by Simon Parke
‘I merely want to know if you were serious about investing in Mind Gains and how you felt when - or if - you were turned down.’ Martin stopped swinging in his chair.
‘Frances and I used to have sex,’ he said. Ah. Peter wished Tamsin was here.
‘You were lovers?’
‘No, we just had sex. No love. I don’t think either of us would have wanted that, or known what it was. Indeed, I still don’t. And it’s ages ago, a very old story. University and all that.’
It felt like a new story to Peter.
‘And you stayed in touch?’
‘Heavens no. Definitely lost touch, no touch at all, until we bumped into each other in Lewes High Street, thirty years on.’
‘A chance meeting?’
‘After which a very interesting cup of coffee followed.’
‘And she told you about her ideas for Mind Gains?’
‘Among other things. Allow me a private life, please!’
‘Nothing much is private when murder comes to call.’ Abbot Peter shifted in his seat.
‘I know what you want to ask, Abbot, and the answer is “No” - it all seems rather childish now.’
Peter nodded.
‘And you offered money?’
‘I did.’
‘Are you not busy enough?’
‘I get bored very easily, Peter. You can hear my confession, if you like. I’m bored of this job, I need more stimulation in the office. Work on a national in London and there are at least one or two intelligent folk filing copy, a controversial columnist, a greedy MP, a bitchy Oxford professor, all thoroughly unpleasant - and in the professor’s case, pure acid. But all bright and amusing nonetheless, good company. Here in the provinces however - .’
His face mimicked despair.
‘I apologise on behalf of dull provincial people everywhere.’
‘I mean, I’m getting bored of you, even as I sit here, Abbot! I was delighted to see you, always a pleasure, but the novelty soon wears off. Nothing personal.’
‘If it’s any consolation, Martin, I’m still quite interested.’
‘I wish I could join you.’
‘And I’m especially interested in your feelings towards Barnabus, when Frances passed you over for him.’
‘I wasn’t passed over.’
‘I think you were.’
‘She wanted a shrink, that’s what she really wanted, though God knows why.’
‘She wanted someone qualified to do the job?’
‘Therapy is a profession where qualifications mean nothing - particularly at Henry House!’
‘You don’t like Barnabus.’
‘Believe me, whether or not I like Barnabus has got nothing to do with it.’
Peter considered for a moment.
‘So you bear no hard feelings towards him - or Frances?’
‘What a strange world you inhabit, Peter.’
‘Why so?’
‘To imagine there could ever be hard feelings about something like that.’
‘Something like rejection?’
‘It was just business, entertainment! I think religious folk struggle with bitterness more than the rest of us!’
‘So when Frances said no, everything was good?’
‘We need not over-egg the pudding, Peter. But pretty much so, yes.’
His phone then rang.
‘Hello?’ he said, while waving goodbye to the Abbot. Their time was clearly done and Peter gathered his things.
‘And who’s speaking?’
‘It’s Rebecca, Mr Channing.’
‘Ah yes, well I think I once met your husband at Henry House.’
‘Yes, you did, Mr Channing.’
‘So how can I help, Rebecca?’
Peter would have liked to have heard more. He’d have liked to have heard both Rebecca’s problem and Channing’s solution, but the editor’s gestures were clear enough; he was being dismissed and was soon on a bus back to Stormhaven, having forgotten both baby wipes and milk.
‘Damn.’
Peter was still coming to terms with the need to shop. You don’t shop in a monastery: all that you need is already there, and if it isn’t there, it’s probably out of reach, a couple of deserts away. But here in Stormhaven, and presumably other towns in the west, nothing is there unless you go and get it. Some people like going to get it, and they are called ‘shopaholics’. But Peter was not one of these. He hated going to get it.
But he did like the bus and had found a window seat on the top deck, half way back. The light was fading but he clearly discerned the flinty silhouette of Lewes prison, a Victorian addition to the landscape at the top of town. It’s most famous inmate down the years was probably Eamonn de Valera, incarcerated there after the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916. He was a man who interested Peter: a man sentenced to death by the British government and then reprieved because of his American birth; but even more interestingly - for Peter at least - a Republican politician who asked to be buried in a religious habit. It was not a desire Peter shared, a religious habit for eternity? Exciting perhaps for a politician, but less so for an Abbot and as the prison disappeared from sight, he wondered: would this be where the murderer of Barnabus spent their first night in captivity? Only if male, and more pressingly, only if found. How near were they? And what wall of fire stood between them and the truth?
But what most focused Peter’s mind as they accelerated down the A27 was the fact that he’d heard the same woman’s voice twice that afternoon: once at Henry House in the hall, demanding to know what was happening, and then again on the phone to Martin Channing, seeking his help.
Her name was Rebecca and she was clearly in some distress.
Sixty Six
‘Well of course I lied about my intentions! I was hardly going to tell the truth!’
Virgil’s forceful defence put Tamsin on the back foot, when she should have been on the front.
‘Lying to the police is a crime.’
Lame, Tamsin, very lame - you can do better than that.
‘I didn’t lie anyway,’ says Virgil.
‘You just said you did.’
‘Hyperbole. You never asked me whether I’d lived in the house as a child! Did you ever ask me that?’
Tamsin stares. For a posh boy, Virgil lives in a very small house, covered in papers and piled with books, photos on the mantelpiece of smartly dressed college days, a louche, golden haired youth amongst others born to rule.
‘Had I been asked that, asked whether Henry House was my family home - and a perfectly fair question it would have been, let me add - I would of course have given plod an answer of unimpeachable truthfulness.’
‘Instead of the lie you did give us.’
‘You’re rather one-tracked, aren’t you?’
‘Some call it focused.’
‘And perhaps you have to be one-tracked to be a plod.’
‘You talk as if you’re somehow superior.’
‘Don’t know about that!’
‘It’s how it sounds.’
‘I’m multi-tracked, me - I see seven things at once, sometimes more, superior possibly but damnably irritating!’
‘So shall we get back to the subject?’
‘And what you call a lie, this is my point - we’re getting there, across unpromising terrain, I grant you - what you call a lie, I call the tilting of my sails to the changing wind.’
Tamsin found him strangely believable. He wasn’t lying, of course not; he was simply tilting his sails towards the changing wind. It was self-evident, surely? Note to self: ‘Tamsin, get a grip.’
‘So here’s a question: are you a murderer?’ Virgil laughed.
‘I’m a rogue - but a loveable rogue!’<
br />
‘You’re a rogue.’
‘Total rogue, hands-up to that, no defence.’
‘And what makes you a rogue?’
‘Questions, questions!’
‘It’s what I do. I want to find out about you.’
‘Exactly. And I don’t want you to find out about me! I like me covered over.’
‘So why are you a rogue?’
‘Look, I rather abuse trust... terrible abuser of trust, is that good enough?’
‘You abuse people’s trust?’
‘And people don’t like that, not a good idea, “Abusing trust is a very bad plan, Virgil!’’ ’ he says, in a voice other than his own.
‘So you abuse trust.’
‘Mea culpa.’
‘Anyone’s trust in particular?’
‘No one I’m telling you about.’
‘So shall I take you down to the station for further questioning?’ Virgil subsides.
‘Well, old wifey probably hasn’t seen the best of me.’
‘Your wife thinks you’re a bastard?’
‘Totally my fault of course, well partly hers, but the largest serving of blame is on my plate, definitely, large portions, though she hardly helped things, all that roaring about, like some deranged lioness.’
Tamsin felt as one walking in mud, slipping and sliding, no grip and little progress.
‘So you’re a rogue but a loveable rogue, you say?’
‘Absolutely!’
‘And who says you’re loveable?’
‘Who says?’
‘I don’t see a queue.’
Virgil gives a naughty grin.
‘I say I’m loveable, damn it!’
‘I’m not sure that counts.’
‘I won’t let you not love me! Everyone loves Virgil!’
‘Barnabus struggled to love you. A pretty hard session you had together, by all accounts.’
‘He was like a fancy fly half on the rugby pitch, and I mashed him, battered him totally... I mean in the session, not with the poker.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘I think I’d remember.’
‘Only if it suited you.’ Virgil is frustrated.
‘The man’s in my house, for God’s sake, in my bedroom! He’s sleeping in my bedroom! That’s definitely bad form.’
‘Your old bedroom.’
‘Who ever forgets their childhood bedroom?’
‘I’ve done my best, but you seem to be struggling.’
‘It was my bedroom.’
‘The bedroom you walked out on before embarking on a long and drawn-out tantrum towards your father, who remained at Henry House.’
‘That’s completely different.’
Sixty Seven
A fire burned in the hearth of Sandy View and the Abbot and Tamsin sat as close to the flame as possible. Peter was perched on the old herring box and Tamsin enjoyed the chair.
‘You could always get another chair,’ said Tamsin.
‘I keep meaning to.’
‘That’s a statement that lacks conviction.’
‘No, I definitely keep meaning to.’
‘If you wanted a chair you could have one the following day; you could have a new chair tomorrow.’
‘It’s on my list.’
‘Is that the imaginary one you never look at?’
Peter raised his eyebrows at this sustained intrusion into his private life.
‘It has a slightly notional feel, I grant you.’
It was good to recognise the truth sometimes: he didn’t have a list. Tamsin poses a leading question: ‘Do you fear that two chairs would encourage more people to drop in?’
‘Anyone’s welcome here,’ says Peter.
‘Really?’
‘Open door.’
‘But that isn’t the message of the furniture.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The furniture doesn’t speak of welcome or an open door. It says ‘Why are you here?’
‘You’re in a comfy chair, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, but you’re on a herring box.’
Outside was a cold clear night, as the tide withdrew slowly across the shingle, leaving shiny stones in the light of the moon. Both held a generous glass of whisky in their hands.
‘So what have we got?’
They’d decided that a review of the case was in order.
Tamsin: ‘We’ve got a spooky house, a murdered clown -.’
‘Psychotherapist.’
‘Same thing. And we also have what looks like seven suspects.’ Peter went through the list:
‘Frances Pole, Kate Karter, Martin Channing, Virgil Bannaford, Ezekiel St Paul, Pat Strong - and you’re including Bella Amal?
‘I know she wasn’t there, but her name has to be in the mix. She’s too involved.’
‘And the cleaner Pat Strong has gone missing in suspicious circumstances, after giving both a false name and false address to her employers. So who is she? Where is she now? And is she dead or alive?’
‘And if she’s dead, who killed her?’
‘Or what drove her to kill herself?’
‘Anything else from the notes Barnabus took after the meetings? Any unmentioned moments of revelation?’
‘I was most struck by Ezekiel St Paul.’
‘The Reverend.’
‘I just couldn’t see why he was there at the Feast. His particular brand of belief would regard therapy as little less than satanic. His attitude would be: why see a therapist when you can pray?’
‘And my attitude would be: why do either?’
‘He said himself that the godless cannot help the godly. So why did he choose the godless to speak to? I don’t understand his place in all this, it’s not making sense. And then there’s Kate Karter - .’
‘I’ve had my fill of her today.’
‘Really?’
‘She’s rung me three times to say that she believes her life is in danger.’
‘From whom?’
‘She doesn’t say. She spills her fears in a torrent of words and then makes a joke of it. So perhaps it doesn’t matter.’
‘Not necessarily. A joke for her is an escape from reality, a step away from her true feelings, a way to deflect attention from pain.’
‘You mean fear might be the truer emotion?’
‘Possibly. This is what Barnabus said about Kate: ‘Without a physical mask when we met - apart from the fake tan - but her emotional mask was a brittle and resistant thing.’
‘And Martin and Frances?’
‘Interesting.’
‘They once had a relationship, you say?’
‘They once had sex.’
‘The two are not entirely separate.’
‘I’m merely giving you Martin’s take on the matter. He was clear about the sex but against any mention of love. He did, however, want to invest in Mind Gains.’
‘But Frances went for Barnabus instead, the no-mark, poorly-qualified Barnabus, which can’t have gone down well.’
‘Martin says it meant nothing.’
‘And you believed him?’
‘I’m not sure. He does the careless veneer very well. And Virgil?’ he asked, aware he hadn’t heard from Tamsin about her visit. ‘He gave Barnabus a wretched time when they met.’
‘He was a bit of a lamb with me,’ said Tamsin. No need for the Abbot to know how difficult she’d found the interview.
‘But he didn’t like Mind Gains being there?’
‘He hated Mind Gains being there. Well, in his shoes, who wouldn’t?’
‘Are you his PR woman?’
‘I’m just say
ing!’
‘Not everyone clings to their past,’ said Peter.
‘Really? Well, what do you think of the Abbot who replaced you in your desert home? A tiny bit resentful perhaps?’
‘Funnily enough, I was speaking to him on the phone today.’
‘They have phones?’
‘Surprisingly good line. He could have been in Eastbourne.’
‘Maybe he was.’
‘I didn’t hear any retired couples in the background.’
‘And you like him?’
‘The new Abbot?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, we’re hardly friends.’
‘Precisely!’
‘And obviously he’s destroying the place.’
Tamsin laughed and Peter spouted some nonsense about people doing what they can until they can do it no longer.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘He’s a gifted man, but made small by his perceptions.’
‘And how does that work?’
‘A discussion for another time, perhaps.’
‘I don’t think I’ll be passing this way again, so it’s now or never.’ Peter is reluctant but the whisky is warm in his belly and the fire so fine it could seduce a nun. ‘We only begin to understand how our perceptions create our reality once we’ve been through some sort of change or crisis in our life, and been broken by it. Perhaps something collapses or we’re faced with new circumstances, where nothing that used to work for us works any longer. We’re then shocked into noticing how warped our perceptions have been to this point, how blinkered.’
Tamsin was struggling, but Abbot Peter knew his destination:
‘Abbot Donald, however - or Abbot Donaldo, as he calls himself, for fear of sounding like the cartoon duck - he hasn’t passed that way yet, hasn’t been broken, hasn’t allowed himself to be. So he’s still in the grip of his old perceptions, insecure perceptions, still trying to achieve success, nonsense like that.’
Tamsin pulled a face.
‘It isn’t a crime, Abbot.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Success.’
‘Indeed. But neither is the pursuit of it an interesting way of life for the adult human.’
Tamsin looked into the fire and sipped her whisky.
‘Sounds like you haven’t let go, Uncle.’
