‘And what about you?’
‘Pretty pissed off, darling, but that’s life, isn’t it?’
‘Nobody else, since?’
‘Oh, quite a few. But none of them ever became friends.’
‘And that’s the moral, is it?’ Jane said. ‘If he’s also a friend, hold on to him.’
‘Oh, I never talk about morals, of any kind. Nor do I give advice. What else did your tarot reader tell you?’
‘Well, that’s the problem. She knew what Mum did, and she had an agenda. So I can’t really trust the rest.’
‘But you trusted what she said about your love life.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you had sex with the married man?’
‘Actually, erm, no. But I think I could make it happen.’
‘Well, of course you could—’
‘Actually, it’s already been kind of good for me. In a life-changing way, really. What’s he …?
Roscoe was on his feet about half a second before the front doorbell rang.
‘I’ll get it.’ Jane stood up. ‘You’d better pop into the scullery in case it’s Bliss or somebody who asks questions.’
In the hall, she opened the door to a guy in a green hiking jacket. Clergy shirt and a dog collar underneath. Familiar-looking baggage at his feet.
‘Hullo.’ Dome head, big friendly smile through his white beard. ‘Would you be Jane, by any chance?’
‘Um, yeah. I’m afraid Mum’s out, though.’
‘Oh, well, look, I’m Teddy Murray. Odd-job man at Garway. Your mother was staying with us for a couple of nights and had to leave in a hurry. Said she’d come back for her stuff, but I know how busy she is and I happened to be passing through, en route to Hereford, so …’
He picked up the bags and beamed.
‘Oh, right,’ Jane said. ‘Great.’
‘Must say, this is a lovely village, Jane. You’re both very lucky.’
‘Yeah. I suppose we are.’
‘Well, I’ll just … leave them here, shall I?’
Teddy Murray dropped the overnight bags over the threshold, into the path of Roscoe who’d come trotting through from the kitchen.
And Roscoe just went totally crazy.
Snarling. Like all-snarl, huge jagged teeth exposed, like the ripper teeth on a circular saw. This Teddy Murray backing away into the drive.
‘Roscoe!’ Jane down behind the dog, desperately hauling on his collar through the hackles. She could be in trouble here. ‘Oh, God, sorry … sorry …’
Getting dragged through the doorway, Roscoe’s jaws opening and shutting like a gin trap on a spring.
‘Guard dog, eh?’ Teddy Murray trying to smile from a few metres back. ‘I suppose two girls on their own in a big house …’
‘Back to the …’ Jane’s knees grazed on the mat ‘… obedience classes.’
‘Tell your mum I’ll talk to her again,’ Teddy Murray said.
Jane got the door shut, the dog inside, the snarl reduced to a low rumble. Blowing out a lot of air in a whoosh, she went back into the kitchen where Mrs Morningwood was standing in the middle of the floor, face like hardening plaster.
‘My fault, darling.’ Her voice clearly on autopilot, somewhere different from her thoughts. ‘Should have shut him … somewhere.’
‘He hasn’t done it before, has he?’ Jane said. ‘I mean, like … tried to savage somebody?’
‘Oh.’ Mrs Morningwood was expressionless. ‘No. No, he hasn’t.’
Huw was in the North Transept with his old mate Tommy Canty, lighting a candle.
‘Dunmore’s here.’
‘Where?’
Merrily looked around. Six candles were burning on a tiered stand in front of the renovated shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe. Back in the Middle Ages, there’d been long queues – scores of pilgrims, sick people and relatives of the sick. Tommy Canty had been Beckett-class in his day.
There was a container of candles you could buy to light and ask for the saint’s help. Huw fitted his candle into one of the holders.
‘Bishop’s in one of the chantries. Trying to reach an arrangement with his Governor.’
‘That’s why you’ve got me here? To face up to the Bishop?’
She was feeling very much on edge. Lol had driven her down to Broad Street, dropped her on the corner by the Cathedral Green and then, against all her pleas, driven off back towards Westgate and Roman Road to find the man who’d destroyed the most beautiful guitar in the world.
‘Dunmore wants to talk to you,’ Huw said.
‘About what?’
‘About what he’s just trying to clear with his God.’
‘Bernie’s who you came to see? He was your appointment?’
‘And every bit as knackering as I’d figured. You forget how shit-scared they are. Bowed under the gross weight of centuries of solemn, dark ceremonial.’
‘Not as many centuries as the Church has. Not by a long way.’
‘Only the Church doesn’t threaten to rip your tongue out by the roots if you finger a brother or shout out Jahbulon on the bus.’
‘Fair enough. What’s he going to tell me?’
‘I’d say whatever you want to ask. So have a think about it before you go in.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Unless he chickens out.’
‘What did you say to him?’
‘Mr Gwilym helpful, was he?’
‘Didn’t intend to be, but I rather think he was. What did you say to the Bishop?’
‘I’d better be off, lass.’
‘You’re going?’
‘Nowt else I can do here.’ He looked over the candles to the shrine. ‘See you, then, Tommy.’
Nodding to the tomb in which there hadn’t, for many years, been anything of Tommy.
‘Huw, I think I’d rather you stayed.’
‘Lass …’ Huw bent to her. ‘It’s part of the deal. Just you and him.’
‘Oh.’
‘I won’t pray for you.’ He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Already done that bit.’
He pointed to the seventh candle.
‘What did you say to him, Huw?’
‘Didn’t need to say much. Callaghan-Clarke’d already been in.’
‘Oh.’
‘Just get on with it, eh?’
Looking slightly irritable, Huw left Merrily in the cold light of the North Transept, the handful of candles a small and lonely glow.
52
Male Thing
LOL WAS STANDING next to Jimmy Hayter’s champagne Jaguar, the formula fantasy flashing past: he hot-wires the Jag, takes it away, calls Hayter on his mobile with directions.
And then what?
As he didn’t know Hayter’s mobile number or how to hot-wire a car, there wasn’t much point in taking it further. He just stood there, leaning against the front of the Jag, in full view of the picture window identified by Merrily as the window of Sycharth Gwilym’s office.
The sky had gloomed over again and it began to rain. Lol didn’t move. The mobile in his pocket was switched on. Until he had a call from the cathedral, there was nowhere to go.
After twenty minutes, his grey Alien sweatshirt dark with rain, he still hadn’t moved.
He was very cold.
After twenty-five minutes, it stopped raining and Lord Stourport came out.
The walls and ceiling of the fifteenth-century Chantry Chapel of Bishop John Stanbury were of richly foliate stone. It was like being under a copse of low, weeping trees in winter.
‘I’m going to retire, Merrily,’ the Bishop said.
It wasn’t warm in here but he’d taken off his jacket. There was a small green stain on a shoulder of his purple shirt.