Silence in the stone room. One of those moments when spiderwebs of cracks appeared in the walls of reality, and Merrily thought: Do I really want to be doing this? Should anyone be doing it?

Huw looked over the lamplit assembly of bemused vicars and rectors and priests-in-charge. God’s elite commando unit, Merrily thought, and wanted to give in to hysterical laughter, except one or two of them might then think she was possessed.

‘So, lads,’ Huw said, ‘which of you would like to practise his cleansing routine?’

Charlie Headland’s mouth tightened. Merrily guessed he was wondering if Huw had rigged this. And she even wondered that, too. Tests – little tests. Lies. Disinformation.

‘And should we bless and cleanse the entire premises? Or perhaps each other?’

Merrily thought, horrified: It’s getting completely out of hand. How quickly we all rush to the edge.

‘This is insane,’ Nick Cowan, the ex-social worker, said. ‘It’s nonsense. There was obviously some sort of electrical fluctuation. A power surge, that’s all.’

Huw beamed at him. ‘Good thought, Nicholas. You do get problems like that in the mountains. That’s a very good thought. There you are…’ He spread his hands. ‘Lesson for us all. Always consider the rational nuts-and-bolts explanation before you get carried away. Why don’t you go and check the fuse-box, Charles? In the cupboard over the front door. There’s a torch in there.’

When Charlie had gone, Merrily sat down. She felt tired and heavy. To break the uncomfortable silence, she said, ‘Was that a genuine case – the woman on the video?’

‘Ah,’ said Huw. In the wavery light, he looked much younger. Merrily could imagine him in some rock band in the sixties.

‘You said they went back to talk to her again.’

‘Well.’ He began to wrap the unravelled videotape in a coil around his hands until it was binding them together. ‘Our man in Northampton knocks on the door and gets no answer, but he can hear a radio playing loudly inside the house, and the door’s unlocked, so he goes in and calls out, like you do. And the radio just goes on playing, and our man’s beginning to get a funny feeling.’