expected, the kind you made if you needed to work all night. ‘I mean, there might be something in this for more than Dexter.’

  She hadn’t wanted to waste any time, to dwell too much on this before taking action. She’d walked straight down to Old Barn Lane and gone into the chip shop just as it was opening for the evening. Alice wasn’t working tonight, but the woman there, Sharon, had phoned Alice at home and Alice had told Sharon to send the vicar round directly.

  ‘En’t never had no kids, vicar, as you know. Used to babysit the others. Oldest sister, no kids, you spends half your nights babysitting – they think they’re doing you a favour.’ Alice sat herself down in a chrome-framed chair at the chrome-legged table. ‘What I’m saying, I knowed all of ’em, vicar, all them kids, better’n their own mothers in some ways, truth was known. Kids talks to the babysitter, see – when they wakes up in the night, when they’re tryin’ to put you off sending ’em to bed, they talks.’

  ‘So Dexter, Darrin, Roland...’

  ‘Babysitted all them boys for years. Never hardly had a Saturday night at home. Roland, he wasn’t like the others. Upsets me still to think about that child. He was... like he didn’t belong in that family. They’re – I’m saying this even though it’s my own family, but they’re a rough bunch, vicar, en’t got no social graces. En’t saying there’s no goodness at the heart of ’em, but you gotter dig deep sometimes. ’Cept with Roland. A true innocent, that child. He was that innocent it was like he didn’t belong in this world, which is a daft thing to say—’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Like he never growed a skin, vicar. Sometimes, I wakes up in the
night, years him, clear as day, sniffin’ his tears back. “Daddy was drunk”, he’d say. “Daddy’d come in drunk and he smelled bad.” Saturdays, see, Richie, he’d spend the whole afternoon in the pub – come back, trample on the kids’ toys and laugh hisself daft about it. Then they’d go out, him and my sister, Lisa, and I’d come round and babysit and clean up the mess and dry the tears. And talk to Roland. Darrin, he was his dad’s son, didn’t wanner talk, got bored easy. Roland, he wasn’t like neither of them. You think about what happened to him, and you think, why? Why was he put on this earth for that short time, for that to happen?’

  ‘You learned something from him,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Yes.’ Alice’s sharp little eyes filled up – a rarity, Merrily guessed.

  ‘What about Dexter’s family?’

  ‘That’s the middle sister, Kathleen. Her ex-husband, Mike, least he kept a job longer’n a week when they was together. None of ’em was bright, look, no get-up-and-go. You only gotter look at Dexter. I couldn’t look at Dexter for months, mind, after Roland died. I thought – God help me – why couldn’t it be him instead, or Darrin?’

  ‘Darrin’s... been in trouble?’

  ‘I never knows whether he’s in or out of prison, vicar, been in that many times. Beyond all redemption now, that boy. His dad, he was always destructive, but that was just clumsy and careless, through drink mostly – he never done nothing criminal. Most he ever got done for was urinatin’ in a public place – doorway of the Old House, dead centre of the city, all the shops still open, you imagine anybody that stupid? Thick as a beam-end, Richie. But Darrin – when his ma blamed Dexter for what happened to Roland, Darrin went and did damage on them, and Kath and Mike, they wouldn’t put the police on him ’cause they was ashamed of what Dexter done.’

  Merrily sighed.

  ‘Problem with Dexter, look, he en’t got no charm, do he, vicar? Too fat, en’t too pretty to look at and not much of a way with him. Nothin’ about him, is there? Most people, they don’t know what he did – never did, even at the time; his name wasn’t in no papers nor nothin’, ’cause of his age. But he always reckons everybody knows and whatever he do they en’t gonner think no better of him, so he don’t even make the effort. But inside, it all builds up.’

  ‘Until he can’t breathe.’

  It all added up. Except, perhaps, for the Requiem for Roland seventeen years dead. This was something she wouldn’t even have thought of before meeting Llewellyn Jeavons. It was unknown country. Embrace, Lew had said. Embrace the entire dysfunctional family? Was she big enough for this?

  ‘Nobody got no time for the boy but me n’more,’ Alice said. ‘He’s had girlfriends, but they drifts away. En’t a good bet, is he?’ She looked at Merrily. ‘What you got in mind then, vicar? You gonner have to spell it out for an ole woman.’

  The difficult part. Merrily looked up and saw her own face reflected, warped and stretched and crushed, in shiny things on shelves.

  Danny Thomas said, ‘We’ll take him to the hospital in the van. No problem at all.’ He turned to the man with the face like a bloodied waxwork. ‘Nathan, ennit, as I recall?’

  The guy grunted something about his mates. Amber, apparently oblivious to the cold and the carnage, had cleaned his wounds the best she could and gone calmly back to the hotel. It was all less disturbing now, in the clearing, with Danny and Gomer there.

  ‘Looks like your mates didn’t hang about, boy,’ Gomer said. ‘If they got a mobile, we can phone ’em from the hospital and they’ll come and pick you up, mabbe.’

  Everything was turned around now. The moment of panic when the hands had come down on Jane’s shoulders, and then the moment of wild relief when Ben had shone the torch on the man’s face and it had a beard and hair like grey seaweed around it and a puzzled expression.

  ‘Yes, but how—?’ Ben sounded worried again. ‘How’s he going to explain to the hospital what happened?’

  ‘Stick to the truth, I’d say,’ Gomer said. ‘What happened, he slipped on the ice and snow and come down on that ole broken post with his nose. We’d just parked the van, comin’ to pick Janey up, and we years the poor bugger moaning. Don’t reckon our friend yere’s gonner wanner make n’more of it than that.’

  Jane had to smile. For a while, after what happened to his depot and to Nev, it had looked like Gomer’s effective years were over; he’d been erratic, disconnected. Now he was back in gear. And bringing Danny into the business... that had been inspired. Mavericks, both of them.

  ‘If you got a toilet that en’t too posh, with a basin and an ole pair of jeans, that might help too,’ Danny said to Ben. ‘We’ll stand outside, make sure he don’t get away. All right, Nathan?’

  Nathan might have nodded. The blood had stopped flowing, but he was still breathing through his mouth.

  ‘This is very good of you guys,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t know what you saw—’

  ‘Not much,’ Gomer assured him. ‘Not much at all. What you wanner do now, Janey? Come with us to the hospital, or I come and pick you up on the way back?’

  ‘That’d be out of your way,’ Jane said. ‘I’d better come, I suppose.’

  Not exactly looking forward to sharing a back seat with the remains of Nathan, but what could she do? She waited with Gomer in the foyer while Danny escorted Nathan into the ground-floor gents and Ben ran upstairs to replace his torn and saturated trousers. There was no sign of the White Company. Were they still in the kitchen? Was she missing Alistair Hardy’s first attempts to reach Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? All that stuff seemed so unreal now. As unreal as the idea of Lucy Devenish floating around her like some pagan angel.

  ‘What did you really see?’ she asked Gomer.

  ‘Like I said, not much at all, Janey.’ Gomer got out his tin to roll a ciggy. ‘Starts off when we’re just about to turn up the drive and Danny spots this green Discovery in the lay-by across the road, no lights. Had a run-in with these boys the other night, see.’

  ‘Clancy told me.’

  ‘Did she? Well, Danny’s quite keen to discuss a little matter of severe damage to Greta’s runabout, so he pulls in, and we waits a while. Then we sees the three of ’em running up the drive with the gun. Then there’s about three shots. That’s it for Danny – puts the lights on full beam, the ole fog lamps too, goes revving up the drive, windows down, bawling out, “Armed Police, stay where you are!” Seen ’em do it on the box.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Bloody worked, too, ennit? They wouldn’t know, that stage. They muster took to the woods, ’cause next thing we seen two of ’em back on the road behind us. Jump straight into the Discovery and off. This one – Nathan – your mate Foley likely had him cornered by then. Time we gets to the top, we years Foley shoutin’ at the feller, Miz Craven trying to calm both of ’em down. He’s saying to the Welshie, Just tell us what this is about, all we wanner know’s what it’s about. Someone payin’ you to make trouble, kind of thing. Then Miz Craven, her says some’ing and then this Welshie – he don’t sound too scared, not then – we years him go, “So what you gonner do about it, you and this nancy boy?” And that’s when I reckon Foley goes for him.’

  ‘Insult to injury.’ Jane recalled Ben on the last night of the murder weekend. They think I’m soft. They think I’m effete, some arty bastard from London. Then he’d said, Where I come from we have real hard bastards.

  Scary.

  ‘So, what if the hospital ask questions?’

  ‘Ah, that boy, he en’t gonner say nothin’. Wouldn’t look too good, where he comes from, getting ’isself filled in by – pardon me – a London pansy.’

  ‘What if the hospital tell the police?’

  Gomer shrugged, lighting his ciggy. ‘Could always not bother goin’ all the way to the hospital – kick the bugger out, side o’ the road.’

  And, for a few moments, Jane thought that was what they were going to do, when Danny Thomas pulled into the bay fronting a closed and lightless garden centre on the Hereford
road and switched off the engine.

  ‘Right, then,’ Danny said.

  He and Nathan were in the front, Jane and Gomer sitting on bags of sand and cement on the deck of the van. Nathan had his shaven head tilted over the back of his seat. He was wearing the jeans that Ben had brought for him. They were too long. And they were white – a last, desperate joke, as Ben had accepted from Danny, with a moue of distaste, the bin liner containing Nathan’s camouflage trousers.

  Nathan sat up in a hurry. There was enough moonlight to show that he was very scared.

  ‘Relax,’ Danny said. ‘What you gotter worry about? All you done is wrecked my wife’s car and nearly put my eye out with a rifle. Do I look like the sorter feller holds a grudge?’

  Nathan made a lunge at the door, slamming into it with his shoulder. He cried out.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Danny said. ‘Oughter’ve told you, that door’s knackered, he is – only opens from the outside. You gotter wind down the window, see, lean out and do it that way. You wanner bit o’ help with that, is it?’

  Nathan slumped, still breathing hard through his mouth, like he had a very heavy head-cold. ‘Juss fuggig... ged id over.’

  ‘What – beat the shit out of you? Mess those lovely dinky white jeans? Nathan, we come to your aid, man. We’re your friends.’

  ‘Fuggoff.’

  ‘And friends – what does friends do but share a few confidences?’

  A lighted bus went past on the Hereford road, and you could see the scar on Danny’s forehead like an angry red slug-trail. Beside Jane, Gomer took out his ciggy tin. Jane began to feel an edge of trepidation about what they were going to do to a man already in need of serious medical attention.

  Nathan said, ‘You lemme out now, made, we’ll leave id at thad, eh?’

  ‘Mate?’ Danny said. ‘Mate? I was a fucking long-haired twat, if you recall, the other night.’ He leaned towards Nathan. ‘Do you recall the other night?’