The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (MW6)

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Depends how serious they were. We can be fairly discreet, especially if it leads us to other offenders. And this, of course, is the point. If Hook had talked about his conversion and its implications, it might have been viewed as a rather worrying development by some of his former associates in this city’s criminal underclass. Especially if he was indicating to all and sundry that he might be ready to put the record straight on certain matters – come clean, as it were.’

  ‘You think he’d be a marked man?’

  ‘It does rather sound as if he was bent on martyrdom.’

  ‘Have you talked to his other relatives?’

  ‘Only his mother, who lives in the city and knew nothing of any conversion. She thought the most likely person for him to tell would be the aunt, who—’

  ‘So you did know about Alice.’

  Howe didn’t reply.

  ‘Have you talked to her?’

  ‘No answer when we rang. She’s probably asleep by now. And we haven’t been out there simply because most of the roads in that area are now closed. Anyway, I thought I’d talk to you first, somehow imagining you’d be able to tell me rather more than you have.’

  ‘He really was killed?’

  ‘He was certainly killed. But if you’re asking if he was murdered, let me put it this way: there are some not-terribly-subtle textural differences between snow which has fallen naturally on to a body lying in the road and snow which has been kicked over it in order to conceal it from approaching vehicles.’

  ‘Somebody... dumped him in a main road? To be run over?’

  ‘Whether he was already dead, or unconscious, when he was placed in the road, only a PM can establish, so we won’t know until tomorrow.’

  Merrily discovered that she was pacing the lobby, loose shadows meshing in her path.

  ‘Of course, the macabre aspect to this,’ Annie Howe said, ‘as one of our officers pointed out, is that Hook was placed in the road at the spot – or somewhere very close to the spot – where his brother died. Hook lived in a flat at Wormelow. A neighbour who was walking to the Tump Inn saw him leaving the building sometime around mid-evening, on foot. He may have been going to meet his killer and, unless this was a remarkable coincidence, we could assume the killer was someone who not only knew about the accident but also precisely where it took place.’

  ‘I...’ Merrily went back to the chintz-covered chair and sat down again. ‘His cousin Dexter was driving. Which you know, of course.’

  ‘Was Harris still close to his cousin?’

  ‘Apparently not. There’s been a rift in the family since the accident. We... I suggested the situation might be improved by holding a service – a Requiem Eucharist – for Roland, who was killed. Dexter said that Darrin would be dead against it. He suggested several times that Darrin was unstable... violent. He said, more or less, that he’d been scared of Darrin when they were kids. That Darrin liked to hurt people, cause trouble, had a cruel streak. I assumed, because Darrin had a prison record and Dexter didn’t, that this was at least close to the truth.’

  There was a silence. The door of the lounge opened and Bliss looked out, saw that Merrily was still on the phone, scowled and went back in.

  ‘I’ll tell you about Darrin Hook, shall I?’ Annie Howe said. ‘Because I arrested him once, you see, a number of years ago. He’d got into a factory on the Holmer estate, with some mates, lifting some computers that they didn’t, of course, know how to get rid of – these particular models being part of a network system. So, when they tried to flog them to a nice chap who assembles PCs in his garage, we had the whole bunch in no time. Hook, it turned out, was the one who had got them into the factory, past quite an efficient security system. He’s not bright, but he’s remarkably good with his hands. And he does what he’s told. You might say, I want to get into a chemist’s shop, or I want a BMW Series 7, and Darrin will do the technical bits. You could call him an instinctive thief, a natural.’

  ‘He was the one who broke into the car that night. When he was about twelve.’

  ‘It’s what he does. What he did. It made him popular with certain people. Won him acceptance.’

  ‘Dexter indicated he was... you know... hard.’

  ‘Mrs Watkins, all his convictions relate to basic thieving, never involving violence – not on his part, anyway. It doesn’t surprise me at all that he was converted, in a very short time, to your religion. If he was exposed to someone with sufficient evangelical fervour, in a situation where he couldn’t get away, he’d be a pushover.’

  ‘Especially if he had something on his conscience?’

  ‘I don’t doubt that. You people are quite good at targeting someone’s weak points.’

  ‘You haven’t talked to Dexter, then.’

  ‘He wasn’t at home, and we haven’t tried to find him. It sounds as though he’s either easily scared or he’s been deliberately giving people the wrong impression about his cousin.’

  ‘He was doing the late shift at Alice’s fish and chip shop in Ledwardine, but I expect it’ll be closed by now.’

  ‘Long ago, I should think. Does he stay in the village?’

  ‘I think he goes back to Hereford. Whether he could get through tonight, though...’

  ‘We’ll talk to him first thing in the morning, one way or another. He’s not going to know we’re looking for him. Well... thank you, Ms Watkins. We got somewhere in the end, didn’t we?’

  ‘I’m not sure where we got. If he hadn’t told Alice about his conversion, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have told Dexter.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Howe said. ‘Good night.’

  Merrily gave the DC his phone back and went out through the porch to avoid Bliss for a while. The implications here were horrific. Tugging up the hood of Jane’s duffel, she walked out onto the forecourt, where the snow was falling hard again, like inside one of those glass things you shook.

  I was bigger than Darrin, but he was real nasty, look. Stuck his knife in the back of my hand once. Had an airgun, shot a robin in the garden. Things people thought were nice, he’d wanner destroy.

  It didn’t fit. And yet these things must have actually happened, because Dexter Harris wasn’t imaginative. It was just that Darrin hadn’t done them. And if Darrin hadn’t done them, then...

  You’re a fuckin’ ole meddler, Alice, nobody assed you to start all this shit... what if everybody don’t want the truth out?

  Dexter didn’t want it out.

  She pushed back her hood, lifting up her face to the cascading sky, feeling the cold, stinging truth on her skin. Far from rejecting the idea of a Requiem Eucharist, a born-again Christian of the Charismatic persuasion – throwing up his arms and yelling that he’d been saved and praise the Lord – would see it as a sign, a response from God to his need to be cleansed of his sins.

  Suppose Dexter was still in contact with Darrin? Suppose he knew about Darrin’s conversion, guessed that, in Darrin’s erratic mental state, it would all come flooding out, what had really happened that day, the things that Darrin had never talked about.

  Never talked about because he was afraid of Dexter.

  Dexter, the good boy. Not the most pleasant person, to talk to, but he worked hard and he was a martyr to his asthma. And all he did that night, after all, was drive the car.

  Merrily walked, with determination, back into Stanner Hall, pulling out her own mobile, ringing Alice again, letting it ring for over two minutes before giving up and ringing Lol.

  39

  What Brigid Did

  ALL THE TIME she was talking, Lol kept looking at the window. There ought to be curtains; maybe Merrily couldn’t afford curtains on a starvation stipend. The snow was coming down vertically out of a windless sky, as if it had been directed to obliterate the village.

  And unless it had been an apparition of the newly dead, that definitely hadn’t been Darrin Hook at the window.

  ‘So, not a word from Alice?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘nothing. A
nd it’s not likely she’s going to call now, is it?’

  ‘You do know what’s... implied here,’ Merrily said, fifteen miles away and safe, thank God. ‘You do realize what it suggests – about Dexter?’

  ‘It suggests that Dexter might not be your problem any more,’ Lol said carefully.

  Merrily said, ‘If he is responsible for—’

  ‘Then you couldn’t have known, you had no reason even to suspect it. You didn’t know Darrin and, if what Howe says is right about his conversion, neither did Alice.’

  ‘It was my decision. My solution to their problem.’

  Jeavons’s solution, Lol thought. He ought to tell her about Jeavons, but he didn’t think she’d take it in.

  ‘You gave them an option,’ he said.

  ‘The kind of option that someone like Alice was never going to refuse. When you think about it—’

  ‘Don’t think about it. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s a police matter, out of your hands. Your only problem now is going to be Alice, and if you start blaming yourself, that isn’t going to help. How’s Jane?’

  ‘Confused. Lol, why wasn’t Alice answering her phone?’

  ‘Probably because she hasn’t got one in her bedroom. I’ll go round and see if she’s OK, if you like.’

  ‘No... don’t do that. If she hasn’t been round and she hasn’t rung, I suppose that means she doesn’t know. If she’s asleep, let her sleep. I’ll call her in the morning, when she’s better able to handle it, before the police can make a move on her. Damn – Bliss is making signals. What’s it like there, now?’

  He looked away from the window. ‘Don’t try and get back tonight, you won’t make it. Not even in Gomer’s truck. Is there somewhere you can sleep?’

  ‘It’s a hotel. But nobody’s sleeping.’

  ‘Call me back when you can, there’s a couple of things—’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I love you,’ Merrily said, ‘so don’t—’

  ‘Eirion rang, too. He’s worried about Jane, and he—’

  ‘I’m going to have to go.’

  Lol sat staring at the hypnotic sleep-light on the monitor. He’d promised to call Jeavons back after he’d spoken to Merrily, but all that had been superseded now. He glanced at the window. He couldn’t have told Merrily about Dexter looking in. He couldn’t have done that.

  Because it meant that Dexter had still been here an hour ago. Here in the vicarage garden. Out there looking in.

  The fish and chip shop must have been long shut, but the chances of Dexter being able to get a vehicle out of Ledwardine had, for a long time, been remote. Therefore, the chances were that Dexter was still here.

  At Alice’s? Obviously. Where else could he have gone? Lol picked up the phone. Maybe he should ring Annie Howe himself, let her know about this. Tell her that Dexter Harris, whom she would presumably like to question in relation to the possible murder of his cousin, was here in Ledwardine.

  But then, it wasn’t certain. Nothing about this was certain.

  Ethel the black cat sat on the sermon book and watched Lol, as though sensing his indecision. Ethel had a red collar with a small round bell. The first time he’d been in this ancient house was when he’d arrived with Ethel, kicked and injured. And Merrily Watkins – ‘one of my uncles used to be a vet, in Cheltenham’ – had wrapped her in an old quilted body-warmer and laid her on the kitchen table examining her for internal injuries, removing bits of broken tooth. Lol often wondered if he’d fallen in love that night, when Merrily had said something like, ‘God, these lights are crap,’ explaining her belief that oaths were OK because they kept the holy names in circulation.

  Without this cat...

  ‘You’re right.’ Lol stood up and went to find his wellies.

  Bliss led Merrily back into the lounge – his incident room – where a brass-stemmed standard lamp lit the scratched wood panels with a light that was thin rather than soft.

  Over the fireplace, Sir Arthur’s blue-tinted face gazed into places where Bliss wouldn’t want to go. Bliss sat down in the easy chair near the flaking fire, one leg hooked over the arm, and motioned her to the sofa opposite.

  ‘None of this goes out of this room, all right? And if it subsequently proves irrelevant to this case, it doesn’t get spoken of again. Even Andy doesn’t have clearance yet.’

  Merrily sat down and closed her eyes. You could learn too much in one night. She’d shown him the chat-room printout that Jane had given her, told him where it had been found. She wondered where Jane was, but at least Gomer had been with her.

  ‘Best take off that sad old coat and have a coffee,’ Bliss said. ‘This could take a while.’

  Jane looked up from making cheese toasties for the cops, watching Amber adding the herbs to her chocolate. Couldn’t believe either of them was doing this. Keeping busy, knowing it was all coming to an end – shadows lengthening, ghosts emerging, moss and mildew reclaiming the walls of Stanner. Like being in the band on the Titanic.

  ‘How can you just... go on?’

  ‘It’s what I do. I’m—’

  ‘A cook, yeah.’

  ‘Better than a conference, Jane,’ Amber said bitterly, ‘and without any dirty bedclothes. We’ll even get paid.’

  After a while, Amber said, ‘She seemed such a godsend. A woman with all the management skills and diplomas and years of experience – a personable woman who was happy to work for a pittance and never minded scrubbing floors.’

  Jane stopped grating cheese. ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think...?’ How could she ask what she wanted to ask? ‘Do you think Dacre was killed because of her?’

  Amber stopped stirring. ‘Because of her?’

  Jeremy wouldn’t come back and sit down. He walked into the little kitchen, with the dog at his heels, flinging open the back door, staring out across the yard, as if there was likely to be some personal message for him, scored out in the snow. When he turned round, back into the room, Danny saw pain passing across his face fast as a train over a level crossing.

  ‘You thought it was me had him, din’t you?’

  ‘Jeremy, till them cops come, I didn’t even know it was Sebbie dead.’

  Danny pushed his fingers into his hair. It still wouldn’t penetrate his brain that Natalie Craven was the Brigid Parsons, one of those names that nobody who’d read a paper or seen the TV news over the last twenty-five years would ever totally forget.

  ‘How come we never knowed? How come nobody round yere knowed Paula’s daughter was Brigid Parsons? Tell me that.’

  ‘Nobody knew ’bout Paula, neither. They kept it quiet.’ Jeremy came away from the door and went and stood by the paraffin lamp, looking down at the glass. ‘Paula killed herself.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Not long after giving birth. It was... pretty bloody horrible, Danny. Nobody talks about it. Nat’lie never learned about it till her dad was dyin’. Poor bugger blamed hisself, but it weren’t his fault. It was in her.’

  ‘So her mother killed herself, grandmother killed herself, and... It don’t bear thinkin’ about, Jeremy. None of it.’

  ‘Brigid growed up thinkin’ her mother died in childbirth. Which is true, in a way. Her dad, Norman, he had things to find out, too. Thought Paula was an orphan – which was true, like, but it was only when they come down yere he found out the truth about Hattie and Robert. The Nant was his now, see, but he felt it oughter be held on to for Brigid.’

  ‘That’d been me, I’d have wanted to get rid, fast. Specially after...’

  ‘He’d signed the lease by then.’

  ‘But you knew. About Brigid and what she done. I mean you muster knowed, when it was all in the papers. You and Sebbie.’

  ‘We never said nothin’. The two sisters never met. The Dacres knew what nearly happened when they was little, swore her’d never get another chance. And were they gonner spread it round the
y got two killers in the family now?’

  Danny didn’t even like to think how Jeremy would have taken it. The girl he loved, the girl he’d prayed to God to send back. Jeremy in love with the memory of the monster who lured a boy of fourteen into an old railway shed with the promise of sex, and stabbed him and cut him and tore him to pieces with a little Kitchen Devil and her own nails. And the next night, while the police and the neighbours were still looking for the missing boy, did the same thing to his mate. TEEN FIEND, the Mirror said, when Brigid was convicted. This was the girl Jeremy had prayed to God to send back to him, and it didn’t bear thinking about, none of it.

  ‘I wrote to her,’ Jeremy said. ‘I wrote to her five, six times. Never had no reply. Figured mabbe her’d been moved and they never forwarded the letters. Turned out her dad wasn’t passing them on.’

  Poor little sod. Was some folk born unlucky or what?

  ‘Wasn’t until he was dyin’, end of last year, that Norman sends for Brigid. Tells her the truth about who she was and where she come from. Tells her about Hattie.’

  ‘And what good did that do?’

  ‘Good?’ In the lamplight, Jeremy, for once, looked his age and then some, his face full of dips and hollows.

  ‘Must’ve seemed good for you,’ Danny said, and then he thought about it. ‘Bugger me, no wonder you rung me to come over when they turned up in that camper van. You was scared to death. You knew who it was gonner be all along. You just din’t know if her was gonner have two heads and bloody claws.’

  He turned and walked back into the living room, where the fire was burning low, tossing uncertain shadows on to the walls. Danny saw a dark and tragic tapestry forming.

  ‘How long before Sebbie found out who the new woman was?’

  ‘Dunno, Danny.’

  ‘He ever ask?’

  ‘Never asked me.’

  ‘Just sent his Welsh shooters round to cause trouble. Put the wind up you. Let you know he was on the case. Cause a reaction. Was that it?’

  ‘Mabbe he seen the Hound.’

  Danny snorted, turning to face the boy who was standing in the doorway now, his face mottled by the fire.