‘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 Telegraph.’
‘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.