The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (MW6)

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Do you... reject the Devil and all rebellion against God?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Say, “I reject them.” ’

  Say it, for God’s—

  Clancy looked confused. Her face was damp and florid in the crimson glare suffusing the room.

  ‘Clancy, say, “I reject them.” Say it, if... if you want to.’

  Clancy rocked, losing her balance, the words tumbling out.

  ‘Do you renounce the deceit and corruption of evil? Say “I—” ’

  ‘I... renounce them...’

  The cold sun hung in the red portion of the stained-glass window, like a blood-blister. When Merrily finally drew the cross on Clancy’s skin, she almost expected the water to boil and sizzle. It didn’t.

  Anticlimax. No smoke, no mirrors.

  It was always best.

  Clearing away the remains of the Eucharist, after the baptism and the commendation, Merrily’s hands were weak, but there was still a dipping and rising in her spine, something finding its normal level.

  Jane came to help her. At some point – good heavens – she actually squeezed Merrily’s hand.

  ‘Hey... not bad.’

  ‘Erm... thanks. Only it wasn’t—’

  ‘Yeah, I know. It wasn’t down to you. All the same, you could easily’ve blown it. Mum...’ Jane began to fold up the white tablecloth with the wine stains. ‘Is this... I mean, you know, is this it?’

  ‘No chance. I’ll probably be back three or four times. Could you... leave the cloth there, flower. Call this superstition...’

  ‘Oh... right.’

  Clancy was at the bottom of the room with Brigid and Jeremy, Bliss and Alma a few yards away, giving them some space.

  Merrily shook her head as the old concertina radiator began gonging dolefully behind her, squeezing a little heat back into Stanner Hall.

  ‘What happened to your wrist?’ Merrily said as they filed out into the lobby, she and Brigid side by side with Bliss in front, Alma close behind.

  Brigid said nothing.

  ‘Happened on the rocks, didn’t it? Last night.’

  Brigid shrugged and it turned into a shiver. Brigid was very pale now, pale enough to faint. They moved towards the reception desk, Mumford standing there, his face grey with stubble and no sleep. In the half-light, the lobby looked as dismal as an old hospital waiting room.

  ‘Brigid,’ Merrily said. ‘Tell me...’

  ‘All right, it happened on the rocks.’ Brigid turned to her, still walking. ‘Look, I just want to say, you know... thanks. I don’t know what you did, but maybe... maybe something happened. Even I think that. And I’m not impressionable. Not for a long time.’

  ‘Something probably did happen,’ Merrily said.

  ‘And I wanted to say... if you could maybe stay in touch with Jeremy, because he...’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It could have happened for us. We were so close to it.’

  ‘I believe you were.’

  On the reception desk, the phone was ringing. Mumford picked up.

  ‘I wish I’d known earlier,’ Merrily said. ‘I wish somebody had felt able to say something.’

  She looked at Jeremy, who must have said more in the past few hours than in his entire adult life.

  ‘And Clancy...’ Brigid said.

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘I’m not going to cry,’ Brigid said. ‘It’s not what killers do.’

  Mumford said to Bliss, ‘It’s the DCI, boss.’

  ‘Tell her we’ve had word that the snowploughs’ve been through and we’re on our way.

  ‘Boss—’

  ‘Tell her we’ve gone.’

  Merrily said, ‘That was Annie Howe, the head of Hereford CID. If you don’t make a full statement she’s going to give you a very hard time.’

  ‘That’ll be something to look forward to.’

  Merrily said, ‘You see, the point is, that wrist injury – I saw it on Largo’s video.’

  Brigid stopped. Alma said, ‘Keep moving, please, Brigid, directly to the porch.’

  Then Clancy Craven was there, dragging on Alma’s arm, face all twisted up.

  ‘You’re not taking her! You’re not! You can’t take her away!’

  Clancy started to scream. Merrily saw Jane behind her, looking upset, unsure how to respond. Jeremy watching her too, with an expression that, if you didn’t know him, you might interpret as anger. Jeremy turned and walked away towards the entrance as Brigid pushed in front of Alma, hugging Clancy. ‘Clan... it’ll be OK. It... Everything’s taken care of.’ Over Clancy’s shoulder, she said to Merrily, ‘Where did you see that video?’

  ‘Ben has it. Ben thinks it was shot a couple of days ago.’

  Bliss was listening now.

  ‘But the fresh blood shows it had to have been between whatever happened on the rocks and you being brought in, right?’ Merrily said. ‘Did you get it when you beat Sebbie to death at the foot of the r—?’

  ‘Merrily!’ Bliss snarled.

  Brigid said, ‘What?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake—’ Bliss spun round, ran to the door to Ben’s office behind reception, flung it open. ‘In! In there now!’

  54

  Reichenbach

  WHEN BLISS SAID, ‘Clancy, would you and Jane like to fetch us all some of Mrs Foley’s incredible coffee?’ Clancy looked at her mother like this was some cheap trick and when she returned with the coffee all the police cars would have gone from the forecourt.

  ‘I promise you, Clancy,’ Bliss said, ‘we won’t leave the premises without you get another chance to see your mum, yeh?’

  Clancy wouldn’t look at him but she went off with Jane. She hadn’t looked at Merrily either since the water had dried on her forehead. This could take months – years – of aftercare. It wasn’t magic.

  Merrily put a new cigarette packet, open, on the desk, with the Zippo. On the front of the packet it said Smokers Die Young. Alma brought in a third chair and an ashtray, and Merrily sat facing Brigid, watching her smoke with a cautious relish, as if she was already banged-up.

  ‘Right.’ Bliss sat next to Merrily. ‘Where’s this video?’

  ‘You don’t need to see it now, Francis. Its existence is enough.’

  ‘Men just bloody lie to you all the time,’ Brigid said.

  ‘Meaning Largo?’

  ‘Some of us, on the other hand,’ Bliss said, ‘though we may seem like crass twats only looking for a result, have a profoundly spiritual core. Some of us might even be deeply shocked to think that a woman who’s just left a feller horribly unfaced should allow herself to be whisked away to be interviewed about it for the box. Something doesn’t ring true, in other words, Brigid.’

  ‘Could I talk to Merrily on her own?’

  ‘No, but you can talk to DCI Howe, who is also a woman – so I’ve been told. Can we cut the crap? I sometimes feel that a service like the one we’ve just attended can blow away the need for an awful lot of unnecessary evasion. Which goes for you, too, Reverend. In fact, you can start us off.’

  ‘OK.’ Merrily took a cigarette.

  ‘And make it quick while I can still breathe in here.’

  ‘Well, essentially, Antony Largo has been after Brigid – in at least one sense, maybe more – since he was a young researcher with the BBC. Antony Largo likes – sorry, Brigid – vicious women. He made a well-known documentary called Women of the Midnight, which—’

  Bliss leaned into the smoke. ‘He made that?’

  ‘While still in his twenties, apparently. And never looked back.’

  ‘As I recall, Merrily, that programme caused a flap by being a bit... well, it looked closely at the sexual side of things, didn’t it? We heard from past lovers, in considerable detail.’

  ‘And you can apparently get the rest of the detail on video through the Internet, as long as you claim to be over twenty-one.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Bliss said. ‘So you knew Mr Largo then, Brigid.’


  ‘No, I didn’t, actually. I didn’t even remember his name. Only anoraks know the names of TV producers. Didn’t recognize him, either, when Ben brought him in, though I’d apparently met him at Ellie Maylord’s, when these guys were after me for Panorama. As he reminded me the other week.’

  ‘In what circumstances did he remind you?’

  ‘After he was here with Ben that first time, he didn’t go back to London. He booked into the Green Dragon at Hereford, and he phoned me.’

  ‘Must’ve been a shock, Brigid.’

  ‘Yeah, it was. He said could I meet him. He said as soon as he saw me he was thinking, like, what if Ben finds out?’

  ‘You’d appreciate talking to someone who really cared.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe some of the men I’ve met who really cared,’ Brigid said.

  ‘I may even have arrested a couple. So, you met Mr Largo?’

  ‘I met him in the camper van.’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Was a refuge for me, that van.’

  ‘I thought you’d sold it to the nature lads.’

  ‘Lent it. Said I might need it back at some stage.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘In my situation, the kind of refuge you can drive away is sometimes useful. It’s also better if you don’t keep it at home. That way, visiting reporters, or other people you don’t want to get involved with, don’t get to see it in advance. I have bad memories of driving out of Looe at the head of a cavalcade.’

  ‘So you entertained Mr Largo in your camper van, even though—’

  ‘In this case, because I didn’t dare meet him anywhere public, and I wasn’t having him anywhere near The Nant. And I didn’t entertain him, thank you.’

  ‘You can’t blame people for embroidering – man and a woman in a camper van on a remote clifftop. And with what we know of his tastes...’

  ‘That was on his second visit, I assume. The first time he suggested I might like to cooperate in a sensitively made documentary. The second time, it was to offer me a percentage. Which he said could run to well over a hundred grand, including US rights.’

  Bliss leaned back, eyebrows going up. ‘Tempting?’

  ‘Not to me. This might be difficult for you to get your head around, but money doesn’t mean that much to me or Jeremy. As long as we’re in a position to earn enough to keep going.’

  ‘Money means a certain amount to everybody, Brigid.’

  ‘Ask Merrily what means more.’

  ‘Peace of mind,’ Merrily said. ‘In a very particular sense.’

  ‘Did you like Mr Largo?’ Bliss asked.

  ‘I didn’t feel very happy being alone with him, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Buy the video, Frannie,’ Merrily said.

  Brigid smiled and extracted another cigarette.

  ‘You turned him down?’ Bliss asked.

  ‘I put him off. You see, the danger here is that this was one of a very small number of people who would actually have been close enough to me as an adult to recognize me. Only, things had changed a lot in the last couple of months. I’d found a man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and he was living in a place he needed to spend the rest of his life in.’

  ‘Having you around could be pressure for a serious introvert,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s a big secret to keep.’

  ‘I think we’d’ve started to tell local people in time – the ones who could handle it. Guys like Danny Thomas and Greta. You get a group who know, and you have this level of protection that you wouldn’t get in a more populated area.’

  ‘True. They like to know all about you, but once they do, they can be very loyal. And very good at secrets, of course.’

  ‘Sometimes too good at secrets.’ Brigid lit her cigarette. ‘I’ll buy you another packet of these before they take me away.’

  Merrily smiled. She was getting that feeling in the spine again.

  ‘You led him on?’ Bliss said.

  ‘I said I’d need an absolute assurance that my appearance would be disguised and also my location, and I didn’t think he was going to be able to promise that. I also said that if I did it I wouldn’t want any money, but I would want right of veto or whatever. You see, I’ve never seen Women of the Midnight. It’s not the kind of thing I watch, strangely enough. He said a solid, sensitive programme like he was planning would take the heat off and also allow me to have my say. Well, I didn’t want my say, but I didn’t want him shopping me, either. Not yet.’

  ‘Did you never think of going to court for special protection?’ Merrily asked. ‘Make it so the media weren’t allowed to identify you, for Clancy’s sake?’

  ‘I didn’t want special protection. I didn’t deserve special protection. Clancy, maybe.’

  Bliss said, ‘Can we talk about Sebbie Dacre?’

  ‘I’ll only go so far.’

  ‘He was blackmailing you, right?’

  Brigid laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have the... I dunno what word I’m looking for, but he wouldn’t have it. I’m sorry. I didn’t want him to die.’

  ‘You killed him, Brigid.’

  ‘I wanted...’ Brigid blew out a lot of smoke, turning away. ‘What’s the bloody point?’ The smoke drifted up and mingled with the smoke around the muzzle flash from Sherlock Holmes’s pistol in the picture.

  ‘Please,’ Merrily said, ‘don’t stop now.’

  ‘Look – he was out of it, he really was. Hell, there’s enough insanity in my family for that to surprise nobody. Somebody told him about this Web site where all these saddos were drooling over what women had done to men, and he printed stuff off, pinned one to the sign at the bottom of the drive so I’d know that he knew. He was dangerous. He was a risk. Sure. At some stage he was going to tell somebody who’d take him seriously. But he still didn’t know, for certain.’

  ‘You think he was genuinely mentally ill?’ Merrily said.

  ‘I think it was the booze, mainly. The toxic combination of booze and being a Chancery.’ Brigid flicked her cigarette towards Bliss. ‘What’s that sound like? I don’t know why I’m bothering – this guy isn’t going to believe the half of it.’

  ‘Try him. He’s a Catholic.’

  ‘But I just want to make it clear – again – that I’ve never... I am never gonna blame whatever I’ve done on being a victim – my mother’s daughter, Hattie’s granddaughter. I will live with being a bad and vicious person – a monster – and getting punished for it, rather than take one miserable step down Sebastian’s road. I’ll be an old lag with a filthy mouth. I’ll be an evil monster for Sun readers to wish dead and sick kids to wank over, and that’s it.’

  ‘And yet you came here to find out about it. You cooperated with Beth Pollen and the White Company...’

  ‘It was about closing doors, Merrily. And it was about Clancy – I’ve explained all that. It wasn’t about me.’

  ‘You know,’ Merrily said. ‘I don’t think I’m buying that. You understand—’

  ‘No, listen—’

  ‘You understand too much about Sebbie’s problems. And he denied it too, didn’t he? I mean, people who talked to him—’

  ‘If you talked to him, you’d think he didn’t give a toss. “Load of old drivel” – I’ve listened to him in the pub, spouting off – maybe for my benefit, just in case I was who he suspected I might be. Just so I’d know he wasn’t scared of anything, particularly me, and the past.’

  ‘Why scared of you?’ Merrily said.

  ‘Not for me to say. Ask Jeremy.’

  ‘Because your mother tried to kill his mother when they were little? Because Ellen Gethin—’

  ‘Why did he come to the van last night?’ Bliss said. ‘And why were you there?’

  Merrily said, not quite knowing where the question came from, ‘You were trying to help him, weren’t you?’

  ‘Where did you get that idea?’

  ‘I don’t kno
w.’

  ‘I was...’ Brigid ground out her cigarette in the metal ashtray. ‘He wasn’t blackmailing me, OK? He was saying to me, “I’ve been expecting you, and you’re... trouble.” Something like that. I was a threat. Jeremy said he’d been seeing the Hound of Hergest, like other drunks see pink elephants. He never said that to me. He said he wanted Brigid Parsons to sell him The Nant, and he’d give a fair price for it, and that would be the end of a long, bad period. He thought I could take Jeremy with me and buy him another farm a bloody long way away. He didn’t actually try to blackmail me... not then. But I didn’t want to go, you see, and Jeremy... nothing was going to get Jeremy out of The Nant, so I... said why didn’t we meet?’

  ‘Usual venue,’ Bliss said.

  ‘Look, I honestly didn’t think. How naive was that, for someone like me? See, the thing is, we were never going to like each other, but he wasn’t going anywhere, he owned everything in a big circle around The Nant, and he could make things very difficult if he wanted to – I mean he gave us a taste of that with the hired guns, like this Wild West situation. I still thought there had to be a way we could coexist.’

  ‘What were you gonna offer him, Brigid?’

  ‘Not The Nant and not sex. Peace of mind? A way of making peace with the past? On one level, that seemed very naive, but, yeah, it was worth a try.’

  ‘Good God.’ Merrily sat up. ‘You were going to invite him to the White Company gig.’

  ‘I did. I told him there were some people who’d like to help him with his... paranoia. I said we should attack it. As a family unit. Bite back.’

  Merrily nodded. ‘You and him.’

  ‘And the White Company. And you, maybe. Deal with it – for Clancy’s sake. And by then, I’d also been made aware that I needed help on a personal level if I was going to survive here.’

  ‘Nathan?’

  ‘That was a shock. It happened quicker than I could think.’

  Bliss leaned back, arms folded. ‘What exactly happened with Sebbie, Brigid?’

  ‘In Sebbie’s view of things,’ Merrily said, ‘there would be only one reason for a direct female descendant of Hattie Chancery to invite a man to Stanner Rocks.’

  ‘I thought we’d got way beyond all that,’ Brigid said. ‘Twenty-first-century Chancerys. I didn’t realize, even then, how far he was sunk into it.’