The Mushroom Man (7 page)

I’d stood up to leave, but I sat down again. Dewhurst’s story about how he was missing his little girl had been heavily featured in the tabloids. He was receiving letters of sympathy from all over the country, and prayers were regularly said for him in the local churches. If we went off half-cocked I’d be as popular as a turd in a jacuzzi.

‘You’re naive, Charlie,’ Gilbert stated.

‘So it appears. Go on.’

He sat back in his big chair and tapped the polished top of his desk with a pencil. He said: ‘Acting Chief Constable Partridge’s immediate, overriding ambition is not to apprehend little Georgina’s abductor. No, it’s to lose the
Acting
tag. It’s the chief constables’ conference in three weeks and he’ll be there. Sometime after that there’ll be the interviews for the vacancy. This is a high-profile case and he wants an arrest under his belt. The result, when it eventually comes to court, is secondary. If it goes wrong he’ll be able to say that it was initiated before his appointment. In the interim he’ll take all the credit.’

I shook my head slowly from side to side. ‘You’re right, Gilbert,’ I said. ‘Naive is hardly the word. I thought all we had to do was catch villains.’

‘He’s an ambitious man, Charlie.’

‘Well, I refuse to feature in his plans. I want taking off the case.’

‘I thought you might say that, so I’ve already given it some consideration. Your request is turned down. You’ve got two weeks, from the weekend. Come back after that and I’ll think again.’

‘Go on!’ urged Lee Todd. ‘Let’s do it. We’ve plenty of time.’

‘No,’ pleaded his girlfriend, Vicky Smith. ‘It’s not right.’

‘Not right? You’ve never said that before.’

‘I mean now, before we see the vicar. You’ll have to wait.’ A shudder of delight ran through her. They were seated in his Mini, with its huge stereo speakers that blocked the view through the rear window blaring out rave music. Lee’s hand was up her miniskirt and his fingers were exploring the crotch of her knickers.

‘Stop it!’ she demanded, half-heartedly. By sliding forward on the seat she could pull her pants so tight they dug into her puffy thighs and he couldn’t get his blunt fingers under the elastic.

‘Please!’ he begged.

‘No!’ She snatched his hand away and sat up straight. ‘Later, when we’ve seen the vicar about the
banns. Then we’ll do it, you know, how you like it.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yes, promise.’

‘Oh, all right then.’ He extricated himself from her and moved back to his side of the car. They sat smoking a roll-your-own cigarette, and Lee opened a can of Coke. ‘Are you sure he won’t ask if I’ve been christened?’ he said.

“Course he won’t. If he does, just say you ’ave.’

‘But won’t he check?’

‘Nah. Anyway, things get lost. What difference does it make? Stop being such a wally.’

They sat without speaking for a while, bodies jerking to the incessant beat of the electronic music, until Lee announced that he’d never been in a church before.

‘It’s not a church, it’s a vicarage,’ Vicky told him.

‘Same thing,’ pronounced Lee.

‘You don’t ’arf talk some rubbish!’ declared Vicky. ‘The vicarage is the ‘ouse where the vicar lives. That’s the bloody church, through the trees, with the clock on top.’

‘Well, I’ll have to go to church when we get married, won’t I? Then it’ll be the first time.’

‘Come on,’ she said, straightening her skirt and running her fingers through her variegated hair. ‘It’s time to go.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Lee fumbled with the pocket of his shirt and took a twist of silver paper from it. He
unwrapped two small white pills and tossed one into his mouth, swallowing it with a swig of Coke.

‘Hey! Where’s mine?’ protested Vicky.

‘You’ve already had one.’

‘So have you.’ She snatched the last pill from him and gulped it down with a drink from the can. ‘Come on!’

Bottle was something Lee prided himself in having in abundance, but walking up the drive to the vicarage door drew on all his reserves. Vicky pressed the bell push.

A dog barked, followed by a light coming on inside and a shadow falling on the frosted glass. The vicar’s wife opened the door.

‘We’ve come to see the vicar, about our banns,’ announced Vicky. Lee stood a respectful yard behind her.

‘Oh, how do you do? I’m Mary Conway. You must be Vicky and Lee.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So pleased to meet you. Ronald said would you mind if he saw you in the church? He’s in there now, if you’d care to pop along.’

‘Oh, all right, then. G’night.’

‘Just go straight in. Bye bye.’

They turned on their heels and walked back down the drive. Halfway up the path to the church Lee’s power of speech returned. ‘Hey, Vicky,’ he whispered.

‘What?’

‘When we come out, when we’ve finished, we could always come back and have it in the graveyard. That’d be a laugh.’

‘Lee Todd! You’re obsessed. Sex! Sex! Sex! That’s all you ever think about!’

‘I know. That’s why you love me, innit?’

Vicky embraced his arm in both hers and looked up at him. ‘Probably,’ she laughed.

The big door swung open and Lee entered a house of God for the first time in his eighteen years. He quietly closed the door behind them. It was not an example of ecclesiastical architecture likely to fill a young heathen with a sense of awe and wonder, being built during one of the Church’s more austere periods. What did impress Lee was the power of the silence.

‘What do we do?’ he hissed.

‘Dunno. Look for him, I suppose. Let’s go down to the front’

They walked down the aisle together for what was to be the only time in their lives, Lee’s trainers padding noiselessly and Vicky’s stilettos ringing out on the stone flags.

There was a door marked Vestry, with a glimmer of light visible under it. Lee, now confident that no bolt of lightning was about to smite him, knocked.

There was no answer. He turned the handle and they went in.

‘Cor, it’s a bit warmer in ’ere,’ Vicky said.

‘Yeah. Smells as if someone’s been smoking Pashas.’

‘Pashas? What’s them?’

‘Strongest cigs ever made, according to my dad. It’s one of ’is catchphrases: “You smell as if you’ve been smoking Pashas,” he sez,’

‘’Spect it’s incense,’ Vicky told him.

They wandered back into the nave and looked around them.

‘How long do we wait?’ asked Lee.

‘Dunno.’

Down near the entrance was a notice board, with letters and schedules and various Third World appeals pinned to it. They studied the messages, and were unmoved by the pictures of pot-bellied children and weeping, wizened mothers.

Lee’s bravado had returned by now. Or his animal desires had overcome his apprehension. ‘Hello! Anybody there?’ he shouted. Vicky laughed. Lee sprinted down to the front of the church and climbed into the pulpit. ‘Today’s hymn is “My Way”,’ he called out.

Vicky followed him. ‘You’re daft,’ she giggled.

Lee put his arms around her and kissed her. He turned her around so that he was behind her and enclosed her breasts in his fingers.

‘Don’t,’ Vicky moaned, as his tongue probed her ear.

‘Hey! Who’s that watching us?’ he demanded.

‘Where?’ said an alarmed Vicky.

‘Her up there.’

Vicky looked where he gestured. ‘That’s a statue of the Virgin Mary,’ she explained.

‘What, the vicar’s wife?’

‘No, idiot. Jesus’s mum.’

‘Blimey, bet they had to go a long way to find her.’

‘Yeah. Specially with sex maniacs like you around.’

He resumed his fondling and Vicky rotated her buttocks against his loins. The Mother of God gazed serenely just above their heads as his fingers flicked open the buttons of Vicky’s blouse and slid her bra up, revealing nipples as brown and hard as the carved acorns that decorated the oak lectern.

‘Stay there,’ he ordered, suddenly letting go of her. He sprinted to the church door, slid the big bolt across, and was back with her in seconds. Vicky stood pulling the front of her blouse together.

Lee grabbed her hand. ‘C’mon,’ he ordered.

‘Where?’ whimpered Vicky.

‘In here,’ he replied, dragging her towards the vestry. The only furniture in there was the vicar’s ancient writing desk and a chair. On the floor in front of the desk was a thick woollen rug, woven in a pattern representing scarab beetles. It was from Morocco, and had been presented to the church by
the local Bible-Koran Society, in a gesture of conciliation.

Lee closed the door behind them. The key was in the lock, so he turned it. He kissed Vicky roughly, fondling her and fumbling with her clothing, then forced her down onto the rug.

After the absolute minimum of preliminaries he hooked his fingers into her pants and pulled them off. This time she eased her buttocks off the ground to facilitate their passage.

Lee was kneeling between her legs. He undid his jeans and was onto and into her with a speed that would have impressed a Wensleydale sheep farmer.

Their lovemaking depended on enthusiasm and athleticism rather than tenderness and concern. The aim was to achieve a fleeting moment of intense pleasure as rapidly as possible, which would immediately be followed by a feeling of wondering what all the fuss had been about – until the urge to do it again slowly returned.

Sex in unusual places has its own eroticism, but it does sometimes fall down on practicality. Vicky was lying entirely within the borders of the woven pattern, but Lee’s feet projected beyond it, onto the parquet floor, which the ladies of the congregation polished, with assiduity and Johnson’s wax, every Tuesday morning.

He was wearing Reebok basketball boots, famed for their grip on slippery surfaces. Every thrust of
his loins pushed Vicky and the rug across the floor, and every three or four thrusts his toes stuttered forwards to bring him back into the optimum position. Slowly they progressed across the vestry, like some Gothic, ratchet-propelled animal.

It was unsatisfactory for Vicky, too. She flailed her arms around, trying to find a fixture to cling to. There was nothing at all within the arc of her right arm, but the left was underneath the big wooden desk.

She groped about in vain for several seconds, then she thought her fingertips brushed something. The next thrust confirmed her thoughts and the one after that brought it within her grasp.

Vicky grabbed hold and braced herself. It wasn’t the solid anchorage she was hoping for. It was soft and yielding, as well as wet and sticky.

It was another hand.

Vicky gasped with terror and yanked her own hand back. She held it above her and blood dripped from it onto her face.

Her scream echoed around the high roof and set the starlings flying from the tower. With a mighty convulsion she threw Lee off and jumped to her feet. The locked door delayed her progress slightly, but within seconds she was running barefoot out into the night, still screaming.

Lee had just reached the good bit. Vicky’s first recoil action made him think that for once his
timing was perfect. He was on the backstroke, on the verge of the big finale, when she shot out from under him. He impregnated a woven scarab beetle with half a billion of his healthy, if genetically undistinguished, spermatozoa.

Exhausted and frustrated, he collapsed on the rug. He was facing the underside of the desk, but his right arm was obscuring his vision. Beyond his arm, in the shadows under the desk, Lee could make out what looked like somebody’s shoulder, wearing a tweed jacket. His hand was trembling uncontrollably as he drew it back, and he found himself staring into the sightless gaze of the late Reverend Ronald Conway.

Lee caught Vicky at the reproduction lich-gate. She was sobbing and screaming and cursing because she’d hurt her feet in her panic. He grabbed her arm and manhandled her into the car, before shaking her until her teeth rattled. It was an effective treatment for hysteria. When she quietened down they drove off. Parked in a farm gateway a couple of miles away, they reviewed the situation: they’d had an appointment with the vicar; his wife knew their names; Vicky had left her shoes and knickers behind and Lee had deposited a sample of his body fluids that would have provided for the nation’s
in vitro
fertilisation programme into the next century.

‘They’d find us,’ Lee concluded.

So, for the second time that day, he voluntarily
walked into a building that he would normally have avoided like a crocodile avoids sticky toffee. They went to the police station and reported finding a body.

Detective Inspector ‘Oscar’ Peterson had seen it all before. He didn’t like churches and the last thing he’d been hoping for was another murder. Especially one like this. A nice juicy domestic would have been OK, but the murder of a vicar didn’t fall into the normal pattern of crime. It jarred, like a satellite dish on a Georgian terrace. Peterson could have retired on full pension three months ago; so he was now working, as he constantly reminded anyone who’d listen, for one-third pay. He needed this like Salman Rushdie needs a season ticket at Bradford Park Avenue.

He was standing in the doorway of the vestry, trying to build a mental picture of what had happened. He’d already set the wheels of a murder inquiry into motion, and was waiting for the SOCO and the superintendent from regional HQ to appear. At his elbow was the young PC who had made the initial response to the report.

‘One thing I did notice, sir,’ said the PC, eager to please, ‘was the smell. It was quite strong then, but you can still smell it.’ He sniffed audibly, as if to suggest how.

DI Peterson inhaled through his
nicotine-wrecked
nasal passages. What lingered of the heady mixture of gun smoke, sex and Vicky’s cheap perfume stirred his few remaining receptors into life. He looked thoughtful.

The PC sniffed again. ‘Mean anything to you, sir?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ replied Peterson. ‘Shithouse on a French destroyer.’

It was nearly midnight when the coroner gave his permission for the body to be removed to the Princess Royal Hospital for a post-mortem. DI Peterson had done all he could at this late hour – organised his team, set up an incident room and taken steps to protect the scene of the offence – so he went home. He wanted to know the results of the PM as soon as they were available, but he’d no desire to witness the whole gory spectacle. He’d sat through plenty and knew he wouldn’t faint or be sick, but didn’t feel the need to prove it.

His wife, Dilys, was waiting up for him. The DI said he would be going out again and she made him a sandwich. He told her all about the murder at the vicarage.

They had a good marriage, based on love and, above all, an enduring friendship. Unlike most policemen he always told her about all his cases, especially the difficult or more spectacular ones. The job was the only thing he
could
talk about.
That was what worried him. Could their happiness survive twenty-four hours per day of each other’s company if he retired? Could he survive it? Three months was supposedly the average
pension-drawing
span of ex-police officers. He shuddered at the thought.

Professor Alan Tuke, the pathologist, raised his head from his grisly work as Peterson entered the mortuary lab. He winked at the DI and mischievously said: ‘DI Peterson enters room at…two ten a.m.’ for the benefit of the video/sound recorder. Peterson picked up a swivel stool and took it to the furthest corner of the lab, where he could hear but not see. The Professor was nearing the end of his immediate investigation. He was removing various organs and putting them in glass jars for later analysis. Not that it would be necessary – the cause of death had been fairly obvious. Nobody poisons a victim, then cuts them in half with a shotgun to hide the evidence. The DI listened to him intoning his progress into the microphone and admired his thoroughness.