Ash (25 page)

‘Deal.’ Ash gave one shake of the other man’s proffered hand and tried to convey trust in his expression. ‘Let’s start with the archbishop and his nun, shall we?’

‘Yes, Archbishop Carsely and his votary, Sister Thimble.’ Andrew Derriman ruminated for a few seconds more. Then, he appeared to have made up his mind. ‘There shouldn’t be any harm in explaining the man’s personal circumstances to you. After all, you may come upon others that you’ll recognize, or at least be familiar with, and – who knows? – they might be involved in deeds that have attracted, in the archbishop’s words, “a dark oppressive legion”. Who can truly know?’

Derriman leaned in closer to Ash and his words were hard to catch under the drone of other conversations in the great hall.

‘When he was just a bishop, Carsely’s diocese was in London’s East End. Priests who knew him then and had worked with him in deprived areas were aware that he was abusing children of both sexes. Carsely would tell the children it would be a mortal sin to speak of what happened between them and that if they did so, their souls would be banished to the fiery depths of Hell. He went on pilgrimages to Lourdes with many sick children. Carsely was a learned and respected member of the priesthood and other priests were frightened to expose him. Nevertheless, every so often a priest would try to denounce him, and the Church, fearful of yet more bad publicity, would either move them on to different parishes or abroad on missionary work.’

Derriman shook his head wearily, as if the problem was bearing down on his own shoulders.

‘You may remember the scandal in the Roman Catholic Church when correspondence between American bishops and a future pontiff was made public in the 1990s. The bishops had condemned an American curate who had allegedly abused two hundred deaf children. At the time, the disciplinary division in Rome, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was led by Cardinal Ratzinger, later elevated to Pope. As Cardinal, he failed to respond to the American senior clergy. Eventually the accused priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, died of natural causes and the affair itself was allowed to die.’

Ash hadn’t wanted to interrupt, but he was way ahead of Derriman. ‘You’re going to tell me that Carsely, eventually elevated to archbishop, was a paedophile, so they sent him here to avoid further scandal.’

‘I’m afraid so. Such a high-profile case, you see. It was much, much more damaging that it was an archbishop rather than a mere priest. This was before the problems of paedophilia in the Church became much more notorious. Carsely was brought here to keep a tight lid on his indiscretions. And it worked – he was contained.’

‘I don’t understand why the nun is with him. Sister Thimble?’

Derriman shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘She served him in his parish when he was just a priest, then followed on when he was promoted. She’s devoted to him, even if he is perverted. I think her vocation is to bring him back to God and have him repent his transgressions. Besides, Archbishop Carsely refused to enter Comraich without her. She’d become his faithful servant and remains so.’

‘Sounds kind of creepy.’

The general manager nodded his head. ‘Yes, I suppose it does. But it works.’

Ash watched the ex-archbishop as he made his self-important way down the lengthy marble hall, making a straight path through other guests, blessing them with an imperious sign of the cross as he went. Sister Thimble followed close behind, almost running to keep up with what to her was obviously deity made flesh.

Ash looked questioningly at Derriman. ‘You don’t think . . . ?’

It was as if the stooped general manager had read his thoughts. ‘That she devotes her whole body to the defrocked archbishop if only to keep him appeased? Or perhaps I should say “satiated”?’

‘Well . . .’ Ash let the word hang.

‘No. Our absolute condition of admission was that he be chemically castrated at Comraich to avoid more problems of a sexual nature. Although his preference was for the very young, who knew what substitute he might use once he was here? Sister Thimble acts both as his acolyte and his nurse, administering his medication.’

Ash opened his mouth to speak, but found he had nothing to say. He was too stunned. And he felt sorry for the nun. What had she ever done to be incarcerated, apart from being too loyal for her own good?

‘When the archbishop arrived,’ Derriman went on, disregarding the astonished look on the ghost hunter’s face, ‘he was given a choice of two methods to check hyperarousal and intrusive sexual fantasies. The third method, the complete removal of the testicles, was not even offered as a choice. We’re not barbarians here at Comraich.

‘The first offer was a twice-daily intake of tablets called Androcur, an anti-libidinal drug which opposes the action of testosterone rather than interfering with its production.

‘The second choice was Leuprorelin, which acts on the pituitary gland to halt the production of testosterone. This drug takes the form of a monthly injection.’

‘Is it legal in this country?’ enquired a dismayed Ash.

‘It is now,’ came the swift response. ‘It’s voluntary here. Archbishop Carsely volunteered for the first option. Sister Thimble ensures he takes an Androcur tablet twice a day, and so far they appear to have been effective. There are some side effects, as one would expect from any drug, but none has actually caused the archbishop any distress. Not the best of solutions, I admit, but the best we have at present.’

Both men started walking again until Derriman stopped by a solid-looking door on their left. He knocked loudly, then entered a code on a keypad beside the door. A voice from within called out ‘
Okay
,’ and the lock clicked before the door was opened.

Ash entered behind Derriman, and in a day of shocks, some good, some bad, some confusing, he was taken by surprise yet again.

‘Awesome,’ Ash murmured quietly to himself.

It wasn’t the size of the high-ceilinged room that astonished him, but the sophisticated hi-tech equipment that filled it. It was completely out of context with the venerable building in which it was housed.

This might well have been a mini-control complex for the space shuttle at NASA, but for the juxtaposition of new with old, and that, to Ash, was the shock of it.

Banks of CCTV time- and date-stamped screens filled one wall entirely; three observers sat before them at a long desk filled with computer workstations and joysticks to control the cameras that monitored the entire castle and its grounds. At a second desk uniformed men and women typed and Skyped in various languages. Above a door across the wide room a red warning light shone, while below, on the door itself, bold capital letters announced PROCESSING ROOM. Looking around, Ash took in computers and laptops, more desks occupied by data processors, large flat-screen televisions showing CNN, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera and BBC News 24.

A separate television monitor showed the monochrome interior of the guardroom by the estate’s second set of gates that Ash had passed through earlier that day. Another single monitor revealed the area just outside the first gate by the lodge at Comraich’s initial, innocent-looking first entrance where he’d caught the camera zooming in on him. A third monitor displayed what looked like a docking area for both large and small vehicles and Ash guessed this had to be the castle’s delivery point where vans, lorries and transporters unloaded goods. In fact, there was already an articulated lorry backed up there with several uniformed men transferring cardboard boxes of various sizes onto a raised loading bay.

Ash spotted Kevin Babbage sitting at a desk on a long dais in front of a whiteboard that ran the length of one wall. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie loosened. Babbage’s shoulders somehow looked even broader without his jacket, the shirt stretched as if the muscles beneath were striving to break through. His buzz-cut hairstyle was perfectly suited to the launch-pad activity among his staff, and his granite expression looked as if he would break legs if annoyed.

He stood, pulled on his jacket, straightened his tie and hopped off the dais. Babbage headed straight for Derriman and Ash, ignoring a young, bespectacled man who tried to catch his attention as he went by. Babbage came to a halt directly in front of Ash, ignoring Derriman entirely.

‘You ready to get your hands dirty?’ Babbage’s voice was gruff, suiting his appearance perfectly. He lowered his voice and continued, ‘I suppose you’ll want to see Hoyle’s room first?’

He nodded. ‘Maybe I can pick up some clues there.’

‘This isn’t a detective story,’ Babbage said brusquely, surreptitiously glancing round. ‘We don’t have a murderer here in Comraich.’

‘Maybe not. But
something
killed him and I’d like to find out what. There may be a clue – or a
sensing
– in his room.’

Babbage looked sceptically at Ash.

‘Then the sooner we start the quicker we might achieve a result,’ Derriman interceded, obviously conscious of the friction that was building between the two men.

‘Fine by me.’ Ash gave Babbage a broad but humourless smile and the security chief just offered a grunt.

As the trio descended the steps leading down from the ground floor, Derriman eagerly explained the castle’s different levels and layout. Ash felt the stooped man, bundled up as he was in scarf and thick pullover beneath his coat, might have served better as a professor of history rather than a manager in a covert world of high stakes and nefarious dealings. The Inner Court regime he was part of didn’t seem quite right for a man of his apparent sensibilities.

His guide’s voice sounded more hollow with every step they took down the spiral of worn stone steps, and the air was cooler the lower they went. Ash was glad of his jacket, the collar of which he pulled tight around his neck. Babbage seemed unaffected by the chill.

The castle had six levels above ground, Derriman explained, with many confusing chambers, passageways and turret rooms. The very top rooms, which had access to the battlements, contained the living quarters of Lord Edgar Shawcroft-Draker and Sir Victor. Also the fifth floor was the castle’s chapel which was presided over by the defrocked Archbishop Carsely. VIP guests were also accommodated on the third and fourth floors.

For such exalted guests the apartments were more like five-star hotel suites; practically all were full at present, or soon would be. The second floor housed the senior staff and visitors. The first floor was where the dining room, reading rooms and libraries, viewing rooms, cinema (television and radio were not available – Comraich was deliberately isolated from the rest of the world, after all), games and card room were all situated. Also on that floor were the kitchens, the first of which served only the main restaurant, while another smaller one catered mainly for the estate rangers, wardens, guards, gardeners, manual labourers, nurses and others who worked within the complex.

On the ground floor was the long reception hall with various offices along the way. At the rear of the massive property was a gymnasium, health club and small indoor swimming pool. And, of course, there were many, many display rooms exhibiting all manner of fascinating items from the past.

Suits of armour guarded several hallways and there was more than one armoury full of violent-looking weapons of destruction. Displayed in many rooms roped off out of necessity, although the contents of each were in plain view, were four-poster beds, genuine crystal chandeliers, in one a long refectory table, a pair of serpentine marquetry commodes, in others rosewood bookcases, silver cutlery and wine coolers, paintings, marble statues and busts, hand-painted and silk wallpaper as well as tapestries, elegant cabinets, exquisite clocks – all manner of precious antiquities that could keep a serious historian interested for months.

Beneath Comraich there were three subterranean levels. The one they were currently descending to was the hospital unit, where Ash was somewhat perfunctorily shown around; he was amazed at the state-of-the-art equipment kept in different surgeries or operating theatres. He was also impressed by all of the hi-tech medical paraphernalia on view and the lavishly furnished wards and single rooms.

‘Is this where Douglas Hoyle’s body is being held for the autopsy?’ Ash had asked, only to be assured that there was a discreet mortuary on this floor that was kept well away from the general hospital section. This was where Hoyle was undergoing a post-mortem at that very moment. Below this lower floor was a place specially kept for newcomers, where they could recover from the trauma of leaving behind the world they had known for this new environment. Here they were kept in luxurious but solitary confinement where they could be physically examined by a doctor and counselled by both psychiatrist and psychologist until they were deemed fit to join the general Comraich community. It was a kind of limbo, Ash thought.

‘I take it, then, that guests here are watched by cameras day and night,’ Ash pressed. ‘So whatever happened to Hoyle would have been captured on film.’

It was Babbage who answered. ‘There are CCTV cameras in every important room in the castle, including Douglas Hoyle’s, but when we examined the observation tape the morning after the incident, all the video file was blanked. And I mean
all
the CCTV files were blank, as if somehow they had been overexposed. Not a single image on any of ’em. That same night practically all staff members and guests felt nauseous. At first, we thought food poisoning was to blame, but all the kitchens were spotless and what was left of the food was subsequently analysed in our own lab. No dodgy bacteria or poison was found in any of it. All normal.’ He paused on the stairs and faced Ash. ‘I’ll say this – it was a night none of us, staff or guests, ever want to go through again.’

Little else was said on the subject as Ash was led down to the next level. On the stairs, they met Rachael Krantz, on her way up. She carried a clipboard on which was a graph of some kind.

Derriman, who had been leading the way, stopped and looked anxiously at her. ‘Is-is everything all right?’ he asked timidly.

She gave him an unpleasant look, then switched her eyes to Ash.