Fragments

by Morgan Gallagher

  ‘Please, Father Jones, be seated.’

  ‘Please call me Wyn, sis...’ His voice trailed off as he drew back in his mistake. It was one she was used to hearing from the clergy and she smiled back at him.

  ‘Maryam is just fine, Wyn.’ She held her hand outstretched in his grasp, for just a moment, to reassure him of the honesty of her response. She then approached Father Edwards, who was pouring her a mug of coffee. She extended her hand.

  ‘Maryam Michael, Father, from the Office of the Arcane. Sorry to meet you in such dreadful circumstances.’

  Father Edwards was over eighty years old and his body was carrying the burden of the murder badly: he looked defeated, wasted in the pain of it all. Maryam felt his age, his anxiety, his desperate need for the nightmare to be over. His face was grey and his middle and index fingers stained tobacco yellow. Priests did not, in general, allow this to happen as they dispensed the host from those fingers to the mouths of the faithful. It spoke volumes to her of what was going on inside. He nodded and avoided her outstretched hand by giving her the cup of coffee. He turned and sat down at the table. A tobacco tin sat on it and he played with it. Maryam sat and Wyn jumped up again to make her a sandwich of white sliced British bread and fried bacon. She thanked him, cut it in half and made herself eat half of that. The discussion slowly turned their attention from her, to the circumstances, and she was able to dispense with the tiny bites she was taking and concentrate on coffee. Much more coffee!

  By the time they had introduced themselves to each other and swapped enough banal pleasantries to get them over not talking about the murder, Inspector Barham had arrived with Shahrukh and a crime scene team in tow. On their arrival, Wyn went to his room and Father Edwards, who had not offered his forename to anyone, although she knew it was Peter, retired to sit outside in a somewhat dilapidated greenhouse, and smoke. The rain pouring down on the panes obscured him from view. Before she and Barham discussed the case, Maryam asked permission to have Father Edwards moved to a different address. Barham agreed and Maryam phoned Father Scott on the mobile number he’d given her. He was en route with Atkins. She requested a respite place be found for Edwards in another parish house, perhaps even at Westminster Cathedral. After all, they had the apartment they had prepared for her?

  Barham and she discussed the case, with Maryam reporting she had no observations, but requesting that she be allowed to direct the crime team in some additional tests. Barham was happy with this and they went over to the Church. Maryam could see Wyn Jones looking down on them from his bedroom window. She pushed her sympathy to the side and concentrated on being calm and empty, open and flexible. In her heart she knew what Barham did, that Wyn had no connection with this death at all. Her head wasn’t so sure they were going to be able to prove that.

  In the Church, Maryam asked if the tabernacle interior had been fully checked, not only for fingerprints, but for fluids. The crime officers stated it had only been dusted for prints, which she had known, as she’d seen the dusting powder all over the screen and door. When tested, it proved positive for blood, a tiny amount on the base of the interior. Barham asked what had led her to suspect this and they sat and discussed it with Shahrukh and another detective named Gatto, as the lab technicians catalogued.

  It’s a sacred space. If the person who committed the murder was also trying to reinforce the sacrilege within Catholic, or Christian, tradition the way they had with Islamic, then it made sense to desecrate the area the sacred host was kept in.’

  ‘Then why not make it obvious?’ Barham and Gatto were taking the lead, with Iqbal listening hard. Maryam addressed Barham who had asked the question.

  ‘I’m sure the secondary intent is to cause problems between the communities. Being seen to actively defile the tabernacle at the same time as defiling the Qur’an would put both communities in the same position. The desecration of the Islamic element is being made more visible than that of the Christian one.’

  ‘Why not desecrate a host?’ This was from Gatto, who shared the same accent as Barham; both natives of this area of London.

  ‘These days there is no sacred host kept in an empty, locked church. There are usually only unblessed communion wafers.’

  Gatto nodded. ‘Of course.’ Barham looked at him, and he continued. ‘The priest blesses the host at each service, each mass. If there is any left over, he swallows them himself so none of the sacred host is wasted.’

  ‘And the host is more sacred in a Christian church, than say the pages of a bible would be?’

  ‘In a Catholic church, yes. The host is the physical body of Christ.’

  Barham looked confused. It was Iqbal who spoke up, surprising everyone.

  ‘In the Roman Catholic Church, the bread and wine of the communion are changed by the prayers of the priest into the actual body and blood of their saviour, our prophet, Jesus. In other Christian communities it represents such, a symbol of it, not the actual thing. Here, in this Church, it’s treated as if it is actually his body, his blood.’

  Barham looked to Maryam, who nodded.

  ‘Detective Iqbal has said it succinctly. Ripping up a bible in a Catholic Church would be annoying, but not outrageous or seen as a severe attack. Polluting the tabernacle with the blood of a murdered man is in line with the offence of ripping and bloodying the Qur’an.’

  ‘So it confirms your thoughts that this is a serious attack on both religions?’

  ‘On this Church, and its beliefs, there has been a serious attack. I’m still convinced the attacking of Islamic principle is about making more of the offences to this one.’

  ‘The multi-faith leaders have been informed this morning. Myself and DC Iqbal have an appointment with the Imam of the local mosque this afternoon.’

  ‘I would be interested in attending that, if you would allow it. But first I must ask what you’ve done to find the weapon used in this murder.’

  ‘The weapon?’

  ‘Yes, the knife, although I suspect, as does your surgeon, that from the writing and the cuts it is a scalpel. The report says nothing has been found.’

  This time it was Sergeant Gatto who took the lead, taking out a note pad, a very old fashioned and reassuring notepad, and read from it.

  ‘Yesterday, the entire Church and the graveyard were searched thoroughly, including with a metal detector. Detectors were quite useless in most of the Church, given the nails in all the wood, but it was swept through. The drains were checked and the main sewer is being examined today, on all the lead points. The street outside, the bins and post boxes, have been checked and there are ongoing searches in all the local gardens. The bin collection was the day before the murder, so most of the bins and skips out there are relatively empty, so that’s been quite easy. So far, we have nothing.’

  ‘Have you searched the parish house?’

  Barham took over again.

  ‘No, we haven’t. Father Jones was taken to the police station and processed after he’d reported finding the body. He stayed with the body and phoned on his mobile phone and the CCTV evidence confirms this. After processing, he was returned to the parish house and asked to stay there. We haven’t had the manpower to search the premises yet, as the rain has made searching outside areas a priority. The Bishop has given permission for such a search.’

  ‘The Sacristy was completely searched?’

  Gatto took that in his stride, confirming Maryam’s suspicions that he’d seen the inside of a Catholic Church quite a few times in his childhood; for all that he wasn’t practising now.

  ‘Yes, it was walked through and nothing found, no evidence it had been broken into. It was locked until we had Father Edwards fetch a key, as Father Jones was still down the station.’

  ‘What’s your point, Miss Michael? What’s so special about this Sacristy room?’ Barham appeared to be intrigued rather than suspicious.

  ‘It’s just that if I were going to desecrate a Church and I knew enough about the Church as this person appears
to do, I’d have spent a few moments in there. Further, if I wanted to desecrate the host without being noticed, and hide a scalpel where it was unlikely to be found immediately, it would be in the sink in there down the plug hole.’

  ‘But we’ve explained that we checked the drains.’

  ‘The sink in there isn’t connected to the drains, Inspector. It’s a sacrarium. It’s completely separate from the normal sewage system. It’s only used to wash anything that a sacred, consecrated host could have come into contact with. It washes straight down into soil.’

  Inspector Barham’s shock, when the sink hole furnished forth not only a bloodied scalpel, but the entire sink gave evidence of blood having being washed off in it, was palpable. The crime scene technician, who had shone a torch down the open mouth of the plug hole the day before, was also the one who then checked it for body fluids; she was very annoyed with herself: Barham was furious with her.

  Maryam stayed in the nave throughout the entire affair, in order to distance herself from the evidence. Shahrukh talked her through why she’d suspected the sacrarium in the first place.

  ‘The wooden lid was up. Normally, when a priest finishes washing the communion vessels, and the altar cloth, and anything that may have a tiny crumb of host on it, in the running water, they would rinse out the sink and close down the lid. The lid was up, and I presumed the crime lab had left everything as they found it. I wondered if it was up, in order to make sure the sink dried before anyone went back in there. There is no reason for the sink to be used except after Mass. It’s never used for anything else.’

  ‘Why does it go into soil?’

  ‘To return the Body of Christ to the earth. Washing the blood from the murder off in there was a desecration. Any host particles going down in the weeks or months to come, would be contaminated. And the scalpel going in there would further deepen the desecration.’

  ‘It’s not that it’s a good place to hide it?’

  Maryam shook her head.

  ‘Only if you were in a panic. You’d know once it went in there, it would stay there for... well forever, with surgical steel. Better places in a church to actually hide it, than there. No, it was symbolic. I’m sure.’

  ‘Would the priests be the only ones to have keys? It was locked when Father Jones reported the body.’ He was trying to get one step ahead of his superiors.

  ‘No, not at all. The women of the parish, who come in to fix the flowers and clean, will have a key. There should be a set of master keys for the entire Church at the parochial headquarters, in a drawer somewhere. Plenty of people move in and out of the Sacristy. I doubt the door is locked during Sunday services, where the priests will be moving in and out with their clean surplices and renewing altar clothes. Altar boys will be in and out of there, too.’

  ‘Altar boys?’

  ‘Young males of the parish. Although girls are now accepted in most places. They help during formal masses, called High Mass. This Church has one the third Sunday of every month. Go look at the notice board.’

  She took the young officer round to the notice board in the vestibule, where he examined the rota of services and meetings. He was quiet.

  ‘This place must look empty to you.’

  He nodded, looking unsure of commenting whilst on duty.

  ‘It can be easy to think Churches such as these have been deserted. Especially if you see your own place of worship filled five times a day. But these old Churches live on, despite the lack of numbers, because the faith of those left burns so strong. Keeping faith when you are socially isolated is harder than following the crowds who walk past your door daily.’

  Shahrukh took on board what she said.

  ‘I suppose so. It’s not something that has even occurred to me. But it does feel like a place of worship. I feel as if I should cover my head when I walk in here. I’m uncomfortable when I don’t.’

  Maryam laughed. ‘Me too! But that’s another story. Uncovering your head is the correct protocol, if you are male. It’s keeping your hat on that is out of place.’

  ‘But all the uniformed officers are wearing hats in there!’ There was a real touch of panic in his voice.

  ‘It’s fine. The crime scene technicians have to have their hair net things. And the need for it to be a crime scene comes first. Weren’t you asked to take your hat off when you did the training?’

  ‘We were in civvies. It may have been mentioned, I don’t remember.’

  ‘Well, remember it now. If you are ever called to a Christian Church, or into this one after it’s been released, take your hat off if you’re wearing one’.

  ‘The women don’t wear veils, why do you feel as if you should?’

  She was saved from answering by the reappearance of Inspector Barham, who recalled the group to the back of the nave, to inform them of something that the more thorough forensic examination of the Sacristy had revealed: that the wooden floor had liberal amounts of semen and vaginal fluid scattered across it, as well as blood.

  The discovery was not what Bishop Atkins had wanted to hear. He spent several hours in private discussion with Wyn Jones, who had taken on the look of a man condemned out of hand. The discovery also lengthened the time the Church remained in the hands of the police, as more detailed swabbing had to be done and the crime techs stayed on until well after dark, with a shift change seeing a new team brought in. One advantage to this was that there was finally time for them to search through the parish house, where they found nothing useful. Barham, Gatto and Iqbal came and went, but Maryam stayed, tucked out of the way in the Church, moving between the parish house and the crime scene when she was in the way in one, or needed in the other. Several more sites of sexual activity had been discovered, including inside the sealed off confessional box and on the benches of the choir. Maryam was not surprised when the main altar revealed the same.

  Late in the afternoon she excused herself from the activity and asked Father Scott to accompany her out to the local shops. There they bought enough groceries for several days and she and Andy returned to the parish house and prepared food for everyone. Tea, coffee and what the British called biscuits and the Americans, cookies, were being used at a strapping rate by the various Metropolitan personnel. Father Edwards had been moved to another parish house whilst she had been in the Church in the morning, and Father Jones was still in conversation upstairs with Fred. She and Andy sliced, chopped, peeled and fried, and between them they rustled up a vat of soup and another of stew. Andy was a more proficient cook than she was, and between her labours on the chopping board and his with the meagre spice rack, what they produced was edible. The fridge was stocked with enough cheese, cold meats and salads to keep everyone going; there was fresh bread, fresh ground coffee and fruit. She and Fred sat in the kitchen eating vegetable soup and enjoying the rest from their labours: physical work did soothe the soul.

  In the dark of the evening, Inspector Barham requested that Father Jones accompany her down to the police station for questioning. On discovering that the Sacristy had recently had the locks changed and only two keys opened it, one kept by Father Jones and one by Father Edwards, the point had been reached where Father Jones was being treated as a serious suspect. Maryam watched the squad car drive off with Wyn and Fred in the back. A lawyer appointed by the Church would meet them at the station. At least they had managed to get Father Edwards out to somewhere less painful before this had occurred.

  Shahrukh had come to the kitchen to deliver the keys of the Church and the news that the crime technicians had released it. He shared bread and soup with them before going off duty, and they decided a mutual protocol for keeping the Church safe overnight and for Maryam to have access to it. Tomorrow, the cleaning firm recommended by the police would clean the blood out and then restore all areas covered in forensic powders and liquids, and the Church would be able to be opened to its parishioners. Father Scott had arranged for a prayer vigil for the murdered youth and the local Bishop would lead it off after reconse
crating the altar. For tonight, the police officers on guard would be stood down as there wasn’t the need, or the manpower to keep them. The local constabulary would patrol every hour or so, as they had done during the graffiti attacks. Father Scott had moved into the parish house that afternoon after Father Edwards had left, and he’d had contact with the local parishioners who had helped before. He was going to keep the CCTV working, and keep a general eye on the house and liaise with the congregation. Maryam would work in the Church after she’d had a nap: it was going to be a long night.

  Fred returned from the station at about midnight. She was lying on the bed in a half asleep, half awake, meditative mode. A gentle tap on her door served to bring her senses back up to ‘on’ and she joined everyone in the kitchen for what was, to all intents and purposes, a council of war. Wyn Jones had not returned to the house; he’d been allowed to leave the station without charge on condition he did not go within three miles of his home. He was at Westminster Cathedral. Gatto had escorted Fred back in to brief Maryam on the outcome of the interview. He came in intending to stay just long enough to hand Maryam an updated file, taking her through the evidence that had been piling up against Wyn, but stayed to eat the large bowl of stew she’d placed in front of him. Both he and Fred devoured the food as she sifted through the file. It included a detailed log of the CCTV footage that had been collated. It revealed that whilst Wyn had indeed been the only person to enter the Church the morning he’d found the body, he’d also been the last person to leave it the night before, which they’d known. What they had not known until the footage revealed it, was that Jason Briggs had entered the Church just a few minutes before Wyn had that night and he’d not come out.