Absolute Proof

by Peter James

  And felt a strange prickle tugging at his skin. As if every hair on his body was being stretched tight.

  It looked like a hand-carved wooden drinking vessel. A chalice.

  He took several photographs, then lifted it up. It was uneven, but it was beautiful. Quite delicate, with an elliptical bowl and a small, flat, round base.

  In the bottom of the bowl was a dark crust.

  He wondered what he was really looking at.

  An elaborate prank? Or something Christianity had been trying to find for the past two thousand years?

  Was it possible?

  The garage door suddenly shook as if someone was trying to open it. He froze. Then calmed down. It was just the wind. He looked back at the vessel. Could it be the Holy Grail? Was it possible he had found it?

  Whoever had followed him to Chalice Well, and subsequently kicked him in the face and run off with a bag of car-boot-sale tat, clearly believed it was.

  He stared down again at the vessel. The roughly hewn cup.

  The chalice that Jesus had drunk from? That some of his blood had been poured into, according to legend, while he was on the cross?

  That Joseph of Arimathea had brought here and protected by hiding it in a cavern, with concealed entrances, near the well?

  He wondered how long it would be before his assailant realized that he had been stiffed. And come looking for the real thing.

  The same person – or persons – who had tortured and killed Cook?

  He needed to hide it.

  He stared around the garage, his brain racing. Where would someone not think of looking?

  He still had his old golf bag, empty, in a corner of the garage. He pushed the wooden container into the side pocket and zipped it up. Then he wrapped the vessel in his waterproof golfing jacket, put his head torch back on and carried the vessel out into the back garden. He walked down to the shed at the far end and took out a spade.

  There was a space a couple of feet wide behind the shed where he had his compost heap. He moved some aside, dug a deep hole in the earth, laid the wrapped cup at the bottom, filled the hole back in and smoothed the earth over, then shovelled the compost back on top.

  When he had finished he went back into the house, removed his muddy shoes and, feeling drained, climbed upstairs to the bathroom. His head was pounding from the blow to his nose. He took out a couple of paracetamol from the cabinet and swallowed them with a glass of water, cursorily brushed his teeth, removed his clothes, had a very quick shower and climbed into bed.

  The clock said 2.49 a.m.

  He was exhausted. But he was far, far too wired to sleep.

  He lay thinking. Listening. Fearful of every sound he heard.

  What danger had he put himself and Imogen in?

  What should he do next?

  First thing in the morning, he planned, he would call an alarm company, get them to come over and secure the house as much as they could and install panic buttons.

  Then he lay there, images of Harry Cook’s tortured body burning in his mind. Thinking about earlier. Whoever had kicked him in the face, taken the bag and tried to trap him inside the well was not going to go away. Especially not when they opened the bag.

  Not much had made him smile recently, but that thought did. Very fleetingly, before the fear flooded back.

  38

  Wednesday, 1 March

  The refectory of Simonopetra was a vast, high-ceilinged, austere room, amply capable of accommodating the three hundred monks for whom the monastery had originally been constructed.

  Square, white, ten-seater tables, fashioned from marble quarried on the peninsula, were ranked along its length. The monks sat at three tables, eating their morning meal in silence whilst the Abbot stood, reciting from the scriptures at a lectern in the centre of the hall in his monotone voice.

  Separated from the rest of his brothers, Brother Pete sat at a corner table – it was the monastery’s ‘naughty step’. Where monks who transgressed were sent to eat on their own, to atone.

  He would be denied the wine that the others were drinking for this month. Instead he had to make do with the tepid fish, the feta cheese, tomatoes, lettuce and bread, eaten alone with his thoughts and his raw, painful knuckles, still hurting from the punch he had delivered to the journalist.

  He had been summoned to the Abbot’s chamber a few hours after and chastised. Told solemnly that he had brought the monastery into disrepute.

  ‘You realize that without funding, in particular from the EU, this monastery – and this entire commune at Mount Athos – could not survive, Brother Pete?’

  ‘I do, Father.’

  ‘Perhaps you are too steeped in your American ways of violence to fit in with us? You confessed to me, when you first came here, that you had spent two years in prison for assaulting a man who was rude to you in the hamburger restaurant where you worked. Perhaps you still carry that same violence in your heart?’

  ‘No, I care deeply about all we do and stand for here, Father. This was different, this newspaper reporter wanted to make us look bad. I was worried it would affect the grants from the European Union on which we depend. I felt I had to take a stance and defend us.’

  ‘Violence is not our way.’

  ‘I apologize. I’ve been unsettled by visions recently – I feel that our Lord might be communing with me, giving me specific words of guidance.’

  ‘You do?’ The Abbot half closed his eyes and stared directly at the monk. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘It’s hard to say, but I feel it so deeply within.’

  ‘What has He been telling you?’

  ‘That our Lord Jesus might be back on earth, and no one realizes. He has come to save the world. But He needs our help.’

  ‘This is quite an assertion, my son. And if you are wrong, it could get you in serious trouble. Tell me, why would our Lord talk with you when violence is not his way? Violence is not the way to help.’

  Pete looked at the floor. ‘I sinned, and I’m sorry, but I feel this so strongly.’

  ‘We all know our Lord is coming back. His messages have always been of love and forgiveness. We have to spread His word. What do you think that striking an influential newspaper reporter will achieve?’

  Pete had the grace to blush.

  But now, as he sat alone with his thoughts, half-heartedly forking his breakfast into his mouth, he wished desperately that his cousin, Angus, had remained here. He felt he could talk to him in a way that he could talk to no other human.

  He wondered increasingly if his cousin felt the same thing he felt.

  The sense that something momentous was happening. That our Lord was preparing to return to save us and no one realized.

  39

  Wednesday, 1 March

  The sign outside the shopfront, in Brighton’s Lanes, proclaimed DEREK BELVOIR ANTIQUES AND RESTORATION. Ross Hunter, in the private office at the rear of the tiny, cluttered premises, removed the sunglasses hiding his black eyes. ‘So what do you think?’ he asked Belvoir.

  Ross had met the old rogue almost a decade earlier, when he had been writing an article on the history of Brighton’s infamous ‘knocker boys’ – the crooks who, in the heyday of the city’s notoriously bent antiques trade, used every trick in the book to con old people out of their most valuable antique possessions.

  Derek Belvoir had talked to him then, openly and shamelessly. Perhaps bragging, he’d told him in detail how, for instance, you could make a fake Georgian chest or dining table. Or how, if you had a couple of chairs missing from a genuine antique dining table set, you could make them up out of modern materials in a way that would be almost undetectable.

  The antique dealer sat behind his desk, his silver hair groomed with élan, wearing a tweed suit and sporting a yellow cravat. Through the jeweller’s loupe, screwed into his right eye socket, he was examining first the two halves of the wooden container Ross had brought him. Out of respect, Belvoir had put on a pair of white cotton gl
oves and placed a black velvet cloth on his desk beneath them.

  His small, reedy, cockney voice betrayed his carefully conceived aristocratic appearance – as did his cheap grey loafers and his single gold earring. But one thing Ross respected about Belvoir was that he did know his stuff. So much so that, for a short time, he had appeared on the hit television show Antiques Roadshow, before receiving a three-year prison sentence for handling forged antiques.

  The last time Ross had seen him, Belvoir’s emporium had occupied a vast, two-storey premises in a prominent position in the Lanes. But in recent years, the domestic and international trade in so-called ‘brown furniture’ had pretty much collapsed. Most of the respectable Brighton antique dealers had moved into antique jewellery or Oriental antiquities. Some of the dodgier ones had moved into drugs.

  ‘Blimey, Ross, where’d you get this from?’ He gave him a quizzical look.

  ‘What can you tell me about it?’

  ‘It’s oak. I don’t think I could put a date on it, but there’s a clue in the sealant used.’

  ‘Sealant?’

  ‘The bonding – glue – between the two halves of the outer shell?’

  Ross nodded.

  ‘I’d struggle to replicate this – not that I’m into any kind of repro any more, you understand? I don’t do that no more, I gone straight, legit.’

  ‘I understand, Derek, I’m not trying to catch you out. I just need to know the provenance.’

  Derek looked up at Ross, at his black eyes. ‘Nice shiners!’ Then down at the goblet. ‘Did someone fight you for this?’

  ‘Very funny.’

  Belvoir focused again on his task. ‘This is not something I’ve ever seen before.’ He lifted it and held it close to his face. He turned it over, slowly and carefully, several times. ‘Made with a lot of skill, a proper carpenter, but before the lathe was invented. It’s very old. Yeah? Like, I could not put a date to it. There’s some crusted gunk at the bottom – maybe what its owner had been drinking? The petrified glue – sealant – used to stick the two halves together is really interesting. A lab could tell you for sure about the outer casing and the cup. The glue’s possibly tar or, more likely, tree sap.’

  ‘How long ago was that used, Derek?’

  ‘First used a thousand years ago, if not more – maybe a lot more.’

  Ross tried not to let anything show on his face. ‘Is that so?’

  Belvoir laid it down gently on the cloth, and removed his eyepiece. After some moments he looked up, beadily. ‘Mind if I ask you where this came from?’

  ‘Picked it up in a car boot sale.’

  ‘What did you pay for it – a couple of quid?’

  Ross held up a single finger.

  ‘One pound?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got the bargain of the century! Not sure I could put a value on it, because it’s so unique. These two outer bits are obviously a container of some kind. I’ll hazard a guess that this had some use on a ship – oak is one of the most water-resistant of woods – some types of it. This is one. It’s very old, for sure.’

  ‘You say tree sap as glue was used over a thousand years ago? So might that make this over a thousand years old?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you. You could get it carbon dated by a lab. How accurate you could get on its age would depend on where it’s been stored. Are you looking for a value?’

  ‘Not so much, more its provenance.’

  ‘I’ll give you five hundred for it – if you throw in the goblet.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Too bad you don’t have more info. It could be priceless. Could be the Holy Grail itself!’ He grinned.

  ‘Yep, who knows?’

  Belvoir stared hard. ‘It’s unique, Ross, but that’s its problem – there’s nothing to compare it with.’ He looked up. ‘I don’t suppose there are any more where this came from?’

  ‘Oh sure, my local supermarket is stacked full of them.’

  40

  Thursday, 2 March

  Ross took a jam-packed early morning train to London Victoria, checking out all the people on the platform and the fellow travellers in his carriage for anyone who might be following him. Although, he was uncomfortably aware that members of a good surveillance team were likely to be all but invisible.

  After the tube across London to Euston Station, he settled into a seat on an Intercity train to Birmingham. Imogen had taken the morning off work to be there for the alarm company who were going to install motion sensors, panic buttons downstairs and in their bedroom, and window locks. To allay her worry about the costs, he told her a white lie that the Sunday Times had given him a cash float for expenses.

  He opened his laptop and first checked his social media. Responses were still coming in from his post last week, asking what people would consider to be proof of God’s existence. Mostly they were from committed Christians, quoting Bible passages, and one was from a Muslim, quoting from the Qur’an. One told him to go out on a summer evening and look at the sunset. And one told him if he even had to ask the question, he would rot in Hell for eternity.

  He began to make notes, inspired by his meeting with Benedict Carmichael, of what might constitute absolute proof – and the consequences that could result.

  In a largely secular Western world, what difference would it make to have God’s existence conclusively proven? he typed.

  As the train pulled out of the station, a stream of people who had just boarded walked past him. A woman stopped to consider the empty seat beside him on which his laptop bag sat. She caught his eye, giving him a hostile glare, but he really didn’t want someone next to him reading his screen, so he faced her down. Then his face twitched, involuntarily. She moved on hastily, to his relief. God made that happen! He grinned at the thought. Then focused back on his work.

  The buffet trolley came by. Ross bought a coffee, a bottle of water and an egg sandwich, which he ate ravenously before returning to his work.

  He flipped through the notes he had taken at his meeting with Carmichael and then wrote, Proof is the enemy of faith?

  Through the window he saw a landscape of grim buildings and fat, squat chimneys belching smoke out into the grey sky. Heading north made him think of Ricky. And the guilt that always came with that.

  Ricky had always tried to be friendly and he had pushed him away, more and more. Ricky had never understood why. He’d constantly tried to reach out to Ross, unable to grasp why his brother was so cold towards him. Ricky had been dead for well over a decade. And yet that moment of his death was as vivid now as it ever had been. As was his guilt.

  He closed his eyes, his heart feeling heavy. Thinking about how mean he must have seemed to his twin. His dislike of his brother had increased as he had grown older, and eventually he shunned him almost completely. He’d barely seen him in the few years before his death.

  Had Ricky’s dying moments been his one last attempt to draw them together, to bond? To give him a message?

  Should he, like Harry Cook, go to a medium and try to make contact with him?

  He didn’t like the idea, and yet he couldn’t quite dismiss it.

  He lapsed into a troubled doze and was woken some while later by the loud, droning announcement over the intercom.

  ‘We will shortly be arriving at Birmingham New Street. This train terminates here. Please ensure you take all your belongings with you.’

  41

  Thursday, 2 March

  As Ross sat in the back of the taxi, focusing on the purpose of his visit, he reflected on the tumultuous past week. He thought of Harry Cook’s denial that he had been digging at Chalice Well. So, if he had been telling him the truth, that he had been stopped within moments of beginning, someone else had been digging there after him. Cook had assured him he’d not given the coordinates to anyone else. Yet someone had carried out a thorough – albeit narrow – dig on the exact spot.

  Who?

  And why?

 
; The person – or persons – who had attacked him, taken the bag and entombed him in the well?

  Cook had approached and upset the trustees of Chalice Well. They weren’t a secretive bunch, Ross had googled them and seen all their photographs. Their aims were listed on the website. They were primarily to preserve Chalice Well and the gardens in perpetuity.

  Had these trustees carried out a dig, Ross wondered, after being alerted by the retired professor? Had Cook given them more information than he had let on to Ross?

  Had they subsequently dug in the place where they’d caught Cook digging, in order to satisfy themselves that he was indeed deluded?

  Or . . . ?

  He peered out through the taxi’s window. They were driving down a main thoroughfare with dilapidated semi-detached four-storey red-brick houses on either side. They pulled up outside one.

  ‘Number thirty-three?’ the driver checked.

  ‘That’s it.’ Ross glanced at his watch. 11.50 a.m. Perfect timing for his midday appointment.

  He paid the driver, gave him a decent tip and walked up the steps to the entrance porch. The brass plate, in need of a polish, read: ANHOLT-SPERRY BRINE, SOLICITORS.

  He pressed the bell and there was a click of the door lock. He entered a reception area that was as old-fashioned and decrepit as the exterior. A woman, with grey hair pulled into a severe bun, peered at him from behind a tall wooden counter. ‘May I help you?’ she said in a voice laced with suspicion.

  ‘I have an appointment with Robert Anholt-Sperry.’

  ‘And you are?’

  He gave his name and was told to take a seat.

  Five minutes later a much more pleasant younger woman escorted him up three flights of narrow stairs, opened a door and ushered him into a cluttered office, with stacks of files covering the desk and most of the floor space. A man, of similar vintage to Cook, lumbered to his feet to greet him. He had a heavily jowled face, with pronounced moles on his chin and on each cheek, and a threadbare comb-over. The frayed collar of his checked shirt was rucked by his badly knotted Old Harrovian tie. He had a world-weariness about him, moving slowly, a man aware time was running out on him, so why hurry any of it along?