The Sixth Lamentation

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.’

‘Then let me oblige,’ and rather too quickly he said: ‘My thesis is that getting hold of the truth requires us to distinguish different kinds of narrative — symbol, allegory, parable and the like. Now, one of the main problems is when one form of discourse pretends to be another … myth or fable masquerading as fact. Story dressed up as history. ‘

Max Nightingale looked deeply bored.

The stranger said, ‘Have any of you read the Narnia books?’

While Pascal and Max Nightingale seemed irritated at the interruption, Lucy was relieved. It was an interlude in a difficult meeting, that was all. Pascal could ask about Brionne’s name after the discussion was over. There was no rush. She said, ‘I’ve read them, several times. ‘

He smiled winningly and cried, ‘But you haven’t tried talking to a lion, have you? It’s just a myth about good and evil and the lion wins.

Lucy noticed Pascal’s face darkening with a sort of expectation.

The stranger said, ‘There’s no difficulty in that instance because there are no facts, it’s just fiction. But what happens when fact and fiction mix?’ He raised his glass. ‘Let’s take the Holocaust, for example.’

Lucy shivered at his serene manner, the use of charged language without reverence.

He smiled, saying, ‘How much is fact and how much is fiction?’

‘Let’s go,’ said Pascal, standing up.

‘Am I the voice of temptation in your wilderness?’ he pouted.

Lucy glanced at Max. He had paled and seemed unable to respond. She rose, picking up her coat. The straps of her rucksack were tangled round her feet. Her purse fell out, coins rolling under the table. A number of people close to them turned at the noise. An old man nearby grimaced and pulled himself up, his head inclined towards Pascal and his tormentor.

‘Come on,’ snapped Pascal.

‘Let’s take the Schwermann trial, said The Don, supremely relaxed. ‘He might be convicted. But who’ll question the old fairy tales?’

‘Lucy, please, come on,’ said Pascal.

The old man lumbered over and grabbed the Don’s shoulder, tugging at the cloth. He shouted, ‘.I’ve had enough of you, clear off. Go on, get out. ‘

The Don stumbled to his feet, his smile suddenly twisted with suppressed rage. ‘Get your hands off me, you ignorant—’

‘I’m not scared of y-your sort,’ the old man stuttered, raising a shaking fist.

From the other side of the room someone yelled, ‘Dad? What the hell … ?’

Max and Pascal rose quickly, moving round the table. The old man pulled harder, his fist drawing back. Suddenly, with a look of ecstasy, The Don swung his arm in a sweeping, imperious arc and struck the old man across the face. At the same time Pascal lunged forward, trying to come between the two men. Then Lucy gasped. Pascal slipped and tumbled over. He spun to one side, falling. His left arm caught the edge of a table, his body twisted and there was a sickening thud. Pascal groaned, like one asleep, rolling his head from side to side. Both arms lay limp upon the floor. Lucy covered her face, staring at him through shaking fingers. A thin wail broke out of her that wouldn’t stop. She could only see one of Pascal’s feet, the rest of him now surrounded by people on their knees while others pushed tables and chairs to one side.

An ambulance came. All Lucy could remember afterwards were the colours. Green sheets, a red blanket, shiny chrome bars on the stretcher, yellow jackets and pale, white faces. Someone took her hand. An arm went around her shoulder. There was no sound any more, either from her or all around. It was as though she was wrapped in great puffs of cotton wool, and she floated in a vacuum, deep inside her head.

The last thing she saw before being led outside into the night air was the place where Pascal’s head had come to rest. A small but thick smudge of blood shone at the base of a rather vulgar table leg, ornate metalwork curving down to a small iron globe.

Lucy was brought home by a woman police officer at three in the morning. Alone in her flat, still surrounded by a heavy, numbing insulation, she saw a flashing light on her answer machine. Her body moved towards it and pressed a button.

‘It’s me, Cathy,’ drawled a voice into the darkness. ‘I tried you on your mobile without success and I now confidently entertain certain suspicions. So, what did you do this time? Bell-ringing? Call me sometime.’

4

Morning light danced across the hills around Larkwood. Captivated, Anselm opened the windows of his cell. He sat quietly, preparing himself for Lectio Divina, but started at a distraction: footsteps moved swiftly on the corridor outside, growing louder. It was peculiar because monastic comportment for bade anything that might disturb the spirit of recollection, and it was unheard of at that hour, even in the breach. A knock struck his door. Anselm rose, turning the handle with apprehension.

Brother Jerome had a clutch of newspapers under his arm. It was his task to read diverse reports and opinions from Left and Right and distil them into a balanced news bulletin to be read out during lunch. He had evidently just collected the papers from reception. Without saying anything he pointed to a passage on the front page of a national. Pascal Fougères had been taken to Charing Cross Hospital, Hammersmith. He had died shortly afterwards from a brain haemorrhage sustained during a fall. The accident had occurred, it seemed, when he intervened in a quarrel about the last war. Police sources said an investigation was under way

Anselm shut his door and slumped on to a chair. With his mind’s eye he described Leviathan rising out of a boiling sea, arching high into a red sky dripping water like rain.