There was a light in the downstairs window, but as they watched it went out. Then a bedroom light came on, for a few seconds only, before it too went out.
A police squad car took the T-junction turn at 60 m.p.h. and slid into the kerb. Liam Kennedy got out, picking the sweaty T-shirt away from his narrow chest. He stood looking at the church, fidgeting, switching his weight from foot to foot.
Shaw nodded. ‘You OK? We need to talk — briefly.’
‘I need to check inside,’ said Kennedy. ‘We could talk then. I’ve got a room here, in the basement.’ He broadcast a smile, which Shaw judged he thought was charming.
The main doors of the Sacred Heart of Mary, under a high-pointed neo-Gothic arch, were locked, but along the side of the building ran a path to a single door over which hung a light bulb in a metal frame, like a miniature iron maiden.
Kennedy laid a finger to his lips and pushed the door open. The nave was unlit, a little moonlight struggling through the sickly blues and reds of the Victorian stained glass. Shaw stood, waiting for the subtle jigsaw of greys and blacks to form itself into an image. The smell was pungent: human sweat, lavatory cleaner, and something
Kennedy stepped close. ‘The hostel — number 6 — is home to only four men at any one time. It’s designed to provide a bridge — a real home, for a month, maybe three — for those who’ve got themselves a job. Here at the church we look after the less fortunate. A dozen, twenty a night. We do our best.’ He held out his hands to indicate that, while that was not enough, it didn’t mean God wasn’t pleased with him.
Shaw tried to keep his reactions to Kennedy as neutral as he could, but he recognized it would be a struggle. In his short career he’d found more evil than good in organized religion, more exploitation than salvation. And he couldn’t suppress the question: what were this young man’s motives for working here, amongst the broken? Perhaps, he thought, he was broken too.
The front sets of pews in the church had been removed, stacked to one side, and in their place mattresses laid out in two neat rows. On each lay a man; most of them just covered in a sheet, wrapped by constant movement into mummies. One lay on the cool wooden floor, only his hand left on the mattress. The outer door closed behind Shaw with a thud on an automatic spring, and one of the figures stirred, crying out ‘Slainte! ’ — an Irish toast.
They followed Kennedy behind the altar into a small room. A table with green baize had a rip in it, and the unshaded light bulb made the bare, unpapered walls look stark. A row of pegs was empty except for a surplice and a Tesco bag. In one corner stood a large metal filing
Kennedy opened a narrow door with a key, flicked a switch, and turned his body slightly to one side with practised ease so that he could drop down a flight of stairs.
‘It’s a bit hot,’ he said, greeting them at the bottom. Behind him was a lagged boiler, oil-fired, ticking in the silence. ‘We can’t shut it down because it provides hot water — for here, and the house. In winter, it’s snug — in summer, I try and keep the skylights open.’
At ceiling level there was a line of frosted-glass windows in one wall, heavily barred and letter-box narrow. The boiler room was neat and swept, as was a corridor which led away down the length of the church above, lit by three more bare light bulbs. Off it was a door into a bedsit, with a kitchen and toilet to one side. The narrow horizontal window here was open too, held up by a wooden stay, revealing the leaves of a fig tree in the graveyard above.
‘It’s not the crypt of St Paul’s, is it?’ said Shaw.
‘It’s home,’ said Kennedy. In one corner stood an easel, half a dozen twisted oil-paint tubes in the wooden gutter. A light sketch in pencil covered a piece of cartridge paper, the lines too thin to reveal the subject. There was a desk and a computer — a slim white laptop. Kennedy touched it like an icon. ‘I’m setting up a website for the church. I can do that — design and so on. I’ve done it before.’
He tucked his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans. ‘How can I help?’ he asked, the accent leafy-suburb London. ‘Ask anything — I won’t sleep, not now. Those poor men,’ he added, his eyes pressed quickly closed.
‘Aidan has some very serious burns; he’s still unconscious. I think there are concerns the shock may be too much — although he’s still young, and strong.’ Kennedy looked away, his voice catching. ‘Pete’s got minor burns, and the smoke’s really got his lungs, but he’ll be fine. He’s under sedation.’
‘Four beds, you said. Where are the other two men?’ asked Valentine, noticing a crucifix set above the door. The last time he’d been in a church had been for a funeral, and the memory, suppressed for so long, was making him anxious. He didn’t recall the service itself, or anything anyone had said about his wife, but he could catch the precise smell, a kind of polished dampness. It was there again now, like a spirit.
‘Well — Pete was only stopping a few nights — he’s one of our old boys.’ Kennedy laughed, but didn’t get any response. ‘He was here last year, in the summer, but he’s up on the coast now at St John’s, Hunstanton. And doing very well. He had to come back to Lynn — probate on a will, I think; I don’t know the details. So there are actually three places vacant — Aidan’s the only permanent resident at the moment. But we can’t push people who aren’t ready. The hostel is supposed to be a haven, you see, a safe place. So there’s a process: criteria,’ he added, proud of the word.
‘A process you’re in charge of?’ asked Shaw.
‘It’s my job,’ said Kennedy. ‘I’m the hostel warden,’ he said, puffing up. He stood up a bit straighter, too, knowing he’d just taken responsibility for something that
‘You’re very young for the job…’ said Shaw, smiling.
‘Father Martin trusts me. That helps a lot,’ said Kennedy.
‘So it was your decision to give one of these rooms to Aidan Holme — a serial offender with a record in peddling drugs?’
Kennedy nodded, as if considering an obtuse point in an academic debate. ‘Yes. Yes, I did. Well — I recommended. Father Martin has the authority. But Aidan’s past was not a secret. He’s on a registered scheme for addicts. He takes medication to help him with that — and I collect prescriptions for all the men. He’s stuck to the course — which is not easy. Father Martin gets regular reports on his progress from his social worker and they have been excellent. I believe he’s clean. I have faith in him.’
Kennedy’s confidence was, Shaw guessed, as brittle as the trendy glasses on his face. He tried to remind himself that this was a young man, that life hadn’t yet taught him to see the people around him as a blend of good and evil, lies and truths.
‘But supplying? He’s been charged with supplying,’ said Shaw.
‘He denies it. I’ve asked him about it and he’s adamant that he is an innocent man. I’m sorry — that was my judgement.’
They heard a brief blare of a car alarm through the narrow graveyard window.
‘No. I think that’s what Bryan Judd probably told them. I’m not surprised they believed him. Is that why they attacked the hostel?’
Shaw wasn’t answering questions, he was asking them, and he thought Kennedy’s answer had been smoothly glib. ‘When you were with him in the street — earlier. What did Aidan mean when he said he was dying, and that he’d told you that would happen?’
‘Aidan’s not stupid, he’s highly intelligent. He felt — feels — he’s wasted his life. Here — in the church — we’ve talked about that many times. He said his greatest fear was that now — now he’d decided to sort his life out — God would take his life from him. I had to try and make him believe that wouldn’t happen. Father Martin too. We told him that there is always time to repent, and that, if he did, there was no reason why there couldn’t be rewards in this life, as well as the next.’
Shaw couldn’t fault the logic, even if it was based on what he saw as superstition. ‘Is it the first time there’s been trouble at the hostel?’ he asked, switching tack.
‘There have been incidents in the past — in the street, at the Crane. People want their church, you know, but they don’t seem to want what it stands for.’ He said it as if reading the words, and Shaw wondered if he was mimicking Father Martin. Perhaps the priest was a father figure in more than one sense of the word.
Flames.’ Kennedy closed his eyes.
‘How?’ said Shaw, aware he’d been inveigled into the question.
‘I hear voices,’ said Kennedy, opening his eyes.
‘Anyone we know?’ asked Valentine.
Kennedy’s smile froze. ‘I’m sorry if you don’t believe. I hear voices all the time and they said there’d be a fire. I told Father Martin we should have hydrants fitted — and smoke alarms. I am responsible.’
‘So you keep reminding us,’ said Shaw.
Kennedy licked his lips and Shaw noticed, for the first time, a stud in his bottom lip in the shape of a cross. ‘Mary told me,’ he said, glancing over Shaw’s shoulder. They turned to see a painting, mass produced in a cheap frame, of Christ’s mother revealing the heart in her chest, rays emanating, a chain of thorns producing drops of blood.
‘Does anyone else hear the voices?’ asked Shaw, trying to keep the tone unchallenging. Something in Kennedy’s voice told him that for this man the voices were real enough.
‘There’s a network. We all hear — but not the same voices.’ He looked from Valentine to Shaw. ‘We’re not mad. The doctors encourage us to listen to the voices, not deny them.’
‘Doctors?’ asked Shaw. Kennedy’s face looked like it was about to crumple and Shaw instantly regretted the question. He held up a hand to stop the answer. ‘Sorry.’ He turned to go and noticed again the easel, and now, up
‘A study,’ said Kennedy, laughing again. ‘The work itself is in the church — would you like to see?’
Valentine ground his teeth. What he wanted was to go home, what he needed was a drink. He willed Shaw to say ‘No’.
‘Yes,’ said Shaw.
Kennedy took them back up into the vestry, then into the nave, to the end, by the closed main doors. To one side a temporary kitchen had been set up; a stainless-steel unit, gas stove, sink, counter, and a fridge-freezer. The smell of shepherd’s pie was stronger here, and stewed greens.
‘The council provides food — we’re trying to raise the funds for a proper kitchen. But the men appreciate it — a hot meal.’ Kennedy had lowered his voice in deference to the sleeping men, and lowered his head too, as though in prayer.
‘The men in the hostel at number 6,’ said Shaw. ‘I saw the kitchen — it didn’t look like they cooked their own meals. The cupboards were empty.’
‘No. They eat here. We are a community. God provides.’
Shaw recalled the empty silver takeaway curry trays; perhaps God didn’t provide enough.
Kennedy flicked a switch. A spotlight illuminated the high whitewashed wall above and around the neo-Gothic doors. Valentine took a pew, suddenly aware that he might be overwhelmed by sleep. He closed his eyes and
Shaw stood back. The whole surface had been prepared for a wall painting — but only one corner, at the bottom right, had progressed. It was in classical style, a velvet drape on the corner of a table, upon which were several objects: a skull and a bunch of grapes in a silver bowl. The grapes were ripe, beyond ripe, blushed with a thin layer of white mould. And some animal bones on a gold plate, picked clean of the flesh. To one side was a second bowl — just pencil lines, the subject of the study in Kennedy’s room.
‘You did this?’ asked Shaw. The work was amateurish but studied, like painting-by-numbers. It was a work of dedication, not inspiration.
The fingers of Kennedy’s right hand pulled at the left. He nodded, not taking his eyes off the images.
‘Memento mori,’ said Shaw. ‘Remembrances of death.’
Kennedy nodded. ‘Yes. Mortality.’
‘And the rest?’
‘The Miracle at Cana. Father Martin’s favourite reading. It’s a great honour to be asked.’
Shaw couldn’t be sure but he thought he recognized the composition, the Italian colours. ‘It’s a Patigno? A copy?’
Kennedy blushed, as if copying a masterpiece was a sin. ‘Yes, of course. That’s clever of you. I did design at college — A Level. Mostly websites, actually. So this is a challenge. I’ve got a large print of the original in the back — if you’d like to see…’
Shaw held up both hands. Valentine stood, walked
‘Don’t think so,’ said Kennedy. ‘It’s a waste, but we can’t really risk it.’ He looked to the clock over the door. ‘It was down twelve hours. Too long. The freezer’s old — and not very efficient even when it’s working, and it’s — ’
Shaw cut him short. ‘We need to speak to the men, these men, all of them. Some of them must have known Holme? Or Hendre even? Where were they during the fire?’
Kennedy looked shocked, which Shaw thought masked some anger as well. ‘I told them to stay inside — but most were asleep because the lights were out. I can’t wake them, not now.’ He looked at a wristwatch, a Swatch. ‘It’s past one in the morning.’
‘No, it can wait till first thing. But can you keep them all here for us?’
Kennedy looked back at the sleeping men as if for the first time. ‘Sure. Well, until breakfast. That’s nine o’clock. Then most of them walk — in the summer — down to the river, or the parks. That’s their right.’
Shaw turned to go but noticed an electronic organ set to one side, and looking up he saw the original Victorian pipes. On the pew end was a pile of hymn books. He picked one up, leafing through, thinking about the ‘Organ Grinder’. ‘You still hold services here?’
‘Yes. Oh yes. It’s part of a team ministry — based at St Anne’s. So we get a Sunday service once a month, and
‘Someone plays the organ?’ asked Shaw.
Kennedy shrugged. ‘Father Martin sometimes, for the men. A few parishioners too, but not often.’ He kicked at the floor with his trainer, and they could hear the gritty sound of something covering the tiles.
‘I’d like their names, please,’ said Shaw. ‘The parishioners…’
Kennedy looked down, irritated. ‘Since we banned confetti we have to deal with this…’ He crunched something with his heel.
Shaw knelt quickly and picked up something, juggling it into the centre of his palm, holding it out for them to see.
It was a single grain of rice. Uncooked.
‘Rice?’ asked the man behind the counter of the all-night mobile kiosk. He wore a Chinese shirt, dragons and little willow-pattern bridges, but the accent was London overspill and he had Red Devils tattooed on one hand.
‘Chips,’ said Valentine. ‘Curry sauce.’ He didn’t recognize the man; normally it was a woman with cutaway gloves.
He took the tray and a plastic fork and left without saying anything, leaving the right money in loose change on the counter: 90p. It had been that price for a year now.
The quayside was deserted, it was 2 a.m, the light from the all-night takeaway spilling out to the railings over the water. Valentine touched the iron, a little ceremony of luck, then walked, picking at the food, until he got to South Lynn, the network of streets he’d lived in all his life. He put the tray of half-eaten chips into a bin, crunching it down so that the seagulls wouldn’t tear it back out.
His terraced house stood dark and still; but the street light outside his bedroom was on, buzzing like it always did. Briefly, he wondered if the power had been out here, then dismissed the thought. There was nothing in the fridge anyway.
In his imagination he could see into the rooms, through the bricks, as if it were a doll’s house standing
His keys were heavy in his pocket, and only a few minutes earlier he’d been dreaming of his bed, but now he couldn’t face it, because sleeping was about letting go, and he wasn’t very good at that. He walked on instead, past the corner shop and its security grille, to the graveyard of All Saints’. Someone had put an empty can of Special Brew on top of his wife’s gravestone. He sat on a bench and lobbed grit at it. He unpeeled the charity sticker from his lapel and stuck it on the stone. There were twenty, thirty, others in various states of rotting away, all over the granite surface.
Julie Anne Valentine 1955–1993
Asleep
The beer can clattered down on the tarmac path.
He walked; zigzagging through the terraced streets behind the London Road, trying to shake off the illusion that he was being followed, an illusion which haunted him now when he was alone, at night, in the silent streets. Near the old city gate there was a pub called the Honest Lawyer, the sign a headless clerk; closed down now, the windows stopped-up with breeze blocks. Beside it stood a funeral parlour. Granite stones in the window, lilies in
On the other side of the shop from the chapel was a house, two-up two-down, with a front door in matching gloss black. And beside that a set of garages: four roll-up doors. Valentine knew what was inside each: a sleek black car with glass panel sides for the coffin, a Daimler estate, and a glass-casket funeral coach; he’d often seen the plumed black horses pulling it towards the cemetery at Gayton Road.
The fourth roll-up garage door was never open in the week except in the evenings. Inside was a souped-up Citroen, stripped down for stock-car racing, up on blocks, with a bonnet logo that read TEAM MOSSE.
In front of the house, parked at the kerb, was a battered BMW, rust on one of the wheel arches.
There was a chestnut tree opposite the house on a triangle of open ground and the branches came right down to the ground, creating a perfect canopy. By the trunk of the tree was a bench, a hidden gazebo. And that’s where he always sat. It was a bit like his other addictions now, watching this man — like the booze, the fags, and the gambling. He did it without thinking, and wouldn’t have admitted that it wasn’t fun any more. He’d started after Christmas because January was always his worst month. His generation — born in the fifties — didn’t do depression, but if he’d known a little he’d have spotted the symptoms. He felt cold when it was mild, tired when he woke up, and alcohol deepened the feeling that he’d forgotten how to get through a day, like suddenly losing the ability to tie your own shoelaces.