Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

‘Because of something I did.’ Merrily sighed.

Sophie glared at her. ‘ I certainly intended no parallel with the Stock business.’

‘But what if Amy Shelbone is out there with Layla Riddock? This is a girl even Jane is scared of.’

Sophie thought for a moment, then reached for the Hereford phone book. After a couple of minutes tracking along columns of names, she slammed it shut.

‘Ex-directory.’

‘Only to be expected,’ Merrily said. ‘I imagine there’s quite a lot of people would like to ring Allan Henry late at night. Well, at least we know where he lives. A little bit of Dallas in Canon Pyon.’

‘Oh no,’ Sophie said. ‘You stay away from there. What would be the point?’

‘We could at least find out if Layla’s there. If she is, she can’t have gone off with Amy – and then it all falls down, doesn’t it?’

Sophie scowled. ‘Why doesn’t that man just tell the police?’

‘But he hasn’t. He’s told me .’

‘Almost as if he knew you,’ Sophie said with bitterness.

‘And, whatever he says, Amy did lie. She claimed Jane had approached her initially, to lure her into the circle – Jane, not Layla. She also tried to stitch me up when I went to the bungalow when her parents were out. So we know that Amy does tell lies.’

‘But the attempted suicide… why did she do that?’

‘Well, there was a vague mention of “pressure”,’ Merrily said. ‘But it was clear he didn’t want to talk about it. I don’t think – and this is possibly the most worrying thing of all – I honestly don’t think he knows why she did it.’

‘I MEAN YOU’RE not gonner scare me , Watkins,’ Kirsty said. ‘I don’t give a toss who you’ve talked to. The school year’s over. The slate’s wiped clean. They can’t touch any of us now and like, by the time we go back, those time-serving gits en’t gonner want to remember. Also, I may not even go back. I’m undecided. I may’ve had enough of education.’

She sat down with her back to a tractor wheel, stretched out her legs, fanned herself with her baseball cap. Jane thought she looked disgustingly smug.

‘Came to me, couple of months ago: OK, you get your A levels, you go to university, you get some pissy little job in some nasty, overcrowded city, so that in twenty years’ time you can afford to take your kids to live in the country. It’s insane, ennit?’

‘You’ve got a point,’ Eirion agreed. ‘But—’

‘But meanwhile – yeah, yeah – Amy bloody Shelbone.’ Kirsty closed her eyes in a kind of weary contempt. ‘Why don’t you just let it go, Watkins? The kid’s neurotic. She tried to kill herself, so-called, but she didn’t make it. After an hour or so on the end of a stomach pump, or throwing up, whatever, she en’t gonner do that again in a hurry, is she, stupid little cow?’

Jane stared at the chunky girl sprawled in the hay. The other guy had gone, just slipped away. Kirsty didn’t need back-up, she was wholly self-sufficient; this was her place. But for the tractor and the blast of Massive Attack from its cab, she could have been part of a scene from centuries ago.

‘Questions are being asked all over the place,’ Jane said. ‘And it isn’t you in the frame, or Layla, either. It’s me, right? I’m the only one she named – like to the doctors and the police and people like that.’

Jane didn’t know if Amy had named her to anyone except her parents, but she needed to bring it down to a personal level that Kirsty Ryan just might relate to.

‘Tough,’ Kirsty said. ‘Go tell Morrell about it.’

‘Like you said, why should Morrell care? School’s out. But I am so not gonna sit here and take the shit for you and Riddock. I’m going public on it. You ever heard of Bella Ford from Radio Hereford and Worcester?’

‘Nope.’

‘Well, she’s a mate of mine, anyway, and I’m going over there to see her tonight, and I’m putting you and Riddock in the frame for bullying and terrorizing this younger kid into trying to top herself.’

Kirsty’s eyelids flicked up.

‘Believe it,’ Jane said grimly.

‘I only listen to Radio One,’ Kirsty said. ‘Therefore, I don’t give a monkey’s.’

‘OK.’ Jane shrugged. ‘So you won’t hear it.’

‘So why you telling me?’

‘’Cause I’m kind of a straight person. I don’t go behind people’s backs. I just wanted to tell you why I was doing it, is all.’

‘And to warn you they’ll probably be ringing you up for a comment,’ Eirion put in swiftly. With his news-reporting ambitions and his dad having fingers in BBC Wales, HTV and the Welsh-language outfit, S4C, Eirion knew quite a lot about radio and TV. ‘They’re obliged to do that, to give you a chance to get over your side of the story.’

‘Well, they can piss off, can’t they?’

‘Sure. Sometimes it’s easier for them if you do refuse to comment. They only need to give you the opportunity.’

Jane said, ‘It’s just, you know, that I’d started to feel a bit bad about you. Thinking maybe you weren’t as majorly responsible as Layla, and I wanted to tell you what I’d done. And now I’ve done that, so, like… we’ll go now.’

She turned away. It was beginning to get uncomfortably hot in this field, anyway, like the hay was extracting all the juice out of the sun.

Eirion pulled the car keys out of his jeans.

Kirsty sat up. ‘You’re an evil little cow for a vicar’s daughter, aren’t you?’

Less than ten minutes out of the centre of Hereford, you could be into deep countryside. There weren’t many cities like this any more and, the way things were going, Merrily thought – as she thought almost every time she drove out of the city – it wouldn’t be long before Hereford had become like the rest. Rampant megalomania, disguised as essential economic growth.

Ego-tripping councillors and unscrupulous developers.

Allan Henry.

Sophie stopped the Saab with two wheels on the grass verge, near the top of a low hill a mile out of the straggling village of Canon Pyon.

They were in a quiet lane, looking down on sloping woodland. On its lower fringe, the sun was reflected darkly from the huge picture windows on the side of a long, brick villa that had been built on so many levels it seemed to cascade down the hill.

Where they were now parked was probably the only place you could get a good view of Allan Henry’s home. The surrounding trees failed to conceal a wall with railings enclosing about two acres of garden, suggesting Allan Henry must also own the land between the wall and the lane. In fact, Merrily supposed he owned the whole hill.

‘What do we do now?’ She was in need of a cigarette, but Sophie had a yellow and black no smoking sign on the dash, and she meant it.

‘I suppose that depends on to what extent you think Henry might be implicated,’ Sophie said. ‘Personally, I wouldn’t even get out of the car.’

‘Think about it. If we assume David Shelbone is costing him hundreds of thousands of pounds, maybe millions – because, if the Hereford bypass goes through there, the Barnchurch estate would be gold dust – then anybody might feel frustrated to the point of… I mean, people have killed for less, haven’t they? Much less.’

Sophie nodded. ‘It’s frightening when you think about it. Which is why, if I were you, I wouldn’t get out of the car.’

‘So… accepting that killing people can seriously damage your future, Allan Henry’s looking for ways of neutralizing a sober, clean-living, God-fearing man who can’t be bought. What are the most important things in Shelbone’s life?’