The Vows of Silence (32 page)

Feet shuffled. Someone sneezed violently. The boy
in the blue fleece pinched the boy in the red one. The woman next to him leaned against Tom. He moved away and she leaned further. She smelled of fish.

He hung about the chapel after they had all left, until the pastor came out from the side room to tidy up.

“Tom? Sorry not to have you up there playing for us tonight—everything all right?”

He came nearer, looked closely. Sat down beside him.

“You don’t look good. You hear the words of God just now? ‘Come to me all ye that are burdened’? Whatever’s wrong, boy, take the words to heart.”

“I’m trying. It’s just—difficult.”

“I’m here for you if you want to talk, but if not, try Jesus. He’s always there for you.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“So … I’ll just get on with the clearing up, you do what you decide to do, Tom. We’re both of us right next to you.”

“Thanks.”

He bent his head. The floorboards were scuffed and dirt-stained. Thousands of feet, he thought, thousands of feet.

He didn’t know if he wanted to talk to the pastor or not but he couldn’t talk to God, and in any case, why should he need to, he knew his innermost heart, he knew what was wrong. He ought to do something to sort it, that was all, he ought to stop it happening. He couldn’t want this marriage, Helen Creedy to a militant, arrogant, atheist who sneered at Jesus and had
once drawn a pair of spectacles on his image on one of Tom’s leaflets. His mother wasn’t reborn yet but she was a good person, he knew it was only a matter of time before she saw the light and welcomed Jesus into her life, but there wasn’t any hope for Phil Russell and if she married him …

No, you couldn’t say there wasn’t any hope. There was hope for everyone to turn to Jesus before it was too late. Only just now Tom couldn’t see how it would ever happen to Phil. Proud and stiff-necked, he thought. That was him. The Bible always had the right phrase somewhere.

The pastor banged shut the wooden box full of hymn books and paused.

“Tom, I have to go in ten.”

Tom got to his feet.

“You need to talk through something, give me a call. I’m back in later, you ring me, now? No fretting, OK?”

“OK. Thanks.”

“You on your motorbike? Frighten the pants off me those things.”

Tom laughed and followed him out. The bike was parked up in the schoolyard next door and when he had trundled it to the gate and buckled his helmet he sat for a moment looking down the street. He couldn’t have told the pastor but while he had been there on his own in the chapel, he had prayed for the last time to be told what to do and it had come into his head at once, shocking him, taking his breath away. But the voice had been clear. The words had been unmistakable. He didn’t under stand why this was what he
should do because it was so off the wall, he’d never expected anything like it. But the more he thought about it now, sitting astride the machine in the evening dark, the more it seemed the right thing and clear. If nothing else, it would wake her, make her understand, show her the right way, this would. That was why he had to do it. It wasn’t for himself, it was for her. The sacrifice was for her. She might not see it straight away but she would see it pretty soon because that was what his answer had been and God’s answer could never be wrong.

He kicked the bike into a roar and turned out of the gate. Behind him, locking up, the pastor shook his head and said a word of prayer for the boy not to speed into an accident.

Sixty-five

“You’re happy with all of this, I take it?” Peter Wakelin asked again.

“It all seems fine.”

“I’m not very good at delegating, I’m afraid.”

Jane laughed. “That much I gathered. Honestly, Peter, the place will still be standing when you get back.” She got up and gathered the papers on the table into her folder. It was a mild morning with shafts of sun breaking through the inevitable Cambridge mist. She wondered how many more times the Dean would want to go through the arrangements and timetables for everything due to take place during his absence. Now she had her doctorate supervisor to see and an undergraduate to visit in the acute psychiatric ward, but as she reached the door, Peter Wakelin said, “Jane—are you busy later?”

“When later? I’m not free for the rest of the day now, I’m afraid.”

“I mean this evening. I wondered if you’d have dinner with me?”

She hesitated. Her plan was for a quick supper in hall and an evening of work. She didn’t especially want to change it. But as she glanced at him, she changed her mind. This man is lonely, she thought, and he can’t face either a convivial evening with the entire college or one alone. She knew how that felt. She liked her own company but there had been times over the last couple of years when she had wanted anything but.

“That would be nice,” she said.

Something she read as relief lightened his features.

“Shall we meet at the main gate? Seven thirty? I’ll bring the car round.”

“Can’t we walk?”

“Not where we’ll be going, no.”

“Fine. See you then.”

She went out to collect her mail from the lodge. She felt that she had somehow been put on the back foot, and had mis interpreted something without quite knowing what or why. It was a question in her mind as she drove out to the hospital to see the undergraduate who had been sectioned.

Jane did not know Polly Watson, as far as she could remember, but the girl, a second-year student, had asked to see her. Her academic record was impeccable, she had had no reported medical problems prior to this and seemed to have been generally invisible.

Jane had had little experience of visiting psychiatric patients. She had expected security in the wing but the reception clerk gave her an odd look and asked her to
take a seat. Why, Jane wondered, do they always have them placed around the walls, in hospitals and waiting rooms everywhere, regimented and rather alarming? Chairs in groups changed the whole feel.

A number of people waited together, heads down, not speaking to one another. A woman alone flicked the pages of a magazine without reading anything. A man came in, gave his name, sat down, got straight up again. Left.

Several people came and went. Jane decided that fifteen minutes was a reasonable time to wait before returning to the desk.

Someone came out carrying two potted cyclamen, put them on the window ledge and went again, tapping a code into the security panel to open the door.

After ten minutes, a young woman in a dark trouser suit came over to her.

“Reverend Fitzroy? Dr Fison. Would you come through with me?”

They went down a corridor. Cream-painted. An institutional corridor. Voices in the distance. A smell of burning milk.

“Do sit down.”

An office. She had expected to be led to a ward.

“I’m sorry you had to wait but as you can imagine when this sort of thing happens there’s a bit of a procedure.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know Polly at all, but as she sent for me perhaps you can fill me in before I see her?”

A look of surprise. A frown. She put down her pen. “Oh Lord. They didn’t tell you.”

“Tell me?”

“Polly’s dead. She had a stash of medication and she also swallowed four razor blades. She was found in the toilet at five this morning. I’m so sorry, there’s clearly been a slip-up in communication.”

“Clearly.”

“We’ve been in touch with her family. Her parents are on their way from—” she glanced down at the papers—”York. So that’s that. You’ve had a wasted journey.”

“No,” Jane said. “Would it be possible for me to see her body?”

“Afraid not, unless you want to go to the mortuary. There’s got to be a PM of course.” She spoke coolly. She had not known Polly Watson either. One acute admission, one suicide, file closed.

“I will go to the mortuary, actually,” Jane said.

“As you wish. Do you know where it is?”

Handshake. The corridor again. “I’ll leave you here if that’s all right—busy day.”

Jane went out into the chilly grey morning. She felt bleak and helpless. She had failed someone without even knowing them. An unhappy girl with who knew what problems and in what distress, a girl who had studied here for a year and was barely known to any of them.

It shouldn’t happen, she thought.

It happens.

After she left the mortuary she realised what had been in her mind. Peter Wakelin had asked her to dinner. Dinner was different. She liked what little she
knew of him but she also knew that she did not want to go. She was still finding her place and her feet after a bad two years. Calm and peace in which to get on with her doctorate and do her job well were what she needed now.

When she got back she wrote a note and left it in his pigeonhole.

Sixty-six

“If you’d just like to tell me what it’s about, sir …”

“I said, I’m not telling you what it’s about, I want to see the boss.”

“Not sure who you mean by that, sir, but I’m the duty sergeant.”

“I know that. I want to see the one in the suit that’s on the news.”

“That would be CID, sir. I can get someone from CID to talk to you if you’d tell me what—”

“No. Tell you what, I’m going to sit over there. Not been out of hospital long, so I get giddy, I’m going to sit over there and wait and you can fetch him and if he’s out I’ll still wait and if he comes through those doors I’ll see him. I don’t mind waiting, I got nothing better to do, and when I see him and when I tell him he’ll be very glad I did. So you fetch him. The one on the news. Not talking to anyone else.”

“If you mean DCS Serrailler, he’s out and he’ll be out all morning and he won’t talk to you without knowing what it’s about.”

“He’ll talk to me. I can wait.”

The man walked over to the bench against the wall and sat down. His movements were cautious and he held himself together as if he feared the onset of pain. The hair at the back of his head was shorter than the rest, as if it had been shaved. He was bristly, scruffy, pale. Neither old nor young. The sergeant watched him for a minute. He wasn’t familiar. Dosser? Nutter? Hard to say. Bit of both, he thought. The phone rang.

Half an hour later the man was still there, sitting, occasionally closing his eyes but alert every time the doors swung open, looking closely at whoever came and went.

“You’ll have a long wait, sir—why don’t you let me get someone down from CID? You can talk to them, then maybe if it’s important they’ll pass it on to the Super. Only as you may have heard we’ve got some big stuff going on—as you said, you’ve seen him on the television news, so you can guess he’s pretty busy …”

He wound down. The man heard him out, looking at him with out much interest. Then looked at the floor, not acknowledging anything that had been said.

Two hours later, he was still there. Two and a half hours. Three. In the end the desk sergeant went over.

“Listen, you can’t sit here all day and all night. He might not be back for hours. If you won’t talk to anyone else I’m going to have to ask you to leave. What’s it to be?”

“Cup of tea?”

“You’re pushing your luck. Right, here’s the deal—cup of tea, you talk to someone else or on your way.”

“Who will I have to talk to?”

“Someone from CID. Whoever’s available. If anyone is available, otherwise it’ll be someone from uniform.”

The man sat quiet for a long time, weighing it up. Then he nodded.

Ten minutes later, tea in front of him, he was sitting opposite DS Graham Whiteside in the small waiting room.

“Right. Name?” Whiteside looked bored.

The man put his hand to the back of his head but did not quite touch it. “In hospital couple of weeks,” he said. “Not good. Left me for dead.”

“What’s this all about then? Hit-and-run? Whatever, if it’s that long ago why didn’t you report it before?”

“Because I was in hospital, wasn’t I? Didn’t come round for the first four days.”

“Let’s get this organised. Name, I said.”

“Matty.”

“Oh, come on, give me a hand here, I’m bad at guesswork. Matty
who
?”

“Lowe.”

“Getting somewhere … and when was this?”

“When was what?”

“The hit-and-run or are we making the whole bloody thing up—sir?”

“I’m not making anything up. Why would I do that?”

“Oh, you’d be amazed. When are we looking at? Date and time. If you can manage that.”

“When it happened or when I saw him?”

Graham Whiteside passed a hand over his brow and mopped off imaginary drops of sweat.

“I saw him at the fair. He’d left me for dead, you know, and they say you don’t remember anything after you’ve taken a bash on the head but I do. Not everything, mind, but I remember a bit. Enough to know where I was and that someone blinded me with light and then clouted me on the back of the head here and left me for dead. I came round in hospital, splitting skull, load of bruises. All I remembered was being blinded. At first. Still don’t remember much more.”

“If you don’t remember anything you’re wasting my time, sunshine.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t remember everything. I was on the old airfield, in one of the hangars … I’ve been dossing a bit, lost my way. It’s all right out there. Better than shop doorways.”

Drugs? Probably. The sergeant tapped the side of his foot against the table leg. “Get on with it.”

The man sipped his tea. “Hospital got me a place, hostel on Biggins Road. You know it?”

“I know it.”

“Not bad. Could be worse. Could be better. So. So I got on my feet and walked a bit. Took me time. Skull splitting, leg aching. Two weeks is a long time, your muscles go. I could have walked ten miles before it happened. Often have done. But I got going. So I thought I’d have a wander out to that fair.”

“What’s the Jug Fair got to do with your hit-and-run?”

“Right. Nice night, got a quid or two. Thought I’d have a wander and I did, but the lights and the noise got to me, made my skull split again. I wasn’t as fit as I thought so I decided to make back.”

“I’m seeing stars, Matty, my head’s spinning.”