The Sixth Lamentation (24 page)

‘Meeting
Max Nightingale.’

‘You’re
joking.’ She thought of him with revulsion. ‘I call that unfortunate. ‘

A long
moan of hopes betrayed floated out from the kitchen. As usual her mother was
battling with milk and powder, strong adversaries that would not be reconciled.

Pascal
said, ‘I don’t know why he threw that question in about your grandmother but he
hadn’t the faintest idea who she was.’

‘That’s
not a miracle.’

‘But if
he knows of her, he may well know of Victor Brionne … and his name.

Her
father realigned his plate, clinking it against a neatly laid dessert spoon.

Lucy
said, ‘But he’s not going to tell you, is he?’

‘I’d
like to find out.’

‘You’re
joking again.’ Lucy sensed the future, predatory and inevitable.

‘I’m
not. In a way he’s no different to you or me-Lucy spat, ‘How?’

‘He’s
part of the aftermath. He’s not a criminal. I’d like to meet him, it’s just… right … and I couldn’t be bothered to work out why’

‘I have
to go,’ said Lucy The approval of her father flowered in a smile. Phone calls
during meals were not encouraged. It had been one of Darren’s specialities,
done on purpose.

The
call ended, and Lucy’s father said, ‘Dreadful things those. Who was that?’

‘Just a
friend.’ The barricade on her private life appeared. Her father scouted around
for an opening, looking for light between the slats: ‘How’s your study getting
along?’

‘Not so
bad.’ The phrase sealed a gap. Lucy had detected the true meaning beneath her
father’s question: ‘You made a hash of Cambridge so please don’t fail again.’
She thought: fail who? You or me? Who do you really think lost out in my
growing up? Shocked by her own charity she answered: we both did, terribly and
she suddenly wanted to touch him. She took her father’s empty plate and laid it
on hers. When were they ever going to forget the past? Why were they cursed to
remember everything?

Her
mother came into the room, hands on her hips, her face fallen: ‘I’m afraid there’s
lots of lumps in the custard.’

‘Oh
God, not again,’ said her father as he reached out for Susan’s hand.

2

Anselm drove Salomon
Lachaise to Long Melford, a town of Suffolk pink not far from Larkwood. Having
parked they walked into Holy Trinity Church, a huge construction more like a
cathedral, its magnificence built upon medieval piety and the wool trade.
Salomon Lachaise removed his heavy glasses, squinting with wonder at the
windows and the empty stone niches in the chantry, once the home of solemn
apostles. They passed through a churchyard to the Lady Chapel.

‘This
was a school after the Reformation,’ said Anselm, pointing to a children’s
multiplication table on the wall. Salomon Lachaise quietly studied the enduring
markings of long, long ago. He said, ‘It is a kind of mockery, but one cannot
survive without shame.’ He pressed small hands deep into cardigan pockets,
making them bulge. ‘It is something I could never tell my mother.’

‘Why?’

‘Her
peace grew out of my being am ordinary boy doing his sums at school like all
the others.’

Anselm
said, ‘But why shame?’

‘Because
you cannot escape the sensation that you have taken someone else’s place.’ He
looked closely at the wall. ‘It’s like a debt to heaven.’

They
stepped outside, back into the churchyard. Salomon Lachaise said, ‘When I was a
boy my mother used to say that hell was the painless place where everything has
been forgotten. ‘

‘That
doesn’t sound so bad.’

‘It
couldn’t be worse.’

‘Why?’

‘Because
there’s no love. That’s why there is no pain.’

They
walked beneath a milky sky shot with patches of insistent blue. Anselm looked
up and asked, ‘Then what’s heaven?’

‘An
inferno where you burn remembering all that should be remembered.’

3

Cathy and Lucy finally
made it to the Turkish baths. There were three rooms linked by arches. Each got
smaller and hotter than the one before. For twenty minutes they sat upon the white-tiled
seats of the first chamber. Steam swirled around them. Their heads slowly fell
under the weight of bone as strength drained away At a nod from Cathy they
moved into the next phase of affliction; when Lucy thought she could bear it no
more, Cathy gestured towards a small, empty compartment. None of the other
users had been in there. The heat was overpowering. Lucy slumped in a corner,
blinded by sweat, until she was so weak she could barely lift her limbs. Cathy
leaned against the wall, her eyes tightly closed. Through the burning fog Lucy
could just see the small scar upon the flushed cheek. It kept the lead, always
a fraction redder.

Cathy
slowly raised an arm, pointing to a swing-door adjacent to the entrance. ‘You
first,’ she breathed.

Lucy
staggered back, blinking rapidly, her eyes swimming from the sting of salt. She
pushed through the door into a bright room by a small pool. Somehow she lay on
a table.

‘That
was hell,’ she said. ‘I’m never coming back as long as I live.’

‘It’s
not over yet, love,’ said a deep voice. A woman with thick muscles appeared,
armed with a huge lathered sponge. At its touch upon her toes Lucy howled. It
was too much. The lightest contact was like merciless tickling. Lucy shrieked
until she was hauled off and pushed towards a warm, gentle shower. When she emerged,
the woman with the muscles gave her a shove and Lucy toppled into the pool of
freezing water. When she surfaced she was ready to die. Death had lost its
sting.

Lying on a padded leather
divan, wrapped in a warm towel, Lucy had her first experience of transcendence.
By her side on a small table was a mug of hot, sweet tea and a bacon sandwich.
Cathy lay upon a parallel couch.

‘I
believe in God,’ said Lucy

‘I’m
told a bishop died of a heart attack in a place like this.’

‘No
better surroundings.’

‘I don’t
think he made it to the pool.’

‘He
coughed it on the table?’

‘So it
seems.

‘What a
way to go.

Cathy
reached for her sandwich and said, ‘Did you take my advice and invite the
Frenchman out?’

‘I did,
actually,’ replied Lucy

‘Where
did you go?’

‘A
monastery. ‘

Cathy
chewed thoughtfully ‘Before that you had a meal in a crypt.’ She licked melted
butter off a finger. ‘Where to next time?’

‘A pub,
I suspect. ‘

Chapter Twenty-Four

1

Lucy met Pascal on a wet
pavement outside Sibyl’s Cave on a Friday night. She said, ‘It’s seething.’

‘We’ll
be all right: He rubbed his hands confidently, as if about to spin a couple of
dice down the felt. He winked and Lucy bridled. She couldn’t split the gesture
from scaffolds and whistling beery cheek. He said, ‘I have a good feeling about
this.’

Pascal
had obtained Max Nightingale’s phone number from Father Anselm. The meeting was
set up. Apparently he’d been keen. When Pascal had told Lucy she’d felt a
sharp, churning disgust. ‘Good,’ she’d said.

Lucy
yanked at the pub door, releasing from the bright hallway a gasp of heat and
noise. The lounge was packed with competition, professionals loudly shedding
the pressures of work. They glanced into a small smoking room. Thick blue
swirls hung above the tables like belchings from so many garden fires. Empty
glasses stood in tight crowds. A young girl in a short black skirt pushed past
gripping a damp cloth. They forced their way towards the veranda entrance.
Pinned to a jamb was a forbidding notice: Private Party. Through the window
panel Lucy saw suits, legs crossed while standing, wine glasses pressed to the
chest: the boss was leaving. Pascal pulled her by the arm towards the debating
room.

The
appetite for argument was on the wane — young bloods were heading for the bar
or home, leaving disparate clusters of older men. Where were the women? thought
Lucy Her gaze shifted and she saw Max Nightingale sitting in a corner. On the
table was a black motorcycle helmet. It stared at Lucy and she thought of an
empty, severed head. They joined him, pulling up chairs.

‘Who’s
Sibyl?’ asked Max Nightingale. Lucy noticed dark grime beneath his nails: a
trace of his grandfather’s dirt. Catching her glance he said, ‘Paint. I’ve been
painting.’

‘Papered
cracks?’

‘No,
pictures.’

‘Oh.’

‘Sibyl?’
he repeated.

Pascal
said, ‘She’s the maim player in a tragic myth, a mystic who pushed off death
and spent centuries in a cave. She wrote out riddles on leaves but left them to
the mercy of the wind.’

Max
Nightingale stared back blankly ‘I thought she was the landlord.’

Lucy
laughed, against the will to scoff … she who hadn’t known either.

Pascal
said, ‘You asked a question at the Priory — about Agnes and a child. Where did
you get the name from?’

‘My
grandfather.’ He spoke frankly quickly

‘Do you
know who she is?’

‘No.’

Pascal
seemed to see suspicion and caution peeling away ‘I’d like to ask you a
question, but first I just want to say something.’

Max
Nightingale removed the helmet from the table. A space opened up, flat, ready
to be crossed. Lucy regarded it with horror.

Pascal
said, ‘We’ve been born on different sides of a nightmare, but it’s worth
saying … I’ve got nothing against you.

Max
Nightingale flinched. Then, recovered, he said, ‘Ask me your question. ‘

Lucy
heard a shuffle: standing almost over them was the man she called The Don.

2

Brother Sylvester must
have enjoyed one of his flashes of competence, for he managed to transfer a
telephone call from the switchboard to the extension where Anselm was to be
found. The shock of the feat momentarily distracted Anselm’s attention from DI
Armstrong’s words:

‘We’ve
put all the evidence to Schwermann during the interviews. He said only one
thing, a quotation: “Zwei
Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.”‘

‘I’m
sorry, I can’t help you there. ‘

‘I don’t
need help, thank you. It’s from Goethe’s
Faust.
Translates as “Two souls
dwell, alas, within my breast.” I think it’s am admission of sorts.’

‘But it
won’t get you very far with a jury’

‘I
realise that. Anyway, the investigation is over. We’re going to charge him
tomorrow with murder.’

‘Joint
enterprise?’

‘Yes.’

Anselm
had a premonition of what was to follow

‘As for
Victor Brionne, or Berkeley, nothing has turned up. There are no records to
show that he ever lived or died, not under those names.

Anselm
thought back to the charming Robert B, legs crossed, confiding the little he
knew; coming to Vespers and taking his time in parting.

DI
Armstrong said, ‘Brionne has been a very cautious man. He must have changed his
name again — perhaps by deed poll, or simply by claiming his papers had been
destroyed: that would have been fairly easy for a refugee after the war. Either
way, there’s little chance of finding him. It is as though he never existed.’

3

‘May I join you?’ A warm
smile lit The Don’s face, among a shock of white hair, from his scalp down to
the beard. In his hand was a pint of beer. Without waiting for a reply he drew
up a chair and sat down.

‘I
recognise you, actually,’ he said, nodding to Pascal, ‘from the television.’

Max
Nightingale opened his mouth to speak but the stranger said, ‘Well, well, here
we are, four open minds round one table. There’s nothing we cannot question
and, as so often happens in the dialogues of Plato, our combined ignorance can
lead us to the truth. The blind can lead the blind after all.’ He smiled
cheerily

‘Look,’
said Max Nightingale, ‘we’re in the middle of something.’

‘I’ll
join in.’

‘I’m
sorry, but—’

Pascal
interrupted: ‘Max, this is the debating room. I should have said … anyone
can participate …

‘So,’
said the man with the white beard, looking amiably round the table, ‘what’s the
subject?’

Pascal
said, with strained patience, ‘We haven’t got one.’