Merrily would be glad to leave.

Yesterday, they’d been addressed by their second psychiatrist, on the problem of confusing demonic possession with forms of schizophrenia. They’d have to work closely with psychiatrists – part of the local support-mechanism they would each need to assemble.

Best to choose your shrink with care, Huw had said after the doctor had gone, because you’d almost certainly, at some time, need to consult him or her on a personal level.

And then, noticing Clive Wells failing to smother his scorn, he’d spent just over an hour relating case histories of ministers who had gone mad or become alcoholic or disappeared for long periods, or battered their wives or mutilated themselves. When a Deliverance priest in Middlesbrough was eventually taken into hospital, they’d found forty-seven crosses razored into his arms.

An extreme case, mind. Mostly the Deliverance ministry was consultative: local clergy with problems of a psychic nature on their patch would phone you for advice on how best to handle it. Only in severe or persistent cases were you obliged to go in personally. Also, genuine demonic possession was very rare. And although most of the work would involve hauntings, real ghosts – unquiet spirits or insomniacs – were also relatively infrequent. Ninety per cent were basic volatiles or imprints.

Like the monk.

Ah, yes… monks. What you needed to understand about these ubiquitous spectral clerics, Huw said, was that they were a very convenient shape. Robed and cowled and faceless, a monk lacked definition. In fact, anyone’s aura – the electromagnetic haze around a lifeform – might look vaguely like a monk’s cowl. So could an imprint , a residue. So that was why there were so many ghostly monks around, see?