The Prayer of the Night Shepherd mw-6

by Phil Rickman

  Sky’s Come Down

  On the TV monitor, watched by Bliss and Ben Foley, Brigid was talking about life in a detention centre for young offenders where her peers regarded her with a kind of awe.

  ‘I was pretty much heartbroken for months. Couldn’t talk to anybody for fear of breaking down. That was seen as me being aloof and cool and dangerous. Nothing’s ever how it looks, is it?’

  Merrily, crouching next to Brigid at the desk, murmured, ‘Mark and Stuart. Did they try to rape you?’

  ‘Get off my back, Merrily. Why would I give the parents any reason to like evil Brigid any small amount better while thinking less of their sons?’

  ‘You’re not evil, Brigid.’

  ‘Natalie,’ Brigid said.

  ‘Brigid…’ Bliss was sitting on the edge of the desk. ‘Do you say anything about Dacre on this video?’

  Brigid shook her head. ‘He didn’t want any of the spooky stuff.’

  Merrily saw Ben Foley wince.

  ‘I meant his death,’ Bliss said. ‘The death that occurred not long before you recorded this.’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘All right, I’ve seen enough for now, thank you, Mr Foley. Hang on to it, though. Can you make a copy?’

  ‘I did that before the power went.’ Ben was looking nervous, Merrily thought, his skin pale and porous.

  ‘Tell me how exactly you encountered Mr Largo last night, Brigid,’ Bliss said.

  ‘Well… I knew he was supposed to be coming back, to shoot the White Company experiment. Antony said he’d wanted to see me again before it all got going. He said he was on his way to Stanner Hall for the White Company.’ Brigid looked apologetically at Ben. ‘Actually, I don’t think that was his intention. I don’t think he’d have come back here at all last night if the snow hadn’t made it impossible for him to get out of the valley.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Ben said. ‘He was just going through the motions. I misunderstood his glee.’

  ‘He said he saw me in the Daihatsu, taking the track up to Stanner,’ Brigid said. ‘But then he saw this Range Rover coming up a bit later. When he saw that it was heading the same way, he decided to wait at the bottom, near the quarry, so whoever it was wouldn’t see us together. After… what happ—’ Brigid’s face tightened. ‘After I pushed my cousin off the rocks, when I was stumbling down, Antony must’ve seen me from his Shogun, and he came out to meet me, with a torch. He said he thought he’d seen somebody falling. Next thing, we both saw Sebastian lying in the snow, and it was… you know, it was pretty obvious he was dead.’

  ‘What did Mr Largo say?’

  ‘He said, “Christ, Brigid, what’ve you done?” And I was… stunned, I suppose. It was a bad dream. To find I’d… done it again. Killed somebody. Happening just like that — so fast, so unstoppable. You’re looking round to see if the world’s the same place you were in a few minutes ago. It’s like the whole sky’s come down on you. Like all the sides of everything are coming in on you. You can’t believe it happened, you want to turn time back. You can hardly breathe.’

  She’s talking about the first time. Merrily’s fingers were clasped around the pectoral cross.

  ‘I really didn’t hate him, I pitied him. And there he was, killed so quick. Here one minute and ranting… and then just a piece of bloody meat. And you think… how can it—? And… and then you turn around and all your future’s gone as well.’

  Bliss said softly, ‘And Mr Largo said… what?’

  ‘He said, “Oh my, Brigid, you’re in the shit here.” ’

  ‘He didn’t ask you what happened?’

  ‘He just said that. And then he said best not to go too near. He said I was obviously in shock. We moved the Daihatsu back to near the roadside, and he took me back to the Shogun and drove me off up towards Presteigne or somewhere. We went into this fairly big pub I’d never been in before, where there were quite a few people, and he found us a table by the fire and he bought us brandies. And he was trying to explain how it was going to be if they got me for this… like if they got me. I knew it was as good as all over, and I was hardly listening, just sitting there in front of that fire, thinking about Jeremy back at The Nant and his fire. That lovely fire. Thinking we’d never sit in front of that again, together. Thinking about Clan, what was going to happen to her now. Thinking how, when the Social Services got hold of her, there’d be nobody who could remotely understand what she was carrying around, and Clan, she doesn’t help herself, you know?’

  ‘He was right, though,’ Bliss said. ‘You were in a mess.’

  ‘He said, “Look, I want to help. I’m not going to tell you there’s nothing in it for me, that it’s any kind of selfless act, but I’m willing to up the percentage considerably.” And I’m like, “What’s the use of that, you can’t have a murderer taking a cut, there’s some law against it.” And he said no, the money would go to Clancy, in trust, or whatever. However I wanted to do it.’

  ‘And now the money you didn’t care about, suddenly that was meaningful.’

  ‘It was meaningful because I haven’t really got any money. I’ve got a farm and a man who belongs to it, so I haven’t got a farm to sell. And to keep Clan out of the System, that would take big money, to pay for somebody…’

  Bliss glanced down at Merrily, then back at Brigid.

  ‘So you agreed.’

  ‘He said he had a contract already made up and he’d make some quick changes and put his signature to them, and that would legally oblige him to pay a third of the action to Clancy. He took the contract out of his pocket and he put it on the table in the pub. It looked legit, but how would I know? What was I going to do here? What would you do?’ Brigid did a swift sweep of faces, her hair swinging. ‘Any of you?’

  ‘So you recorded the interview.’

  ‘He said if we didn’t do it now, it’d be down the pan… which was pretty obvious. So we drove into New Radnor, and we parked off the bypass, which was still pretty clear, and he set up a camera with a light inside the Shogun. He had two cameras going — one he held, the other on a short tripod in the back of the car, shooting like a profile of my face. He had loads of batteries and stuff, and he clipped a personal microphone to my coat and we… we just recorded it in one go.’

  Like it was being done at gunpoint, Merrily thought.

  ‘I just babbled on, I wasn’t really thinking about what I was saying. He asked questions and I just said the first things that came into my head, except when he asked about Mark and Stuart and I just said I hadn’t got anything to say about that. We must’ve gone on for nearly an hour and a half, with a couple of breaks so he could move the car a bit to stop us getting blocked in by the snow.’

  ‘And you were sworn to secrecy about when it was done?’ Bliss said.

  ‘He said it had to be kept under wraps or we wouldn’t make a fraction of the money. He said he’d be compromised if it came out he was a witness to the murder.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Bliss said. ‘What would this be worth, Mr Foley?’

  ‘A lot. Even now, Brigid Parsons is still big box office. Brigid Parsons back in the headlines with — I’m sorry — another conviction for a similar crime would be huge. Mega.’

  ‘Even an interview knocked off in a car?’

  ‘Makes no difference these days. You can get perfect quality anywhere. Gives it more of a sense of authenticity. By the time he’s dressed it up with other interviews, old news footage, comments from a shrink — you’ve got to have a shrink these days, and most of them will say whatever you want. Yeah, he’s looking at big bucks. Enormous bucks.’

  Merrily said, ‘So how important would it be for Brigid to have done another murder?’

  ‘Like I said — mega. Court case of the year. Questions asked in Parliament about the monitoring of murderers who’ve been let back into society.’ Ben looked at Brigid, as if he still couldn’t absorb the idea of her as a serious killer, as anybody other than Natalie, his manager. ‘But most i
mportantly, she’s out of the picture. This is the only interview anybody will ever get.’

  Bliss said, ‘I know where you’re coming from, Merrily, but…’

  Merrily looked up at Ben, saw his eyes go wide and still with sudden comprehension.

  Bliss chewed his lip, then he said, ‘How successful is Mr Largo at present, Mr Foley?’

  ‘He… seemed to be on top. But then, in this business, nobody ever goes around telling people their careers are on the slide. I don’t really know where he is in the pecking order, I’ve been out of it for too long. Been out of it so long I trusted him. Thought he was a mate.’

  ‘But even if he was still successful,’ Merrily said, ‘something like this, that would still be the summit of his career…’

  ‘God, yes,’ Ben said. ‘Most independent producers would k—’ He swiped back his hair with both hands. ‘Figure of speech.’

  Merrily wondered if Largo had heard Sebbie on the phone to Zelda Morgan from the bottom of the rocks, where he’d fallen. Probably not. Had he even thought of the risk that Sebbie’s fall could be ruled out as the cause of death and, if he had, might Sebbie still be alive? Or would he have taken a chance, anyway? She was a notorious convicted killer. Who was going to believe her denials?

  She waited for Bliss to ask something, but Bliss was staring up at the window, chewing his lower lip again.

  ‘What would Largo’s state of mind be?’ she asked Ben Foley. ‘He’s waiting in his car, say at the entrance to the quarry. He’s seen Brigid going up there. He’s seen a Range Rover taking the same route. Perhaps he’s in the car with the headlights on, or perhaps he’s out there with the torch. But suddenly he sees a body tumbling down from the rocks through the snow. What’s he feeling? Shock? Incredulity?’

  ‘What do I say?’ Ben’s attempt at a smile was loose and nerveless. ‘Shock and incredulity aren’t in Antony’s repertoire.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Seeing what looks like a murder happen before his eyes? A murder on a plate? A murder committed by a high-profile killer he’s been… lusting after — for reasons most of us wouldn’t like to contemplate — since he was a graduate trainee?’

  ‘In your own words, then, sir,’ Bliss said.

  ‘I would say barely controllable, very dark sexual… excitement.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Of course, the man has used me, lied to me, cut the ground from under my feet and left me humiliated, so I may be a tad prejudiced…’

  ‘Brigid,’ Bliss said, ‘when you came down from the rocks, what did Mr Dacre say to you?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything.’ Merrily was aware of Brigid drawing in a thin thread of a breath. ‘He was dead.’

  ‘All right.’ Frannie Bliss stood up. ‘I can’t let you go anywhere yet, Brigid, you realize that. But I won’t send you to Hereford. I’ll say we’ve had new snow. I’ll say something.’ He turned to Ben. ‘Where is he, Mr Foley?’

  ‘He’s gone, I think. Can’t have been too many minutes ago.’

  ‘Back to London?’

  ‘He said he’d phone me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Sometime. Actually, it may be sooner than sometime. After I copied his video discs to VHS, I, ah, put blank ones back in his case.’

  ‘Naughty. What’ve you done with the originals?’

  ‘They’re here. I may put them under a stone at the bottom of Hergest Pool for a thousand years.’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘Local joke,’ Ben Foley said.

  Bliss thought for a moment. ‘Sod it, let’s get the bugger stopped on the road and brought back. I want his clothes.’

  They went out for air, Merrily and Brigid.

  They stood at the highest point of the forecourt. The view was immense and blinding under a surprising glaze of gaseous early sun. No snow had come down since dawn.

  ‘Is it safe?’ Brigid was staring at one of the small farms lying under Hergest Ridge like a trinket fallen from a shelf, and Merrily realized that this must be The Nant, tilted into the hillside, half submerged in snow. ‘Is it safe to tell Clancy? Is it safe to tell Jeremy?’

  You could see something crawling slowly towards it like a beetle, perhaps the loyal Danny Thomas going in his tractor to see to Jeremy’s animals.

  ‘I think Jeremy already knows.’ Merrily gazed over the snowy forestry to Hergest Ridge: thick white icing on an old fruit cake, rich and spicy, dark and bitter and soaked in alcohol. Where was the Hound? Out there, somewhere, or existing only in the collective consciousness of mid-Border people, a shadow on the retina of the mind’s eye?

  ‘Can I stay here?’ Brigid said. ‘If it…?’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘It’s a challenge, isn’t it?’

  ‘Everywhere’s a challenge.’

  She was thinking about something Gomer had said about Jeremy’s island of calm in a sea of noise and blood. She wondered what would happen now to Sebbie Dacre’s three farms, whether some other robber baron would come riding over the horizon in his Range Rover, unable to spot the symptoms of history until the disease had set in. It was important to guard the island.

  Behind them, a shout went up.

  ‘That,’ Frannie Bliss said, ‘is outrageous. They think they’re a bloody law unto themselves, these bastards.’

  ‘It’s a remote area,’ Mumford said. ‘Always been self-sufficient. Half of them have got their own snowploughs.’

  Merrily stood at the bottom of the steps, below the hotel porch, as Bliss followed Mumford down.

  ‘Who we looking at here, Andy?’

  ‘I’ll give you three names, boss. Berrows… Thomas… Parry.’

  ‘Damage?’

  ‘The van with Dacre’s body in it had a headlamp smashed. That’s the only police property. However—’

  Merrily hurried over. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Your little friends,’ Bliss said, ‘decided, for reasons of their own, to reverse all the sterling work done to clear tons of snow from the bottom of the drive, thus allowing us all to return to comparative civilization.’

  ‘They… put the snow back?’

  ‘They put it back, Merrily, even better than nature had done it in the first place.’ Bliss’s voice acquired some heat energy. ‘They seem to have created an impacted wall of snow harder than the sides of the fucking Cresta Run. So that the first vehicles, thinking the road was clear, just piled into it.’

  ‘I think it was Berrows started it,’ Mumford said. ‘He was… in a bit of an emotional state. Especially after the girl came down. Then Thomas and Parry arrived in the tractor with a plough, and it escalated. They can go a bit mental, sometimes, Border people.’

  ‘Nick them,’ Bliss said grimly.

  ‘And the other bloke’s talking about legal action,’ Mumford said.

  ‘Sorry, Andy?’

  ‘The Scottish bloke.’

  ‘Scottish bloke.’

  ‘In the Shogun.’

  ‘I see.’

  In the silence, a little smile landed like an insect at the corner of Bliss’s mouth.

  ‘The impact seems to have dislocated his shoulder,’ Mumford said.

  ‘Did you tell him how sorry we were?’

  ‘No, I thought you’d like to do that yourself, boss. As the SIO.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bliss said. ‘That would be correct procedure. I’ll come now.’

  56

  Christmas Eve

  Killing for a chip shop. Killing for what Jane had described as a contemporary dynamic.

  Small doorways for big evil.

  ‘Most motives for murder seem ridiculous,’ Merrily said, in front of the parlour fire as the daylight slipped away. ‘But all that tells you is that the reasons — the motives — are usually irrelevant. For most of us, they wouldn’t be motives. We hope.’

  You hoped. You hoped you had an immune system, a natural defence — Christianity, whatever — against all the evil in the air around you. You hoped there was no suc
h thing as an evil person, only someone with a weakened immune system.

  She’d been to see Alice this afternoon. Alice had come out of hospital. Alice was at her sister’s house in Belmont — Darrin’s family, Roland’s family. A whole male generation wiped out.

  Alice couldn’t move her left side much, but she could communicate, just about — verbal soup dribbling from the right side of her mouth. You could get the sense of it, mostly. For instance, the family’s discovery that no doctor had actually treated Dexter Harris for asthma in over ten years. Since the Family GP had become part of history, such things didn’t come out.

  How long had Dexter been feigning attacks to get himself out of various situations and responsibilities? Don’t give me no stress.

  Mostly, Alice had just wept, a fiery little woman doused by life. There would be a lot of weeping in that house this Christmas. It was what Christmas would become, for them, for the foreseeable future.

  She’d promised Alice and the family some healing. From the Sunday-evening service. The, erm, healing service. Well, what could you do? A forum to discuss setting up a spiritual healing group in the diocese had been arranged for mid-January, at the Cathedral. The Bishop himself would chair the meeting. The idea of having Lew Jeavons as guest speaker had been ruled out.

  ‘I need to ring him,’ she said to Lol. ‘Do I mention the twelve priests? Or do I wait for him to bring it up?’

  ‘He may not want to explain.’ Lol was sitting on the rug with his back against the sofa, his head against Merrily’s thigh. ‘Some things just… evolve.’

  Just before she and Jane had left Stanner, Alistair Hardy had taken Merrily aside. I’m uncomfortable about this, Mrs Watkins, knowing how you feel about people like me. But after what you said when we met on the stairs, about the twelve priests and Black Vaughan…

  He’d counted them, he said. This was just after the incident with the girl during the Eucharist, before Merrily had initiated the baptism. He’d counted all twelve.

  And what were they wearing? Merrily had asked, legitimately sceptical. Kind of… monk’s robes? All carrying candles?

  Yes, Hardy said, they did have a candle each. But none of them wore monks’ robes. And two of them were black, and one was a woman.