by Mark Roberts
32
At a little after two-fifteen, as Rosen drove away from Albert Bridge Road towards St Thomas’s Hospital, his hands-free mobile rang on the dashboard. He flicked it on to speakerphone, expecting it to be another bulletin from the British Library, telling him that Father Sebastian still hadn’t moved from his reading station.
‘DCI Rosen speaking.’
‘Hello?’ Clear, tentative, African, by the sound of the masculine voice on the other end of the line, and then an uneasy silence. ‘Is that Detective Chief Inspector David Rosen, Metropolitan Police, England?’
‘Yes, it is. Who am I speaking to?’
‘I was speaking with your assistant an hour or so ago, Detective Sergeant Carol Bellwood. I am Sergeant Joseph Kimurer, Kenyan police.’
Rosen hit the tail end of a short queue at a red light.
‘Your assistant gave me your number.’
‘Thank you for getting back to us, Sergeant Kimurer.’
‘I’d like to say it’s a pleasure.’
‘No doubt Detective Sergeant Bellwood asked you about Father Sebastian. You have some information you’d like to share?’
‘Can we speak in confidence?’
‘We can speak in confidence.’
‘Father Sebastian is a well-known name in the Uasin Gishu District.’
Rosen shifted into first gear and joined the trickle of traffic through the junction.
‘Fame comes for many reasons, Sergeant Kimurer. What’s Father Sebastian’s claim to fame in your part of the world?’
‘He came in the name of Christ and left with the name of Satan.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Rosen.
‘Detective, Father Sebastian is a man who must be treated with great caution. He is a man to be feared. During his time in Uasin Gishu, he cast out many demons but, in the end, became possessed by the chief demon he exorcised. He killed six children and six mothers.’
‘Do you think he was possessed by the devil, Sergeant Kimurer?’
Kimurer laughed across the distance of seas and continents, but there was no joy in that sound.
‘Not at all. I’m a rationalist, an atheist. I have a master’s degree in Psychology. Sebastian Flint is a paranoid sociopath. The problem is not his soul. It is his conscience or, rather, his lack of one. He came to my country for fun, perverse fun.’
‘When you say he killed six women and their children, were the children in utero or had they been born?’
‘They had been born already.’
‘Why wasn’t he arrested?’
‘The people got to him first. They tried to kill him, though he survived. Then the Catholic Church found him and smuggled him from the Rift Valley province and back to England. Do you have problems in England with dishonest policemen? Bribes?’
‘Indeed we do.’
‘We share a burden. High-ranking officers were given money and the case was made to disappear. Do you have Flint in your custody?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘Who is being bribed by the Church?’
‘No one. He hasn’t been charged with a crime at present.’
‘Do you have him in your sights?’
‘I have him in my sights.’
‘Has he committed a crime?’ asked Sergeant Kimurer.
‘It’s my growing belief that he is connected to a series of unsolved crimes, though I have yet to prove it. Sergeant Kimurer?’
‘Yes?’
‘How positive are you that Flint killed six women and children? How certain?’
‘I am one hundred per cent certain.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘I was a boy at the time of these killings. I lived twenty miles away.’
‘So you didn’t see Flint kill anyone with your own eyes?’
‘No, but I know people who were there, eyewitnesses, reliable people. One man told me that he saw Flint enter the house of his first victim. It was his neighbour’s house. Flint went in and a minute later there were screams, a woman and a child screaming. He hurried over to see what was wrong. There was blood everywhere. Two mutilated bodies on the floor, an innocent woman and her young daughter hacked to pieces. He saw Flint leaving by the back door as calmly as if he’d just paid a social call. Other people saw him get into his car and drive away. He was at the wheel, covered in blood. One man tried to make Flint stop the car but Flint drove at him at speed so he had to throw himself out of the way.’
Rosen felt cold but wiped a film of perspiration from his brow.
‘I went looking for evidence in the archive but couldn’t find it. It had all been destroyed years ago. For money.’ The anger in Kimurer’s voice was fresh. ‘So I went looking for people. In my own time, I tracked down eyewitnesses and have detailed statements from the other five attacks. There were twelve victims in all, before the people caught up with Flint.’
‘Sergeant Kimurer, with respect, there must be many cold cases on your files. You feel strongly about this one. Why?’
‘It had a profound effect on me as a child – on all of us children. Flint became the stuff of nightmares. The world stopped being innocent. But that’s not all, Detective Rosen. I dream of the day Flint comes back to Kenya to pay for his crimes. I will be there with the evidence I recorded before those witnesses died.’
You’re a good man, thought Rosen, and wished Kimurer was on his team.
‘Detective Rosen, when you were a child, was there a murderer in your country who terrified you?’
A grim, iconic, black and white mugshot sprang to mind.
‘Yes. He terrified a generation.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Ian Brady.’
‘You must understand, Father Sebastian is our Ian Brady. He is a bogeyman, his name is used to scare young children even to this day.’
Rosen pulled his car into a pay and display grid.
‘Thank you, Sergeant Kimurer. You’ve been most helpful.’
‘Detective Rosen, if you go near this man, please remember, he has no remorse, so don’t turn your back on him for one second. You understand?’
‘I understand,’ said Rosen.
As Sergeant Kimurer hung up, the knot in Rosen’s stomach tightened.
In a matter of hours, he would come face to face with Flint.
33
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous in my life,’ said Sarah.
He wanted to say, ‘You’ll be fine,’ but the best he could come up with was, ‘Let’s just take this one step at a time.’
They approached reception at the antenatal clinic in St Thomas’s Hospital.
‘I’m here for an ultrasound scan,’ explained Sarah.
‘Name, please?’ asked the receptionist, not looking up from her screen.
‘Sarah Rosen.’
The receptionist scrolled down her onscreen list.
‘You’re not here.’
Sarah tried to explain but her words became tangled.
‘We’re an emergency case—’ tried Rosen.
‘Well, your case notes aren’t here, either.’
At that moment, another woman arrived carrying a thick folder of case notes with a yellow Post-it attached to the front, and threw it down.
‘They’re my notes!’ said Sarah, seeing her name in block capitals across the top of the battered file.
‘OK, take a seat, please.’
Sarah picked up a leaflet from the low table before them while Rosen looked around without connecting with anyone’s eye.
Although there were around thirty mothers with partners, parents and friends in support, the waiting room was curiously quiet, as if even a little speech was somehow a dangerous thing.
‘What’s that you’re reading, Sarah?’
‘Just a leafet.’
She handed it to Rosen. A smiling mum, T-shirt riding above her bump, hands cupped above her pubic bone. The model was a young woman whose pregnancy was no doubt going to be a walk in the park giv
en the healthy glow she radiated – a wellness of being she no doubt took for granted.
‘What are you thinking?’ asked Sarah.
‘I think we have to be utterly realistic,’ said Rosen.
‘Could you be a little more precise?’
He didn’t want to say the words, he didn’t even know how to, but he tried. ‘We might not make it.’
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice fracturing with fear. ‘I know.’ She looked at her husband. ‘It’s just so unfair.’ Her eyes brimmed but she took in a deep breath, her spirit fighting back.
Their eyes locked in tenderness and, in a single moment, there was a deep connection. To lose a child again would be unbearable.
‘We’ll just have to help each other,’ said Rosen. ‘Day by day, if things don’t go our way.’
‘I know you’ll help me, whatever happens.’
Suddenly, the weight of their shared history hit Rosen hard and he found to his shame he couldn’t look at his wife. In that unforgiving public space, he needed to separate himself from the moment.
Across the aisle, he noticed a young man staring hard at him and automatically wondered what he’d arrested him for and when. He quickly reviewed his mental list and decided that he hadn’t. The young man and his girlfriend, both aged about seventeen, in matching tracksuits, caught the hardness of Rosen’s stare and looked away.
‘What’s up with them?’ asked Sarah.
‘It’s the concept of us, at our age, having a sexual relationship and making a baby. That’s my guess, anyway.’
He watched the hands of the plain white clock shift from a minute after three to a quarter past, and felt the uneasy tugging of conscience, the anxiety of having to be in one place when another called to him.
‘Excuse me,’ he said to a passing nurse, ‘is there a delay on appointments?’
‘Yeah, we’ve had extras thrown in at the drop of a hat.’
‘If you have to go, go,’ said Sarah.
‘Sarah Rosen!’ a sonographer called.
They followed the woman to a plain room with a scan machine and a green vinyl bed. Rosen closed the door after himself as the sonographer invited Sarah to lie down. He sat on a chair next to Sarah.
Sarah squeezed Rosen’s fingers as the sonographer, whose face looked elderly but whose movements belonged to a young person, squeezed cold gel on her stomach. She smiled and asked, ‘Ready, Mrs Rosen?’
Laying the ultrasound transducer on the curve of Sarah’s womb, exploring and examining, the sonographer said, ‘Listen.’
‘Ectopic?’ asked Sarah.
‘Not at all. The baby’s in your womb. Absolutely normal place and position.’
There was silence for what felt like an age and then the rapid beating of a tiny heart registered onscreen as a soundwave. Sarah laughed and Rosen felt as if a bolted door inside him had unlocked.
‘Look.’
A head. Two arms. Two legs. A body. The pathway of the baby’s spine.
‘It’s for real, then,’ said Rosen, withdrawing his eyes from the screen to Sarah’s smile, then returning them to the screen. The baby was still there, arm rising, thumb to lips.
‘He’s sucking his thumb.’ Such a small action, such a huge event.
‘Could be a girl,’ said Sarah.
‘Could be, but I didn’t know babies did that in the womb.’ As he spoke, Rosen realized how much he might have to relearn. ‘Didn’t know that.’ Calming the awe in his voice, he looked more closely at the screen. Still there. The baby was still there.
‘They do all kinds of wonderful things in the womb. When you’ve done as many scans as I have, you get to know something about babies. Their different personalities are stamped on them already. From the jolly to the grumpy and all the places in between. Look at the face. Can you see?’
Rosen tried to focus on the tiny features but didn’t quite know where he was supposed to be looking.
‘This is a calm baby. The calm ones usually have an inborn sense that they’re wanted and loved.’
‘Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?’ asked Rosen.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Sarah, quickly.
Rosen wondered whether future Saturdays would be spent at White Hart Lane or reading the papers at some dance studio or other, though the only thing that really mattered was that there would be future Saturdays to share with his son or daughter.
‘Some people want to know so they can plan ahead,’ the radiographer explained. ‘Painting the room, buying clothes, that sort of thing. We can’t be sure about the sex at this stage, but I can try and tell you.’
‘Do you want to know, David?’
‘If you do.’
‘Is it a boy or a girl?’
‘Look at the screen; we’ll wait till the baby turns a little this way.’
The sonographer focussed on the screen, then on Sarah, finally on David.
‘I can see the parents’ features in the facial shape. If you look at the shape of the baby’s nose, well, that’s you, Mrs Rosen, but the jawline is definitely dad’s. The baby’s got elements of both of you but my hunch is, this baby’s going to be a ringer for you, Mr Rosen.’
Time and space collapsed and the jagged memory of his father leaving came into focus once more but, for the first time, without the ever-present pain that accompanied it.
‘I’ll never do that to you,’ murmured Rosen.
‘What was that, Mr Rosen?’ asked the sonographer. Sarah’s hand tightened around his.
‘I think he’s apologizing to the baby for inflicting his face on him, or her.’
‘I’m eighty percent sure it’s a boy,’ said the sonographer. ‘Silly question time. Would you care for a picture of your child? I’m afraid a small charge is incurred.’
They asked for six. As the printer issued the images, Rosen picked up the first, looked at his son, and handed it to Sarah.
‘Is that a smile on his face?’ she asked.
‘They experience pleasure, the sound of mum’s voice, familiar music . . .’
And pain? Rosen pushed the thought away but it pushed back harder.
The sonographer glanced at her watch and said, ‘You need to get back to your GP to make an appointment at Mr Gilling-Smith’s clinic.’
The sonographer took another furtive look at her watch as Sarah wiped the rest of the gel from her abdomen before sitting up and fixing her top. They thanked the sonographer who smiled, wished them luck and held the door open for them to leave.
‘I’ll phone the surgery and make an appointment,’ said Sarah.
‘Do you want to come along?’
‘I want to come with you, Sarah.’
‘But you can’t?’
‘I can’t, I’m sorry.’
‘Going anywhere nice?’ she asked.
‘Charing Cross Station.’
‘What are you doing there?’
‘Meeting a suspected murderer.’
They passed a clock on the wall on the way to the lifts. He wasn’t desperately short of time for his scheduled appointment at the station, and wished he could stop feeling torn, forced into two races at the same time.
‘Let me walk you to your car . . .’
‘Is it Herod?’ she asked.
‘It’s the priest, the ever-so helpful priest, Father Sebastian.’
‘Is he a murderer?’
They arrived at the lifts and, within a matter of moments, were joined by a very young and heavily pregnant woman with her mother.
David and Sarah Rosen exchanged a glance.
‘Could be – looks as if he could well be.’
34
Father Sebastian was sitting, drinking mineral water from a plastic bottle and watching the mating ritual of two pigeons when Rosen first spotted him on the concourse at Charing Cross Station.
In the same few seconds, Rosen saw Carol Bellwood in the middle distance, eyeing the destination and arrivals board. She glanced back at Rosen as she turned her head, looking right through h
im.
It was rush hour and the place had the feeling of a besieged city about to fall into enemy hands, with a continuous flow of single-minded commuters in flight.
‘Father?’
Rosen was struck by the stillness of the priest, the same stillness he’d observed that morning in the British Library. Did he have hearing problems? After Kenya? After they’d lynched him?
‘Father Sebastian?’ This time a little louder.
‘Hello, David. Glad you could make it.’ The priest didn’t look up at the detective.
In a single moment, dozens of copies of the Evening Standard seemed to fly past Rosen, clutched by commuters, the headline pronouncing the discovery of Julia Caton’s body.
Father Sebastian looked up at Rosen and said, ‘Poor Julia. It’s a tragedy.’
‘What time’s your train?’
‘You’ve got me for about ten minutes.’
‘What are you doing in London, Father Sebastian?’
‘The connection between Herod and Alessio Capaneus woke me up in the middle of the night. To be honest with you, I’m more than a little disappointed in myself for not seeing it sooner in the broad light of day, but in my own defence I have to confess that it’s not a hotbed of intellectual activity at St Mark’s, and I’ve become a somewhat dull shadow of my former self. But you don’t want to know about me, do you? You want to know about Alessio Capaneus. He’s not on the internet, but I found him in some very interesting books today.’
Rosen saw time dripping away on a digital clock.
‘Alessio Capaneus? What did you discover?’ asked Rosen.
‘Erzurum, it’s a rather beautiful city, ever heard of it? No. Why should you? It’s centuries old, at the foot of the Palandöken Mountains in the eastern Anatolian region of modern-day Turkey. It’s the place where Capaneus had his Satanic visions, where he travelled to after he was banished from Florence. It’s where he wrote his book.’
‘Alessio Capaneus wrote a book? You said the book was hearsay, that it didn’t exist.’
‘I said at the time, I think it doesn’t exist, I think it was hearsay. Well, I did some digging today in an effort to help you and, guess what, I thought wrong. There is a book. It’s made up of two distinct parts. An Old Testament and a New Testament, if you like. The first part’s an account of creation, the ascent of man, the war in heaven and the creation of hell. Ever heard the expression, “History is written by the victors”?’
