The Resurrection of the Body (8 page)

T
he Police Call

A couple of days after I had written this letter the detective sergeant from Stoke Newington Police Station rang and asked if he could speak to me on a confidential matter.

I said of course, and made an appointment for later that afternoon. The PCC meeting was starting at 7.30 that evening, and as usual we were holding it in the living room in the vicarage, which was larger than my office and much more warm and comfortable than the church. I suggested he came at seven, if half an hour would be enough.

He said that would be fine, and arrived promptly on time. I offered him the usual cup of tea, which he accepted, and we sat down in my study.

‘You know Jim Jeffries,’ he said.

I suppose I had been waiting for this. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said.

‘He comes to church regularly?’

‘When he’s not in prison,’ I said.

The sergeant was sharp. ‘So you know about that.’

‘Of course I know

‘Do you know what for?’

‘Petty theft, receiving, that kind of thing.’

‘Did you know that twenty years ago he did time for causing grievous bodily harm?’

‘Twenty years is a long time.’

The sergeant looked at me coldly. ‘You take some kind of oath, don’t you, you vicars. Of confidentiality. If
someone
confesses something to you, you won’t reveal it to anyone.’

‘We don’t actually take any specific oath,’ I said, ‘but I think that is fairly generally understood.’

‘Are you protecting him? If he confessed anything, you wouldn’t tell us, would you?’

‘No, I wouldn’t. But in this instance, I can assure you that he’s said nothing to me that would be of any use to you.’

‘I see.’

He sat for a minute, glancing round the bookshelves. I found my thoughts wandering. This was the kind of issue I had often thought about in the past. There is, of course, a limit to confidentiality. Naturally, if anyone confessed a crime such as sexually abusing their children, there was no way I could sit back and allow the child to go on
suffering
. Although the Anglican church retains the
sacrament 
of confession, it is seldom used, and there is not the formal confessional of the Catholics. I don’t know what they would do in such circumstances, but in my view there are occasions on which not to breach confidentiality would be wrong. Whether I would tell the police if Jim had confessed the murder to me I don’t know. I would
certainly
urge him to give himself up, but I’m not sure that I would betray him to the police if he didn’t.

The sergeant brought me back to earth with a bump.

‘He wasn’t in church on Good Friday.’

‘No.’

‘Has he been since?’

‘No, he hasn’t been for a few weeks. I did see him recently, and he told me he was having doubts.’

This seemed to amuse the Detective Sergeant. ‘Well, he’s not alone there, is he?’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘I’m sorry for taking up your time.’

As he left I saw that he had in his hand a newly printed copy of the parish magazine.

T
he PCC

There was a funny mood that evening at the PCC. I don’t think that I can have imagined it. We discussed a report compiled by the Social Responsibility Committee on ‘Black Christians in Stepney’ and the policy of St Michael’s towards giving to outside charities. We also
discussed
the use of ‘inclusive language’ in the Sunday
service
and decided, as an experiment, to introduce a couple of minor changes into the wording of the service, in order to eliminate one or two instances of male-dominated
emphasis
in the liturgy. We also discussed the use of incense in church, because one or two people had complained about it last time it was used and in particular an elderly
parishioner
, Doreen, had said that it brought on her bronchitis.

Tessa was also at the meeting. She too seemed in an odd mood, and was dressed, unusually for her, in an attractive cotton dress. She wore her hair loose, and I caught her smiling at me once or twice as if we shared some secret knowledge. I think she felt that she was on my side against all this pettiness.

At the end of the meeting Mercy came into the kitchen where I was loading the used mugs into the dishwasher. She mentioned my letter in the parish magazine and said that she didn’t understand it. She wanted to know whether I had ever had any kind of religious experience.

This was not an easy question to answer when
preoccupied
with dirty mugs and a dishwasher. Straightening up, I said that I found it hard to define a religious
experience
. Every time I hear a beautiful piece of music, or see something lovely, or feel close and loving towards
someone
, or visit a mother with a healthy newborn baby, I am filled with a sense of joy and meaning. I see God, or the miraculous, in all these things. I could not say that I had any separate sense of an experience that I would say was religious apart from these things.

Then Mercy said abruptly, ‘I went with Mary up to Clissold Park. Have you been to Clissold Park to see for yourself?’

I must admit that I felt irritated; I felt that everyone was getting at me. I was afraid to admit to her what I had seen and all the implications of it; besides, I was tired. I turned and ushered her out into the hallway. As she put on her coat and hat I told her, ‘Perhaps I shall go on Monday.’

‘Oh, please do,’ she answered, ‘And tell me what you find.’

T
he Scent Goes Cold

I didn’t go to Clissold Park. I went as far as the gates, and then turned back. Instead I drove down to the council office responsible for parks and recreation. It is the same office that is responsible for the cemeteries, so I’d had reason to go there before.

I had to think of some story to tell them. I would have to make up some fiction, some excuse as to why I wanted to know who this gardener was. I do try never to lie, but to always tell the truth in everything, except little things when it doesn’t matter, ‘white’ lies, as we call them. So it went against the grain to tell a council official a story which I had completely concocted from start to finish.

I said that I had spoken to the gardener on duty in
Clissold
Park the Saturday before last, and that he had dropped a pouch, and that I wanted to return it to him.

The woman from the council said that if I wanted to do that I could leave the pouch with her, and she would get it to him.

I said that I didn’t have the pouch and that she could ring me if she found out who it was, and I would bring it in to them.

She said I should either hand it in or give it to the police.

I said that I wanted to be sure myself that it was returned to the right man. At this the official became a little irritated. I am sure that if I hadn’t been wearing a dog collar she would have thought I was up to no good.

She repeated, very patiently, as if I were quite stupid, that this was the only way she could go about it. I left my number and said I would try to drop the pouch in, but that I was very busy. She said she would pass on the message.

I left the building, stood on the busy street, disoriented. Cars buzzed backwards and forwards in front of my eyes. Lying is clearly a skill that does not come naturally to me; to lie successfully, you clearly need great skills of
anticipation
and foresight. Still, I was a novice at it. With time no doubt it became easier and easier; I might even become as accomplished as some of the boys in the church school, who lied instinctively, unable to recognise the truth any more.

Three days passed and there was no phone call. Twice I went to Clissold Park, sneaking up there in odd
moments between visits to parishioners without telling Harriet, but there was no gardener. I went into the café and asked if the gardener ever came in to buy tea or have a chat but they knew nothing.

On the fourth day I scribbled a note to Detective Chief Inspector Stone, telling him that I had seen a man two Saturdays before at the rose garden in Clissold Park who appeared to be a council-employed gardener, and who seemed to bear a remarkable resemblance to the dead man. I wrote that another parishioner had seen him on a previous day pruning the roses, and also noticed the resemblance. I thought I ought to let him know in case it turned out to be a relative. I posted the letter and waited in anticipation for something to happen. There was no answering phone call. I thought that probably Stone had read it with exasperation and put it in the bin. Perhaps that is where it belonged.

I should at that moment have forgotten the whole
incident
, and nearly succeeded in doing so; indeed, if I had never sent that note it is quite possible that nothing further would have happened. But something strange had happened to me. I wanted to believe that this bizarre series of events had a meaning. I couldn’t bear to think that it hadn’t. When nothing more happened, when the trail seemed to go completely cold, I had a feeling of
disappointment
, that things were out of joint, that I had been somehow cruelly set up and then let down. I felt that if this event could be meaningless, the cruel murder and the theft of the body meaningless and unexplained, then everything could be meaningless and unexplained. In
other words, I felt I had lost the ability to live in faith. Everything became colourless, all the things I had
previously
enjoyed, even my relationship with Harriet and the children.

I was suffering the kind of crisis that is, perhaps, not unusual among the clergy, a spiritual depression, a
temporary
or not-so-temporary loss of faith. I wrestled with this inside, not knowing what to do to help myself. I was forgetful, miserable, and withdrawn. In the meantime I went about the parish, performing my duties, taking services in the church, attending meetings, visiting the sick, writing letters and preparing the class for confirmation, and depositing my monthly cheque from the church commissioners into my bank account.

T
he Detective Chief Inspector Accuses

Monday is my day off. There was no reason why Detective Chief Inspector Stone should know this. The children were at school, and Harriet was out teaching, as she was three days a week. The house was in silence and I was lying on my back on the living-room floor, staring at the ceiling, and listening to a Bach cantata on Classic FM.

There was a knock on the door. It was the same kind of loud, peremptory knock that bailiffs give. I had been in many houses of the parish where people live in daily fear of the bailiffs. Once I was there with a woman when they called because she hadn’t paid her poll tax or her council
tax. When she refused to open the door they had pushed a form through the letterbox for her to fill in saying what they could take. She had written angrily, her fingers
pressing
hard on the pencil: ‘Two children under five, one ageing husband, one cracked loo seat, a broken chair.’ Then she had passed it out again.

I tightened my dressing-gown cord and went to the door. It was Detective Chief Inspector Stone.

He walked into the house without my asking. I didn’t offer him a cup of tea.

‘Why did you send me this note?’

He held it out to me, my own handwriting on the church notepaper.

I was taken aback by his accusatory tone. ‘Because it happened. I thought it my duty to tell you.’

‘We have made enquiries.’ He walked around the room, looking at everything, staring into corners, in the way
people
do when they are buying your house. ‘There is no one of this description employed as a gardener by the council. The gardeners, in any case, do not work on Saturdays. And the roses were pruned in February. No one had instructions to prune them this late in the season.’

I said, ‘But the roses have been pruned. I looked at them myself. They were recently cut.’

‘Why did you tell Mrs Marcus at the council offices that you had a pouch of his? Might I see this pouch?’

At this I blushed red. ‘I’m sorry, there is no pouch. I’m afraid I made that up … a rather inept attempt to get some information, I’m afraid.’

He looked at me in that condescending way the police
have when they have you in the wrong and which I cannot stand. Vicars are not supposed to lie, not to anyone, not in any circumstances. I felt I had been caught with my pants down; even more because I stood here unshaven, in my dressing gown, my pyjama trousers sagging.

Stone walked across the room and looked out of the window.

‘What is going on?’ he asked me.

I said I didn’t know what he meant.

‘I am beginning to form the opinion that there is some strange conspiracy here to mislead and misinform the police,’ he said. ‘This is a very serious matter. A body is stolen from the mortuary and concealed. False reports are given to the police. Paintings are tampered with in order to give the appearance of the deceased.’

‘Paintings tampered with?’ I said, not understanding what he was talking about. ‘This is extraordinary. Do you have any evidence? What can you mean by this?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind getting dressed and coming over to the church you will see.’

I went upstairs and dressed rapidly, pulling on my clothes with clumsy, unresponsive fingers. I went into the bathroom and quickly pulled a comb through my hair. It was receding in front and grey hairs were appearing at my temples. Until the age of forty I have to confess that I still felt as if I were twenty-five and that I was going to live for ever. The face staring back at me from the mirror gave the lie to that.

I went downstairs and accompanied the chief inspector across the road. The door of the church was open; who
had opened it, I don’t know. Inside, men were standing on a scaffold, tapping with tiny chisels and picking at the face of Christ on the painting of the baptism. I was beside myself. This was an outrage; surely this could not be done without permission?

‘This is a house of God,’ I said. ‘This is an act of
desecration
. This is sacrilege!’ Words could not express what I felt. To see these people scraping paint from the face of this beloved picture which I had faced every Sunday for the last five years, in front of which I had preached
sermons
and baptised children, filled me with rage. I was beside myself. ‘How could you do this without
permission
?’

‘But we have had permission.’

‘From whom?’

‘From the Archdeacon. We wrote to him, explaining that this was a criminal investigation, a murder. We needed to take samples of paint from the church, and of course permission was granted.’

‘But why did you not inform me?’ I could hear my voice rising to a childish squeak.

‘A letter is in the post. It is regrettable that we had to start before it reached you.’

There was no disguising his contempt for me. I stood in the church, and tears came into my eyes. I was
humiliated
. I stood and watched the workers for a few moments. I would have asked them to stop but it was probably too late; the damage had been done. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘be as careful as you can. This painting is a work of art.’

‘We are taking every care,’ said Stone. ‘Now, if you have
a few moments, I would like a word with you in your office.’

We went through to my study. The blinds were drawn and it was cold and slightly damp. I sat on my chair. Stone sat opposite me.

‘We are keeping an eye on everybody connected with this church,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what motive you might have for such actions, but it’s clear that anyone who could do these things must be deranged. Is there anyone in your congregation who might get involved in something like this? Some religious nutcase? Someone who might act out a dangerous fantasy, who might have ideas of grandeur, who might seek fame by proving the existence of miracles?’

His eyes bored into mine uncomfortably. I stared back into his. I am a good judge of souls, reflected in people’s eyes; I am not sure that Stone had one. His eyes were all black, opaque, angry, hostile.

‘I can see where your thoughts are leading,’ I said, ‘And I can see that it seems to offer a reasonable explanation. But there is no one in my church who would do such a thing.’

‘We would like to interview all the members of your congregation.’

‘I am sure you have the power to do so.’

‘Will you co-operate?’

‘As long as it is sensitively done.’

‘I would like a list, then, of your regular attenders.’

His demands infuriated me. I strove to keep calm.

‘Suppose the criminal were an irregular attender.’

‘Then I would like a list of the names and addresses of everyone you know who has come to the church.’

‘I could give you the circulation list for the parish magazine. It’s about two hundred households.’

I reached into the file, took out the list, made a
photocopy
in the fax machine, and handed it to him. He eyed it suspiciously. ‘This is everyone?’

‘If I think of any others I can let you know.’

‘You couldn’t put a mark by the regular people?’

I went through the list and put a cross by some thirty or forty names.

Stone stood up. He looked at me with something
pitifully
approximating menace and said, ‘As I said at the beginning, we’ll get to the bottom of this, you can be sure of that.’ I got the feeling that he already knew who his
suspect
was, that he wanted to let me know but didn’t dare make any unsubstantiated accusations, and had to
content
himself with this rather feeble parting shot.

Well, it has got to him, too, I thought. Perhaps he is not a bad man. He wrote to me two days later saying that the samples of paint from the face of Christ showed that some of the paint was of a type different from the rest of the painting and had only recently been applied. I looked at that face every day and I did not believe that there was any change. I studied some old photographs and wrote to James Durfield; certainly he knew nothing about it. He told me he was very upset about the whole business, the police had come to visit him; his voice trembled on the phone.

Stone was accusing someone – possibly me – of
fabricating
evidence. Of course we know that the police have been accused of this themselves, especially locally, and particularly in relation to the planting of drugs on
innocent
people. Personally I would prefer to think that a policeman might fabricate evidence to provide a rational explanation for an event which otherwise might lead his superiors to think he had gone off his head, than that a churchgoer might feel the need to fabricate the passion and resurrection of Christ to restore his battered faith.