by Alan Beechey
“You’ve been in the High Street, Mr. Dock?” Oliver asked quickly.
“Now, Oliver, I asked you to call me Dougie, didn’t I?” Dock replied with a nudge. “Jesus used his first name, and if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for me, eh? Besides, if you call me ‘Dock,’ young Effie might think I really am one.”
Effie, who was searching in her handbag for her warrant card, did not ask the obvious question, and Dock hurried on.
“Yes, I took some of my Victory Vanguard boys out for a march to work off some energy, bring the color back to their little cheeks. Here, since I’m in uniform, I’ll give you the official VV salute.”
He held up both hands, first and second fingers extended in a double Churchillian victory sign. It was vaguely reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s final gesture on the steps of the helicopter that took him away from the White House for the last time. Behind Dock’s back—and to it—a couple of the boys delivered their own colorful variation on the salute.
“It was quite funny, actually,” Dock continued. “We gave the Christmas shoppers a rousing rendition of ‘Ding Dong, Merrily on High’ on our bugles—of course, we can’t play all the notes—and after we’d blasted out the ‘Gloria’ chorus, one of my lads turned to me and asked ‘Is that what the angel meant by “Glory to God in the High Street”?’ It’s so sweet, isn’t it? He’s only eight, such a dear little soul.”
Dock seemed almost misty-eyed at the reminiscence, but Effie’s announcement that she was actually Detective Sergeant Strongitharm brought him sharply back to reality. He expressed surprise to hear that Tina had run away, but could offer nothing that would help Effie find the girl. Effie concluded the interview and indicated to Oliver that she was ready to leave the church. Dock confirmed that he had unlocked the building’s front door on the way in and trotted away, already preparing a retelling of the incident for his boys that would no doubt cast himself as some sort of special constable.
In the narthex, Oliver slipped an arm around Effie’s shoulders, gently pivoted her toward him, and kissed her.
“I’m on duty, you know,” she cautioned him quietly as they broke apart and then launched herself at his lips again. They held each other for a few seconds in the dark space. Outside, the daylight was fading.
“Alone at last,” Oliver mused, absentmindedly caressing the curves of her bottom, but a gently cleared throat from the doorway told him he was wrong again.
“Helping the police with their inquiries, sir?” said a young woman with dark hair. She stepped toward them. “Well, Effie, I suppose this is your mysterious inside source.”
“Hello, Tish,” said Effie coolly. She stepped away from Oliver, who was far less adept at handling unexpected shame, and introduced him to her assistant. They shook hands.
“Inspector Welkin said you were here,” Tish told Effie. “ I thought I’d check in with you, before we start the street interviews. I tried your mobile first, but there was no reply.”
“I must have left it in the car,” Effie confessed.
“No joy with the Quarterboys’ family doctor, by the way. He hasn’t seen Tina in months. Did you get anything useful?” Tish asked, glancing slyly at Oliver.
“Nothing that will help us find the girl,” said Effie. She turned to Oliver. “Ah well, Ollie, you have delighted me long enough. I’ll take you back to the train station.”
“What time do you get off?” he asked.
Effie sighed. “Since we haven’t found Tina, we don’t. At least not till late. After we finish the interviews, Tish and I are going to check out some of the shelters and other haunts where the runaways end up in the West End. The evening is the best time to do that. It might be a long night, and I have to be back here in the morning to see Nigel Tapster and some of the other church people. So once again, I’ll go home to sleep when I finish. Sorry, Ollie.”
“You onto something here, then?” Tish asked hopefully. Through the curtains, they heard the piano and guitar playing the rhythmic patterns that accompany rap music.
“I don’t know,” said Effie, leading them through the narthex doors and across the church’s vestibule. Tish’s car was parked beside hers. “But I’m more convinced than ever that Tina is a lot closer to home than the West End. If only we knew where to look.”
Chapter Five
How Still We See Thee Lie
Sunday, December 21 (Fourth Sunday of Advent)
When Effie returned to the church the next morning, the car park was full, and she reluctantly left her Renault on the street opposite. She had tried to time her arrival with the end of the morning service, to waylay some of the departing congregants, but she was clearly early. She got out and leaned on the car, knowing that she would probably doze off if she stayed inside. The sound of church bells from a few streets away signaled the superior punctuality of Anglicans.
Yesterday had been a very long day. At four o’clock exactly, half an hour after she had watched Oliver disappear glumly into Plumley Central Underground Station, she had begun the slow walk from Tina’s school to her home, while Tish Belfry, DC Stoodby, and a couple of uniformed officers followed other possible routes that Tina might have taken through the middle-class mean streets of suburban Plumley. But none of the pedestrians they stopped could positively remember noticing Tina on Thursday afternoon or seeing her since, and the few leads that emerged were vague and certain to be sterile, the imagined sightings of a public eager to help a child, rather than true memories. The telephone company had so far been unable to trace Tina’s phone call the previous morning.
And so, after an early dinner in a High Street café crowded with short-tempered Christmas shoppers, the three detectives had taken the train to Leicester Square to begin the tour of the shelters and youth centers where many of the capital’s runaways gathered for free food and medical attention and, occasionally, salvation. Tina’s description had been circulated as soon as she had gone missing, and the police and social workers associated with the shelters were conscientious, but Effie knew they were also overwhelmed with similar descriptions from police stations all around the country, especially as the holiday season increased the tensions within families. She and Tish could focus on Tina alone, and try to edit from their minds the dozens of other children they would see hanging up sparse tinsel and homemade paper chains on the bare walls of the shelters, or hovering in nervy flocks around Piccadilly Circus, or, as the cold evening wore fruitlessly on, gathered beside fires in the Dantesque cardboard cities that had grown up under the city’s bridges and overpasses. For all her self-confidence and skills at self-defense, Effie was secretly pleased that Trevor Stoodby had tagged along with them.
She wanted to find Tina now for more than one reason. Obviously, she wanted to bring the child home safely to her parents. But Effie was growing aware of a personal need to see Tina with her own eyes, face to face. She had stared at the photograph Tish had obtained from the Quarterboys so often—that thin, impish face, the audacious nose that she may yet grow into, the long, dark pigtail—that it occasionally startled her to remember she had never met the girl. She needed to be sure that Tina would still look the same in person, and not turn up with the haunted, defiant, vulnerable eyes of the teenage girls and boys she had seen on the streets and in the shelters, or with a gaunt, bruised body that might already be tainted with heroin or desecrated by sexual predators.
Their energy had run out at three in the morning, long before they had exhausted every possible site. Effie took a taxi to her flat in Richmond, slept for four hours in her clothes, and, freshly showered and changed, made her way back to Plumley by train on Sunday morning, fighting to stay awake in case she missed her stop. She was pleased to see that her Renault had survived the night in the police station car park, having little faith that the location was any deterrent to enterprising car thieves.
Poor Ollie. It was the first time since they had become a c
ouple that her job had completely edged out an entire weekend, apart from the couple of hours she had engineered the day before. She knew how he must be feeling, if he knew what was good for him. After years of not caring whether or not she had a man in her life, she could not, for now, imagine being without Oliver. She mourned the lost opportunity, but Tina had been gone for longer than the magic, meaningless twenty-four hours, and she could not walk away, knowing that DI Welkin had nobody else to put on the case. Fortunately, Tish understood this too, and was once again at the station on Sunday morning before she arrived. So was Trevor Stoodby, looking different. He had shaved off his ludicrous moustache that morning, and the ribbing he received from his male colleagues, who were prepared to mock any change for no logical reason, lasted until Welkin ordered all three of them back to their undercover duties in the shopping center.
Effie decided she would find a way to make it up to Oliver. She really ought to think of a memorable Christmas present for him before it was too late. Surely Tina would be home before Christmas Day?
It was midday when she spotted Barry Foison jogging toward her along the alleyway beside the church. He ran over to an old Fiat parked in the car park, rummaged for something in the glove compartment, and then scuttled back the way he had come, without seeing her. She crossed the street and cautiously climbed the three steps in front of the church entrance, noticing that there was no wheelchair ramp. It had been a long time since she had attended a church service, and she didn’t know what to expect.
The main doors of the church were open, but they led only to a shallow vestibule, and a pair of closed inner doors kept in the warmth. Effie passed through these doors into the church’s narthex. Nobody was in sight, but she heard the congregation singing on the other side of the heavy velvet curtains that separated this space from the sanctuary. It was “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” sung to the old English folk song that had been turned into a hymn by Vaughan Williams. She loved this carol.
They were singing the final verse as she found a gap in the curtain on the left side of the church.
“O holy child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray…”
Effie sent her wish to whatever higher power might be listening that a certain missing child would descend to her. She slid into a rear pew, recalling the words of the carol from her own childhood and joining in as Heather Tapster struck the piano keys for the last quatrain.
“We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell:
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.”
Effie sat down. Then she noticed that the rest of the congregation was still standing and got to her feet again. Paul Piltdown was in the pulpit, diagonally across the church from her. He spoke into the microphone, startling Effie, who hadn’t noticed the loudspeaker mounted on the wall above her head.
“Once again, friends, we invite you to remain with us as the table is prepared for the Lord’s Supper. And now the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be among and remain with you, now and forever. Amen.”
Effie had some vague idea that she was supposed to cross herself at these words, but nobody else did. There was the low-frequency rumble of a sotto voce “Amen,” and then Piltdown sat down in the pulpit. The worshippers also, sat, leaning forward in prayer. Heather turned away from the keyboard and seemed to be feeling for something on the floor, but the piano cut off Effie’s view of her. She reappeared with some sheet music and launched into a gentle arrangement of the Wexford Carol. Piltdown climbed down from the pulpit and walked the length of the aisle opposite where Effie was sitting, apparently deep in thought. The worshippers stirred from their prayers, and some gathered Bibles and handbags. Several young children scurried into the church through the door near the pulpit that she and Oliver had used the day before—she recognized Kylie and Kurt among them. Dougie Dock followed, beaming broadly. The children slotted themselves into various family groups, which then headed for the exit along with some individual worshippers, no doubt to be greeted heartily by the minister. Outside, Effie could hear more children’s voices and footsteps running along the alleyway beside the church. But about a dozen people stayed in their pews, some continuing to pray, others idly flicking through their hymn books or chatting quietly with their companions.
Of course, this was a mass. Not a mass, that was Catholic. Not a Eucharist, either. A Communion service, that was it, held after the main service had finished. Hadn’t Heather mentioned it the previous day? Her husband’s first as a deacon. Effie would have to wait until it was over before she could speak to him. Well, if she remembered the drill from her parish church, you didn’t have to join in the parade to go up to the altar rail if you didn’t want to participate. Where was the altar rail? The balustrade that ran along the lowest tier of the platform was too high. Behind it was a large table, covered with a white linen cloth, with several heavy wooden chairs, like armless thrones, lined up behind it.
Heather stopped playing, and after a brief exchange with a group of young people sitting near the piano, she walked toward the back of the church. She did not acknowledge Effie as she passed. Wouldn’t she stay to see her husband’s first performance, if that was the right word? Or was she like Phoebe, superstitious about attending one of Tim’s opening nights, despite the risk that it might also be the closing night? And where was the famous Nigel Tapster anyway?
Barry Foison came into the church through the door to the left of the platform, wearing a double-breasted suit that seemed too large for him, and carrying two platters, which he placed on the Communion table. Then he padded away again. Meanwhile, Piltdown made his way back through the church, presumably having said his farewells to the congregants who couldn’t wait to get the roast in the oven. Some people rose from their seats and joined Piltdown on the platform. Effie recognized Dock and Sam Quarterboy—she knew from an earlier phone call that Sam felt his place was in God’s house, while Joan felt hers was at home beside the telephone. There were three others. A tall, balding man had come in through the same door Foison had been using. That had to be Nigel Tapster, from Oliver’s description. A smart woman with stylishly cut gray hair had to be Patience Coppersmith, Billy’s mother, the only woman on the diaconate. Yes, there was a certain resemblance between her and the sullen sandy-haired teenager, whom Effie could see among the youngsters. And that should have been it, according to Oliver’s briefing: four deacons, with the minister in the middle. But who was the other, an old man, moving stolidly toward the platform, climbing the step, and settling himself onto one of the oak thrones? She saw Quarterboy tap Piltdown on the shoulder and point toward the man. Piltdown looked surprised, but made a gesture of helplessness. Tapster also stopped and glared at the old man, who seemed oblivious to the fuss but simply stared ahead, clutching a Bible.
Foison made a second appearance, this time carrying two odd trays that looked like cake stands with tall handles. He placed them carefully on the table, and then took a seat in the third pew. Piltdown sat down in the center chair, immediately to the left of the old man. Sam Quarterboy sat on Piltdown’s left, with Patience taking the outer chair on that side. That left one chair on the old man’s right, with both Dock and Tapster hovering beside it. Finally, Tapster mimed that Dock should have the special chair. He stepped off the platform, grabbed the piano stool that Heather had vacated, and carried it back with him. The old man still seemed unaware that anything was going on.
Piltdown rose to his feet. The church fell silent. Heather had not returned.
“Friends, whenever we meet around the Lord’s Table, it is a special and solemn occasion. Today, it is…er…especially special, since we mark the first participation of our brother deacon, Nigel Tapster, as an officiant in the sacrament, and we also mark the long and historic diaconal career of our dear brother, Cedric Potiphar.”
That explains that,
thought Effie. The old boy’s cuckoo. Didn’t Piltdown say he’d had trouble convincing Potiphar that he had lost his deposit?
“To celebrate this event, we are not going to sing the usual Communion hymn this morning. Instead, Nigel is going to lead us in our musical worship with a seasonal song.”
Tapster smiled broadly and once again walked off the platform. He collected a guitar from an open case beside the piano and returned, tentatively testing the strings with a plectrum. Then he tried a chord, grimaced, and turned to the congregation.
“This is going to be a little Chinese number,” he announced, leaving an expectant pause. “Called ‘Tu Ning,’” he added eventually.
The deacons remain stony-faced, but the teenagers groaned in unison and continued to laugh noisily at the joke while Tapster went back and rummaged in his guitar case.
There was a laugh at the rear of the church, too. A child’s laugh. Effie turned, but she was the only occupant of the back row of pews; three elderly women who were sitting across the aisle from her had filed out before the Communion service. Nobody was there. It must have been an echo from the front, bouncing off the plain walls, or perhaps a stray laugh picked up by the pulpit microphone.
Tapster was back on the platform. He played another chord, and the guitar seemed to be in tune now, although he was still looking pained. Perhaps the constant back and forth was too much exercise for one session, Effie reflected wryly. Tapster sucked thoughtfully at a forefinger for a second, as if waiting for inspiration. Then he strummed the guitar and began to sing. Effie’s amusement rapidly vanished.
It was a shame that Tapster failed to carry the melody, if there was one, because it left his audience with nothing but the words to focus on. These seemed largely to be branding the entire planet, believers and nonbelievers alike, as hypocrites, with the notable exception of the enlightened lyricist and, by extension, the singer. But this aspersion must have been lost on the cluster of teenagers at the front of the church, who cheerfully joined in the unmemorable chorus as if they’d been rehearsed. The chorus contained the song’s only sop to the season, which begged God to send his “true spirit of Christmas Present” to dwell among us, clearly on the assumption that it hadn’t been here before the songwriter demanded it. Effie could almost hear the whirring from Dickens’s grave.
