Reprobation

by Catherine Fearns

  He tried to open his eyes.

  ‘It’s OK, I don’t think I’m dying, dude. Everything just fucking hurts. And don’t ask me if I saw the hooded guy and the gate while I was under. Because I didn’t see shit. Actually, I did. I saw you.’

  20.

  ‘Aye aye.’

  Detective Constable Colette Quinn smiled as the automatic doors slid open and she strolled into the reception area of Halton Hospital, where Detective Inspector Darren Swift was waiting.

  ‘Hello stranger,’ he said warmly, and they sat down side by side on plastic chairs. ‘How’s it going, back in Crosby?’

  ‘Same old. But never mind that, fill me in on the case. I heard Canter let you back in on the case. Didn’t do too badly in the end, did you, boss?’

  ‘Would you believe, it was all thanks to Dave. And you, of course. We’re a good team.’ They gave each other a look that brought all the tension to the surface, and then washed it away.

  ‘So anyway, yeah.’ he continued, ‘Canter let me handle the questioning for both Clancy and the nun.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s denying everything, still smooth, still blaming the heavy metal band. She… is a fucking nutter. Refuses to even mount a defence, just keeps spouting the Bible. But now we’ve got the van they’ll go down no problem. Forensic evidence all over it. The only place where they weren’t careful. It’s just a matter of building the case now.’

  ‘And what about our heroic heavy metal team?’

  ‘The amateur detectives? They properly beat us to it didn’t they. Completely innocent, both. He’s probably been discharged from hospital now. As for her – I hope she takes the opportunity to leave that convent.’

  ‘Detective?’

  Darren stood up as a woman pushing a pram came towards him, having been directed over there by the receptionist.

  ‘Kirsty Long, social services. And this gorgeous little one is baby Elizabeth. We’re calling her that for now because it was Chelsea McAllister’s middle name.’

  Darren and Colette peered into the pram, where a baby girl slept peacefully, wrapped up in pink blankets against the cold outside.

  ‘Ah, she’s dead cute isn’t she?’ said Colette. Darren nodded in absent-minded agreement as they began walking down the hospital corridor, but he found it hard to tear his eyes away from the sleeping baby. Since Christmas his dreams had been tormented by confused images of Andrew Shepherd’s project, of what this baby was supposed to represent. It was nothing he could ever discuss with anyone; not with Matt, or Colette, or even with that Sister Helen Hope. It was madness, madness. But he couldn’t get rid of that nagging feeling somewhere deep within him: what if?

  As they approached the intensive care ward, the baby began to squirm, struggle and cry, so the social worker plucked her from the pram, shushing and murmuring capably. She motioned to Darren to take the pram, and he pushed the empty vehicle inexpertly down the shiny corridor, the multi-axle wheels veering from side to side and making Colette laugh as she dodged out of the way.

  ‘So if and when Shepherd wakes up, what’s he going to be charged with then?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, that’s the weird thing. I’m not sure he can be charged with very much at all. Spiritual grooming is not a crime. Voluntary IVF is not a crime. His hard drive was completely unrecoverable after he smashed it, and there was nothing specifically criminal amongst the rantings on his apartment walls. The people he manipulated were vulnerable, but they weren’t underage. No kidnapping, no violence, no assault. He genuinely believed he was helping them. Saving their mortal souls, in fact. A Shepherd of souls.’ Darren was embarrassed at himself for even saying this out loud, and continued quickly:

  ‘I mean, we’d have to meet this guy and see what he’s actually like, but I imagine that the fact he indirectly caused these people’s deaths would be punishment enough for him.’

  ‘In any case,’ added the social worker, ‘there’s no question of him gaining custody of this child following his behaviour. But access – possibly. And seeing the baby might help him recover, might help him talk. That’s what the police think, right?’

  They reached the private room where Shepherd was being held.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Colette, ‘if he does recover he’ll be released into psychiatric care. I mean, he is completely insane.’

  Darren was still looking at the baby, who was now fully awake and stared back at him from the social worker’s shoulder. ‘Insane, yeah.’

  The uniformed police officer stationed outside Shepherd’s door knocked gently and opened it for them. Inside the prostrate figure of Andrew Shepherd lay surrounded by machines that beeped and flashed as his bare torso gently rose and fell, his arms above the bedcover with palms open. His beard had been trimmed, his hair washed, but it was still long and unkempt, and fell around him on his pillow. An immense calm filled the room, and Darren couldn’t help but be reminded of a church altarpiece. A nurse was tending to his intravenous drip, and she looked up and smiled brightly.

  ‘He’s showing signs of stirring actually. Rapid eye movements, fast heart rate, audible breaths. We think it might be today….’

  Dr. Andrew Shepherd is standing at the Strait Gate. He has been walking for what seemed like an eternity, heaving one foot in front of the other as if they were made of lead. The golden sky has been weighing on him, but as he walks it has gradually been resolving itself into two distinct and immiscible welkins: one a dark red, thick with black storm clouds; the other a very pale yellow, almost white. The line that divides them gradually becomes clear. A wrought iron gate, silhouetted black, with nothing before it, and nothing after it. Atop the gate sits a cockerel weathervane. Next to the gate stands a hooded figure, faceless, who instils neither fear nor hope, but simply a stillness, an acceptance. It is not yet time. Andrew Shepherd turns away and opens his eyes.

  ***

  Lilith Taylor is taking her final breaths. She is alone, and she is not afraid. The rhythmic, throaty sounds that she makes become gradually more faint, and the monitor beeps slow down at the same pace, in a descending cadence of mortality. She thinks about her life, and the terrible things that she has done. She killed her own child, yes, she killed her, and eventually she killed her husband too. Those were the big things, and she had never confessed them to anyone, especially not to Shepherd, to Him. Because why would she? And who knows, perhaps they were necessary. But there were the small things too; the little cruelties that she meted out: the lies, betrayals, the petty meanness. She was not a good daughter, or a good mother, or a good wife, or a good friend or neighbour. She doesn’t really know why she did any of it, or why she doesn’t feel bad. In any case, she got away with it, perhaps because she believed. Because Andrew came, He came to save her, and then she knew that she had been right to believe.

  As the heart monitor slows further, Mrs Taylor’s body twitches occasionally, involuntarily. Her wasted arms are pock-marked with brown and purple age spots, so much so that nobody would have spotted the extra needle marks in the crook of her left elbow. Or at least, not the young care assistants who diligently washed her every day. It has only been four weeks since He was last here, and the virus has held, she knows that somehow. Her eyelids flutter, and behind them the world narrows to a tunnel, and she moves along it with ease, not like the last times, when she had been terrified and had battled one foot in front of the other as if through treacle. This time she almost skips, like a carefree young woman again. The way begins to construct itself into a path, with a vast sky that splits into two distinct halves, and she is approaching a gate. The hooded figure is there; she knows him now, she has been here before, and she imagines that his face if she could see it would now be the face of Shepherd. As she approaches she is not afraid, because this time she knows that she will pass through the gate, and she also knows which way she will turn.

  Outside it is a bright, crisp January morning; a low sun in a cloudless sky, reflecting off the frosted grass. The nurse who visi
ted earlier had flung open the curtains so that the quality of the light in Mrs Taylor’s upstairs hospital room is almost blinding. It shines on to her pale face, hair, nightgown and bed linen, so that she almost radiates white light and a visitor would have had to shield their eyes. The light catches dust particles in the air that seem to glitter around her. With an almost imperceptible gasp, she takes her final breath and the monitor flatlines into one continuous beeping sound. Soon a nurse will appear, take the time of death, and Father Anthony will come and say a prayer. On the counter next to her bed is a Bible, open at Corinthians 11 13-15. And no wonder; because Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

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