A Vicar, Crucified

by Simon Parke

But for Abbot Peter the skulls in the outhouse brought peace and perspective rather than fear. He never left their speechless company without a renewed spring in his step and missed them even now. Travelling to Lewes by train was at least some recompense.

  On arrival, he walked up the narrow streets - or twittens, as they were called - that dropped off the high street and then headed down hill to the east of town. He crossed the bridge over the Ouse which had been the escape route for so many of the soldiers running from slaughter in 1264. From there, he continued on past the cafés and antique dealers of Cliffe High Street. He breathed in the familiar yeasty air of the Harvey’s brewery and was soon standing at the front door of 18 Thomas Street, the last in a small row of nineteenth-century houses.

  Mrs Gold opened the door.

  ‘You promised me a cup of tea at the Christmas Fayre,’ said Abbot Peter.

  ‘Not one I’ll forget in a hurry,’ she said, ushering him into a clinically clean front room.

  ‘It had its own drama, didn’t it?’ said Peter.

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘Shame we couldn’t have used it on the advertising: “Vicar will speak from the dead after tombola”. It would have improved the turnout, I think.’

  Mrs Gold was not prepared for such flippancy in a monk.

  ‘And is the murderer apprehended?’ she asked.

  Abbot Peter smiled. FA cups are ‘held aloft’ and murderers are ‘apprehended’.

  ‘The murderer is still free, externally, at least.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Well, there’s probably not much freedom within them. Those who are inwardly free don’t kill.’

  There was a slight pause. Mrs Gold thought this was poppycock but then what do you expect from a monk? If the murderer wasn’t caught, they were still free in her book.

  ‘Well, do sit down.’

  ‘Thank you. And you have a lovely house.’

  ‘I’m still getting used to it; down-sizing isn’t easy. I wouldn’t have thought much of this place a few years ago, believe me. But then I didn’t know of Gerald’s financial difficulties.’

  As far as Abbot Peter could remember, Gerald was her deceased husband whose profligate spending only came to light on his death.

  ‘So what was it you wanted to speak about?’ she asked, once they were settled with the tea.

  ‘Teddy bears,’ said Abbot Peter.

  Sixty Four

  ‘That was off the record and you know it!’

  The Bishop was incandescent but Martin Channing unruffled. This was hardly the first such conversation he’d had down the years.

  ‘Off the record, on the record? Aren’t we suddenly getting rather legalistic, Bishop?’

  ‘You didn’t honour your word.’

  ‘Which word was that, Stephen?’

  ‘We were speaking about a column I might write.’

  ‘And which you did write and I’m sure we can use it one day. But let’s be honest, because honesty is always best: what you shared with me over the phone was a good deal more truthful and our concern is for the truth, surely? I mean, did we print anything untrue?’

  The Bishop felt like a mouse in a trap.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or anything you didn’t say?’

  ‘It’s about what’s appropriate, about the context.’

  ‘Oh, Stephen, Stephen, I have more respect for our readers than that! I’m a great believer in giving them the truth and allowing them to decide.’

  ‘But you didn’t allow anyone to decide anything. You just gave them some Sabbath titillation.’

  ‘Something which the church signally fails to do!’

  ‘I’ll be objecting in the strongest possible terms to the owners of the Sussex Silt.

  ‘Your prerogative, of course Bishop but you might struggle to get past our sales figures which is the first point on their moral compass.’

  ‘Typical.’

  ‘But I do hope this isn’t the end of our relationship.’

  ‘You’ve got some nerve.’

  ‘Because I can help you.’

  ‘That I doubt very much.’

  ‘I know things that might interest you.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Why was he being drawn in?

  ‘I just wondered, for instance, if you knew about an affair Ginger Micklewhite is supposed to have had with a married woman? Interested?’

  The Bishop’s pause said it all.

  ‘I mean I’m sure you’re not at all interested but a reader has contacted us and obviously we’re very cautious about what we print. It was in his last post apparently, prior to his arrival at St Michael’s. But I did just wonder if it might have a bearing on the death of the vicar? I mean, “everything’s material” as the psychologists say.’

  The Bishop should have put the phone down long ago. But he was drawn to the negative and tantalised still by the promise of a column. And so he listened and he listened until he could listen no more, until something inside him said ‘No!’ and he ended the call without a further word.

  It was good to be out of the trap. But he was rigid with rage.

  Sixty Five

  Abbot Peter knew something was wrong.

  He returned to Sandy View around 7.00 p.m. and both saw and smelt disturbance. He’d neither left the bottle of whisky out on the table nor emptied it to the extent now apparent. And then he saw the door to his study ajar when he knew he’d left it closed. He paused for a moment, stilling himself and listening. There was no sound but a gull crying and a car turning. He looked again at the study door and then at the whisky. It was not unknown for burglars to draw freely on house hospitality. Or was this perhaps one of Stormhaven’s alcoholic wanderers seeking a hostel. Either might resent discovery and Peter steeled himself for confrontation.

  He moved quietly towards the study and then a noise from within, an expletive, a woman’s voice. He reached the door, peered through the gap and, with surprise, recognised the back of DI Tamsin Shah, also his niece. She was sitting carelessly, clearly the worse for wear, at the small table on which lay Peter’s jigsaw of the Colossus of Rhodes, boldly astride the harbour entrance of that ancient city.

  ‘We’re not doing very well, are we?’ she said, without looking round.

  ‘I did ask you not to use my study, Tamsin. It was one of the house rules.’

  ‘And I asked you to help me with my case.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘So we’ve both been let down.’

  Abbot Peter watched his anger rise and subside.

  ‘You don’t have the power to hurt me, Tamsin but you do have the power to hurt yourself.’

  ‘My glass is empty.’

  ‘And what do you want: applause or consolation?’

  ‘You’re a lousy detective, believe me!’ said Tamsin. ‘Really lousy - leave it to the professionals.’

  There was such hostility in the remark it took Abbot Peter a few seconds to allow it to pass through.

  ‘Is this your first case as a Detective Inspector?’ he asked.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I was talking to one of your colleagues. They said you were very competent, a fast-track promotion girl. But they also said they wouldn’t want to be around on the day that you failed at something.’

  ‘I haven’t failed.’

  ‘I know, Tamsin, I know. You’re doing an excellent job.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘I say.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be a murderer tracked by you.’

  ‘Then tell that to the Chief Inspector! He had the bloody nerve to say I’m taking my time and asked if I wanted some help? Me need help?!’

 
‘The Chief Inspector is just watching his back. It’s what those with a little power do.’

  Tamsin managed a smile. ‘You know the joke doing the rounds at present?’

  ‘Tell me,’ said the Abbot gently.

  ‘Why do Chief Inspectors walk into lamp posts?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They’re too busy watching their backs.’ Abbot Peter heard only the frustration.

  ‘It’s time for you to rest, Tamsin.’

  ‘I don’t want to rest.’

  ‘Rest now and be brilliant tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me, Abbot! Don’t ever patronise me as if I’m a failure! It’s you who’s the failure! You!’

  Suddenly she was lunging forward sweeping both jigsaw and glass from the table, sending pieces flying and the glass smashing against the wall. The Colossus of Rhodes, three quarters complete, lay in disorder on the floor amid glinting shards of something other than diamonds. Silence reigned in the study but not peace.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s quite okay.’

  Peter was shocked but gathered himself around remembered words.

  ‘We do what we do until we can no longer do it and then the fresh shoots appear. Tonight you rest, tomorrow the fresh shoots.’

  The headache was making Tamsin weary.

  ‘And you? What will you do?’ she asked.

  ‘I must go to a special place; I’ve been away from alone for too long.’

  ‘You’re alone most of the time!’

  ‘There are degrees of alone and many shades of solitude.’

  He helped Tamsin up the stairs to her room. He returned in a while with some hot milk but she was already asleep. He kissed her forehead and quietly closed the door. He went downstairs to his study. Slowly, he returned the jigsaw to the table, piece by piece, a meditation in itself, a return of order in a disordered world. He then made a thermos of sweet coffee and taking his coat from the back of the door, walked out into the winter night, December twenty-first, the shortest day - and the longest night.

  And as he began his ascent of the cliffs, he knew the answer lay in the scattered pieces of the jigsaw. There was something about Tamsin and the Colossus of Rhodes which made perfect sense of everything. He had seen the killer.

  Act Four

  ‘I’ve done a bad thing, Jennifer,’ he said. They were words of effort, dredged with difficulty from the harbour slime of his unconscious.

  Sixty Six

  On the longest night of the year, the night which turned out to be the last night of the investigation, the six suspects were variously engaged.

  Sally was clearing up after the small evening service which took place in the parish room. She left there and walked through the church into the vestry. There she turned out the lights, noticed the answer phone had two messages but decided to leave them. She still hesitated on entering the vestry and held her eyes away from the cross. Could a room of such hatred ever regain its calm? Not for Sally, for whom this would forever be a disturbing place. Closing the door behind her, she returned to the church, still and dark. She was walking down the carpeted aisle towards the main entrance when she sensed a presence in the building. She stopped and looked into the darkness. The noise came from the prayer chapel, nothing more than someone changing position and knocking against something.

  Sally paused, her breathing quickened.

  ‘Is anyone there?’ she asked. Silence.

  She was not without courage, but remained a practical soul and moved quickly towards the light switches. If she was to face an intruder, let it be in the light. With a flick of the switch, the church was revealed, obscure corners exposed and there in the prayer chapel, the figure of Malcolm Flight, kneeling, swaying backwards and forwards. Sally made her way towards him.

  ‘Are you all right, Malcolm?’

  He looked up at her with pleading in his eyes.

  ‘I don’t know what to do without Clare.’

  Sally considered the words, spoken less than six feet from where her body was found. He was being ridiculous.

  ‘You were never with Clare, Malcolm,’ she said.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You speak as though you were together.’

  ‘We were together in a way.’

  ‘How were you together?’

  ‘She came back for me that night, you know, the night she died.’

  Sally’s immediate reaction was to judge Malcolm harshly. He knew nothing about the hurt of rejection. Her pain was real; his was all in his head. But she stayed calm with this pitiful man.

  ‘Clare came back for something that night,’ she said. ‘But was it really you?’

  ‘I had to leave of course because she could be distant, could be cold and that was the worst, the cold and the distance... not that pain again, not that... but had I stayed...’

  ‘We can’t live with “if onlys”, Malcolm.’

  ‘I could have saved her.’

  ‘Clare made her choices, Malcolm.’

  ‘And what in hell’s name do you mean by that?’

  What did Sally mean by that? On reflection, the origins were not so hard to discern. Whatever had happened between the Bishop and Clare had not just been the Bishop’s doing. Clare was complicit, Sally had seen it. Had the Bishop misread the signs, felt approached and then rejected?

  ‘The trouble is, I only love what I can’t have,’ she’d once confided to Sally. Sally didn’t know what had happened in the car but Clare had made her choices.

  ‘I just meant that she did what she thought best, Malcolm. And you did what you thought best, whatever that was. What more can any of us do?’

  And in saying these words, she thought mainly of herself. Soon she would visit the police station.

  ***

  Betty was watching a programme about elephants, and knitting for Romanian orphans. She’d knitted a lot of jumpers on behalf of that country, different colours, though mainly pink or blue and she hadn’t lied in the interview, hadn’t said anything that was untrue though whether that mattered now, she wasn’t sure.

  On the telly, the daddy elephant had disappeared, everyone was worried and Betty knew the feeling. She’d spent many years trying to find her father, idolising him, trying to get back to the man. Sixty nine years ago a silly girl in the office had said ‘P’raps your dad isn’t all you crack him up to be.’ Betty had hit the girl hard across the face, a stinging blow, for which she’d been sacked. She hadn’t known her father well, he’d died when she was seventeen, disappeared like the daddy elephant. But she had photos and the beach hut would have made things good, made things right after such a long wait. She remembered him by his beach hut, or perhaps the photos remembered, and she remembered the photos. She’d waited for it all these years, waiting until it was hers, only for it to be taken away, snatched from her and stolen.

  It was like having her father taken from her all over again and she knew who had done it.

  ***

  Ginger was ringing Jennifer because of Anton; and more particularly because of his jibe.

  He remembered the row, one of many. He’d been telling the vicar about Franciscan tertiaries, how they came about. He’d commended St Francis on his humility and Anton had said, ‘So what happened to yours?’ It was a cheap shot from a cheap man but could a cheap shot be true? The words had lingered like a bad smell, like grit in his shoe, which gave them the ring of truth. And as he thought about these things, the same question returned again and again:

  ‘What happened to you, Ginger?’

  He liked the label of tertiary. It set him apart, gave him some mystery but what did it really mean? What did it add up to if the heart of the calling was no longer there? And when exactly had he said goodbye to it? As St Paul said, in
some of his more searching lines, ‘If I have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging bell; if I have no love, I am nothing.’ And Ginger had no love.

  ‘This is an unexpected call,’ said Jennifer.

  Ginger and Jennifer were not close, though they’d once sat together on a local youth committee.

  ‘I’ve done a bad thing, Jennifer,’ he said.

  They were words of effort, dredged up with difficulty from the harbour slime of his unconscious.

  ‘I didn’t know you did bad things, Ginger,’ she said settling back into her chair.

  She’d been going through some application forms for maternity cover. Her staff became pregnant with unnerving frequency. But a confession from Ginger would be a welcome distraction.

  The phone call finished ten difficult minutes later with Ginger much calmed. The same could not be said of Jennifer, however. After what she’d heard, she was concerned for her life and decided on a walk. She needed to breathe some sea air.

  ***

  Bishop Stephen stood at the back of St John the Baptist, Southover, the posh part of Lewes. He was in meeting and greeting mode, one of his favourite roles. He always enjoyed confirmation services, the chance to be a shepherd to his flock and to pull them up where necessary. And though their faces were happy now, caught up in the post-service excitement of chat and refreshments, they’d not been smiling as he’d delivered his hard-hitting sermon on the crucifixion of Christ. Correcting people was his gift even if they did not wish to be corrected. In his talk, he’d majored on the hateful and ignorant nature of those who had committed the crime: those who had cried out for Jesus’ blood, those who had whipped and tormented him, those who had nailed him and swung the cross skywards. Not a Christmas message perhaps but an eternal one.

  ‘Bad people do bad things,’ he’d declared, ‘bad people do wrong things and we do no one any favours to pretend otherwise. Wrong is not a relative thing, wrong is a killing thing and so, while we speak of forgiveness, let us also honour the gift of correction. Those who are bad, we correct! Those who are wrong, we correct!’

  He spoke with many after the service, delighting in their goodwill and his brief sense of prestige. But as he drove home on this longest night of the year, he remembered one conversation above all.