by Guy Sheppard
‘Your work here is done?’
‘Alas, I won’t get to the bottom of it all but I’m confident that I will be able to write my report on Reverend Luke’s state of mind when he vanished. I think I can do it to the Church’s satisfaction.’
‘Consider this then a timely visit.’
‘Is it?’
‘Please, Inspector, do please keep that dog of yours at a distance. I don’t want hairs on my coat.’
Sasha eyed Barbara closely, snarled softly and with a grave and pronounced strut, walked back to her basket.
Jorge led his guest into Hill House’s main reception room where he offered her a chair by its gilded fireplace.
More awkward adjustments of coat and skirt ensued, but mostly he was impressed by her quiet dignity.
It was less some stately elevation of manner than the desperate self-respect of a person who had exhausted all other options. She really hated having to come to see him like this.
He walked over to the drinks cabinet.
‘Whisky?’
Barbara brightened considerably.
‘If you please, Inspector.’
Jorge set their glasses on the table on which lay the very large jigsaw puzzle.
‘You like puzzles, Ms Jennings?’
She shook her head somewhat abruptly.
‘No, but I can see you do.’
‘I don’t know how many hours I’ve sat here piecing it all together. Reverend Luke Lyons left it behind for someone to finish. As it happens, that someone is me.’
‘I recognise the scene, Inspector. That’s the railway bridge that once crossed the River Severn at Sharpness.’
‘So much blue sky and water can prove very tricky.’
‘But only one piece remains.’
‘That’s true.’
‘So why don’t you finish it?’ said Barbara and poked a slice of black and grey cardboard about with her pink fingernail. It featured a door.
He quickly stayed her hand.
‘Here’s the thing, I didn’t even know that the tower had a door until I went there to see for myself.’
She pointed at the name: Sharpness Swing Bridge Cabin.
‘How else do you think the signalman climbed up to work the controls, Inspector?’
‘You can’t see the entrance today. Not obviously.’
‘That’s because the tower was bricked up half a century ago after the bridge was removed. Inside it are stairs going nowhere.’
‘Talk about hiding in plain sight!’
‘Actually it’s a sad and remarkable survivor.’
‘Damn right.’
Barbara paused. Cleared her throat.
‘Fact is, Inspector, it all begins and ends with that swing bridge.’
Jorge took a quick sip of whisky.
‘I believe you. Now tell me why you’re really here.’
‘I’m here to carry out someone’s last wish uttered on her deathbed.’
‘Since when is that any of my business?’
It was Barbara’s turn to sip some whisky.
‘It’s like this, Inspector. Gwendolen Lyons made me promise to tell you what really happened to her husband Sean in 1981.’
‘How is that possible? She was too confused to remember anything properly. Her mental decline made her a very unreliable witness, I’m told.’
‘This has nothing to do with Alzheimer’s disease.’
Jorge’s eyes came to rest on the seventeenth century gold face that adorned the overmantel above the room’s fireplace. Suddenly he paid it very close attention.
‘Yeah. Probably won’t help now but it’s my duty to listen, I suppose.’
Barbara drained her glass quickly.
‘As everyone round here knows, Inspector, at about 10.30 on the 25 th October 1960 the railway bridge over the River Severn was hit by two fuel tankers. I don’t need to remind you that five good men died that night when Sean went missing. Soon afterwards his overturned boat was found in the mud upriver and everyone assumed that he had drowned trying to save the crew from their burning barges.’
‘That much I’ve already put in my report.’
‘You have? But how?’
‘That really doesn’t matter right now. Please continue.’
‘Then know this, Inspector. In 1981 Mary Brenner and I walked into Chapel Cottage to find Gwendolen talking to no other than Sean Lyons. He said he knew the location of their son’s hoard of stolen antiques. That loot was – still is – worth millions. He showed us the key to its door in his pocket. With it he wanted to buy Gwendolen’s silence about his bigamy, but most of all he wanted to take his grandson away with him. Well, Luke was not yet six months old and Gwendolen was in the process of adopting him because his parents would be in prison for the foreseeable future and could do nothing for him. But Sean’s real wife came from a very good family. They thought Luke would fare better with them because Olivia knew all the ‘right’ people.’
‘You walked in on Sean Lyons? How coincidental is that?’
‘Once a month Gwendolen ran a reading club. The night that was our book night.’
‘So what did you see, exactly?’
‘Sean stood in the kitchen in his new steel-capped boots, leather coat and gloves. He boasted about how good a mother Olivia had been to their daughter Sara. But with Lady Sara Greene shot dead by Rex during the Severn Sea Gang’s bungled burglary at her country house in Wiltshire, it seemed pretty obvious that they just wanted to fill a big hole in their lives. Or Sean felt genuine guilt and remorse for what his son had done to what was, in a very real sense, his own family? Perhaps he and Olivia wanted a brother for Sara’s baby Eva who’d been born by Caesarean section in such traumatic circumstances.’
‘Sounds logical.’
‘But Gwendolen felt betrayed. Here was a man who had not only married her bigamously but who’d gone back to his war bride. She hadn’t even realised that he and Olivia had had a child together, for Christ’s sake. Sorry reverend – my language.’
‘Fuck that, just tell me what happened next.’
Barbara sat up very straight. Wriggled her shoulders.
‘Can I possibly have another whisky?’
‘Honestly, I don’t see why not. It belongs to Reverend Lyons.’
‘The mention of a wartime baby with that woman was too much for Gwendolen, Inspector. She fell into a rage. She started calling Sean all sorts of terrible things. Told him that she regarded their marriage vows as still sacred, that digging up stolen treasure held no interest for her. She couldn’t believe that someone she still loved had a whole other life to which she had been kept oblivious. The next minute they were fighting. I don’t know who started it but that’s when Sean lost his temper. They howled and tore at each other’s faces. Banged and crashed all round the kitchen. Like wild animals.’
‘You call the police, or what?’
‘No, absolutely bloody not. No time. With a saucepan in his hand, Sean was beating Barbara about the head over and over again. She was down and dazed on the floor. Then he began to kick her as hard as he could in the ribs.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I yelled at him to stop, of course.’
‘Good for you.’
‘An argument lost on Sean. I tried to seize his arm but he was like a devil. He was calling Gwendolen every bad name under the sun, but most of all he was not going to let her ruin his future elsewhere, he said and threw me off. Told me to mind my own damned business. Didn’t even notice Mary seize a knife from the kitchen drawer. I don’t think she ever meant to do him serious harm, Inspector, she just wanted to stop him killing her best friend. The knife was very sharp and serrated. It cut through Sean’s clothes in one blow. I doubt it would have killed him, though. Instead he turned enraged, tripped and fell against the kitchen sink. As he hit it hard he jammed the knife another inch into his heart and collapsed. We were all absolutely sure he was dead. At the time.’
‘Pass me that bottle of whisky. I
need another drink, too.’
That’s when he noticed the face of the red-haired woman carved over the fireplace. She was grinning broadly.
*
Some time passed before either of them broke the silence, whereupon they both tried to speak at once.
‘No, you first,’ said Jorge. ‘What did you do with Sean’s body?’
Barbara took a deep breath.
‘Mary wanted to call an ambulance, not to mention the police, but I wouldn’t hear of it. I said: “That bastard has ruined enough lives already. He’ll not put you in prison now.” Mary simply burst into tears and Gwendolen and I had to make all the decisions.’
‘Bold move.’
‘In the end we decided to dig a shallow hole at low tide and drop the body into it in an old leather suitcase on the river’s foreshore. After all, what did we have to lose? As far as everyone else was concerned Sean Lyons had already died twenty years ago when the bridge fell down. No one was looking for him anymore. As for Olivia, she’d more than likely assume that he had run off again with the money. He need not be found, not ever. Even the police had written him off.’
‘So he died and you thought it was all over?’
Barbara swallowed hard and almost choked. To her sore eyes rose more tears.
‘Except poor Mary began to convince herself that we had buried him alive. For years she had visions of him using that large brass key that he had shown us to dig his way out of his grave. Then, one day, Ian Grey told her about Sean’s pocket watch that he had found on the riverbank at the time he went missing. It was the sort of thing the dead might come looking for, said Mary and convinced herself that Sean was back among us. In reality it must have fallen out of his coat when we bundled his body over the seawall. Mary and Ian were very close at the time. In the end she couldn’t live with the secret. She as good as told him what she’d done, I think, because she was half out of her mind with guilt. I suppose you could call it post-traumatic stress. When Reverend Luke returned to Berkeley Ian decided to go digging for bones and I had to keep talking him out of it, but not before he scared us all rigid. That’s when Sean’s boot washed up. From that moment on Mary kept saying that the river was unhappy. We’d offended its spirit and it wanted justice. Said it wouldn’t be content until it had taken us, too.’
‘Which was all nonsense, of course.’
‘Don’t be so sure. Reverend Luke’s disappearance sparked something. Even before then, two men came asking questions about Sean. They had an idea that he might have reburied the treasure somewhere. Then there was the sale of Chapel Cottage for the new nuclear power station. Would the bulldozers dig up Sean’s last resting place when they built new flood defences? At last Mary did what she promised, she drowned herself at the place where we buried his body. More or less. I can’t be sure. Since 1981 the river has seriously eroded that part of the bank which hampered Ian’s searches as well. She couldn’t accept that all he wanted to do was to get rid of the evidence to protect her most of all! In desperation he looked to Reverend Lyons as the only person he might trust because, as Sean’s grandson, he had a shared interest in keeping the truth to himself.’
‘Okay, I have more questions. Offending the river’s goddess was not nonsense, you say?’
‘Don’t you see, Inspector, on the night Reverend Luke vanished Gwendolen heard the water call to her just like Mary. It wasn’t the first time. She’d been called to the seawall before.’
‘The real question is what did they say to each other?’
‘He told her goodbye, Inspector. “You won’t see me again,” he said. “I’m leaving for good. I’m going on a very long journey.” Of course, Gwendolen was confused.’
‘Did she ask where to?’
‘All he would tell her, Inspector, was that he was going to the end of the world where the eels go.’
‘Are you sure? Are you quite certain that’s what he said?’
‘I swear.’
He liked to think that, no matter what, he could have been Luke’s rock, thought Jorge, or his anchor. But he had to admit that he had no evidence that he could ever be anyone’s saviour. Couldn’t be that arrogant. Loyalty alone might not be that useful. It was on a rock that a ship might founder.
He reached for the whisky bottle to find it was empty.
54
Luke sat on the seawall and watched the high tide flood the Severn. Slim Jim Jackson’s convulsive gasps still rang in his ears. He felt neither mental distress nor physical exhaustion but only a strange euphoria at the sight of blood on his hands. It was as if he had just experienced a miracle.
That soon passed. Suddenly he could endure the wide empty horizon of sky and water, but not the emptiness in his heart.
How it had come to this, he did not rightly know. Yet some would say that there was not a single human being who could set themselves the simplest task, but that the eye of God or the Devil would bear upon it. There had always been, from the very beginning, a questionable side to the continued existence of Rex Lyons’s so-called treasure, he thought. He was in great doubt about his father’s secret. Had he not simply set out to prove the whole thing bogus both legendarily and factually to all his enemies – sad, defeated enemies, too apt to think that violence alone could buy them the thing they coveted most?
Clearly, in every sense, he had sat here crying for too long already. Deceptive was the shift in the river that drove its fickle currents.
He’d had his revenge but what now? His ears strained to hear past the water’s moonlit, glassy surface when its siren call grew louder. He shivered inside his long black coat while in his boots his toes turned bitterly cold.
Berkeley Pill light beacons showed in line ahead bearing 187 degrees. They, too, would steer him into the river if they could?
He licked more blood off his lips as he failed to settle his stomach.
‘I’ll stay here a few minutes longer,’ he told himself and flinched at the bitter taste on his tongue.
Because of surging water across mud and sandbanks he could not see how to navigate his way to the deepest channel; he worried that he would too soon become bogged down in swampy twists and turns. He was more apprehensive about choosing the best place to enter the water than his own apprehensiveness – he didn’t deserve to drown too slowly.
Suddenly his phone rang with the call for which he’d been waiting.
‘Luke? Thank God. It’s me, Ellie. For Christ’s sake, what’s going on? Randal’s come rushing home with Sasha. He says two men stopped him outside his school and told him they were friends of yours – that you were all going fishing.’
‘Randal’s unharmed? Thank God.’
‘Jeremy and I have been worried sick. What do we tell the police?’
‘Tell them there was trouble all right but it’s all over now.’
‘You okay? Randal says there was a fight.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve taken care of it. No one will bother you or him ever again.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because without me no one can do a thing.’
‘I’m really disappointed in you, Luke. You should never have got involved with any treasure.’
‘No, obviously bloody not. No one should. It’s a curse.’
‘Are you quite sure you’re not hurt?’
‘Yeah, I think I am.’
‘Admit it, these are the same men who attacked you in Gloucester Docks?’
‘Damn right they are.’
‘That’s madness.’
‘Hard to think they believed me when I said I’d give them the loot.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘Tell the police to check the hospitals.’
‘What about you?’
‘Forget about me. Hang on to Sasha.’
‘She’s run off somewhere.’
‘I can’t take her with me…’
‘Listen here, Luke, you come home right now, do you hear me?’
‘Home is where I’m go
ing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘Luke? You love me?’
‘Always.’
He hung up. Then he lifted his eyes to the river and immediately the moonlight on the water seemed to dazzle. Knowing what he knew now, his mind was quick to discount the greatest doubt about what was out there, which was no mean feat in the current circumstances.
But he had grown up next to the estuary which made a big difference.
He chewed his lip. Unbuttoned his coat. In those tricks of the moon there was a suggestion of another living being close by? He had tried to deny everything else since finding God, but now the thing approaching him from downriver was all silvery back and scales.
His first thought was the bore.
It was too late for him to entertain any change of heart – the regret was too great; he was thoroughly disheartened.
Anyone else would have told him that, coming from the mouth of a determined suicide, any showing of the goddess Sabrina was always going to be the merest flight of fancy now. He couldn’t be wrong, though, it was happening. Four seahorses were coming at him at full pelt. Their hooves rode the crest of the bore at a gallop with its surf. Each liquid rent in the quicksilver surface peeled back the inky depths beneath.
Others might state that no one would ever know for sure, that he was not a reliable witness. Naturally they were both right, but, as in some uncanny vision he did see loom before him a rider in a watery chariot of some kind.
To step upon its platform at last would be to embark on his final journey to the oblivion he now craved?
The red-haired charioteer turned and spoke, yet her lips hardly moved as her voice boomed in his ears. He noted then the appealing correlation between her commanding words and heartless smile as her sweet gaze bore down so hard upon him. He no more knew why she rendered him so spell-bound than why he had so little willpower to resist. But he saw clearly that with all the mysteries of the ocean in her silvery sea-green eyes, there glinted something wonderfully tempting. With such cruel attitude, but with such beauty, she had come to offer him the world.
‘Come, Luke, join me in the water. Come ride with me to my palace beneath the waves.’
