Gatto nodded. ‘Of course.’ Barham looked at
him, and he continued. ‘The priest blesses the host at each
service, each mass. If there is any left over, he swallows them
himself so none of the sacred host is wasted.’
‘And the host is more sacred in a Christian
church, than say the pages of a bible would be?’
‘In a Catholic church, yes. The host is the
physical body of Christ.’
Barham looked confused. It was Iqbal who
spoke up, surprising everyone.
‘In the Roman Catholic Church, the bread and
wine of the communion are changed by the prayers of the priest into
the actual body and blood of their saviour, our prophet, Jesus. In
other Christian communities it represents such, a symbol of it, not
the actual thing. Here, in this Church, it’s treated as if it is
actually his body, his blood.’
Barham looked to Maryam, who nodded.
‘Detective Iqbal has said it succinctly.
Ripping up a bible in a Catholic Church would be annoying, but not
outrageous or seen as a severe attack. Polluting the tabernacle
with the blood of a murdered man is in line with the offence of
ripping and bloodying the Qur’an.’
‘So it confirms your thoughts that this is a
serious attack on both religions?’
‘On this Church, and its beliefs, there has
been a serious attack. I’m still convinced the attacking of Islamic
principle is about making more of the offences to this one.’
‘The multi-faith leaders have been informed
this morning. Myself and DC Iqbal have an appointment with the Imam
of the local mosque this afternoon.’
‘I would be interested in attending that, if
you would allow it. But first I must ask what you’ve done to find
the weapon used in this murder.’
‘The weapon?’
‘Yes, the knife, although I suspect, as does
your surgeon, that from the writing and the cuts it is a scalpel.
The report says nothing has been found.’
This time it was Sergeant Gatto who took the
lead, taking out a note pad, a very old fashioned and reassuring
notepad, and read from it.
‘Yesterday, the entire Church and the
graveyard were searched thoroughly, including with a metal
detector. Detectors were quite useless in most of the Church, given
the nails in all the wood, but it was swept through. The drains
were checked and the main sewer is being examined today, on all the
lead points. The street outside, the bins and post boxes, have been
checked and there are ongoing searches in all the local gardens.
The bin collection was the day before the murder, so most of the
bins and skips out there are relatively empty, so that’s been quite
easy. So far, we have nothing.’
‘Have you searched the parish house?’
Barham took over again.
‘No, we haven’t. Father Jones was taken to
the police station and processed after he’d reported finding the
body. He stayed with the body and phoned on his mobile phone and
the CCTV evidence confirms this. After processing, he was returned
to the parish house and asked to stay there. We haven’t had the
manpower to search the premises yet, as the rain has made searching
outside areas a priority. The Bishop has given permission for such
a search.’
‘The Sacristy was completely searched?’
Gatto took that in his stride, confirming
Maryam’s suspicions that he’d seen the inside of a Catholic Church
quite a few times in his childhood; for all that he wasn’t
practising now.
‘Yes, it was walked through and nothing
found, no evidence it had been broken into. It was locked until we
had Father Edwards fetch a key, as Father Jones was still down the
station.’
‘What’s your point, Miss Michael? What’s so
special about this Sacristy room?’ Barham appeared to be intrigued
rather than suspicious.
‘It’s just that if I were going to desecrate
a Church and I knew enough about the Church as this person appears
to do, I’d have spent a few moments in there. Further, if I wanted
to desecrate the host without being noticed, and hide a scalpel
where it was unlikely to be found immediately, it would be in the
sink in there down the plug hole.’
‘But we’ve explained that we checked the
drains.’
‘The sink in there isn’t connected to the
drains, Inspector. It’s a sacrarium. It’s completely separate from
the normal sewage system. It’s only used to wash anything that a
sacred, consecrated host could have come into contact with. It
washes straight down into soil.’
Inspector Barham’s shock, when the sink hole
furnished forth not only a bloodied scalpel, but the entire sink
gave evidence of blood having being washed off in it, was palpable.
The crime scene technician, who had shone a torch down the open
mouth of the plug hole the day before, was also the one who then
checked it for body fluids; she was very annoyed with herself:
Barham was furious with her.
Maryam stayed in the nave throughout the
entire affair, in order to distance herself from the evidence.
Shahrukh talked her through why she’d suspected the sacrarium in
the first place.
‘The wooden lid was up. Normally, when a
priest finishes washing the communion vessels, and the altar cloth,
and anything that may have a tiny crumb of host on it, in the
running water, they would rinse out the sink and close down the
lid. The lid was up, and I presumed the crime lab had left
everything as they found it. I wondered if it was up, in order to
make sure the sink dried before anyone went back in there. There is
no reason for the sink to be used except after Mass. It’s never
used for anything else.’
‘Why does it go into soil?’
‘To return the Body of Christ to the earth.
Washing the blood from the murder off in there was a desecration.
Any host particles going down in the weeks or months to come, would
be contaminated. And the scalpel going in there would further
deepen the desecration.’
‘It’s not that it’s a good place to hide
it?’
Maryam shook her head.
‘Only if you were in a panic. You’d know
once it went in there, it would stay there for... well forever,
with surgical steel. Better places in a church to actually hide it,
than there. No, it was symbolic. I’m sure.’
‘Would the priests be the only ones to have
keys? It was locked when Father Jones reported the body.’ He was
trying to get one step ahead of his superiors.
‘No, not at all. The women of the parish,
who come in to fix the flowers and clean, will have a key. There
should be a set of master keys for the entire Church at the
parochial headquarters, in a drawer somewhere. Plenty of people
move in and out of the Sacristy. I doubt the door is locked during
Sunday services, where the priests will be moving in and out with
their clean surplices and renewing altar clothes. Altar boys will
be in and out of there, too.’
‘Altar boys?’
‘Young males of the parish. Although girls
are now accepted in most places. They help during formal masses,
called High Mass. This Church has one the third Sunday of every
month. Go look at the notice board.’
She took the young officer round to the
notice board in the vestibule, where he examined the rota of
services and meetings. He was quiet.
‘This place must look empty to you.’
He nodded, looking unsure of commenting
whilst on duty.
‘It can be easy to think Churches such as
these have been deserted. Especially if you see your own place of
worship filled five times a day. But these old Churches live on,
despite the lack of numbers, because the faith of those left burns
so strong. Keeping faith when you are socially isolated is harder
than following the crowds who walk past your door daily.’
Shahrukh took on board what she said.
‘I suppose so. It’s not something that has
even occurred to me. But it does feel like a place of worship. I
feel as if I should cover my head when I walk in here. I’m
uncomfortable when I don’t.’
Maryam laughed. ‘Me too! But that’s another
story. Uncovering your head is the correct protocol, if you are
male. It’s keeping your hat on that is out of place.’
‘But all the uniformed officers are wearing
hats in there!’ There was a real touch of panic in his voice.
‘It’s fine. The crime scene technicians have
to have their hair net things. And the need for it to be a crime
scene comes first. Weren’t you asked to take your hat off when you
did the training?’
‘We were in civvies. It may have been
mentioned, I don’t remember.’
‘Well, remember it now. If you are ever
called to a Christian Church, or into this one after it’s been
released, take your hat off if you’re wearing one’.
‘The women don’t wear veils, why do you feel
as if you should?’
She was saved from answering by the
reappearance of Inspector Barham, who recalled the group to the
back of the nave, to inform them of something that the more
thorough forensic examination of the Sacristy had revealed: that
the wooden floor had liberal amounts of semen and vaginal fluid
scattered across it, as well as blood.
The discovery was not what Bishop Atkins had
wanted to hear. He spent several hours in private discussion with
Wyn Jones, who had taken on the look of a man condemned out of
hand. The discovery also lengthened the time the Church remained in
the hands of the police, as more detailed swabbing had to be done
and the crime techs stayed on until well after dark, with a shift
change seeing a new team brought in. One advantage to this was that
there was finally time for them to search through the parish house,
where they found nothing useful. Barham, Gatto and Iqbal came and
went, but Maryam stayed, tucked out of the way in the Church,
moving between the parish house and the crime scene when she was in
the way in one, or needed in the other. Several more sites of
sexual activity had been discovered, including inside the sealed
off confessional box and on the benches of the choir. Maryam was
not surprised when the main altar revealed the same.
Late in the afternoon she excused herself
from the activity and asked Father Scott to accompany her out to
the local shops. There they bought enough groceries for several
days and she and Andy returned to the parish house and prepared
food for everyone. Tea, coffee and what the British called biscuits
and the Americans, cookies, were being used at a strapping rate by
the various Metropolitan personnel. Father Edwards had been moved
to another parish house whilst she had been in the Church in the
morning, and Father Jones was still in conversation upstairs with
Fred. She and Andy sliced, chopped, peeled and fried, and between
them they rustled up a vat of soup and another of stew. Andy was a
more proficient cook than she was, and between her labours on the
chopping board and his with the meagre spice rack, what they
produced was edible. The fridge was stocked with enough cheese,
cold meats and salads to keep everyone going; there was fresh
bread, fresh ground coffee and fruit. She and Fred sat in the
kitchen eating vegetable soup and enjoying the rest from their
labours: physical work did soothe the soul.
In the dark of the evening, Inspector Barham
requested that Father Jones accompany her down to the police
station for questioning. On discovering that the Sacristy had
recently had the locks changed and only two keys opened it, one
kept by Father Jones and one by Father Edwards, the point had been
reached where Father Jones was being treated as a serious suspect.
Maryam watched the squad car drive off with Wyn and Fred in the
back. A lawyer appointed by the Church would meet them at the
station. At least they had managed to get Father Edwards out to
somewhere less painful before this had occurred.
Shahrukh had come to the kitchen to deliver
the keys of the Church and the news that the crime technicians had
released it. He shared bread and soup with them before going off
duty, and they decided a mutual protocol for keeping the Church
safe overnight and for Maryam to have access to it. Tomorrow, the
cleaning firm recommended by the police would clean the blood out
and then restore all areas covered in forensic powders and liquids,
and the Church would be able to be opened to its parishioners.
Father Scott had arranged for a prayer vigil for the murdered youth
and the local Bishop would lead it off after reconsecrating the
altar. For tonight, the police officers on guard would be stood
down as there wasn’t the need, or the manpower to keep them. The
local constabulary would patrol every hour or so, as they had done
during the graffiti attacks. Father Scott had moved into the parish
house that afternoon after Father Edwards had left, and he’d had
contact with the local parishioners who had helped before. He was
going to keep the CCTV working, and keep a general eye on the house
and liaise with the congregation. Maryam would work in the Church
after she’d had a nap: it was going to be a long night.
Fred returned from the station at about
midnight. She was lying on the bed in a half asleep, half awake,
meditative mode. A gentle tap on her door served to bring her
senses back up to ‘on’ and she joined everyone in the kitchen for
what was, to all intents and purposes, a council of war. Wyn Jones
had not returned to the house; he’d been allowed to leave the
station without charge on condition he did not go within three
miles of his home. He was at Westminster Cathedral. Gatto had
escorted Fred back in to brief Maryam on the outcome of the
interview. He came in intending to stay just long enough to hand
Maryam an updated file, taking her through the evidence that had
been piling up against Wyn, but stayed to eat the large bowl of
stew she’d placed in front of him. Both he and Fred devoured the
food as she sifted through the file. It included a detailed log of
the CCTV footage that had been collated. It revealed that whilst
Wyn had indeed been the only person to enter the Church the morning
he’d found the body, he’d also been the last person to leave it the
night before, which they’d known. What they had not known until the
footage revealed it, was that Jason Briggs had entered the Church
just a few minutes before Wyn had that night and he’d not come
out.