The Medieval Murderers - The False Virgin

‘Good. Let’s have a takeaway. Pre-shag? Or post-shag?’

‘I don’t understand you when you use vulgar terms, Eric. Or foreign ones either. Pre-this, post-that.’

‘Indian, Chinese?’

‘Decisions, decisions.’

‘Your place or mine?’

‘There’s a new Thai restaurant round the corner.’

‘That must be round your corner, Sonia. So it’ll be your place, then.’

‘Get out now,’ said Sonia, her eyes flicking towards the monitor on her desktop. ‘I can see Mr Malenkov’s visitor has arrived. Oh, and we’ll be having that Thai takeaway pre-shag, if you don’t mind.’

Meanwhile, on the top floor, Boris Malenkov was again staring at the high white clouds in the summer sky. He looked down just in time to observe Michael Deverill emerging from a taxi and automatically casting an eye up at the very window where Boris stood. Was the young man carrying anything? From this angle, he was unable to see properly.

Deverill disappeared under the portico entrance. Moments later Sonia buzzed to indicate that the visitor was on his way up. Boris sat down at a writing table in the corner nearest the windows. His back was to the door. He picked up a pen and examined it. When the tap at the door came, he waited a moment before answering and also before turning round. Then he pretended to be surprised.

‘Ah, it is you, Mikhail. Kak vashi dela ?’

His visitor paused for a moment as if trying to recall the right response to ‘How are you?’ Then he answered simply: ‘Yes, I’m fine, Mr Malenkov. You got my message?’

Boris said nothing. He rose from the chair. His heart beat a little faster as he noticed that Deverill was carrying something before he realised that it was only a plastic bag from a supermarket. Some surprise or query must have appeared on his usually impassive face for Deverill said: ‘Don’t worry, Mr Malenkov, I haven’t brought my shopping with me. Instead I have the item that I mentioned, the one we discussed. The one I texted you about.’

‘That is good.’

‘I often carry around valuable things like this. No one is likely to mug a person with a Sainsbury’s bag.’

Boris Malenkov thought there was something a bit cheap about such deviousness, something almost sacrilegious, if his visitor really had the genuine ‘item’.

‘My father sends his regards,’ said Michael Deverill.

‘You make good side, Mikhail, you and your father Patrick. No, that is not right, not good side. I mean you, you…’

‘Make a good team, Mr Malenkov?’

‘Yes, good team.’

For a moment, Michael Deverill looked uncomfortable at the idea of making a good team with his father. Malenkov seemed not to notice. He went on: ‘Come now, Mikhail. Show.’

They were standing on opposite sides of the Chippendale dining table in the middle of the room. Michael Deverill reached into the plastic bag and brought out something wrapped in what looked like a strip torn off a sheet, none too clean either. He laid it gently on the shiny surface of the table and peeled back the folds of cloth. Inside was an unmarked wooden box with a sliding lid, the kind of box – it occurred to Boris – in which you might keep chess pieces. Michael Deverill removed the lid and handed the box to Boris Malenkov.

Malenkov took the box and carried it to one of the windows. He tilted it so that he might see the object inside more clearly. Then he eased a hand under the object and lifted it right out. In his palm he was holding another hand, a hand that had been severed violently from its arm, to judge by the jagged, splintered stump. The hand rested comfortably in Malenkov’s own wide palm. If you’d been asked to estimate the height of the owner of the hand, you might have said that he – or she – would have been about three feet tall.

The hand was made of wood painted a realistic pinky-white, although the paint was thin and flaking in places. But the most striking thing about it was that in the cupped wooden palm there rested a butterfly, also carved out of wood but enamelled and perhaps studded once with jewels, for there were regular little pits on the butterfly’s wings. The carver had done a fine job, for the hand and the insect seemed to be composed of quite different materials, one thick and fleshy, the other thin and airy.

Boris Malenkov looked at Michael Deverill, still standing on the other side of the table. The young man was gazing at him, waiting for his reaction. His long fair hair flopped over his ears and the collar of his jacket. Boris thought he looked worried.

‘You have done well, Mikhail.’

Again, for a moment, Michael looked not reassured but more uncomfortable, but he quickly said: ‘Thank you, Mr Malenkov. There’s something else.’

Deverill drew another item from the bag and walked round to pass it to the Russian, who took it while continuing to clasp the butterfly. This second item was much smaller, no more than a fragment of wood. In it was embedded a piece of what looked like rock crystal, which, in turn, contained an unidentifiable scrap of greyish material. Boris Malenkov peered and puzzled over this. He turned to Deverill.

‘What you are seeing is a piece of human skin. It belongs to our saint, Beornwyn.’ He paused, gratified at the Russian’s response, a start of surprise amounting almost to fear. It was as if Malenkov were to suddenly glimpse a familiar face in the street, an old friend – or enemy – he had long thought dead. Boris moved away from the window and placed the items – the severed hand cradling the butterfly and the fragment of rock crystal – on the table. He stood back and gazed at them with his hands folded respectfully in front of him. Michael Deverill picked up the thread of what he had been saying. ‘We believe it belongs to St Beornwyn, my father and I. The quartz, the crystal, was most likely embedded in one of her feet, I mean the feet of the statue depicting her, and which served as her reliquary.’

‘Reliquary?’ repeated Malenkov after a time. He had difficulty saying the word.

‘A container for a saint’s relics, objects such as a bone or a phial of dried blood, a shred of clothing or piece of skin. It’s normal for reliquaries to take the form of a box or chest, but sometimes a statue may be used. The image of Beornwyn herself has been lost, apart from these two pieces.’

‘Where did you find them, Mikhail?’

‘Of course, you do understand it was not we who found them, Mr Malenkov. All I can say is that they were unearthed somewhere in Nottinghamshire, from a place where the cult of St Beornwyn was very strong in the days before the dissolution of the monasteries. That was during the reign of-’

Boris Malenkov waved an impatient hand. He did not want a history lesson. But there was something he needed to be sure of.

‘St Beornwyn, she does not come from Notting-ham-shire?’ Boris broke up the name of the county into its component parts. ‘She comes from north?’

‘From Northumbria, yes,’ said Deverill, who had done some research into Beornwyn so he could talk with authority on the subject. ‘She was the daughter of a local king.’

‘My wife, she came from that part of the country too. Not the daughter of king, no, but daughter of Russian, yes.’

Boris smiled to show that he was making a bit of a joke but there was pride in his voice too. Deverill knew that one of his reasons for collecting Beornwyn relics was because of the association with his wife, Anesha, whose Russian father had married a woman from Newcastle. Anesha Malenkov and St Beornwyn came from the same remote, northerly area of England, though many centuries apart, of course.

Michael Deverill continued: ‘The strongest evidence that these Nottinghamshire relics are connected to your saint, Mr Malenkov, is not so much that they were found together near this site which was once holy ground, but that the hand cradling the butterfly – rather a finely wrought carving, wouldn’t you agree? – confirms the link with Beornwyn. Consider how, after her martyrdom, her modesty was preserved by a cloud of those beautiful flying creatures. And of course the crystal containing her skin, her pale flayed skin…’