The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (MW6)

by Phil Rickman

  ‘But now, you think Sebbie perhaps... knows the truth?’

  Jeremy looked at Merrily at last. ‘It’s possible. Deal was done at the time through Big Weale, the solicitor, in Kington. And when he... when he died, sudden, leavin’ his whole business in a big tangle, this other firm come in to sort it all out. ’Course, Sebbie’s a magistrate, knows all the lawyers for miles around. Things gets mislaid. Documents. Can’t always trust lawyers, can you?’

  ‘And the lease...’

  ‘Lease is nearly up.’

  ‘Dacre thinks he has a chance of getting you out and buying The Nant?’

  ‘Can’t say what he thinks. Dacre’s in a funny state. Things he done lately en’t been that rational.’

  This from a man who’d just tried to hang himself. But Merrily’s understanding of that was hardening up in the light of what she was learning about Jeremy’s weakening grip on everything he held dear.

  ‘So the future...’ She didn’t know how to put it.

  ‘No.’ Jeremy shook his head so hard that Merrily winced. ‘It en’t about that.’ The agony of it made his eyes water and come out like marbles. ‘En’t about money, nor ground. I love The Nant, course I do, every square inch of it, only...’

  Merrily looked up at him. Her knees were starting to ache.

  ‘When we was kids, see – twelve, thirteen – her come to stay with her dad. They had a posh caravan. Me and her, we like... we got fond. Wrote to each other for years. All them years, I’m dreaming mabbe... mabbe her’ll come back. And praying, I s’pose. Prayed a lot, truth be told. Prayers she’d come back.’

  ‘And then she did come back... twenty-five years later?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘All that time—’

  ‘Things happened, see. In her life.’

  Merrily reached out and took one of his hands, squeezed it gently.

  ‘I seen the van parked... where they used to put the caravan. I was scared. I seen Clancy at first in the lower field in the early morning – it was like seein’ Brigid, like her’d come back near enough the same as when I last seen her. I was scared... couldn’t go there. I called up Danny, and he come down. Then we seen this woman... and her hair was dark – thought it wasn’t her, after all, see. And then...’

  Tears rolled down Jeremy’s face. Tears coming without any change of expression, like a crying doll’s.

  Merrily thought, But she stayed. She moved in, with her daughter. She put her daughter into a local school, got a job at the hotel, the house her family used to own...

  There were big gaps in this story. Big issues that he wasn’t telling her about. She thought about the note that Danny had shown her when she arrived, Jeremy’s prosaic farmer’s farewell.

  Please deal with the sale of my stock, and see they go to the right kind of place or keep everything yourself for nothing. Natalie will understand.

  ‘He could’ve took the farm,’ Jeremy said. ‘Took The Nant. Took the lot.’

  ‘Dacre?’

  Merrily thought of what Gomer had said: Mary Morson, mabbe her rung to break the news to him as he wasn’t the only fish in Natalie’s stream.

  Other fish. Worst-case scenario.

  She looked over to the photo on the dresser: two light-haired children in T-shirts and shorts, screwing up their eyes against the sun. Standing side by side, not touching. The girl, even then, a bit taller than the boy.

  She thought, in dismay, Dacre?

  Dacre and his cousin in the back of a camper van on the top of Stanner Rocks?

  ‘Could’ve had the lot if he’d left her.’

  Jeremy looked away, back into the fire.

  34

  The Butcher’s Counter

  JANE STAYED WHERE she was; no backing off now. Ben took an impulsive step towards her and then abruptly turned away and caught up with Beth Pollen at the little gate at the bottom of the car park. He threw open the gate and followed Mrs Pollen into the darkness of the clearing beyond, the place where he’d pulped Nathan, the shooter.

  Bastard. Jane stood for a moment, feeling the cold on her face like a contemptuous slap, and then, breathing hard, she followed them.

  I quit. That simple. Perhaps part of her had known this was coming, was unavoidable after what Amber had told her about the good friction point, the proposed use of Mum as a twist.

  Twist. Hook. Contemporary dynamic. She didn’t have to listen to this bullshit any more and, if he wanted some now drama, he could have it.

  She was almost at the gate when she became aware of him standing just on the other side, by the fence post where Nathan had lain. He was alone; Beth Pollen must have gone on a little way; Jane could see a torch beam bobbing.

  She stopped, keeping some space between her and Ben, clasping the camera to her chest. Maybe she’d have to hit him with it.

  ‘Jane...’ If he was speaking quietly that was probably only because he didn’t want Beth Pollen to hear. ‘Jane, whatever you just said, let’s pretend either you didn’t say it or I didn’t hear it. And while—’

  ‘I said I qu—’

  Ben raised a hand. ‘While I realize you were the first one to spot the flames, I have to stress that I know this track, and how dangerous it can be. Also, I think I can smell petrol, so obviously someone started that fire. All I want to do is make sure nobody’s in any danger.’

  ‘You think someone’s up there?’

  ‘You’re not going to be missing anything. It’s irrelevant. It’s probably kids.’

  ‘So why’s it OK for Mrs Pollen to go up?’

  ‘She’s not going up. She’s making sure I take the right path and waiting at the bottom of it with the mobile phone. I wouldn’t trust you to wait anywhere.’

  ‘I think you know what this is about, don’t you?’ Jane said. ‘I think you know what’s happening up there...’

  ‘Don’t try to be clever, Jane.’

  ‘... Why the rocks are on fire.’

  ‘And don’t—’ She could almost see his patience snap like a frozen twig in the air above his head. ‘Don’t mess with me, all right?’

  ‘Or what – you’ll beat—?’ She almost felt him go rigid, knew she’d gone too far, but it was too late to stop now. ‘And aren’t we in the perfect place for it? Where you worked Nathan over? Where Hattie Chancery smashed her husband’s head in, with the trophy stones?’

  She heard the squeaking of his leather gloves as his fists tightened, and she felt a tug of fear, remembering the state of Nathan. She looked around for Beth Pollen’s torch: no sign now. She was backing up against the gate and feeling behind her for the fastener, jiggling it urgently when Ben moved.

  She bit off a scream.

  But all he did was turn, without a word, and walk off again, only faster this time, half-jogging, his hiking boots going phwat, phwat, phwat in the tight fresh snow. By the time Jane was through the wicket gate, he’d disappeared into the pines.

  She knew that she ought to get out of there, go back to the hotel. But it wasn’t in her to back down, not tonight. She found his tracks and followed them. The independent, unemployed woman on the Border.

  The moment Lol entered Merrily’s bedroom, the phone beside the bed began to shrill, and he felt momentarily guilty, as though someone had discovered him prying. Snowlight grey-washed the room. He glanced quickly back at the door, impelled to go rushing out of it and down the stairs to take the call in the office.

  Instead, he switched on the bedside lamp. The bed was turned down. There was a nightdress case like a black and white cat curled up on one of the pillows. A white towelling bathrobe hung behind the door. A cross of dark wood was positioned in the centre of the wall opposite the bed.

  The caller had a voice like a rich, organic mulch. ‘I’m phoning for Mrs Watkins. I do realize it’s late.’

  ‘She’s out.’ Lol sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Guess I’d be sorry, too, I was in her house and she wasn’t.’ The caller chuckled. ‘Well now, you must be
the musician who would like to spend more time with the lovely Merrilee, but the situation, alas, forbids it. A concise name that rolls off the... Lon?’

  ‘Canon Jeavons?’ Lol said.

  ‘But you should call me Lew. We just two guys with short names. You think we shorten our names in the belief it gonna streamline our lives? Ah, wait... Lol. Not Lon, it’s Lol, correct? You know, I sometimes wonder, if I reverted to all three syllables of my own given name, whether perhaps it would slow me down enough that I didn’t give half-assed advice.’

  Lol looked around Merrily’s bedroom. Its white walls were uneven, bolted together with twisted ribs of ancient oak. It had a pine wardrobe, no dressing table, no mirrors.

  ‘You mean like Reach out?’ he said. ‘Embrace?’

  ‘Good,’ Canon Jeavons said. ‘She talks to you. Yes, I guess that’s what I mean. On reflection, what I should’ve said was, Be reticent, go careful. That would be a slightly different approach, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘That would be exactly the opposite approach,’ Lol said.

  In between the wardrobe and the window, the bedside light was reflected from polished wood, and he spotted his oldest Washburn guitar, the one he’d left here at the end of the summer when he was working on the final songs for the new album.

  ‘Lol,’ Canon Jeavons said, ‘you don’t have to tell me where she’s gone, but you could reassure me it’s nowhere in connection with a small boy who died in a car wreck.’

  Lol saw that the Washburn was shining with new polish and had been stood reverently on a cushion. The cushion was pale blue, velvet. He was touched.

  ‘No, it isn’t anything to do with that,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Jeavons said solemnly. ‘Can I ask – are you a religious man yourself, Lol? No forget that. Intrusive. Only, when I said on reflection, I mean that this phone call came out of prayer. Which, I concede, the secular might define as a conversation with the inner self in the hope of inspiration. In any event, I sit down and we going over it all between us. And the message comes to me: better to tell her to take advice before proceeding any further in this matter.’

  ‘She did take advice,’ Lol said. ‘She took advice from you.’

  A pause.

  ‘Yes,’ Jeavons said heavily. ‘However—’

  ‘Let me get this right – God suggested you might call back. Because He wasn’t impressed with the advice you gave?’

  ‘Lol—’

  ‘She told you about the brother?’

  ‘The bad guy.’ Jeavons sighed. ‘Yes. The, ah, acts of violence carried out by the brother against the other half of the family, that did not bode well. Six years in New York, and I didn’t pick up on that. Must be getting old.’

  ‘As it happens,’ Lol said, ‘what we now know of him makes him seem even less of a teddy bear.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. It...’ Jeavons hesitated ‘... must be hard for you, Lol.’

  ‘It can get a bit perplexing.’

  ‘I like a man who understates. Come on, it blows your head off! For instance, where is she now, on this terrible night?’

  Lol watched the light shimmer from the guitar, recalling the last song he’d composed on it and its key lines: The camera lies/she might vaporize.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I hope she’s having a quiet one-to-one with a mild-mannered farmer who tried to take his own life. I hope she not standing in for twelve priests at the exorcism of a medieval devil and a hound of hell.’

  A stony place, quilted with snow.

  The path was here somewhere, but Jane couldn’t find it. She’d gone blundering after Ben into the white areas between the trees, looking for his tracks, until she wound up, panting, at the fork in the main drive. This was where one track sloped down to the Kington bypass, while the other, much narrower, crawled to the top of Stanner Rocks.

  She’d been up there just once, when the weather was still OK. Great views. The track wasn’t too steep, and you could get a vehicle up when the ground was firm, but it went very close to the edge, where the old quarry had been, and you wouldn’t be happy doing it at night, not even in the best of conditions, not even with somebody like Gomer Parry at the wheel.

  She saw the stems of the pines lighting up maybe fifty yards ahead of her, like organ pipes – Ben switching on a torch? Only it seemed to be in the wrong place. Too low. So easy to get disorientated in the white hell. She headed for the beam, anyway, and—

  ‘Aaah!’ A thin branch whipped her cheek, pulled the camera away, and she stumbled, and the camera fell into the snow.

  Not too clever. She snatched up the Sony 150 and dusted it off. Moved on more slowly, holding it in both hands. Now she could neither see nor hear Ben or Beth Pollen, and the torch beam had vanished, and if it wasn’t for the snow and a lemon-wedge of moon she could be in trouble here.

  Jane stopped, realizing in dismay that this actually wasn’t being very adult. Being adult was about standing back and rethinking your position in the light of changing circumstances. Like, circumstances were saying that Ben Foley didn’t want her here – basically, she guessed, because he didn’t want any of this preserved on video. Taking on Ben, getting into his face, was probably unwise. But once you were launched on the path of being awkward, it was a matter of basic pride that you didn’t turn away. It was like when you were a little kid, running faster and faster, giddy with it, knowing that the fall was inevitable.

  Jane stubbed her toe on something very hard and stumbled and went down with her hands in the snow, throwing up a fine flurry like a cloud of frozen midges, as she pulled them out with a sucking sound.

  Looking up she saw, in a moment of cold awe, the white-spattered face of Stanner Rocks, sheared off where the quarrying had been before the rocks were recognized as ancient and precious. The wall was glowering over her like a decaying cathedral, holes in its masonry pointed with snow. No flames up there now, no amber halo, only the milky mixture of snowlight and thin moonlight. And on the ground, that wet sucking sound.

  Only the sucking was nothing to do with her.

  The shock of this came at Jane like a sudden wild gust from nowhere, as she crouched, exposed, in the snow. It came at her along with something else – something close up, loping, something that came with a loose, heavy panting, with a pulsing of muscle and with a piercingly thin, raw, feral smell that ripped at your senses like barbed wire.

  Jane tightened up, shrinking into a hedgehog ball. Somewhere far inside her – beneath the parka and the fleece, beneath the skin – there was a rolling orb of cold that felt no bigger than a pea and no smaller than a planet, coming to rest in her stomach and weighting her to the rock. And although she couldn’t seem to move, she could still scream, with no shame, like an animal.

  And cower, biting down on a second scream – also, agonizingly, on her tongue – as the ground lit up around her.

  ‘For goodness’ sake!’ A gloved hand came out of the light. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Oh God.’ Jane was shaking, kept falling back down.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ Beth Pollen was bulked out by the sheepskin coat, throwing off some wholesome, matronly perfume, her voice mature and strong and unafraid.

  ‘Didn’t you hear it?’

  ‘I certainly heard you.’

  ‘Didn’t you feel it?’

  ‘I really don’t know how your mother puts up with you,’ Beth Pollen said crossly.

  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.