‘What’s wrong, Soph?’
‘I’m sorry?’
Sophie looked up from her computer. She was wearing a dark red woollen suit over a cream silk blouse. The Bishop of Hereford’s lay secretary over many years and several bishops. Worth her weight in pearls.
‘You scowled,’ Merrily said.
‘I don’t think so, Merrily.’
There was a muttering of thunder from Dinedor Hill or somewhere. Merrily got up from her desk. On Mondays she usually tried to come in for a couple of hours to review the Deliverance schedule, although lately there hadn’t been much of one. She was late today because of the afternoon cremation. A difficult funeraclass="underline" people she hadn’t known before, and so it was all the more important to make it resonate. Huw wasn’t the only Deliverance minister to suggest that cursory, conveyor-belt funerals were leading to disquiet on both sides of the grave.
‘I’d better put the kettle on before the power goes.’
‘This isn’t Ledwardine, Merrily, the power isn’t going anywhere.’
‘It’s my turn, anyway.’
She filled the kettle and plugged it in, spooned tea into the pot then swiftly backed up and peered over Sophie’s shoulder at the computer. There was an e-mail in the frame.
Sophie, Re the ‘sample’ of Deliverance files that you mailed me this morning, this is not what I meant. I feel it is important that the whole team sees all correspondence before it is filed. I also think we should be able to access the database at all times of day, rather than having to trouble you during office hours. Please get back to me with your thoughts before close of
Sophie clicked it away.
‘Ah,’ Merrily said. ‘I see.’
Sophie gazed into the screen-saver photo of swans on the Wye, impossibly blue.
‘I tend to receive instructions most days from Canon Callaghan-Clarke.’
Outside the window, the sky was solid now, like a rock formation over Broad Street.
And, oh dear, you didn’t do this. You didn’t treat Sophie Hill as a servant. What you had to learn, if you wanted to avoid trouble in the workplace, was that Sophie served only the Cathedral.
‘And will you be getting back to her with your, er, thoughts?’
‘What do you suggest? For instance…’ Sophie went back into the e-mails. ‘Should I have sent her a copy of this?’
Happy Beltane, Ms Exorcist! Yes soon be Walpurgis Night!!! Why don’t you come out and let your hair down. ha ha ha.
( )
* I * Lucifer
‘This came through the website?’
‘Yesterday. When exactly is Beltane?’
‘April the thirtieth… Saturday? May Day Eve, anyway. When all card-carrying Satanists perform their blood sacrifices.’
‘Ah, yes. Probably mailed from an Internet café.’
‘Just some kid who’s learned how to construct a devil on the keyboard. With a website, you’re bound to get a percentage of this sort of crap.’
‘Unless, of course’ – Sophie looked up – ‘one decides to dispense with the facility.’
‘Scrap the message line? She wants to do that?’
‘The entire website, actually,’ Sophie said.
‘What?’
‘I’ve been asked, initially, to supply a list of all the e-mails it’s stimulated in the past year.’
Merrily went to the window, exchanging hard looks with the sky. This time, there had to be a mistake. The website was about offering straightforward advice to people experiencing problems they thought might be of paranormal origin. It included self-help procedures and useful prayers. It advised them to contact their local clergy if the problems persisted or, if they preferred to, e-mail, phone or write direct to this office.
She turned back to Sophie.
‘So how many people did contact us in the past year through the site?’
‘Not a great many. Perhaps thirty.’
‘And what percentage, would you say, were jokes or try-ons?’
‘I’d say about twenty per cent. A few were from children who genuinely thought they had a problem, but turned out to have seen too many episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A couple came from Women’s Institutes asking if you could address their meetings. We had, I think, four from people thanking us for the prayers and the advice and saying they’d actually worked and they were now sleeping better – that sort of thing.’
‘And how many requiring follow-up action?’
‘Seven. Mainly poltergeist-related, all subsequently dealt with by the local clergy – prayer and counselling.’
‘It’s a substantial number, when you think about it, for a largely rural diocese. What exactly has Siân said?’
‘She said she’d placed the issue of the website on the agenda for the next meeting of the Deliverance Panel and, as I say, went on to ask for detailed background information as to the site’s usage.’
‘What do you think her argument’s going to be?’
‘I suspect she’s going to dismiss the whole thing as costly and trivial. If anyone wants this essentially… esoteric service badly enough, they’ll go to the trouble of finding us. Of course, I may be quite wrong—’
‘Esoteric – that was her word?’
‘Unless I misheard.’
‘So we’re minority stuff. They’re pushing us into a back room and switching the light out.’
‘Or possibly a cupboard,’ Sophie said.
‘If that website has saved just one faintly timid person from—’
‘You don’t have to convert me, Merrily.’
‘No.’
They looked at one another in the dimness of the afternoon. The kettle rumbled towards the boil, distant lightning glimmered. Merrily sat down at the desk, her back to the window, and switched on the lamp.
‘Sophie, what am I going to do about this bloody woman?’
This morning she’d phoned Huw Owen, leaving a message on his answering machine. He’d come back to her just after twelve when she was getting into her black coat for the funeral. He hadn’t found out very much and none of it was encouraging.
Except that there appeared to be no hidden agenda. No worthwhile conspiracy theory. No credible faction, in or out of Canterbury, with a mission to destroy Deliverance.
Which, of course, didn’t mean it wasn’t bubbling under, somewhere.
Huw told her what he’d learned about Siân Callaghan-Clarke: fifty-one years old, formerly a barrister – which would explain her need to work with professionals like Saltash, the resident expert witness. Born in Winchester to an upper-middle-class, High Church, landowning family.
‘Word is,’ Huw said, ‘that the father was a traditionalist. Her younger brother would have the career, Siân was expected to marry well, raise kids – women’s stuff.’
Not a good time to impose those values. Siân had not only not married well, she hadn’t married at all, moving to Worcester as a criminal barrister and managing to raise two sons inside a comfortably loose arrangement with her head of chambers. He was still around, still in Worcester, and the sons were both at Oxford.
The Church?
‘Well, it was in the family,’ Huw said. ‘Uncle became Bishop of Norwich. Her brother – who she appears to have resented from an early age – is now an archdeacon, Exeter or somewhere. Siân, commendably enough, began to help some of the youngsters she was defending and concluded that the Church had the facilities to operate a support network for addicts and suchlike and wasn’t using them. It’s not that simple – as I’ve just been finding out up in Manchester – but it was enough to get her involved. And that was the time when the battle for women priests was on, and her younger brother, apparently, was strongly anti.’