The Fabric of Sin mw-9

by Phil Rickman

  … Rapist.

  But how could you think that of easygoing Teddy, placid Teddy? How could anyone?

  ‘I keep hearing stuff about Jacques de Molay being here,’ Merrily said. ‘Some ex-Templar’s confession. Jacques de Molay forcing him to deny Jesus Christ or be … put into a sack or something.’

  There was a sack in the inglenook, an animal-feed sack of thick plastic. Maybe two.

  ‘Ah,’ Teddy said. ‘That old tale.’

  ‘You don’t believe it?’

  ‘Confessions could be extracted without too much difficulty in those days.’

  ‘Not so easy now.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘To get someone to confess,’ Merrily said. ‘Not so easy.’

  Wondering how quickly she could get out of here, if necessary. How fast she could run. Wearing a skirt.

  But then all she had to do was open the door and scream for Lol, and he’d be down here in seconds, ready to face Teddy.

  And his crowbar.

  And Jane … Merrily flinched at an image of Jane’s soft face raked across by the sharp end of a crowbar wielded like a weapon of war. Like a Templar’s …

  She straightened up. Patted some red dust off her best dark blue woollen jacket.

  ‘You know what, Teddy?’ she said. ‘I think you’ve been misleading us all.’

  ‘This is so weird.’

  Jane and Lol had got out of the car. The night wind was blowing Jane’s hair back. She faced into it.

  ‘I can’t believe she did that, Lol. Can’t believe how much she’s changed … even this past year Or you, come to that. Never used to notice people changing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Scary, really.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She didn’t think he’d taken his eyes off the front of that farmhouse once since Mum had gone in. He was like Roscoe, sitting upright on the grass between them, Jane resting a hand on the dog’s neck, feeling a quiver there.

  ‘When we came here — I mean to Ledwardine — I had no respect for Mum. I despised her. For being a priest. For making me watch her … pray and stuff. How could she, you know? How could she put me through that?’

  ‘That’s normal,’ Lol said. ‘Oh God, Jane, I forgot. Eirion rang.’

  ‘Irene?’

  It was out before she could stop it.

  ‘He, um … he said you hadn’t been returning his calls.’

  ‘Did he?’

  She looked at Lol’s shape in the darkness, tense. He used to look very boyish, in a wispy kind of way. Even just a couple of years ago. There was grey in his hair now and he had an air of faint regret. Maybe the wasted years. And there was still anxiety. Not so much about his career as a fear of losing Mum. And how to handle a priest.

  ‘He said he must’ve rung about twenty times,’ Lol said. ‘He sounded pretty upset. He thinks, um … he thinks you’re having an affair with a married man.’

  ‘Coops.’

  ‘That would be the guy, yes.’

  ‘It’s over,’ Jane said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s given me what I need.’

  Lol took his stare off the house for nearly a second.

  ‘The best places to apply for courses in archaeology.’

  ‘Jane …?’

  ‘I was thinking, well, if I hate the idea of the future so much, like the way the world’s going, why not just like … immerse myself in the way it used to be.’

  ‘You told your mum about this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I wasn’t certain. Coops took me on a field walk. You just, like, walk a line through a … field. And pick things up … bits of stone, bits of pottery, and it’s like you’re peeling away the layers. It was amazing. Unexpectedly amazing. The feeling of … I dunno … contact.’

  ‘That’s … fantastic, Jane. You’ve found it? At last?’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe. I’d have to get accepted somewhere first. How did he sound?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Eirion.’

  ‘Seriously pissed-off.’

  ‘Oh God. Sometimes I can’t believe what a total bitch I am.’ Jane looked down at the long stone house. ‘What do you think they’re talking about in there?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t like the feel of this, Jane.’

  ‘You think Mrs Morningwood is … I mean, we know nothing about her, really. What are we going to do? About Mum.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not her … boss.’

  ‘Yeah, but you love her. Trouble is,’ Jane said, ‘she thinks the boss does, too.’

  ‘Which …? Oh.’

  ‘She’s inclined to trust the bugger too much, if you ask me. Faith doesn’t always win through. Look at all the good people He … Good people who get shafted. Destroyed. Happens all the time.’

  * * *

  She had to stay with this. Nobody else was going to find out. She sank her hands into her jacket pockets for warmth.

  Misleading everybody. Not really. Teddy could have been standing up in various pulpits for thirty years and preaching from the Gnostic gospels and nobody would notice. Faith was flaccid. People no longer heard. Congregations didn’t listen.

  ‘I meant the Templars, that’s all.’ Merrily keeping her voice light. ‘You like to pretend you have only a cursory knowledge, but the first time we met you said you were a historian by inclination, and it’s just not possible for a historian to live in a place like this without getting …’

  ‘Obsessed?’

  ‘Totally immersed, I was going to say. I bet you were so excited when you found The Ridge. Like your … like your whole life had been moving towards Garway.’

  Teddy looked up, first in surprise. And then, maybe, in suspicion, his eyes sullen in the lamplight.

  ‘Yes. I suppose so. I applied several times for this parish. Always went to someone else. I suppose the time wasn’t right. And, as a team minister, with the other parishes, I wouldn’t have had the space I have now. This has been a happy coincidence. A time to be seized.’

  ‘You knew a lot about them before you came? The Templars?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I studied quite a bit. A good bit.’

  ‘Before theological college.’

  ‘Yes. Theology was … an interesting tangent. I grew up at a time when you could follow your …’

  ‘Stars.’ Merrily found a smile. ‘As it were.’

  ‘I was born in Hertfordshire. There’s always been a lot of Templar activity around Hertford itself.’

  ‘Hertfordshire to Herefordshire?’

  ‘Interesting. One letter and almost the whole width of a country away. In Hertford itself, there’ve always been rumours of tunnels under the town, connected to the Knights Templar, the Holy Grail. There’s still an organization there. An Order.’

  ‘Of Templars?’

  ‘It didn’t go away.’

  ‘Secret?’

  ‘To an extent. But enough on the surface for them to call on the Vatican to apologize for the inquisition of 1307.’

  ‘You think the Vatican should apologize, Teddy?’

  ‘It would just be a token gesture. The Templars never needed tokenism. They dug out their own heritage. Literally.’

  ‘From the site of Solomon’s Temple. Or is that a metaphor?’

  ‘It’s both. Like Garway. This place is as important as Solomon’s Temple now. More important.’

  ‘Because it hasn’t altered? Apart from the odd radio mast, much the same now as it was in the thirteenth century.’

  ‘And even the mast is symbolic. Like the hill itself, it communicates information that not everyone can receive.’

  ‘As above, so below.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You get periods of great activity and illumination,’ he said. ‘Periods of urgency.’

  ‘And this is one?’

  ‘The only one we’ll know in our lifetime. We have to … do the right thing. Exactly the right thing. Just to survi
ve.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The Templars.’

  ‘That’s a state of mind, is it?’

  ‘It’s a state of being. Seven centuries ago, they were the greatest combination of spiritual and physical power the Western world has ever known. It’s probably hard for a woman to understand.’

  ‘Probably, yes.’

  ‘A mocking tone, Merrily?’

  ‘Hell, no. I believe it. I believe if you immerse yourself in something, it creates within you enough of an illusion of power to … to be power. It’s likely to be a destructive power, of course, but that’s what the Templars did, isn’t it? They destroyed. Violent guys. Killed the infidel.’

  ‘And were sanctioned to do so by St Bernard of Clairvaux. As a result of whose influence they were also granted independence of all other ecclesiastical powers, except the Pope himself. The Templar is a fearless knight, St Bernard said, who, as the body is covered with iron, so the soul is the defence of the faith, Without doubt, fortified by both arms, he fears neither man nor demon.’

  Teddy folded his arms over his reddened surplice, smiling.

  ‘Defence of the faith,’ Merrily said.

  ‘To defend faith the Templar needed knowledge. Only knowledge cancels doubt.’

  ‘And who’s the demon? Baphomet?’

  ‘He’s just a symbol, you know that. An aspect of the green man. Ubiquitous. The life-force in nature.’

  Also, Merrily thought, the sex-force in nature.

  Thinking of the night before the rape, at dinner at The Ridge: nut roast and gossip. Had it occurred to Teddy then, over that meal, that if Mrs Morningwood was the victim of a sex crime the list of possible suspects from her client book would direct police attention, from the start, far away from the Master House? He must have known about her. All his walks, his coffee stops at farms along the way.

  Or had he simply fallen in lust with the idea? Just like old times. Watching Muriel from the hill, fantasizing about how he’d do it? Mild, cheerful Teddy Murray lacing his hiking books, pocketing his condoms. Already out there, probably, when Merrily was taking that dispiriting early call from the Bishop. Circling Ty Gwyn like a hawk, in complete command of his landscape.

  Baphomet. Mat Phobe.

  And now, at last, in the unsteady glow, she could see him with long hair, reddish, tangled around his face, an eager, mid-twenties face, bum-fluff on the jawline. Enthusiastic. Full of a raging fire, blown up by the bellows of testosterone and whatever other chemicals Jimmy Hayter had obtained that week.

  ‘So who’s the infidel now, Teddy?’

  ‘Today, Merrily, I’m very much afraid that term would have to include most people.’

  She didn’t know if there were any anti-Islamic implications here, didn’t want to. He came further into the room, pushing the lantern with the toe of a walking boot, propping the crowbar against the side of the inglenook.

  ‘Are you getting what you wanted? To make your historic connections?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘I admire you, Merrily. You’ve taken on something that is, transparently, not for women, and you’re sticking in there. That’s really rather courageous.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Look, if you want to get off, I’ll carry on here for a while. Clear up some more of the mess.’ He dug into a trouser pocket, pulled out something white, balled-up, snapping it apart. ‘Got to take precautions, all these dead rodents. Sure you don’t want to see the priest’s hole? In fact …’

  Surgical gloves.

  Putting them on as he stepped into the inglenook, dragged a yellow feed sack, thick plastic, out into the room, and then a second one.

  ‘Can’t say they didn’t come prepared. Obviously collecting some of the rubble in these, to clear it out of the way, give themselves more space. If you step under here. Merrily, and look up the chimney, you can actually see into the priest’s … oh.’

  Teddy glanced back, in mild annoyance, to where one of the feed sacks had fallen on to its side and some of the contents spilled out over the edge of the hearth. The contents included what looked like a clavicle, part of a ribcage. Finally, the top half of a skull, no lower jaw, with rubbery fragments of skin and black hair, rolling gently, with a clink, into the lamp.

  Merrily screaming the scream as Teddy Murray casually stepped out. Choked off with heart-in-mouth shock, the scream wasn’t much of a scream at all, in the end.

  And by then Teddy had her by the hair with one hand, the other half-clawed in her face, twisting. His mouth up close, whispering some words, but the only ones she heard, as he was forcing her to her knees in the dirt, were ‘… joy you.’

  60

  Crumpled Linen

  The image had formed in a hollow of powdery yellow light, while Lol was fighting for consciousness.

  But with consciousness had come this unendurable pain and his senses had let go for a moment, storing the one frozen tableau: a man piling bones into a sack.

  He must have passed out a third time, if only momentarily, because, the next thing, the yellow scene had gone and so had all the light.

  Lol didn’t move, working out where he was, what had happened, the blackness resolving at one stage into the velvety coffin of the broken Boswell guitar.

  Confusion. Panic. Need to get up. He planted a hand on the floor. His shoulder screamed, his head pulsed, his memory rewound.

  One blow was all he could remember, and the whistling of the air before it came.

  Below the shoulder he’d already damaged getting in. The oak door had jammed and he’d thought someone had locked it from inside and he’d taken a wild run at it, gone crashing through to meet the steel bar swinging out of near-darkness, sending him spinning around, his head ramming the door.

  Ah. Old oak: the hardest.

  Lol cried out into the darkess in his head.

  Hands cool on his face now, the soft voice from the meditation in the candlelit church. Black jeans and sweatshirt, hair tied back.

  ‘Can you speak? Oh, God, please …’

  The night air made it real.

  Up on the rise, the wolfhound was going crazy in the Volvo, as if someone had gone past, someone he wanted to kill. And Jane, hearing him, was going, ‘Where’s Mrs Morningwood?’ and wouldn’t stop until they’d all gone back into the earth-smelling house, where Lol couldn’t do the stairs.

  Jane had kept asking him if his shoulder was broken and he didn’t know — how were you supposed to tell? He waited at the bottom of the half-spiral, tense and sweating, almost sick with the headache and the pain in his upper arm, until they came back, the mother and the daughter, having found nothing up there, nobody.

  At some stage, he realized that Jane was doing all the talking.

  When they were outside again, he got close to Merrily, was able to say, ‘He touch you?’

  ‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘Once. After I screamed. It’s all right.’

  ‘Didn’t hear it,’ Lol said, horrified. ‘I didn’t hear the scream.’

  ‘Walls are two feet thick. We never thought.’

  It came back to him how they couldn’t stand it any longer, he and Jane, not either of them. Making a joint decision that Lol should go in.

  ‘Look,’ he said to Merrily. ‘Never … never do that …’

  ‘Again. No.’

  ‘You knew it might be him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Never again,’ she said and clung to his good arm all the slow way back to the car. ‘Hospital,’ she said. ‘Where’s the nearest? Abergavenny?’

  ‘Call Bliss. Drive till we find a signal and call Bliss.’

  ‘Ambulance first. Please, Lol.’

  ‘Can’t let him get away. Have to find the bones.’

  Moving sluggishly through the rutted field, Merrily at the wheel, Lol recalled his dreamlike memory of the bones and the yellow sack, the scene for ever vivid with shock. Bones? Sack?

  ‘Two sacks,’ Merrily said. ‘A whole body. A skeleton. In pieces. He took it away.
In the sacks. Must have got out the back way. Jane and me — upstairs, just now — we saw the priest’s hole. It must have been in there, all these years.’

  ‘Where anybody could have found it?’ Lol said.

  ‘No. Somebody, I think it was Roxanne Gray, told me about the priest’s hole, which the family had blocked up many years before. Fifty years? Maybe the commune people had rediscovered it and blocked it up again. With something inside. Someone.’

  ‘Mary,’ Lol said.

  ‘Mary Roberts. Mary Linden.’

  ‘Need to get Bliss.’

  ‘Don’t move,’ Merrily said. ‘Please don’t move more than …’

  ‘Need to find him. Before the bastard dumps the bones in the river or something. Or he’ll walk away from it.’

  He saw Merrily clench the wheel.

  ‘Enjoy you,’ she said. ‘Going to enjoy you. That was what he said.’

  She looked at him and he felt the scream that was going on inside her.

  Jane said, ‘He’s got to be insane. Not just psychotic.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s insane at all,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s the trouble. Just driven towards something we can’t really understand. The only hope we have is that if they find that body maybe they can match the DNA against Fuchsia.’

  ‘He is insane,’ Jane said, leaning over from the back seat. ‘Because if he thought he could …’ putting her arms around Merrily from behind, and her arms were quivering ‘… if he thought he could just kill you and leave you …’

  ‘He was wearing surgical gloves.’ Merrily turned to Jane. ‘And he wouldn’t have just left me. When we were upstairs, just now, and we looked down into the priest’s hole? Struck me then that it was vacant. It had a vacancy.’

  As they reached the top road at The Turning, she started to laugh, dangerously close to hysteria, and then she said, not even sounding surprised, ‘He’s there.’

  Lol saw a flash. Out in the road, lit up in headlights, the surplice billowing.

  Lit up in headlights, but not from the Volvo.

  Merrily braked hard and the Volvo stalled, as was its habit. An engine roar and he flew up like a swan, this great, white flapping thing.

  * * *

  Merrily was out of the car before Teddy Murray hit the tarmac. She saw a wheel of the Jeep rolling easily over his head and she heard — one of those sounds you knew you were never going to forget for the rest of your life — the crunching of his shiny skull like an egg in the road.