The Rags of Time

by Peter Grainger

  ‘Oh, I can see that! Ex-con becomes the guardian of Abbeyfields!’

  Smith was quiet, waiting for the laughter to end, and then he said, ‘It’s a funny old road to Damascus, though.’

  ‘Well… Not up to me. Andrew is the only person I haven’t had a word with at some point during the day. He was in here when I first arrived, looking for something in the drawers, but he left then, and hardly said a thing. We can try the kitchen garden and the greenhouses.’

  They went out into the enclosed, walled gardens and found three men still working there. Andrew was not among them but one had seen him within the hour, leaving the friary by the back gate – the narrow door that Smith had stood next to on the other side of the wall when he climbed the path up from the river. He glanced at his watch and saw that the time was ten minutes to eight o’clock.

  They left the men in the garden, and as they walked away Smith said, ‘I’ll take a walk down that way, see if I can meet up with him.’

  ‘This is still to do with Jeremy, yes?’

  ‘Very much so,’ and that was enough for Joseph Ritz.

  He said, ‘Do you need a hand?’

  ‘No, thanks. I need to ask him a few questions. He’s more likely to answer if there’s only me to hear what he has to say, to be honest.’

  Joe walked with him to the gate, which had been left unlocked. The friar opened it and watched the policeman walk away down towards the river. Nothing more was said, and after a few seconds the gate was closed. And when he heard the gate close, Smith stopped walking and listened. Then he took out his phone, wrote a short text and sent it. When he was certain that it had been read, he continued on his way down towards the river.

  Andrew Waring sat on the slope to the left of the badgers’ sett, half-hidden behind a thin screen of cow parsley and willowherb. The turf was soft beneath the willow trees that lined the edge of the Laveney, and there was a flattened area where he had sat before and where Jeremy himself had sat with him a few short weeks ago, in the spring. Jeremy had said “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows…”, and though there was no wild thyme here, the rest of those words, when he asked Jeremy to say them, had seemed so suited to the magic of the place, to the mystery of this ancient, unspoiled corner of England.

  He had known that he was too early to see the badgers but a sense of urgency had brought him anyway – or a sense of something ending, perhaps, something that must be seen and felt now because it might soon be gone forever. When we go, so does the world as we have known it, for it is known only by us and therefore only within us. At least, so some of the empiricists believe – but such beliefs are only another form of faith. Jeremy knew all the references, of course – Jeremy had done the reading and the study, but hadn’t he said too that some were born with a gift to understand these things and had no need of universities. Hadn’t Jeremy said that he, Andrew, was such a one? And when he heard those words he knew that for the very first time in his difficult life he had been understood and known. When Jeremy saw the tears, he had reached out and held him in his arms. Here on this bank, in this same silence, in this little Eden.

  To make a sacrifice, we must hold a belief in something greater than ourselves – we must value something more than our own insignificant existence. Jeremy had made this sacrifice for him. Jeremy had offered himself up for the thief and the murderer, offered his own freedom in exchange for that of the sinner. Jeremy had believed, still believed, in him. In that terrible argument, as two souls had struggled to understand each other, his guardian had told him that he, Andrew, could accomplish more in this world than any of them had ever achieved. Your anger was righteous, he had said; ask forgiveness and then go and carry out our founder’s instructions – go and re-build his house…

  Behind him, somewhere on the path back to the friary, a blackbird shrilled its alarm. Andrew listened, and then a wren began to scold its own warning. Someone was coming. He sat up and reached inside the robe. To have been an inspiration to Jeremy, to the guardian, was enough; that surely was the placing of one stone upon another, a beginning. There could not be a finer moment than when they were here, he and his redeemer, weeping in each other’s arms.

  He was smiling, the sealed letter in his left hand and the knife in his right. He held both objects out in front of him for a moment, and then he laid the letter down upon the grass.

  Smith came into the clearing where he had stood with Steven Harper. The light was still good, and he looked around but there was no sign of the man that he had come to find – no sign of any badgers either, come to that. Waring might have gone on down the path to some other destination but he, Smith, had been somehow convinced that it would be here, at the geographical if not the gravitational centre of the story of this case, that he would find him. So he waited and listened. The river was somewhere off to his left, hidden beneath the weeping willows, making no sound. He could hear an engine, far away on the Lowacre road, where Waters and Ford were waiting in the car. He could walk down to them and see if anyone had passed by – but Waters would already have told him if that had happened. Waters would probably have apprehended Brother Andrew – the first detective in history to arrest two priests on the same day.

  Something stirred in the vegetation on the bank to his left – a small bird or a mouse, most likely. He watched and a stem of the willowherb moved again, and then again. Smith stepped towards it, wondering whether he should have brought his old truncheon out for the evening instead of leaving it gathering dust on a shelf in his study. Some of these mice can be more of a handful than you think.

  Then he saw the sandalled foot twitching and things happened very quickly. He was astride the body in a moment, seizing the left wrist and holding it straight up into the space above the body. Releasing first one hand and then the other, he wriggled out of his jacket – one of his decent linen ones, of course – and then bound one of the sleeves twice around the open wound as tightly as he could; Waring had done a good job, cutting lengthways instead of across, and Smith took spurts of arterial blood on his shirt-front before he could control the flow. After that, he held the arm as high as possible, gripping the wrist so tightly in his right hand that it must have hurt both of them, and reaching for his phone with his left.

  Waring was still half-conscious. His eyes opened wider and he swung his right fist up towards Smith, who dodged it easily enough before trapping the offending arm under his left knee.

  ‘Very good, sir, but you’re not so handy without a shovel, are you? And you’re not wriggling out of this so easily if I have any say in it.’

  Waring seemed to collapse back into himself but the eyes were still upon Smith. The phone began to ring. Smith glanced around and saw the letter on the bank.

  ‘Is it all in there, in the letter? Have you told the truth?’

  The wide-pupilled eyes were pale and having difficulty in focusing but after a moment came a single nod, before they began to flutter. The face was paler too, and Smith thought, why doesn’t someone answer this sodding-

  ‘DC?’

  ‘Listen, and do just what I say. One of you call an ambulance, get them on that footpath and up here as soon as you can. Tell them it’s a Police Priority A or make up something better. Tell them to send their fittest crew because they’re going to have to run like hell.’

  ‘OK, onto it already. What does the other one do?’

  ‘What other one?’

  ‘The other one of us. You said-’

  ‘Right, the other one, the one with the First Aid certificate, gets his backside out of the car and up here pronto. It’s starting to look like the end of a Shakespeare play.’

  He could hear that Waters was already on the move but still on the phone.

  ‘On my way, DC. Which play?’

  ‘The one with the most blood at the end, whichever one that is.’

  And then the line went dead because Waters was running full tilt.

  They were about to close the ambulance door. Over the stretc
her they had rigged up a frame and Waring’s left arm was up and supported by it, wrapped in some sort of inflatable pressure bandage – it looked as if they had been able to stop the bleeding. On the right side, a drip had already been put in place. Waring was not conscious but Smith had heard the two ambulance men discussing whether a sedative should be used, and it seemed that the answer had been yes. Waters came up and stood beside Smith for a moment.

  ‘DC?’

  ‘Just a minute.’

  He wanted to catch the eye of the senior paramedic – a man, thank God, who had known exactly what to do. Eventually the man saw what Smith wanted and raised an eyebrow. Smith pointed first at Waring, and the ambulance-man gave a couple of nods, which meant that as far as he was concerned, the panic was over. Then Smith pointed to Waters, and the paramedic realised that this was not a question; he nodded again and put up a handful of fingers – they would be on their way in five minutes.

  ‘Right. You go with him in the ambulance, Fordy drives the car back and lets DI Reeve know what’s happening. He’s unconscious - the friar, not Fordy - but you do not leave his side until reinforcements arrive. Write down anything he says or mumbles. Got that?’

  ‘OK. But what if they need to operate, which they will if he’s cut arteries and nerves?’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to put on one of those gowns and assist as necessary. You know the NHS is under-staffed. We’ve all got to pull together.’

  ‘Right… Are you sure you’re OK, DC? You do look a state.’

  Smith had the jacket in one hand. The sleeve was entirely soaked in blood, and he held it up for closer inspection.

  ‘I’m not sure this will even dry-clean.’

  The blood that had spurted onto his shirt had now soaked in and spread across the chest. He’d need to be careful when he went back up to the friary; if he wandered in looking like this and carrying the knife, it could trigger a major incident alert.

  Smith said, ‘Have you got some gloves and a couple of evidence bags in the car? In all the panic I left the knife and the letter.’

  Waters went to fetch the things that he needed. Smith looked into the ambulance again but they were still making thorough, unhurried preparations for the journey to Kings Lake General, which was another good sign.

  Waters came back. ‘Here you are. Do you want Richard to come up with you before he heads back? He’s already spoken to the DI. She said she’ll meet me at the hospital. And she has a few questions.’

  ‘Really? Some people are never satisfied… No, I’ll go on my own. It’s not far and I need a word with my contact up there. If I don’t do that, he’s going to start thinking that we’re coming for the rest of them.’

  Waters took a signal from the paramedic – just about ready. He said, ‘So it was Brother Andrew. Did you know?’

  ‘No, but it was the best guess.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He disappeared the day after Randall was killed, and at short notice; they usually book a taxi but this trip was done in a hurry. He stayed away much longer than they usually do. In fact he doesn’t come back until he gets a phone call from the friary telling him that we’ve arrested the wrong man – one of the detectorists. Brother Andrew’s real grievance is with the people who dig up animals, not artefacts. He comes back on the Wednesday and tells - this bit is a guess – tells Brother Jeremy what he’s going to do. Jeremy, you understand, knew what had happened the day after Randall was killed. Secrets of the confessional and all that. Anyway, that’s what the argument was about I’d say, Waring going to make sure the evidence was discovered. Jeremy didn’t want Andrew back at all, let alone going back to the scene. But nevertheless, on the night of the day got back, he goes out and moves the shovel to where it will be found. Jeremy saying that he needed twenty four hours to think about it never did ring true to me.’

  The ambulance’s engine was running now.

  Waters said, ‘More than one bit of guesswork in there, DC. The phone call? How do you know someone – Jeremy, presumably – called him?’

  ‘Because I checked with BT. The call lasted twelve minutes. The timing fits with what I just said must have happened.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘And do you know what that’s called these days, in the business?’

  ‘No, but I think I’m about to find out.’

  ‘It’s called rocket science.’

  Waters was climbing into the ambulance. Smith watched and then called out, ‘Don’t forget your nails when you scrub in!’

  Fortunately, Waters had not asked why Jeremy Hayward had offered himself up to the justice system in place of his young apprentice. What people do is much more easily explained than why. The guardian of the friary was an academic, an intellectual, a clever, rational man; generally they make poor criminals for all sorts of reasons, but in the novice the guardian had perhaps found, or thought that he had, the one thing that he himself lacked – the true spark of the divine. Smith had met the young man only once before tonight but there was certainly something unusual about him, and onto that people might project all sorts of things, including their own feelings of inadequacy. In a moment, or perhaps several moments, Hayward had found that all his temples had been built on sand, and they were washed away by a torrent of spiritual passion. Or maybe it was some other sort of passion. Who knows? Perhaps there was something in the letter. He ought to get up there before some wild animal wandered off with it.

  It was getting on for ten o’clock by the time he got back to the badgers’ sett, and the light had almost gone. He photographed the knife and the letter on the ground – his phone’s camera flashed and lit up the scene garishly – and noticed that there were splashes of blood on the envelope. Sort of appropriate. Then he bagged up the two items, and took the time needed to write on the labels, there and then. Old habits die hard.

  Old habits indeed. He turned away from the grassy bank where not two hours ago a young man had tried to end his life and thought about his own. There could be more to it than this, even now. What had she said? OK, but not maybe… For a while he had been thinking that maybe it was time to go, and maybe the maybe was a mistake. While you’re thinking about it, you’re not doing it.

  The sodden shirt was clammy now, clinging to his skin as the air began to cool. Too much blood over too many years. He held up the bag containing the knife – too many knives over the years. He would rather face a handgun any day. He could take the shirt off, of course, and walk back bare-chested, but there would be mosquitoes and the remaining friars would be even more terrified than they were about to be. He kept a change of clothes at the station, and he was going there anyway. Couldn’t leave all this until the morning, and Reeve would be ringing him soon. It would be two am before he was home, and then back in for eight o’clock.

  Maybe. Wind it down over, say, six months, or go for something quicker - a few weeks. You could make it days, of course, if you mentioned a bit of stress now that employers were so aware of their duty of care; mention that and you could probably get it down to a matter of hours. What had Hayward said? Hours, days, months, which are the rags of time? Rags - that’s all this shirt was good for now…

  Something was moving out in the gloom. He stood very still then, and thought that he could see just for a moment a black and white-striped head against the darkness of the badgers’ sett. The head moved slowly this way and that, scenting the air, and then it was gone into a rustling, a twig snapping and a silence. Smith waited, motionless, for another minute or two but nothing else happened. Then he made his way without the torch on his phone back onto the footpath, and turned right up towards Abbeyfields.

  © Peter Grainger All rights reserved

  If you have enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a short review at Amazon, where you first found it. As I do not market or promote my writing in any way, it stands or falls entirely by the readers’ opinions of it.

  Smith’s previous four cases can be found here:

  An Accidental
Death: A DC Smith Investigation

  by Peter Grainger

  Link: http://amzn.com/B00FN0YJ6S

  But For The Grace: A DC Smith Investigation

  by Peter Grainger

  Link: http://amzn.com/B00JR9OF6A

  Luck and Judgement: A DC Smith Investigation

  by Peter Grainger

  Link: http://amzn.com/B00S889ZNO

  Persons of Interest: A DC Smith Investigation

  by Peter Grainger

  Link: http://amzn.com/B0130NBIL8

  In This Bright Future: A DC Smith Investigation

  by Peter Grainger

  Link: https://amzn.com/B01BDN5KDO

  If you would like to know more about Smith and his other cases, you could email to petergrainger01@gmail.com Alternatively, you might like to try this:

  https://www.facebook.com/petergraingerDCSmith?skip_nax_wizard=true

  As ever, thank you for reading,

  Peter Grainger

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two