by Unknown
Shaw was going to speak but Lena asked him a question. ‘Are his eyes open?’
He’d nodded, aware that his own pulse rate had soared, and a muscle had started to tic below his left eye.
‘In the front room, over the fireplace, there’s a family picture…’
Shaw had noticed the slight cast in her left eye, and the easy way she’d withdrawn one arm from the boy’s neck. He took those thoughts into the front room. It was cold, despite the June day outside, the grate holding a folded white paper flower and a dusty Palm Sunday cross. Standing there, trying to focus on what he’d been asked to do, he thought he might be in shock, because he’d never seen death up close, not the moment of it, despite all the hours in the morgue sketching faces.
The picture showed a boy on a beach, bedraggled palm trees in the background, a parent in either hand. He took it back to Lena.
He stood on the doorstep waiting for the ambulance, straining to hear the siren. Behind him he knew, without looking, that she’d got him to look at the picture, so that that would be the image he took with him.
8
Shaw’s memories had slipped into a dream-like sleep, so that when a double tap sounded on the roof of the Land Rover he’d jumped, his heart racing. He opened his eyes to see a face at the open passenger-side window, a face he recognized but couldn’t name. He wore a fire helmet – white, with a black comb insignia and a black band. Shaw glanced at his epaulette and saw the two impellers which signified that he was the watch manager – senior officer at the scene.
‘Peter,’ he said. ‘George and I think you should see this.’ The voice gave Shaw the name – Jack Hinde, an experienced officer, who’d been friends with his father. Hinde was popular in the CID room at St James’s, and had been for twenty years, because he was a superb expert witness in arson cases. He was looking at retirement now, but Shaw guessed he’d pick up a consultancy from one of the insurance companies, and spend the last decade of his life being paid for what he knew, not what he did.
Hinde led the way to the threshold of number 6, the burnt-out house, where Valentine stood looking down into the gutted basement. Water still splashed amongst the blackened beams. The fire brigade would be here until first light, making sure the fire didn’t flare up again. The blaze had been an inferno at its height, and it was still possible its embers were alive, deep inside the charred wood and bricks.
Valentine pinched a dog-end between finger and thumb before slipping it into his pocket, then followed them into the ruined house. Shaw looked up through the smoking rafters to the room where he’d rescued Pete Hendre. The floorboards on the ground floor were burnt through in the living room, revealing the flood beneath. The smell was one of the saddest Shaw knew – a home, all the lives in it, reduced to charcoal and soaked bedding. A metal stepladder had been fixed to a floor joist down into the basement. Hinde led the way, Shaw followed, while Valentine watched from above.
‘You see, Peter,’ said Hinde, stepping off into a foot of water. ‘That’s experience for you. George is keeping a professional distance – right, George?’
Valentine was backlit by a floodlight, so they couldn’t see his face.
The basement was a single room, less than half the area of the ground floor. Shaw stood with one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, the other on a stone step which just cleared the water.
The room was empty but for a workbench, in heavy wood, which had survived the blaze. On it were various pieces of laboratory equipment. Most of the glass was smashed except for a spherical jar, a rack of test tubes, and what looked like a filter. ‘Big boy’s chemistry set,’ said Hinde.
‘Drugs – it’s a factory, right?’
Hinde shook his head. ‘Don’t think so, Peter. Fire Investigations Unit took some stuff away, but they know their drugs – they reckon no. It was mostly household goods: salt, some garden chemicals, hardware too – creosote, that kind of thing. If you’re firing up crack, or anything like that, you need the right gear – and this ain’t it. This is for something else. And it’s not kids – there’s the remains of a set of electrical scales. It’s not rocket science but it’s not cheap either. And there’s no literature – someone had it in here.’ He tapped a gloved finger against the helmet.
‘Right – thanks for the heads up.’ Shaw looked round the basement walls. Up against one was the shadow of a set of shelves, not horizontal but criss-cross, creating a pattern of lozenge shapes, like a garden trellis. Within each of the spaces was the ghostly outline of the bottom of a wine bottle.
‘Château Dosser,’ said Hinde, laughing. ‘But not a single bottle. And before you ask – this isn’t a wine-making kit, or a still.’
Shaw filed the image away in his mental library.
‘Find much?’ asked Valentine, intrigued, when Shaw was back in the street.
‘A chemistry set, but no sign of drugs, and what looks like the remains of a wine cellar – long abandoned. So no – nothing that makes sense, anyway.’
They’d arrived at the church and Shaw cricked his neck looking up at the lime-green cross. ‘Where’s this Kennedy, then?’ he asked, checking his watch, surprised it was still just 12.58 a.m.
Valentine shrugged. ‘Squad car rang – Kennedy’s pretty tired, so they stopped for a tea at one of the all-night places on the Tuesday Market. Should be any minute.’
The church was adjoined by a Victorian presbytery, which had its own front door; the building was like a folly, in a playful style – a gingerbread house in a forest of gravestones: lancet windows, a small tower carrying a bell, and a porch in wood with carved saints as doormen. Ivy had once engulfed it, but had been cleared away, to leave the marks on the brickwork like veins seen through thin skin.
There was a light in the downstairs window, but as they watched it went out. Then a bedroom light came on, for a few seconds only, before it too went out.
A police squad car took the T-junction turn at 60 m.p.h. and slid into the kerb. Liam Kennedy got out, picking the sweaty T-shirt away from his narrow chest. He stood looking at the church, fidgeting, switching his weight from foot to foot.
Shaw nodded. ‘You OK? We need to talk – briefly.’
‘I need to check inside,’ said Kennedy. ‘We could talk then. I’ve got a room here, in the basement.’ He broadcast a smile, which Shaw judged he thought was charming.
The main doors of the Sacred Heart of Mary, under a high-pointed neo-Gothic arch, were locked, but along the side of the building ran a path to a single door over which hung a light bulb in a metal frame, like a miniature iron maiden.
Kennedy laid a finger to his lips and pushed the door open. The nave was unlit, a little moonlight struggling through the sickly blues and reds of the Victorian stained glass. Shaw stood, waiting for the subtle jigsaw of greys and blacks to form itself into an image. The smell was pungent: human sweat, lavatory cleaner, and something meaty in a school-dinner way – shepherd’s pie, liver and bacon, mince.
Kennedy stepped close. ‘The hostel – number 6 – is home to only four men at any one time. It’s designed to provide a bridge – a real home, for a month, maybe three – for those who’ve got themselves a job. Here at the church we look after the less fortunate. A dozen, twenty a night. We do our best.’ He held out his hands to indicate that, while that was not enough, it didn’t mean God wasn’t pleased with him.
Shaw tried to keep his reactions to Kennedy as neutral as he could, but he recognized it would be a struggle. In his short career he’d found more evil than good in organized religion, more exploitation than salvation. And he couldn’t suppress the question: what were this young man’s motives for working here, amongst the broken? Perhaps, he thought, he was broken too.
The front sets of pews in the church had been removed, stacked to one side, and in their place mattresses laid out in two neat rows. On each lay a man; most of them just covered in a sheet, wrapped by constant movement into mummies. One lay on the cool wooden floor, only his hand left on the mattr
ess. The outer door closed behind Shaw with a thud on an automatic spring, and one of the figures stirred, crying out ‘Slainte! ’ – an Irish toast.
They followed Kennedy behind the altar into a small room. A table with green baize had a rip in it, and the unshaded light bulb made the bare, unpapered walls look stark. A row of pegs was empty except for a surplice and a Tesco bag. In one corner stood a large metal filing cabinet, scratched, dented, with a calendar taped to one side, the Sundays marked with felt-pen initials in red.
Kennedy opened a narrow door with a key, flicked a switch, and turned his body slightly to one side with practised ease so that he could drop down a flight of stairs.
‘It’s a bit hot,’ he said, greeting them at the bottom. Behind him was a lagged boiler, oil-fired, ticking in the silence. ‘We can’t shut it down because it provides hot water – for here, and the house. In winter, it’s snug – in summer, I try and keep the skylights open.’
At ceiling level there was a line of frosted-glass windows in one wall, heavily barred and letter-box narrow. The boiler room was neat and swept, as was a corridor which led away down the length of the church above, lit by three more bare light bulbs. Off it was a door into a bedsit, with a kitchen and toilet to one side. The narrow horizontal window here was open too, held up by a wooden stay, revealing the leaves of a fig tree in the graveyard above.
‘It’s not the crypt of St Paul’s, is it?’ said Shaw.
‘It’s home,’ said Kennedy. In one corner stood an easel, half a dozen twisted oil-paint tubes in the wooden gutter. A light sketch in pencil covered a piece of cartridge paper, the lines too thin to reveal the subject. There was a desk and a computer – a slim white laptop. Kennedy touched it like an icon. ‘I’m setting up a website for the church. I can do that – design and so on. I’ve done it before.’
He tucked his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans. ‘How can I help?’ he asked, the accent leafy-suburb London. ‘Ask anything – I won’t sleep, not now. Those poor men,’ he added, his eyes pressed quickly closed.
‘How are they?’ asked Shaw.
‘Aidan has some very serious burns; he’s still unconscious. I think there are concerns the shock may be too much – although he’s still young, and strong.’ Kennedy looked away, his voice catching. ‘Pete’s got minor burns, and the smoke’s really got his lungs, but he’ll be fine. He’s under sedation.’
‘Four beds, you said. Where are the other two men?’ asked Valentine, noticing a crucifix set above the door. The last time he’d been in a church had been for a funeral, and the memory, suppressed for so long, was making him anxious. He didn’t recall the service itself, or anything anyone had said about his wife, but he could catch the precise smell, a kind of polished dampness. It was there again now, like a spirit.
‘Well – Pete was only stopping a few nights – he’s one of our old boys.’ Kennedy laughed, but didn’t get any response. ‘He was here last year, in the summer, but he’s up on the coast now at St John’s, Hunstanton. And doing very well. He had to come back to Lynn – probate on a will, I think; I don’t know the details. So there are actually three places vacant – Aidan’s the only permanent resident at the moment. But we can’t push people who aren’t ready. The hostel is supposed to be a haven, you see, a safe place. So there’s a process: criteria,’ he added, proud of the word.
‘A process you’re in charge of?’ asked Shaw.
‘It’s my job,’ said Kennedy. ‘I’m the hostel warden,’ he said, puffing up. He stood up a bit straighter, too, knowing he’d just taken responsibility for something that might have gone badly wrong. One of the boiler pipes gave a curious liquid thud.
‘You’re very young for the job…’ said Shaw, smiling.
‘Father Martin trusts me. That helps a lot,’ said Kennedy.
‘So it was your decision to give one of these rooms to Aidan Holme – a serial offender with a record in peddling drugs?’
Kennedy nodded, as if considering an obtuse point in an academic debate. ‘Yes. Yes, I did. Well – I recommended. Father Martin has the authority. But Aidan’s past was not a secret. He’s on a registered scheme for addicts. He takes medication to help him with that – and I collect prescriptions for all the men. He’s stuck to the course – which is not easy. Father Martin gets regular reports on his progress from his social worker and they have been excellent. I believe he’s clean. I have faith in him.’
Kennedy’s confidence was, Shaw guessed, as brittle as the trendy glasses on his face. He tried to remind himself that this was a young man, that life hadn’t yet taught him to see the people around him as a blend of good and evil, lies and truths.
‘But supplying? He’s been charged with supplying,’ said Shaw.
‘He denies it. I’ve asked him about it and he’s adamant that he is an innocent man. I’m sorry – that was my judgement.’
They heard a brief blare of a car alarm through the narrow graveyard window.
‘OK,’ said Shaw. Kennedy might be a fool, he thought, but at least he was a decent one. ‘So when the Judd family tell us Aidan had drawn Bryan Judd into taking drugs, and in fact into stealing drugs from the hospital to peddle on the street, they’re lying, are they?’
‘No. I think that’s what Bryan Judd probably told them. I’m not surprised they believed him. Is that why they attacked the hostel?’
Shaw wasn’t answering questions, he was asking them, and he thought Kennedy’s answer had been smoothly glib. ‘When you were with him in the street – earlier. What did Aidan mean when he said he was dying, and that he’d told you that would happen?’
‘Aidan’s not stupid, he’s highly intelligent. He felt – feels – he’s wasted his life. Here – in the church – we’ve talked about that many times. He said his greatest fear was that now – now he’d decided to sort his life out – God would take his life from him. I had to try and make him believe that wouldn’t happen. Father Martin too. We told him that there is always time to repent, and that, if he did, there was no reason why there couldn’t be rewards in this life, as well as the next.’
Shaw couldn’t fault the logic, even if it was based on what he saw as superstition. ‘Is it the first time there’s been trouble at the hostel?’ he asked, switching tack.
‘There have been incidents in the past – in the street, at the Crane. People want their church, you know, but they don’t seem to want what it stands for.’ He said it as if reading the words, and Shaw wondered if he was mimicking Father Martin. Perhaps the priest was a father figure in more than one sense of the word.
‘But I knew something would happen. Something terrible. I knew there’d be a fire. Flames.’ Kennedy closed his eyes.
‘How?’ said Shaw, aware he’d been inveigled into the question.
‘I hear voices,’ said Kennedy, opening his eyes.
‘Anyone we know?’ asked Valentine.
Kennedy’s smile froze. ‘I’m sorry if you don’t believe. I hear voices all the time and they said there’d be a fire. I told Father Martin we should have hydrants fitted – and smoke alarms. I am responsible.’
‘So you keep reminding us,’ said Shaw.
Kennedy licked his lips and Shaw noticed, for the first time, a stud in his bottom lip in the shape of a cross. ‘Mary told me,’ he said, glancing over Shaw’s shoulder. They turned to see a painting, mass produced in a cheap frame, of Christ’s mother revealing the heart in her chest, rays emanating, a chain of thorns producing drops of blood.
‘Does anyone else hear the voices?’ asked Shaw, trying to keep the tone unchallenging. Something in Kennedy’s voice told him that for this man the voices were real enough.
‘There’s a network. We all hear – but not the same voices.’ He looked from Valentine to Shaw. ‘We’re not mad. The doctors encourage us to listen to the voices, not deny them.’
‘Doctors?’ asked Shaw. Kennedy’s face looked like it was about to crumple and Shaw instantly regretted the question. He held up a hand to
stop the answer. ‘Sorry.’ He turned to go and noticed again the easel, and now, up close, he could see what the drawing was – fruit, in a bowl, set on a table covered with a cloth. ‘Yours?’ he asked.
‘A study,’ said Kennedy, laughing again. ‘The work itself is in the church – would you like to see?’
Valentine ground his teeth. What he wanted was to go home, what he needed was a drink. He willed Shaw to say ‘No’.
‘Yes,’ said Shaw.
Kennedy took them back up into the vestry, then into the nave, to the end, by the closed main doors. To one side a temporary kitchen had been set up; a stainless-steel unit, gas stove, sink, counter, and a fridge-freezer. The smell of shepherd’s pie was stronger here, and stewed greens.
‘The council provides food – we’re trying to raise the funds for a proper kitchen. But the men appreciate it – a hot meal.’ Kennedy had lowered his voice in deference to the sleeping men, and lowered his head too, as though in prayer.
‘The men in the hostel at number 6,’ said Shaw. ‘I saw the kitchen – it didn’t look like they cooked their own meals. The cupboards were empty.’
‘No. They eat here. We are a community. God provides.’
Shaw recalled the empty silver takeaway curry trays; perhaps God didn’t provide enough.
Kennedy flicked a switch. A spotlight illuminated the high whitewashed wall above and around the neo-Gothic doors. Valentine took a pew, suddenly aware that he might be overwhelmed by sleep. He closed his eyes and felt dizzy, so he snapped them open, looking up at the lit wall.
Shaw stood back. The whole surface had been prepared for a wall painting – but only one corner, at the bottom right, had progressed. It was in classical style, a velvet drape on the corner of a table, upon which were several objects: a skull and a bunch of grapes in a silver bowl. The grapes were ripe, beyond ripe, blushed with a thin layer of white mould. And some animal bones on a gold plate, picked clean of the flesh. To one side was a second bowl – just pencil lines, the subject of the study in Kennedy’s room.