Sabrina & The Secret of The Severn Sea

by Guy Sheppard

  She was positively drawn to one thing in particular, Jorge noted, so much so that her frequent returns to his table became quite rude, not to say unnerving.

  ‘They do say it’s the Devil’s ship, Inspector.’

  ‘You serious?’

  ‘Makes my flesh creep,’ said Lucy and fled back to the kitchen.

  An hour later Jorge stopped to button his coat as he stepped back on shore. He had, from here, a clear view of the black ship across the harbour.

  The inquisitive Lucy had a point because something about it made his flesh crawl.

  It was the ship’s figurehead. It was no pretty lady but a grinning human skeleton that hung on chains by its head and pelvis from the vessel’s bowsprit. A hideous curvature of the bony spine lent the abominable thing a semblance of sinuous life as it flexed its empty ribcage in the breeze.

  Bones and chains rattled horribly whenever the leering cadaver raised or lowered its calcified arm in order to proffer its drinking cup to the sea. With its other hand it clasped a hawser. The skull’s fleshless jaws gaped with delight at its awful toast to the waves.

  He was outraged and amused, not simply by the novelty of the figurehead, but by the unsettling audacity of whoever had put it there. How could anyone be unaffected by this gloomy harbinger of death so plain to see in the bright spring air? On the doomster’s back danced three much smaller skeletons like children.

  Lucy was correct, it looked to be a long walk round the harbour via the bridge. Sasha sat up on her cushion in the camper van to greet him. She pressed the tip of her nose to the window as he started the engine.

  Clifton Suspension Bridge had reopened as police concentrated on recovering the body of the jumper from the mud below.

  Too much to hope that he survived?

  Tried to settle the flutter in his heart.

  His thoughts focused again on Rex Lyons’s Bible as he drove out of Bristol. There was no mention of it in the notes in his case file but that particular copy of the Good Book held special significance for Rev. Luke’s disappearance, according to Frank Cordell. What if that’s what the killers wanted when they showed him the view from the roof?

  There could be but one explanation – the most unfavourable one.

  ‘Consider this a warning, Sasha. Somebody wants to know the same thing we do?’

  Worse, what if Frank blabbed before he flew?

  10

  ‘What do you mean, you have something to tell me in confidence?’ said Luke, declining to shake the prisoner’s hand. It was Tuesday, March 29 th 2016, his first day at work in HMPL…. ‘I’m your new chaplain. What else?’

  ‘Don’t be such a fool, reverend.’

  He again tried to turn away. To ignore the other man’s iron grip on his wrist was dangerous, though. He stopped moving. He had not been able to believe his luck when he saw Cordell’s name on his list of prisoners for counselling today. It was like someone’s idea of a bad joke.

  ‘I don’t have time for your silly mysteries.’

  ‘Surely you remember who fenced those jewels for you in London not so very long ago?’

  ‘How can anyone ever forget the great Frank Cordell?’

  ‘My point exactly.’

  ‘Believe me, I’ve done my best.’

  That was not to say that he didn’t feel some sympathy for the old man as he sat down in his office, thought Luke. The gap-toothed felon had a wall eye, courtesy of a cellmate’s razor and dislike of child abusers at his previous jail. His cheeks, too, had the unhealthy pallor of someone who had, as a consequence, avoided the exercise yard for his own safety.

  But now he was in an open prison things were a little more relaxed in preparation for his eventual release back into the community.

  Cordell smiled.

  ‘I am still your friend, Luke, believe me.’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Yet you answered my call.’

  ‘I didn’t have to. Okay, it’s good to see you alive, Frank. Never expected you to make it this far. I sure as hell didn’t expect to make it myself.’

  ‘Happy times, eh, Luke?’

  ‘Is that what this is about?’

  ‘Listen to me, reverend. Your father and I did time together on and off in prison, as you know. I was in jail when Rex Lyons died because of that deadly brawl in the showers. I saw Paul Colley stab him in the throat with a sharpened pencil, as a result of which Rex contracted sepsis which the doctors failed to detect in time. It killed him. End of story.’

  ‘Amen to that.’

  ‘Except it isn’t.’

  ‘Paul later hanged himself in his cell.’

  ‘That’s because Rex had powerful friends.’

  Luke stared out of the window for a moment to the prison gates beyond.

  ‘Is this why you wanted to see me, Frank? To dredge something up? Well done, you.’

  ‘Believe me, reverend, I’m on your side.’

  ‘Somehow I doubt it.’

  ‘Yeah, long story.’

  ‘I’m past all that now, anyway.’

  ‘Are you, reverend? Then why are you here?’

  ‘I’m here to do my job.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean Rex died for no reason.’

  Luke left the window and faced the table; he was both horrified and fascinated to meet this ghost from the past.

  ‘Listen, Frank, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. I’m the Reverend Luke Lyons now. What do I care about what you think about my father’s murderer? It’s one crook’s opinion of another.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s more than that.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘Rex Lyons died to keep his secret.’

  ‘Secret? What secret?’

  ‘You know that very well.’

  ‘I don’t have time for this, I really don’t.’

  ‘Perhaps you know more than you realise.’

  Cordell’s cyclopean eye bore into Luke. It reminded him how everything concerning his father’s death had forever been shrouded in the unnatural fog of incarceration.

  ‘Don’t mess with me, Frank. You hear me?’

  ‘Honestly? You don’t want to know?’

  ‘As a Christian I feel I should turn the other cheek.’

  ‘You? The ‘Lucky’ Luke Lyons who wouldn’t hesitate to settle a score with his own gun?’

  ‘What can I tell you? In London every gang had to look after its own.’

  ‘Fact is, reverend, I’m prepared to give up my evil ways like you. What if God wants me to help you in order to save us both? Don’t I deserve forgiveness, too?’

  ‘Technically.’

  ‘Rex Lyons speaks to me from ‘the other side’, reverend. I hear his whispers in my head from beyond the grave every day.’

  ‘I’m really happy for you.’

  ‘Damn it, Luke, will you listen to me or not? Do it as a man of God if not as an old friend?’

  When a prisoner suddenly professed that he had seen the light in something like a spiritual conversion, then he had to wonder, thought Luke. If not risky the ploy was no less repulsive. It might help him to win coveted category D status, it might enable him to play with his kids in a special room when they next visited. In short, he was being set up?

  ‘What is it you want from me, Frank? What is it you expect me to do for you?’

  ‘I’m old and not a well man. True, I’ll be out of here in twelve months but this is not about me, it’s about Alex, my grandson. He’s only six and very ill. I want him to have a chance of survival, to see him ride his bike like a normal child. All I need is the money because the NHS won’t fund the operation. Time’s running out, reverend. UK doctors say Alex is too far gone for surgery already.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He has a brain tumour. It already affects his sense of balance but you can save him if you try.’

  ‘Don’t see how I can.’

  ‘Here’s the thing. For £100,000 my daughter can send her son to Prague for proton-beam t
herapy.’

  This charmless conversation suddenly had Luke’s full attention. This was not to be a gentle trip down memory lane after all. He was speechless for a moment, then he laughed out loud.

  ‘Seriously, Frank, you think I have that kind of money to give to the likes of you?’

  ‘You will when I tell you how to get it.’

  ‘I doubt that very much.’

  ‘I’m talking about all those antiques that were stolen by the Severn Sea Gang during the 1970s and 80s.’

  ‘To this day no one knows where my father hid it all.’

  ‘What have you got to lose, reverend?’

  ‘My parents, Rex and Jess, did a very bad thing. A woman died because of that stupid treasure.’

  ‘Damn right she did.’

  He glared once more at Frank’s cunning face and was momentarily really furious.

  ‘That’s not all. Because Rex and Jess were thieves I grew up to believe that I could have whatever I wanted. No laws of common decency applied to me and my sense of entitlement overrode all protest. I was born with a burden. An evil one. That same burden got Rex murdered, most likely. That treasure is cursed because it knows no rules. You’re right, I did come here today in the vain hope that I might learn something about my father, but it has nothing to do with those lost antiques. I was going to ask you if he ever spoke to you about me. Ever say he loved me? Instead, you tell me that he has plans for me from the next world. Are you insane?’

  The pain in his head eased. Rather, it became throb by throb the constant pulse of his strained heartbeat.

  ‘Rex’s burden doesn’t have to be yours, reverend,’ replied Frank and scratched his thin grey hair with his dirty fingernails. ‘When I fenced goods for your dad I did it as a true friend. I owe him, big time. I don’t like to see his memory trashed, is all. That’s why Paul Colley got what was due to him. Thanks to Rex I fenced a fortune in gold, diamonds and sapphires. I can do so again, for you. Why let everything go to waste? Rex owes it to you as his beloved son. Think of it as your legitimate inheritance.’

  Luke did not react beyond a contemptuous toss of his head. He found the other man’s whole attitude daring but ridiculous. Had he not long ago given up any notion of honour among thieves?

  Ever since then he had tried to distinguish between crime and a means to an end.

  ‘You want me to fund your sick grandson’s operation with stolen goods? Honestly? That’s why you petitioned so eagerly to see me this morning?’

  ‘That stash of antiques is the answer to both our prayers.’

  ‘But I can’t help you! Besides, it would be a sin.’

  Cordell’s good eye was no mere madman’s staring orb. It looked inwards. With a treasure hunter’s glint. A monomaniac’s passion.

  ‘ If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God . Proverbs 2: 4-5.’

  Luke paced about, his hands in his hair.

  ‘You’re absolutely wrong, Frank. It can’t be done. My old man’s been dead for twenty-six years and so are some of his gang. Not even my mother was entrusted with the secret of where Rex buried that loot.’

  ‘What can I tell you? Someone is already after it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind who. If they can come after me, they can go after you.’

  ‘Why bother about the treasure now?’

  ‘All I’m saying, reverend, is this. If you’re going to get it you have to move fast.’

  ‘Love to chat but I have other prisoners to console today.’

  ‘Hey, slow down. Listen to me, Luke. Rex and I did drugs together in our cell and he talked about a Bible in his dreams.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Do you remember if he gave it to you as he laying dying in his hospital bed? I asked after it but it had already gone.’

  ‘The prison chaplain gave my father a Bible at his request. Rex swore to him that he had found God. What’s the point, here?’

  ‘You still have it? You do, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s all I do have of his. It was 1990 for Christ’s sake. I was only nine.’

  Frank’s ugly eye lit up. His waxy cheeks, with the dull colour of a corpse-candle, positively crinkled and cracked with relief. Suddenly he appealed to him not like a wheedling, pathetic pensioner-cum-prisoner any more, but like a fellow conspirator.

  ‘Good for you! Bring it to me. Can you do that?’

  ‘You asking me for my father’s Bible?’

  ‘Just do it, damn you. I must look at it. So must you, Luke. It could be your salvation and my grandson’s, too.’

  He stood there so long waiting for some general explanation that he forgot the hour. It was 12 o’clock. Just time to fill in his chaplain’s log before he had lunch.

  ‘And if I still don’t like the sound of it?’

  Frank fixed him with his bloody eye. Even for a recovering drug addict he had a strangely cadaverous look about him. Skin on his cheeks shrank tightly to the bone. Eye sockets were dark and sunken. He looked from some angles like a scrawny vulture.

  ‘Charity begins at home, reverend.’

  ‘What’s in my father’s Bible that’s so important to you? Is it a map?’

  ‘You might say.’

  ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘Come again soon, Luke. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Think of it as God’s gift. He brought us together so we can do great things.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like that to me.’

  ‘This way you not only get to save a little boy’s life, reverend, you get to set your family’s record straight. Think of it as your own special redemption.’

  *

  Of course there was no map in his father’s battered Bible, thought Luke or else he would have seen it by now? He’d been using that Bible for years. He felt certain that the sad aftereffects of his pathetic withdrawal from hard drugs could explain the all-enveloping delusion that was ready to invade Frank Cordell’s life right now. Who knew what fog filled his addled brain? He glanced at the door that he closed behind him, but it was all right. Within the prison’s bright blue and white corridors, shiny floors and merciless lights there was little room for any shadow. Nothing could be regarded as his inseparable attendant – nothing unsubstantial, unreal or counterfeit was allowed to live here where the truth was laid bare.

  There was, in prison, literally nowhere for anyone’s rotten soul to hide.

  He locked the Chapel at seven p.m. Left the prison. Hurried home.

  *

  The sun had almost set as Luke walked Sasha round the grounds of Hill House vicarage and back into its big reception room. He was very tired, but after he had relit the fire he began to unpack his beloved possessions from their boxes one by one.

  That removals man had been correct – he had here the beginnings of a veritable museum.

  A dozen wooden crates were filled with stuffed fish all caught by his own rod and line. Ready for the walls of his new home. Sea bass, cod and salmon were all lovingly framed amid reeds, gravel beds and blue-painted lagoons in their pretty glass display boxes.

  From another crate he took the bell that had once belonged to the full-rigged sailing ship MARY E. CAMPBELL. He put his hand to its bronze curves. Set it swinging. It was suspended from timber salvaged from the ship’s actual wreck, he had been assured at auction. Inside its rim was a child’s name. The baby had been christened on board the ship and her name etched into its bell for posterity but it had not brought the vessel good luck. An explanatory brass plate told how, years later, the collier’s cargo had shifted in a sudden squall. So mysterious was it that the master was acquitted of all blame when the ship foundered in the Bristol Channel on the 13th September 1869 with the loss of seven lives. Its only survivor had been a stowaway woman.

  How strange it felt to see the soul of a ship hanging there before his very eyes. It was like a revel
ation.

  ‘This recalls my days as a ship’s chaplain,’ he said and grinned at Sasha who lay down by the fire. She stretched her paws before the enormous 17 th century chimney piece. Flattened her ears. Growled.

  A woman’s head was carved into the front of the elaborately gilded overmantel, Luke noticed. Hair streamed red in the glow of the flames. Fiery eyes peered his way with the same intensity that someone might gaze out to sea.

  He removed his copy of the Bible from his suitcase when a sudden chilling reminder came over him.

  Had he not, in his great distraction, forgotten to visit Ellie at Floodgates Farm?

  Meanwhile the Bible’s aged, yellow pages exuded a rich, musty aroma as he took care to turn its brittle paper.

  Still it remained his most prized possession, a last link to the otherwise bridgeless past that was his dead father.

  Only, he could not then have predicted how soon this memento would so nearly destroy him.

  11

  Luke woke up in alarm. He had to blink several times before he could make sense of anything.

  He was still in his chair by the fire in Hill House’s main reception room. He must have dozed off while doing his jigsaw puzzle, he decided. Sasha stood on his chest. Licked his stubbly face with her horribly wet tongue.

  Meanwhile the clock on the wall said three minutes past midnight.

  Sasha jumped to the floor and barked. Her small, sunken eyes urged him to hurry. Things literally didn’t sound too good.

  He hurried to switch on more lights. He laid a hand on a heavy brass telescope. Strode down the hall.

  Someone wouldn’t stop hammering on the front door.

  So washed-up and stranded appeared the house, so full of his salvaged bits and pieces and nautical mementos of those who had died at sea, that he found himself horrified by the sudden summons.

  There was no denying the terror of the hand that did the banging.

  The dead could not have knocked any louder.

  ‘Who is it?’ demanded Luke and flung open the front door.

  ‘Please, reverend, let me in.’

  A panicky and completely naked young man stood before him. Wild, reddish brown eyes appeared drunk or drugged, or simply distressed; his entirely pathetic appearance was nothing short of ridiculous. He was also soaking wet, though there was no sign that it was raining.