The Fool Page 8

  ‘Fire and brimstone trouble?’ Again, she was sure that Gatto had been raised Catholic.

  ‘Yes, Faith of Our Fathers trouble.’

  ‘Huh?’ It was Iqbal’s turn to look confused.

  ‘Dungeon, Fire and Sword,’ replied Gatto. ‘What about the other bit?’ He indicated the Arabic script on the photo.

  Shahrukh answered that. ‘It’s the prophet speaking, replying to a question about who are the people likely to be bothered by demons.’

  ‘And who’s that then?’ Gatto asked him.

  ‘Sinners. Those who lie and cheat. The point being that if you are pure of heart, you won’t be bothered by them.’

  ‘So, let me get this right. We have graffiti in a church about to become a mosque, from five, six years ago, saying that the badly behaved will be damned and that demons will come after sinners?’

  ‘A somewhat crude summing up, but yes.’ Maryam was aware that one of her faults was that she thought and spoke as an academic.

  ‘And now we have a dead body in a church that has been defiled and is laying out on a Muslim holy book, and a statement that a demon killed him with the implication being that the said demon is a Catholic priest?’

  ‘Well, yes, you could look at it that way I suppose.’

  ‘Blimey. Well, I think the priest is orf the ‘ook then, don’t you?’ That Gatto’s childhood accent had slipped through as he spoke said much to both Shahrukh and Maryam.

  Barham had been sceptical about the connections but let Gatto and Iqbal follow the line of investigation: they had to find a connection between Briggs and Embleton. Maryam, exhausted as she was, asked for a car to take her to the Cathedral, where she informed Bishop Atkins of all they’d uncovered and personally told Wyn Jones he was unlikely to be charged. Jones had been stunned into pale silence. Fred had made sure she’d eaten before sending her back to Peckham via Andy Scott. They’d both tried to persuade her to stay at Westminster for the night, but she wanted to wake up in a room she knew and compose her thoughts for her report on her own.

  The parish house was still up and filled with people coming and going for the prayer vigil in the Church, which was on its second night. Maryam excused herself and went straight to bed, falling asleep within moments.

  Her dreams were not happy. She woke after only three hours and drew upon her Tarot cards. The reversed Chariot, card seven, was working alongside the reversed Ace of Swords. The person involved was working against authority, taking no heed of the situation or others’ understandings or feelings. The force working through that person was out to destroy Divine authority. The Fool was once more the card being worked against. Wyn Jones was the battleground. Why?

  She spent an hour writing her report for Rome and included Geoffrey Embleton’s details: date of birth and last known address. At the police station, she hadn’t asked permission to do so, she’d just not spoken. They, in turn, had not forbidden her from discussing him with others. The sins of omission: it oiled the wheels of justice most days; when it wasn’t creating injustice.

  She felt dirty and sweaty. It was past dawn but only just. She prayed for an hour, as she could pray when dirty with no problem. Then she ran a hot bath, ignoring the banging in the pipes and soaked in it for half an hour, before rising and then meditating for another hour. Meditation needed clean. Her sense of balance restored, she descended into the kitchen.

  The women of the parish had been busy; the kitchen gleamed. So had Father Jacob, who handed her a plate of poached eggs on toast and a quite acceptable cup of coffee. They talked about West Africa, his home town, and how he was coping with the cold in Britain whilst she relished the cleaner air. The stench of stale smoke was gone and had been replaced by the lemon oil of detergents: it was much more palatable. Everywhere, everything looked cleaner: the paint in the hallway was three shades lighter.

  She walked over to the Church afterwards and sat at the back for a couple of hours as parishioners in the prayer vigil came and went. Father Jacob was alternating with Father Hector to make sure a priest was present at all times and many other clergy were coming and going. The entire London community of priests was trying to make sure they attended the Church and prayed there at least once during this phase of restoration.

  She sat, thinking, feeling the sense of space and light re-enter the Church, and then drifted off, drifted into thinking of nothing very much.

  It wasn’t a noise. It wasn’t a sound. It wasn’t a feeling. What was it?

  Something had flared her into life, brought her senses up full. The Church around her had become huge, cavernous. The light from the stained glass windows was flowing in but failing, stopping, not managing to reach the air above her, not managing to illuminate the central space. The people in the front pews were distant, tiny specks on her consciousness. She could feel someone praying on her left, behind her. She turned. A woman, old and round and puffing, a multi-coloured head scarf on her hair, a worn rosary in her hands, was praying in the depths of the left aisle. Her coal black spiral tresses were tinged with grey. She exuded life, loving, and images of joyous grandchildren roaring with laughter. Maryam could smell jerk chicken, grits, all manner of mouth-watering things. She turned back to the altar. The front pews were still far away, floating somewhere else. The right hand aisle also held someone praying, kneeling at the altar of the Lady. His hands were hidden from her as he was leaning forward on the communion rail. It looked as if he too held a rosary. She leaned forward, trying to see clearly. His head was bowed; she could see nothing but the pale back of his neck. He was thin, wiry looking and wore a waxed jacket, the type that kept out the cutting wind and rain. As she looked, she could smell wax; incense and wax. Not candle wax, sealing wax. As soon as the thought was formed, the scent strengthened, developed. The powerful smell of old books, lost books, musty books, slammed into her. She sat back, breaking the moment. The light that had been held above her cracked and clattered to the ground. The altar was back where it should be. No one else seemed to have noticed the noise. She stood up, sliding sideways out of the central seating and headed up the side aisle for the Virgin’s altar. As she moved, the smell became stronger, more corrupt. Mould and decay caught at her throat, she tried not to cough. The man was still kneeling, head bowed. He was less than two feet from the tea roses she’d seen arranged the day before, yet all she could smell was decay and deception. The stench became so strong she gagged, had to cough or suffocate. The man jerked back, looking at her approaching him. As he stood up from his knees, she saw his face clearly, saw his eyes. Saw the darkness moving in them; saw the lack of humanity, of love. Could see the depths of despair caused by a complete absence of grace. She faltered, tripped and fell as the darkness pushed into her.

  By the time she had been helped to her feet by the parishioners and a startled Father Jacob, her head had cleared. The delicate scent of the tea roses was mingled with incense, burning candles, aftershave and perfume. She apologised for tripping and disturbing everyone’s prayer. Father Jacob escorted her to the parish house, where he was so concerned that he phoned Bishop Atkins. Maryam was quite content with this; she was using all her energies in restoring her own sense of belonging to herself and herself alone. It wouldn’t do to alarm Father Jacob further and she happily accepted some tea from him and let him sit with her and prattle away whilst they waited out the good Bishop’s arrival.

  When he did arrive a scant half an hour later, which led Maryam to wonder if Father Scott had gained tickets for speeding on their way, Wyn Jones arrived with them. She was a little shocked by this, given the police request, but it was clear he’d been alarmed to hear of her fall and had wanted to see she was fine for himself. She accepted this, but asked them to send a message to Scotland Yard advising them that he had returned to the parish. Andy Scott phoned Iqbal’s mobile phone number whilst Maryam discovered something wonderful about Wyn Jones: he could make excellent coffee. He was clearly a man taking his own territory back as he marshalled together the water, gr
ound beans, and a cafetiere that she hadn’t known the kitchen held. Although he almost swore in frustration when it took him five minutes to find which cupboard it was in.

  ‘The parishioners have been busy.’

  ‘Mrs Olagbegi has been rather frustrated by Pete’s refusal to let her ‘take over’, as he put it.’

  ‘When did you lose your housekeeper?’

  ‘Oh, many years ago. The old one died and parish funds could not afford a new one.’

  ‘Was Father Edwards here then?’

  ‘He’s been here thirty-five years.’ He stopped and looked at her. ‘Mrs Fisher, the housekeeper, had been here for twenty years when she passed. I think he still misses her.’

  Fred returned from the Church, where he’d popped in his head as he’d walked Father Jacob back up. With Andy off the phone, they took their coffee through to the parlour and firmly closed the door. Andy drew a chair up against it as a precaution against a parishioner walking in at the wrong moment.

  Maryam described what had occurred, although she did so as a light sketch, not in detail. Some things you didn’t tell priests. Or anyone, actually. She did describe the scent of the old books even as she omitted the detail about the jerk chicken, and she described the man in full.

  ‘That is Keith Pargiter.’

  They all stared blankly at Father Jones.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Well, yes, he’s a stalwart of the parish. He’s an altar server and does some ground work in the graveyard. He runs an antiquarian book shop on Rye Road, although it does most of its business online, I believe. He joined the parish about three years ago I think, when he bought the shop. You’d have to ask Pete when exactly.’

  ‘And he’s a regular parishioner?’ Andy spoke first.

  ‘Oh yes, one of the faithful, as I said, can always be trusted to help out if we need it. He’s also been very good at donating bibles and religious texts to us if they are of no commercial value. We have a lot of things that Keith has passed on.’

  ‘Does he have keys to the Church?’ Maryam asked.

  ‘Well, not as such, no, but he’s on the cleaning rota with the others, why?’

  ‘I’m not sure how to tell you this, Father Jones, but the man I saw was Geoffrey Embleton.’

  Gatto and Iqbal turned up about twenty minutes later. They asked Wyn if it would be all right if he went for a walk or went up to his room... or really, wasn’t he sure he wouldn’t be happier at the Cathedral?’

  Father Jones had capitulated with a sigh and declared he was going to go and clear his head and walk back over to the other side of the river. He’d been cooped up for days between the police station and the cloister, and so he was off to get some fresh air.

  ‘Well, some London rain, I suppose,’ he said as he opened the door to discover the heavens had opened once more.

  He took his overcoat and a brolly from the hallway and departed. Iqbal followed him out to make sure he went past the Church, then returned to the parlour.

  Once more they laid out the files and started to go through them meticulously. Gatto had brought with him photographs from Embleton’s file and Maryam confirmed that was the man who had been praying in the Church before. She didn’t mention anything other than noticing him ‘because of a smell of old books’.

  ‘And Father Jones knew him as Keith Pargiter?’

  ‘Yes. He runs a book shop, old books.’

  ‘Well, if it is him, it’ll be interesting to see if he has an old Qur’an in stock. Or rather, missing.’

  ‘Didn’t Inspector Barham ask for the antiquarian book shops to be looked into, to see where the copy of the Qur’an could have come from?’ Iqbal asked Gatto.

  ‘Yes, she did, son. Keep asking questions like that and you’ll do okay.’ Iqbal almost blushed but held it off by staring hard at some paperwork.’

  ‘And you got a strange feeling off him, did you, Miss Michael?’

  ‘I never said that, Sergeant Gatto, did I?’

  ‘No, you didn’t, what was I thinking?’ His wry tone fooled no one. Maryam sipped some coffee and looked placid and neutral. Gatto excused himself and went outside to phone headquarters in private to see if the book shop had already been visited. Iqbal stayed and took them through what they’d uncovered in their own inquiries.

  ‘Shortly after Embleton was issued the ASBO for the mosque conversion, he was admitted to hospital. He was suffering from malnutrition and dehydration. There were marks on his body, self inflicted.’

  ‘What sort of marks?’

  ‘He’d whipped himself with something that had metal on it. One of the wounds on his back had become infected and it was the blood poisoning that caused him to collapse in Marks & Spencer’s. After treatment, he was voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric unit. No idea of the diagnosis or treatment, still looking.’

  Maryam sighed. ‘It is rather unfortunate that Mr Pargiter appears to have been born in the wrong millennium.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Never mind, Detective, carry on.’

  ‘He came back into police view about two years later, when he was the subject of a complaint from a synagogue in Golders Green. He had been trying to convert to Judaism and things were not going well. I’m not sure what that means. He’d been asked to leave the synagogue in question and not return.’

  ‘And he kept coming back?’

  ‘Yes, Bishop, he did. I spoke to the local officer who worked on this case. It was only when Mr Embleton was threatened with an ASBO that he backed off.’

  ‘Did they know of the prior one?’

  ‘Yes, they did. They’d been looking into his background and it popped up in the system. PC Shirley Deal, who phoned me back, remembers him as it was such an odd case. Although still registered at his Peckham address, he was staying with friends in Golders Green. Intellectual sorts with a huge house; always had lots of people staying. She went round there and spoke to him, pointed out his previous ASBO and that they’d apply for another one for the synagogue if he kept pushing it. From her account, he left the area there and then.’

  ‘When was this?’

  Iqbal looked at his notes. ‘About three years ago.’

  ‘Well,’ said Maryam, in a tone that made Gatto feel as if he was talking to his Chief Inspector. ‘I think we need to do two things. Firstly, establish that Keith Pargiter and Geoffrey Embleton are the same person, and then prove a connection between him and Jason Briggs.’

  She’d been expecting it to be a slow and tedious affair. Police work was, despite the film and television versions of everything happening within two days. However, circumstances moved quickly once her report had been received in Rome. It only took twenty-four hours for Rome to return the information that Keith Archibald Pargiter had been accepted into training for the priesthood in 1964, when he was twenty years old. He had been carefully nurtured by his family, who had presented him as a gifted scholar and dedicated postulant. It had helped that the family had the wealth to support his training in Rome itself. The report she received back, which included a scan of a faded passport photo of the young man, was scant. It outlined only that Keith had had immense difficulty in accepting the changes being deliberated in the Holy City by the Vatican II council. He left the seminary by mutual consent in 1967. Rome had no more record of him. The fact that his true name was Pargiter and not Embleton helped the police untangle everything.

  Keith Pargiter had been arrested and convicted of arson in 1970 and had spent three years in a secure psychiatric unit before being deemed ‘cured’ of the religious obsession that had resulted him in burning an Anglican Church to the ground. On release, he’d been sent to a private sanatorium in Switzerland by his family. He’d disappeared off the radar until turning up in Peckham three years prior, to inherit his maternal uncle’s book shop. However, his fingerprints were on file, and they matched the fingerprints of Geoffrey Embleton, which had been taken in the fuss that had resulted in the ASBO. The 1970 files were from Surrey police and
had never made it into a computer database.

  The matching of the fingerprints allowed Barham to seek a search warrant for Pargiter’s shop and his flat above. Pargiter himself had flown: no one had seen him since he encountered Maryam in the Church. The investigation into the shop accounts revealed an industrial storage unit where he kept the majority of his stock. Whilst the shop and the house had revealed nothing out of the ordinary, the storage unit was packed with all manner of occult and religious texts, including several copies of the Qur’an. It also contained crates of artefacts: chalices, altar cloths and a myriad of Catholic altar vessels. One small box had been locked and bolted into a larger crate and stored out of sequence with everything else. It contained two items, a communion chalice and a crucifix. Both bore the fingerprints of Jason Briggs. The feet of Christ on the base of the Crucifix also had his saliva and epithelia: he had kissed it at some point, no doubt when Keith had been tutoring him on Catholic tradition. Maryam could have returned home at that point, but she chose to stay on and see the parish settled back down. It was an odd time for all concerned. Wyn was allowed to return with no problem, and as he’d never been charged, there was no press coverage on him in connection with the murder. That was one reason Barham had been so meticulous on his being taken in and out of the police station on a daily basis. A dedication to preserving the reputation of those that passed though her official hands that Maryam appreciated. Not all officers of the law were so diligent.

  The accounts of Geoffrey Embleton revealed that he’d sent money to a private detective in Nigeria in the past six months and had received ‘documents’ in return. Whilst the Metropolitan police could do little, the Curia investigated and supplied proof that the confirmation certificates shown to Father Jones by Jason Briggs had been bought by the private detective, from a young man in the village that Jason’s father had come from. This freed Father Jones to reveal everything that had been told to him by Briggs under the Seal of the Confessional. Fred and Maryam had stayed with him and the Diocese lawyer, as he’d gone through everything that Briggs had told him. The endless confessions of how he was repeatedly raping young girls in the Church, how the vows of priesthood had trapped Wyn into listening.