'Yes. Fine. Thank you.'

They went back through the living room, the former hop-store, where any extra light not blocked off by the barns was absorbed by drab leathery furniture a Stewart's, probably. By the back door, Merrily turned, looked up at Stock.

'Could I just ask you a what do want this to achieve? I mean you personally?'

He wasn't ready for this one, didn't meet her eyes. Instead, he went to open the door for her, and the day came in like a golden cavalry of angels.

'I want things to be normal,' he said. 'That's all.'

She drove up to the minor road leading to Knight's Frome and was almost through the village before she realized that it was the village. The church was out on the edge, the other side of the river; the white house nearby could only be the vicarage. No car outside.

She pulled on to the verge, about fifty yards away from the church, took off her jacket, threw it over the passenger seat, lit a cigarette and checked her mobile for messages.

Just the one. 'Merrily. Sophie. I'm afraid I can't raise the vicar, but Bernard says go ahead without him. He'll clear up any political debris. Which I suppose means I shall.'

Right, then. Merrily switched off the phone and put out her cigarette. As she was climbing out of the Volvo, she saw, through the wing mirror, a rusting white Astra pulling in about twenty yards behind.

It was already hot, and not yet ten-fifteen. A single cloud powdered the sky over the church, which was low and comfortably sunken, with a part-timbered bell tower. Pigeons clattered in what had once been a hedge surrounding the vicarage.

From the car boot, Merrily pulled her vestment bag and a blue-and-gold airline case containing two flasks of holy water. She'd knock on the vicarage door, on the off chance someone was home. If not, she'd change in the church, always assuming it was open. Slinging the bags over her shoulder, she bent to lock the car. As she pulled out the key, there were footsteps behind her, a quiet padding on the grass. She turned quickly, wishing she hadn't locked the car.

She froze.

The mirage was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and those same round, brass-rimmed glasses. She was aware of the bird-song and the laboured chunter of a distant tractor as they stood and stared at one another for two long seconds.

He shuffled a little, nodded at the Radiohead motif on her chest. 'So, er... what did you think of Kid A?'

'Erm...' Stunned, she put down the vestment bag, adjusted the plastic strap of the airline case. She swallowed. 'Well... you know... it kind of grew on me. Parts of it.'

'Uh huh.' He nodded. Then he said rapidly, 'Merrily, I'm sorry to, you know, spring out at you like this. I did come round to the vicarage quite early this morning, but-'

'That a that was you knocking?'

'But there was no answer, so I went to buy a Mars Bar and a paper at the shop, and then I ran into Gomer Parry and we talked for a few minutes and then... when I got back your car had gone.'

'I... overslept.' Merrily saw flecks of grey in his hair. It was shorter now; the ponytail hadn't come back. She bit down on her smile, shaking her head. 'You really choose your times, Lol.'

'Because you're working.'

'Yeah. I mean, could we...? I mean...'

'Gerard Stock, right?'

She felt the smile die completely.

'As... as you know,' Lol said hesitantly, 'I'm about the last person to try and tell you anything about your job. But... don't do this.'

'What?'

'Put him off a could you do that? Stall him? Please?'

'I... No. No, I can't do that.'

'Then at least come and talk to the vicar,' Lol said.

19.

And then... Peace

THE VESTRY AT Knight's Frome was about the size of a double wardrobe and didn't have a proper door, never mind a lock. She had Lol stand guard just inside the church porch while she changed.

This was getting crazy, too much to take.

She unpacked the bag: full kit plus pectoral cross.

Jane, of course a Jane would love this situation, wouldn't she just? All the times in the past six months the kid had asked innocently, 'Have you heard from Lol? Has Lol been in touch? Does Lol spend all his weekends in Wolverhampton...?

Merrily took off her skirt and T-shirt, got into the cassock that she never wore except for services, since a certain incident.

Laurence Robinson: palely sensitive singer-songwriter a in downbeat, low-key, minor chords. Unlucky in love, survivor of a nervous breakdown and some years of psychiatric treatment. Might well have become the next Nick Drake a Q magazine. If, like poor Nick, he'd killed himself, the less satisfactory route to immortality.

But Lol had survived to become droll, self-deprecating and, from Jane's point of view, dangerously cool. The stepfather to die for. And flirt with, obviously.

Merrily did up all the fabric-covered buttons of the cassock. Fortunately the kid was away. Her own feelings she could control, up to the present.

The last time she'd seen Lol Robinson had been on Dinedor Hill, above Hereford, where a few days earlier a young woman's death had been shatteringly avenged a leaving Lol in the middle of steaming wreckage with two people dead and one dying. Heavy trauma. In a still December dusk, before Christmas, the two of them had stood next to a fallen beech tree on the edge of the Celtic hill fort and looked down over the city, where steeples and the Cathedral tower were aligned under a shadow of cloud and the distant Black Mountains.

A prayer, a meditation, in remembrance of the victims and then they'd walked back down the hill, hand in hand. And then Lol, no big fan of organized religion, had told her he was wondering if there wasn't some middle way between spiritual guidance and psychotherapy... a new path, maybe. And they'd walked away to their separate cars and she'd known in her heart that they would meet again sometime, at least as friends, but that this wasn't the moment to allow things to go further.

Lol Robinson. Just about the last person she'd expected to meet today, materializing in a heat haze at the roadside. And, more confusingly, revealed as one of the anti-Stock contingent warning her to back off.

Like she had a choice.

Abandoning attempts to contact Merrily, Lol had been on the road by seven a.m., knowing that if he didn't catch her before she went out, she could be anywhere in the diocese and there'd be no chance of talking to her until she arrived at Stock's tonight a by which time it would be too late.

I truly hope your friend has the sense not to get involved, Simon had said. And then, last night, Isabel: He gets things he can't put into words.

When he found Merrily had left the vicarage, he'd gone into Hereford, checked the Bishop's Palace parking area, then called the office to make sure she wasn't there. Mrs Hill remembered him but wouldn't tell him where Merrily had gone. She'd offered to pass on a message; Lol said it was OK, no problem. He'd decided to stake out the entrance to Stock's place, all day if necessary, to catch her before she could go in.

But he'd arrived back in Knight's Frome to find she was already there. Shoved the car into some bushes, gone running down the gravel track by the kiln, about to go and hammer on the door, disrupt whatever was happening... when the door had opened and she'd walked out- -followed by Stock: Merrily and Stock together. The first time he'd seen her in six months and here she was with Stock, who was looking, from this distance, as pristine as the husband in some old soap-powder ad, a man on the side of the angels. Merrily had been nodding to him a conveying understanding and sympathy a and at one point seemed about to take his hand. But then she'd turned and walked towards her car and Lol had sidled along the bushes, back to the Astra, to follow the Volvo.

When she'd parked close to Simon's church, it had seemed meant. He'd made his move. Shock value. It hadn't even been too difficult to persuade her to walk with him the few yards to the white vicarage.

Where it had all seized up like an overwound clock.

The door had been opened by a woman of about sixty-five, in a pinny, who told them the vicar and Mrs St John had gone shopping in Hereford. They always went on a Tuesday, see, because it was a slack day in the city, between the weekend rush and the Wednesday market. Easier for Isabel to get around town, the housekeeper had explained. Easier for Hereford if Isabel was in a good mood, she'd implied.

Blank wall. How could he persuade Merrily to back away from this when he couldn't tell her any more than she already knew?

Like, what was the real reason Simon had refused to exorcize Gerard Stock's kiln? It was becoming clear that there was more to it than the vicar's declared belief that Stock was fabricating the whole thing either to screw Lake or milk some money out of an inheritance he couldn't sell.

Isabel had implied, Trust him. Lol didn't trust him a too many suggestions of instability there. And if anybody could spot instability, it was Lol.

He stood gazing down the aisle of Simon's very basic little parish church a no fancy carving, no stained glass a towards the altar. The truth was he had no reason to trust anyone in the clergy, except- He turned at the swish of the velvet curtain, and she emerged from the vestry like she was stepping out of a dress-shop cubicle. Apparently, some men were kinky for women priests, like with nurses and meter maids, because of the uniform. But when Lol watched Merrily stepping into the nave, in her cassock and white surplice, it only made him scared.

Stock was very bad news. Simon knew more than he was saying.

Lol... was just a guy who wrote songs.

She gave him a small smile. She looked like a child playing dressing-up a the silly-vicar outfit. Then he saw the lines at the corners of her eyes. New lines.

'Don't look so worried,' Merrily said. 'It's what I do.'

Walking back to the car, she sensed his discomfort. She didn't think he'd ever seen her in the full gear before. Now she was a priest, with an aura of black and white sanctity; not a woman any more. There was even a new stiffness, a formality, in the way he spoke to her.

'I just think,' Lol said, 'that perhaps you should ask him why he can't sell the kiln a just to see what he says.'

'Lol, that's...' It was childish, but she did it: pushed herself onto the bonnet of the Volvo, with the surplice fanning out around her. 'That's irrelevant, isn't it? I've heard all about him, I know what kind of man he's been, I realize he probably went to the papers for the express purpose of stirring it for this guy Lake, or capitalizing on it in some other way. But it a it doesn't change the fact that I do think he's got some trouble here. If I had to like and admire all the people I was asked to help, then... well, I'd be having a lot of days off, you know?'

Lol kept peering up the road and Merrily knew he was hoping to delay things until Simon St John got back from Hereford.

'If you're thinking about me...' She felt suddenly edgy and embarrassed and delved in her bag for cigarettes. 'I'm protected. From above, by the Bishop. And... from further above. I mean... you know... come in with me, if you want.'

'In?'

'When we do it. I don't imagine Mr Stock would mind. I wouldn't.'

Merrily bit her lip. She hadn't thought about that, she'd just said it. She thought about it now. The standard advice to Deliverance ministers was to have a few good Christians around at an exorcism, including a second minister, if possible. Back-up. What kind of Christian you could call Lol she had no idea, but he was actually living here, he actually knew Gerard Stock... and, however he felt about dogma and the clergy generally, she knew by now that she could trust him. All the way.

The car bonnet was warm under her cassock. She looked at the fragmented cloud over the little church of Knight's Frome and then back at Lol. He was coincidence. Charismatic Christians, like the infamous Nick Ellis, saw every small coincidence as a pointer from God.

'Look, there are two ways of looking at an exorcism of place,' she explained.' It's not waste disposal, pest control, Rentokil, whatever... it's helping a dislocated essence... spirit... soul back on to the path. What I mean is, maybe we're doing this less for Gerard Stock than for Stewart Ash.'

'Whom neither of us knew.'

'Every day, in crematoria all over the country,' Merrily said sadly, 'duty clergy conduct funerals for people they never knew, in front of grieving relatives they've only just met. Maybe we'll meet him today.'

Lol looked up, startled.

'It's been known for the subject of an exorcism to make one final appearance,' she said. 'And then... peace.'

'Hi!' Stephanie Stock sprang up from the old leather sofa. 'It's really, really nice to meet you at last.'

A central ceiling light-bowl and two lamps were on in the living room at the kiln-house. It still didn't get close to summer daylight. The walls had been painted white, but the furniture was old and dull. Unexpectedly, the brightest thing in the room was not the white-shirted Stock, but his wife. She squeezed Lol's hand, lingering over it, smiling into his eyes.

'I've kept on saying to Gerard, hey, bring him over! I had the first Hazey Jane album years ago, when I was at school, and I'm just dying to know what you've been up to since. It's not as if... I mean, you're looking good!'

Lol blinked. Stephie Stock wore a short white summer dress, like a low-cut tennis frock. She was considerably younger, conspicuously more animated than her husband who, close up, was looking as worn and grey as you might expect after last night in the Hop Devil. She's a mouse, Simon St John had said dismissively. What other kind of woman would Stock marry?

'Steph, this is Merrily Watkins,' Stock said. This was a different Stock, sober and withdrawn. He had raised no objections to Lol being here, expressed no particular surprise that Lol and Merrily were acquainted. The feeling Lol had was that Stock was just relieved it wasn't Simon.

Stephanie slowly let go of Lol's hand, running her warm, slender fingers to the tips of his. She looked at Merrily and her wide mouth flexed into a one-sided grin. 'You know, it's still really strange to see a woman with the full-'

'Steph was brought up a Catholic,' Stock said quickly. 'Convent girl.'

'And, let me tell you, you don't escape that easily,' Stephanie said ruefully.

Lol was studying her. He still couldn't be sure. He remembered that his Lady of the Bines had had darkish hair, stringy. Or maybe just wet. Stephanie's hair was golden brown, shorter, looked altogether healthier. As did the woman herself: smiling, confident, in essence not the keening banshee wreathed in dead bines. But then nor was this the Stephanie Stock he'd been told about.

'Coffee?' Stephie offered. 'Beer? Wine?'

Merrily shook her head. 'Maybe afterwards.'

'Afterwards! Wow. This is really going to happen, isn't it?'

'Of course it is!' Stock snapped. Then he straightened up, pulling his shoulders back.

'Poor love,' said Stephie. 'He gets so spooked. One thing about Catholicism, it teaches you not to be too afraid of what goes bump, right? Look, Mary-'

'Merrily.'

'Right. Sorry. Look, am I... suitably dressed for this? I could go up and change.'

'You'll be fine,' Merrily said. 'I was saying to Gerard earlier, I don't like this kind of service to seem sinister, because it's basically about liberation. We're asking God to give you back your home and at the same time free Stewart's spirit from this earth and let him go into the light. In fact, it could be that when we've finished, you'll notice a difference here.'

'What, lighter?'

'Let's just see what happens.'

'Wow,' said Stephie.

She seemed very young to Lol. Although she had to be over thirty, she still had the confidence of inexperience a innocence, even. He couldn't understand, seeing her now, why she'd kept such a low profile locally, why neither Prof nor Simon had ever met her. It couldn't be that Stock had kept her penned up like some exotic pet; she didn't seem the kind of person you could treat that way. And anyway, she was the one who went out to work while he stayed at home.

'So, how much time have you got?' Merrily asked her.

'Well, I'm currently temping for this big car-dealer and it's quite busy... but I guess I've got two hours. Is that enough? I mean, I can phone them...'