The Hand of God

by James Craig

  Lorna? A frisson of dismay spread through Carlyle’s brain. Since when was his girlfriend on first-name terms with his mother? He had been going out with Helen Kennedy for more than six months now, but this was only the fifth or sixth time that she had visited the flat that – much to his chagrin – he still shared with his parents. And only the second time his parents – to his even greater chagrin – had actually been present.

  Even without the intervention of his parents, Carlyle was amazed that Helen hadn’t yet dumped him. He still shivered at the thought of how he had first met her, ducking into Westminster Reference Library to avoid the rain on a grim winter’s day and finding her almost totally hidden behind a large pile of books about nineteenth-century European history. How he had plucked up the courage to go over and talk to her was a mystery, both then and now, as was how he had managed to get her to agree to a date. Even now, he veered between insane glee at his good fortune and mortal terror that it could run out at any minute.

  His mother looked at him slyly. ‘I thought you were going to watch the football with your dad? You know how he likes watching the World Cup.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ Carlyle said firmly.

  ‘Isn’t it Scotland tonight?’ his mother asked, demonstrating a level of awareness of the sport that had never been previously revealed. ‘They’re playing . . .’ she tried to dredge up a name from the depths of her brain, ‘someone or other.’

  Yeah, and they’re crap. After the complete and utter fiasco of the 1978 competition, a most abject failure even by Scottish standards, Carlyle had vowed never again to worry too much about what the eleven comedians in blue shirts got up to on a football pitch. Apart from anything else, he was only a second-generation Scot, which made him even worse than an Anglo! It wasn’t like his father was a raging fan either. Alexander Carlyle knew as well as his son that disaster would sink the current campaign sooner or later, and almost certainly sooner. It was as if football existed simply to replenish the well of deep, dark pessimism that characterised the Carlyle menfolk. When it was a choice between that and a night out with Helen, there was simply no contest. ‘There’ll be plenty of other games,’ he replied, trying to sound as reasonable as possible.

  A pained expression settled on his mother’s face. ‘He’ll be really disappointed.’

  Not that you give a toss.

  ‘We’re going to see a film,’ Helen explained, trying to move the conversation on. ‘Betty Blue.’

  ‘Betty Blue,’ his mother repeated, making it sound about as appealing as a dose of castor oil.

  ‘It’s French.’

  Carlyle watched his mother consider a range of possible responses before limiting herself to ‘That’s nice’, delivered with the grumpy air of a woman who had long since forgotten what it was like to go on a date.

  ‘I’m really looking forward to it,’ Helen beamed. ‘And we’ll probably go somewhere to get a bite to eat afterwards.’ She shot a glance at Carlyle, who ignored the coming pain in his wallet long enough to nod his assent.

  ‘He’s taking you somewhere nice, I hope,’ his mother said grimly.

  ‘I’m taking him, actually.’ Helen grinned. ‘We’re celebrating.’

  ‘Oh?’ Carlyle watched as his mother’s brain ran through a list of stock possibilities, all of which would be guaranteed to cause her further annoyance. She shot him a look that said, Something else you haven’t told me? ‘That sounds nice.’

  ‘Yes,’ Helen continued. ‘I’ve got a job.’

  ‘Ah.’ His mother’s shoulders relaxed as she stood down from red alert. ‘But I thought you hadn’t got your exam results yet?’ Helen had recently completed her finals at the LSE, where she had been studying international relations. To Carlyle’s mind, it was hard to come up with a degree less likely to equip you for the world of work, but Helen had surprised him by landing a job as an administration assistant in the London office of an American aid charity less than a week after the end of the summer term.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. I know I’m going to get a decent degree and I really need to start work sooner rather than later. It doesn’t pay a lot but it’ll be useful experience.’

  ‘Yes.’ A look of dismay passed across his mother’s face. ‘I often think that John should have gone to university. It might have helped him get a proper job.’

  ‘Mm.’ Helen stared into her tea.

  ‘Yeah,’ Carlyle scoffed. ‘Like a couple of O levels and a cycling proficiency test were ever going to get me very far.’

  ‘You could have done better in your civil service exam,’ his mother scolded.

  Helen gave him a smile to offset his mother’s grumpiness. ‘You never mentioned that you’d tried for the civil service.’

  ‘Me and ten thousand Oxbridge clones,’ Carlyle harrumphed. ‘All of whom had been prepped for the bloody thing. I just turned up and sat the paper. Never had a clue.’ He glanced at his mother. ‘Not that I ever wanted to join the bloody Foreign Office anyway.’

  ‘You could have tried harder,’ his mother said, clasping the plastic bags to her bosom as she slipped into a familiar lament.

  Helen decided to intervene. ‘But I think John’s done very well, Lorna,’ she said brightly. ‘He’s got a good job. And an extremely important one.’ Rising from her chair, she leant across the table and gave him a peck on the lips before sitting back down.

  Carlyle blushed, embarrassed by her show of kindness and impressed by her willingness to stand up to his mother. As a Guardian-reading leftie, Helen was no fan of the police, but when it came to her boyfriend at least, she had always judged the man and not the job.

  ‘He could have done better,’ his mother grumbled. ‘That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Ma!’ He gestured towards the door. ‘You’ve always got to have the last word, haven’t you? I thought you were going out.’

  ‘Aye, well, I won’t be long.’ Heading past the table, she gave Helen a consoling pat on the arm. ‘Nice to see you again, dear. Maybe you can come round for tea one night. John’s dad would like that.’

  ‘That would be lovely, Lorna.’ Helen smiled, taking a sip of her tea.

  ‘Good. I’ll leave it to John to sort out a date.’ With considerable reluctance, she slipped into the hall. ‘Behave yourselves while I’m out.’

  For a minute or so, they sat in silence, listening to his mother getting herself ready for her trip to the shops. After the front door finally closed behind her, Carlyle counted to twenty to make sure that she had finally gone. Rising from the table, he dropped his mug into the sink and turned to face Helen.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Pushing back her chair, she got up and stepped towards him. ‘It’s the same for everyone. My parents are worse.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Having never met Helen’s parents, he was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  Putting her arms round his neck, she kissed him tenderly on the lips. ‘Your mother just wants the best for you.’

  ‘God knows what my mother wants.’ Pulling Helen close, he breathed in her scent as he kissed the top of her head.

  ‘Hey!’ She made a half-hearted attempt to squirm from his embrace.

  ‘C’mon,’ he grinned, gesturing in the general direction of his bedroom. ‘Let’s go and listen to some Pet Shop Boys and I can show you the rest of my injuries.’

  5

  Inspector Walter Callender scratched his head and looked blankly at his colleague. Sergeant Joseph Young absorbed the stare, giving nothing in return. An amiable fellow, if as dumb as a box of rocks, Young was well suited to the limited vagaries of day-to-day life as a provincial copper, which meant that he wouldn’t be much use at this particular crime scene.

  ‘Well, boss?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Well,’ Callender sighed. ‘You’d better let Mrs Callender know that there’s no chance of me being home in time for dinner this evening.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ If Young f
elt slighted at being given such a menial task, he didn’t let it show.

  ‘Get back to the station and help coordinate our initial lines of inquiry. Let me know who’s on shift for the next twenty-four hours and we can decide if we need more resources, which we will.’ Callender fully expected CID to relieve him of the case before the day was out – this kind of carry-on being meat and drink to the energetic boys at the Criminal Investigation Department – but this would give Young something to do in the meantime.

  ‘Yes, boss.’ Resisting the temptation to salute, Young recovered his helmet from the top of Marjorie Scanlon’s Aga and turned on his heel, almost tripping over a tabby cat loitering by the door as he headed out. With a hiss of disapproval, the cat skulked over to an empty bowl on the floor by the oven. Shaking his head, Callender looked at the animal.

  ‘Hold on a second, Tiddles.’ Reaching down, he retrieved the bowl, the cat watching him patiently as he filled it with water from the tap at the sink before carefully returning it to the tiles. He watched as the cat took a succession of sips before sitting up and looking up at him expectantly.

  ‘I suppose you want something to eat, too?’ Callender stepped over to the fridge and opened the door, pulling out an opened can of John West tuna and dumping the contents into a bowl on the draining board by the sink. ‘Here you go.’ Placing the fish next to the water, he watched the cat happily dig in. A telephone started ringing in the living room next door. Callender counted thirteen rings before it stopped.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Looking up, Callender saw the familiar figure of county pathologist Frank Scudder standing in the doorway. A portly fellow, he was red in the face, clearly struggling with the heat of the day.

  ‘Just feeding the cat.’

  Dropping his bag on the tiled floor, Scudder pushed his thick-rimmed NHS-style specs up a nose that was marginally too big for his face and gestured towards the body hanging from the light fitting in the centre of the room. ‘Haven’t you got more important things to do?’

  ‘I was just waiting for you, Frank.’ Leaning against the sink, Callender folded his arms. ‘And it’s not like Mrs Scanlon’s going anywhere, is it?’

  Scudder tilted his head, as if trying to make eye contact with the deceased. ‘Terrible business.’

  ‘That’s for sure. Have they fished the husband out of the canal yet?’

  ‘They were doing that when I left,’ Scudder explained. ‘I thought I’d better get up here straight away.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Callender agreed.

  ‘We don’t really have the manpower to deal with two crime scenes at once. Then again, we don’t normally get this kind of thing in Berkshire.’ He shot Callender a look. ‘It’s not the big bad city, after all.’

  ‘We didn’t normally get this kind of thing in Mile End either,’ the inspector observed, without rancour. He was used to being pigeonholed as the big city cop; the Met policeman in exile. It came with the territory. He and his wife had left London eighteen months previously. After the best part of twenty years of putting up with her husband working the mean streets of the East End, Carole Callender pined for the quiet life. The inspector just wanted a quiet life. Although perhaps not as quiet as the one he had had up until 4 p.m. this afternoon. Unpleasant though they were, these deaths were the first interesting thing Callender had come across since he had walked through the front doors of Newbury police station to start the long, slow, boring descent into retirement.

  Be careful what you wish for, he admonished himself as he watched Scudder’s glasses resume their southward migration down his nose.

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ Scudder straightened himself up and retrieved his bag. ‘And the nearest thing we had to a local celebrity, too.’

  ‘Who? Mrs Scanlon?’

  ‘No, the husband. Hugh Scanlon. He was a famous journalist.’

  Callender thought about it for a moment. ‘The name doesn’t ring any bells.’

  ‘This would be in the sixties. He was retired now, or largely retired. He still produced the odd book, I think. Spies were his thing. The Cold War. Reds under the bed, and all that.’

  ‘Like John le Carré?’ Callender asked.

  ‘No, no. Like I said, he was a journalist. He was an expert on traitors in the security services, people like . . . whodyamacallit . . . Philby and Maclean.’

  ‘Maybe a spy killed him,’ Callender quipped, already bored with the conversation.

  ‘I don’t know about that. It looks like the old fella had been drinking heavily. We found a thermos flask with whisky in it by the side of the canal. Looks like he’d drunk most of it.’

  Callender frowned. ‘So he could have just fallen in and drowned?’

  ‘I would have said that was most likely.’ Scudder readjusted his specs again, gesturing at Marjorie Scanlon with his chin as he did so. ‘If it wasn’t for her.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Unless he had an accident and she found him, then ran home and topped herself out of grief.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem very likely,’ Callender mused.

  Scudder stared at the woman, as if he was expecting her to offer up an explanation of what had happened. ‘You don’t think,’ he said finally, ‘. . . we couldn’t be talking about foul play, could we?’

  ‘That, Frank,’ Callender smiled, ‘is what I am looking for you to enlighten me on.’

  Sitting in the otherwise empty first-class compartment of the 4.47 to Paddington, Martin Palmer rested his head against the cool glass of the window as he contemplated another productive day. After attending to the Scanlons, he had enjoyed a most agreeable pork pie, washed down by a pint of Berkshire Traditional Pale Ale, in a pub called the Red Lion overlooking the village green. It was a modest repast but enough to keep him going until he got home and his mother placed his dinner before him.

  After ambling back to the train station, he had been dismayed to discover that there would be a wait of more than an hour for the next train back into town. However, a nice bench in the sun allowed him the chance of a postprandial snooze, and the wait was not so burdensome, even with an additional twenty-five-minute delay caused by signal problems at Swindon. Now, as the train pulled out of the station, he was surprised to see an ambulance making its way along the lane, its lights flashing and siren sounding. Palmer knew where it was heading. That was quick, he reflected. Who’d have thought they’d have found the old buggers already? The vague sense of annoyance permeating his brain quickly dissipated as he sat back in his seat. Not that it matters. Perhaps the woman with the dogs had returned, to find Mr Scanlon sleeping with the fishes. Giggling at the thought, he settled in for the short journey home.

  6

  Stepping out of the Lumière cinema into the hustle and bustle of St Martin’s Lane, a somewhat dazed Carlyle rolled his head on his shoulders, trying to ease the gentle headache that was forming at the base of his skull.

  Helen hoisted her outsized leather bag over her shoulder and took his arm. ‘What did you think?’

  Trying to push all thoughts of Béatrice Dalle from his mind, he gave her hand a squeeze.

  ‘Not bad.’ The young policeman was still coming to terms with European cinema, struggling to understand the difference between your basic porno on the one hand and ‘art house’ movies on the other. He was grateful for the fact that his girlfriend would happily take him to see one, while doubtless running a mile from the other; grateful but confused.

  ‘Is that all you can say?’ Helen teased. ‘Not bad? Not exactly Barry Norman, are you?’

  Mm. What do you want me to say? ‘The sex scenes gave me a stiffy’? Avoiding any eye contact, Carlyle felt himself blush. This was tricky ground. He knew that he would have to take a strictly safety-first approach to the conversation if he wasn’t to drop himself in it. ‘It was good,’ he said blandly. ‘I enjoyed it. Very stim— er, interesting.’ Not wishing to add anything more, he pulled her close and concentrated on slaloming through the evening crowds, leading
her towards the Cafe Pasta fifty yards up the road.

  Ten minutes later, they were sitting at a window table, sipping a cheap Pinot Grigio that had doubtless been sourced from the new Tesco supermarket around the corner and nibbling on large slabs of focaccia. Looking around, it occurred to Carlyle that the restaurant was still quite busy for the reasonably late hour. The pre-theatre crowd, a staple of the restaurants that lined this side of the street, had been and gone but the place was still at least half full. A couple of overworked waiters – a boy and a girl who barely looked out of their teens – flitted from table to table, taking the diners’ orders.

  Helen gestured towards the handful of dough hovering in front of her boyfriend’s face. ‘Good?’

  ‘Mm.’ Struggling to make conversation, Carlyle took another bite of his starter and allowed himself to be distracted by a friendly-looking middle-aged couple at a nearby table. Will that be us, he wondered, in twenty years’ time? On first inspection, it didn’t seem such a bad prospect. The woman looked in good shape, at least for what he supposed to be her age; the man was clearly going to seed. Still, they seemed happy enough, engaged in thoughtful conversation, clearly relaxed in each other’s company.

  ‘So . . .’ Helen wiped the corner of her mouth with an oversized red paper napkin. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Uh?’ Carlyle quickly returned his attention to his own table. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In terms of getting somewhere proper to live,’ she explained. ‘When are you finally going to move out of your parents’ flat?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Carlyle reached over and took another piece of garlic bread from the plate in the middle of the table. ‘When I can afford it, I suppose.’

  Helen eyed him suspiciously. ‘Don’t you want to move out?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ he replied, immediately irritated by the sulkiness he could discern in his own voice. Taking a bite from the bread, he chewed carefully and swallowed. ‘But you know what it’s like, with the cost of renting. And then there’s the deposit and so on.’ So far, the closest he’d come to escaping his mother’s clutches had been a room in a place just off the Uxbridge Road. Unfortunately, it had never become available, thanks to the regrettable demise of the landlady, who had been brutally murdered before Carlyle had been able to express an interest.