A Taste for Death (2 page)

And now, as always, with dramatic suddenness, it loomed before them. They passed through the turnstile in the canal railings and took the gravel path to the porch of the south door, the one to which Miss Wharton had a key. This led to the Little Vestry where she would hang up her coat and to the kitchen where she would wash out the vases and arrange the fresh flowers. As they reached the door she glanced down at the small flower bed which gardeners in the congregation were trying to cultivate with more optimism than success in the unrewarding soil at the side of the path.

'Oh look, Darren, how pretty. The first dahlias. I never thought they'd flower. No, don't pick them. They look so nice there.' He had bent down, his hand among the grasses but as she spoke he straightened up and thrust a grubby fist into his pocket.

'Don't you want 'em for the BVM?'

'We've got your uncle's roses for Our Lady.' If only

t were his uncle's! I shall have to ask him, she thought.

can't go on like this, offering Our Lady stolen flowers, if were stolen. But suppose they weren't and I accuse

I shall destroy everything there is between us. I can't him now. And it might put the idea of theft into his head. The half-remembered phrases fell into her mind; Crrupting innocence, an occasion of sin. She thought, I Shall have to think about it. But not now, not yet.

She rummaged in her handbag for the key on its wooden key ring and tried to fit it into the lock. But she couldn't get it in. Puzzled, but not yet worried, she tried the dorknob and the heavy iron bound door swung open. It Was already unlocked, a key in place on the other side. The passage was quiet, unlit, the oak door to the Little Vestry on the left tightly closed. So Father Barnes must already be here. But how strange that he should arrive before her. And why hadn't he left on the passage light? Aa her gloved hand found the switch, Darren scampered Past her, up to the wrought iron grille which separated the passage from the nave of the church. He liked to light a candle when they arrived, thrusting thin arms through .the grille to reach the candleholder and the coin box. Early r their walk she had handed him the usual tenpenny Piece, and now she heard a faint tinkle and watched while he stuck his candle in the socket, and reached for the nlatches in their brass holder.

And it was then, in that moment, that she felt the first tvitch of anxiety. Some premonition alerted her subcon-SCious; earlier disquiets and a vague sense of unease came tgether and focused into fear. A faint smell, alien yet hqrribly familiar; the sense of a recent presence; the pos-sible significance of that unlocked outer door; the dark Passageway. Suddenly she knew that something was

dreadfully wrong. Instinctively she called out:

'Darren!'

He turned and looked at her face. And then, immedi he was back at her side.

Gently at first, and then with one sharp movement, she opened the door. Her eyes dazzled with light. The 'long fluorescent tube which disfigured the ceiling was on, its brightness eclipsing the gentle glow from the passageway. And she saw horror itself.

There were two of them and she knew instantly, and with absolute certainty, that they were dead. The room was a shambles. Their throats had been cut and they lay like butchered animals in a waste of blood. Instinctively she thrust Darren behind her. But she was too late. He, too, had seen. He didn't scream but she felt him tremble and he made a small, pathetic groan, like an angry puppy. She pushed him back into the passage, closed the door, and leaned against it. She was aware of a desperate coldness, of the tumultuous thudding of her heart. It seemed to have swollen in her chest, huge and hot, and its painful drumming shook her frail body as if to burst it apart. And the smell, which at first had been tentative, elusive, no more than an alien tincture on the air, now seemed to seep into the passage with the strong effluvium of death.

She pressed her back against the door, grateful for the support of its solid carved oak. But neither its strength nor her tightly closed eyes could shut out horror. Brighfiy lit as on a stage, she saw the bodies still, more garish, more brightly lit than when they had first met her horrified eyes. One corpse had slipped from the low single bed to the right of the door and lay staring up at her, the mouth open, the head almost cleft from the body. She saw again the severed vessels, sticking like corrugated pipes through the clotted blood. The second was propped, ungainly as a rag doll, against the far wall. His head had dropped forward and over his chest a great mat of blood had spread like a bib. A brown and blue woollen cap was still on his head but askew. His right eye was hidden but the left leered at her with a dreadful knowingness. Thus mutilated, it seemed to her everything human had drained away from them with their blood; life, identity, dignity. They no longer looked like men. And the blood was everywhere. It

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seemed to her that she herself was drowning in blood. Blood drummed in her ears, blood gurgled like vomit in her throat, blood splashed in bright globules against the retinas of her closed eyes. The images of death she was powerless to shut out swam before her in a swirl of blood, dissolved, reformed, and then dissolved again, but always in blood. And then she heard Darren's voice, felt the tug of his hand on her sleeve.

'We gotta get outer here before the filth arrive. Come on. We ain't seen nothin', nothin'. We ain't been 'ere.'

His voice squeaked with fear. He clutched at her arm. Through the thin tweed, his grubby fingers bit, sharp as teeth. Gently she prised them loose. When she spoke, she was surprised at the calmness of her voice.

'That's nonsense, Darren. Of course they won't suspect

us. Running away.., now that would look suspicious.' She hustled him along the passage.

'I'll stay here. You go for help. We must lock the door. No one must come in. I'll wait here and you fetch Father Barnes. You know the Vicarage? It's the corner flat in that block on Harrow Road. He'll know what to do. He'll call the police.'

'But you can't stay 'ere on your own. Suppose 'e's still here? In the church, waitin' and watchin'? We gotta keep together. OK?'

The authority in his childish voice disconcerted her.

'But it doesn't seem right, Darren, to leave them. Not both of us. It seems, well, callous, wrong. I ought to stay.'

'That's daft. You can't do nothin'. They're dead, stiff. You saw 'em.'

He made a swift gesture of drawing a knife across his throat, roiled up his eyes and gagged. The sound was horribly realistic, a gush of blood in the throat. She cried out:

'Oh don't, Darren, please don't!'

Immediately he was conciliatory, his voice calmer. He put his hand in hers. 'Better come along with me to Father Barnes.' She looked down at him, piteously, as if she were the child.

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'If you think so, Darren.'

He had regained his mastery now. 'The small body almost swaggered. 'Yeah, that's what I think. Come along with me.' He was excited. She heard it in the raised treble, saw it in the bright eyes. He was no longer shocked and he wasn't really upset. It had been silly to think that she needed to protect him from the horror. That spurt of fea' at the thought of the police had passed. Brought up on those bright flickering images of violence, could he distin-guish between them arid reality, she wondered. Perhaps il was more merciful that, protected by his innocence, he shouldn't be able to. He put a thin arm around her shoulders, helping her to the door and she leaned against him, feeling the sharp bones under her arm.

'How kind he is,' she thought, 'how sweet, this dear, dear child.' She would have to talk to him about the flowers and the salmoaa. But she needn't think about that now, not now.

They were outside. The air, fresh and cold, smelled tc her as sweet as a sea breeze. But when, together, they had pulled shut the heavy door with its iron decorated bands she found she couldn't fit the key into the lock. Her finger.. were jumping rhythmically, as if in spasm. He took the key from her and, stretching high, thrust it into the lock. And then her legs geratly folded and she subsided slowly'

on the step, ungainly s a marionette. I-Ie looked at her. 'You afl right?'

'I'm afraid I can't x,alk, Darren. I'll be better soon. Bu!

I have to stay here. Yu fetch Father Barnes. But hurry!' As he still hesitated, she said:

'The murderer, he can't still be inside. The door was unlocked when we arrived. He must have left after he'd- he wouldn't hang about irside waiting to be caught, would he?

How odd, she thought, that my mind can reason thai out while my body serns to have given up.

But it was true. He couldn't still be there, hiding in the church, knife in han!. Not unless they had died ver) recently. But the bloocl hadn't looked fresh... Or had it? Her bowels suddenly hurned. Oh God, she prayed, don'!

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let that happen, not now. I'll never get to the lavatory. I can't make it past that door. She thought of the humili-ation, of Father Barnes coming, the police. It was bad

enough to be slumped here like a heap of old clothes. 'Hurry,' she said. 'I'll be all right. But hurry?

He made off, running very fast. When he had gone, she still lay there, fighting the terrible loosening of her bowels, the need to vomit. She tried to pray but, strangely, the words seemed to have got muddled up. 'May the souls of the righteous, in the mercy of Ghrist, rest in peace.' But perhaps they hadn't been the righteous. There ought to be a prayer that would do for all men, all the murdered bodies all over the world. Perhaps there was. She would have to ask Father Barnes. He would be sure to know.

And then came a new and different terror. What had she done with her key? She looked down at the one clutched in her hand. This was weighted with a large wooden tag charred at the end where Father Barnes had put it down too close to a gas flame. So this was his spare key, the one he kept at the Vicarage. It must be the one they had found in the lock and she had handed it to Darren to relock the door. So what had she done with hers? She rummaged frantically in her handbag as if the key were a vital clue, its loss disastrous, seeing in imagina-tion a phalanx of accusing eyes, the police demanding she account for it, Father Barnes's tired and dispirited face. But her scrabbling fingers found it safe between her purse and the bag lining, and she drew it out with a moan of relief. She must have automatically put it away when she found the door already open. But how odd that she couldn't remember! Everything was a blank between their arrival and the moment in which she had thrust open the Little Vestry door.

She was aware of a dark shadow looming beside her. She looked up and saw Father Barnes. Relief flooded her heart. She said:

'You've rung the police, Father?'

'Not yet. I thought it was better to see for myself, in case the boy was playing tricks.'

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So they must have stepped past her, into the church, into that dreadful room. How odd that, huddled in the corner, she hadn't even noticed. Impatience rose like vomit in her throat. She wanted to cry out, 'Well now you've seen!' She had thought that when he arrived everything would be all right. No, not all right but better, made sense of. Somewhere there were the right words and he would speak them. But looking at him, she knew that he brought no comfort. She looked up at his face, unattractively blotched by the morning chill, at the grubby stubble, at the two brittle hairs at the corners of his mouth, at the trace of blackened blood in the left nostril, as if he had had a nose bleed, at the eyes, still gummy with sleep. How silly to think that he would bring his strength, would somehow make the horror bearable. He didn't even know what to do. It had been the same over the Christmas decorations. Mrs Noakes had always done the pulpit, ever since Father Collins's time. And then Lily Moore had sug-gested that it wasn't fair, that they ought to take tums at the pulpit and the font. He should hae made up his mind and stood firm. It was always the same. But what a time to be thinking of Christmas decorations, her mind a tangle of hollyberries and gaudy poinsettias, red as blood. But it hadn't been so very red, more a reddish brown.

Poor Father Barnes, she thought, irritation dissolving into sentimentality. He's a failure like me, both failures. She was aware of Darren shivering beside her. Someone ought to take him home. Oh God, she thought, what will this do to him, to both of us? Father Barnes was still standing beside her, twisting the doorkey in his ungloved hands. She said, gently:

'Father, we have to get the police.'

'The police. Of course. Yes, we must call the police. I'll phone from the Vicarage.'

But still he hesitated. On an impulse she asked:

'Do you know them, Father?'

'Oh yes, yes. The tramp. That's Harry Mack. Poor Harry. He sleeps in the porch sometimes.'

He didn't need to tell her that. She knew that Harry

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liked to doss down in the porch. She had taken her turn at cleating up after him, the crumbs, the paper bags, the discarded bottles, sometimes even worse things. Sh.e ought to tave recognized Harry, that woollen hat, the jacket. She tried not to dwell on why it was that she hadn't. She asked, with the same gentleness:

'And the other, Father. Did you recognize him?'

He looked down at her. She saw his fear, his be-wilderment, and above all, a kind of astonishment at the enormity of the complications that lay ahead. He said slowly, not looking at her:

'The other is Paul Berowne, Sir Paul Berowne. He is -he was - a Minister of the Crown.'

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As soon as he had left the Commissioner's office and was back in his own room Commander Adam Da/gliesh rang Chief Inspector John Massingham. The receiver was snatched at the first ring and Massingham's disciplined impatience came across as strongly as his voice. Dalgliesh said:

'The Commissioner has had a word with the Home Office. We're to take this one, John. The new squad will officially be in existence on Monday anyway, so we're only jumping the gun by six days. And Paul Berowne may still technically be the Member for Hertfordshire North East. He wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds on Saturday, apparent/y, and no one seems quite sure whether the resignation dates from the day the letter was received or the date the warrant is signed by the Chancellor. Anyway all that is academic. We take the case.'