A Vicar, Crucified

by Simon Parke

  ‘How touching.’

  Jennifer objected to Tamsin’s tone. ‘Why this whole thing about us having to like our mothers? Not all sacred cows are sacred, you know.’

  Abbot Peter and Tamsin sat silent.

  ‘Anyway, Clare was a flirt. She led the Bishop on. He may have groped her in the car, dirty old man, but she led him on. She pulled people towards her and then pushed them away. I watched her. Savage. Nothing was good enough for Clare. No wonder men were confused.’

  ‘Perhaps married Bishops shouldn’t get confused,’ said Tamsin, unusually drawn into a moral debate. But Jennifer had moved on.

  ‘I was the youngest head teacher in England when appointed.’

  ‘Yes, I heard,’ said Peter. ‘Your mother seemed proud of your success.’

  ‘Oh, she was always proud of my success. Like throwing meat to a ravenous lion, success was how I kept my mother happy. But she was never proud of me - just my success.’

  Seventy Eight

  Tamsin parked the car outside Sandy View. It was 3.15 a.m. on the longest night of the year.

  On the empty roads between Lewes to Stormhaven, Abbot Peter had explained the significance of the teddy bear.

  ‘It was her mother who told me about it.’

  ‘She shopped her own daughter?’

  ‘No, she didn’t see it like that. She told the story with pride, not shame. I couldn’t believe she was unable to appreciate the significance of her words. But she thought it was comical if anything.’

  ‘So what did she tell you?’

  ‘When she was at school, Jennifer crucified Cyril, the teddy who didn’t win her “The Cutest Bear” competition.’

  Tamsin was silent.

  ‘She made a cross in the garden and nailed Cyril to it and then left him out there to rot, just like the Romans did.’

  Tamsin looked haunted.

  ‘Seemed a bit extreme to me too,’ said Peter, for once misreading the silence. ‘But as I say, her mother thought it a huge joke and quite unconnected to the investigation.’

  ‘I don’t see it as extreme,’ said Tamsin.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘She was just a child.’

  ‘Indeed and the girl is the mother of the woman.’

  ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘With your psychological rooting around in the past.’

  ‘Why would I? Our psychology is our decision pool. And of course then it all then began to fall into place.’

  Tamsin hated it whenever Peter said ‘Of course.’ He used it like a Professor, trying to make light of his superior knowledge but failing.

  ‘I remembered Mrs Pipe telling me something about Betty’s obsession with the beach huts. And so I looked at the picture she gave me of her father on the beach and there he was by beach hut No.7. My guess is, things finally came to a head inside her. She’d accepted the council decision at first but her unspoken anger grew and grew until she spilled all to Ginger. He then undertook an investigation of his own and spoke to a friend in the council who discovered that Jennifer Gold now owned the hut. It was Ginger who then came up with the idea of the brick through the window, and Ginger who threw it.’

  ‘“We know it was you”.’

  ‘That’s right. But he didn’t connect it to the murder; he just wanted to make life difficult for Jennifer, create some public dismay and get the beach hut back for Betty - who of course had just written “JUDAS” on the door when I met her the night of the murder.’

  ‘But how did you know about the beach hut? I don’t imagine Ginger told you.’

  ‘He rang me earlier this evening and confirmed one or two things but no, it was Christopher Thornton’s boss, Mr Robinson, who told me on Saturday that he thought it was a teacher who owned the hut. He didn’t have a name and promised to get back to me. Much was suddenly making sense however. The young Jennifer crucifies teddy bears because she can’t cope with failure and a teacher now had a hiding place for the nails, the sweet coincidence of psychology, tools and opportunity.’

  Tamsin clapped slowly.

  ‘But let’s be honest,’ she said, ‘it was hardly the Enneagram which solved the case.’

  ‘You’re sounding a bit threatened.’

  ‘I’m just stating the obvious.’

  ‘I can agree to an extent. But it did inform it.’

  ‘Well?’

  Peter was being asked to explain himself which always made him hesitant. Inner coherence did not always translate well into words.

  ‘Well, the teddy bear was the first breakthrough and that arose from listening; listening to her mother talk about the past. The girl is the mother of the woman.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  ‘But it was you and the jigsaw which had most impact. There, just briefly, I saw an explosion of the demonic energy necessary for murder.’

  ‘I look forward to your Christmas card.’

  ‘And of course any student of the Enneagram would know that the same energy would be in Jennifer. Email confirmation that she now owned the beach hut arrived shortly before she attacked me. But in myself, I already knew.’

  ‘So why not act sooner if you were so certain?’

  Abbot Peter paused, his cleverness punctured a little.

  ‘The most certain are the most deceived on earth.’

  ‘That’s sounding pathetically gutless.’

  ‘It’s possible I was a little slow.’

  ‘A little? You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me.’

  ‘A humbling truth I must live with.’

  Tamsin enjoyed this small victory. It was good to be back on top.

  ‘But Jennifer didn’t crucify the vicar?’ she said.

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t know. But I was almost sure once I’d been in the beach hut and seen her gear. The thing was, everything there was used - except the hammer and nails. The gloves, the protective clothing, the tape, the knife, the chloroform had all seen action of sorts. But the hammer and nails, they were still in their plastic seals, unopened, unused.’

  ‘So if she didn’t crucify the vicar, who did?’

  Seventy Nine

  It was 3.45 a.m. on the longest night of the year. For the desk sergeant Ron Reiss on night shift, every night was the longest of the year. On the night shift, time could stand still for considerable lengths of time, the clock hands stuck. There was talk of cutbacks, of closing the station between 8.00 p.m. and 8.00 a.m. bringing the police more in line with the commercial sector. After all, who could possibly want a policeman at night when everyone was asleep?

  ‘We’ll be like the supermarkets,’ as one of his colleagues observed. ‘Doing special offers: “Confess two crimes, get one free”.’

  Reiss, seemingly glued together by dissatisfaction, complained about nights as he complained about everything. But should the cuts come, he’d miss the uninterrupted company of his Jaffa Cakes and fishing magazines. People asked him if he got lonely on his long night vigils, but for Reiss, loneliness was a crowd, loneliness was his family, loneliness was... life.

  He took another Jaffa Cake from the box and was starting an article on the best trout rivers in the West Country when he heard someone at the door. The bell rang and reluctantly he pressed the door release. He didn’t like his nights disturbed and looked with some hostility at the old lady making her way to the desk.

  ‘Are you the person I should be speaking to?’ she asked.

  ‘It depends who you think you should be speaking to,’ he replied, irritated already.

  ‘Is Abbot Peter here?’

  ‘Abbot Peter? It’s not a monastery, love.’

  He had a particular
hatred for the Abbot’s involvement in police business.

  ‘I’ve come to report a murder,’ said Betty.

  She had the sergeant’s attention for a moment, before cynicism set in. ‘I see. A cat? A goldfish?’

  ‘The vicar.’

  ‘I think we know about that, love.’

  ‘But I have an important message for the woman detective. Will you make sure this reaches her?’

  She handed him a brown envelope, used more than once and now resealed with an environmentally-friendly stick-over, encouraging something worthy like recycling or giving generously to persecuted Christians. On the envelope was simply written ‘The woman detective’.

  ‘You will make sure this reaches her, won’t you.’

  ‘Yes, madam,’ said Reiss, taking hold of it. ‘I’ll make sure she gets it. Now are you going to be all right getting home?’

  Something about this fragile woman’s demeanour melted him.

  ‘I’m going to sit for a while,’ she said. ‘It’s a favourite place of mine.’

  Epilogue

  Eighty

  Tamsin returned from answering the front door. It was nine in the morning.

  They’d managed four hours’ sleep but the day was fine, crisp and blue with no hint of the previous night’s squall. It had been a brief conversation with the constable at the door and now she held a brown envelope in her hands. She confirmed the news first given in a phone call ten minutes earlier.

  ‘Betty was sitting on a seafront bench just five hundred yards away. She was there all night, found by an early morning dog walker. No obvious injuries.’

  Abbot Peter nodded.

  ‘It seems she just sat down and decided to die, looking out across the water.’

  Tamsin wanted a reaction but found none in her static uncle. The traditional response would have been a soul-searching ‘We were too late!’ or ‘We could have saved her!’ But Peter would not be beating himself with the stick of meaningless and misplaced guilt. It was what it was.

  ‘She left this with the desk sergeant last night.’

  Tamsin waved the envelope in the air.

  ‘I am sorry Sergeant Reiss was her last company on earth,’ said Abbot Peter as he sipped some coffee.

  ‘Shall we read it?’

  The re-usable label was cut with a knife and Tamsin pulled out the letter inside, a proper letter from a time when people wrote letters, spindly writing in fountain pen but very clear:

  ‘It was me who crucified the vicar. Not the taping but the nailing, that was me. I just came to shut the banging door and found him there. He was quite asleep, like he’d been drugged. But he hadn’t been nailed there, just taped and I thought I’d put in the nails. We talked about this when you interviewed me and I should have told you then but I didn’t.

  How did I do it? I went to my secret cleaning cupboard and got everything I needed, overall and gloves, hammer and nails. And then I got up on the table and banged them through his wrists. He didn’t move. It wasn’t like when Jesus was crucified when there would have been screaming. I didn’t seem to hurt him. There was blood of course but no reaction I could see. Perhaps he was already dead. Then I put everything back in my cleaning cupboard which you can go and check. It’s not the cleaning cupboard everyone knows in the corridor, by the way. Every cleaner has to have a secret place otherwise everything gets taken. My cleaning cupboard is behind the spare flower stands in the gallery. Abbot Peter has promised to bury me.’

  Tamsin put the letter down.

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘The bit about burial? Yes, it’s true. She asked me the other day, quite out of the blue.’

  ‘And that also explains why we never found anything in the church. We were up against the cleaner’s secret cupboard.’

  Abbot Peter smiled with sadness.

  Tamsin spoke: ‘She doesn’t say why she did it. Did she hate Anton that much?’

  ‘I don’t think it was about Anton.’

  ‘Then who was it about?’

  ‘He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time as eighty-six years of rage and disappointment finally made it to the surface. She wasn’t crucifying Anton.’

  ‘She was crucifying Anton!’

  ‘Look beneath the story, Tamsin.’

  ‘It’s not what police do - we nick people. It’s up to lawyers and psychologists to explain them.’

  ‘We spend our lives punishing the wrong people and Betty did that night. She walked into St Michael’s, fetched her nails, climbed up on the table and crucified her disappointing parents, her disappointing God, seven disappointing vicars and the disappointing faith which had let her down so badly. She’d been as loyal as a dog to external authority, so trusting of it. But when that trust shattered, there was nothing to fall back on inside, no sense of self to reassure her - and suddenly she was dangerous.’

  ‘The revenge of Bogbrush.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘Ten mad minutes and everything changed.’

  ‘And we all have those ten minutes inside us... coffee?’

  Eighty One

  ‘Are you a paedo or something?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go down that path, Mr Hucknell, or you’ll find yourself in serious trouble.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘I’m informing you.’

  Ginger stood outside the fourth floor flat with the front door half-open and the owner filling the space, blocking entry. Ginger raged inside, but for now, he held the force in, controlling it, using it, riding on its back.

  ‘You’re on the brink of losing your son for good, Mr Hucknell. Is that what you want?’

  ‘What’s that to do with you?’

  ‘Enough for me to be standing here now.’

  Their eyes wrestled in the silence.

  ‘Get off my property.’

  ‘I’m not on your property, mate, public thoroughfare this. And I’ll be gone soon enough - but so might Tommy and that’s why I’m here.’

  ‘You’re full of it, aren’t you?’

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Tommy is a member of my youth club, Mr Hucknell.’

  ‘Paedo.’

  ‘And he came to me last night with bruises on his face and body. He told me he’d had to get away from you. How do you feel about that?’

  ‘How do I feel about what, you tosser?’

  ‘I thought they were strong words from a 14-year-old boy. Obviously this isn’t the first time and I informed the social services. They’ll be speaking with you today. I’m just giving you the heads-up.’

  ‘Where’s Tommy?’

  ‘Safe, which presently means out of your reach.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I’m here hoping you’re going to be a father to him. Would you like to be a father to Tommy, Mr Hucknell? Break the vicious circle, give him what you never received? Takes a big man that, but perhaps you are one.’

  The man moved to strike at Ginger but then moved back; something in him cowered.

  Ginger’s heart beat fast but his fist stayed by his side.

  ‘The thing is, Mr Hucknell, no one’s ever told you how good you could be.’

  ‘Get out of here.’

  ‘But if anyone ever does tell you that, remember to believe them.’

  Eighty Two

  ‘It’s clearly a life-changing decision,’ said Bishop Stephen. ‘Really, you should have come round to speak about this.’

  Instead, Sally and the Bishop were conversing by phone.

  ‘I mean, you know my door is always open to you, Sally.’

  ‘I did come round, Bishop.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I came round last nig
ht but you were... busy with your own issues.’

  ‘I was in all evening.’

  ‘But distracted as I remember, discussing forgiveness with Margaret.’

  ‘Oh, that was nothing!’

  ‘You were a Pharisee and Margaret was a bitch.’ The Bishop was suddenly in sermon mode.

  ‘Marriage is like climbing a mountain, Sally, as I hope one day you’ll discover: moments of struggle, of course but then wonderful new views.’

  ‘Well, those views are not for me, Bishop.’

  ‘But how can you say that?’

  ‘I’ve decided to become a nun.’

  ‘You’ve what?’

  ‘It isn’t a sudden decision. I’ve applied to a community not far from here. I think I’d be a healthier soul in seclusion. I need to face a competitive spirit inside me which I do not believe is who I am but what I’ve become. I’ve been meeting with Ginger at six every Wednesday morning for the last six months to talk it through.’

  ‘You should have come to me.’

  ‘He’s a Franciscan tertiary.’

  ‘As we’re all aware.’

  ‘And his brother is a monk in Yorkshire. They’ve been wise counsellors.’

  ‘Well, there’s always a first time!’

  ‘But it did mean we were in the church on the morning after Anton’s death.’

  ‘Reasons you held back from the police. I know, because they asked me why I thought you might have been there.’

  ‘I decided not to tell them.’

  ‘Well, I’ll say one thing, Sally. You’re right to be wary of your aggression.’

  ‘Pot and kettle, Bishop?’

  ‘You hide it well and persuade most people to love you. But Margaret saw it there. She sees everything, as I well know. Those skin eruptions you suffer from.’

  Sally reddened with rage.

  ‘Do you know what she said to me about them?’

  ‘I’m not particularly interested,’ said Sally ‘and nor is it any of your business.’

  ‘She said, ‘The control and justification of hatred has to go somewhere.’