Stations of the Soul

by Chris Lewando

  ‘You’ve given up?’

  Redwall said, over his shoulder, ‘We’ve worked flat out, and will continue to do so. There’s nothing I can say that will help you understand the extent of my feeling of inadequacy that day. When I drove down the ramp, it was like a scrap heap, steaming in the sun. There were unidentifiable bits of metal and flesh scattered for a mile. I’ve often wondered whether I could have done more, saved someone’s life.’

  ‘And if you don’t get the guy, he’s going to do it again.’

  Redwall’s movement arrested. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what Helen said. She told me it was the same guy.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Helen told me to get a life. I guess I owe it to her to try.’

  Redwall grimaced. ‘She was right. You have to stop feeling sorry for yourself. You got out of that accident alive. At the time, I wouldn’t have given long odds on that happening.’

  ‘Me neither. But I’m not choosing to feel sorry for myself. The way I feel is a direct result of what happened. I’ll never be physically what I was before, and the mental scars run just as deep.’

  The DCI gave a dry smile. ‘You’re right, of course. I apologise. So, put that brain of yours to better use than dwelling on retribution. It’s not going to happen.’

  It was later that evening, just as Robin turned at the door to switch off the living room lights, that a glint of silver caught his eye. Under the chair where Redwall had dropped his briefcase lay a tiny USB stick. Limping over, he fished it out and stared at it for a moment, curiosity and conscience warring. Then he took it upstairs and slotted it into his computer. He couldn’t phone Redwall till the morning, anyway, and if he took a quick look, Redwall would never know. But the stick contained all the statements relating to the pile up, and he couldn’t miss the opportunity to read them. Redwall could have lost it anywhere.

  Chapter 16

  Later that evening, Redwall made his way down the steps of the station towards his car, his feet finding their own way, his mind whirling with tiredness and unanswered questions, when he was hailed.

  ‘Hey, Redwall! How the devil are you?’

  His long-time nemesis was a tall, ungainly man with sloping shoulders and a worn jacket, into the pockets of which his hands were carelessly plunged. He was leaning against the wall with one shoulder.

  ‘Freman, hi. What can I do for you?’

  The reporter pushed himself upright and began to slouch alongside Redwall. He had an expressive, mobile face that portrayed whatever he wanted it to portray. Presently it was aggrieved. He should have been an actor. ‘Can’t a guy just be pleased to see you?’

  ‘It worries me when you say you’re pleased to see me.’ But his words were light. Freman often annoyed him, and at times went beyond the bounds of human decency in his quest for a story, but they’d known each other since school. In the first year of University, they’d both studied English, but Redwall had side skipped to criminology, and eventually to police work. Freman had gone on to become a reporter, and although the undercurrents of friendship couldn’t be easily eradicated, he had to remember to be wary, and not say something he’d later see printed.

  ‘So, what can you tell me about the crash. Anything new turned up?’

  ‘No. And you can quote me on that.’

  ‘I need something to keep the interest going.’

  ‘Then invent something. Isn’t that what you do? Journalists say things they know aren’t true in the hope that if they keep on saying them, they will become true.’

  Freman grinned. ‘Arnold Bennet. I’ve heard that before. Many times. Can’t you do better than that?’

  ‘The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.’

  ‘I’ve heard that one, too – from you, in fact. I also heard another prossy got topped.’

  ‘Where in hell did you get that?’

  He tapped his nose. ‘That would be the third one in a year. One’s a nutjob, two’s coincidence, three’s a serial.’

  ‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you? A serial killer in London. Shades of the Slasher. So, let me put you straight: prostitutes put themselves in harm’s way. They’re the most vulnerable group of women. They’re abused, all the time, and sometimes they die. The last dead girl we found had taken an overdose. It wasn’t her first time. She got lucky before.’

  ‘I can always tell when you’re lying. Was she strangled?’

  ‘She had a name, and a kid. You could try feeling a little human emotion, here.’

  He wasn’t going to suggest, as he had to his wife, that it was probably a good thing for her kid, who was now housed somewhere she’d get real meals and have a bed to sleep in.

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Somewhere around forty.’

  ‘No, the kid. Kids make great emotional stories.’

  For a second, Redwall wondered why he liked the man. He shook his head, fished his car keys out, and stopped by his black Ford.

  ‘Want to go for a drink?’ Freman asked.

  ‘Tempting, but no. It’s been a long day. I’m going home.’

  He slid in and slumped tiredly, but Freman was holding on to the door. ‘And Helen Speakman, wasn’t she strangled, too?’

  Where in hell had he got that from? ‘Helen was probably targeted by some creep who read about her in your newspaper. We’re not releasing anything at this time. But there’s nothing to tie her death to the prostitutes.’

  ‘But she was strangled.’ Freman’s persistence was tiring. ‘A strange coincidence, to use a phrase by which such things are settled nowadays.’

  Redwall mentally scoured well-thumbed volumes in search of the quote. ‘Keats?’

  ‘Byron.’

  ‘Damn. But I repeat. No coincidence. No similarity. And I’m not giving you anything, because it’s a live murder investigation.’

  ‘That’s nothing if not oxymoronic.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I do, indeed. And Robin Vanger had nothing to do with it?’

  ‘Jesus wept! Have you been following me?’

  ‘Only a little bit.’

  Redwall was furious, but he managed to keep his voice level, if clipped. ‘Go home, Freman. Leave it out, will you? I don’t know what sort of connection you’re trying to make, here, but you’re off on a tangent. If you spike my investigation, I’ll personally see that you never work again.’

  ‘Helen met with Vanger, recently.’

  ‘Their joint shrink organised it. Perhaps you could put your high IQ to discovering why. It should be a task within even your capabilities.’

  ‘Was Robin sleeping with Helen?’

  ‘Your mind’s a sewer. He was not. Now, if you don’t mind…’

  Freman stepped back, and Redwall was able to slam the car door. Perhaps it would have been better if Freman had joined the Force, at least they could have kept an eye on him. And he did have a talent for adding two and two and coming up with anything but four.

  The first strangled prostitute, discovered over a year ago, had been treated as an isolated incident, generated by drugs or alcohol, until the second one turned up. The long time-lapse before the third had lulled them into thinking whoever had done it had moved to different waters.

  And Helen, at a stretch, made it four. He shook his head as he drove away. If there was a connection, even the possibility of a reason eluded him. Helen had been a teacher, a pillar of the community. No-one could fault her – until the incident at the hospital, when she’d flipped and attacked the nurse, but under the circumstances, as Vanger said, it was within the bounds of reasonable explanation. He’d met her several times, back then. Out of her mind with grief one moment, ice-maiden the next, he couldn’t envisage her moonlighting as an escort. Could she have found out something about the killer, and been silenced for it? Her murder hadn’t been the pure bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d been murdered at her own home. Targeted, presumably
, but why? Because of the news story? He rubbed the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb. That had been a while back, now.

  Despite what he’d said to Robin, over the years Redwall had really grown to believe that some people just had bad Karma; born to have it harder than anyone else. But he didn’t think Helen was one of them. Coincidence was a handy label, as Byron had said, all those years ago. And he didn’t like coincidences any more than Vanger.

  Something was nagging at his subconscious. Freman was making mental connections that he, himself, was too tired to discover. Perhaps he ought to bury his pride, buy Freman a drink, weasel his thoughts out of him. He shook his head, imagining his friend’s unholy amusement.

  The next morning, he went straight to the morgue. Ellie Jackson, the pathologist, a small, dark-haired woman in a pristine white coat, glanced up from her computer screen as Redwall entered. The room was spotless, shining rows of sharp-edged tools laid out neatly, as though for a life-saving operation.

  ‘Sorry, I’m not done,’ she apologised.

  She led the way to where Helen lay, exposed, all notions of social constraint eradicated. There was a dark stain all down one side where the blood settled as she died, another around her throat. Her eyes bulged and her mouth encircled a swollen tongue. They didn’t show that on TV when people were strangled, he thought.

  ‘Was she raped?’

  Ellie shook her head. ‘She was fully clothed when she was found. So, if it wasn’t a sexual assault, what was it?’

  ‘That’s the million-dollar question. She was a school teacher, well liked, by all accounts. They don’t usually make that kind of enemy. I’ve got a couple of uniforms going around the houses in her road to see if anyone saw anything. She was only found by chance. A postman clocked the smell. Forensics are still there. Was she harmed in any way?’

  ‘Other than being strangled to death?’ Redwall didn’t smile at the morgue humour, so Jackson carried on. ‘As she wasn’t tortured or bound or raped, and it wasn’t sexually motivated, she was pretty much executed. Got rid of. Unless you can find evidence that the murderer broke into the house for some other reason, I’d look for someone who knew her. Someone who wanted to silence her, maybe.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought that. But what the hell could a grieving mother, a teacher, a pillar of society, need to be silenced over?’

  ‘It’s usually about money.’

  ‘Maybe. But strangling is so, ah, up close and personal.’

  He’d have to look into her finances, see who benefitted. But that in itself was strange, because such a motive would put the killer at the top of the list of suspects. But, then again, he’d seen daft things done by people who simply had the hubris to believe they wouldn’t be caught. Then Ellie added something he hadn’t expected.

  ‘She was strangled from the front, too, like the prossies. There are clear thumb impressions, and from the position, I’d say the murderer was quite a large man. Tall, anyway. Again, it would suggest someone she knew. Or someone she had opened the door to. Her fingernails being clean might just be because the bloke had a longer reach than her and wore something tough, but I still would have expected to see fabric traces or broken fingernails, at least. It’s as if she stood there and allowed it to happen. I don’t believe it was the same guy. I’ll know when I measure the bruising.’

  Redwall was pleased she hadn’t been raped, not that it mattered to her, now. But it still left the huge question of why. If it wasn’t for sex or money, what kind of motivation could there be? Who had Helen upset, aside from that nurse she had attacked? And she would have been too small to have done this. Helen had been taller than her by several inches. And besides, time had marched on since then. Though, revenge was a dish usually served cold – as the cliché suggested.

  ‘Just because she opened the door to him, doesn’t mean she knew him. Most people would open the door to a stranger. You don’t assume murder. It might be a delivery. I’ve even heard of people knowingly opening the door to canvassing politicians.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Truly.’

  ‘Might she have been meeting someone from a dating agency?’

  ‘That doesn’t sound in character. I think she was far too immersed in her own grief to have been interested. But we’ve got someone checking her computer.’

  ‘OK, I’ll email you my report within a couple of hours.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll go, and let you get on.’

  Chapter 17

  Robin had read about Father Kelly’s angel in the papers, quite by chance, as he’d been searching for Helen Speakman’s story. Both stories had been written up by the same guy, Freman, who had tried to suggest some kind of connection.

  He found Father Kelly’s sermon both profound, from a humanitarian point of view, and totally ludicrous from the aspect of blind faith. He wasn’t a religious person, never had been, despite his mother’s belief, and had attended the service out of pure curiosity.

  He was intrigued, but also embarrassed, as the congregation murmured unintelligible responses in waves, crossing themselves, moving up and down as a single rustling entity. In his adult life he had never sat through a sermon, and was fascinated, despite his scepticism, at how beautifully the myth worked in the church’s favour.

  He remained seated, detached, clutching his stick as a visible excuse. How could intelligent people really believe that the answer to life itself rested within the pages of a book cobbled together from eye-witness accounts passed by word of mouth for hundreds of years before being written down? He’d become an adult before learning that even history, which he’d always assumed to be fact, was simply an interpretation of possible truths.

  Father Kelly, a slender man with pure white hair, preached with the astonished air of a man who had been blessed with the vision of an angel. Robin guessed he wasn’t the only one in the surprisingly full church who was there through curiosity. But he suspected he was the only one there because he thought he might have seen the angel, too.

  Or whatever it had been.

  Robin perused the ornate church with interest: the embroidered altar cloth, soulful effigies, and tall diamond-paned windows through which the dying sun painted the congregation. His eyes roved to the banks of cheap plastic lamps that presumably replaced votive candles. There was ritual significance, he imagined, in holding a candle to the flame, watching the wick burst into life, seeing the thin line of smoke take the prayer up into the heavens, that surely couldn’t be discovered by pressing a button. Had this technological wonder been justified by fire risk, or the cost of candles?

  As an atheist, Robin appreciated the fabric of old churches, infused as they were with timeless beauty, carved by the skill of long-forgotten artisans. As he imbibed the deep peace in the vast, empty space above, he guessed that absolute conviction of a god must surely be comforting. But the words spoken at his mother’s funeral, In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, were an indication that even those who preached were erring on the side of caution. He might as well believe in fairies or vampires or Valhalla.

  Father Kelly’s voice intoned a sense of finality, as he declared, ‘We are blessed; the angels surely walk among us. We will now have a special collection for the poor people who have lost their homes in the recent tsunami.’

  He uttered a rushed benediction and marched briskly down the aisle to stand at the door with his request for a special donation, before his congregation could escape without being suitably generous. Robin was cynically amused. Perhaps losing one’s personal pride was part and parcel of losing one’s self to God. Except that didn’t apply to those fighting their way heavenward via the church’s top brass, seeking the good life on earth, in case the myth didn’t pan out.

  Eventually Father Kelly walked back towards the Altar, clutching his bounty. His sermon had certainly been spiced with that indefinable quality, that inbuilt charisma that some people – politicians, evangelists, entrepreneurs – wielded with an almost hypnotic power. That, combined
with faith and a miracle, were tools that worked well, judging by the rumpled banknotes that littered the collection bag. Since when did people put notes in? Robin’s few recollections of church, as a child, were of a grudging search for small change.

  He slid awkwardly from the pew. ‘Father Kelly?’

  The priest turned, startled. ‘Sorry, I thought everyone had gone. Can I help you?’

  ‘I just wondered if I might speak with you for a moment?’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met?’

  ‘Robin Vanger.’

  Father Kelly glanced perceptively at the stick Robin leaned on. It was Robin’s first major outing; his leg was aching abominably.

  ‘You were involved in that stinger accident?’

  He nodded. It was still on everyone’s lips, because it was close to home, the size and scale and horror of it somehow personal: that might have been me, my husband, or my child. It was easier to identify with those possibilities than the tragedy of strangers swallowed by a distant tsunami.

  The priest, indicated back into the church, and he slowed his pace. ‘Did you like my sermon?’

  ‘Very - ah, eloquent.’

  ‘You’re not of the faith?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Father.’

  ‘Afraid?’

  ‘Just a manner of speaking. I’m not ashamed of not believing in your god, but I’m also happy to let those who believe it get on with it as long as it doesn’t affect me.’

  ‘It’s curious, then, that you’re here.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Not at all. All men belong to God, even if they don’t realise it. We’re all affected by the actions of others.’

  ‘As I discovered,’ Robin said dryly.

  The old priest levelled his grey eyes just fractionally on Robin’s, pausing before a small studded oak door. He led the way into a functional room that held all the welcoming air of an underground station. Tobacco-coloured paint peeled from the walls, and the furniture was a nineteen-seventies attempt at something ergonomic. Although it was clean, the tiny windows sparkling, the church obviously didn’t spend money where it wasn’t going to be visible.