C. Sansom - Dissolution

I leaned forward. 'Listen to me, Brother. I have told Mark nothing yet. But you will tell me all you know about the deaths here, you will tell me what you have been holding back.'

He took his hand from his mouth and stared at me in puzzlement.

'But Commissioner, there is nothing else to tell. My shame was my secret. Everything else I told you was true, I know nothing of these terrible deeds. I was not spying. The only reason I used that passage was to – to watch the young men who came.' He drew a shuddering breath. 'I only wanted to look.'

'And you are concealing nothing else?'

'Nothing, I swear. If I could do anything to help you solve these terrible crimes, by Jesu I would.'

He crouched against the wall, shamed almost beyond bearing. I felt a wave of anger that I had, once again, followed a trail that led to a dead end. I shook my head, expelling my breath angrily.

'God's death, Brother Gabriel, you have led me a dance. I had thought you the killer.'

'Sir, I know you would have the monastery down. But I beg you, do not use what I have done. Do not let my sins cause the end of Scarnsea.'

'God's blood, you exaggerate these sins of yours. Such solitary vice is not even enough to justify prosecuting you. If this house closes, it will be for other reasons. I only wonder sorrowfully that a man should waste his life on such a strange idolatry. You are as silly a creature as any under heaven.'

He closed his eyes in shame, then looked up and I saw his lips move in prayer. Then his mouth fell open and his eyes, still looking upward, seemed to bulge from his head. Puzzled, I edged closer. So quickly I had no time to move, he turned and, with a shout, launched himself at me with arms outflung.

What happened next is etched into my mind so vividly my hand trembles as I write. He shoved me violently in the chest. I fell over backwards, landing on the stone with an impact that knocked all the breath from me. For a moment I thought he had gone mad and would kill me. I looked up and for a second I saw him standing there, his eyes wild. Then something else appeared, descending from above in a rush of air, a great figure of stone that landed where I had been standing a moment before, smashing Gabriel to the earth. I can hear it now, the great ringing crash of the stone hitting the floor mingling with the dreadful crunching of Gabriel's bones.

I raised myself on my elbows and lay there stupidly, mouth open, staring at the painted statue of St Donatus, now shattered into pieces on top of the sacrist, whose arm stuck out underneath as a lake of blood spread out across the floor. The statue's head had broken off and lay at my feet, staring at me with an expression of pious sorrow, painted tears white under the eyes.

Then I heard Mark's voice, a yell such as I had never heard.

'Get away from the wall!'

I looked up. The plinth the statue had stood on was teetering on the edge of the walkway, fifty feet above. I could just make out a cowled figure behind it. I scrabbled away just before it hit the ground where I had lain. Mark grabbed me and helped me up, his face deathly pale.

'Up there!' he cried. I followed his gaze. A dim figure was heading away along the walkway, towards the presbytery.

'He saved me.' I stared at the wreckage of the sacrist's limbs under the stone, the lake of blood. 'He saved me!'

'Sir,' Mark whispered urgently. 'We have him. He's on the walkway. The only way down is the stairs either side of the rood screen.'

I collected my scattered wits, and looked at the stone staircases at either side of the screen. 'Yes, you're right. Did you see who it was?'

'No. Just a figure in a habit, with the cowl up. He's gone towards the top of the church. If we go up the stairs, one on each side, we can cut him off. We'll have him, there's no other way down. Can you do it, sir?'

'Yes. Help me up.'

Mark helped me to my feet. He drew his sword and I grasped my staff, taking deep breaths to try and calm my pounding heart. 'We'll go parallel and keep each other in sight.'

He nodded and ran quickly to the right-hand staircase. Averting my eyes from Gabriel's body, I took the left.

I mounted slowly. My heart was thumping so hard it made my throat pulse, and white flashes danced before my eyes. I took off my heavy coat and laid it on the stairs. The cold chilled my bones but I had greater freedom of movement as I crept upwards.

The stairs led onto the narrow platform running round the interior. It was of iron mesh and, looking down, I could see far below the candles winking before the altar and the saints' shrines, the heap of stone and the great scarlet pool of Gabriel's blood. The platform was no more than three feet wide and only an iron rail separated me from the drop. Just ahead the mason's tools lay in an untidy heap beside the ropes, secured to the workmen's basket hanging out over the gap by rivets driven into the walls. I peered along the platform, cursing the poor light. All the windows were underneath the walkway and it was no more than twilit up there. I could not see far ahead, but there was someone ahead; there must be. I carefully manoeuvred my way along, bending to get under the ropes.

Just ahead the platform was level with the top of the rood screen. It ran from one side of the nave to the other, seven feet wide with, on the top, the statues at which I had previously peered from ground level. From there they had appeared quite small, but now, glancing at the dim figures through the gloom, I saw they were life-sized.

Cautiously, carefully gripping the rail, I moved down the platform past the screen. The rail creaked with every few steps and once I felt it wobble under my hand. I told myself that the mason and his men clattered along safely whenever they worked up here, but could not help wondering whether the blocks crashing over might have weakened it.

Across the church I made out Mark moving slowly along in parallel. He raised his sword and I waved my staff in acknowledgement. Between us, now, we must have the killer trapped. I gripped the staff hard. My legs had begun trembling and I cursed at them to be still.

I moved steadily on, staring ahead into the gloom. Nothing. No sound. As I approached the top of the church the walkway bent round in a half-circle, and a few moments later Mark and I were staring at each other, standing fifty feet apart at either end of the presbytery. And between us nothing, nobody. He looked at me incredulously.

'He came this way, I saw him,' he called.

'Then where is he? There's nobody this end of the church. You must have been mistaken, he must have headed down the other way, towards the door.' I stared back the way I had come, past the rood screen to where the end of the walkway was lost in the darkness.

'I'd swear on my life he came this way, I'd swear it.'

'All right.' I took a deep breath. 'Keep calm. If he's down the other end of the church we still have him. No one has gone down the stairs, we would have heard. We'll go back to the other end.'

'Perhaps we should go down. One of us could fetch help.'

'No, it's hard to keep an eye on both staircases at once, in a place this size he could slip away if he gets down.'

We took a parallel course once more, back the way we had come. My eyes were sore from peering intently ahead. As I passed the rood screen with its statues, something nagged at my mind. I was well past before it came to me: there had been the usual three statues: St John the Baptist, Our Lord and the Virgin. But there was a fourth as well.

Even as I paused and turned something whistled through the air and struck the wall beside me. A dagger clattered onto the walkway at my feet as I turned, realizing that what I had taken for the middle statue was in fact a living man in Benedictine habit. Even now a dim figure was clambering over the railing onto the walkway. I turned and ran towards him, but my foot caught in the mesh of the walkway and I fell forward onto the railing. For a second my head and shoulders hung out over the nave and I stared terrified over the drop, then I managed to haul myself upright. The figure had gone. I heard footsteps clattering down the stairs.