The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (58 page)

In the clean, shiny, chromium kitchen, Lol saw things that bothered him, like a single cup on the kitchen table, half full of cold tea. Like a tin of assorted biscuits with the top off.

These things bothered him because everything else in here was immaculately tidy.

He didn’t like to go further than the kitchen. He stood just inside the doorway, called out tentatively, ‘Mrs Meek?’

On the wall by the door was a calendar of Peter Manders scraperboard etchings of Herefordshire scenes. Above it, two framed photographs, one of four grinning blokes, including Dexter Harris, hefting between them what looked like a tractor wheel. The other was a formula studio portrait of a small boy with close-cropped hair. Roland?

Roland and Dexter, only Darrin missing. The bad boy, the black sheep.

In fact, the weak boy, the easily led boy who could have used some support from a strong, self-sufficient auntie, if she’d ever been told the truth.

A door across from Lol was open to the dimness of perhaps a hallway, but through another door, opposite, he saw a stuttering light.

‘Alice?’

A wide hall ending in an arched front door. From here, it was clear that the flickering was from a TV set in a lounge or living room. Lol went in.

‘Alice?’ In case she’d fallen asleep in front of the TV.

Leaving the back door unlocked, well after midnight?

On the widescreen TV, a black and white movie of
Gaslight
vintage was showing with the sound down: a woman in a doorway holding a lantern high.

This was a long room with a picture window overlooking the orchard, spectacularly snow-clad. The only light apart from the TV came from perfect red and yellow designer flames curling almost realistically from real coals on a gas fire in the bottom wall. The carpet was cream, the four-piece suite huge and expensive and vacant.

Lol went back into the hall. Doors on both sides, three of them slightly open. Bathroom: empty. Utility room with washing machine and dryer: empty. Toilet and shower room: empty.

He put an ear to the closed doors before slowly opening each of them. Two were bedrooms, with that room-freshener smell that told you they weren’t in everyday use.

There was no sound, either, from the third bedroom. Lol went in, switching on the light. He saw a white dressing table, a built-in wardrobe. The bed was turned down and the room felt warm. There was a small en suite bathroom and toilet.

Alice’s room. Nobody here.

The final room had evidently been intended for a study; it had built-in shelves and cupboards. There were cardboard boxes on the floor. On the wall opposite the door, by the window, was a framed local newspaper cutting showing a middle-aged man in an apron, holding out two bags of chips, a younger Alice looking on. The headline read:
Frying Start – Sizzling New Venture for Farmer Jim
.

Alice and Jim had been struggling for years on a small farm, not much more than a smallholding. Lol remembered someone saying that, by the time Jim died, the fish and chip shop in Old Barn Lane – the first chippie in an expanding Ledwardine – had proved to be the most lucrative business in this village, by a big margin, and that included the Black Swan.

A very worthwhile inheritance for somebody.

When Lol got back to the kitchen, Dexter Harris was sitting at the table, nibbling a chocolate biscuit. He barely looked up. The huge, solid greyness of him was reflected out of a chromium freezer door, a kettle, a Dualit toaster.

‘Whatever you took, boy,’ Dexter said, friendly enough, ‘let’s have it on this table yere. Else mabbe I’ll make a start by breakin’ your arm, see where we goes from there.’

41

N
EITHER
J
ANE
NOR
Amber noticed Beth Pollen until she was almost at the bottom of the kitchen steps.

‘Would this be a convenient time to talk?’

Amber picked up the earthenware jug for the chocolate, defensive. ‘Jane or me?’

‘I think both.’ Mrs Pollen looked tired, a bit frazzled. She said to Jane, ‘And I
do
want to talk to your mother.’

‘She’s around.’ Jane was embarrassed now about the way she’d clung to Beth Pollen at the rocks when the fox or the badger had run past.

‘But I want to clear the air on some things first. Everything, in fact.’

Jane put down the cheese-grater and stared at Mrs Pollen, still in her sheepskin coat, open over a pale blue jumper and jeans, as she came down the final step into the kitchen.

‘To begin with...’ Mrs Pollen turned to Amber. ‘When The Baker Street League cancelled their conference, that was entirely my doing. Neil Kennedy was actually quite amused, at first, by the idea of your husband trying to build a business around the dubious legend of Conan Doyle and the Hound of Hergest. And they were quite gratified with the terms he was offering – and the idea, if I may say so, of a weekend of your renowned cooking.’

Amber put the earthenware jug back on the French stove. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I had a long discussion with Neil Kennedy during the murder-mystery weekend. I told him Ben Foley believed he had conclusive proof that Doyle had been here, which he believed would finally discredit the Cabell legend, in Devon, as the source of the Hound. I said I understood Mr Foley, as a former television producer, hoped to use The Baker Street League to help him front a large-scale media campaign, particularly in America. And I told him... other things. Dr Kennedy was not terribly amused. As I’m sure you found out.’

Amber turned down the heat under the chocolate. ‘You’d better sit down.’

‘Thank you.’ Beth Pollen took a wooden stool next to the island unit, and Amber dragged over two more, and put on the halogen lights. Jane stared into Mrs Pollen’s weathered, guileless face.

‘You deliberately screwed it up for Ben?’

‘Yes.’

Amber said, ‘I don’t understand. Both Kennedy and you already knew there was proof that Doyle had been at Stanner. The document you mentioned... in the files of The Baker Street League?’

‘That doesn’t exist, Mrs Foley. I invented it. No article was written, as far as I know, for
Cox’s Quarterly
or any other defunct magazine. There is no proof, to my knowledge, that Conan Doyle ever stayed at Stanner or came to this area. He
may
have – all the indications are there, the coincidence of names – but we’ll probably never know. And if you remember, I said the other night that if anyone asked Kennedy about a handwritten document, he would deny all knowledge of it. Quite legitimately, as it happens.’

Jane felt like her head was filling up with a grey fog. She let Amber ask the question.

‘Why? Why did you want to
do
this to us?’

Beth Pollen sighed. ‘Because if Stanner had become, as Mr Foley had planned, a regular conference venue for The Baker Street League, the White Company would never have been allowed to set foot in the building. What I
didn’t
lie about was the enmity between the two organizations, which, as a member of both, I’ve been able to observe, over the years, in all its incredible peevishness. I realize the League is far more prestigious, prosperous and influential, and I’m sorry, but I wanted
us
in here. I wanted Alistair Hardy here. He has a remarkable ability.’

‘We don’t understand,’ Jane said.

Mrs Pollen sighed, her face coloured mauve by the halogen lights. ‘We had to mislead the White Company as well. Doubt I’d have been able to persuade them if I hadn’t been able to show there was evidence that Conan Doyle
had
been here at the critical moment. Alistair Hardy’s fees are... sizeable. He’s doing this for nothing because of the TV coverage.’

Jane felt herself exploding. ‘Get me out of here! Everybody who sets foot in this place just
lies
.’

Amber said, ‘Mrs Pollen, you said “we”?’

‘Yes,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘The other person.’

The other person
. The phrase seemed to bounce off the stones in the wall.

Natalie. It all added up, didn’t it? When Ben had lost The Baker Street League conference, it was Nat who came up with an instant replacement and rescued the whole situation. OK, just a bunch of loony spiritualists, but better than nothing. The way Beth Pollen had turned up at the church, at just the right moment to impress Antony Largo. A set-up.

‘I
was
going to get round to that,’ Mrs Pollen said.

‘Brigid?’ Jane said.

‘So you
do
know,’ Mrs Pollen said.

Dexter had taken off his expensive biker’s jacket, uncovering a grey denim shirt with epaulettes and a badge on the breast pocket with twin exhaust pipes on it. He stood in the middle of the floor, his hands half-curled, like ring-spanners.

‘So you en’t took nothin’.’

It was likely he’d recognized Lol now as the guy he’d seen through the scullery window. But he wouldn’t know whether Lol had seen
him
, so he wasn’t letting on. Hence the catching-a-burglar routine.

It gave Lol some leeway. He told Dexter his story about the vicar getting worried when Alice had twice failed to answer the phone. Lol walking over here to see if everything was all right, finding all the lights on in the empty bungalow, with the back door unlocked. No more than the truth.

‘Sorry I came in like this, but anything could’ve happened.’

‘Like what?’ Dexter said.

‘I mean... where is she?’

‘How should I know? I come back from closin’ up the chip shop, hour or so ago, she en’t yere. Telly on and everything, no Alice. I been out lookin’ for her. No sign. Dunno where she gone. Neighbour’s, mabbe.’

‘They all seem to be in bed.’

Dexter shrugged.

‘You called the police?’

‘Not
yet
. Her’d go through the bloody roof. ’Sides which, how’s the police gonner get through with all the bloody roads blocked for miles around? Nah, her’s likely wandered off. Her’ll be back.’

Lol considered. He’d been honest so far, no call to deviate from that.

‘She’s had a shock. The vicar told me.’

Discovering that he was playing the Christian aide, the clergy groupie, the little guy in glasses who fluttered vaguely around the vicarage, a moth lured by the incandescence of its incumbent.

‘Tole you what?’

‘About your cousin.’

‘Yeah. Tough.’

‘You weren’t that close?’

Dexter shook his head. ‘Waste of fuckin’ space, you want the truth. Never kept a job, always in trouble with the law. Brought the whole family into disrepute.’ He leaned towards Lol, a bubble of moisture like an ornamental stud in the cleft of his lower lip. ‘So what’s with you and the vicar?’

‘Friends. I’m staying the weekend with her. She was called out to talk to someone who attempted suicide.’

‘Local?’

‘Kington.’

‘En’t gonner get back from there in a hurry.’

‘So I’ve got to ring her back about Alice. She’s worried.’

Dexter stared at him blankly, like,
What do you want
me
to do about it?
He went to the chrome-fronted fridge/freezer. ‘You wanner lager?’

‘No, it’s... Yeah, OK. Thanks.’

Dexter got out two cans of Stella Artois, tossed one to Lol. ‘Wanner help me take a look around, is it?’

‘That’s a good idea.’

‘Right, then.’ Dexter put on a grim, knowing smile, snapping the ring-pull on his beer can. A smugness there, Lol thought, a satisfaction.

‘Which way do you think she might’ve gone?’

‘Put it this way, if you gets to Leominster, turn back.’ Dexter had a swig of lager, took his leather jacket from the back of a chair, pulling a pair of black driving gloves out of one of the pockets. ‘Never mind, boy, be a cold bed for you tonight, anyway, look.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Don’t gimme that “friends” shite.’

Dexter clapped Lol on the back. It was as if he was on a roll and nothing could go wrong for him tonight.

Yes, Jane had heard of her. Although of course it had all happened long before she was born. She knew about her in the way she knew of, say Lizzie Borden, a half-mythical figure with a rhythmical, nursery-rhyme name and an underlying pulse of horror.

Brigid Parsons killed some boys
.

There were others. There was Mary Bell, whose name you knew because it was such a nice, short, wholesome name, and the killers of little Jamie Bulger, whose names you could never remember.

But this was less horrific, surely, because only one of the boys died. And he was older than Brigid Parsons, so the element of cruelty was missing, or, if it was there, it was different. Different with Brigid Parsons.

Different with Natalie Craven.

You’re asking me what I believe? I believe you don’t let anybody fuck you about. That’s it, really
.

This was unreal, and it wasn’t less horrific at all. Jane had an idea of how bad it actually was; she’d once read a colour-supplement feature:
Where Is Brigid Parsons?
Something like that.