The Fool

by Morgan Gallagher

  ‘Any trouble at home?’

  ‘Yes. Keely was brought in drunk and disorderly by the local constabulary about four weeks ago. Turned out that the perfect daughter had been skipping school and running wild in the evening when the family thought she was studying at a friend’s house.’

  ‘She’s one of the girls who have been in trouble since the youth group and choir started?’

  ‘Yes. Her father banned her from the choir, took her out of the local school and she started in a private Catholic school two weeks ago. Her mother drives her across town to the new school and drives her home. Father is refusing us access. We’re going through procedures to interview her.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Thirteen.’

  ‘The brothers?’

  ‘Ten and eight.’

  ‘They in trouble?’

  ‘No. Still at primary school, no problems reported. It’s just Keely that’s gone off the rails.’

  ‘Does it make sense to you, Shahrukh, the gangs targeting these girls through the Church?’

  He thought about it. ‘No, actually. From what I understand from the briefings I’ve had, the girls that join gangs are the ones already in trouble. They come from broken families with histories of abuse. The girls in the choir don’t tend to follow that pattern. Much more work for the gang, bringing them in. Gang meat is usually easy prey. Girls on the edge, already in trouble... they drift towards the gangs. The gang gives them family and safety. If you are in one of the stronger gangs, you never have any trouble at school or on the streets again as long as you are with your pack. If you are being bullied, the gang will dish out punishment. We had one girl who was being raped by her step-father: she got into a gang in order to get them to beat him half to death. She had to put up with worse than he was doing to her from the rest of the gang, but she took it. I was always confused by that.’

  ‘It was on her own terms.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The gang treatment, it was on her own terms. She knew what was going to happen, didn’t want it, but she’d agreed in her mind. You don’t look convinced.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It’s not something I can make sense of in any way. The women here, on the streets and the estates, often allow themselves to be treated very badly.’

  Maryam studied Shahrukh. His expensive suit cut to fit him, the pressed linen shirt collar and easy clean silk tie. His hands were soft, his fingernails manicured so discreetly that you had to really look. He’d worked hard at dressing to conform to his plain clothed superiors, but quality always shone through. Like his Italian shoes. Yes, she could see that he would have some problem understanding Peckham.

  ‘What brought you into the police, Shahrukh, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  His smile lit up his face. ‘Somebody’s got to catch the bad guys.’

  They set themselves to catching the bad guys the old fashioned way: hard slog. They sifted through all the evidence, twice. The coroner had constructed a timeline on the presumed time of death being at approximately four a.m. Blood flow would suggest that meant Jason had been cut for the first time at approximately one a.m. Toxicology still hadn’t returned results on what drugs, if any, had kept Jason lying down whilst he bled to death, so times could be out by a couple of hours, depending on what might have been in his blood.

  ‘What time does the CCTV show him entering the Church ahead of Father Jones?’

  ‘21.43. Father Jones went in at 21.55, came out at 22.20. Locked the door as he left.’

  ‘So, even if he had attacked Jason, then the coroner doesn’t think the cutting started for another two hours, maybe three?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘So what was he doing in there?’

  ‘The timeline is why Father Jones has not been charged yet. He can’t have attacked Jason and started the cuts that early, nor did he have enough time. Equally, no one else went in.’

  ‘What if there was someone else in there at the same time?’

  ‘It is possible. The cameras are not 24 hour, they come on at twilight.’

  ‘If Wyn didn’t do it before he locked up, what’s the thinking back at the office?’

  ‘That Father Jones knew the cameras didn’t pick up the outer door to the Sacristy and went in later using his key. Only he and Father Edwards had keys, and Father Edwards is too old and infirm to be considered as a suspect.’

  She mused on the two or three hours of ‘dead’ time for Jason Briggs.

  ‘Didn’t the coroner’s report say that Jason had eaten and drunk alcohol?’

  ‘Yes. They wondered if there was a drug, it might have been given in wine. But still no tox report as of yet, as I said.’

  ‘Show me the bit in the file.’

  He handed it to her and she read out loud. ‘Stomach partially full. Strong smell of alcohol. Meal of chicken, rice and peas had been ingested but was not fully digested. Meal probably eaten within two to three hours of death.’

  She looked at Shahrukh. ‘Where had he eaten chicken, rice and peas if he’d been in the Church since ten o’clock?’

  Shahrukh’s phone call to Barham about the stomach contents had two immediate effects. Wyn Jones, who had been en route for more questioning, was sent back to Westminster with a polite request he stay there for a few more days. Barham then phoned Keely Curtis’s father and read the riot act to him in a most convincing manner. Keely could, she promised, be taken into care if Inspector Barham thought she was in danger of significant harm; did Mr Curtis want to push that, given his thirteen year old daughter had been found in the gutter, unconscious in her own vomit, just four weeks ago? He agreed to her being interviewed as long as a lawyer was present.

  Shahrukh drove Maryam to the local mosque in his own car, which was gleaming, small and city-use compact. She marvelled that it had both its wing mirrors and no dents as he negotiated the tightly packed streets with the huge buses and trucks and constant double parking in every nook and cranny. He drove neatly but with just a hint of aggression. It seemed to work.

  Parking down the street, walking up to the mosque, Maryam observed that it was an old building that had been bought and made over into a Mosque. She read the plaque outside as she took a grey Hermes silk scarf from her coat pocket and covered her hair neatly. The plaque stated it was six years since the former Anglican Church had been converted. Maryam studied the arched windows where stained glass had been stripped out and replaced by plain and then looked up to the steeple, now used as a minaret, calling the faithful to prayer.

  Imam Abdhul-Rahemm Malik was a gracious host. Maryam, for her part, was a gracious and respectful guest. When tea was offered, she accepted it with appropriate gratitude and she sat neatly to one side of the Imam, making no attempt to shake his hand. The meeting had been arranged in the lull between afternoon and evening prayer and Maryam knew her time was very limited. The Imam had begun by thanking Maryam for ensuring that the Holy pages of the Qur’an had been treated with respect, and by offering his aid in any way. Maryam thanked him, then diverted the conversation to the Mosque in a way that disconcerted both the men.

  ‘Imam Malik, may I ask you if you were part of the organising committee that oversaw the buying of this property and the conversion?’

  ‘Yes, I was. We spent many years raising the funds for it. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I presume it had been abandoned and deconsecrated by the Anglican community before you took over?’

  ‘Yes. That is correct. This building had been empty for many years before we began negotiations to buy it. It came out of a meeting at an inter-faith council. The Church that was, even abandoned, was costing the Anglican authorities a fortune to maintain. But they could not demolish it or have it assigned to any other purpose.’

  ‘So a transfer to your community, whilst maintaining it as a place of worship, was suggested?’

  ‘Yes. We paid a token sum and made a contract that all the Christian elements we removed would be passe
d on to the Church, or the profit from their sale was. The stained glass windows went to a new Church being built somewhere else, I believe. The font and their altar were removed before we took possession.’ Malik was starting to look a little uncomfortable. Shahrukh spoke up.

  ‘Miss Michael, are you suggesting the mosque and the events at the Church are connected after all?’

  ‘Not in that sense, no, Detective Iqbal. As I’ve stated, I firmly believe that attacks are aimed only at the Catholic Church. That the use of Islamic elements is about causing trouble, not an actual part of the crime.’

  ‘Then why are you asking about this mosque?’

  ‘Because I suspect that whoever killed that young man and wrote upon his body knew a great deal, not only about Islam, but about Catholic beliefs. They knew how to instruct a young man from the streets on how to act in a Catholic Church. They could write Arabic with a sure hand. The person is educated about faith and highly knowledgeable.’

  ‘And...?’

  ‘When planning permission for the conversion of the Church here was undertaken, did you have any serious objections? And when I say serious, did you have objections lodged by someone who argued time and again, perhaps using lawyers or sending in many letters, or generally using the legal argument as well as a religious one?’

  ‘We had several objections, obviously.’

  ‘But did you have anyone that seemed to be... out of place? Out of the normal, expected response?’ It was Shahrukh who had picked up the thread and pushed forward. ‘Did you have any vandalism during the conversion? Anything unusual?’

  Malik nodded. ‘Yes, we did. How did you know that?’

  Maryam felt the knot in her chest loosen. Shahrukh’s voice betrayed that the same had happened with him. There was a chance that Wyn could be saved.

  Whilst Maryam was searching through records of the Mosque with Imam Malik, a young mother from the community by her side, Shahrukh had returned to New Scotland Yard to examine the police records about the same events. The usual stupid and everyday obscenities had occurred, such as slices of bacon being nailed to the doors. However, there had also been some more adept vandalism. A section from the bible had been carved into a wood panel alongside quotes from the Qur’an, on the inside of the former church. That had had to be removed and stored safely. The files contained a photograph of the panel before it was removed. Someone had spent a long time carving Deuteronomy 32.17 into the wood:

  They sacrificed to devils and not to God: to gods whom they knew not: that were newly come up, whom their fathers worshipped not.

  The Arabic was much shorter but beautifully carved. Very sure and clear on the swoops and curves. It was Sura 26.221 and translated as:

  Shall I inform you upon whom do the devils descend?

  Maryam wrote down both quotes, being careful to replicate them exactly.

  ‘Is the panel still in good condition? Do you have it?’

  ‘I would have to inquire. It may have been buried, I do not know.’

  Maryam turned to the file on the objections to the transfer. Among the usual deluge of complaints about anything changing in any way in someone’s beloved ‘community’, one complainant stood out. A man who had been voracious in his protests; he’d even chained the front gates, repeatedly. He’d tried to stop diggers and workmen going in and had protested vigorously the removal of the windows. He’d lodged dozens of complaints with the local council and the police. He’d ended up being given an exclusion order under an anti-social behaviour order, forbidding him from entering the street the building was on. In the five years since the order there had never been any more trouble from him. She noted everything down, thanked the Imam and the woman who had chaperoned them, and left.

  At the same time, a tearful Keely Curtis was detailing all the areas in the local Church that Jason Briggs had forced her to have sex with him. She’d thought he loved her, she explained, and had bought her gold earrings and a gold cross. Why would he buy her a cross if he didn’t love her? During the break in choir rehearsals, Jason had tried to find somewhere private for them to go and chat, but as the only place they could meet was the Church during choir practice, it was impossible. Her parents didn’t let her out of their sight apart from when she was at the Church, and she was never out of sight of the priest or a parish helper then. Jason finally persuaded her to meet in the Sacristy during a Sunday service. She was attending with her family and excused herself, saying she felt sick. She went out the Church doors and went round to the Sacristy, where Jason was waiting for her. He took her in and raped her with two of his gang whilst the Mass was being said through the wall. Jason used his mobile phone to film the other two having sex with her and threatened to send it to the whole school, and her father, if she said a word. Then they threw her back out into the graveyard. She’d gone home, showered, thrown her clothes into the washing machine and told her parents she was sick and stayed in bed for three days. She was too scared to do anything else, and when Jason started texting her to tell her to sneak out and meet up with the gang, she did as she was told. When Jason was thrown out of the choir and the new door and locks were put in the Church, Keely was ordered to make copies of the keys. She worked in the shop every Saturday and knew how to access the secure codes. She had been trained in making keys: it was how she earned her pocket money.

  Keely had continued to be raped by Jason and some of his gang, in various places in the Church. All the girls who’d been recruited from the choir had been involved in sex in the Church, usually either the confessional box or on the Altar. It was a ‘thing’ of Jason’s. He’d told her he only did it there with ‘special’ girls. In fact, there had been jealousy with some of the other gang girls, which Jason had solved by smashing the face of one of the trouble makers. He’d taken her into the Church with Keely and some of the other choir recruits and smashed the girl’s face open on the Altar stone as he’d raped her from behind. This had pleased Keely as the girl had been having a go at her personally. None of the other regular girls had complained about the ‘Church’ girls again. Keely had also been given a lot of jewellery and a bunch of girls at school who were bullying her had been ‘sorted’ by the gang. She had begun to like running with them and had started to take part in the drinking. It was only when she was caught paralytic in the streets when her father had thought she was fast asleep in bed, that her family had realised she was out of control and locked her down, literally. Dad had changed all the door locks in the house and installed security shutters on her bedroom window. She’d got out once from the bathroom window, but her dad had caught her in the garden and had knocked the living daylights out of her. She’d threatened to have him arrested for assault and they’d kept her in her bedroom until the bruises had healed a bit.

  ‘Can they do that, Inspector? Can your Mum and Dad keep you locked up like that, like an animal? I’ve told them how much I hate them, but they don’t care! I hate this new school, and they won’t listen to me, and now you know he hit me! They don’t care about me!’

  All Inspector Barham cared about, and was grateful for, was that she didn’t have kids.

  Maryam reached Scotland Yard before Barham had finished interviewing Keely. Gatto had been working with Iqbal on the records of the vandalism and obscenity at the mosque conversion. They’d found the same details about the legal order keeping the local man away from the mosque and had been checking up on him. His name was Geoffrey Embleton, he still lived in the area and he was in his late fifties. He hadn’t been in trouble since the problems at the mosque conversion. They were happy to let Maryam feedback to them her thoughts.

  ‘I’m pretty sure he’s a Catholic, raised by a very old, or strict, family.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘If he did this carving here on the wood panel, it’s from a Catholic Bible, not an Anglican one.’

  Gatto was impressed. ‘You can tell that just by looking?’

  ‘Yes. Translations differ... is this computer on the int
ernet?’

  ‘Yes, go ahead.’

  She opened up several windows and put in different editions of the Bible in each tab. Then she typed the same chapter and verse in each. Within a minute they had four separate versions of the text.

  ‘It was an Anglican Church, and at the time it would have been the New English Bible that would have been in use. That talks about foreign demons that are no gods, but you won’t get it on the internet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Still under copyright.’

  Both Iqbal and Gatto laughed. Maryam, who hadn’t thought she’d been saying anything funny, looked confused, but carried on.

  ‘You can see it here in the King James, and here in the New Jerusalem Bible. The New Jerusalem is the current Catholic one. But look here.’ She pointed to the screen.

  ‘That’s the exact same quote down to the colons.’ Gatto sounded even more impressed.

  ‘Exactly. And this, gentlemen, is from the Douay-Rheims Bible, which is the official Catholic translation from the Latin Vulgate.’

  They both just stared at her.

  ‘It’s an old text, superseded many years ago, too obscure to be used on the walls of an Anglican church in 2004.’

  ‘There’s no mistaking it. It’s a distinctive translation.’ Gatto was writing details down on his notebook.

  ‘What does it mean, the text, with the other one there, too?’ Iqbal asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. The bible text is spoken by Moses to the Israelites in the desert, after he’d returned with the Ten Commandments. The Israelites had been making merry in his absence, getting drunk, worshipping false gods. He returns from the mountains and blasts at them, warning them to pay attention and do as the Lord has commanded or they are in deep trouble.’