Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘Evangelism’, though, had been a bummer. There were background articles on St John the Evangelist. There were four Web sites about some kind of computer software with that name. There were no obvious links into crank preachers in the American South who might have known Nick Ellis; and ‘Charismatics’ proved little better.

‘I could try “Bible Belt”,’ Eirion offered.

‘You’d probably get suppliers of religious fashion accessories,’ Jane said gloomily.

‘ “Cults”?’

‘No chance. People never think of themselves as being in a cult. “Just off to the cult, don’t wait up” – doesn’t happen.’

‘What we need is a Christian search engine.’

‘What we need is divine intervention.’ Jane walked over to the window which overlooked the forecourt of the Bishop’s Palace. No good searching for it out there.

‘OK,’ Eirion said. ‘What are we really asking for?’

‘Some big, rattling skeleton in Ellis’s vestment closet. Something that maybe caused him to leave America, come back here in a hurry. When you think about it, most Brits who go over to the States tend to stay there, making piles of money. So it’s reasonable to think Ellis came back because something happened to make him kind of persona non grata. Like he was the leader of a mass suicide cult who contrived not to go down with the rest.’

‘We’d have heard about it.’

‘We’re stuffed.’ Jane angrily keyed in ‘loony fundamentalist bastards’, and the Web found, for some no doubt entirely logical reason, a bunch of science fiction and fantasy writers including David Wingrove, David Gemmell and Kirk Blackmore.

‘We’re just not asking the right questions.’

‘Kirk Blackmore... where did I hear that?’

Sophie came in then, with a piece of paper, a name written on it. ‘Try this.’

‘Ah,’ Jane said, as Blackmore came up on the screen. ‘This was the guy whose covers Robin Thorogood was going to design, but they pulled the plug.’

Eirion was staring up at Sophie, bewildered.

‘I used the telephone.’ Sophie inclined her neck, swan-like. ‘It’s rather old-tech, it involves the less-exact medium of human speech, but it does tend to be more effective when dealing with the clergy.’

‘ “Marshall McAllman”,’ Eirion read.

‘Before the Reverend Nicholas Ellis came to New Radnor and then Old Hindwell, he was a curate for just over a year at a parish outside Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I’ve talked to his former vicar, the Reverend Alan Patterson, who only found out after the Reverend Mr Ellis had been with him for several months that he’d previously been a personal assistant to the Reverend Mr McAllman – which did not entirely please him.’

‘Let’s put it in, Jane.’ Eirion keyed in the name, while the computer was still showing:

KIRK BLACKMORE ORACLE.

The reclusive Celtic scribe returns with a

remarkable new Lord Madoc novel which...

‘Found,’ Eirion said, after a few seconds. ‘ “The Mobile Ministry of Marshall McAllman”.’

He clicked. Kirk Blackmore vanished.

‘There you are.’ Sophie peered. ‘ “Angelweb Factfile. The journeys of Reverend Marshall McAllman were directed by the Will of God and took him from Oklahoma...” ’

‘ “... to South Carolina”,’ Eirion read from the screen, ‘ “via Arkansas and Tennessee, dispensing a low-key but extremely potent evangelism effectively tailored to the needs of small towns and simple folk. He developed a loyal following after several witnessed instances of prophecy, divine inspiration and angelic” blah blah blah... “Reverend McAllman retired in 1998, a disillusioned man, after surviving a campaign by an unscrupulous journalist on a Tennessee newspaper, the Goshawk Talon . Although there remains considerable debate about Reverend McAllman’s ministry, his name is still revered in” blah, blah—’

‘There you have it, then,’ Sophie interrupted. ‘Your next port of call must surely be the, ah, Goshawk Talon .’

‘Does that mean it’s in a place called Goshawk?’ Jane wondered.

‘Doesn’t matter, let’s just put it in,’ Eirion said.

‘ “Found”. Some stuff on birds of prey. And... “The Goshawk Talon and Marshall McAllman”... OK.’ Eirion clicked, waited. ‘Oh.’

The file you are seeking is unavailable.

Jane’s face fell. ‘What do we do now?’

‘A technical brick wall.’ Sophie sighed. ‘Hard to imagine how we survived for so long without all this.’ Then she did something most un-Sophie-like – stamped her foot. ‘ Phone them, child! They presumably have telephones in Goshawk, Tennessee. If this publication still exists, it shouldn’t take long to find the number. If it doesn’t, we shall have to think of something else. Get on to international directory enquiries.’

‘I don’t know how.’

Sophie sighed in mild contempt. ‘Leave it to me.’ She stalked out.

‘Wow,’ Jane said. ‘The turbo twinset.’

Eirion smiled his Eirion smile. It did things to her, but this was not the time. There never seemed to be a time. The sudden urgency manifested by Sophie made Jane quite tense. What if someone was ringing home with information far more important than anything they could hope to find on the Net, and she wasn’t there to relay it. Paranoid, she rang the vicarage answering machine. One message for Mum to call Uncle Ted. Sod that .

‘We seem to be drifting a long way from Kali Three,’ Eirion said. He started to key it in.

‘No, don’t.’ Jane leapt up and stood at the window, staring down at the woodpile below. There was a sense of being very close to something, but it was too indistinct, ghostly. She felt that invoking Kali Three would somehow bring bad luck. She turned back to the room.

‘We have to go there.’

‘Old Hindwell?’ Eirion said. ‘I’m not sure about that. Why?’

‘We just do .’

‘Absolutely not.’ Sophie was in the doorway.

‘Sophie, there’s some really heavy—’

‘Don’t you think your mother has enough to worry about? Sit down and speak to the man from the paper. Or would you prefer me to do it? Perhaps it might be better if I did.’

‘She’s right,’ Eirion said. ‘She’s going to sound so much more authoritative than either of us. Especially to Joe-Bob McCabe, of the Goshawk Talon .’

‘Ah sure lerve your ac cent, ma’am,’ said Jane. The only person from Tennessee she’d ever heard talk was Elvis.

‘The man’s name,’ said Sophie, ‘is Eliot Williams. He’s busy at the moment, but his editor’s getting him to call me back. I think he rather senses a story.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said, ‘you’re, like, incredible.’

But Sophie had already returned to her office, where the phone was ringing.

A DARK, VICTORIAN living room. Merrily imprisoned in the lap of a huge, high-sided leather armchair, coat folded on her knees, cup and saucer on top of that.

Judith Prosser was adept at disadvantaging her visitors.

‘And since when is religion a matter for the police, Mrs Watkins?’

‘When it’s sexual assault.’ Merrily drank some of the coffee. Perversely, it was good coffee.

‘Do you know what I think?’ Judith’s own chair put her about a foot higher than Merrily. ‘I’ve been enquiring about you, and do you know what I think? I think that Father Ellis has dared to intrude into what you consider to be your back yard. He is doing what you think only you should be doing.’

‘You think I’d do—?’

‘How would I know what namby-pamby thing you would do these days, when the Church is like a branch of the social services?’ A withering contempt for both.