Reprobation

by Catherine Fearns

  Swift nodded into his pint, the weight of the world off his shoulders. But Colette had turned away to the bar. She blinked back a tear and steeled herself, downing a shot and fixing a smile.

  Swift nudged Colette. ‘You look gorgeous.’

  ‘So do you. So does he.’

  They both looked down and into their drinks.

  ‘I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s just… it’s complicated. There are good reasons, I swear.’

  ‘It’s alright Darren. Story of my life, fancying the wrong lads. I’ll be OK. Unless it turns out that bringing a boyfriend is just your roundabout way of trying to prove you didn’t shag Canter.’

  They were silent for a moment, then she decided to pull herself together, because what else could she do. She motioned over to where Matt was chatting to their colleagues. ‘He seems lovely anyway. Matt, did you say his name was? How long have you been together?’

  ‘Nearly a year now.’

  ‘And what does he do?’

  ‘He’s a firefighter.’

  Colette pursed her lips. ‘A policeman and a firefighter.’

  ‘I’m gonna stop you there,’ said Darren. ‘And if you even think about requesting the Village People from the DJ, you’re fired, I swear.’

  Colette burst out laughing, and put her head on his shoulder, and everything seemed to be OK.

  ‘Is that why you didn’t want to go down to Zeus then?’ she asked.

  He nodded. ‘Yeah, I just… I’ve been there socially, you know, so I didn’t fancy them spotting me as a police officer. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. There are good reasons, I swear. I haven’t had the easiest time in the past.’

  ‘My God, you grew up in the Mainstreet church.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s not the half of it.’

  When Darren’s phone started vibrating in his pocket he was glad of the welcome distraction. It was the station calling. Over the inevitable sounds of Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’, he mouthed to Matt and Colette, ‘I have to take this.’ He pointed to the phone at his ear and went out onto South Road, leaving them standing awkwardly together with their drinks.

  ‘Swift?’

  ‘Yeah, boss, it’s Dave.’

  ‘Yeah, go on, what is it?’

  ‘So boss, I’ve found something, can you just come back to the station?’

  ‘Dave what are you doing at work? I thought you’d be on the dance floor by now.’

  ‘I know but I wanted to finish chasing up those leads before Christmas.’

  ‘On the Shepherd case? Dave, we’re finished with that, you know that…’

  ‘Seriously, Darren, you need to come, honestly.’

  ‘OK fine. If this is a wind-up…’

  ***

  Swift went round to the station at a half-jog, and found it almost in darkness apart from the duty office. Dave was sitting at his desk under the light of a desk lamp, and Swift immediately noticed that Dave had transferred some of the case files to his desk and had built his own mini-incident board. He stood over him somewhat impatiently.

  ‘Right, what is it then?’

  ‘Boss. I don’t think it was Shepherd. At least, not by himself.’

  ‘You what? Start at the beginning. What have you been doing?’

  ‘So, as you know I got nowhere on the timber planks or the van or Zeus, so I moved on to these… tang… tang…

  ‘Tangential’

  ‘Right, tangential links you suggested. Anyway I finally got the visitor records and phone records for Northern Genome through. They were difficult bastards over there; they wouldn’t give them up, citing data protection, and the warrant took ages. Anyway – basically Matthew Clancy lied. Shepherd did visit him, nine months ago, on three separate occasions.’

  Swift rubbed his palm across his mouth, rocked on his heels, looked around at nothing, put both hands to his head. The ground was moving beneath his feet now.

  ‘What shall we do, boss?’

  ‘Wait a minute. Let’s see the phone records.’

  Dave handed him a pile of papers itemising phone calls to and from Northern Genome, and Darren skimmed through them.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Liverpool numbers. Especially over the last few months. Wait, 01704, that’s a Formby number isn’t it?’

  He ran his finger down the lists, and the same 01704 number kept appearing, phone calls to and from, right up until that day.

  ‘Quick, look up this number, Dave.’

  Dave typed the telephone number into Google, and there it was, unmistakeably. He looked up at Swift and said: ‘Argarmeols Hall. The Sisters of Grace.’

  Swift rubbed his hands across his face in frustration and a mild but growing panic.

  ‘Those fucking nuns. Right, let’s go. Call this in to Canter, I’m going to grab Colette and get over to Formby. I’ll take a squad car.’

  Swift ran back to the pub and into the back room, where he yelled through the door ‘Colette, I need you, grab your coat.’

  He looked over to Matt. ‘Sorry, something urgent has come up. I’ll see you back at home.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll look after him boss!’ Swift stopped for a moment to notice that Matt appeared to have settled in nicely. Swift drove to Formby above the speed limit but resisting the urge to put on the siren, telling himself to stay calm, that they still didn’t know what was really going on. Quinn sat in the passenger seat trying to pull down her short sparkly dress, and pretend to herself that she hadn’t had several drinks. They used the fifteen minute drive to try and analyse this new information. ‘So let me get this straight,’ said Quinn, hoping that her voice wasn’t slurring. ‘Shepherd, Clancy and the convent are all in on it?’

  ‘We don’t know who exactly is in on it at the convent. Maybe all of them, who knows? But it has to at least involve that lecturer, Helen Hope. There was something weird about her from the start. No coincidences, right? I should have followed my own advice, followed my hunch. Plus, apart from anything else, the rest of them are all ancient.’

  ‘Apart from that Deaconess.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Also, they may not have been physically involved but they might have known something. We could bring in the lot of them for obstruction of justice.’

  ‘My god, can you imagine the cells full of old nuns.’

  ‘Dealt with by our drunk rabble after the party.’

  Finally the car pulled onto the gravel at Argarmeols Hall, which was already dark and quiet for the night. The Deaconess opened the door in a dressing gown.

  ‘Officers? What on earth is going on?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘Where is Helen Hope?’ asked Swift.

  ‘Goodness me, I’ve already had that dreadful rock band here looking for her tonight. What on earth is going on?’

  ‘The Norwegians? They were here?’

  ‘Yes, not half an hour ago. I sent them packing of course. She’s not here.’

  ‘So where is she then?’

  ‘She went to… well, she said that she went to … I’m not sure, she’s been very mysterious lately. Sister Mary might be able to tell you, although I’m afraid she is out as well tonight. She went up to the retreat in the van.’

  ‘What van?’

  ‘Well, our van, of course.’

  ‘Do you keep it here? We didn’t see a van either time we visited.’

  ‘When it’s not here it’s up at the retreat. We had to start renting one a couple of months ago because Sister Helen has been taking off in the car so much.’

  Swift and Colette looked at each other: the retreat. The Deaconess was shivering in the doorway, so the three of them moved into the hall, where she continued talking. ‘To be quite honest, we’ve had some major problems with recalcitrance from Sister Helen recently, and I’m somewhat at a loss with her—’

  But Swift interrupted: ‘So why did you rent a van and not a car?’

  ‘We needed the space, Detective. For the renovations at the
retreat. Sister Mary found all these cheap building materials.’

  ‘Building materials? Like timber planks?’

  ‘Well yes, exactly, I suppose. She’s very good like that, Sister Mary, saved us a lot of money. She’s been overseeing the renovations, working with some architect firm in Manchester.’

  Swift and Quinn looked at each other again: Manchester. As his mind raced, Swift felt a black hole of hubris swallowing him up.

  ‘How well do you know this Sister Mary, Deaconess?’

  ‘I’ve known her for fifteen years. But sometimes I wonder how well any of us know each other, really know each other, in this place. Do you think we have both made terrible mistakes, Detective?’

  He ignored her and asked, ‘Where’s the retreat then?’

  The Deaconess wavered for a moment, and was about to tell them that the location was a secret. But she realised she had no choice, and gave them the address. ‘It’s around an hour to an hour and half’s drive from here, just get on to the M6 and keep going.’

  As they left, she called out from the doorway:

  ‘Make sure Helen is safe, detectives. I need her.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  As the crew packed up the coach outside the stage door, Mikko called the convent, and tried to call that policeman, Swift, the one that had come questioning him weeks ago. But there was no answer from either number. Music was still thumping from the next band on stage. He told the rest of Total Depravity that they needed to drive up north, it would take a few hours, they would have to trust him, he would make it up to them. And there were few complaints other than from the driver, who had been hoping to join in the after-party himself rather than staying sober. The band and crew packed the coach with as many hangers-on and alcoholic drinks as possible, and by the time they were past Birmingham and approaching the North, most of the passengers in the huge vehicle were very drunk indeed. But as the debauchery developed, for once Mikko was not at the centre of proceedings. He sat in the front seat, just diagonally behind the driver, looking out of the window and fiddling with the GPS on his phone. Surely he could work out where this place was. She had described it as a stone house set in the hillside and visible from the M6, in the middle of the Pennines. It had to be here somewhere, and he must be watchful, not to miss it.

  ***

  Here is another nativity scene, of sorts. There are sheep in the fields, those hardy Northern breeds that need only be brought down from the fells for the winter. Instead of the guiding star, a full moon, assisted by the orange lights of the motorway and the Doppler streaks of car headlights. In place of the stable, a stone cottage, where a baby born without sin lies not in a manger but a Moses basket bought from Mothercare. No shepherds or kings to visit this miracle baby, but a large black coach, speeding up the M6, and filled not with gifts of frankincense and myrrh but with vodka, marijuana and groupies.

  And where are the angels? Perhaps Swift and Quinn, also speeding up the M6 but a good hour behind, hoping for back-up from Canter and desperately trying to enlist the local police in the nearest big town of Lancaster.

  And what of Herod, who massacred the innocents, who sought out the Anointed One to kill him and prevent the new kingdom of God on earth? In Judea, King Herod sent his men far and wide to seek and destroy the second coming. But tonight the threat of Herod is already there, inside the cottage.

  ***

  Helen awoke in a place that was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. She was terribly dozy, almost euphorically so, her body slumped like a dead weight. She could barely move anyway, but had a sensation of being tied by the leg to something. That she couldn’t move even if she tried.

  ‘Ah, you’re awake. Hello, dear.’ Through blurred vision Helen made out a large grey and white figure, and recognised the voice of Sister Mary, who came over and put her face close so that Helen could confirm it was her. ‘You’ve not been out for too long dear, just a bit of sodium thiopental so we could get you here safely without any fusspotting.’

  ‘Sister Mary, what’s going on?’ Helen’s voice sounded far away and detached from her body. Her instinct was that this was a serious situation, and yet she was struggling to break out of the drugged stupor, and Sister Mary seemed so calm, her usual cheerful self.

  ‘Oh, Helen, you have been such a disappointment to us all. Working a secular job, missing prayers, no evangelism whatsoever, taking off in the car, that dreadful heavy metal man… I mean it absolutely beggars belief. And then this… you had no business getting involved with all this, did you dear?’

  She tapped a large folder that lay on a worktop. It was Helen’s red research folder, with everything she had found about Shepherd, Clancy, Baptiste, Total Depravity, all her notes and theories, everything. ‘You went in my room?’

  ‘Well now, we couldn’t have this going around, could we? Because you know, despite her utter charmlessness, stupidity, and despite those homosexual proclivities – oh yes, we all know about those, dear, we all know what used to go on at the retreat – our venerable Deaconess was absolutely right. These have been portentous times, filled with rapturous signs. And the crucifix on the beach served as a wonderful warning, don’t you think? A great change is coming. And here it is, my dear.’

  Helen realised that Sister Mary’s bustling about while she spoke was the bustle of someone preparing a baby’s bottle. And she looked around to try and gauge her position in this long room, as things gradually came into focus. She was sitting on a bare concrete floor at one end of a windowless room, leaning against the wall and handcuffed by the ankle to a thick central heating pipe. A couple of metres in front of her was a Moses basket on a white wooden stand. The basket was traditional wicker with white frilled sheets. It was moving slightly on its rockers, and Helen could make out the tops of tiny hands and feet occasionally waving over the top. Her ears still felt blocked by the anaesthetic, but she was starting to make out little squeals and murmurs.

  ‘Here, make yourself useful, hold this will you,’ said Mary cheerfully. Mary lifted a baby out of the Moses basket and held it inexpertly in front of Helen, who struggled up on her elbows into a seated position. She had no choice but to hold this tiny child that was offered to her. Helen was no expert but the baby seemed very small and couldn’t be more than a few weeks old. The last time she had held a baby was twenty years before, when she had held her baby brother.

  ‘Now, you’re not going to faint again and drop her are you? I imagine your blood pressure is still low. No? Jolly good. She doesn’t look very hungry actually, for once in her life she’s not screaming the place down. Noisy little thing, aren’t you?’ She leaned down and prodded the baby’s chest. ‘Inclines me to believe she’s the one thing rather than the other. You know how tired parents accuse their babies of being little devils. Well. Just saying.’

  The baby was crying now and Helen cradled it awkwardly, trying to find a comfortable position for both of them. Mary handed her a bottle of milk. ‘Here, just shove this in her, that will keep her quiet.’ The baby took the bottle readily, greedily, while Helen tried to ascertain what was going on in the rest of the room. She recognised the smell now, that damp moorland smell – she must be in the retreat, even though she had never been down to the basement. She could also smell that this baby had not been changed or washed properly, and behind that slightly fetid, sweetly pungent smell there was the scent of disinfectant. The same hospital disinfectant she had detected in Shepherd’s apartment. And she could see similar brushed silver laboratory units to the ones she had seen in Shepherd’s living room, and similar machinery and equipment.

  Then she realised there was another figure moving around on the other side of the room, no, two figures, one of which was prostrate on a hospital bed. There was a drip and a monitor, and the lying-down figure seemed to be in restraints – not psychiatric restraints with soft velcroed fabric, but leather and metal shackles, as if in a prison hospital.

  ‘His vitals are dropping quickly, I’m struggling to keep
him going here. But according to the last sequencing, I believe the virus has taken. So we’re OK.’ Helen knew that voice. It was the deep, velvety voice of Matthew Clancy, although now it had lost some of its kindness and possessed an ominous urgency. He was wearing a lab coat and busying himself with his patient, but he turned around and said, ‘Oh yes, hello Sister Helen, by the way. How nice to see you again.’

  ‘What’s going on here?’ she asked, trying not to panic. ‘Who is that on the table?’

  ‘Oh, I think you know already, my dear, don’t you?’ said Sister Mary, and Helen realised that she did. ‘I thought you had it all figured out? That’s Stuart Killy, dear. We just need to make sure he’s clear of the soterion before he, you know, snuffs it. She said these words with a bizarre comedic emphasis. He’s not responding very well at the moment though.’ She went over to hold a piece of equipment for Clancy, who was holding out his hand for an assistant. She peered down into Killy’s face. ‘Not co-operating, are we?’

  ‘What on earth happened to his foot?’ asked Helen. She could see now that his leg was wet and seeping, and tried to suppress her growing horror.

  ‘Oh this? Revolting isn’t it.’ Mary poked at Killy’s stump, causing him to scream in pain. ‘We had to take off that blasted ankle bracelet, and I’m afraid my amputational skills are not what they were. In fact they were never anything really, it was the first time I’d done it – terrible mess wasn’t it?’ She nudged Clancy, and he tutted as if she had burnt a cake or reverse parked the car poorly.

  ‘Yes Helen, I’m afraid it has been a long time since my training at Cambridge. And emptying bed pans for those disgusting old nuns does not exactly count as keeping up your medical practice, does it? But if he hadn’t been on those steroids Shepherd gave him it wouldn’t have gone gangrenous, so it’s hardly my fault.’