Mortal Spoils

by D M Greenwood

  He pushed the wheely bin faster to get up a bit of impulsion before reaching the ramp which led from the basement to the courtyard passage of Ecclesia Place. He wondered if he could link the bins together to cut down the number of journeys and make for a bit of interest in the cornering. He revved himself up for the final dash. The trolley, in the manner of trolleys, was insufficiently balanced for coping with its load. It lurched, locked and precipitated the bin on to the paving stones. Kevin said a number of things he’d heard his stepfathers say in their time.

  ‘Hello,’ said Tom. ‘Having a bit of bother?’

  Kevin looked at the spreading line of rubbish which was beginning to be blown about by the draught from the narrow passage.

  ‘Just my flaming luck.’

  ‘Not luck, knowledge. Technique.’ Tom was didactic. He assumed everyone wanted to learn, Kevin as well as Canon Clutch. ‘If you want to use that trolley to take that load at that angle, you’ll need to reset the wheels at least another twenty centimetres out at the front.’

  Kevin listened because Tom had started in to help him reassemble the rubbish. If Tom had just stood there, Kevin wouldn’t have given ear.

  ‘It looks past its best,’ Tom said, bundling newspapers and tea bags back into the bin as though it didn’t matter who did what.

  ‘Other one would be better. It’s like what you said, wheels are fitted further out.’

  ‘Why not use it?’

  ‘It’s broken. I hit it a bit of a clout Monday. I was in a hurry.’

  Tom paused. ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘They were all on edge because of that foreign bloke. Everything had to be, like, polished up. Ashwood kept on at me.’

  ‘Did you get a look at the foreign chaps?’ Tom was curious to know what Kevin might think of this new connection of the Church of England’s.

  ‘Yeh,’ Kevin was smug. ‘Got him all to meself, didn’t I? He come before the main lot. I reckon Ashwood only got the second division. The runners-up.’

  ‘What?’ Tom was mystified.

  ‘Like I said. The chief chap come early. Ten to oneish. Ashwood wasn’t back from his little rest. This chap came in in a helluva hurry. I says to him, I says, “Sir, you’ve got to sign the book.” Then Canon Truegrave trots up and takes him by the elbow and says, “That’s all right, he’s with me. Can you get us some coffee? The Archi whatever’s had a long journey. He’s a bit tired.” So I scoots off and gets him some coffee.’

  ‘Where did you take it to?’ Tom was so close to Kevin he could see the youth’s incipient moustache.

  ‘I took it up to Canon Truegrave’s office, but they weren’t there. So I left it.’

  ‘Then you came back here?’

  ‘S’right. Just got in before the sergeant returned. He’d have said I shouldn’t have left the desk. But needs must when the devil drives.’ It was a phrase of his nan’s. Kevin thought it appropriate for the clerical context.

  ‘How did you know it was the Archimandrite?’

  ‘Got one of the cross things on his middle, silver with a big blue stone in it and a ring, big, foreign like.’

  ‘But I did ask you before if you’d seen the Archimandrite and you said you hadn’t.’ Tom thought of all the time wasted.

  ‘No you didn’t.’ Kevin was virtuous. ‘You said had I seen anyone round about threeish. Well, I hadn’t. I didn’t see any of them again. Ashwood kept me at it clearing up the conference room right through the telly and that. He’s a mean beggar.’

  ‘You didn’t happen to notice his boots, by any chance?’

  ‘Nice pair. Funny colour. Brown.’

  The tide was high as Theodora strode across Betterhouse Bridge. She felt the elation which comes from being suspended high over water. Scullers in skiffs looked stripped and athletic as they shot the piers of the bridge to emerge triumphant on the other side, as though they had performed some sort of conjuring trick. The floating pontoon with its fringe of small moored craft, rowing boats and canoes, which provided a quay for the river police launches, rose gently on the swell. In mid-channel, pleasure craft chugged and lurched as they changed places with each other. These would be the last trips of the year.

  A Dutch motor barge pushed upstream to the last of the commercial wharves beyond Betterhouse. The German flag flew from its stern. On the aft deck, behind the tiny wheelhouse, Theodora could make out two figures conversing. The height of the tide and hence the nearness of the boat to the bridge enabled her to see them quite clearly. One man, middle-aged and portly, wore a panama hat with an MCC ribbon and a fawn linen suit. The other, younger and slimmer, with thick black hair and sunglasses, wore blue overalls. On the deck between them a packing case vibrated to the throb of the engine. For a moment Theodora felt a pang of envy. How agreeable it would be to be going travelling on some commercial packet to see new places. Did one need a passport to go to Europe now? Or could she just step on board and bargain for a passage to Hamburg or Santander? Was that what the river was, an image of freedom, a natural highway to elsewhere? Was that why it drew people, to stare over the parapets of bridges, to stand on tiptoe to peer over flood barriers, to hang about quays and wharves? Was that why she’d chosen to live beside the river? She caught herself up. She’d just told Anona Trice not to fantasise. She had work to do here. Quite apart from the parish and its worthwhile tasks, something was going on at Ecclesia Place which had led to a man’s, perhaps a priest’s, death. Who had killed the man in Tom’s photograph and why? And who was he?

  Ashwood, at the reception desk of Ecclesia Place, greeted her by name. He’d obviously added her to his list of regulars.

  ‘Is Mr Logg in, Sergeant?’

  ‘Left for lunch at,’ he consulted his book, ‘twelve thirty. Should be back any time now. Very punctual man, Mr Logg. He left a message in case you called.’

  It was Theodora’s theory that Ashwood couldn’t bend from the waist. He hinged from the top of his legs and reached under the counter and produced an envelope.

  ‘And is Canon Teape in?’

  ‘Came in ten a.m. No note of him having left. If he’s not in the library, you could try the refectory. He lunches late, the archivist.’

  Tom’s note read, ‘Kevin holds the clue. Gone to exhibition. Will call c. eight this evening. OK?’

  Theodora headed for the library, making her way down to the foundations of the building. Teape was nowhere to be found. The library had the air of indifference to people which characterises the best libraries. It existed for itself alone. In fact there were a couple of what Theodora classified as postgraduate theologians closeted in the corner of one of the bays but they seemed swallowed up in the silence. The big catalogue was in the centre of the room. It had not progressed beyond a set of handwritten cards – some with the ink turning green with age – slotted onto metal rods.

  Theodora checked the reference number of Ellis Bernhardt Truegrave’s copy of The Cold War Frontiers and the Church. The library did not use the Dewey system but some arcane symbolism of its own. Theodora, however, was an old hand at cracking the systems of theological libraries. She mounted the neat spiral staircase to the upper catwalk and put her hand on the volume. The book opened at the photograph labelled ‘Georgios XII, Archimandrite of All Azbarnah 1974-’. There, as Tom had said, was the studio black and white of a strong-featured man in his fifties, bareheaded, set against a white wall with a black Orthodox cross on it. Her eye travelled down the heavy figure and, yes, there it was, the pectoral cross which could easily have been the one so lately in her possession.

  She scrutinised it for some minutes. There was no attribution to a photographer. She flicked to the contents page, then to the illustrations. Maps from the Times Atlas, photographs, courtesy of Canon E. B. Truegrave. So he’d taken it himself. Had he labelled it correctly? Where had the mistake, if it was a mistake, come? Theodora looked at the pendulum clock on the wall above the archivist’s desk. It was two-thirty. She really coul
dn’t linger here. There was work to be done in the parish. As she turned to descend, there was a shuffling sound at the far end of the room and Canon Teape appeared stage left behind his desk.

  Theodora gathered up the volume and made her way down the stairs and round the catalogue. Teape gave a theatrical start.

  ‘Miss Braithwaite, how very nice. Have you everything you want? There is some of Newcome’s early correspondence catalogued, rather confusingly perhaps, under Revival, Catholic.’

  Theodora wasn’t interested in the eccentricities of the Ecclesia Place archive catalogue. She looked down at Teape’s toad-like figure. She noticed he was actually younger than she had thought on first meeting. His thin hair, watery eyes and recessive manner had made him seem older than his probable middle forties. That meant, perhaps, that he might be more clued up than an older cleric. For a moment she played with the idea of showing him the photograph and inviting his comment. Would he recognise that the photograph of Georgios XII was not the man whom he had met with Archbishop Papworth a couple of days ago? But something restrained her.

  ‘I was thinking of going to the Azbarnahi exhibition.’

  ‘Ah, at the Galaxy Gallery. I haven’t got round to it myself yet but it’s supposed to be very good. I’m afraid we haven’t been sent the catalogue.’

  ‘Background reading,’ Theodora explained.

  ‘Very necessary, otherwise objects lose their significance. One puts them in the wrong context or no context at all. We tend to think our own categories are the only ones and then miss the point. We used to call it education.’

  ‘Quite.’ Theodora was terse. Why did she feel so irritated with the Ecclesia Place set-up? It had done her no harm. On the other hand it didn’t seem to do anyone any good either.

  Canon Teape glanced at the volume in Theodora’s hand. ‘I see you have Bernhardt’s little volume. Quite a good introduction to something of a terra incognita. The article by Cyril Leyland on the art and architecture is particularly well researched.’

  Theodora took the plunge. ‘I was wondering about the illustrations. The one of the Archimandrite attributed to Canon Truegrave. That would have been taken by himself, would it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Bernhardt is a very competent photographer. He did a beautiful job on my own small collection.’

  ‘You collect?’

  ‘In a modest way, ecclesiastical silver.’

  ‘Not incunabula?’

  ‘One sees so many books.’ Canon Teape was deprecating.

  ‘And the Ecclesia Place Press,’ Theodora was dogged. ‘I haven’t come across it before. Are they …’ She wanted to say capable of carrying out proof-reading which would get the photographs rightly labelled. ‘Look,’ she said, and slid the volume under Teape’s nose. ‘I wondered if there was a mistake.’

  Teape studied the photograph for a minute or two. ‘Mistake?’ he said wonderingly. ‘How?’

  ‘The man in the photograph doesn’t look much like the man I saw on News at Ten the other night.’

  ‘Really? I suppose the TV lighting is rather different. A treacherous medium.’

  Theodora was stumped. ‘Is this really the same man you sat across the table from to negotiate the concordat on Monday?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Teape. ‘No doubt at all.’

  *

  Tom pushed at the door marked pull, reconsidered his position and pulled. The young woman inside the door of the Galaxy Gallery shone like an icon. She had gold hair and was dressed in a gold and black dress with long black sleeves. Gold slippers peeped from under her table, on which was heaped a pile of catalogues.

  She ran her eye up and down Tom from his brossed hair via the nylon shirt and grey flannel suit to a Reading University cycling club tie. She took in his crepe-soled French shoes. These had done him good service on his final year’s studies exchange at Lyons’ Institut de Finances Commerciales. He wasn’t too easy to read, he knew.

  ‘We’re just closing.’ She’d made her decision. Her accent could have been Benenden via Sloane Square.

  Tom smiled collusively and bent towards her. ‘I’m doing some research for Canon Truegrave of Ecclesia Place.’

  The girl hesitated. ‘I don’t think he’s left yet. You might just catch him in salle number two.’

  The form of the gallery, its systems and mechanisms, were unfamiliar to Tom and therefore meat and drink. ‘Who’s sponsoring the exhibition, I mean financially?’

  The assistant was surprised. ‘You are. I mean, Ecclesia Place is.’

  Tom was thrown. ‘Are you sure?’

  The girl’s gold eyebrows indicated she thought he was joking tastelessly. She handed him a catalogue and dismissed him.

  Tom stepped through the door marked ‘Salle One’ and stopped. The room was dark and for a moment he had to adjust his eyes. There was a smell of incense and, only just discernible above the velvety silence, the sound of slow bass chanting. Down the middle of the room was a line of modern glass cases like a jeweller’s, each illuminated from its base and shining like baubles anchored on a dark sea. In each had been placed a collection of homogeneous objects, icons, ciboriums, plates, pyxes, office books in elaborate silver bindings. The effect was of an unsung and uncelebrated but illustrated Mass. Overall, suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the room, was a cross, two metres by two, in silver with a pattern of blue opaque stones the size of a man’s hand worked into the design. The light from the showcases below played on it and it swung in the breeze of the ventilation system like a mobile.

  The elaborate creation of this ambience without a context in life disturbed Tom. What sort of response did the organisers want? What was the point of artificially constructing a church without the essential purpose of a church, for worship. Was Ecclesia Place really sponsoring this?

  More to the point, where was Truegrave? Tom wanted to ask that gentleman about one or two things. Like, what did you do with the Archimandrite between collecting him too early for the concordat meeting, his becoming a corpse and his disappearing from the carpet I rolled him in at about two-thirty, before you met a man who is different from someone you photographed and labelled Archimandrite Georgios XII in your book The Cold War Frontiers and the Church? Difficult, Tom thought, to put it more succinctly than that.

  Salle number one ended in double doors covered by long purple curtains. The shock of light in salle number two made Tom blink. This room was bright with October evening sunlight reinforced by powerful fluorescent ceiling light. The cases here were of scale models of power plants, factories and office blocks. Round the walls were blow-ups of mining complexes and hydro-electric dams; the Vorasi factory and the Zakon dam – doing, doubtless, terrible things to the tributary of the Danube. Closer inspection showed them to be photographs taken at different and ingenious angles of the same dam and the same factory. Tom bent to look more closely at the enlargement of the machinery and products. So the Ecclesia Place Press weren’t the only ones who could get the labelling of photographs wrong. The room, however, was empty.

  ‘The exhibition will close in ten minutes,’ said the Benenden voice from the grille in the wall. Then, lest there should be any monoglot Azbarnahi speakers, ‘Kurkali sen verhoi aklonzok dur instelin.’ The speaker, clearly not a native, stumbled over the vowels as though they were tank stops. Perhaps Azbarnahi was not taught at Benenden.

  Tom dived back the way he’d come. Adjusting his eyes to the jeweller’s room, he began to move towards the door by which he’d entered. Before he reached it, his ear was caught by the rustle of a curtain covering a door he’d not previously noticed halfway down the long side of the room. Curious, Tom swerved briskly towards it. The back stairs fire exit of the Galaxy Gallery opened before him. Below he could hear the sound of feet on metal treads. He leaned over and peered into the dimly lit lobby at the bottom. There was a sound of a bar being pushed on a door and, in the light which for a moment the open door admitted, Tom could make out the figure of a ma
n in a black cassock. The man’s face turned, momentarily, towards him. It was his second view of the Archimandrite Georgios XII, the one who had signed the concordat.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Agenda

  ‘The agenda for the Diet, I need hardly tell you, should come before any other priority.’ Canon Clutch never felt he need not repeat himself or shy away from what was perfectly understood by everyone. He smiled at his canon colleagues, almost winked at Myfannwy but by the time his eye reached Tom the smile had worn itself out.

  The pre-meeting to the agenda meeting of the Diet was held in Clutch’s room. It was as impressive as a cabinet minister’s. Tom read the symbols to himself. There had been some interesting work done recently on the symbolism of workplace environments. But a lot of it was American and focused on factors like ‘the placing of the mineral water machine in open working areas’. Perhaps he could offer something more sophisticated for Modern Manager’s Easter issue.

  The cliff of mahogany desk reared up like a rampart to indicate straightforward power of the ad baculum variety. A cache of Kalashnikovs in a corner could hardly have been more blatant. Canon Clutch seated himself behind the desk but provided no other accommodation except chairs for his colleagues. They were expected to scribble uncomfortably on their laps and consult papers spread out on the floor.

  An oil painting of the last but one Archbishop of Canterbury presided over all from behind Clutch’s chair. It was considered tactful to wait until vacating office before sitting for a portrait. To forge too swiftly into the future would be imprudent. So the symbolism, no less potent, was always, as it were, one in arrears. The last but one occupant smiled self-deprecatingly at his lawn sleeves. His college’s arms rested on his left ear. He’d been a scholar by inclination and had not wanted to be Archbishop. His retirement day had been a happy one. The gilt frame was topped with the arms of the see in gilded plaster. It gave the particular mould and form of power, ecclesiastical not just governmental.