The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (MW6)

by Phil Rickman

  ‘You told Bliss you killed Dacre?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Unless it turns out he had a heart attack on his way down, yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter why. He’s dead, I killed him. End of story. I’m not looking for absolution. Harold Shipman’s banged up for killing about three hundred of his patients, but nobody knows why he did it.’

  ‘That’s because he hasn’t even admitted doing it.’

  ‘He’s a doctor. Those bastards never admit killing anybody even by accident.’

  ‘Was this an accident?’ Merrily asked.

  ‘Hey, listen, I’ve already been more cooperative than Dr Shipman. And I was also more selective. And I didn’t want to talk about this to you, I wanted to talk about Clancy. Can I have another of those?’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘Ta.’ Brigid picked up the Zippo from the coffee table and lit her own cigarette this time, leaning back with it. ‘Merrily – that’s a very old-fashioned vicar sort of name, isn’t it? Most women clergy seem to have these monosyllabic dykenames.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘I know you’re not. You’re with this songwriter guy who was mentally ill and isn’t sure where he stands.’

  ‘He wasn’t mentally ill. He got sucked into the system. Would it have mattered if I’d been gay?’

  ‘Don’t look at me like that. I was inside for ten years, hormones squirting out everywhere. Yeah, maybe a little. She’s had enough situations to adjust to.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Clancy. How much time do we have?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think the head of Hereford CID wants you taken over there for questioning. She may get impatient. She may send a snowplough.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘She wouldn’t want you talking to me. I think this is the only chance we’ll get.’

  ‘Female authority figures – like I need another one. OK, Merrily.’ Brigid gazed steadily through the smoke. ‘Here’s the situation: I don’t belong to any church, and I’m not sure what I believe. I’ve never seen the ghost of my appalling grandmother, and I’ve never felt her looking over my shoulder. Not, I should say, for want of trying. I’d love it if we could meet. Earlier tonight – Jane’ll tell you – I mean, earlier tonight there I was lying up in her room, surrounded by creepy old photos of the bitch. The biggest one, I had to clean the glass and I did that by spitting in her face, over and over again. And then I lay there under her smeary picture, looking at both of us in the dressing-table mirror. Anything happen? Did it hell. No lights, no images, no sudden drops in temperature. Bitch.’

  ‘Why did you want to see her?’

  Brigid ignored the question. ‘Last week – you’ve probably had this from Jane – Ben and I got into a confrontation with one of the shooters Sebastian hired, and he made some contemptuous remark about Jeremy. Blue light.’

  She looked at Merrily for a reaction.

  ‘You attacked him.’

  ‘Ben was very gallant. He said at least people might stop calling him a poof now. He said he could understand it after the guy nearly shot Clancy at The Nant. Yeah, I... The guy wasn’t expecting it, of course, and I think the first blow must’ve smashed his nose. What I didn’t realize until Ben was pulling me away was that I had a rock in my hand. A jagged piece of what had been dressed stone, about the size of half a brick. I don’t remember picking it up – I suppose it must have been a reflex thing when Ben and I first saw him coming towards us, and we didn’t know if he was armed. And you still don’t seem surprised.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Feel free to be shocked. It still shocks me, when I allow myself to think about it. Which isn’t too often, because I have to be at least halfway normal for Clancy. Naturally, I’m not unaware that this happened in roughly the place where my grandmother smashed the skull of my grandfather. But I stress that I did not feel anything. I didn’t feel her with me. You know?’

  ‘Does this sort of thing happen often? I mean, is it something you have to... control?’

  ‘I don’t think control comes into it. I’m not even an aggressive person. I mean, truly I’m not. When I was inside, nine times out of ten – no, hell, more than that – if someone had a go at me, I’d deal with it, and not in any extreme way, you know? Only on a couple of occasions in nearly ten years was there anything... And that’s being banged-up, and being banged-up can be... trying.’

  ‘What about the... thing that got you in there?’

  Merrily recoiled. It was like two little steel shutters had come down over Brigid’s eyes.

  ‘I’d heard you didn’t talk about it.’

  ‘What’s the point? You want some whingeing psychobabble? Psychiatrists and therapists... every so often, one would have a go at me. Sod that. I don’t make excuses, I don’t feel self-pity, and I don’t permit myself to feel pity for... them. I did my time, I deserved it, that’s it.’

  It sounded like a litany, one she’d intoned many times.

  ‘And I’m not mentally ill like my mother, and I’m not a drunk like my gran.’

  ‘Your mother was—?’

  ‘My mother, at the age of seven, tried to kill her sister. She was rescued from a psychiatric hospital by my father. Not long after I was born, she slashed her wrists in the bath. Let’s not talk about it. I’m not mad.’

  What? ‘You’re probably too sane,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s what’s scary.’

  ‘One of a number of things, actually.’

  ‘You came here as owner of The Nant?’

  ‘Done some homework, then. I’ve got a dossier on you, too. No, a lawyer and an accountant see to all that. I came because something had already happened. Well, two things. One, like I said, because Clancy stuck a Biro in a kid’s eye. Two, because my dad was dead, but before he died he told me what he should’ve told me years before. Told me about Hattie and what happened at the big house we used to look at through the pines, Jeremy and me, when I was a kid on holiday.’

  ‘Did your mother know about Hattie?’

  ‘She’d cancelled Hattie from her history at an early age, but Hattie came through – or something did. My mother was diagnosed as schizophrenic. My dad was a male nurse who thought he could handle that.’

  ‘And you really didn’t know until—?’

  ‘My dad didn’t know until he brought me up here to look at The Nant, and Eddie Berrows told him.’

  Merrily said, ‘Clancy... the pen... was that the only time?’

  ‘I hope so. Look, I said the shrinks never got anywhere with me, and that’s true, but there was one guy. He was the chaplain at my last place – the open prison. He was ex-Army, and he went back into the Army as a chaplain a year or so later. He was very posh, but a bit of a rough diamond, and we... got on, you know? Mates, kind of. The last year, I’d go out for weekends and stay at his place, with his wife and kids. It was a laugh. He wasn’t holier-than-thou, and he had his problems. And he’d keep saying to me, “You need a better priest than me.” ’

  ‘What did he mean by—?’ Smoke from under the green log belched into the room like dragon’s breath and made Merrily cough.

  ‘What he meant was a Deliverance priest, and he tried to explain what that meant, but I was like, “Sod off, Chas; what am I, demonic?” He... we still stayed in touch after I came out, and he must’ve been in contact with Ellie Maylord because he rang me a couple of nights after she did, about the biro incident. I’d spoken to my dad by then, and I told Chas about Hattie, and I said – even though I hadn’t really made a decision at that stage – that I was thinking about coming back here to suss all that out, and he went a bit quiet. Well, what did he think, I was gonna be like my mother, run away, pretend it never happened? Even she finally realized that was futile. The next night he’s on the phone again: “I’m going to give you the name of someone who can help you.” I was still managing this hotel in Shropshire, and he faxed
me some stuff over, and it said, The Rev. Merrily Watkins, Ledwardine. He said he knew you and he’d have a word with you if I wanted. I said, Forget it, no way, stay the hell out of it.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Chas? Charles Headland. The Reverend. You remember him?’

  Merrily sank back into the sofa, an image coming up of an unforgiving, grey Nonconformist chapel below the point of Pen-y-fan in the Brecon Beacons, overlooking the valley of the shadow of death. An ill-assorted bunch of Anglican priests, most of them nervous, a couple over-confident, trying to see across the valley.

  ‘I was on a course with him. The course – the Deliverance course. Where we were trained to investigate the paranormal and told where to sprinkle the holy water. I knew he’d been in the Army, but he never said anything about being chaplain of a women’s prison. Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s out of it. He’s not even a vicar any more. He had a breakdown.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ It happened. It happened to Deliverance ministers in particular.

  ‘He faxed me a load of guff – where you lived, your phone number, the fact that you had a daughter about Clancy’s age who went to Moorfield High School. Which was the only bit that was any use, initially. I didn’t want Clancy to go to the school at Kington in case... well, I don’t trust people, I didn’t want any risk of it getting out. So I got Clancy into Moorfield, which was a safe-ish distance away. And I did ask her to look out for a girl called Jane Watkins, if only for Chas’s sake. Not realizing Clancy was going to be practically stalking the poor kid.’

  Merrily sat up.

  Brigid smiled ruefully. ‘She’s quite good at not seeming to be doing it. She has a talent for appearing forlorn and vulnerable.’

  Merrily remembered Jane telling her, half-exasperated, about the new girl who hung around looking all needy and alienated. Who was a year behind where she ought to be and therefore had to go into classes with little kids. How they had absolutely nothing in common, but she felt sorry for her and...

  Merrily began to feel uneasy.

  ‘It was me who got the Foleys to offer Jane a job,’ Brigid said. ‘I don’t know why I did it, really. Except that I supposed it would guarantee Jane not becoming too fed up with Clancy, and I thought Jane was probably good for her. And Amber kept offering to pay Clancy to help out around the place, and frankly I didn’t want her around this place too much. I suppose that while I wanted to find Hattie Chancery I didn’t want Hattie to find Clancy. If that makes any sense.’

  Merrily nodded, lighting another cigarette.

  ‘I got to know a woman called Beth Pollen, whose husband had died, and the suddenness of it had thrown her into spiritualism. She was interested in Stanner, because he’d been doing a paper on it, and... she was OK. Somebody I could trust, amazingly. So I did. Beth became the first person outside the System I’d ever just told who I was and what I’d done. And she said that if there was an ancestral problem here – a curse, however seriously you want to take that as a description – then we should address it from a position of knowledge. Between us, we uncovered a lot of stuff about the Chancerys and Hattie and what she was like. We went right back into it... right back to Ellen Gethin, who was the wife of Black Vaughan and killed this guy in cold blood after he killed her younger brother who—’

  The lounge door opened a crack, and Brigid turned and waved, and the policewoman, Alma, came in. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Merrily said. Alma went out and the door closed.

  ‘I still didn’t want to involve you,’ Brigid said. ‘I didn’t want us to have a half-arsed bloody exorcism – not after we found out about the crazy thing the Chancerys did, when the guy over the fireplace may or may not have been in attendance. I didn’t want to resort to superstition, if there was any way... I don’t know what I wanted.’

  Jeremy? Did you want Jeremy?

  The question had kept pushing itself into Merrily’s head, and she kept pushing it back. She was aware that Brigid had mentioned Jeremy only in passing, only in relation to some other point she was making.

  The log on the fire was giving up. There were no more flames. Brigid shivered and pushed her arms into her cardigan. Her mouth was wide and generous, her eyes were warm, with deep, wry lines in the corners, and she talked like she was already back behind bars.

  ‘I gather you’ve got quite a big vicarage in Ledwardine. Seven bedrooms?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Just you and Jane?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I won’t dress this up. Would you have room for Clancy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s my bottom-line question. When I go away again, can Clancy come and live with you?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Jane’s told Clancy all about you and your situation. Jane’s done a lot of rabbiting, because Clan doesn’t have much to say, except to me.’ Brigid was talking rapidly now. ‘Jane’s told her about the big vicarage, and Lol, and how inhibited you are about that – not wanting anybody to know, not wanting to be seen as living in sin, and yet you’re big on the concept of the Church offering sanctuary, and you feel guilty about all those bedrooms doing nothing, and... Look, I’m sorry to hang it on you like this, Merrily, but what other chance am I going to have?’

  ‘Brigid, it’s—’

  ‘Natalie. It’s Natalie. For the moment, it’s Natalie.’

  ‘It’s a big step.’

  ‘It could be the biggest thing you ever did. I mean it’s too late for me, right? And yeah, I feel very bad about putting this kind of responsibility on anybody. But what happens if Clancy goes into the System? What happens if she goes into the System and somebody gets hurt, or somebody dies? Go on, tell me I’m being ridiculously superstitious. Tell me, from your vast experience as a Deliverance Minister, that I’m entirely irrational.’

  ‘No. You’re not.’

  ‘Doesn’t have to be a full-time thing – I realize that if Jane thinks Clancy’s a pain in the arse now, that isn’t going to improve. I thought maybe Danny and Greta, they got no kids... I thought they could have her some of the time, to take the pressure off.’

  ‘That’s why you sent her to Greta tonight?’

  ‘It was an opportunity. I didn’t realize, obviously, how tonight would turn out – this wasn’t a set-up, Merrily, it wasn’t cold-blooded. Listen, the other thing is that money won’t be a problem. I know how pitifully little the clergy earn, and I can pay you ten grand a year, maybe a good bit more, until she’s twenty-one. It’s... all arranged.’

  ‘It isn’t about—’

  ‘What it’s about is spiritual security. And I know it’s a huge thing to ask, and I promise that if it goes wrong for her, I will never, never hold you in any way responsible.’

  ‘Natalie, how long have you been planning this?’

  ‘Is that important?’

  ‘And what about Jeremy Berrows?’

  The door opened again, and Bliss’s head appeared. ‘Ladies—’

  ‘Five minutes, Frannie,’ Merrily said. ‘Please.’ Before the door had closed, she was leaning forward. ‘What about Jeremy?’

  ‘I’ve damaged him enough,’ Brigid said. ‘It’s best if he doesn’t see me again. Best if he truly forgets me this time, and that’s all I want to say about it.’

  Her face had become flushed and against the faded brocade of the chair she looked radiantly beautiful, lit up by this powerfully incandescent, raging... sorrow.

  Merrily said, ‘Tell me something: did you ever love him at all, or was he just the only man you could be around for any length of time without wanting to take him apart?’

  ‘That’s not fair—’

  ‘Natalie, we don’t have time for fair.’

  ‘What do you...?’ Brigid Parsons dug her shoulders into the back of her chair, pulling her cardigan tightly across the opening of her shirt, as if it was a gash. ‘What do you know about Jeremy, anyway?’

  ‘I’m just trying to work o
ut, from the bits you’ve let slip, whether you came back here for Jeremy or Sebbie Dacre.’

  ‘You can’t—’

  ‘I mean, to kill him. Kill Dacre. And I don’t really know where that came from. All I do know is how perilously close you came to killing them both.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Erm, earlier tonight, Jeremy—’

  Brigid Parsons stood up so suddenly that she knocked over the coffee table and both cups. ‘What’s he done?’

  Bliss and Alma exploded into the room, followed by two male uniforms.

  45

  Fatalist

  IT HAD STOPPED snowing again, but this only made the air seem colder and the sky darker. Alice was breathing up at it – a damp, soughing sound, like the wind through rotting leaves.

  Alice was birdlike, but she was soaked and felt like dead weight as Lol waded through the orchard under the snowlagged limbs of apple trees that he never saw until it was too late, because he’d had to leave the Maglite behind on the tomb, along with Alice’s shoes buried in the snow.

  It seemed strange that, when some snow-fuzzed twig scraped her cheek, she didn’t wake up struggling and flapping, cawing at him, outraged. He wondered if she would ever wake up again and what state she’d be in if she did, how much of her would be functioning. Salt and vinegar on that, is it, lovey?

  Or would the chip shop be under new management? Get ’em served and on to the next one, don’t give ’em too many chips neither.

  Lol stopped.

  At the edge of the church’s own orchard, the rhythm of Alice’s breathing had fractured, the indrawn breath suspended like a roller-coaster car pausing on a peak before clattering into the long valley, and he thought, Christ, she’s gone.

  He didn’t know any more about strokes than what the condition looked like. He didn’t know whether the schizophrenic woman in the psychiatric hospital had lived or died, only that they hadn’t seen her again.