The father, Wayne Jukes, was twenty-two, an 'assistant manager' at a night club. What this actually meant was that Wayne had been responsible for selling various stimulants to the punters. He also did a little pill-peddling around the schools and colleges, for a bit of extra cash, and that was how he met Justine. Wayne wore nice suits and a tie and was smooth and plausible. He had a Toyota sports car, so it didn't take long.

Justine's parents were disappointed, naturally, but they thought Wayne was a presentable enough boy, with an apparently promising managerial position. They helped Wayne and Justine get a house, a little semi on a not-bad estate, ready for the baby.

David Shelbone knew all these details from the Social Services people in the Black Country and in Hereford. He'd also gone out of his way to obtain the inquest and court reports in the local papers a destroying them, of course, before Amy learned to read. He'd even traced Justine's parents. David was very thorough: anything that might help understand Amy better, he and Hazel wanted to know.

Justine had been very young, had never really wanted this baby, found it awfully hard work, especially with Wayne out most nights, pursuing his junior managerial role. Justine, at home with the infant Amy, had very rapidly become depressed, and it became clear that Wayne Jukes had taken to slipping her a little something to make life seem easier. Sometimes he'd even keep her company.

They thought they were cool, rising above it. They thought because he was in the business somehow that meant they could control it. And they were young, too young for life to appear seriously bad. When you were young, you bounced.

It was a long time before Justine's parents realized what was happening. By then, Wayne was himself using more than he was selling a too far gone to realize he was being eased out of the club operation because he was becoming untrustworthy, careless, a risk.

And the mortgage wasn't getting paid, and the baby cried too much and Justine complained sometimes a to the extent that Wayne had found it expedient to give her a little tap from time to time.

David Shelbone was telling the story in his colourless, hesitant way, but Merrily was seeing it in harsh documentary flashes, hearing the voices, the accents, the head-spinning, squashy, bloody, sobbing reality of those little taps.

There was a serious falling-out with her family, and Wayne and Justine sold the house and got a small flat in a run-down area, at the end of one of those streets that went on for ever, a greasy ribbon of tatty garages and betting shops, chip shops, half-dead pubs.

At the very end was a church, which had been a big parish church back in the days when this had been a village street but now had a congregation of about seven pensioners. Some days Justine would retreat into the church, taking the baby, when Wayne was in one of his moods.

Which was most days, because Wayne was drinking heavily now as well. He'd made friends in one of the half-dead pubs and Justine had found it best not to be around a or to be there but completely out of it a when Wayne got home.

It was worse at night, obviously. A neighbour, who cleaned the church for the vicar a who had four other collapsing congregations to try and shore up a became concerned for Justine and gave her a key to the side door next to the vestry, and some nights that was where Justine would go, carrying the baby and a carving knife in case there was anyone already in there.

And one night there was.

Wayne had been wondering for a long time where Justine went, the times she wasn't there when he came home in need of some kind of action. So one night he left the pub twenty minutes earlier than usual and waited in a derelict doorway across the street and followed her when she came out with the kid. Next day, he found the church key in the back pocket of Justine's jeans and had a copy cut for himself.

And that same summer night, when Justine came into the church with Amy, Wayne was waiting for them behind the dusty, moth-eaten drapes in front of the vestry door.

It might have ended differently if Justine hadn't done some business of her own that afternoon with a bloke she and Wayne used to know when Wayne was at the club a a bloke who gave her a little something for her trouble. If Justine hadn't shot the little something into her arm before she came out, if she hadn't been up there and ready for anybody, Wayne included, it might have ended with just a few more little taps.

'And Amy saw all this?' Merrily said. 'How old was she?'

'Nearly three.'

'Dear God, that's old enough to absorb everything. Even if she had no conscious memory, it would all be there.'

'The Social Services were very careful about where she was taken,' David Shelbone said. 'The grandparents didn't want her a they'd recently taken in an elderly relative, and, well...'

'Mmm.'

'It was an emergency, obviously. They wanted to get the child well out of the area, and we were experienced, reliable foster-parents, unencumbered at the time. We were approached, told the background. We were fully prepared.' He fell silent.

'And?'

'Nothing to cause alarm. Not ever. No particular problems at all a and, believe me, Hazel and I have coped with some very taxing children in our time. But Amy settled down remarkably quickly. No nightmares beyond the norm. Nothing to suggest suppressed memories of violence. She was always a very well-balanced, if rather serious child. Our daughter. We both decided very quickly that, if at all possible, she should stay with us and become our daughter.'

'There were no indications at all that she might have remembered something?'

'Not until... I mean, yes, I have sometimes wondered if her serious and rather... orthodox approach to life didn't reflect a subconscious need to impose an order that would in some way cancel out the chaos of her early years. But it's not something that's greatly worried me, and Hazel was always most emphatic that Amy should never be exposed to any kind of psychological assessment. We were naturally glad when she a without any coercion from us a began to embrace Christianity from quite an early age... perhaps four or five. Hazel always believed that if she ever required solace she would find it there, rather than in counselling or therapy.'

Merrily recalled Hazel Shelbone's reaction to the suggestion that some kind of psychiatric assessment would be needed as a preliminary to exorcism.

'What did you tell her when she asked you about her real parents?'

'We told her we understood there'd been an accident a and she never questioned that. We always accepted that there may come a time when we'd have to tell her the real truth, but not until she was old enough to deal with it.'

'So when, after years of going happily to church, she suddenly knocked the chalice out of Canon Beckett's hands and-'

'It all ended at the altar, you see,' David Shelbone said. 'That's the point. That was what frightened us the most.'

No one knew exactly how it had ended. Wayne Jukes had presumably either decided or been told that it would help his defence if he was unable to remember anything after emerging from behind the curtain to find the baby sitting on the font and his wife crouched, snarling a the Kitchen Devil glinting in the feeble light, swishing the air.

Less than half an hour later, police a summoned by neighbours who had been afraid even to go in a found the threadbare chancel carpet already slippery with blood, Wayne standing in the aisle, with his face opened up from eye to chin, Justine vomiting blood over the altar rail.

Amy sitting on the altar itself, laughing.

'Justine had stab wounds to the lungs, throat and stomach,' David Shelbone said. 'She died in the ambulance.'

The trail of blood apparently suggested that Justine had first slashed Wayne and then picked up the child and run to the chancel, the trail of blood along the aisle showing how Wayne had blundered after her.

'She'd put Amy on the altar and then either she'd put down the knife in horror at what she'd done, and he picked it up and attacked her with it... or he overpowered her, and in the struggle-'

'What happened to Wayne?'

'I gather he's out of prison now,' David Shelbone said without emotion. 'Doing youth work in Bristol.'

Merrily felt faintly sick, thinking not about Justine Jukes but Stephanie Stock and Gerard with the wild poppies on his shirt. Domestics: the most common kind of murder.

'Why didn't Hazel tell me about this at the very beginnning?'

'We'd never told anyone a anyone. Besides, Hazel and I both fervently believed that the way out of this was through Christ. Her mother died in church, so Amy had some sort of flashback a again in church.'

'So Hazel never really believed that Amy was possessed by Justine?'

'It didn't matter,' David Shelbone insisted. 'She was possessed by the past. If the memories could be reawakened by these foul experiments then they could be exorcised by Christ. We have old-fashioned values, Mrs Watkins. Today we'd probably never be accepted as foster-parents.'

'When did she go missing?'

'She wasn't there when we got up this morning. That was a terrible shock. Her bed hadn't been slept in. Her mobile phone was gone. We've tried ringing it, but it's always switched off.'

'And you think she's somehow made her way to the Black Country. Does the church still exist?'

'Oh yes. And also... we searched her room. Something we've never done before. We found an old road atlas of mine under the bed. The area was ringed. Hazel set off for there about three hours ago.'

'How much money has Amy got?'

'There was five hundred pounds of her money in the account. She can draw two hundred a day from a machine.'

'And what do you think Amy might do there?'

'I don't know. I haven't a clue what they'd do.'

'They?'

'I doubt she's on her own. That's one reason I wanted to talk to you. Your daughter would know who the other girls were, wouldn't she?'

'Didn't you ask Amy herself?'

'She wouldn't tell us... except for naming your daughter. This was when Mr Beckett-We asked her again, later, as I was ready to go to see the headmaster, but she insisted it was all over.'

'She told you that?'

'I honestly believe she thought it was over. And it was clear that if we tried to take it further she'd throw a tantrum. She once said if we attempted to find out, she'd-Mrs Watkins, you have to understand this is not the way she normally behaves. It's clear, looking back, that she's under someone else's influence. And I rather doubt we're talking about her dead mother.'

So he actually didn't know yet about Layla Riddock? He didn't have the information to make this other, very meaningful connection with Allan Henry?

And how, in his present state, would he react if she told him about it? Merrily wasn't prepared to put it to the test.

'Erm... my daughter's on holiday with her boyfriend's family. I'll try and get hold of her, OK? I don't know how long it'll take, but if I find out anything I'll... I'll get back to you at your office. And if Hazel finds her-'

'I'll get straight back to you, of course,' he said. 'Thank you, Mrs Watkins. Thank you.' He stood up. 'There is one more thing. If Hazel finds Amy and brings her back, I don't think it'll be safe for her to come home. I wondered if the Church had any place of a of sanctuary, I suppose, somewhere you could recommend as safe for both of them. I mean Hazel as well. I'm sorry to put this on you.'

Merrily stood up too. 'If you think it's necessary, we'll find somewhere. Until all this is sorted out. Even if it's in my vicarage.'

She smiled.

This was all she needed right now.

'I'll help you all I can,' she said. 'But if Hazel doesn't find her by tonight, I really think you should go to the police.'

When Sophie returned, Merrily laid the whole story on her, including the information she'd had from Charlie Howe at the Green Dragon, before Andy Mumford's arrival had rearranged everyone's priorities.

Sophie's eyebrows rose several times.

'What was I supposed to do?' Merrily asked her. 'Do you think I should've warned him about Layla Riddock?'

Sophie thought about it, hands clasped on the desk.

'That would be giving him a target,' she said at last. 'Not good. Especially if the target's Allan Henry.'

'What do you know about him, Sophie?'

'I know that he isn't what one might call a Friend of the Earth, particularly the Herefordshire earth. He began by buying small derelict properties in villages and hamlets a a petrol station that went out of business, that sort of thing a demolishing them and developing the sites. And then somehow those sites would start to expand into adjacent fields. His own thoroughly tasteless dwelling began that way. He gets away with things. Luck of the Devil, as it were.'

'Charlie Howe said that.'

'And there's a man who'd recognize it,' Sophie said darkly. 'However, you have no proof whatsoever of any connection between this girl's evident persecution of Amy Shelbone and her stepfather's grudge against David Shelbone. No, I think you did absolutely the right thing in not telling him a at this stage, at least. I think you have enough to worry about, without having an already distressed individual behaving in a probably irrational fashion because-'

'Because of something I did.' Merrily sighed.

Sophie glared at her. 'I certainly intended no parallel with the Stock business.'

'But what if Amy Shelbone is out there with Layla Riddock? This is a girl even Jane is scared of.'

Sophie thought for a moment, then reached for the Hereford phone book. After a couple of minutes tracking along columns of names, she slammed it shut.

'Ex-directory.'

'Only to be expected,' Merrily said. 'I imagine there's quite a lot of people would like to ring Allan Henry late at night. Well, at least we know where he lives. A little bit of Dallas in Canon Pyon.'

'Oh no,' Sophie said. 'You stay away from there. What would be the point?'

'We could at least find out if Layla's there. If she is, she can't have gone off with Amy a and then it all falls down, doesn't it?'

Sophie scowled. 'Why doesn't that man just tell the police?'

'But he hasn't. He's told me.'

'Almost as if he knew you,' Sophie said with bitterness.

'And, whatever he says, Amy did lie. She claimed Jane had approached her initially, to lure her into the circle a Jane, not Layla. She also tried to stitch me up when I went to the bungalow when her parents were out. So we know that Amy does tell lies.'

'But the attempted suicide... why did she do that?'

'Well, there was a vague mention of "pressure",' Merrily said. 'But it was clear he didn't want to talk about it. I don't think a and this is possibly the most worrying thing of all a I honestly don't think he knows why she did it.'

32.

The Big Lie

'I MEAN YOU'RE not gonner scare me, Watkins,' Kirsty said. 'I don't give a toss who you've talked to. The school year's over. The slate's wiped clean. They can't touch any of us now and like, by the time we go back, those time-serving gits en't gonner want to remember. Also, I may not even go back. I'm undecided. I may've had enough of education.'

She sat down with her back to a tractor wheel, stretched out her legs, fanned herself with her baseball cap. Jane thought she looked disgustingly smug.

'Came to me, couple of months ago: OK, you get your A levels, you go to university, you get some pissy little job in some nasty, overcrowded city, so that in twenty years' time you can afford to take your kids to live in the country. It's insane, ennit?'