Rest.
‘Anselm, my brothers and sisters in these cells. I know why you chose me, but why did you choose them?’
‘Why them? Unlike you, they all grew up in the bosom of the Mother Church. They knew God. Knew what it was to worship. And they strayed. Lost their souls. For money. For things of the world.’ He looks at me with a grave face. ‘We pray every day for their redemption. We work for it. It is our honour and our duty.’
That’s how they justify all this to themselves, is it? Yes, walling people up in tiny stone cells might look bad to you but, hey, we’re trying to save their immortal souls. And, OK, it might look like we’re hypocrites, wandering around in the wind and sunshine, living a free life under the stars, but we really care. We feel for these people. We pray for them. We’re saving them, don’t you see it, we’re saving them.
Bollocks to that. Bollocks to it all.
Carlotta, I presume, died in Parry’s cellar. Her kidnap negotiation was still ongoing. Even so, her fibrotic lungs, her endangered heart couldn’t take the strain of that place. What would they have made of this? How long would they have lasted here? And how exactly would any of that have helped her hypothetically immortal soul?
In a grim way, however, I like it that I have taken her place. My living corpse taking the place of her departed one. Entering the tomb that had been readied for her.
Anselm interrupts my thoughts. ‘But you are wrong. You don’t know why we chose you.’
‘I found Parry. You knew I’d understood the set-up.’
‘Yes, and in a way that forced things on us. But it was still you who chose us.’
I shake my head, resisting, but he continues, ‘The first time, yes, you came because your investigation brought you here. But the time after that? And the time after that? And the time after that? And when you prayed, we saw a soul in trouble. And when you swore at Father Cyril, he heard a soul in trouble. And when he gave you the Revelations of Divine Love, you read it, every word. And when he placed his hands on your head, your troubled soul felt peace.’
I stare at him, mouth open.
In a very gentle voice, he adds, ‘And what happened in there, in our church tonight: can you really tell me that you did not feel the spirit of the Lord moving within you?’
I don’t answer.
Can’t.
‘You chose us. It was you who chose us.’
I bow my head.
‘Forgive me, Brother.’
‘You are already forgiven.’
We move to the glass and pray again.
Five decades. And five more. And five more. And yes, I say, can we do five more?
Four o’clock and Anselm yawns.
It’s one of the things about the monastic life. We’re so regular in our timings that when we reach the midday dismissal, our bellies start to rumble. That’s what the abbot told us when Burnett and I first met him.
My own relationship with sleep is so impaired, so strange already, that a night spent awake hardly signifies. But Anselm is different. His monkish body-clock is all askew. Kneeling all night when he should be asleep, and these hours of prayer are hard on any bones, old or young. This isn’t the first time he’s yawned, but it’s the biggest so far.
I yawn too. Amplifying that contagion of tiredness.
‘Excuse me, Brother, I need to use the chamber pot.’
And do. I’ve been drinking water half the night and have a whole bladderful of urine to release.
I squat over the little pot and pee, as noisily as I can.
Use the sound to cover me, as I empty the little ewer of water out over the floor.
Use the sound to cover me, as I take two handfuls of finely powdered lime.
A natural product. Beautiful when used right, and one that does all those good things to do with letting old buildings breathe, that sort of thing.
But also caustic. Fiercely, dangerously caustic.
When wet, lime is one of the most strongly alkali substances available outside a chemist’s laboratory. One that will react, and react strongly, to moisture of any sort. The cornea of the eye, for example. The soft linings of the nose and mouth.
Stepping up behind Anselm, I give him one handful of lime in his eyes, the other over his airways.
He gasps in pain and surprise and the gasp allows me to shove a whole big handful into his open gob.
There’s no treatment for caustic burns, except plenty of fresh water and I’ve just emptied all the water we have.
Stepping quickly back as Anselm roars and flails, I snatch up the chamber pot. Smash the thing over his saintly little head. Which stuns him, if only a little, and makes more of him wet. I take the bag of lime and pour it, throw it, scatter it over him.
He’s a man powdered and, beneath the powder, burning.
When he opens his mouth, it’s white and void inside. The same thing with his eyes. It looks like they’re closed, but they’re not. They’re open. Just white and grey and staring.
He tries to clean the lime away with his robe, his hands, but he’s like a fish trying to wash away the river. Whether he’s permanently blind, I don’t know, but he’s functionally sightless.
He thrashes around. Cries out, I think, saying ‘Sister! Sister!’, but his mouth is full of a powder that burns and his roar is the roar of a beast.
I stay clear of his arms, ducking and weaving as I have to, but I don’t actually think he’s trying to hurt me. To restrain me, yes, but not actually to hurt me.
Choose the fight you want, not the one they want. If you can’t win, don’t start.
Any time before now, those monks would have had the fight they expected – and that Brother sadist Thomas wanted. Right now, I’ve got the fight I want, and one that takes place when and where and how I want.
A strong, blind man whose instincts are for gentleness versus a petite, but seeing woman who has her entire life hanging on the outcome.
No contest.
I wait until Anselm is a little off-balance – skidding on china and urine – and kick hard at his only standing leg. He starts to fall.
As he goes down, I grab his head and throw it downwards against the stone. It bounces horribly, but just once.
He starts to move, just a little. Not in combat mode now. Not even restraint mode. More am-I-still-alive mode. I put in a few more considered, disabling kicks and stamps, then leave it.
That brother ain’t gonna bother this little sister no more.
I step up onto the bed. I can’t reach the gap in the ceiling like that, but my little glass prayer-niche gives me a foothold and – clumsily, clumsily – I scrabble up to the roof and through it.
Look down.
Anselm is dragging himself upright, or sort of upright. But he’s not trying to stand, he’s trying to kneel. My kicks were scientific enough that he’s going to have problems with his ribs, knee and testicles, but he somehow accomplishes a kind of lopsided lean up against the wall.
His burned hands search for and find the little palm cross. The bit of glass through which a pair of seeing eyes would find the altar.
I leave him at it.
A basic clip-together tower scaffold provided support for the monks as they built the roof. There are stones still here. Some mortar left overnight with a square of plastic keeping it moist. I add a few more stones to the roof. My stonework is of the very crudest sort – Anselm would hate it – but it doesn’t have to hold for long. There’s still a gap here, but not one that a man could climb through.
‘So long, Brother,’ I call down. ‘You were always nice to the pigs. I’ll remember that.’
And leave.
Out of the room, its row of cells. The door into the vestry is locked, but it’s not much of a door, not much of a lock. It was only ever needed to keep out the idly curious. I give the thing a couple of good kicks and it pings right open.
Then out through the vestry and church into the courtyard. It’s asparkle with frost and moonlight, the way it should be.
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I feel a bit wobbly, a bit light-headed: the after-effects of the ketamine, that strange and scary night, eighteen hours or so without food, a blast of adrenaline from the fight I’ve just had. None of those things are particularly disabling, more that their cumulative effect leaves me feeling a little delicate.
I want a joint, want some warm food, want to have a long, hot bath and a cuddle from someone friendly. All those things will have to wait, though. For now, I have work to do.
I start walking out – to the road, to freedom – when I see that there are several cars parked in the little visitors’ area.
Of course. This is the week after Christmas. There’ll be plenty of spiritual seeker types who want a nice little jolt of religion to get them through the holiday season. I don’t know how the monks explained that the church was out of bounds yesterday evening, but they’ll have found some smooth lie to get them through.
I pad over to the visitors’ block. The one whose doors are never locked, where Carlotta never stayed.
Open a couple of doors at random – empty – then find one where someone is sleeping, but don’t see what I’m looking for. Then open another and there, on the little table, are some car keys and a phone. Also – praise be – a cheeky packet of chocolate digestives that whoever this is has already half-eaten.
I take the phone and the biscuits. Creep out.
Walk far enough that my voice won’t disturb anyone and call Burnett’s mobile.
‘Who’s this?’ His voice, grumpy and asleep.
‘It’s me. Do you still want that promotion?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you should probably make some arrests. People won’t just arrest themselves, you know.’
I tell him where, tell him how. Make him play it back, because I don’t want him to screw this up because he’s sleepy. He’s on the case, though. He’ll do fine. When he asks do we need an ARU – an Armed Response Unit – I say no, then change my mind and say yes. ‘For Dylan Parry, yes definitely. For the monks, probably not, but I’d have something in reserve, if you can.’
If you can: Dyfed-Powys isn’t the sort of force that can assemble many firearms-trained police officers at a moment’s notice. Burnett says he’ll get on to it.
‘And communications,’ I say. ‘You have to get Dylan Parry before he can get to a phone. If you need to block signal or whatever, then do it.’
It takes Burnett only a moment to figure out what I’m talking about, but says, ‘I’m on it. What’s wrong with your voice?’
‘I’m eating biscuits.’
‘You’re eating biscuits?’
Burnett is obviously still a bit sleepy, since I couldn’t have made myself much clearer. ‘Yes, sir. I’m eating biscuits. Stolen chocolate digestives. Oh, also, we’re going to need some ambulances.’
‘Ambulances?’
‘Sir, is this a new game where you repeat everything I say?’
‘OK. Ambulances. How many?’
‘Um, one actual hospital case, but we probably better have paramedics as well. Four possible cases of shock.’
Burnett, I think, is about to say ‘Shock’ or something like it, but he bites the word back and just says, ‘Fine.’
Adds: ‘You better not be screwing around here. This better be for real.’
He says that when, unfortunately, I have quite a lot of chocolate digestive in my mouth so although I do say, ‘It’s for real, don’t worry,’ it does sound quite a lot more chocolatey and biscuity than it should.
Burnett wonders whether to growl at me some more, but decides against. We ring off.
I call Cesca.
She answers, sleepily.
‘Cesca, it’s me. Your strange detective.’
‘Ess? Hi. Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. Where are you? Right now. Where are you?’
Plas Du, is the answer. Her mother’s house near Llantwit.
‘Good. That’s good. Then do you want to see how this ends? This investigation of mine.’
She does.
I tell her to shift herself over here. ‘And, Cesca. That little hippy-dippy box of yours. Do you still have it?’
There’s a short pause, then, ‘You want me to bring you a joint?’
That High Rising Terminal. A generational thing.
‘No. Not one joint. Bring everything you’ve got. I’m not in a one-joint place right now.’
She says OK. Says it enthusiastically enough that I can actually hear her leaping out of bed, starting to get organised.
I ring off.
Walk out into the dark road. Keep my arms well tucked into my mantelet. Keep my wimple on because, much as I dislike it, it keeps my head warm.
Try eating more biscuits, but I’m feeling a bit sick.
The first patrol car arrives in about fifteen minutes. No sirens. No noise.
Two officers, neither armed but both competent enough. They park well back from the monastery, not wanting to give anything away just yet. A radio burbles.
I ask one of them for a jacket. One of the uniforms gives me his. One of those black and neon hi-vis things.
‘Thanks.’
I pull my wimple off my head but keep it as a thickly folded scarf.
‘Were you undercover?’ asks the uniform curiously.
I don’t answer.
Another car arrives, then an ambulance.
Two officers stamp up the road a little way and have a cheeky ciggy. They don’t offer me one, I think because they’re still slightly intimidated by the pious and virginal nun who first greeted their arrival.
The radio tells us that an ARU is in place outside Dylan Parry’s house, which is good. He’s the one most likely to give trouble.
Then Burnett arrives. Tracksuit bottoms and an old jumper pulled straight over pyjamas. A thick coat over the top. No wheelchair.
He stares at my socks and sandals and long skirt. At my hi-vis jacket and wimple-scarf. Opens the jacket enough to see my kirtle in all its glory.
‘What the fuck are you wearing?’ he says.
I shake my head. Don’t even ask.
A bell starts to toll for matins.
‘We could take ’em now,’ says Burnett, but I say not. It’s better to collect everyone in the church and make arrests as they leave. Besides which, a van full of officers up from Neath is due here any minute.
The matins bell slows to longer, single beat, then falls silent. A uniform with a night-vision scope, trained from a distance on the yard, reports that the monks ‘appear to have entered the church’.
The van arrives from Neath. Ten officers. More than enough now. A second ambulance too, with three paramedics and a bleary-eyed junior doctor.
We allow another few minutes to take care of any stragglers, then our little force enters the yard. From the dim church interior, the first psalm.
The little quadrangle fills and thickens with our booted, jacketed, batoned presence.
Burnett radios someone. Tells them to suspend phone lines. Landline and mobile. Cutting the valley off. Once he gets the confirmations he needs, he tells the ARU at Parry’s house to move in and move in hard.
Hard, loud and nasty.
I know how those things go. Steel ram on the door. Lights ablaze. Police megaphones at maximum blare.
It’s not the cuffs that make the arrest. It’s the noise and commotion first. Get that first blazing intro right and the bad guy knows he’s defeated the very same second that his door bursts open. That’s the moment his freedom ends.
Three minutes later, Burnett gets a call back. Parry under arrest. No weapons discharged or even taken off safety. Parry neither made nor attempted any phone call, but his mobile has been seized and is already en route for the tech team at Bridgend.
Burnett tells someone to get the phone lines turned back on.
Three minutes after that, another call. A cellar found in Parry’s place. Multiple locks on the doorway in. Black cloth backdrop. Video camera. Ditto a cache of tinned and dr
y food that would, at first estimate, feed one person at least two months.
Burnett tells them to sod off out of the cellar. Tells them to get the forensics boys in there immediately. He’s got one hand on his promotion and he’ll be damned if he pisses it away now.
Burnett wants to enter the church, make the second set of arrests. No operational reason why not, but I say no. It’s just not how I ever pictured it and I like to do things, when I can, the way they always looked in my head.
We hear the last sounds of matins inside the church. A silence – that’ll be Cyril giving the blessing, then the whole business of honouring the anchorites, me included. I imagine Anselm on the other side, tapping on the glass.
Tippy, tappy, by the way,
Sister Julian’s run away.
Tippy, tappy, tap, tap, tap.
I’ve gone blind, my life is crap.
Sounds that no one in the church can hear.
Then the movement of the congregation outside.
We don’t use rams or batons. No lights. No blare of megaphones.
Just quietly detain each monk as they step out into this still pre-dawn frost. Handcuffs and the caution. Our own sweet litany of detention.
The men are surprised – startled – but their monastic serenity remains remarkably unperturbed. The civilians – the two men and four women who were in the visitors’ rooms – are unhappy and perplexed, but they exhibit that wonderful British trustfulness. That belief that, if a uniformed copper wearing the Prince of Wales’s feathers on their badge arrests someone, that person almost certainly deserves it. We could probably arrest the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a whole shower of bishops and archimandrites, yet receive no more reaction from the Great British Public than a quiet, muttered, ‘Goodness gracious.’ That, followed by a quick, polite search for a nice cup of tea.
We take the five monks. It’s me who gets to do the honours with Cyril.
Don’t swear. Don’t shout. Don’t use one of those whoops-a-daisy tricks of violence that leave no mark and which no court ever needs to hear about.
I don’t speak even.
Just hold up the cuffs and let him place the bracelet on his own wrist. A burly uniform from Neath, every inch the rugby-playing type, completes the process, delivers the caution.
The Dead House: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller (Book 5) (Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series) Page 34