A Pleasure and a Calling

by Phil Hogan

I was so struck by this remark I could barely swallow. It was as if he saw in a moment through to who I was, to my own sense of mission. My own love for people. It seemed like a parable when, later, he told me about a man, a former parishioner, whom he regularly saw on his visits to a secure psychiatric hospital. The man, a farmer, had shot three men and a woman with his shotgun, killing the woman. ‘They had been intruders,’ he said. ‘He believed that they had plotted against him and his wife. There was no evidence for it, of course. They were innocent ramblers, out walking, rucksacks, boots. They weren’t even on his land. Who knows what evil he saw in them. He couldn’t elaborate. He just knew it to be true. He felt it in his heart and in desperation pursued them and gave them both barrels, so to speak. Perhaps twice. I know nothing about guns. Of course it was a terrible crime, but this man cannot even now be separated from that belief. He is insane, of course – officially it comes under the umbrella of schizophrenia. He had been sectioned more than once before. But at the extreme it is also an example of blind faith.’

  ‘Isn’t that your bread and butter?’

  ‘We have the Gospels,’ he said. ‘Witness statements. But in the end we’re either compelled in our hearts to believe or we are not. That’s why it’s so hard. The only difference between the sane and the insane is how many people you can get to agree with you. The story of Jesus and his miracles and the Lord revealed – the very spreading of the Gospels – is the story of our moving from one state to the other. Two thousand or so years ago they’d have thrown me in jail for my madness. Or worse, of course.’

  By now Marrineau had opened a bottle of Napoleon brandy he’d won in his own Christmas raffle. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t have the strength to put it back in. Sin provides too. Which is why it’s so appealing.’

  I have no taste for drink but I joined him in saluting its quality. He drank without inhibition. He was full of joy. He told me that he was not lonely; on the contrary, he chose to be alone. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve had no shortage of offers since Sarah left. But my life now is more focused. My parameters have been redrawn to best carry out the labours I promised God I would devote my earthly life to. And it works. No one gets hurt, by which I mean by my negligence, by which I mean Sarah.’

  He had not once enquired into my own religious beliefs (I have none), but urged me nevertheless to come to his 10.30 service in the morning. ‘There’ll be baptisms, so don’t sit too near the front, followed by my sermon, which is not to be missed. This week, temptation. It’s actually a diatribe against credit cards, which is one of my bêtes noires. Debt is so destructive. I try not to be too judgemental but Jesus and I would have been in full agreement on how much violence you might legitimately inflict on moneychangers.’ He grinned, squinting at me. ‘I’m joking. But tomorrow I won’t be.’

  He talked me into staying. ‘The spare room is always ready for guests,’ he said. ‘Plus, I’ve heard that your B&B has a serious bedbug problem. Or was it rodents? I’m sorry, that’s not true. I must stop saying the first thing that comes into my head. But please, do stay.’

  * * *

  I lay in the dark, aware of the faint ticking of the clock in the hall. The old Marrineau would have taken an eye for that eye. I wondered how Zoe was getting on. I fell asleep to the sound of snoring from the next room, transformed in a dream – in which I was unable to apply brakes on a heavy vehicle rolling slowly backwards – to a distant road drill. When I awoke he was gone. There was a note in the kitchen: ‘Two (non curry) sausages in the fridge are yours. Have an egg. Cornflakes in pantry – M’.

  I went back upstairs. Marrineau’s bedroom was untidy. And dusty. There was a pile of laundry next to the basket. The drawers, yanked open, their contents in a jumble, suggested a frantic search for some arcane item of clerical garb – collar studs, I imagined. There was a garish plaster crucifix on the wall above his bed of the sort available in Italian souvenir shops and a tattered paperback copy of the Bible on the side table. Opposite the bed was a colourful tapestry, doubtless woven by Marrineau’s female devotees, that read simply JESUS IS OUR LORD.

  I was disappointed to find no traces of the old Marrineau. The wardrobe rattled with empty hangers as I looked in vain for his rawhide jacket with its leather fringes; his boyhood sporting trophies were nowhere to be seen. In the bathroom his enviable crocodile-skin gift set of razor and brush had been replaced by an electric shaver. A single toothbrush stood in a mug, above it a clouded mirror that I imagined Marrineau standing before every morning, tugging a comb through his tangle of hair, adjusting his eye-patch and feeling blessed.

  The dog appeared in the doorway and came to be patted, sniffed at my leg, woofed and padded off again. I searched through a concertina file of old papers in the hope of finding a letter from my aunt or Isobel, or even a copy of my damning boyhood psychiatric report. Weighed down by a snowy Nativity paperweight was a pile of more recent correspondence – messages of thanks, a note from the family of someone who had died, a postcard from a couple on honeymoon. As I leafed through, I came upon a photograph I had seen before, and with it a letter. It was headed St Mary Hospice, Meldringham, and was dated some months previously and written in ink by an unsteady hand.

  Dear Marrineau,

  You should have this. You may even remember the day I took it. Perhaps you wondered why. But you were young, of course, and not given to questioning masters. You were hurrying with your gym class across the Middle lawn. I called you back, asked you to give me a smile for my camera. I’m afraid I had planned it in advance. It was foolish of me.

  I took photographs of other boys too, but this is the only one I kept. I am deeply ashamed and yet at the same time I cannot regret it. I have lived at the wrong time – though not for very much longer.

  My confession, such as it is, ends there. I have never touched a boy. I am guilty only of loving from afar. I am grateful for your visits and prayers (no doubt I shall need them where I am going), but I would rather you didn’t come again. I am sure you will understand.

  I am sorry for the distress this will perhaps cause you.

  Yours sincerely,

  Geoffrey Stamp

  I hadn’t the heart or stomach to eat Marrineau’s last two sausages. Instead I walked back to my B&B, showered and had breakfast there. Then I drove the hire car back to St Alban-in-the-Dale in time to see the congregation coming out. Marrineau was at the door in his robes and black eye-patch, shaking hands and laughing. Ladies of the parish, rejoicing in their eccentric, charismatic pastor, queued up to praise him, some calling him ‘Father’, some ‘David’. As the crowd drifted away he spent ten minutes in particular with one side-whiskered and florid gentleman who could only be a farmer. Wholeheartedly roaring about something together, they looked like a comedy double act. I lingered until the man had rumbled away in a muddy Range Rover before approaching Marrineau.

  ‘I missed your sermon. And now, alas, I must take my leave.’

  ‘That’s a pity. Not tempted to stay for our homeless Sunday lunch? It’s free if you take part in doling it out.’ He didn’t wait for my answer but pointed down the road. ‘I’ve just talked that man with the whiskers into a large donation.’

  ‘Good news for your church spire.’

  ‘Ha, let me tell you a little secret. As much of the cash as I dare skim off goes to keeping my groups going – youth support, mother-and-baby, my drop-in centre for the unwashed, unwanted, the unemployable, the lonely, the inadequate, the unappealing, the plain needy. People would rather give money to buildings. Sometimes I think, bugger the spire. Until it’s actually falling down, I suppose.’

  I promised, as he’d hoped, to have my bank send him a cheque.

  We shook hands and I drove off. Why had I come? I’d wanted to get out of town. And what better alibi, should I need one, than to have spent the weekend with a clergyman in Yorkshire – an old friend from a good family and a good school. But curiosity was behind it too; even a sense of unfinished business. Who knew? He had felt it too. Mayb
e he wasn’t too disappointed to find that I hadn’t needed ‘saving’, as he put it. I hadn’t apologized, or asked for or offered forgiveness. We had engaged in an unexpected way – though it wasn’t as friendly as we were each determined to make it look. It occurred to me that, for Marrineau, doing the Lord’s work wasn’t about making friends but gathering donors, tin-rattlers, volunteers, disciples, listeners – a clientele of the faith. He could have been selling a house. Perhaps we just glimpsed a little of ourselves in each other, enough to spark one evening into a beatific glow, two flints shaken together in a box.

  I thought about Isobel and the girl, how I had done right by her. Maybe even changed her opinion of me. The point was, it was time to move on and, Marrineau’s God willing, continue with my own good work. And if that sounds a little self-congratulatory, just imagine what our town would be like without me.

  37

  I GAVE IT ALL DAY MONDAY. I thought it might take time to track down Sharp’s golf club – or, rather, set of clubs – but I’ll be damned if they weren’t in the first charity shop I walked into. I almost immediately recognized the bulbous green-striped head of the club protruding from the bag. I had feared – hoped now – that the pattern on its metal striking surface (parallel lines pleasingly not unlike my own sign) might be matched to an imprint left in the skin, flesh and bone of Sharp’s right-side temple. I made a circuit of the shop, inspecting unwanted jigsaws, knick-knacks and worn clothes. I was reluctant to buy the whole set of clubs and risk jogging the memory (during the renewed surge of investigation that would surely follow) of the elderly lady who ran the shop. It seemed to me less risky simply to wait until she was in the back room sorting the contents of the bin liners that one saw piling up in the doorways of all such shops over the weekend, then slip the club out of the bag and walk out with it to my waiting car.

  At the office, Wendy was flustered with news that Zoe had not turned up this morning to meet buyers at the Curries’ place and that it was Katya’s day off. ‘We can hardly send Josh on his own.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll deal with them.’

  ‘I called her but she’s not answering.’

  ‘I’ll try her later. She’s probably having one of her downturns.’

  ‘Downturns?’

  ‘Yes, she won’t want people calling her every five minutes.’

  Late in the day, I rang Detective Sergeant Monks.

  ‘Just a thought,’ I said. ‘And this is probably nothing. But having made a few enquiries, one of my staff does seem to have mislaid her binoculars. And I’m absolutely sure it is nothing but…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Well, that’s the point. This is rather delicate.’

  ‘And yet, Mr Heming, I sense you want to tell me about it.’

  ‘It’s perfectly innocent – well, sort of. The fact is that Zoe – who is, I should say, an excellent young woman and a valued member of staff. Well, when I told her about the binoculars you’d found…’

  ‘You told her?’

  ‘Yes, and something rang a bell with her, I could tell. And then, sure enough, later she stepped into my office and told me she’d once had a brief relationship with Mr Sharp – Douglas, as she called him. Which, as she explained, was why she didn’t want to deal with the sale of his house when it came in. If the binoculars found in the car are hers – and she thinks they probably are – that’s how they would have got there.’

  ‘In the boot?’

  ‘Well, quite, that’s what I said to her.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She became cross and said, “Use your imagination, Mr Heming.”’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘The trouble is, I’m not certain that she really wants to tell you, though I’m sure it’s just a matter of eliminating her binoculars from your inquiry. Understandably she doesn’t want to get involved—’

  ‘Is Zoe in the office now?’

  ‘No. She hasn’t been in all day. I think she might be off sick. She does suffer from depression from time to time.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Ah. I’m going to have to get back to you on that. Wendy has now left for the day and I’m afraid she has the keys to everything. Would first thing in the morning be all right?’

  There was a pause in which Monks sighed. ‘If you could do that.’

  * * *

  I had to think hard about Sharp’s handsome matching leather holdalls – the advantage of having them versus the danger of Abigail finding them missing and wondering if she ought to do anything about it. I had an idea where she had put them. I’d thought it odd that the key to her lock-up garage had been missing when I’d shown the Perettis round, and it made sense to assume that that’s where the bags were now – Abigail would have moved them into her lock-up garage after she and I had cleared it of her mother’s rubbish. But the other reason the spare lock-up key was missing, I now realized – or reasoned with some confidence – was that I already had it, that it was the key with the green wooden fob I’d taken from her backpack on that hazardous day in the library.

  First I needed to be sure Abigail would be safely at work. I knew the times of her shifts, but she was nowhere to be seen at the library. I stood outside for some minutes trying to spot her, before driving to Raistrick Road. Here I called her landline. No answer. I rang at the door. I went round the back of the terrace to the garage. The green of the fob was a perfect match for the wooden door, and sure enough the key turned in the lock. But the bags weren’t there. The garage was empty of everything but a few gardening tools.

  I relocked it and looked up at the bedroom windows. Something wasn’t right. I went round to the front door and let myself in. The echo that rose through the house said it all. I tried the front room, the living room, the sun room, the kitchen. I dashed upstairs. The house had been almost entirely emptied, almost certainly by one of the clearance firms that advertised in the paper. The curtains and carpets remained, along with a small assortment of items – a lamp or two, a wicker chair, a rug – that she evidently intended to come back for. The two holdalls were among them. I called the library and asked for Abigail.

  ‘I’m sorry, she left two days ago. Can anyone else help?’

  I called Abigail’s mobile but couldn’t get through.

  I tried again. I didn’t know what I wanted to say. Perhaps I just needed to know it was over.

  Eventually I went through to the back of the house. The key was in the door. I opened it and took the two holdalls out to my car, returning with a tyre lever. Then I locked the door from the outside, wedged the lever into the door crack and leaned hard on it. The wood, rotten round the lock, creaked and splintered, and the door burst open. I slotted the key back in on the other side in the locked position and left the door ajar.

  I was almost home when the phone rang. It was her.

  She started with a long breath. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I’ve been meaning to call. The truth is … well, I’ve moved back to London. I just felt the whole thing was getting on top of me. And I’m sorry I took the coward’s way out. It was an impulse thing. The truth is I’m really not fit to be in a relationship right now. Also, I’ve decided I can’t face the hassle of selling the house at the moment. I don’t know why … it’s just too difficult, I’m sorry. I know it seemed that we—’

  ‘No, no, that’s fine,’ I interrupted at last. ‘No problem. Bad timing. Please don’t even think about it. I’ll take the house off our books. And obviously you’re free to take up with another agent – or anyone, really.’

  I tried not to sound too cheerful when after a few moments more we exchanged awkward goodbyes. That was what my unbending devotion to Abigail had come to. And yet how could it ever have ended otherwise?

  38

  I’M AFRAID THIS IS where the real story ends, at the dead of night in a small but ‘gorgeous’ garden flat, a well-managed Victorian conversion with access to the high street and the usual facilities. ‘And with two osteopaths on the premises!’ as Zoe
had joked when she’d signed the contract and come skipping back from the solicitors brimming with life. The property had been distressingly out of her reach and yet she had somehow pulled it off, miraculously talked them down by an unbelievable margin.

  ‘Maybe they just liked me,’ she said.

  I cannot say her triumph that day had nothing to do with me, or at least Damato Associates, who have money to burn – more money than one man of frugal habits can reasonably cast to the flames – when the occasion calls for it. That was out of the goodness of my heart, long before my ill-advised romantic dalliance with Zoe. Before all of this.

  I stand over her in my absurd mask. My fear was that I would find her lying on the sofa with the TV still blaring, or worse, in some macabre position – on all fours perhaps, in the way of a Pompeian greengrocer or barber – overcome in a surprising, terrible need for air. But here she is, gone in her sleep, her face radiating a discernible, vivid pinkness in the light of the radio dial. Her killer is still here, of course – unseen and unsmelled – even now seeping into the pores of the room, redoubling and purifying its evil with every minute.

  I unroll my toolwrap, position my torch, and set about removing the gags I’d stuffed behind the plastic vents. In the sitting room the congealed leavings and debris from our Indian takeaway on Friday cover the coffee table. Here are our two wine goblets, dark-streaked in the flitting beam. She had opened a second bottle of red after I’d left, and drunk most of it. I take one of the glasses – the one on the right as I faced the TV – and some of the foil containers and packaging and push the whole lot deep into a carrier bag.

  It could have been a last supper. The balm of alcohol. She has taken paracetamol, too, in the kitchen. Perhaps she awoke with a headache, thinking she had flu, and then went back to bed. In the bathroom, a half-used blister pack of Prozac sits on the lip of the white basin with another glass to the side, almost full of water. I return to the bedroom. I think of her lying there throughout the night and day, brightness coming and going at the edges of the curtains, and the visiting sounds of local traffic and neighbours. Her face is tilted towards the window as if in some final tragic appeal. It occurs to me, seeing her here now like this, that she has always looked the part.