[Lambert and Hook 22] - Darkness Visible

by J M Gregson

  ‘No. Nothing. Well, three points on my licence for a speeding fine.’

  ‘That’s not a criminal record.’ Bert paused, pursed his lips, nodded slowly. ‘I think the magistrates might be persuaded to take a lenient view, if there were other things in your favour. If we were able to point out that you had cooperated fully with the police, for instance.’

  Luke Hetherington, with all the phrases from his contemporaries about not trusting the pigs racing across his mind, was immediately suspicious. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing other than doing what every good citizen should do, Luke. Helping the police in the course of their inquiries. Giving assistance rather than being obstructive as we try to ensure that the law is upheld.’

  ‘I’m not getting anyone else into your bloody cells!’ Luke found that he enjoyed this first, belated flash of defiance.

  Bert Hook smiled a jaded, experienced smile, as if this was just what he would have expected from a spirited but mistaken young man. ‘You sound rather like one of the succession of young thugs we get in here, shouting, “I ain’t no grass, copper!” Those silly sods always end up in trouble. I can understand why they do, in a way. They haven’t your education, Luke. They haven’t the sense to realize that when you’re in a hole, you should stop digging and look for help.’

  Hetherington stared at him suspiciously. He said sullenly, ‘And who’s going to help me? Not bloody coppers, for a start! All you lot want is convictions.’

  Hook gave him a grin which was almost conspiratorial. ‘You’re right there, lad! We’re given targets to meet, like every other poor bugger nowadays. But what we can do is help you to help yourself. Oh, we can take you to court and get a conviction easily enough. Leave you with a criminal record, which might or might not inhibit your career as an accountant. But what we really want is a conviction of one of the big boys. If you can help us to get that, we might be able to take a lenient view of your own lawbreaking.’

  ‘What do you want of me?’ Hope and suspicion fought for supremacy in the young, revealing face.

  ‘The name of your supplier, for a start.’

  ‘I don’t know that.’ The denial was automatic, but Hetherington was not a good liar.

  ‘I think you do, Luke. One of your friends put you on to him, told you where you might meet him, didn’t they?’

  Luke knew little about the ramifications of the drug trade, but he knew enough to know that those who informed on their suppliers could be killed. He had had a lot of time to think about this in the cells, to remember what his dealer had told him to say. ‘His name was Gary Peters.’

  There weren’t many jokes in this evil industry, but the police were on the wrong end of this one, dreamed up by some bright boy in the local branch of the trade. Every user who had been arrested in the last two months had given Gary Peters as the name of his dealer.

  Chris Rushton said sharply, ‘Don’t piss us about, Mr Hetherington. DS Hook was giving you the chance to save yourself. If you choose not to do that, you will find that—’

  ‘That’s the only name I know. That’s the man who sold me the drugs last night. I’m telling you what I can, trying to cooperate.’

  They pressed him as hard as they could, but he was too scared or too ignorant to give them any more. Rushton eventually said, ‘We’ll decide on the nature of the charges against you in the next few days. If during those days you remember the names of people dealing in illegal drugs or any other item of information you think might be useful to us, it will be very much in your interest to contact this number immediately.’

  The Crown Prosecution Service probably wouldn’t want to take the case to court at all for possession in these quantities, though Rohypnol, the date-rape drug, might excite their interest. Rushton couldn’t honestly see any great advantage in prosecution himself, beyond the minor one of chastening this naive young man and setting an example for others like him. Hetherington would get a fine and a rap over the knuckles from some magistrate conscious of overcrowded prisons and the accused’s middle-class background. In his experience, JPs always thought public schoolboys were more capable of reform than any other offenders. He sent this one sourly back into the world outside.

  That evening Luke Hetherington was full of bravado with his friends. His arrest had given him a fleeting status he had not enjoyed before. On his own when the raucous evening was over, he wondered what charges he would face and how he should conduct the next years of his life.

  At the other end of the city, the man who had sold him the drugs was speculating about what Hetherington had told the police and how he might support himself with only minimum drug dealing in the weeks to come.

  Three

  By eleven o’clock on Friday morning, it was not just warm but hot in the centre of the old city of Gloucester. Traditional exam weather. The young people suffering the agonies of A levels and GCSEs unscrewed the caps on their bottles of water, cudgelled their minds, wished they had worked harder during the year, and wrote down things which would have made their teachers writhe.

  The Severn, that great river which has witnessed so much of British history, ran slow and sluggish around the edge of the town. The ancient docks, now largely a tourist attraction, were thronged with visitors. Business was particularly brisk in the antiques centre, which had once been a warehouse for the exotic imports brought up the Severn estuary from around the world.

  One building remained cool, even as the sun climbed towards its zenith and tee shirts and shorts dominated the dress of its visitors. Robert Beckford, verger at Gloucester Cathedral, looked up at the vast stone cliff of the building’s eastern elevation and reminded himself again how lucky he was to have secured this job. The clergy who had interviewed him had avoided direct references to his army career, but he was sure that his active service in the Falklands and Iraq had helped him to get the appointment. Which was ironic, because he couldn’t imagine any greater difference than that between the brief hell-on-earth he had endured in those strange sideshow wars and the quiet, unchanging peace of the cathedral and its close.

  When he was interviewed, he hadn’t known the differences between the various solemn-faced, anxious, well-meaning members of the cathedral chapter who had spoken with him. Now he understood most of the distinctions among deans and archdeacons and rectors and rural deans and humble vicars, though he didn’t even try to fathom the recondite exchanges which seemed to take over as the doors closed firmly upon meetings of the cathedral chapter. The language might be a little different, the iron fists sheathed in a little more velvet, but Rob thought these lengthy meetings must contain many of the elements which took over when military brass hats closed the doors upon the rankers to plan the subtleties of military strategy.

  The deliberations of the chapter were interesting but largely irrelevant to Robert Beckford. The really important thing was that he had landed on his feet here. He loved the solemn vastness of the cathedral. He loved the voices of the choristers at choral evensong, loved the quiet services in the Lady Chapel and in the other small chapels which fringed the main body of the building. He also loved the other extreme of the solemn services, where many clergy moved in a slow-motion ballet upon the ancient high altar and the bishop glided among them like some benevolent despot, presiding over the participation of clergy, choir and congregation in the ramifications of ancient rituals. It reminded him incongruously of the parade square on formal military occasions, where men stood like statues until propelled into action by orders bellowed from deep within the torsos of officers and sergeant majors.

  Robert Beckford imitated his old sergeant major now, telling the day’s first party of schoolchildren to stop running and move in an orderly fashion among the massive circular pillars. He gave them his most forbidding frown and tightened his lips beneath his neatly trimmed moustache to still them into silence. Then he relented, as he usually did with children, and gave the wide-eyed boys a whispered introduction to the tomb of the murdered king, Edward II, who
had lain here since 1330.

  Robert went and stood for a moment beside the empty choir, looking north-east and enjoying the light pouring through the multicoloured stained glass on to the deserted benches. He congratulated himself once again on being here, on having this humble but wonderful job amidst the stones which had seen more of devotion and love, anger and treachery, violence and blood, than any individual could ever encompass. He said as much to Gwen, his wife, after he had walked the eighty yards to his cosy house in the cathedral close for his morning coffee.

  Gwen thought one of a wife’s functions was to keep her man’s feet on the ground. ‘You’re an old sentimentalist at heart, Rob Beckford. You choose not to see the worst parts of modern life.’

  ‘I’m not ignoring what goes on. I know the trouble the police have to deal with in Gloucester on some nights. I just think we’re lucky to have found a place like this. A place where we can ignore the worst features of life in the twenty- first century.’ He looked out with satisfaction on the tiny weedless garden at the back of the house, where the petunias and antirrhinums he had planted last month were already providing cheerful colour.

  ‘All right, Rob! We’ve fallen on our feet here. You don’t need to tell me that, after years in married quarters in some pretty Godforsaken places. But you’ve earned it. You don’t need to be apologetic about it. And in particular, you don’t need to tell me every day how lucky we are! Once a week will be quite enough in future, thank you. Now be off with you, before you put this job you like so much in jeopardy by skiving!’

  The old military word. Rob liked that in Gwen. She never pretended to be anything other than exactly what she was. He surprised her with a brief kiss on the forehead before he went obediently back to the cathedral.

  Gwen washed the coffee cups and put them on the drainer, then changed her blouse for a lighter one and went joyfully out into the town. The city, she should say, but to Gwen it had all the cosiness of an old market town, with the added benefit of some of the bigger stores. She had spent much of her married life making the best of limited company in married quarters and limited shopping in strange and isolated spots. And all the time she had had to remind herself that she must not put down roots, must not become too attached to people or to places, because she and Rob might be moved on to a different part of the world with only a week or two’s notice. Or worse still, he might have to go off without her, as he had done to the Falklands, when jingoism had taken over the nation and she had waited among its noisy trumpetings for news that her man was still alive.

  Despite her cheerful mocking of her husband, Gwen Beckford also congratulated herself on her good fortune, as she moved unhurriedly among the amply stocked shops and exchanged cheerful greetings with tradesmen who knew her.

  She loved the combination of old and new in Gloucester, loved the fact that she could be among the most modem shops and yet in an ancient city with venerable buildings. There were still individual shops here, like the new Boutique Chantelle. Gwen loved looking at the gowns and the hats in the window, though she would never have dreamed of venturing inside. And whenever she chose, she could walk away from the throngs outside the windows of Debenhams or Next and be back after a few minutes of unhurried walking in the neat stone house with mullioned windows, with the frenzied modem world shut firmly out.

  Back in the cathedral, her husband was encountering problems. Robert Beckford had worked in his army days for a widely differing range of personalities, priding himself on the fact that he could work with anyone, whether directing them or being directed by them. Miss Edwina Clarkson, the newly appointed civilian administrator of the cathedral’s commercial activities, was testing this claim and giving him difficulties. He had so far failed to establish any satisfactory working relationship with her. As he strode back to his duties, she was waiting for him beside the stall which sold postcards, pamphlets and books about the cathedral’s history.

  ‘And where have you been hiding yourself, Mr Beckford?’

  ‘I haven’t been hiding at all, Ms Clarkson. I’ve been for my morning coffee. As permitted by the terms of my employment here.’

  ‘It’s Miss Clarkson, please. I don’t hold with this modern feminist nonsense. “Miss” has been good enough for centuries, so it’s certainly good enough for me.’ Her lips tightened primly as she prepared to attack. ‘Any more than I approve of shop stewards in cathedrals.’

  ‘There are no shop stewards here, Miss Clarkson. I’ve never even been asked to join a union in the three years I’ve been here. And I’ve never felt the need for one.’ Not until now, he thought. He found himself standing to attention and staring straight ahead of him, as he had learned to do as a young soldier when criticized on the parade ground.

  ‘And where did you choose to go for this prolonged coffee break, Mr Beckford?’

  ‘It wasn’t prolonged, Miss Clarkson. I have never counted the minutes, just as I never watch the clock at the end of the day if there is work to be done here, but as I understand it, I am entitled to a twenty minute break. I have been away for no more than that. I took my coffee with my wife at home.’

  Edwina Clarkson sniffed. She had a formidable sniff. Even Rob Beckford conceded that - credit where credit was due. ‘I should prefer you to take your coffee break here in future. It’s bad for the morale of our younger workers if their colleagues are seen to be enjoying special privileges.’

  She spoke as if she were deploying a workforce of a hundred, rather than the two full-timers and four part-timers over whom she held jurisdiction. Rob tried to lighten the atmosphere a little. ‘Have you tasted the cathedral coffee, Miss Clarkson? My Gwen does a much nicer cup, and a nice line in ginger snaps. You’re very welcome to drop in whenever—’

  ‘I would prefer no insubordination, Mr Beckford, if you don’t mind. You will take your coffee break within the precincts in future.’

  She turned and strutted away. He watched her formidable backside rotating towards the transept and wondered how many petty tyrants had strutted beneath this high roof over the centuries. Much more cruel ones than Miss Clarkson, no doubt, and until the last few years exclusively male. Rob Beckford, who had spent a military career in a male-dominated world, tried hard to persuade himself that a male administrator might have been just as pompous and just as petty as Miss Edwina Clarkson.

  He gave two boys in the latest school party a little help with the list of tasks on their worksheet, then went and sat in the empty Lady Chapel for a couple of minutes to calm his mind and forget Miss Clarkson. He liked the Lady Chapel, which seemed to him a smaller and more intimate version of the choir, where he had stood for a moment before his coffee. These were the moments when he wished he had the serene religious faith he saw in so many of the clergy and the congregations who attended services in the cathedral. He felt immensely lucky to have this holy place to himself for a few minutes, but also immensely inadequate in that he could not summon that unclouded, automatic belief which had informed the thousands of people who had sat in this place in centuries past. He willed himself to pray, his mind flicking automatically back into the unthinking words of worship he had learned as a child. ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name ..

  Robert Beckford was halfway through the paternoster when he became conscious that he was not alone. Someone had slipped into the pew behind him; he had heard no noise, yet he was aware of a presence. He kept his eyes closed and continued his silent prayer. This could not be Edwina Clarkson or she would have spoken by now, chiding him harshly for his presence here and his lack of activity. This could only be some member of the public, who probably wanted to be as quiet as he did in this sacred, peaceful place. He would conclude his prayer, then go out and sweep the cloisters.

  The voice behind him came in a hoarse whisper, which seemed to Rob far too loud. ‘I need money, soldier boy.’

  He didn’t turn to confront the speaker. He did not want to see the thin, crafty face, so out of place here, so unwelcome as it shatter
ed the composure he had been recovering. Rob kept his eyes closed; to open them as he spoke would have been a desecration of the chapel, a mocking of the sacred icons on the walls and in the windows. ‘You said you wouldn’t come again. You said the payment in April was the final one.’

  ‘Unforeseen circumstances, soldier boy. Things beyond my control.’

  People like this always came back for more. Everyone said that. But you didn’t have a choice. You paid because you had to, because the alternative was unthinkable. ‘I don’t have money.’ Still his eyes were shut. Still he would not turn shoulders rigid with tension to face this tormentor.

  ‘You’ll find it. You don’t have a choice, do you?’

  ‘I do. I could let you do your worst.’

  ‘But you won’t. The stakes are too high for you to do that, soldier boy.’

  It was ridiculous, a man of fifty being taunted by a creature like this, who was half his age and no physical match for him. Rob wanted to whirl on the man, to take him by surprise and wring his miserable throat. He wondered if anyone had ever died in the Lady Chapel before, whether perhaps in the gory medieval conflicts which had rent the area some power-mad cleric had slit the throat of some overambitious priest here.

  Robert Beckford said, ‘I’ll need time!’ and knew in that moment that he was lost, that he had agreed to pay.

  ‘You can have a week. Five hundred. Final demand, so long as it’s delivered on time.’

  ‘How do I know that?’

  ‘You don’t. You’re dependent on my good will. On the respect I have for our fighting forces.’ A coarse, guttural, scarcely human clicking, which might have been amusement at his own humour.

  ‘When and where?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, verger. I’ll be back in my own good time. I’ll give you a week, seeing as how I’m so fond of you.’

  ‘I can’t carry money about with me and just wait for you like that.’