A Vicar, Crucified

by Simon Parke

‘Goodnight, Sally. And God bless. Look after yourself.’

  She walked with Sally to the door and felt numb as it closed.

  Forty Nine

  ‘We should hardly be surprised at the latest turn of events, my dear,’ said the Bishop, sitting upright in bed.

  He’d read his bible verse for the evening but his mind was still in Stormhaven.

  ‘Which events?’ asked his wife Margaret, who across the bed was reading a biography of Carl Jung.

  He and Margaret did not now touch; or not in any way that could suggest desire. They’d not had sex for two years and not enjoyed it for seven. Something had died since the wedding. Was this a good marriage? Everyone thought so, for Margaret came to all the public events and that was the test surely? And how Bishop Stephen loved to preach on the benefits of such union!

  ‘Those who pray together stay together!’ he would say. He liked snappy sayings and the attention they brought.

  ‘Marriage is made in heaven but worked at on earth!’ That was another sound bite he favoured.

  ‘That which God has joined together, let no man - or another woman - divide!’ Sometimes he used that one as well. He even encouraged the government to support marriage with tax breaks, though his own marriage had less life than a tomb.

  ‘Good night, dear,’ said Margaret as she put down her book and turned out her bedside lamp.

  ‘It’s no surprise at all to me,’ he continued. ‘I have always said that the stones of Stormhaven are soaked in blood.’

  ‘It’s just a nice seaside town.’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘I really don’t understand all your dramatics.’

  ‘They’re called the Cormorants. The locals, they’re called the Cormorants. Do you know why?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll tell me.’

  ‘It’s because they’re famous for looting ships.’

  ‘Then they must be very good swimmers. At least shops stay still when you smash their windows. I’m going to sleep now.’

  ‘Then I have a bedtime story for you.’

  Bishop Stephen could be a story teller, an educator, he had the gift.

  ‘The “Cormorant” name dates back to 1562,’ he said as though reading to an interested group of children.

  ‘Is this a long one dear?’

  ‘Not too long, no. But crucial is the fact that Stormhaven was one of the Cinque Ports.’

  ‘Shouldn’t “Cinque” rhyme with “sank”? said Margaret sleepily.

  ‘No, no, that’s the French pronunciation - the English say “sink” - rather appropriate for Stormhaven!’ Silence.

  ‘Hastings, New Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich were the originals but others were added, including Stormhaven, and the people of these towns had the right to claim goods washed up on the shore from ships lost at sea - a right that was profoundly abused.’

  More silence.

  ‘Of course wind-powered navigation around the cliffs was always dangerous in those days, especially in the dark. But the good people of Stormhaven made it a great deal more so by moving the navigation lights. Can you believe it? They moved the navigation lights to fool the passing ships! And - this I find incredible - they even lit fires on the cliffs to guide ships onto the rocks! And when they sank, they robbed the bodies of drowned seamen when they floated to shore. That’s the Cormorants for you! Thank God for the good people of Stormhaven!’

  He’d made his point and waited for a response. But as he looked towards his wife, there was nothing but sleep’s deep breath and the widening chasm between them.

  He was glad she hadn’t mentioned Clare in some accusatory way.

  Sometimes she did, which was ridiculous, and quite unwarranted.

  Fifty

  Tamsin lay in the spare bed, contemplating the second day of the investigation. She was glad at least to be back in her own sheets, collected from her police digs at the foot of the South Downs on the outskirts of Brighton. The sooner she was out of there the better. Sharing a kitchen and toilets with four spotty constables and a disturbed sergeant was the downside of her transfer to the Lewes area. The sergeant was recently arrived as well. His wife had locked him out of his home after repeated bouts of physical violence. Two suitcases containing his possessions had been delivered to the front lawn via the upstairs window. Now he and his battered suitcases were in the room across the corridor from Tamsin; and he was finding excuses to knock on her door.

  ‘You and me are alike in a way,’ he’d said last week, with alcohol on his breath. ‘Both starting again. I suppose that’s how fate brings people together.’

  Not in Tamsin’s world. It was time to go flat hunting.

  Her uncle had rather sweetly attempted some home decoration. He’d put fresh flowers in her room and one or two dubious shells. She’d had a bedside lamp delivered, something else the Abbot lacked. Indeed, when she considered his home, it looked to have been furnished mainly by Beachcomber Furnishings Ltd, with old netting, a lobster basket, discarded wicker chairs and sea-soaked crates performing various roles.

  To this extent, his laptop in the study looked out of place. When asked, he’d said he was writing a book. She hadn’t pursued the matter further because it was not relevant to the case. It was good for the elderly to have a hobby but that didn’t mean she had to be interested. Sometimes she had the impression he was thinking more about the book than the case; or at least thinking more about something. He’d spoken about the Enneagram in outline to her, but really she had more important things to think about. You had to prioritise and in terms of relevance, some ancient form of typology was right up there with the day’s astrological predictions. He hadn’t seemed to mind her rebuttal. He said he quite understood and left it at that: ‘There’s a time and a place for everything, Tamsin and this apparently is neither the time nor place for you.’

  She was glad it was the end of the matter.

  ***

  There was a winter moon tonight, shining cold hope through her small window. She heard the late-night voices of two shingle walkers carried on the wind. She’d left the window open to hear the sea but mainly heard the Chief Inspector’s final words to her, as she’d set off from HQ on the first morning of the investigation:

  ‘I want the case solved by lunch, Tamsin!’

  He was only joking but he never really joked and everyone in the force knew these cases were the easy ones. The crucifixion of a vicar displays madness hard to keep hidden in the routine of community life and in such cases the madman tends quickly to be found.

  ‘It’s nick-a-nutter’ time,’ said one of the sergeants to her.’Sprechen ze psychiatric?’

  But as the second day drew to a close, the psychopath was still appearing sane; there was another body but no sign of Mr or Mrs Mad.

  Tamsin went downstairs and made some tea. She drank it with the front door open and the waves crashing. She stepped outside. You could just see the top of St Michael’s from here. Everyone out there was lying of course but so what? Each community has its own deceit. What the police needed were some new facts with which to smash the lies and leave the audience gasping. They needed the murder equipment - the knife, the tape, the hammer, the drugs, the clothes. Where were they? If they’d managed to miss a live body in the church, were they now missing something else there? There would have to be another search.

  ***

  In the room across the landing, Abbot Peter drifted into sleep wondering whether the publisher was just being polite. You could never tell with publishers. His words were encouraging but he was probably just being polite. He may not even have read the manuscript and he did keep saying he couldn’t promise anything.

  ‘There’s a lot of potential here, Peter. Whether it’s the right book for our current list, I’m not sure, but this isn’t a “no” - or not a definite “no” anyway.
It’s a “maybe”, Peter, so do stay in touch. Cards on the table, I do wonder if the Americans might not be a better market for the Enneagram. The English tend to be less credulous and rather more - how shall we put it - rational about these things. But who knows? It’s just a thought. Keep on keeping on!’

  For Peter, publishers were like wife-beaters declaring they’ve changed: you believe them not because they’re believable but because you want them to be, the sad triumph of faith over experience. You hope they’ll stop hitting you; or you hope they’ll publish your book. It was true: the Enneagram wasn’t very English, searching out the psyche in such a disturbing way. But neither was it the avoidant psychology of absurd promise so beloved by the American self-help market. And for good or ill, it was quite impossible to turn into a sound bite.

  ‘Give it to me in a sentence,’ one publisher had said.

  Peter replied: ‘If I could give it to you in a sentence, it wouldn’t be worth anything.’

  Most publishers, like Tamsin, placed it somewhere between astrology and witchcraft and Peter was sympathetic to their cause. It was hard for outsiders to understand until they had stepped inside the circle, until they felt its fire in their belly, at which point they’d scream in delight:

  ‘Someone knows me at last!’

  Tamsin had immediately recognised the personal threat it posed and so dealt it a hasty death blow.

  ‘I think that’s something to do on your own, Uncle.’

  ‘You make it sound like a dirty habit,’ he’d said.

  The voices of two laughing beach walkers carried on the wind, excited by a discovery. He wondered what they’d found. He always wondered what others had found but not because he wanted it. He had no need of anything else for life had given him quite enough to love: first the hot desert and now this stormy coast. What more could he ask? You don’t have to know what you’re looking for to find it. And as sleep approached, he was thinking of the stone. He was thinking of his secret place, for though he lived alone, he would sometimes feel the need to intensify his solitude. At such times, he would make the grassy walk up the white cliffs and at a particular point, learned from a local fisherman, he’d step over the edge, through undergrowth and thistle, where he’d find a small and hidden chalk path - more of a ledge, really - which precariously led to a cave half way up the cliff face. Who else knew of it, he wasn’t sure. But there he would sit alone on a large rock and contemplate the big sky, the circling birds and the dangerous sea below. He called it The Seeing Stone after something his father had once said; it was his secret place, where things became clear.

  He must go back there soon.

  ***

  And as Abbot Peter drifted off, there was a late night addition to the murder diary. It sat alongside Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on the book shelf, a fact that interested the killer:

  ‘I suppose, if caught, I will be called a Jekyll and Hyde figure, a split personality. Such ideas give comfort to people. Blame it all on nasty Mr Hyde. But Robert Louis Stevenson was not saying that. He wasn’t saying there was simply a good person and bad person in us all. That would be stupid. He understood there were many different selves, not just two. We use the self who is necessary in any situation, that’s my understanding at least. The cleverest know which self to use to achieve their immediate ends. I have an army of selves each obeying my command.

  I seem at present to be a rather good commander.’

  Fifty One

  Friday, 19 December

  It was the morning of the third day of the investigation. Abbot Peter was making toast, Tamsin at the round table in the living room with coffee.

  ‘So the question is: how do you tape someone to a cross without a struggle?’ she asked.

  ‘By drugging them first,’ said Peter from the kitchen.

  ‘Taping an unconscious body to an upright cross would require great strength.’

  ‘True.’

  The only alternative to two murderers and team work, which remained a possibility, was complicity on Anton’s part and both knew it was time this option was explored.

  ‘So Anton allows himself to be tied to the cross,’ said Peter.

  ‘Perhaps so.’

  ‘It is the large elephant in the room.’

  ‘So let’s stop walking round it.’

  ‘The fact is, when a vicar dies in odd circumstances the possibility of a sexual element is never far from the public’s mind.’

  ‘And very close to the Silt’s.’

  ‘And they’re not alone. Sergeant Reiss assumes I’m a paedophile because I’m an Abbot.’

  ‘Has he said?’

  ‘He doesn’t need to. I hear people’s attitudes more than their words.’

  ‘Let’s be honest, Uncle, there are quite a few vicar/sex-shame stories.’

  ‘I agree, though no more than doctor, estate agent or psychologist sex-shame stories. But the vicar ones stick, I grant you. The pervy priest stories are saved by editors for the big-sale Sundays. The English seem particularly to delight in them. What this says about the priesthood - or the role of the priesthood in popular imagination I don’t know, but there we are. Sex is the first thought when a vicar dies violently, with burglary trailing some way behind.’

  ‘And when a womaniser like Anton dies in a sex game - let’s make that assumption - it’s more likely the murderer is a woman.’

  ‘But perhaps not Betty.’

  Tamsin got up and went to the front window.

  ‘And then again why not a man?’ she said.

  ‘A man?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘So we’re looking for a woman - or a man. You’re not really narrowing it down.’

  Tamsin was on a roll: ‘We have no evidence that Anton was gay and plenty of evidence to the contrary. Yet for all his flirting he was still single at the age of thirty two.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘So was this perhaps a love that dared not speak its name?’

  ‘I’m not sure love has much to do with it.’

  ‘And now you’re sounding pompous.’

  ‘Better by far than vacuous.’

  Tamsin’s phone rang. The silence as she listened indicated interest. Peter noted that, unusually, she wasn’t harassing the speaker, simply receiving their words. He watched her absorption, her compulsive hunger for the kill. Here was a ruthless woman and more often than not, when Peter used that word, it was in a positive sense.

  ‘A note she wrote at the parish meeting has been found in the vestry,’ said Tamsin, as she put down the phone.

  ‘A note who wrote?’

  ‘And, get this: her footprints are all over the table that must have been used for the crucifixion.’

  ‘Whose footprints?’

  ‘Betty’s.’

  ‘Betty?’

  ‘She’s our murderer. She’s being taken down to the station now. Give me half an hour with her, people sometimes say more to outsiders, then join us.’

  Fifty Two

  ‘Detective Inspector Tamsin Shah with Betty Dodd, interview starting at 2.42 p.m.’

  Betty sat opposite Tamsin in a stark room in Stormhaven Police Station that offered only a chipped formica table and two chairs for furniture.

  ‘I’ve never been inside a police station before,’ said Betty, with a mixture of awe and pride.

  Tamsin found the child-like quality of this observation unnerving and a rare sense of care arose in her. Perhaps she was also remembering Abbot Peter’s words that more flies are caught with honey than vinegar. She’d use whatever it took to catch this fly; she could do honey.

  ‘I hope you’ve been treated well, Betty.’

  ‘I’ve been treated very well, thank you.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘A very
nice young constable brought me here and made me tea.’

  ‘I’m glad. I think constables were made to make us tea.’

  ‘PC Neville was his name.’

  ‘An excellent officer.’ She just managed to get that line out.

  ‘And when I asked for some biscuits he went off and found me a box of Jaffa Cakes!’

  ‘I will commend him personally.’

  Unlike Sergeant Reiss who would be furious.

  ‘I’ll need to be home by four,’ said Betty. ‘That’s when Thomas comes round.’

  ‘Thomas?’

  ‘He’s a cat, not my cat, I don’t have a cat of my own - I don’t like them bringing in the mice. But he likes to come round and I give him something.’

  ‘Well, we’ll do our best about getting you home by four.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And if we have any difficulties then PC Neville will make sure Thomas is greeted with something appropriate. He loves all animals.’ This wasn’t the sort of recorded interview Tamsin wanted anyone else to hear; she felt like a social worker.

  ‘But before then, Betty, I just wanted to speak with you about the night the vicar was murdered.’

  Betty sat in silence.

  ‘And you have chosen not to have a lawyer with you.’

  ‘Why would I want one of those?’

  Tamsin could think of several reasons but wasn’t going to help out. Honey had its limits.

  ‘Do you have anything you want to say about that night?’

  ‘It was very wet, I remember the rain.’

  ‘Yes, it was very wet; though of course you must like the rain because you went for a long walk in it.’

  Betty again remained silent.

  ‘As far as the seafront Abbot Peter told me.’

  ‘Is it true he’s your uncle?’ asked Betty.

  ‘If we can just stay with the night of the murder for the moment?’

  Tamsin gathered herself again, wondering whether to add a little vinegar to the honey currently failing to catch any flies. ‘Do you recognise this?’