Gospel Truths

by J. G. Sandom

She leaned against him softly. Lyman watched her as she slowly undid a button on her blouse. Then, carefully, she pulled the material apart. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and he could see the white skin of her breast, the curve and then a tiny swollen nipple.

  “Just a hint,” she said with a laugh, “of things to come.” She pulled away.

  “I won’t be long,” Lyman said. “I promise.”

  “Promises, promises.” She fastened the button on her blouse and started toward the door. “But I’m warning you. If you’re not back by midnight, I may be forced to throw open the window and shout for help.” She opened the door. “You’re not the only policeman in London.”

  “You’re such a little bitch, Dotty.”

  She smoothed her hair and smiled. “I know. That’s why you love me.” Then she was gone.

  Lyman looked around the room. He was alone again, and yet he had the strange sensation that he was being watched. It was that photograph of Marco Scarcella on his desk.

  After two weeks of fruitless effort, the former Venerable Master had finally acceded to an interview. Lyman was booked on the morning flight to Geneva. It was a piece of fortune that had descended on him out of nowhere, and so suddenly that Lyman thought it seemed to contradict his definition of policework as a series of planned accidents.

  And yet he still felt frustrated and defeated. Despite what Mrs. Pontevecchio had just told him, everything pointed to a suicide. Pontevecchio’s body had revealed no hidden contusions, nothing at all to indicate the banker had been forced into that noose beneath Blackfriars Bridge. They had scanned his blood and organs. They had checked his fingernails. They had even analyzed his hair, in case he had been drugged before and then transported to the scene. Nothing unusual had been found.

  And yet…Lyman picked up the photograph of Scarcella. Perhaps he was beginning to understand what Mrs. Pontevecchio had tried to tell him earlier.

  The files revealed Scarcella had returned to Europe two more times after the exposure of his infamous I Four in the spring of 1989. The first time, in May of 1990, British Intelligence reports had placed him on Cap Ferrat in the south of France. Apparently he had returned at the request of Saddam Hussein to purchase arms, in anticipation of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The missiles which he had procured for Argentina during the Falklands war had already proved effective. “Effective.” Lyman wondered at this word. It was the one which they had used in the report. It was so practical an adjective, so accurate a symbol.

  He tried not to visualize the missile swinging low across the waves, the flash of the explosion, the face of his son, Peter, taking one last desperate breath as the water washed around him.

  Lyman focused on the photograph before him. And then, in September 1990, Scarcella had returned to Europe one more time, where he was promptly arrested in Geneva for trying to withdraw fifty-five million dollars from a bank account suspected of being connected to the Fabiano scandal. They had locked him away in Champ Dollon, and there he had been languishing for nearly a year.

  Lyman tucked the snapshot back into the folder on his desk. In less than twenty-four hours he and Scarcella would be sitting face to face, within the same four walls, breathing the same prison air.

  He pushed his chair out and rose slowly to his feet. He was tired. He had not slept well for weeks, and his flight to Switzerland was in the early morning. He slipped the files into his briefcase. Then he turned his back to the desk and headed out the door.

  When he reached the ground floor of the station, he paused for a moment to check the bulletin board for messages. No one had called. No one wanted anything, and this relieved him. But just as he was walking down the corridor to leave, young Constable Tony Frazier appeared from nowhere and waved at him to stop.

  “Is it important?” Lyman asked halfheartedly, without even slowing down.

  “There’s some bloke downstairs who claims he saw that Italian banker on the night he hanged himself.”

  Lyman stopped. “Another one? What’s he look like?”

  “A vagabond. We just arrested him for bashing up a chemist over on Fleet Street. You’re on that Pontevecchio case, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” Lyman said. “Do you believe him?”

  Frazier shrugged. “You should see what he did to that chemist. Made a right mess of him, he did.”

  Lyman sighed. “All right, let’s take a look.”

  They made their way toward the stairway leading to the holding cells. As they walked, Frazier told Lyman about the case.

  It had started a week earlier, he said, when the vagabond had taken to sleeping in the alleyway beside the chemist’s. At first the chemist had simply shouted him away, threatening the ragged figure with furious reprisals. But as the days wore on, and the vagabond refused to forfeit his new sleeping spot, the chemist had resorted to more stringent methods.

  He tried washing down the area with ammonia. The vagabond had ignored it. He tried leaving out his rubbish in the alley, but the vagabond had only moved it to the side, forming a little nest between the empty cardboard boxes and the plastic bags.

  That very night, in desperation, the chemist had filled a bucket full of ice-cold water mixed with a little iodine. Then he had crept out to the rear of the shop and cracked the side door open. The vagabond had come. He was curled inside a playhouse of old boxes. The chemist moved into the alley stealthily, and tossed the cold solution on the beggar’s face.

  Despite his well-planned access to the door, the chemist had badly underestimated both the speed and fury of the vagabond. The mound of clothes burst open. A shape emerged out of the shadows and the chemist found himself down on the alley floor, his eyes half covered by a heavy hand, and his left cheek stinging from a hail of blows. It was as if the anger of a lifetime had been suddenly released, he told Constable Frazier later. Only the strength of three strangers attracted by his screams had managed to pull the vagabond away.

  The vagabond, it turned out, was a bricklayer and machinist named David Ellison. They had seen him at the station several times before. He had the record of a thousand other workmen from the north, the drifters blown like winter thistles from the hills and empty one-mill towns of Yorkshire. He had made the run down to the city on the backs of lorries, watching the country change around him, the houses grow more frequent and more grand. He had looked for work for months, reading the papers every evening in his tiny rented room near Windmill Street, waiting his days away at the Exchange, watching the fold of bills he always kept upon him slowly vanish, waiting for it to end.

  When his landlord finally chucked him out, he had tried living in the shelters for a while. At least he had a bed there, and a plate of warm food every night. But apparently the social workers had always made him feel as if it were his fault, as if he liked to live as he did. As if he really had a choice.

  Lyman and Frazier signed in at the entrance to the holding cells and the night guard let them through. Ellison was in the interrogation room at the end of the corridor. Lyman could see his face through the little window in the door. Someone had been at his nose and it looked broken and raw in the icy light.

  “Let’s have it, then,” Lyman said to Frazier as they entered the room. “What’s the bastard claiming?”

  Ellison lifted himself up in his chair. He had coal black hair and the massive shoulders of a workman. He had not shaved in days. “I’m not claiming anything,” he said. “I saw it with my own two eyes.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I saw what they did to him. To your Italian friend. Not that he didn’t deserve it, mind you. Now me, I’d rather be poor and alive than a dead banker any day. What’s the point of money if you have to die getting it.”

  “Who said anything about money?”

  “All bankers have money. That’s why they’re bankers. We’re the poor ones. We’re the ones they piss on.”

  “Christ,” Lyman said. “A bloody socialist.” He drew a chair up from the corner of the room and sat down facing
Ellison. “And what about you, eh? What about Ellison and his broken nose? Who’s going to take care of him—the state?”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  Lyman laughed softly. “So I see.” He turned toward Constable Frazier and said, “Why don’t you leave us for a bit.”

  The young policeman cast an angry look at Ellison. “I’ll be outside if you need me, sir.”

  “We’ll manage. Thank you.”

  The door closed loudly. Ellison leaned back in his chair.

  “Who broke your nose?” Lyman asked. “Was it Frazier or the shopkeeper?”

  Ellison smiled, poking gently at the swollen purple flesh with his flat fingers. “Neither. What do you care, anyway?”

  “I want to know.”

  Ellison sat up. There was something in the tone of Lyman’s voice, a barbed foreboding, an edge, which did not brook debate. “It happened in the alleyway. I knocked it up against the wall. That’s the truth.”

  “I see,” Lyman said, after a pause. “I just wanted to be sure.” He studied Ellison’s face, taking in the thick black hair, the agate circles at the centers of his eyes. Then he pulled a pack of Players from the inside pocket of his worn tweed jacket and offered one to Ellison.

  “I have a theory,” Lyman said, shaking the pack invitingly. Ellison took one. “The way I see it, you don’t need the state. I mean, look what the state’s given you already. Bloody all.” He lit the cigarettes and slumped back in his chair. “The way I see it, it’s because we’re all so bloody worried about the state, or the union, or the bloody family that we end up thinking they’re the ones we should be taking care of, instead of us.” He shook his head. “But you, Ellison. You’re all alone. You broke the rules. And now there’s only one person who can take care of you.” He paused, taking a drag off his cigarette. “And that’s me.”

  Ellison smiled again and for the first time Lyman realized that at one point in his life he must have been a handsome man. Those dark North Country eyes. That strong jaw. He must have been the bane of Yorkshire women for a few short summers.

  Ellison took another pensive drag. “What about the chemist?”

  “You tell me what you know,” Lyman answered. “You tell me everything you saw, everything, and I’ll take care of the chemist. Otherwise you go upstairs. Understand? Assault. Attempted murder.”

  Ellison looked at the cigarette in his hand. “I was sleeping in the bushes,” he said carefully, as if the words were difficult to pronounce. “Just above the embankment path, between Blackfriars and the railway bridge. I was bloody tired of the hostels. Full of drunks and thieves anyway. But I had no money. It was warm for June. Anyway, I like sleeping outside. I used to do it all the time up-country.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well,” he continued. “I woke up and saw this gaffer standing on the embankment by the water, just beside the bridge. He was a toff all right. I could tell from his clothes. So I wondered what he was doing there, all alone in the middle of the night.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Ellison frowned. “I only got a good look at him once, when he crossed beneath the light. It was your banker, I’m sure of that. I saw his picture in every gutter for the next two weeks.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “For a while, nothing. He just kept looking up at the bridge and then back at his watch. Then after a few minutes these two blokes come out from the underpass, where the bridge crosses over the embankment. That’s when he started to move away, when I could see his face in the light. He was bloody terrified. But he couldn’t run, you see, because—just then—two other blokes come down the embankment from the other side. He was trapped proper, right between them. Then he tried to smile and put on a bold face, especially for the two men near the underpass.”

  “He knew them?”

  “Oh, I’m sure of it. He was talking to them but I couldn’t understand it. Then…” Ellison paused, flicking the ashes of his cigarette onto the floor.

  “Then what?”

  “Then they all came forward, all except one. Your banker tried to stay in the center of the light. Two of them grabbed him from behind, but he didn’t really struggle. He kept on saying, ‘Nonchello, nonchello,’ or something like that, over and over. The bloke in the shadows did all the talking back. He had a deep voice, I remember. The voice of a big man. Then, suddenly, they just pulled him to the ground. One of them took a box out of his coat. It must have been a knife or something because while the other two were holding him, the third one pulled his trousers part way down and stuck it in him, right there, in the groin. Bloody savages.”

  “Go on.”

  Ellison smiled grimly. “Doesn’t bother you, does it? All in a day’s work.” He let his cigarette fall to the floor and crushed it with his boot.

  “I’ve seen worse. Just tell me what happened.”

  “Then they pulled his trousers back up and one of them looked over the railing, down at the river. The fellow in the shadows seemed to be giving the orders again. It was like he knew I was there watching, as if he knew I’d see him if he went beneath the light. They lifted the banker up and hoisted him over the railing. He’d gone all limp, flopping about in their arms. I thought they were going to dump him in the river. Then I heard the sound of a small motor and I realized someone else had come up in a boat. They all climbed over the railing and disappeared, all except the fourth man. I could just barely see him looking over the railing. I suppose he was watching them hang the banker under the bridge. Big bloke.”

  “What about his face? Would you recognize him again?”

  “Too dark,” Ellison answered, shaking his head. “All I can say is that he wore a long black coat, and a white shirt. He wasn’t wearing a tie.” He paused.

  “What is it?” Lyman said. “What else?”

  “I know you’ll think I’m daft,” he said uncertainly, “but it looked a little like a vicar’s collar.”

  “Like a priest, you mean?”

  “Right. A clergyman. But it was really very dark. Then he walked back up the embankment, up the stairs, and across Blackfriars.”

  Lyman offered Ellison another cigarette. The vagabond’s large hand was trembling. He looked suspiciously at the open box and finally slipped one behind his ear. “For later,” he said.

  Lyman took one for himself. “Why didn’t you tell anyone about this earlier?”

  Ellison shrugged. “None of my business. Besides, who would have believed me. I mean, look at me. Would you?”

  “I didn’t say I believed you.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Ellison pulled the cigarette from behind his ear and dropped it between his teeth.

  “You didn’t brag about it to your friends?” Lyman insisted. “In a pub, I mean. A story for a pint. And what about the reward? If you saw his picture in the papers for the next two weeks, why didn’t you notice the reward?”

  “What reward?”

  “For information, Ellison. For something on the hanging.”

  “I didn’t see anything about a reward. I must have missed it.” He looked away. “Never went to school much. Can I have a light?”

  “Unless,” Lyman added slowly.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you thought you might get even more if you kept quiet.”

  “Look, I was afraid. That’s all. You can’t trust a copper. You and them bankers always work together.”

  Lyman smiled, shaking his head. “It’s no good, Ellison. Constable Frazier was right.” He stood wearily, stretching his back. “Pity. You’ll miss sleeping outside.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ellison said, grabbing at Lyman’s sleeve. “I thought we had a bargain.”

  Lyman leaned forward suddenly and popped Ellison’s head back with the palm of his hand. “Not anymore,” said Lyman.

  Ellison started to his feet. “Look, all right, I did know about it. The reward, and all that.”

  Lyman had started for the door, but he stopped and turned aroun
d.

  Ellison was rocking back and forth, struggling inside, like a hooked fish underwater. “Christ, all I wanted was a chance,” he said. “Don’t you see? It’s got to be worth money. Big money. Why else would he have tossed it? I’m only asking for what’s due me.”

  Lyman walked back to the center of the room. “I see,” he answered carefully. He pulled a box of matches from his jacket and lit their cigarettes. “If that’s the way it is.” Then he smiled sadly and said, “But what do I get, Ellison? What’s my due?”

  Ellison grinned. “Half.”

  “Half of what?”

  “Half of whatever we find. I promise. Half of whatever the key leads into. I’m going to need help anyway.”

  “What key?”

  “The little red key. The key the banker tossed away. Half of whatever it brings. All you have to do is let me go. That’s it.”

  Lyman exhaled deeply, the blue smoke rising wave on wave against the naked incandescent bulb above. “I’m sorry, Ellison,” he said at last. “But I’m going to have to ask you for it.” He seemed genuinely sad, as if he had refused reflexively, as if his honesty were just another habit he had picked up on the way, like smoking. “Tell me about the key.”

  Ellison sat down. He looked more disappointed than angry. He puffed on his cigarette slowly, meditatively. Then he wiped his forehead with his sleeve and said, “It happened when he leaned against the railing. Your banker. He had his back to the river, and then I saw him put his right hand in his pocket.”

  “For the key, you mean?”

  “Well, that’s it,” Ellison replied. “I’ve been over it a hundred times in my head. First he was leaning back against the railing with one hand in his pocket. Then he turned around to face the river—as if he was going to jump for it—and as he did, he put his hands out on the railing. Both of them. Like this.” He thrust his own hands out before him. They trembled in the air, huge and calloused, mottled with dirt and blood from his fight with the chemist. “That’s when he took it out. He must have. It was the only time he turned his back on them. And then they grabbed him.”

  “Where is this key?”