The Fool Page 5

  ‘Well, I’d appreciate it if you could do a background check on the place that replaced the door and the locks, Sergeant.’

  ‘It was done by the firm in the High Street. The owner is a member of the congregation...’ Gatto picked up and rifled through the report on the table. ‘Here it is, a Mr Vincent Doherty. Did it at a discount and did a very good job. I know of the man, he’s solid as a rock. He has a specialist licence to make keys for security firms.’

  Gatto was making it clear that Mr Doherty was above suspicion in terms of handing out keys to others for work he’d done.

  ‘I’m sure Mr Doherty is an honest, upright citizen, Sergeant Gatto. But I’d like to know if he has a child, or a grandchild, in the choir or as part of the youth group, or if one of his workers does. Perhaps someone associated with Mr Doherty is an altar server? Does he have a wife who helps clean the church or arrange flowers for the Sanctuary?’

  Gatto relayed Maryam’s request to the station before he went off home to try and get some sleep. Maryam wondered on the state of his marriage: police officers gave so much to their communities, and their jobs. There often wasn’t much left for family.

  The silence in the kitchen was not comfortable and barely sufferable. Maryam had no desire to deal with Fred and he, in turn, had no desire to deal with her.

  ‘You’ll be going on in now?’ His tone of voice alerted Andy that something was wrong. He responded in a very British way and got up and put the kettle on for tea.

  ‘Yes.’ Maryam stood up.

  ‘I can’t come. I can’t force myself to take part in this...’

  ‘Chicanery...?’

  ‘Ritual.’

  Maryam sighed and spoke it out for the benefit of Andrew Scott.

  ‘Bishop Atkins is not a supporter of the Congregation or its methods, Andy. He finds this quite painful. Would you like to accompany me, or am I going in on my own?’

  ‘Are you allowed to do this on your own, Marie?’ She was mildly shocked that he’d let the sarcasm through in his voice. This really was hurting him. Of course, it would. He was a dedicated priest and Wyn Jones a rather wonderful young man.

  ‘Yes, I am, Frederick, I am indeed. As you know, or you would have assigned someone to do it with me.’

  At her jab back, old wounds opened between them. Maryam felt so very drained and so very tired of it all. Why London, why him?

  ‘Do you think I should go with Miss Michael, Bishop, witness her work?’ Andy somehow managed to make his attempt to placate sound aggressive. She put her head down in her hands.

  The pretence was what was draining her, the pretence that this had not been discussed between them before she arrived. That it was somehow normal protocol for the Bishop of the Curia to be following her around in someone else’s parish. That no one from Southwark itself had been near her, that her contact with the London hierarchy had been restricted to Fred and Andy.

  The pretence that Fred hadn’t informed Andy precisely of what was going on and they had decided between them who was going to do what.

  She checked herself, then. An inner voice, a truer voice, reminding her that she had no way of knowing any of that, and she needed to remain open, flexible and trusting, at all points. The important thing here was the desecrated Church over there, the young man who had been killed, and the future of Wyn Jones. It was Wyn Jones who hung here, in the balance: his future almost gone. His life almost completely shattered and his faith on trial. She pulled her own emotions into check.

  ‘Fred, I know you are not comfortable with the Arcane. I know you think it is obsolete. I know you feel we should have been abandoned at Vatican II. However... it was not. The Holy Church still has room for this type of... endeavour.’

  Fred nodded. He took the route she had offered, the one of agreeing to disagree and just get on with it.

  ‘I have discussed my... misgivings with Andrew here. But I assure you, he is free to make up his own mind. I brought no one else in, as we simply don’t have any one gifted enough. The only person I could have recommended to you is the one being accused.’

  He got up and left. The atmosphere in the room did not improve.

  ‘You have to forgive us both, Father Scott. Old wounds, old battles.’

  Scott stoically poured out tea that no one would drink.

  It was just past two a.m. when she and Andy walked across through the graveyard and entered the Church by the main doors. It was odd that this was the longest way from the parish house to the Church, but the one that everyone took. The stone wall that separated the two did push you down midway between the two, but there was a diagonal path up to the Sacristy end, that no one ever used. She’d watched and noted.

  The drizzle was refreshing and she’d dressed for cold, so the wind didn’t bother her. Andy carried her work case as it was important that she unlock the door and open up.

  At the transept, in front of the sanctuary containing the altar, she laid out her work tools. The sight of the dried blood without the police tape made it even more macabre. Andy was so nervous she was tempted to shout ‘Boo!’ in his ear, but she refrained.

  ‘First things first.’ She laid out a dozen or so incense cones. As she lit them, she asked Andy to distribute them about the nave. Smoke curled up and flowed around them.

  ‘Is there any special order to putting them somewhere?’

  ‘No, I just want all areas of the Church to be covered by them.’ She did the altar, the apse, and the side altars, and set Andy to put a couple up in the choir.

  She took her camera out and photographed the smoke as it rose and curled from the cones.

  ‘We’re documenting the air flow.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So we know where the air flow is.’ She smiled. ‘Not everything is more than it seems.’

  He was relaxing, good.

  The smoke did exactly what she thought it would. She talked it through with him.

  ‘The air from windows and doors create a natural air flow. With the main doors at the back and a good tight seal on the stained glass windows, you’d expect the smoke to slowly drift off to the main doors. The choir smoke should go up and then spiral down into the nave and add to the flow to the back doors. At the altar, the smoke will rise and swirl in line with how good the window seals are. It should collect at the dome. At the transept, depending how the doors face the wind and how good the seals and hinges are, it should part; some will go out that way, some will add to the smoke collecting in the ceiling.’

  She photographed the eddies and flows and, in the main, the smoke did exactly as she predicted.

  ‘Wow.’ Andy sounded impressed.

  ‘No, not wow: science.’ Her smile was genuine.

  When they’d documented the entire Church, they moved the cones to the areas where the police tape had been, in tight rows. Thick streams of smoke did exactly as the thinner ones had done earlier. She photographed them, paying close attention to the confessional box that had been taped off. There was nothing unusual about the air flow. When six were placed on the bloodied altar, the smoke billowed up and split, half rolling up to the dome that was somewhat behind the altar and the rest flowing up to the nave roof. It then drifted slowly to the gospel side, towards the side door there.

  Asking Andy to open all the outer doors, she collected all the cones and dampened them. Then they waited for the Church to clear. It took a good half hour and the temperature dropped sharply. They watched the doors that had been opened and managed to get the Church sealed back down again before any of the promised patrols noticed anything.

  ‘We’ve established the normal air flow for the building, now we clean and clear.’

  Maryam took a long thin blade out from the partitioned lining of her case. About nine inches long, double sided.

  ‘It’s steel, and will suffice as a sword, or a dagger, depending on the ritual.’

  She walked over to the altar and started to draw shapes in the air using the blade, also touching her head, ch
est, heart, and mouth. She started facing East and the transept doorway. Andrew heard her call out to the angel Rafael in Latin. She turned South and spoke out Michael, then West and Gabriel. She turned North, facing the apse and the tabernacle, and spoke the name Uriel. The hairs on the back of Andy’s neck stood up and he turned away. He came to understand Fred’s resistance in a visceral, emotional way. It was one thing to know, intellectually, that the Arcane did things that you wouldn’t do in normal service. That you knew there were exorcism rites in the Church and priests trained to deliver them. It was quite another thing to actually witness a woman on the altar, speaking Latin, drawing pentagrams in the air with a sword, speaking the name of an arch-angel never mentioned in the bible; not part of your faith, your canon. To witness her doing this with an altar stained with blood, someone’s life blood. He felt sick and ran to the back doors.

  He made it to the toilet tucked in the back of the vestibule and threw up. His body shook as he washed his face and hands, rinsed out his mouth. What had been an intellectual understanding that someone had tried to commit sacrilege in a Church was now a fundamental emotional connection for him. He was covered in cold sweat when he returned to Maryam and her work upon the altar, wondering if he had the strength for it.

  She was finishing off the nunc dimittis and he searched his memory for why she might be dismissing a servant of the Lord, encouraging them to pass over.

  ‘Quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum... Lumen ad revelationem gentium, et gloriam plebis tuae Israel...’

  As she spoke she was sprinkling water, holy water, all over the altar and on any area of dried blood on the stone flags of the floor.

  He sat down on the front pew shaking, his head in his hands. Oh, he was the wrong person for this. In his heart of hearts, he’d been dismissive of the Bishop’s objections and feelings. Not now. Now he was impressed at Atkins’s strength, how he’d accepted the command of his Church despite his personal feelings. Humility: it was a never ending lesson.

  Something odd occurred as the prayer came to an end. He felt a breeze across his face, caught the scent of... roses. Neither rose oil nor rose incense, or even chemical rose scented air freshener; it was the fragrance of real flowers. The delicate scent of tea roses. He raised his head. By the altar, Maryam Michael was standing with her arms outstretched and palms uplifted. Despite the blood, the death, the finger print powder covering everything... there was a sense of deep peace, of acceptance, communion and freedom, emanating from the altar. His mind could not comprehend it but his soul, the core of him that prayed and reached for God, responded. Andrew Scott got down on his knees, blessed himself with the sign of the Holy Cross and prayed for the soul that had just departed: wishing with all the strength of his own soul, that the departed one would find peace, acceptance, forgiveness, and divine love. That it would move into a state of Grace.

  Maryam did not bother the young priest with words or explanations. She accepted his profound need to feel the journey he was upon and not to mar those feelings with words, intellect and questions. She cleared her equipment back into her pack and silently jotted down notes for her report.

  Lesser mark of the pentagram completed: working area protected. Nunc dimittis finished. Distinct sense of a soul both locked into place and then released. Scent of tea roses. She paused, wondering, thinking; filtering. Mother of All Sorrows? Rome would puzzle upon her report and decide on action, if any. She suspected this parish might be receiving more funding, and more priests, to keep its flame alive. What a pity that Wyn Jones would be moved on.

  She opened out her inner case and brought out a crucible and a mortar and pestle. She selected frankincense and ground alfalfa grasses, crushed and blended them together. She then added a single dried rose petal. The mixture was tipped into the crucible and the lid put on. She readied her camera to one side and moved the crucible onto the altar, in the centre, which was free from blood stain as the sheets of the Qur’an had kept it clear. She lit the mixture and put the lid back on. When the smoke was beginning to flow out from under the edges she used crucible tongs and lifted the lid clean off. A cloud of smoke bellowed up. She picked her camera up.

  Andrew watched as the smoke rolled up... and stopped. How it condensed into itself and hung in the air above the altar. How it rolled into itself in a delicate swirling ball, until the heat from below died and it dissipated. How it drifted down, back towards the altar, gently flowed over it and disappeared on the stone flags of the floor. He was too astonished to pray.

  Altar tested positive for supernatural interference.

  She tested several locations. Both altar and tabernacle tested positive. The confessional and the choir did not. The strongest reading was from the Sacristy, as she’d expected.

  It was well past dawn by the time she’d finished and cleared up. Andy had stayed and watched. They walked back over in the companionable silence that had slowly been restored to them through the night’s endeavours. Whilst he made them both some breakfast, Maryam typed up an initial report and emailed it through to Rome. She requested permission to continue her investigation by interviewing Wyn Jones, outlining some of her concerns and in particular, her suspicion about his uncommon silence with the police.

  The day had a lot of chaos in it and they were both drained. Andrew took the couch in the parlour and Maryam got two hours sleep lying on the bed in her room. First, the doorbell started ringing, and then the phone never stopped. The house began to fill up. The police leaving the scene had allowed the women of the parish in to take charge of the cleaning and cooking, and setting everything to rights. Two new priests arrived, settled in upstairs and then began to prepare rotas for an all night prayer vigil in the Church. The cleaning company finished the crime scene clear up and a veritable mob descended on the church to clean and set up for the ceremony. Maryam watched a local woman arrange a spray of pink tea roses with white baby’s breath on the side altar dedicated to Mary. On the other side, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, she set in place a vase of crimson carnations. She confirmed that those were the flowers that were always placed there. Sometimes the tea roses were white, sometimes yellow: they were always tea roses.

  ‘Father Edwards, he says the Lady likes tea roses and he often smells them here. So we always try and make sure there are some fresh ones in. The florist donates them when she can. Tell me, do you know if the Fathers are well?’

  When the email arrived from Rome granting her full permission to proceed with an occult inquiry, she checked with Atkins where Wyn Jones was. As she’d thought, he was back at the police station. Fred assured her that they’d send someone to pick her up and bring her over to Westminster as soon as Wyn returned. Would she like to move into a room there now? She almost said yes, then thought better of it and said she’d stay here but would it be all right if she came over for dinner that evening? She and Wyn could eat and talk then. Fred agreed and Maryam took her weary body back upstairs and slept through the chaos of the various women of the parish finally having free rein to clear out decades of Father Edwards’s smoking. They were stripping the covers off the furniture as she went past the parlour. The sight both made her smile and her heart ache: what if the old priest could never bear to return?

  The four of them ate together, Fred, Maryam, Andy and Wyn Jones. The Westminster housekeepers had laid out a set of cold cuts with salads, there was warm soup in an electric tureen; breads and cheeses. Wyn had arrived back from the police station very late and was drained, as were they all. Fred had opened an excellent bottle of wine, then another, and then had brought in some port. Wyn had eaten little and drunk less. The case against him was building momentum. Everyone in the room understood that if he was called back to the police station again in the morning, he would be unlikely to return. As soon as he was formally charged, his life, his ministry, his priesthood, was gone. The press would descend and devour him whole. Fred, who had been informed of Maryam’s assessment by his own Cardinal, was on edge. He tried everything
he could to deflect Maryam, defer her interviewing Wyn. Maryam put up with this until the eating was over and she felt she had enough of a measure of Wyn to proceed on her own, and quietly dismissed both Fred and Andy. This she would need to do on her own.

  Wyn Jones watched the tiny woman with the grey eyes and silver hair send Bishop Atkins out of the room with a nod of her head. His heart let loose a little of the pain it was carrying. He was not sure who he’d been expecting, but he had trusted in His Lord to send him someone to help. He had not expected a fiery angel or a burning bush, but he’d been praying for some sign that he was going to get out of the hole he was now in. Looking at the calm and demure face of the woman in front of him, he prayed that good things really did come in small packages.

  Maryam went straight into it, knowing that with her, unlike with the police, Wyn had no choice but to answer when he could. It was when he could not answer she was interested in, but bided her time.

  ‘Start from the beginning, Wyn, from when these events started. What you now realise was the beginning.’ After days of being pummelled by words, Wyn started stiffly, reciting by rote. However as she left him to it, only asking him the occasional gentle question, above all showing him her respect for him and his work, he relaxed into discussing it openly. The story was not new to her, but it was new to the man sitting in front of her and his pain, his shame and anger, was displayed clearly as he took her through the events that had led up to the murder.

  ‘Jason Briggs was an enforcer for a gang, the Rye Runners; enforcer, part-time leader. Depended on who was in prison at the time. He had no contact with the Church at first, but his younger brother, Brad, was in the youth group for a while. Their aunt, whom Brad lives with, isn’t home much and the boy fends for himself with Jason’s help. Brad came in one evening with another boy and stayed. He was good at singing, joined the choir, and wanted to join the football club as soon as we got it running. After a few weeks he started coming to services.’