Free Fabric of Sin by Phil Rickman

the whole superstition and a bunch of slightly distasteful movies?’
    ‘Such is the received wisdom, Merrily. What rather bothers me is that the church promises to be packed. I’ve had letters from allkinds of organizations wanting to be represented – from Templar re-enactment groups to more … shall we say more sinistersounding societies.’
    ‘Like what?’
    Teddy had said there seemed to be a number of occult-sounding groups whose rituals were supposed to be based on Templar practices. He said he didn’t know much about them. Merrily knew a little more, from Huw Owen’s reading list. Supposedly ancient formulae handed down through Renaissance magical orders and then developed by the fashionable fraternities of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mainly bollocks.
    ‘Lucky the anniversary is going to be a Saturday, then,’ Merrily said.
    ‘You think that will change anything? I don’t. It’s their first opportunity in a century to commemorate the suppression – and a century ago few, if any, of these theories were in the public domain.’
    ‘Why here? There must lots of Templar churches all over the country. In fact—’
    ‘Actually, no,’ Teddy said. ‘Nothing so perfectly preserved. The London temple, for instance, was wrecked in the Blitz. There’s nowhere more authentic. Or more isolated and yet … get-at-able.’
    He’d unlocked the tower, dark and starkly atmospheric with its funeral bier and a magnificent medieval oak chest hewn from a massive log.
    ‘Whose idea was it to have a memorial service?’
    ‘So many people wrote in, we couldn’t get out of it, Merrily. So I’m quite anxious that this business with the Master House should be dealt with before then. Do you think that will be possible?’
    ‘Before next weekend?’
    ‘Bad enough when the girl arrived. Wish I hadn’t been here.’
    Merrily had been forced to say that she’d do her best to get it wrapped. And if Huw was right that might be on the cards. She’d asked Teddy where the Master House came into the picture. One of the Templar farms, he’d said, that was all. They farmed sheep, as did the Hospitallers after them.
    As did the locals today. Not much had really changed in Garway,Merrily was thinking as the mobile chimed to indicate that DI Bliss had left the building.
    ‘Raining hard in the police car park, is it, Frannie?’
    ‘It’s not raining at all, and I’m not in the police car-park. I’m off the premises entirely, and if it was known I was calling you I’d probably have a tail.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    Merrily was still thinking about the Garway Green Man who, having small, stubby horns, might be expected also to have a tail.
    ‘All right, listen,’ Bliss said. ‘I may be touching upon something you already know about, but why would the gentlefolk that humble coppers like myself used to call the Funnies suddenly have become interested in you?’
    ‘The Funnies?’
    ‘I’m thinking specifically of a feller in an unmarked room at headquarters who very occasionally creeps around this division when it’s felt that national security might be at stake.’
    Merrily rubbed vainly at the condensation on the windscreen. Without the engine running, it kept re-forming under her palm.
    ‘You’re talking about the Special Branch?’
    ‘I hope you’re on your own using language like that.’
    ‘Frannie, are you actually saying the Special Branch are making inquiries about
me
?’
    ‘I’m saying nothing, Merrily.’
    She scrubbed furiously at the windscreen, starting to put it together, and it was … it was beyond ridiculous.
    ‘What are you doing, exactly?’ Bliss said.
    ‘Trying to see out of the bloody—’ She sank back in her seat. ‘I’m looking into something connected with the Duchy of Cornwall’s investments in Herefordshire. Would that explain anything?’
    A short silence, except for a car engine somewhere and a clanging that became duller. What sounded like Bliss moving away from something