‘No strong singers?’

  ‘A small pool. Bede could sing. Anselm has a nice voice. Sebastian tries. But Placid and Darren . . .’

  ‘I suppose you get what you get. We had some fine voices when I was here.’

  ‘Oh, they can sing. Or they could if they didn’t hate each other. You know how it is, singing plainsong reveals the man, exposes the secrets of the heart, and all that.’

  Yes, it does, thought Daniel.

  ‘It will change, I suppose, with Bede’s death. Get worse probably.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They both hated Bede. Now he’s gone, there’s nothing to dilute their loathing for each other.’

  ‘Unusual for a brother to alienate two such different personalities.’

  ‘Bede could annoy anyone. So top-of-the-class, so lacking in self-awareness.’

  That sounded like something he had read somewhere, thought Daniel. ‘Not the sort of thing that is usually unmanageable. It takes more than that.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, Anselm hated him because he left the door open to the hen coop and all his pretties were killed by the fox, and then he argued against having a hen funeral. It was bitter. And Darren hated him – well, Darren hates everyone – for not being solid enough on priestesses. I think the vote on that subject is too much for him. I think he’ll cross the Tiber. What about you?’

  ‘I’d quite forgotten about it,’ said Daniel. ‘What happened at Synod?’

  ‘It voted in favour. The way ahead is clear. First priestesses should be up and running in a couple of years. So, will you?’

  ‘What?’ said Daniel.

  ‘Cross the Tiber?’

  ‘Become a Roman Catholic? No.’

  ‘Me neither. I’ll stay if I can. Why should I leave the Church I love because it has . . . what do they call it? A moment of madness? But they’ll have to work out something solid for us. Some sort of provision. Protect us from the apostasy of our turncoat bishops. But imagine a Church of England communion lady trying to ordain someone?’

  ‘It will come,’ said Daniel. ‘Change always does. Look at East Germany. Look at the Soviet Union. The old order changeth yielding place to the new . . .’

  ‘But this is the Church, Father.’

  ‘Which changes like everything else.’

  ‘Not on something as fundamental as this.’

  ‘Actually, it does. Lending money at interest was condemned by Scripture and the teaching of the Church for centuries, unequivocally. The sin of usury. Change was unthinkable. And then trade and capital and banks remade the world, and it became expedient and necessary and the Church profited from it even while the popes continued to condemn it. The Reformation could not have happened without it, for the rise of the merchant class followed, a fact conveniently forgotten when people condemn things for not being biblical.’

  ‘That may be so, I couldn’t say, but unlike priestesses, it is not a first-order issue, Father.’

  ‘That’s my point. It was, once. And then things changed.’

  Augustine looked affronted. ‘So, you’re in favour?’

  ‘It’s not like that for me. It’s like joining the EEC. I don’t have passionate feelings about commercial and political convergence in Europe; if it happens, it happens. What difference does it make? God is still God. Jesus is still our Saviour.’

  ‘But how will he save us if the Sacraments of the Church are made worthless?’

  ‘By the agency of women priests?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘I used to get worked up about these things, but now whenever I stand at the altar and hold in my hands the broken body of Christ, entrusted to me for the salvation of souls . . . if God wills it that I can, anyone can.’

  ‘I am disappointed in you, Father.’

  ‘I’m not here to appoint you, Augustine.’

  Augustine trembled. Then he said, ‘I am the hebdomadary this week, Father, and I have to ring the Compline bell. Some traditions we still uphold,’ and he turned in a rather Bette Davis sort of way, which did not really work, for it required a sort of brittleness he could achieve in temperament but not in stature.

  Daniel stepped back slightly as he left, feeling the force of his anger, but it receded and as Augustine started to ring the bell it faded to the point where he no longer felt even the hint of the anxiety confrontation normally provoked in him. Daniel was no longer a member of this community, and its passions, both obvious and obscure, were not his. He had his own passions to deal with. He was heartbroken, devastated, beside himself – he liked that expression for its explicit out-of-body-ness – in a predicament that was causing him self-doubt he had never experienced before.

  No longer a member. So why, when he settled into the precentor’s stall, did he feel immediately at home? He had felt the same way in the novitiate when he served as precentor there, as if he had discovered who he was. But this was not an arrival, it was a return. ‘Always we begin again.’ I should be here, he thought. I should always have been here. I’ve never really left.

  Augustine went and lit the candles on the altar, and then extinguished all the lights in the church one by one until only one shone faintly over the entrance from the cloister. Daniel heard the sigh as the organ bellows inflated on the balcony at the west end.

  Then came another sighing sound as the double doors from the cloister opened and then the swish-swish of the brethren arriving, hooded according to custom, with the abbot at the rear. When all were in their places Aelred rapped on his stall and the service began in darkness, for all knew it by heart, save Daniel, who kept the desk light on in his stall so he could read the antiphon for the Nunc dimittis.

  When it came Daniel opened his mouth to sing and something unexpectedly beautiful happened. The words and the plainsong and his voice and spirit joined and rose into the darkness of the church, alone at first – ‘let your light so shine, O Lord, upon us’ – and then the brethren joined their voices with his, a bit ragged at first, and individual, with startling variations in tone, accuracy and beauty, but Daniel’s line was so strong and true that he hauled the others with it so that by the time they reached the little cluster of notes around ‘that the darkness of our hearts being wholly done away’, they were singing as one. As one? There was no loss of individuality – he was who he was, Aelred was Aelred, Augustine was Augustine, Sebastian was Sebastian – but they had become gloriously one in singing the praise of God.

  You silver swan, Daniel, thought Aelred, which opened its throat to pour forth melody before expiring, because there was nothing lovelier left for it to do.

  ‘In peace we will lie down and sleep,’ Aelred said.

  ‘For you alone, Lord, make us dwell in safety,’ the community replied.

  Daniel was sitting at the desk in his room. He had the little icon of the Anastasis in front of him, Jesus hauling the souls of the lost out of the pit of hell, lit by a tea light.

  There was a rap on the door. Daniel opened it and let Neil in.

  ‘How was Sergeant Bainbridge?’

  ‘Forthcoming. Suspicious, but forthcoming,’ said Neil.

  ‘And?’

  ‘You were right. There’s more than one, actually. But it is as you thought.’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Aelred, I suppose, as Abbot. Maybe our suspect has a confessor among the brethren too? Sergeant Bainbridge, of course. What do you want me to do?’

  Daniel indicated to him to sit in the armchair. ‘What I said.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Leave,’ said Daniel.

  Neil looked surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘Better that way.’

  Neil was silent. Then he said, ‘I thought we had got beyond this, Dan.’

  ‘That’s because you want to be beyond this. I am not. I want you to go back to Champton and Honoria.’

  ‘But what are you going to do?’

  ‘I have to make some decisions,’ said Daniel.

  Neil said, ‘Hang on. We are trying to establish a murder. And find a murderer. Personal stuff will have to wait.’

  ‘I want you to do something for me on the way home.’

  ‘Now you’re being mysterious,’ said Neil.

  ‘I need you to visit someone – I’ll tell you who and where, and I want you to show him something.’

  ‘What is this about?’

  Daniel handed him a piece of paper. On it there was a sketch of a cross with equal arms terminating in four arrowheads. In the centre of the cross was a cipher that looked like a capital I.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I shall spend tomorrow morning talking to Mr and Mrs Corbett and suggest they wait a while before deciding the burial arrangements for their son.’

  ‘OK. Any messages for home?’ asked Neil.

  ‘Warmest regards. Fondest wishes. Assurance of prayers.’

  ‘Got it.’

  Neil made to go, but when his hand was on the doorknob Daniel said, ‘More than one?’

  ‘Yes. According to Dennis that white-haired little gnome has form too.’

  ‘Colin,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Colin Cummings.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Daniel. ‘He says he’s a scholar on sabbatical.’

  ‘He may be a scholar but he’s on licence, not sabbatical,’ said Neil.

  ‘So I gathered. What for?’

  ‘Manslaughter. Long-running argument with a neighbour about motorbikes. Kept him awake when he revved them. So Colin set fire to their garage. Whole house went up. Killed the neighbour and his wife and their two-year-old.’

  ‘How long did he serve?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘This was in the early Sixties and he hasn’t been out that long. Finished up at HMP Ford with more degrees than you. Do you think he’s . . . a person of interest?’

  ‘I do,’ said Daniel. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Why would he want to murder Bede?’

  ‘He burnt a whole family alive for keeping him awake at night.’

  14

  Neil arrived at Braunstonbury Police Station after his long drive back from Ravenspurn, a journey made longer by the diversion to Oxford, where he had called in at St Kilda’s College, identified himself to the porter and enquired if he could please speak to Dr Keschner on a matter of high importance. Fortunately, Dr Keschner was in his rooms trying on a pair of shoes he had just collected from Ducker’s, made to order for a considerable sum.

  He sat down on the sofa opposite the detective sergeant, whom he had installed in the armchair in which he usually put students for tutorials, poured two cups of tea, offered his visitor one of the Bahlsen Jubilee biscuits he had brought back from Germany on his last visit, and spread his feet in a rather overdone V to show off the perfect loveliness and soft gleam of his conker-coloured Oxfords.

  Neil did not notice the shoes and Dr Keschner soon forgot about them after Neil told him of the death of Brother Bede. When he had collected himself, Neil showed him the sheet of paper with the peculiar cross drawn on it and then asked him the questions Daniel had asked him to take down in his notebook.

  They spoke for twenty minutes. Dr Keschner went to his study and found some papers. ‘I shall get them photocopied for you. The secretary will do it for me now if I ask nicely. If you would like to come with me?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Neil.

  They made their way down the staircase and across the quad to the college office. Ten minutes later they stood at the gate, Neil holding a manila envelope. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Dr Keschner, thank you. And if anything occurs to you, could you please call me?’ He gave him his card.

  ‘Can you tell me what this is about, Detective Sergeant? If I knew more, I may be able to tell you more.’

  ‘Not at liberty at the moment, Sir.’

  ‘I have an idea what it may be about,’ said Dr Keschner.

  ‘We’ll be in touch, Sir. Thank you for your time.’

  Neil drove back to Braunstonbury feeling a peculiar mix of urgency – the hunter closing in on his prey – and calmness too, because the kind of trap Daniel was setting was not the kind he could imagine the murderer escaping. They never escaped, they never tried to, because whenever Daniel was after someone, or something from them, he would use neither carrot nor stick, but rather mobilise the essential qualities of the person concerned to reveal who they really were; and then all was revealed, all ‘the secrets of the heart’ as Daniel called them, and there was nowhere to go after that.

  Neil remembered a conversation he’d had with Daniel about the devil, a lively and terrifying presence in his childhood growing up in a religious community that renounced ‘the lies and deceits of Satan’, but which he now saw as a sort of folk superstition designed to make evil explicable. He assumed Daniel, whose piety was more pilot light than furnace, would think the same, but he did not. ‘Sometimes,’ he’d said, ‘I have thought I have encountered active evil, an evil of purpose, evil with agency. Not an absence, a presence. I feel it prickle, like the witches in Macbeth, when people destroy themselves and others not through wickedness, but through having their goodness turned against them. It is the deadliest of weapons. What turns good into that? It takes something.’

  Back at the station, Neil waited until three for Daniel to call. The phone rang as three o’clock struck.

  ‘Hello, Daniel,’ he said, ‘looks like you were right. I talked to Dr Keschner and he gave me some documents that you need to see.’

  ‘Urgently,’ said Daniel. ‘There’s a Chapter of Faults for the novitiate tomorrow after Matins. Can you come back?’

  Neil sighed. ‘To Ravenspurn? Dan, I’ve . . . got something to do.’

  ‘Honoria,’ said Daniel.

  ‘I am summoned to her presence. But look, I can fax them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘There must be a fax at Ravenspurn?’

  ‘Which everyone has access to,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Same at Ravenspurn Police Station. Any ideas?’

  Daniel thought for a moment. ‘Yes. Can you hang on till I call back? Say half an hour?’

  ‘Like the fookin’ bus, but slower,’ said Alma. ‘Pardon my French, love.’

  Daniel and Alma had just made the quarter-to-four train from Ravenspurn. It was misleadingly called a Sprinter and rattled slowly along the Calder Valley line connecting York to Manchester. Daniel remembered taking its less immodestly named predecessor once from Leeds to Preston, and as it heaved itself over the Pennines a terrible thunderstorm broke. In flashes of lightning, a howling wind and drumming rain, the driver’s Yorkshire-accented voice came on the PA to say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen . . . welcome to Lancashire.’

  They would not be going so far today, just a couple of stops to Hebden Bridge, where Donna, Alma’s niece, awaited at the library.

  ‘Mytholmroyd,’ said Alma absentmindedly as the train pulled out of the station. ‘Sounds like something from Dungeons and Dragons.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘It’s a game the lads are all playing, like Monopoly only with wizards and dwarves and mortal combat.’

  ‘Ted Hughes’s hometown,’ said Daniel. ‘Doesn’t he write about the cliffs?’

  ‘Scout Rock,’ said Alma and nodded towards the window, ‘that’s it over there. It overhangs the town, like Aberfan.’ She made a gloomy face and Daniel thought of his mother, who shared with Alma a relish for disaster, and wondered if that was one of the reasons why he liked her so much.

  After he had spoken to Neil, he’d found the piece of card on which Alma had written her telephone number and called it. Was there a fax machine at Hebden Library and would Donna be able to receive an urgent fax for him? Alma said to call her back in a minute. As he replaced the receiver, he saw there was a lady waiting outside the phone box in the intensifying gloom and strengthening rain. She rapped on the glazed door with her ten-pence piece.

  ‘I’m waiting, love,’ she said.

  Daniel politely stepped aside and held the door open for her. ‘Will you be long?’ he asked. ‘Only I’ve got to call someone back and it’s urgent.’

  ‘It will take as long as it takes,’ said the lady and put down her bag with the air of someone settling in. ‘If it’s that urgent, there’s another phone box at the station.’ She produced from her bag a cache of ten-pence pieces, which she proceeded to stack as the door closed behind her.

  Daniel had rushed to the station down the long lane that led through the town and over the canal. The phone box outside was one of the old ones, lit the colour of pale urine, smelling of the same, and empty. The handset was battered and sticky, but it worked, so he called Alma back.

  Yes, she said, there was a fax at Hebden Library, and this was the number. Donna would make sure it all came through, and he would have to fetch his coat and meet her at Ravenspurn train station. ‘Already there,’ he said.

  He had called Neil at Braunstonbury Police Station to give him the fax number, but he had used up all his ten-pence pieces and had to use a fifty, an extravagance that he thought in an absentminded way he should justify by having a conversation about the weather, but Neil, with a note of testiness that Daniel felt more keenly than he should, had said he had to go.

  Alma had been quiet for a while. Then she said, ‘Tough place.’

  ‘Mytholmroyd?’

  ‘The whole valley. “Valley” sounds like something from England’s green and pleasant land, doesn’t it?’ said Alma. ‘But there’s a dark, wet wound in the rock round here. Good place for a monastery.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘Dark and wounded. Monks are drawn to all that, aren’t they? And so many of you lads had darkness and wounds of your own, right?’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘I don’t know. All that time staring at a man with a gaping gash in his side, dead on a cross. Why don’t you just . . . live your life? This life, the here and now, like our Donna?’

  ‘I don’t know, Alma. I suppose because of what lies on the other side of the cross. New life. Life transformed.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what lies on the other side of the cross, Crispin. Hebden Bridge.’

 

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