The Sixth Soul

by Mark Roberts

In a soulless Port of Dover café, Sebastian Flint sipped a cup of Earl Grey tea and recalled the time when he’d been lynched. He remembered the moment when the mob had fallen silent, assuming he was dead, the moment after the very last kick to his ribs when the mob had drifted away, slowly at first, in dribs and drabs.

  Flint recollected the carpet viper slumbering in the shadow of a rock. Like the snake, Sebastian was belly down in the Kenyan dust. He had opened his eyes enough to watch the serpent flick out its tongue to collect the chemical information hanging in the air around him, information seeping from his skin as he shed warm blood into the thirsty soil.

  The carpet viper retracted its tongue, passing its cargo to its Jacobson’s gland in the roof of its mouth, where the airborne chemicals would be distilled, keener than smell and sharper than taste. From them, the snake would know not to attack the man who was neither prey nor predator.

  Flint had smiled through continents of pain, the darkness of his pupils connecting with the black of the serpent’s eye. He called to mind the carpet viper sliding from the shadows towards him. As he had drifted out of consciousness, he had watched the serpent slide across his fingers to the open wound at the base of his hand.

  From the darkness around the rock, a deeper shadow had crept towards his brutalized body. Unable to speak, he had stared into the darkness as it had crawled onto his skin in the final moments before he passed out.

  In the almost empty Port of Dover café, Flint observed the increasing tension in the lorry driver at the till. He reached inside his coat and produced nothing. He rummaged with both hands in his hip pockets. Empty. He tried his trousers with no success.

  ‘Shit! My wallet.’

  Flint walked over to the till. The girl behind the counter drew back the cup of coffee she’d been about to serve the driver.

  ‘Here,’ said Flint, handing a two-pound coin to the girl, who pushed the cup of coffee back towards the driver. Flint indicated the table in the corner where he was sitting and the driver joined him.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t leave it in the cab of your lorry?’ asked Flint.

  ‘No, I bought a paper in the newsagents, five minutes back. Thanks for this.’ He sipped the hot coffee.

  ‘You want me to help you find that wallet?’

  ‘There was only a fiver in it.’

  ‘Got your phone?’ asked Flint.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Got your passport?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘You need to call your credit card provider and cancel—’

  The driver laughed sourly and stared past Flint. ‘I don’t have any credit cards. Not any more.’

  ‘No credit cards?’

  ‘I had several when I was married.’ He looked wistful at the memory.

  ‘I think we’ve been to the same place,’ said Flint. The man looked back at him. Flint added, ‘My ex maxed out all my cards before she left me.’

  ‘Bitch. She wasn’t called Lisa, was she?’ The driver laughed at his own joke and Flint joined in, louder than his new companion but in total harmony.

  It opened doors. The driver said, ‘She cleaned me out; left me for some other fellah and I ended up being made bankrupt. The worst of it is, I’ve got a new woman in me life now; she’s an angel, the opposite of Lisa. She’s pregnant, and we’re going to charity shops to get stuff for the baby.’

  ‘That’s just so unfair,’ Flint commented. The driver drank the rest of his coffee in silence, then glanced up at Flint and smiled.

  ‘What you looking at me like that for?’

  ‘You’re not the only one with problems, mate,’ said Flint. ‘Where you heading?’

  ‘France.’

  ‘What you carrying?’

  ‘Flat-packed furniture.’

  ‘Let’s go look for that wallet,’ suggested Flint.

  ‘There was just a fiver in it, that’s all.’

  ‘A fiver’s a fiver. Let’s go look for it.’

  ——

  A QUARTER OF an hour later, in the lorry’s cab, Flint said, ‘At least we tried.’

  ‘I didn’t think we’d find it.’

  The water bottle on the dashboard looked old, as if it had been refilled from the tap on dozens of occasions over several months. The driver caught Flint eyeing it.

  ‘What did you mean back in the café?’ asked the driver.

  ‘I said a few things.’

  ‘You said, something like, you’re not the only one with problems, mate. What were you getting at?’

  ‘I need a favour.’ Flint reached inside his coat and took out a fat brown envelope, which he placed in his own lap. He saw the excitement in the driver’s eyes. ‘I don’t know your name, you don’t know mine. Let’s keep it simple,’ he said. He opened the envelope to show a wad of money. ‘Three thousand in fifties. Hide me in your lorry. As soon as we get to France, I’m history and you’re three grand better off.’

  Flint offered the notes to the driver, who looked utterly conflicted.

  ‘What if I get searched?’

  ‘When was the last time that happened?’

  ‘You never know.’

  ‘That’s a point.’

  Slowly, Flint returned the money to the envelope. The driver watched, entranced, his shoulders sagging as the notes vanished from sight.

  ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. I shouldn’t have put you in this position.’ Flint opened the cab door. ‘I hope it goes well,’ he said. ‘The birth and all that.’

  Jumping down, he shut the door behind him and walked away. Suddenly, the door flew open.

  ‘Hey, mate,’ said the driver. Flint turned. ‘We get searched, you say you stowed away, right?’

  Flint walked back, feeling the weight of the driver’s wallet in his pocket.

  ‘I’ll give you fifteen hundred now, fifteen hundred when you let me out in France.’

  62

  In the incident room at Isaac Street Police Station, Rosen’s mobile phone vibrated as it buzzed on the surface of his desk. Exhausted and numbed by shock and tension, he watched the phone ring twice.

  ‘David, the phone, quickly, it’s important!’ Bellwood thrust the mobile at him.

  SARAHMOBILE. His wife’s name registered on the display panel.

  He took the phone from her, all eyes in the room on him, and let out a sound, somewhere between a solitary laugh and a cry of relief.

  SARAHMOBILE. The display flashed before his eyes like lightning.

  ‘Sarah, where are you?’

  But all he heard was the muffled throb of a large engine and the action of water somewhere in the middle distance.

  ‘Sarah?’ He felt the absence of her voice as a sharp intense pain in the centre of his chest. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Your landline’s busy.’

  ‘Flint . . .?’

  ‘Is there something going on today, David?’

  ‘Where’s my wife, Flint?’

  Silence.

  ‘Where’s my wife being held?’

  ‘I’m confused and a little disappointed, David. Are you going to ask me why I’m confused and a little disappointed?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what, David?’

  Rosen dug deeper into the pit. Flint wasn’t going to directly answer the one question he needed an answer to, but as long as he had Flint on the line, there was the spectre of a chance that he might give something away. Keep talking, keep engaged . . .

  ‘Why are you disappointed?’

  ‘Because you went to the British Library yesterday and you saw me but you didn’t say hello after all the help I’ve given you. You didn’t have the good grace to come and say hello, that’s why I’m confused and a little disappointed. I felt you ought to know that. I think that’s only fair, don’t you?’ The shape of his mood was hidden behind his manicured, educated tone.

  ‘That’s not the main question,’ said Rosen, ‘as I see it.’

  ‘Then, what is the main question?’ asked Flint. ‘
As you see it?’

  Rosen didn’t speak for a moment. He listened hard to the sounds in the background, knowing that these would yield more than the caller. He listened to the capacity of the engine and the wider insistence of the motion of water.

  So, thought Rosen, how did you make it out of Dover?

  A memory assailed Rosen, a childhood fragment, with the caption of his response as a six-year-old to something he had witnessed in the tiny kitchen of the overcrowded tenement flat he had once called home. The family cat, something between a stray and a regular visitor, had lifted its paw from the back of a dazed mouse and allowed the little grey ball of life to run five paces before lazily reaching out to haul it back to square one. Rosen remembered thinking: Just do nothing, stop joining in with his game; he’s going to destroy you anyway.

  ‘Father Sebastian, we were in a library, a place of quiet reflection, where you looked deep in study. It seemed wrong to disturb you.’

  He wrote the words: ‘Inform the port authorities at Calais: Flint probably on ferry heading out of Dover.’ He slid the note towards Bellwood.

  The throb of the engine shifted as the waves grew more dense.

  ‘Such respect for education,’ said Flint. ‘You do know, it would have been lost on you. If you’d been born into a good family and you’d been sent to the best public school, you’d have still come out as you are. All that nurturing would have slid off you. You were born to be what you are, Rosen, a sorter of filth, other people’s mistakes, the unpalatable end of human nature. That’s what you’re here for, that’s what you are, and I’m telling you that the little worm that gnaws inside you – What if? What if I’d had a better start? What if I’d been to a better school? – that worm in your soul is a phantom. You’re a refuse collector.’ Flint sighed. ‘I’m trying to cut you some slack here, Rosen, I’m trying to help you, can you see that?’

  Rosen looked around the room at the faces of his colleagues as he absorbed Flint’s words, and realized he was on speakerphone, for the whole room to hear. In that moment, no one quite looked him in the eye.

  ‘David, the thing about you is—’

  Rosen stared at the surface of a cup of coffee that had grown cold on his desk, tormented by the need to ask again where his wife was but knowing this would feed Flint, satisfy him and reinforce his lust for manipulation.

  ‘What’s the thing about me, Father Sebastian?’

  A door opened, metallic, echoing, then slammed shut in the place where Flint was, a sound that seemed to arrest his attention and send him into a momentary lull.

  ‘You’re a taker. Take, take, take. It’s all you’ve ever done with me.’

  ‘What can I give you, Father Sebastian, a man of your standing and erudition?’ Rosen eyeballed his colleagues. Bellwood met his gaze and he felt her willing him on. ‘What can I give to you?’

  ‘Spoken like a true pauper.’

  Nausea crept up from the root of Rosen’s digestive system and, with it, rage.

  ‘David, I’m sorry for your loss.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  The waves around Flint rode higher and, as they slapped, Rosen had the sense that Flint was about to end the call.

  ‘That’s what I called to say: I am sorry for your loss.’

  ‘If you were sorry for my loss, Father Sebastian, you’d tell me where my wife is!’

  ‘I was thinking of quite a different loss. It wasn’t that long ago.’

  A door opened deep inside Rosen, a door to a different day in another year that could never come back but would never go away.

  ‘You have a child, David? No, no, no. Three times you denied her in St Mark’s. Remember? Funny how those little betrayals always weigh most heavily . . . No?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten Hannah.’

  ‘Your lost girl?’

  ‘You know nothing about our loss.’

  ‘Then, educate me. What does it feel like, that kind of loss?’

  Rosen sat back in his seat, staring at the speakerphone on the desk, then looked at the room full of faces, like a frozen moment of life flashing before his eyes.

  ‘Give me your loss, David,’ said Flint, ‘and I’ll give you hope.’

  ‘Hope?’

  ‘I can go as quickly as I came. Your wife? Where did you leave her this morning?’

  ‘Hannah was a beautiful child,’ began Rosen.

  ‘Where did she die?’

  ‘She died in her cot.’

  ‘Did you put her in the cot that night?’

  ‘I was on duty.’

  ‘But she was still alive when you came home?’

  ‘I went to see her as soon as I came in.’

  ‘Are you sure she was still breathing at that point?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How sure?’

  ‘I listened to her, the landing light was on, I saw her shift in her sleep.’

  ‘Did you touch her? Kiss her before she . . . left you?’

  ‘You’re . . . you’re asking me questions I can’t answer, Flint.’

  ‘You walked away from her cot?’

  ‘I can’t give you those moments.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘I went to the bathroom.’

  ‘And when you returned?’

  ‘I thought you wanted my loss.’

  In the background, the muffled sound of screeching gulls suggested that, wherever he was, Flint was coming close to dry land.

  ‘This is the door to loss. Stand at that door, David, and take hold of the very moment when you returned to the cot and all that the landing light could pick out was her stillness and you could no longer hear a thing. Did you pick her up? Did you shake her? Did you order her to come back from the dead?’

  ‘I picked her up. I didn’t shake her. I didn’t order her back. I called for Sarah, I told her our baby was dead, I gave her over to her mother . . . I called the ambulance, I called the police—’

  ‘What didn’t you do in your loss?’

  ‘I couldn’t say goodbye because I missed the moment. I didn’t say goodbye. I wasn’t there to so much as hold her when she passed into the cold, the dark.’ Rosen was almost whispering by now.

  ‘And your wife, she lost her mind, didn’t she? But, you, David? What did you lose?’

  ‘Then . . . then, I lost hope.’

  The phone in his hand fell away from his ear. He held his breath to staunch the sobs that rose inside him but tears, fierce and silent, rolled down his face.

  Carol Bellwood stepped forward and placed one hand on his shoulder. She folded a hand around his and guided the phone back to his ear.

  Rosen released his grief in a deep, single outbreath.

  Bellwood stepped back.

  Rosen heard the faintest echo of his own voice caught in the loop of the two telephones. There was a deceleration in the ship’s action and the motion of the waves slackened. He looked at Sarah’s name on the display of his phone and, leaning into the receiver, asked, ‘When did you take my wife’s phone from her, Flint? Well?’

  ‘She has a few hours,’ Flint’s voice tumbled into the room. ‘But not as many as the others, so you still have a few hours to reach her.’

  ‘An address, Flint?’

  ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘Yes, you do—’

  ‘But I do know someone who does.’

  ‘Where is Dwyer?’

  ‘That’s not the man you should be looking for if you want to get to your wife.’

  ‘Then who is?’

  ‘Brother Aidan.’

  ‘Brother Aidan knows where my wife is?’

  ‘Go get him, Mr Plod!’

  Flint ended the call. Bellwood took the phone from him and redialled, but the line was dead.

  Rosen called out, ‘Kent Constabulary, we need officers at St Mark’s right now.’

  Gold was on the phone. ‘I’m on it, boss. I’ve got the postcode.’

  ‘It’s a sure-fire bet, he’ll be disembarking at Calais i
n the next hour.’

  ‘We’re talking to port authorities at Calais, and the local police.’

  ‘We need a single phone line free to receive incoming photographic footage, and another dedicated line for oral feedback.’

  Corrigan held up his mobile phone. ‘I’ve got the latest iPhone for visuals, David.’

  ‘And I’ll block any incoming calls on mine that aren’t from Kent Constabulary,’ said Bellwood.

  ‘Brother Aidan?’ Rosen said the name out loud. ‘What the hell’s going on, Flint?’ He looked around, seeing the normality of an incident room on red alert.

  ‘David . . . David . . .’ The voice, it seemed, came from far away, but it was Bellwood in his face, commanding his attention. She pointed at Gold. ‘Kent have three cars on the way to St Mark’s right now.’

  Rosen nodded but had the cast-iron conviction that, whether cars were on the way there or not, it was already too late for Brother Aidan.

  63

  Local officers from Kent police streamed live iPhone footage from the chapel of St Mark’s Monastery to the incident room at Isaac Street.

  Holding Corrigan’s iPhone in the palm of his hand, Rosen watched and listened.

  ‘Two of the brothers died trying to escape from the chapel.’

  DS Wilson, of Kent Constabulary, narrated the iPhone footage to Rosen. On the screen, two elderly men were slumped near the doorway; the others had been hacked down between the door and the communion rail. ‘The rest, as you can see . . .’

  At the communion rail, Brother Aidan, the top of his skull severed and not immediately visible, must have been the first to be attacked as he kneeled at the rail awaiting communion. Returning to St Mark’s, Flint had apparently celebrated a mass of some description.

  Aidan, who according to Flint knew Sarah’s whereabouts, lay in the ultimate silence, his face a death mask on the iPhone in Rosen’s hand.

  ‘Is this the guy you’re looking for?’ asked Wilson.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Rosen, his voice barely more than an exhalation of breath.

  ‘What’s that?’ The voice of an unidentified officer overrode Wilson’s.

  ‘Jesus!’ The image on the screen swung abruptly as the phone that was recording the massacre in St Mark’s chapel was pointed in the direction of the second speaker. He was crouched on his haunches in the middle of the chapel, metres away from Aidan’s corpse. ‘Look at this, Tom! It looks like a body part.’