by Simon Parke
But then, as he’d waited on the scaffold, waited for the hangman, he’d asked for one last hurrah from his broken body, one more push, and gathering what strength remained, he’d thrown himself from the scaffold, breaking his neck in the fall. Freedom! He’d done what he could, spared himself the awful end. They still quartered him, he wasn’t getting off that lightly; but they quartered the dead, not the living.
Peter contemplated similar themes, thin wire round his neck. Would it be wise, like Guy, to opt for worse ahead of much worse? One brave leap from the scaffold ...and then he was thinking of Poppy, playing on his study floor... Poppy with arms outstretched towards him, waiting to be picked up, waiting to be swept up into the air and held safe. His eyes watered. How he longed now to stoop low and whisk that little body skywards and see those joyful trusting eyes. These were not familiar thoughts, strangers to his psyche but overpowering, why had he not had children of his own? Perhaps he needed only the children of others, that was enough, more than enough but far away now, his hands bound, held in the grip of tight plastic and the wire noose keeping him straight - straight like a soldier on parade, like a puppet on a string, awaiting the puppet master.
And then the shock of the flames, a bonfire on the lawn, sudden conflagration, petrol-fuelled heat. Hungry flames ripped skywards and visible on top, the silhouette of a burning guy, punished again for high treason... as now the flames lit the office, dancing with hellish delight through the room, this way and that, that way and this, dark and light, light and dark, now you see me now you don’t, an opening door and standing across the room from Peter... a clown.
Seventy Seven
‘And finally, I’d like to say thank you to my wife: thank you for not being here tonight and ruining the evening, you bitch!’
‘Mick Norman as tasteful as ever,’ whispered Chief Inspector Wonder to Tamsin.
‘He’s always been repulsive.’
Mick Norman - ‘thirty years in the police farce!’ - delivering the speech he’d made a few times in front of the mirror. But he’d been sober then, less soaked in alcohol, which can affect performance and did tonight, with too much bitter in so many ways. He over-estimated his comedic talent, and under-estimated communal weariness towards his unhappy marriage, which had consumed him for almost as long as his resentment at not making the rank of Inspector. So there was laughter throughout, but the half-hearted variety, the embarrassed sort, because boorish isn’t funny, a bit close to the bone old Mick, the one about his wife, not nice, and really everyone unhappy until it was over and the music resumed in the canteen of Stormhaven Police Station... but only after Mick Norman had called on everyone to ‘get some more down yer and don’t miss me too much ’cos I sure as hell won’t miss you!’
Tables had been cleared to the side, but there wasn’t a rush on to the dance floor, groups staying close to the alcohol, paid for from the social fund, so no reason to hold back.
‘Perhaps not the best way to end his time with us,’ said Wonder to DI Tamsin Shah, who’d been trying to leave for some time. ‘I met his wife once.’
‘Poor woman.’
‘She was really rather nice, not the picture he paints at all, but who knows what goes on behind closed doors?’
‘I’d leave the door open if Mick Norman was with me.’
‘There speaks the ice queen!’
What a ridiculous, stupid bloody male response, thought Tamsin.
‘Always a bitter man,’ she said.
‘Decent copper.’
‘But never an Inspector and he couldn’t cope with that.’
Tamsin knew well the negativity towards fast-track promotion girls like herself.
‘I didn’t realise you had to have tits to be promoted,’ a sergeant had once said to her.
‘So why haven’t you been?’ she’d said, lightly touching the man boobs stretching his sweaty shirt.
‘Tart.’
Tamsin had looked at him, lost for words and walked away. But she’d get her revenge; he was still in the area, and she’d get her revenge.
‘I think I’ll be off,’ she said to the Chief Inspector.
‘So soon?’
‘If I don’t leave now, I’ll have to resign.’
‘You do know that you’re a good cop, Tamsin,’ he said.
The music was too loud for talking but she heard clearly enough.
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Bloody good cop.’
Why did men get like this when drunk?
‘And a bloody attractive cop to boot,’ he continued, ‘shouldn’t say it but there we are!’
Oh dear.
There’s more: ‘And it’s not the wine talking, Tamsin, but the truth talking! You have no right to be so bloody good and so bloody attractive! And if I was a younger man - .’
This was getting worse, with an embarrassing silence on the cards at their next meeting.
‘Good night, Chief Inspector.’
‘Er, yes, goodnight, Shah - whatever you call yourself!’
His arms and lips moved towards her in a vague lunge but one avoided with an evasive spin and Tamsin stepped with relief from the half-light of the canteen into the neon-lit foyer. The desk sergeant was alongside her.
‘Ah, I was just coming to find you, Ma’am.’
‘You should have come sooner.’
‘There’s a couple want a word.’
‘A couple?’
‘Well a man and a woman, Ma’am. And they very much want to see you.’
***
‘You must have had something good on Kate,’ said Abbot Peter from his uncertain scaffold.
‘Oh, the best,’ said the clown. ‘Her husband’s a paedo, the lowest of the low.’
‘Fighting off strong competition.’
‘Or he was, in the West Country, a few years back, fifteen-year-old girl, case dropped in the end, and doesn’t seem to appear on any records now - apart from mine. And if his present school found out, of course...’
‘And why this?’
The clown paused.
‘Why you standing there with a noose round your neck, soon to hang?’
‘And don’t say it’s nothing personal.’
‘It’s entirely personal.’ This wasn’t good news.
‘Victims are sometimes told not to take it personally,’ said the clown. ‘I believe I’ve been told that in my time. And perhaps occasionally it’s true, but not tonight, not at all. I want you take this most personally.’
‘I did know it was you.’
‘Know?’
‘Suspected.’
‘More truthful.’
‘No, I knew. Barnabus was too smart.’
‘Barnabus is dead. How smart is that?’
‘Did you not notice the writing in the cupboard?’ Slight hesitancy.
‘No? Shame - it had your name all over it.’
But only a brief wobble from the clown, who is now confident again:
‘I spoke to your DI, today. Tamsin whatever, busily chasing red herrings this afternoon. I suspect your half-baked suspicions will die with you.’
The clown moves nearer.
‘I’m coming to stand closer, it’s the Lord of Misrule’s prerogative. I’m in charge.’
Peter feels vulnerable, the clown now a few feet away.
‘I don’t envisage being interrupted, but perhaps it’s better if I’m away from the door, should anyone enter. I mean don’t worry, we’re locked in, so we should be safe - but you can’t be too careful in these old houses.’
‘It has a ghost you know, a real Harlequin, I just saw it, on the balcony.’
‘And what if the ghost was me, Abbot Peter?’
‘Abbot Peter’ was spoken with some malice.
‘Well, that’s possible.’
‘And what if I’m half a second away from kicking the bench from beneath you?’
Peter remembered Guy Fawkes in his last moments, still fighting against the odds, the tortured body making something from nothing. All Peter had was time, the need to make time, more than half a second.
‘This is a magnificent grudge,’ he said.
‘You took Barnabus from me.’
‘I’m struggling to remember how.’
‘I’m not.’
‘I remember him travelling a long way to escape you.’
Now the clown moved closer and stopped to place their foot on the bench. Peter felt slight movement beneath him. One more push and ...
‘It’s a good fire, isn’t it?’ said the clown, moving towards the window. ‘I wanted the feel of hell for you, but I didn’t realise quite how fiery it would be. It really could be a stage set, with you as the guy.’
The clown danced a little in the firelight, a cross between mime and ballet, just as Channing had performed in interview.
‘And now your final scene. We’ll tarry no more.’
Peter gave up his struggle for escape, there being nothing more to do. He had only time, and his time was done, not even fists beating on the front door were any help to him now: ‘Open up, open up - it’s the police!’
But there were no fists and no beating - just silence, mad firelight and a clown. He closed his eyes and heard the harlequin’s feet come closer, returning to his left. He felt the foot once again against the side of the bench.
‘Into your hands, O Lord, I- .’
A terrible scramble on the floor beside him, he opened his eyes, two clowns fighting on the floor, dangerously close to his scaffold.
What the hell was going on?
Seventy Eight
‘It might have been good if you’d told us this before,’ said Tamsin.
She’d just listened to Abbot Peter’s phone message and was concerned she’d heard no more. Her return calls were getting no reply.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Rebecca. ‘I had my reasons.’
‘So did Ivan the Terrible,’ said Tamsin, ‘so let’s rehabilitate him as well.’
After a lethal cocktail of boredom, noise and a drunk boss who should know better, Tamsin was not in a forgiving mood.
‘I know where she is!’ said Virgil suddenly. ‘I only know where the little dear is!’
Shocked silence.
‘You do?’
‘Well, I know where she might be.’
‘That’s not quite the same.’
‘She’ll be doing what I used to do as a child.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Rebecca.
‘My car - you’ve drunk too much, Detective Inspector.’
***
Shortly afterwards, an aggressively driven mini minor set off towards Henry House with a desperate mother, a post-party copper and an energised man-boy at the wheel. Police back-up would be along, when some sober police officers, with no party hats, could be found and organised.
Seventy Nine
‘Bella!’
‘Pat!’
After initial contact, the masks had come off as they hit the floor with waving arms and rolling bodies. The two combatants saw their opponent in a flickering fire-lit moment of shock and surprise, before struggle resumed, with savage intensity. Peter shuffled on his scaffold, his bench four feet from the action, as Bella inched slowly back towards the execution, the heavier and the older, the wily warrior against the youngster, single-mindedness and the power of hate inching slowly towards the bench... and then Pat forcing her back again, inching her away - but for how long? And above his noose-held neck, so many questions rushing through Peter’s mind: where had Pat appeared from? And were they not friends? Suddenly Pat is on top.
‘I know who you are, Bella Amal.’
Pat was astride her opponent, the spread-eagled Bella, clown astride clown, breathless victor looking down on subdued loser; neither had the energy for more.
‘Whore girl,’ said Bella. ‘Pierrot! Did you really think you could take him from me?’
‘He loved me.’
‘At least the past tense is correct.’
Pat felt sadness, exhaustion as her jerky breath settled.
‘Still, you’ve got me now,’ said Bella with resignation.
‘It looks like it, Bella.’
‘Trumped.’
‘Pat look out!’ whispered Peter, with a terror that was too late. He’d seen the vegetable knife on the floor a moment after Bella, but a moment too late, the blade handle grasped, swung up through firelight, a swift rocket of metal, ascending then descending steel, sunk deep in Pat’s shoulder and gasping, she rolls off, rolls away, hands reaching up and back, shock and pain, bloodying clothes, Pat staggers to her feet and then stumbles to a halt. Between her and Peter stands Bella with the knife in her hand.
‘Who to kill first?’ she says. ‘A genuine choice. Both of you obviously - but who first?’
‘You know it has to be me,’ said Peter.
‘Always want to be first in the queue, Abbot. I hate pushy people.’
‘Pat may never have seen a hanging, Bella; part of every girl’s education, to see a monk swing, surely?’
The knife-jabbing Bella was edging the whore girl back towards the window, a moment she’d waited for since she’d seen them kiss on the stairs on Halloween morning, confirming every suspicion... she knew anyway, lost soul Barnabus and the whore girl, her husband and the whore girl.
‘You must tell me, cleaner bitch, how did Barnabus feel about me working here?’
Bella couldn’t stifle a sniffle of delight and amusement.
‘He just said you were mad.’
‘You should have seen his face when I walked through the door that morning.’
‘You had no right - .’
‘I was prepared to start again, forgive and forget, well not forget, you don’t forget, do you? But offer him a second chance.’
‘And he, you... but not as a wife.’
Pat was beginning to whimper, to sob, to buckle.
‘Home-wrecker.’
‘I would never wreck a home, never, I- .’
‘Whore girl searching for halo.’
‘You didn’t have a home, Bella, not with Barnabus.’
‘Mrs Hope to you. Amal! Egyptian for “Hope”!’
Yes, that had been Donaldo’s clue, there in his blessing at the end of the email.
‘Fifteen years of water under the bridge, Bella. That’s what Barnabus said.’
Pat steadied herself with her good arm, reaching down to the desk.
‘Not under my bridge,’ said Bella. ‘Nothing’s passed under here. Now get on your knees.’
Peter watched as the drifting, fainting, slurring young clown slowly obeyed. A savage kick in the stomach, nasty, Pat sprawling, choking on the floor, reaching for her screaming shoulder, crawling towards the door.
‘You’ll need the key,’ said Mrs Hope. ‘If you could just wait a moment.’
Bella now turned round to face Peter.
‘Where did she come from Peter?’ she asked calmly.
The bonfire in the garden was quietening, like a drunk nearing sleep. The hysteria of petrol, cardboard and wood was over, the flame sated and sedate; with the dancing light of youth now done, the blaze settled into the late middle age of embers and ash. Henry House was dark once again, only shadows outside and in.
Peter spoke quietly:
‘Your thousand limbs rend my body
This is the way to die:
Beauty keeps laying
Its sharp knife against me.’
Recognise it?’
‘Shall we start your countdown?’
‘It was Barnabus, speaking through Hafiz. ‘Beauty - as in “Bella” - keeps laying her sharp knife against me. Clever, that - too clever for me, until today.’
‘So I stabbed him to death? It’s not a crime... well, it is a crime, but not one that will be pinned on me. So how about one minute, that’s sixty seconds, before your neck feels the tightening?’
She walked round in front of him, as Peter puzzled with the words just spoken.
‘But before we do all that nonsense, the hanging and everything - not that your death is nonsense, but you know what I mean-I repeat my question: where did she come from, Abbot?’
‘Who?’
‘The whore girl, Pierrot. Where did she come from?’
Eighty
‘I don’t know,’ said Peter.
Where had Pat appeared from? He hadn’t a clue.
‘I’m happy to place a blade in your calf in pursuit of knowledge, Abbot. Painful I’m told. Where did she come from?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘One more chance.’
‘Bella, I closed my eyes with one clown about to execute me. I opened them, to see two clowns on the floor.’
An alliance of confusion, something shared, we’re in this together, any alliance was good, however brief. And then his puzzlement understood.
‘Did you say you stabbed him to death?’ he asked.