The Drowned Man

by David Whellams

“Oh, definitely! I had an affair of the heart with a Montreal man. He took me away to the Colonies for a time.”

  This was a well-honed fable, but then Mrs. Carpenter surprised him with the punchline. “But then the cad brought me back!”

  Peter had to laugh. He checked the snow globe sitting close by her teacup with MONTREAL etched in script on the base; the glass dome encased a cross on a mountaintop. He turned to Carole Carpenter but she gave him a look that held him in place. Without warning, the old woman raised herself from the sofa and declared, “Nap time, I think.”

  Peter stood as the daughter guided the woman behind a beaded curtain into a back room that now must serve as a bedroom. Soon she was asleep, allowing Carole to come back and sit where her mother had been.

  “Would you like tea, Inspector?” She seemed glad of company.

  “No thanks. Just to be clear. How much does she know?”

  The question was abrupt but they had already established a rapport, he felt, and Carole did not appear discomfited. It was Peter who was suddenly derailed. A small black wreath hung over the old woman’s bedroom doorway. Melancholy swept over him like a wall of fog. The blue devils, his mother might have said. He raised his eyes to Carole’s and for a skipped beat drew a complete blank, a white page without jots or hints of what he wanted to say. Fifty years of interviewing witnesses, and nothing kicked in. His brother’s death had snatched away his mind, and this house of mourning, curtained and hushed, triggered a rush of fears in him.

  Carole pretended not to see his distress. “No, she doesn’t know and there’d be no point. She confuses my brother, Joe, with Johnny a lot.”

  Peter fought to recover his composure. The woman waited primly, expectantly.

  “I thought he was called Jack,” Peter managed to say.

  “What he’s called in London may not be his nickname at home.”

  Peter liked the kind, well-mannered young woman. “Is Joe expected, Carole?”

  “Joe could be anywhere in the town, but you can be sure he’s in the town.”

  Peter rubbed his eyes, as if to massage away black thoughts. “I’m sorry, I missed your point.”

  “I’m sorry, too. I wasn’t implying that he’s a ma’s boy or anything. I’m meaning to say that Joe told me the other day that he never plans to leave New Bosk. He grew up here and has a good job here. He seldom goes anyplace else, I meant.”

  “What does Joe do for a living?”

  “He’s a Level 3 mechanic. Has a half interest in a choice garage.”

  Peter had been told that Joe Carpenter had demanded to fly to Montreal to retrieve his dead brother. He did not sound like much of a traveller. Peter was already gaining a sense of a deep anger in the brother.

  Joe did not show up for the balance of the hour. Peter accepted the offer of tea, although he craved a pint, and he and the young woman talked easily. As he had surmised, Mrs. Carpenter had been to Montreal once as a girl but never on a lover’s tryst. The snow globe — Carole turned it over to demonstrate — restored her imagined memories every time. Peter tried not to read too much into it — it was a harmless talisman, a mnemonic device — but pathos existed in the fact that John Carpenter had yearned to see Montreal since his boyhood because of this souvenir. In his pitch to Frank Counter, John Carpenter had spoken with enthusiasm about Canada. He had likely done research on Google and had expanded the trip into a major vacation. It seemed innocent enough.

  Although the Mercedes was tuned to a smooth hum, Peter caught the idling motor out front. Carole apologized for Joe’s absence but suggested that Peter return in a couple of hours. Peter had hoped to be gone from New Bosk by then so that he could get back to the cottage and his dog. Carole walked him out the rear door and around to the street. Primroses and hawthorn bloomed in pots along the towpath. She presented a final wan smile and turned away.

  CHAPTER 4

  Peter and Tommy swung by the garage in the centre of New Bosk but Joe Carpenter had left for the noon hour. The mechanic on duty didn’t think Joe intended to return home for his lunch.

  They decided to stop at the first restaurant in the high street that advertised Batemans ale, and then do another round of the garage and the Carpenter residence. They ordered the ploughman’s lunch: Stilton cheese, pickle, chutney, and Lincolnshire plum bread.

  Although Peter spoke admiringly of Carole Carpenter, Tommy judged that the meeting with the sister hadn’t changed his partner’s mind about going to Montreal. In fact, Peter’s debriefing was perfunctory and Tommy noted the cloud that had descended on his old friend. He remained watchful as Peter ordered a second cask ale.

  Peter eventually spoke. “So, Tommy, what’s the story on Bartleben’s retirement? Frank thinks Sir Stephen may be vulnerable. The phone hacking thing.”

  “The phone hacking thing? The boss is not vulnerable at all. He left his old position, shall we say, in a timely fashion, making him no longer accountable for the messes in Special Projects or anywhere else. Good sense of self-preservation, our man.”

  “But he has no power from his spot on the shelf. What does he have to gain by staying on the sidelines?”

  “His title is special adviser. Think of it, my friend. The title is open to further definition. He intends to be the one to define it.”

  “So he wants back in?” Peter’s speech was slightly slurred.

  “Yes, he does.”

  “Wants Frank’s territory?”

  “When the timing is right.”

  They decided on a quick tour of the town. Turning off the Sat Nav, Tommy drove them through the old central marketplace, which aside from a few parked cars was as barren of humans as a Mexican town in a Sergio Leone western. A signpost on the far side of the square pointed to various compass points but Tommy ignored it in favour of exploring the town. It did not take more than five minutes to reach the true countryside, with its ordered farms and dirt roads. A few sheep were scattered picturesquely across the far hillsides but they still saw no sign of the forest that gave the place its name. The fields stretched to infinity, only a few pinwheel wind turbines marking the vista.

  At the edge of town Peter spied an ancient church and forced Tommy to slow down. The spire of All Saints Catholic did not provide much of a landmark against the afternoon sky, for it was a Romanesque structure and its architects, and all subsequent tinkerers, had kept its profile low, maintaining its stunted towers and hunkered-down personality.

  Peter at once said, “Let’s stop. We have time.”

  Verden had all the time in the world but he was an impatient man by nature and couldn’t see much profit in investigating this dusty and currently empty church. He edged down the unpaved lane and parked by the small cemetery.

  Peter was immediately pleased to note that the church, after most of a millennium, still stood apart from the town, a place of sanctuary for pilgrims. Near the building an effort had been made to dredge out a pond, which was now overgrown with duckweed. The sexton, or perhaps local volunteers, had scythed the yellow grass around and inside the cemetery; all the gravestones stood upright in precise rows. Peter got out of the Mercedes.

  “I’ll pick you up,” Tommy called through the passenger window.

  “I won’t be long,” Peter said. “I’m guessing that Carpenter’s funeral will be held here. But I won’t dawdle and if Joe isn’t back home yet, we’ll simply head for the cottage. Fifteen minutes.”

  Tommy drove off, leaving Peter to admire the exterior of the much-amended Catholic church. A plaque told him that All Saints had risen in Norman times on a cruciform foundation; the lack of flying buttresses and other Gothic innovations had kept the outside stocky, the wings of the cross short. The cornerstone had been set about the year 1150. The small building was wonderfully preserved. In terms of the local superstition Carole Carpenter had described, brides and candidates for baptism or burial had no choice but to
enter by the main door at the base of the cross and proceed up the centre aisle.

  Within, the diocese had maintained the original stonework and the immense font in the nave, and that in itself was a triumph of preservation, Peter saw. The nearby pulpit had been added much later. Although the outer stone walls were thick, the church interior was laid out in three rows and two aisles, in the Romanesque style. Norman arches, which always reminded Peter of an archer’s bent bow in some movie version of Henry V (wrong era, he knew), set the confident character of the interior. Stained glass scenes enlivened the path up the aisle. The clever early churchmen had appropriated the best of the pagan era, with carvings placed at the capitals of each pillar, water-leaf and animal masks etched everywhere. Discreet plaques explained that major renovations had been implemented in almost every century. From the entry, the eye was drawn inevitably forward to the small altar, which was in its own room, separated from the main space by an iron gate that was more like a fence. Today the gate was open and Peter came forward, curious about the altarpiece, which backed against the stuccoed end wall.

  He wasn’t surprised to find few paintings — Henry VIII would have taken care of these — and likewise the candlesticks were new and undistinguished. What did catch his attention was a cross perched high above the altar and affixed to the wall. It had double horizontal arms. Peter recognized it right away as a reliquary cross, by far the most valuable single item in the building. Any wayfarer in the Middle Ages visiting All Saints Church for the first time would know from the multi-armed crucifix that the church possessed one or more venerated relics from a saint. Perhaps fewer would know that the body part — a finger, a lock of hair, a vial of blood (Peter had once encountered a reliquary box asserted to contain a saint’s foreskin) — would always be held sealed inside the horizontal arms of the cross rather than the vertical.

  The altar room was silent, remarkably cool in the August afternoon. He craned his neck to see the golden cross better. Peter was determinedly agnostic and his interest was secular. In Casablanca, he mused, the Cross of Lorraine is the signal used by the underground in the Nazi-occupied city, a double cross to outwit the double-cross. But today he found the reliquary and the church as a whole morbid. It felt like a museum and he wasn’t particularly curious about the Church’s prized relic. He almost walked out.

  Instead, he stood by the altar and ruminated on the cross. He was still determined to turn down the Montreal assignment. Sir Stephen, and perhaps Tommy Verden, were hoping that the trip would bring him back to his old self. But there would be no revival of his old self, Peter reflected. Not yet. For now, he was all too aware that the gold cross above his head was a false icon — not that it wasn’t actual gold or that the silver inlay and stuck-on amethysts and garnets weren’t real, but that the relic inside held no curative powers for him. His brother, a devout Catholic convert, had died suddenly and alone of a massive stroke, giving no one the opportunity of intercession, with or without magic relics. The air in the chapel was cool but stuffy and he felt delirious, although not in any religious way. Whatever the forces in play in Peter’s mind, they were earthly and ultimately depressing to him: at that moment he didn’t care to speculate on what miracle-spinning body parts were encased in the arms of the cross. He had lost his taste for exploration.

  Without warning, he began to weep. He pounded his fist on the last pew, causing the chalice and the candlesticks on the altar to tremble. His brother had left without warning, perished of a stroke on the Persian carpet in his library. The housekeeper had found him ten hours later lying in gouts of his own blood and vomit; the telephone lay on the rug beside the body, proof that he had struggled to call for help. Peter wondered if Lionel had been trying to call him. The police were requested; they had even called Peter in as a courtesy, but there was nothing criminal about it. The death had been a cheat, in Peter’s view. His brother was a civilized man and a loyal older brother. He shouldn’t have died alone. That wasn’t their fraternal deal.

  The chalice toppled. The clatter jerked Peter out of his self-pity, at least for the moment. Since the cup stood at the back of the altar, he could hardly reach it, even when he took the final step up to the dais where the presiding priest normally would have stood. He stepped up and stretched to his full height of five-foot-six to reposition the cup. Wiping away his tears, he looked higher and noticed that the reliquary cross had shifted off the vertical by a couple of inches. This was a small miracle in itself, since he was sure it must be anchored by screws to the wall. He descended the two short steps, picked up a stiff-backed wooden chair, and carried it up, so that by standing on it he could just reach the base of the cross. It centred easily. Peter paused in mid reach to read the inscription below the crucifix. It had been fashioned by Lucas di Vieri, a Sienna goldsmith, in 1347. It held the index finger of St. Jerome.

  Peter was still standing in this ludicrous pose when Joe Carpenter came up behind him. He had nabbed Peter in the posture of a snoop, a thief, and a desecrator.

  “Now then, what the fuck is this?” Joe Carpenter said.

  Peter tried to stay calm. In his personal turmoil, he might have given out a gallows laugh in response to the man, but when he turned the fellow was pointing a gun at him.

  Peter recognized the dark eyes and broad forehead of the Carpenter line. His face was ruddy, from sun rather than drink, Peter estimated, and he sported an elaborate but scruffy fringe of beard; his black hair flopped over his eyes. John Carpenter stood five-foot-ten according to his file, and Peter had the impression he had been lean and thin-boned, but Joe was stocky and not much taller than Peter. He held the battered carbine pointed at the detective’s chest. Peter deduced that he kept the weapon permanently in his car; but why carry a cumbersome weapon around in one’s vehicle? The point was moot; the rifle was quite real.

  Peter wasn’t worried. He decided that he wouldn’t explain himself, whatever the provocation; he was in that kind of mood. He would not be aggressive, either. He stepped down and replaced the wooden chair. Joe Carpenter’s gun tracked him.

  “I’m Chief Inspector Cammon. Please lower your gun. You were told I would be coming down.”

  “Well, here we both are. What are you doing in our church?”

  “Is this the family church, then?” Peter continued, alluding to the impending funeral of John Fitzgerald Carpenter.

  “Yes, but you won’t be attending the doings.”

  Right. A misstep. No more probing, Peter decided.

  Joe continued, “If the funeral ever gets done. You represent the Scotland Yard? Well, where would be my brother’s body?”

  “That’s what I’m here to talk to your family about.”

  “Never mind that. My ma’s in and out and my sister’s not making the decisions.”

  “Please put down the rifle.” Joe lowered it a few degrees.

  “My brother will be lying there just where you stand. The pastor will say the Mass and splash water on the coffin. Let the rotting process begin. Walnut.”

  “What?” Peter said.

  “Walnut, the coffin. It’s bought. Lies empty in the funeral home as we speak. What do you suppose they ship him home in from Canada? Cardboard? Pressed board?”

  “It’s something they’ve done many times before,” Peter said. “They use metal. The paperwork has been signed off at both ends. I’ve seen the papers.”

  “I’ll see to it when I get there,” Joe said.

  He had been waving the short-barrel rifle about with each response from Peter. A veteran of gun confrontations, Peter knew to move slowly and choose his moment, but for now he still had hopes of talking Joe out of shooting. The detective wasn’t afraid or angry.

  Peter saw Tommy enter silently from the back of the church. He was carrying a Glock 17 in a two-hand grip pointed at the mechanic. It was a bodyguard’s weapon and it was entirely wrong for this job. In brandishing the powerful gun, Verden was se
nding Peter a bundle of signals. He was using the gun only to intimidate. One shot from the Glock would break all their eardrums and blow out windows, and if Tommy had it loaded with .40 calibre rounds, the noise and effect would be devastating. As well, the bullet would pass right through Joe Carpenter and shatter the altar. No, Tommy wouldn’t be firing the big pistol.

  “Would you put the carbine on the floor by the step, please, sonny,” Tommy said. “One move, one twitch and that’ll be a sacrificial altar for you.”

  Joe Carpenter turned. Although he (unlike Peter) could have no doubt that the tall detective would use his gun, he did not lower his own weapon completely. “I could take your eye out.”

  Tommy held his stance. “You might put his eye out, but not mine. I can take you down easily, lad, no problem. By the way, one shot will blow out that lovely stained glass and generally fuck up the tourist potential of this institution. The sacred meets the profane. You’ve lived here all your life? You want to die here?”

  Quite the speech, Peter thought. The melodramatic language was designed to scare and befuddle the mechanic, and to signal to Peter how they would play this through. No one was going to get shot, unless Joe Carpenter lost control. Peter had a vision of Joe joining his brother in a twin walnut coffin right where they now stood.

  But it wasn’t Peter’s move. No one changed position for a full minute. Joe then lowered the rifle but held onto it, as he considered whether to place it on the marble floor or prop it against a pew.

  Tommy held his aim. Peter sensed his indignant anger. “Why don’t you lay it on the altar, if that suits you, lad?”

  Joe turned to Peter, his voice petulant. “I want my brother brought home this week. And I want your promise to find his killer. Full effort by Scotland Yard.”

  Peter knew that he could not make that promise. Tommy knew it, too.

  “Tommy,” Peter said, “leave us for a minute.

  “Give me the gun and I’ll leave you two to sort it out.”