Soul Seeker (10 page)

‘Have you made any progress at all with missing persons?' she asked of Lancefield.

‘We've gone back a month. In that time frame, there are thirteen possible females, eight possible males.'

‘Anything from fingerprinting the body?'

‘She's not known to us.'

‘And I take it the DNA samples have returned no hits on the database?' Of course they hadn't; she would have known about it. ‘Have you shown photos of the head to the next of kin of the missing males?'

Even Fisher, who had the sensitivities of a male baboon on steroids, thought that was worthy of surprise. Lancefield asked, ‘Are you joking?' which was probably not particularly tactful.

Beverley didn't react. ‘No.'

‘What are we going to say if we get a positive ID?'

‘If you like, you can tell them the truth. Tell them he was beheaded.'

‘Don't you think that's a bit brutal?'

Her DCI frowned, shook her head as if slightly unbelieving. ‘Not at all. They're going to find out eventually.'

The pain now so huge, so corrosive that he had lost almost all conscious thought. He was nothing but that excruciating agony, and because of that he could no longer smell his flesh burning, feel his body thrashing, hear his last few whimpers. His eyes were jerking around in their sockets but it didn't matter because the proteins in his lenses and corneas were cooking and coagulating like egg whites.

From somewhere his dying screams came, but he did not hear them.

And still the current increased . . .

And increased . . .

And increased until his heart gave mercy, gave him relief from the excruciation, and began to fibrillate.

He was dead and at rest at last.

FIFTEEN

T
he first time he had met the Reverend Pilcher, Joshua had been so scared he had run crying from the room and had had bad dreams in the night. Marcus Pilcher had understood, though; he told Antonia with a tired but tolerant smile that he was used to the reaction. Antonia, embarrassment almost consuming her, had been rushing to apologize so that she barely heard his words of reassurance; she had been determined to express her shame and anger that Joshua should be so rude. Only after a few moments of patient explanation from Marcus Pilcher, BA, had she come to appreciate that he did not mind, indeed had half expected it.

‘I
am
rather a shock to the sensitive soul, Antonia.' She had hastened to deny this, politeness overcoming her strict Christian upbringing as she lied through her dentures, but he had said nothing, a most effective way to silence her. Eventually he had pointed out, ‘I am six foot seven inches tall, I am almost hairless, I am not the most handsome of men, and I limp slightly, the result of a rugby injury. Of course Josh is slightly taken aback; shows he's got brains.' His smile was huge and warm as he said this, and Antonia fell slightly in love with this gawky giant with a harelip, who wore a dog collar and who, inevitably because he was Church of England, smelled slightly of damp.

And, as the months had gone by, Joshua had come to realize that looks weren't everything. Marcus Pilcher had soon shown himself to be an exemplary vicar, one with a keen interest in the pastoral care of his parishioners, one who, moreover, had a sense of humour. He had even managed to increase the congregation slightly, although the base was so low as to be subterranean; Antonia and seven others, and she was the youngest by a good five years. He had introduced a children's service every month, one to which Joshua and Harriet were taken regularly despite their mute (and sometimes not so mute) protestations. It had attracted quite a few regular attendees; those who, Antonia judged, were normally put off by the slightly austere and more ceremonial services of the Church. She felt in two minds about this, fearing that the Church was ‘dumbing down' to attract the lower common denominators, rejoicing to see some life returning to the thirteenth-century, eternally cold, eternally dark St Barnabas Church.

And Marcus had become a family friend. He was divorced, had previously had a parish in Gloucester, and only been ordained for four years. Prior to this he had been an ambulance paramedic. ‘I saw such violence,' he told Antonia and Andrew one evening. ‘Such terrible evil and hatred, that I felt that merely caring for the physical side of the injured and dying wasn't enough.'

They had finished dinner on a cold and blustery night in November. The room was brightly lit and all three of them now felt comfortable with each other. Marcus replied, ‘And before that I was a prison warder.' He smiled at their surprise. ‘I had quite a chequered career before I came to appreciate what I should be doing. What I've told you tonight is only a small sampler.' He paused, then leaned forward in a conspiratorial way. ‘For a long time I was an alcoholic.'

Antonia, being an experienced hostess, did not let her shock show, although she did not wish to hear more; Andrew, though, was his usual equable self. ‘Were you really?' he asked, as if the priest had just told them he used to be world heavyweight boxing champion which, in truth, his frame suggested was quite possible.

Marcus nodded, apparently oblivious to Antonia's distress. ‘I had a huge nervous breakdown and used alcohol as a prop to get me through it.'

‘Gosh,' said Andrew. He indicated the half-full wine glass in front of his guest. ‘You're OK now, though?' he asked with a smile.

Marcus nodded and returned the smile, ‘All things in moderation.'

‘
All
things?' asked Andrew mischievously.

They all laughed politely and then Marcus said, ‘Which is why I have a particular interest in helping other alcoholics. I used to run a group in my previous ministry, I still undertake visits, and I run a chat room.'

They were impressed and they all drank to his charitable work.

Anthony asked, ‘What part of the country do you come from, Marcus?'

‘I was born in Suffolk. Quite remote – Walsham – but it was a wonderful place to grow up in. When I went to university, it was as if I was discovering a completely new world.'

‘Is anyone else in your family in the Church?'

He laughed. ‘Oh, no. I am unique.'

Whilst Antonia was clearing the plates, she asked, ‘What did you read?'

‘Theology, although I dabbled in the life sciences.'

‘Really? Aren't they slightly antagonistic?'

Pilcher laughed heartily. ‘Good grief, no. They have much to learn from each other. You have a fool for a priest if he dismisses science out of hand.'

‘And vice versa?'

Pilcher nodded enthusiastically, his hands clasped as his elbows rested on the table; it was a characteristic pose. ‘Bravo! Science doesn't know everything, and never will, but faith, by its very nature, knows hardly anything.'

‘And a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?'

More delight from Pilcher. He said at once, ‘Well said, Anthony. Well said.' They toasted this aphorism with the remains of the wine after which Anthony got up and fetched some port.

SIXTEEN

M
r Len Barker had had a stroke six months before that had taken from him his ability to speak, much of his ability to move, his independence and his taste for life. He now lived in sheltered accommodation, some woman or other coming in three times a day to get him up, or to prepare his meal, or clean, or, most humiliating of all, to ‘clean him up'. He had served as a police sergeant for twenty-four years, then as a prison officer until his retirement two years before. He had always been active – boxing as a lad, then some rugby and cricket in the force, more recently golf and bowls – and had always had good reports from his medicals; no diabetes, no hypertensions, no obvious problems with his heart. And then this. Out of the blue. He had hardly been exerting himself, had only been enjoying a couple of pints in The Russell Arms, his then local, situated at the very top end of Cheltenham High Street; it served a decent pint and looked like a complete toilet, which acted as a fairly efficient way of deterring all but the initiated. One moment that had been nothing unusual – the lighted gloom, the general chatter pulsed with bursts of laughter, smells of stale alcohol, smells of even staler, but somehow now delectable tobacco smoke – the next, everything had
changed
. Or rather, his perception of it all changed; everything lost colour, lost tone, lost meaning; everything became disconnected. Then it all faded.

Then he faded.

And now here he was, Bromsberrow Heath, a village to the north of Gloucestershire; he had always been a town boy, had hated the countryside. It was three months later, unable to speak properly, unable to write, attending rehabilitation three times a week at the stroke unit, barely able to get himself to the toilet and clean himself up afterwards, spending most of his time in a wheelchair, watching the television and, when that paled, the view from the window of his living room, the only one worth attention. The view was of a small garden, one laid purely to lawn and the end one of four. Because beyond the far fence there was some dense woodland, the small bird table – the only feature of the garden – was well frequented, although he had no idea what he was looking at, a deficiency that summed his life up quite neatly; in short, everything was now shit. Beyond the farther chain-link fencing – so like a prison wall to him – was some scrubby woodland and beyond that, his carers had told him, was another fence, the perimeter to a quarry, although he could not see this directly. It would not have mattered to him, anyway. There was no life here, no bustle, no atmosphere. And in that there was no life in this place, he saw his own death in it.

He could no longer raise any enthusiasm for the exercises that the physiotherapists put him through, for the interminable and pointless games that the ugly speech therapy girl forced him to play, for the visits from the overweening and slightly pungent district nurse, and for the occasional condescensions of whichever doctor he saw in the hospital outpatients. Part of him knew that it was all hopeless, some of him suspected that he was making some – and slow – progress. After all, he was learning painfully to write left-handed, and was learning to speak again – if lipless groans and tongueless grunts could be described as speech. And there was also his most personally satisfying success, that he had achieved a degree of independence; he could now transfer from his bed to the wheelchair, and back again, without aid. It cost him dear in exhaustion, but he exulted in the small degree of self-confidence and pride he earned. No longer did the carers have to put him to bed like a baby or a retard, although they still insisted on helping.

And recently, in a gesture he knew of defiance, he had taken to rising in the middle of the night when he now habitually awoke, and making the arduous transfer to the wheelchair and then to the small, stuffy sitting room where, when the early-morning television became completely intolerable, he just would sit and stare out into the darkness of the garden, the light off so that he could see better, although he didn't particularly know what he was seeing. Just to be there was in some way significant, even magnificent, to him.

Thus it was he saw the white van backing up into the woodland towards the quarry. He wondered what it was doing, his policeman's instincts aroused.

She was seriously drunk, but she was perfectly confident that she was in control. She had not planned to be travelling home alone that Friday night but, as her father had always told her, shit happens. Sometimes she struck lucky, sometimes she didn't. Mandy – lucky bitch – had left her twenty-five minutes before, arm in arm with a tall and chirpy Afro-Caribbean, clearly hoping for a night of happy, lager-fuelled debauchery. Her only slight sniff had been a spotty juvenile, short but stocky, who clearly fancied himself with no obvious evidence to support that conclusion. He had even insisted on buying her a drink, even though a blind man could have seen her body language which was displaying in neon letters a metre high:
I would rather fuck your dead grandfather.

So here she was, getting off the night bus with still half a mile to walk to her parents' flat on Hester's Way and, as she did so, she stumbled, fell to the ground.
Bloody hell, I must have really gone overboard tonight.
But, even as she was thinking this, she knew that she hadn't. Three, maybe four lagers, then a few vodka shots – surely no more than half a dozen; nothing out of the ordinary. She had been becoming groggier and groggier as the journey had gone on, but suddenly her legs weren't working and she felt slightly sick.

‘You alright?'

A figure was leaning over her, wearing a hoodie, the face in shadow. Hands reached down to help her up; they were gentle hands and her head was woolly, so that she was just relieved not to be on her own. When she was upright, however, her head stopped being woolly, started revolving. She staggered. ‘Oh! Oh, shit!'

The hands tightened around her upper arms, took her weight. ‘I don't think you are, are you?' The words were cheerful.

She breathed, ‘No. I don't seem to be.'

‘No probs. I'll take care of you.'

And the sedative took full effect, and she awoke twelve hours later to find herself strapped into an electric chair, watching Malcolm Willoughby being slowly cooked to death by an imperceptibly increasing current.

SEVENTEEN

D
r Charlotte Sherman had been a clinical psychologist for four years. During that time she had acquired a reputation as a competent and hard working professional and she had turned a few heads, although she was not a stunning beauty, being somewhat short, with longish, auburn hair, a rounded face and severe short-sightedness; when she had her glasses off, there was something about the narrowed eyes and distorted face that John Eisenmenger had found utterly enchanting. When he had discovered that she had recently separated from her long-term partner, he had found himself in the unaccustomed position of having to take many deep breaths and expose himself to possible rejection. It had not happened and six months later, they were settling into a relationship. Neither of them was keen to advertise this, although they were well aware that the rumours were beginning to circle, like buzzards; he tried to avoid the unfortunate corollary of this, that the liaison was a corpse.