by David Blake
‘You interrogated the Bishop of Norfolk, Tanner, in the middle of Norfolk Cathedral, in front of an entire congregation! Furthermore, you failed to formally identify yourself, your questions were relating to the very guy he’d only just presided a funeral over, and if all that wasn’t bad enough, there wasn’t even an investigation for him to be questioned over! I mean, what the hell were you expecting, the Queen's Medal for distinguished service?’
Tanner’s mind spun as he struggled to find something to say. He’d never been suspended before, not once in his entire career.
‘Aren’t you at least going to apologise?’
‘It was a mistake, sir. I realise that now. And yes, I’m sorry. But to have me suspended?’
‘Anyway, it’s too late for all that now. You need to clear your desk, and make sure that you brief DI Cooper on anything you’re currently working on before you leave.’
‘DI Cooper? Don’t you mean, DS Cooper?’
‘He applied for a promotion when I first took over, which I’ve decided to approve.’
‘But…he’s not ready, sir.’
‘I wasn’t aware anyone asked for your opinion, Tanner, especially in light of the fact that you’ve just been suspended.’
‘No sir, but don’t you think he’s too young?’
‘It’s not about age, it’s about experience.’
‘Which he’s also lacking.’
‘Unfortunately, Tanner, your actions over the weekend have left me with little choice. I need at least one DI working here, and I’ve had bugger-all luck in finding a replacement for DI Burgess.’
An awkward silence fell over the office, with Tanner just sitting there, desperately hoping that his boss would change his mind.
Eventually Forrester leaned forward in his chair to say, ‘Look, I’m sorry Tanner, but it’s only a suspension. You’re not facing disciplinary charges, or anything. And it’s not as if there’s all that much going on at the moment.’
‘It’s fine, sir,’ Tanner replied, pushing his chair away from him as he stood up. ‘No doubt I deserve it.’
With the sense that nothing more needed to be said, he turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.
Heading back over to where Jenny was still sitting, he saw her eyes flick up towards him before returning to stare back at her monitor.
‘Enjoy that, did you?’ she asked.
‘Not very much, no,’ he replied, pulling his coat from the back of his chair.
‘And where are you off to?’ she asked, her curiosity piqued.
‘I’ve been suspended.’
‘Suspended?’ she repeated, staring up at him, clearly shocked by the news.
‘You were right. The bishop did make an official complaint: one of police harassment.’
‘But - suspended for how long?’
‘I’ve no idea. He just said until further notice.’
‘Jesus, John. I thought they’d give you a slap on the wrist. I never seriously thought they’d suspend you.’
‘Don’t worry. It was my fault, as was the way I spoke to you. Anyway, I’ve got to brief DI Cooper on my case files, and then I’d better be off.’
‘DI Cooper?’ she repeated, in much the same way as he had done a few minutes earlier.
‘Forrester’s promoted him.’
‘But…he doesn’t have the experience, surely?’
‘I’d have to agree with you. Apparently, he put in for a promotion shortly after we lost DI Burgess, and with me being suspended, I’m not sure Forrester had much of a choice.’
With that, Tanner set off for the far end of the office, where Cooper sat opposite Burgess’s empty desk which stood as a stark reminder as to what had happened two months before.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tuesday, 2nd July
HANNAH BEAL COULD hear the faint sound of the number 23 bus growling its way up the hill behind her. She was never going to make it, even if she ran, which she knew she wouldn’t. Apart from the fact that her pride would never allow it, she probably wasn’t fit enough to make it all the way to the top. Besides, the shoes she had on made it impossible.
A heavy blob of rain smacked into the top of her head.
She’d been expecting that. The sky had been growing increasingly dark since she’d left work. She had neither a coat nor an umbrella, but why on earth should she have had? A blue sky had greeted her when she’d left the house that morning, and the forecast the night before had said nothing about rain.
A sudden chilly breeze pinched at her ears, bringing with it another drop of water.
Picking up her pace, she glanced over her shoulder.
The bus was coming up fast.
It was no use. She was never going to make it. She was just going to have to wait for the next one. But wait where? The bus stop at the top of the hill didn’t have a shelter, and there wasn’t a single tree anywhere along the road to duck under.
The rain began slamming into the pavement around her.
She was going to get soaked!
Staring around, she searched for shelter.
Up ahead, she saw the footpath that led into St. Peter’s Cemetery. It was hardly her first choice, but she knew there’d be somewhere in there for her to hide, at least until the rain had passed.
A flash of lightning lit the sky, followed a few seconds later by the ominous rumble of thunder.
As if on cue, the skies opened.
There was nothing for it. With her leather handbag held over her head, as fast as her heels would allow she tottered through the cemetery’s entrance and swung right.
Following the narrow footpath, with gravestones watching her from either side, she glanced up to see a stone mausoleum standing in grim solitude at the end. Seeing the entrance had a pillared alcove, she headed straight for it, doing her best to ignore the water that had begun to trickle down her arms, plummeting the depths of her sleeves.
By the time she reached it, she was running full pelt, despite her shoes. Unable to stop, her body slammed into the mausoleum’s heavy wooden door, loud enough to wake whoever had been laid to rest inside.
Ditching her handbag on the ground, she leant on her knees, gasping for air, a drop of rain hanging precariously from the tip of her nose. Wiping it away, she shook the water off her hands to stare down at her boot-cut trousers. She’d only bought them that weekend, and she had a sneaking suspicion that they were supposed to be dry-clean only.
She was completely soaked. The idea of using her handbag as some sort of makeshift umbrella had done nothing to protect her from the elements.
Glancing back towards the road, over the top of the cemetery wall she saw the roof of another bus beginning a gradual ascent of the hill she’d been walking up only about a minute before.
‘Fuck it!’ she exclaimed. She may as well have kept going to the stop and waited there. It would have made no difference. She’d have been just as wet, but at least she would have had a bus to climb on to.
Lightning tore through the sky, followed immediately by a sudden crash of thunder so loud, she felt the ground shake beneath her feet.
As quickly as it had started, the rain stopped.
In the eerie silence that followed, she waited a moment before daring to poke her head out and cast her eyes up at the sky.
Then it really began to come down, with even more fury than it had done before.
She pushed herself back up against the mausoleum’s door. The alcove wasn’t nearly as deep as she’d first thought, and water was being splattered up over her shoes.
She stared out, following the bus’s roof as it continued up the hill. Eventually it came to a halt at the very stop where she could have been waiting, if only she’d had the good sense to have kept going.
Seeing it pull away, she cursed again, knowing that she could have been on it now, watching the rain through a window, instead of from the alcove of some god-forsaken tomb.
After a few minutes, as she watched a torrent of water run over
the path in front of her, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the storm wasn’t going to stop. If anything, it was getting worse.
Realising that she was just going to have to wait it out, she retrieved her handbag from off the ground and searched its contents for her phone.
The moment she touched it, the surrounding air was ripped apart by a blast of burning white heat.
The next thing she knew, she was lying face down on the soaking wet path, rain cascading over the length of her body while a constant whining noise seemed to be drilling its way through her head.
Blinking away the rain, she tried to work out where she was, and what had happened. One of her arms was wedged under her body, the other lay beside her head. She moved the fingers of both. They felt OK, but the moment she tried to move her legs, a wave of pain surged up through them, burying itself into the base of her spine. She had a go at lifting her head, but she couldn’t, not without amplifying the pain in her back.
Moving only her eyes, she tried to look down the length of her body to where she could feel something pressing down on her legs. It looked like a broken slab of stone.
Glancing over to one side, she could see one of the two pillars which had been supporting the arch she’d been sheltering under. The mausoleum beyond, what was left of it, was nothing more than a crumpled ruin, from which a plume of dust and smoke rose steadily up through the still falling rain. What was pinning her legs to the ground must be the concrete arch itself.
Using her free hand she scrabbled for her phone. She remembered she’d been holding it just before the explosion, which she could only assume to have been a bolt of lightning striking the mausoleum; but she couldn’t find it.
As the whining noise inside her head began to subside, she heard what sounded like lumps of concrete being moved from within what was left of the mausoleum, as if someone was searching through the rubble. She tried moving her head to see better, but the same pain as before tore its way down her spine.
Holding on to the hope that it was someone looking for her, she tried calling for help, but her mouth was filled with the taste of chalk, and her throat felt as dry as paper. Forcing herself to swallow, she did her best to call, but it was nothing more than a whimper. Breathing in through her nose, she tried again.
‘Help me! Someone!’
The sound of movement stopped.
The person, whoever it was, must have heard her.
Without moving her head, she could see a shadow climbing over boulders of concrete, heading towards where she lay.
As it grew closer, she tried to see its face, but its head was covered by a hood, leaving nothing but a gaping black hole.
She watched as the figure approached.
As it grew nearer, from the angle at which she lay she was only able to see its feet, which were bare, clad in a pair of open-toed leather sandals.
As the figure knelt down beside her, she was finally able to penetrate the darkness of the hood, to where the face of a man stared silently back.
‘My legs,’ she croaked. ‘I…I can’t seem to move them.’
Without saying anything, the man shifted his gaze to look down at them, where indeed a slab of concrete lay.
Standing up, he carefully manoeuvred his way around to her feet. There, he squatted down to take a firm hold of either side of the broken piece of masonry. Grunting as he did, he heaved it off her legs, and stood upright.
Still unable to move her head, she croaked out a quiet, ‘Thank you!’
Grinning at her, he began lugging the huge stone up the length of her body, stepping either side of her shattered legs as he went.
Hannah watched as the lump of stone rocked first one way, then the other, as the man carried it towards her head, all the while trying to work out what he was doing.
Reaching her chest, the figure stopped to gaze up into the sky. With rain streaming down his face, he called out, ‘Lord, your power brings us to birth, your providence guides us through life. It is by your command that we return to dust.’
Holding her hand up so that it rested against the base of the stone, Hannah stuttered, ‘I - I don’t understand.’
‘Into your hands I commit this spirit,’ the man continued.
‘What - what are you doing?’
‘Into your arms I commit this life.’
‘No, please, wait!’
Positioning the stone slab so that it hung directly above Hannah’s head, he looked down at her and said, ‘Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace.’
After offering her a warm smile of graceful benevolence, he let go, leaving her skull to be crushed to a pulp underneath.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Wednesday, 3rd July
JUST AFTER TEN o’clock the following morning, bleary-eyed and wearing nothing more than a pair of jeans and an old polo shirt, John Tanner emerged from his cabin.
He’d hardly slept a wink the night before, despite having polished off a bottle of rum he normally kept for weekends. The storm that had battered the Broads throughout the night had seen to that. Usually he didn’t mind the patter of rain falling onto the yacht’s canvas awning. Like the rhythmic lap of waves against the hull, he found it helped him to sleep. But last night’s deluge was unlike anything he’d experienced before, especially as it felt like he was sleeping out in it. While the drumming of the torrential rain prevented him from drifting off, the thunder and lightning had him staring wide-eyed up at the sloping low ceiling, hoping to god that his boat’s mast wouldn’t be struck. He knew the storm had passed directly overhead, as most of the flashes of lightning were followed almost immediately by the almighty crashes of thunder. At one point he’d became so concerned that his boat would be hit, he’d considered fleeing to seek shelter somewhere on land, but the only places he could think of were the marina building, the shop, or the pub, all of which would be locked. Besides, he’d be soaked in the process, and knowing his luck, would have been struck by the very lightning he’d been so keen to escape.
At some point though, he must have fallen asleep, as he’d woken that morning as if being dragged out of a coma.
Having remembered that he’d been suspended, and that there was no particular reason for him to get up, he’d lain there for another hour or so, drifting in and out of sleep, until his bladder had finally forced him up.
The morning’s air felt as if it had been washed clean by the storm, as had his canvas awning. He noticed that the boat was sitting higher against the bank, and that his mooring lines were far too tight. Realising that the water level must have risen during the night, he stepped down to slacken off the lines. Had he known it was going to rain so much he’d have loosened them the night before, but with neither a TV nor Wi-Fi, he hadn’t had a chance to check the weather forecast.
Once he’d done that, he gave the boat a quick once over, but nothing else seemed out of place. Even the flag at the top of the mast was still where it was supposed to be, fluttering merrily away.
Avoiding the water-logged grass, he walked over to the shop to pick up a few morning essentials.
Behind the counter, the plump middle-aged lady who seemed to be permanently stationed there glanced up at him from over the top of her thick-rimmed glasses.
‘Good morning, Mr Tanner,’ she said. ‘I see you managed to survive the storm.’
‘Just about,’ he replied, ‘although I can’t say I got much sleep.’
‘I’m not surprised. Cats and dogs, it was!’
As he made his way towards the back of the shop, he heard her call out, ‘Is that why you’re not working today, again?’
Feeling a prickle of embarrassment, hoping there wasn’t a customer listening from behind another aisle, Tanner raised his voice slightly to say, ‘Not really.’ He’d worked out a long time before that there wasn’t much that escaped her attention. And keen for her not to find out that he’d been suspended from duty, just in case she put a notice up in the window announcing the fact, and as she’d already asked him somethin
g similar the previous morning, Tanner thought he’d better come up with some sort of a plausible explanation.
‘I’ve taken a couple of weeks holiday,’ he announced, pulling a litre bottle of milk from the fridge cabinet.
‘I’m surprised they could spare you,’ she called back, as he made his way around to where they kept the bread.
‘Why’s that?’ he asked, with casual indifference.
‘Haven’t you heard?’
With both items in hand, he returned to the counter.
Seeing her heaving a pile of that day’s issue of the local free newspaper, the Norfolk Herald, onto the counter, he asked, ‘Sorry, but haven’t I heard about what?’
‘What happened last night,’ she said, handing him a paper. ‘It’s all over the news.’
Placing the milk and bread down, he took hold of the Herald to see a picture of what looked like a half-demolished building, underneath which the headline read, ‘Dead Monk Kills Girl.’
Tanner raised an eyebrow at the cashier. ‘Seriously?’ He’d read some farcical headlines in his day, but that one really took the biscuit.
‘It was on TV as well,’ she proclaimed, as if that proved it to be true. ‘OK, not the part about the dead monk,’ she conceded, ‘but a girl was murdered last night, in St. Peter’s cemetery, right next to where that cult leader was buried at the weekend. Apparently, his mausoleum was struck by lightning, his body’s missing and there’s a witness who saw a hooded black monk rise up from the ashes to murder a girl who was standing next to the tomb.’
Tanner had little time for sensationalist newspapers, as the Norfolk Herald was proving to be; however, the headline had done its job, and curious to read the story, at least the Herald’s version of it, he tucked it under his arm and said, ‘Well, I guess that just proves that you can’t believe everything you read in the papers, or what you see on the news, for that matter.’
Looking a little put-out, as she scanned in his items, she said, ‘Well, maybe not, but the police are asking for witnesses, and they did say that they’re not ruling out murder.’