Burnett: ‘Bloody hell. So Parry thinks he has to stop that investigation.’
‘Correct.’
‘Bye-bye Rhydwyn Lloyd. And almost goodbye you and me.’
I nod.
Burnett: ‘You think it was Parry who placed the explosive?’
I shrug. Don’t know.
‘Hope we get that bloody murder charge.’
He always wanted a murder conviction from this case, but Carlotta wasn’t killed, Bethan isn’t dead, and the missing-presumed-dead kidnappees are now neither missing, nor dead.
I say, ‘No maximum sentence for kidnap. If a court wants to hand down a life sentence, it can.’
‘Ha! That’s true. Six monks, plus Parry: seven.’
Burnett computes what seven life sentences on a single case translates into. The answer is Detective Chief Inspector, minimum.
‘And you’ll get Inspector,’ he says.
I make a noise with my throat and nose that, translated, means approximately, ‘I bloody well hope not.’
A uniform knocks at the car window. Starts asking some boring question about some boring evidence-handling issue.
Burnett’s attention starts to float away.
I call it back. ‘Boss?’
‘Yes?’
‘Bethan. Bethan Williams.’
‘What about her?’
‘She’s alive. Somewhere. She doesn’t have to run any more.’
‘OK. So she can come home.’
‘What if she doesn’t know it’s safe? We need to find her.’
‘It’ll be all over the papers. She’ll know.’ He shrugs.
A police shrug. A not-my-problem shrug.
His attention starts to shift away again. Before it quite vanishes, he says, ‘Look, Fiona, we’re here to solve and prosecute crime. Bethan Williams is an adult woman who can make her own free choice about how she wants to live. Those choices are no business of ours. It’s not a police matter.’
No business of ours?
And Neil Williams with his ruined life. And Len Roberts, a crazy but brave and resourceful man, with his.
If Bethan isn’t part of Burnett’s business, I think she might yet be part of mine.
I get out of the car.
Burnett yells, ‘Fiona, we’re going to need a statement from you.’
‘Now, sir? It’s been a long night.’
Burnett wavers. On the one hand, he wants to get every last shot in the can now. To run this case so tightly no defence barrister in the world will be able to raise a quibble.
And on the other hand . . . me. My kirtle, wimple and mantle. Those cells that are still in the process of being pulled apart.
‘OK, then. Tomorrow first thing. Now go home. Get some rest.’
I raise my hand in acknowledgement, but walk away.
Into the courtyard. Am going over to the church, when a constable, younger than me, says, ‘Sarge? We’ve got Miss Zhamanakova for you.’
Because my face doesn’t do an oh-yes-Miss-Zhamanakova thing, he says, ‘Cell number three? You asked.’
Yes, I did.
Cell number three. Aurelia.
I find her in the farmhouse living room. Those panelled walls. A fire roaring in the hearth. That oak sideboard with its water decanter, its glasses, its heap of fruit.
Those things and Aurelia. Two uniformed officers are talking to her. A paramedic. The junior doctor just finishing up some tests. Blood tests. Blood pressure. Heart. Other things. I don’t know what. There’ll be more tests, hospital tests, after this. Burnett has a Family Liaison type working to make arrangements with the medical team, the victims, the families. What those arrangements are, I neither know nor care.
I say something.
Nobody hears.
I try saying something again, but no one’s listening, so I just say, ‘Look, fuck off. All of you. Just fuck off out of here.’ Say it grimly enough and repetitively enough that they all do, except this pale woman in her grey habit.
Someone closes the door and the two of us are left here. I shed my borrowed jacket in the hall. Aurelia has laid her mantelet I don’t know where. She’s still wearing her wimple, but aside from that we’re the same.
Give or take the odd electric light, we could be two women from a painting five centuries old. Even the air is quiet at that thought.
I say, ‘Sister Aurelia.’
Her lips close several times on air before they form an actual word – I know what that’s like – but I know what she’s going to say before she says it.
‘Sister Julian.’
We sit.
Opposite each other at a short refectory table. Like staring into a mirror, except that she is taller than me, and very pale. The skin and eyes of a land close to the High Arctic.
Her kirtle is beaded around the neckline, where mine is plain, but the bootstring lacing at the front is the same. The grey cloth is the same. The weight of scratchy wool. The thin, almost sheer, undershirt.
I say, ‘Last night. You saw me through the glass? I thought I felt it.’
‘Yes. That evening. They told us you were joining. You made cross and, I don’t know, this.’ She crosses herself and, as far as you can while sitting, bobs.
‘I curtsied. Yes. You got the best one.’
She smiles, but there’s no happiness in the smile. As far as there’s anything in her eyes, it’s shock. A sense of danger.
I say, ‘All the brothers are under arrest. Father Cyril, Anselm, Nicholas, all of them. Dylan Parry too. The man whose cellar you stayed in.’
‘Thanks you.’
‘They will go to jail and never come out. We’ve swapped places, them and us. It’s their turn now.’
She shakes her head. A tiny shake and a real one.
She does that partly because no British prison would reproduce the kind of confinement that this woman has endured. But mostly because imprisonment is an inner thing more than an outer one. Part of Cyril, I think, will welcome the chance to withdraw. ‘I myself have just finished four weeks in which I spoke not a word. I’m afraid elephants might have walked through that courtyard without me noticing.’ Perhaps he half-wanted this outcome. Perhaps they all did.
Aurelia says, ‘You are a police?’
‘A police officer. Yes.’
‘Last night, when I see you, I— ’
‘Yes?’
I think this is what I wanted to know. The reason I asked to see this woman. I want to understand what she felt. What she saw.
She says, ‘I don’t know.’
I feel a quick rush of disappointment black-tipped with anger, but she hasn’t finished speaking.
‘I don’t know. I have two thought. One is, you are real one. You are really here to do this thing.’ She sweeps her hand from wimple down towards the hem of her skirt. ‘You have this in your face which say, “Yes, I am come to really do this.” But also, I think, this woman make us free. How, I don’t know, but . . . this woman make us free.’
I say, ‘What did you do?’
She snorts at that. Dismissively. A stupid question.
‘What you think I did? What is to do in there? I prayed. For you, I prayed.’
‘All night?’
‘Yes.’
‘On your knees?’
‘Of course.’
My mouth moves in a ‘thank-you’ shape, but says nothing.
We’re silent a few moments. A merest speck of the silence that Aurelia has known these last several years.
Then she says, ‘I was almost ready for my third dress. You spoil this. I don’t get my dress.’
I don’t know what that means. Say as much, and she tells me.
When things wore out, the monks weren’t mean or stupid about replacing them. When Aurelia’s undershirt disintegrated with use, they simply replaced it, no questions asked.
But then her dress, her kirtle, started to collapse.
‘Here is bad and also here.’ She indicates where seams started to go at the neck and s
ide. ‘Also,’ she says, fanning her hands under her nose, ‘I don’t think it is good.’
‘So?’ I ask.
‘So I say I am ready for new dress. They say yes, no problem, please to pass out. So I give them. Wait for new dress. But all they do is sew here, here,’ she mimes the same seams. ‘Not even clean. I cry. Am angry and they just say, “You must pray, Sister. Pray for dress.” So I do. Pray real . . .’ Her hand raps her chest.
I say, supplying the words that, in English, she doesn’t have, ‘So you prayed with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength.’
‘Yes. This. Exact.’
‘And?’
‘I wear my dress out. Not here.’ Her hand waves around her neck and upper body. ‘But here.’ She points down to her knees, hidden beneath this refectory table. ‘Both knees, holes. And then I say, “Brother Monk, dear fellow, I am ready for new dress,” and I pass it out and, same day, is come back new dress. Brand new. Same . . . same . . .’
‘Any colour you like, as long as it’s grey. Any fabric you like as long as it’s wool.’
‘Yes. But also this.’ She runs her hand around her neck, that beaded collar. ‘This beads. Little silver bead. And I am so happy I cry, really, for three days. When I sleep, I touch, touch, touch. But also one other different. The cloth here,’ she indicates her knees, ‘is more thick than first dress. Only here on knee. Everywhere else the same. And I understand. I can get third dress. Third dress even nicer. Maybe more bead. Maybe, I don’t know, belt? But I have to work hard. More hard than first time.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I pray on my knee every day. All day sometime. At night, if not sleep, then also pray. One knee already – phwoot!’ She makes a noise and gesture as of a knee popping through cloth. ‘One more knee and I get my dress. Then you come.’
She stands and shows me. One knee worn through. The other not far to go.
‘From now today, I will have new clothe, every day. Father has money, so best clothe of anywhere. And all I really want is to see that third dress. See if it have more bead.’
I stand up.
‘Aurelia, your wimple. Your headcovering. May I?’
It’s hard for her, but she nods. Says yes.
I untie her wimple. Drop it on the table next to her. Comb out her hair – which is very long, very blonde – with my fingers. She looks like a beautiful, frightened princess from a Russian fairy-tale.
‘It’s over, sweetheart. It’s really over.’
I hug her head against me and she cries. Long, trembling sobs which I understand because I have known them myself, albeit that my eyes never manage to produce tears.
We stay hugging. She stays crying. Human and human alone in an empty room.
After a while, and when I can sense she’s almost ready to pull away, a black Rolls-Royce glides into the courtyard outside.
‘Aurelia, sweetheart. Your family. Are they in London?’
‘Mother and brothers, no. They are in Moscva. But your policeman, he said, my father yes, my father in London, my father they call.’
As she speaks, she looks up. Looks into the courtyard. Sees a man – silver-haired, burly, pinstriped, Slavic – step out of the car.
She dissolves. ‘Papa. Papa.’ Her face is a mess of tears and love and her first real sense that her old life might yet grow again.
I rap at the glass. Attract his attention. But the young constable who directed me here is directing him too. He breaks into a heavy trot.
My cue to leave.
I take Aurelia’s hands – these hands which are no longer Aurelia’s, but which belong to a Miss Someone Zhamanakova, a person with whom I have a vanishingly small amount in common.
‘Peace be with you, Sister.’
She peaces me back, but her attention is elsewhere.
As it should be. As it should be.
I leave them to it.
I walk through the whole house. Searching through the monks’ bedrooms. Their music room. Their linen room. Every sodding room in that light-filled and handsomely appointed house.
I find it in the attic. A linen chest. Some sheets and blankets on top, but beneath them, clothes.
Undershirts. Wimples. Stockings.
Another plain grey kirtle, like the one I’m wearing. But some others too. I spread them all out on the bare boards of this little room.
I can see which dress was coming next. Sequins instead of beads. A silver tassel on the bootstring tie.
It’s clumsily done and not particularly attractive. Not by any standard that would have made sense to the Miss Zhamanakova of old. But there’s another dress here too. One with gold lace at the collar and a polished leather belt and just the merest whisper of black velvet at the hem.
That was certainly not dress three in the sequence. I doubt if it was even number four. It looks more like five to me, even six. Thick padding at the knees. Padding so thick, they had to quilt it.
Long years of prayer needed to get through to the frock after this one.
I take the dress. Stealing evidence, in theory, except phooey to that, those boys are going down. The only evidence that mattered was ripped apart with picks and sledgehammers earlier this morning and a million people watched it happen.
Using pen and paper from the abbot’s study, I write a note.
‘Dear Aurelia, This was the next dress. Call me any time. Fiona (Sister Julian)’.
Add my home address and a phone number.
Down in the courtyard, the Rolls has long gone, taking father and daughter back to the life they once shared. I shove the dress and the note in a plastic evidence bag. Find a uniform and tell him to post it to Miss Zhamanakova.
‘Post it first class. No, actually, special delivery. Do it right now. Don’t mess up.’
The uniform jumps to it. Leaps to it.
I glimpse myself in the hall mirror. I look like an angry nun. Never say no to an angry nun: first rule of policing.
Burnett sees me.
‘What the hell are you still doing here? I told you to go.’
‘No vehicle, sir. The senior investigating officer hasn’t bothered to give me wheels. I’m not sure this inquiry is being very well run, to be honest with you.’
Burnett yells at someone outside. Tells them to bring a patrol car.
As they go, he says to me, ‘The dead house in Ystradfflur. Why that? I can see they had a body they weren’t expecting. They’re religious guys, so they don’t just want to drop Mishchenko, the one you call Carlotta, into a lake. But why there? Why not at least drive her to some other part of the country altogether?’
I chide him. ‘You’re thinking modern again, inspector. You need to think medieval.’ That doesn’t illuminate things for some reason. So I explain, ‘This is the monastery of St David. He’s their patron saint. Now David’s big thing, his signature miracle if you want to put it like that, was raising a hill at Llandewi Brefi—’
‘A hill? In Llandewi? Why would anyone—?’
‘I know, don’t ask. But Llandewi is the place for anyone who venerates St. David and I think that’s where they wanted to take Carlotta. Far enough away that she’s off their turf and a reverential place to lay her out. A nice compromise. Only, that night, there’s the tanker spill on the A40. Emergency vehicles everywhere. And no safe route through to Llandewi. Whoever’s carrying Carlotta basically panics. They decide they need to dump her and dump her fast, but still somewhere respectful and preferably somewhere that—’
Then Burnett gets it. ‘The Church of St David at Ystradfflur. The same bloody saint.’
‘The same bloody saint. Exactly.’
The weird thing about this whole case is that, if I’d been wearing my medieval glasses from the start, I’d have got the whole thing more or less straightaway. Those five panes of glass in the church: there’d have been plenty of medieval peasants who’d have understood them for what they were. The icons above: any medieval churchman would have known
that these were saints revered for their feats of godly isolation.
I think Cyril even took pleasure at laughing at my blindness. ‘There is compulsion in religion too,’ he told me. As he told me about David’s miracle at Llandewi. As he handed me Mother Julian’s Revelations. As he sized me up for that final cell.
The patrol car arrives. Burnett tells the driver to deliver me home. ‘If she tells you to go anywhere else, to make any kind of stop or detour, you say no. And you actually wait long enough to see her in through the front door. Yes? Have you got that?’ The driver yes, sirs him and looks fiercely at me.
Then, to me, Burnett says, ‘Go home. Go to bed. Get some rest.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I say.
And obey to the letter.
47
We get the gang, or Burnett does. London and Wales, both damn ends of this operation.
Parry’s phone gives us contact numbers. One of those numbers connects to a man who owns a dark-grey BMW, a BMW that we can place on the King’s Road in Chelsea at 1.10 a.m. on the night Alina Mishchenko was taken. And, joy of joys, that same BMW owner once owned a pale-blue Audi, which was one of the two unaccounted-for London number plates in Llanglydwen, that week after Bethan’s vanishing.
Those things gave us enough, more than enough, for a search warrant. One of those steel-ram, siren blaring, you’re-so-totally-fucked raids that every copper loves more than anything, me included.
The man involved, our target and now our prisoner, is called Michael Nugent. The guy owns a couple of fancy restaurants in Hammersmith, London. Lived in a big, leafy house in Chiswick worth maybe three million. His home computer was encrypted and secured, but wasn’t encrypted enough. Not when pulled apart at a GCHQ lab in Cheltenham, staffed by the best minds in cryptography and computer tech.
And the computer reveals – everything. I don’t understand the process, but our techie guys can basically connect that computer via a whole chain of proxy servers to the emails sent and received by Jack Gerraghty and the Mishchenkos. Not just those emails, but others too. Nine kidnaps in total, Aurelia – Ekaterina Zhamanakova – being one of them. Four of those kidnappees ended up buried in the walls of that Llanglydwen monastery, and are now out and free. Poor Carlotta never survived Dylan Parry’s cellar and her ghost now broods over the black and silent waters of that underground lake. In the remaining four cases the ransom money was paid. Money totalling somewhere just north of forty-five million dollars, or about thirty million quid.
The Dead House: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller (Book 5) (Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series) Page 36
