Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio.
St Michael, protect us in battle.
A wave of dizziness washes over me. I sit back on my haunches.
‘Mum?’ Flo’s voice sounds distant. ‘Are you okay? What have you found?’
I nod, but I’m not okay.
I think we’ve just found the missing curate. Benjamin Grady.
A rattling at her window. Skeletal fingernails scratching the glass.
Merry sat up in bed, blinking blearily. Her room swelled with shadows. Moonlight wavered at the window.
Rattle, click. Rattle, click.
Not fingers. Pebbles. Stones.
She padded across the room and pulled the curtain aside, peering out. Her eyes widened as she spotted the figure standing beneath the window. Joy. She yanked it open.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I needed to see you.’
‘In the middle of the night?’
‘It was the only way. Please.’
She debated with herself, and then nodded.
‘Wait there.’
She grabbed her dressing gown and tiptoed carefully out of her room. She could hear snoring next door. Mum had finished two bottles of wine after tea, so she should be out for the count. Still, Merry found herself holding her breath as she padded down the stairs and out of the back door. The night breeze felt cool through her thin pyjamas.
‘What’s going on?’
Joy started to sob, noisily. ‘I’m so sorry. I let you down.’
Merry glanced nervously back at the house. ‘Don’t cry. Come on.’
They walked to the end of the garden and sat down on the broken-down wall, near the well.
‘I was so stupid,’ Joy sobbed. ‘I thought he was good, but he’s the devil.’
‘Who? What are you talking about?’
But Joy just shook her head. ‘You know, what we talked about before? Running away?’
Merry did. But they hadn’t talked about it much recently. They had barely seen each other.
‘I thought you’d changed your mind.’
‘No. Do you still want to go?’
She thought about her mum. She was getting worse. The other night, she had become convinced that Merry was possessed and needed the devil driving out of her. When Merry had seen the full bath of ice-cold water, she had run and hidden in the woods.
‘Yes,’ she said firmly.
‘When?’
She considered. ‘Tomorrow night. Pack a bag. Meet me here.’
‘What about money?’
‘I know where Mum has some hidden.’
‘Where will we go?’
Merry smiled. ‘Somewhere they’ll never find us.’
FORTY
It seems to take him a long time to cycle from the farmhouse to the outskirts of Chapel Croft, even though a weathered white sign informs him that it is only five miles.
His head throbs from the sherry (or rather, from stopping drinking the sherry) and his ankle feels like it’s on fire. He stops several times, to catch his breath and rub uselessly at the ankle. The inflammation is spreading. Purply-red skin bulges over his sock and stretches up his calf. But he has to keep going.
At one point, he rests near a stile. He can see a trough for sheep the other side. He clambers over, sticks his face in and drinks. The water is brown and sour, but it’s relatively cold and it quenches some of his thirst.
Finally, he rounds a long bend and he sees it. A white chapel in the distance. That has to be it. His excitement rises. So near. And then he spots the row of police cars parked outside; officers in uniform, a roadside cordon.
What’s going on? Why are they there? Has something happened to her?
He puts his head down and cycles on past. When he’s at a safe distance, he stops, climbs off the bike, props it on its kickstand and crouches beside it, pretending to fiddle with the chain while stealing sly glances at the chapel.
And then he sees her. For the first time in fourteen years, walking across to the cottage with an old woman, a tall man and a teenage girl. Her daughter. Emotions flood through him. Shock. The daughter looks so much like she did as a girl. Relief. She is here, and she’s okay. Confusion. What is all the police activity about?
It can’t be connected to what he did at the farmhouse. It’s too soon for them to have found the bodies. But he has a bad feeling. He messed up. He should have just stayed put in the barn. Out of people’s way. Then no one would have got hurt. The only thing he has in his favour right now is that no one knows who he is or what he looks like. But that won’t last. And he’s hardly inconspicuous with his torn and dirty clothing and red, angry ankle. He needs somewhere else to lie low. Get himself together. Work out a plan.
What for? If she loves you, how you look won’t matter. What are you scared of?
Nothing. He isn’t scared of anything. He just wants it to be right. It has to be right. Or …
… she might reject you again. Leave you again?
No. He did a bad thing. He made a mistake. But now she’s had time. To forgive him. Just like he has forgiven her.
He climbs back on the bike and cycles off again. This time, he doesn’t stop until he is the other side of the village. The road is deserted. Just fields and cows either side. And, to his left, a gate. Rusted, padlocked. A rutted, overgrown track leads away from the road and disappears into more tangled bushes. Just visible over their straggly branches, the tip of a weathered roof in the distance.
He wheels the bike up to the gate. After a moment’s thought, he chucks it over. Then, he follows.
Every city, village and suburb has abandoned buildings. He learned that from his time on the streets. Places that, for some reason, no one has claimed or, perhaps more accurately, no one wants to claim.
Even in the richest neighbourhoods there will be one dwelling that remains empty, never sold. Perhaps because of legalities or red tape, or perhaps because some buildings don’t want to be lived in. Their walls have absorbed too much pain and misery. They brim with it. It seeps out of every cracked brick and warped floorboard. Inhabitable, inhospitable. Do not enter. You’re not welcome. Stay away.
Like this place.
He stares up at the derelict house. The darkened windows glare back at him, the sagging roof like a glowering brow. The door gapes open in a silent scream.
He walks through the long grass towards it. He peers through the doorway and then steps inside. It’s gloomy in the cottage. Even though the sun is high, the light doesn’t stretch all the way into the rooms. The shadows are too deep. The darkness held too tightly within.
It doesn’t bother him. Nor does the smell, the crushed cans and cigarettes butts on the floor, or the strange graffiti on the walls upstairs.
He smiles.
He’s home.
FORTY-ONE
‘Hard to be a hundred per cent positive, but it certainly looks like the same ring.’
The plain-clothes detective, DI Derek, lays the photograph back down on the kitchen table and slips off his glasses. He’s a tall, kind-faced man in his late fifties. He looks like he should be tending vegetables rather than investigating murders.
‘So, it’s him? Grady?’ Joan peers at him over her coffee, her eyes bright.
I called her right after I called the police. She insisted on driving straight over. ‘This is the most excitement I’ve had since someone drove a horse and cart into my front room.’