Shadow of the Serpent

by David Ashton

  That was not always an easy task.

  His eye fell upon the Stations of the Cross, which ranged around the inside of the chapel, high on the walls. He knew their particular depiction now as well as he knew his congregation and indeed, at times, intrigued himself by superimposing the faces of the poor on the actors in the drama. Not upon Jesus Christ of course. That would have been blasphemous; but Saint Veronica for instance.

  Many women who knelt before him to worship could have wiped the sweat of death from the Saviour’s countenance.

  ‘Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi.

  ‘Quia per sanctum Crucem tuam redemisti mundum.’

  He murmured his own priestly words and their response as he walked slowly down the side of the church.

  He had worked hard to build some bridges between the Protestant and Catholic poor of his parish, with some success, but now the Home Rule movement had reawakened tensions between them.

  Many of the Catholic clergy were in favour and spoke accordingly at meetings for the repeal of the Act of Union and a parliament in Dublin, but Callan steered a middle course. Church and the State. A bad mix. He was no great prophet but he could sense the most hellish upheaval.

  The Liberal party was apparently sympathetic, but so was the serpent when it offered Eve the apple.

  Ireland would be a battleground. Lives would be lost. The Irish were good at killing each other. Like dogs in a pit they’d been set so many times past, face against face, to snarl and draw blood. They had a taste for it now.

  His footsteps echoed in the silent chapel and then stopped. His mind shifted.

  He had gone to that meeting in West Calder out of a mild curiosity. But when he heard Gladstone speak on the platform it sent a shiver down his spine.

  Something in the voice, the harsh, sonorous tone, awakened memories, drifting memories that were brought back into focus. But it was all so long ago, and who was to say that his mind wasn’t playing tricks?

  Then amongst all the faces of the crowd, he saw the one staring back. His gaze had met McLevy’s and he had left abruptly, much disquieted at the coincidence of these events being drawn back together.

  Thirty years ago. The same implacable gaze. A young constable, asking questions that Callan would not, could not answer. The constable must have sensed something because he kept pressing hard and it had taken all of Callan’s training in the art of priestly blankness to keep him from betraying what he had witnessed.

  During his years at the chapel of Maris Stella, he had heard many confessions, many souls had poured out their pain, some small and even tawdry, some fierce in agony.

  But, the one. That night. It had never left him. He looked back towards the confession box and it was as if a floodgate suddenly opened and the images seared through his mind.

  He had been sitting alone and enclosed, the hour late, to commune with his Maker, but heard footsteps echo in the empty chapel and then a thud shook the other part of the box as if a wild animal had blundered inside.

  He tried to invoke the formal beginnings of the confessional exchange but the man had paid no heed. Either he did not know the responses or did not care.

  The voice was low and rumbling as if being wrenched out of the man’s very soul; the words ugly, disjointed.

  From where Callan looked down through the grille, all he could see was the top of the head, the hair thick, a few stray shafts of light running across like spiders.

  ‘Blood. Blood is the cure. Stinking wombs, they chain my soul. To Satan.’

  The priest took a deep breath.

  ‘You must calm yourself, the way to forgiveness is not to be found in violence of word or action. The humble penitent is beloved of our Lord Jesus.’

  A harsh cough of laughter was the response as if the very devil himself was squatting on the bench.

  ‘I will cut them down. Out of their body I will cut my salvation. Out of their stinking wombs!’

  Then, astonishingly, the voice changed to that of an educated tone, as if the mind was split. The tone was deep and powerful.

  ‘For what says Proverbs?’ asked the man. ‘Do not hearken to a wicked woman; for though the lips of a harlot are like drops from a honeycomb which for a while are smooth in thy throat, yet afterwards you will find them more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two-edged sword!’

  Then the man scrabbled up the side of the partition and put his mouth against the small opening of the grille.

  All that the horrified priest could see was the orifice, mouth opening and closing, the red tongue flickering, teeth bared like a beast and flecks of spittle covering the metal grille and dripping down slowly like some sort of obscene Satanic fluid.

  ‘For her past sins, St Thais was walled up in a convent cell in which there was but one small opening through which she received a little bread and water. Her cell filled with her own excrement until, at the end of three years, she was finally cleansed. Of her sins!’

  The mouth laughed then dropped out of sight and the man once more squatted like a beast below.

  Father Callan tried to still the trembling in his voice. He felt as if surrounded by a miasma, an unholy exhalation which seeped into his very pores. To breathe was to be infected.

  ‘What is it you have done?’ he managed to whisper.

  ‘I cleansed her,’ came the chilling response. ‘And I rescued her. Out of the stinking womb.’

  ‘How? How did you do this?’ the priest asked.

  For the very first time, the man fell silent. Father Callan could finally bear it no longer.

  ‘If you do not say, I cannot help you. What have you done?’

  A howl of pain, as if from a wounded tortured soul, and then there was a gleam as a sharp steel blade swung up against the grille, denting the metal.

  The blade stuck for a moment and the horrified priest could see the smears of blood on the edge.

  The blade whipped out of sight and a pair of eyes glared into his, burning with hate.

  Then the man was gone. Footsteps. Crash of the outside door. Silence, once more.

  If it had not been for the patch of blood where the man had leant against the partition wall, blood that the priest had carefully cleansed away from it and the lattice-work of the grille that very night, Father Callan might have wondered if he had not suffered a demonic visitation, a rupture in the fabric of reality.

  But all that was dispelled when he heard the terrible tidings next morning. And then, some days later, looked into the eyes of Constable James McLevy and denied all knowledge of murder, the faint smell of paint and linseed oil mixing with the incense inside the bright new building.

  He had no option. He did not know whether the man was Catholic or no, or what perverse demons had driven him into the chapel, but the sanctity of confession must be protected no matter how crude and incomplete the process.

  He would carry the burden for the rest of his life. It was a matter of faith.

  Father Callan shivered as he came out of these thoughts. For a second he thought someone was behind him and startled, but it was his own shadow on the chapel wall.

  All these years ago, he had made his own confession to his bishop and been told to dismiss the matter from his mind. The Catholic Church did not welcome such scandal.

  That should have been the end of the matter but now he felt strangely unshriven, as if a feeling of guilt he had carried all these years had been stirred into a raw hunger to confess his suspicions. But that would be wrong. Against his creed.

  And if he did, what could he tell? A memory, shifting like sand, compromised by time. Nothing more. What use would that be to McLevy and his like?

  Father Callan found himself looking up at the last and fourteenth station.

  Jesus is laid in the tomb.

  38

  For those who have been defeated, good

  becomes bad, and bad becomes even worse.

  MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, Don Quixote

  When McLevy opened his eyes it was
to discover himself tied up, as Aunt Katie would have put it, like a turkey on the Christmas table.

  His hands had been pinioned behind and his feet, which stuck straight out in front due to the fact that he had been propped up against one of the stones, were also bound together with a thick strong cord.

  ‘I do apologise,’ said a voice. ‘I shall unloose you in due time but I am afraid you will gain little benefit from the action because of a certain insensibility. Namely, that of death. This, from your point of view, is undoubtedly unfortunate but needs must when the devil drives, eh?’

  A dry chuckle and then his own revolver was levelled at the inspector’s head. It appeared to be aiming straight between the eyes, the muzzle steady as a rock.

  A finger tightened on the trigger which drew back under the pressure. McLevy’s magnified focus was centred on this sight. He watched the hammer pull away from the striking pad, then farther back and farther to the limit when it would snap forward like a deadly snake.

  For some reason, Jean Brash came into his mind, roses in bloom, high summer, red hair, green eyes, lips smiling as she reached towards him with the sacred pot.

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ he croaked, ‘you have such a thing as a cup of coffee on your person? I would like to satisfy my thirst before you shoot me with my own gun.’

  A sardonic laugh came in response and the revolver was lowered to the side.

  For the first time, McLevy was able to take stock of the man in front of him.

  Dressed for the evening, a black silk scarf wrapped around his neck, part covering the bow tie and white shirt.

  Both men were revealed by the glimmering candlelight though that was as far as equality went. The inspector was cramped like a rag doll on the flagstones, while the man sat on the top of the tomb opposite, one leg swinging in a carefree gentle arc.

  A definite elegance, tall, slim, stage-door Johnnie silver hair, strands of which fell negligently over the one eyebrow and occasioned a flick of the head to keep all in place. Face smooth, features small, not for a moment memorable, like that of a baby, unformed almost, until you got to the eyes. Everything stopped when you got to the eyes. Ice-blue. Cold. A killer’s eyes.

  The man had suffered McLevy’s scrutiny patiently enough then, on bringing out a pocket-watch to check the time and nodding acceptance of a reasonably tight schedule, spoke in a brisk fashion with traces of an upper-class drawl.

  Though that might well be a disguise, like everything else about him.

  ‘I’m afraid, old chap, there is no coffee to hand and your demise will not involve anything so neat as a bullet hole.’

  He relaxed his finger from the trigger, laid the revolver down on the surface beside him and delved into the recess of his jacket.

  ‘This is the fellow for the job. A bit messy. I do hope you don’t spout. One can never tell with people.’

  He produced a small axe, the like of which McLevy had seen Gladstone use on the tree. The edge of the blade shone murderously keen in the light.

  ‘I sharpened the little beauty this very morning, with my own fair hands. You’ve a bit of heft to you but it should cut through the blubber.’

  McLevy was perfectly still. It was his habit in extremity of danger. You may have only one move to make.

  The man raised an eyebrow at the lack of response, perhaps even a little nettled by it.

  ‘I shall render you unconscious first, of course. It’s the decent thing.’

  ‘Like ye did Frank Brennan?’

  A moment. Then, a charming smile. All of McLevy’s senses were fixed on that smiling face. Perhaps the man wanted to toy with him, as a cat will a mouse. That was fine by the inspector, he would encourage such a cruel pleasure.

  Anything but the axe. Anything that might provide the smallest chance of surviving this hellish predicament.

  ‘Ye did a fine job: lockpicks, the pillow, in and out like a ghost, but what was the necessity, sir?’

  McLevy let humble admiration creep into his voice and watched the man nod acceptance before replying.

  ‘Over-elaboration. Fault of mine. My reconnaissance had led me to believe that money would keep him in the tavern and removed from his pimping ground. But then, inevitably, he saw me in the doorway, and there was always the prospect that sometime, somewhere in the future, there might be another recognition. I don’t like loose ends.’

  That took care of that and anyway Frank Brennan wasn’t worth the breath. The inspector had other things on his mind. Play for time. Act the innocent.

  ‘Ye said, render me unconscious? But, ye’ve already done that, sir. I was out like a light. Ye could have finished me off there and then. Why bring me back to life?’

  ‘I felt the least I could do, old boy, was thank you. Face to face, as it were. After all, you’ve done a tremendous amount of work on my behalf.’

  He smiled again. McLevy’s face was like a mask. The fellow had to see himself in someone else’s eyes to behold his own genius. That might be a weakness.

  ‘Alas, I am forgetting my manners in this heathen country. Allow me to introduce myself.’

  The man levered himself off the tomb and bowed as if meeting a stately dowager.

  ‘Graham. Sir Edward Graham. I have an official position. Security. But I also run and provide a service, most secret, to those in highest authority. Those who kiss the Queen’s hand. When split from my official guise, I become another person. And I call myself the Serpent. A silly name but it satiates a melodramatic streak.

  He bowed once more.

  ‘At your service. The Serpent.’

  ‘An adder in the path that biteth the horse’s heels so that his rider shall fall backward,’ the inspector quoted, in apparent acquiescence of the man’s function.

  ‘Genesis. Exactly! But what says Matthew? Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.’

  ‘Harmless? But, ye’ve murdered three people.’

  ‘Oh, more than that. In my time.’

  McLevy closed his eyes as if the full extent of his dreadful plight was beginning to dawn.

  Keep the bugger talking, words don’t kill.

  ‘All this … all that has happened … was your planning. Was it not?’

  ‘Indeed. Start to finish, old boy.’

  ‘But why? For God’s sake, why?’

  McLevy blinked like a bewildered child and the Serpent almost laughed at the look on the face opposite.

  He assumed the manner of someone delivering a lecture, a dissertation, an anatomy of events.

  ‘Let us suppose that the advent of William Gladstone was not welcome; indeed a foul, unacceptable prospect to someone in the highest reaches, exalted almost.’

  ‘Like a Majesty, maybe?’

  A sharp look came into the Serpent’s eye and McLevy schooled his features back to bovine.

  ‘A messenger approached me, a most high messenger, and a remark was made. Implication more than command, but to be hard reckoned and in no way ignored.

  ‘The import of it being … who will rid me of this turbulent priest? … that sort of thing, eh?’

  McLevy nodded as if his dull brain was managing to follow it all so far, and the Serpent carried on.

  ‘So it became my task to put these, as it were, unspoken words into practice. This is what I have done. To the best of my modest ability.’

  ‘And what is your reward?’ McLevy asked most humbly.

  ‘I shall sit on the right hand of power. Together we shall play the long game. Though to tell you the truth, old boy, a great reward also comes from the strategy and the act itself.’

  He laughed lightly and flipped the axe up into the air so that it described a circle before the handle landed back in his hand. McLevy eyed the sharp blade and kept talking.

  ‘How will you effect this purpose? What is your strategy, Sir Edward?’

  ‘To the point. Good. It is as follows. William Gladstone will be found here, a little dazed in his wits, holding the bloody implement of murder, you
r body at his feet. Some torn pages from his most private diary, genuine enough, which detail his covert meetings with prostitutes and self-scourging, will be found in your pocket.’

  He hoisted himself off the tomb and McLevy noticed the man’s shoes were highly polished. Good-quality leather.

  ‘Your part in all this is already a matter of record. Your colleagues and even Gladstone’s own men can attest to the fact that you pursued him for these murders. It will be assumed that you taxed him with the further proof in your pocket and that he gave in to the evil influences which had set you on his trail in the first place.

  ‘A witness will also swear that she saw him rise from the corpse, axe in hand, covered in your blood, etcetera, etcetera.

  ‘Bravo, inspector! The case is solved. Pity you had to die, but we shall all travel that road, sooner or later.

  ‘In your instance, however, sooner carries the day.’

  The man skipped happily across the flagstones in a way that reminded McLevy of the night he trailed the supposed figure of Gladstone through the fog.

  Unbeknownst to the inspector, what was causing an excess of spirits in the Serpent’s breast was the thought that soon he would be reunited with the little fleshly beast. Would lie in her arms once more, and feel the naked pulse of pleasure.

  ‘Of course, I, in my official capacity, can make sure that the whole thing is hushed up. But Gladstone will be finished. He will never assume office. In any capacity. A toothless and disgraced old man.’

  ‘What about his party? They can take office, can they not?’

  ‘Without his backbone they will collapse. A whiff of the scandal will encourage the rot. There will be another election, and no mistake on this occasion.’

  A look of detached cruelty came in his eye. Almost time to render. And chop.

  McLevy wasn’t quite ready for that.

  ‘How did you know about … thirty years ago?’

  ‘Records. We keep records on everything that might be useful. Including your good self. Thirty years ago, William Gladstone was in emotional crisis. He had lost his daughter. He was in Edinburgh, on the streets that night. The very night a brutal crime was committed that set the headlines all aflame. A Lamb to the Slaughter.’