This side of the Second Coming
A DARK MORNING, but the gatehouse office was unlit. It looked almost derelict, like one of the shut-down shops in the old city awaiting a new charity and another consignment of secondhand clothes.
Merrily stopped on the edge of the green and gazed up in disbelief. All the ominous clarity of last night had been fuzzed by the cloud and the rain and the confusing messages passed on by Jane who, when she’d staggered downstairs, had already been in the kitchen, fully dressed, kettle on, cat fed.
They’d talked for nearly an hour, nothing hidden, but not much of it making sense. She’d rung Abbie Folley to say thanks for last night. No answer; she’d left a message.
Sophie? No, she wouldn’t ring Sophie back, she’d see her at the gatehouse. She wanted all this logged. She wanted it official. She’d left the Freelander on the Gaol Street car park, walking rapidly up through the city centre, already crowding-up for Christmas, and following narrow Capuchin Way to the Cathedral.
The door to the gatehouse stairs was locked.
She’d never known this before. She pulled out her mobile and rang Sophie at home, leaning up against the sandstone wall under the office. Across the yard, the Bishop’s Palace was dimly lit like a posh department store.
‘Jane told me you were coming,’ Sophie said.
‘But you’re not here.’
‘Merrily, don’t do – or say – anything rash.’
‘I won’t be in the office today, but the Archdeacon’s coming to talk to you.’
‘About Darvill? Listen, I’d very much like to talk to her about Darvill, but not now. Not till I know what’s behind it. Not going in cold. Sophie, I’ve had it with these people and their backalley politics and their… sense of privilege.’
Shouting into the phone because she was frightened. ‘You’ll find Siân is not unsympathetic,’ Sophie said. ‘She’s just stepping carefully around the Bishop. As, indeed, are all of us. Not that, in my case, this will be as difficult as it was.’
‘Sophie?’
She heard the gatehouse door opening, turned to see Siân Callaghan-Clarke, standing there with no lights behind her.
‘I’m so sorry, Merrily, really don’t have long. Apparently the police are coming to talk to me. Don’t know what it’s about. Very annoying.’ Siân admitting Merrily to the main office, then locking the door. ‘Wouldn’t take off your coat. Economy heating only today, to stop the pipes from freezing.’
The Archdeacon wore a dark woollen suit over a grey shirt. Grey eyes, grey hair cut short. She still made grey look vital.
‘Now don’t look at me like that.’ Palms of her hands coming up as she sat down behind Sophie’s desk. ‘Sophie works directly for the Bishop’s office. Nothing to do with me.’
No signs of Sophie in the office. No spare reading glasses, no packet of tea, no winter cardigan on a hanger. Siân didn’t put on any lights.
‘Never seen you as naive, and I’m not going to talk down to you. It’s a time of upheaval. The diocese – we’re hardly going to recover, financially, are we, this side of the Second Coming?’
‘I don’t understand. You’re talking about money?’ Merrily sat down in her old chair and loosened her red scarf. ‘You’ll be all right for a while, though, surely. Just flog off another greenfield site for executive housing.’
A sore point in Hereford, the diocese’s land deals. Siân’s smile was a slit.
‘Property transactions are not within my remit either, so I won’t take that personally. Now I realize you’re upset about Sophie, but—’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Oh.’
Siân didn’t blink. Before being called to the altar, she’d been called to the bar; useful training for the modern C of E.
‘Upset?’
‘She hasn’t told you yet, then. I’m afraid she only learned yesterday afternoon. Perhaps you’ve been busy.’
‘What hasn’t she told me?’
‘Sophie’s job – and this is said to be entirely an economic decision – has been reduced to a two-day week.’
‘What?’
‘As from today.’
‘He can’t just—’
Merrily half out of her chair.
‘I didn’t say who’d taken the decision.’
‘You mean it was you?’
‘No, of— I’m not Sophie’s boss, you know that. Oh, this is one of those weeks when, if I could desert this post… Look. Bernard Dunmore preferred to work closely with his lay secretary, as did his… his predecessor. New bishops don’t always adapt.’
‘That woman’s more important to the Cathedral than bishops.’
‘Merrily…’ Siân’s palms were up. ‘You don’t have to spell anything out to me.’
‘Including that the drastic reduction of Sophie’s working week may not be entirely unconnected with a winding-down of deliverance?’
‘Again, as the deliverance ministry reports directly to the Bishop, it’s not my—’
‘Now that’s a bloody joke, isn’t it? I’ve never spoken in any depth to that bastard since they put him in purple.’
‘A degree of paranoia is entirely excusable.’
‘Paranoia in the sense of being convinced someone’s out to get you? When in fact they have your best interests at heart?’
Dangerous ground; she didn’t care. The traffic on Broad Street had its lights on which made the gatehouse office feel like a bomb shelter.
‘I’d like to deal with this Kilpeck issue,’ the Archdeacon said.
‘I hope we’re going to come back to Sophie.’
Siân’s expression said this would be pointless.
‘Sir Lionel Darvill and his obsession with Kilpeck Church. I do know about that. He’s hardly alone, although he may be alone in claiming it was built by his ancestors. For which, as far as I can see, there’s not a shred of proof as his family only seems to have been in the area for a couple of hundred years. However—’
‘If it ensures regular donations…’
‘Regular donors do tend to be humoured, yes. And I think, with his handicap and his refusal to let it limit his activities, he’s to be admired. All the same, there are aspects of this that I’m not over happy about.’
‘Like that he seems to have tried to get in the way of me carrying out a fairly routine deliverance procedure?’
‘That’s not how he put it, obviously.’
‘For the record, Siân, it was textbook. I’d been asked for advice by the parish priest on behalf of one of her parishioners and concluded that what it called for was a comparatively routine Requiem.’
‘Which you agreed with the family.’
‘Erm…’
‘Merrily! Textbook?’
‘Oh, Siân, come on, when is this job ever straightforward? I had a guy in mental and spiritual turmoil, and I had to make a fast decision. No, I didn’t talk to the subject’s divorced parents, but it was done in the presence of someone closer to him than either of them. As for Darvill, he’s no relation at all, so it’s not his place to make any demands. Did you talk to him?’
‘No.’
‘So who did?’
‘I believe someone will be going to talk to him. If he hasn’t already been.’
‘Sorry… who are we talking about?’
Silence. Siân looked around the fast-dimming room, appeared to be listening, then shook her head as if trying to clear it. Then she sat up behind folded arms.
‘I won’t be putting any lights on, Merrily. As we’re not here.’
‘We’re not?’
‘This is very difficult for me. Quite a lot has become difficult since—’ Siân’s gaze had come to rest on Merrily’s bag, on the floor next to her chair. ‘I’m assuming you don’t have an active iPhone in there.’
‘What?’
‘An iPhone. Switched on.’
Merrily reached down into her bag, brought out her elderly phone and opened it up on the desk. Siân went through the procedure for switching it off.
‘Forgive my paranoia, but it’s a rather formidable device, isn’t it? Good at multitasking. Seems to have the facility to record voices in full broadcast quality.’
‘So I’m told.’
‘Essentially, my job is head of human resources in the parishes. Carried out more efficiently if people trust me. So let me say that, while it’s hardly in my interests to fall out with the Bishop, I certainly have no wish to be part of a clandestine campaign to reduce what he likes to call “relics of medievalism” in the diocese.’
Siân folded her arms, the dimness settling around her like smoke.
‘I say clandestine…’ In the poor light, her grey eyes had become grey patches. ‘… though it won’t be for long, originating, as it does, at a rather more senior level than Craig Innes.’
‘I think we all have ideas about who at the top of the Church—’
‘And keep those ideas to ourselves.’ A glimpse of Siân’s teeth. ‘Bishop Craig is seen as… as a cleansing agent, if you like. Quietly removing stains.’
‘I’m a stain now?’
‘It was a metaphor.’
‘He thinks I was sleeping with Mick Hunter.’
‘Merrily, he probably doesn’t. He’s been assured enough times that you certainly were not. But the very fact that you’re followed by rumour, no matter how tenuous, and that you’re doing a secretive job for which he nurtures a distaste… Need I go on?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well. You should know – bearing in mind that we are not here – that this particular— I’m going to have to call it an inquiry —has been arranged with the full cooperation of Paul Crowden’s Bishop.’
‘You know about Crowden?’
‘Crowden is the nearest you’ll get to the public face of deliverance scepticism. He has approval for an independent study of exorcism practices. Nothing to do with the House of Bishops or the Archbishop’s Council. Nothing, in other words, to do with Craig Innes. Ostensibly, it’s something he feels strongly about, and he feels he represents a body of opinion within the Church.’
‘Blimey, anyone who thought ecclesiastical espionage had eased since the years after the Reformation—’
‘Now I don’t know Crowden at all, but he’s certainly all over you, Merrily, and it shouldn’t tax your skills too much to be aware of when and where he’s poking around.’
‘So when Darvill contacted the Bishop, the Bishop alerted Crowden?’
‘Let’s say someone did. Which I know because he was copied into a memo that the Bishop’s clerical secretary innocently copied to me. Sophie, less innocently, had also asked me about Crowden, so that trail inevitably led back to you. So, basically, Mrs Watkins, watch your step. Jump at shadows. Expect anything which might be regarded as unorthodox to go into Crowden’s notebook. Which may, if politically expedient, even become an official report one day.’
‘Siân, this is—’
The phone rang, Siân reached for it.
‘This is as far as I’m going. And I’ve told you nothing. Yes…’ Into the phone. ‘All right, thank you.’ She replaced the phone, pushed her chair back. ‘For some reason, the police are on their way to see me. Please cover yourself on the way out – scarf, hood, anything.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘Just a weather warning.’ Siân standing up, peering out of the window. ‘The sleet’s back. And I’m always serious.’