Fallen Gods

Thirty-three

Adam Broadley was in a consulting room, rather than a waiting room, when Rose and Steele returned to the Royal Edinburgh Hospital on Tuesday morning. They had accepted the clinician's suggestion that rather than risk terrifying his sensitive patient. by arriving at her home unannounced, he should ask her to come to see him, so that he could explain what was going to happen.

Andrea Strachan was seated behind a table when Broadley led them in to see her. She wore a dark twin-set, and her shoulders were hunched. Her eyes had a glassy look as she peered up at them. She had been with the police before, and when he introduced them, she was frightened.

Maggie Rose tried at once to put her at her ease. "This is a routine interview, Miss Strachan," she began, 'but given your recent illness, Adam thought that it would be best if it took place in his presence. We had no problem agreeing to that. Normally a discussion like this would be recorded these days, but this morning Inspector Steele will just take notes. So, if I can explain what it's about…"

"You don't have to!" the woman exclaimed in a shrill voice that fell not far short of a screech. "I'm mentally ill, not mentally deficient.

I know what this is. It has to do with that ridiculous painting going up in smoke. This is haul in the loony and pin it on her."

Steele leaned forward and looked her in the eye, kindly, he hoped. "No it's not, Andrea," he said. "We don't have a remit to find a scapegoat here. If we did, you'd be in a smelly room in Torphichen Place, not here in Adam's office."

She seemed to soften, very slightly. "Go on then," she muttered, 'what is it about then?" The inspector looked to Rose, seated on his right.

Recognising that their subject seemed to respond better to a man, she nodded and leaned back in her chair.

"First of all," he resumed, "I want to get some things clear, so that you can understand at least what's brought us here. Is that fair?"

"I suppose."

"Good. First and foremost then, you were there when the picture was burned, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"And you'd seen it before when you went with Mr. O'Reilly and Mrs. Laing to take delivery at the Academy?"

"Yes."

"Fine; that's established. Next I want to tell you something, and then I want to ask you something. But I want to make it clear that I am making no accusation, just establishing facts. What I have to tell you is that the painting was ignited by an incendiary device, triggered remotely."

"That's what you would say," Andrea retorted. "Some of us would say that it was God's punishment."

Steele and Rose saw Adam Broadley's forehead clench in an involuntary frown at her comment, but it went unnoticed by the girl, who was seated beside him. "If it was," said the inspector, with a soft smile, "He still used an incendiary. We found pieces of its casing afterwards."

For a second, he thought that Andrea smiled back at him, but if she did it was so fleeting that it was gone in less than a second. "Now," he continued, 'to what I want to ask you. You have an honours in chemistry, I know. Would you have the capability of making such a device?"

"In the event that God told me to do it? Is that what you mean?"

"No, it was a straight question; but you can frame it any way you like."

She made a small, exasperated sound. "You know I could, because I did it before, when I tried to burn that holy roller place last year. But let me save you a question. I didn't."

"I wasn't necessarily going there, Andrea."

"Not much."

Steele grinned, in part at the girl, but mainly to preserve their fragile rapport. "Well, maybe I was. But first I was going to ask you what you thought of the Vargas Trinity. Some people thought it was blasphemous. Did you?"

"Funnily enough I didn't; I saw it as a feminist joke, that's all. God doesn't actually have a sex; mankind was made in God's image, not just a man. Yet he's been depicted as male; that's more of a blasphemy in a way. He's referred to in male terms, but that's purely a convenience. What Vargas was saying was that if you see God as a woman then since Christ was made in Her image too, then all three, the Holy Spirit included, had to be women. A joke, you see; a bad joke, I admit, expressed in an execrably bad painting, but not something that would move God to destroy it."

This time she looked Steele in the eye, and held his gaze. "I see," he said, slowly. "But what about those holy rollers? This is a genuine question, by the way, Andrea, no tricks. I'm interested. What made them blasphemous in your eyes?"

She seemed to bridle and he thought for a moment that the thread tying them together had snapped. "The way they carry on, of course," she answered, her voice rising. "Have you seen the pagan way in which these people purport to worship God? All that hand-clapping and wailing and yelling, all that calling attention to themselves. They are approaching God without any humility, as if He was a celebrity of some sort, rather than the Lord of Creation before Whom we should all bow down our heads. Their practices bring Him into disrepute, and that's why He called me to destroy their temple."

Broadley laid a hand softly on her arm. She shook it off. "Oh all right, Adam," she said, crossly. "I accept that I was ill; I accept that I still am. But you have to accept that God's call was real to me at the time, and that it still is. Just as it was real when He spoke to me again on Friday. Yes, I know it's part of my illness, but it still has reality for me, and it is natural for me to obey Him."

The physician looked at the detectives. For a second Steele thought he was about to intervene, and silenced him with a quick chilling glare.

"Let's get this straight, Andrea," he continued, quietly. "God spoke to you again on Friday, you say?"

She looked at him with a calmness that was almost serene, a total contrast to her attitude fifteen minutes earlier. "Yes."

"How?"

"This time it was on the telephone," she told him.

"How did He speak to you before?"

"Last time it was through the television, when it was switched off.

Other times it's been through the speakers of my stereo. There's nothing odd about Him using the phone."

"Will you tell me what happened?"

"Of course. I was at home, alone as usual, when the phone rang, or seemed to. I picked it up and He was on the other end."

"How did you know it was Him?"

She smiled at him, and for the first time he noticed that behind all that severity, she was actually very pretty. "Do you mean did He say, "Hello, Andrea, this is God"? No, of course not. He doesn't need to. He's in my head. I know that now, so when it happens I just accept it."

"Okay. So what did He say?"

"He said that He had a task for me. He said that He wanted me to go to the opening of the exhibition on Saturday. There would be a purpose to it, He said. I would be His witness."

"What did you say?"

"Don't be daft, inspector. You listen to God, you don't talk to Him."

"Sorry. So you went to the opening ceremony?"

"Of course."

"How did you get in without a ticket?"

"I'd been there before. The security people all knew me. I just waved and went in."

"We saw you on the videotapes. You looked apprehensive."

"I was. For all I knew, we were all going to be smitten with thunderbolts."

"When it happened, when the picture went up, were you surprised?"

She gave him that smile again, this time with her eyes as well as her mouth. "Inspector Steele, I suppose I was the only person in that room who wasn't."

"But you did not do anything to set off that device and you did not create and plant it?"

"No, I did not. As I told you, this time I was only a witness. I suppose I was such an awful instrument against the Baptists that God felt He couldn't trust me again."

Steele grinned back at her; for a few seconds they simply looked at each other, saying nothing.

"Is that it?" asked Broadley, eventually. "Because if it is…"

Andrea Strachan turned to look at him. Steele thought of a butterfly, emerged from its chrysalis. "I know, Adam," she said. "You don't have to say it. You'd like me to stay with you for a few more weeks."

The young clinician looked almost grateful. "I'd hope it won't be weeks, but yes, I would like you to spend some time with me."

"If you wish. I know better than to argue anyway. You're as persuasive as the inspector here. Can you fetch my medication and some clothes from my place?"

"We've got medication here, but I'll have a nurse get some clothes for you. Come on, I'll find you a room."

She stood, and the detectives followed suit. Just as she was leaving the room, Steele called out to her. "Andrea, just one more thing." She stopped and looked back. "After God had finished speaking to you last Friday, what happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"How did the call end?"

"He said what He had to say, and then He was gone."

"What did you hear after that?"

"A dialling tone, that was all."

"Mmm," Steele mused. "In that case didn't it strike you as odd that God should hang up His phone?"

She left them with a shade of doubt in her eyes, for the first time since they had met.

"Stevie," Maggie Rose exclaimed as the door closed, 'that was most impressive; a master class in interviewing. Well done."

He blinked and looked at her as if he had heard not a word she had said. "Sorry?"

"Ah, never mind. What do you think?"

"You're the boss. What's your take?"

"She probably did it, but we have no witnesses to her planting the device or igniting it. We could maybe search her home under warrant and find something that could have been the triggering device, but we'd still be a mile short of making a case. As it is she's under psychiatric care again, so she's no risk. Do you agree?"

Steele scratched his chin. "Remember what we were saying yesterday about things being too easy?" he asked her. "Well this is. I'm sorry but I just don't think she did it. I am quite sure she had a phone call on Friday, and I'm even more certain that it wasn't from God. Andrea's been handed to us on a plate by some clever bastard who doesn't want us to take this investigation any further. If you want me to buy that, you're going to have to order me. But even then, I don't think I can."

Rose smiled. "Are you sure you haven't just fallen in love?" "Maybe I have, but that's got nothing to do with it. I can still spot a set-up when I see one."