'You'll be freezing!'

'Melissa, our beliefs will keep us warm.'

'Well, rather you than me. Thank you, Ned Bain, and Tim Francis. And we'll keep you up to date with whatever happens. Now, here on 5 Live...'

Jane switched off. When she turned round, her face had darkened.

'They're not taking any of it seriously.'

'Vicars and witches? What did you expect?'

'How can you sit there and-'

'Because I'm used to it. It's a secular society and we've become a quaint anachronism. Of course they're not taking it seriously.' Unfortunately, they would do soon, if it came out that the police had interviewed Betty regarding Mrs Wilshire.

Jane pulled out a chair and sat down directly opposite Merrily. 'You have got to listen to me, do you understand?'

'I'm listening.'

'Ned Bain-'

'He's a smooth operator. A clever man.'

'It goes deeper. Up in the gallery, at Livenight, we found the researcher already knew all about you and Dad and how Dad died and where it happened and everything, and he told Irene he got that information from Ned Bain, and it's all there on the Kali Three Web site with suggestions that you should be regarded as an enemy, like, by pagans and occultists everywhere.'

'How do you know all that?' The kid had her full attention now.

'Because Irene spoke to Gerry, the researcher, afterwards.'

'About your dad? They had all that?'

For an awful moment, she was back in that stifling, oppressive studio, dry-mouthed, with Bain lazily watching her through what appeared, for just a moment, to be Sean's eyes.

'Everything,' Jane confirmed.

And earlier that man smiling Sean's pained, 'Isn't it all so tedious?' smile. All of it following a Sean-haunted drive up the M5, and then, when returning home, on that same stretch of motorway, on the way back.

'What we figured it means,' Jane said, 'is that people all over the world were probably sending you ill will at that point.'

'Down their computers?'

'Don't try and laugh it off. You were crap on telly.'

'Thanks.'

'Maybe that wasn't all your fault, you know? There's a lot of really heavy people out there. They knew your weaknesses: your guilt trip about Dad and the Church.'

'That's... silly.'

'And now Ned Bain's in Old Hindwell.'

'OK, not good.'

Two religious fanatics facing each other across the ruins of a church that was spiritually suspect. Both sides raising the stakes.

Betty Thorogood came down, wearing a sloppy old baseball sweater of Jane's. She declined an egg, but accepted toast and honey.

She'd heard the radio report from upstairs.

She said she was going back to St Michael's.

'I don't want that church reconsecrating not in anybody's name. I'm not forecasting some apocalypse scenario, I just don't want it to happen. I'm stopping it.'

'You've got thirteen people to persuade. All determined to celebrate Candlemas.'

'They can bloody well do it somewhere else,' Betty said flatly.

Merrily brought coffee. 'Tell me exactly what happens at Candlemas.'

'It's the festival of Brigid, the triple goddess.'

'Three stages of womanhood,' Jane translated, 'maiden, mother, hag.'

'Imbolc means belly. It's about Mother Earth giving birth to spring, so in Wicca we put the emphasis on the mother. Three women are involved in the rite, but the mother wears the crown of lights... that's a headdress of candles. This is a festival of light and new awakening. Of all the sabbats, it's probably the one closest to Christianity, I'd guess.'

Merrily nodded.

'Normally, it would be an especially good time to consecrate a church or temple, simply because it's coming out of a long period of darkness, reawakening to spring.'

'Everything perfect, then,' Merrily said neutrally, 'for giving back Old Hindwell to the old gods.'

'No, everything's utterly wrong take it from me. If there were good omens before, it all reversed when we moved in. I've become snappy and irritable and... alienated from Robin. We've hardly even, you know, touched each other since we arrived. And even regarding money. Robin had the possibility almost the certainty of a very lucrative contract, to do seven book covers for Kirk Blackmore, the fantasy writer.'

'Wow,' Jane said. 'I used to read his stuff, when I was a kid.'

'And then the rug seems to have been pulled. Blackmore's decided he doesn't like Robin's concept, and it's Blackmore calls the shots. That's just the latest thing to go wrong.'

Jane said, 'Maybe you need the new light.'

Betty shook her head. 'There won't be any. We won't bring that place out of the darkness; it'll suck us in.' She looked vaguely around, from face to face. 'Whatever you may think about this, I've called out to the goddess in the night, and the goddess won't come to me. I'm not being emotional or hysterical about this. I just don't see a good future.'

'OK, so you go back,' Merrily said, 'and you try to stop it. How do you do that?'

Betty shrugged. 'If necessary I can just tell them all to get out. It'll cause another row with Robin, but the house is half mine. That's only a last resort. If I play along for a while, something subtler might occur. I don't want to create negative vibrations, if possible. What about you?'

'I'm going to have to try and cool Ellis. One or two ideas occur. Well, one anyway.' Merrily's throat was dry from too much smoking, not enough sleep. 'Maybe we can meet somewhere, late afternoon, and see where we stand.'

'There's a footbridge,' Betty said, 'that leads from the church to the other side of the brook.'

'I know it. Four o'clock?' Part of her was saying this was whimsy, that the only really important things were to, first, find Barbara Buckingham, and second, persuade the police to investigate the Hindwell Trust. 'Betty, what do you think, seriously, is likely to happen if we can't stop this tonight?'

Betty shook her head quickly, non-committally.

'The dragon gets out,' Jane said, 'whatever that means.'

'I've been thinking.' Betty looked at Merrily. 'The problem with this place is nothing really to do with us. But it is to do with you, I suspect with what you do. Ellis thought it needed exorcizing. I'm not sure he was wrong.'

'But not by him.'

'No,' Betty said, 'not by him.'

'You mean... by me?' Merrily felt obscurely honoured and immediately guilty about that.

'I wondered about tonight,' Betty said. 'Candlemas is Candlemas. I suppose it's a good time, wherever you stand. I mean, I'd go in with you, if you thought that would help. Or, if you thought that would be spiritually wrong, I'd stay out of the way.'

'I don't know.'

'Would you think about it, Merrily? It's become kind of central to everything, hasn't it?'

'But... exorcizing a church...'

'Like you keep saying,' Jane said, 'it isn't a church any more.'

'All right, I'll talk to the bishop.'

'Please don't do that,' Betty said. 'He might suggest you have other priests along. That would bother me. I don't want it to look like a formal sellout.'

Merrily nodded. 'OK.'

'Wow,' Jane said.

43.

Mitigating Circumstances JANE HAD CALLED Eirion at the rotting mansion and there was no answer. Well, there was an answer... on a machine, and in Welsh.

Like she wasn't already feeling excluded enough. Gomer had collected Betty and taken her back to Old Hindwell, Mum had gone off on her own. Little Jane had been given the really important job of relaying any messages to Mum on her mobile.

Bastards!

'I can't speak bloody Welsh!' she howled over the message. 'Just tell Irene... Eirion... to call me. It's very urgent. It's Jane Wat-'

She shut up. The message was being translated.

'Dafydd and Gwennan Lewis are unable to take your call. Please leave your message after the tone. Diolch yn fawr.'

'OK. Please, please, tell Eirion to ring me. It's Jane Watkins. It's very urgent. Please?' Realizing she'd ended on a kind of strangled sob. Maybe that would underline the urgency, or maybe just the existing suspicions of the wealthy and powerful Dafydd Lewis about the hysterical English. It was not bloody fair, because she now had, like, masses of new data to lay on Eirion. He could hit the Net, and they could crack this thing wide open.

Jane paced the kitchen. Actually, she was quite proud of Mum this time, agreeing to undertake an exorcism on behalf of a witch. Like, it was a really heavy decision to have to make. But had she accepted the significance of Kali Three? It really was a pity they hadn't got a decent computer.

Ah!

Jane went rapidly round the house, doing what had to be done laying a fire in the drawing room, putting out dried cat food for Ethel, and all the time thinking hard. She didn't need Irene; she just needed an online computer.

Sophie!

Sophie had one in the Deliverance office. It was only right that the diocese should pay for this research.

There should be a bus to Hereford passing through Ledwardine within the hour. Jane ran a brush through her hair, tugged on her fleece coat and was out of there. There'd be some resistance from Sophie, sure, but nothing Jane couldn't handle with the usual combination of pathos and rat-like cunning.

She bought a Mars bar from the Eight-till-Late and stood on the square munching it, relishing the freedom to do things. Back at bloody school next week, with dismal GCSEs looming. Although the public school system was this, like, totally disgusting anachronism, she wished she was at the cathedral school with Eirion; at least it was in the middle of town.

It was bright but unexpectedly cold on the square. Jane chewed and stamped her feet on the cobbles. A silver BMW went past, then slowed suddenly and backed up and stopped on the edge of the square. The window glided down on the passenger side. Some sex beast wondering if she was in need of a lift.

'Excuse me, little girl.' Creepy voice sibilating from the bourgeois, tinted interior. Eyes narrowing, Jane pocketed the Mars bar and sashayed over. 'Looking for somewhere, I am, see?' he oozed. 'Wonder if you can point me in the right direction. Little place called... if I can just see it on the map... Ah, got it...' The passenger door was thrown wide open. 'England!'

Jane glared in delight. 'You bastard!'

'Good morning, Eirion,' Eirion said. 'How's the whiplash? Well, it's quite a bit more comfortable, thank you, Jane.'

Jane got in. The leather seat creaked luxuriously. 'Where'd you steal the flash Kraut wheels?'

'Gwen's, it is. She owes me. Don't ask. Are you doing the decent thing and going to school?'

'Well, I was, naturally. But, on second thoughts, I think we'll go to Hereford Cathedral. I can show you the Deliverance office, in the gatehouse.'

'Jane...' Eirion snatched off his baseball cap and his dark glasses. 'Half the school goes past there.'

'You won't be spotted, you'll have your head bent over a keyboard. By lunchtime your eyes will be so terminally weakened you'll be regretting you ever left the land of Druids and sad male voice choirs.'

Eirion sighed and let out the clutch. He handed her a brown A4 envelope. 'Read this.'

'What is it?'

'What do you think it is?'

Jane pulled out a thin sheaf of printouts.

'Kali Three.'

She read about her mother and her father.