Allan Henry stood with his legs apart. He wasn’t the puffy, bloated tycoon-figure Jane had imagined. He looked quite young from here. He looked fit – a lot fitter than Mr Shelbone.
‘So what’ve you got against me, David? It’s just your name keeps cropping up time and time again. Everything I do to bring new business into this town, improve the local economy, create jobs – you’re there trying to sabotage it. I don’t understand – it’s just you, every time. A reactionary little man, a deluded loner with a grudge. Nobody at the council can figure you out. What’s the problem? What’s the matter with you?’
‘You and your thugs!’ Mrs Shelbone was out of the car, now, a big, bulky woman, arms flailing. ‘You can have your thugs destroy our car, but you won’t intimidate us, with the… with the Lord Jesus Christ on our side!’
‘Destroy your car?’ Allan Henry looked for a moment like he was going to laugh but in fact, Jane thought, his expression had turned suddenly menacing. ‘Thugs? You arrive at my private residence at one in the morning in a car that’s either been in an accident or been… quite deliberately damaged by you and your husband and you wake everyone up – to accuse me and my gardener—’
‘You—’ Mr Shelbone stabbed a quivering finger at him. ‘You’re filth. God will punish you!’
‘Ah, you’re a sad and a sick old man, David Shelbone,’ Allan Henry said, almost lazily. ‘You should be having treatment. You should be on medication.’
‘It’s you that’s made my husband ill!’ Mrs Shelbone shrieked. ‘And you’ve turned our daughter… You and that… witch.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Allan Henry turned on Mrs Shelbone. ‘That’s something else, isn’t it? I had a silly little woman vicar here allegedly investigating some ludicrous allegations against my stepdaughter. I might have known where all that came from.’
Jane began to quiver. Eirion put a hand over her mouth. ‘Save it,’ he whispered. ‘Just remember everything that’s said. You’re a witness.’
She thought she caught a movement behind Allan Henry, a figure flitting like a moth. Eirion took his hand away.
‘You…’ David Shelbone’s rigidly pointing arm began to shake suddenly. God, Jane thought, what if he has a heart attack? ‘You tell me… where you’ve got’ – his voice rose to a howl of helpless anguish – ‘GOT MY DAUGHTER!’
And suddenly Allan Henry was losing it. ‘Shelbone!’ Advancing through the gate in the illumination from the headlights. ‘What would I want with your fucking daughter? Truth is, you and this mad old bat should never have been allowed to adopt that child, and if she’s run away, then you’ve driven her away. We—’
He half turned as headlights appeared behind him. There was the mean, throaty snarl of a powerful engine, and then the lights were full in Jane’s eyes.
‘It’s coming out!’ Eirion yelled. He started to drag her back into the rhododendrons.
Jane heard Mrs Shelbone scream, saw the woman throwing herself in panic across the bonnet of the Renault as the yellow car came through the gates. There was a vicious scraping of metal on metal, a small splintering crunch as it tore a tail light from the Renault and spun off into the bushes, no more than a foot from Jane’s legs, to get past and back onto the drive. She heard tyres spinning and then the wheels hit the tarmac, skidding, and the car took off into the night, and Jane yelled,
‘Layla!’
Eirion was frantic. ‘You OK? Jane? Jane!’ Feverishly pushing foliage aside, like he might find both her legs severed at the thighs.
‘That was Layla Riddock!’ Jane cried. ‘Where’s the car? Get after her!’ Her legs worked. She began to run back up the drive. ‘Come on!’
‘What?’
‘Please, Irene, go, go, go – go!’
Nice idea. Quick thinking in the circs. Except that when the BMW reached the lane, there was no sign of the yellow car. She could have gone either way, either left towards Dilwyn or right to Hereford. Jane was sobbing in frustration, scanning the horizon for tail lights, but the horizon was no more than five yards away, here: high hedges either side of the twisty road.
‘Right! Irene, go right!’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, but we’ve got to try something. It just seems more likely. Just do it.’
‘Call the police.’ Eirion was poised at the junction, holding the car on the clutch. ‘The phone’s on the dash. Dial 999.’
‘And tell them what?’
‘Tell them there’s a disturbance at Allan Henry’s. Tell them you’re a neighbour and you heard crashing and screams.’
‘There aren’t any neighbours. Please, Irene, go – go!’
‘Call the police! And if you really want to help the Shelbones, give the cops our names as witnesses.’
‘Oh, all right!’ Jane stabbed at the phone, and Eirion sent Gwennan’s car racing towards Hereford, Jane half hoping that after a couple of hundred yards they’d find the yellow sports car upended in some ditch.
‘Emergency – which service?’
‘Police.’
Eirion made pained noises as Jane described the sounds of what could have been a massacre coming from the Henry spread, and then conveniently got cut off.
‘Why the hell did you—?’
‘Just keep going, Irene.’
‘Why? What’s the point?’
‘Haven’t you figured this out yet?’
‘Forgive me, I’m Welsh.’
‘She’s got the kid in the car,’ Jane said. ‘She’s got Amy.’
Merrily was breathing again. In the confining darkness of Lol’s car, they’d approached the absurd, cornered the chimera… been able to talk about something that otherwise might have remained undiscussed, possibly for ever, putting a permanent distance between them – a gap that might never have been crossed.
Now, she was feeling closer to Lol than she had to anyone except for Jane, Sophie sometimes and – curiously – Gomer Parry, since first coming to Ledwardine and taking on this impossible job and discovering that the people she could trust to try and understand her were all too few.
Ironically, Lol remained unconvinced about the threat posed by Layla Riddock – maybe because, without her, they wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have reached this level of communication.
‘She’s seventeen,’ he said as they neared Canon Pyon. ‘She’s just a rich girl with a hobby.’
‘However,’ she reminded him, ‘she clearly believes that being half-gypsy gives her access, a power base.’
‘Imaginary power base.’
‘And she’s now got remarkable influence over one of the richest developers in the county.’
‘It happens.’
‘Taking over his house, his bed? From her own mother?’
‘She’s a young girl, he’s a rich middle-aged man,’ Lol said sadly. ‘The gypsy magic could be entirely superfluous.’
‘And the fact that she’s also assuming responsibility for conserving and regenerating his finances? And somehow being allowed to?’
‘It’s not a fact, though, is it?’ Lol said. ‘It’s only what she thinks. He scatters her mystical charms and talismans around, it keeps her sweet. He doesn’t believe any of it, and they both know it won’t last.’
‘Maybe.’ She watched Lol driving, the slit-eyed alien on his sweatshirt lit green by the dashlights. The mature woman’s dream: a nice-looking man who, targeted by a young girl, any young girl, could be firmly relied on to run like hell. ‘So, what about the persecution of the Shelbones? It starts as a game, becomes a serious fixation for the persecutor as well as for the principal victim. And it’s working.’