Phil Rickman - The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘Ben has it. Ben thinks it was shot a couple of days ago.’

Bliss was listening now.

‘But the fresh blood shows it had to have been between whatever happened on the rocks and you being brought in, right?’ Merrily said. ‘Did you get it when you beat Sebbie to death at the foot of the r—?’

‘ Merrily! ’ Bliss snarled.

Brigid said, ‘What?’

‘For fuck’s sake—’ Bliss spun round, ran to the door to Ben’s office behind reception, flung it open. ‘In! In there now !’

WHEN BLISS SAID, ‘Clancy, would you and Jane like to fetch us all some of Mrs Foley’s incredible coffee?’ Clancy looked at her mother like this was some cheap trick and when she returned with the coffee all the police cars would have gone from the forecourt.

‘I promise you, Clancy,’ Bliss said, ‘we won’t leave the premises without you get another chance to see your mum, yeh?’

Clancy wouldn’t look at him but she went off with Jane. She hadn’t looked at Merrily either since the water had dried on her forehead. This could take months – years – of aftercare. It wasn’t magic.

Merrily put a new cigarette packet, open, on the desk, with the Zippo. On the front of the packet it said Smokers Die Young . Alma brought in a third chair and an ashtray, and Merrily sat facing Brigid, watching her smoke with a cautious relish, as if she was already banged-up.

‘Right.’ Bliss sat next to Merrily. ‘Where’s this video?’

‘You don’t need to see it now, Francis. Its existence is enough.’

‘Men just bloody lie to you all the time,’ Brigid said.

‘Meaning Largo?’

‘Some of us, on the other hand,’ Bliss said, ‘though we may seem like crass twats only looking for a result, have a profoundly spiritual core. Some of us might even be deeply shocked to think that a woman who’s just left a feller horribly unfaced should allow herself to be whisked away to be interviewed about it for the box. Something doesn’t ring true, in other words, Brigid.’

‘Could I talk to Merrily on her own?’

‘No, but you can talk to DCI Howe, who is also a woman – so I’ve been told. Can we cut the crap? I sometimes feel that a service like the one we’ve just attended can blow away the need for an awful lot of unnecessary evasion. Which goes for you, too, Reverend. In fact, you can start us off.’

‘OK.’ Merrily took a cigarette.

‘And make it quick while I can still breathe in here.’

‘Well, essentially, Antony Largo has been after Brigid – in at least one sense, maybe more – since he was a young researcher with the BBC. Antony Largo likes – sorry, Brigid – vicious women. He made a well-known documentary called Women of the Midnight , which—’

Bliss leaned into the smoke. ‘He made that ?’

‘While still in his twenties, apparently. And never looked back.’

‘As I recall, Merrily, that programme caused a flap by being a bit... well, it looked closely at the sexual side of things, didn’t it? We heard from past lovers, in considerable detail.’

‘And you can apparently get the rest of the detail on video through the Internet, as long as you claim to be over twenty-one.’

‘Well, well,’ Bliss said. ‘So you knew Mr Largo then, Brigid.’

‘No, I didn’t, actually. I didn’t even remember his name. Only anoraks know the names of TV producers. Didn’t recognize him, either, when Ben brought him in, though I’d apparently met him at Ellie Maylord’s, when these guys were after me for Panorama . As he reminded me the other week.’

‘In what circumstances did he remind you?’

‘After he was here with Ben that first time, he didn’t go back to London. He booked into the Green Dragon at Hereford, and he phoned me.’

‘Must’ve been a shock, Brigid.’

‘Yeah, it was. He said could I meet him. He said as soon as he saw me he was thinking, like, what if Ben finds out?’

‘You’d appreciate talking to someone who really cared.’

‘You wouldn’t believe some of the men I’ve met who really cared,’ Brigid said.

‘I may even have arrested a couple. So, you met Mr Largo?’

‘I met him in the camper van.’

‘Aha.’

‘Was a refuge for me, that van.’

‘I thought you’d sold it to the nature lads.’

‘Lent it. Said I might need it back at some stage.’

‘Oh?’

‘In my situation, the kind of refuge you can drive away is sometimes useful. It’s also better if you don’t keep it at home. That way, visiting reporters, or other people you don’t want to get involved with, don’t get to see it in advance. I have bad memories of driving out of Looe at the head of a cavalcade.’

‘So you entertained Mr Largo in your camper van, even though—’

‘In this case, because I didn’t dare meet him anywhere public, and I wasn’t having him anywhere near The Nant. And I didn’t entertain him, thank you.’

‘You can’t blame people for embroidering – man and a woman in a camper van on a remote clifftop. And with what we know of his tastes...’

‘That was on his second visit, I assume. The first time he suggested I might like to cooperate in a sensitively made documentary. The second time, it was to offer me a percentage. Which he said could run to well over a hundred grand, including US rights.’

Bliss leaned back, eyebrows going up. ‘Tempting?’

‘Not to me. This might be difficult for you to get your head around, but money doesn’t mean that much to me or Jeremy. As long as we’re in a position to earn enough to keep going.’

‘Money means a certain amount to everybody, Brigid.’

‘Ask Merrily what means more.’

‘Peace of mind,’ Merrily said. ‘In a very particular sense.’

‘Did you like Mr Largo?’ Bliss asked.

‘I didn’t feel very happy being alone with him, if that’s what you mean.’

‘In what way?’

‘Buy the video, Frannie,’ Merrily said.

Brigid smiled and extracted another cigarette.

‘You turned him down?’ Bliss asked.

‘I put him off. You see, the danger here is that this was one of a very small number of people who would actually have been close enough to me as an adult to recognize me. Only, things had changed a lot in the last couple of months. I’d found a man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and he was living in a place he needed to spend the rest of his life in .’

‘Having you around could be pressure for a serious introvert,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s a big secret to keep.’

‘I think we’d’ve started to tell local people in time – the ones who could handle it. Guys like Danny Thomas and Greta. You get a group who know, and you have this level of protection that you wouldn’t get in a more populated area.’

‘True. They like to know all about you, but once they do , they can be very loyal. And very good at secrets, of course.’

‘Sometimes too good at secrets.’ Brigid lit her cigarette. ‘I’ll buy you another packet of these before they take me away.’

Merrily smiled. She was getting that feeling in the spine again.

‘You led him on?’ Bliss said.

‘I said I’d need an absolute assurance that my appearance would be disguised and also my location, and I didn’t think he was going to be able to promise that. I also said that if I did it I wouldn’t want any money, but I would want right of veto or whatever. You see, I’ve never seen Women of the Midnight . It’s not the kind of thing I watch, strangely enough. He said a solid, sensitive programme like he was planning would take the heat off and also allow me to have my say. Well, I didn’t want my say, but I didn’t want him shopping me, either. Not yet.’