I heard a key in the lock of the door to the main building. It was opened by a man in priestly garb with close-cropped red hair. His pale face was heavily lined around the mouth and nostrils, as if his expression had set hard after decades of inactivity, though he couldn’t have been more than thirty.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked, his demeanour making it clear that he would rather not.
‘I wonder if I could have a glass of water?’
The priest studied me with his small green eyes. ‘Wait here, please.’
He went back into the house, shutting the door behind him. A few minutes later, the Rector General himself bustled in.
‘What can I do for you, young man? My name is Father Wulfstan.’ He held out a beefy hand.
I shook it. ‘I just dropped in to see if I could get a drink.’
Father Wulfstan’s face was even redder than in the photo, purple almost, and thick-skinned around the jaw. But what the image did not show was how strong and well-proportioned his features were – broad, sloping brow, shapely nose and generous, big-lipped mouth.
‘Water you wanted, yes,’ he said. ‘Father Neil is getting some now. He doesn’t trust you, thinks you’re a pikey! Good heavens, those boots. . . I must say, you do look absolutely destitute. Come in for a moment.’
He ushered me into a panelled dining hall lined with portraits of saints and other dignitaries, whose faces, replete with either suffering or disapproval, stared out across a large mahogany table. Father Neil returned, the cheap grey carpet slippers he wore slapping the tiled floor. He handed me a glass of water, then hovered nearby.
The warm atmosphere was releasing from my clothes a smell of old sweat and dirty straw, which seemed especially offensive in this dignified room. Evidently the same odour and the same opinion of it had also occurred to Father Wulfstan. ‘May I offer you a change of clothes?’ he enquired. ‘By good fortune, one of our order is about your size – in fact, looking at you now, I’d say you and he could almost be brothers.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Much appreciated.’
‘Father Neil,’ said the Rector General, ‘go to Father Daniel’s room and find clothes for our visitor. A complete set, shoes included. He can change in the downstairs cloakroom. Then bring him to my study.’
Father Neil did as he’d been ordered without comment – and without altering the rigidly disagreeable expression on his face. Five minutes later, dressed in black trousers, white shirt and pale grey V-neck pullover, and shod in a pair of rubber-soled black shoes, I was shown to the Rector General’s study.
It was a grand and opulently furnished room with a leaded bay window occupying most of one wall, a capacious fireplace with a carved stone mantel, and a pair of glass-fronted cabinets containing a display of silverware – crosses, chalices, platters, bowls, thuribles and incense boats all jostling for space on their broad shelves. The Rector General was rummaging at his desk, which was covered completely with hundreds of items of paperwork. These had formed themselves into a kind of miniature dune, with peaks and drifts spreading out onto side tables positioned at strategic points round the desk to catch the overflow. He looked up as I entered.
‘A significant improvement, though the jacket is a little tight for you. Please sit.’
He directed me to a red armchair, made a gesture of impatience at the mess on his desk, then came round and dropped his considerable bulk into a sofa opposite. ‘A glass of sherry?’
He already had one in his hand, nearly empty. He refilled from a bottle on the coffee table, then poured one for me. I took a mouthful: it had a musky perfume and was unpleasantly sweet. There was a stack of boxes beside his desk, each bearing the same logo as appeared on the bottle in front of us. On the carpet next to the boxes was a neat pile of broken glass.
‘Father Neil is making you a sandwich. I am curious about you, I confess. We don’t get many visitors, especially fine young men like you.’
‘I’m down on my luck, that’s all,’ I said, feigning irritation in hope of averting further questions.
‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,’ said Father Wulfstan amiably. ‘When you are young, you may fall unexpectedly. Perhaps it is not your fault, but you fall. And you do not know where the fall will end.’
This diagnosis seemed at once kindly and faintly sinister. I decided to wait for the food, eat it and leave.
‘You must always believe that our Dear Lord will provide for you,’ the Rector General went on. ‘And indeed, He will do so very shortly, in the form of Father Neil’s sandwich.’
He finished his sherry and poured himself another.
‘I read in your leaflet that you have a refuge in Kosovo,’ I said.
‘Yes indeed, run by Father Daniel, the dear man whose clothes you are wearing.’
‘What made you decide to set up there?’
‘No doubt you think it odd that a Catholic order should carry on its good works in a region where most of the population are Muslim and the Christians themselves are Orthodox. But I promise you, we are very ecumenical in all we do, most especially when children are involved. Daniel’s mother was Albanian, you know, and he speaks the language. I thought it a good opportunity for him to bring succour to his kinsfolk in that war-torn region.’
‘So Father Daniel is at the refuge now?’
‘Oh yes, he would not leave his poor charges for anything. A man of simple faith and unquestioning obedience to the Order of St Hugh – and to God. I often give thanks that I was able to save him.’
‘Save him? What did you save him from?’
‘Great unhappiness. Or perhaps despair is the better word. His father was a brute, you see, obsessed with money and free with his fists. When he was fourteen, his mother ran off and took him with her. She left him with us and fled abroad. We’ve had him ever since. The father was found dead. Well, to be truthful, he was murdered. Suspicion fell on the mother, of course.’
‘So he hasn’t seen her since?’ I said. My own mother had died in a cycling accident when I was a teenager, and I felt drawn to the story of Daniel’s loss.
Father Wulfstan abruptly stood up from the sofa – he was surprisingly athletic for such a big man. He picked a small silver bell off a shelf by the door and rang it hard. ‘Father Neil!’ he shouted, when the summons was not immediately answered. ‘Father Neil!’
The young priest appeared, and stood with his hands clasped neatly behind his back.
‘Cut two slices of bread and put a piece of cheese between them,’ Father Wulfstan said harshly. ‘How long can that take? Go on, the poor man is half starved.’
The Rector General returned to his sofa. He took his mane of white hair in both hands and smoothed it luxuriously back over his forehead, drawing the skin of his face so tight that patches of white appeared in his rubicund cheeks.
‘Daniel does still cause me concern,’ said Father Wulfstan. ‘Rather, I suppose, as you would, were you in my charge. May I offer to hear your confession? Of all the sacraments it is the most consoling. You may protest that you are not a Catholic, but God will not turn his back on any heathen who has the grace to reach out to Him.’
I was a Catholic – by upbringing, at least – and hearing these words I was struck by the realisation that everything about the headquarters of the Order of St Hugh reminded me of the boarding school where I had spent my adolescence: the frowning saints and waxed floors, the comfortless warmth and disinfected smell, and even – no, especially – this big, genial, sherry-soaked man sat solidly on the sofa opposite me.
Father Wulfstan went prattling on and only hunger kept me in my chair. Just then I heard a scrunching of gravel from somewhere outside.
‘Are you expecting a visitor?’ I asked.
‘No indeed,’ said Wulfstan quickly.
Too quickly. I stepped over to the window and saw the bonnet of a police car. I ran back to the dining hall. Voices from beyond the door to the annexe. I crouched behind it and a burly policeman stepped thr
ough. I came up fast beside him and drove my fist into his midriff, heard the breath rush from his lungs. I shoved him sideways and stuck out a leg. He tripped and the side of his head crashed against the mahogany table.
I swung the door open. A lanky young constable stood in front of me, his face frozen in a moment of fearful indecision. Our eyes met and I wanted not to hurt him, but there wasn’t time. I feinted a punch with my right, and as his hands came up to protect his jaw, stepped in and drove my elbow into his temple. I caught him as he fell and lowered him on top of his colleague, who was leaning against a chair and fumbling for his radio.
‘Run if you like,’ boomed the Rector General from the far end of the dining hall, ‘but your soul will not escape judgement.’
Both policemen’s radios were now hissing and yammering away, but their owners weren’t in any state to answer. I took the handsets and backed out into the annexe, then stepped over to a side window and checked the gravel drive. One squad car, empty. . .
I ran outside. A split-second later I was doubled up over my knees and staring at the grey carpet slippers of Father Neil. I squinted up at him. His expression had finally found a reason to change: narrow lips widened to reveal a row of uneven teeth, eyes shining with excitement. The golf club he’d swung into my ribcage was poised for a second blow.
‘Don’t move,’ he said.
I came out of my crouch and my knuckles were dislodging teeth long before the head of the club whipped harmlessly round behind my back. I ripped the shaft from his hands and swung the bulb of wood into his thigh. He gave a yelp and started to whimper and crab away, dragging his dead leg after him. I dropped the club and ran round the back of the house.
As soon as I was out of sight of the driveway, I sprinted to the perimeter and carried on round, keeping below the height of the wall. One of the handsets I dropped in a flower bed; the other chattered away at me: Romeo Oscar Three Two was on its way, then Bravo Lima Two Zero. I reached a place where I had a view of the driveway and looked over in time to see a police BMW hurtle through the gates. The Jack Taylor was about half way between us and there was no cover. The doors flew open and three policemen jumped out. Two of them ran for the door, the third got on his radio. If he turned round, he’d see me. I thumbed the handset and spoke through gritted teeth:
‘Suspect went towards the chapel. Repeat, towards the chapel. Shit. . . Get me an ambulance.’
The one with the radio must have heard me and fallen for the ruse. He called the other two and pointed towards the chapel. As the three of them hurried off on their wild goose chase, I vaulted the wall and sprinted across the road.
ETA one minute. You OK, Mikey?
I pulled the Jack Taylor from the hedge and ran to a side road. Siddington Lane. The corner was overhung by a bulging privet hedge. Once behind it, I’d be safely hidden, at least for a moment or two. A siren was howling from somewhere towards the centre of town. In the periphery of my vision I saw a uniform running across the ornamental garden.
Suspect on foot, male, six four or five, well built, black trousers, grey sweater. Appears unarmed, but violent. Approach with caution.
I got into the lee of the hedge. The siren stopped and I heard a vehicle idling somewhere nearby. The driver gunned the engine and seconds later a Range Rover surged past the neck of Siddington Lane. I hitched the radio to the waistband of my trousers, climbed on the bike and stood on the pedals till the old steel frame got up to speed.
Suspect on foot. . . Well, no. I listened to them fanning out, dispersing methodically over the streets and side roads and footpaths. This was their patch and no suspect-on-foot was going to give them the slip. Bravo Lima Two Zero check Siddington Lane, confirm. Suspect now a mile away and flying. On Siddington Lane, no sign of him yet. I reached a crossroads that told me I’d left Northampton four miles behind.
Mikey’s radio’s missing. Has anyone got Mikey’s radio? Repeat, has anyone got PC Wakefield’s radio?
I tossed it into a hedge and carried on west.
27
After twenty miles of hard cycling, I began to think I’d got away with it. They’d scour the streets and the countryside around St Hugh’s for an hour or two, then assume I’d gone to ground and start on sheds, garages, overgrown shrubberies, patches of wasteland. It could be four or five hours before they admitted to themselves that I’d slipped the net.
Wulfstan must have had an email or fax from one of Clive Silk’s lot, telling him to ring immediately if a man answering my description turned up. He’d made the call while I was changing into Father Daniel’s clothes. Silk had been very quick off the mark, but I couldn’t work out how he knew about the Order of St Hugh. He must have found out that the girl had been at their refuge in Kosovo, though I hadn’t told him – he hadn’t even asked. There were refugees on the move all over the region and she could have come from anywhere. I’d told Silk I’d left her at 77 Syrna Street, though, and he knew about the Vegas Lounge. Maybe he’d already found a connection between these places and the refuge. In that case, all my worst fears were confirmed.
I’d escaped recapture and had a clean set of clothes to show for my visit to the Order of St Hugh – that was something. On the downside, I also had a couple of damaged ribs, courtesy of Father Neil’s golf club. The bones clicked and creaked like cracked knuckles. It’s not easy to cycle without moving your torso, but I tried.
On the run in hostile territory: I’d been trained for this, though not with rural Northamptonshire in mind. They knew roughly where I was now and I would have to go cautiously, but I felt confident they wouldn’t find me again. I wasn’t going to give myself away by using a cash card because I didn’t have one, and they still didn’t know about the bike. Keep moving. Avoid human contact. Don’t attract attention.
That became difficult when a blowy, spattering kind of rain began to fall. People do cycle in the wet, but not usually dressed in a fertiliser bag they’ve picked off a barbed-wire fence. After another hour in the saddle, I started to flag and the cold got to me. My shoulders stiffened up, my legs felt like logs of sodden wood, my ribcage ached.
Then I came across a stack of bagged potatoes and onions by a farmyard gate with an honesty box nailed to the post. I robbed it of five pounds and 46 pence and cycled on to the next village. I bought a flimsy plastic pac-a-mac for one pound fifty and spent the rest on food, keeping forty pence back for the phone call to TJ.
I sat behind a hedge in a muddy field, cramming my mouth with pork pie and wondering what to do for the next twenty-four hours. Somewhere warm to sit would be a good start. I’d seen signs for Leicester and although it was twenty miles away, I had plenty of time to kill and there’d be a library that might stay open late. I could hole up there until closing time, then replenish my larder from the rear of a supermarket before finding somewhere to spend the night.
I sat in the overheated Edwardian grandeur of Leicester Central Library and read newspaper reports of the goings-on at the peace conference in Rambouillet. It was early days, but things didn’t look promising. The term ‘Chateau fatigue’ had been coined to describe the state of the antagonists, who it seemed had not yet summoned the energy actually to speak to each other. MOBILE PHONE LEAKS PLAGUE KOSOVO TALKS ran one headline. Delegates had been rousing themselves from their torpor sufficiently to make off-the-record calls to the media on illicit phones, to the great irritation of the grandees in charge. Reading between the lines, it was clear that the Serbs were calling NATO’s bluff: there was no legal basis for demanding peace under threat of war, they’d persuaded themselves; and anyway, the West is timid, its people lazy and fat. They should have looked more closely into Tony Blair’s eyes, I thought.
I returned the newspaper to its rack and picked up a book from the returns shelf: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. A strange story – a perfectly executed formal dance which ends, not in justice, but with Poirot, studiously genteel to the last, coercing the murderer into suicide. It kept me occupied until six,
and I was casting around for another to take me through to closing time at nine when I spotted an area of shelves given over to a newspaper archive of large bound volumes and tins of microfiche.
Father Daniel was in his mid-thirties. He’d been left with the Order of St Hugh when he was fourteen, about twenty years ago – 1978 or ’79. I found the 1978 tin and loaded the first reel onto the reader. They had only national newspapers, but still, an unsolved murder, a fugitive wife. . . The reel clattered in its guides and the pages streamed by. It took me two hours to find it, a story from the Lowestoft Journal syndicated in the Daily Telegraph:
TRAWLERMAN FOUND DEAD AT OULTON BROAD HOME
The body of John Cady, age 53, has been found at his home on Dell Road, near Oulton Broad South Station. Police were called when fellow trawlerman Phillip Nash reported that Cady’s boat, the Suffolk Rose, had been left unattended since his return to port on Sunday. ‘I’ve never known John leave the Rose for so long,’ said Nash. ‘He loved that boat more than anything.’
On searching his Dell Road house, police found the body of a man, presumed to be Cady. Early reports indicate that he had been repeatedly stabbed, and police have opened a murder enquiry. His wife Irene and their 14-year-old son Daniel are missing, and police have appealed for information about their whereabouts. Irene Cady, who is of Albanian descent, came to Lowestoft in 1965 and found employment as a chambermaid at the Royal Hotel, where she is thought to have met her future husband. Their Dell Road neighbours say the Cadys kept themselves to themselves. ‘Irene always had a smile for you, and she kept her house very neat,’ said Elsie Gardiner, 72, ‘but they never had visitors.’
Say A Little Prayer (A James Palatine Novel Book 2) Page 19
