Transgressions

by Sarah Dunant

  “You should have been here half an hour ago. I wasn’t quite so charitable then.”

  “What did people do before religion?”

  She glanced at her. “How big a question is that?”

  “I mean, at Christmas.”

  “They celebrated the winter solstice in the hope that spring would come again. Darkness and light. It’s not so dissimilar really. You should come to our Christmas Eve service. The whole church is lit by candles. It looks wonderful.”

  “Is that a sop to paganism?”

  The vicar laughed. “Probably. Though it wouldn’t be wise to admit to it. Anyway, what can I do for you? How is your particular vandal behaving these days?”

  She looked at her and gave another little shrug. When it came to it, just as outside the police station, she somehow didn’t have the words. “At least mine only uses ketchup,” she said quietly. “Easier to wipe off.”

  “Ketchup.” Catherine frowned. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “Because I’m not sure I know what to say.”

  “Try it.”

  She sighed. Where to start? “Do you believe in forgiveness?” The woman studied her for a moment. “Yes, I do.”

  “Isn’t that the party line?”

  She smiled. “Absolutely. But that’s not why I believe in it.”

  “What about redemption?”

  “Um . . . I would say the same answer. Only I think that’s less to do with me and more to do with God.”

  “You mean sinners have to find it out for themselves?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  Elizabeth looked down at her hands and realized she was still holding a piece of the Nativity, a half-torso of a king carrying a golden box. Was it gold or myrrh? It was all so long ago she couldn’t remember. She looked up. “What did you do before you were a priest?”

  “Me? I was a schoolteacher. In a tough school in East London.”

  “Was it rough?”

  “It was . . . a challenge, yes.”

  “So you’ve met these kinds of kids before?” she said, gesturing at the wall.

  “Maybe. I’d like to think not.”

  “What happened? Did you lose your faith in education?”

  She laughed. “I’d put it another way. I’d see it more as having greater faith in something else.” She paused. “You know, I used to say to myself that if God ever let women priests be ordained I would make him a promise that in return I would never sound self-righteous. But it’s not as easy as it sounds.”

  Sweet, thought Elizabeth, but something of an occupational hazard. “I wouldn’t worry. From what I remember you’re better than most.”

  Their voices echoed up into the cold chasm of air above the altar. She looked around her. It was not an impressive church: too young to have much atmosphere and not enough secluded places for the spirit to linger. But it felt okay, considering. Maybe it wasn’t so much the place as the people who made the difference, generations of spirituality layering down through the ages, seeping into the brickwork, coloring the air. How many disturbed souls had sat here before her, seeking comfort and truth?

  “Have you ever had to forgive someone who didn’t deserve it? Someone who had done something serious?”

  “Elizabeth, I—”

  “I mean in the confessional sense. Somebody comes and tells you something, something you really ought to tell the police about, but you can’t divulge it because it’s confidential.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Montgomery Clift,” she answered firmly.

  “What?”

  “Montgomery Clift. In I Confess. It’s a Hitchcock film. Clift plays a Catholic priest whom a murderer confesses to. I used to watch it all the time as a young girl. I think I had something of a schoolgirl crush on him.”

  “But he was gay, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. Though I didn’t know that at the time. But I grant you it does give it a bit of a subtext, doesn’t it?”

  This time when the silence came the woman decided not to break it. She sat patiently watching, waiting, giving her the space, making it as comfortable as she could.

  “I called you, but you were away,” Elizabeth said at last. “It isn’t a poltergeist.”

  “So what is it?”

  She sighed. “It’s a bit like this.”

  “You mean some kind of burglar or vandal?”

  But when she opened her mouth to say more she found the intake of breath was needed more to control the tears—not the jagged, pushy sobs from the night with Malcolm, but a softer, more insistent rain. It continued for a while. She wondered if it might somehow wash it all away.

  The woman put a hand over hers and held it there. Eventually she said, with great gentleness, “You know, Elizabeth, you only have to ask for help and it will be given.”

  “Yours or God’s?”

  “Both. I promise you.”

  She sniffed fiercely. “I’m not anybody’s victim.”

  “No. I doubt very much that you are.”

  “And I think if somebody sets out to hurt you, you have a right to protect yourself.”

  “Is that what you did?”

  “Catherine.” A man’s voice cut in loudly across the church. She turned and looked up. “Catherine, I’m sorry, but the police are here.”

  She let out an impatient sigh. “Thanks, John, tell them I’ll be five minutes.”

  He hesitated. “I told them that you were with someone. But they said it was important. That they need to see you straightaway.”

  “Five minutes, John,” she said, and in those few words you could feel the schoolteacher rising up inside her. She turned back, immediately engaged again, but the moment had passed. At the mention of the police Elizabeth was already on her feet. “No, please, don’t go.”

  “I have to. I . . . I’ve got work to do.”

  “Listen, if something has happened to you, or you’ve done something you’re frightened about, you have to tell someone. It won’t just go away.” And the voice was tougher this time.

  Sensible, Elizabeth thought. She’s so good and sensible. What would she have done? Understood his distress and talked him into the Church rather than her own vagina? Giving faith instead of taking sperm? No. You couldn’t understand it unless you’d been there. And even then . . .

  “Elizabeth?”

  “So what did Montgomery Clift do? In the film.”

  The woman stared at her for a moment, then said evenly, “He persuaded the man to go to the police.”

  She gave a little snorting laugh. “I think that’s what you call a cop-out. You’d better go. They’re waiting for you.”

  At the other side of the church the man was still standing, trying to look as if he wasn’t there. The reverend shot him what could only be described as an uncharitable look. She turned back. “I’ll be ten minutes. Will you promise me that you’ll stay till I get back?”

  There was a small silence.

  “Promise.”

  She nodded.

  “Good. Do you want to come to the vicarage or stay here?”

  “Here.”

  “Thank you. Maybe you could give John some advice when he gets back with the paint. He isn’t the world’s handiest handyman.”

  She watched her walk across the altar to the door at the other side. The man opened it for her, and they went out together. Silence returned. She sat staring at the graffiti on the wall. It struck her that if God had wanted to, he could have done something about this. Made sure the door was harder to force, or sent a crack of lightning through the nave the instant the spray paint hit the wall. They were just boys. With a little imagination they could easily have been terrorized back into line.

  And what could he have done for her? Made her thin man impotent? Even given him a good hobby to keep him out of other people’s garbage cans? But of course it didn’t work like that. Because when push came to shove, he didn’t give a damn. If you read the small print you realized it had all b
een given up to you anyway. Free will. No doubt Catherine Baker would have another spin on that one. But to accept her comfort you also had to accept his. And he had already proved negligent. “Where were you in the still of the night when I was ripe for conversion?” she said into the empty air.

  The front door of the church opened, and the soiled angel tramped back in, heaving a can of paint and a plastic bag over a broom handle. He scowled at her as he passed. She waited until his back was turned, then got up and walked out.

  eighteen

  The street was Montague Crescent. That much was obvious. It met the end of her road and curled around in a graceful semicircle till it intersected with another equally resi-dential avenue. It was a rhythmic flow of terraced houses, late Victorian, three stories high, like everything else around. Also like everything else they had gone through incarnations of living fashions: family homes turned into apartments, then into more salubrious first-time buyers’ flats, and now (when they could manage to sell) back into family homes again. She could almost imagine them inside, layers of linoleum like a mille-feuille cake baked up from a century of tenancy.

  She counted the house numbers off carefully. From her kitchen window she could see what she thought was the left-hand end of the terrace, though not the right. If she had got it correct his was eighteenth along. That made it number 36 or possibly 38.

  Neither of them was in particularly good shape, but 38 was definitely the loser, its bottom window frames peeling and the door splintered at one corner with cracked frosted glass in the panels. She crossed the road and climbed the steps to the front door. There were two bells, but no names. Neither bell looked as if it worked. She pressed the bottom one. There was a thin sound from deep inside somewhere. Silence. Then footsteps.

  The door opened onto a corridor cluttered with decorators’ ladders and drop cloths. A woman, young, in jeans and a sweater, stood with a baby on her arm.

  She flashed back to the night she had focused on a certain lighted window in her binoculars. Wrong house. Again. “Hi. I’m sorry. I was looking for a man who I thought lived here. Tall, thin—wiry hair? I was sure he told me number thirty-eight.”

  “No. Sorry. There’s only the Cranwright family here,” she said in a giveaway accent made up of the Outback and surfing beaches: sunshine vowels in winter gloom. “They just moved in a few months ago though, so maybe he was here before.”

  “I see. You don’t know about next door, by any chance? I mean, it could have been thirty-six.”

  She shrugged. “I’m the nanny. I don’t live here. But I think they’re apartments. I’ve occasionally seen folk coming in or out.”

  She was nice-looking, with a no-nonsense haircut and the leftovers of a tan. Fresh off the boat. Had they told her about English cities? How dark they could be? How you had to lock the windows and check the footsteps behind you in alleyways? Maybe he wouldn’t be so foolish as to crap in his own backyard. More the kind of guy who preferred crossing walls and darkened gardens. “Thanks anyway,” she said quietly.

  “No worries.”

  Let’s hope so. She walked back across the road and checked out number 36. Now that she knew, the house looked even more appropriate. The bottom floor had a graying lace curtain with a forest of jungly plants pushed up against the glass. It would be dark inside, though hardly tropical. The middle floor—his floor—had blinds: not thin fashionable ones, but chunky wood, a leftover from an obsession with Scandinavian furniture thirty years before. Her mother’s sister had had them in her living room. As a child she remembered running her fingers along them during bored Sunday afternoons, harvesting rich layers of dust. Now they were a sure sign of furnished accommodation.

  Furnished accommodation. She had done it only once, a stopgap between a friend’s apartment and one of her own, and she had hated it even then: hard enough to know who you are in life without trying to find out among other people’s obsessions. She couldn’t wait to leave. No doubt he felt the same way. And the nights, of course, would be the worst. If you were going to feel the madness you’d feel it most then.

  Hmmn, I know you quite well, she thought. Your scrawny body, your zipped lips, and your nasty little hammer and twine. She saw again that wired, nervous smile. What did he want from her? Some kind of understanding, even sympathy? Forget it. Inadequate is as inadequate does. I bet you’re in there now, she thought, cutting out headlines from the local newspaper and sticking them in your scrapbook. Getting a life, it was called. Except his came from destroying other people’s.

  Not anymore. She used the phone booth at the end of the road, getting the number from directory assistance: it seemed too risky to call the emergency number.

  A man answered. When she told him what her business was he said he’d put her through to the right person and asked her what her name was. When she wouldn’t give it he connected her anyway. Another voice answered. “Detective Inspector Groves, CID, speaking.”

  “Are you the officer dealing with the Holloway Hammer?”

  “I am on the investigation team, yes. Who am I speaking to, please?”

  A familiar grammatical mistake, the kind of thing a translator comes across all the time. She took a deep breath. “The man you’re looking for lives at number thirty-six Montague Crescent. Middle bell.”

  “Thirty-six Montague Crescent,” he repeated slowly. “I see. And can I ask you how you know?”

  “I just know, that’s all.”

  “Do you have a name for this man?”

  “No.”

  He paused. “You know, if you have anything to say—anything at all with regard to this case—I can guarantee you it would be kept in strictest confidence.” His voice was careful, almost rehearsed, almost—dare one say it?—a little bored.

  “I’ve told you. He lives at thirty-six Montague Crescent. More than likely he’s there now.”

  “Yes, madam. And I assure you that we will check it out. But I have to tell you we get, on average, two or three calls like this every day, and we obviously have to prioritize some of them. Now, if you felt able to give us your—”

  Could they be tracing the call? she thought. They do that kind of thing, don’t they? Keep you on the end of the line until they have a reading.

  “He carries a hammer and sometimes string or a piece of twine, okay? He’s tall and scrawny with a breathy voice. And he likes to talk before he does it, likes to see people scared. I’m sure any of your eight other women would tell you the same thing. Believe me, this is not a hoax.”

  She slammed down the phone, heart thumping.

  By the time she got home, the frozen foods were melting. She kicked aside the mail and slammed the boxes into the freezer. In the kitchen she made herself a strong cup of coffee. No point in trying to go to bed now. The adrenaline was too strong in her system. She imagined standing on the opposite side of his road, watching while they pulled him down the stairs into a waiting police car. No, that would be a dream worth going to sleep for. The reality, of course, would take awhile longer. An anonymous phone call would no doubt find itself added to a list. Maybe it would warrant some checking out. How long? One hour, maybe two. Never mind. While they worked so would she.

  Back in the basement cell she went for action over elegance, writing to fit her mood. She made Mirka pathetic, then sweet, then in so much pain that she was unable even to cut up her own food.

  The man did it for her, sitting next to her, hacking through the lump of gristly meat with a knife that was sharper than it looked. As she chewed slowly she tempted him into talk: tales of village life and how it had changed since the system had imploded, of poverty and disillusionment and the upsurge in new opportunities. She was surprised by how stupid he was, expecting the thin one to be the brains for the fat one’s brawn. But it made it easier.

  In return she painted pictures of bright lights, big business, and sidewalks paved with gold, and watched as his eyes shone in their reflection. Expecting bribery (Would that have worked better? Was it really j
ust greed?), he didn’t anticipate seduction, didn’t consciously register the heat of her against his leg or the way that her lips grew moist around the fork, until it was too late. And so it was that at last Mirka came to learn what it felt like to rub herself up against a country boy and find his farm fingers groping their way into the wetlands of her cunt.

  The words flowed like genital juices. But still she made Mirka work at it, made her use the slap-slurp sound of sex and her own extravagant groans to cover up the scrape of the knife as she slid it up from the steel tray beside the bed. And she made her suffer, too, using her damaged hand to massage his cock (she needed her good one for the knife), the pain of the grasp roaring up through her like a lava flow and causing a yelp of breath that would have given her away if he hadn’t been too far gone to notice.

  The playboy pleasures of American sex. They’d both seen enough of it in the movies, but she was the one who had been there, done that. Give the boys what they think they want and for that moment they’ll forget to be wary of you. She pushed him gently back onto the bed, sliding herself down his body onto her knees in front of him, using her tongue as a tourist guide, heading toward places he had read about in the brochures. He gasped, then pushed her head down farther toward his groin, and she knew then that she had him, and that his lust was wrenching him out of his own control.

  As her tongue went down, so her good hand came up until the two connected in a triangle of soft flesh just above his penis. No time for thought now. She rammed the knife in, then twisted it up, feeling the steel push through a pulpy mash of sinew and flesh. And as she did so she rose up and covered his mouth with her own, sucking the scream out of him, taking its noise into her lungs and swallowing it down.

  In that split second as he flung her off him in agony she was up and out the door, slamming it behind her and ramming the bolts into place.

  The wood muffled his yells, but they would still be enough to wake the fat man. She went for what she could get. A heavy iron kettle was sitting near a gas ring on the floor. She picked it up and swung it down over his head with all the force she could muster. The blow connected; she could feel the mash of bone and metal, but in her gut she knew it wasn’t hard enough. He roared up, reaching out for her and clutching his head at the same time. She dropped the kettle and fled, up the cellar steps and out through the door. She heard him stumbling up behind her. This lock was flimsier; it would give with the first battering ram of his shoulder, but if there was any justice in the world she wouldn’t be there by then.