The Cure of Souls (33 page)

T
RAFFIC HAD FADED
, the shops and the city library were all well closed. Broad Street was cooling into torpid evening and the trees were draping long shadows over the Cathedral green.

Inside the gatehouse, Merrily sipped tea the colour of engine oil, not tasting it. Furrows of concern on Sophie’s forehead were dislodging strands of her fine white hair.

‘I mean, what was the woman trying to
do
to you?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Merrily watched a man aiming a camera up at the gatehouse. Just the one camera, not very big – a tourist, then. It would be the real thing soon enough, the pack unleashed. ‘She probably did the right thing in the circumstances. Until we saw the video, I don’t think I quite believed it. Thought maybe I was being set up – or that he’d told them he’d killed her, but he hadn’t… not
really
. She was probably right to show us.’

‘I shouldn’t have gone in with you,’ Lol said. They’d both had to make full statements, which had taken another hour and a half. ‘It isn’t as if I was any use in there.’

The three of them were hunched close to the window, as if putting on lights might draw the eyes of the world. Siege mentality already.

Sophie looked at Lol. ‘Mr Robinson, were you
posing
as a qualified psychotherapist when you went into the kiln with Merrily?’

Merrily smiled wanly. ‘He’s not good at posing. Even if he
was
qualified, you’d never get him to admit it.’

‘Quite,’ Sophie said. ‘So there’s no real argument, is there?
A
– neither of you was suggesting that Mr Robinson was there to fulfil the psychiatric or psychological function.
B
– this was a minor exorcism-of-place, for which a psychiatrist would hardly, in normal circumstances, be considered essential anyway.’

‘That’s not how it’s going to read, though, is it?’ Lol said.

‘The fact remains,’ Sophie told him severely, ‘that, for reasons of her own – resentment, religious antipathy, whatever else – Detective Chief Inspector Howe is fabricating a spurious scenario.’

‘It doesn’t
matter
,’ Merrily almost howled. ‘A man’s murdered his wife. Would that still have happened if I hadn’t gone there and done what I did? Possibly. But possibly not. And
possibly not
is enough to hang me. But more than that—’

‘Just don’t hang yourself first,’ Lol said. ‘You know really that you didn’t have a choice.’

‘—more than that, I’ve got to live with the killing of a young woman. And the inference – the increasingly
strong
inference – that it…
it
doesn’t work. Or when
I
do it, it doesn’t work.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Sophie snapped.

‘So what do
you
think God’s telling me?’

‘Look.’ Sophie raised a finger. ‘If –
if
any one person can be said to carry any blame here – and I don’t necessarily accept that anyone should – then it has to be The Reverend Simon St John, doesn’t it? Whatever St John knew about Stock to convince him to stay out of it, he kept it to himself.’

‘You don’t understand…’ Merrily lit a cigarette and, for once, Sophie didn’t frown. ‘I was approaching this right on top of the Amy Shelbone issue.’

‘Oh, Merrily, that—’

‘No, look…’ Merrily glanced apologetically at Lol. ‘I’ll explain this properly sometime but, in essence, I was being accused of not responding to a situation with sufficient effectiveness. Following which, a young girl tried to take her own life.’

Sophie hissed, exasperated. ‘For heaven’s sake, Merrily, Dennis Beckett—’

‘Look at the facts: here’s me driving down to Stock’s place this morning with a head full of Amy Shelbone and, like, totally insufficient background about Stock’s own problem – in fact, not really believing he
has
a problem. And then, while talking to him and coming to realize there
is
a situation, am I not then subconsciously thinking,
God, I can’t underplay this one as well
? Less concerned with finding out what the hell’s going on than with covering myself? Was I—’

She stopped, realizing her speech was becoming swollen by sobs, and aware of Sophie getting decisively to her feet.

‘Drink your tea, Merrily. Pull yourself together.’

Through a film of tears, she saw Sophie walking over to the door, beckoning Lol to follow her.

Sophie Hill almost dragged him down the stone stairs. Her expression was taut and her eyes were like grey stones in the half-light.

‘Mr Robinson, I don’t know what your current relationship with Merrily
is
, but I think you’ll agree that what we need to do now is get her out of here, before she does or says something from which there’ll be no going back.’

Lol nodded, bewildered. ‘Anything I can do. Anything.’

Sophie took his arm, led him to the foot of the steps and even then kept her voice low. ‘I was very much playing it down in there, as you probably realized.’

Lol nodded. He instinctively liked Sophie, wished she didn’t have to keep calling him ‘Mr Robinson’.

‘This is actually rather grim.’ She opened the door leading out to the stone archway. ‘We both know that the press and the Church of England are going to hang Merrily out to dry, and if she thinks she’s in any way at fault she won’t even fight back.’

He remembered Merrily in Howe’s office, what he could see of her: cowed, shattered. ‘In any situation, she always tends to feel responsible.’

‘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.

‘A holiday.’ Merrily inhaled and leaned her head over the torn back of the Astra’s passenger seat and closed her eyes. ‘So what’s that like, exactly?’

‘Boring,’ Lol said, ‘as I recall.’

‘We had a few odd days, when Jane was younger. Not for a while, though.’

‘How is she?’

‘Raging. Eirion’s stepmother seems to think she enjoys being a nanny to her youngest kids.’

‘Taking a risk there.’

‘And can she even begin to know how much of one?’ Merrily closed her eyes. ‘Don’t really want to get there. I want to drive through the night talking inane crap. Like when we were young.’

‘
That
’s a holiday. I remember now. Inane crap with bits of sex in between.’

‘You and Alison?’

‘Once. Five days in Northern France. You ever see Alison in the village?’

‘Well, she’s still with James Bull-Davies, if that’s what you mean. They say she’s really taken him and his decrepit house in hand. But they don’t come to church.’