by Mark Pearson
‘Where’ve you been, Jack?’ she said.
Delaney leaned over and kissed her. ‘My car broke down.’
‘Again? Isn’t it about time you got rid of that old thing?’
‘Probably. But I like my Saab.’
‘It doesn’t like you.’
‘Got the Tube.’
Kate wrinkled her nose suspiciously. ‘After a couple of beers, by the smell of you, I’d say.’
‘I might have had a couple. It’s been a bit of a day.’
‘Funny how your car often breaks down when you’ve had a bit of a day.’
Delaney lay on the bed and rested his head on the pillow. ‘Just a coincidence.’
‘I don’t believe in coincidences.’
Delaney grinned. ‘Me neither.’
‘I heard about the court case.’
‘Hard not to.’
‘Yes. Pretty much over the news continually.’
‘Small-news day.’
‘What’s going to happen?’
‘Nothing, darling. Old cowboy here, he’s pretty much bullet-proof.’
‘Man from Krypton?’
‘Something like that.’
Kate rested her head on his chest and he stroked her hair. ‘How was your day?’ he asked her.
‘Not the best, if I am honest.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘Not yet.’
Delaney nodded. ‘Fair play.’
‘What about yours?’
‘Started bad, got worse, ending up nice, though.’ He stroked her hair some more. She looked up and kissed him.
‘Glad to hear it.’
Delaney’s mobile trilled and he fetched it out of his pocket, checked the caller ID, then answered the call. ‘What’s up, Sally … Yeah, yeah, I know. I had it switched off for a couple of hours. Okay, let me grab a piece of paper.’
Delaney fumbled in his pocket for his notebook and grabbed a pen off the bedside table. ‘Shoot.’
‘Reverend Geoffrey Hunt. Okay, got that. How did you get on at Northwick Park Hospital?’ He listened for a while. ‘All right, I’ll meet you seven tomorrow morning. Usual place. And how did Inspector Hamilton behave himself?’
He grimaced and held the phone way from his ear. ‘No, you hang up,’ he said and closed his phone.
‘So you switched your phone off for a couple of hours?’ said Kate.
‘Forgot to turn it back on.’
‘Another coincidence.’
‘Mobile phones in pubs, they shouldn’t be allowed. I am very consistent on that point.’
Kate laughed. ‘Nothing should come between a man and his Guinness.’
‘Only you, sweetheart.’
‘What was that about Reverend Hunt?’
‘You know him?’
‘Sort of. I know his wife. She used to teach at the university, still registered to the practice there.’
‘What did she teach?’
‘She’s a doctor of divinity. Why?’
‘I don’t know. I’m a detective, Kate. I like asking questions. Ask enough, and sometimes things make sense.’
‘And sometimes they don’t.’
‘True.’
‘Is her husband in some kind of trouble?’
‘Not that I know of. St Luke’s is his old church.’
Kate sat up. ‘I didn’t know that. I was called out there this morning. Before they knew it was human remains.’
‘Your friend’s husband was the incumbent vicar at the time the body was put in the ground.’
‘So they’ve got you on that case?’
‘Amongst others. Till I get suspended, that is.’
‘The Devil finds work for idle digits.’
Delaney slipped his hand down the duvet. ‘Best keep them busy then,’ he said.
Kate slapped his hand. ‘You can have a shower first, busy boy.’
‘Good idea.’ Delaney swang his legs round and stood up. He leaned over and kissed the bump of Kate’s belly.
‘Henry the Eighth got one thing right,’ he said.
‘And what would that be?’
‘It’s good to have lots of children.’ He smiled and headed to the bathroom.
Part Three
43.
Sunday morning
‘DECK THE HALLS with boughs of holly! Fa la la la la, la la la la. ’Tis the season to be jolly … Fa la la la la, la la la la!’
‘Do you want to button it, Roy?’ said Jack Delaney as he leaned against the counter and contemplated lighting a cigarette. Roy stopped singing and grinned over his shoulder at him.
‘What’s up with you this morning, Jack? Or do I even need to ask? You being normally such a ray of emerald-green Fenian sunshine.’
‘What does that even mean, Roy? How in the name of St Joseph on a fucking bicycle can you have green sunshine?’
‘I was talking metaphorically, Jack.’
‘You were talking bollocks.’
‘You want an egg with this?’ asked the portly short-order cook as he flipped some slices of bacon.
‘I do.’
‘I see the piece of shit we talked about yesterday walked free.’
‘Yeah, he did.’
‘Anything going to come down on your head?’
‘I should think so.’
‘If you’d handled things a little differently back then, Jack …’
‘You saying this is my fault?’
‘Nothing of the sort. Like I say, I wouldn’t even have let the scum make it to court.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m a changed man nowadays.’
‘Are you?’
‘You see me smoking this cigarette?’ Delaney asked, holding up an unlit Marlboro.
‘Not yet.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Don we now our gay apparel, troll the ancient Yuletide carol!’ sang Roy happily, as he cracked an egg that spattered and sizzled when it landed on the hot griddle plate. ‘Fa la la la la, la la la la.’
‘God give me strength,’ muttered Delaney as Sally Cartwright walked up to the van. She was dressed in black trousers, with higher heels than usual and a smart black parka with faux-fur trim. Her long, blonde hair was tied back in a loose ponytail. She had on more make-up than usual too, and was altogether too bright and perky-looking for seven o’clock on a Sunday morning.
‘Are you on a promise, Cartwright?’ he said.
‘Sir?’
‘Never mind. But I am guessing you are not dolled up like a tart’s breakfast for Roy’s and my benefit.’
‘You look gorgeous as ever, Sally darling,’ said Roy and started buttering some bread.
‘I don’t want butter on mine,’ said Delaney.
‘Jeez, Jack. How long have you been coming here?’
‘Too bloody long. Next year I’m going vegan!’
Roy laughed as he slipped some bacon into the buttered slices and handed the sandwich over to Sally Cartwright in a paper napkin. ‘Beauty before age,’ he said.
‘Cheers, Roy,’ said Sally, and squirted some tomato ketchup into her sarnie.
Roy Smiley flipped the egg briefly, put three slices of bacon on a slice of unbuttered bread, added the egg, topped it with another slice of bread and handed it over to Delaney, who grunted approvingly.
‘Reckon it’s going to snow?’ asked Sally.
‘Sing we joyous, all together, heedless of the wind and weather,’ sang Roy.
‘Fa la la la la, la la la la,’ added Sally.
Delaney shook his head despairingly and took another bite of his sandwich.
‘So I’ve done a bit of looking into the Reverend Geoffrey Hunt,’ said DC Cartwright.
‘And?’
‘He retired from the church twenty years ago.’
‘About the same time our man was planted in his churchyard.’
‘Give or take, I guess. As you know, Derek Bowman couldn’t be very specific. Could be after Hunt’s time. Could be during, as you say.’
Delaney finished hi
s sandwich and wiped his lips clean with the paper napkin, before screwing it into a ball and handing it over to Roy.
‘How old was Hunt when he retired?’
‘Late forties. Health reasons apparently. And his wife was on a good wage.
‘University lecturers? Wasn’t aware they were well paid …’
Sally looked at him curiously.
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t just go to the pub last night, Sally. I did some research of my own.’
‘Where?’
‘Never mind where.’
‘Anyway Dr Hunt was a publishing academic. She had one book which sold an awful lot overseas as well as here. Particularly in America.’
‘So he could afford to retire.’
‘Yes. Just about.’
‘What else do we know?’
‘Well this is where it gets interesting.’
‘Get on with it then, Sally. For God’s sake. We’ve got a murder to investigate.’
‘I know, sir.’
‘Well?’ added Roy.
Sally smiled. ‘We did a missing-persons check for the area, going back nineteen to twenty-one years.’
‘And?’
‘And it seems that the Reverend Geoffrey Hunt’s brother, Jeremy Hunt, went missing in that period.’
‘And?’
‘And he was never found, sir.’
44.
BIBLE STEVE WAS floating in a sea of mist and fog.
He held his hands fanned in front of him, moving his arms in a slow breaststroke, but the milky light slipped between his fingers and he seemed hardly to be moving at all. His eyes were fogged with the stuff and it filled his lungs with a cold moistness. And then the mist thickened into a cloud and started sliding down his body. And a light overhead grew brighter and brighter. And his feet came forward, and the white stuff around him sank down around his ankles. And the light dazzled, reflecting off the cold steel in his hands, and the blood poured over his hands like hot soup.
Then he opened his eyes and screamed.
Patricia Hunt took the kettle off the stove and placed it carefully on the trivet beside it. Her hand throbbed a little, but she had been quick to run it under cold water, so that it hadn’t blistered and worsened overnight.
She looked across at her husband, who was dressed in pyjamas and a dressing gown and was hanging up the phone.
‘It was the police,’ he said.
Patricia nodded without replying.
‘They’ll be here a little later. I had better get dressed.’
‘Better had.’
‘We have to be very sure of what we say, Patricia.’
‘I know.’
‘Everything’s going to be all right.’ He nodded reassuringly and then his whole body shook again as he coughed and fought for breath. He gestured to the dresser, and his wife hurried across to fetch his inhaler for him, shaking it vigorously. He took a quick breath and, after a few moments, squeezed it again and took a deeper breath.
‘I really think we should go and see the doctor, Geoffrey.’
‘And what will she tell us? There’s nothing different. It’s a cold. You have to wait it out, that’s all.’
‘Well, dress up warm!’
‘Yes, dear,’ he said, smiling, his breathing steady now, and kissed her on the forehead.
Detective Inspector Emma Halliday had only been in the job for a few months. As a detective, that is. She had been promoted from sergeant back at the tail end of summer. She was in her mid-thirties, six foot one in her flat feet, with short hair that she had recently dyed black to give her a little more gravitas. She had clearly defined cheekbones and a set of perfect teeth. Her nickname back at Paddington Green was ‘Catwalk’, but very few people called her that to her face.
Emma’s father had been a policeman, and his father before him. Her twin brother had gone to university and studied textile design and was now successful, in a small way, in the fashion industry, with his own business just off Oxford Street. Emma had opted for Hendon, even though she had grades good enough to go to Oxford and read English, which is what her mother would have preferred. But Emma was always sure what she wanted to do, and that was to join the Metropolitan Police force. Sometimes, though, she regretted it.
She was waiting outside the morgue in the South Hampstead Hospital. Her young assistant, Constable Andrew Hoyland, shorter than her by a good few inches, with short-cropped ginger hair and a spray of freckles across his cheeks, was taking notes as she talked with the constable from the Transport Police and the A&E registrar.
‘He was brought in at eight-thirty last night?’
The registrar, a short man in his early thirties, nodded. His hair was dark too, but, whereas Emma Halliday’s was glossy and healthy, his was matted and dull and the bags under his eyes suggested he could do with a good night’s sleep. ‘That’s correct. He died shortly afterwards. His injuries were massive. Nothing we could do.’
‘And you still have no idea who he is?’
‘There was no identification on him. Do you wish to come through?’
The doctor gestured towards the morgue, and Emma Halliday could see the colour draining from her younger assistant’s face. ‘Are you all right, Constable?’ she asked.
‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll be fine.’ He sounded as though, by stating the fact, he hoped it might be so.
‘Goes with the territory, Andrew.’
‘I know.’
‘Can’t say you ever really get used to it. But we have to deal with it.’
The temperature dropped considerably as they entered the morgue, and Emma was glad of it. She hoped her constable would be okay, but equally she hoped she would be herself. She had made the mistake of eating a full English breakfast that morning, and prayed she’d be able to keep it down. He had seen a fair few dead bodies over her years on the force, but had never seen one that had gone under a train.
The registrar crossed to one of the large steel drawers and pulled it smoothly out. She looked over at DI Emma Halliday, who took a deep breath and nodded. The doctor pulled back the cloth covering the top part of the dead man’s body. His head had been smashed on one side, but not so badly on the other side. He looked like a man wearing a particularly gruesome horror-mask. The Phantom of the Opera without his face-covering.
It was enough for Detective Inspector Halliday. She nodded to the registrar and he slid the drawer smoothly back into place.
‘His belongings are over here.’
The small man led the detective over to a side-table where the man’s shoes and clothes and belongings had been put in individual, clear bags. Emma picked up one of them.
‘Eight hundred and fifty in cash. Lot of money to be carrying around.’
‘Yes,’ agreed her constable. ‘And in just a plain brown envelope?’
‘Yes,’ answered the registrar.
‘And just this card?’ asked Emma Halliday as she put down one bag and lifted another.
‘Just that, yes.’
Emma looked at the card in the bag. It was larger than a standard playing card. Rectangular, about six inches by four inches. The picture depicted the Angel Gabriel playing a trumpet from which hung the St George’s Cross flag. Underneath him was a group of people – men, women and children who were standing in graves and looking up at him in awe. In the background was a towering ocean, a tidal wave.
‘What is this?’ the detective said, to no one in particular.
‘It’s a tarot card,’ replied the registrar. ‘Judgement.’
45.
SERGEANT ‘SLIMLINE’ DAVE Matthews, on guard duty, stood with Laura Chilvers outside the intensive-care room where Bible Steve was being attended to. Laura had little make-up on, as usual, but this morning she didn’t look radiant. Her eyes were red and there were the first signs of bags under her eyes. Matthews took a swig of water from the clear plastic cup he was carrying and looked over at her.
‘Did you get much sleep last night?’ he asked.
‘Not m
uch, why?’
‘You look like shit, Doctor.’
‘Yeah, thanks for that, Slimline.’
The sergeant smiled cheerily. ‘Just saying.’
‘Well, don’t!’
He gestured towards the window. Bible Steve was under the covers with his arms outside. His head was back on the pillow and he was snoring loudly.
‘Looks like he’s getting plenty of sleep.’
Laura nodded.
‘That’s a good sign, I guess.’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘Means he’s alive at least.’
Laura Chilvers nodded again.
Dr Lily Crabbe came out of the room. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’
‘How is he doing?’ asked Laura.
‘He’s been sedated. We’d rather not do it, but his body needs to repair itself and sleep is the best mechanism for that sometimes.’
‘Why was he sedated?’ asked Laura.
‘He woke up screaming this morning. Talking gibberish and wouldn’t settle. We didn’t have any choice. He looked like he might become violent. It took a couple of nurses to hold him down, or he might have injured himself or one of my staff.’
‘Does he remember anything?’ asked Laura.
‘He remembers being here. He remembers being on the streets. The snow. Being cold.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Yes.’
Sergeant Matthews looked down at the sleeping man. ‘How long will this amnesia last?’
‘It really depends on what caused it in the first place. You tell me that he has had this condition for a number of years?’
‘As far as we can tell, yes.’
‘Well his situation has certainly changed. He doesn’t remember the name Steve, or Bible Steve. But that is the name you say he has been giving for himself.’
‘Yes,’ agreed the sergeant. ‘It’s the one he responds to.’
‘Not any more.’
‘Is there anything that can be done, Doctor?’
The woman ran her hand through her hair. ‘It depends what caused it and what type of amnesia he is suffering from.’
‘There are different types?’
‘Yes, Dave. There are,’ Laura answered for the registrar. ‘Short-term memory loss which means anterograde. That concerns recent memories only. Then there is retrograde amnesia, which means whole chunks of your life can disappear, even your identity. And it can be caused by all kinds of things: stress, physical or mental trauma.’
