The Fool (6 page)

Maryam assessed the blurred black and white
photos that had been printed off the camera feed. They showed the
fight that had taken place between Wyn and Jason, Wyn going off in
one direction being helped by a parishioner who had heard the
scuffle, Jason shouting and gesticulating after him. Three hours
later, Jason Briggs entered the Church but never exited. Wyn
arrived five minutes after Jason, went in, and came out twenty-five
minutes later, locking the door.

‘Is he still refusing to say what the fight
was about?’

Gatto nodded and there was a moment of him
swallowing food before he replied. ‘Yes. Won’t budge. Just says it
was a private matter between them and he regrets having lost his
temper.’

Maryam looked at Fred and wondered if she
should speak up. There was only one logical conclusion when a
priest under threat of being charged of murder would refuse to
speak. What had Fred advised him during all those hours upstairs?
Was it her role to speak of it? She assuaged her doubts by
continuing to ask questions.

‘Was the Church patrolled that night?’

‘Not by us.’ Gatto looked to Bishop
Atkins.

‘Two parishioners did a walk through the
graveyard, at about eleven thirty, to make sure the emptying of the
pubs had cleared through.’ Fred had taken down a lot of information
in his own notebook. He looked grey with both fatigue and
worry.

‘No one heard anything?’

‘No.’

‘Were there any lights in the Church?’

‘Yes. Some lights have been kept on all
night, since the vandalism started, I understand.’ Gatto had
referred to his notebook. Maryam wondered whether the officer and
the bishop had noticed they were mirroring each other. Eat, look at
notebooks, answer queries in turn.

‘In the Sacristy?’

‘Yes, I made special note of that.’ Fred had
answered before Gatto. ‘The back of the Church there has no light,
and therefore no camera. So the Sacristy light was left on for
those patrolling, to be able to see the path as they walked round.
It’s the darkest part of the yard and where there had been a lot of
the most obscene pictures. You can’t see that area easily from any
other view point.’

The Sacristy was the nearest part of the
Church to the parish house garden wall. There were only about four
feet of space between the Church ending, and the wall of the garden
beginning. It was the most isolated, least travelled part of the
Church grounds. What Fred described made sense to her.

‘You can’t see the outside door to the
Sacristy at all, from any angle, can you?’

‘No, the outer walls of the East doorway
block it from view. In fact...’ Gatto referred to a typed sheet of
information in his file, ‘that door had to be replaced during the
vandalism attacks, as it had images carved onto it. So someone had
been able to take time to work. I believe that we’d requested a
CCTV camera placed there, but there hadn’t been funds for it?’

Gatto look at Fred, who rifled in his own
papers.

‘I’m not sure. This isn’t my area, of
course. The Southwark office would know. I’ll ask them in the
morning and see if they can assign you one of our people who helped
with the prior incidents.’

Gatto nodded. ‘That would be good, sir. On
these notes it says we requested a camera and the funds were being
looked into, but the issues were solved before one was put in.’

‘But the door was replaced?’

‘Yes, Miss Michael, it was.’ Paper rifling.
‘It was a heavy duty security door with a steel outer cover. Is
that relevant?’

‘It may be. But you are saying that the
outside door was replaced and the inner door to the Sacristy had
recently had its locks changed?’

‘Yes, that’s correct.’

‘Which would mean both outer and inner keys
were replaced at roughly the same time? Did Father Jones say why
he’d had the internal locks changed?’

Gatto let out a long exclaim of air, and
Fred looked down at the floor. Maryam carried on observing Fred, as
Gatto spoke.

‘He said he’d felt the place was unsafe,
after the attacks. We pushed him, but it didn’t make sense. We
asked him if he’d found anything in there, graffiti or vandalism,
and he said no. Given the evidence of sexual activity in there, we
pushed him hard. He said nothing.’

Fred’s upper lip was starting to bead over
with sweat.

‘Did you ask Father Jones, Sergeant, if he’d
had sex with anyone in the Sacristy?’

Fred’s face drained of all colour, and he
coughed and stood up, and poured himself a glass of water. Gatto
ignored him as he answered Maryam.

‘Yes, we did. He was most indignant and
shouted no. He got quite animated. Father Jones has a bit of a
temper.’

Fred had sat down again and was staring at
his notebook.

‘Any priest accused of murder and sexual
impropriety in their own Church is going to have a bit of a temper.
Tell me, Sergeant, did you ask Father Jones if he knew of anyone
else having sex in there?’

Gatto looked at her. Then he looked back at
his notes, puzzled.

‘Actually, I don’t think so, Miss Michael,
I’m not sure anyone did. We asked him who would be having sex in
there, apart from him, and about keys and stuff. We pushed him
hard. But we never said it like that, I’m pretty sure. But we did
push him.’

Maryam was quite sure they had pushed him.
Maryam was quite convinced that the police had done their utmost to
present Wyn with the picture of him, and his congregation, and his
youth club, and his charismatic beauty and his energy, and had
pushed hard on the subject of a priest having sex in his own
church. She’d have lost her temper, too.

‘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,
chest, 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.