The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (76 page)

‘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

K
ILLING 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 such 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.

Just thought she might like to know.

Lol had told her that Jeavons had felt bad about the way the Dexter thing was turning out. Asking Lol to ring him as soon as he could find out what time the Stanner Eucharist had been arranged for. He hadn’t said a word to Lol about his international database of over three hundred healing and deliverance priests.

After being given the approximate time, he’d asked for the location. And a map reference.

Hardy said he’d noticed that Merrily’s aura had appeared brighter and more vivid. As the dark essence of Hattie Chancery hazed into something palely grey.

Probably still there, though
, Hardy said.
There’s probably more to do. You’d know about that
.

Aftercare required.

Before lunch, Bliss had rung. DNA tests on Antony Largo’s clothing had proved inconclusive. Maybe he’d managed to dump some. This was not, Bliss said, going to be easy. Antony Largo was not in custody, and he had the worst kind of lawyer. The Crown Prosecution Service, as usual, was demonstrating symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome.

However, Strathclyde Police had been helpful. Largo had formerly been known as Anthony McKinnon. Born in the fairly sedate seaside resort of – wait for it – Largs, north of Glasgow, McKinnon, aged sixteen, had been one of several juveniles questioned in connection with the alleged gang rape of a prostitute, who had eventually decided that she didn’t want to appear in court. It wasn’t much, Bliss said, but it was a start.

Brigid Parsons had made a full statement at Hereford and had been released without charge. It was a delicate situation, and its satisfactory resolution depended on Bliss nailing Largo. Bliss wouldn’t give up.

Meanwhile, Natalie Craven and her daughter had returned to The Nant. Former DCI Ellie Maylord had been consulted and would be travelling down. Bliss thought it would be a good idea if she and Merrily met. Merrily agreed.

Aftercare needed.

But Dexter Harris, Bliss said, had been more or less textbook. A black bin-liner had been found in a roadside litter-bin, inside it a claw hammer coated with blood and hair. By this time, Dexter’s truck had been forensically examined. Truck/ hammer/ Darrin/Dexter. A formality. Lol’s part in the final act had not been made public, but he wasn’t looking forward to the inquest.

Lol’s theory about Roland? Well, that was never going to be proved one way or the other. Lol was convinced that when Dexter had made Darrin take the car that night, it had been his intention that Roland wasn’t coming back. Everything that Dexter had laid on Darrin – the brutality, the cruelty – was probably down to Dexter. All that and more.

Howe, it seemed, had been unconcerned. It was all academic now. Forensic psychology would say that Dexter was formula-psychopathic – the lies, the cunning, the remorseless cruelty. Merrily recalled a report that suggested over one per cent of the population was, to some extent, psychopathic. Most psychos didn’t kill. Most killers didn’t make a habit of it.

‘The thing is,’ Lol said now, ‘Dexter was... let’s be honest, he was dull. An extremely dull person. Unbelievably self-righteous, limited intellect, all that. But as a killer, he was imaginative. He was instinctive... creative. He had
flair
.’

‘Christ, Lol!’

‘Like, when he decided I needed to be killed he had it all worked out in no time. Disappearance... some landfill site. My DNA all over Alice. He walks in and finds Alice has had a stroke, he acts on it, he uses the whole situation, including the weather conditions, just like he did with Darrin – I mean, both of those could have
worked
. And he’d have held out against interrogation because he’d have resented it. The cops would have been
in the wrong. He
wasn’t a criminal. He was a working man with a clean record... well, since the age of twelve, and you couldn’t hold that against him.’

‘But some of his family did.’

‘And he resented it. His family had treated him badly. Whatever happened to any of them, they deserved it.’

‘What’s the betting that the damage inflicted on Dexter’s family’s property by Darrin was not in fact done by Darrin at all?’

‘Dexter.’ Lol nodded. ‘Makes sense. Dexter seems to have created a whole new image for Darrin within the family. Alice swallowed it, anyway. Maybe she didn’t see much of Darrin.’

‘But Roland’s death – accidental? Engineered? How good a driver
was
Dexter?’ Merrily remembered Bliss’s re -construction.

Unfortunately, Dexter panics, stands on the brakes and the Fiesta stalls on the kerb, directly in the path of the oncoming lorry.

‘Try not to think too hard about it,’ Lol said.

‘Where does it come from, then?’ Merrily said. ‘What was feeding his imagination?’

‘Your guess may be better than mine.’

She slid down to the rug, next to him. Although the snow was almost gone, he hadn’t left Ledwardine since Dexter’s death. She hadn’t yet asked him what the estate agent had told him before the office had closed for Christmas, an hour or so ago.