The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (MW6)

by Phil Rickman

  ‘What he seen, Jeremy, was the curse of Chancerys comin’ back to the Stanner Valley.’

  Jeremy cried out, so sharp and sudden that the dog whimpered and cowered away from him.

  ‘Why’d you take a rope into the barn?’ Danny said.

  And couldn’t bear to hear the answer. He went and sat down by the fire, wishing to God he was at home with the cans on and The Queens of the Stone Age a satisfyingly numbing wooden mallet in his head.

  ‘I begged her to go,’ Jeremy said, like from a long way away. ‘I begged her to leave. I prayed for her to leave, same as I’d prayed for her to come back. Now I’m praying for her to get out before it... I could feel it coming.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The shadow Hound. Death.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Danny roared. And yet remembered when he seen the two of them in the Eagle, thinking how soon romance died.

  ‘And you seen the signs, Danny. Signs even you couldn’t miss. And yet you did.’

  Danny let his hands fall from his ears. ‘What?’

  ‘The night this Nathan got beat up.’ Jeremy came to kneel down, side of Danny’s chair, like a dog. ‘You was there just before it happened, right? Think back, Danny – what was they saying?’

  ‘I don’t bloody know.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You tole me.’

  ‘They was... Like Foley said afterwards, Nathan called him a wimp. Then splat, splat.’

  ‘No, words? What did he actually say? What did Nathan say?’

  ‘Jeremy, for—’

  ‘What’d he say?’

  ‘Foley’s telling him to get the hell off his land or else, and Nat... Brigid... her’s like, Better do what he says. And then Nathan goes, What you gonna do about it, you and that fuckin’ little...’

  Danny stopped, the words booming in his head louder than The Queens of the Stone Age and The Foo Fighters live on stage, together. And a big part of the black tapestry got itself blocked in.

  ‘... That fuckin’ little English wimp.’ The words shrank in Danny’s mouth.

  Quarrel was with herself, Jeremy had said earlier. Me as got hit, mind.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Jeremy, he din’t mean Foley was a fuckin’ little English wimp, he meant... he meant you.’

  He stood up, looked down at Jeremy by the chair, the boy’s eyes full of a knowledge that he wished he didn’t have.

  ‘Foley never lifted a finger against Nathan, did he?’ Danny said.

  40

  Extreme

  ON THE SQUARE, the Christmas tree lights had gone off at midnight, and now the tree was shapeless with snow and joined at the hip to the market hall. The falling snow was so dense that it was like passing through lace curtains, the few lights still burning in Ledwardine peering out at Lol like suspicious, muffled eyes.

  Crossing into Church Street where the roadway and the pavements had become one, he passed the timber-framed terrace that included Lucy’s house, its windows black, snow piled up on the step like a whole month of mail.

  It was as if he was alone in the village. Everywhere, this white and quilted silence, like a chapel of rest.

  A short way down the hill, the turning into Old Barn Lane was just another snow-flow now. But with hunched and crooked buildings either side, it was more sheltered here, the snow shallower, and Lol was able to hurry – as much as anyone could, moving like a wader in a congealing river.

  In the months before he’d first met Merrily, when he was living in this village with Alison Kinnersley, he would sometimes walk down here for chips. Alice had lived over the shop then, and he vaguely remembered her moving out, into the first new home to be finished in Old Barn Close. Alice, it seemed, had always wanted a bungalow.

  The shop was near the bottom of the lane before it fell away into fields. Blinds were down, no light shining through the gaps, and no street lamps to identify the entrance to the Close, about fifty yards further on. He’d been holding the vicarage’s black Maglite torch out in front of him, as if it was pulling him along. Now, passing the chip shop, its fatty miasma still in the air, he finally switched the torch on.

  The Close was a so-called executive development of nine or ten houses and bungalows, architect-designed and well spaced between existing trees. Alice’s home was at the end, backing onto the old orchard chain that curved around most of the village, ending up back at the church.

  OK, then. If there was a meaningful light on in the bungalow, he was going to knock on the door. If Dexter Harris answered it, he’d say he was sorry to show up so late, but he was bringing a message for Alice from the vicar who was stuck over in Kington, had tried to phone and couldn’t get a reply. It wasn’t brilliant, but it wouldn’t sound too suspicious on a night like this. If Dexter said that Alice was in bed, he wouldn’t argue, he’d just go back to the vicarage and try to get through to Annie Howe.

  If Alice was there, however, he’d have to play it by ear. His conversations with her, in the old days, had never got much beyond salt and vinegar, but he thought she’d remember him, and he guessed that, like probably everyone else in this village, she’d know about him and the vicar. Whether he told Alice about Darrin, if she didn’t already know he was dead, would depend not least on whether Dexter was here or likely to return.

  Lol stopped at the entrance to the Close, getting his breath back, brushing the snow from his glasses and the arms of his old army-surplus parka.

  Why was he really here? Why was he doing this? Because he’d been unnerved by the face at the window? Even more by what Merrily had told him? Because he couldn’t just sit there doing nothing until he fell asleep in some chair? Because he would otherwise have felt useless?

  No – face it – it was essentially because he knew that this was what Merrily would be doing if she was here. Merrily – and he didn’t like to contemplate this too deeply – would be afraid of what little fiery-faced Alice might have said or done and where it might have led.

  Because of the relentless snow, he didn’t see the light in the end bungalow until he was halfway along the close. All the others were either in darkness or had outside lamps as a deterrent to burglars. At Alice’s, the light was in either the kitchen or the living room or both. Hard to say; curtains were drawn – cheerful red roses against a yellow trellis.

  Both gates were open. A sign on one said Orchard’s End. There was a white truck in the drive, with big tyres and a couple of inches of snow on the bonnet. Dexter? Lol switched off the torch. There was also a light on over a side door next to the truck. He went up and rang the bell, noticing that the snow had been roughly cleared from around the door, that footprints leading around the back were already half whited-out.

  He heard the bell ringing inside, an old-fashioned continuous ringing, strident. He stopped and waited. No response. He tried again, keeping his finger on the bell push for about ten seconds.

  Inside the bungalow the ringing died away. The lights stayed on. The snow kept on falling in its windless silence.

  There was a slim glass panel in the door. When Lol leaned on the door to peer through it, the door swung open, and he wasn’t expecting that at all.

  Merrily lit a cigarette from the stub of the last. She never did this: it was chain-smoking, a sin. She hardly noticed until it was done and the smoke was curling up, past the waistcoat of Arthur Conan Doyle, like grey ectoplasm.

  ‘How long have you known about her?’

  ‘Me personally? Couple of months,’ Bliss said, ‘maybe longer. It’s a routine thing, notifying the local bobbies when someone of her... status moves into your patch. Social workers and the Probation Service watching their backs.’

  ‘How long did she serve?’

  ‘Eight, nine years. The last year in an open prison. They come out, for lengthening periods, to get work experience, and she was taken on at a big guest house, and she did very well, got on with people. Which is how she got the taste for it. Like being on a permanent holiday, and most of the folk you met were on holiday too, or transient workers
. Temporary. Passing through.’

  ‘I suppose after being in one place for so long, it’s hard to settle down.’

  ‘She wasn’t. She was in about six places all over the country. Different young offenders’ institutions for the first years, and then two adult women’s prisons. I don’t think they knew what to do with her from the start. Smart, outgoing, quite good with people – long way from your usual moody psychos. But one of those young offenders’ joints – Borstals, as was – she was in there with boys, and that could get inflammatory at times. She was a walking challenge for the hard lads – physically very mature for her age – and there were a number of incidents. And then she absconded and got caught quick and moved on. I think everybody was happy when she was old enough for Styall, partly because it was near where she lived but mainly because it was all women.’

  Merrily said, ‘Did the temporary employers know who she was?’

  She was thinking, Did Jeremy know what Brigid did? But how could he not know? This was a national hate figure whose name, when it appeared in tabloid headlines, was almost invariably preceded by the word ‘evil’: Evil Brigid should never get out, says victim’s mother. And then: Evil Brigid pregnant. Evil Brigid freed in secret. And the media hunt – Where is Evil Brigid?

  Here.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Bliss said. ‘Some employers prefer not to know. And when she came out, she had a new name and new documents – driving licence, P45, all that. This is her second change of name – the first one, the press rumbled her at some hotel in Cornwall. That was when she dyed her hair. There was a rumour she’d had plastic surgery, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘The Probation Service are presumably still involved?’

  ‘Oh yeh, they’ve always been there in the background. And also, in this case, the officer who nicked her, Ellie Maylord, who was my boss for a while when I was a youngster. Later, she became the first female operational DCI on Merseyside, ended up as superintendent. But she was just a little DC when she brought Brigid Parsons in, and she’s always kept in touch with her... Well, I think she was fascinated, the way most people are, even coppers, by someone this... extreme.’

  ‘Inevitably.’ Merrily fingered her pectoral cross.

  ‘So it was Ellie who contacted me, on the quiet, in October. My boss already knew, it turned out, but I was well off the need-to-know list. Ellie was worried about why, after managing quite a big hotel in Shropshire, Brigid had wanted to come here, to this’ – Bliss looked around – ‘not terribly prosperous establishment. I said I’d make a few discreet inquiries, keep an eye on her. But, as you know, I’ve been a bit busy with one thing or another these last two months, so it got overlooked. Do you know why she came here?’

  Merrily tipped her cigarette into a big metal ashtray, pushing it away. Bliss didn’t know, then, that Brigid Parsons was Hattie Chancery’s granddaughter, Dacre’s cousin. All he knew was that Dacre had been found dead and a convicted murderer was missing.

  How come Hattie Chancery had failed to become part of the legend of Brigid Parsons?

  Merrily retreated behind smoke; she’d need to think about this before enlightening him. ‘She became pregnant in prison, didn’t she? I remember reading a long piece in the Observer magazine some years ago – about a year after she came out.’

  Recalling a photo of a woman’s silhouette, shot from a distance, in a wide, empty field at sunset. A little girl running ahead of her. The little girl who was now Jane’s unlikely best friend.

  Jane’s friend, the daughter of Brigid Parsons. No wonder she was quiet.

  ‘Embarrassing,’ Bliss said. ‘It had to be either one of the male staff or someone she encountered on working days. But she never told, and she insisted on having the child. Toted the kid around with her all over the place. Admirable really, all the high-pressure jobs she managed to hold down and bring up a young baby. Something to prove, I suppose.’

  ‘I see.’ It all made sense now, what Jane had told her, about them moving from place to place, usually holiday resorts, lost in the anonymous army of migrant seasonal staff. Finally, travelling like gypsies. ‘What about her parents?’

  ‘The mother died when she was born. Dad supported Brigid, but then he got married again, had a new family. Didn’t see much of her until he was dying himself, not too long ago. After her father died, that was when she came down here.’

  ‘The head teacher at Moorfield, Robert Morrell – would he know who Clancy’s mother was?’

  ‘Might. I’m not sure. He’d love it, wouldn’t he, the old namby-pamby liberal.’

  ‘I’m just surprised he let her go near Jane.’

  ‘Oh, I think we all tend to misjudge Jane,’ Bliss said. ‘She can be a pain in the bum, but she’s from a nice home. Morrell might think Clancy could have worse friends.’

  ‘You’re being worryingly laid-back about this, Francis. Personally, I’m shattered.’

  ‘That’s because I know where I’m going. I’m accumulating background data for when we bring her in.’ He smiled tightly. ‘Which we will. We’ve got officers at the Thomas place.’

  ‘You’re making a few assumptions.’

  ‘I’m looking at the evidence. A woman goes missing from work at a hotel just a few hundred yards from the spot where a man is found dead in suspicious circumstances? I mean, even if this wasn’t Brigid Parsons...’

  ‘Surely they wouldn’t let her out without extensive psychiatric screening. I mean, how old was she when she killed those two boys – thirteen?’

  ‘Killed one boy,’ Bliss said. ‘Mark Andrew Goodison. Stuart Petit survived, just. She thought she’d killed him, almost certainly intended to, but he survived to finger her. If he hadn’t, I doubt she’d ever’ve been even questioned. The extreme savagery of it, nobody was looking for a girl. He lost an eye, Stuart, did you know?’

  ‘I’d forgotten.’

  ‘Most people just remember what happened to Mark – the bits of it the press felt able to print at the time. But whatever the shrinks say, I think there’s a good chance that the child who did that – hasn’t exactly gone away. Don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve never met her.’

  ‘Stick around,’ Bliss said.

  They took the tractor, Danny and Jeremy – Danny realizing how much worse the conditions had got since he’d left home. But not being able to get back there, that was not an option.

  Danny Thomas versus the worst winter for many a damn year, Danny Thomas versus God. No contest tonight.

  When he got the engine going and the music started up, and this time it really was ‘Bad Moon Rising’, he got rid of it so fast he nearly broke the damn switch. And when Jeremy Berrows, hunched up in the other side of the cab, said, ‘It’s gonner be all right, I swear it’ll be all right,’ Danny couldn’t find it in him to make any kind of reply.

  Ahead of him, he saw the lights up on Stanner Rocks, National Nature Reserve and crime scene. He saw the heads in the rocks like some primitive, pagan Mount Rushmore in miniature, rimed with snow and secrecy, and he wanted to blow the whole enigma into the endless night.

  ‘Danny, I know what it looks like to you, and that was why—’

  ‘Why you never said a word?’ Danny lurched in his seat, grinding the tractor onto the snowbound bypass, scraping his hair from over his eyes. ‘I can’t believe you never told me none of this, boy, I cannot believe it. I can’t believe you let that woman leave that kid with Greta.’

  ‘Danny, it—’

  ‘I can’t believe you’d do this.’

  ‘Danny, I’ve known her for over twenty-five years. I know all her problems, I know why she done what she done, and I know the things she won’t do.’

  ‘You’ve known she was a bloody murderer for twenty-odd years, and you still wanted her. You brought her into the valley, and you never said a word. You knowed what she done to Nathan, and still said nothin’. You know it en’t bloody changed, boy. That woman kills, and you let my Greta get involved in it, and you never said a word
, and I thought you was my friend, and whatever happens I en’t never gonner forgive that.’

  In the clean, shiny, chromium kitchen, Lol saw things that bothered him, like a single cup on the kitchen table, half full of cold tea. Like a tin of assorted biscuits with the top off.

  These things bothered him because everything else in here was immaculately tidy.

  He didn’t like to go further than the kitchen. He stood just inside the doorway, called out tentatively, ‘Mrs Meek?’

  On the wall by the door was a calendar of Peter Manders scraperboard etchings of Herefordshire scenes. Above it, two framed photographs, one of four grinning blokes, including Dexter Harris, hefting between them what looked like a tractor wheel. The other was a formula studio portrait of a small boy with close-cropped hair. Roland?

  Roland and Dexter, only Darrin missing. The bad boy, the black sheep.

  In fact, the weak boy, the easily led boy who could have used some support from a strong, self-sufficient auntie, if she’d ever been told the truth.

  A door across from Lol was open to the dimness of perhaps a hallway, but through another door, opposite, he saw a stuttering light.

  ‘Alice?’

  A wide hall ending in an arched front door. From here, it was clear that the flickering was from a TV set in a lounge or living room. Lol went in.

  ‘Alice?’ In case she’d fallen asleep in front of the TV.

  Leaving the back door unlocked, well after midnight?

  On the widescreen TV, a black and white movie of Gaslight vintage was showing with the sound down: a woman in a doorway holding a lantern high.

  This was a long room with a picture window overlooking the orchard, spectacularly snow-clad. The only light apart from the TV came from perfect red and yellow designer flames curling almost realistically from real coals on a gas fire in the bottom wall. The carpet was cream, the four-piece suite huge and expensive and vacant.

  Lol went back into the hall. Doors on both sides, three of them slightly open. Bathroom: empty. Utility room with washing machine and dryer: empty. Toilet and shower room: empty.