Robert Walker - Blind Instinct

“If so, if it were mere innocent happenstance, a weird kind of serendipity or synchronicity, why hide the fact he knew these people? O'Donahue, in particular, I mean.”

Jessica considered the logic of it, Sharpe's logic, so tight and secure and sure. “It stands to reason that troubled souls, the ill and infirm, the weak and helpless, all the societal “victims” of a harsh world, victims of alienation, child abuse, rape, incest might flock to a man like Luc Sante for confession, redemption, salvation. His book alone would draw them near, not to mention his sermons and his practice,” she said to Sharpe now as they arrived in a wide corridor where they could step from the canal water and follow alongside on a concrete levy. 'To date the only single piece of evidence tying the victims of the crucifixion killings together remains the meager message left on their tongues, but what if it means far more than Luc Sante or anyone else has suggested or suspected?”

“Not quite sure I follow you,” he replied, and for a moment, she thought she saw something sinister playing amid the flickering of the torch light and the light in Richard's eyes.

She shrugged it off, anxious for him to hear her fully, so on she explained, saying, “It would take monumental acceptance of a leader to hold out one's tongue to allow such a hot-iron branding.”

“Then you've determined the branding occurred before death?”

“Absolutely. Dr. Raehael left the findings on my temporary voice mail.”

“You forget the victims were drugged.”

“No, I am not forgetting that. I'm saying that even in their dragged state, to stand and allow their tongues to be yanked outward and upward, likely by pinchers, then branded on the bottom side, that they-the victims-may have been willing agents in their own crucifixion deaths.”

“That's astounding. An astounding conclusion.”

“But altogether fitting with what we know about cults and the cult mentality, whole congregations checking out en masse-no pun intended. Add to what we've learned over the years about such cult thinking. Luc Sante makes the same point in his Twisted Faiths.”

“His book, you mean?”

“Yes. It has been assumed the victims were either drugged or tied to the cross upon which they were crucified to have their tongues branded, but suppose, like the bug-eyed sisters I saw at Luc Sante's cathedral, that every cult member willingly stepped forward to be branded at some time or other long before they were crucified, and if so, then they, too, had become sheep, followers to a cause, and this meant only one thing, that they were not victims so much of murder as they were of religious zealotry and sleight-of-hand. And-”

“And what if the magician were none other than Father Jerrard Luc Sante who masked his evil with his own philosophy of what evil in this life actually looks, speaks, smells, and feels like.” Jessica took up his thinking, adding, “Suppose all the victims were anxious to follow in the footsteps of Christ by way of the Father, Luc Sante? Or possibly Father Strand? What if all were anxious to be the next 'Chosen One,' to be crucified in the shadow of the millennia, to take on the role of the new Messiah?”

“Sounds both preposterous and right for our century, wouldn't you agree, Tatham?” asked Sharpe, who wondered what a more impartial outsider to the case might make of such talk.

Tatham gasped but picked up the pace of the discussion at once, mumbling, “Your theory, Dr. Coran, when presented to your superiors could put the two of you in the fun house with my aunt Dee-Dee.”

“Does sound far-fetched, even preposterous,” agreed Jessica, “but it's exactly that kind of thinking which allows the behavior of a Jeffrey Dahmer type to coexist alongside normal people who don't murder and eat one another.”

Richard nodded, saying, “Agreed. It's that counterproductive editing of our intuition that makes victims of us all. Think of it! Each victim was quite religiously… mad? Would you say, over the edge, insane with an obsession, to be the Chosen One. At least obsessively driven in his or her faith?”

“Burton converted… Maybe so he could show his devotion to the cult.”

“A cult catering to the aged and the highly religious who'd given up on the usual, organized religion for something more promising?” she suggested. “I'd have called your theory too mad in itself, too outer fringe to actually be worth pursuing, but with what's gone on here of late,” Jessica replied as they trudged on, “it rather rings plausible.”

“Given the state of cults in the free world today, anything's possible,” Richard agreed.

“Not sure anyone else would believe it, however.”

“I'm afraid it's too much for me,” added Tatham, “and it would appear we've come to the end of our journey. Look ahead.”

Their combined lights illuminated a dead end, an impenetrable brick wall, lichen growing on it here in the blackness of this world. Scurrying rats made pitter-patter noises like the sound of miniature hooves over cobblestone.

“There's no way beyond it?” asked Richard.

“ 'Fraid not from the look of it…” Tatham and Richard sought a crevice, a roundabout, but the area had been sealed many long years before.

“What about the canal? Where did it go?”

“Veered off in another direction somewhere behind us.”

“Perhaps if we followed it.”

“I don't think it would help, as it goes off away from the church. You wanted near St. Albans from what I gather, right?”

“Yes, yes indeed.” Richard's disappointment resounded in the cavern where they stood.

“I see no way out but the way we came,” Jessica said, even as she searched the walls here for a doorway, a set of stone steps leading up or down, any sign at all that they were not completely dead-ended. “We've managed to investigate our way into a blind comer.”

“What about the other corridor at the T-section,” suggested Richard, stubbornly hanging on.

“I tell you, it would take you nowhere near St. Albans,” Tatham assured them.

“Why the deuce doesn't this wall show up on the specs?” shouted Richard, his voice bouncing off the slick walls.

“We're not dealing with specs. We're looking at it twice removed, from my replicas and maps made from the ancient maps, and then from your photo enlargements. We're lucky to have found our desUnadon at all.”

“Some destination,” grumbled Richard. She knew that to Sharpe, the wall represented far more than a wall below London's streets. To him it must mean an impenetrable barrier leading to an inglorious end to his entire career.

“Come on, Richard,” she coaxed. “Let's get out of this vile place.”

He finally nodded, indicating the way. “Yes, let's find the world. Why I ever let you talk me into mucking about here, I don't know.”

“Richard, it was your idea.”

“My idea, indeed!”

“You brought RIBA into it, remember?”

He frowned in Tatham's direction, Tatham saying just the worst thing in response. “Sorry, old man, things didn't work out as expected.”

“Just lead us back to light, Dr. Tatham,” Richard groused. Silence and regret marked their arduous journey back.

Their Wellington boots, dripping and smelling of the stagnant water from the out-of-use canal, Jessica and Sharpe drove Tatham back to the RIBA where they had enlisted his help, bidding him good-night and thanks. He waved them off and they drove back toward Victoria Gardens Embankment and the York.

“I desperately need a shower,” Jessica said.

“Feeling a bit dirty from ratting around in the sewers?”

“You know it.”

“Yes, I feel the same way.”

“Your place is on the way. Stop over, pick up an overnight bag, and come stay the night with me,” she suggested.