A Vicar, Crucified

by Simon Parke

  ‘Time to get out, to go home,’ he thought to himself.

  The fear of the footsteps had subsided. Perhaps he’d misheard and seen poorly.

  ‘Fear comes and fear goes and when it goes we are sane again.’

  He cast the torch beam over the murder gear one more time. And then stopped. How had he missed that? He was looking at the hammer and nails and something was puzzling him. How could he not have noticed? And what implications followed?

  He turned off the torch and remained still and silent in the gloom. He thought of Betty’s father who once stood in this exact spot. He thought of the beach hut communities and friendships that had formed down the years. They’d taken photos, laughed, drank, eaten, argued, gone home... and when their time had come, when their race was run, they’d passed on, passed over. But they were forever here on this desolate shore and Peter sensed them. He was not alone, a cloud of witnesses went before him and stood with him now. Peter sensed their imprint on the space, an imprint impossible to erase.

  ‘I need you tonight,’ he said. ‘Come with me now, my friends. We shall be an army of righteousness against the destroying hordes.’

  He stepped out in to the gale and with his habit flying wildly in the wind he made his gusty way back towards Sandy View.

  ***

  The house was quiet. No light shone inside as he turned the key and entered. He listened for Tamsin. Was she back? He thought he heard her upstairs. He removed his shoes and trod the stairs carefully but found no one in either bedroom. He rang her phone but there was no reply. He wrote a simple note and left it on her pillow:

  ‘Come and talk on your return. I know the killer. It was the jigsaw that finally gave them away.’

  He stepped out of his wet clothes, dried himself, wrapped his chill nakedness in pyjamas and dressing gown and cleaned his teeth. He went downstairs and into his study. The Colossus remained undone on the table but that could wait. He went over to his desk, switched on his computer and sat still as slowly the screen lit and offered his emails. There were two in his inbox. One was selling Viagra, a doomed sales pitch, while the other one, from council man Mr Robinson, confirmed the identity of the murderer. He read it once and then read it again. He turned off the computer and sat in the dark for a moment because before something, there is nothing.

  He left the study and went to the front door. Opening it, he looked down the road for Tamsin. No sign. If she wasn’t back within the hour he’d go to the police station. But he’d prefer to speak directly to Tamsin. He owed her that. Or did he?

  ‘Come on, Tamsin,’ he found himself saying. ‘Let’s bring this to an end.’

  Seventy Four

  ‘I want to be truthful,’ said Malcolm, now sitting opposite Tamsin in the parish room.

  The chairs were more comfortable than the climate. She didn’t trust Malcolm. She’d never screamed in her life before but something about him had frightened her. She didn’t trust anyone, why would she? But this creature of the shadows posed a particular threat.

  ‘I want to come clean,’ he continued, with an almost messianic gleam in his eye. ‘I want to be clear not opaque, be precise rather than vague.’

  ‘Tell me what you know, Malcolm. That’s all the police ask. Save the melodramatics for the theatre.’

  ‘As Sally said, I wasn’t with Clare.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘That was a fantasy.’

  ‘I think I knew that.’

  ‘She reminded me of my mother actually.’

  ‘Is that relevant?’

  ‘She never paid me any attention either.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  Malcolm nodded. Tamsin looked him in the eyes.

  ‘I don’t want to be harsh, Malcolm but if this is a misery memoir, you’re mistaking me for someone who cares.’

  She had little time for self-indulgent reflection on the past.

  ‘I was here in the church that night,’ he said.

  ‘The night of the murder?’

  So Peter had at least been right about that.

  ‘In many ways I stand guilty of the murder of Anton Fontaine.’

  ‘“In many ways?” What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It’s not that straightforward.’

  ‘You either crucified him or you didn’t.’

  ‘I was waiting to speak to him, I wanted to tell him what I thought of him, I was ready to explode.’

  ‘So you felt full of hatred - but that isn’t murder.’

  ‘Jesus said a hateful thought is the same as murder.’

  ‘Meanwhile, back on planet earth?’

  Talking with Malcolm was like walking through treacle in a fog.

  ‘I watched Abbot Peter leave the church and soon after I heard voices in the vestry.’

  ‘Did you recognise them?’

  ‘Only Anton’s. He was talking to someone but the other voice was very quiet.’

  ‘Male? Female.’

  ‘Too quiet to say.’

  ‘So you have no idea as to who might have been in the vestry with the vicar?’

  ‘No.’

  Tamsin wondered if she believed him. It mattered.

  ‘And anyway, I was distracted because then Clare came in.’

  ‘Through the main door?’

  ‘Yes, and I was shocked to see her and disappeared back into the shadows.’

  ‘You’re good at that.’

  ‘I was. But I’m coming out of them now, believe me. That’s why I’m here talking to you.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘She went to the main altar, lit a candle and stood there, gazing on it. But then there were ripping sounds from the vestry, it must have been the tape.’

  Tamsin raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I’ve heard how he was found,’ he continued.

  ‘And you went to the vestry?’

  ‘No. But Clare did.’

  ‘Clare went to the vestry?’

  ‘But then suddenly she was running back into the church. She almost ran straight into my arms which freaked her out, but all she said was, ‘Go and get help, go and get help - now!’ She was whispering, I don’t know why, though people do in church. Respect, I suppose.’

  ‘Or terror,’ said Tamsin. ‘Perhaps she’d seen something she shouldn’t and the murderer was after her. That might make me slightly hushed.’

  ‘Anyway, I left straight away.’

  ‘Quietly I presume.’

  ‘You must remember I don’t exist. Or rather, I didn’t exist. I’m changing that now. Now I exist.’

  ‘So where did you go for help?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  Tamsin again found herself up against the strangeness of Malcolm Flight.

  ‘Why not?’

  Malcolm raised his eyebrows in a dismissive manner and then smiled weakly.

  ‘I just thought “Why bother”? Not proud about it, but that’s what I thought at the time.’

  ‘You just thought “Why bother?”?’ Malcolm nodded.

  ‘I can think of one or two reasons,’ said Tamsin.

  ‘But what did I really owe Anton or Clare? That’s what I was thinking. Did they ever bother with me?’

  Tamsin did her best to hide the incredulity.

  ‘So whatever was happening in there, you didn’t care? Do you care about anything, Malcolm?’

  ‘Why jump just because they command it? I thought. I’ve been a doormat for too long.’

  Outside, a gull’s scream penetrated the fourteenth-century walls.

  ‘Nothing changes anything, you see,’ he declared. ‘Generations come and generations go but the world stays the same, as the book of Ecclesiastes says.’

  ‘
The one book in the bible written by an atheist I’m told,’ said Tamsin, happy to be away from the holy.

  ‘We get older and wearier but nothing changes anything. That was my thinking that night.’

  Tamsin got up to leave; she had heard all she needed to hear.

  ‘You changed things, Malcolm; because you didn’t get help, Anton and Clare died.’

  Malcolm grimaced. ‘They made their choices in everything they did,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t one choice that brought them to the church that night - it was many choices.’

  ‘So that’s all right then?’

  ‘And none of those choices had any concern for me.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘I was left alone. And then I left them alone.’

  ‘And what about your many choices, Malcolm? Where have they left you?’

  ‘In my life? Sad. Absent. Stubborn. Cynical.’

  ‘And guilty in so many ways?’

  He sat in silence and then spoke simply and clearly.

  ‘And that’s why I’m here telling you these things. I’m making a choice to speak, a choice to be honest, to be present, to be here, now. I needn’t do it but I am doing it, I have to do it. Not for your sake but for my sake. I’m not going back to how I was; I’m saying goodbye to it.’

  ‘Bit late for that.’

  ‘Have you ever been honest with yourself?’

  Tamsin didn’t reply.

  ‘I’m starting again,’ said Malcolm, with unnerving energy. ‘I’m out of the shadows and taking my place in the world. Don’t you realise how good that is?’

  Seventy Five

  Abbot Peter was feeling a little light-headed.

  He imagined it was the after-effects of the chloroform in the hut. Delayed reaction... very delayed but no doubt it would soon wear off. He’d find a book to keep him company as he waited for Tamsin, though nothing sprung readily to mind. He cast his eye along the book shelf as the dizziness returned. Was he going down with something? He turned towards his bed but knew the worst before it happened. His first instincts on entering the house had been right. There had been someone upstairs when he returned and their hand came swift and fast from behind to smother his mouth and nose with a cloth. A sweet organic smell filled his nostrils, pleasant enough, strangely pleasant but over-powering, power over, a losing of power, don’t breathe in, he strikes out with his elbow, smashing the chest of the assailant, a groan behind him, a groan he knew but still the cloth strongly held and pressing, don’t breathe in, keep it out, though now he was falling forward...

  He must have lost consciousness for a moment, for he was lying on his bed, hands and legs taped with a knife held gently against his throat. Leaning over him was a figure in a familiar white protective garment and a face mask. They must have kept a spare at home. Admirable planning and such a shame there wasn’t a war to hand where such dark skill could be used against an enemy and then applauded with a VC.

  ‘Oh we do like to be beside the seaside, Abbot.’

  ‘Indeed we do, though a knife at one’s throat takes away some of the pleasure.’

  ‘Not for me.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘And I’m interested?’

  ‘This isn’t pleasure, this is desperation.’

  ‘I don’t feel desperate.’

  ‘How would you know what you feel when you said goodbye to feeling so long ago?’

  ‘Spare me the “so-long-ago”. It’s such self-indulgence.’

  It was the strangest of meetings: one eager to kill, one to survive, and both eager to talk.

  ‘You know of course that every murder is a failure,’ said Peter, his head clearing.

  ‘From where I sit, your survival would be failure, not your death.’

  By their own logic, this was true. There was no way he could live. He’d seen the force at work as she’d lunged forward to destroy the jigsaw at the mention of failure.

  ‘So now it’s goodbye, Abbot - or is it uncle, because you were like an uncle to me?’

  ‘They’re just labels.’

  ‘And I must go and clear the beach hut.’

  ‘You were a little slow there.’

  ‘There’s still time. It’s a long night remember, plenty of darkness.’

  The knife pressed against his neck, one change of angle from the killing cut.

  But before the twist:

  ‘I knew the Special Witness label would tempt you.’ Peter stayed quiet, in a place beyond words.

  ‘What I didn’t know was how seriously you’d take it. But to be killed for a beach hut, Peter? Was that really your imagined staircase to glory?’

  Peter was thinking of the paraglider flying free over the sea.

  ‘Your mistake is to imagine life means anything,’ said the killer. ‘It doesn’t. And so if you think I’ll feel bad as you choke, I won’t. I don’t have the remorse gene inside me, I’m afraid.’

  The trouble with a murderer’s hood is the loss of peripheral vision. It also impairs the hearing. You’re in your own little world as every murderer must be. But you don’t see or hear behind you and suddenly Peter is witness to Tamsin’s wild eyes and the knife dislodged, now flying towards the window and then the short struggle on the floor, an unfair contest, before the detective has the assailant’s arm forced firmly up her back.

  ‘Jennifer Gold, I’m arresting you for the murders of Anton Fontaine and Clare Magnussen.’

  Detective Inspector Tamsin Shah drew a couple of breaths before continuing.

  ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  The Abbot’s niece was sitting on Jennifer while he remained in taped isolation, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘But you didn’t bang in the nails, did you, Jennifer?’

  Tamsin looked at Peter aghast.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘I mean you did everything else, Jennifer, but I don’t think you actually did the nailing. Well, am I right?’

  Seventy Six

  Sally was surprised at her desire for cleansing. Cleansing? It was not a word she’d ever used in a sermon. It had something of the nineteenth century about it with their revivalist fervour and insistence on sin. But it seemed strangely appropriate now as a very different future beckoned. It was time to take herself seriously and exchange this vanity for something authentic.

  She put on her dog collar for the last time, tidied her hair in the hall mirror, stepped out into the rain, opened the car door, took refuge in its dry security, turned on the engine and pulled out into the road. She’d visit the Bishop first and then the police station.

  ***

  ‘You have to let me in, Mr Micklewhite! Please let me in!’

  It was strange to hear such respect on his young lips. The names Tommy usually gave Ginger were more colourfully obscene; but any port in a storm and this was a bad one for the boy.

  ‘He flung me out and I ain’t got nowhere else to go!’ he pleaded.

  Tommy had beaten on his door, a wet rat in the rain, and Ginger had taken him in. The 14-year-old had a large bruise across his face, darkening even as they talked.

  ‘‘E just came at me and I ain’t goin’ back. Never.’

  ‘We’ll go back together.’

  ‘What, me and you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But he’ll do it again.’

  ‘No he won’t, Tommy. Believe me, he won’t.’

  ‘Will you smash ‘im?’

  ‘I’ll do what’s necessary.’

  ‘I ain’t going.’

  ‘Then I’ll go by myself.’

  ‘He
’ll smash you.’

  Ginger smiled. No one had ever smashed him, no one had ever got close, he’d always smashed first though now he looked for a better way. Things would be different. He’d be strong on behalf of Tommy rather than vindictive on behalf of himself.

  ‘Do you want some hot chocolate?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We’ll have something to eat and make our plans. Now go and dry yourself off.’

  He’d protect Tommy. But first he must ring Abbot Peter with a confession.

  **

  Betty took the long way round despite the rain, walking the length of the sea wall, then down by the caravan park and under the railway bridge before turning right onto the main road back into town. She’d left a note for her home help, whom she didn’t need anyway, and for the warden Mrs Neeves.

  ***

  Malcolm fingered the small card, remembering the incident. The words of a stranger in the supermarket last week still haunted him, a question he’d never been asked:

  ‘Well, what would you like to do?’

  They’d talked while he stacked the eggs. It was one of his preferred tasks on the shop floor: meditative, focusing and precise. Organic medium, organic large, non-organic medium, non-organic large. Unlike the apples which rolled around, each egg box had its place and stayed there, which Malcolm found strangely therapeutic.

  The customer had been pleased to find the eggs, having searched for some while.

  ‘They’re not easy to find,’ she said cheerily and without hostility.

  ‘Which is why I like them,’ said Malcolm. ‘I tend to be alone here.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to interrupt!’

  Malcolm smiled.

  ‘I don’t know why the shop is quite so keen to hide them,’ he said.

  No one could ever find the eggs.

  ‘The bigger question is: why are you so keen to hide yourself?’