The Body Under the Bridge

by Paul McCuster

  “Good morning,” he croaked.

  Father Benson looked up from the magazine in his lap with open-faced surprise. “Good afternoon,” he said.

  “Which afternoon?” he asked.

  “The afternoon after the incident in the crypt.”

  “Everything happened last night?”

  “Or earlier this morning, depending on how precise you want to be.”

  Father Gilbert surveyed his condition. He had an IV attached to the veins in the top of his left hand. His right arm was bandaged. A dull pain in his side made itself known. “Was the damage bad?”

  “The doctor said the sword missed your major organs and got the fatty part of your waist. But they still had a fair amount of stitching to do. They’re worried more about infection than anything else.”

  “When can I go home?”

  “Maybe later today, or tomorrow morning. They want to make sure you’re not bleeding internally. It could take a month or so before you’re fully recovered.” Benson spoke with a strained calm. He had more lines on his face than Father Gilbert had noticed before. Or it might have been the light.

  He started to sit up, felt pleasantly light-headed, and lay back again. “Am I on heavy painkillers?”

  “The best that the NHS can buy.”

  “Were you hurt?” Father Gilbert asked.

  “I’m the only one who came out of the crypt undamaged.” He leaned forward on his knees. “Thanks to you.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You pushed me out of the way. There were bullet holes in the wall where I was standing.”

  “Alex Wilton?”

  “He nearly bled to death, but the paramedics got there in time,” Benson said. “He’s down the hall. On the mend. He’s got a nasty cut on the back of his head, too.”

  “Where David Todd hit him with the poker?”

  A nod from Benson.

  “Mary Aston?”

  “A fractured pelvis, the muscles on that leg cut through, possible nerve damage. She’ll probably walk with a limp for the rest of her life.” Benson’s gaze went up to the silent television. “I don’t know how much walking they do in our prisons,” he added.

  Father Gilbert wanted to say something clever, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “I don’t think she knew what she’d got herself into,” Benson said.

  “Everyone seemed motivated by different things.” Greed, power, lust, glory, Father Gilbert thought. Does the story ever change? “David Todd?”

  “Dead at the scene.”

  Father Gilbert saw the body hanging on the graveyard fence. He winced, then pushed the thought aside. “How did you find me? Was it the boy? Did he get help?” he asked.

  Benson looked mystified. “What boy?”

  “In the graveyard.”

  Benson thought for a moment, and then seemed to relax as if he understood something Father Gilbert didn’t. “We don’t have to talk about it all now.”

  “We don’t have to talk about what?”

  “The details. The doctor said it’s better for you to put them out of your mind and rest.”

  Father Gilbert wanted to argue but, in his drug-induced state, couldn’t be bothered. He thought everything would become clearer when he gave his statement to the police.

  Benson looked uncomfortable. He was strangling the magazine he’d been reading.

  “What’s on your mind?” Father Gilbert asked.

  “I want you to know before Mrs Mayhew mentions it,” he said, then cleared his throat. “I’ve asked the Bishop to reassign me. I’m trained to be a minister, not a character in a horror movie.”

  Father Gilbert had seen it coming.

  * * *

  Father Gilbert was released the next morning. Mrs Mayhew drove him back to the vicarage, lecturing him the entire way about taking care of himself. When he tried to bring up what had happened at the church, she quickly changed the subject. Her only concession to the tragic events was that she’d been in touch with the Bishop about reconsecrating St Mark’s.

  He napped after she left. He slept deeply and dreamlessly and awakened feeling ready to get on with his life again. Then the painkillers wore off and the wound in his side persuaded him to take it easy for a while longer.

  The local newspaper had a front-page article about the bizarre murders in Stonebridge. There was a picture of St Mark’s and an old photo of David Todd and an official statement from Macaulay promising a full investigation. Father Gilbert later heard that the BBC had mentioned it in one of their news broadcasts, sandwiched between flooding in Leeds and a crime spree in Slough.

  DC Adams arrived in the afternoon to get Father Gilbert’s statement about the events. He went through all of the details as best he could, aware of how his slurred speech would sound on the digital recorder. When he began his account of what had happened in the graveyard, Adams’ expression changed.

  “Thank you,” he said, turning off the recorder. “That’s all we need for now.”

  Father Benson brought fish and chips for dinner. As they sat at the kitchen table finishing the cod, Father Gilbert asked directly, “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “What do you mean?” the young priest asked.

  “I mentioned the graveyard yesterday and you dodged the subject. DC Adams shut down the discussion completely. What don’t I know?”

  Benson busied himself with the bottles of sauces for the fish.

  Father Gilbert watched him a moment, then asked, “Why don’t you want to talk about it?”

  “Because it didn’t happen, Father.”

  “What didn’t?”

  “You weren’t in the graveyard. You never left the crypt.”

  Father Gilbert winced. “What? But I chased after Todd.”

  “You didn’t, because he never left the crypt either.” Benson fiddled with a chip, looking at it as if he’d never seen one before. “He died right there from multiple bullet wounds. He was dead before he hit the ground.”

  Father Gilbert shook his head, the memories too vivid. “No, I chased him down the tunnel to the graveyard. He was impaled on the wrought-iron fence. And there was a boy…”

  Benson shook his head.

  Father Gilbert was stunned.

  “It might’ve been like your experience with Colin Doyle,” Benson offered. “Or you were delirious. You lost a lot of blood.”

  “No,” he said softly, trying to comprehend that possibility. He wiggled his toes in his slippers. “How did I lose my shoes and socks?”

  “I took off your shoes to get to your socks.”

  “Why?”

  “To use as bandages,” Benson replied. “I put one in your hand for you to hold against your side. Then you used the other as a tourniquet to stop the flow of blood from your arm.”

  Father Gilbert lightly touched his forehead. It was sore. “Then what is this?”

  “A scrape.”

  Father Gilbert thought it through: the knot on his head he’d received in Todd’s attic, the cut on the other side when Todd hit him with the hilt of the sword… but the scrape? He remembered how he had stumbled in the graveyard, scraping his head against a headstone.

  He was going to say something to Benson, to argue about it. But the young curate’s eyes begged him not to discuss it any further. So he didn’t.

  * * *

  “It’s not a big surprise that Mary Aston is talking only through her solicitor,” Macaulay said to Father Gilbert the next day. “She maintains that she didn’t kill Sanders. She ran for her life, she said.”

  “Any chance David Todd did it?”

  “The timing of his release from jail – and when Sanders was murdered – makes it possible. But narrowly. Five or ten minutes could make all the difference.”

  They were sitting in the front room at the vicarage. Though he’d chosen the most worn armchair in the house, Macaulay somehow sat erect.

  “She said as much to me,” Father Gilbert said. He’d stopped taking the pain
killers, for fear of becoming too dependent on them. Now he was aware of the stitches in his side.

  “The Crown Prosecutor will go through all of the evidence and decide what, exactly, is indictable,” Macaulay said.

  “What do they have?” Father Gilbert asked.

  “Mostly circumstantial stuff. The weight of the evidence goes against David Todd.”

  “That’s convenient for her.”

  “Still, we’d like to convict her as an accomplice in the murders of Sanders and Scott.”

  Father Gilbert thought through the Chief Constable’s difficulties. There was no evidence she was anywhere near Haysham at the time of his murder, nor that she had anything to do with Challoner’s death. She was with Father Gilbert when Scott was murdered, though the timing of his death was still a matter of debate. Perhaps his and Father Benson’s testimonies of what was said between Mary and David Todd in the crypt would be helpful. But that could also be dismissed as hearsay. In the end, everything would be pinned on David Todd.

  “What about Colin Doyle and his connection with Todd?” Father Gilbert asked.

  “Jack Doyle has gone on record with the Southaven police to say that their falling out was because of David Todd’s influence over Colin. Jack felt that Todd was recruiting Colin for something.”

  “The Society?”

  “Jack claims he knows nothing about the Woodrich Set or the Society. He thought David Todd was leading Colin into a business scam. So he blames Todd for his son’s suicide.” He hesitated, then said, “It was Jack who beat Todd up the night Haysham was murdered.”

  “Not an Avenging Angel,” Father Gilbert said.

  “Todd used everything that happened to add credibility to his story, to validate his sense of fear – and his position as a victim.”

  Father Gilbert wondered about David Todd. Catholics prayed for the souls of the dead. He sometimes wished Anglicans did the same.

  “Mrs Clarke is terribly sorry about Alex’s behaviour,” Macaulay said. “She wants to apologize to you for your suffering and thank you for saving him.”

  Father Gilbert nodded, hoping he wouldn’t have that conversation with her.

  “She thinks his curiosity and ambition allowed him to get drawn into David Todd’s scheme.”

  “David Todd’s or Mary Aston’s? I suspect she was the one who persuaded him to help.”

  “How he was drawn in makes no difference to me.” Macaulay had the look of a man who was profoundly disappointed in a wayward son. “Had he been more conscientious as a detective, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “What will you do with him?”

  “He’s on probation from the force, pending a full inquiry into any illegalities in his actions.”

  “Spoken like a true police spokesperson,” Father Gilbert chided him. “Have you had a chance to look at the Chronicle?”

  “The Woodrich book? I’m not interested. It’s locked up as evidence, and good riddance to it.”

  “It’s the property of the diocese,” Father Gilbert said. Admittedly, he’d rather watch it burn and bury the ashes somewhere than put it back in the diocesan library.

  “Let them come and get it, then.”

  “And the Woodrich Set?”

  “After it’s no longer of use as evidence, Professor Braddock has arranged for it to go on display in London somewhere – with the Stonebridge Man.”

  Father Gilbert looked amused. “Is that what he’s calling it? Not Joshua Todd?”

  “Not sexy enough.”

  “Ah. The Stonebridge Man.”

  “They may make a tour of it.”

  * * *

  “Father Gilbert…”

  He was working at his desk at St Mark’s. He looked up at Father Benson, who had made it a point to avoid any private conversations with him since the last one about the graveyard. “Yes, Hugh?”

  “May I?” he gestured to the guest chair. Father Gilbert nodded and he sat down. “I want to ask you…” He picked up a paperweight and put it down again.

  Father Gilbert waited.

  “Do you believe David Todd was possessed?”

  Father Gilbert rested his elbows on the desk and said, with careful diplomacy, “We may never know where the line was between Todd’s wilful choices and an external force that drove him.”

  “I take that as a yes,” Benson said.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “His behaviour in the crypt, the way he looked and talked…” Benson shook his head. Then he folded his arms as if he felt cold. He looked at Father Gilbert. “He said some very specific things to you. Not as David Todd, but as whatever it was inside of him.”

  Father Gilbert nodded slowly.

  “You’ve met it before, haven’t you?”

  He gazed at Benson, trying to calculate the risks behind his answer. “We’ve met before. And I suspect we’ll meet again.”

  “Why?”

  “It wants to destroy me. Piece by piece.”

  Benson sighed deeply.

  “I’m sorry. If I could have spared you from any of this…”

  “I wish you could have,” Benson said sadly.

  CHAPTER 43

  It was remarkable to Father Gilbert how the flow of life pressed on, regardless of the magnitude of its interruptions. Businesses have their opening and closing hours, newspapers are delivered, television follows its relentless schedule, kids go to school, men and women see to their jobs, pints are drawn at the pub, lovers argue, worshippers kneel, the dead are buried.

  Even for those who were scarred by the events of those few days – and those who had to face justice for the roles they’d played – life pressed on. Mary Aston’s solicitor was a master of delay and prevarication. Alex Wilton resigned from the police force. Father Gilbert finally returned to his full-time duties at St Mark’s.

  Adrian Scott’s bookshop was put up for sale. Father Gilbert had some money put away and thought about buying it. He feared someone would turn it into a trendy pub or a mobile phone shop. But the latest rumours were that the owner of a second-hand bookshop in Southaven intended to grab it up.

  It was three weeks before Father Gilbert ventured down to the crypt again. He’d asked Mr Urquhart to open the door to the tunnel for him. He had the impression that the Scot, who prided himself on knowing every inch of St Mark’s, was embarrassed that the tunnel had existed without his knowledge. The plan was to use it as a proper drainage system, but to seal up any use it might have as a passageway.

  Father Gilbert retraced his steps from the crypt to the graveyard. Everything was exactly as he remembered it – though it couldn’t have been a memory, since it didn’t actually happen. Yet, there was no explaining how he could know the details of the tunnel, or its entryway in the side of the church, when he’d never seen them before.

  Astral projection, or what some people called “out of body” experiences, often accompanied near-death occurrences. Father Gilbert knew personally of a few cases. He could only guess that this was what he’d experienced with David Todd.

  The tombstones were exactly as he knew them, if only from the many times he’d strolled through the graveyard. He came to the place in the iron fence where Todd had been impaled. Even in broad daylight, it was easy to imagine him hanging there.

  He reflected that bona fide exorcists have recounted how the smallest and seemingly weakest possessed person can have extraordinary strength. Getting over that fence shouldn’t have been hard for a demon. Unless the demon had been weakened by the consecrated ground. His formal theological training didn’t allow him to come to a conclusion.

  He sat down where he had collapsed that night and leaned his head against the same headstone. The ground was wet. He didn’t care.

  His side hurt – more than it had in several days.

  Your wound will remind you, Todd had said.

  He said a prayer for the souls of David Todd, Lord Haysham, Adrian Scott, Joshua Todd, Clive Challoner, and the nameless victims of the Society – regar
dless of Anglican teaching on the subject.

  He lifted his head to the sunshine. It was a beautiful spring day. He yearned to take a long walk, to get lost in the woods.

  He stood up, and his eye went to the name on the tombstone:

  Adam Ainsley, 1926–1938, Beloved Son, Now In The Arms of His Saviour.

  He remembered the name. It was the son of John Ainsley, the vicar at St Mark’s whose boy had drowned in the pond while the Woodrich sword was kept at the vicarage.

  Well, of course, Father Gilbert thought. He had no doubt that the boy had jet-black hair and had worn a dark suit of clothes.

  CHAPTER 44

  The reconsecration was a small event. For obvious reasons, Father Gilbert hadn’t offered a general invitation to the parish. Bishop William Spalding officiated, though he did so nervously, as if he was participating in a superstitious ritual. Mrs Mayhew and Mr Urquhart were there. Father Benson attended as his last duty at St Mark’s. He was to leave the next day for a parish near Nottingham.

  The clergy were dressed in vestments – copes, chasubles, and stoles, with the Bishop wearing his mitre. Their colour was purple, to represent humility and penance.

  Father Gilbert was disappointed to learn that the Church of England didn’t have a set liturgy for the reconsecration of a church. He had assembled a rite from several liturgical traditions.

  They began in the nave and slowly processed to every room of the church. The Bishop read the prayers and blessings.

  They finished at the crypt door, which was closed. The Bishop read:

  “Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings with thy most gracious favour, and further us with thy continual help; that in all our works, begun, continued, and ended in thee, we may glorify thy holy Name, and finally by thy mercy obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  The Bishop lifted his pastoral staff and knocked three times on the door.

  Father Gilbert resisted the sudden apprehension that someone – or something – might knock back.