Psalm 151 (Jason Ford Series)

by Guy N Smith

  It isn’t your head he’s after.

  There was somebody there.

  A silhouette that was neither a shadow nor in Corms’s frightened imagination, a shape that stood back, saw him and watched him.

  Homer? It had to be the Head Verger, because there was nobody else inside the cathedral and the doors were locked.

  It wasn’t Homer, because whoever stood there was too short, the shape was all wrong. And for Michael Corms that was a terrifying realisation. He might have fled, except that there was nowhere to flee; the stranger stood between himself and the steps, which led down to the nave. He would surely have cried out, maybe even screamed, had his voice been able to function.

  Instead he just cringed, waited for the other to advance, a luckless rabbit mesmerised by a hunting stoat.

  The shape moved from out from the shadows, stood on the fringe of the organ lights, visible only from the waist down. Jeans, well-worn but not frayed, off-white trainers that were slightly scuffed.

  Corms reacted with an instinct which bypassed logical thinking, grabbed for the heavy music tome that stood on the stand, his shaking fingers lost their grip, the volume slid from his hand, fluttered like a shot bird and thudded to the floor. A cry of fear and frustration escaped his lips, he might even have screamed had not a familiar voice spoken from the darkness beyond the organ.

  Those trainers moved forward, the light travelled upon the stocky body, past the waistband of the jeans, and onto a pale blue sweatshirt. On upwards as the figure came closer, the light showed a square jaw, rugged features, close-cropped dark hair.

  Recognition. Corms’s relief merged into anger, surprise that checked the sharp retort. The weakness had him sinking back into the organ seat.

  “I’m terribly sorry if I startled you, Mr Corms,” Ford said, and smiled what might have been a genuine apology.

  14

  Sandra had made up her mind that she couldn’t wait four years to leave Michael. She awoke depressed on that sunny July morning when John Weston was scheduled to give his organ recital in the cathedral and the Close was already filling up with tourists, and made her decision. She would go round to Gerry’s house later and break the news to him.

  Her depression was a hangover from yesterday’s fiasco with the washer-dryer. It had been leaking for weeks, a slow seepage which suddenly became a flood. She had phoned the engineer; he had called within a couple of hours and ten minutes later he was shaking his head in despair. The bearings would not fit tightly enough to stop the leak on the new drum. The repairs, had they been possible, would have amounted to around £150, the engineer had explained, and who was to say that the motor might not pack up next week.

  “It’s out of guarantee, you’ve had it three years,” he mumbled with some embarrassment, consulting some documentation fastened to a clipboard.

  Well, Michael would have to buy a new machine. He could write to the makers and lodge a complaint about a design fault also. He wouldn’t, though, because he was too lazy. She bundled a pile of dirty washing into a bin liner; the launderette was the answer to the current problem. She checked her purse to make sure that she had enough money for the machines. Michael wouldn’t pay; he would tell her to add it to the already increasing amount in her creditor’s book. And that would be that.

  The schools broke up for the summer holidays next week. That was an additional problem: her visits to Gerry would be curtailed. Phone calls would be restricted to after bedtime, and even then she would have to speak in a quiet voice.

  “I’ve come to a decision, Gerry.” She put the kettle on, saw that there was a completed typescript in an envelope on the table. Officially, it was her job to check it for typos. She enjoyed reading his work—not that she was a horror fan, it was just that anything to do with Gerald Norman was exciting.

  “To send the kids away to the grandparents’ for the summer holidays.” He was in one of his annoying flippant moods.

  “Ha, ha, very funny.” She wasn’t in the right frame of mind for his humour. “No, nothing to do with the kids … well, yes, it is, really. Very much so.”

  “Go on then, spit it out.” He seemed suddenly uneasy.

  “Gerry, I … I don’t want to wait four years for us to get together. I’ve been thinking about it, I’m just wasting four years of my life. Why should I have to put up with him for a day longer than I need to? I’d like us to go as soon as possible.”

  “I would, too.” He nodded.

  She stared. Maybe she had expected excuses, an expression of dismay, but she detected relief in his smile. “Gerry … are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.” He stared into his mug as though suddenly it was the most important thing in the world to him. “I didn’t really think you’d stick it out for another four years, I was just waiting for something to happen, and obviously it has.”

  “It was after four this morning when Michael came home. He was very drunk, the worst I’ve ever known him. He’s gone to the cathedral with a monster of a hangover this morning.” She declined to add that the washer-dryer breakdown had been the flashpoint, the proverbial last straw. It sounded trite.

  “Why’d he hit the booze like that?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but something scared him like I’ve never known him scared before. He came back from the cathedral, he’d been practising late last evening, and he was white and shaking. He said it was nothing, but something had happened.”

  “Maybe he thought he saw a spook.”

  “This killer, more like. Anyway …” Sandra admitted to herself that that was the reason she had to get away, take the kids with her. It was selfish, she wasn’t thinking of her husband. “I want to leave Michael, and I want you to leave Jane, Gerry.”

  “All right.”

  “When?”

  He opened a folder, consulted something scrawled on a sheet of loose-leaf. “Mid-January, love.”

  “Mid-January!”

  “Why, what’s the problem? Only last week it was four years, now we’ve cut it to six months and you’re obviously not happy with that.”

  “I can’t stick another six months, Gerry!” She was pleading now, close to tears. “I’ll go right round the twist.”

  “First,” he leaned his elbows on the table, placed his fingertips together and pursed his lips, “we have to find somewhere to go. Unless we do that, then the only alternative is an old van and joining these New Age travellers!”

  “I wish you wouldn’t joke about it.”

  “I’m not, I just want to make it plain that we have to have a plan.”

  “Michael always says you have to have a plan.”

  “For once he’s right. I have to find somewhere for us to live, work out the finances.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “I’ll handle that. What about Michael? Darling, it’ll take weeks, maybe months, to get everything organised.”

  “I don’t see how you’re going to be able to afford to keep two families.”

  “Now it’s you who is creating obstacles.”

  “Gerry, why don’t we just pack up and go?”

  He sighed. “Darling, it isn’t quite as simple as that. I said January because I can have my next book finished by then, we have to have money to live on. Also, I need a break in my work schedule to be able to sort out the move.”

  “You’re sure you’re not just stalling me?”

  “Christ, no!” He stood up, walked to the window. “I love you, I can’t envisage life without you.”

  “All right. I hear Michael’s been talking to you.”

  “I met him in the cathedral.”

  “What were you doing in there, Gerry?”

  “I was doing some research for a book and I just happened to bump into him. Why, does it matter?”

  “Not really.”

  “It obviously does by your tone of voice.”

  “I don’t like the cathedral, it frightens me. I don’t like you going in there, Gerry.”

  “In ca
se this nutter carves me up? I can assure you he only kills organists.”

  “And assistants?”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say, I wouldn’t even wish that on your bastard of a husband, Sandra.”

  “The police are watching everybody who goes into the cathedral. There’s closed circuit TV cameras everywhere, like they have in the supermarkets to trap shoplifters. That was how Adrian Frame got caught a few months back.”

  “So what?”

  “They’ll have you on film, Gerry, they might even come and interrogate you.”

  “I doubt it, but at worst they’ll only waste valuable writing time.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Anybody who was remotely connected with the cathedral and its Close frightened her. It was a place of violent death. The killer might be somebody she knew.

  She wished fervently that Gerry had not gone there.

  15

  This year’s Festival had been the best ever, according to The Mercury, since its launch in 1982. Ford read the lengthy review carefully; there was little that he did not already know, he was unlikely to turn up anything of relevance to the case, but he was methodical. He needed an overall picture in his mind; the cuttings would be consigned to his already bulky file.

  He read and studied the review of each event, beginning with the opening lecture on the science and sounds of music by an eminent professor in the Civic Hall.

  The choristers had excelled themselves later that same day with a programme that included Handel and Psalm 23. Michael Corms was commended for his organ playing; Ford recalled that recital: the detective had been seated in the rear pew, he had spent the time studying every member of the congregation, poised like a coiled spring should anything happen. Frame’s widow had been there; at one stage she had hidden her face in her hands. Her eyes were red rimmed afterwards. James Drinkwater had led the singing impeccably.

  Choral evensong had been routine; without his constant vigilance Ford would have been bored. Strangely, Charles Homer was seen little during these services as he had delegated the duties, mostly to Lumby and Needes.

  The orchestral recitals were less of a mental strain on Ford; nothing amiss was likely when there was no organist. All the same, he did not relax, he never took chances.

  He did not concern himself with lectures; he left the security to constables, but he did, reluctantly, admit to enjoying The Marriage of Figaro. He was not musically inclined; on the few occasions when he sang with the cassette player in the car, he changed key on innumerable occasions. He only sang when he was alone.

  John Weston’s organ recital was the climax to Ford’s feeling of rising tension. He watched and waited, it seemed an eternity. Weston, the famous organist was unaware that he was under police protection by a CID officer posing as a hotel maintenance man who was on duty outside the room door throughout the nocturnal hours.

  But there was no cause for concern. Weston left the city early the next morning.

  One of the world’s leading early music ensembles with a wide repertoire of medieval, renaissance, and baroque music performed in the cathedral on the following evening, followed by a piano recital in the Lady Chapel.

  Choral evensong was daily at 5.30pm. Ford found it repetitive and boring, and he had to struggle to maintain his concentration. Each evening he followed Michael Corms home; he did not consider it necessary to accompany him on his nightly drinking sessions. On those occasions when Corms used his car, the detective felt that it would have been condoning drink driving. Corms had been lucky on both counts. So far. The killer might not get him, probably considered him to be an inferior victim in terms of status, but for sure, by the law of averages, the police patrol cars would stop him and breathalyse him one night.

  Ford would have no sympathy when that happened.

  There were musical performances most days in the cathedral, few of them included an organ accompaniment; a brass quintet and wind quintet, pride of place going to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. A production of The Phantom of the Opera filled every available seat, both aisles lined with chairs to accommodate the fully subscribed audience.

  A brass band played on Stowe Fields on the Saturday night. Fortunately, the fine weather held. This was followed by the annual grand spectacular firework display to conclude the Festival.

  Ford had given a tempered sigh of relief as he left the field, jostled with the crowd after the finale. The Festival had been hard work for the force—ten days and nights of climbing tension, long boring hours spent on fruitless vigils.

  “Maybe you can relax for a while now, love.” Brenda came through from the kitchen carrying a mug of tea. “You did your job and nothing went wrong. That’s what policing is all about. VIPs that have to be escorted to and from public appearances, armed units and helicopters following them, everybody hopes that nothing will happen. When it doesn’t, you feel it’s all a waste of police time. But without police protection, some guy might have died. Look upon it as preventative action: the police presence in and around the cathedral kept the killer from making an attempt. You won.”

  “No.” Jason Ford smiled wryly. “We didn’t win, the bastard’s been laughing at us all the time. He’s run up a bill of tens of thousands of pounds for the taxpayer, he’s had every cop in the city scrutinising faces until their eyes hurt. And he never intended to make a move—it’s all been a game for him. The press have hyped it, made Jack the Ripper seem like a fond uncle by comparison.”

  Brenda Ford nodded, she understood only too well.

  “Now he hopes we’ll relax the security.” Ford walked across to the window, stood looking out across the open plan estate, rows of identical houses with neatly mown lawns, cars parked in the driveways. A comfortable and safe existence for nine-to-fivers; all they had to worry about was their mortgages. Nobody would stalk them or kill them because they weren’t interesting enough.

  “You think he might strike again, Jason?”

  “No doubt about it.” When Ford turned round, his smile was gone. “He won’t stop now, they never do. He’ll kill, and kill again, until he’s caught. That’s the only way he’ll ever be stopped. The Festival was his bit of fun, he revelled in the publicity. Somewhere in the teeming masses of this city, he’s been laughing at us. Now the laughing’s done, and this is where we get down to serious business.”

  She said, “I know,” and because she knew she worried for her husband’s safety.

  “The chief’s recalled most of the extra men to routine duties, something that would never have happened in Dawson’s day. Just a handful of us are left on the case. Maybe the killer’s waiting for a new organist to be appointed; he doesn’t get a kick out of mutilating a stand-in. The job has suddenly become the hot seat, I don’t reckon there’s going to be the usual flood of applicants. We’re playing a waiting game; once there’s a full time organist in the cathedral again, that’s when this guy’ll creep out of the woodwork. In the meantime, we don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of finding him, but we have to keep looking.”

  PART TWO

  AUTUMN

  16

  “I hate my father!” Adrian Frame screamed from the landing, banging on the banisters with clenched fists, vibrating the solid oak structure right the way down to the hallway below. “I hate him and I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad somebody …”

  “Adrian, please!” Philippa Frame appeared in the kitchen doorway, tried to hold back her tears even though she could not stop trembling. “I won’t have you speak of the dead, your own father, like this. Stop shouting—the entire Close will hear you and you’ll be heard inside the cathedral.”

  “Good, I’m glad.” The lanky youth, wearing a crumpled denim shirt and torn jeans, came slowly down the stairs, a step at a time. A deliberate, threatening advance. He spat, screwed his pallid acne-covered features up into a snarl. “Like I said, somebody did me a big favour; I just wish I’d done it myself.”

  His mother’s instinct was to cower,
maybe even flee, make a dash for the door, run outside. Lately she had become very frightened of her son. But he was still her son, and that was why she stood and faced him now.

  “Your father did everything possible to help you, Adrian. You’ve no cause to hate him.”

  “Haven’t I?” He descended another step, paused. “It was him that shopped me to the police when he found pot in my room.”

  “Because he loved you, Adrian.”

  “Loved me!”

  “Yes, he wanted to stop you before it was too late, before you became addicted. It was the only way, we talked it over. We didn’t do it lightly.”

  “You, too!” He hissed. “You cow!”

  “It obviously didn’t do any good.” Philippa Frame had lost a stone in weight these last two months, and her only son wasn’t allowing her to grieve in peace. “Now you’re facing shoplifting and assault charges, and you’re on crack, too. Just look what it’s done to you, just go and see for yourself in the mirror. You’re not the same person you were three months ago, either physically or mentally.”

  “And I’m glad,” he laughed, a harsh sound, stepped down into the hall, “because that way I’m no longer his son. Nor yours. I’m me.”

  “You’re in court next week.” Her voice shook. And pray to God that they send you for treatment. I just want to be left alone to grieve. At least Rupert had been spared the shame, the ignominy.

  “If I’m around.” Adrian’s eyes seemed to film over, his voice sounded far away like an echoing whisper in the silent cathedral across the road.

  “What … what d’you mean by that?” She felt physically sick, held on to the carved dolphin table by the telephone for support. “You … you’re not going anywhere, Adrian … are you?”

  “I might be.”

  “You mustn’t. If you don’t turn up in court, they’ll issue a warrant for your arrest. You’ll be sent away. And fined. And now that your father’s gone, I don’t have the money to waste on fines. Please, don’t cause me any more trouble.”