And the answers came back, in Brummy, in Northern, in cockney London and posh London.

'This is not about the law. Read your Bible. In the eyes of God they are profane.'

'Why are there as many as five churches around the Radnor Forest dedicated to St Michael, who was sent to fight Satan?' A woman in a bright yellow waterproof holding up five fingers for the camera.

There was a central group of hardcore Bible freaks. This was probably the first demonstration most of them had ever joined, Merrily thought. For quite a number, it was probably the first time they'd actually been closely involved with a church. It was the isolation factor: the need to belong which they never realized they'd experience until they moved to the wild hills. And the fact that Nicholas Ellis was a quietly spoken, educated kind of fanatic.

'It's true to say,' a sprightly, elderly woman told ITV Wales, 'that until I attended one of Father Ellis's services I did not truly believe in God as a supernatural being. I did not have faith, just a kind of wishy-washy wishful thinking. Now I have more than faith, I have belief. I exult in it. I exult. I love God and I hate and despise the Adversary.'

For a moment, Merrily was grabbed by a sense of uncertainty that recalled her first experience of tongues in that marquee near Warwick. Whatever you thought about Ellis, he'd brought all these people to God.

Then she thought about his slim, metal crucifix.

Ellis himself was answering no questions tonight; gliding along, half in some other world, no expression on his unlined, shiny face. Self-belief was a great preserving agent.

Hanging back from the march, Merrily rang to check on Jane, walking slowly with the phone.

'It was on the radio,' the kid said. 'That Buckingham woman's probably dead, isn't she?'

'Not necessarily.'

'But if she is, you don't think she topped herself, do you?'

'That's something the police get to decide, flower.'

Jane made a contemptuous noise. 'The police won't do a thing. They don't have the resources. The only reason this area has the lowest level of crime in southern Britain is because half the crimes don't even get discovered, everybody knows that.'

'So cynical, so young.'

'I read the story in the Mail. Totally predictable right-wing stitch-up.'

'You reckon?'

'Yeah. Mum... Listen, the truth, OK? Have you spoken to Irene since we were in Worcester? Like, him telling you all about me conning him into taking me to Livenight by saying you knew all about us going and it would help his career. And then like, in his role as a Welsh Chapel fundamentalist bigot asking if you knew how seriously interested I was in alternative spirituality, and maybe that what I secretly wanted was to get to know some of those people the pagans and then you both agreeing that this was probably a spiteful teenage reaction against having a mother who was a priestess and into Christianity at the sexy end.'

The kid ran out of breath.

Merrily said, 'Was this before or after Eirion said to me, "Oh God, I'm so sorry, this is all my fault, what if she's got brain damage?" And I said, "No, it's all my fault, I should never have agreed to do the bloody stupid programme"? Was it after that?'

Jane said nothing.

'Look,' Merrily said, 'after the initial blinding shock of seeing you in the middle of the motorway, it didn't take a lot of creative mental energy to form what looked like a complete picture of how you and Eirion came to be in the neighbourhood of Birmingham anyway. Complete enough to satisfy me, anyway, without any kind of tedious, acrimonious inquest. I mean, you know, call me smug, call me self-deluded, but the fact is when you really look at it I'm actually not that much older than you, flower.'

Silence.

'Shit,' Jane said at last. 'OK, I'm sorry.'

'I know.'

'Er, might that have been the Long Talk, by any chance?'

'I think it might.'

'Phew. What time will you be back?'

'Hard to say.'

'Only, that nurse phoned.'

'Eileen?'

'Said whatever time you get back, could you ring her? She sounded weird.'

'Weird how?'

'Just not the usual "Don't piss me about or I'll take your bedpan back" voice. Kind of hesitant, unsure of herself.'

'I'll call her.'

'Yeah,' Jane said. 'Somehow, I would if I were you.'

When the procession reached the Prosser farm, Merrily saw two people emerge discreetly from a gate and join it without a word: Judith Prosser and a bulky, slab-faced man.

'That's Councillor Prosser, Gomer?'

'Impressive, en't he? Wait till you hears him talk. Gives whole new meanin' to the word orat'ry.'

'Not that you don't rate him or anything.'

'Prince among men,' said Gomer.

By the time the march reached the track to St Michael's Farm, a police car was crawling behind. That figured: even good Christians these days had short fuses. They walked slowly on.

'That reminded me,' Gomer said. 'Learned some'ing about the Prossers and this Ellis 'fore I left the Lion. Greg yeard it. One o' the boys Stephen? got pulled over in a nicked car in Kington. Joyridin', 'e was. 'Bout a year ago, this'd be. Woulder looked real bad for a magistrate's boy.'

'It happens.'

'Not yere it don't. First offence, mind, so Gareth talks to Big Weal, an' they fixes it with the cops. Gareth an' Judy promises the boy won't put a foot out o' line again. Just to make sure of it, they takes him to the Reverend Ellis, gets him hexorcized...'

Merrily stopped in the road. 'I'm not hearing this.'

The mobile bleeped in her pocket. She pulled it out, hearing Judith Prosser's words: Time was when sinners would be dealt with by the Church, isn't it?

'Merrily?'

'Sophie!' She hurried back along the lane to a quieter spot.

'Is this convenient? I tracked down a Canon Tommy Long, formerly the priest in charge of St Michael's, Cascob. He was more than glad to discuss something which he said had been puzzling him for many years. Shall I go on?'

'Please.'

'Seems that, in the late summer of nineteen seventy-five, he had a visit from the Reverend Mr Penney. A very odd young man, he said long-haired, beatnik-type, and most irrational on this occasion who suggested that, as Cascob was a remote place with no prospect of anything other than a slow and painful decline in its congregation, the Reverend Long might wish to seek its decommissioning by his diocese.'

'Bloody hell.'

'Once he realized this was far from a joke, the Reverend Long asked Mr Penney to explain himself. Mr Penney came out with what was described to me as a lot of nonsensical gobbledegook relating to the layout of churches around Radnor Forest.'

'St Michael churches?'

'In an effort to deflect it, the Reverend Tommy Long pointed out a folk tale implying that if one of the churches were destroyed it would allow the, ah, dragon to escape. Mr Penney said this was... quite the reverse.'

'Why?'

'Mr Long wasn't prepared, at the time, to hear him out and now rather wishes he had.'

'What happened then?'

'Nothing. Mr Long pointed out that the Church in Wales would hardly be likely to part with a building as historic and picturesque as Cascob, especially as it contains a memorial to William Jenkins Rees, who helped to revive the Welsh language in the nineteenth century. The Reverend Mr Penney went somewhat sullenly away and, some months later, committed his bizarre assault on St Michael's Old Hindwell.'

'When he went away, where did he go? Does Mr Long know?'

'There's no happy ending here, Merrily. Mr Long says he was told some years later that Terry Penney died in a hostel for the homeless in Edinburgh or Glasgow, he isn't sure which. The poor man had been a heroin addict for some time. I think I shall go home now, Merrily.'

Robin spotted some lights, but they were the wrong lights.

He saw them through the naked trees, through the bald hedgerow further along from the barn. They were not headlights.

George came to stand alongside him at the window.

'What do you want to do, Robin? Shall we all go out and have a few words with them in a civilized fashion?'

Vivvie dumped her glass of red wine and came over, excited. 'Is it them?' She had on a long red velvet dress, kind of Tudor-looking, and she wore those seahorse earrings that Robin hated. The bitch was ready to appear on TV again. 'What I suggest is we-'

'What I suggest,' Robin said loudly, 'is we don't do a god-damn thing. This is still my house... mine and... Betty's.'

The whole room had gone quiet, except for the damp twigs crackling in the hearth.

'I'm gonna go talk to them,' Robin said.

George smiled, shaking his head. 'You're not the man for this, Robin. You tend to speak before you've thought it out, if you don't mind me saying so.'

'I do mind, George. I mind like hell...'

'And you're tired,' Alexandra said kindly. 'You're tired and you're upset.'

'Yeah, well, damn freaking right I'm upset. I've been accused by that bastard of being a manifestation of insidious evil. How upset would you feel?'

'That's not what I meant.'

Robin backed up against the window, gripping the ledge behind him with both hands. 'So, I'm gonna go out there on my own.'

'That's really not wise,' Vivvie said, appealing to the coven at large.

Max cleared his throat. 'What I would suggest-'

'Don't you...' Robin threw himself into the room. 'Don't any of you tell me what's wise. And you...' He levelled a shaking finger at Vivvie. 'If it hadn't been for you and your goddamn big mouth-'

'Robin...' George took his arm, Robin shook him off.

Vivvie said, 'Robin, I'll thank you not to use the expression God-damned...'

'Shut the fuck up!'

Robin saw that it had begun to rain again. He saw the lights curling into rivulets on the window.

He took off his sweater.

The gate to St Michael's Farm was shut.

Through the bare trees you could see lights in the house, you could see the black hulk of what seemed to be a barn. But you could not see the church. The itinerant congregation formed a semicircle around Nicholas Ellis at the gate. The two men with garden torches stood either side of the gate.

A white wooden cross was raised five or six feet long, like the one in the bungalow garden on the road from Walton.

Merrily felt an isolated plop of rain. Umbrellas went up: bright, striped golf umbrellas. A cameraman went down on one knee on a patch of grass, as if he'd found God, but it was only to find a low angle, to make Ellis look more like an Old Testament prophet.

Disgracefully, Ellis responded to it. A kind of shiver seemed to go through him, like invisible lightning, and his wide lips went back in a taut grimace.

'My friends, can you feel the evil? Can you feel the evil here in this place?' And then he was crying to the night sky. 'Oh Lord God, we pray for your help in eradicating this disease. You who sent Your most glorious warrior, Michael, to contain the dragon, the Adversary, the Old Enemy. Oh Lord, now that this infernal evil has once again returned, we pray that You will help us drive out these worshippers of the sun and the moon and the horned gods of darkness. Oh Lord, help us, we pray, help us!'

And the chant was taken up. 'Help us! Help us, Lord!' Faces were turned up to the rain.

Merrily winced.

Ellis cried, '... You who send Your blessed rain to wash away sin, let it penetrate and cleanse this bitter earth, this soured soil. Oh Lord, wash this place clean of Satan's stain!'

His voice rode the slanting rain, his hair pasted to his forehead, the hissing torchlight reflected in his eyes. Until I attended one of Father Ellis's services I did not truly believe in God as a supernatural being.

Now Ellis was spinning round in the mud, his white robe aswirl, and putting his weight against the gate and bellowing, 'Come out! Come out, you snivelling servants of the Adversary. Come out and face the sorrow and the wrath of the one true God.'

'Fuck's sake, Nick...'

Ellis sprang back.

The weary, American voice came from the other side of the gate. The TV camera lights found a slightly built young guy with long, shaggy hair. He wore a plain T-shirt as white as Ellis's robe, but a good deal less suited to the time of year. He was just standing there, arms by his side, getting soaked. When he spoke, the tremor in his voice indicated not so much that he was afraid but that he was freezing.

'Nick, we don't need this shit, OK? We never touched your lousy church. There's no dragon here, no Satan. So just... just, like, go back and tell your God we won't hold you or your crazy stuff against him.'

The man with the cross stood alongside Ellis, like a sentinel. One of the garden torches fizzed, flared and went out. There was a gasp from the crowd, as though the flame had been a casualty of demonic breath. To charismatics, everything was a sign. Merrily moved in close to the gate. She needed to hear this.