Artifact

by Bowes, K T

  “Have you ever been up there?” the policeman countered. Jayden shook her head.

  “No. I don’t like heights and to be honest, Cam and I rarely have cause to go into the church during the week anymore. We work through here and when I go to church on a Sunday, I just come in the main doors like everyone else. I’ve never worked out where the stairs are for that balcony.”

  “There’s a door in the vestry.”

  Jayden looked surprised. “Wow, like a priest hole? How exciting. I suppose that’s why the balcony was so well hidden. I wouldn’t have known it was there until I looked up one Sunday and Reverend McLean was looking over the side above the altar. There’s so much decoration in the stone that it would be impossible to distinguish it from all the other shapes up there.”

  Jayden leaned against the back of her chair and tried to relax under the gaze of the perceptive brown eyes. Policemen made her feel uneasy ever since the attack and subsequent proceedings. It had taken her years to get over the feelings of dirtiness and humiliation, the hideously personal questions and the hidden feeling that somehow it had all been her own fault. Jayden crossed another chasm as she calmly contemplated the policeman opposite her and successfully banished Guilt and Resentment at what he represented. She smiled, seeing the effect it had on his bearing and confidence. “What’s your name?”

  He sat straighter in his seat. “Detective Sergeant Chris Lambert,” he replied. There was something about him that was quite endearing.

  “I realise you probably told me yesterday. But I was in too much pain to take it all in.”

  Lambert nodded in acknowledgement of that fact. “Is it any better now?”

  Jayden looked down at the cast nestled inside the cream sling. It pinched slightly and began to itch. “Well, I will never understand how children seem able to bounce back and go to school the day after a broken bone is cast,” she said pensively. “I feel like crap today. I’m going to look at them skipping along with a new found respect.” Her brow knitted slightly as she remembered something. “What were you looking for in my flat? It took ages to put it all right. I was a bit slow; I didn’t even ask you if you had a warrant.”

  “No warrant,” Lambert answered, “but the full co-operation of the home owner.”

  Jayden shook her head and raised one eyebrow, acceding to the cunning that allowed them access to her home. It was a dirty trick, especially seeing as she hadn’t been firing on all cylinders at the time. Watching her thought process, Lambert was quick to add, “We could have got one if we needed though. It would have just taken a bit longer.”

  “But what were you looking for?” she repeated.

  The policeman shifted position in his seat. “The murder weapon.”

  Jayden was confused. “You said he was pushed off the balcony.”

  “Actually you said that,” he replied, displaying the subtle interrogation method which had shot his boyish looks up the ranks of the Lincolnshire Constabulary at a rapid speed. Jayden’s face clouded as she thought about where she had heard it. Ed. Ed had said it as he had arrived at her flat yesterday. He had said that she wasn’t strong enough to tip the vicar over the balcony. Her brain seemed to whirr and clack as the cogs turned inside and the policeman watched her casually. Ed would be strong enough.

  “What are you not telling me, Miss Mitchell?”

  Jayden cringed and shelved her reservations. Why was she so reluctant to tell him about the row she saw Ed having with the vicar on the night he died? Did she really think that Ed had gotten so furious that he had killed a man? He hadn’t looked out of control, standing nonchalantly with his hands in his pockets as the older man had raved, but people could do the most out of character things. If her own experiences hadn’t told her that, then her counselling had.

  With a fleeting moment of dismay, Jayden considered her brother. Obviously he was out of prison and hanging around the city. What if he had approached the vicar for information about her and McLean had refused? She dismissed that thought immediately. Nick already knew where she lived as he had watched her walk home oblivious and laid lilies on her doorstep. That quite apart from the fact that the gullible vicar would have thought nothing about giving her address to anyone who asked for it, in complete contradiction of all data-protection legislation.

  Jayden ran the scenarios through her head and still the policeman calmly observed. Leaning forward slightly, he surprised her by asking for the key to the filing cabinet containing her counselling notes. Jayden sat back and shook her head. “You will definitely have to get a warrant to do that,” she said. “Unless of course, the diocese orders me to hand it over, which unfortunately I would still be unable to do. When I left my friend’s house the other night, I neglected to leave my handbag at his, so I’ll need that back first as the key is inside.” Jayden shuddered at the thought of going up to Raff’s house and asking for it. “Get the warrant and I’ll allow you access, but these clients trust me. Often it’s the only thing we have in common and I won’t break that trust for anything.”

  Detective Chris Lambert entered into the game, seeing that she was distracted and preparing to go along with whatever Jayden had planned. He kept her talking for another hour, making scant notes on his pad that appeared to relate to nothing but the small talk they were engaged in. She told him nothing in essence, but he kept pressing, knowing that there was more to this woman than met the eye. She was composed and delectable, but he could almost smell the spirit of Fear that hung around her office waiting to swoop. It unsettled him and made the hunter in him frantic to discover what it was that she was hiding.

  The counsellor was as difficult to interview as her Japanese colleague. The detective wondered if they had taken a special course in how to avoid direct questions at university, perhaps in a room labelled ‘101.’ Cam had been evasive when Lambert had visited him earlier, simply stating that he had met with Jayden in her office and left around twenty minutes to six. His wife had confirmed that he arrived home at six having stopped at the supermarket for ice-cream as she had texted and asked him to. The receipt bore out his story with its digitally stamped time.

  Lambert stared hard at the woman in front of him, knowing instinctively that she hadn’t killed the vicar but sensing that she knew something significant. Jayden feinted and dodged with skill and evaded his probing, whilst wondering why she was bothering. Perhaps Ed had told them everything anyway. “Have you spoken to everyone else?” Jayden asked him casually.

  “Like who, in particular?”

  Jayden felt irritated at the gridlock, knowing that she had just given herself away. Lambert smiled his pin-up beam, a peculiar glint in his eyes. “I wondered if anyone else had seen something that might be helpful,” she blagged, hoping to put him off the scent.

  “Who would have still been here?” her combatant pushed. Jayden’s heart sank and she tried to keep the inner dismay from reaching her face. She sighed in feigned irritation.

  “I have no idea, Officer Lambert. That’s why I was asking you.”

  The detective leaned forward in his seat. “Who in particular, do you want me to have spoken to? Could it perhaps be Reverend Edward Smith by any chance?”

  The blanch was impossible to prevent as colour drained from Jayden’s face. Now she had done it. “I guess so,” she said quietly. “Reverend McLean often kept the curates late. It was his...” she tailed off.

  “It was his what?” Lambert persisted.

  Jayden stood up, pushing her seat backwards with her legs and turned to face the tinted window behind her. The detective was sharp though, not needing to see her eyes when he could read her body language.

  “What was the vicar like, as a person?”

  Jayden sighed. It was a logical question. “I’m sure there are better people able to answer that. I tended to avoid the man. He was bullish and antagonistic and treated his curates badly.”

  “Badly in what way?”

  The slippery slope opened up unavoidably before Jayden. She had a
rrived in the very place that she had hoped to avoid. Thinking long and hard about her answer, Jayden remained with her back turned towards the detective. If she told him about the vicar’s treatment of Ed, he was bound to jump to conclusions, especially if she added the small detail of their loud disagreement on the night the man died.

  With no idea why she was so evasive, Jayden deflected the suspicion onto someone else. She turned around victoriously. “Brian, he treated Brian really badly. A few weeks ago, a client who hadn’t been to church for a long time asked if we could go and sit in the pews for a while. She thought it might help her.”

  “Is that usual?” Lambert asked and Jayden cocked her head quizzically while she contemplated the question.

  “Not really,” she replied, “but we had been working on her phobia of being outside her home and it was what she wanted to do.”

  To Jayden’s surprise, the detective let out a belly laugh which didn’t quite fit with his professional air. “So with spider phobias, do you go poking around in the back of cupboards with clients, or bungee jumping with those afraid of heights?”

  Lambert’s smile died on his lips at the look of fury on Jayden’s face. She walked around the desk to where he sat, standing over him with a flush to her cheeks and a new stiffness in her body. When she spoke, the detective could almost feel the acid dripping down his neck. “I’m so pleased that you find my clients hilarious, Officer Lambert. Perhaps they would be amused by your inability to commit to relationships, or a sense of dissatisfaction with what you have which makes you flirt with new opportunities. Why is it that the older detective rarely speaks to you or acknowledges you in a room? How does it make you feel to be underrated by someone whom you respect? We all have issues and difficulties Detective Lambert; the courage is in dealing with them.”

  Jayden walked over to the office door and wrenched it open. “I think our chat is over. Goodbye.”

  Chris Lambert was not only speechless; he was stunned. How was it that the woman had learned so much about him just from the minimal contact they had shared? He floundered in his chair but made no attempt to leave his position. He muttered something unintelligible as Jayden tapped the toe of her boot impatiently on the floor. Inwardly she fumed at the man’s insensitivity towards damaged, hurting individuals but also at herself. It was wrong to utilise her knowledge of human behaviour to read him like that and worse still to use it against him. Consumed by her inner thoughts, she was surprised when hearing the squeak of the leather chair, she was met by the imploring eyes of the detective.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said contritely. “I shouldn’t have made fun of them like that. How did you know...about me?”

  Jayden let the fire door shut on its closer and came to sit back down at the desk. It seemed too good to be true that the detective was now the one on the back foot, negating her fumbled need to defend Ed. She observed him quietly. “The other day you were wearing a man’s engagement ring and now you aren’t. You could have taken it off for a number of reasons, a sports game or because you had to. Only you keep rubbing at the spot where it was with a look of regret in your eyes. You have a way of flirting which leaves the other person to do the work if they are willing and that wouldn’t happen if you were committed to the person who gave you the ring. The older detective, I’m sorry, I can’t remember his name, treats you as though you aren’t there. It’s rude, but you haven’t said anything as though you don’t feel deserving of the elevation to your current post. It’s simply that he just doesn’t like you snapping at his heels and is threatened by you. I don’t believe it’s personal.”

  Jayden leaned forward. “I’m sure on a sliding scale, these issues would seem far worse than a frightened woman who asks to sit quietly in an empty church she once loved. But you see, she lost her soul mate a year ago in a car accident. The following week her home was invaded while she was in bed and she was beaten for the cost of a flat screen television and an old laptop computer. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about the kind of damage one human being inflicts on another for financial gain.” The detective had the decency to look thoroughly ashamed. “That’s why I will guard my clients’ confidentiality with my life,” Jayden said softly, “and you will not be getting access to the finer points of their misery without a search warrant.”

  Lambert nodded with understanding. But then he proved why he was already a detective at his young age. “What did the vicar do?” he asked shrewdly. “To Brian, the curate. What did he do while you were in the church?”

  Jayden sat back and closed her eyes. The memory was as perplexing as it was dreadful. There was no harm in sharing it however. “We sat down near the pillar towards the back of the pews. We both prayed for a while, which is possibly why the reverend didn’t realise we were there. He appeared up near the line where the walls meet the roof and it was curious because only his head showed. I hadn’t even realised there was a balcony up there; it’s so well blended into the structure. He appeared to move around two whole sides of the nave and then stopped directly opposite us. To my surprise, he held a mug of something over the top of the balcony and poured liquid from it as though he was watering the garden. The vicar said nothing and walked back around the ceiling to wherever he had come from. It was truly astounding.”

  “Did your...client see?” Lambert asked, interested.

  “No, thank goodness,” Jayden replied. “She had her head down and her eyes closed praying. She looked up when she heard a splash but only saw the vicar retreating around the edge of the ceiling. She asked what had happened and I said I didn’t know - because I didn’t. How could I explain something like that?”

  “So, are you telling me that Reverend Brian was underneath?” Lambert asked and his butt edged towards the front of his seat with anticipation.

  “Well, that’s the curious thing,” Jayden answered, “I didn’t even realise Brian was there until we were going through the doors at the altar end of the church. I had thought the vicar had just tipped his cup of tea over the balcony and I wanted to move in case he was going to walk round to our side and drop something on me. As I went through the door and looked back, Brian sat up in the pew. The poor man looked shocked and possibly burned. He seemed understandably devastated and wiped his face on his cardigan. For a moment there, I thought perhaps he was crying.”

  Lambert was all business as he made copious notes on his pad. Then he surprised Jayden further. “What do you know of a Mr...” he consulted his notes, “Macdonald?”

  For a moment, Jayden floundered unsure of the name. It seemed vaguely familiar but not in a personal way. Her forehead creased in concentration and her green eyes narrowed, but she had to admit defeat finally, shaking her head and causing her long curls to bounce against her shoulders.

  “Cecil and Beryl?” Lambert pressed and recognition flooded into Jayden’s face.

  “Yes, Beryl was the organist here for...well, forever actually. She was immensely talented.” Jayden bit her lip. “I feel mean now, she’s only been gone for a few months. I didn’t use her surname; she was always just Beryl.”

  “What do you know of her husband?” Lambert asked. Jayden shrugged.

  “Just that he’s the nicest man. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, if that’s what you’re asking. He’s been a church warden for years, but I think he resigned shortly after his wife died.

  “He’s been suggested to us as someone who may have wanted the vicar dead. He was overheard threatening the reverend on Christmas Eve.”

  Jayden exhaled angrily. It never ceased to amaze her how quickly activated the human desire to share in trouble was. She wondered which of the ‘concerned’ congregation members had bleated to the cops about Cecil’s distraught outburst after the Carols by Candlelight service. “He didn’t threaten anyone,” Jayden countered, with aggravation in her voice. “Reverend McLean said, somewhat tactlessly that he’d had to pay for an organist seeing as they no longer had one. He’d made no secret, either publicly or privately that poor Beryl
’s death had inconvenienced him greatly, but it was just a little too much for Cecil that evening. His son had persuaded him to come to the service, hoping that it might help to be somewhere that Beryl loved to be, but it was too much, too soon and he was overwhelmed. Reverend McLean actually suggested from the pulpit that folk be a little more generous than usual, seeing as the organist needed paying. Some people thought it was a joke and laughed, but Cecil approached him about it on his way out of the front.”

  “Were you there?” Lambert asked, frantically jotting. “Or is this hearsay?”

  “I sat with Cecil and his son,” Jayden said abruptly, growing progressively fed up with the game. Her elbow ached; her clients were struggling somewhere, unable to access her help because of the cordon around the church and she wanted to be at home, curled up on her sofa.

  “What did Mr Macdonald do?” Lambert asked directly.

  “Nothing initially. He just wanted to leave. But the rest of the congregation wanted to see him and wish him well, so he ended up trapped near the front doors. Reverend McLean usually stands...used to stand,” Jayden corrected herself, “just inside the doors to shake hands with everyone. It was his way of ensuring that he was the centre of attention the whole way through the service, until the bitter end. Martin Macdonald tried to get his father out but inevitably, Reverend McLean made a beeline for him. To everyone’s stunned amazement, he asked if Cecil would consider making a donation towards the cost of the organist.”

  Even Lambert found it hard to keep the disgust from creeping into his expression, curbing it quickly. “So, if I’ve got this right, he wanted the widower to stump up towards the cost of his dead wife’s replacement?”

  “Yep,” Jayden sighed. “That’s about it.”

  “Geez, no wonder the old guy lost his cool!”