The Calling (26 page)

Monday 22 November, 8 a.m.

Hazel convened everyone in the conference room
at 8 a.m. Father Glendinning hadn't slept from the
look of him, and he shot a fearful glance at each
person as they entered the room. There were
Greene, Wingate, Spere and two other officers.
Spere had strongly voiced his displeasure at being
left out of this part of the investigation, but now he
sat silently, waiting. Jill Yoon was sitting behind
her projector and her laptop.

'Father,' she said. 'You can begin anytime.'

The priest wearily got to his feet and leaned forward
against the tabletop. 'First off, I'm here
against my will.'

'Noted,' said Hazel.

'And second, no person should be compelled to
engage in activities that run counter to their
deepest-held beliefs, which is exactly what—'

'Also noted,' said Hazel, an edge of anger creeping
into her voice. 'I want you to tell everyone here
what you told me last night at DC Wingate's place.'

Glendinning looked over at Wingate, as if the
mere existence of that man's apartment were
the cause of all his grief. 'I presume some of you are
familiar with the contents of the New Testament?'
He glanced around the room with barely concealed
disgust, and when it was apparent he was waiting
for some form of response, a couple of them grunted
their acknowledgement. 'Fine. Now, there's a long
history to the Bible, and some of that figures here,
in your investigation. So unlike the way you pay
attention in church, when you bother to come, you
should pay attention to this.'

'Father,' started Hazel, but he rolled over her.

'To begin, the scriptures the New Testament are
based on were originally in Aramaic, an early
Semitic language. It wasn't a Bible then, just a
collection of stories and laws and blessings that
were copied out from hand to hand. The first Bible
was in Greek, and it collected and organized these
writings. The Greek Bible was brought over into
the vulgate Latin by Jerome around 400 AD.
However, it has always been understood that there
was an oral component to the scriptures, and that
some fragments were subject to a prohibition. They
were never written down, nor were they supposed
to be. This spoken component consisted mainly of
blessings conferred only on the closest of Christ's
disciples. These were meant to travel from mouth-to-mouth,
as it were, in the keeping of the high
priests. Once uttered, the recipient of the blessing
became the keeper of it, and the speaker of the
blessing was to offer himself up as a sacrifice.
Naturally, the later Christians were eager to rid
themselves of these pagan rites, and none of the
Greek Bibles have any of these so-called
carmina
inconcessa
in them. Forbidden songs.' He looked
about the room to ensure they were following him.
Hazel nodded. 'In any case, they begin to turn up
in Latin commentaries around the year 800 AD,
and of course they are suppressed, but after that,
from time to time, they reappear. Never in the Old
English, or later translations. But some people are
aware of them, it would seem.'

'You are,' said Greene.

'In the seminary, the history of the Bible is
taught. There's a great deal of folderol concerning
the writing of scripture, a lot of which is very
colourful. But most of it is nonsense.'

'Most?' said Howard Spere.

The priest continued. 'The
carmina inconcessa
have
a special power over the imagination of those who
know anything about them. Sects have sprung up
over them, and the charismatics who founded these
sects claim to have access to some terrifying powers.'

'Which brings us to the Belladonna,' said Hazel.

'He started a church,' Greene said. 'We already
know that.'

'Well, this is its congregation,' said Glendinning.
'And it has only a single prayer in its Mass. One of
the
carmina
is known as the
Libera Eos
. When the
women went to complete the burial rites at Christ's
tomb, they found the tomb empty. And it is said
that their holy service, never to be completed, was
rewarded by the Holy Ghost with a consecration
against death. It's a prayer of resurrection, and in
every instance of resurrection investigated by the
Church since the time of Christ, it has been said
that this
Libera Eos
has been invoked. The speaker
dies instantly, but the blessed are reborn.'

Greene was scrubbing his mouth with his hand.
'Wow,' he said. 'So this ... series of sounds ... ?'

'Yes,' said Glendinning.

'He's
way
crazy, isn't he?' said Greene.

The priest rounded on him, his face red.
'Whether he is crazy or not is beside the point,
Raymond. He's a believer. This church of his is a
serious thing.'

'Which is worse than being crazy?'

'That's up to you people,' said Glendinning. 'All
I know is that he mustn't be allowed to finish it.'

'Because otherwise ...' said Greene, trying to
get the priest to say it himself. 'Because ... if he
does, then the world ends and little red men with
pointy sticks come and drag us down to the centre
of the earth?'

Glendinning was glaring at him. 'Because it's an
offence to God, that's why.'

'I thought this stuff was "nonsense",' said Howard
Spere. 'Are you telling us now that you believe?'

'There's nonsense and then there's dangerous
nonsense. No man should wield such a thing for his
own purposes.'

'Jill,' said Hazel. 'Do you want to play us what
you have?'

'I've just told you what you have,' said
Glendinning. 'It's not necessary to listen to it.'

'There's a division between church and state for
a reason, Father,' said Greene. 'I'd like to hear this
zombie prayer for one.'

Hazel shook her head at him. 'It's okay, Jill. Let's
hear it once.'

Yoon tapped a couple of keys and the projector
fired up. A dart of light hit the screen and the focus
resolved into the face that had so frightened
Glendinning. He turned away from it. 'Ready?' she
said.

'Go.'

The face breathed in. They heard the voice,
intoning. '
Libera
...
eos
...
de vinculis mo
—' it said,
and broke off.

'What does it mean?' asked Wingate.

Glendinning kept his face averted. '''Free them
from the bonds of death". Once it's completed.
There are two more sounds.'

'Tamara Laurence's pictures are coming in,' said
Hazel. 'But Father Glendinning says he knows
what the last two phonemes are.'

She looked at him, waiting, and finally, with a
miserable expression on his face, Glendinning
went to the easelboard and pulled on the projection
screen. It rattled back up into its frame, and
he faced the board and began writing. The digitized
face wavered on the back of his coat. When he
stepped away, the letters R T I S were on the board.
'I'd be grateful if you men and women would be so
kind as to keep yourself from profaning my beliefs
by pronouncing what I've written here.' He turned
to Hazel, slapping his hands against each other. His
face seemed deeply red in the light. 'May I go now?'

She moved silently to open the door, and Father
Glendinning was about to hurry out of the room
when she put her hand up. 'Is there anything else
you think we should know about resurrection,
Father? Anything that might help us decode this
man's behaviour any more?'

'All I know about resurrection is that I've never
seen it happen.'

'But you must believe in it. Isn't it the cornerstone
of your faith?'

'And yours, Hazel?'

'Yes, I'm sorry. Mine as well.'

He drew back into the room a little, willing to
delay his departure another minute to have a final
word on the matter. 'Only those of pure spirit and
body can be raised from the dead. Their hearts
must be pure and their bodies whole.'

'Excuse me,' said Greene from within the room.
'How do these people count as "whole" when
they've been chopped up, cut in half and drained of
blood?'

'I didn't say they had to be in one piece, Mr
Greene. If God can raise you from the dead, he can
put you back together. But if you've outraged His
gift in some way, you cannot be given it back.'

Hazel put her hand on Glendinning's arm. 'So
despite the states of these murder scenes, Father,
our killer is keeping to a set of rules, you think?'

'What does it matter what I think?'

'I just want to know if you think he really
believes in what he's doing.'

Glendinning gestured with his arm minutely,
enough to communicate he didn't intend to be
held a moment longer. He looked around the room
behind him. 'Hazel, he's as serious as cancer,' he
said, and then, at last, he swept out.

When she closed the door, Wingate gestured to
Jill Yoon and she shut off her machines. 'So what
we know is that he's absolutely compelled to finish
this thing,' he said.

'And Smotes is out,' said Greene. He was staring
at the ceiling. 'Libera ... eos ...'

'
Don't
—' said Wingate sharply.

'You religious, Jim?' Wingate just stared at him,
and Greene became aware of another pair of eyes
on him. Hazel's. 'Are we getting superstitious here,
people?'

'We're trying to stay focused, Ray, that's what
we're doing.' He shrugged, like staying focused was
at the front of his mind. Hazel continued. 'Sevigny
gave us the whole list. But I don't know if there's a
backup list or anything. There could be.'

'Understudies?' said Spere. 'If he's this fastidious,
I doubt he'd have a waiting list. These were his
people. Wingate's right. He needs someone now.'

'What would you do if you were him?' she asked.

After a minute, Greene said, 'If you run out of
willing victims, there are always ...'

'Or you take your own life,' said Wingate.

Hazel shook her finger at them. 'No. Whatever
that scene meant, in his shack in Port Hardy, he
didn't go to that trouble, to all
this
trouble, just to
blow his brains out in the Maritimes.' She fell
silent a moment. 'Do you think he cares if Robert
Fortnum enters the Kingdom of God? Or Ruth
Maris? Did he go to these people, complete
strangers, to give
them
the gift of life?' She looked
around the room and could see the penny dropping
for all of them. 'These people ... they're like a wire
carrying a charge. One end of the wire is in Peter
Mallick's dead heart, and the other plugs right into
the heart of God. They all wake up, but that's not
why he's doing it. He couldn't care less if Delia
Chandler rises out of her grave. He just wants
to go home and see his brother standing in the
door.'

'So he's going to finish,' said Wingate.

'Yes,' she said. 'He's in this to be reunited with
Peter. And now he has to find someone who will be
to him what Smotes was willing to be. He needs a
willing victim.'

She looked around the room, waiting for someone
to say out loud the terrible thing that had just
occurred to her. So she wouldn't have to be alone
with it.

Once Glendinning was gone, Hazel dismissed
everyone but Greene and Wingate. 'I actually
wanted to talk to you about something else for a
couple of minutes,' said Greene.

'Can it wait?' said Hazel.

'It shouldn't,' he said.

Wingate started to leave the room, but Hazel
waved him back in. 'I'm sorry, Ray, but we have to
push on. Let's talk after lunch. Sit down, both of
you.' The men sat. 'What's the update on Harry
Nevin?'

'He's awake, but he's not happy about it,' said
Greene. 'Massive concussion, and just about every
bone in his face is broken. Plus he lost about eight
teeth.'

'Jesus,' she said. 'Please tell me we sent flowers.'

'You can thank Melanie.'

She shook her head in wonder. 'Mallick could
have killed him.'

'I guess one thing went our way then,' he said,
and he fixed his eyes on her.

'Then there's Carl Smotes,' said Wingate to
break up the brief silence. 'He's too sick to be
moved. He's agreed to have someone at the
house, though. There's one guy there, and a nurse.'

'Well, I don't think it matters, anyway. Simon's
not going anywhere near Newfoundland now. Our
cover's blown and so is his.'

'Do you want me to call off the RCMP then?'
asked Greene.

'No,' she said. 'Keep them on it for now. Just to
be safe.' She sat down and rested her forearms on
the table. 'I guess you both know about Sevigny.'

'A little,' said Wingate. 'I hear he clocked his
partner.'

'Apparently the guy was helping himself to a
little extra money and Adjutor called him on it.
They were swinging at each other on the station-house
steps. Partner's an Anglo though, and
Sevigny's CO is Anglo too. It's half-and-half up
there, but there are tensions I understand. They're
probably going to suspend him.'

Greene shrugged his shoulders. 'It's not an
Anglo thing, Hazel. The guy's obviously a loose
cannon. He walked in here telling us what to do
with his funny accent. Higher-than-thou prick, is
what I say. He's getting what he deserves.'

'He's the one who broke this case for us,' she
said. 'I just feel bad for him.'

'Maybe Mason'll let you have him when he's
served his suspension,' said Greene.

She smiled at him. 'James, can you go see how
the background check on Simon Mallick's
coming?'

Wingate stood up quickly and put his cap back
on. 'I'll be at my desk.'

She hadn't taken her eyes off Greene. 'I thought
we were past this, Ray.'

'I guess we're not.'

'You developed new problems with me over the
weekend? We're making progress, Ray. Real
progress here.'

'All you're doing is handing Mason his
dynamite. After you're done here taking evidence
off-site, failing to share information, claiming
jurisdictions, there'll be a crater here where the
station house was, with two guys standing in it
holding their coffee mugs.'