by Phil Rickman
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Sophie snapped.
‘So what do you think God’s telling me?’
‘Look.’ Sophie raised a finger. ‘If – if any one person can be said to carry any blame here – and I don’t necessarily accept that anyone should – then it has to be The Reverend Simon St John, doesn’t it? Whatever St John knew about Stock to convince him to stay out of it, he kept it to himself.’
‘You don’t understand…’ Merrily lit a cigarette and, for once, Sophie didn’t frown. ‘I was approaching this right on top of the Amy Shelbone issue.’
‘Oh, Merrily, that—’
‘No, look…’ Merrily glanced apologetically at Lol. ‘I’ll explain this properly sometime but, in essence, I was being accused of not responding to a situation with sufficient effectiveness. Following which, a young girl tried to take her own life.’
Sophie hissed, exasperated. ‘For heaven’s sake, Merrily, Dennis Beckett—’
‘Look at the facts: here’s me driving down to Stock’s place this morning with a head full of Amy Shelbone and, like, totally insufficient background about Stock’s own problem – in fact, not really believing he has a problem. And then, while talking to him and coming to realize there is a situation, am I not then subconsciously thinking, God, I can’t underplay this one as well? Less concerned with finding out what the hell’s going on than with covering myself? Was I—’
She stopped, realizing her speech was becoming swollen by sobs, and aware of Sophie getting decisively to her feet.
‘Drink your tea, Merrily. Pull yourself together.’
Through a film of tears, she saw Sophie walking over to the door, beckoning Lol to follow her.
Sophie Hill almost dragged him down the stone stairs. Her expression was taut and her eyes were like grey stones in the half-light.
‘Mr Robinson, I don’t know what your current relationship with Merrily is, but I think you’ll agree that what we need to do now is get her out of here, before she does or says something from which there’ll be no going back.’
Lol nodded, bewildered. ‘Anything I can do. Anything.’
Sophie took his arm, led him to the foot of the steps and even then kept her voice low. ‘I was very much playing it down in there, as you probably realized.’
Lol nodded. He instinctively liked Sophie, wished she didn’t have to keep calling him ‘Mr Robinson’.
‘This is actually rather grim.’ She opened the door leading out to the stone archway. ‘We both know that the press and the Church of England are going to hang Merrily out to dry, and if she thinks she’s in any way at fault she won’t even fight back.’
He remembered Merrily in Howe’s office, what he could see of her: cowed, shattered. ‘In any situation, she always tends to feel responsible.’
‘All right,’ Sophie said, ‘let’s examine the situation. First – I can’t see them charging Stock with murder tonight, can you?’
‘Not unless he’s had a change of heart and given them a full statement.’
‘They won’t charge him even then, not immediately. And you know what that means.’
‘Gives the press free rein to rake over the story. They go back to the original piece in the People and they find that quote from Merrily saying she’s going to be looking into it carefully, and they’ll want to know if she ever did.’
‘And whatever answer they get will be the wrong one. If she didn’t actually do anything, the Church was being fatally neglectful. And if they find out the truth…’
‘Merrily’s dog food,’ Lol said.
Sophie stood in the gatehouse doorway, gazing through the stone arch towards the Bishop’s Palace yard. An elegant, white-haired Englishwoman with a cardigan draped over her shoulders. Formidable.
‘I don’t know how much you know about the Church of England, Mr Robinson, but I can tell you with some authority that, like any large secular organization, it’s essentially self-serving and self-protective.’
Lol said nothing. It was hardly a revelation.
‘For the Church, it’s going to be more than Merrily on trial, it’s the credibility of the entire Deliverance Ministry – arguably one of the few dynamic arms we have left. They may not even try to defend her, simply wash their hands of it all. They’ll have an inquiry, at the end of which they’ll agree that she behaved in an arbitrary fashion, reacted too quickly, disregarded the guidelines, failed to take advice.’
‘Can they throw her out of the Church?’
Sophie looked him in the eyes. ‘With what you know of Merrily Watkins, would they need to?’
Merrily stood at the window, staring down at the evening light on Broad Street. Stephanie Stock’s severed head lay in the middle of the road. She wondered when Stephanie’s head would no longer be visible everywhere she looked, with its smile slashed to double-width and one of its eyes fully open – and the other one missing.
In fact, she realized that she and Lol must have been spared the worst. They’d only seen Stock’s video. The police’s own footage, while it might have less narrative tension, would be far more explicit. She’d heard Frannie Bliss and Andy Mumford talking in the corridor, and so she knew that Stephanie had not died by having her head cleanly cleaved off, like Anne Boleyn, but that Stock had gone at her, at the bottom of the stairs, like some barbaric Dark Age butcher.
This had happened immediately in the wake of what the papers would inevitably describe as an exorcism. A botched exorcism. Howe hadn’t exactly been concealing the existence of Stock’s video; its contents would inevitably be leaked.
And had this supposed exorcism, it would be asked, brought out something savagely malevolent, long dormant inside Gerard Stock?
It wouldn’t matter that, unlike Michael Taylor, Stock had not been personally exorcized – no induced convulsions, no speaking in guttural tongues, no green bile, no Out, demons, out. Wouldn’t matter that it had been simply a modest entreaty to God for the Stocks’ home to become dweller-friendly again.
Merrily’s fists tightened. How could that possibly cause a man to go into a murderous rage? How could it?
It wouldn’t matter.
Tell her to throw some holy water around and leave by the back door. She wondered if Bernie Dunmore would even remember saying that.
The phone rang.
She turned slowly. Perhaps this was Bernie himself, fresh from the conference on Transsexuality and the Church, disturbing gossip having reached him while he sat nursing his single malt in the bar of Gloucester’s swishest. Casually approached by some journalist, perhaps, as he debated with the Bishop of Durham how best to react to an archdeacon’s new breasts.
She started to laugh, and let the phone go on ringing.
A clattering on the stairs. Sophie rushed in. ‘Don’t touch that.’
‘Wasn’t going to.’
Sophie sat down behind her desk, took two calming breaths and picked up the phone.
‘Diocese of Hereford, Bishop’s Palace. Sophie Hill speaking.’
Lol came in, looking a little brighter; Sophie could do this. Don’t depress Merrily.
‘No,’ Sophie said, ‘I’m afraid she’s on holiday. Is there anything I can do for you?’
She? The only two women working from this office were Sophie and Merrily.
‘When?’ Sophie said. ‘Well, I don’t know, precisely. I know she was supposed to have left yesterday, but I believe she delayed her departure for some reason… No, I couldn’t. I’m afraid that’s not the sort of personal information I’m permitted to give out.’
Merrily held her breath and moved away from the window: they could be out there somewhere, on a mobile.
‘No, I’ve no idea, I’m afraid. You’d have to ask Mrs Watkins herself about that sort of thing… No, the Bishop’s away at a conference. He’ll be back on Thursday night… Look, I’m sorry, but I’m only a secretary. I’m really not party to that kind of information. I should try our press officer tomorrow. Goodnight.’ Sophie hung up. ‘The Daily Teleg
raph.’
‘Why am I on holiday, Sophie?’
‘For the sake of your health.’
‘Not good enough.’
‘For the health of the Christian Church, then,’ Sophie snapped. ‘Look, I’ve just been asked if you conducted an exorcism today at the home of Gerard and the late Mrs Stephanie Stock. What would you have said if you’d been asked that question?’
‘I’d have explained that it wasn’t exactly an exorcism.’
Sophie and Lol exchanged glances.
‘Yeah, I know. And they wouldn’t have believed a word of it.’ Merrily reached for her cigarettes, glared from one to the other of them. ‘I’m supposed to run away?’
‘Yes,’ Sophie said. ‘For the moment. At least until such time as the police charge Gerard Stock with murder and the media are formally gagged until after the trial.’
‘What about the Bishop?’
‘I’ll phone Gloucester and advise him to stay in his hotel room and lock the door.’
‘And where am I spending my holiday? Learning Welsh in Pembrokeshire with Jane?’
‘You can stay at my house tonight.’
Sophie lived with her husband in one of the streets behind the Castle Green.
‘Which would implicate you,’ Merrily said. ‘Thanks, but forget it. Anyway, I have to go home and feed the cat.’
‘Don’t throw up silly barriers,’ Sophie said irritably. ‘Phone Gomer Parry. He has a key to the vicarage, doesn’t he?’ Sophie knew everything. ‘Or Mr Robinson has an alternative suggestion,’ she said.
In the fields to either side, cut and turned hay lay like a choppy green sea. The road and the fields and the woods lay in shadow, but the Malverns above them were caught in the sunset, their foothills glowing as if lit from underneath, like a Tiffany lamp.
It was serenely beautiful. And yes, she had to agree, it was the last place anyone would think of looking for her.
Eye of the storm. Merrily lit a cigarette. She felt a little scared, actually. Trepidation – or the electric, arm-bristling fear of another imminent revelation.
Lol had driven her back to Ledwardine Vicarage, and she’d packed a case and phoned Gomer Parry. Gomer had been round in minutes: how about he move in tonight, feed the cat, keep the newshounds off the premises? He’d caretaken once before, when Merrily and Jane had been armlocked into a family wedding in Northumberland. Now widowed and restless, he liked being the guy who looked out for them both… which also brought him closer to the action. Good old Gomer.
‘A holiday.’ Merrily inhaled and leaned her head over the torn back of the Astra’s passenger seat and closed her eyes. ‘So what’s that like, exactly?’
‘Boring,’ Lol said, ‘as I recall.’
‘We had a few odd days, when Jane was younger. Not for a while, though.’
‘How is she?’
‘Raging. Eirion’s stepmother seems to think she enjoys being a nanny to her youngest kids.’
‘Taking a risk there.’
‘And can she even begin to know how much of one?’ Merrily closed her eyes. ‘Don’t really want to get there. I want to drive through the night talking inane crap. Like when we were young.’
‘That’s a holiday. I remember now. Inane crap with bits of sex in between.’
‘You and Alison?’
‘Once. Five days in Northern France. You ever see Alison in the village?’
‘Well, she’s still with James Bull-Davies, if that’s what you mean. They say she’s really taken him and his decrepit house in hand. But they don’t come to church.’
‘So who sits in the Bull pew now?’
‘Nobody. People are so superstitious, aren’t they?’
She felt the car slow and turn, and when she opened her eyes the road had become an alley between rows of short wooden pylons. Entwined around them, luxuriant growth seemed to be surging towards the awakening stars.
It was Lol who was shivering. He pushed his compact body back into the seat to stop it, but she felt the tremor and she knew his hands were tightening on the wheel.
‘Time to abandon The Prince of Wales Guide to Making Stupid Conversation, I think.’ Merrily caught some ash in the palm of her hand. ‘What haven’t you told me?’
Lol watched the road winding between the hop-yards, put on his headlights. ‘So exactly how long have you been a vicar?’ he said.
She recognized the church, embedded in shadow, fusing with the bushes above the river bank. There was a light on in the vicarage, just one. It was the kind of light you left on when you went out for the night, to create an illusion of habitation.
The Astra crawled through the village, if you could call it that. There were several cars on the forecourt of the pub. One was a station wagon with its rear hatch flung up, a man pulling out a black tripod.
‘Didn’t take them long, did it?’
Lol drove slowly past. He even managed to give the man a suspicious glance, like a true local in his battered old car. Subtle. There are rooms at Prof’s studios, he’d said. It’s not finished yet, but it’s quite respectable. Who else would be there? Only me, in a loft, out in the stables.
The road curved out of the village, up a slight incline and down again. The Malvern Hills disappeared and reappeared, undulating with lights like gems mounted on a jeweller’s velvet tray.
‘Is this going to help?’ Merrily said. ‘Us coming here?’
‘Trust me, I’m a drop-out trainee psychotherapist.’
‘Well, I’m not any kind of psychotherapist.’ She squeezed out her cigarette, turned to look at him, her back resting against the passenger door. ‘But I’ve learned enough about your little ways in the short time we’ve known each other to know that when you’re at your most facetious it usually means you’re also kind of scared.’
Lol turned through a gap in the hedge, went very slowly downhill and eventually came to a stop. She could see the humps of buildings but no lights. What had she expected: The Prof Levin Studios, in neon?
‘You’re obviously not scared of the dark, though,’ Merrily said.
‘No, I like the dark.’
‘Yes, you would.’
Lol switched off the engine. ‘When…’ He hesitated. ‘When I first came here… I went out for a walk in the dark. Well, actually, it wasn’t that dark, bit like tonight. I walked down there.’ He pointed through the windscreen to a line of poplar silhouettes. ‘Over the river bridge, then I picked up a path and wandered into a wood. Then I got a bit lost.’
‘Your thing, being lost,’ Merrily said softly.
‘Is it?’
‘But it’s produced some lovely songs. Ask Jane.’
‘She’s just being kind.’
‘She’d take that as a serious insult. Go on – you went for a walk. You got lost.’
‘And then I came to this abandoned hop-yard. Everything cleared or dead, with the poles and the frames naked.’ He paused. ‘And a woman – Stephanie Stock. She was naked, too.’
Merrily stiffened. The summer night gathered around the old car, opaque now like November fog.
25
Soured
DOWN PAST THE inn, at the edge of the old harbour, there was a stony footpath, and if you followed it for about half a mile you came to a fairly secret cove. Or at least it seemed secret at night; there was probably an oil refinery beyond the headland.
‘You can’t.’ Eirion stood with his back to a millpond sea. There were just the two of them on the beach. One of the great things about Pembrokeshire was that you could still find lonely beaches in July.
Jane climbed onto a rock so that she was looking down on him. Post-sunset, the sky was luminous, almost lime green.
‘What?’ Hoping her eyes were glittering with an equally dangerous intensity.
Eirion backed off, the heels of his trainers almost in the water. ‘Well, yes, all right, of course you can.’ He would always start to sound Welsh when he was agitated. ‘You can do what you want. You’re free, you’re sixteen years
old, you’re—’
‘English.’
He moaned to the brilliant sky. ‘Don’t start that again! Please, please, don’t hit me with that racism stuff again. They’ve just been brought up to be proud of their language and their culture.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Jane. ‘Their culture.’
This evening they’d been to the movies, to a cinema in Fishguard. Well, not actually a cinema, a cinema club. Where they’d seen this thriller, with not-bad car chases and a couple of half-hearted love scenes and a leading actor who Jane recalled from TV and who was moderate totty, in his fresh-faced way.
It had actually helped that it was in Welsh and that snogging had been rendered impractical due to two small girls sitting in between them with their chocolate ripples. It had allowed Jane to contemplate the terrible turn events had taken, and the element of guilt she could no longer reject.
An unexpected wave hit Eirion’s ankles and pooled into his trainers. He groaned. ‘Jane, please don’t do this to me. Stay until the weekend, at least, then we can think of something.’
‘I’ve thought of something. I’ve thought of a taxi. I’ve thought of the nearest station. I’ve thought of… lots of things.’
‘But there’s nothing you can do there!’ Eirion sat down in the sand and took off his trainers to empty the sea out of them.
‘I let her down.’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘I dumped her in it.’
‘That’s ridic—’
‘Because I didn’t have the guts to say to Riddock, “This is naff, this is dangerous, this is wrong.” ’
Jane came down from her rock, and began to ramble up the beach – but slowly, always keeping Eirion in sight. People here still talked about that couple who were murdered years ago on the Pembrokeshire coastal path and nobody was ever caught. English couple, as it happened, on holiday.
‘Jane, we’re all—’ Eirion picked up his trainers and ran barefoot along the sand towards her. ‘We’re all braver after the event. She’s not going to hold it against you. You think she doesn’t understand how hard it is? You think she was never in that position herself, of having to keep her street cred at school?’