'I saw him the other night.'

'He's a buffoon. And he don't fully realize the kind of desperate bastard he's up against a though maybe he does now.'

'You really think Stock's making all this up, to try and publicly shame Lake into moving those barns?'

'Look,' Prof said, 'Stock's on his uppers, right? Suddenly he gets a break; he wins a house. With problems attached, sure, but it's a wonderfully unexpected gift, and he's determined to capitalize. He wants the very maximum he can get. He's gonna use whatever skills he's got, whatever contacts. What's he got to lose? Nothing, not even his credibility. What's he got to gain? Jesus, those barns go, you can add seventy, eighty thousand to the market value of that place.'

'Why doesn't he just sell to Lake for some inflated price and walk away?'

Prof opened out his hands in exasperation. 'Because he is Gerard Stock.'

'That first barn made poor Stewart's life into a black hell,' Gerard Stock says. 'But he was a stubborn man and refused to give in.'

But Mr Ash's determined stand was ended the night he surprised two young burglars.

They beat the sixty-six-year-old author to death on the stone floor of his kitchen.

'I did not believe in ghosts or hauntings, but I've often felt Uncle Stewart's presence in the kitchen,' says Mrs Stock. 'I feel his spirit has been somehow trapped in the darkness of this place.'

The Stocks approached the local vicar, the Rev. Simon St John, asking him to exorcize their home.

'But he didn't want to know,' said Mr Stock. 'He implied that we ought to be looking for psychiatric help. When something like this happens, you become aware of a rural mafia at work. Stewart Ash fell foul of it, and it looks as if we have too.

'Nobody in the village speaks to us, except other outsiders. I've even been refused service in the pub.'

Lol shook his head. 'He only got thrown out because he was completely pissed and insulting people.'

Prof's beard jutted. 'Who was he insulting, Laurence?'

'Well... Simon. Called him Saint Simon. And other things. Stock said he used to work for TMM when Simon was in a band recording with them.'

'The Philosopher's Stone,' Prof said tonelessly. 'For your own information, Simon was a classical musician. A session cellist, if you like, and he was brought into this band about twenty years ago. Tom Storey was in it, too, for his sins. I worked with them for a while a for all our sins. It didn't last.'

'I think I remember something.'

Prof looked hard at Lol. 'Whatever you heard, it was probably crap. Whatever Stock said about Simon, you can put it to the back of your mind. For a while, God and music were fighting over Simon, but it was never really a contest. He's a good man, he loves his music, but he needs his God. And his wife. And whatever else you hear... Simon and Isabel a this is a marriage to die for. You understand?'

'Whatever you say,' said Lol, bemused.

'Of course he refuses to exorcize the house of this despicable scheming bastard! He knows as well as I do that there's no conceivable basis for this garbage.'

'Stock asked me if I believed in ghosts,' Lol said.

Mr Stock added: 'I never believed in ghosts but after what we've witnessed here, it seems to me that the spirit of Stewart Ash cannot rest, even though two young men have been convicted of his murder.

'I can't help feeling that the whole truth has not yet come out and perhaps someone in the area knows more than they're saying.

'We feel very isolated, but we feel we owe it to the memory of Steph's murdered uncle to see this through.'

The Rev. Simon St John refused to comment about what he said was 'a private matter'.

But Hereford's diocesan exorcist, the Rev. Merrily Watkins, said last night that she would be looking into the case.

'If I was aware of someone in genuine need of spiritual support, I would want to see they received whatever help we were able to give them,' she said.

'Pah.' Prof tossed the paper to the stained stone flags on the floor. 'He's trying to stir the shit. It's what he does. Now they have to try to shore up this nonsensical crap by calling in some stupid woman who doesn't know Stock from Adam. And then they wonder why-What's the matter now, Laurence? What is the matter with you this morning?'

'Nothing,' Lol said. 'That is... I know her, that's all.'

'The exorcist?'

'We lived in the same village a when I was with Alison. And then... not with Alison.'

Prof squinted curiously over his bifocals. 'You know this exorcist, this woman priest? I thought you couldn't stand priests.'

Lol shrugged.

'Except for this one, eh? Nice-looking?'

'She's...' Lol thought he was too old to be blushing; Prof's little smile indicated that perhaps he wasn't yet. 'I haven't seen her in some months. She's become a friend.'

'A friend.'

'We can all change,' said Lol. He had a mental image of a small woman in a too-long duffel coat borrowed from her daughter, wind-blown on the edge of an Iron Age hill fort overlooking the city of Hereford. Requiem.

'My, my.' Prof stood up and went to rinse his coffee cup at the sink. 'And see, by the way, that you keep this place in such a condition that we don't have visits from the jobsworths at the Environmental Health.' He placed the cup on a narrow shelf matted with dust and grease. He started to whistle lightly.

'What?' said Lol.

'Hmmm. They got room for a mere man, with God in the bed? I don't think so. Women priests, women rabbis? You ask me, it's the Catholics got it right on this one.'

'Not that you're an old reactionary or anything?'

'Plus, exorcism, that isn't a game.' Underneath the cynicism and bluster, Prof was some kind of believer. Lol had always known this. 'This Stock crap a this is a game...'

'You're entirely sure of that, Prof?'

Lol had kept staring at the picture, of Gerard Stock and Stephanie Stock but, like the shot of the kiln, it was printed for effect, her face two-dimensional in the candlelight. It could be, but he couldn't be sure. And if it was, what did that say about Stock and his alleged haunting?

'Listen, don't get involved.' Prof unplugged his cappuccino machine, began to roll up the flex. 'You let Stock and Lake get on with destroying each other. Warn the woman priest to keep out of it as well.'

'You're taking that thing with you?'

'Just work on your songs,' Prof said. 'Don't let any of those people into this place a when I'm gone.'

10.

Bad Penny

'I'M JUST CALLING to apologize,' Merrily said to the vicar of Knight's Frome. 'I wasn't exactly misquoted, I just wasn't fully quoted. They didn't use where I explained that I couldn't really comment on a case I knew nothing about and I was sure you must have had good reason for refusing to deal with this guy. So I'm sorry.'

'Yeah, sure. I mean, that's fine,' the Rev. Simon St John said. There was a pause on the line. 'Sorry... which paper did you say it was in?'

What?

It was gone three in the afternoon. It had been before nine this morning when she'd called into the Eight-till-Late in Ledwardine, on her way back from Holy Communion, to ask if she might have a quick flip through the tabloids a actually missing the story first time, never expecting a spread this size.

'You mean...' Merrily sat up at the scullery desk. 'You mean you haven't read it?'

'I don't see the papers much,' Simon St John said in his placid, middle-England voice.

'But you must have known they were going to publish it?'

'I suppose I had an idea, yes.'

'Had a-?' The mind boggled. She tried another direction. 'Erm... the feeling I get is that this Mr Stock is trying to... get back... at the landowner. Mr Lake.'

'And also his wife's uncle, I'd guess,' St John said.

'The one who's dead?'

'It's rather complicated.' He didn't seem unfriendly, but neither did he seem inclined to explain anything.

Last try: 'You've also been accused of being part of a rural mafia,' Merrily said.

Simon St John laughed. There was laid-back, Merrily thought, and there was indifferent. 'I've been accused of far worse things than that,' he said eventually. 'But thanks for letting me know.'

'That's... OK.'

'I expect we'll get to meet sooner or later.'

'Yes.'

'Goodbye, then,' he said.

It was another of those days: Mercury still retrograde, evidently.

She tried the Shelbones again and let the phone ring for at least a couple of minutes before hanging up and calling back and getting, as she'd half expected, the engaged tone. The implication of this was that someone was dialling 1471 to see who'd called. So maybe they would phone her back.

But they didn't, and Hazel Shelbone's excuse that she didn't want to talk to Merrily while Amy was in the house was wearing thin. Most people now had a mobile, especially senior council officials. Behind that old-fashioned, God-fearing Christianity, deep at the bottom of the reservoir of maternal love, there was something suspicious about this family.

So how was she supposed to proceed? The request for a spiritual cleansing was still on the table. Merrily didn't think she could just turn away, like Simon St John. Besides, she was curious.

She was finishing her evening meal of Malvern ewe's cheese and salad when Fred Potter, the freelance journalist, rang again.

'Before you say anything,' Merrily said, 'who alerted you to this story? I mean originally.'

'Ah, well.' He laughed nervously. 'You know how it goes, with news sources.'

'Yeah, down a one-way street. If someone like me doesn't disclose something, we're accused of covering up the truth, while you're protecting your sources.' She paused. 'How about off the record?'

'Oh, Mrs Watkins...'

'You know,' Merrily said thoughtfully, 'something tells me this won't necessarily be the last time our paths cross. I do tend to get mixed up in all kinds of things that could make good stories. Who knows when you might-'

'You're a very devious woman.'

'I'm a minister of God,' she said primly.

The scullery's white walls were aflame with sunset. She lit a cigarette.

'All right,' Fred Potter said. 'Off the record, it was brought in by our boss, Malcolm Millar. He knows Stock from way back. Stock was in PR.'

'When was all this? When did you learn about it?'

'Couple of days ago. Malcolm sent me out to see the Stocks yesterday morning.'

'So it's likely they cooked it up between them?'

'Oh no. I don't think so. I mean, a ghost story a that's not something you can verify, is it? I can tell you it's dead right about how dark it is in there. I couldn't live in that place. It's a scandal that this guy, Lake, can just block off someone's daylight to that extent.'

'There are laws on ancient lights. It's one for Stock's solicitor.'

'But the press don't charge a hundred pounds an hour, do we?'

'What I'm getting at, that's not our problem, is it? I mean the Church's. We just come in on the haunting. And if that turns out to be made up-'

'Please, Mrs Watkins.'

'I'm not making notes, Fred. I'm just... covering myself.'

'It's like asking if I believe in ghosts,' he said. 'Maybe I don't, but a lot of people do, don't they? Presumably you must.'

'Sometimes.'

'OK...' A pause, as if he was looking round to make sure he was alone. 'He's a bit of an operator.'