‘Walaiakum salam, Maryam.’ Even in his
English accent, one of privilege and wealth, Shahrukh managed to
pronounce her name with the correct emphasis. She looked forward to
him speaking it aloud in front of Fred Atkins, especially if Fred
continued to refer to her as ‘Marie’ in front of him.
Maryam indicated that Shahrukh should follow
her as she walked down the long central aisle heading for the
sanctuary.
‘Then you’ll know of the import of this.
Have you been informed of all of it?’
‘Nope. Inspector Barham just asked me to
accompany you and to assist you...’
‘And to not let me touch anything...’
‘And to not let you touch anything... then
to escort you to the other house, then to go home. She said I’d get
a full briefing when I came in for duty in the morning.’
‘Wise, very wise. Although I dare say it
will be boring for you what I’m about to do.’
‘Why, what are you about to do?’
‘Nothing.’
And nothing was what she did, although it
was a very active nothing. With Shahrukh by her side, she walked
every inch of the church that was not sealed off by tape. She went
into the empty confessional boxes on the gospel side of the church.
She sat in each of them, on both sides of the screen, and did
nothing for five minutes. She knelt on the penitent’s side and sat
in the confessor’s. She avoided the confessional that was sealed
off by police tape. She walked out of the nave back into the
vestibule and took the stairs up to the choir area and sat there.
She asked the detective to walk her out of the Church and into the
Sacristy at the back via the outside door, set to one side just for
the priests to use. This ensured she didn’t walk through the taped
area of the altar. The outside door was tucked to the side and had
a large steel sheet over it. She spent ten minutes studying the
interior of the small room. When they returned to the nave, she sat
at the front pew and looked at the altar for about twenty
minutes.
She’d spent about two hours in the Church
before hunger and tiredness started to intrude. She asked Shahrukh
to walk her through the rain, and the graveyard, to the parish
house. He advised her to only leave the house with an umbrella in
her hands in the morning as there were a few stalwart local
photographers snapping away from the street during the day.
Another uniformed officer stood watch at the
door there, who nodded to her as she was allowed in by a very
anxious Father Scott.
Inside the hallway, the smell of an old
parish house met them: dust, age, furniture polish, fried onions,
and cigarette smoke. The days of the smell of cabbage were gone.
Maryam doubted that young Father Jones smoked, but the walls gave
evidence that Father Edwards, who had been in residence for
decades, did so with gusto. Father Scott took Maryam’s coat and
indicated she should go through to the formal parlour.
‘I need to freshen up and change my
clothing, Father Scott; please show me to my room first. Could I
ask you to make some tea and toast please? I’m quite hungry.’
Father Scott nodded and they tip-toed past
the sleeping Bishop Atkins, pegged out in a chair by an old gas
fire in the parlour, and crept up the stairs. On the landing, one
room showed light under the door sill and Maryam thought that would
be Father Jones’s. All others were dark. The floor boards creaked
as they walked to the end of the hallway and through the farthest
door.
It was a visiting priest’s room, as she had
expected, clean and bare. It had old linoleum and a faded rug, both
from the 1950s, a dark wood bedside table of indeterminate age and
design. The lamp and radio on the table were old, but the bed and
bedding were modern and looked new. There was a crucifix on the
wall above the bed and a couple of portraits of the Sacred Heart
and the Virgin Mother & Child on the walls. A desk sat with a
small television sitting on it, unplugged and forlorn. A jug of
water and a single glass. A wardrobe and a chest of drawers
finished the room. Her cases had been laid carefully to one
side.
‘There is a guest bathroom next door. It is
not en suite, but no one else will use it.’
Maryam nodded.
‘Would you like some soup?’
‘Oh yes, please, that would be fine.’
‘There is real coffee.’
Her face lit up. ‘Oh, that would be
wonderful, thank you.’
She longed to have a shower, but had no idea
how the plumbing in this old building would react, no need to wake
everyone with creaking and groaning. She washed herself down
quickly and dressed in pyjamas and a mandarin collared, floor
length house coat. It was only partially a defence against Atkins:
after what she’d seen she needed to feel safe and comfortable.
Father Scott, who turned out to be called
Andrew but preferred Andy, had warmed through a tin of tomato soup
and sliced into a crusty loaf of bread. Tinned soup in the UK was
most acceptable and she ate it gratefully. The coffee was almost
good and she enjoyed it thoroughly. Andy was a most generous and
understanding companion who understood the value in silence. It was
something she appreciated about dealing with the clergy: the
understanding that silence is often its own defined space and not
always an uncomfortable absence.
It was about three a.m. when Fred blundered
into the kitchen, having woken with a crick in his neck. One look
at the tiredness in Maryam’s face and he ushered both himself and
Andy out the door, saying they would return in the early afternoon.
Her smile of thanks to him was totally genuine, as he’d restored
her memory that he was a kind and caring man who just happened to
be good at politics and enjoyed being a power player. She felt
chagrined for her less than charitable thoughts of him and scolded
herself for her own weakness.
Then she hauled herself into bed with a
grateful sigh. She’d been up for almost twenty four hours and her
head ached with the weight of the day’s events. Sleep came
swiftly.
The dawn filled the room with cold light.
The revving of motors and hooting of horns crowded out the bird
song. The rain slashed the panes sideways. Maryam slept.
When she rose five hours later, her body was
rested and her mind still held a little of the dreaming quality of
the spaces in-between. She sat at the desk and shuffled her Tarot
cards and placed them out on the desk. In her mind she was seeing
the layout of the chapel as she’d walked through it. She placed the
cards on the desk in roughly the same positions as the areas that
had interested her, finishing with the altar itself. Only once she
completed the pattern she had in her mind, did she look down at the
lay.
The altar card sprung out at her: The Fool.
Card zero. The young man off on adventures, too keen and new and
full of the love of life to notice the danger he is in. The
Sacristy had the most useful card to her, a reversed King of
Swords. It suggested to her that someone was seeking to make most
ill, under the guise of something else. Her senses had resonated
with something in that room and the lay of the cards had reflected
that. The card at the confessional, the reversed Hierophant, rang
out a clear warning to her: misinformation, distortion, power
achieved from withholding information. Bad advice. Not a card you
want to see in connection with giving up on sin and the granting of
forgiveness. With no repentance there can be no salvation.
There were a lot of positives in the lay,
including the World, card twenty-one. A good ending. Or perhaps,
with the Fool there, central, a new beginning that would end well.
Interestingly, the card by the vestibule, where the police stood,
was the Knight of Swords. Swords were so apt, given the
circumstances, and looking at the cards, she looked forward to both
meeting Father Jones, and working further with DC Shahrukh
Iqbal.
She cleared the lay away and slipped her
cards into her shoulder bag. Then she spent an hour in prayer and a
further hour in meditation. Around her, people were moving about
the house with hushed tones and delicate treads, no doubt trying
not to wake her. The banging from the pipes as she showered both
confirmed her suspicions and served to alert them to her being
awake, so when she entered the kitchen, she was greeted by the
smell of fresh coffee, and frying bacon.
A startled Father Jones jumped up from the
kitchen table and smiled at her, offering her his hand, which she
accepted with a smile. She was dumbstruck for a moment by his size
and beauty: his photo had done him no justice. He was easily six
foot two, perhaps six three. Both his hands enveloped hers with a
gentle but firm hold; long, strong fingers with calluses that
betrayed much reading, writing, and if she was not wrong, the
playing of the guitar. His eyes were hazel with green flecks, a
startling contrast with the dark caramel of his skin. His Welsh
accent, cultured and enchanting in one. His physique had the sharp
and supple tones of the professional athlete. When he smiled you
felt your heart lift. It was no wonder the graffiti he’d been
attacked with had concentrated on his sexuality. Wyn Jones shone
with energy and humanity in a very warm and real body of flesh. The
bruise on his cheek and the slight cut on his lip only served to
highlight his perfection. Poor man, how he must have had to fight
to make others believe his vocation was pure.
‘Please, Father Jones, be seated.’
‘Please call me Wyn, sis...’ His voice
trailed off as he drew back in his mistake. It was one she was used
to hearing from the clergy and she smiled back at him.
‘Maryam is just fine, Wyn.’ She held her
hand outstretched in his grasp, for just a moment, to reassure him
of the honesty of her response. She then approached Father Edwards,
who was pouring her a mug of coffee. She extended her hand.
‘Maryam Michael, Father, from the Office of
the Arcane. Sorry to meet you in such dreadful circumstances.’
Father Edwards was over eighty years old and
his body was carrying the burden of the murder badly: he looked
defeated, wasted in the pain of it all. Maryam felt his age, his
anxiety, his desperate need for the nightmare to be over. His face
was grey and his middle and index fingers stained tobacco yellow.
Priests did not, in general, allow this to happen as they dispensed
the host from those fingers to the mouths of the faithful. It spoke
volumes to her of what was going on inside. He nodded and avoided
her outstretched hand by giving her the cup of coffee. He turned
and sat down at the table. A tobacco tin sat on it and he played
with it. Maryam sat and Wyn jumped up again to make her a sandwich
of white sliced British bread and fried bacon. She thanked him, cut
it in half and made herself eat half of that. The discussion slowly
turned their attention from her, to the circumstances, and she was
able to dispense with the tiny bites she was taking and concentrate
on coffee. Much more coffee!
By the time they had introduced themselves
to each other and swapped enough banal pleasantries to get them
over not talking about the murder, Inspector Barham had arrived
with Shahrukh and a crime scene team in tow. On their arrival, Wyn
went to his room and Father Edwards, who had not offered his
forename to anyone, although she knew it was Peter, retired to sit
outside in a somewhat dilapidated greenhouse, and smoke. The rain
pouring down on the panes obscured him from view. Before she and
Barham discussed the case, Maryam asked permission to have Father
Edwards moved to a different address. Barham agreed and Maryam
phoned Father Scott on the mobile number he’d given her. He was en
route with Atkins. She requested a respite place be found for
Edwards in another parish house, perhaps even at Westminster
Cathedral. After all, they had the apartment they had prepared for
her?
Barham and she discussed the case, with
Maryam reporting she had no observations, but requesting that she
be allowed to direct the crime team in some additional tests.
Barham was happy with this and they went over to the Church. Maryam
could see Wyn Jones looking down on them from his bedroom window.
She pushed her sympathy to the side and concentrated on being calm
and empty, open and flexible. In her heart she knew what Barham
did, that Wyn had no connection with this death at all. Her head
wasn’t so sure they were going to be able to prove that.
In the Church, Maryam asked if the
tabernacle interior had been fully checked, not only for
fingerprints, but for fluids. The crime officers stated it had only
been dusted for prints, which she had known, as she’d seen the
dusting powder all over the screen and door. When tested, it proved
positive for blood, a tiny amount on the base of the interior.
Barham asked what had led her to suspect this and they sat and
discussed it with Shahrukh and another detective named Gatto, as
the lab technicians catalogued.
It’s a sacred space. If the person who
committed the murder was also trying to reinforce the sacrilege
within Catholic, or Christian, tradition the way they had with
Islamic, then it made sense to desecrate the area the sacred host
was kept in.’
‘Then why not make it obvious?’ Barham and
Gatto were taking the lead, with Iqbal listening hard. Maryam
addressed Barham who had asked the question.
‘I’m sure the secondary intent is to cause
problems between the communities. Being seen to actively defile the
tabernacle at the same time as defiling the Qur’an would put both
communities in the same position. The desecration of the Islamic
element is being made more visible than that of the Christian
one.’
‘Why not desecrate a host?’ This was from
Gatto, who shared the same accent as Barham; both natives of this
area of London.
‘These days there is no sacred host kept in
an empty, locked church. There are usually only unblessed communion
wafers.’