Cyril holds my eye, every moment, but I can’t read his expression.
He’s led off.
Someone tells the civilians that they should go to their rooms and remain there until otherwise instructed. I find the person whose phone I’ve got and give it back. I tell her that I stole her biscuits as well, and she says, ‘Oh, that was you was it?’ and gives me a strange look.
Then Burnett says to me, ‘Five men. We’ve only got five.’
‘That’s why we need the ambulance.’
I take Burnett and a couple of others round to the vestry. Through the door that leads to the cells.
I explain what they are. Point to the one on the end of the row. ‘That was mine. Sister Julian. That’s what they called me.’
Burnett face goes pale white in shock. I don’t think he even went quite that colour down in the caves. He says, ‘Fuck.’
Burnett can walk OK, it seems, but bending isn’t his forte. So it’s the two men with us who throw open the iron hatches. They start shouting, ‘Police. We are here to release you. Please . . .’ I think they want to say, ‘hold on’, but holding on is the forte of these particular guys and girls. They’ve been holding on for years already. Were expecting to stay holding on for the rest of their prayer-achened lives.
Burnett starts to radio for help with demolition. One of the guys tries to gauge the depth of the walls by looking along the little food tunnels. Says, ‘Fuck.’ Looks pale.
A babble of accents – Slavic, Russian – comes out of the tunnels, weirdly warped and still muted by the stone.
A uniform tells me there’s a girl outside. Asking for me by name.
Cesca.
I tell him to send her in.
Stand there with Cesca. Show her the cells. The iron hatches.
She stares.
We go round into the church, where someone has had the wit to smash those glass windows with a police crowbar. Five heads in the openings.
Two men, heavily bearded, wild-eyed.
Two women, shocked, but somehow looking less bestial than the men, perhaps only because their faces are smoother.
I catch Aurelia’s eye – not that she’ll stay ‘Aurelia’ for much longer – and we stare at each other, recognising that moment we had last night. Me, enrobed as bride. She, kirtled and mantled and seeing herself in me.
Our eyes touch and I catch myself having the strangest thought. That I ruined this thing for her. Smashed her anchoritic freedom. As though I wanted what she had. I wonder if Anselm – the fifth face, at the fifth window, sightless but still praying by the shattered glass – was right. That something in me chose this place, this life.
The junior doctor comes to Anselm’s little window and starts to see if he can do something for his eyes. My guess is yes. My hope too. I wanted to get away from Anselm, not blind him.
At the other windows, an official clutter of paramedics checking on the kidnappees. Coppers trying to get names and next-of-kin information.
I watch for a second, then say to Cesca, ‘I really, really, really need that smoke.’
We head out.
Burnett yells, ‘Fiona, where are you off to? I still need to know what the bloody hell this is all about.’
‘Sir, I am going for a smoke and when I’m good and ready, I might come back.’
He does a short double-take. Shakes his head in disbelief. And lets me go.
45
Up on the hill, Cesca and I smoke.
Her joints are thin, weedy, useless things. Rolled too thin and with too much corrupting tobacco. But, three joints in, I feel almost calm.
As I light my fourth, the sun rises over Pen-y-fan and a plane of sunshine tilts and gilds everything with its touch.
Rose and gold and this sparkling diamond frost.
Cesca says, ‘Ess?’
‘Sorry. I’m OK. Really.’
‘If you want to talk . . .’
Because her serious, dark eyes still hold mine, I say, ‘Technically, I’m dead. They held a funeral service for me last night. It just takes me a bit of time to . . .’ To what, I don’t really know. But I raise the hand that has the joint in it, to the hills, to the valley, to the sun. ‘I wasn’t sure if I’d see any of this again.’
‘You said they were – anchorites?’
‘Yes. An anchorite – more commonly an anchoress – is a person who chooses a life of solitude and union with God. It’s a spiritual tradition that dates back right to the start of the Christian era, but probably reached its peak in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. For some reason, England and Wales seem to have had more anchoresses than anywhere else.’
‘And they were forced into it? It was a punishment?’
‘Oh no, they chose it. Absolutely no compulsion involved. It used to be quite a big deal. You had to ask your bishop for permission and there was a whole big process of prayer and reflection while the thing was being considered.’
‘OK.’
‘But assuming your bishop said yes, you could go right ahead. There would have been a vigil, a fast, a mass. Then the enclosure ceremony itself. The anchoress was taken to her cell and there’d actually have been a funeral service held for her. Not because she was dead, but because from now on she would be dead to the world. She’d have had her funeral service and then – at her request, this is precisely what she wanted – she was walled up. There was a window through which she could receive food and water. And, this bit was crucial, she had a little window, a “squint” it was called, that gave her a view of the church, the altar.’
Cesca is listening intently, but she’s also opening up her hippy-dippy little Indian box to get at the hash and tobacco and Rizla papers within. Starts to make a joint, because I’ve smoked all the ones she had pre-made.
‘Anchoresses would have had what I had, basically. A mattress. Plain clothes, rather heavy and scratchy. A Bible. And as much opportunity for prayer as you could wish.’ I grimace. ‘A girl can never have too many canticles, right?’
Cesca: ‘What if one of these people changed her mind? Tried it for a year and found she missed things too much?’
‘No dice. She’d made her vows. There was one anchoress who did change her mind. She got someone to open her cell and she left it. When the bishop heard, he flew into a rage and made her go back. Once you were inside, you were there for ever.’
Cesca looks hard at me, and I say, ‘I was. I’d made my vows. Knelt as they gave me a funeral service. Prayed as they walled me up. I was there for ever. That was their plan.’
Cesca, who doesn’t swear much, swears softly under her breath.
She wants to know how I got out, but I won’t tell her.
That old anchoritic tradition, it seems to me, was holy enough, good enough. Life back then was hardly easy, no matter where you were. And most anchoresses came to be seen as holy people, sources of wisdom, whom people would travel to see and consult. Theirs was a strange calling, perhaps, but not a crazy one.
And it happened by choice. Real choice. A choice where people could say yes or no. For all the crap and the earnestness and the theological justifications that Cyril and friends no doubt have up their monkish sleeves, they took away choice and forced phoney vows into unwilling mouths. Vows that any self-respecting deity would see for the trash they truly were. Those monks deserve to pay the heaviest of prices for their crime.
Deserve to, and will. It would be hard to think of a simpler case for the prosecution.
We smoke a bit more, and the brief sun vanishes behind cloud, and the rose and the pink fades from the air – except that it doesn’t, because it’s still there, dancing and for ever – as Cesca and I walk back down the hill through the baa-ing sheep.
46
By the time we’re down, the clean-up is in full flow.
Fire crews and a team of coppers are whacking at those damn cell walls with picks and sledgehammers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of men work so hard. One guy stands and assaults his piece of wall wit
h massive, repeated blows until his arms shake and his face and back are running with sweat. Then he stands back and his team-mate takes his place. Ripping out those stones, block after block, blow after blow. Somewhere down the far end, a guy with a power tool stands in a rain of stone dust, a pile of broken stone at his feet.
Almost nobody speaks but there is a tremble of rage in this room, the like of which I’ve never experienced.
I say to the crew attacking the third cell, Aurelia’s, ‘I would like to speak to this woman, please. When she is out and safe.’
They nod, wipe their faces, return to their task.
Burnett is busy with a million things. The whole machinery of arrest and charge. Assigning bodies to tasks. Approving interview strategies. Resolving problems. Keeping intact anything that’s forensically important. Handling the exhibits officers, the SOCOs, their questions. I don’t disturb him.
Someone’s got a van up from Carmarthen that’s doling out hot drinks and bacon butties.
I butty up. Drink a weak tea.
I’m on my second butty when Burnett finds me.
‘You still here?’
‘Yes, Brother Alun.’ I fold my hands in front of me and bow my head, anchoress style.
‘Don’t start that. Here, give me two minutes, can you?’
We sit in his car as he eats his bacon butty. His face has a kind of taut rigidity as he lowers himself into his seat, but after that one moment he seems comfortable enough.
I wonder if he’s remembering that first grey morning at Ystradfflur. He was slow to handle his butty then, but he’s making up for it now. Massive bites. A greasily gleaming maw.
He says, ‘My ribs hurt like buggering hell. I’m only on aspirin and paracetamol now.’
But he’s OK and getting better, so I say nothing, or nothing much.
He takes a monster mouthful of butty and says, through the mush, ‘OK, there’s a kidnap ring. I understand that.’
I nod.
‘Dylan Parry. He was the Welsh end of the operation. The one who held the kidnappees. The one who fed them, took care of them, and handed them back over if the ransom was paid. I get that.’
Nod.
‘But if you don’t get your ransom money, why the fuck do you do that?’ He jabs his butty at the monastery walls. ‘It’s not tidy. It’s not a safe way to dispose of your victim.’
I shake my head. ‘Really, are you sure?’
Burnett looks uncertain, and I follow up.
‘Remember Linnea Gorkšs? The girl found in that Sussex woodland?’
‘What about her?’
‘OK, from what we know now, today, she looks like a match. Russian Orthodox upbringing. Wealthy parents. Mysteriously dead. Killed efficiently enough that a major inquiry found no leads they could progress.’
Burnett stares at me and completes the train of thought. ‘So let’s say this kid, Linnea, was one of the very early targets. Family doesn’t pay up, the victim gets killed, but then – whoops – her corpse is uncovered. Massive police inquiry. A ton of publicity. And the people behind the kidnapping realise that corpse disposal isn’t actually all that easy or safe. They’re worried that the whole operation will be sprung into the open.’
‘Exactly,’ I say, ‘Exactly. And, look, I don’t know everything. But I imagine that Parry would have started out every inch the professional criminal. He was fine with kidnap. If that meant he had to murder an eighteen-year-old and dump her in a Suffolk wood, well, hell, that was in the job description. He just got on with it.
‘But then – I don’t know. Parry’s living in this valley. Maybe starts going to one or two services in the monastery just for the hell of it. Or because he had a guilty conscience. Or to build himself some cover. Who knows? Anyway, he gets talking to the monks. He realises these guys might be highly spiritual in some ways, but they’re also psycho-fundamentalist nutcases. Let’s say, for example, he hears Father Cyril letting rip on how today’s young and over-privileged are endangering their immortal souls. Maybe Cyril goes on a rant about how the true Christian soul longs for nothing more than silent communion with the Lord.
‘So Parry says, “Hey, guys, do I have sinners for you.” He explains that these monks would actually be saving lives. After all, if the monks don’t take the kidnappees, Parry explains, sorry and all that, but he’ll be obliged to kill them.’
‘Oh, bullshit,’ Burnett interrupts. ‘Why don’t the monks just go to the police?’
‘Why would they? They don’t regard our law as having any real validity. The only law they care about is the Word of God. And, in any case, if Parry made his proposal by way of a formal confession, I don’t think the monks can divulge his secret. I mean, legally, yes of course they can, but not under the rules they live by.’
‘That’s fucked-up.’
‘Fucked-up, but sweet, no? Basically, Parry makes a “confession” that the monks can’t do anything with. And he says, “Now, look, either I go on killing these people – who will, by the way, be damned for ever because of all that terrible soul-imperilment of theirs – or you get to save lives and save souls. How about it, Father?” Whether that’s exactly how it happened or not, I’d guess it was something along those lines. And the monks did really believe their own shtick. They thought they were doing a good thing here.
‘And in terms of cover, it couldn’t really have been better. A bunch of monks, who worked and prayed and were openly, obviously committed to a life of prayer and charity and poverty. All those things plus walls two foot thick. No doors or windows. From Parry’s point of view, it was like burying his corpses without the trouble of killing them. Nothing for us to find and if we did ever stumble across the victims by accident, we’d have rounded up the monks in a flash, but – unless any of those guys volunteered a full confession – we would have no way of working back to the ultimate perpetrators. What’s not to like about that?’
‘Fucking hell,’ say Burnett.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Fucking hell.’
‘Weird to think that all that was going on – ’ he gestures over at the now rapidly vanishing cells – ‘when we were in here that first day, chatting with the abbott and drinking their damn soup.’
‘Yes.’
Burnett never went into the church that first day. I did. Saw the icons and didn’t recognise their message. Looked in through those little windows and, for all I know, was witnessed by four pale-faced victims looking out.
‘Do you think Parry was actually religious?’
‘Don’t know. Probably not. I know he came to occasional services, but maybe that was just to keep in with the monks. Or maybe he just got a kick from thinking about what was happening behind those little panes of glass.’
‘Last night. Was he there as you . . .?’
‘No. I presume he was busy ditching my car, which we still need to find by the way, but I’m pretty sure he’d have been there otherwise. Apart from that, I had essentially the same treatment as the other four. I was heading the same way.’
‘Fuck.’
I’m still wearing my kirtle and Burnett’s face is sombre as he looks at it. He doesn’t even know about the bridal wear. The candles and the prostration and the funeral.
‘You’re OK, are you? Really?’
‘No, I’m not OK. Everyone keeps asking me stupid questions.’
Burnett focuses back on the case.
‘Bethan Williams,’ he says.
‘Yes, Bethan,’ I say. ‘A serious girl. Musical and religious. A bit infatuated maybe, the way some girls get into boy bands and some girls get into God. Probably infatuated enough and serious enough that the monks might have thought she had a vocation.’
Burnett: ‘A vocation for . . .?’ He nods at me. My anchoress garb.
I nod.
‘Yesterday afternoon, I walked the path that Bethan used to walk. I saw Parry’s place and realised that if Bethan had seen something, it was most likely here that she saw it. Perhaps a victim being taken by Parry an
d the monks together down to the monastery.
‘Whatever. But the point is, she figured it out. Realised who these people really were, what they were up to. She realised that these were astonishingly dangerous men and that she was at risk of going the same way. Perhaps she already knew a little too much. Perhaps one of the monks, convinced of her religious seriousness, told her more than he should have done. Or perhaps they saw her, just as they saw me, as someone who might want to do this thing for real.
‘Any case, she ran. At that time, her parents’ marriage wasn’t good. They were angry and arguing. They didn’t seem like a safe refuge for her problems. Len Roberts – who, by the way, did have sex with her a couple of times, but never forced, always consensual – he seemed like the obvious refuge. He sheltered her for a while, but then there was a police manhunt and, Roberts realised, SAS men out on the hills. Both of them felt, Roberts and Bethan, that she couldn’t go back to normal life. There was simply too much danger. And they were absolutely right. If Bethan had gone back, she’d have met with an accident.’
Burnett, who’s finished his butty and is now licking his chops and exploring his fingers, objects to that. ‘Right. Or she could just have reported the whole matter to the police.’
‘Really? Only to find that there’s nothing in Parry’s cellar except for his porno DVD collection? And nothing in that storeroom except for some sacks of grain and loose firewood? These were the very early days of the whole operation, remember, and the monks didn’t have much to clean up.’
Burnett follows that logic. Agrees with it. ‘OK, so she runs. Roberts gets her out of the valley via those damn tunnels. Kisses her goodbye. Off you go, lass, you go get yourself a brand-new life. He comes back. We give him a hard time, but he says nothing because that’s the deal.’
‘Yes, exactly,’ I say. ‘And years pass, no problem. Only then Carlotta comes along. A police inquiry gets going. And when we start to open up that cave, Parry sees what we’re up to. Now, he presumably didn’t know there was a cave there at all, let alone a second exit. But once we’d found the cave, Parry realises that Roberts somehow used that cave to shelter Bethan. In which case, she’s probably still alive. And if he’s figured that out, then we’ve figured it out, and all of a sudden there’s an active police investigation aimed at finding her and getting her story. And if we get her story, then the whole little operation is well and truly screwed.’
The Dead House: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller (Book 5) (Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series) Page 35
