To Geoffrey they were a delight. When the archdeacon had told him that the faculty had been granted and the money found to repair and refurbish St Sylvester’s, he’d been particularly eager that those responsible for the work should not be the usual building-site force, shouting their monotonous obscenities from one end of the church to the other, careless of atmosphere and artefacts. Makepeace and Singh had been just right. The courteous brown faces of the Singh cousinhood could be seen peering sympathetically through the foliage of scaffold planks and electric leads. If he came about lunch-time he could find them in the south aisle near the lady chapel, unobtrusively cooking on a neat iron brazier which seemed to fit naturally into the ecclesiastical setting.
‘Please be seated, Reverend Geoffrey,’ Mr Singh the eldest had said formally on the first occasion he had happened upon them, ‘and do us the honour to eat with us.’
Geoffrey had been much moved, had shared a chapatti and a curried marrow with them, and felt the Anglican church well served by its workforce.
He was well served too, he reckoned, by his curate. When the archdeacon had indicated that the money might stretch to one, provided he shared with the Foundation of St Sylvester next door to the church, he’d been surprised and gratified to find that Theodora, the only applicant for the post, shared many of his own views.
‘Why here?’ he’d asked her. Theodora, who thought that if you really had a vocation you should let Providence choose your future for you, had been tempted to answer, ‘Why not here?’ But she was honest: she had a reason; indeed two reasons. ‘We lived not far from the source of the Thames when I was a child. It’s interesting in later years to see what it becomes. Also, of course, there’s the Foundation of St Sylvester.’
Geoffrey had thought he understood. The Foundation of St Sylvester was the result of the late-nineteenth-century’s wish to establish Catholic parishes in the urban developments of England. Its originator, the Reverend Thomas Henry Newcome, had been a follower of the Tractarian movement when at Oxford. His private fortune had enabled him to found an order of priests dedicated to the extension of Catholic life and teaching within the Anglican Church. Their aim was not the sudden conversion of the missionary or the evangelist, but the creation of an environment in which people could grow gradually into the Christian life through the discipline of prayer and sacrament. Two houses had been established for training priests and the refreshment of like-minded laymen, in Yorkshire and London. Langthorne had been willing to have the London house next to his church, and so they stood today linked by an asphalt path and a line of chestnut trees.
The fortunes of the order had fluctuated as Catholic bishops alternated with evangelical ones. But in the eighties of our own century, there had been a resurgence of interest in the connection of physical to spiritual. Doctors and psychiatrists had been recruited into the order, and the network had produced work which was interesting at the level of research as well as innovative in pastoral and parochial ministry. The present warden of the London house was the Reverend Gilbert Racy, a doctor, a psychiatrist and deeply suspect to the more mundane of his south London brother clergy.
It might well be, Geoffrey surmised, that someone coming to the Anglican ministry de novo, like Theodora, would be attracted by working under the aegis of such a priest. In this, however, Geoffrey was mistaken. Theodora had known about parochial ministry at its very best from the days of her childhood. She had seen and, as she grew, wholeheartedly admired her late father’s parish service. What attracted Theodora to the Foundation was simply that the London house of St Sylvester possessed the archive for the Society. Theodora, a budding church historian, felt there might be scope for her talent.
Geoffrey had wanted a curate to help him build up the parish, and the only way to do that was to visit. Theodora visited. From tower block to Victorian terrace she fought her way through dogs and children, becoming daily a familiar figure to the parish. He’d found her totally committed and surprisingly able to deal with a wide social variety. She had an unfussy competence which sprang, he supposed, from her clerical family. He suspected that she made lists and kept to them. She was prayerful and not apparently too worried about the question of women’s priesting. He had the impression she felt it was a waste of energy, perhaps indeed a temptation, to dwell on that issue. He had no objection to her doing two mornings a week at St Veep’s to balance the parish’s books. Her many reserves he respected. He was satisfied. He hoped she was.
So here they both were, this Lent-tide, in a place, a special place, a parish with tasks, small and mundane, tiny contributions to the expansion of God’s kingdom. Like boot sales, Geoffrey thought, and marched down the aisle towards the vestry door.
‘Why boot sales?’ his agnostic sister had asked him on one of her brief visits to his patch.
‘I don’t have a theology of boot sales,’ he’d replied with irritation. ‘I suppose I feel it brings people together in an area where communities are not always too good at relating, where they are changing too quickly. It releases good energy, gives people who don’t have much say, a bit of a say. Celebrates, even. Redistributes the cash, some of it in the Church’s direction. Don’t you have them at St Veep’s?’
‘No,’ Miss Brighouse had said.‘We have concerts conducted by famous musicians.’
‘Each to his own,’ Geoffrey had murmured tranquilly. ‘I quite like a boot sale myself.’
At the vestry door a different sort of smell greeted him: old boots, newspaper, and a cold dampness inadequately held at bay by Victorian cast-iron heating pipes running round the walls. A slight rustling in the undergrowth of boxes caught his attention as he swung the door closed behind him. Bundles of stuff piled high and stacked round the walls of the small room cast shadows towards him. The brave sunlight of an April morning seeping through a roundel high up in the far wall barely illuminated the space.
‘Hello,’ Geoffrey called, his tone encouraging as to a dog or child.
There was silence. Geoffrey moved forward towards a pile of men’s clothes tastefully surmounted by a bunch of plastic daisies.
‘Anyone there?’ he called again, and began to push his way through the stacks of stuff. A figure detached itself from behind one of these and made a rush for the door. Geoffrey spun round and clamped a well-timed hand on the stocky figure. In the murky light he discerned an oblong face, with thick black brows and a dark complexion.
‘Now what would you be doing here?’ he inquired.
For a moment the face said nothing, then the boy shook himself free from Geoffrey’s grasp; Geoffrey thought he was going to make a run for it. But he clearly thought better of it.
‘I come from my mother,’ the boy’s accent was south London with, Geoffrey recognised, Greek overtones. ‘She sent me with things for our sale at Easter.’
Geoffrey liked the ‘our’. The Kostas family were, he had ascertained, Greek Orthodox, but the mother and grandmother came to St Sylvester’s occasionally, probably attracted by the formal ritual which Geoffrey observed in his liturgy. The boys came to the youth club. Whether any of them knew that the Anglican Church was in communion with the Greek Orthodox, whether any of them cared, he had not inquired. The nearest Orthodox church was across the water; not far, he seemed to remember, from St Veep’s. As far as Geoffrey was concerned they were in his parish, they had a right to his pastoral care. It was he who had helped break the news of her son’s death to Mrs Kostas in Springer’s office yesterday, he who had driven her to the hospital and then home. He looked down at this offspring of the Kostas tribe with concern.
‘It’s Paul, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ said the boy stonily, then added, as an afterthought of politeness, ‘Father.’
Geoffrey cursed himself for incompetence. ‘Peter?’
The boy nodded. They were, Geoffrey recalled, twins.
‘It was kind of your mother to send us things …’ He thought and then added, ‘At this time.’
The boy nodded again. From s
omewhere outside the building a motor horn sounded with sudden loudness. The boy jumped visibly. ‘I’m just going up to the house to have some coffee,’ Geoffrey said gently. ‘Would you like a cup?’
The boy hesitated, then he said in a sort of wail, ‘I can’t, I can’t. My father says our fortune has left us.’
Then he turned away from Geoffrey and leaned against the pile of coats, crooked his arm across his eyes and wept.The white plastic daisies on top of the pile quivered, Geoffrey focused his full attention on the stricken boy and started to pray silently. ‘Comfort, sustain, repair this Thy child, most merciful Father of all men.’ Gradually the boy’s shoulders ceased to heave. Geoffrey waited silently. Then he said, ‘Come up to the house any time you want to.’
The tears left the boy as quickly as they had overtaken him. He turned towards Geoffrey but his eyes did not take him in. Without a word he made for the door. Geoffrey made no attempt to detain him.
Ten minutes later, Geoffrey pressed the rewind button on the ansaphone in the vicarage hall. The voice was a man’s: cultivated, slightly nasal, vaguely familiar. Geoffrey caught the end of the message before identifying its owner. ‘So what they’re saying is the Kostases’ boy’s death can’t have been an accident. He must have been killed deliberately, murdered in fact.’
‘My difficulty,’ said Theodora, ‘is Mrs Stephanopoulos.’
‘My difficulty,’ said Geoffrey, ‘is Ralph Troutbeck.’
‘You go first,’ said Theodora courteously, curate to vicar. ‘The message on the ansaphone from Troutbeck said the police had
had the result of the post-mortem on Paul Kostas and there were signs of bruising on the face and shoulders. The police wanted to know if Troutbeck had noticed these before Kostas disappeared from his class. He said he couldn’t remember. The police suspect the boy was hit and then pushed up against the heating unit. Then the electricity was switched on.’
Theodora shuddered.
‘I’ve asked him to come round. He sounded distraught.’ ‘When?’ she asked.
‘Now, as soon as he can. I’d be awfully grateful if you could stick around
and minister to him a bit. I don’t know him very well. I suspect he wants to talk to someone who knows the school but who wasn’t part of it. Talking to Springer as his boss might be a bit difficult.’ He paused. ‘Now tell me about Mrs Stephanopoulos.’
‘There are undercurrents,’ said Theodora thoughtfully.‘It’s not that she’s not affected by her daughter’s plight, she clearly is. But she’s almost fatalistic about it. She blocks off examining lines of inquiry which might lead to Jessica’s recovery. It’s like playing a game with her. I advance one suggestion and she blocks it, then another and it’s blocked again. But all the time I feel that, if I did hit on the right one, she’d own it. But she’s not going to come out with it herself.’
‘That’s a fairly common ploy the guilty make in confession,’ said Geoffrey, experienced in such matters. ‘They can’t face it and bring it out for themselves, but if we can do it for them, they’ll acknowledge it.’
‘But what could Mrs Stephanopoulos be guilty of?’ Theodora inquired. ‘Is there anything in the political angle?’ Geoffrey pursued. ‘Revenge, that sort of thing?’
‘They’re heavily guarded,’ Theodora said. ‘There’s a guard-chauffeur who doesn’t speak much English but has British nationality. According to the account of events Stella had heard, the kidnap car was parked somewhere near his but he apparently didn’t notice it. And on the salver in the Stephanopouloses’ hall there was this …’
The doorbell rang, setting in motion the copper bell on a board at the far end of the kitchen.
‘I’ll get it,’ Geoffrey said, leaping to his feet. ‘Could you do us some coffee, if I brought him down here?’
The young man sat at the kitchen table, crouched over the coffee mug which Theodora had handed him, as though it might be snatched from him. Theodora took in his slim figure, the pale, bony face, long, with the greater part given over to forehead, dark eyes recessed under dark eyebrows, a short nose and a mouth which pouted, the underlip thrust out and suggesting self-pity. His hair, of which there was a great deal, was dark and curly, worn long. It cascaded down over his neck and collar. It looked, Theodora thought, like a wig. She noticed long, beautiful hands, strong and white like a pianist’s. Was he nervous, she wondered, or only acting nervousness? Was he disguising real nervousness by acting nervous. His bodily movement seemed too considered. Of course he was a drama specialist. It probably left him without much spontaneity. She thought of the other Troutbeck she knew. Apart from the dark good looks, they had nothing particularly to relate them. He was dressed in fawn cords and a darker, soft fawn pullover. The predominant image was one of softness.
Geoffrey allowed him to talk, letting him repeat his story, prompting, encouraging, engaging with him. Theodora was moved to professional admiration of Geoffrey’s technique, all the more because it did not advertise itself as a technique. Still, it didn’t seem to be working. Ralph Troutbeck was no more relaxed now than he had been twenty minutes ago when he first came. His knuckles showed white as he clasped the mug.
‘So how did you describe what happened to the police?’ Geoffrey asked, to allow him to give a slightly different angle to his narrative. ‘I told them,’ Troutbeck answered – was his tone defiant? Theodora wondered – ‘I told them that I took the group for fourth section, first after break.’ He licked his lips.
‘Not the easiest time,’ Theodora murmured to help him. He glanced up at her almost for the first time. Her fellow teacher’s remark seemed to reassure him.
‘Right,’ he said making the monosyllable a triphthong. ‘They tend to develop their own interests over break and it’s difficult to settle them. As I said, it’s a big group. I honestly can’t see how one person can be expected to keep tabs on forty fourth years – year tens,’ he emended, correcting his pre-National Curriculum phraseology.
‘Forty does seem a bit large,’ Theodora soothed him again. ‘Muriel’s away. My colleague. I had her lot as well as my usual ones. Hence the two Kostases. They split them into different classes because they were such a pain together.’
‘How a pain?’
‘Oh, well, I suppose they’re just terribly good at causing trouble, starting things off. They’re into things military. I suppose it’s a tough culture. Cyprus and all that. What I’m saying is, I suppose, they carry weight in their group. They’re bullies, if you like. If they aren’t on your side you won’t even get the attention of the rest of the kids because they’re all busy listening to the relevant Kostas.’
Troutbeck stopped and looked embarrassed. Theodora reflected that teachers are trained nowadays to suppose that if they can’t control a class, it’s their fault, not the class’s. In Theodora’s experience that was not always true. Some classes set out to destroy teachers and did so. Had that happened to Troutbeck, she Wondered. Had there been a row? Had things got out of hand, groups splitting off and just ignoring instructions, going about their own unruly business, from angels to devils, from pupils to opponents in twenty minutes? Had conversations turned to laughter, jeering and calling out? Had Ralph moved from exasperation to panic? Had he lost his grip, his nerve, and finally his temper, and had the result of that been a boy thrown against an electric bar and killed? It was such a silly and unlikely death, the sort of death which comes from someone panicking. It occurred to Theodora to wonder what someone like Troutbeck was doing at SWL. Was he serving his time before he could move on to higher, more congenial things? Why wasn’t he writing his play or his novel, oozing into journalism, advertising or TV? Theodora brought her attention back to Troutbeck’s tone. It had a hint of hysteria, compelled, forced into reason and control, she thought.
‘You took them from their classroom to the hall?’ Geoffrey asked. ‘Yes. Their two classrooms are next door to each other on level three.’
Geoffrey remembered how the levels of the bleak building seemed i
dentical to him, and wondered whether they had any distinguishing marks to someone who worked in it.
‘The Councillor Ferrin Hall leads off the end of the corridor. ‘It’s three classrooms put together, really, but it’s big enough for drama,’ Troutbeck continued.
‘Where’s the closed classroom, the one not in use?’
‘It’s next to the hall.’
‘They’d pass it on their way to the hall then?’
‘Right.’
‘Are you sure all the pupils made it from their classrooms to the hall?’
Troutbeck hesitated.
‘Did you take a register?’ Geoffrey pressed.
Troutbeck flushed, ‘Of course. But …’
Theodora prompted him. ‘The Kostas boys looked alike.’
Troutbeck glanced at her again with relief and nodded. ‘It’s really not possible to check there’s a face behind every voice that answers,’ he said hopelessly. ‘If you did, you’d never start the lesson.’
‘Do you think it might have been possible for one of the Kostases – Paul – to duck into the closed classroom?’
Holy Terrors Page 6