The Angel Court Affair (Thomas Pitt 30) (34 page)

‘Put somebody on finding out, if he can, but we can’t afford to wait for him to get back to us. Sofia may not have more than a day or two, if she’s even still alive now. Nazario has to make up his mind in the next few hours . . .’

‘They gave us longer than that, sir . . .’

‘That doesn’t matter. They torture her to death before then, even if they don’t mean to!’ Pitt said with a sharp note of desperation in his voice.

‘No, sir,’ Stoker agreed grimly, his face pale. ‘But I’ll put someone on it anyway.’

Pitt went to Angel Court early in the afternoon. There was no more time for delay. With Sofia still missing and none of them knowing for certain if she were still alive, let alone how much she may have been tortured, they were all deeply distressed. They were still mourning the fearful deaths of Cleo and Elfrida. Neither shock nor grief is so quickly recovered from, let alone the constant struggle to keep faith in such disaster.

Pitt had warned Nazario the previous evening that Smith had continued to preach, but that he had considerably moderated the power of Sofia’s message. Nazario had appeared disappointed, but not surprised. Pitt assumed that the difference of opinion between them was of long standing.

No two people saw issues or leadership in exactly the same way. Pitt was not leading Special Branch exactly as Narraway would have. And even if he could have done the same, judgement for judgement, would he have? No, the loyalty was always to the job, not to the predecessor, regardless of admiration for them, or friendship.

Melville Smith should have done what he thought the faith required, not copy Sofia, if he believed her judgements were flawed.

Pitt turned in at the entrance to the court, passing the stone angel with its huge wings. He crossed the cobbles towards the door and saw the old woman watering the tubs of herbs. She glanced at him curiously, then as soon as she recognised him, turned away again. She looked even more haggard than before, her skin dark, eyes hollow. Her hands on the watering can were embedded with dirt.

Pitt felt a moment’s compassion for her. Perhaps she mourned over Sofia’s loss as deeply as anyone else, but she seemed excluded from the fellowship of the others left. Pitt was not sure if she spoke much English. He thought of saying something to her now, but if she did not understand him it would only embarrass her. And she had her back to him, bending over the tubs, pinching off leaves here and there and holding them in her other hand, the watering can beside her on the stones.

The door was opened just as Pitt raised his hand to knock. Henrietta stared at him and wordlessly beckoned him in.

Henrietta led him back inside after closing the door firmly. Her face was gaunt, as if she had slept little. Her thick hair was pulled back severely, showing the bones of her cheek and jaw. Her eyes were hollow, as if with illness, but it was still possible to see that she had been beautiful once, perhaps not so long ago. She walked ahead of him from one room to another, leading him to the same place where he had spoken to Melville Smith before. Her feet were silent on the ancient boards, and she did not turn back to see if he were following her. She walked stiffly, as if her joints hurt, but he could not say whether her pain were entirely physical, or if most of it lay in the burden of grief in her mind.

Melville Smith and Ramon were waiting for Pitt, with Nazario Delacruz standing between them. They all looked ill at ease. Nazario was tense and pale, the marks of exhaustion plain in his face and in the way his shoulders were hunched forward, without energy, yet without comfort.

He nodded to Pitt, as an acknowledgement rather than a greeting.

Ramon Aguilar was clearly afraid, but Pitt believed it was for Sofia, not for himself. He glanced at Pitt, gave the ghost of a smile, and then turned back to Nazario, waiting for him to lead, now that he was back with them.

Melville Smith avoided Pitt’s eyes. He looked strained, even guilty, but that could have been no more than the bitter awareness that Sofia had gone missing while he considered himself in charge. Pitt felt sorry for him. It was a delusion. No one, probably not even Nazario, had been in charge of Sofia.

Nazario spoke first.

‘I will speak this evening.’ He made it a statement, and instantly Pitt saw both Smith and Ramon Aguilar stiffen. The disagreement was unmistakable, but neither said anything. Clearly they had already made their views plain.

Smith looked at Pitt, waiting for his reaction.

‘I think, Señor Delacruz, that we should discuss this privately,’ Pitt said. ‘You may repeat to anyone whatever you wish, or ask counsel as you think right. But there are certain facts I would like to make sure you are aware of.’ He turned to Smith. ‘May we use your office, sir?’

Smith hesitated, not because there was any decision for him to make, but only that he was reluctant to let go the shred of control he still had.

Nazario answered for him.

‘Of course. Come.’ He turned and led the way without looking to see if Pitt was following him.

Once in the office he closed the door and took one of the two chairs away from the desk, leaving the other for Pitt.

‘What is it you wish to say, Commander?’ he asked.

‘Have you discussed the reason with them yet?’ Pitt needed to know that before he went any further.

Nazario’s black eyebrows rose. ‘No. I do not want them to hear from anyone what that man is saying of Sofia. It is untrue, as I told Señor Narraway. Melville Smith might not care, but Ramon would be deeply distressed to hear such things and know that anyone else might hear them and imagine them true.’ His face filled with gentleness. ‘He is a simple man, tender. He had a sister he loved, and who fell from grace for a very human passion, which the Catholic Church does not forgive in women. He still grieves over it and this would hurt him unnecessarily, and perhaps make his judgement less balanced than he would afterwards wish. I will not allow anyone else to carry the blame for what I do.’

‘Admirable,’ Pitt said as gently as he could. ‘But is it wise?’

‘Wise?’ Nazario’s voice cracked a little. ‘What is wise, Mr Pitt? What would you do in my place? Have you reached a wise decision?’

‘You have a right to blame me for not having prevented this in the first place,’ Pitt said miserably. ‘But you and I arguing now is an indulgence we can’t afford. I want us to do the right thing. I don’t care whose idea it is, or how we reach it, only that afterwards we are still sure it was the best we could.’

Nazario leaned back a little in the chair, as if his body had lost the strength to be angry any more.

‘You want to know what I have decided. Time is short. I understand that. So I will preach this evening. Not Mr Smith’s new, softer philosophy, but the beautiful, burning truth Sofia spoke. I know why I do it, so there is no use in trying to persuade me not to. I know Sofia, Mr Pitt. That is what she would do, what she would live or die to defend . . .’

Pitt looked at him steadily, remembering the bruised face he had seen in the cab, for a moment in the lamplight.

‘Are you sure? I have not lied to you that they will kill her brutally and without hesitation . . .’

Nazario shuddered and seemed to shrink further into himself, as if he had become a smaller man.

‘I know that. Whatever happens, I shall not accuse you of misleading me. Now let us make certain I do not mislead you. I imagine you love your wife? Yes, I see by the look in your face that you find the question less than real, as if there were no more than one answer possible.’

‘There is only one answer,’ Pitt agreed. He did not say that he also loved his children. He thought of Jemima and Daniel, a rush of memories from all ages in their lives. And he remembered that this man’s children were lost to him for ever. He could not imagine it, the ceaseless pain that he would not see them grow up. They would never be young men, young women, have lives and loves of their own, perhaps children of their own. Loss happened to millions, but each one was an individual loss, irreplaceable by any other.

As if Nazario could see the thoughts naked in Pitt’s face, he smiled very slightly. ‘I love my wife too, Mr Pitt. But I love her for who she is, not just for what she gives to me. For myself, I wish her home safely, and what the world thinks of her is little to me.’ He leaned forward with a sudden urgency. ‘But what she thinks of herself is of infinite importance. Do I like my comfort at the expense of destroying what she is? Is that love? Yes, love of my own momentary comfort, not of her.’

Pitt stared at him, trying to see the meaning behind the words. What was Nazario saying with the philosophy? He was trying to clarify something and Pitt did not thwart him.

‘Do you believe in God, Mr Pitt?’ Nazario asked.

He caught Pitt off balance.

‘Not one that is going to step in and save your wife,’ Pitt answered. He said the next words with pain, but Nazario had to hear and believe the truth. ‘They have already tortured her! I have seen her, briefly, but it was perfectly clear. She was horribly bruised about the face. What I could not see might have been worse. The way she sat was as if her arm and her back both gave her more than discomfort. God is not going to help her!’ He heard the anger and fear in his own voice. He knew he was seeing not only Sofia’s face swollen and blackened with bruises, but his mother’s pale face, strained with the losing fight against illness that as a child he had not understood. Had she imagined the God she believed in, that she worshipped every Sunday, was going to save her?

‘Only a child believes in that God, Mr Pitt,’ Nazario said quietly. ‘A child who does not understand that the path is long and hard, filled with shadows that are sometimes very dark, just as the light is marvellous. It carves of us a deep vessel, if we will allow it to. It can hold all the joy there is, in the end. Sofia knows that. I know she has her moments of doubt, even of despair. Those of us who think will all have them. It is then that faith counts, the belief in the good, even if it seems denied to you at that moment.’

‘So you are going to let them kill her?’ Pitt found the words hard to say. He was angry with Nazario for his complacency, his acceptance. It was not he who was going to die, probably in horror hard to imagine. Would he still be so sure of himself if he had seen the corpses of Cleo and Elfrida? Should Pitt describe them for him? The blood and the flies, the obscene indignity of it, never mind the pain!

‘No, I am not,’ Nazario cut across his thoughts. ‘I am trying to make you understand. And the God who would save her was your invention, not mine. Is that the God you think has hurt you so much?’

Pitt was startled. ‘I didn’t say that!’

‘It is in your face,’ Nazario told him. ‘The God you were told about has disappointed you somewhere in your life. And I think you have taken up the role of mending things, putting them right yourself, because you want them to be so.’

Pitt wanted to argue, and there was a touch of truth in Nazario’s words.

Pitt smiled. ‘You think I imagine I can do God’s work?’ he said incredulously.

‘A little of it,’ Nazario agreed. ‘Perhaps one act at a time, as the chance comes to you. You don’t like the thought of it, but it is so.’

Again Nazario was right; ever since his mother’s death he had been denying the faith she believed in. It had let her die. He had tried to rebuild it in small certainties, one act at a time, values he was certain of. But it was not faith because there was no trust in it, no belief in a power beyond his own.

‘I do what I think is right, in my job,’ he said. ‘So do most men.’

‘You didn’t answer me whether you believe in God or not,’ Nazario pointed out. ‘Of any sort.’

‘I don’t know,’ Pitt said impatiently. ‘But what I believe is not the point. Do you expect a divine intervention? Are you prepared to risk your wife’s life on it?’

‘No, of course I’m not!’ Nazario snapped. ‘But I do know what I believe, and I am trying desperately to cling on to it, in spite of my whole soul crying out to save her because I want to . . . now . . . more than anything else. I would let them take me, if they would, but that would do them no good. I don’t know what it is she won’t tell them.’

‘And if you did?’ Pitt asked quickly. ‘Would you?’

Nazario sat back a little. ‘I’m glad I don’t have to choose,’ he said softly. ‘She is protecting someone, but also protecting the value she believes not just for this life, but for eternity. Do you believe in eternity, Mr Pitt? Is there a forever that matters? Is goodness a reality, or a convenience, a fiction to make life bearable, trying to give meaning where there is none?’

Pitt did not answer. He thought again of his mother, of all the people he had known and loved. He understood now that she had been ill for a long time, and hidden it from him to protect him from the fear of losing her. She had created for him a safety, a time of happiness unshadowed by fear, because she put his wellbeing before her own. It has not been lack of trust in him, but a greater trust in her faith in the God she believed in, and in love. Now that he had his own children, he understood that.

He had never accepted that the people he loved were temporary, here and then dissolved into nothingness. But was that faith, or simply his own need? He had refused to think about it, because he had no answer. Loss hurt too much to risk examining it, looking for an eternal healing, and finding nothing there. That was why when Jemima asked him he would not tell her what he believed. He had let her down by not knowing, not going on seeking, even in the dark. And Daniel too, when he should ask. The answer was becoming clearer. His mother had not denied him the chance to help her, she had turned to the God she believed in, and protected her child in the best way she knew. He had failed to see it.

‘Is it easier for you not to look?’ Nazario pursued, almost as if he had understood Pitt’s thoughts. ‘It isn’t for me. I have to look until I see something, even if I have to change it a little day by day. There is meaning. I will not accept that every brave and beautiful thing, every moment of tenderness, every act of love vanishes and is lost. Whatever I find, or don’t find, I will go on looking. If I deny what Sofia believed, then I deny her whole life.’