'You've got a point,' Eirion agreed. 'But-'

'But meanwhile a yeah, yeah a Amy bloody Shelbone.' Kirsty closed her eyes in a kind of weary contempt. 'Why don't you just let it go, Watkins? The kid's neurotic. She tried to kill herself, so-called, but she didn't make it. After an hour or so on the end of a stomach pump, or throwing up, whatever, she en't gonner do that again in a hurry, is she, stupid little cow?'

Jane stared at the chunky girl sprawled in the hay. The other guy had gone, just slipped away. Kirsty didn't need back-up, she was wholly self-sufficient; this was her place. But for the tractor and the blast of Massive Attack from its cab, she could have been part of a scene from centuries ago.

'Questions are being asked all over the place,' Jane said. 'And it isn't you in the frame, or Layla, either. It's me, right? I'm the only one she named a like to the doctors and the police and people like that.'

Jane didn't know if Amy had named her to anyone except her parents, but she needed to bring it down to a personal level that Kirsty Ryan just might relate to.

'Tough,' Kirsty said. 'Go tell Morrell about it.'

'Like you said, why should Morrell care? School's out. But I am so not gonna sit here and take the shit for you and Riddock. I'm going public on it. You ever heard of Bella Ford from Radio Hereford and Worcester?'

'Nope.'

'Well, she's a mate of mine, anyway, and I'm going over there to see her tonight, and I'm putting you and Riddock in the frame for bullying and terrorizing this younger kid into trying to top herself.'

Kirsty's eyelids flicked up.

'Believe it,' Jane said grimly.

'I only listen to Radio One,' Kirsty said. 'Therefore, I don't give a monkey's.'

'OK.' Jane shrugged. 'So you won't hear it.'

'So why you telling me?'

''Cause I'm kind of a straight person. I don't go behind people's backs. I just wanted to tell you why I was doing it, is all.'

'And to warn you they'll probably be ringing you up for a comment,' Eirion put in swiftly. With his news-reporting ambitions and his dad having fingers in BBC Wales, HTV and the Welsh-language outfit, S4C, Eirion knew quite a lot about radio and TV. 'They're obliged to do that, to give you a chance to get over your side of the story.'

'Well, they can piss off, can't they?'

'Sure. Sometimes it's easier for them if you do refuse to comment. They only need to give you the opportunity.'

Jane said, 'It's just, you know, that I'd started to feel a bit bad about you. Thinking maybe you weren't as majorly responsible as Layla, and I wanted to tell you what I'd done. And now I've done that, so, like... we'll go now.'

She turned away. It was beginning to get uncomfortably hot in this field, anyway, like the hay was extracting all the juice out of the sun.

Eirion pulled the car keys out of his jeans.

Kirsty sat up. 'You're an evil little cow for a vicar's daughter, aren't you?'

Less than ten minutes out of the centre of Hereford, you could be into deep countryside. There weren't many cities like this any more and, the way things were going, Merrily thought a as she thought almost every time she drove out of the city a it wouldn't be long before Hereford had become like the rest. Rampant megalomania, disguised as essential economic growth.

Ego-tripping councillors and unscrupulous developers.

Allan Henry.

Sophie stopped the Saab with two wheels on the grass verge, near the top of a low hill a mile out of the straggling village of Canon Pyon.

They were in a quiet lane, looking down on sloping woodland. On its lower fringe, the sun was reflected darkly from the huge picture windows on the side of a long, brick villa that had been built on so many levels it seemed to cascade down the hill.

Where they were now parked was probably the only place you could get a good view of Allan Henry's home. The surrounding trees failed to conceal a wall with railings enclosing about two acres of garden, suggesting Allan Henry must also own the land between the wall and the lane. In fact, Merrily supposed he owned the whole hill.

'What do we do now?' She was in need of a cigarette, but Sophie had a yellow and black no smoking sign on the dash, and she meant it.

'I suppose that depends on to what extent you think Henry might be implicated,' Sophie said. 'Personally, I wouldn't even get out of the car.'

'Think about it. If we assume David Shelbone is costing him hundreds of thousands of pounds, maybe millions a because, if the Hereford bypass goes through there, the Barnchurch estate would be gold dust a then anybody might feel frustrated to the point of... I mean, people have killed for less, haven't they? Much less.'

Sophie nodded. 'It's frightening when you think about it. Which is why, if I were you, I wouldn't get out of the car.'

'So... accepting that killing people can seriously damage your future, Allan Henry's looking for ways of neutralizing a sober, clean-living, God-fearing man who can't be bought. What are the most important things in Shelbone's life?'

'His family,' Sophie said reluctantly. 'Wife, daughter... and his religion.'

'Adopted daughter. Originally a foster-child taken in by the Shelbones under very difficult circumstances. Now, David Shelbone might think Amy's origins are a secret, but quite a few people in and around social services will be aware of the history a including councillors, present or past.'

'In some quarters it would be quite an open secret,' Sophie agreed. 'It wouldn't take much for the information to get back, via certain councillors, to Allan Henry.'

'Whose stepdaughter goes to the same school as Amy.'

'This is very much the tricky part, Merrily.'

'But if you work from the premise that Allan Henry initially asks his stepdaughter what she knows about Amy Shelbone, and Layla tells him that Amy's this prissy, stuck-up little swot... And from then on, Layla starts to take a particular interest in Amy. Now, why a as a teenager a would she particularly want to help her stepfather?'

'No,' Sophie said. 'They don't, as a rule, do they? Not without an incentive, usually monetary. Has her stepfather told her the full background, do you think? That this girl's father is a serious thorn in his side who could affect their future standard of living? Does he perhaps exaggerate that situation?'

Merrily thought of Robert Morrell on the phone the other night: like a lot of wealthy men with potentially problematical stepchildren, he's been throwing money at her for years.

'Mmm. Maybe he tells Layla that if the Barnchurch project goes down, his business will be in ruins and her lovely new sports car will have to go?' She caught a glimpse of shimmering turquoise behind Henry's villa. 'Or even the swimming pool? I mean, maybe he isn't exaggerating at all a we don't know the size of his stake in Barnchurch.'

'I don't normally like to encourage flights of fancy,' Sophie said. 'But I suppose there is a certain tainted logic to all this.'

'At some point Allan Henry tells Layla what he's learned about Amy Shelbone's history a the background even Amy herself doesn't yet know. So then what happens? Most girls would simply confide it to a best friend, and within a couple of days it'd be all round the school. And Amy would probably become a more popular figure as a result a attracting a lot more interest, even some sympathy, for a change. But Henry realizes that Layla, being Layla, is going to come up with something far more elaborate.'

Merrily thought of Gypsy Layla: black hat, dark veil, predictions of death and destruction. Had Layla also been aware that it was the father of Amy Shelbone who'd complained about her at the Christmas Fair and ended her show a the very same David Shelbone who was now trying to shut down Allan Henry's show?

'So Gypsy Layla becomes Madame Layla, confidante of the dead, in session every lunchtime in the caretaker's hut. She has at least one friend in on the secret and, between them, they work the glass. She has a lovely name to play with a Justine. She takes it very slowly, feeding out bits at a time to Amy... there are probably usually other girls involved as well so it won't look suspicious a like Jane, in fact. And slowly and exquisitely, little Amy is hooked.'

The barb really taking hold when Amy went home and asked Hazel Shelbone certain questions a saw the instant dramatic effect on Hazel. Immediately, Amy would feel herself to be at the centre of this awful conspiracy a her beloved adoptive parents had been lying to her for all these years. The only person who wasn't lying to her was her real mother, reaching out from beyond the grave. Layla, with her sense of drama, could create whatever kind of Justine she needed for the purpose: lonely, sad, unloved, imploring.

And horribly seductive to an adolescent who perhaps did sometimes feel like an alien a without previously having known why. Had something previously hidden been unblocked, horrific memories awoken?

'So gradually Layla was feeding it out to Amy: blood in the church, blood on the altar. Then here's Dennis Beckett in his vestments, with his chalice: "The blood which he shed for you... The blood of Christ keep you in eternal life." And Amy Shelbone, kneeling in the chancel, is getting a whole different slant on this.'

All smelly and musty and horrible, and it's full of dead people... There must have been some ghastly images in her head by then a Wayne Jukes, maddened with pain and shock, half his face hanging off, plunging the kitchen knife into Justine. And 'eternal life' was some church-bound, tortured spirit.

'The big lie, the great cover-up.' Merrily was rocking in the passenger seat, everything suddenly making blinding sense. He watches us suffer and die and he doesn't help us, ever, ever, ever... Nobody's going to ever save you. It's all a horrible sick lie! 'Amy only knows one church, one altar. She's imagining her mother dead... in Dilwyn Church.'

She stopped, hearing what else Amy had screamed from her room: And I don't... I don't want to die in... Had 'Justine' predicted that Amy too was going to be killed or at least die in church? Had she given some kind of terrible warning that made suicide seem like a soft option?

'The essence of all this,' Sophie said, 'is that the child has been virtually programmed to turn against everything the Shelbones cling on to. If that's true, then, in its insidious way, it's actually extremely sophisticated. Almost Satanic in its... Do you know what I mean?'

'In the way the poison's been introduced.'

'However, I don't even see that any laws have been broken. And I still don't think you should get out of this car.'

'You bastards.' Kirsty Ryan lay flat in the churned hay, staring up at the deepening blue. 'I don't know whether you're lying to me, or what. It don't matter either way to me, though, look, 'cause I en't catching no armful of shit for that bitch, I can tell you that much.'

'Why don't you just tell us everything?' Eirion suggested.

Kirsty rolled her spiky head back into the hay. 'Who is this guy thinks he's Geoffrey Paxman?'

'Just a friend,' Jane explained.

'Thanks, Jane,' Eirion said.

'Well, all right, a really good friend,' Jane conceded.

Kirsty grinned. 'Then why'n't you both just go and have a roll behind that hedge and leave me alone, eh?'

'Please, Kirsty.' Jane leaned over her. 'This is really important.'

Kirsty sat up. 'All right. Siddown. Got any blow? Naw, forget it. Only kidding. Wouldn't do at the vicarage, would it? Listen, I'll go so far and no further, so don't go asking me more stuff when I say no. And you keep me out of this, right? Else I'll come after you with the four-ten.'

'OK.' Jane sat down in the mown grass. Kirsty with a shotgun a that was entirely believable. 'We never even spoke to you.'

'This thing, it got out of hand, right? I went so far with it then I was out. Finished. I even tried to bust it all up, but that didn't work. So that was it, I was outer there. Plus, I mean, in school you need diversions, right? You gotter have things to get you through it. Though I don't need that now, do I? I look like I got time to mess with the mind of some stupid little cow?'

'No,' Jane said.

'All right, well, it's simple enough. Layla knew some things about Shelbone, look a about her parents, her real parents.'

'How did she-?' Eirion began, but Jane put a warning hand on his knee and he shut up.

'Like, for instance, that her dad knifed her ma to death in this church,' Kirsty said.

Jane clutched at the hay.

'Both of them bloody junkies. Both parents junkies and her dad's a murderer a and Shelbone's this holier-than-thou, pain-in-the-arse, stuck-up little cow who'd grass you up to the teachers soon as-Unbelievable, ennit?'

'Where did this happen?' Eirion asked.

'Somewhere up the Midlands? Not round yere.'

'In a church?' Jane felt numb.

'Now Layla, she had a very good reason to bring down that family. On account it was Shelbone's ol' man, her adopted ol' man that messed it up when Layla done that gypsy thing at the Christmas Fair.'

'I wasn't there. I was sick.'

'Well, I'll tell you, Jane, that was real scary, that stuff she was coming out with. When she gets in that gypsy gear, it's like she's another person. Wouldn't have my fortune told by her, no way. But that's beside the point. The point is ol' man Shelbone protests that it's unChristian and he gets it stopped. So in Layla's view they all got it coming to them now, big-time. Gypsies don't forget, right? And she done me a few favours, mostly money, you know? So I couldn't say no.'

'To helping her stage the ouija?'

'But, after a while, I could tell this was fucking the kid up, serious.'

Merrily gazed over the glass waterfall that was Allan Henry's home. She thought about getting out, going for a meditative walk around, with a cigarette. Perhaps there was something obvious she was missing.

'Where's her mother stand in all this?' she asked suddenly.

'Sandra Henry,' Sophie said. 'Sandra Riddock?'

'You know her?'

'Not personally, but she worked for an estate agency where my sister was manager for a while. It was how she met Henry. They were the agents for one of his first shoddy housing estates a twelve, fifteen years ago? She was quite a beauty, apparently. I remember my sister saying that no one knew she even had a child, then.'

'The father was a gypsy, Jane says.'

'I wouldn't know. But you're right a I do wonder if Sandra Henry knows what her daughter's been up to.'

'I wonder if she's in. I wonder if she's down there now a on her own. I wonder if Layla's away, supposedly staying with friends or something equally suspicious.'

Sophie stiffened. 'On what basis would we be calling on her?'

'We? Well, me, I'd have to play it straight. I'm a minister of the Church. I've just found out my daughter's been involved in experiments to contact the dead, along with Mrs Henry's daughter and a girl who attempted suicide. As a priest I'm naturally very worried about that. What's she going to do, laugh it off, turn me away?'

'You'd be using Jane.'

'I'm not using Jane. Jane didn't even tell me about it. Dennis did.'

'All right.' Sophie started the car. 'Let's try and find the entrance to the drive. I'm told it isn't obvious. I won't say "On your head be it." It's both our heads.'

'You're a mate, Soph.'

'Oh, shut up.' Sophie pulled into the lane, drove very slowly down the hill. It was very quiet; there were no other houses or farms in the vicinity. No cows or sheep grazed the hill. As far as Merrily could recall, no other vehicle had passed them since they'd stopped.

'Likes his privacy.'

'Evidently.' Sophie stopped opposite a tarmacked opening on the right. 'You think this is it?'

'Try it.'

Sophie drove into the entrance a the deep shade of big forest trees immediately closing over the car. After about fifty yards they came to the perimeter wall with its railings on top, a couple of brick gateposts, eight or so feet high, with metal gates, open. A black sign on the left-hand post decreed, in yellow lettering, NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY.

'Probably be security cameras, somewhere,' Sophie guessed. They passed a small bungalow with a van outside. 'Staff there, I expect. We supposed to check in, I wonder?'