THROUGH THE GLASS DARKLY - OLD SINS CAST LONG SHADOWS

THROUGH THE GLASS DARKLY - EPISODE FIVE

CHAPTER

EIGHT

Leaving DCI Shaw to trudge back to the manor, I walked in the direction of the Mabbott family chapel.  The snow-covered track was just about walkable, it wound lazily through gentle rises for half-a-mile or so, and the noise of the modern world was lost behind me. Eventually, the chapel appeared in front of me. It was in a small lost valley; a red brick church tower in front of it. Beyond, a hazy maze of trees and fields. No other building was in sight. It was utterly bewitching.

The path led to a little wooden porch, with a drop-gate to keep out animals. It looked original, as far as I was aware there was nothing else like it in Suffolk. The door into the church had a metal grill set in it, and this all seemed original too, 18th century at the latest. Through this grill, I could peep at remarkable things.

The graveyard was still in use for burials, and it was a peaceful spot to see out of eternity! For now, though, it was pleasant enough to contemplate here for only a moment, among the scattering of 18th and 19th-century memorials, and the large monument set into the outside of the south chancel wall.

The stillness of the air sucked the sound of my footsteps into the nothingness of the graveyard. Trees didn’t rustle as if they were tense with nerves for what was to come. I could describe it as creepy, but frightening was closer to it.  The silence pressed in on me and all I could hear was the beating of my heart and scuffing noise my feet made as I stumbled through the snow.  It was the kind of silence that fell just before you were knifed in the back. It sent a shiver down my spine and my blood chilled in my veins.

The chapel itself had a negative vibe.  Evilness oozed out of every crack and crevice of its dismal stone walls. Demonic gargoyles hung from the walls and the dark sky added to the frightening atmosphere.

I pushed the heavy oak doors open, the echoing around the empty interior. The creaking noise reminded me of a dying animal or the tormented cries of a tortured man. An uneasy breeze blew down the centre of the chapel and grasped me with its chilly touch. His fingers circled around my body, tenderly fondling every inch of me, I pulled my shoulders tight together huddling into myself for warmth. It was pitch black; I felt blind. As if my eyes had been gouged out. My body washed cold. I brought my fingers to my eye sockets; they were still there. Turning on the torch of my mobile phone, the chapel became illuminated, casting an eerie glow onto the dusty altar. Thick cobwebs hung on every surface and my footsteps sounded deafening on the cold stone floor.

I could almost feel a presence surrounding me and a cold tingle ran down my spine.  I felt uneasy although I reassured myself it was only the breeze, yet a part of me didn’t believe it was right. 

The work of spiders graced every wall and window frame. The old webs hung loosely, waving in the draft next to the new delicate silky strands of a living arachnid. Each cobweb was a new home within an old one, something occupied in this old abandoned chapel. They hung from the rafters and billowed in the breeze that stirred the dust in the old chapel. They hung like great sheets of hair from an ancient hag, white, dirty looking and tangled. They were on the panes of the windows too, obscuring what tiny light there was struggling through them in the dim of twilight.  It was a pity the spider cannot appreciate its art. Intricate, delicate, sculpture of silky thread. A thing of such beauty that if you had never seen one before, or knew of its maker, you would think it was the work of a mischievous angel; for it was sticky and such that it would break if you dare to touch it.

The chapel had one of the most haunting and evocative interiors of any church I have ever experienced. It was an untouched 18th-century interior, with barely a sign of Victorian enthusiasm. The benches and box pews were blanched by centuries of Suffolk air and sunlight. The tiled floor was delightful; along with the brasses and memorials. The only jarring note was the unexciting 19th-century glass in the east window.

            Moving into the passage, I wondered whether this quiet air tinctured with the scent of incense, candles, and the more solidly Anglican smell of musty prayer books. Metal polish and flowers had held for me the promise of discovery, of a scene already set, a task inevitable, inescapable.  The passage with its floor of encaustic tiles and its white-painted walls ran the whole west end of the church. The little vestry was the first room on the left. Next to it with a connecting door was a small kitchen about ten feet by eight.  A flock of pigeons left in disarray, cooing, and flapping violently away from the aged building. My mind told me not to move, but my body dragged me to the light like a moth to a flame. Each step echoed through the cavernous inner hall, reverberating off the ancient stone, bouncing between each pew and finally laying to rest upon the altar. The chapel was no warmer inside than out. As the night closed in ice crept across the windows as if spun by wintry spiders. The only warmth to be had been from my body. However uncomfortable this chapel could be, but the alternative was infinitely worse.

            The hymn board caught in the beam of my torch, had the last hymns showing:

74

17

18

19

            A strange combination, having three hymns so close together.  There was something odd about that.  But I couldn’t think what.

            Turning off my torch for a moment, I sat in one of the pews for a moment.  I had seen darkness before, the kind that made your street like an old-fashioned photograph, everything a shade of grey. This wasn’t like that. This was the darkness that robbed you of your best sense and replaced it with a paralysing fear. In this darkness I sat, muscles cramped and unable to move. I only knew my eyes were still there because I could feel myself blink, still instinctively moisturizing the organs I had no current use for. I couldn't hear anything either. I guess that should have brought the heart rate down below the level of "rabbit in a snare,” but it didn't. But in my genes, I'm a predator, I have the front facing eyes and brain enough to hunt, but I felt like prey in this utter black. The dawn was hours away and until that precious time, I could only wait. A movement made noise; it was bad enough I still had to breathe. But I wanted to see tomorrow enough to make me hold this position for as long as it took.      

            If my thoughts were visible, they would be an inverse explosion, crazy chaotic turns and twists of light all coming together to just one idea, to just one word. Though they spun in a way that appeared without design or logic, they always danced their way back to the case.

            I don’t know how long I sat there, baffled, and infuriated.  I knew that someone had killed Lord Mabbott and Wendy Clark.  But who was it?  It could only be one of three people.  Lady Victoria Mabbott.  Cleo Mabbott and Adam Mabbott.  They all had the means.  They all had the opportunity.  But at the moment they didn’t have a motive.

            Oh, to have the skills of the great detectives. To have the mind and eye for clues equal to those of the famous untangles of mysteries. Not to parade my knowledge, returning lost diamonds and catching dastardly killers. Not to share with the masses the secrets behind the downfall of kings and the rise of emperors. Not to unravel the elaborately spun lies of conmen. No, had I the deduction of Holmes and Poirot, I would quietly solve the commonplace.

            I turned my torch back on, and an owl let out a series of low hoots, four, five from somewhere in the roof.  The darkness had been no barrier to the owl. From the inkiness of the roof, I heard it swoop on a rodent using hearing alone, the only sound was the rhythmic beating of its wings in the air, grasping it the first time, its talons sinking deeply into its still living flesh. Once alighted it hooted back before beginning its meal. The mouse scrambled with its legs, but it was going nowhere.  The owl had transformed from something bewitching to a killer.

It was then that I noticed on the pew in front of me, a leather-bound Bible, taking shape in the darkness.  Protruding from its pages was two lace bookmarkers.  Lace?  This bible belonged to a woman.  It was about the only thing in the chapel that wasn’t covered in a thin layer of dust.  Which meant it had been left here only recently.

            I reached across the pew and picked it up.  And using the torch on my mobile phone discovered that, the first bookmark signified an extract from the King James version of the Bible, 1 Corinthians Chap 13 verse 12: For now, we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known?

            It was best explained to me that if you imagined looking into a broken curved mirror.  The image was distorted, and some things could be clearly made out, others you could piece together what you are looking at, while others were a total mystery.  So, for some things you were face to face and everything is clear, and other things you were only seeing in part but not fully.  The last part is saying that through God, all things can eventually be seen. 

To better understand it, the New Living Translation explains it well.  Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

We all interpret things differently. I interpreted this one way, another may see it as something different.

            I moved on to where the second bookmark was inserted.

            This extract was from Matthew Chap12 Verse 34:  You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good.  A fitting metaphor for the religious leaders like the Pharisees, for not only was their religion deadly and capable of causing great calamity to their victims, they were deceitful—just like their father, the devil (the Serpent) who was a liar and murderer from the beginning?

            I sat back in my pew puzzled.  I felt I was being led around this case by the nose.  This was another clue, left by someone who wanted me to find it.  Whoever was manipulating me wanted me to solve the case.  Were they the killer or were they someone who was innocent who didn’t know how to stop this killing except leaving me a trail of breadcrumbs?

CHAPTER

NINE

It was still snowing as I watched each footstep sink into the crystalline snow. I made my way to the pavement, and then I turned around to see my path laid out behind me in the otherwise pristine white. I spied icicles hanging from the window frames of shops and regretted not snapping one off. Glancing upward it was easy to tell that were it not for this brilliant white blanket at my feet the night would seem overcast, for the sky was a blanket of dark cloud, hiding the stars. Somehow, I felt that my footprints would be wiped out before I return.

The restaurant overlooked River Ox, where most of the surface looked like glass but with as much give as concrete. There was a view across the water to factories and warehouses, reclaimed and renovated into flats.

There were tea lights in red globes on every table in the restaurant.  It had the perfect lighting to hide a myriad of flaws and blemishes – mine not Kira’s.

Once inside, I shook out my coat and handed it to a waitress.  Melting snow leaked down my forehead.  Kira arrived fifteen minutes later warmly wrapped in a black overcoat with fur collars. Underneath she was dressed in a dark blue camisole with spaghetti straps and a matching mini skirt.  Her stockings were seamed and dark. She used a linen napkin to dry herself and ran her fingers through her hair.

“I never remember to carry an umbrella any more.”

“Why is that?”

“I used to have one with a carved handle.  It had a stiletto blade inside the shaft . . . In case of trouble.  See how well you taught me.”  She laughed and reapplied her lipstick.

I cannot explain what it is like to sit in a restaurant with such a beautiful woman.  Men coveted Zoë, but with Kira, there was real hunger as your insides fluttered and your heart knocked.  There was something very pure, impulsive, and innately s****l about her.  It was as though she had refined, filtered, and distilled her sexuality to a point where a man can believe that a single drop might be enough to satisfy him for a lifetime.

Kira glanced over a shoulder and instantly attracted a waiter’s attention.  She ordered salad niçoise and a glass of white wine and I chose penne carbonara and bottled water.

            “So how is DCI Shaw?”

            “You know him?”

            “Our paths crossed in London,” she replied, sipping her wine.  “This is nice.  Do you want a taste?”

            I took a sip from her glass.  The sauvignon detonated sweetly on my palate, cold and sharp, making me yearn for more.  I slid the glass back towards her, touching her fingers, and wondered about the identity of the last person to share a bottle of wine with her.

            Kira raised her eyes sideways a moment to look at me.  “You didn’t answer my question?”

            “He was okay,” I said.  “You never said that you knew him.”

            “You never asked,” she responded quickly.  “Have you taken the case?”

            “Yes.”

            “He can’t be that bad then.”

            “He’s a force of nature.”

            Kira laughed.

            “What are you laughing at?”  I asked.

            “He is very full on.  Some people find him abrasive and opinionated.  I think he’s an acquired taste.”

            “Did you ever acquire that taste?”

            “I understood him better than the rest of the team on the investigation we were working on.  He’s wonderful at his job.”

            “Is he married?”

“I believe so.  I think he’s got a couple of grown-up kids.”

            I could hear her stockings scrape as she crossed her legs.  Her eyes were no longer focused on the menu.  She was somewhere else.  It struck me how different she is become since we had separated, how disengaged.  Amid a conversation, she could suddenly seem to be a thousand miles away.

            “I think he might be having an affair.”

            Her eyes came back to me.  “Really?”

            “You sound surprised.”

            “I am surprised.  What makes you think that?”

            “He’d been wearing the same shirt for two days, which means he didn’t go home the night before.  He was with another woman, either at her place, or a hotel.  He had lipstick on the left side of the collar, below his ear.  He didn’t have a spare shirt, so he wore the same one again and sprayed it with her deodorant.”  I sipped my water.  “He also had to move a box of Belgian Chocolates from the front seat before I got into his Land Rover.  He must like this lover a lot but doesn’t want the affair to wreck his marriage.”

            “My God, you’re observant.”

            “I’m a private detective, Kira,” I said smiling.

            “Then, Mr private detective, why don’t you tell me about this case?”

            She listened intently as I told her about my day and as I described each new low point her eyes clouded with concern. When I’d finished, she reached across and squeezed my hand.  “I wished I hadn’t encouraged you to get involved, now.”

“I didn’t need a great deal of persuading,” I admitted.

“No, you didn’t,” she laughed.  “I know what you’re like, John.  You still want to save people despite them already being dead.”

“I can try and stop it happening to someone else.”

I enjoyed the confidence which came with sitting opposite Kira.  She continued to talk quickly and eat slowly.  However, she was still watching me.  Her eyes were like mirrors within mirrors.  I could see myself in the reflection and I didn’t like what I saw. 

As the coffees came, she apologized for ‘rabbiting on’ and reached across the table and held my hands.  I had been nodding in all the right places but in truth, my mind was whirring with all the unanswered questions of the case.  I didn’t want to admit as much, but I didn’t know which direction to follow.  When I was investigating a murder case, I normally had a sense of forwarding momentum.  Even if I didn’t know who the killer was, the leads always suggested where I should be focusing my attention.  And, as this case unfolded, I felt that that was exactly the process I was involved in.  And then we discovered Wendy Clark’s body, and that was what had been upsetting me so much.  It was not as much that I now didn’t know which was up or down in the case any more, although that was certainly true.  Nor was it the fact that my instincts couldn’t even begin to give me a sense of why Wendy had to die.

As the feeling of self-reproach continued, I found myself increasingly focusing on the fact that I’d had in my hands what could turn out to be the key: Lord Mabbott’s diary.  There had to be something about those significant dates.  But what were they?

“John?”  I heard Kira say shaking me out of my reverie.  “Are you okay?”

Without answering I reached across to the nearest vacant table and pinched a napkin from it.  I then took a pen from my pocket and wrote the four dates on the napkin.

Fourth of March. The fifth of April. Fourth of June. Fourth of October

“What are you doing?”  Kira asked.

I showed her the napkin.

“What are these?”

“The four dates that Lord Mabbott made payments to his blackmailer.”

“And you think they might be significant?”

“I’m sure they’re one of the keys that can unlock the case.”

Kira stared at them for a while, but I could see in her eyes that they made no sense to her at all.  They were just four, random dates.

“I tell you what,” she began, sliding the napkin back to me.  “Why don’t we forget about all this just for tonight?  We’ve got some making up to do.”

I smiled.  My foot found hers beneath the table, less gently than I’d hoped.  She flinched as if I’d tried to kick her, hard.  I apologized and felt my heart vibrating.  Only it wasn’t my heart.  It was my phone.

I held my hand against the pocket, wishing I had turned it off.  Kira sipped her Latté and pondered my dilemma.  “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

“I’m sorry.”

Her shrug was not ambivalent or open to interpretation.  I knew what she was thinking.  I looked at the screen of my handset.  Graham Moore’s number was on the screen.

“Hello, mate.”

“Sorry to disturb you so late, but I’ve finally got hold of the information that you were asking for.”

“Go on.”

“I’ve spent hours on the telecoms company to release the name of the person the SIM card from your surveillance bug was registered to, but they didn’t want to give me the information without proper authorization from the police.”

I knew how big companies were reluctant to aid anyone unless all the necessary paperwork had first been issued.

“But I kept going at them, explaining that this was a murder case, moving up the chain of command until I finally spoke to the head of the company.  He could get the details for me, and you’ll never guess who owns that bug.”

“No?  Who is it?”

“Lady Victoria Mabbott.”

“What?” 

“The bug is registered in Lady Mabbott’s name.”

“How come the owner of the phone company was so willing to give you all this information?”

Grahame laughed.  “John, what you don’t know, won’t hurt you.”

I laughed and then thanked him, and he told me where I too leave his fee before finishing the call.

I looked at Kira.  “I have to make this call.”

Kira said nothing.

I dialled DCI Shaw’s number and when he answered I told him the news.

“Where are you?”  Shaw asked when I had finished.

“At a restaurant with a friend.”

“Male or female?”

“Female," I said.  “You know her, in fact.”

“Do I?”

“Dr Reed.”

There was silence, and then he said.  “Give me the address of the restaurant, I’ll send a car to pick you up.”

“Why?”

“We’ll go and question Lady Mabbott.”

“Can’t it wait until the morning?”

“No.  It can’t.”  He snapped.

My surging stare went straight through Kira.  DCI Shaw was still talking.

“This is a murder enquiry, John.  We’re not looking for a missing family pet”

“Very well,” I said with resignation.

The call ended.  I looked at Kira.  Her face didn’t begin to hint what was on her mind.

I told her that I had to leave.  I told her why.  Without a word, she stood up and gathered her coat.  She signalled for the bill and paid for it all on her credit card.

I followed her across the restaurant, her hips swung fluidly beneath her skirt, articulating more in a few paces than most people managed in an hour of conversation.  I walked her to the car.  She got in.  There was no kiss goodbye.  Her face was an unknowable combination of disappointment and disconnection.  I wanted to go after her, to win back the moment, but it was too late.