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makes contact,
slamming
into the windpipe. Not exactly what you’d call a butcher’s strike, but the sheer impact of it would leave the poor bastard reeling, spouting blood and tissue everywhere. A great dollop… as you see.’
    Billy gestured at the separate puddle. Bliss felt queasy.
    ‘Poor old Mansel tottering away, couple of metres and then…’ He began to back off unsteadily. ‘
Bang
, on the skull, and Mansel comes down like a block of flats.’
    Bliss said, ‘And the killer…?’
    ‘Just watches.’
    ‘Watches?’
    ‘Well, obviously, I don’t know that, but… I’ll be able to give you a full list of injuries and possibly confirm the sequence tomorrow, but if you want to take a closer look…’
    ‘For now, I’ll take your word. So the killer knew he’d killed. There was serious intent…’
    ‘Hardly trying to fend the poor chap off.’
    ‘And then slinks away. With his big knife.’ Bliss turned to Terry Stagg, the wind in his face like barbed wire. ‘First light, we go over the whole frigging farm, inch by inch. I also think we’re gonna have to drag Howe away from her dinner party, or wherever. Gorra mad bastard here.’
    ‘Or someone pumped up with drugs.’ Billy’s teeth shining with carnivorous glee. ‘Whoever he is, Francis,
I
wouldn’t like to face him in an alley.’
    Terry Stagg said, ‘Mr Sollers Bull… you need to know…’
    ‘Where is he?’
    ‘I suggested he went home. You go down to the fork in the drive, turn right—’
    ‘Where’ve I heard that name before, Terence? Sollers Bull…’
    ‘TV?’ Stagg said. ‘Pictures in the papers? I’ve been trying to tell you.’
    Bliss turned. Billy Grace was grinning.
    ‘Oh shit,’ Bliss said. ‘He’s got
form
.’
    ‘That might be how you see it, Francis,’ Billy said. ‘But to quite a few people hereabouts, he’s a bloody hero.’

6
Exhaust
     
    E VEN NOW, EVEN in a room full of priests, it was hard to relive. Years later, it would still start burning in her memory like acid. If it caught her in the night, she’d have to get out of bed and pray. Recite St Patrick’s Breastplate, the way she had the night Denzil Joy died.
    ‘Let me set the scene for you,’ Huw Owen said to the students. ‘When Merrily were appointed as deliverance consultant, the man she replaced was the last Diocesan Exorcist. His name were Canon Dobbs and he couldn’t be doing wi’ namby-pamby terminology like
deliverance
.’
    He paused, looking down to the darkest part of the chapel again.
    ‘An austere owd bugger, Dobbs. Former academic.
Not
a supporter of the ordination of women. Merrily’s a university dropout who received her calling in the last days of a wonky marriage – he got killed in a car crash. Was there an element of guilt after that? I wouldn’t like to spec—’
    ‘Huw—’
    ‘Always an element of summat, in’t there? We’re all on the threshold of imbalance. As this job keeps reminding us.’
    She saw his left hand quiver. And again he looked out towards the shadows in the left-hand corner, where Merrily could see a man now, leaning back, an arm thrown across the back of the empty chair next to his.
    ‘Anyroad, Canon Dobbs felt it were his duty to expose theupstart bint to the kind of evil the very existence of which would be denied by the progressive bishop who’d appointed her. And – happen – by some of you. Lass?’
    Huw extended an arm. Merrily stood up.
    ‘Erm… I don’t know whether anybody here’s ever been a nurse. Or knows one. But I’ve found it’s always useful to listen to nurses.’
    A rush of wind hit the chapel and there was a distant splintering, all heads turning except for Huw’s.
    ‘Not least because they’ve seen most things relating to death. This, erm, this is about a death. It was my first deliverance job and probably should’ve been Canon Dobbs’s last before he retired, but he was… unavailable.’
    Merrily was already uncomfortable. All she had to do was lift the cellar