Paul Finch
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” It was a male voice, but it sounded old and tired. “It’s been so long since my last confession… I can’t even remember it.”
Father O’Shea gave it little thought. “Well, the fact you’re here now is a good sign. It means you’re serious about this. Remember, make a heartfelt confession and Jesus will forgive even your worst sins.”
There was a pause on the other side of the curtain. “I wish I could believe that. Look, Father… there’s a lot I want to tell you about.”
“Go ahead, please.”
“I don’t think I can do it in here.”
The priest was puzzled. “If you seek to unburden your soul, there’s no better place than this.”
“Yeah, but there are people waiting to come in after me, and this could take a long time. Could you meet me afterwards? I mean when confessions have finished?”
“Meet you?”
“I really need to talk, Father. But we don’t have to go anywhere else. I’ll wait out there in the church.”
The priest chewed the inside of his cheek. He had other things he needed to do today.
“Please, Father. I’m desperate.”
“Yes, of course.” This was a soul in torment. And most likely a good one. Otherwise, whoever it was, they wouldn’t have come here. “If you want to wait for me, that’s fine. But I’ll probably be another hour.”
“That’s okay, Father. What I’m going through has been half my life. Another sixty minutes won’t hurt.”
It ended up being more than sixty minutes. Nearly ninety. Even so, when Father O’Shea had removed his stole and cassock, and come round into the nave, a sole figure was still seated in the second pew from the front, his eyes locked on the towering window behind the altar, with its vivid stained-glass depiction of Jesus ascending in glory.
As O’Shea entered the pew, the man turned to face him. He was somewhere in his mid-sixties, but heavyset and wearing an old khaki combat jacket and jeans.
“Thanks for this.” He offered a large, tattoo-covered paw. “The name’s Michael Hagler.”
The priest shook hands with him but was discomforted. There were tattoos on Hagler’s forearms as well as his hands. His white hair was razored into a crewcut, he had a thick neck and broad shoulders. His face could once have been handsome but was now leathery and pockmarked. O’Shea sat down anyway. He was only in his late twenties, but thin and bespectacled. He’d never been a fighter and it was undeniable that priests had been robbed and beaten in their own churches. But these were the risks you had to take if you wanted to tend to your flock. And to be fair, the sense of threat wasn’t huge. The man still seemed tired. His eyes were red rimmed as if he hadn’t slept in a long time.
“That name doesn’t mean anything to you?” Hagler said.
“I’m afraid not,” the priest replied.
“I’ve been out of circulation a while, I suppose.”
“How can I help you, Michael?”
“Father, I’ve got a story to tell that you might struggle to believe. But as God’s my witness, every word of it is true.”
O’Shea glanced at his tattoos again, seeing swords, pistols, clenched fists. All crudely done. “Before you say anything, Michael, I should warn you… if you’re about to confess some crime to me, you’re no longer protected by the confessional seal. Do you understand what that means?”
Hagler smirked without humour. “It means you can grass me up.”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
In truth, O’Shea wasn’t sure whether this was strictly correct. The Apostolic Penitentiary might deem Hagler still to be in the process of confessing even though he had left the confessional and others had stepped into his place, but it was better to be safe and warn him. Either way, Hagler seemed unconcerned.
“Would you?” he asked.
“First of all, I’d try to persuade you to hand yourself over. But if this is something bad… well, I’m a priest and a spiritual counsellor, but I have a duty as a citizen too.”
“You don’t need to worry, Father. All my crimes have been accounted for.”
Which meant that he’d been in prison, O’Shea thought, again with discomfort.
“How long have you got spare?” Hagler wondered.
“Well, tomorrow’s Ash Wednesday. We have a full programme of services here at St. Lucy’s. Today, though… well, it’s all about pancakes. Not quite as much for the Church to do… is everything all right?”
The visitor had paled. “Ash Wednesday. Always thought it a miserable occasion, myself.”
“Well, it’s the start of Lent. Not exactly a celebration.”
“Used to be, you know. Before your time.” Hagler became distant. “Long before.”
“Perhaps we should talk about what’s bothering you?”
“Yeah… yeah, we should. You’re not local to this area, are you?”
O’Shea feigned affront. “Michael, I’m a scouser born and bred.”
“But you’re not from Crocky?”
“Well, no. Childwall, but…”
“Used to be very different round here. Back in the early 80s, when smack was the thing.”
O’Shea pondered that. His parish wasn’t located in the most salubrious district even now; there was lots of unemployment and crime was high, but back in the day it had been truly woe begotten. “Were you involved in that, Michael?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry to say I was.”
* * *
“What’s Ash Wednesday anyway?” Bluto asked.
“I don’t know,” Doddy replied as he drove. “Some religious thing.”
“Fucking heathens!” Marv said. “Start of Lent, isn’t it.”
Bluto, who was sitting between them, still looked nonplussed. “What’s Lent?’
“Build-up to Easter, you dickhead.”
Bluto didn’t look as if he was even sure what Easter signified.
“Lent’s the bit where you don’t get any sweets,” Doddy explained.
“Or more accurately,” Marv added, “it’s when you’re supposed to mourn Jesus because he’s gonna get put on the cross.”
Doddy frowned. “Always wondered about that. I mean, Good Friday’s the end of next month.”
“So?”
“Why do we mourn about something when it hasn’t happened yet?”
Marv shook his head. “It happened two thousand years ago. We already know it happened. So, each year… well, we mourn in advance.”
Doddy hooted. “I can see why you were never a teacher, Marvellous.”
Marv scowled. “What’s difficult about what I’ve just said?”
Doddy stuck his thumb in Bluto’s face. “Look at this dipstick. Doesn’t have a fucking clue what you’re on about.”
“What’s the ash bit?” Bluto asked.
“You not seen ’em all walking round with lumps of ash on their foreheads?” Marv said.
“Yeah, but what’s it for?”
“Fuck’s sake. I don’t know. Marks them as sinners, maybe.”
Bluto chuckled. “We’d be covered in the shit…”
“Here,” Doddy interrupted, pulling up. A phone-box sat on the opposite corner. He turned to Marv. “You calling in?”
Marv, whose name wasn’t actually Marvellous, or even Marvin, but whose surname was Hagler, went across the road. Doddy and Bluto watched him, the former so-named because, with his buck teeth and mop of black curls, he – sort of, vaguely – resembled one of the city’s favourite sons. Bluto, on the other hand, looked a lot more like his Popeye cartoon namesake.
Marv came back and jumped in. “Black Dog,” he said. “He’s there now. So, get a spurt on.”
They called them the Taxation Team. Their ordinary routine of a weekday night would involve prowling the district in their van, identifying the dealers operating without approval, carting them off, and… well, taxing them. Not every dealer was willing to give up even a portion of his money or stash, but the Taxation Team were old hands on young, fit bodies. On top of that, most of the characters they nabbed were pathetic specimens, users themselves looking to feed their own habits, working without protection.
Sometimes without protection. Which was why tonight was going to be different.
The Black Dog wasn’t a pretty pub. Bang in the middle of a sprawling council estate, it had originally been built to provide a heart and soul for the community. They’d once had functions there, dances, live music. But these days the place was mainly known for trouble. Some of its windows were boarded; shattered glass sparkled on its car park. There were no cars there at present, though that was because the back alley, which was the only way in and out, was blocked by overturned bins and heaped with festering rubbish, preventing any kind of vehicle gaining access. However, tonight was going to be an exception.
Marv and Bluto got out. They were wearing their uniform trackies but now donned extra protective clothing: big thick coats (which worked quite well on a damp, cold night in February anyway), and heavy-duty gloves. It was easy enough heaving the bins out of the way, but the bulging plastic sacks would be full of needles, so they needed to be careful with those.
Doddy didn’t reverse the van all the way onto the car park, but halted before the entrance.
“He knows you too well,” he told Bluto through the open window. “You have to stay outside.”
“He knows me too,” Marv said.
“Yeah, but you don’t stand out in a crowd.”
Marv nodded. The logic was inescapable.
Bluto accompanied Marv along the car park to the pub’s rear door, which stood open, a racket of shouting and laughter echoing from inside, even though it was only six-thirty. Bluto waited on the right-hand side, drawing his half-a-pool-cue. Marv went in, but almost immediately came out again.
“Nearly walked into him!” He darted left of the door, fitting his brass knuckles over his glove. “Gone to the pisser. But he’s got his jacket on.”
“Alone?” Bluto asked.
Marv nodded. They waited.
It was a bit of a joke really. Even if Clawson had come out with two or three heavies in tow, Bluto could likely have handled them. He wasn’t much in the brainbox, but he was built like a shire horse, and he had a monster of a right hook, with or without his tool. Of course, the gun would be a factor. The gun was the reason they were here.
Clawson sauntered out, and Bluto’s cue came down from overhead in a wild swinging arc, cracking on his cranium. The target’s legs buckled and he collapsed. Marv didn’t even need to throw one, but he did anyway, meaty impacts sounding as he slugged the target twice, once in the right temple, once in the right side of the jaw. Clawson was a lifeless heap after that.
Marv searched under his coat, finding the pistol, an old Webley, which, in truth, looked just as likely to blow its shooter’s fingers off as kill someone, but he pocketed it anyway. They took Clawson’s feet and dragged him down the length of the car park, watching the pub as they went. The few windows at the back that weren’t frosted or boarded were too fogged. No one would see. Doddy now reversed into view, the van’s back doors, which had already been unlocked, swinging open.
“Get him fucking in,” Marv said.
Clawson’s greying hair was a sticky, crimson nest, but he was coming round. He groaned, started struggling. Bluto raised his cue.
“Enough of that,” Marv hissed. “He’s gotta be alive.”
They slung the half-conscious body into the back of the van and climbed in after it, slamming the doors. Marv yanked on a cord, and a flickery bulb came to life. Doddy hit the gas, and the van lurched forward, swerving out of the alley.
Clawson burbled something but it made no sense. His lips brimmed with blood.
“Too late, Johnny,” Marv said. They turned him over, rummaged in a sports bag, and producing a pair of cuffs, fastened his hands behind his back. “You pay your fucking dues, lad. You don’t pull shooters on people.”
“Fucking dickhead.” Bluto slammed a granite fist into the captive’s ribcage.
“Should’ve known better, Johnny,” Marv said, turning him back over. “Branching out on your own was never going to work. But pulling a shooter? That’s against the rules. Bring a shooter, and what happens next? Every fucker does. Next thing, we’re living in the Wild West.”
Again, Clawson grunted something. His right eye was buried under a plum-sized blue swelling, but his left one had opened. It was weak and watery, but baleful. It fixed on Marv with unnerving intensity. But Marv merely shrugged.
“That’s why we’ve got to make an example. We don’t want to, you understand. But orders is orders.” Bluto handed him a metal box. Marv yanked a glove off with his teeth, then flipped the box open and took out a capped syringe. Again, he caught Clawson watching him. “Don’t worry. This isn’t the same shit you’ve been selling. We wouldn’t do that to you. It’s not going to be great though, lad, I’ll be honest.” He glanced at Bluto. “Hold him still.”
The captive only resisted feebly, but the giant leaned down, totally immobilising him. Marv produced a lock-knife, flicked it open and worked its blade along Clawson’s left arm, slicing the anorak and shirt. He picked up the syringe again, flicking off its cap and applying the injection. “Just a little prick, Johnny. As the actress said to the bishop. In case you were wondering, this is called suxamethonium barbital. Used in general anaesthesia. Similar to succinylcholine, but not as likely to kill you. Got to get the dosage right, though. Which is why it’s lucky we’ve got our own sawbones on the payroll, eh? Lucky for us, of course. Not so much for you.” He shouted through the wooden partition: “How we doing?”
“Five minutes to the Scout Hut,” came Doddy’s muffled reply.
“That should do us.” Marv dipped into the sports bag again, yanking out a bundle of pale green cloth, which, when he shook it out, was two-layered, and had been cut in roughly the shape of a human being. He glanced down at Clawson. Blood still ran freely from the busted mouth, but the single eye had glazed over. Marv shoved him a couple of times. He was so limp he might have been boneless. “Okay, strip him.”
The Scout Hut was about the size and shape of a double garage and built entirely from wood, the rear of it accessible from the other side of a small grotto at the back of St. Lucy’s Church. It faced down a narrow drive, and was separated from the rest of the world by a pair of wrought-iron gates, which, like the Hut itself, were never kept locked, because, apart from some cricket stuff and a few old footballs, what in there was worth nicking?
On the face of it, this should have been the easy part, but in actual fact it was going to be risky. The only place to park near the church was on a paved concourse at the front. Mid-evening on a weekday, there wouldn’t be much traffic going past, while across the road stood a row of rubbishy shops – cycle repairs, second-hand goods and such – with flats above them, which all would be nestling behind drawn curtains. But there might be people coming and going to the church itself. So, instead of parking on its concourse, they’d opted for an unlit backstreet at the rear of the shops, which meant they now had to carry Clawson a significant distance. That was no problem for Bluto, but it increased the chance they’d be spotted. Not that anyone would recognise the captive. He’d now been press-studded into his head-to-foot suit of pale green cloth, while Doddy, Marv and Bluto had pulled balaclavas on.
Doddy went first, cutting along a side-passage to the front. He halted at the road, which was called Maitland Drive. Only the odd car went past, but on the other side, candlelight glowed through the stained-glass windows of the church. He signalled to the others. Marv came up next, Bluto behind him, Clawson’s inert form draped over his shoulder.
“Anything?” Doddy asked.
“Dead to the world,” Bluto grunted.
“Naw. He isn’t that.” Doddy leaned against Clawson’s head. “I know you can’t respond, Johnny, but I know you can hear me. You can feel me too, yeah?” He flicked at the cloth covering Clawson’s ear. “Sorry, I know you can’t wince. Shit when that happens, eh?”
“Road’s clear,” Marv said.
Doddy led the way over, the others following. They accessed St. Lucy’s forecourt without incident, carrying the body down a narrow passage alongside the main building. In the grotto at the back, it was so dark they almost tripped over the low fence encircling the central flowerbed, in the middle of which a marble image of St. Lucy, holding the plate on which rested the pair of eyes the Romans had gouged from her head, stood on a plinth. On the other side of that, they opened a side gate and emerged at the rear of the Scout Hut.
“Piece of piss,” Doddy chuckled.
“Yeah, but what’s that fucking noise?” Bluto murmured.
When they listened, there was a rising hubbub of not-too-distant voices.
“That’s what tonight’s all about,” Marv said. “You know, Jack-a-Lent?”
Bluto shook his head. He still didn’t really understand why they were doing this, though it never usually stopped him. He turned up, did a job, got paid, went home. That was Bluto.
“Let’s crack on.” Doddy sidled around the Hut, found a door and opened it. It was dark inside, and not wanting to activate the main light, he pulled a torch and switched it on.
“What the fuck?” Bluto breathed.
In all honesty, it was the last thing any of them would normally have expected. Especially on Church property. It occupied the centre of the Hut, where space had been cleared, boxes thrown into the corners, sports gear kicked aside. In appearance, it was an ungainly wheeled structure, like an old-fashioned vaulting horse, but with no padding along the top, just rough wood, and an upright steel pole, a section of scaffolding or a piece of pipe, projecting upward about three feet. Most eye-catching was the figure seated astride the top of it. It sat with its back to the pole, its arms twisted behind it and knotted together at the wrists with twine. Faint hints of the same pale green cloth they’d put Clawson into were visible through gaps in its clothing, which mostly comprised a raggedy clown outfit: like a Pierrot costume, very old and dirty, one side red, one side blue, off-white ballet shoes on its feet, off-white gloves on its hands. A conical hat, like something a schoolkid would make, sat on its head, while a featureless white mask, held in place with an elastic band but daubed with exaggerated human features in blotchy, garish paint, covered its face.
“Meet the star of the show.” Doddy pulled his balaclava off. “Jack-a-Lent.”
“What’s that fucking stink?” Bluto replied.
“Him.” Doddy grinned, his Bugs Bunny teeth protruding from his sweaty face like ivory pegs. “They stuff him with rubbish. Real nasty stuff. Rotten food, dirty nappies, all that.”
“Fucking vile,” Bluto said.
“I know. That’s the whole point…”
* * *
“Excuse me …” Father O’Shea interrupted. He’d turned steadily paler during the course of the tale, but now looked physically sick. “This thing you describe was on Church premises?”
Hagler eyed him. “Course it was. At the start.”
“Start of what, some kind of parade?”
“What else?”
“And what… what was Jack-a-Lent?”
Hagler frowned. “Aren’t you supposed to be a priest? Don’t tell me you’re one of these trendy new ones?”
“Please, Michael! What are we talking about here?”
Hagler glanced down the length of the church. Briefly, the emptiness of it held his gaze, as if he’d just heard something odd. “I’ve looked it up,” he finally said. “Had lots of time for stuff like that. There are different views.”
O’Shea shook his head. “Whose views?”
“People who write about history, tradition, all that stuff…”
Before he could elaborate, a boom resounded through the building. The archetypal thunder of a church door. Hagler shot another glance along the nave, his mouth in a tight line. O’Shea looked too, but there was nothing to see. What they’d heard was almost certainly one of the cleaners going upstairs to the organ gallery.
“Michael?” he said.
With an effort, Hagler refocused. “Some say Jack-a-Lent was like an embodiment of the winter. You know, he was on his way out, so everyone was having a laugh at his expense. Were going to punish him. Good riddance to bad rubbish and all that. But that’s probably bollocks, pardon my fucking French…” He reddened and shrugged. “Everything gets credited to pagans these days, doesn’t it. Christmas, Easter… but mostly that’s wishful thinking by sad little atheist bastards. Can’t see why it would ever have been popular in old Catholic parishes like St. Lucy’s if it was that. More likely, he was the personification of Lent itself. Parishioners who were due to have a hard time needed someone to take it out on.”
O’Shea shook his head. “I can’t say I’m familiar with this tradition.”
“Medieval, isn’t it. I guess someone here at St. Lucy’s, some priest or teacher, liked the idea of bringing it back.”
“Well, I myself would have been very uneasy with it.”
“You do surprise me. Not even if it was supposed to be an actual person?”
“A person?”
“Because that’s another theory.”
“In God’s name, who?”
Hagler gave him a pitying look. “Who do you think? Judas.”
“Judas Iscariot?”
“How many Judases do you know, Father?”
* * *
Hillside View was a deceptively pretty name. It evoked imagery from the Yorkshire Dales; whitewashed country hotels; a vista of sweeping moorland. But the truth was different. A spartan 1950s tower block, located on raised ground overlooking St. Lucy’s parish, it had been poorly designed and built with materials so cheap that, less than thirty years after welcoming its first residents, it had already deteriorated beyond human use. It now stood empty and condemned, but it was easy enough to access. A barricade of old doors had been erected around the site, but this could be levered open by simple use of a crowbar. Having left the van in an arched passage between two burned, boarded shops, the Taxation Team slipped through the gap they’d made and headed up to the fourth floor.
It would normally have been an unnerving prospect: bare concrete stairwells covered in graffiti, stinking of urine, scattered with beer cans and spent needles; on each level, shadow-filled corridors leading off, broken only by patches of spectral moonlight. But in truth, if Doddy, Marv and Bluto encountered any druggies there, or anyone at all in fact, they were the ones who’d be the problem.
On the fourth floor, on the north side, Doddy kicked his way through a door chosen at random. The shell of an abandoned apartment lay beyond it, though some items of older, heavier furniture had been left. They opened the slide window and stepped onto the balcony. Far below, a main street was visible. Further along it, terraced houses stood on either side, though down at this end it was slum clearance land, a cindery waste stretching into the darkness to both left and right. Despite that, excitable crowds were gathering on both sides of the road. There was cheering and raucous laughter, and a curious chanting.
The chanting grew in volume as the procession, which had just come into sight at the far end of the street, reached the first onlookers. Marv waited with trepidation. He’d seen this numerous times, but it never ceased to unsettle him. Six blokes walked at the front in a horizontal line, each one carrying a burning torch. They waved at the crowd and shouted to people they knew. Twenty yards behind them, a team of men and boys lugged on ropes, which pulled taut over thirty or so yards before connecting with the cumbersome, wheeled vaulting horse, that distinctive garish figure still astride it, its arms locked behind the post at its back. The chanting grew louder, more voices picking it up.
Bluto looked puzzled. “What they saying?”
“What they say every time,” Marv replied. “Innocent blood.”
With that explanation in mind, the chant was now clear.
“Inno-cent blood… Inno-cent blood… Inno-cent blood…”
“What you fucking playing at, Marv?” Doddy asked. “Get the camera.”
Marv dipped into the sports bag and took out the last item they’d need that evening. It was a Nikon F3, with a telescopic lens attachment. How much it would catch in this poor light was uncertain, but there’d shortly be plenty more to work with. The grotesque effigy now rode amid the people, whose cheers turned to roars as they launched projectiles at it. Initially, these were eggs and bits of fruit, but soon stones as well, cans and bottles, several of the latter missing and smashing on the road, though just as many scored direct hits.
Marv commenced shooting, managing to catch a sequence of three or four as a small kid broke from the crowd, raced forward and took a savage swipe with what looked like a clothes prop, smacking the object of their derision full in the face, knocking the mask askew.
“Ouch,” Doddy tittered. “Nasty.”
“What if some bizzy comes snooping?” Bluto said, his thoughts characteristically wandering. “Finds the van? And that thing in the back of it? And a pile of Clawson’s clothes?”
“The bizzies are at the party.” Doddy nodded down and grinned again. A Merseyside panda car was parked up about fifty yards along the street. A couple of uniforms leaned against it, arms folded, enjoying the show. Alongside them stood some kind of local dignitary, an older guy in a red gown and a chain of office. “Right under their noses, eh?” Doddy chuckled. “Right under their fucking noses.”
Marv took more pics.
“Don’t overdo it,” Doddy warned him. “Don’t run out of film before the big finale.”
“Twat,” Marv retorted. “Can’t fucking please you.”
Doddy cackled. “Just the good stuff, yeah?”
Below, the procession veered onto some wasteland, the crowd flooding in pursuit, forming itself into a huge circle, while the trundling vehicle and its single ragged passenger came to a halt in the middle. More folk scurried forward, unwrapping polythene sheets from great bundles of sticks and armfuls of loose planking, propping them up around it, building the whole thing into a massive combustible pyramid, from out of the top of which only Jack-a-Lent’s sideways-lolling head was visible.
Doddy chuckled again. He’d always been one to enjoy his work.
The men with the torches now thrust fire into the kindling. Most of it caught easily, but just in case, a couple produced pails of what was presumably petrol. The crowd surged back as the accelerant was thrown and with a titanic WHUMP, the flames billowed, the entire ghastly structure now ablaze, crackling so loudly they could even hear it on the fourth floor. Marv peered through his lens, struggling with the glare, but closing tightly on the effigy’s head as it was swiftly engulfed in flame. Within a couple of seconds, it was a blackened turnip; a couple of seconds more and it wasn’t even that.
“How long before they notice the stink?” Bluto wondered.
Marv wrinkled his nostrils. “Speaking of which, there’s a funny smell here.” Glancing round, he was startled to glimpse someone walking past the apartment’s broken-open front entrance. “Shit!” He hurried across to it but, looking out, saw only a deserted passageway filled with light and shadow. There was no sign of movement.
When he told the others, Doddy shrugged. “Some social reject. No shortage round here.”
“What if he overheard us?” Marv tapped Bluto’s arm. “Genius here mentioned Clawson’s name.”
Bluto looked sheepish, but Doddy shrugged again. “No biggie. Some fucking druggie who doesn’t know what day it is.”
“Or some druggie who’s desperate to get his fix and knows he can get paid from the bizzies’ grass fund.”
Doddy worked his lips together as he thought on this. Silence was usually golden round here, but at present the big H had equal pulling power. He grunted and pushed them both out into the passage. “Go and see.”
The figure had been headed left-to-right, so that was the way they went, rounding a corner into a small lobby area latticed with silvery moonlight, a number of black doorways standing on different sides. Even with weapons out, they hesitated.
“Come on!” Doddy shoved them from behind. He’d drawn his own weapon, a machete with its chopping edge honed like a razor.
They advanced, scanning the doorways. One, which stood just left of an upward staircase, was the jammed-open entrance to a lift shaft. When Doddy shone his torch through, the lift was present, a narrow metal cubicle, its interior scribbled all over as though some madman had been in there with a felt pen. A single frosted glass panel sat in the middle of its ceiling, but it was intact. No one could have climbed up through that diminutive gap anyway.
Doddy slashed his beam back across the lobby, highlighting more graffiti: skulls embedded with daggers, a devil head chewing an arm, a naked woman upside-down on an X-shaped cross.
“Christ,” Marv breathed. “Fucking Romans…”
“What?” Doddy exclaimed.
Outside, the crowd was still chanting. “Inno-cent blood… Inno-cent blood…”
“This thing’s fucked up, Dod,” Marv said. “We shouldn’t be doing this. We shouldn’t even be here.”
“Hear that?” Bluto interrupted.
They fell silent: a scraping or dragging sound filtered down the nearby stairwell.
“The fuck!” Doddy steered his underlings towards it. “Get up there.”
They ascended warily, Bluto with the cue at his shoulder, the way the bizzies carried their truncheons when they were wading in, Marv flexing his gloved hand inside his brass knuckles. He now felt he could have tooled up with something better. He still had the Webley in his pocket, but suspected it was way past its best.
There was a sudden explosive bang from close overhead. Then another, and another, and they realised that something enormous was travelling fast down the stairway. They halted, tingling. The next switchback was about ten treads above them. Their eyes riveted on it as a massive angular object came end-over-end into view. It caromed from the facing wall, and descended again, driven with such force that it was all they could do to scamper back down into the lobby and dart one to either side. The colossal item of furniture, for it was an old bureau or sideboard, landed with a noise like a motorway collision.
The trio stared at each other agog as the dust settled.
“Bastards,” Bluto breathed, that old psychotic rage slowly taking hold. He yelled it full-bloodedly, “BASTARDS!”, before charging up the stairway, flailing with his cue. “BASTARDS!”
They heard him shrieking it again and again, increasingly muffled as he rounded switchback after switchback. And then his tone abruptly changed.
From roars of rage to screams of horror.
Marv stared at Doddy, whose eyes were bugging, whose curly mop looked almost to be standing on end. Upstairs, Bluto roared manfully again, bellowed in fact, as if he was still game for the fight, but it was shriller than it should be, tinged with terror. At which point it transformed back into a protracted, piercing screech, and then descended.
At shocking speed.
There was an immense crash from the lift shaft.
With a clatter, the frosted panel fell out and shattered.
Doddy swung his torch through its entrance. The lift was still empty aside from the reflective splinters on the floor, but Bluto’s face was visible where the ceiling panel had dislodged. Torn and bloodied. Where the left eye once was, the butt-end of his cue jutted out.
They ran. It was more instinct than anything else. Just took to their heels, down and down towards the ground floor, only halting in the porch area, panting, sweating.
“How… how did that thing get through his head?” Marv stammered.
“When he fell down the lift shaft,” Doddy stuttered. “What else?”
“Fell? Or was thrown?”
“What’s fucking wrong with you, Marv?”
“What clothes was Clawson wearing?”
“How the fuck do I know?”
Marv tried to recall. Army Surplus kecks, he thought. A leather jacket over a denim shirt. He’d only caught a fleeting glimpse of that person passing the flat doorway up on the fourth, but damn it to Hell, if he wasn’t sure that bastard had been wearing similar togs.
“We put the right one on that hobby horse, didn’t we?” he said.
“Course we did. I carried the original back to the van, myself. It was light as a feather.”
“Whatever’s up there isn’t.”
“What do you mean, whatever?”
“You ever tried picking Bluto up?”
“Marv… Bluto fell. No one chucked him.”
“How about the bureau? Did that fall too?”
Doddy glanced back to the foot of the stairwell. More silvery moonlight filtered down it. There was no sound from overhead now, but they weren’t fooled. They knew what they’d seen. And that bureau had been one massive lump of furniture.
“Fuck it,” Doddy said. “We’ve done the job. We’re getting out.”
They went to the front doors. The firelight that had previously flickered through the grimy glass panels was dimmer now. It was quieter out there too, the festivities dying down. Marv glanced back once as they went outside, not sure whether a shadowy outline at the foot of the stairway, which he was sure hadn’t been there a second ago, was a silhouetted person standing just out of sight.
It didn’t matter. He hurried after Doddy. They sidled through the fence of scabby doors and half-ran along the back alley to the arch where they’d left the van. But the first thing they saw were its rear doors hanging open.
They slid to a halt. Doddy shone his light inside. The effigy was absent, along with the scrunched-up ball of Johnny Clawson’s clothing.
“This means nothing!” he said. “Some bastard’s broken in, that’s all. What do you expect, they’re all fucking tea leaves round here!”
Marv ran his gloved fingers along the left door’s edge, particularly over its mangled lock. “Smashed open from the inside.”
“Bollocks.” Doddy dug for his keys. “Get in.”
The road took them around the rear of Hillside View, descending only gradually so that, when Marv looked up through his passenger window, the great monolithic structure, now atop a high concrete embankment, towered into the night. At first, he thought the figure standing on the embankment parapet was an old fence-post clad with tatters of windblown material, but then it leapt out.
The van shuddered under the impact.
“What the fuck?” Doddy shouted.
“Get us out of here,” Marv replied. “It’s on the roof.”
They swerved onto a street where the houses were still occupied, careering recklessly between lines of parked cars. Once on a wider road, Doddy flung the vehicle from side to side. “Not fucking having this!” he shrieked.
But then a gloved hand snaked down onto the windscreen.
“You bastard!” He threw the wheel left to right again, the vehicle fishtailing, but the passenger clung on. “Gimme that fucking shooter!”
Before Marv could object, Doddy’s left hand had burrowed into his pocket. It snagged the Webley, pulled it out and pointed it at the ceiling. And only then did the driver realise that they’d mounted the kerb, a concrete wastebin directly in their path. He yanked the wheel left, but still caught it a glancing blow, the impact terrific, the van veering crazily across the road on its nearside wheels, before tilting over completely and landing on its side.
Marv clenched his eyes shut as, first, the passenger window imploded on him, and then dirt and gravel flew into his face. However, by habit if not design, he’d fastened his seatbelt, so when the vehicle came to a halt, he was shaken but not injured. He couldn’t say the same for Doddy, who hadn’t put his belt on, and now lay half on top of him, his hair limp and wet with the blood leaking from a deep gash in his scalp.
However, the Taxation Team leader was still conscious and still raging with anger.
“Fuck!” He clambered off Marv, struggled upright, punched his door open and levered himself through it. In his left hand he wielded the Webley.
“D… Dod…” Marv stammered, so exhausted by shock that he struggled to unclip his belt and then had to fight with every inch of strength just to clamber out in pursuit.
When he dropped outside and stumbled around the vehicle, Doddy was limping along the road, the Webley in one hand, the machete in the other. There was no streetlighting at this point; demolition land lay left and right, a fire-blasted wilderness. This meant that the figure Doddy was encroaching on was indistinct.
Marv mopped sweat from his eyes, sagging against the van as his knees threatened to give.
Doddy shouted something incoherent, before throwing the machete. It spun, glimmering, hitting its target full on, but bouncing off. Doddy shouted again, levelled the firearm and pumped the trigger, and the blot of light as it exploded in his hand was searing.
The maimed man’s scream split the night as Marv stumbled away. He was determined not to look back, though he did so anyway, perhaps a hundred yards from the crash site, and was just able to distinguish Doddy on his knees, right hand clasping his left wrist. But it was less like an accident scene and more like an execution tableau, because now that second figure was encroaching on him, its raised hand clutching that gleaming slice of well-honed steel.
* * *
“I didn’t go straight to the coppers,” Hagler said, his face ashen. “I was still in denial. But that night, as I slept at my girlfriend’s place…”
“You just went to your girlfriend’s?” Father O’Shea asked, incredulous.
“Why not? It was the code of silence. No one ever talked. That was our shield, our failsafe.”
“You were worried that a drug addict in Hillside View might…”
Hagler made a dismissive gesture. “He could maybe have pointed the law in the right direction, but he wouldn’t have given them a smoking gun. Anyway, there were worse things to worry about. That night, I heard the sound of Sue’s back gate. It was locked but it was rattling, like someone was climbing over it. Then I heard someone in the yard. Steel-shod boots clashing on flagstones… and you know, I’d barely noticed it at the time, but Clawson had been wearing segs.” He shook his head. “When someone tried the back door, I went out through the front. You look at me like I’m dogshit, Father. That because I left Sue behind? What did it matter? Wasn’t her it was after. Far as I recall, she slept the whole night through.”
A noise distracted him. He glanced up at the organ gallery. The priest looked too. A figure was visible there, standing with its back turned. Hagler’s cheek twitched. But then the figure straightened up and moved along, and they saw that it was an elderly lady with silver-rinsed hair, wielding a feather duster.
* * *
It was anyone’s guess what was happening in Liverpool. Marv made no effort to find out. He didn’t even call Sue, because she’d demand to know what was going on, and the less she knew, the better. There was no way the bizzies wouldn’t want to speak to him once they’d found Doddy and Bluto, especially as both were in the vicinity of Johnny Clawson’s funeral pyre. The heat would be on, and at some point, he’d have to go and face it, but they’d lack the crucial evidence. Wouldn’t even have enough to stitch him. If they tried, he knew people who knew people… no jury would convict him.
He shifted position. One of his buttocks was going numb. He was perched at the end of a jetty, looking out across the glass-smooth surface of Derwentwater, a pristine lake cradled amid craggy, pine-clad hills. Down its far end, the rolling treeless summit of Skiddaw brushed the salmon-pink clouds. On his left, the last of the setting sun’s rays dissipated over the broken line of Catbells ridge.
He could almost have relaxed, if he hadn’t been expecting an interruption.
Said interruption duly arriving.
The steady clump-clump of segged boots advancing along the jetty. And that smell, a ripe stink of putrid trash tainting the April air. By Marv’s estimation, it was less than a yard behind him when he dived forward and hit the lake’s surface…
* * *
“I swam to the western shore,” Hagler said. “It’s all woods on that side. No paths or roads. I made my way round the lake on foot, dripping wet, worried sick… because I could sense it coming, hundreds of yards behind me. But coming all the same, never resting. The die was well and truly cast, Father.”
“So, that’s when you went to the police?” O’Shea said.
“Turned myself in that night. Keswick nick. They didn’t believe me at first, but then they rang Merseyside. The only way they could be sure I wasn’t some nutjob, I suppose. And the only way I could be safe.”
The priest blew out a long breath. “How many murders were you charged with?”
“Only Clawson’s. Bluto and Doddy they put down to members of his crew. I got thirty years. Managed to extend it by constant misbehaviour, but the older you get in jail, the harder it is to keep the tough guy act going. Plus, these soft fuckers these days, they really want to let you out. It’s not your fault, it’s down to society. You deserve another chance.”
“And so now you’ve got one.”
“Or alternatively, I’ve picked up exactly where I left off. Because why wouldn’t I? I’ve got a price to pay, and there’s no way round that.”
“Michael, would it help…” The priest wasn’t quite sure how to put this delicately. “Would it help if I told you that you’re simply wrong here? That God doesn’t punish sin by sending demons to kill us? That’s never been part of Christian doctrine. We don’t even believe that demonic entities exist in this world.”
Hagler looked puzzled. “What about possession and all that? The Catholic Church does exorcisms, doesn’t it?”
“Even possession is a contentious issue. Not every priest accepts it. But even if possession is real, these entities don’t manifest… don’t take actual physical form as you’ve described.”
“Maybe it’s Judas himself, then, eh? He’d have a beef with me, wouldn’t he? He used to come here every year… to get his just deserts. He needed to be punished for committing one of the worst betrayals in human history. And he took it on the chin. And then what happens? We suddenly get in the way, and not only that… we serve up one of our own mates instead. Just like he did. Talk about making a bad situation worse.”
“Michael…” O’Shea smiled gently in an effort to demonstrate how deluded this was. “Think about it logically. This… thing, Jack-a-Lent, it was made of rubbish, rotting waste. It could hardly be walking around intact after nearly forty years.”
“It shouldn’t have been walking around at all, but it was. Anyway…” Hagler shrugged wearily. “Whatever will be will be. The main reason I’m here is to get some absolution. I’ve paid my debt to society, but not to the Big Fella.”
“That I can certainly help with,” the priest said. “You’ve made a very full confession.”
Not that he thought it would make any difference, because this man was clearly in a state of complete mental breakdown rather than sin. However, reconciliation was always good for the soul. Taking him to the altar, O’Shea completed the sacrament and issued God’s pardon, requiring only a simple Act of Contrition, rather than any kind of penance. After that, he undertook to walk him down the church towards the porch. When they reached the front door, Hagler hesitated, glancing warily outside. The paved concourse had never changed, though the row of shops across Maitland Drive offered different services these days, fried chicken, payday loans, e-liquids. It wasn’t impossible, though, that the familiarity of it was a problem.
“If you’d rather, we can go the back way,” the priest said.
“For old times’ sake, Father, I’d rather not go past the Scout Hut.”
“The Scout Hut’s not there anymore. Nor is that deplorable statue of St. Lucy. It’s an overspill car park these days, thank Heaven.”
Hagler smiled to himself. “The front door will do fine.” But still, he delayed going out. “I know you think I’m just a whacko…”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Careful, Father. Lying’s only a venial sin, but it can lead to worse.” The ex-con sighed. “The truth is… we did a lot of bad things in this city. I’m not just talking about Clawson. People like us turned huge tracts of it into a junkie sewer. I can’t quantify the number of lives that were damaged.”
“I told you. All your sins have been forgiven.”
“We’ll soon put to the test how forgiven I am. But you’re wrong, Father, if you think everything should be nicey-nicey. You know… you feel bad about what you did so that means it’s okay?” He smiled sadly. “I don’t think so.”
“Michael, you’re not making sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense is trying to hide the reality of evil because it discomforts you. Or discouraging an appropriate response to it because these days we’re too sophisticated for that. You’ve got things arse over tit, Father.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“I hope a time never comes when you’re sorrier you feel your way. Anyway, I’ve done what I came for. I’m off, I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear.”
He made a visible effort to steel himself and walked out of the church. O’Shea watched him trudge across the concourse. “Good luck,” he called.
Hagler didn’t look round but made a semi-coherent response, which sounded like “I’ll need it.” Then he turned onto Maitland Drive and vanished from view.
The priest went through to the presbytery and up to his bedroom, to change. If the fellow wasn’t mad, he was plain wrong. Evil wasn’t a totally outdated concept, but things weren’t nearly so simple. Good Lord, Hagler himself was the proof of that. A terrible upbringing, most likely. Mental disintegration, which was now clearly in full force.
He glanced from the window as he buttoned himself into a clean shirt and collar, and spotted the penitent again. He was visible by his green khaki, down the far end of Maitland Drive, chatting with someone else. Whoever this new person was, Hagler seemed quite pally with him. An old mate? A partner in crime? Two idiots together? Had this other guy just been up the road, spinning a similar tale of gibberish to Father Magee at Queen of Martyrs?
O’Shea watched as the twosome walked off together, unsure whether to be relieved or irritated. Though then, rather than stay on the main road, they cut right down a narrow alley, which, as far as he knew, connected to a derelict underpass that now led nowhere.
It was disconcerting to see that the second man was leading Hagler by the arm.