Reverend Paul Coates has been flagged by the house-to-house enquiries as one of the few without an alibi for the night Danny was killed. Miller is wittering excitedly about their forthcoming dinner party, extolling the virtues of her domestic god of a husband. Hardy, still seething from the encounter with Steve Connolly, has tuned out.‘Know this new vicar well?’ he asks her. The ground between graves is uneven and he almost turns his ankle in one of the divots.‘No, he’s only been here a couple of years. We’re not big churchgoers. Midnight Mass… Easter, if we remember.’‘And so did Christianity fall.’‘What about you, then, sir? You religious?’‘Yes, I pray nightly that you’ll stop asking me questions.’Coates is waiting for them on the bench at the top of the graveyard, an iPad on his lap. Dog collar aside, he could be dressed for a game of pool in the pub. Hardy can see that Coates gets a kick out of being more modern than people expect him to be, and that he’s longing for them to comment on the iPad, so he makes a point of ignoring it.
