As she opened her eyes, a shaft of sunlight from the one small window threw her back into the kiln-house. She tasted sulphur, heard the shrill, cold calling: beep… beep… beep… beep… invoking dead Stephie, racked with laughter. I think you’d better answer that, vicar. It might be God!
She clawed around the bare boards for the mobile. ‘Yes?’
‘Merrily?’
‘Sophie…’ She sat up in the bed — no headboard: stone and rough plaster against her back and shoulders, dungeon-like. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in the office, of course. Are you alone?’
‘I’m in bed. Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m alone.’
‘I have the morning papers here.’
‘Oh. Do I want to know this?’
‘Gerard Stock was charged last night with the murder of Stephanie Stock.’
Merrily closed her eyes.
‘I think that for you we can take that as a…’ Sophie hesitated. ‘I was about to say reprieve.’
‘Think the phrase is “stay of execution”.’ Merrily fumbled for her cigarettes. ‘What do they actually say?’
‘It’s made page one in the Mail and the Telegraph. All the reports identify the Stocks as people who complained that their home was haunted, and how it was the site of the murder of Stewart Ash. Nowhere, I’m relieved to say, is there any mention of an exorcism taking place, although the Telegraph reminds us you’d voiced an intention of looking into the problem. I would think that they’ve said all they consider themselves allowed to say until after the trial.’
‘Which, since he’s confessed, may be not too many months away.’
Sophie said calmly, ‘Has he?’
‘What?’
‘Confessed.’
‘He was the one who called the police.’ Merrily tried to grip a cigarette between lips that felt slack and rubbery.
‘But you don’t know if he’s made a formal statement, do you?’ Sophie said. ‘We may not even find out. He’ll probably be shipped off to a remand centre, if he hasn’t gone already.’
‘Well… it means I’m back in circulation, at least.’ Merrily looked around the tiny monk’s cell and felt a small pang of regret. Safe haven. Sanctuary. ‘For the present.’
‘Ah,’ Sophie said. ‘About that. I’ve… spoken briefly to the Bishop at his hotel in Gloucester. He feels, as I do, that — since we’ve already told several people that you’re away on holiday — perhaps it would be best if you were to remain away. For a week, at least.’
‘What about the parish?’
‘That’s all been arranged. A locum’s been organized for the Sunday services, if you agree. It’s the ubiquitous Canon Beckett, I’m afraid. Jeffrey Kimball’s back in Dilwyn tomorrow, so the Canon’s available again.’
‘Oh.’
‘I imagine DCI Howe will need to talk to you again, but I wouldn’t make the first move there if I were you. I’d keep your head well down.’
‘What’s Bernie’s attitude?’
‘Guarded,’ Sophie said.
‘That’s a useful word.’
‘And there’s something else. Someone else wants to see you. I pass this on now, but I’ve also told him you’re going away.’
‘Who?’
‘Mr Shelbone. David Shelbone. Perhaps you could talk to him on the phone, if you must.’
‘Something’s happened?’ Merrily swung her feet to the bare boards.
‘Well, it seems Mrs Shelbone’s done something rather drastic.’
‘Oh, Jesus…’ The unlit cigarette fell from her lips.
‘Nothing like that,’ Sophie said hastily. ‘What’s happened is that she’s apparently left home and taken the child with her. Convinced — he claims — that, in the wake of her attempted suicide, Social Services will try and take Amy away from them and put her into care. Mr Shelbone reckons there’s a story going round that he and his wife are religious extremists and the child may be psychologically dam-’
‘Does he know where they are?’
‘If he does, he isn’t saying.’
‘Sophie, I need to talk to him.’ A couple of days ago this would have seemed like a serious breakthrough, and it was still important. ‘Maybe Lol could give me a lift in.’
‘If you must do this, I’ll pick you up. An hour? Don’t wear a dog collar.’
First time Sophie had ever said that.
Lol had somehow produced scrambled eggs in the microwave. He’d spread a clean tablecloth on a packing case. Merrily looked around, felt quite touched. Either he’d lied about the condition of the kitchen or he’d been up for a long time, scrubbing.
He brought her more toast from the toaster. He was actually wearing his old Roswell alien sweatshirt, faded now to light grey — big slanting eyes on the chest, holes in the elbows. She told him about Sophie’s call and that the worst of the heat was off, for a while. She also told him about the Shelbone situation, why it was important for her to go back to Hereford.
‘And afterwards?’ Lol said lightly.
‘I’ll get Sophie to bring me back here. If that’s OK with you.’
Lol smiled.
‘Or maybe I’ll just pick up the Volvo. Not as if it’s got a Deliverance sticker in the window. Sophie was perhaps being a little overcautious last night.’
‘I just don’t think she trusted you on your own,’ Lol said. ‘How do you feel now?’
‘Well — I’m eating… thank you.’ She looked at the remains of her breakfast, then at Lol. ‘Can’t say I feel a more seasoned human being for having seen a man carrying his wife’s head around like a potted plant.’
First shudder of the day. Get it over with. Why had Stock done that — brought in the head, put it down in a beam of light, like a Stone Age priest with a sacrifice commemorating the arrival of the midsummer sun? She carried her plate to the sink, turned on hot water.
‘Lol, when — when I said Stock had confessed, Sophie said, “Has he?” Like there was some doubt.’
She watched his reaction. Lol was looking unhappy.
‘Am I missing something?’
‘Well…’ He picked up a tea towel. ‘Maybe she means, what if he pleads not guilty?’
‘But he did call the police, didn’t he? He did actually tell them he’d killed his wife?’
‘But he’s had time to think about it, hasn’t he? I didn’t like the idea of him refusing to make a statement. He’s clever. Suppose he gets a smart barrister and they try to hang the whole thing on exorcism?’
‘You mean on me, right?’
‘I don’t know. You studied law for a while, didn’t you?’
‘But saying what?’ The backs of her legs felt weak. ‘That Stock had acted out of character due to a sudden infusion of the Holy Spirit? I don’t think even that was quite suggested in the Taylor case.’
‘But you said that was over a quarter of a century ago. Probably twice as many people going to church as there are now. We’ve become a secular country very quickly. You might talk about the Holy Spirit…’
‘I imagine some barrister would argue that’s become a meaningless term. Mythology.’
‘They’d probably bring on a tame shrink,’ Lol said. ‘There are dozens of the buggers out there — university professors… authors of distinguished textbooks, theses. Awesomely eloquent, frighteningly fluent, oozing with… certainty. I’ve been listening to them for months. They’re scary. Not necessarily right, but convincing.’
He put down the tea towel, and came to lean against the stainless-steel draining board. Merrily let the hot water run over her wrists. This was a new Lol, wasn’t it?
‘So they screen Stock’s video in court,’ he said. ‘The jury see you at work. Then they see Stock at the end, when he’s about to throw you out. He’s angry, almost irrational — this is the real Stock, of course, but the jury don’t know that. The first Stock they saw was this quiet, subdued, compliant character who just wants peace restored to his home. They’re thinking to themselves, what happened in there? What brought about this change?’
‘He was annoyed at Stephanie, the way she was behaving.’
‘But on the video he isn’t going for Stephanie, he’s going for you. And me — he’s questioning what I’m doing there. Am I there as a psychotherapist in case he’s bonkers? So what’s this other guy about? the jury asks itself…’
‘Is directed to ask itself,’ Merrily said, ‘by the smart brief.’
‘Meanwhile, back on the video, Stock’s trying to find out what’s been achieved there, and he’s not satisfied with the answers. He loses it completely, hurls the brimstone tray to the floor. And what do we do? We just walk out, leaving this unstable and clearly violent man-’
‘With the offer of a few prayers to tide him over,’ Merrily said bitterly.
‘And then they… I suppose they put you in the witness box.’
‘And screen the — what they’ll keep on calling an exorcism. They take me through it, prayer by prayer, line by line, demanding explanations, justifications. They ask: What happened to you when you looked like you were choking? Why did you suddenly start rushing around opening doors?’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Well, that was… that was just something I should’ve done before we started. You’re supposed to open all the doors.’
‘So the evil spirits have nowhere to hide?’
‘I…’ She stared down into the sink. ‘Something like that.’
‘You actually had an awareness of evil?’
‘Maybe.’ The water was very hot on her hands and wrists, but she didn’t remove them.
Lol took a step back. ‘Did you?’
‘Yeah, I know — how do I qualify that? How do I define evil?’
‘No,’ Lol said. ‘This is me, not the barrister. I want to know. Did you feel an evil?’
‘I… I smelt sulphur. I tasted sulphur. It went to the back of my throat in this raw, searing way that sulphur does. I can’t explain that, but it did feel like I was choking. For a couple of seconds I felt like I was going to-’
The water began scalding the backs of her hands and she pulled them back with a small scream. Lol wrenched a hand towel from a hook on the wall.
‘-die.’ She pushed her hands gratefully into the towel. ‘Now that sounds really stupid, doesn’t it? Imagine having to say that in court. But yeah… I mean, obviously, what happened afterwards took the edge off it in a big way, but for one terrifying split second I really thought I was about to choke to death, or at least pass out, lose consciousness. So I started to say in my head something called St Patrick’s Breastplate, which is a complete spiritual self-defence thing, surrounding yourself with the power of Christ, and I went around opening doors, and it… it went away. And I got my act together and carried on. How would your psychologist and your agnostic barrister react to that?’
Lol didn’t reply. He was holding her hands, still wrapped in the towel.
‘Go on.’ She felt her voice shrink. ‘Finish the scenario.’
Crunch of tyres on the track outside. Sophie?
Lol took his hands away. He stood there in that same old alien sweatshirt, those same sad, whipped-puppy eyes behind his brass-rimmed specs. But this was Lol back from psychotherapy school — six months exposed to concerned humanism, sympathetic psychobabble. He was right: he did know these people now.
‘They’d take me apart, right?’ Merrily said. ‘They have full access to science and psychology and scepticism and cynicism. I’m-’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. We shouldn’t’ve started this. It could be that none of it will happen.’ He followed her to the door. ‘I was just playing devil’s advocate.’
She turned and stared at him, and he realized what he’d said and smiled ruefully, eyebrows rising above his glasses.
‘Jesus,’ he murmured.
‘Two thousand years of exorcism on trial,’ Merrily said.
It seemed so ridiculous when you put it like that.
So why was she sweating?