The Fever of the World, page 12
Jane stared at her. She wouldn’t have talked like this even a year ago. Certainly not in the days of the old bishop, Bernie Dunmore.
‘What… abandon the Church?’
‘It’s a possibility. Congregations are on the slide.’
Jane’s arms dropped to her sides.
‘You’re serious?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Because…’ a shock – don’t let it show ‘…even if it’s a crap organization it’s still, like, the framework for the most significant things you’ve ever done?’ Thinking of Mum practising deliverance rather than being a vicar. ‘Mum, you’ve been closer to the edge of human experience than anyone I know who’s still alive. And it’s much bigger than…’
Much bigger than organized religion.
But was it? Grateful when Mum’s mobile chimed in her bag and she was dragging it out, Jane was thinking, Words mean nothing. I have to do something to show her that she can rely on me. That we’re basically on the same side, hold the same values. That I’m, like… in this, too.
‘Merrily Watkins,’ Mum said into the phone, and then, after quite a long pause, ‘Siân, I didn’t recognize your… No, I am at home, almost. I was just…’
This, Jane decided, was Siân Callaghan-Clarke, Archdeacon of Hereford. She was OK, basically. Mum listened. She said yes and no a few times, looking at first puzzled and then… just a bit suspicious?
And then she stood up suddenly.
‘It was you?’
Jane didn’t even pretend she wasn’t paying attention.
‘Yes, I probably can,’ Mum said eventually. ‘I suppose I can be there in about half an hour if the traffic’s not too bad.’
Hereford, the Cathedral gatehouse, where she used to go at least once a week, for a meeting with Sophie. But those days were over.
Mum clicked off the phone and sat down in silence for a few seconds, not looking at Jane. She didn’t exactly say, Oh shit or anything, but her expression came close.
21
Metaphysics
PATTI CALDER HAD been gone a while but Vaynor knew she’d been here, that much was clear to Bliss. Vaynor had come straight to Bliss’s office; now Bliss had locked them in so they wouldn’t be interrupted. Not that this was likely – since the virus, people stayed out of small rooms.
Neither of them spoke for what seemed over a minute. Bliss was still hearing Patti: he was on his hands and knees… we did a breath test.
It had to be explained sooner or later.
Eventually, Vaynor spoke.
‘If it’s better I just get out now, I’ll do that.’
‘Huh?’
‘For good, if that’s what you feel is right. I’ll start again somewhere. There won’t be a fuss about it. Some things I just can’t discuss.’
Bliss nodded and sighed. It could turn out to be necessary, in the end, to go through some tedious bureaucratic shite but he didn’t really want to see this lad’s papers on the desk.
But he did want to know what was behind it, if Vaynor was seriously thinking he might be in the wrong job. Bliss rested his chin on his right fist.
‘Darth, did you know when you blew in that bag last night that you were well under the limit?’
Silence. He saw Annie Howe gliding past the small window outside both his office and the CID room, let his eyes snap into a blink. Stay out. Stay out, Annie.
‘No,’ Vaynor said eventually. ‘I thought I’d be well over the limit. And that’s all that matters… what I thought.’
‘Why? How much did you think you’d had?’
Vaynor said that all he could remember from Ross town centre was ordering himself a double whisky. He admitted it used to be his tipple for a decadent period in his last year at Oxford. When he joined the police, he said, he gave it up, switching to beer for a few weeks then losing the booze altogether. Couldn’t explain why he’d bought that double, but guessed it was somehow related to a panic he’d rather not try to explain.
Annie looked into the window separating them from the CID room. Bliss turned his chair away to convey to her that this really was not a good time.
‘And you think you knocked it all back?’ he asked. ‘The Scotch?’
‘I’m not sure now. May have abandoned it.’
‘You obviously did.’
‘Yeah, I… I don’t really drink any more. Didn’t sleep much last night. Kept having this dream, couldn’t get rid of it.’
‘Kind of dream?’
Bliss thinking about what he’d read in one of the morning papers he’d found in the CID room, about isolation from the virus causing serial dreams. Because if that was all it had been…
‘The kind you don’t want,’ Vaynor said. ‘No, I don’t think I did finish the drink.’
Calder had told Bliss that, because they couldn’t believe the breath test had misfired, she and Mills had been back into that pub, where the landlord, who didn’t know Vaynor, had said he’d found an abandoned whisky glass that was pretty damn full. It was probably still on the shelf under the bar and might be there until the pub came out of lockdown, because none of the regulars wanted to touch it last night in case it was contaminated.
Vaynor looked like he genuinely couldn’t remember too much about that double whisky. Or what bloody day it was. He shook his head.
‘I was confused. Boss, I’m really not in a good way. If I’m honest, I’d done something no decent copper ever does if he wants to stay in the job, and… Look, I don’t want to talk about it. It came up in the dream, but also, it… something happened.’
There was a spare chair opposite the desk, and Bliss had nodded at it twice but Vaynor was passing up the opportunity to sit down and pour it all out; he was behaving like a frigging schoolboy in the headmaster’s office.
Bliss said, ‘Darth, listen, this is not official. I just wanna know what was happening in your head. I wanna hear it from you.’
Vaynor looked down at his shoes.
‘Is this a police matter?’ Bliss asked him.
‘I don’t know. It might be.’
‘Meaning what?’
He was seeing puzzlement and a kind of anguish in Vaynor’s eyes. Something had happened to this lad last night that he didn’t understand and therefore couldn’t unload. Smart guys like Darth Vaynor hated it when they couldn’t get their heads around something. They’d failed, they were inadequate, couldn’t do the job. Where other coppers would just roll over, Vaynor’s first way of resolving it could be resignation. Getting out, moving on. Which would badly wound more than just his ego.
‘Darth—’
‘And I didn’t send it.’
‘What didn’t you send?’
Vaynor coughed and looked down at his shoes.
‘The thesis.’
‘Thesis?’
‘“The Wye in Wordsworth”.’
‘That’s the title?’
Vaynor nodded. Bliss said nothing. He’d read it on his laptop as soon as he got in this morning. And he’d been in early.
‘It was a good piece,’ he said. ‘We all thought that – at least them as could understand it did.’
‘I’m embarrassed about that. As if I’d posted while I was drunk.’
‘Except you weren’t remotely drunk. Were you?’
‘I’d better go,’ Vaynor said.
But he didn’t.
He looked into space and said, ‘Boss, you remember… a year or so ago… there was a case that began with a storm, and the recovery of body parts underneath a tree behind the Cathedral?’
‘Yeh, I remember, but why are we going back there?’
‘And it all came back to a man who died in a private care home.’
‘I remember, OK?’
‘And it wasn’t talked about much, even in here.’
Bliss nodded. He wanted to put more than social distance between them. It wasn’t a case he or anybody in this building liked talking about outside of a very quiet pub. It wasn’t strictly a police matter.
‘You decided it was an issue that had only limited interest for us,’ Vaynor said. ‘I kind of realized that at the time.’
‘I didn’t think we’d ever find an explanation that meant we’d keep our jobs if we talked about it in the wrong company. You know what I’m saying?’
‘Yes,’ Vaynor said. ‘I think so.’
Unhappily.
Bliss stared at him, feeling cold inside. No, he didn’t understand a lot about that case, although he knew why he was always going to remember it late at night, until he could sleep. And why Anne Howe was never going to discuss it with him again, especially in her bed in Malvern.
‘You did believe something happened, though, boss,’ Vaynor stated quietly. ‘Something that other people wouldn’t consider strictly feasible. Didn’t you?’
Bliss walked slowly round his desk, breaking all the social distance rules.
‘I didn’t necessarily believe it, Darth,’ he said quietly, ‘I… accepted it. Not quite the same thing. Sometimes you’ll find stuff you don’t believe but in the end you gorra accept it happened.’
‘What you said at the time,’ Vaynor said, ‘was that while most of the villains we deal with are bad… some are evil. We talk about pure evil… It’s something that exists outside of normal—’
‘All right.’ Bliss raised a hand. ‘Let’s not get too deep into this kind of stuff. Metaphysics, is that the word? Yeh, we all remember somebody like that. Somebody who… somebody to whom normal motives can’t be applied.’
Vaynor stood up slowly, moved to the door, stood with his back to it.
‘I’m sorry, boss. I don’t like what this is telling me. I’m still trying to work out what happened, and I don’t think there’s a police answer. Metaphysics would get closer, and that’s not a word you’d use in a thesis either. Not if you wanted to walk away with a PhD.’
‘What did you tell Eve?’ Bliss asked.
Vaynor said nothing.
‘Look…’ Bliss unlocked the office door ‘…there’s norra lorra work for us right now, with the virus and all. Even burglars won’t do places that might be infected with C-19. So… as it’s your day off, why don’t you go home? Think about it, decide how much you can tell me.’
‘I…’ In the doorway, Vaynor stopped, turned. ‘I can’t do that. Eve’s not there. Eve left.’
Bliss let go of the doorknob.
‘I don’t know what’s bothering you but if it falls into the box I’m thinking of, you need to talk to somebody. And norra copper, for once.’ He paused. ‘She’ll be back? Eve?’
He wasn’t going to tell Vaynor he’d spoken to someone who thought she’d already spent too much of her life with the lad.
‘I don’t know,’ Vaynor said. ‘And I don’t want to waste your time, boss.’
Bliss moved towards him, taking over the doorway.
‘The pure evil feller. You meant Kindley-Pryce, right? Was that the name?’
Vaynor might have nodded.
‘If it’s him then you’ll know he died,’ Bliss said. ‘Which meant we didn’t have to try and explain his strange behaviour. That’s often the best way out with these people, who we don’t encounter too often. Sometimes we need a middleman to quietly assist us.’ He moved towards the window, his voice dropping. ‘Or a middle-woman.’
22
Sealing the can of worms
THE SUNSHINE WAS getting absorbed by the tower of Hereford Cathedral, now closed down by the virus, with Reformation-era shadows fogged under the gatehouse arch, and Merrily walking into a dense new silence.
Every cathedral in the country was being closed the way they never had been before. Nobody knew when – or even if – they would open again. You couldn’t avoid asking the big, scary question, the question that, until the virus had taken over, had only been whispered: was this it, as the Sunday broadsheets kept asking – the beginning of the end for the Church of England?
She moved quietly up the gatehouse steps to find the woman in Sophie’s chair taking off a royal-blue cloche hat, turning it over in her hands and looking as though she wanted to put it right back on and get the hell out, with today’s business, whatever it was, unloaded.
‘I’m sorry we’ve had to meet in here,’ the Archdeacon said. ‘With the deliverance office open only two days a week, it’s becoming rather dusty. But everywhere else here is shut because of the virus and it’s getting warmer. Why hasn’t Sophie complained?’
‘Sophie doesn’t complain.’ Merrily shut the door. ‘She endures.’
‘Evidently.’
‘But remembers.’
‘Perhaps I’d better complain, then,’ Siân Callaghan-Clarke said.
‘Are you sure you want it to be known that you’ve even been in here lately? It’s no longer the Bishop’s favourite refuge. Not this bishop.’
Siân placed the cloche hat on the desk beside her leather briefcase. It was the same brass-cornered case she’d carried around when, as a canon, she’d been given the task of building a deliverance team around Merrily, including a psychiatrist. Getting, as it had turned out, a close view of the challenges of deliverance and why psychiatrists were not always in a position to address the problems that led to it.
It was fair to say that Siân now knew the score.
‘If you’ve heard the whispers about the Bishop,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing any of us here could do to stop that. It’s far above our heads now. If Innes becomes special adviser on deliverance to the Archbishop of Canterbury we just have to assume that’s the way deliverance is going.’
‘Out of the highest window?’
‘Not necessarily. Things like this are getting passed because everyone’s attention is being diverted by the virus. And at worst… well, archbishops don’t hold the job for ever, do they? I’d say your best policy might be just to keep quiet and see what transpires.’
‘And the fact that the Bishop of Hereford is now monitoring all my cases and has managed to reduce Sophie to junior-typist level?’
‘Things change, Merrily. Sometimes quite quickly. But getting new rules adopted is always a lengthy process in the Church.’
‘Not if it’s done by experts, with a series of small procedural tweaks, and at the right time. Now, for the first time, all the churches are closed, allowing the furniture to be subtly rearranged.’
Merrily went to her seat in the window. Siân was more sympathetic these days, but it was unwise to be lulled into indiscretion by the newly softened, untrimmed hairstyle, the hints of highlights, the smile that slid more easily into place. The Archdeacon was still a former barrister.
Siân reached over for her briefcase.
‘The Bishop is someone with whom I have at least to pretend to rub along.’ She unclipped the case. ‘I’m glad you came, Merrily. I need your discretion.’
Extracting a small tin with a gold-leaf design on it, matches and – bloody hell – cigarettes. In an elegant, somehow old-fashioned way, Siân slowly lit one.
‘This… is a very private vice, rarely indulged in outside my home. Not an addiction.’
Which sounded like the preliminary to an exchange of confidences.
‘We all say that,’ Merrily said.
Siân frowned.
‘I invited… another addict to make an approach to you. Via Sophie.’
‘Another…?’ She thought of Arlo Ripley’s character, Simon Wilding. ‘I have to say I hadn’t known the Rev. Ripley originally came from you. Maybe you can explain.’
‘Yes, you need to hear it spelled out,’ Siân said. ‘Arlo’s a man I’ve known for some years now. The Bishop didn’t know him at all, except, possibly, as an actor. He’d looked at Arlo’s application for Whitchurch and seen a man whose fame is almost guaranteed to triple a congregation.’
‘That’s as far as it goes?’
‘As an actor, Arlo was, in his worn and wasted way, very appealing to women. British viewers love a damaged hero, someone who’s suffered.’
Merrily said, ‘But Arlo Ripley isn’t Simon Wilding.’
The Archdeacon blew out smoke.
‘Isn’t he?’
‘I’m sorry…?’
‘The casting of Wilding was the result of an independent TV producer spotting Arlo looking vague and disconnected in a minor part. There was apparently a very good screenplay doing the rounds, which nobody wanted to take on because the central character was considered weak and unappealing. It’s said the producer guessed Arlo would slip effortlessly into the role, generating sympathy rather than contempt, because… essentially, he’d be playing himself.’
Siân waved her cigarette in the air.
‘I don’t mean Arlo was an addict in the Wilding sense. He may have used cocaine for a while – as a few long-established clergy have been known to do before an important sermon – but this is different. Do you know much about something occasionally called addiction syndrome?’
Merrily thought about it.
‘Is that when someone’s kind of, erm, addicted to addiction?’
‘In a way. But the roots of the condition are seen to be psychiatric, rather than a particular dependency,’ Siân said. ‘So it doesn’t have to be drugs or gambling, or it can be both… and more.’
‘The opium of the people?’
‘Don’t make light of it. I don’t think this was addiction syndrome, but we were afraid it might not be far off. Arlo had read theology at university and, while studying hard for his degree, he’d been…’ she paused, as if unsure whether to say it so bluntly ‘…self-harming.’
The phrase resounding in the unnatural silence as Merrily went rigid.
Siân said, ‘If you want me to be more explicit, I’d have to say that he was inflicting what one might call Stanley-knife stigmata on various parts of his own body.’
‘I…’ Merrily sank back. ‘I didn’t know anything about this.’
‘But you’ll agree it sounds like a valid reason for keeping Arlo Ripley away from your particular discipline… exorcism, the paranormal. My first thought was that he was finding personal flaws that he could face directly and try to conquer… that he thought certain extreme redemptive processes would somehow deepen his faith. But…’
