Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

When she saw the office door, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or turn around and creep quietly away.

The white panels were adorned by a single, black gothic letter. Above it, a simple, black cross.

The Rev. Charlie Headland was chuckling softly in her head. More like MI5…

Too late to turn around and creep out. Sophie – grey suit, pearls, neat white bun, half-glasses on a chain – stood in the adjacent doorway.

‘Merrily, good morning. Did you see a few specks of snow? I’m convinced I saw snow. Heavens, come up.’

‘Do I have to sign in? Maybe pass through a detector?’

Sophie smiled wryly. ‘Michael’s specific instructions. In one respect I suppose it’s rather elegant.’

‘Sophie, it looks like the entrance to a bloody chapel of rest.’

‘Oh.’ Sophie looked put out. She was the Bishop’s person, whoever the current bishop happened to be.

The new arrival on the office desk was an Apple Mac and a printer, and something Merrily took to be a scanner.

‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘All I know how to do on one of these is type.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Sophie said, a little cool now. ‘I’m your secretary as well, for a while. Michael wants me to open a Deliverance database: filing and categorizing the various cases, and giving area breakdowns. He also wants me to arrange a meeting with the Director of Social Services, the Chief Executive of the Health Authority, charities like MIND – and also the police.’

Merrily flopped down behind the desk. ‘What?’

‘And you’re to have an e-mail address, possibly a website.’

She looked into the blank computer screen as though it were a crystal ball, conjuring up Huw Owen’s tired, rugged face. I don’t want stuff letting in. A lot of bad energy’s crowding the portals. I want to keep all the doors locked and the chains up…

Her new secretary stood by the window, hands linked demurely at the waist of her tweed skirt.

‘Look… Sophie,’ Merrily moistened her wind-roughened lips, ‘the thing about Deliverance, it needs to be low-profile. I wouldn’t go as far as to use the word “clandestine”, but there’s a danger of attracting time-wasters and fanatics and loonies and… other undesirable elements. The Bishop doesn’t seem to have grasped this basic point.’

‘Deliverance is getting a high priority, Merrily.’ Sophie slipped into the visitor’s chair. ‘Look… I really wouldn’t worry about this. Michael’s a very young man to be a bishop, and he perhaps feels he’s been put in place to make an impression, help push the Church firmly into the twenty-first century. He’s also a very clever man, with an impeccable pedigree which he tends to underplay. Father and an uncle were both bishops… father-in-law’s the Dean of Gloucester. Michael feels that if people are aware of the amount of work undertaken by the Deliverance ministry, they may be more inclined towards what you might call spiritual preventative medicine.’

‘You mean what we used to call “Going to Church”?’

Sophie smiled wryly.

‘I know,’ Merrily said wearily. ‘It all makes a kind of sense. I just wish there was less… bollocks.’

‘I don’t doubt that you’ll cope, Merrily. You’ll find the details of the Dorstone haunting on your computer, if you click on the desktop file marked Memo . I shall be next door if you want me.’

‘Thanks.’ Merrily shed her coat and switched on the computer.

And then closed the door and picked up the phone and rang Eileen Cullen at home.

‘Timed it well, Merrily. Come off shift, whizz round Tesco, home to bed.’ Away from the ward, Cullen’s voice sounded softer. ‘How are you now?’

‘Bit confused.’

‘Ah-ha. Well… what can I tell you? There’s a palpable sense of relief on the ward. We laid him out – he made the scariest corpse I ever handled – then we fumigated the side ward. Too much to expect that he’d take his smell down to the mortuary with him.’

Almost immediately, Denzil’s reptilian odour was in her head. Merrily stifled a cough.

‘Oh, and later in the morning,’ Eileen Cullen said, ‘I’m told that the old man came in and said a prayer or two.’

‘Old man?’ Merrily tingled.

‘I don’t even know his name, but his collar was the right way round so nobody questions it.’

‘His name is Dobbs,’ Merrily said.

‘Aye, that’s the feller, I suppose.’

‘He already knew about Denzil. Didn’t he?’

‘He must’ve. Though how he’d have found out the man was dead, I don’t know. We’ve hardly got the time to put out a general bulletin to the clergy.’

‘OK, look, let’s not keep walking around each other – I’ll explain. Canon Dobbs is the Diocesan Exorcist. I’m the one being set up to take over from him. He doesn’t want to go, and he certainly doesn’t want to be replaced by a woman. I’m coming round to thinking he set me up with Denzil last night to give me a taste of just how nasty and squalid the job could be. And why it’s not a suitable job for a woman.’

After a moment Cullen said, ‘That wasn’t very nice of him then, was it?’

‘Not awfully. So I’d appreciate just… knowing. Like, anything you can remember. Entirely off the record, Eileen.’

‘Aye,’ said Cullen, ‘you get surgeons like that. They love to leave you holding the shit end of the stick. All right, I’ll tell you what I know. He did know Denzil Joy. Whether this was from Denzil’s life outside of hospital I wouldn’t know. Probably. But he came in once – I didn’t see this, I wasn’t there, but Protheroe was – and they had to ask him to leave. Denzil’s spitting at him, coming out with all kinds of foul stuff you don’t want to be hearing from a sickbed, and it carried on that way after the priest was well out of the building. It’s why we put him in solitary the past two times. Though obviously his wife lived to regret that.’

‘Did anyone ask Dobbs about the incident?’

‘Oh, he wouldn’t talk to the likes of us – except very briefly to Protheroe. He said to let him know if we had any further trouble with Mr Joy. So, naturally, the other night, after the business with the wife, Protheroe’s screaming, “Call the priest, call the priest, the man’s possessed with evil.” ’

‘And you called him?’

‘I called the number she gave me and a woman answered, and I told her what it was about and she said to hang on, and then she came back and said to call the Reverend Watkins. Does that solve your problem?’

‘Do you remember the phone number you rang for Dobbs?’

‘Oh, I probably wrote it down and threw it away. Protheroe probably keeps it in a gold locket around her neck.’

‘Well, thanks. You’ve been very helpful.’

‘Aye.’ A pause. ‘How’re you feeling yourself, Merrily? Like, did he do anything to you?’

‘I… maybe.’

‘I don’t want to worry you,’ Cullen said, ‘but they say it comes back sometimes. Like the ache you get with the shingles, you know?’

‘I’ve never had shingles.’

‘Pray you never do,’ Cullen said. ‘Seems daft saying this to a priest, but if you ever want a chat about anything, you’ve got the number.’

‘Thanks,’ Merrily said. ‘Thanks.’

She clicked on Memo .

STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

Mrs Susan Thorpe, proprietor, the Glades Residential Home ,

Hardwicke (between Dorstone and Hay-on-Wye) requests a

discreet meeting with regard to unexplained occurrences .

Sophie’s head came round the door just then, as if she’d heard the click of the mouse. ‘Would you like me to call her for you? Make an appointment?’