by Mark Roberts
Clay touched the top of a gravestone inlaid into the wall of the corridor and felt the utter coldness of death, certain that the First Born now had a human name and a face. Adam Miller.
As Hendricks delivered Huddersfield to Clay, Huddersfield asked, ‘How long do I have to stay here for?’
‘Until I say it’s time for you to leave,’ replied Clay. ‘First things first, Gabriel. The first man. The first name in the Book of Genesis. Adam. This is the name of the First Born, your lover, your savage, the man you have taken life with?’
‘First things first,’ replied Huddersfield. ‘You found it then? The garden?’
‘I’ve found the garden. But in the garden there are thousands of bodies. I’m looking for the one that you and Adam Miller buried.’
‘Adam Miller?’
‘The body? Where is it?’
‘In the garden.’
‘You wish to serve and please the Lord and save your soul. Because one day you will die and you will be summoned for the Last Judgment.’
Inspiration sparked deep inside her. She glanced at Hendricks. ‘Follow us, Bill.’ They walked deeper into the stone passage.
‘But I have served the Lord,’ said Huddersfield.
He was holding back, but she could sense him unravelling before her. Everything she knew about him, everything she had heard and seen, the chaos that was Gabriel Huddersfield, made perfect sense.
‘And so have I,’ said Clay. She hung on to the silence, walked deeper into the darkness of the stone passage.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, catching up with her. He overtook Clay, walked in front of her. ‘What do you mean, And so have I?’ He turned, walked backwards, drilled his gaze into hers. ‘I said, But I have served the Lord. And you said, And so have I. What do you mean?’
‘Pray in silence,’ said Clay. ‘The best prayers are silent. The greatest form of prayer is to answer in silence the questions that need to be asked.’
She felt like she was being swallowed by darkness, but the conflict that danced across his wounded face kept her moving.
‘What questions? What prayers?’
‘I will ask aloud. You will answer in silence.’
She walked him to the bottom of the passage, the edge of the graveyard. It was quiet and the day was closing down at the edge of the Garden of St James. Gravestones were scattered within the natural stone boundaries of the garden, bodies buried under the snow, marked by nineteenth-century marble angels and sealed in beneath headstones carved with the briefest of biographies.
‘In silence, Gabriel. Did the First Born deceive you?’
A blackbird flew quickly overhead as its mate called from the trees overlooking the dead.
‘What is hell like? In silence, Gabriel,’ said Clay. She waited, sensed the wheels of his mind turning in the mounting tension of his face. His eye movements slowed, processing fear. ‘Can you be spared from hell, Gabriel? Angels have fallen in the past. Have you fallen? Do you know? Is there doubt? Can fallen angels be saved? And what is more loathsome in the eyes of the Lord? Sexual perversion? Or murder?’
The wind around their ears whistled and at their feet it moaned.
‘Listen. Can you hear that? Do you know what the sound is? It’s a requiem for a fallen angel.’
Tears filled his eyes and he looked utterly lost.
He opened his mouth to speak. ‘Silence!’ she ordered. She waited. ‘I have stood in the darkness...’
In the span of a single moment, she was six years old again, standing in the chapel of St Claire’s, looking at her protector Sister Philomena lying dead in her coffin. The spark of love that had always illuminated her had gone out, leaving only a cold, waxy approximation of her once lovely face.
‘And I have walked untouched through fire to do battle with the Evil One.’
Forward in time, to nine years ago. Alone in a burning building, she faced Adrian White, Satanic prophet and serial killer, across a wall of fire. Death was almost certain.
‘Do you know who I mean?’
‘The Baptist!’
‘Can you be spared the torments of hell, Gabriel?’
She took his left hand in her right, felt the profound coldness of his fingers and the wetness of his palms and knew she was touching terror.
‘First things first. Redeem yourself. First things first. Show us where you buried the body. Show us where the other half is. Take Bill Hendricks to the body.’ She leaned in to Hendricks. ‘I’ve got to find Adam Miller.’
Tears streamed down his face.
‘I will.’
81
4.01 pm
Close to the top of the Vestey Tower, a pair of lift doors opened. A sign on the wall, blood-red writing on a white background, read: ‘Level 10: The Bell Chamber’. Artificial light leaked in through narrow windows.
‘Where going?’ asked Abey as Adam steered him and Louise out of the lift and into the narrow sandstone corridor. Adam pushed them forwards. Shadows wreathed the high walls above their heads.
The approaching footfall and echoing gabble of foreign voices forced a sickly smile on to Adam’s face. As a group of Japanese tourists turned the corner and headed in their direction, he whispered to Louise, ‘Just keep walking and shut up.’
‘Hush now, Abey!’ said Louise.
He slid a finger across his tightly shut lips.
‘Lift?’ asked one of the Japanese women.
‘Oh, just keep going that way,’ replied Adam, smiling broadly. ‘Do you like the sound of bells, Louise?’
‘You’re hurting my arm, Adam. There’s no need to hold on to me. I’m not capable of running away. I don’t want to make you angry.’
‘You already have done. Accusing me of involvement in your father’s murder. You made a mistake, didn’t you? Saying I was in your father’s room last night. I’m not a murderer.’
He stopped dead in his tracks, sniffed the dampness in the air leaking in through the masonry, the coldness that radiated from the stone.
‘I wasn’t in your father’s room with Gabriel Huddersfield. You’re confused. You’re upset. And you’re wrong. Say it. Say of yourself, I was wrong. Say it. Go on. I was wrong. Say it.’
‘I can’t say that, Adam. Because I did see you in my father’s room.’ His grip tightened and she sobbed with the sudden hike in pain. ‘I’ve got brittle bones, you’re going to break my arm.’
He let go of both of their arms and placed his hands in the centre of their spines.
A set of stone stairs leading up to another level loomed. Two diagonal walls ran towards each other, defining the tight rectangle of a stone platform, a space to view the interior of the bell chamber.
‘Do you like the sound of bells, Louise?’
‘Yes, I like the sound of bells,’ she replied.
‘My father used to say that every time you hear a bell ring, an angel has won its wings.’
Adam pushed them to the low stone wall and metal fence overlooking the bell chamber. Thirteen huge upturned bells sat in the middle of the space. In the middle, a concrete structure housed the largest of the bells, 15 tonnes, Great George. Mist drifted in through slats in the carved arches in the wall and was picked up by the bright overhead lights.
‘Yes,’ said Louise. ‘I saw that film too. It’s a Wonderful Life. Clarence the aspiring angel says it: Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.’
‘My father had more wisdom in his little finger than the whole of every film ever made in Hollywood put together. He didn’t need to steal other people’s lines and pass them off as his own.’
Louise looked into his eyes, saw a chink of light. ‘What would your father say to you, in his wisdom, Adam, if he was here now?’
A brief but undeniable look of shame passed over his face. ‘Stop talking to me about my father!’
He stood behind Louise, breathing on her, eyeing the steep drop to the concrete floor where the bells were housed, sizing up the lethally sharp edges of the huge triangular
panels that divided each bell from its neighbour.
Louise turned. ‘I felt the same breath on my neck last night,’ she said. ‘If you throw me over the railing on to the bells...’ Several voices and numerous pairs of feet came thundering down from the rooftop at speed, descending the 108 steps of the winding stone staircase to the bell chamber platform. ‘...people will know.’
A child’s voice echoed into and around the bell chamber. ‘Hello-lo-lo-lo...’
They were getting closer now, the people coming down the staircase.
‘You’re coming with me.’ Adam grabbed Louise and Abey by the arms and marched them towards the voices.
As they turned the corner and advanced into the oncoming human wave, a solitary hand pressed against Adam’s chest. ‘We’re being evacuated, mate. You can’t go up there,’ said the tourist.
‘She’s left her handbag up on the roof,’ replied Adam. ‘Is the security guard still up there?’
‘Oh yeah.’
Adam stood back, let the people through. When a gap emerged, he pressed on towards the stone staircase. ‘Faster, walk faster!’
A man’s voice swirling around the roof of the bell tower. One man. One voice. The security guard.
The steps to the top were edged in white paint. Four steps. A corner. More steps. Another corner. Adam stuck his hand in his coat pocket and felt the reassuring grip of his screwdriver.
Turn. Up. Run.
It would only take a matter of minutes.
Turn. Up. Run.
The last steep set of steps, the open doorway to the roof of the tower.
Night was falling. From the ground, diagonal beams of broad yellow light lit up the tower’s exterior.
‘Go ahead of me!’ With Louise first and Abey in front of him, Adam started the final climb, the screwdriver between his fingers.
Up. Walk.
He would be the only one to leave the bell tower alive.
82
4.09 pm
As he followed Gabriel Huddersfield into the graveyard, Hendricks flicked on his torch.
‘You mentioned the other half in connection with the body we’re looking for now,’ said Hendricks. ‘The other half of what exactly?’
‘The silenced half. The starved piece.’
‘Starved piece? Starved of what?’ He looked at the back of Huddersfield’s head, the casing of a damaged brain, and wondered if he was floating into oblivion.
‘How do you know Adam Miller?’
‘This place.’ Huddersfield turned off the path and on to the snow-blocked expanse of grass at the centre of the graveyard.
‘This place? As in, you know him from the Anglican Cathedral?’
‘He works as an interpreter here. I’ve been a visitor for years. I come here and the Catholic Cathedral. I like them both. I used to see him watching me, staring at me every time I came in to pray. I’d sit on the back pew, looking at the stained glass over the altar.’ He stopped and stared blankly ahead, lost somewhere in his head.
‘Go on.’
‘The first time I saw him was three years ago. I saw him watching me. I watched him walk away when he saw I’d seen him watching me. I came next day. I brought a small mirror. I hid it in my hand.’
He held up his hand, stared into his palm and a pair of tears rolled down his face.
‘I sat in the same place. I looked in the mirror and he was watching me. I came every day... Sometimes he was here, sometimes not. I looked in the mirror. Every time, he came a step closer. I stopped looking in the mirror.’
He closed his hand, raised it to his mouth and bit down hard on the flesh beneath his little finger.
‘Stop that!’ said Hendricks.
He released his hand.
‘Keep talking.’
‘I... I could hear him breathing behind me. I was in the same place and so was he. I was at one end, he was at the other. I stopped looking with my eyes. I started feeling him... closer and closer along the pew... The heat from his body next to mine. I opened my eyes but did not look at him. I stood up and walked ten paces towards the door. He told me, Walk. I walked and he followed me, always ten paces behind me, all the way from this place to Sefton Park. I walked to 777 Croxteth Road, the place I have lived since a kind lady helped me. I opened the front door and left it open. I walked up the stairs and the front door closed. I walked up the stairs and he followed me. I opened my door and left it open. I walked into my living room and I heard my door close. I had never known such agony, such raw agony.’
Silence. Then a tiny voice, a raised voice from high above. Hendricks’s eyes were automatically drawn to the top of the Vestey Tower.
Gabriel Huddersfield stopped. ‘I am here.’
To Hendricks, surrounded by a circle of trees, it felt like they were in the middle of nowhere, a good place to get rid of a dead body. He shone his torch on to the ground. The snow was thick and there was no apparent sign of a grave.
‘I am standing on it.’
‘Step aside,’ said Hendricks, slipping a pair of latex gloves on to his hands. He crouched, removed a layer of snow and felt the grassy, moss-riddled earth. With the tips of his fingers he stroked the ground, trying to tease out some sign of disturbance. His fingers fell still as he reached a small gap, a straight line. He shone his torch on to it and carried on, following the light with his fingers. The line stopped abruptly, changed direction to make a corner.
He got out his phone. ‘Terry? We’ve got a square. Thirty centimetres each side, right angles at the corners.’
He banged the centre of the square and the ground outside it. It all felt solid, but there was something extremely hard beneath the square. It’s a grave, he thought. But not a hastily dug grave, a bin in the earth to dispose of human evidence. He could sense precision and attention in its construction.
Seagulls tricked by the cathedral’s huge up-lights screamed as they scattered in and out of the growing darkness.
He looked again at the square. It had been set out with care. More than that: it had been executed with love.
83
4.14 pm
As Adam Miller stepped off the last stair and out on to the roof of the Vestey Tower, snow started falling, its flakes like broken stars caught in the vivid lights beaming up from the floor.
He paused and watched.
The security guard was there, his back turned. Louise and Abey were advancing towards him as he gathered his things from the hut at the centre of the roof space. He won’t be able to protect you, thought Adam. He imagined them as a trio of figures eternally trapped in a snow scene held on the flat of his hand, the hand that was about to deal with all of them.
He looked around the roof, at the rectangular structure of scaffolding posts in the centre of the space and the narrow ropes that hung from it, stretching out across the floor around the security guard’s hutch.
Abey turned, looked at Adam, pointed and said, ‘Bad man!’
The guard looked over his shoulder. ‘What are you doing here, Adam?’ he asked.
Louise stopped, turned towards Adam, and he didn’t know if she was smiling or about to scream.
‘I’m just a silly old woman...’ She shivered with cold. ‘Getting the wrong end of the stick, mistaking this upstanding Christian gentleman for a murderer. Silly me. Silly old woman.’
‘What’s going on?’ asked the guard.
Adam walked towards the three of them.
Abey picked up a thread of rope from the floor, whipped the falling snow and freezing cold air. ‘Bad man! Bad man! Bad man!’ His chest began to heave and a rope of mucus hung from his nose.
The security guard pointed at the door and the steps leading back down to the bell chamber. ‘Get inside now, the three of you! We’ve had an order to evacuate. I don’t know what the hell’s going on here, but I do know we need to get out of here and down to the ground floor. Now!’
‘You want us to just get off the roof,’ said Adam, ‘and walk down the stairs and get in the lift
s and walk out on to the ground floor?’
‘The police are here. The building and grounds are crawling with coppers,’ said the guard.
‘Why?’
‘There’s something going on in the graveyard.’
‘And you want me to walk into that?’ said Adam, standing just an arm’s length from the guard.
‘Hey, what is the matter with you?’ The guard’s face fell. His authority dissolved into anxiety. ‘You don’t look right.’
‘How did the police know we were here?’ asked Adam. On the ground below, sirens swarmed from many directions. He pointed at Louise. ‘You’re a fucking liar!’ He pointed at Abey. ‘You’re a fucking cretin!’ He came right up to the guard. ‘And you’re fucking dead!’
The security guard’s walkie-talkie fizzed with static. ‘What’s happening, Jim?’ As he raised it to his face to respond, Adam snatched it from him and threw it over the side of the tower.
The guard walked backwards, his hands raised in front of him. As Adam closed in, the guard glanced back, saw Abey crying and Louise shaking, the two of them wrapped in an embrace. ‘You don’t look well, Adam. You don’t look yourself,’ he said.
‘Stop bothering the stonemason?’ said Adam. ‘What did you tell me to do? And what did you call me?’
‘I didn’t mean to offend you...’
‘Oh yes! Fuck off, faggot...’
‘I was only doing my job.’ The guard’s back was against the masonry. ‘You... G-give the screwdriver to me,’ he said.
‘As you wish,’ replied Adam. He raised his arm and his hand lunged forwards, the tip of the screwdriver cleanly piercing the centre of the guard’s left eye.
The guard staggered a few paces, reached up and folded a fist around the handle as he dropped to his knees. His hand fell away and his body collapsed.
Adam grabbed a length of rope from the scaffolding, looked up at Louise and Abey, and started tying the guard’s feet together at the ankles. ‘Don’t move a muscle, either of you!’ he barked.
