Hating that Egan was seeing all of this, nosing into her life and space, tart words tasted good on her tongue but she swallowed them with effort, keener to establish what information he thought he was going to give her. And then she’d sit back and see if, as she suspected, he had been with Antonia Simpson on the night of the murder. She turned on the only side light before heading back into the kitchen to get two glass tumblers filled with ice.
Something needed to break soon. They couldn’t hold the Snows indefinitely in Durham. Violet was on bail but she would apply to have her conditions moved to Blackpool; pretty soon, they would insist on going home.
She gave Egan a glass, who grimaced before tipping his ice into a lone pot plant next to his armchair.
‘Make yourself at home,’ Martin observed.
‘Thanks.’ He poured himself a good measure of whisky before passing Martin the bottle. ‘So, young, free and single now, is it?’
‘Yeah, that’s it,’ Martin replied. ‘None of your business, of course.’
Egan gave her a wink. ‘I’ve got you all alone, then?’
Martin narrowed her eyes, ignoring him. ‘What is it you want to tell me?’
Egan wiped a hand over his mouth and took another swig of his drink. ‘I spoke to someone today that knows quite a lot about Tristan Snow. A good deal, in fact.’
Martin shrugged. ‘And?’
‘And he says some things that I would think you’d be very interested in. Things about what the good Rev and his mates liked to get up to in their spare time.’
Martin considered this nugget, wondered how to play it. ‘What kind of things are we talking about?’
‘Things that a man of the cloth shouldn’t be doing, that’s for sure.’ Egan patted his nose with a finger. ‘If you know what I mean. And also,’ he reached into his rucksack and brought out a DVD case. ‘He’s sent me a film of one of Snow’s sermons. Which is disturbing, to say the least.’
Martin eyed the DVD before taking a drink and sitting back in her chair. ‘Yes, I would find that interesting,’ she said eventually. ‘But before I get overexcited and start charging round blowing up balloons for the end-of-case party, I’d want to know a few things.’
Egan tipped his glass to her.
‘The main thing I’d want to know is, what’s in it for you? Because,’ she said, leaning forward and topping up her glass, ‘I’m pretty sure that you haven’t come to see me tonight in the hope of getting a Crimewatch sticker.’
‘Sure, sure,’ Egan replied. ‘But it’s an easy ask. I just want exclusivity.’
Martin frowned. ‘On something that no one knows about yet except for you? I don’t buy it.’
Egan exhaled loudly. ‘Listen, last time we got together over a murder, I went about it in the wrong way. I can see that now. I pissed you off. And ended up with egg all over my face. So,’ he grinned, ‘call me a sentimental old fool, but I thought this time, I’d do it properly. Be upfront. And then you and I can help each other out. Work together instead of against each other. How about that?’
‘I don’t believe you, Egan,’ Martin paused. ‘I know you, you little shit. There’s something you’re not telling me.’
‘Well, how about I tell you who this source is? Then you can decide if my offer’s a good one?’
Martin opened her palms. Go ahead.
‘Jonah Simpson, his name is. Whole buffet of sandwiches short of a picnic. But,’ he said, wagging his finger, ‘he has known Snow for the last twenty years, in Blackpool.’
‘Simpson . . .’ Martin half-whispered, her nerves tingling all of a sudden.
‘Ring any bells?’ Egan grinned, nodding. ‘Father of Antonia Simpson and . . .’
‘Sera Snow,’ Martin finished for him. She definitely wanted to speak to him, although there was no way she would let Egan know how important this information was.
‘He remembers some interesting things, does old Jonah. He’s a man of the cloth himself. Worked with Snow at that Deucalion place. Then there was some falling out – I haven’t got to the bottom of it yet – and they became mortal enemies.’
‘So no reason for him to try and stitch Snow up, then,’ Martin said wryly. ‘Even though he’s dead.’
‘Well, I suppose. But I believe him. He seems proper shaken up about Snow’s death. You know, like the only reason he had to live was to hate him. And now Snow’s not around, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. And the things he says tally with what’s on YouTube. You’ve seen all that, obviously?’
‘Exorcisms, miracles,’ Martin said. ‘Anyone can see it.’ Again, the words of Violet came to her, that everything was there for all to see.
‘Yeah. So the dude was into some weird shit, right? But Jonah reckons there was other stuff going on. Stuff with kids. One kid in particular, in fact. A friend of his granddaughter’s.’
Martin’s skin prickled, knowing what Egan was about to say. ‘He can identify her?’
‘Says she was called Mercy. Remembers it because – in his words – it’s such a beautiful name.’
Mercy. There she was again.
Martin leaned back in her chair and took a long drink of Talisker, regarding Egan.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘There’s something more. Something you’re not telling me.’
Egan gave a short laugh and ran his hand over his head. ‘All right,’ he said, sheepish. ‘Busted.’
Martin waited, her glass on her knee.
‘A girl’s come forward,’ Egan sighed. ‘Says Snow put his hand up her skirt, back in the day, when he was performing in Blackpool. She went backstage to meet him, went into his dressing room. He tried it on and she fled.’
‘And?’
‘We’re running it on the front page tomorrow. I’m just giving you fair warning, Martin. It’ll cause issues.’
Martin sat forward, her hackles raised. ‘Why, Egan? Why will it cause issues?’
‘Because it relates to the Mercy thing.’ Egan put his glass carefully down on the floorboards next to his chair. ‘Because she was only thirteen when she says that it happened.’
Martin tilted her glass, looking at the amber liquid as it slid towards the rim. Perhaps this was the chink of light. Perhaps this was where things began to open up. ‘What’s on this DVD, then?’
Egan laughed. ‘Movie night with the inspector? There’s an offer . . .’ He pushed the case over the floor with his foot towards Martin. ‘Go ahead.’
Martin picked it up and looked at the case. It was blank, innocuous. She threw Egan a glance. ‘You’re saying this is of Tristan Snow?’
He nodded.
‘You sure it’s not something else. Easy Rider perhaps?’ Martin allowed herself a brief smile as Egan’s face turned blank, before realization dawned.
‘Where were you, Egan? The night Tristan Snow was killed?’
Egan recovered, rubbing the stubble on his chin, a glint in his eye. ‘Things that bad, Martin? Surely you’ve got better hopes than pinning it on me?’
‘It was Sunday night, as you know. In the Market Tavern, your second home. Then on to the Angel. Made a little friend for yourself. Took her back to yours. Ever the romantic, put on Easy Rider. I won’t mention the spliff . . .’ Martin paused. ‘No? Not biting?’ She settled back in her chair, pulling a knee to her chest. ‘Come on, Egan. When were you going to let me know you’d got the alibi for Snow’s sister-in-law?’
‘Ah, now. Where’d be the fun in that?’
‘What time did you leave each other?’
‘About 8 a.m., I’d say,’ he replied, with a wink.
‘You’re disgusting,’ Martin said, scowling.
‘Aye.’
‘You’ll need to make a statement.’ She sighed, getting to her feet and walking over to the television with the DVD. Pressing play, she stood in the middle of the room, arms folded, watching the static, before the blurred heads of a congregation sharpened and the figure of Tristan was revealed on a small platform at the front of a
hall.
Martin had to admit that Tristan was magnetic. Tall, with dark curls which would spring down over his forehead as he jumped about the stage; he burst with energy. Sparks seemed to shoot from his fingertips as he swept his audience into his arms with magnanimous gestures, enveloping them with the certainty of his words. He smiled and moved with rapture and the crowd swayed in tune with his dance. They stood in front of him: some with their palms upturned towards the heavens; some with one hand in the air, their eyes half-lidded, drowsy with admiration. Beneath the music of Tristan’s words, the crowd hummed and nodded, a backing track of pure assent.
Martin watched, caught between scorn and disbelief. She had seen only a few minutes, barely listening to what Tristan was saying, when she stepped forward, sharp as a tack. She was barely aware of Egan any more – the video was old and the images were hardly crystalline, but Martin suddenly saw what was obvious – what he’d been alluding to when he’d given her the video.
The majority of the congregation were children.
Martin hadn’t noticed it when the film had started as the camera had panned over the backs of heads. But now it moved behind Tristan, homing in on the faces looking up at him. Some of the children were teenagers, but others were as young as four or five. Behind them stood the adults, but it was clear, as Martin began to listen hard to what Tristan was saying, that this was a sermon for the young.
He held a stuffed toy in his hand as he prowled in front of them, speaking rapidly, musically, in a rhythm to which they could sway along.
‘Sin comes at you in a delicious way,’ he said. ‘The Devil preys on the young. He knows that you are vulnerable. He knows where you are weak. He comes in the guise of something nice, that you want to pet.’ He held up the stuffed animal. ‘At first you think, oh it’s harmless, I’ll just think that dirty thought, or say that swear word. But then, just when you’re least expecting it – BAM!’ He clapped his hands together, dropping the toy. He bent in close to them and the children began to move closer, mushrooming into one organism. From a discrete helper, Tristan grabbed a huge toy tiger. ‘Then you’ve got a tiger by the tail . . .’ He began to swing it round and round, whirling it in front of the children, who huddled in even nearer, cheeks flushed, their eyes fixed on the reeling tiger.
‘You can’t see where he is or where he’s going . . . now, now, now, you’re not in control. NOW . . .’ Tristan pushed the tiger menacingly into the faces at the front, making them rear back in shock. ‘Now, you’ve got the Devil inside of you.’ He dropped his voice. ‘I know that some of you have two sides to you, yes I do.’ Tristan crouched down in the middle of a circle of children. ‘I know. I can see you. You play a clever game, right here in this room. You pretend to be good Christians, to love the Lord and Jesus Christ. You pretend to be good children.’ He beckoned to them to lean in further. ‘But I know you’re a bunch of phoneys,’ he whispered. ‘You’re a whole bunch of fakers.’
Martin held her breath as she watched some of the little kids in the front of the circle begin to cry.
‘That’s right,’ Tristan said. ‘You need to get yourselves clean. You need to make yourselves whole. Because, right now . . .’ He paused, getting to his feet. ‘You phoneys are going to hell!’ He rocked on his feet with his hands in the air. ‘Give me the water, please. Let these children become clean. Let them confess their phoney ways. Give me your hands, children.’
A bottle of water was handed to Tristan and he began to pour it over the hands of the children who held them out willingly to him.
‘Wash it away. Wash it clean, boys and girls. You are dirty, with your thoughts and your deeds. Wash yourselves clean. That’s right.’
The children moved forward in small groups to put their hands underneath the water. Many were wailing with their hands in the air, sobbing; their eyes red with pain. Martin could hear some of them crying apologies as they rubbed their hands underneath the water. At the back of the room, their parents – presumably – nodded happily, watching the weeping of the children.
As Martin stared disbelieving at the screen, the camera swept past Violet. She must have been about ten, her hair in a high ponytail. She stood, her eyes raised to the ceiling, palms outstretched. She had no tears on her face but, as the film came to an end, and Martin reached to switch it off, the detective realized that her own cheeks were wet and her heart was pounding with an acute and desperate pity for those children.
30
They bring me tea here, which is nice. About the only thing that is. The view and the tea. And the paper and pencils.
They sharpen the pencils for us themselves. Worried the points will get too sharp and we’ll slit a vein open with them, I imagine.
The day we left our home, were you sad Antonia? I wasn’t sad. Not in the slightest. I never wanted to think about it again. About the dirty white house we’d left behind, stubbed into the ground like a half-smoked cigarette butt, its view over the concrete bridge obscured by the ever-present rain. I jabbed my nails into my arms as I walked, hugging myself as if making a vow. That would be the one lesson I took from our mother. I would block it all out for eternity.
Remember how we spent hours on our beds? Me more than you. You were always off, standing by the bridge, chatting up the boys on the estate. But I could lie for ages in that room, listening to the walls, hearing the words imprisoned within them; those unsaid sentences and paragraphs which bubbled underneath the wallpaper, crawling up and around the struts of the house like giant stag beetles, phrases jutting from their horns.
I could put my head on one side and hear the rattle of their whispers behind the plaster spread thickly over the walls. It muffled the sounds of the unspoken words, secreted them in my imagination.
The words were never uttered though, were they? They remained captive in the walls, rotting into the mulch of a thousand beetle carcasses.
We never spoke about it. How Mum had left us. We never knew why, nobody ever explained. Everything was conjecture wrapped in a pretty bow of silence. Did you feel anything about it, anyway? Any feelings we had, I think, were expressed only in our sighs, the whites of our knuckles curled round the china handle of a mug of tea. Maybe one day – the words behind the walls whispered – one day, it would change. Maybe the net curtains on our pinched and mean-spirited house would be lifted and sunlight would spring through the hallway and into the rooms, lighting up the truth for everyone to see.
One day she was there, tucking us into bed. The next – she was gone. A vanishing act! At once, the house clanged with the sound of nothing. Even Dad – he was an approximation of a father, I suppose. He was as silent as the grave. A saying I’ve always wondered about. Because graves can speak, did you know that?
Believe me. I’m an expert.
Anyway, Dad said nothing. He just sank into disappointment, leaning against the note on the fridge as if it could replace his backbone for the rest of his life. He carried on going to the church though, didn’t he? God forbid anything prevented him from that. I sometimes wonder whether, if he’d ever lifted his eyes away from the altar and looked at our mother, she might not have left.
When I think that, though, I laugh to myself. Because look who I married! Talk about history repeating itself.
The day we moved, I stood in Mum and Dad’s room, looking at her things. They were exactly as she’d left them, even the black and gold case of her lipstick covered in dust. I thought about her face. She had that expression, do you remember? That wounded but unbroken face of a martyr. I realized then that she hadn’t ever wanted things to get better. She loved the drama too much, didn’t she? I remember when they fought, her lips would rise with a tick of enjoyment, and again afterwards, with the endless cups of tea and the mascara-smeared faces. What did you think about that? I was disgusted by it.
So then we were gone. Blown out of the front door on the back of a resettlement from the church. Dad took it like a drowning man reaching out for a life belt. I stood at the threshold of our
house that very last time, and after all those years of whispering to me, the words that had festered in the walls tore their way out of the wallpaper with their spindly legs. They followed me out, Antonia, dancing across the doorsteps at my ankles, trying to clamber up my thighs and into my heart. But I didn’t let them; I shut them out. I vowed then that I would never speak of our mother, and I took it into my heart that I would never see her again.
Even if she crawled, begging to me, on her hands and knees.
Blackpool was a grey cake iced with neon. Do you remember that old gypsy song Mum used to sing before bed? That’s what we were now, raggle-taggle gypsy-ohs. Only once I cried for what we’d lost. There on the promenade on our first day in Blackpool. I cried for our mum. And for our dad. And for what we were going to do with ourselves in this new place where we knew no one.
I walked along. It was raining, of course. My tears blurred the ground and the rain-leached chalk of the pavement paintings. Before I knew it, I’d crashed into a tin billboard, which stood like a taunt outside a tiny, run-down theatre.
‘DO YOU NEED A MIRACLE?’
I looked up at the heavens. A cosmic joke, right?
I went inside.
A man was standing on a dais by a makeshift bar as I entered. The gloom made it hard to see but his shoulders were broad, and his eyes were kind.
‘Done in by the rain, were you?’
I shrugged, my hands hidden in large pockets.
‘You look like a drowned mouse,’ he said. He stretched his arm towards me. ‘Come . . .’
I stepped up to join him on the stage and felt as if I had stepped into a force field. From one second to the next, it was as if I had left everything behind.
‘Would you like something to make you warm?’ he asked.
I found myself holding a steaming mug of tea; the sugar biting on my tongue, relaxing my tense jaw. I was too afraid to look directly at him in the beginning. But I could sense him above me, bending down, the heat of him enveloping me.
The Taken: DI Erica Martin Book 2 (Erica Martin Thriller) Page 15