‘It’s my other friend, the very self-effacing Mr Robinson.’
‘Boyfriend, eh? What a shame. When you’d gone yesterday, I had a little fantasy about you in your cassock.’
‘Thirty-nine buttons to undo, one by one,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s an old one. You haven’t seen a couple of teenagers around, boy and a girl?’
‘I told you: nobody here but me.’
‘But you’re a notorious liar, Allan.’
‘I swear on my Swiss bank account.’
‘OK.’ Merrily got out, Lol too, leaving the sidelights on, locking the car.
‘What’s he do, then?’ Allan Henry asked. ‘Archdeacon?’
‘He makes music. He writes songs.’
‘I think I feel one coming on now,’ Lol said.
‘Be careful, my friend,’ Allan Henry said, as if by instinct. ‘I don’t just threaten, I sue. I always sue. Go for everything. Bleed dry – it’s the only way.’
Layla unlocked the metal gate with a steel key. She was wearing tight jeans and a black cotton top that finished three inches above her gold-ringed navel. Her tumbled hair was dyed black, with a long, streak of gold that seemed to have been spun from the moon. Jane could tell Eirion was unexpectedly impressed; he’d gone very quiet.
‘You don’t know about the Barnchurch, Jane?’ Layla’s voice was throaty, almost gravelly.
It stood no more than twenty yards behind the gates. All the ground around it had been cleared, and a small mountain of sand had been dumped a few yards away. It was a regular red-brick building with a slate roof. There were brick steps up the outside, tough grass sprouting between them.
It looked like, well, just a barn, and not a very old one – except that, where the gable end was half-lit by the security lamps, you could make out where a Gothic window had been bricked up, just the ridge now, like an old operation scar.
‘This Welsh miracle-worker used to preach here, way back,’ Layla said. ‘Sinners reborn, the sick taking up their beds and walking out, angelic visitations. Powerful stuff. In fact, the farmer here was so impressed he gave him this barn, and all the local people helped turn it into a church, and the miracles went on for a while and then… I dunno, the buzz died, or the preacher fucked off back to Wales, or the miracles stopped happening or something, and it became just a barn again and got forgotten about. But, hey, once a holy place – you know what I’m saying?’
‘Yeah,’ Jane said, though it really wasn’t much more than a breath.
‘Imagine all that energy shut up with chickens and cows, sacks of feed, tractor parts. Throbbing away on its own for about a century. And then Allan buys the site and it wakes up again – so much energy focused on the old Barnchurch, so much money banked up, so many greasy palms, so much desire… that it’s become really charged again.’ Layla’s face was radiant. ‘You go in there, pow! Heavy shit, Jane. This place really makes it, where so many real churches are just old dust.’
Eirion said, ‘Where is Amy?’
Layla turned to appraise him. ‘Boyfriend?’ She walked right up to Eirion, gazed arrogantly into his eyes from about three inches away, her breasts almost touching his chest. Eirion blinked. Jane tensed.
‘Hey, this boy’s had nooky tonight!’ Layla spun away from him. ‘Was that with you, Jane?’
Jane said nothing.
‘Where’s Amy?’ Eirion said stolidly.
‘You want to keep this boy, Jane? You’d like to stay together? I can actually fix that, if you like. I can show you kitan-epen. I fixed it for Eagles and Sigourney, did you know?’
‘Ms Riddock,’ Eirion said, ‘is Amy Shelbone with you?’
‘She’s probably in there.’
‘In the barn?’
‘She’s got a key. She’s very trustworthy. She’s got a key to the main gate and a key to the Barnchurch itself. She comes on the bus. Isn’t that sweet?’
Jane stared. ‘She’s been here? All the time?’
‘Just for a couple of nights, approaching the full moon. Making things ready for Justine. You remember Justine, Jane?’
‘Her… mother. Murdered.’
‘Oh, you know all that. Who’ve you been talking to? Kirsty?’
Jane said nothing.
‘There was a full moon the night Amy’s daddy slaughtered Amy’s mummy, did you know that? The moon’s great for that stuff. It moves the tides, and we’re nearly all water – but you’d know all that.’
‘Sure.’
‘You want to go in and see? Talk to little Amy?’
Jane looked back at the wire-mesh fence and the BMW. Actually, she didn’t. She wanted to go home.
‘After you,’ Eirion said to Layla.
‘Tell me something.’ Layla put the flat of a hand on Eirion’s chest and spread her big, fleshy fingers. ‘Do you get asthma at all?’
She didn’t wait for an answer, let her hand fall and walked away towards the brick steps, big hips swaying, the sliver of gold breaking up and reforming as she tossed back her hair.
Eirion swallowed. Jane looked at him questioningly.
‘Haven’t had an attack in years,’ Eirion said uncomfortably ‘Jane…’
‘What?’
‘I don’t think it would be a good thing to annoy her, do you?’
They didn’t make it to the house, only as far as the vardo in its little clearing, to one side of the drive.
Allan Henry noticed Merrily looking at it.
‘She’s not in there, vicar. Believe me.’
‘Can I see, anyway? Would you mind?’
‘The holy of holies?’
‘Please.’ What she needed was to get him talking about Layla. Now, while he was hyped-up, aggressive, his back to the wall. Outside the gates, he’d picked up what looked like the plastic cover of a car’s tail lamp and thrown it far into the bushes, without comment.
Allan Henry tutted. ‘Can’t believe how amenable I’m being to everyone tonight.’ There were two wooden steps up to the vardo. The door was locked, but he had a key. ‘She doesn’t know I had this cut. Thing is, I don’t like there to be places I can’t go. ’Specially not on my own property.’
He went in first. There was electricity: a flicked switch turned on a couple of erstwhile Victorian brass oil-lamps, one on a dresser, one on a wall bracket.
‘Gosh,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s a complete little world.’
It was beautifully kept but not like a museum. Although everything – from the decorated and lacquered panels on the dresser to the vaulted ribs in the bowed ceiling – was polished or at least shiny, there was a used feel about the place: a pan on the cast-iron stove, a mortar and pestle on the dresser with powder scattered around it, a silk scarf spread on a small camping table, with a pack of Marseilles tarot cards at its centre.
And books: over a hundred on shelves, floor to ceiling, either side of a red-and-black-curtained window. Merrily checked out a few of the titles: a couple of dozen on gypsy lore but mainly general occultism. One was laid horizontally on top of a row: A Manual of Sexual Magic.
‘How old is she?’
‘Coming up to eighteen,’ Allan Henry said. ‘That means she’s been a grown woman for five, six years.’
‘Erm – in what context are we talking here?’
‘Gypsy girls mature earlier. By Layla’s age, most of them are married, with two kids. By my age, there’d be a bunch of grandchildren. Like you say, a different world.’
‘Which sounds like as good an excuse as any.’ Merrily looked at Lol, who was still standing out on the steps. Lol’s eyes narrowed.
‘However, this is not really any of your business.’ Allan Henry picked up the tarot pack and then dropped it quickly, as if it was hot. ‘No blood relationship between me and Layla. Don’t even have the same surname. I’ve never been a father to her. She never wanted a father. But, like I say, not your business, Reverend.’