Act Three

He got up to open the window. The cold air rushed in as white breakers hit the shore. Tonight, they were waters of judgement. He knew what must be done.

Forty Three

George Ivanovitch sat on the Seeing Stone. The air was still, the valley silent.

‘You are to imagine a room in which nine people are gathered,’ said the Sarkar.

‘I understand,’ said his pupil.

‘At first sight, they may appear the same. Perhaps they are all of one colour or share a craft, family or creed. But in this room of nine people, whatever their outward links, they are inwardly different. And though they appear similar and perhaps do similar things, they will do them for very different reasons. The Enneagram looks at the root of action not the action itself.’

Gurdjieff listened. From the moment he’d found the manuscript in the underground vault, he had waited for this moment.

‘So let us move around this group of nine souls and describe each personality, using a number to describe each.’

‘I’m ready.’

‘So we start with Point One. The One is industrious for good as they perceive it. When unhealthy, of course, they are self-righteous, resentful, moralistic, myopic, blaming, rigid, dogmatic and with a rather fixed view of the world.’

‘I see why people fear this knowledge. It is less than polite.’ The Sarkar was unswayed.

‘Ones seek the correct way, the right way and believe the right way is their way. Perhaps they procrastinate sometimes for fear of making a mistake. Feeling the blame when young, they do not wish to be wrong again. They possess inside them a judge, an inner critic who declares them always guilty. So to escape and deflect, they in turn declare others guilty. They tell people what they should do and ought to do. They are angry people - angry that they and the world are not good - but avert their gaze from this trait believing that good boys and girls should not be angry. Left unacknowledged, their rage becomes resentment. Never put the blame on a One, my friend. They will come for you. But like every number, they are both nightmare and glory, and in health, when living from the mercy pool where self-hate dies, they are clear thinkers and visionaries for good in a world they no longer judge but perceive as quite perfect now. Here is their true majestic self - serene, shining, noble, laughing, ordering, applauding and quite happy to admit mistake. Wonderful. Shall I move on?’

‘Tell me all nine. I listen well.’

‘So be it. Point Two. Can you see them?’

‘I see them.’

Gurdjieff was enjoying this game.

‘The Two has a great outward energy but for what? Some call them ‘The Cat’, flattering endlessly to get what they want and what they want is for others to need them. They need to be needed. When unhealthy, of course, they are out of touch with their needs, fixated with relationship, resentful if neglected, superior, smothering, patronising and rather self-important saints. They ask always the question, ‘How are others disposed towards me?’ Their inner desire is to be indispensable; to be needed by everyone they know. They are content not to lead; happy instead to be indispensable to a leader. If their care for others is not appreciated, however, their pride is hurt and resentment runs deep. Pride is the stone they trip on daily, pride dressed as caring: ‘It is others who need help not I!’ This is how they think. But pride merely covers their lack of inner substance. Once they see this, however, once they discover and touch their true inner will, they move from nightmare to glory. Exchanging pride for humility they live a most creative role in the world. Discerning their own needs they are free now to care without caring - nurturing, compassionate, connecting, perceptive, intimate and responsive, their true majestic self awakes! Wonderful.’

Gurdjieff remembered being seduced by a woman such as this. She had never forgiven him when he walked away and now he saw why.

The Sarkar continued: ‘The Three is different again.’

‘They are all different!’

‘Indeed. And the Three will be known for inspiring confidence in those around, though perhaps a little more than is merited. When unhealthy, of course, they can be cold, calculating, secretive, selfpromoting, corner-cutting, prestige-seeking and quite numb to their emotions, well-defended from how they feel. They are activists, confident in their moves, needing action to drown frightening introspection. So they drive things forward, desiring success and victory over others. Threes are the golden people in a way, efficient and attractive, people whom others would like to be like. They are also the most deceitful, hiding their motives even from themselves. They crave success because their self-image is defined by it. They crave activity because they fear the exposure of their inner life to the light. They simply dare not fail and will do all things necessary to ensure they do not. Success is their only identity, until one day, they come home to a kind universe in which they need not defeat or outperform everyone. From nightmare to glory! They learn loyalty, a bigger cause than themselves and now shine a rather brighter light. They are hopeful, truthful, humorous, loyal, self-aware, engaging, authentic and with boundless energy, true rather than phoney gold. Their majestic self awakes! Wonderful.’

‘I’ve met them,’ said Gurdjieff, ‘but perhaps not understood them.’

‘Then let us continue and I now describe the Four, a rather special number.’

‘Special?’

‘That is how they imagine themselves, perhaps. They consider themselves special in some way, attracted by the authentic and tragic. Birth, intensity, abandonment and death - this is their territory! When unhealthy, of course, they are controlling, self-pitying, demanding, alienated, blaming, elitist and coloured by despair. They are the white dove cooing, melancholic, moody and in love with sweet sadness. They keep their distance from those present and obtainable, desiring instead the unavailable, the impossible and the absent, the fantasy. Even as they pull people towards them, they push them away. They are the abandoned ones, creating beauty out of pain and darkness from their envy. At their tragic heart is the worthlessness of the abandoned, a sense that their origins are fatally flawed. Hence the pursuit of the special and a fantasy sense of worth. Their genius emerges as they bring their profound awareness to the reality and joy of this present moment, this practical now, where all is quite well. Here they become luminous, personal, content, authentic, intuitive and relating. From nightmare to glory, they discover their infinitely valuable and original selves. Wonderful.’

Gurdjieff recognised one such as this immediately, though whether it was good news, he could not say. His heart beat faster.

‘Next!’

Forty Four

Peter sensed a man behind him as he knelt in the side chapel; one who had arrived unseen. Malcolm Flight was probably six foot tall but carried himself as a smaller man; as one not important in the world. With a straggly beard of brown ginger and sandals even in the rain, he was a stranger on the earth, like his hero Van Gogh.

The Abbot remembered last year’s Maundy Night vigil. It had been an especially cold event, with the church heating broken. Everyone huddled together in the parish room for the night, drinking tea and improvising blankets. Except Malcolm. He knelt alone on the stone floor of the church. At 5.00 a.m. he got up to make some coffee. He found almost everyone asleep, but was soon back in the cold church with his drink, kneeling again on the stone, where the Good Friday cross was laid out on the floor, the cross which had recently found further use.

‘I’m glad she’s found at last,’ he said.

‘Who?’ asked Peter.

‘Clare.’

Abbot Peter looked towards the hand stretching out from the side of the altar.

‘I can’t believe the police didn’t find her,’ said Malcolm.

‘They haven’t been looking for her.’

‘Then perhaps they should have been looking.’

‘Clare was not a missing person. She was an independent woman with means and free to go wherever she wished.’

‘I told them she might be here.’

‘Where?’

‘In the church.’

‘Why did you think that?’ Malcolm Flight stood in silence.

‘That’s how everyone describes her,’ he said with bitterness, ‘ “an independent woman” - but what’s that supposed to mean?’

There was hostility in his voice.

‘At the very least, it means she was free to go wherever she wished.’

‘She’s not free now,’ he said. ‘But then, which of us is?’ The Abbot stayed on his knees at the altar rail.

‘So what is your part in all this, Malcolm?’ he asked. ‘Is there anything you wish to tell me?’

Malcolm rolled a cigarette and lit it.

‘Not here, Malcolm.’

Malcolm looked at Peter and then put it out on the back of the box.

‘You didn’t go home after the meeting, did you?’ he continued. ‘You were here in the church.’

‘I would be careful what you say.’

‘Why should I be careful?’

‘Stupid words, they cause trouble.’

‘Which of my words are stupid?’

‘Stupid words are like escaped ferrets. They rip at the poor rabbit’s throat.’

Peter was taken aback. ‘That’s a violent image,’ he said.

Malcolm breathed in deeply.

‘Do you perhaps have a particular rabbit in mind?’ asked Peter. ‘Perhaps you had a pet rabbit?’

Malcolm paused. He was known for his slow release of information and a life of deep secrets.

‘I don’t keep pets.’

‘You have other interests?’

Was Peter now being too pushy? Press too hard and Malcolm would close like a clam.

‘My occupations are shelf filler and painter. My vocation is contemplation.’

‘A fine vocation,’ said the Abbot appreciatively. ‘Though not necessarily a lucrative one.’

Silence.

‘Did you need Clare?’

Malcolm brought his hands together in tense union. Each squashed the blood from the other in restless struggle. And for the first time, Abbot Peter noticed how strong they were and how ready for work.

‘It doesn’t matter if it was a violent image, Abbot. The only interesting question is this: was it a true image?’

True image? Or, as the Latin had it, vera icon: the cloth of legend used by St Veronica to wipe the brow of Christ on his way to crucifixion, left stained with the outline of his face. It was a holy relic in the Vatican to this day.

‘Beware the true image which plays false, Abbot. That is what I say to you.’

‘You’re saying there is one here who is not what they appear?’

‘I do the accounts, remember.’

Peter had entered this sanctuary in search of peace. But with a corpse before him and disturbance behind, he now felt only dissonance. The protruding hand of Clare was pale and lifeless, the forefinger pointing in death to something beyond. But to what? If you traced the eye line, it took you straight to the vestry door. Yet likely as not, this was random directing. Unless Peter was mistaken, here was a body dumped, dragged perhaps, wedged in and left. Perhaps an act in haste?

‘What have the accounts got to do with it?’ asked Abbot Peter.

There was no answer but rain against the glass. Malcolm Flight, ‘the ghost’, had left as silently as he’d arrived. Peter turned to the altar once again. The Christ now looked directly at the body that lay sprawled beneath him.

So what, or who, had brought Clare to this holy place? It was time for this sanctuary of grace to be invaded by the law.

Forty Five

The Sarkar was gazing across the valley with a smile.

‘I’m ready,’ said Gurdjieff, still king on his stone throne and eager for more.

‘The Five is sometimes likened to the fox, they wish to see but not to be seen. Detachment is both their glory and their grave. They see things deeply but not always truly, blinded by the emotional isolation they believe will save them. When unhealthy, of course, they hoard unshared things, become separate people, withdrawing, secretive, uninvolved, compartmentalizing life. They are restrained with time given to others. Distant and thinking, they withdraw themselves from people, feelings and possessions. They regard all people as a threat to their survival. Fives are content with little material wealth but how they fear inner emptiness. They hoard knowledge, of whatever sort, like a squirrel hoards nuts. Strangers in the world, knowledge gives them power and the foolish Five imagines it will save them. Healing for Fives comes when they leave their self-denying isolation, engage with their long-lost feelings and take their place in the world. From nightmare to glory! Here they reveal deep knowing, spontaneity, vulnerability, transparency, a great sense of investigation; and here they become a window on the universe. Now they see like owls but act like lions, embodied wisdom as their true majestic self. Wonderful.

‘‘You describe yourself!’ said Gurdjieff.

‘Look to your own heart.’

‘But it is you.’

‘I describe the Five,’ said the Sarkar, smiling.

‘And the Six?’

Gurdjieff was enjoying this. It made so much sense of other readings he’d undertaken and observations he’d made. Much was still a mystery but he was excited by the truths he was hearing.

‘The Six seeks security but where will they find it?’ said the Sarkar. ‘That is their life quest. Untrusting of themselves, they seek another to trust or a cause to believe in. When unhealthy, of course, they are cowardly, insecure, indecisive, paranoid, argumentative, accusatory, doubting little bigots. They are fearful people, scanning the surroundings for possible attack; wishing always to know where they stand. They think much but they don’t think well; they think a hundred possible outcomes, imagine problems long before they happen and most never do. They can be rule-bound, wary of breaking laws for fear of stepping out of line. And we note their ambivalence towards authority figures, sometimes reacting with craven submission, another time, with angry opposition. Greatness for the Six arrives when they learn to trust their substantial selves, discover their own true selves to be the authority they’ve been seeking. From nightmare to glory! From here on, they instruct the world not in fear but in courage. They are serene, strong, hospitable, protecting, questioning, loyal, bright, trustworthy, clear in their perceiving, their majestic self revealed. Wonderful’

‘Soloviev!’

‘My answer to you is as before. We must first know ourselves before pronouncing on others.’

‘I like Sixes,’ said Gurdjieff. ‘But fear makes them stupid. Soloviev should have come with me here.’

‘Fear overcame loyalty and he had no inner strength to hold onto. It must have been a terrible struggle inside.’ Gurdjieff thought back to their last moments by the chasm but quickly put away such thoughts.

‘We have three more numbers, Sir, and after Six comes Seven.’

‘The Seven may charm you, win you over.’

‘Really?’

‘Sevens are sometimes called butterflies, bright but always moving, never staying, restless, colourful and dancing away from pain. So we might call them The Butterfly, though some prefer The Monkey because of their monkey minds. When unhealthy, they are eager for distraction, shallow, insensitive, rationalising, attention-seeking, fearful, angered by restraint, shame-avoiding, emotionally cold and quite unable to take responsibility for their actions. They touch lightly on life, picking what suits, like a thief at a banquet. They avoid sadness, and worship at the shrine of their mistaken imagining. They are those on the run from the moment, from the now, the great idealists, imagining better and best round the corner. They are future people because they cannot trust this present moment, cannot trust life’s beautiful unfolding.’

‘They sound like frightened people.’

‘Of course. Fear fuels their flight from present to future, fear and shame of their abandoned and unacceptable selves. You look shaken, my friend.’

‘No. Why should I be shaken?’

‘But of course in their substantial selves, their home selves, they are the true contemplatives. From nightmare to glory! They leave their planning and their frightened future behind and allow the delightful unfolding of the present where they are truly acceptable to themselves. Having passed through the garden of sadness, they are spontaneous, calm, content, playful, testing, positive, connecting, creating, encouraging, cool decision-makers, reflective joy-bringers. Here is true contemplation and their true self. Wonderful.’

Gurdjieff breathed deeply.

‘Contemplatives?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Who would have guessed? Eights?’

The Sarkar drank some water from his bottle and rubbed his eyes. The sun was high in the sky of the Hindu Kush. He got up from the rock where he sat and walked a little, stretching arms and legs. He climbed up now onto a higher rock, which looked down on the Seeing Stone where Gurdjieff remained.

‘The Eight is one who likes to confront,’ he continued. ‘To confront is what they do, how they work. They wish to boss, lusty for power and all else besides. When unhealthy, of course, they are over-bearing, impulsive, insensitive, brooding, raging, stubborn and running from selfblame. The Eight is a leader, openly displaying force and at home with anger. They have been compared to the African rhinoceros and their life to a Spanish bullfight, always wanting blood. They seek power for themselves but dress it up as justice. They are people who are against others, who like to oppose, people who must carve out their own kingdom or die in the attempt.’

‘Why so?’

‘They have never been allowed to be weak so they fear weakness in themselves; and fearing it in themselves, they batter and bruise it in others. But beyond this diminished creation, born of shame and fear of weakness, is their substantial self, strong not for their own gain but for the weak and needy. From nightmare to glory! Here they are vibrant, direct, truthful and unifying. The world is no longer a battleground but a unity. They reveal innocence of intention and become great challengers of deceit. They will be like a strong tree in whose branches many can rest and find protection. Their true majestic self! Wonderful.’

‘And so to our final number?’

‘And our final number is the Nine, there at the top of the circle, the number which holds all others in a manner. Indeed, sometimes the Nine is more aware of other’s needs than their own.

‘So how will I recognize them?’

‘They will avoid conflict; this is one feature of their lives.’

‘They’re hardly alone in that.’

‘It is particularly so with them and there are reasons. They do not like the rage they have buried so deep and conflict stirs this. So the Nine is the mediator, one who seeks peace and harmony around them. When unhealthy, of course, they become neglectful, complacent, lost in others’ needs, slothful, stubborn, comfort-seeking and dwellers in the land of false peace. Sometimes the Nine is called The Sloth or The Elephant. They can appear peaceful and self-deprecating souls but are stubborn, set within and move for no one. As I say, anger is their buried feeling, one not allowed when young, erupting only occasionally in a flood of hot lava. They give themselves little worth and therefore the world little worth; a deep river of cynicism flows through them. Unresolved anger leaves them at the doorway of despair and depressive states; and their insecure self can be spiteful. But when secure, when they wake the self they put to sleep and connect with action over avoidance, these people can hold and love the world like no others, great and magnanimous leaders! Here they are outward-facing, generous, unifying, reassuring, patient, guileless, receptive, mediating, strong bringers of harmony. From nightmare to glory, the majestic self awakes! Wonderful.’

‘And that is the human race?’

‘We have barely started, you understand.’

‘Of course. But that is the human race?’

‘Scarcely ruffled the hair of this creature we call the Enneagram’

‘Quite so.’

‘Certainly my brief descriptions are entirely inadequate.’

‘I understand, but -.’

‘I have lived with it for forty years and still regard myself as a novice, a beginner in so many ways. You have known it for five minutes, so stay humble, stay cautious, stay open, stay listening and uncertain. Uncertainty is fertile.’

‘And I’ve noted that. But still, with all those hesitations, conditions and provisos, the nine states you have just described, that is the human race?’

‘That is the human race.’

‘Will you teach me more?’

‘Oh yes. There is much still to learn.’

‘It seems to me you have described nine types of idiot,’ said Gurdjieff with a smile. ‘We must each discover our own brand of idiocy.’

‘An original thought. I have never heard it put that way, but yes, true. Nine brands of idiocy! You will learn more in community, of course.’

‘And then?’

‘Have you ever thought of going to Europe?’

Forty Six

Council worker Christopher Thornton was unhappy with himself and couldn’t sleep. What he had done, it really wasn’t right and his guilt, not up for discussion. But then what had he ever done which had been right? And when had guilt not been his companion? He’d done things which had the appearance of virtue but, in truth, were just convenient for him. He’d taken the easy path, the line of least resistance. This was how it felt as he fingered himself in bed. He liked to finger himself but tonight found neither pleasure nor response.

In some ways, it was stupid to allow such thoughts. All he had done was add a name to a list, for God’s sake! He wasn’t Stalin. He wasn’t Pol Pot. And the client - well, the queue jumper - was a deserving cause, no question about that. And they always said the money was not a bribe but a gift, just a way of saying thank you for their efficiency and kindness. But you can’t make a winner without making a loser and the loser was out there now, hurt. Well, of course they were hurt and they were hurt because of him.

And today they’d rung him up. He thought the matter finished with, weeks had passed without a sound. But now they’d stirred the pot all over again. They’d rung him up and made their case, pleaded desperately, heart-rendingly in a way. But Christopher didn’t care and had simply zoned out and lied to be rid of them. Least line of resistance; the fact was, the usurper was more pressing and he didn’t want a battle. He’d played the concerned and caring listener and claimed forces beyond his control to be responsible. Yes, of course he knew how important it was and yes, he would do all he could to rectify the matter.

He wouldn’t of course. That was just another lie in a long list of lies - his life seemed one extended game of ‘Let’s pretend’ - and this wasn’t why he’d joined the council. And he hadn’t joined the council to take bribes.

He got up to open the window. The cold air rushed in as white breakers hit the shore. Tonight, they were waters of judgement. Council worker Christopher Thornton knew what must be done.

***

And not far away, in the stillness of the night, a further entry was made in the murder diary. They weren’t lonely. How could they be lonely? But this notebook was certainly a friend, a trusted keeper of secrets. No, not secrets - that implied some sort of shame and how could there be shame? Such were the murderer’s thoughts as they wrote in their careful, almost childish, hand.

‘I am glad they’ve discovered Clare’s body. Apparently I left a hand hanging out in the prayer chapel, though I don’t believe I did. Did I leave her alive? Did she struggle for a while, try to get out from behind the altar? I don’t think I would have wished that on her; I’m not completely heartless.

In fact I’m not heartless at all. I just have a different heart.

I was surprised they didn’t find her earlier, of course. I wanted to get her away from there but how could I? The place crawling with police yet no one found her. Shows how few people pray, I suppose. Everyone loves the idea of a prayer chapel. No one actually uses it... once again I am the truth-teller.

Clare was not in my plan but the great strategists adapt in the field of conflict. The battle plan and the battle are two different things. That’s what my father used to say. How am I doing, General?’

Forty Seven

‘Chloroform again and then a knife in the stomach,’ said Tamsin, as they sat in Peter’s front room. ‘There was a struggle but the chloroform overpowered her. Clare was unconscious when wounded.’

‘When wounded?’

‘She didn’t die immediately.’

‘I see.’

‘She may have survived in some state or other for another twenty-four to thirty-six hours.’

‘So she may have been alive yesterday?’

‘Almost certainly.’

‘While the police walked to and fro, she was dying behind the side altar.’

‘Yes.’

‘We are most blind when we are most busy.’

‘So it seems.’

‘There she was, trying to get out -.’

‘You’ve made your point!’

Tamsin’s rage at the incompetence could be kept in no longer.

‘Don’t take this personally,’ said Peter.

‘I’m not,’ said Tamsin airily, ‘It’s other people, not me.’

She put down the pathologist’s report sent to abbot@stormhaven.com.

‘Your printer takes an age,’ she said. ‘Ever thought of getting a new one?’

‘I’m never in that much of a hurry.’

‘And it groans.’

‘It’s always groaned, from its very first job. It’s one of life’s groaners. Everything is a problem, but everything usually gets done. It reminds me of my postman in the desert. We were fifty miles of rock and sand from his previous stop and my God, he groaned. But always delivered.’

‘She may have been by the main altar when attacked.’

‘Oh?’

‘We found a prayer candle on the floor there this morning. It seems likely she lit it. At least no one has else said they lit it.’

‘And yet that night, I was up by the altar. I went into the church to extinguish the main candle before leaving. There was no prayer candle burning then.’

‘Well, there was one there later.’

‘So why?’

‘Perhaps she’d murdered the vicar and felt a bit bad about it,’ said Tamsin.

‘Do you light a candle when you feel bad?’

‘I don’t know, I’ve never felt bad. Or lit a candle.’

The two sat in silence for a while.

Then Peter said: ‘I feel a review is in order. I feel this case within, but the external outlines would be good to hear again, the hard outer casing of events.’

And so with tea and biscuits in hand, Tamsin and Peter, niece and uncle, Detective Inspector and Special Witness, secular and religious, reviewed what they knew on this second day of the investigation:

‘The Extraordinary Parish meeting finished at around nine on Tuesday evening. There were nine in attendance. All then left, except for yourself and the vicar.’

‘Though we know that someone was in the church,’ added Peter.

‘So you say. But everyone claims they left. The Bishop gave Clare a lift, and Sally, Betty, Jennifer, Ginger and Malcolm all left independently.’

‘Correct.’

‘You then talk with Anton. He leaves you to answer a call on his mobile. It lasts for twelve minutes. He goes off into the vestry and does not return. You decide to leave, enter the main church space and blow out the candle. You imagine you hear something.’

‘I did hear something.’

‘Later that evening, the murderer enters the building. The side door of the vestry was open, so either they came in that way or left that way. Clare is also in the building by this time. We don’t know why. The time of her fatal attack is put at around midnight. By midnight, Anton was probably nailed to the cross, still unconscious from the chloroform. Between midnight and 2.00 a.m. he dies from a heart attack.’

‘It is finished.’

‘Sorry?’

‘They were Jesus’ last words on the cross.’

‘Well they’re not ours. We’ve barely started.’

Tamsin was not impressed by time-wasting.

‘At six the following morning, his body is discovered by Sally and Ginger, both on the church premises. Sally found the side door of the vestry open. Ginger had come through the main door.’

‘And then the question marks which litter the page.’

‘As you say, there are question marks: you think, for instance, that someone remained in the church and you believe that someone was Malcolm. And then according to Jennifer, the Bishop did not give Clare a lift or rather, not as far as her home. There are witnesses that they left together. Jennifer saw him driving alone still some way short of Clare’s home.’

‘We know quite a lot.’

‘Or put another way, we know nothing.’

‘And then of course Betty took in the seafront on her way home,’ said Peter. ‘It was an unusual route given the storm, while Sally denies any relationship with the vicar, and Ginger asks us to believe that he was doing paperwork at six in the morning.’

‘Is anyone telling the truth?’ asked Tamsin.

‘No one tells the truth,’ said Abbot Peter with a smile. ‘We are most careful editors of our material. The genius is in discerning not whether people are lying but why they are.’

Tamsin moved on. ‘And then the following night, a brick is thrown through Jennifer’s window, saying, “We know it was you”.’

‘The most obvious suspect, as you intimated, is Clare.’

‘Your reasons?’

‘It’s straightforward. She crucifies Anton and then kills herself. Here’s someone who doesn’t mind whether he lives or dies or knows her or not. By the time he’s found, she will be dead. Either way, he’s punished and she’s free from whatever it is which troubles her.’

‘Good circumstantially, but the flaws in the theory are about to stack up.’

‘True. Who moved her body and why? Who also removed the knife? How did one person alone carry out the crucifixion? And how does the chloroform fit into the story? Why would someone committing suicide use chloroform?’

‘It’s the death of a theory, I think, unless there were two murderers.’

‘Or more?’ ventured Peter. ‘Murder on the Orient Express... the driver took a wrong turning.’

The weak joke indicated an impasse. Their knowledge was growing but not their understanding of it.

Peter said: ‘I think I’ll take a walk. I need to be alone.’

‘So do I,’ said Tamsin. ‘I’ll come with you.’

***

It was a quiet night by the sea. The dark water was docile as they made their way along the promenade past the Martello Tower built at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. It had remained a squat and spherical coastguard in Stormhaven ever since.

‘It houses the dullest museum in England,’ said Peter. ‘Cookers from the 1940s and kitchen scales from the 1950s, that sort of thing. Quite why, no one knows.’

‘Sounds like Sandy View.’

Peter laughed. ‘Oh dear. Is it that bad?’

‘It’s quaint.’

‘You should be an estate agent.’

They walked a little further until they reached the beach huts.

‘And this is where I met an angry Betty that night,’ said Peter.

‘Here?’

‘Yes, she appeared from behind one of the huts looking furious. They’re in great demand, of course. There’s a waiting list of ten years.’

‘Personally, I wouldn’t wait ten minutes for one of these.’

‘Who knows what she was doing?’

‘Perhaps it was a secret assignation,’ said Tamsin.

‘It was certainly a wet one. The rain was torrential.’

‘True love knows only sunshine.’

‘A romantic premise but not a convincing one,’ said Peter, who wondered what such sunshine would be like.

Tamsin said: ‘The old do have private lives, you know.’ There was a slight pause. Even the gulls seemed subdued.

‘So how’s your private life?’ asked Abbot Peter.

‘Same as before.’

‘I see.’

They walked on a little.

‘I’m not sure I know how it was before?’

‘It was private then as well.’ Peter smiled.

‘Why do people imagine that close things will be shared in the family?’ asked Tamsin.

‘Why indeed? As Jesus said, when his mother insisted on seeing him: “Who is my mother?”’

‘He said that?’

‘Famously.’

‘That must have offended everyone wonderfully.’

‘He kept his secrets for friends like Mary Magdalene, where I suppose he felt safe. We do reveal things when we feel safe.’

‘That could be a very long wait as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Of course the murderer will be aching to reveal themselves.’

‘You think?’

‘Of course. When things weigh on our minds, we need to reveal. The trouble is, there’s nowhere very safe for them at present.’

‘I hope not.’

Another pause in conversation but no slackening of pace in the chill night air.

‘So no young man on the scene.’

‘What sort of a question is that?’

‘It wasn’t a question. There was no question mark at the end of it, more a reflection really. But even if it was a question it’s not so very threatening. It’s something anyone might ask in the supermarket.’

‘That’s why I have my food delivered.’

‘And there’s nothing wrong with a young man in tow.’

‘How about a young woman? Is she allowed?

‘Oh, I think so. I once knew a camel like that. She became very upset when any male camel came near her.’

‘And do you have one?’

‘A camel? No, it would look odd in Stormhaven.’

‘Like you don’t already. You know I mean your private life.’

‘Ah.’

‘Do you have something or someone, hidden and wonderful? After so long in the desert you must have energy to burn.’

‘Oh well, nothing to report on that score, really,’ said Peter.

‘Nothing? I thought churches were full of illicit assignations.’

‘I’m more tempted by illicit solitude.’

‘So who was the last woman to give you a present?’

‘Er, well, Sally sent me a nice card to thank me for helping out at the Summer Fayre. I don’t know if that counts. Oh, and Betty gave me a picture of her father on the beach in a swimming costume, appropriate to the era. He was standing just over there.’

Peter pointed through the darkness to a place on the shingle. ‘I’ve still got that picture. I find old photos strangely haunting.’

‘So who was the last woman you fancied?’

‘You don’t give up, do you?’

‘Never.’

This question was less easy to answer. The last woman he’d fancied was Tamsin herself, when she’d stood on his doorstep at their first meeting.

‘Well, I’ve always thought Jennifer was a handsome lady,’ he said, and this was true. He did find her attractive, though the word handsome hardly described the nature of his desire. So it was the truth, just not the whole truth. As he said himself, we are editors all.

They walked on in silence back towards Sandy View.

***

Abbot Peter still thought of Clare as he cleaned his teeth that night.

‘Tomorrow we must talk again with the Bishop,’ said Tamsin.

‘He may have been the last person to speak with Clare.’

‘No. She’ll have spoken with someone else. You don’t return to church on a night like that just to light a candle.’

‘So who was she meeting?’

‘We don’t know. Perhaps the Bishop can help us.’

‘Best to summon him rather than to be summoned,’ said Peter, before swilling his teeth with mouth wash. ‘Get him out of his office, away from his palace. Get him down to the rough and tumble of Stormhaven police station. And disrobe him of his purple shirt as he enters.’

‘You don’t think highly of him?’

‘Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-hate. His ego has merged almost entirely with the need to be right. It makes true conversation with him difficult.’

Peter wondered if he had been a little uncharitable.

‘Apart from that, of course, he’s a good man doing his best.’

Forty Eight

It had been kind of Sally to come. She’d even brought a lemon and two tins of gin and tonic which they now drank in Jennifer’s front room. No one would have known that the previous night a brick had skidded across this clean and comfortable floor in a tinkling of shattered glass. All was now restored but for one small change. Jennifer had opted for reinforced double-glazing this time.

There was respect between the two of them. They had worked closely during the interregnum and unlike some others in the parish, both knew what was required to run an organisation. Sally enjoyed Jennifer’s ruthlessness and Jennifer appreciated Sally’s competence. Together, they had successfully handled the transition from one vicar to another. Admittedly, they had not seen so much of each other recently. Both had tended to revolve around Anton and each had much on their plate. But they’d twice shared a trip to the theatre in Brighton and had even talked of a holiday flat in Italy together.

‘It must have been terrible,’ said Sally.

‘It was rather bizarre,’ said Jennifer. ‘Me and my metal piping!’

‘And do you know who it was or have any suspicions?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Jennifer. ‘Absolutely no idea. I told the detective that I thought it could be an angry parent. That was before the Abbot went off on one his desert stories. I’m not sure he’s cut out to be a sleuth. He does wander sometimes.’

‘I know what you mean. I do sometimes wonder a bit when I talk with him! He doesn’t react in the normal manner. It’s as if my words are falling into some huge abyss of emptiness. But Tamsin seems very, well, competent.’

‘Oh yes, you can see why she’s made it to where she has. A touch insensitive, of course, which people do not warm to, but there we are.’

Sally nodded with a knowing smile.

‘I certainly had to bite my tongue when she interviewed me otherwise heaven knows what I might have said.’

‘And how is everyone else?’ asked Jennifer. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been a bit remiss in my Church Wardenly duties.’

‘Everyone’s fine,’ said Sally. ‘Bearing up pretty well. Hopefully last night’s meeting helped.’

Jennifer gave her no reassurance on that score.

‘I’m staying in close contact,’ said Sally.

‘I’m sure you are.’

‘Obviously the news about Clare has shaken people.’

‘Yes.’

‘Though perhaps the unknowing was harder to take than the truth.’

‘What weird psychological animals we are!’ said Jennifer. ‘Our fears are more upsetting than reality.’

‘And of course, Clare wasn’t the warmest of souls,’ said Sally casually. ‘People respected her but I’m not sure they ever quite liked her.’

‘You mean she was a cold bitch, Sally. I always have to say the nasty things on your behalf.’

Sally looked into her glass and at the fizz around the lemon.

‘And life must go on,’ she said.

And life did go on, all around them, close and far away, life of all sorts. Outside, a car drove by noisily like a mobile disco; inside, a leaflet dropped through the door, advertising a new Chinese restaurant in the area, offering a ‘special deal’ for new Stormhaven customers; a mile away, a despairing local council employee opened his window and heard the waves of judgement; and here in the warm, two ambitious women called Sally and Jennifer contemplated the parish affairs of St Michael’s with a little gin and tonic. Life goes on until one day it doesn’t.

‘Betty seems unhappy,’ said Sally confidentially.

‘Oh really? Why’s that?’

‘She’s reluctant to say.’

‘She’s not the Betty she was. It’s so sad seeing someone in decline. I remember it in my grandmother. I found it very unsettling as a child.’

‘I’ve said I’m there for her, if she wants to talk.’

‘Let’s hope she does. It would do her good.’

‘She says it’s no one’s business but her own.’

‘You’ve done all you can, Sally.’

‘I hope so. I don’t like to think of her suffering alone.’

There was a pause in the conversation. Jennifer was pleasant company for Sally. She wasn’t as stupid as other people; and her respect meant a lot.

‘And how’s the big strong Ginger?’ asked Jennifer. ‘We all want to know.’

‘Ginger? Oh well, who knows? Ginger is a mystery!’ Sally blushed as she spoke.

‘He does seem to like you. His behaviour at the meeting was a bit boorish but it seems two are fast becoming one.’

‘Me and Ginger? Oh no, no, he’s much older than me. You’re fishing in the wrong pool there, Jennifer! Definitely fishing in the wrong pool.’

‘Yet you were both there in church at six in the morning. And I shouldn’t imagine the police believe in coincidences any more than I do.’

Her delivery was as smooth as cream and Sally was a little startled.

‘Well, you’ll just have to believe in this one, because there’s nothing else to say. Absolutely nothing!’

‘If you say it, Sally, I believe it. You are a priest after all and if I can’t believe you, who can I believe?’

‘You can believe me.’

Sally got up and went to the window. Perhaps it was time to leave.

‘I have some yoghurt in the fridge,’ said Jennifer. ‘Or some cheese cake.’

‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ said Sally.

‘You’re not dieting again are you? You should let your body be for a while.’

‘No, I’ve just lost my appetite what with recent events.’

‘Liar.’

‘I ought to be going anyway.’

‘Stay, Sally. Why not? Get drunk! It would be good to see you loosen up a little. I won’t tell on you!’

‘It’s probably not a good time for loosening up. Not at the moment.’

She took her bag from the sofa.

‘So tell me - how did Anton look?’ asked Jennifer, leaning forward.

‘How do you mean?’

‘When you found him? How does a crucified vicar look? I mean, I know we’re not supposed to ask and all that.’

‘Oh, well it was awful, of course.’

‘It must have been.’

Sally sat down of the arm of the sofa to reflect.

‘I hear he was naked,’ said Jennifer.

‘Yes, he was. He was - naked.’

Sally’s eyes began to water. Jennifer was quickly up, to put her arms around her shoulder.

‘It must have been just the worst,’ she said.

‘It was.’

‘And have you talked about it with anyone?’

‘The police offered me a counsellor but I said “No”.’

‘You’re too proud.’

‘I just don’t think it would be helpful.’

‘So what do you most remember? You need to tell someone.’

‘The shock, I think. Yes, the utter sense of shock in his face.’

They kept a silence.

‘He was a good man at heart,’ said Jennifer. ‘Others may have regretted his appointment but I never did. Well, that’s not quite true, he could be grossly insensitive but I think I prefer that to the grossly depressed Reverend Stone. Anton could have done great things here, if he’d been given a chance. He just needed time.’

‘But someone disagreed.’

Sally got up to leave and Jennifer didn’t stop her.

‘Yes, someone did.’

‘Goodnight, Jennifer.’

‘Goodnight, Sally. And God bless. Look after yourself.’

She walked with Sally to the door and felt numb as it closed.

Forty Nine

‘We should hardly be surprised at the latest turn of events, my dear,’ said the Bishop, sitting upright in bed.

He’d read his bible verse for the evening but his mind was still in Stormhaven.

‘Which events?’ asked his wife Margaret, who across the bed was reading a biography of Carl Jung.

He and Margaret did not now touch; or not in any way that could suggest desire. They’d not had sex for two years and not enjoyed it for seven. Something had died since the wedding. Was this a good marriage? Everyone thought so, for Margaret came to all the public events and that was the test surely? And how Bishop Stephen loved to preach on the benefits of such union!

‘Those who pray together stay together!’ he would say. He liked snappy sayings and the attention they brought.

‘Marriage is made in heaven but worked at on earth!’ That was another sound bite he favoured.

‘That which God has joined together, let no man - or another woman - divide!’ Sometimes he used that one as well. He even encouraged the government to support marriage with tax breaks, though his own marriage had less life than a tomb.

‘Good night, dear,’ said Margaret as she put down her book and turned out her bedside lamp.

‘It’s no surprise at all to me,’ he continued. ‘I have always said that the stones of Stormhaven are soaked in blood.’

‘It’s just a nice seaside town.’

‘Hardly.’

‘I really don’t understand all your dramatics.’

‘They’re called the Cormorants. The locals, they’re called the Cormorants. Do you know why?’

‘I’m sure you’ll tell me.’

‘It’s because they’re famous for looting ships.’

‘Then they must be very good swimmers. At least shops stay still when you smash their windows. I’m going to sleep now.’

‘Then I have a bedtime story for you.’

Bishop Stephen could be a story teller, an educator, he had the gift.

‘The “Cormorant” name dates back to 1562,’ he said as though reading to an interested group of children.

‘Is this a long one dear?’

‘Not too long, no. But crucial is the fact that Stormhaven was one of the Cinque Ports.’

‘Shouldn’t “Cinque” rhyme with “sank”? said Margaret sleepily.

‘No, no, that’s the French pronunciation - the English say “sink” - rather appropriate for Stormhaven!’ Silence.

‘Hastings, New Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich were the originals but others were added, including Stormhaven, and the people of these towns had the right to claim goods washed up on the shore from ships lost at sea - a right that was profoundly abused.’

More silence.

‘Of course wind-powered navigation around the cliffs was always dangerous in those days, especially in the dark. But the good people of Stormhaven made it a great deal more so by moving the navigation lights. Can you believe it? They moved the navigation lights to fool the passing ships! And - this I find incredible - they even lit fires on the cliffs to guide ships onto the rocks! And when they sank, they robbed the bodies of drowned seamen when they floated to shore. That’s the Cormorants for you! Thank God for the good people of Stormhaven!’

He’d made his point and waited for a response. But as he looked towards his wife, there was nothing but sleep’s deep breath and the widening chasm between them.

He was glad she hadn’t mentioned Clare in some accusatory way.

Sometimes she did, which was ridiculous, and quite unwarranted.

Fifty

Tamsin lay in the spare bed, contemplating the second day of the investigation. She was glad at least to be back in her own sheets, collected from her police digs at the foot of the South Downs on the outskirts of Brighton. The sooner she was out of there the better. Sharing a kitchen and toilets with four spotty constables and a disturbed sergeant was the downside of her transfer to the Lewes area. The sergeant was recently arrived as well. His wife had locked him out of his home after repeated bouts of physical violence. Two suitcases containing his possessions had been delivered to the front lawn via the upstairs window. Now he and his battered suitcases were in the room across the corridor from Tamsin; and he was finding excuses to knock on her door.

‘You and me are alike in a way,’ he’d said last week, with alcohol on his breath. ‘Both starting again. I suppose that’s how fate brings people together.’

Not in Tamsin’s world. It was time to go flat hunting.

Her uncle had rather sweetly attempted some home decoration. He’d put fresh flowers in her room and one or two dubious shells. She’d had a bedside lamp delivered, something else the Abbot lacked. Indeed, when she considered his home, it looked to have been furnished mainly by Beachcomber Furnishings Ltd, with old netting, a lobster basket, discarded wicker chairs and sea-soaked crates performing various roles.

To this extent, his laptop in the study looked out of place. When asked, he’d said he was writing a book. She hadn’t pursued the matter further because it was not relevant to the case. It was good for the elderly to have a hobby but that didn’t mean she had to be interested. Sometimes she had the impression he was thinking more about the book than the case; or at least thinking more about something. He’d spoken about the Enneagram in outline to her, but really she had more important things to think about. You had to prioritise and in terms of relevance, some ancient form of typology was right up there with the day’s astrological predictions. He hadn’t seemed to mind her rebuttal. He said he quite understood and left it at that: ‘There’s a time and a place for everything, Tamsin and this apparently is neither the time nor place for you.’

She was glad it was the end of the matter.

***

There was a winter moon tonight, shining cold hope through her small window. She heard the late-night voices of two shingle walkers carried on the wind. She’d left the window open to hear the sea but mainly heard the Chief Inspector’s final words to her, as she’d set off from HQ on the first morning of the investigation:

‘I want the case solved by lunch, Tamsin!’

He was only joking but he never really joked and everyone in the force knew these cases were the easy ones. The crucifixion of a vicar displays madness hard to keep hidden in the routine of community life and in such cases the madman tends quickly to be found.

‘It’s nick-a-nutter’ time,’ said one of the sergeants to her.’Sprechen ze psychiatric?’

But as the second day drew to a close, the psychopath was still appearing sane; there was another body but no sign of Mr or Mrs Mad.

Tamsin went downstairs and made some tea. She drank it with the front door open and the waves crashing. She stepped outside. You could just see the top of St Michael’s from here. Everyone out there was lying of course but so what? Each community has its own deceit. What the police needed were some new facts with which to smash the lies and leave the audience gasping. They needed the murder equipment - the knife, the tape, the hammer, the drugs, the clothes. Where were they? If they’d managed to miss a live body in the church, were they now missing something else there? There would have to be another search.

***

In the room across the landing, Abbot Peter drifted into sleep wondering whether the publisher was just being polite. You could never tell with publishers. His words were encouraging but he was probably just being polite. He may not even have read the manuscript and he did keep saying he couldn’t promise anything.

‘There’s a lot of potential here, Peter. Whether it’s the right book for our current list, I’m not sure, but this isn’t a “no” - or not a definite “no” anyway. It’s a “maybe”, Peter, so do stay in touch. Cards on the table, I do wonder if the Americans might not be a better market for the Enneagram. The English tend to be less credulous and rather more - how shall we put it - rational about these things. But who knows? It’s just a thought. Keep on keeping on!’

For Peter, publishers were like wife-beaters declaring they’ve changed: you believe them not because they’re believable but because you want them to be, the sad triumph of faith over experience. You hope they’ll stop hitting you; or you hope they’ll publish your book. It was true: the Enneagram wasn’t very English, searching out the psyche in such a disturbing way. But neither was it the avoidant psychology of absurd promise so beloved by the American self-help market. And for good or ill, it was quite impossible to turn into a sound bite.

‘Give it to me in a sentence,’ one publisher had said.

Peter replied: ‘If I could give it to you in a sentence, it wouldn’t be worth anything.’

Most publishers, like Tamsin, placed it somewhere between astrology and witchcraft and Peter was sympathetic to their cause. It was hard for outsiders to understand until they had stepped inside the circle, until they felt its fire in their belly, at which point they’d scream in delight:

‘Someone knows me at last!’

Tamsin had immediately recognised the personal threat it posed and so dealt it a hasty death blow.

‘I think that’s something to do on your own, Uncle.’

‘You make it sound like a dirty habit,’ he’d said.

The voices of two laughing beach walkers carried on the wind, excited by a discovery. He wondered what they’d found. He always wondered what others had found but not because he wanted it. He had no need of anything else for life had given him quite enough to love: first the hot desert and now this stormy coast. What more could he ask? You don’t have to know what you’re looking for to find it. And as sleep approached, he was thinking of the stone. He was thinking of his secret place, for though he lived alone, he would sometimes feel the need to intensify his solitude. At such times, he would make the grassy walk up the white cliffs and at a particular point, learned from a local fisherman, he’d step over the edge, through undergrowth and thistle, where he’d find a small and hidden chalk path - more of a ledge, really - which precariously led to a cave half way up the cliff face. Who else knew of it, he wasn’t sure. But there he would sit alone on a large rock and contemplate the big sky, the circling birds and the dangerous sea below. He called it The Seeing Stone after something his father had once said; it was his secret place, where things became clear.

He must go back there soon.

***

And as Abbot Peter drifted off, there was a late night addition to the murder diary. It sat alongside Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on the book shelf, a fact that interested the killer:

‘I suppose, if caught, I will be called a Jekyll and Hyde figure, a split personality. Such ideas give comfort to people. Blame it all on nasty Mr Hyde. But Robert Louis Stevenson was not saying that. He wasn’t saying there was simply a good person and bad person in us all. That would be stupid. He understood there were many different selves, not just two. We use the self who is necessary in any situation, that’s my understanding at least. The cleverest know which self to use to achieve their immediate ends. I have an army of selves each obeying my command.

I seem at present to be a rather good commander.’

Fifty One

Friday, 19 December

It was the morning of the third day of the investigation. Abbot Peter was making toast, Tamsin at the round table in the living room with coffee.

‘So the question is: how do you tape someone to a cross without a struggle?’ she asked.

‘By drugging them first,’ said Peter from the kitchen.

‘Taping an unconscious body to an upright cross would require great strength.’

‘True.’

The only alternative to two murderers and team work, which remained a possibility, was complicity on Anton’s part and both knew it was time this option was explored.

‘So Anton allows himself to be tied to the cross,’ said Peter.

‘Perhaps so.’

‘It is the large elephant in the room.’

‘So let’s stop walking round it.’

‘The fact is, when a vicar dies in odd circumstances the possibility of a sexual element is never far from the public’s mind.’

‘And very close to the Silt’s.’

‘And they’re not alone. Sergeant Reiss assumes I’m a paedophile because I’m an Abbot.’

‘Has he said?’

‘He doesn’t need to. I hear people’s attitudes more than their words.’

‘Let’s be honest, Uncle, there are quite a few vicar/sex-shame stories.’

‘I agree, though no more than doctor, estate agent or psychologist sex-shame stories. But the vicar ones stick, I grant you. The pervy priest stories are saved by editors for the big-sale Sundays. The English seem particularly to delight in them. What this says about the priesthood - or the role of the priesthood in popular imagination I don’t know, but there we are. Sex is the first thought when a vicar dies violently, with burglary trailing some way behind.’

‘And when a womaniser like Anton dies in a sex game - let’s make that assumption - it’s more likely the murderer is a woman.’

‘But perhaps not Betty.’

Tamsin got up and went to the front window.

‘And then again why not a man?’ she said.

‘A man?’

‘Why not?’

‘So we’re looking for a woman - or a man. You’re not really narrowing it down.’

Tamsin was on a roll: ‘We have no evidence that Anton was gay and plenty of evidence to the contrary. Yet for all his flirting he was still single at the age of thirty two.’

‘True.’

‘So was this perhaps a love that dared not speak its name?’

‘I’m not sure love has much to do with it.’

‘And now you’re sounding pompous.’

‘Better by far than vacuous.’

Tamsin’s phone rang. The silence as she listened indicated interest. Peter noted that, unusually, she wasn’t harassing the speaker, simply receiving their words. He watched her absorption, her compulsive hunger for the kill. Here was a ruthless woman and more often than not, when Peter used that word, it was in a positive sense.

‘A note she wrote at the parish meeting has been found in the vestry,’ said Tamsin, as she put down the phone.

‘A note who wrote?’

‘And, get this: her footprints are all over the table that must have been used for the crucifixion.’

‘Whose footprints?’

‘Betty’s.’

‘Betty?’

‘She’s our murderer. She’s being taken down to the station now. Give me half an hour with her, people sometimes say more to outsiders, then join us.’

Fifty Two

‘Detective Inspector Tamsin Shah with Betty Dodd, interview starting at 2.42 p.m.’

Betty sat opposite Tamsin in a stark room in Stormhaven Police Station that offered only a chipped formica table and two chairs for furniture.

‘I’ve never been inside a police station before,’ said Betty, with a mixture of awe and pride.

Tamsin found the child-like quality of this observation unnerving and a rare sense of care arose in her. Perhaps she was also remembering Abbot Peter’s words that more flies are caught with honey than vinegar. She’d use whatever it took to catch this fly; she could do honey.

‘I hope you’ve been treated well, Betty.’

‘I’ve been treated very well, thank you.’

‘That’s good.’

‘A very nice young constable brought me here and made me tea.’

‘I’m glad. I think constables were made to make us tea.’

‘PC Neville was his name.’

‘An excellent officer.’ She just managed to get that line out.

‘And when I asked for some biscuits he went off and found me a box of Jaffa Cakes!’

‘I will commend him personally.’

Unlike Sergeant Reiss who would be furious.

‘I’ll need to be home by four,’ said Betty. ‘That’s when Thomas comes round.’

‘Thomas?’

‘He’s a cat, not my cat, I don’t have a cat of my own - I don’t like them bringing in the mice. But he likes to come round and I give him something.’

‘Well, we’ll do our best about getting you home by four.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And if we have any difficulties then PC Neville will make sure Thomas is greeted with something appropriate. He loves all animals.’ This wasn’t the sort of recorded interview Tamsin wanted anyone else to hear; she felt like a social worker.

‘But before then, Betty, I just wanted to speak with you about the night the vicar was murdered.’

Betty sat in silence.

‘And you have chosen not to have a lawyer with you.’

‘Why would I want one of those?’

Tamsin could think of several reasons but wasn’t going to help out. Honey had its limits.

‘Do you have anything you want to say about that night?’

‘It was very wet, I remember the rain.’

‘Yes, it was very wet; though of course you must like the rain because you went for a long walk in it.’

Betty again remained silent.

‘As far as the seafront Abbot Peter told me.’

‘Is it true he’s your uncle?’ asked Betty.

‘If we can just stay with the night of the murder for the moment?’

Tamsin gathered herself again, wondering whether to add a little vinegar to the honey currently failing to catch any flies. ‘Do you recognise this?’

She pushed a transparent envelope towards Betty containing some paper with writing on it. Betty looked at it without moving.

‘Do you recognise that?’

‘Yes, it’s mine.’

‘And what is it exactly?’

‘They were the notes I took at the parish meeting. I like writing if I can’t knit. I won the writing prize at school for stories. I’ve read a lot of stories and written a few.’

‘They sound very exciting.’

‘Oh, they’re not exciting. Life isn’t exciting. Life is just hard.’

Tamsin said: ‘So these are your notes from the meeting on the night that the vicar died.’ Betty nodded.

‘For the recording, Betty is nodding her head in agreement. So you lost these notes, Betty?’

‘I did, yes.’

‘Do you know where we found them?’

‘In the parish room?’

‘No, in the vestry. Is that a surprise?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘The following morning this note of yours was found in the vestry where the vicar was killed. Did you go into the vestry after the meeting?’

‘No, I went for a walk.’

‘That’s right, you went for a long walk in the rain.’

‘I like walking.’

‘You must do but we still have the problem. How did your notes which you took in the parish room arrive on the floor of the vestry when you didn’t go there? If you didn’t put them there, who did?’

‘I don’t know. It could have been anyone. Things often get moved in church. It makes people very angry and then they blame me as the cleaner.’

Betty was right; it could have been quite a few people and the note in itself proved nothing. Perhaps Tamsin had hoped she’d break down and confess all; but Betty wasn’t breaking down and confessing all so Tamsin decided to play her other ace. If at first you don’t succeed...

‘Something else we found in the vestry was your footprints on the table.’

Betty looked straight ahead.

‘The table that the murderer used to bang in the nails. Do you know how your footprints might have got there on that table? It’s an odd place for footprints.’

Betty was rummaging through her bag. Was she searching for a knife with which to stab her? It did cross Tamsin’s mind but instead of a knife, she drew out a handkerchief on which she firmly blew her nose.

‘I’ve never told anyone this,’ she said.

‘You can trust me,’ said Tamsin leaning forward.

‘I stand on the table to clean the ceiling.’

‘Do you?’

‘It’s the only way I can reach the cobwebs.’

‘They don’t give you a ladder?’

‘I can’t be doing with ladders.’

‘No.’

‘I prefer the table, feel safer on it but I don’t tell anyone in case they make a fuss about health and safety. Roger Stills, the church warden, he’s always going on about health and safety.’

‘So you stand on the table to clean.’

‘Yes.’

‘And when did you last stand on it?’

‘Tuesday.’

‘The day of the murder?’

‘Yes, I wanted everything looking ship-shape for the Bishop.’ It was at this point that Abbot Peter entered the room.

‘Abbot Peter has just entered the room at 2.55 p.m.’

‘Hello, Betty,’ he said.

‘Hello, Abbot.’

She didn’t seem glad to see him and made no attempt to suggest otherwise. The social skills of polite deception had passed her by entirely. Why pretend you were glad to see someone when you weren’t?

‘Do you have anything else you want to tell us, Betty?’ asked Tamsin.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said, getting up. ‘I should probably be getting back now.’

The interview was brought to an end and with Tamsin reluctant to move, almost paralysed in her seat, it was the Abbot who walked Betty to the door of the police station. Betty turned down the offer of a lift, opting to walk but not before speaking with Peter about her funeral.

‘You will bury me, won’t you, Abbot?’

‘I’m sorry?’

Peter was caught out by this particular line of enquiry. Such requests usually came with a preamble and context but not today.

‘I want you to take my funeral and bury me when I die.’

‘Are you thinking of dying, Betty?’

‘I’d like you to do it, Abbot.’

‘And what if you outlive me by many years which is highly possible?’

‘I just want to know that if I die, and I’m not young anymore, you’ll take my funeral. My affairs are in order.’

‘I’m not thinking about you dying, Betty.’

Betty stood stock still, staring straight at him.

‘I’m thinking about you living!’ he continued, his words dying in the air. ‘But of course, should our lives work out that way, should death greet you before it greets me, then it would be an honour to take your funeral, Betty and to lower you into the ground of glory.’

A quiet smile broke out across Betty’s face, like a weak and watery sun.

‘And you’ve chosen burial over cremation?’

‘Yes, I don’t want the flames, Abbot. I want to rot, slowly rotting is the best way for me.’

And with that she started walking, hands clasped behind her back, strong determined progress, making towards the seafront as Peter returned inside.

He found Tamsin looking blankly at her notes.

‘So do we have the killer?’ asked Abbot Peter.

‘Work in progress,’ she said without looking up.

‘I’ll take that as a “no”.’

Fifty Three

‘I don’t know why Clare got out of the car.’

The Bishop was insistent. Neither was he in the best of moods having been asked to ‘cancel whatever you’re doing’ and summoned to Stormhaven police station with pressing urgency. The Abbot had been right. Bishop Stephen would have been happier in his episcopal study with family photos and a theological bookcase for support. A Bishop in a police station was very much an away match, prompting an unspoken battle of the uniforms. In the corridors and foyer were the blue uniforms against which he deployed his purple shirt and large cross. One purple shirt with cross trumped a hundred blues in his opinion; he was the Holy Father here and far beyond the stupid reach of the Plod Brigade. But what irritated him the most was the discovery that Abbot Peter was part of the interview team.

‘So you did drive her home?’ said Tamsin.

‘I offered her a lift, yes.’

‘As was your common practice I believe?’

‘I may have been charitable in this manner on other occasions, if that’s what you’re saying.’

‘That is what I’m saying.’

‘As though it’s wrong to be kind! I thought we were meant to applaud the Good Samaritan?’

‘Loud applause,’ said Abbot Peter. ‘Always.’

‘I’m sure Clare appreciated this regular twosome greatly,’ said Tamsin.

The Bishop’s face reddened a little; this was Peter’s perception as Tamsin continued.

‘It was Clare, after all, who was always the beneficiary of this charity.’

‘She’s on my way home!’

‘Sort of on your way home. A slight detour necessary.’

‘It was nothing.’

‘And yet you didn’t make it to her house on the night of the murder. Why was that?’

There was a pause.

‘She wanted to get out,’ said the Bishop, quietly.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘She decided that she wanted to get out.’

‘An odd decision on such a stormy night.’

‘I thought so myself. I thought, “What’s got into you, you poor girl?”’

‘And what had got into her?’

‘As I say, I have no idea.’

‘So how did the conversation go exactly? Become a reporter for a moment. You were driving along in the rain and you were still at least a mile from her home when she said what?’

‘Well, she just said she wanted to go back to the church.’

‘I see. Any reason given?’

‘No, she just said she must go back. Something was obviously on her mind.’

‘I’m sure it was. And you offered to drive her there, I presume.’

‘Back to church? No, I had to return home; I had other things to attend to. There are many issues which require my attention beyond the affairs of Stormhaven.’

‘So you stopped the car and then what?’

‘Well, she got out.’

‘Did she say goodbye?’

‘Oh yes, she said goodbye and thanked me for the lift and then got out. I didn’t see her again.’

‘Though you rang her on three occasions soon after.’

‘I just wanted to make sure she was all right.’

‘Do you ring everyone three times after they leave you?’

‘It was late, I was concerned.’

‘I’m sure you were but about what?’

‘About her safety of course! And with good reason as it turned out.’

‘Indeed. And you rang her three times because she didn’t answer any of your calls, which is odd given your charitable works toward her. I think I’d always the answer the calls of the Good Samaritan.’

‘I don’t pretend to know the answer to that.’

‘I’m certainly struggling.’

‘But then, Detective Inspector, sometimes we must live the mystery. I often have to say that to people.’

‘And that’s all very spiritual,’ said Tamsin, ‘but in police work, we have to get to the bottom of a mystery rather than “live it” as you say. And the mystery here is this: why did Clare get out of your car on a filthy night and, without explanation, return to the church?’

***

‘A pretty savage performance,’ said Abbot Peter after the Bishop had taken his leave. ‘Though we must, of course, beware of negative fixations. They aren’t always the path to enlightenment.’

‘Negative fixations?’

‘You become fixated by dislike. You lock onto someone in negative relationship. From there on, everything they do and everything they are, is wrong, despised, judged. They’re demonised, they become demons.

‘He’s a liar.’

‘True.’

‘And you shouldn’t lie if you have a big cross round your neck.’

Fifty Four

Saturday, 20 December

Council worker Christopher Thornton tidied his front room but a note seemed superfluous. Why give meaning to something that had no meaning? A note said his life mattered and his life had never mattered, had only ever been pretence. If he were a stick of Brighton rock, the words down the middle would be ‘I’m worth nothing.’ It was disturbing but he couldn’t remember any particular moment in his life when he could say, ‘This is me’. He could only remember saying, ‘Well, I got away with that quite well.’

Some unspeakable shame, he felt it there, the sense that if anyone knew him as he was, then they wouldn’t like him, would see through the pretence to the emptiness behind. His mother had said how horrid he could be, so he’d sent his shadow out into the world and the shadow had done well until the beach hut incident. It wasn’t the worst thing he’d done - well he hadn’t done anything really, just another small lie in a very long list. But it was the money that had tipped the scales, the bribe he’d managed to call a thank you. This was the Rubicon he’d crossed and the reason he left home early this Saturday morning and walked the 300 yards to the sea front where he began the climb up the white cliffs.

‘Vive le weekend!’ said one jolly old lady coming the other way.

‘Vive le weekend,’ replied Christopher.

Away to his left was the golf course, distant figures with time on their hands or business relations to develop:

‘How about we discuss it over a round of golf?’

It was a world Christopher was familiar with but not part of; and this was the final goodbye. His funeral would be an interesting event. Who from the office would go? And what would they say about him afterwards as they hung around the flowers before leaving. They’d probably discuss the football or house prices. He couldn’t imagine them spending very long on him.

The climb was now steeper, Stormhaven below him and the golf course at the end of its reach. Up ahead was a young runner attempting the gradient but travelling so slowly that Christopher’s determined walk was in danger of taking him past the lad. And Christopher’s walk could be very determined; such physical force within that he’d never really harnessed or directed. If only he’d known who he was. He understood Samuel Becket’s lines, words scribbled on a post-it note in his kitchen, ‘There were times when I forgot not only who I was, but that I was, forgot to be.’

And now he stood on the soft grass at the top of the cliffs where only the keen walkers came. Beachy Head was the traditional place to leap, two miles further along the coast and generally, Christopher liked tradition, liked the familiar. But he also liked it here and looked around in appreciation of the wind-swept view. The young runner had made it to the top and now turned wearily inland. Surprisingly, he seemed to be going no faster on the flat than he had on the sharp climb. Perhaps he was a one-gear runner, equal in speed whatever the terrain, never fast, never slow but durable and steady, keeping going until the end and, as Christopher had mimicked him in life, so he’d mimic him in death. He’d keep going to the end.

And then he was being greeted by the strange man in a habit. He’d seen him in Stormhaven before, struggling up the High Street or once in the supermarket talking with the till girl. But he’d never spoken himself. You don’t, do you? But now the two met at last as the wind quietened, a still morning air in high places and a strangely intimate winter silence.

‘Only committed walkers out today!’ the strange man in the habit said cheerily.

‘That’s true,’ said Christopher, glad of the human contact. And then a thought occurred to him: ‘Do you hear confessions?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Do you hear confessions?’

‘I do yes.’

‘Good.’

‘Though it’s a dying trade, not something people practice much now.’

‘I suppose not.’

Christopher laughed inwardly at the spiralling and absurd nature of guilt, as new possibilities now became apparent. He could imagine it: ‘Father, I confess that I am guilty of allowing my confessions of guilt to become a little sporadic of late.’

But the man in the habit did not seem like a vulture feeding off the self-condemnation of others.

‘Yes, they simply “move on”, ‘ continued the strange man in a throwaway manner. ‘But I sense you can’t do that.’

There was a silence between them.

‘So what do you want?’

‘I just want to say I’m sorry,’ said Christopher.

‘What are you sorry about?’

‘Many things. But I’m mainly sorry about the beach hut.’

‘The beach hut? Well, now you’ve spoken it and I’ve heard it.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that’s enough.’

‘Really?’

‘Indeed.’

‘That’s a weight off my mind.’

There was another silence as a woman with an energetic Dalmatian passed them.

‘We all have our reasons,’ said Peter.

‘But they’re not always good reasons.’

‘What is it about the beach hut you’re sorry for?’

‘Just tell Mr Robinson at the council what I’ve said. He’s a good man.’

‘And how will I contact Mr Robinson?’

Christopher placed a card in his hands.

‘I’m not so bad, am I?’ he said.

‘You were never bad,’ said Abbot Peter. ‘Whoever said that you were?’

‘My mother, teachers, where to begin?’

‘Then they didn’t deserve you.’

There was a thought, but perhaps a thought too late.

‘I just want you to remember to tell Mr Robinson.’

‘I will.’

‘Thank you,’ he said as he turned and walked on, only doubling back when the strange man in the habit had continued on his journey back down into Stormhaven.

Christopher looked out to sea beneath dark and blustery clouds. He glanced round, once more reaching out for elusive approval in the wind. And then he ran forward until the land ran out beneath his feet and he was falling, as every leaf must.

Fifty Five

The Christmas Fayre was going very well until Anton’s unexpected return.

‘Where have you been?’ asked Tamsin. ‘I feared I’d have to go alone.’

They’d been due to meet outside the chip shop at 2.00 p.m. and Peter was five minutes late.

‘Yes, I’m sorry but I just had to see Mr Robinson. Very important.’

‘And who is the mysterious Mr Robinson?’

‘The first time he’s been called that, I should think.’

‘So?’

‘He’s a middle-to-large cog in the council’s Recreation and Leisure department.’

‘Why does that sound so bleak?’

‘I don’t know. Is it any different from being a middle-to-large cog in the police force?’

‘I think it’s the Recreation and Leisure thing. Makes it sound like a complete waste of time.’

‘There speaks an activist.’

‘Or just a person who gets the job done.’

Peter paused. Arguing with self-justifying attitudes led nowhere.

‘He doesn’t spill charisma, I grant you, but neither does he spill despair. I think he has a job he believes in, which is rather nice.’

‘And you think he has something for us?’

It was a leading question, accompanied by hawk-like stare from Tamsin.

‘Oh, definitely. He’s getting back to me when he knows more. But he knows quite a lot already.’

‘And what did you talk about?’

‘Beach huts.’

‘Beach huts?’

‘Yes.’

‘Glad to hear you weren’t wasting your time.’

The put-down was short and sharp but Abbot Peter could only smile.

Tamsin continued: ‘You can now make up for lost time by telling me what on earth you do at church fayres. This is my first.’

‘The brief is fairly simple,’ said Peter, as they walked together through the wonderful smell of frying fish and chips towards St Michael’s. ‘You buy one thing you want and two things you don’t. You bump into as many people as possible in a cheery fashion. You comment on the good turnout, even if there’s only three of you. You have a cup of tea, say something nice about the cakes and take your gracious leave.’

‘Sounds more your bag than mine.’

‘You’ll make it your bag, Tamsin, I know you will. There’s room for all sorts at a Fayre and you’ll bring your own particular genius. Indeed, I suspect you’ll do so well they’ll want you back next year.’

‘Don’t.’

But Peter’s prediction proved true. Once there, Tamsin found she could play this game remarkably well, able to charm stall holders quite as well as she crushed junior officers.

‘You have some lovely stones and shells here, Betty!’ she said, after a brief perusal of Betty’s ‘Shingle and Shore’ table.

The altered circumstances of their present meeting to their last did not appear to strike Betty as odd. Indeed, Betty seemed in particularly high spirits.

‘Well, I didn’t find them all myself,’ she said, ‘I did have help but they’re all local. Well, nearly all. Would you like to buy one?’

‘I’m sure I will.’

‘Which one?’ asked Betty, staring straight into her eyes.

‘It’s such a wonderful event,’ said Tamsin, not ready to be pinned down. ‘Let me first take a look round and then come back and make my choice. I do like the starfish.’

‘The starfish isn’t from Stormhaven,’ said Betty.

‘But still beautiful.’

‘It’s from the Greek island of Kalymnos.’

‘Have you been?’

‘No. I’ve been to Watford.’

‘Really?’

‘I had an uncle there.’

‘It’s a lovely place.’

‘I didn’t fancy it much.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’m happy in Stormhaven.’

‘And so say all of us!’

How did Tamsin manage to sound so convincing?

‘Or rather I was happy in Stormhaven.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. What changed?’

Momentarily, the social and the professional coincided but Betty would not be drawn.

‘This is the seventy-fifth Christmas Fayre I’ve attended,’ she said.

‘Loyalty. You’re an example to us all.’

‘Not always. Sometimes I do quite bad things.’

Like standing on the table to clean the ceiling, thought Tamsin.

Tamsin said: ‘I simply don’t believe you!’ as another customer distracted the stall holder and she made her escape.

Meanwhile Abbot Peter was at Jennifer’s teddy bear stall.

‘It’s an annual thing,’ she explained, as she continued with the pricing. ‘I ask parents to bring to school any teddies currently out of favour at home. I occasionally have an angry child, claiming kidnap and demanding their teddy back. But it always proves popular. Well, a lot of them are good as new. And for those who find children’s toys expensive, it can be a bit of a godsend.’

‘I’m almost tempted!’ said the Abbot, looking at the array of cuddly friends in an uninterested fashion.

‘I’m sure we could find a nice one for you, Abbot. A teddy-less Sandy View doesn’t bear thinking about!’

‘I’m coping somehow,’ said Peter.

‘If it’s a girl, we’d call her Pebbles.’

‘And if a boy, Cliff.’

Abbot Peter was looking to move on and eyeing the second-hand bookstall with inappropriate lust when an arm was placed on his shoulder.

‘And you must be the Abbot,’ said an older woman, appearing at his side.

‘Indeed I am. A former Abbot at least.’

‘I suppose you never lose the habit!’

It was not the first time he’d heard this quip.

‘I was a real Abbot in the desert,’ he explained.

‘And you’re still a real Abbot here, whatever the Bishop thinks,’ said Jennifer.

‘I hope you haven’t been persuaded to buy a teddy?’ said the older woman.

‘I’ve resisted the temptation so far, but there’s only so much a man can take.’

‘Well, don’t let her throw sand in your eyes,’ said the woman, looking at Jennifer. ‘She could sell a donkey to Eskimos.’

‘Welcome to my mother!’ said Jennifer, before turning to another customer.

‘Are you visiting?’ asked Peter.

‘I live in Lewes, so it’s only a fifteen minute drive.’

‘You must be very proud of your daughter.’

‘She’ll do. She was the youngest head in the county when appointed. Though it’s strange to see her quite so happy behind a teddy bear stall.’

‘They do grow up quickly, I suppose.’

‘Oh, it isn’t that, Abbot’ she said, ‘Not that at all, it’s quite comical really...’ and she was expanding on the comical when the raffle draw was announced. The Bishop and the mayor duly came forward to do the honours.

‘I hope we can trust these suspicious looking characters,’ said Sally into the microphone, as they took up their positions either side of her.

Everyone laughed.

‘Never trust a Bishop!’ said Bishop Stephen, excited by attention.

Everyone laughed again.

The best raffle prize was Clare’s offer of one day’s van rental, free of charge, on a day of your choice in the coming year. Now that Clare was dead, there was some doubt as to whether the offer still stood, but the parish had decided to go ahead with it anyway. Other top presents included a large bottle of champagne given to Sally by one of her wealthy admirers and a £50 voucher from the local supermarket. After that, the prizes were less thrilling but acceptable. There was shampoo, bubble bath, unwanted dessert bowls and the best of the teddies offered to Jennifer. There was also a can of tinned pears, though no one knew who had given it.

***

The mayor and Bishop formed a surprisingly good double act. The Bishop made jokes about the lavatory chain around her neck and the mayor said she’d use it to flush away his sermons. The mutual hostility brightened everyone’s day until finally, even the tin of pears had found a disappointed owner and the Christmas music resumed over the speakers.

It was darkening outside, but bright inside with Christmas sparkle as people moved towards the refreshments and made final decisions about buying. The homemade jam and pickle stall, a surprising new venture by an entrepreneurial teenager had sold out completely, something which could not be said of the bookstall where Malcolm was reducing everything to ten pence. He had no desire to be bagging them up later, to be kept in black plastic bags for next year. He also displayed his triptych, the one removed from the church by Anton and, gratifyingly, he received many favourable comments about it.

‘Why is it not in the church?’ said Mrs Jones, a regular nonattender, who somehow still imagined a claim over church affairs.

‘Anton didn’t like it.’

‘Well, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead -.’

‘Don’t hold back on my account,’ said Malcolm. ‘Nothing good can be built on evasion.’

Mrs Jones found this a little shocking.

‘Well, anyway, I think it’s a marvellous painting. Definitely should be somewhere.’

But despite the praise, Malcolm found himself glancing towards the prayer chapel and thinking of Clare. He would like to have married her, though she was cold like his mother and it wouldn’t have worked. Certainly it had not been a good ending between them but then again, what had she been doing in the church at that time?

***

‘Good to see Ginger so engaged,’ said Jennifer to Sally as they passed briefly by the tea urn.

The church youth worker was holding an informal ‘punch the palm’ competition.

‘He’s a natural with young people,’ said Sally admiringly.

‘But hardly a regular at church events!’

‘He comes when he can.’

‘It’s so sweet to see you on the defensive, Sally, covering his back for him.’

‘I’m not on the defensive! And I’m not covering his back.’

Jennifer’s surprise was shared by others, for Ginger did not usually attend these things. What he didn’t lead, he didn’t touch. And anyway, from his perspective, he was paid to be with the kids not the adults. Today, however, he was the life and soul of the party. Big, strong and gregarious, his palm was taking a good battering from eager young boys and one or two feisty girls.

‘Hardest punch is the winner.’

‘Who’s the judge?’

‘I am, stupid. After all, it’s my palm so I should know who’s hit it the hardest! And believe me, the winner so far is a girl.’

A verbal gender war broke out between the under twelves - ‘weakling boys, weakling boys!’ - as children quickly re-joined the queue for the chance of another punch.

Meanwhile, the Bishop moved among his flock with a cheery smile until becoming becalmed by the books. When the hands of the Bishop and Abbot touched, reaching for the same tome, they had to talk. Peter was aware their last meeting had been in Stormhaven police station.

‘I hear your Christmas tree is struggling,’ said the Bishop.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m told the lights on your tree at home are following your lead and abstaining!’

‘Oh, they’ll be back, Bishop, in their own time. They don’t crave the attention that some do.’

There was an awkward pause.

‘So how’s Jennifer?’ said the Bishop.

‘Jennifer? Well enough, I think, Stephen. She tried to sell me a teddy but apart from that small moral lapse, behaving impeccably.’

‘I met her mother just now.’

‘Yes, I saw.’

‘Tremendous woman, absolutely tremendous woman.’

‘She obviously made a deep impression on you... in the 60 seconds you spoke with each other.’

‘So where Jennifer gets that unpleasant streak from, I have no idea.’

‘A blueberry muffin, Bishop?’ asked Abbot Peter as a tray of the sweet-smelling beauties passed them.

And then shortly afterwards, Anton started talking. The former vicar of St Michael’s, recently crucified, was suddenly speaking loud and clear. He’d always fancied himself as a DJ and after a number of seasonal tracks, including ‘O Come All ye Faithful’ and ‘Winter Wonderland ‘, he was suddenly addressing the Christmas Fayre:

‘And that beautiful piece of music was “The Shepherds’ Farewell” by Berlioz,’ he said. ‘A bit slow but what can you do? And before that - my goodness, an intruder in the studio!’

There was background noise of a door opening and someone entering the room.

‘Sorry listeners, but the Naked DJ is surprised by a visitor! Didn’t expect to see you here quite so soon! I was just making a CD of Christmas music for the Fayre but it’s not anything which can’t wait obviously. And for those listening, our mystery visitor in the studio is quite lost for words! Well, there’s a first time for every -.’

The church sound system went dead, cutting off Anton in full flow. There was stunned silence in the building. Anton had never been short of a word but few had expected him to offer one this afternoon. And no one moved.

It was Abbot Peter who reacted first, knowing what needed to be done. As quickly and calmly as possible, he made his way from the opposite side of the church to the vestry from where the CD was being played.

‘Let me through, please,’ he said, as he shouldered his way past people still stupid with shock.

‘Was that really the vicar?’ said someone as he pushed past them.

He was there in around ninety seconds. The vestry door was open, but the room empty, as was the CD tray in the machine. Someone had got there before him and he believed he might know who that someone was. It was a strange certainty and one rejected instantly.

‘Certainty blinds more than it reveals,’ as he used to say in the desert. ‘When you are certain of something you stop looking. And when you stop looking, you die.’ So as he stood in the vestry, just seconds away from the murderer’s hurried steps, he noted certainty’s arrival and then allowed it to leave, just as Tamsin appeared at the door, holding a starfish.

‘Gone?’

‘CD or murderer?’

‘Either.’

‘Both.’

‘Someone must have seen something.’

‘Possibly.’

Peter sat down on the desk while Tamsin checked outside. With no vicar hanging on the cross now, an air of normality had crept back into the room. He noted the service register sitting beside him and the Sunday school rota on the wall. The shocking nailing had occurred on Tuesday, but it was Saturday now, four days later and the tide of time had done its work, the need to continue, the need to hope, the need to carry on, erasing scars, returning scenery to the untouched tranquillity of former times. But Tamsin saw no tranquillity in Peter’s eyes.

‘Father Anthony,’ he said.

‘What about him?’

‘Strange man.’

‘Most of your friends are.’

‘No, he’s been dead awhile.’

‘I refer you to my previous answer.’

‘In the fourth century AD, he left his home in Middle Egypt to live as a solitary in the desert for twenty years.’

‘Another half-crazed, unwashed religious escapist?’

‘Far from it: he entered the desert not to escape the darkness but to face it.’

‘How about we stay with Stormhaven? It seems more relevant.’

‘Oh, we’re very much in Stormhaven. For as Father Anthony said, ‘We do not flee from danger, we advance to meet it.’

Fifty Six

The phone was ringing as he walked through the door. Bishop Stephen picked up the phone and discovered Martin Channing on the other end.

‘Christmas greetings, Stephen!’

‘And greetings to you too, Martin - though technically we’re still in the season of Advent. We mustn’t get to Christmas before Mary and Joseph!’

‘God forbid,’ said Martin, who had never made it to Christmas.

The Bishop felt beguiled to hear the charming voice of Martin Channing. What could he want? He was wary, of course. But if Channing wanted to play hard ball, the Bishop knew a thing or two about the journalistic game.

‘I’m just back from the Christmas Fayre at St Michael’s, as it happens,’ he said.

‘Where I hear you were a storming success, Bishop.’

‘Really?’

‘‘An inspiring man of God among his people in their time of need,’ was how one person described it to me.’

‘News travels fast!’

‘Well, news is my business,’ said Martin. ‘If I’m not keeping up then we really are in a mess.’

‘It was certainly a splendid event, community at its most inspiring, the faithful making the best of difficult times - and certainly a good news story if it’s a good news story you want.’

‘You know me, Bishop - I’d cross the desert for a good news story.’

‘Then perhaps you should cross the desert a little more often! After all, the Silt isn’t exactly famous for pages devoted to happy outcomes, appearing more interested in - how shall we say? - bottom-of-the-barrel journalism.’

‘A little harsh, Bishop.’

‘There’s more to life than a few celebrities and the latest ghastly crime.’

Martin Channing chuckled.

‘You’re right of course, Stephen.’

‘Really?’

‘Painfully so.’

The Bishop could hardly believe his ears as Channing continued:

‘And it’s a weakness in the Silt which I want you to change.’

‘Which you want me to change? I would have thought that was the editor’s job.’

‘Good point well made. You hit the nail on the head as ever. I wish some of my journalists had your perspicacity.’

‘Well, I like to think I wasn’t born yesterday in such matters.’

‘Which is exactly why you should be writing a column for the Silt.’

‘A column in the Silt? You mean a regular feature in the paper?’

‘That’s exactly what I mean. A weekly feature.’

‘Weekly?’

‘We need the voice of God, Stephen, the voice of hope, a clarion call to our readership in difficult times. I knew it already but your performance today at St Michael’s just confirmed it.’

‘Well, if you think I can be of help,’ said Bishop Stephen humbly. ‘I hope I speak the plain and simple truth.’

‘And that’s exactly what we want. In fact, perhaps that’s the name of the column. ‘Plain and Simple - Your Bishop speaks in the Soaraway Silt.’

‘I’d have to be able to speak freely, of course.’

‘I wouldn’t want it any other way. This is not Martin Channing’s column - this is your column.’

The Bishop was warming to the idea.

‘Well, there are certainly some issues I believe must be addressed in society.’

‘Then here is your forum - though obviously your readers will want you to start with recent events at St Michael’s.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, I think that would be a marvellous way to introduce yourself to your new congregation, if I may use that term.’

‘Is that wise?’

‘Is what wise?’

‘Me talking about recent events at St Michael’s? I mean, I have my opinions of course!’

‘Don’t worry, we’d want nothing controversial, Bishop.’

‘No, that makes sense.’

Bishop Stephen was reassured.

‘Nothing of a sensationalist nature.’

‘Of course.’

‘Every editor knows when respect is due to a situation and indeed to a community. Marvellous people at St Michael’s.’

‘Quite, quite.’

‘No, we just want your thoughts on the rather ineffective investigation so far, some background on the crucified vicar, your feelings about him and his inadequate leadership - in other words, the plain and simple truth. Start as we mean to go on!’

The Bishop could not pretend he wasn’t enthralled by this opening. To be given a public platform like this from which to speak of Christ was, well, a godsend surely? The Sussex Silt had its detractors, but many read it and they couldn’t all be wrong, surely? Here indeed was a new congregation for the Bishop - weekly sales of 150,000 copies, so a readership of perhaps four or five times that number. This was a congregation who needed him. How could he walk away from them?

‘And you feel this might be a weekly column?’ he asked, like a man seeking confirmation of the full value of a famous painting discovered in his attic.

‘I’m certainly thinking along those lines, Bishop, I’d be a fool not to be. We need you out there on a regular basis.’

‘I see.’

‘But let’s get the first column home and hosed and then make plans - exciting plans.’

‘OK.’

‘No rush of course, but we’d need copy by eleven o’clock this evening. Might there be a window in your diary for that?’

The Bishop thought there might be.

Fifty Seven

‘So what brought my Russian grandfather to the West?’

‘Train, mainly.’ Tamsin smiled.

‘He must have had a reason.’

‘My father had his reasons, yes.’

‘Oh, so he’s your father now!’

‘I think he always was. The grandfather bit came later.’

‘So tell me about him.’

‘Why this sudden interest in your family tree? Things must be bad if you’re now trawling the past for an identity.’

Tamsin remained aloof to the mockery.

‘He ended up in Paris, didn’t he?’ she asked.

The truth was, things were bad. Drained by the day’s events, Tamsin sat drinking tea beside the fire in the Abbot’s front room. No one in the church had seen anything of the murderer. The darkness outside, the Christmas lights inside and the universal sense of shock all proved to be the distraction and cover the killer required to leave the vestry by the outside door and merge quietly again into the stunned crowd inside the church. No one was quite sure who was by them at what particular time after the raffle. There’d been an issue over the whereabouts of Jennifer until she returned from the toilet, at some personal embarrassment. And Ginger came in from having a smoke to find faces turned towards him. He soon turned them away.

‘Can a man not have a cigarette?’

So what had they learned this afternoon? Nothing. They were four days into the case and from Tamsin’s perspective, as far from home as when they started and neither did tomorrow offer relief. It may be the Sabbath but there’d be no rest for her, with the press conference she could no longer postpone in the morning followed by a meeting with Chief Inspector Wonder, no doubt tapping his fingers on the desk with impatience.

So tonight, the hunter wanted to forget the chase and sit by the fire. She wanted to hear stories from another land, a distant land - things cosy, reassuring and safe. And so her question to the Abbot about her grandfather, not that there appeared anything very safe or cosy about him.

‘He spoke privately of being sent to Europe,’ said Peter.

‘Sent by whom?’

‘Well, this is where things get a little hazy. He claims to have been sent by the Sarmoun Brotherhood, a mysterious community somewhere in Afghanistan.’

‘Not everyone believes him?’

‘He just didn’t say very much about it.’

‘Perhaps he was sworn to secrecy.’

‘Possibly. And sometimes things are simply too sacred to talk about. Something dies in the telling.’

‘They call it the sermon.’

‘Very amusing,’ said Peter with a weary smile. He could do with being alone tonight.

‘But whatever impelled him to come he came with a strong sense of calling: “Unless the wisdom of the East and the energy of the West can be harnessed and used harmoniously, the world will be destroyed”, he said.’

‘Radical words.’

‘And all the more so for the fact that such thinking - thinking that took the teaching of the east seriously - though familiar now was unheard of at the beginning of the twentieth century. The west had Freud, what else did it need?’

‘Quite a lot.’

‘Yes, well, that’s another discussion.’

‘And so George Ivanovich Gurdjieff left Afghanistan and got on the train to Paris, end of story?’

Peter laughed.

‘Why do you laugh?’

‘Even when you don’t want to hurry, you still want to hurry.’

‘I always want to get to the end.’

‘Fair enough, but the journey matters as well. You’ll have to put up with one or two delays before his arrival in Paris - because my father had to.’

‘So what held him up?’

‘Well, after some time with the community, he left Afghanistan with my mother Yorii. They soon parted, though. I was the result of a later union between them apparently.’

‘We’ll not go there.’

‘But he was in action straight away. He first taught the Enneagram in Petrograd in 1916. But the Russian Revolution forced him out.’

‘They weren’t converts?’

‘Revolutions place their hope in external reform and pay little heed to the inner workings of the human psyche. They foolishly imagine that if you change the government, you change the people.’

‘Not so?’

‘Not at all. It’s like an alcoholic buying a new set of clothes. Flash new appearance, same old drunk.’

‘So your father moved on.’

‘Yes, he travelled through Istanbul, Berlin, and Dresden before finally settling in Fontainebleau outside Paris. They nearly settled in Hampstead in London but it didn’t work out.’

‘So it was in Fontainebleau that he set up that strange school. My mother spoke of it.’

‘He founded “The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man”.’

‘Interesting name.’

‘Especially since nothing he ever did was remotely harmonious.’

There was a companionable silence as the flickering flames crackled in the hearth. Both knew the storm was about to break, that from here on, if the killer was to be found, there must be daring and danger. Abbot Peter put another log on the fire, discarded wood from the boat builders, collected that morning from the beach.

‘And so that’s my grandfather?’

‘An interesting man.’

‘There speaks the proud son.’

‘Proud? Maybe, I’m not sure. Writer, Russian intelligence officer, entrepreneur, bully, psychologist, choreographer -.’

‘Choreographer?’

‘Yes, he turned his teachings into dance because mind, body and spirit are one. He was a great spiritual teacher alongside everything else.’

‘And it was him who taught you about the Enneagram?’

‘He learned it from the Sarmoun Community and held the symbol in very high regard.’

‘The odd drawing you showed me?’

‘That’s right.’

‘The circle and the nine points?’

‘It may not look much. But he believed that symbol held all the secrets of the universe. He called it “the fundamental hieroglyphic of a universal language”. If you understand that symbol, Peter, he said to me, then libraries become useless! Through that symbol, you can read the world.’

Silence descended again.

‘And you think that through that symbol you can read the people of Stormhaven?’

‘I can read them in a way.’

‘Then I’ll race you to the murderer.’

‘It’s not a competition, Tamsin.’

‘It’s always a competition.’

‘But we’re a team.’

‘No such thing.’

‘And members of a team can’t compete without risking serious dysfunction.’

‘Welcome to the police force. As the saying goes, “Trust a criminal but never a colleague”.’

‘Well, that’s sad.’

‘It’s life.’

‘Not my life.’

‘Okay, so we’ll pretend it isn’t a race; but we’ll both know it is one really.’

Peter sighed; and stirred a little.

Fifty Eight

Sunday, 21 December

London had finally decided to come south.

Until this point, the nationals had been relying on stringers from Brighton’s Evening Argus and the Lewes-based Sussex Silt to keep the gossip pot stirred. Martin Channing had earned a pleasurable amount of money writing pot-boiling pieces for former friends in the trade. But in the end, the lure of nakedness, a crucified vicar and some bracing sea air proved too much and London journalists could no longer resist truth’s cry for help.

They stayed mainly in Eastbourne or Brighton where expense accounts could be more enjoyably exercised. Stormhaven did have a hotel but it was not one where any Londoner would wish to stay. As an estate agent told Peter when he arrived: ‘We don’t want to encourage tourists here. Let them ruin Brighton.’

Such an isolationist policy, when brought to Tamsin’s attention, was not easily understood. ‘The people here have no vision,’ she’d said.

‘Perhaps it’s just a different vision,’ Peter replied, feeling one hotel was more than enough.

‘But hotels bring income.’

‘And they also bring stag weekends with their special brand of late-night hilarity, vandalism and vomit on the pavements. Budapest may be up for that sort of thing but it doesn’t mean Stormhaven has to be.’

‘The march of progress always has a price.’

‘And the other thing about the march of progress is that it doesn’t exist.’

But there wasn’t much talk this morning. It had been a hasty breakfast at Sandy View with Tamsin gone by 8.30 a.m. to prepare for the press conference.

‘Wish me luck,’ she’d said, like a daughter going off for an exam.

‘Imagine them all with no clothes on and you’ll be fine.’

‘What?’

‘It takes away the fear and the fearless are free.’

Tamsin ignored him, gathered her things, closed the door behind her and set her face to the activity of the day.

As she drove away, Peter stood at the window, watched her go and felt a frisson of pleasure. The house was his again, like reclaimed land and it was time for a coffee alone, the best sort of coffee, with perhaps a slice of toast with butter and marmalade. He’d bought butter after Tamsin winced at the margarine, and thick cut marmalade would top things off nicely, the majesty of bitter chunks of orange. He’d sit in his study, settle into solitude and perhaps work on the jigsaw, so neglected of late. These were the things he was looking forward to when he heard the knock on the door. Had Tamsin forgotten her keys?

‘Peter!’

‘Hello, Martin.’

‘May I come in?’

‘Yes of course.’

‘I know you get lonely sometimes.’

‘Not knowingly.’

Peter ushered Martin Channing into the room.

‘It’s been too long.’

‘You must want something.’

‘Yes I want quality.’

‘Please sit down.’

‘The comfy chair?’ queried Martin.

Peter only had one comfy chair.

‘Why not? I can always sit on it later. Coffee?’

‘That would be very fine.’

Martin contemplated the quiet Christmas tree.

‘He looks a rather sad little fellow.’

‘I don’t think of him as sad.’

‘Are the lights not working?’

‘They did work briefly.’

‘That’s a shame. I mean, if an Abbot can’t put on a decent Christmas-.’

‘They’ll be back. So why aren’t you at the press conference, Martin? You’re an editor, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t attend press conferences.’

Peter went into the kitchen and put the kettle on, reluctantly adding another cup to the one sitting ready. He returned to the front room.

‘I would have thought a press conference might be a good place for the press to be, or am I being naïve?’

‘The latter.’

Peter returned to the kitchen.

‘How do you like your coffee?’

‘Not too strong.’

‘One spoon?’

‘Perfect.’

Some digestives and chocolate bars appeared with the coffee and then Peter settled on the wooden box, which once held herring. It had been a while before the smell finally left the house, like a drawn-out exorcism. But the container had its own charm, gradually succumbing to furniture polish and proved both occasional table and bench depending on need.

‘And the press conference is dull because?’

‘Because I want the story not the platitudes and you my dear Abbot have the story.’

Peter had once heard Martin Channing referred to as the only reptile on the planet to wear a bow tie. He was charming, camp in a non-sexual way and entirely amoral.

‘People still talk of the lovely piece you did for us on the desert, Peter.’

The discreet laying of flattery’s trap did not go unnoticed.

‘You have a gift, Peter,’ he continued.

‘You should tell the publishing world.’

‘Perhaps I will. It’s only a matter of time before you’re discovered. And one thing leads to another in my experience.’

‘My desert piece in the Silt didn’t lead to a great deal.’

On his return from Egypt, he’d met Martin Channing at a charity event and the editor had suggested he write about his time in the desert. Peter’s title had been: ‘Desert Learning.’

The paper’s title had been, ‘Why 25 years in the desert drove me mad!’

‘Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey, as I’m sure Jesus said,’ observed Martin, passing on the digestives.

‘It was well-edited piece, as I remember,’ said Peter.

‘I’m glad you like the job we did on it. I took a particular interest in its progress.’

‘I think I mean ‘‘much edited’’.’ Martin smiled.

‘Well, no offence, but while you’re a fine writer of course, Peter, very fine, reminiscent of Balzac in so many ways, you’re still learning the journalistic craft.’

‘There was hardly a sentence of mine left standing.’

‘You musn’t take these things personally, Abbot! The desert may make you a saint but it doesn’t make you a columnist. So yes, a little surgery was necessary.’

‘A heart transplant, as I remember.’

‘No, no, no. Minor surgery only! Nip and tuck really. We just shortened the rather long and opaque sentences, freshened up the vocabulary and removed the cloudy bits.’

‘The cloudy bits?’

‘When a writer doesn’t quite know what they want to say, they get cloudy; they imagine that if they go on for long enough it will all eventually become clear.’

‘But it doesn’t?’

‘You can get away with it in books, Peter, but not in newspapers. We can’t have a reader drifting for even a moment or putting the paper down. We must be instant, pressing and urgent. You see how insecure we are!’

‘So what do you want from me now? You’ve used the only story I have.’

Martin sipped his coffee and smiled.

‘That so isn’t true, Peter.’ Martin Channing leant forward, as the real reason for his visit became clear. ‘Here we are in the midst of an intriguing murder investigation - and believe me, it doesn’t get much more intriguing than a naked vicar crucified, unless we could somehow get the royal family into it.’

‘There’s still time.’

‘And in the middle of it all, Peter, as Special Witness I’m told, is your good self! I think you have another story to tell the readers of the Sussex Silt.’

Fifty Nine

‘We’ve run out of hymn books,’ said Jennifer to Sally, as she put on her robes in the vestry, in preparation for the morning service.

‘There are more in the cupboard.’

‘For which Roger has the key, which means it’s presently somewhere near Lake Galilee.’

‘Well, people will just have to share,’ said Sally irritably. ‘It’s not the biggest crisis currently facing mankind.’

‘Of course. And I mean, it’s a nice problem to have, all these people!’

‘I suppose so.’

‘You don’t sound convinced.’

On a normal Sunday, St Michael’s did not run out of hymn books; but today was hardly normal. It was the fourth Sunday in Advent with the lighting of the last advent candle. But more significantly, it was the first Sunday since the murder of their vicar, Reverend Anton Fontaine, and people wanted an update. For once, it was the ‘Notices’ - generally reckoned one of the duller parts of the service - that were anticipated most keenly.

Sally said: ‘Someone told me, they didn’t think he’d actually gone away.’

‘Roger?’

‘Yes.’

‘Funny you should say that, because I thought I saw him in Eastbourne on Friday.’

‘You never know with Roger. Perhaps he was just too embarrassed about the email incident.’

Jennifer suggested another reason: ‘Or perhaps his carelessness was deliberate. He wasn’t a fan of Anton and may have been greatly amused to see him humiliated in that way.’

‘I can’t deny it’s possible,’ said Sally.

Roger and Jennifer were the two church wardens at St Michael’s but there the connection ended. It’s in the nature of things that church wardens don’t get on with each other and the reason is simple: one is voted for to balance the other. So if one of your church wardens is Jennifer who can organise the world in her sleep, then you choose Roger as her partner, a man who couldn’t arrange a boiled egg without help from his landlady.

Roger moved from one vaguely defined relationship to another and in between, returned to a landlady in Eastbourne whom he’d known at school.

‘It’s all a bit subdued though,’ said Jennifer, as she prepared to leave Sally to her final preparations. ‘In there, I mean. Not a seat to be had - but definitely subdued.’

Sally managed a sad smile.

Jennifer said: ‘I’ll leave you to it then. And you’ll be fine.’

There was a haunted look to the curate this morning, hardly surprising given recent events. Jennifer gave her a hug.

‘No, you’ll be better than fine, you’ll be great!’

‘Perhaps you could join me in prayer, Jennifer?’

‘Is the Abbot not in today?’

‘He rang to say he’s been unavoidably detained.’

‘Busy with the murder no doubt.’

‘It seems that way.’

‘We could do with the Abbot here today, we really could. He’s become an important part of the community.’

Sally didn’t answer but placing the stole round her neck said: ‘Let us pray.’

Jennifer closed her eyes and at the foot of the now empty cross, Sally commended the service and people into God’s hands.

‘And finally, we pray for the murderer, whoever and wherever they are, for they are not so different from us and we all stand in need of your grace. Amen.’

‘Thank you,’ said Jennifer. ‘That was beautiful... if rather charitable.’

Sixty

The council offices were Sunday quiet this morning. Peter had been surprised when Mr Robinson suggested the venue. A lone girl sat at the desk, texting.

‘Is Mr Robinson around?’ asked Abbot Peter.

‘Mr Robinson’s not ‘ere at the moment,’ she said, fresh from the cockney academy.

‘Okay,’ said Peter. ‘He did say he was in this morning.’

‘Well ‘e’s ‘ere but ‘e’s on the bog.’

‘It comes to us all.’

‘He won’t be long or anyfing.’

‘I’m sure he won’t and I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’

‘Sareen.’

‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Well, Sareen, I’ll very happily wait.’

The receptionist paused for a moment and then gave in to curiosity.

‘You’re not going to, like, arrest Mr Robinson are yer?’

‘Why do you say that?

‘‘E said you was comin’ about the police and vat murder in the church place.’

Abbot Peter smiled.

‘Mr Robinson is quite innocent and I don’t arrest people anyway - I’m a monk.’

Sareen looked shocked.

‘Are you really, like, a monk?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And I was finkin’ you was wearin’ fancy dress! Vat is so cool!’

‘Well, I’m glad I’m cool. It’s not something I hear every day.’

‘No, it’s well cool to be a monk.’

And with that, Sareen returned to her texting.

‘I’ll be by the fish tank in the corner,’ said Peter. ‘In my fancy dress.’

Sixty One

The newsagents which served the Brighton area were doing a brisk Sunday trade. Everyone brought their usual paper, their prejudice of choice. But whatever else they purchased, they also chose the special Sunday edition of the Sussex Silt, drawn by a front page headline the size of a shop front.

DEAD NAKED VICAR AND SEXY CURATE IN SECRET FLING

It’s a tale with more twists and turns than a goblin’s corkscrew! But your stone-lifting Silt can today reveal startling new facts in the story that’s gripping the South Coast and beyond.

The Silt understands that the crucified vicar of Stormhaven, the Reverend Anton Fontaine, found crucified naked in the vestry on Wednesday, had recently broken off a passionate affair with his attractive young curate Sally Appleby.

Speaking exclusively with the Silt for this special Sunday edition, a prominent church insider revealed the two had enjoyed ‘a close working relationship’. Pressed further, they said: ‘Yes, there was definitely something between them, and Sally was distraught when Anton called it off. I thought it was very poor behaviour on Anton’s part, not the example I expected at all. Poor Sally was devastated. And an attractive girl.’

There’s no suggestion the love-sick curate murdered her boss in some sexually degrading act of revenge. So let’s put all thoughts of sado-masochistic sex involving consenting clergy in their vestry lovetryst right out of our minds. Many right-thinking Silt readers will not want to dwell on the image of a young black vicar hanging naked on a cross. And call us old fashioned, but we at the Silt agree. We’re better than that.

But as police drag their feet in the case, ‘stumbling between incompetence and cluelessness’ as our insider put it, the town lives in fear of further atrocities. The question on the good people of Stormhaven’s lips today is quite simply this: ‘Who’ll be crucified next?’

So let’s be hearing from you! Have your say in the Silt. Have you ever had an office romance? Can it ever end well? And what about sex in the sanctuary? Was the relationship between Anton and Sally ‘Holy Appropriate’ or ‘Damned Disgusting’? Go online to register your vote.

And finally, have you ever thought of murdering your partner and why? Keep the tone light - this is just for fun! - but £50 to the best stories published.’

‘Hell’s teeth,’ said Tamsin as she put the paper down. She was due to meet Chief Inspector Wonder in ten minutes and this wouldn’t ease her path. The press conference had gone as well as could be expected. She’d remembered Abbot Peter’s dictum about seeing everyone with no clothes on and it had worked; she’d felt no fear and occasionally smiled even. But now this story from the toilet paper that was the Sussex Silt! Who spoke to them - or had they just made it up? No, there was too much there that was true; someone had spilled the beans. And Tamsin was much too busy wondering who it was to notice a small piece below on the tragic death of council worker, Christopher Thornton, whose body was found in the water after he fell from the cliffs yesterday morning: ‘Police are interested to speak with anyone who knew Mr Thornton.’

Sixty Two

Tamsin entered in silence and Wonder bade her sit with a nod of the head, as he completed some writing. The threatening quiet continued, and Tamsin thought of the Chief Inspector in his underpants to calm her nerves. On reflection, she preferred him with clothes on.

‘I’ve just had that bloody Bishop on the phone again,’ he said with some aggression.

‘And your point is?’

Go on the attack, Tamsin, always attack.

‘He says the church’s name is being dragged through the mud, not helped of course by the charming prose in the Sussex Silt today.’

‘And that’s my fault?’

‘I’m not saying it’s your fault.’

‘Did he not notice the fact that the story was based around a “church source”?’

‘He’s just saying.’

‘But what’s he just saying, Chief Inspector? From where I’m standing, the church is dragging its own name through the mud without any help from me.’

‘There’s some truth there.’

‘And while we’re on the subject of mud, he was apparently throwing plenty of the stuff himself at the parish meeting he presided over the night of the murder. There are a good number of witnesses to that.’

‘I’m sure there are.’

‘Oh, and he’s lying.’

‘The Bishop?’

‘He’s not telling the truth about what happened when he gave Clare a lift home. You do know he rang her three times after she left his car in the pouring rain - and that she answered none of his calls. Remember that if he rings you again, playing the guardian of the truth whilst fiddling with his massive cross.’

Chinless breathed deeply in the face of this venom. He had no desire for a stand-up with Tamsin but he had to watch his back as well. Those with power should stay chums... networking, that was the word, and the Bishop might be a Mason.

‘He simply feels,’ said Chief Inspector Wonder, ‘that undue attention is being focused on the church community when an outsider could quite as easily have done it.’

‘Do I have to repeat myself?’

‘I’m aware of your earlier thoughts on the subject.’

‘Anton knew the assailant, he was expecting them. Abbot Peter heard him take a call. He said, ‘Well, thank you for your support but I wish you’d said that at the meeting. But I’m alone now if you want to come round to the church.’

She looked up with eyebrows which asked: point taken? ‘That sounds like a member of the church community to me, Chief Inspector. How does it sound to you?’

Chinless considered the young woman in front of him. Tamsin was not the most creative cop but she was an activist, a ruthless stealer of other people’s good ideas, an effective prioritiser, a project leader and lethal in her own defence. Rank counted for little if anyone came for her; whatever the cost, she didn’t like losing.

‘And who is the killer?’ he asked, changing gear.

‘We don’t know.’

‘No.’

He left enough of a pause to punish.

‘I never like it when the press say we’re dragging our feet,’ he continued.

‘It’s the Silt, for God’s sake, found under “fiction” in the library. We’re not dragging our feet. It’s all made-up by that fantasist Martin Channing.’

‘It may be made up but that’s entirely irrelevant. People like to believe the negative.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

The Chief Inspector paused, dabbing his shiny forehead with a handkerchief.

‘Do you have something to say, Sir?’ she asked.

‘It’s not a complicated case, Shah, and given the small number of suspects, you’re - well, how can I put this?’

‘I don’t know Sir. I’m not paid to be your script writer.’

‘Taking your time about it? I mean, I’m sure you’re doing your best - .’

DI Shah glared at him but he continued.

‘This is your first case as a DI.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘Do you need help? A more experienced copper by your side?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that’s OK for the moment. But it’s important you make your mark here. You’ve trodden on enough people on your way up, Tamsin; they’ll be only too eager to help you back down again.’

Momentarily, Tamsin contemplated a black hole opening inside her, terrifying and empty, but it was quickly covered.

‘I’m also aware of that, Sir. Do you have anything to say that I’m not aware of?’

‘You must understand my position.’

‘We’re very close to our killer.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘I hope it’s not that nice curate.’

Tamsin found this an odd remark.

‘Sorry?’

‘I hope it’s not the curate who turns out to be the psycho.’

‘Sally?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘You have a soft spot for her?’

‘She christened my grandson, Terry.’

‘That’s not a major concern at present.’

‘But could she have done it?’

‘She could have done it. As the Silt kindly reported - and I’ll kill whoever gave them that story - she did have an affair with Anton and quite apart from that, I hear relationships between vicars and curates are traditionally rather strained affairs.’

‘But you don’t crucify someone for being a bad boss!’

‘Why not?’ said Tamsin, in a matter of fact sort of a way. ‘That’s all a bad boss deserves in my book.’

Chief Inspector Wonder felt waves of inadequacy pass over him. How he’d reached the position he had was one of life’s mysteries. In the eyes of many, particularly those passed over for promotion, he’d been fast-tracked through the ranks on the back of an absence of mistakes rather than a bundle of successes; a high flyer for never having flown too low. But most of all, he’d been affable and pliant, features in an officer which makes others feel good about themselves and which can be easily mistaken for competence.

‘She’s in a picture on my mantelpiece,’ he said.

‘Who is?’

‘Sally.’

‘And you don’t want a murderer on your mantelpiece?’

‘And I mean the other thing is, does it still count?’

‘Does what still count?’

‘If a christening is conducted by a murderer, does it still count? Is Terry still christened?’

‘How exactly does a christening count in the first place?’

‘Well, I’m not sure. I wasn’t really listening.’

‘If it’s any consolation, Sir, no one seriously thinks its Sally, though of course it would be hugely amusing if it was.’

‘Amusing?’

‘But I don’t see it, even if we still don’t know what the hell she was doing in church at six that morning.’

‘And what does Abbot Peter see? Your distinctively dressed Special Witness - what does he see?’

‘Not a lot so far. He struggles with hard facts.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He’s always trying to look beyond them.’

‘And what is beyond them?’

‘That’s just my point. He says I solve cases from the outside but he solves cases from the inside.’

‘He was your choice, Tamsin.’

‘I know.’

‘Where is he by the way?’

‘I just spoke with him. He’s been with Recreation and Leisure and is now on his way to Lewes for tea.’

‘Is he doing his job properly?’

Sixty Three

Abbot Peter enjoyed the short train ride to Lewes. And while he contemplated two recent corpses in Stormhaven, he contemplated many more beneath him now as he approached his destination. Yes, this beautiful old town had its own skeletons in the cupboard - or rather, in the embankment.

It had been during the building of the Brighton to Hastings railway line in 1846 that hundreds of skeletons were discovered in a pit in the lands of the old Cluniac monastery on the edge of town. Why were they there? After some research, the bones were reckoned to be those of royalist soldiers killed in the monastery precincts in 1264 at the savage Battle of Lewes, fought between the armies of Prince Edward and the baronial challenger, Simon de Montfort.

Not all Victorians were sentimentalists, however, and with a railway to be completed, there was no attempt to honour the dead of 500 years before. With no time to waste, the skeletons were thrown onto trucks by the railway contractors and dumped in the rubbish on the nearby marshland. There they came to form the railway embankment which remained today, ensuring that all trains from Lewes to Hastings, Stormhaven, Newhaven, Glynde and Ore travel daily over the compacted remains of the dead soldiers of 1264.

It was not a fact advertised by the rail authorities; some might be upset. But it remained the primary reason Abbot Peter chose train over bus for these excursions. Such communion with the past took him happily back to his days in the desert. Like many monasteries in the rock and sand of Middle Egypt, it had been the practice at St James-the-Less to store the skulls of former residents; and at St James’s, not one of the larger foundations, the place of storage had been the outhouse in the gardens beyond the generator. It could on occasion prove a shocking find for visitors who wandered into the half-light of the shed looking for a rake or hoe. There were over 500 skulls piled on top of each other and one resident, suitably aghast, had caused an unusual avalanche in their attempts at escape.

But for Abbot Peter the skulls in the outhouse brought peace and perspective rather than fear. He never left their speechless company without a renewed spring in his step and missed them even now. Travelling to Lewes by train was at least some recompense.

On arrival, he walked up the narrow streets - or twittens, as they were called - that dropped off the high street and then headed down hill to the east of town. He crossed the bridge over the Ouse which had been the escape route for so many of the soldiers running from slaughter in 1264. From there, he continued on past the cafés and antique dealers of Cliffe High Street. He breathed in the familiar yeasty air of the Harvey’s brewery and was soon standing at the front door of 18 Thomas Street, the last in a small row of nineteenth-century houses.

Mrs Gold opened the door.

‘You promised me a cup of tea at the Christmas Fayre,’ said Abbot Peter.

‘Not one I’ll forget in a hurry,’ she said, ushering him into a clinically clean front room.

‘It had its own drama, didn’t it?’ said Peter.

‘You can say that again.’

‘Shame we couldn’t have used it on the advertising: “Vicar will speak from the dead after tombola”. It would have improved the turnout, I think.’

Mrs Gold was not prepared for such flippancy in a monk.

‘And is the murderer apprehended?’ she asked.

Abbot Peter smiled. FA cups are ‘held aloft’ and murderers are ‘apprehended’.

‘The murderer is still free, externally, at least.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Well, there’s probably not much freedom within them. Those who are inwardly free don’t kill.’

There was a slight pause. Mrs Gold thought this was poppycock but then what do you expect from a monk? If the murderer wasn’t caught, they were still free in her book.

‘Well, do sit down.’

‘Thank you. And you have a lovely house.’

‘I’m still getting used to it; down-sizing isn’t easy. I wouldn’t have thought much of this place a few years ago, believe me. But then I didn’t know of Gerald’s financial difficulties.’

As far as Abbot Peter could remember, Gerald was her deceased husband whose profligate spending only came to light on his death.

‘So what was it you wanted to speak about?’ she asked, once they were settled with the tea.

‘Teddy bears,’ said Abbot Peter.

Sixty Four

‘That was off the record and you know it!’

The Bishop was incandescent but Martin Channing unruffled. This was hardly the first such conversation he’d had down the years.

‘Off the record, on the record? Aren’t we suddenly getting rather legalistic, Bishop?’

‘You didn’t honour your word.’

‘Which word was that, Stephen?’

‘We were speaking about a column I might write.’

‘And which you did write and I’m sure we can use it one day. But let’s be honest, because honesty is always best: what you shared with me over the phone was a good deal more truthful and our concern is for the truth, surely? I mean, did we print anything untrue?’

The Bishop felt like a mouse in a trap.

‘No.’

‘Or anything you didn’t say?’

‘It’s about what’s appropriate, about the context.’

‘Oh, Stephen, Stephen, I have more respect for our readers than that! I’m a great believer in giving them the truth and allowing them to decide.’

‘But you didn’t allow anyone to decide anything. You just gave them some Sabbath titillation.’

‘Something which the church signally fails to do!’

‘I’ll be objecting in the strongest possible terms to the owners of the Sussex Silt.

‘Your prerogative, of course Bishop but you might struggle to get past our sales figures which is the first point on their moral compass.’

‘Typical.’

‘But I do hope this isn’t the end of our relationship.’

‘You’ve got some nerve.’

‘Because I can help you.’

‘That I doubt very much.’

‘I know things that might interest you.’

‘Like what?’

Why was he being drawn in?

‘I just wondered, for instance, if you knew about an affair Ginger Micklewhite is supposed to have had with a married woman? Interested?’

The Bishop’s pause said it all.

‘I mean I’m sure you’re not at all interested but a reader has contacted us and obviously we’re very cautious about what we print. It was in his last post apparently, prior to his arrival at St Michael’s. But I did just wonder if it might have a bearing on the death of the vicar? I mean, “everything’s material” as the psychologists say.’

The Bishop should have put the phone down long ago. But he was drawn to the negative and tantalised still by the promise of a column. And so he listened and he listened until he could listen no more, until something inside him said ‘No!’ and he ended the call without a further word.

It was good to be out of the trap. But he was rigid with rage.

Sixty Five

Abbot Peter knew something was wrong.

He returned to Sandy View around 7.00 p.m. and both saw and smelt disturbance. He’d neither left the bottle of whisky out on the table nor emptied it to the extent now apparent. And then he saw the door to his study ajar when he knew he’d left it closed. He paused for a moment, stilling himself and listening. There was no sound but a gull crying and a car turning. He looked again at the study door and then at the whisky. It was not unknown for burglars to draw freely on house hospitality. Or was this perhaps one of Stormhaven’s alcoholic wanderers seeking a hostel. Either might resent discovery and Peter steeled himself for confrontation.

He moved quietly towards the study and then a noise from within, an expletive, a woman’s voice. He reached the door, peered through the gap and, with surprise, recognised the back of DI Tamsin Shah, also his niece. She was sitting carelessly, clearly the worse for wear, at the small table on which lay Peter’s jigsaw of the Colossus of Rhodes, boldly astride the harbour entrance of that ancient city.

‘We’re not doing very well, are we?’ she said, without looking round.

‘I did ask you not to use my study, Tamsin. It was one of the house rules.’

‘And I asked you to help me with my case.’

‘Meaning?’

‘So we’ve both been let down.’

Abbot Peter watched his anger rise and subside.

‘You don’t have the power to hurt me, Tamsin but you do have the power to hurt yourself.’

‘My glass is empty.’

‘And what do you want: applause or consolation?’

‘You’re a lousy detective, believe me!’ said Tamsin. ‘Really lousy - leave it to the professionals.’

There was such hostility in the remark it took Abbot Peter a few seconds to allow it to pass through.

‘Is this your first case as a Detective Inspector?’ he asked.

‘How do you know?’

‘I was talking to one of your colleagues. They said you were very competent, a fast-track promotion girl. But they also said they wouldn’t want to be around on the day that you failed at something.’

‘I haven’t failed.’

‘I know, Tamsin, I know. You’re doing an excellent job.’

‘Who says?’

‘I say.’

‘Really?’

‘I wouldn’t want to be a murderer tracked by you.’

‘Then tell that to the Chief Inspector! He had the bloody nerve to say I’m taking my time and asked if I wanted some help? Me need help?!’

‘The Chief Inspector is just watching his back. It’s what those with a little power do.’

Tamsin managed a smile. ‘You know the joke doing the rounds at present?’

‘Tell me,’ said the Abbot gently.

‘Why do Chief Inspectors walk into lamp posts?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘They’re too busy watching their backs.’ Abbot Peter heard only the frustration.

‘It’s time for you to rest, Tamsin.’

‘I don’t want to rest.’

‘Rest now and be brilliant tomorrow.’

‘Don’t patronise me, Abbot! Don’t ever patronise me as if I’m a failure! It’s you who’s the failure! You!’

Suddenly she was lunging forward sweeping both jigsaw and glass from the table, sending pieces flying and the glass smashing against the wall. The Colossus of Rhodes, three quarters complete, lay in disorder on the floor amid glinting shards of something other than diamonds. Silence reigned in the study but not peace.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘It’s quite okay.’

Peter was shocked but gathered himself around remembered words.

‘We do what we do until we can no longer do it and then the fresh shoots appear. Tonight you rest, tomorrow the fresh shoots.’

The headache was making Tamsin weary.

‘And you? What will you do?’ she asked.

‘I must go to a special place; I’ve been away from alone for too long.’

‘You’re alone most of the time!’

‘There are degrees of alone and many shades of solitude.’

He helped Tamsin up the stairs to her room. He returned in a while with some hot milk but she was already asleep. He kissed her forehead and quietly closed the door. He went downstairs to his study. Slowly, he returned the jigsaw to the table, piece by piece, a meditation in itself, a return of order in a disordered world. He then made a thermos of sweet coffee and taking his coat from the back of the door, walked out into the winter night, December twenty-first, the shortest day - and the longest night.

And as he began his ascent of the cliffs, he knew the answer lay in the scattered pieces of the jigsaw. There was something about Tamsin and the Colossus of Rhodes which made perfect sense of everything. He had seen the killer.