by Guy Sheppard
He soon had hold of his bicycle but his two observers were gone. Then, quite by chance, he saw them head for the tearooms.
He also crossed the street.
As the taller man let out an ugly laugh, Luke recalled the name that he had sworn never to repeat, not since he had renounced his own criminal ways in favour of his new career as God’s obedient servant. That name was Slim Jim Jackson. But he was horribly withered, pale, breathless and unwell. Alcohol or drugs had left him very shaky as he tried to match mouth and cigar at his lips. His suit was shiny, his shoes needed a polish, although a new black hat sat high on his greasy grey hair. The fedora, set at a jaunty angle, was part Cavalier and part gangster. Most of all he recognised the sunken eyes. Their glint of green was as hard as jade or did he imagine it? At this distance his mind ran riot.
Like Mel McAtree in his Homburg, Slim Jim was no spring chicken.
Both ex-cons behaved as if they were about to embark on some tense vacation.
Luke tracked them shop by shop as they strolled along.
‘Stay close, Sash.’
Neither man seemed to know where they wanted to go. They looked in numerous doorways and windows. Then, at last, they entered a newsagent’s shop. When they re-emerged they walked as far as an old red Mercedes. Once seated inside, they spread their newly bought map across its steering wheel.
They wanted to re-acquaint themselves with the local area, Luke decided, as he ducked quickly by.
In particular he saw the hand that did the pointing. Those ugly blue letters that were tattooed on those powerful knuckles were as fresh to him now as they had been twenty-five years ago.
Mel started the car’s engine.
Drove off towards the river.
*
The moment Luke began to ride his bicycle, blood burst from his nose. It bled so copiously that he felt obliged to dismount.
Each annoying red splash on the pavement added to his already peculiar disequilibrium.
That he was now in dire need of a coffee went without saying.
That reassuring sense of feeling at home in Berkeley evaporated as he quickly became aware of the alarmed look that people were giving him as he pushed his bicycle along.
Each time he saw them whisper to each other he was secretly enraged. It was not his fault if they chose to see in his red-smeared face only a certain disdain for their provincial nervousness. No man of God should have to endure such disagreeable and blundering gawkers.
He dived into the only place that he knew to settle his shattered nerves.
The waitress looked up the moment he walked into the tearooms.
‘Americano. Half a shot. Am I right?’
‘Please.’
‘You got a problem, reverend? You’re all bloody.’
He put a hand to his face.
‘It’s nothing.’
So saying, he took his phone from his pocket ready to ring Ellie. The numbers danced as he dithered then changed his mind. Better not rock the boat for the moment until he could work out what the hell to do.
‘If it’s nothing, reverend, then why are you shaking?’
‘Forget it. You wouldn’t understand.’
The waitress fixed her hazel-coloured eyes on his as she took his credit card.
‘You really grow up round here, reverend?’
‘Sort of.’
It occurred to him that her question had all the charm of an inquisitor.
‘The name’s Sandy by the way.’
The colour of her hair matched her name.
‘Nice to meet you, Sandy.’
‘This is a quiet town. Very quiet. And these are quiet tearooms. Doesn’t mean I don’t get to hear disquieting things, though.’
‘Really?’
Sandy lowered her voice.
‘Somebody in the next room has been asking after you.’
‘Who?’
‘Eva Greene. She’s the crime reporter for the local Echo.’
‘I don’t care who she is.’
Sandy smeared her hands on her apron. Shot him a smile.
‘Better watch that one. She’s like a dog with a bone when she scents a story.’
‘Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind.’
Luke took Sasha a bowl of water in the cobbled yard. He returned to think about the revenants that he had so narrowly avoided from the murky depths of his past. Or, to be exact, from his parents’ past. He clenched both fists on the counter. His stomach heaved. Thought he was going to have to run to the toilet. Throw up into its bowl.
His liver secreted a bitterness deep inside him that went far beyond any bile.
The only other customer continued to sit quietly at her table. She observed him past the archway that divided the tearooms into two.
Meanwhile Sandy grew chattier.
‘My mum liked your sermon on Sunday.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Let’s hope you fare better than the last vicar.’
‘Why? What happened to him?’
‘Did no one tell you? He quit in a hurry.’
‘Yeah. Why was that exactly?’
Sandy inspected her nails.
‘A Fisheries patrol boat found his lover dead in the river. They buried him last week in St. Mary’s graveyard.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Stephen Rivers. Ironic, huh. Rivers drowns in a river. After their civil marriage, he and Reverend James were due to have their reception at the castle on the 6th of August. Still no one knows how he came to fall out of his boat.’
Luke sipped his coffee.
‘As it happens, I ran into the funeral.’
‘The poor soul was only twenty-eight but some people will be glad to see him go.’
‘Surely not?’
‘Stephen was in favour of the new nuclear power station near here. So was Reverend James, come to that.’
To which he said nothing.
‘What’s up, reverend? Cat get your tongue?’
‘Why should it?’
‘Some people say you plan to sell your grandmother’s home to the developers? Is that right?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Yeah, so tell us your real plan, reverend,’ said a voice behind him.
Luke glanced over his shoulder. His eavesdropper had decided to join him, after all.
‘Doesn’t mean I can’t drink my coffee in peace.’
Light from the room’s chandelier lit the woman’s face in sly little shadows. Her jet coloured eyes nurtured all kinds of conspiracies attributing characteristics of the darkest kind.
‘Come, reverend, don’t be rude. I just want to say hi.’
‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘Didn’t Sandy tell you? I’m Eva Greene.’
‘I remember now. I saw you at the head of Stephen’s funeral procession? You and and another woman were helping Reverend James walk along.’
‘It’s a tragedy.’
‘You knew Stephen well?’
‘I should say so. He worked in my office as a reporter, like me. We even went running together every Sunday.’
Eva’s profile was that of a young person in widow’s weeds, Luke noted. Everything about her black boots, gloves and jet necklace sought to express her Gothic grief. Her long hair and fingernails were black, her thin cheeks colourless, her mouth similarly withered with dry, cracked lips which seemed forever on the defensive. She was small and lean but with broad shoulders – an athlete, no less. He was annoyed, too, when her eyes grew moist – annoyed and a trifle alarmed. Surely no one should shed tears for the dead in public?
‘Forgive me, reverend, it’s all been such a shock.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Oh, spare me the platitudes. You think the world has ended because I miss him? I’ve put him in the ground and now I’m ready to move on. He’s dead, unfortunately, but that’s as it should be. I can never bring him back. Nothing can be allowed to be worse than it is.’
‘Damn rig
ht.’
Eva lifted her face. Her look was haggard but in her dark, bewitching eyes a light burned bright.
‘You’re ‘Lucky’ Luke Lyons, all right. You’re Rex Lyons’s and Jess Kennedy’s son.’
‘You don’t want to go there. Believe me. That’s a very bad idea.’
Eva leaned on the counter.
‘What’s not to like, reverend? I wish I had parents who robbed stately homes. Most days nothing exciting ever happens round here.’
‘I’d love to talk about me but I have to go.’
‘Hell. Relax, reverend, what is it with you? I’m just messing with you. Your parents were a real Bonnie and Clyde. Just think, all those stolen antiques have never been retrieved. All that gold and silver is still waiting to be found. I wonder where?’
‘Why are you even asking? My father was most likely murdered because of it. My mother abandoned me and moved to Spain and can’t resist bragging about it. Isn’t that bad enough?’
‘Still, you must ask yourself what it would feel like to be really, really rich? You must at least want to believe in the treasure’s existence?’
Luke went to move his cup of coffee to a distant table.
‘What would I get if I did?’
Eva winked.
‘Perhaps you’d get divine inspiration.’
He resolved not to be intimidated by any reporter’s unwelcome presence, yet he did start at her impertinence. True, he would have been insulted had such a spy chosen not to take any interest in someone like him; he also assumed that she would not have had the presumption.
She really should have guessed with whom she was dealing, though.
He would have held a gun to her face not so long ago for merely alluding to that treasure.
Never was it wise to give someone like him dangerous ideas.
*
It was best to collect Sasha and cycle home with his head held high while he still could, Luke decided.
On the way he would call in to see Ellie at Floodgates Farm.
The grieving reporter stood at the window to watch him go, he noted, as he glanced back at the teashops.
And then into his thoughts came the unbidden certainty that something was going to happen, that he should soon see her again as now, but not accidentally. Eva’s gaze logged his course automatically without a word, in its own special dead reckoning which only saw him peddle harder.
He seldom knew whether or when to respond to friendship, anyway, since he was always happier with silence rather than heartily voiced feelings. He never knew how correctly to size up the sincerity of the offer.
That night the telephone rang in the gloomy hall in the vicarage.
‘Who’s this?’ said Luke, raising the heavy, old-fashioned receiver to his ear.
‘The tin tabernacle. Friday night. Eight o’clock.’
24
Naked, he was somewhat miffed. The more he confirmed that his girth was still fifty-one inches, the less he could deny that he had eaten far too much yesterday.
‘Why am I being so hard on myself?’ Jorge asked himself airily. ‘Why listen to self-styled experts on dieting when they are so moralising? It’s like a new Grand Inquisition conducted via television, books and social media. I will be my own person.’
But being his own person did not result from protesting, ‘I will not give into the Fat Fascists,’ or from binning his sloppy white chia pudding and hazelnut and raisin energy balls.
He felt guilty at his own guilt, no matter how many times he denied all the extempore or written discourses delivered from Instagram by way of semi-religious instruction and exhortation.
Food nowadays was almost a religious or moral subject.
A present day Sermon on the Mount would, he was sure, include the Eleventh Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not eat nice things’.
He fiddled with the eel-like tape measure, icy cold as it was against his skin, but could not ‘lose’ more than half an inch.
‘Really?’ he said to his mirror in the vicarage’s antiquated bathroom. ‘Must a few extra kilos of abdominal fat cells mean that I mess up all the insulin in my body when I have no sign of cardiovascular diseases, rheumatism, asthma or cancer? Once in heaven, everyone can surely eat what they jolly well like, anyway? Should I literally make myself miserable in this life just to earn as much food as I can in the next?’
Slowly, undeniably, he became aware of the steady pattering of paws outside the bathroom – prowling, impatient, progressively angrier.
‘All right Sasha. I’m coming.’
It was mid-afternoon when, with some peculiar intuition that he could not yet fathom, Jorge arrived at the door of Angel Cottage in the village of Hill.
He could discount his feeling of apprehension but not of foreboding as he opened a blue wooden gate to an overgrown lawn that was littered with rotting fir cones.
Sasha stopped to wee against an overturned bucket. Aimed at its galvanised sides in an attitude that had nothing less than contempt in it.
‘That bitch yours, officer?’
Jorge spun round. Called Sasha to heel. The speaker who had voiced the complaint was spectacularly lame. She could also have been said to be very striking, despite being in her eighties, with dyed pink hair, very bony features, long nose and pointed chin. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of the peaked cap on his head and then at the insignia on his shirt’s epaulettes, so similar to that worn by a regular police inspector.
‘Barbara Jennings, I presume?’
‘Don’t know about that.’
Jorge was of the instant opinion that she did not suffer fools lightly. Her dark, rose-coloured pashmina coat folded at her waist over her long moleskin riding skirt. Her bare, muddy knuckles were a sea of veins as she held a long-handled axe in both her hands. She glared at him with bright azure eyes.
It was a look to be ignored at his peril.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you. My name is Inspector Jorge Winter. You remember me?’
‘You that vicar’s son?’
‘It was many years ago.’
‘You’re Tom Winter’s boy.’
‘I’m here to investigate the disappearance of Reverend Luke Lyons. The thing is, I’m feeling a bit of a stranger in my own village. Perhaps you can help me?’
‘You got that wrong, Inspector.’
‘I’ve been told that you were one of the last people to see Reverend Lyons alive. Am I right?’
‘You asking me?’
‘You did meet him in the vicarage garden, did you not?’
‘No one said a word to me about you coming.’
‘I’ve been hired by the Bishop of Gloucester to lead a new force of constables to guard its Cathedral.’
‘You a policeman now?’
‘Consider it official Church business.’
Barbara redoubled her grip on her axe.
‘Keep that dog off my bluebells! If you crush the leaves they won’t flower.’
‘Come back here Sasha,’ said Jorge firmly.
Sasha wrinkled her nose at him. Sat down. Scratched a flea in her ear.
‘You want to talk to me, Inspector?’ said Barbara. ‘Make yourself useful. Fetch me some wood off that wheelbarrow. My hip’s playing me up something awful today.’
Jorge feared for his coat. That load of old logs by the front door looked messy and full of snails.
‘How well were you acquainted with Reverend Lyons?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘But you did like him, right? In the beginning?’
‘A man like that can inspire a lot of devotion, Inspector. He exuded charisma when he spoke to us in St. Mary’s on Sundays. He shared stories of his violent past with us. God had saved him and shown him the way, he said. As such he was an example to us all.’
‘He been in touch at all? Any phone calls? Any postcards?’
She lowered her axe and leaned on its long, tapered handle; used it to prop her worn-out hip to keep herself upright.
; ‘Seriously?’
‘You think he’s dead, do you?’
‘Who knows? Who cares? I hope he drowns in hell. I don’t know why I wasted my time on someone so fraudulent and cruel.’
Her change of tone was startling.
‘It really is important that I find out how he came to vanish.’
‘What can I say? He left us all in the lurch. You coming in, or what?’
Barbara pointed again at the freshly chopped logs in the rusty wheelbarrow.
No firewood, no entry.
Suffocatingly smoky the cottage smelt, too, beneath its very low ceilings. A polished brass shell casing from the Second World War served as both umbrella and walking stick stand in the narrow hallway. The living room’s bare floorboards creaked under his boots while in its ancient and blackened fireplace a fire gently smouldered.
Centuries of dirt were engrained in the ceiling’s exposed beams. It was like being below decks in a very old ship.
Sasha, however, went straight to the hearth with its pile of chopped wood and sniffed something.
‘You let that awful dog in,’ complained Barbara, snarling at Sasha, but declined to go anywhere near her.
‘Now that we’re all inside and being friendly, did Reverend Lyons ever mention to you that he was looking for buried treasure?’
‘You want some tea, Inspector?’
‘That would be nice.’
‘You haven’t tasted my tea.’
Barbara ducked worm-eaten rafters into a modern but untidy kitchen that had been built on to the back of the cottage.
Jorge followed as far as the door. Pots and pans needed a good clean. Through the large window he could just see the serpentine glint of the River Severn snaking beyond the fields.
‘Did you notice anything odd about Reverend Lyons in his final days?’ he asked upon their return to the fireside. He failed to see anywhere suitable to sit down.
‘Most definitely something came to obsess him, Inspector. He changed.’
‘For the better or worse?’
Barbara set a tray down on a table in front of them both.
‘Mary Brenner knew more about it than me.’
Jorge dusted a chair with his sleeve.
‘Mary Brenner? Who’s she?’
‘Another one of our congregation. She had great hopes of the reverend, too, in the beginning.’