by Guy Sheppard
‘You talk as if you knew the Lyons family very well, Frank. What were they to you, exactly? Was it strictly friendship?’
‘It rarely is.’
‘Business, then?’
‘That’s more like it, Inspector. Back in the 1970’s and 80’s, after each robbery, Rex brought me a ‘parcel’ of antiques for disposal and I’d try to get him a decent fix. He gave me mostly the shitty stuff, but he always gave me a bit of the cream as well. That way we kept the channels open, ready to pass on the rest of the stuff, the bit worth millions…. Much later on I did the same for Luke before he pretended to find God.’
‘What does this have to do with Reverend Lyons now?’
‘Fact is, Inspector, if anyone has that loot it has to be him.’
‘These are the Devil’s words.’
‘That, Inspector, is because the Devil pays best.’
‘Luke chose to give up crime years ago.’
‘Keep reminding yourself of that.’
‘Sorry, Cordell, but you’re insane.’
‘What if I told you I think I know where Reverend Lyons has gone? What if I told you that it’s on account of me that he isn’t dead?’
‘You can learn a lot from a born liar but not that much.’
‘They tell you what we all called him in here?’
‘I forget.’
‘We called him ‘The Captain’ on account of his passion for boats. Not any old boats, either. I’m talking about those real ocean-going ships that sail up the canal to Gloucester for the Tall Ships Festival every couple of years.’
‘It’s true that Luke once worked as a ship’s chaplain on cruise liners.’
‘He has sailed off with his old man’s treasure, Inspector, I’ll bet my life on it.’
Cordell’s lizard’s tongue flickered at the gap in his very long and twisted lips. His face was not merely cunning, it appealed to Jorge with a knowingness and malignant familiarity.
‘So how do you account for the fact that the GPS signal on his phone ended at the River Severn? He left behind his hat and coat but his body has yet to be found.’
‘And if the dead should ever resurface, Inspector? Do you have pen and paper, by any chance?’
‘I do.’
Cordell wrote something with his shaky hand and thrust it at him across the table’s scratched surface.
‘That’s where you’ll find me, Inspector, after my release tomorrow.’
‘You really have something to tell me about Reverend Lyons?’
‘There’s so much more that you don’t know about your missing priest, believe me.’
‘Until tomorrow, then.’
‘It’s safer. Thanks to that bastard my boy is dead.’
*
Back in his impeccably restored VW camper van, Jorge pulled pages from Luke’s case file. He remained unconvinced that he would ever hear anything useful or reliable from Frank Cordell since everything about him appeared so wild.
Last year’s disciplinary procedure against the missing man lay before him. He reread lines about his quarry, feeling a trifle unnerved in both body and spirit. He skipped paragraphs 1.1 to 5. Looking under ‘Investigations’, he reprised his role against the Rev. Luke Lyons in absentia.
5.1: The purpose of an investigation is for us to establish a fair and balanced view of the facts relating to any allegations against you, before deciding whether to proceed with a disciplinary hearing. The amount of investigation required will depend on the nature of the allegations… It may involve interviewing and taking statements from you and any witnesses, and/or reviewing relevant documents.
He moved on to 6.1: Where your conduct is the subject of a criminal investigation, charge or conviction the Church will investigate the facts before deciding whether to take formal disciplinary action.
More importantly his file contained a ‘selfie’ that Luke had taken one Christmas at a carol service at Westminster Abbey. In it he was in many ways still the boy he remembered, but being in his mid-thirties his black hair was, like his own, already beginning to recede across his scalp and he had acquired large dark circles round his eyes. His face was lean, much leaner than expected, his skin worn, his cheeks drawn, his chin badly shaved. His large blue-black eyes, with some exotic swirls of agate, granite and gold, burned with a fire that belonged to a visionary or former gangster, or both.
‘Where have you been these last eight months, Luke, my old friend?’ Jorge wondered as he turned the key in the ignition and heard the camper van’s smoky engine cough into life. ‘Are you really at the bottom of the river?’
Having been informed in writing of the allegations against him, the basis for those allegations, and what the likely range of consequences would be if the Senior Deacon decided after the hearing that the allegations were true, Rev. Luke Lyons, aka ‘The Captain’, had promptly denied everything by return of post.
A quotation accompanied his denial which was, appropriately enough, from Luke 12:34:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Since then, nothing.
4
Luke paced up and down before his TV set. Beside himself with anger, he watched as the camera in the Spanish television studio switched from distinguished guest to interviewer briefly.
‘Admit it, Jess. You and your gang burgled people’s homes because you liked it?’
Jessica gazed pleasantly into the lens.
‘I never said we were saints. Besides, everyone has to make a living. Take Paul Colley for instance – he had a heroin habit to feed. Mel McAtree was a compulsive gambler. Couldn’t go a day without putting a bet on the horses.’
Luke stopped pacing to listen.
‘Well, Jess, okay, but that’s not what you told The Tatler. In it you said that you were proud to be the best burglars in the business. You were, in fact, career criminals of the worst kind, were you not?’
‘The real point is, dear, did we have a fair trial?’ said Jessica, fanning herself with the folds of her black and gold fan. ‘And my reply to that is no, dear, we didn’t. I mean it suited certain people to demonise us. The way hundreds of police broke into my home and put a gun to my head just shows how the upper classes control everything. We were treated like terrorists. Quite simply all the bigwigs set the police onto us like a bunch of vigilantes – we were victims of a vendetta. I can’t go shopping in Spain without feeling as though some security guard is following me everywhere. The whole business has left me with post-traumatic stress disorder. I should get compensation. Even Ellie, my daughter, suffers and she’s never done anything bad in her whole life except kill her first husband in a car crash. I feel sorry for the rest of the gang.’
‘You suggesting you were wrongly sentenced?’
‘No, yeah, I don’t know. Apart from Rex I got seven years, Paul Colley got ten, Mel McAtree got four years and three months, Slim Jim Jackson got the same, while Johnnie Hunt got five. Even Frank Cordell was given two years and six months and all he did was fence a carriage clock worth £10,000, though he’s made up for it since. That doesn’t make us malicious.’
‘Is it true that you showed Rex how to break into caravans on a site next to Berkeley nuclear power station when you were both children? Did you come up with the name Severn Sea Gang all by yourself?’
‘I really can’t remember.’
There echoed in Luke’s head a sudden torrent of crazy things. ‘Like father, like son’ it was normally said, but what about ‘like mother’?
From the very beginning the Severn Sea Gang had been his father and mother. They were an inseparable team of two. They were first drawn to each other as far back as schoolchildren, alone and angry, by Johnny Kidd & the Pirates – rock n’ roll that took the world by storm in 1960. Rex and Jess were a gang you could join only if you dressed up in pirate costumes complete with eye-patches and wooden cutlasses. While Kidd strutted the stage before an enormous backcloth of a buccaneer’s galleon, his parents had acted out their own versio
n of Clem Cattini on drums by beating the shit out of passing pupils. The fact that they grew up to be sweethearts only confirmed their common cause. What could be more exciting than to be the next Bonnie and Clyde in a small Gloucestershire town like Berkeley? They were eleven at the time.
The interviewer smiled faintly.
‘What about the other members of the gang? They weren’t exactly angelic, either. Mel McAtree attacked a man with a claw hammer in a pub in Gloucester.’
‘He was provoked.’
‘Consider this, then. Johnnie Hunt and Paul Colley smashed their way into factories. Stole lorry loads of precious metals. They also robbed two post offices. Frank Cordell still deals in stolen goods and has been convicted of grooming a thirteen-year-old girl online. After you were all locked up in prison reports of crime declined by sixty per cent in Gloucestershire, did they not?’
Jessica fanned herself vigorously in the hot halo of studio lights.
‘It was a relief, in a way, to get away with it for so long.’
‘So what made you graduate from a few smash-and-grabs to raiding a dozen stately homes?’
‘Really we just got better and better at what we did. As the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit said at the time, Give the Devil his due, they know their stuff!’
‘It took four police forces in Operation Gold to nail you, am I right?’
‘That’s because we were in and out of a place in minutes. Whenever the police took us on, we won.’
‘Can’t feel much like a victory now?’
‘No. Yeah, I don’t know, dear. That haul in Wiltshire alone was worth £35 million.’
‘So, Jess, tell us. Where is it now? Out there somewhere is £100,000 million to the first person who can find it?’
Luke leaned in to listen.
Jessica giggled. The Gloucestershire burr in her voice betrayed all the excitement of a giggling girl.
‘The figure gets bigger every time you mention it.’
‘Well?’
‘Honestly? You want the location?’
‘Seems sensible.’
‘All I can say is that someone knows where it is because Rex did leave behind a clue of some sort, I’m certain. Poor Rex, I loved him so. He read a lot, too. His favourite book was ‘Treasure Island’. He read it to me three times. Smartest criminal I ever knew.’
*
That last part, at least, was true, thought Luke coolly. During prison visits his father would spend every minute telling him how he had loved to dress up as a Teddy Boy. His favourite garb had been his drape jacket with cuffs made from the same colour velvet as the collar. Not that he’d ever get to wear it again. Powder blue, it was and it went with his drainpipe trousers and Crombie overcoat. He told him stories of visits to London where he liked to buy his crepe soled shoes with one inch heels which he named Brothel Creepers. Or he’d tell him how he wore a pocket watch on a gold chain on his fancy waistcoat. Just like his own father had.
The next visit, it would all be about a threat from people ‘we’ couldn’t trust, in case they ever came between ‘us’ and the as yet unspecified ‘good fortune’ that was to come Luke’s way one day. These were all former gang members. By seven years of age he knew their names by heart. One name in particular. Frank Cordell.
‘Never trust the bastard with whom you have to share a cell, Luke, my boy. That one is slippier than an eel.’
Next minute Rex was all sweetness and light.
It had all seemed, at the time, a bit of a game. Now those last words came back to haunt him: ‘In a few years’ time, son, the world will be our oyster. Take care. Not a word to your mother or anyone else because I’ve got it all sorted.’
‘But dad, I never see her. She doesn’t want me.’
‘Then it’ll be you and me.’
Rex neglected to mention that, unlike Jessica, he was serving life for murder. Perhaps he thought he’d forgotten?
‘What the devil?’ thought Luke and went back to pacing the floor.
The interviewer had changed subject.
‘So, Jess, you gave birth to twins in prison, did you not? That can’t have been easy.’
‘I’d rather not discuss it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’re not me, dear.’
‘It looked for years as if your son Luke would follow in your criminal footsteps. He had nineteen convictions for burglary, robbery, fraud and dangerous driving by the time he was twenty. Did you ever worry that he might simply end up like you?’
Luke became aware of a tremor in his body, almost a fit at first, then more and more like simple fear. He stood motionless and watched the TV as he held his hand to his temple. Felt a rhythmical throbbing increase between his eyes. He squeezed his fingers and the blood momentarily stopped being propelled along his veins.
He had never before bothered to take stock of his heart’s innermost working. Never considered its fragile existence, like glass. The beat of someone’s pulse was forever the beat of their mother’s womb, but this felt like a series of enormous hammer blows. He attributed it to her being an otherwise total stranger.
Jessica smeared the back of her hand idly across her lips. With her fingers went a bad taste.
‘I can’t say what my son did. Honestly, I can’t say in my heart-of-hearts if Luke did those things or not because the where and when of his life I never knew until recently. I’m told he fell into wrong company while he lived in Chapel Cottage by the River Severn, that his grandmother found him to be a bit of a handful. Can’t believe everything the youth custody centre said about him, either. That was a rotten place to be in the 1990’s. My son has been made a scapegoat for a lot of other people’s misdemeanours. It was the system back then. I have every reason to believe that he was abused and beaten. It was not his mother who made him violent, it was evil men he should have been able to trust. If I had raised him by myself he would never have committed a single crime.’
‘So Jess, is it true that Luke has put his past behind him to become a man of God?’
Jessica snarled.
‘It’s not the worst thing in the world. No, I absolutely don’t know of anything worse. He must be off his head.’
‘Doesn’t mean a criminal can’t ever decide to go straight, does it?’
‘I very much doubt it, dear. He must have had a total nervous breakdown to do what he’s doing now.’
‘So what did you say when your daughter told you that he’s a priest?’
‘What does anyone say about a religious crank?’
‘Fuck it,’ thought Luke and changed TV stations ready to look out the window again. A fallen tree had just sliced a parked car in two.
No signs yet that the Devil would desist in time for his departure tomorrow.
He glanced at the very large, half-packed leather suitcase on the table.
If he had his mother’s eyes, he also had his father’s beaky nose.
That harpy had to be wrong, though, because people’s characters could sometimes change, if not their looks.
This was literally his last chance to return home and start over.
He’d spent too many years burning bridges already.
Pretty much.
In a fit of bravado he pulled off his clerical collar and undid a few buttons on his shirt. A serpentine tattoo reflected in the glass of the window.
Its red-headed water spirit curled her tail round the curve of his neck as he wondered how such a harsh reminder could still be his.
Her silvery sea-green eyes were not simply of the nature of a monster. Rather, she gazed back at him with a ravishing delight, a vindictive callousness, a viper’s charm.
If only all hell wasn’t about to break out, he hoped, braving the latest thunder. It was the strangest of times. According to the latest news a crocodile had just been seen swimming in the docks in Bristol.
Some things refused to stay at the bottom of the deepest water.
Five minutes later he swi
tched back to the interview.
‘So Jess, finally, what would you say to all your critics out there who might call you a heartless mother and incorrigible thief?’
Jessica tilted the best side of her face to the camera.
‘I’d say it’s all about context, dear. I grew up without a father. So did Rex. Until you know the whole truth about someone you shouldn’t judge them. What I will say is this. That rat who grassed on us has a lot to answer for. So, you bastard, if you’re listening to this right now, don’t think I’ve forgotten about everything I lost on account of you, because one day soon I will find a way to get even.’
Luke took a quick step back as his mother jabbed her finger straight at him. He knew that he should not go so far as to believe a word she said. Should forget that’s where he came from.
Yet he found himself staring at her like some terrible goddess of hell. The greedy-eyed Proserpine grinned at him with such a sly mouth and ironical grimace that he could not help but feel drawn to admire her vile nature.
There had been a time when he had dreamt of finding that treasure, too.
5
If there was one thing of which he was acutely aware, it was the awful aftertaste of cabbage under his tongue.
Jorge was steering his camper van along narrow, frosty lanes out of Berkeley while reminding himself sternly that the Cabbage Soup Diet was NOT intended as a long-term solution to his problem.
Unlike The 3 Day Military Diet which had very quickly proved that he was no soldier, his latest quick fix solution billed itself as ‘a bit of a miracle’. He gave his stomach a pat. Who wouldn’t invoke divine intervention if they could?
