‘That would do it,’ Merrily said.
‘Oh aye. That were the red rag, all right. She’d get into the Church and she’d leave the brat behind.’
As a priest, Huw said, Siân was exactly what she seemed: a modernist and a politician. Known to be tolerant of Islamic fundamentalism while deploring its equivalent in Christianity. Suspicious of evangelism and Alpha training. Considered opposition to gay clerics to be irrational to the point of superstition.
Talking of which…
‘Aye, well… there were rumours of her having a bit of a thing in Worcester with a bloke I trained with, Keiran Winnard – younger than me, charismatic in all senses of the word. She’d certainly be his type: striking blonde, plenty of style and fancy footwork in debate. Liked a woman with a bit of intensity, Keiran, as I recall.’
‘Risky, though, in the Church. In the same diocese?’
‘Wouldn’t be the first. Pure physical attraction, not necessarily a meeting of minds. Anyway, it must have burnt through quickly enough, leaving her even less well disposed towards the miracle-and-wonder lads than before. Happen that was the reason she got out of Worcester. Or she just thought she could rise faster in Hereford – smaller pool, bit of an outpost. Either way, looks like Hereford’s got her for the foreseeable future. And so have you.’
‘So maybe she sees Deliverance as a method of exercising control,’ Merrily said to Sophie.
‘You mean, over the wilder elements within the diocese? The charismatics, the evangelicals?’
‘If you consider that, in certain hands, exorcism itself can be very rigid and repressive… keeping the lid on the cauldron, as someone once said. Taking a dim view of the Charismatic movement, arm-wavers, happy-clappies, speakers in tongues, because of what they might be opening themselves up to. Look at my predecessor. He hated all that.’
‘But from a different perspective, surely.’ Sophie leaned into the lamplight. ‘Canon Dobbs lived an ascetic life – self-denial, fasting, long hours of prayer. A deeply spiritual man. Bitterly opposed to women priests, as we know, and I have no doubts at all where he’d have stood on the issue of gay clergy.’
‘With his back to the altar and a big cross in front. You’re right, it works both ways. Rationalism can be even more repressive, in its way: all possession is mental illness, all ghosts are psychological projections. Siân is potentially more restrictive than Dobbs.’
‘Then why…’ Sophie pinched her chin, forefinger projecting pensively along her cheek. ‘Why would she want Martin Longbeach on the Panel? A… well, a tree-hugger.’
‘Window dressing, Huw reckons. I mean, he’s harmless, isn’t he? And gay. Probably an excellent source of information from the lunatic fringe. And doubtless so deeply honoured to be chosen that he’s more than happy to pass it on.’ Merrily smiled. ‘Is Siân a gay icon, do you think? Or maybe Martin’s being groomed as my successor…?’
The phone rang. Sophie snatched it quickly, probably to kill the image of Martin Longbeach here in this office with his thinking-candles and his herbal teas.
‘Gatehouse.’
Merrily heard a man’s voice on the line. Pale sheet-lightning brought the office up in shades of grey.
‘One moment, I’ll see if she’s in.’ Sophie covered the mouthpiece. ‘It’s former-Sergeant Mumford, are you—?’
‘Sure.’
She’d spoken to him very briefly last night, telling him about the woman who had proved to be Belladonna. It had meant nothing to Mumford, who said his knowledge of rock music began and ended with the Rolling Stones. Sophie passed the phone across the desk.
‘Andy, I was going to ring you tonight. How are—?’
‘You got a TV, switch it on.’ Mumford’s voice, flecked with storm crackle, also loaded with the kind of urgency you didn’t expect from him. ‘Just caught the headline, called you at home, your daughter said you’d be there. You got a television in the office?’
‘Well, we have…’
Looking up at the portable collecting dust on the filing cabinet.
‘Switch it on. Central News, it’s on now, don’t hang around. I’ll call you back.’
Thunder trundling, like a heavy goods vehicle over the horizon, as he hung up.
PART TWO
Jemmie
‘People who will accept an apparition because it is a visual experience will tend to reject the conviction of a sense of a presence because the experience is not externalized… I am convinced that this sense of a presence is experienced far more often than is reported.’
‘And who that lists to walk the towne about
Shall find therein some rare and pleasant things.’
13
Extreme
‘… REMAINS A POSSIBILITY, but, yes, very unlikely to have been accidental.’
The stonework, in jagged close-up, was hard against the patchy sky. Then the picture pulled back, and you could see that the shot had been done from the ground.
This was as near as they could get because the tower was taped off, two police protecting the site. Old videotape from coverage of the Robbie Walsh tragedy, Merrily thought.
They cut back to the policeman who’d been talking over the shot. She didn’t recognize him. ‘… Just about possible to survive that kind of fall, but unlikely,’ the policeman said.
Now Robbie Walsh’s face came up, the school photo, Robbie with his hair brushed and his tie straight, his mouth in an unsure smile, his eyes flicked to one side. The reporter’s voice over the picture:
‘… weeks since the town was shattered by the death of fourteen-year-old Robbie.’
They’d been too late to catch the link into the story and had also missed the first part of the report. It looked like Central News was going heavy on the death of Mrs Mumford, rehashing the events preceding it.
The boy’s photo had been replaced by another one, a poignantly blurred holiday snap of a woman in a sundress leaning – bitter irony now – against a lifebelt hanging from a sea wall.
Merrily bit her lip.
‘And then, at the weekend, came news of the shocking death of Robbie’s grandmother, Mrs Phyllis Mumford, whose body was pulled from the River Teme, flowing just below the castle here. Eighty-three-year-old Mrs Mumford was said by neighbours today to have been inconsolable after the death of her grandson, who’d been staying with her and her husband at the time.’
Shot of the river, a police barrier, two sheaves of flowers lying up against it, the cellophane flapping.
‘The town is in mourning once again. But absolutely nothing could have prepared the people of Ludlow for what was to happen today.’
‘Huh?’
Merrily looked at Sophie. The phone on Sophie’s desk started to ring. Sophie opened a drawer and put the phone in and shut the drawer up to the wire. Merrily moved closer to the TV.
‘… Hard to take in. We’re shocked… shattered.’
Man in his sixties, hair like wire wool and hollow cheeks. George Lackland, Ludlow Mayor, the caption read.
‘… Gather she wasn’t local,’ George Lackland said. ‘We don’t know where she came from, but the thought that she came here – a girl that age – specifically to… you know, to die, in this horrible way… that really doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’