"It's easier to live with it if you know what happened to them."
He looked up sharply, searching my face. Something in my voice had triggered his reaction. "Did you lose someone, Neal?"
I looked at the photographs. "My daughter."
"Missing?"
"There was an accident. She was stolen from me. Weweren't able to see the body. It made it unreal, as if she weren't lost at all."
"Ah. Sorry."
"I didn't come here looking for sympathy."
He stepped out into the middle of the church. "Do you believe in God, Neal?"
"I'm not sure I know what I believe in."
"I believe in Him. You may think that's obvious, given my profession, but you might be surprised at how many who follow this calling come to doubt the presence, if not the existence, of God."
"I didn't come looking for God, either."
"Don't have to. Rather the point, don't you think?"
He turned and faced the window. I watched him, facing the full light, outlined against the morning.
"It's not what it seems, you know." He spoke to the window rather than turning and facing me.
"Things rarely are."
"If I take you to one of the families and it doesn't do any good, will you let it go?"
"I can't say until I've seen them."
He stood framed against the light for a long while, thinking or praying or maybe just waiting for me to add something else. Finally he turned, went back to the photo board and pulled out a pin to release a photo, which he handed to me."Karen Hopkins went missing almost a year ago. Eldest girl of four, seventeen when she vanished. Three younger children, youngest is two. Father works in the chandler's down the dock. On halftime at the moment, but he'll be at work this morning so there's a chance to meet the mother, if you want to."
"I shouldn't meet the father?"
"He won't talk about Karen. Won't even have her name mentioned. If you want to talk to Mrs Hopkins it has to be now while he's at work."
"Was there trouble between them?"
"No, nothing like that. Not everyone deals with the situation in the same way. For some it's easier to lock it away and carry on."
"Then yes, I'd like to speak with Mrs Hopkins."
"Leave the overnight bag here. I'll lock the church. If they do get in they'll steal the silver first. Stash it in the corner there."
I tucked my bag into the corner, conscious of the sword cached in the side pocket. Garvin wouldn't like me leaving it, but I could hardly carry it around with me. While my back was between the vicar and the bag, I pressed my hand to it, using a small amount of power to turn curious eyes away from it. Now anyone coming in while we were gone would have to be actively looking for the bag to notice it. It would do as a temporary measure.
Greg was waiting at the door. I passed through the shadowed porch and waited while he locked the church. He strode from the porch past me, and my stride lengthened to match his so I could keep up. We walked straight out into the traffic, which slowed around him to allow us across, then we turned uphill.
"It must keep you fit, all this walking."
"Have a car; don't use it much. By the time you've found a parking place you might as well have walked. It gets a ride out if I go out to one of the farms or when I go to the big supermarket in town."
I was thinking that having all that metal around him probably wasn't comfortable. I'd noticed that the railings around the church had been cut down. Perhaps it was no coincidence that although the east window had been replaced, the gates were chained back and the railings had never been put back.
"You said it was a calling."
"Did I?"
"You said not everyone who follows this calling believes in God."
"'Believes in the presence of God' is what I said. They believe in Him, but they're not sure whether He believes in them."
"But you do. You were called?"
"You wouldn't do it for the money. The pay is awful."
"You still do it, though. Was there a revelation, a road to Damascus?"
"Why do you ask? Am I part of your story too?"
"Perhaps. You're holding it all together, aren't you?"
He paused, considering.
"Were you called?" I asked.
"Not sure you'd call it that. I was born here. Maybe I just came home."
I could tell by his voice that there was more to it than that, but I didn't press him. After a few moments he continued.
"When I was a lad, I had an Auntie here." The word "Auntie" came out as "anti", as if it were a protest against something. "We were living away by then, but we used to come and stay. Fishing off the dock, ice cream for tea; that sort of thing. It was only summers, like. In the winter it's a different place."
He continued striding up the steep hill, breathing easily but momentarily reflective.
"Grew up in Rotherham. Back-to-back terraces, no work, no jobs. The men used to play dice on the corner, out of sight of the wives." The accent had slipped, giving way to flatter vowels, harsher consonants. "School were a boring place, most of the time we were out of it unless you were caught. If you were caught, you were caned."
He grinned, without humour.
"I had a dicky leg, though. Couldn't run. Couldn't keep up. Too easily caught. They'd leave me behind."
The pace he set showed no sign of the bad leg now.
"So I would be in school while they ran the streets. I did exams. Got into grammar school. Used to come home every night in the uniform and they'd throw sticks and bottles at me."
"You must have hated them."
"No, I wanted to be with them. Out. Free. The posh kids at school called me Makeshit, the kids at home Gimpy Greg. I know which I preferred." He turned into a side street, keeping the same long stride. "Coming up for school board exams I got a fever. It was touch and go for a while. The doctors didn't like it. Didn't know what to make of it. It was there and then gone. I was delirious then lucid. Sick then better. They said it was a virus, fighting my immune system. Long before HIV, this was."
He set off down the street again.
"I was sent here to recover. Never did the exams. I was here for months. The vicar, Georgeson, my predecessor, came every day. He would lay his hand on my forehead and tell me that He was looking out for me and He wasn't going to let me go. He said He had big plans for me. At the end of it I was changed."
"Changed?"
"No gimpy leg. No pain. I could run along the tops, jump over the heather. I would race on the bike down the hill, no fear, pedalling like a madman. I crashed twice. Wasn't hurt. Not a scratch. Wrecked the bike the second time. Then Georgeson came to see me. He said there was a place at the seminary if I wanted it. They would get me my exams, teach me what I needed, show me my path. It meant going away, but I knew I would return. Been here ever since."
He stopped where steps led down to the street below, opening out the skyline, showing the moving shadows of cloud across the sea beyond the rooftops.
"You feel blessed." It was obvious when you looked at him.
"It was a gift."
"Have you ever been back? To Rotherham, I mean?"
"It's all gone. The old bomb sites are supermarkets and the kids don't play in the streets any more. Too scared of child molesters and drug dealers." He set off down the street again.
The temptation to ask him about the fever, the moment when his leg recovered and he began to change, was intense. Had he felt the same opening inside? Was he conscious of the power within him? To ask, though, would beg too many questions I didn't want to answer.
We arrived at a doorway, mid-terrace. The sound of a child squealing indignantly percolated through the window beside the door. Without preamble, Greg pressed the bell button. A distorted electronic chime sounded inside. There was a pause, then more shouting – an older voice with harsher edges. "Shelley! Shelley! See who's at the door, will ya?"