‘Never actually exorcized a demon.’ Merrily sat down, leaving a space between them not quite wide enough to suggest fear. ‘Not much call for it. Well… plenty of call, but you usually find it’s not justified.’
‘So what did you do for the lovely Betty?’
‘Nothing yet. We thought it was all about Jerry Brace, but it evidently wasn’t.’
‘This is the neo-Nazi Connie shagged? Once. She claims.’
‘You don’t think she did?’
‘Not if he was as good-looking as she insisted he was. Anyway, it’s all balls, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t believe in these things?’
‘Belief ’s pointless. Faith’s babyish. I grew up among believers. Parents were cranks. Mustn’t do this, mustn’t do that, this is right, love is all you need, this is wrong, bad karma. Thought they were free, but they were just in a different prison. Couldn’t stand them once I learned to think for myself. Once you realize that nothing’s wrong and nothing’s right unless it works, your life’s transformed. That’s when you become free.’
‘You learned that… from an early age, then?’
‘I’ll try anything once and if I like it I’ll try it twice.’
The smile said, I’ve gone through life breaking taboos like dead twigs.
Merrily holding herself steady, hands on the grass either side, ready to move. Seeing Cherry Banks, mutilated in the smudgy photocopy, and the degradation of the charmingly artless Tamsin Winterson to a limp-haired, blood-caked heap.
And hearing an echo of the car in the track and the car on the top road and the voices that could have come from either.
Gwenda looked at her, a finger alongside her nose, as if puzzled.
‘Why haven’t you exorcized Jerry Brace?’
‘Well… you don’t exorcize dead people. Unless you have reason to think there’s more to it. I mean, his beliefs were very dark, but Jerry himself… he wasn’t up to much, was he? Not by himself. Seems to have idolized Peter Rector, but Rector had changed. Maybe he couldn’t adjust to that.’
‘Fancy,’ Gwenda said. ‘One would almost think you’d known the man.’
Merrily followed the moonlight into the pale eyes, trying to find Mephista there. She saw Mephista sitting in an old ambulance on cold, rainy Hay Bluff, watching her dad making notes for his stillborn book on New Age travellers. Making her own plans for the grooming of Jerry Brace, putting him into a situation which, if he went through with it, would put his whole future into her hands. And he had gone through with it, he’d killed and mutilated and dissected, Mephista standing behind the camera, urging him on.
say it, say it, say it…
I sacrifice you in the name of my father.
Replaying this alongside the sounds of the car on the top road, the car in the track and the voices. And the voices on the tape. You thought you knew where the voices on the tape came from.
say it, say it…
Came from behind the camera.
I sacrifice you
Came from the figure in black plastic.
Didn’t it?
‘Did you see the video, Mrs Protheroe?’
‘Which video?’
‘The one Robin brought into the bar.’
‘We didn’t have time.’
‘So you don’t know what’s on it.’
‘Do you?’
‘Well, yes. A few of us saw it earlier tonight.’
‘I thought Robin hadn’t got a player.’
‘They wanted everyone to see it,’ Merrily said. ‘To see if anyone could throw any light on what was happening on there. We all knew what it looked like. It looked like a murder. A kind of ritual murder. Of a young woman. In that shop.’
‘You’re serious? Has it been shown to the police?’
‘Probably. By now.’
Gwenda looked up and all round. It was very quiet now. Merrily kept her eyes on her.
‘Why did you follow me, darling?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You just happened to arrive here? And on your own. How odd. But then you’re a priest. You’ve got your god with you.’
Gwenda laughed.
Laughed the laugh.
Merrily sprang up, but Gwenda was already on her feet. A well-built mature woman with long legs, muscular legs. She might not go hill running with Gore, but there was all that fitness equipment that Gwyn had been told about, in the apartment. The apartment with no books.
Gwenda gripped the champagne flute. Did something so efficiently she’d obviously done it before. Raised the hand and brought the flute down on the edge of the concrete, very swiftly, at an angle.
‘Tell me,’ Gwenda said.
‘Tell you what?’
‘What you think I did.’