by J M Gregson
Alison Cullis hadn’t thought about Faith for many years now. Faith was a Catholic method of cheating, seized on also by other religions when they met queries they could not answer. You could overrule all questions by simply declaring them out of court and telling the doubters that they must have Faith. Alison tried to dismiss such unhelpful thoughts; she was getting further away from prayer, not closer to it. She concentrated on the single red light which burned in front of the high altar, the symbol of the real presence of God in this place, the simplicity which should cut through all the complex layers of confusion and deceit and enable you to speak personally to your Lord.
With her eyes closed, she heard the door of the sacristy open ten yards to her right, caught the shuffling of feet, the muted sound of the door of the confessional opening and closing. In the stillness of the high church, it seemed almost beside her. She was mouthing the words of worship, trying to dismiss the sounds she heard, but prayer would not come to her stubborn mind.
She opened her eyes. The dim light from behind the closed door and the name over it told her that Father Donnelly was now within his private cubicle and waiting to hear confessions.
That was irrelevant to her. She did not know Father Donnelly and she had not come here to confess. Why should you need a priest between you and God to obtain forgiveness? This was part of the outdated shambles which she was surely on her way to discarding.
And yet, without any conscious decision to stir her limbs, Alison Cullis rose and moved through the adjacent door and into the confessional.
In the warm darkness within, childhood took over. She knelt easily and automatically, pressed her head towards the grille, mouthed the words she thought she had forgotten. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It is many months since my last confession...’
The old priest’s voice was asthmatic, experienced, sagging a little with boredom. She caught a whiff of half-digested food through the holes of the metal, wondered irrelevantly if it was bacon she could smell. Then the stronger smell of stale tobacco took over and the tired voice with the Irish brogue told her to proceed.
Alison had not prepared for this. She concentrated upon the small, half-forgotten, unimportant sins you had to conjure up for this, the losses of temper, the uncharitable fits of impatience. She wondered if you were still supposed to confess the use of birth-control devices, whether this wheezing voice would order her to desist from the instruments of Satan if she told it she was on the pill.
Even here, where the barriers were down and you were supposed to have no shame, she found that she could not articulate those greater sins, those urges which would send her soul screaming into hell. She could not force these things into words, even for herself.
Before she knew that she had finished, the aged, invisible mouth was rasping out the words of absolution. It was time now to rise and to go, but the knees which had bent so automatically to the kneeler would not straighten. Then, as if it was in league with her atrophied limbs, the priest’s voice said, ‘You did not come here today to confess, my child. God has forgiven you the small sins you have confessed, but your soul has other clouds upon it.’
‘Father, I want a divorce.’ The words she had been unwilling to voice to any of her intimates came out now to that unseen, alien, surely unsympathetic face behind the grille. ‘I’ve tried hard to make a—’
‘Divorce is against the teachings of Holy Mother Church, my child. You know that as well as I do, in your heart of hearts.’
Alison Cullis tried to summon the contempt Richard would have voiced so effortlessly. Instead, she found herself making pathetic apologies. ‘I’ve tried, Father. I’ve tried really hard.’
‘Marriage is a sacrament, my child. The vows you freely undertook when you came to the church to participate in that sacrament were solemn and binding promises, made in the presence of Almighty God and invoking his blessing. They cannot now be subject to the whims of men or women.’
‘We are well into a new millennium now, Father. The Church must move with the times.’ The habits of childhood are embedded deep within us: Alison Cullis felt very daring in making even this mild, hopeless protest to the figure of ancient authority she could not see behind the screen.
And it was hopeless, of course. The man who had never been married voiced the platitudes of love and humility, of the willing acceptance of the will of God. She must pray for guidance and rely upon her faith to carry her through. That word again: faith. As it rang in her ears, she realized the futility of this exchange and found herself at last upon her feet again.
Alison Cullis moved away from the confessional, into the main body of the church, where she sat alone and looked up at the high altar. She was still for perhaps twenty minutes, unwilling to re-enter the real world outside, looking unseeingly at the brass and the gold and the ivory in front of her. When she left, she paused at the back of the church to take a last look at the vaulted ceiling and the distant altar. She would not come here again.
If divorce wasn’t on, she would have to think of another way out of this.
The man Alison wished to be rid of was full of his own concerns. Six hours later, as the warm summer twilight moved into night, Richard Cullis sat alone in a pub between Gloucester Cathedral and the city’s ancient docks on the River Severn.
The Director of Research came here quite often. The beer was surprisingly good, and you could be anonymous here, among the cross- section of the city’s residents which migrated to the dock area in the evenings. They were a strange mixture, but one entirely to Cullis’s taste.
There were sales reps staying in Gloucester who came here in search of a little local colour: Richard smiled at his euphemism, picturing what it covered as he looked round the place. The man with a creased suit and hair straying over his collar was no doubt looking for a woman. If he did not pull here he might be cruising in pursuit of the local prostitutes before the night was out. The man with dyed blond hair and Botoxed face who kept looking at his watch was no doubt waiting for a different sort of assignation. Richard, sensing that the male awaited was not going to come here, was seized by a sudden sympathy for the loneliness and desolation of a world which was totally unknown to him.
The rowdy group of youths whose number had grown from four to eight at the far end of the public bar looked as if they were drinking to fuel a confrontation, perhaps with one of the rival gangs which were becoming an increasing city-centre problem. They wouldn’t be interested in the likes of him; they were looking for a rumble with roughs or their own age. Nevertheless, Richard would steer clear of them, be gone long before they were tanked up and dangerous.
Richard wondered if they were customers for the drugs which changed hands in places like this, or more likely in the small, dimly lit car park behind the pub. Several men and a lone woman who wore greasy anoraks even on this summer evening struck him as possible pushers, simply because they looked like users with a habit to feed. But this was no more than speculation: apart from a little experimental pot at university, he had never indulged in illegal drugs. When you were in the business, he told anyone who raised the question, you knew too much about the consequences to mess about with cocaine or heroin.
There was a variety of other individuals in here, the flotsam thrown up by the diverse life of the city, people who probably craved anonymity as much as he did. There was a smattering of accents which would never have been heard here ten years earlier, mostly Eastern European, if his inexpert ears could be relied upon. Legal immigrants, he supposed, or they would not have cared to be seen even here, where few questions were asked, and the men and women who served you did not chat across the bar, as they might have done in a village or even a suburban pub with a local clientele.
Richard Cullis had the sudden, unwelcome thought that he too was a loner, that if he continued his present lifestyle he might eventually end up as isolated and desperate as some of the figures who became the detritus of Gloucester society in places like this and worse. The horrifying F
red West and his equally horrifying wife had conducted their gruesome crimes not half a mile from here, with no one thinking such things were possible until it was too late.
Cullis banished such ideas firmly and turned his attention to more positive thoughts. Priscilla Godwin, with her demure air, her face of an old-masters’ Madonna, her suggestion of sexual tensions beneath her calm exterior, was beginning to fascinate him. He had made some progress the other night. He would come back to it, use his experience to play the game skilfully. She was there for the taking, if he went about it in the right way.
Then he looked ruefully at the bottom of his glass and wondered if that was the beer talking. He went and ordered a single whisky at the bar, taking care to put plenty of water with it: you had to be careful with your drinking, when you were driving. He smiled at himself and his attack of rectitude. He wouldn’t speak to that bitch of a wife of his when he got home. He’d go straight to bed; perhaps what he had drunk would get him off to sleep without the need for a pill, tonight.
Richard Cullis was surprised to find that it was dark when he went outside. He was glad he had not left his BMW in the car park, though there had been space there when he arrived. He did not fancy going into that cavern of darkness, enclosed as it was by high walls. It was dark enough on the narrow street where he had left the car, with the street lamp above it failing to function. He had a feeling that he did not remember experiencing before: he wanted to be out of this place quickly and driving on to the wider roads which led away from the older parts of the ancient city. He pressed the automatic de-locking button on his car keys, was reassured by the familiar bright orange flashing in the darkness.
Richard never knew where the man came from. He might have followed him out of the pub, he might have been waiting for him in the shadows: he might even have been crouched between two of the closely parked cars. Cullis did not hear or see this unwelcome arrival: the first thing he was conscious of was a voice hissing urgently in his ear, ‘Don’t look round! Look straight ahead and go to your car, if you want to survive this.’
‘I don’t have—’
‘And don’t speak a fucking word!’
The obscenity should not have scared him, but it did. It convinced him with its vehemence that this man meant him ill, that violence was only a careless move or a wrong word away. He slid into the driving seat, heard his enemy slide into the back seat behind him, heard the rear door click shut almost simultaneously with his own. So much for the virtues of central locking on which he had just congratulated himself.
Richard felt the coldness of metal briefly on the side of his face, then the sharpness of the knife’s point on the back of his neck. He licked dry lips, heard the tremor in his voice as he said, ‘You’re welcome to whatever money I have. My wallet’s in my inside pocket. If you will allow me to take it out, that’s the only move I’ll make. I won’t—’
‘I don’t want your bloody money, Cullis! ’
The man knew his name. This was personal. Just when he had thought the situation could not be worse, the screw had been turned. He could hear the man’s breath behind him, almost in his left ear, but he didn’t say any more. It was as if he wanted his victim to appreciate the full horror of his situation before he went any further.
It seemed to Richard a long time before he could put words together to frame a question. ‘What is it you want of me?’
‘You’ll find out. That’s if I decide to let you live. Drive! And don’t try anything fucking clever.’
It took him several seconds to get the key into the ignition, a thing which he normally did automatically and unthinkingly. He was terrified that his assailant would think that he was being deliberately evasive. He turned the key, heard the familiar engine purr into life, rammed his foot nervously hard on the accelerator, so that the engine roared towards a scream in the darkness. ‘Sorry!’ he said automatically to that hostile presence behind him.
‘You bloody will be, Cullis, if you draw attention to us. Now drive!’
Richard eased the car forward, pulling carefully out of the line of vehicles at the kerb without touching the shabby grey van in front of him. ‘Where to?’
‘I’ll tell you where to. Take the road out to the bypass. Then the A38 to Tewkesbury.’
The man knew exactly where he was taking him. That somehow made it even worse. Richard’s hands and feet moved automatically, conducting the ritual of driving; his eyes glanced right and left instinctively at the roundabout, looking for other cars. His brain was wondering insistently what this unseen, dangerous, unbalanced enemy planned to do with him. As if to point the question, the sharp point of the knife jabbed at the back of his neck, reminding him it was still there, breaking the skin, causing a trickle of blood to run.
Blood must surely be hot, but it felt cold as ice.
‘Left here, then first right. Be careful at the turning.’
They hadn’t stayed on the A38 for long. Suddenly Richard wanted to laugh at the mundane injunction to take care, to yell out about the uselessness of taking care when he had a knife against the back of his neck. He realized that he must be very near hysteria.
In fact, the direction to be cautious was well founded. As he waited to turn out into the narrow lane, a car came along it too fast, its brakes squealing a little as the driver saw them and belatedly slowed, its headlights on full beam dazzling Richard and his anonymous assailant. Richard stilled an absurd desire to yell out a useless attempt for aid at the swiftly passing motorist. For a second or two, the night seemed even blacker after the sudden blinding white light of this other vehicle. He felt the insistent pain of the knifepoint as he eased the car out between the high hedges and on to the lane.
They went on for four, perhaps five, miles through narrow lanes. Richard lost all sense of time and location, felt that he might drive thus for hours, until a merciful oblivion overtook him. The man behind him said nothing, apart from occasional curt directions about which way to turn the car at junctions. Richard thought that they were probably deep into the countryside between Gloucester and Tewkesbury, in the flood plains of the Severn. The recent summer floods had still not drained: he caught glimpses of fields beneath feet of water, catching the light from the stars and the crescent moon above, still and sinister in the prevailing darkness.
‘In two hundred yards, you’ll see a parking place on your side of the road. Pull in there and stop.’
It was the longest order the man had given him. A young voice, Richard decided, more educated than he had thought at first, when the obscenities had deceived him. It was not much, less telling than even a single visual detail, but if he ever got out of this and went to the police, they’d want whatever he could give them. His brain seemed to be working again.
There was another car in the parking spot, its windscreen facing him as he pulled with infinite care off the road. He suddenly didn’t want to cease moving, sensing that he had been brought here for a purpose, feeling that stopping the BMW might be his last action in this world.
‘Well, Cullis,’ said the voice in his ear, its excitement rising.
Richard had the image of a medieval torturer who was going to take pleasure in his work. He said hoarsely, ‘Who are you? What is it you want with me?’
‘Switch off the engine now. Don’t try to turn your head, or I’ll enjoy it and you’ll regret it.’
He turned off the ignition, heard the soft notes of the big engine disappear into a silence more profound than he had ever experienced before. He could hear the regular breathing of the man behind him, but the voice said nothing for long seconds, enjoying the terror seeping through the pores of its victim. Richard stared at the windscreen of the car facing him. it was no more than twelve feet from him, but he could distinguish no detail of the faces behind it. He thought he caught a movement there, but that could have been his overwrought imagination, or a cloud crossing the face of the moon above them.
‘You work at Gloucester Chemicals.’
It was
a statement, not a question, so Richard said nothing. He should have been even more perturbed at what they knew about him. Instead, he felt an unnatural, overwhelming relief, rising to his temples, bringing him near to a dead faint. He might not be killed, not here. They wanted something from him.
After perhaps half a minute, the voice said, ‘You’re the Director of Research at Gloucester Chemicals.’
This time some response seemed to be needed: perhaps the man wanted an acknowledgement of his cleverness. Richard said, ‘That is my title, yes.’ For the first time, he had an inkling of where this was going. It brought his terror back to him. If he was right, these were ruthless people, quite capable of unthinking, illogical violence.
The voice said calmly, ‘You’re going to release those animals from your laboratory. ’
‘It isn’t in my power to do that. I’m not a working scientist any more.’
The man went on as if he had not spoken. ‘You’re going to make sure that all experiments cease forthwith.’
‘I don’t do any experiments on rabbits or dogs - not even on rats.’
His hair was abruptly seized and his head bent backwards. The blade of the knife was at his throat now; both he and the man behind him knew that his life could cease in an instant with the severance of his carotid artery. ‘You’re in control there, Cullis. We came for the organ- grinder, not the monkey.’ A sudden harsh laugh told him that the man with the knife at his throat was very near the edge of his control. ‘We’d rather see monkeys live than scum like you.’
‘Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t stop the testing of drugs on animals. There are government requirements that we do exactly that. We have—’
‘Don’t give me that! You’re in charge of the labs, Cullis. You’re the bastard who can stop this. And you’re going to do that. If you want to go on living your miserable life, you’re going to do exactly that!’
Richard said nothing, realizing that he could not go on arguing, accepting that reason was something this man and his colleagues did not want to hear. Terror now was sagging into despair. This wasn’t a random attack by a hoodlum. The man with the knife at his throat might be demented, but he was part of something larger, which had its own perverted creed to drive on its actions.
