The Sixth Lamentation

Chapter Twenty

1

It was a sensible arrangement. At the back of the flat were two bedrooms, side by side, one of which had French windows opening out on to the garden. That was where Agnes slept. The other was for Wilma. They left their doors ajar at night.

Lucy was staggered at Wilma’s cleanliness. For fifteen years she’d bustled from Hammersmith to Shepherd’s Bush, to a drop-in centre by a church. There she showered, took her breakfast and then came back to feed the birds in Ravenscourt Park. She’d met Agnes while tailing a pigeon. A friendship had grown, unknown to anyone in the family including Lucy. It was always that way with Agnes. She had small, secret spaces in her life which were only discovered by accident. Surprise questions were an act of trespass, so the family got used to stumbling upon things and pretending nothing had been uncovered. And so it was here. Wilma’s intimacy with Agnes passed without comment, even though a first, brief association was sufficient to confirm that Wilma was pleasantly and ever so slightly mad.

Agnes now had a wheelchair but she would not sit mm it. She pushed it round the flat, moving slowly and with relaxed deliberation as if negotiating an obstacle course, smiling at little victories and wincing at scuffs upon the furniture. The frontiers of her world were contracting and she rubbed against them. She no longer went to the park, or along the river to watch the boats, but moved from room to room, from chair to bed, and, whenever possible, out to the garden among fresh green things.

Wilma was tidying her room again when Lucy decided to mention the gun. She had been foraging in a cupboard for something Wilma had put away when she’d touched the barrel. She’d left it there, wrapped in a duster, with four corroded rounds of ammunition. The incongruity of Agnes with a revolver could not pass without comment. This was a secret space that had to be invaded, tactfully, as they sat in the back garden.

‘A French officer gave that to Arthur,’ explained Agnes. ‘He brought it back, along with his clock. They were his only souvenirs. I’d forgotten all about it.

‘But it’s illegal. It should have been handed in.’

‘Take it to the police after I’m dead,’ said Agnes.

The word struck Lucy like a back-handed slap. But to Agnes it was just another sound. She said, ‘I’d like to go inside now’

They returned slowly to the flat. For a long while Agnes jiggled her wheelchair at the French windows, trying to get it over a ridge. Lucy watched from behind, detesting her impulse to push past and move things along, to get away from this constant, slow pageant of illness.

‘I expect you see rather a lot of young Fougères,’ said Agnes, leaning forward to push.

‘Not really’

‘I suspect he rather likes you.’

‘Stop it, Gran.’

As they passed Agnes’ bureau by the door Lucy saw a sheet of cardboard. ‘What’s that?’

‘An alphabet card:

The letters were written very neatly in lines of four, forming six columns.

Agnes stopped and turned, her blue eyes alarmed as by the heavy approach of a new and threatening machine. ‘When I can’t talk any more, I’ll point.’

They looked at each other, helpless.

Every time Lucy saw Agnes something happened to wound her memory. A gallery of imprints hung in perpetuity. That evening joined the rest. She would for ever be able to see her grandmother standing by a door, thin arms on a wheelchair, her eyes resting on the alphabet.

2

Anselm was reading Athanasius’ Life of Anthony when the Prior knocked on his door. Anselm had always enjoyed all that wrestling with demons for it struck him as a powerful metaphor for aspects of his own inner life whose battles were fought with fiends less easily discerned.

The Prior had come to say that DI Armstrong had dropped by and, since it related to Schwermann, would he deal with it. Anselm closed his book and went to the parlour entrance. She was walking to and fro, preoccupied. After greetings were exchanged, she said, ‘Father, there’s a couple of things I’d like to mention. First, we’re going to interview Schwermann, I expect over several days. If the community doesn’t mind, we’d prefer to bring all the kit and do it here rather than take him to a station. Here’s a list of dates. We might not need them all. It depends on what he says.

‘Of course, I’ll raise it with the Prior,’ said Anselm, taking the sheet of paper.

DI Armstrong hesitated. In Anselm’s experience, the point mentioned last in a series was always the most important, and, if of a sensitive character, usually introduced with reticence. ‘Would you like a short stroll in the grounds?’ he asked. ‘It’s quite reviving to look at someone else’s work.’

They passed through an iron gate still swinging on one hinge since heaven knew when and entered the majestic wilderness of a wet, half-kept garden.

‘So when are you going to take him off our hands?’ invited Anselm, pointing the question at the source of presumed discomfort.

‘That’s the second thing. It’s why I’m really here, as you’ve probably guessed. I could have sent the interview dates by letter.’

‘Yes,’ said Anselm knowingly, not having thought of it.

‘Can I speak in absolute confidence?’

‘Yes.’

‘Schwermann is here to stay I know you were told it was only for the short term but nothing is being planned to move him. I also know you were told it was unlikely any charges would be laid but that was and is nonsense. Once the interviews are over a decision will be taken, but the idea that he’ll just go home is fanciful.’

‘So if and when he’s charged,’ said Anselm, ‘the media will have another field day at our expense.

‘I expect so, which brings me to what I really wanted to say’

They walked in silence towards a bench by an open sloping shed. Finches and sparrows skipped across the grass, their small heads jerking left and right, alert to every movement of the wind.

Sitting down, DI Armstrong said heavily ‘I can’t prove this, but I suspect the Priory has been set up for a fall and I don’t know why’

‘How?’

‘Let me put the whole thing in a wider context. If there is a trial, there will be a colossal embarrassment factor for the government. Schwermann was interviewed in 1945 by a young British Intelligence officer, Captain Austin Lawson. As you know, he went on to a life in politics and is now a Labour Peer. There is something alarming and mystifying about the record of interrogation. Hardly anything was written down. In fact, it contains no more than was repeated in the memo found by Pascal Fougères — I get the feeling Lawson only filled out a report because he had to.’

‘Maybe he didn’t know what Schwermann had done.’

‘That’s possible. Not very much was known in the aftermath of the war, and Lawson was young, twenty-four, so he could have been a bit naïve. But I seriously doubt it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he deliberately left out vital information … like the false names of Schwermann and Brionne, where they got them from … and there’s no record of an interview with Brionne at all, although he must have spoken to him. It’s as though Lawson knew something and let them go. He wouldn’t have made the decision, but it would have been upon his recommendation.’

‘Is he a Catholic?’ asked Anselm suddenly

‘As it happens, he is. How did you know?’

‘His first name … it’s short for Augustine … just a guess.

‘Why ask?’ said DI Armstrong. The voice contained stealth, patience, the tip of a claw

‘Nothing,’ said Anselm, shrinking, clasping at levity. ‘Idle, irrelevant curiosity. A particularly Catholic sin. Sorry.’

DI Armstrong seemed to wrestle with an unwelcome confusion. She cast an eye of longing around the peaceful enclosure. Checking herself, she said, ‘The problem for the Home Office is that they have no control. We do the investigation and if there’s enough evidence there’s a trial. They couldn’t stop it if they wanted to. So there’s a risk the whole mess will be brought out into the open. And Schwermann wasn’t the only one. There were others.’

‘.Why do you think that Larkwood is being set up for a fall?’

‘Milby has to brief the Chief Constable every couple of weeks, and together they have meetings with the Home Office because of the sensitivity of the case. Of course the politicians can’t bring influence to bear, blah, blah, but I’m sure they’re the ones who make “suggestions” about what is best for national security, public relations and so on. And without wishing to smear my boss too much, he’s rather susceptible to fixing things if there’s no other way’

‘Drug squad realism?’

‘Yes, he’s never quite left the back alleys. Anyway, right from the outset he was encouraged, shall we say, to let Schwermann know we were on to him. Milby’s got a few tame journalists — you know what it’s like, favours for favours — so he tipped one of them off, a local hack. Then for some reason Schwermann came here. Once we were informed, Milby let one of the nationals know’

‘What on earth for?’

‘It’s not his agenda. It must be the Home Office, and it seems to me they’ve done what they can to make it look as though Schwermann enjoys the support of the Church. It’s as though they have something on you that could be relevant to the trial, but for political reasons they’re keeping it under wraps.’

DI Armstrong paused. A fraction too long, thought Anselm, and he saw the ploy He thought: she senses the Church may be involved but doesn’t know how, and she’s hoping I’ll offer the answer. This was the true reason for her visit: she had her own question and she’d slipped it in while making a disclosure, trying to get a monk to open up when he was probably most vulnerable. Anselm approved enormously of the technique and would have liked to crown it with success. But he would have to dissemble, for he now understood completely why the government were preparing to compromise Larkwood.

Schwermann was bound to disclose during the trial that a French monastery had protected him after the war and that British Intelligence had interviewed him and released him, and that this would never have happened unless he’d been believed to be innocent. And it was this very argument the government would adopt, with a twist, should a conviction nonetheless ensue. The Home Secretary would say those dealing with the matter at the time had been influenced, in great part, by the moral authority of the Church, who, as it happens, had protected Schwermann once more when his accusers named his crimes.

DI Armstrong had finished what she had to say; but her finishing was expectant. She looked at Anselm and he began his dissembling, impressed and saddened by his own adroit paring of the truth.

‘It sounds as though the government would like a companion if, in the end, there’s a public outcry, and who better than the Church. They would be the real target of interest. ‘

‘That’s what I thought,’ said DI Armstrong as if closing a line of enquiry. Anselm sickened a little because her satisfaction presumed his honesty, and because he was now going to exploit her trust of him.

‘How strong is the case?’ he asked lightly by way of preamble.

‘Difficult to say I’ve interviewed the former Captain Lawson and he says he can’t remember a thing, which I don’t believe. Most of the witnesses are elderly and susceptible. The bulk of the case rests on documents and the interpretation of what they mean … so it’s pretty finely balanced. If we could find Brionne, assuming he’s still alive, then we might have some direct evidence, but he’s vanished.’

Anselm said, ‘When you came here, you asked if you could speak with absolute confidence.’

‘Yes?’

‘Can I now do the same?’

DI Armstrong scrutinised Anselm’s face. ‘.Yes …’

‘First, don’t ask me any questions, because I am bound not to answer them. Second, I promise that what I now ask can only serve the interests of justice, in its widest sense.’

DI Armstrong frowned, but nodded.

‘I know Victor Brionne’s new name. This is what I ask. If I give you the name, and you find him, will you tell me where he is before you do anything and allow me to talk to him first? After that he is all yours.

DI Armstrong stood and moved away Anselm followed her gaze towards the bare window arches of the old nave. Tangled streamers of vermilion creeper drifted lazily where fragments of glass had once conspired to trap the sun for praise. The swish of the leaves was like a faint pulse, or distant water on a beach of stones. Turning back to Anselm she said, ‘All right. What’s he called?’

‘Berkeley, Victor Berkeley’

Anselm’s bargain had come at a price he had not foreseen. She was taking not only him on trust but also the world he represented, its history, its old stones, once considered sacred without question.

Anselm walked DI Armstrong to her car. He said, ‘Thank you for the warning. ‘

‘It’s nothing.’

They walked a little further and Anselm, suspicious, said, ‘One other thing. Have you any idea how Father Andrew knew in advance of our first meeting that Milby had slipped a word to the Press about Schwermann?’

She stopped, smiling broadly, suddenly young and no longer a police officer, simply herself: ‘Yes. I told him.’