Robert Walker - Blind Instinct

“It's part of you, isn't it? In your genes, your nature? And me

… I read people. Part of my genetic makeup to read and understand people.”

Jessica felt a sense of calm acceptance and welcomed relief waft over her as a result of Father Luc Sante's simple gesture and his revelations here. She felt badly that she ever doubted the man, felt badly about herself as well, that she could be so stupid as to embarrass herself this way, and she readily discounted all the coincidences when Father Luc Sante said, “I fear my suspicions about young Father Strand, however, to be true. Do you know he brought many people here for solace, such as the twins, you know, the hapless pair you met the other day. He thought they could benefit from both his ministering and my therapy, and perhaps they have. They respond to me because I was once their minister, when they were younger, you see.”

She noted his absolute innocence in admitting this fact. “Father Strand knew this fact, and so he arranged to bring them here?”

“He did.”

“And what about Father Strand. How long have you known him?”

“It seems forever. He was just a boy first time I met him. He readily joined our choir at Bury St. Edmonds at the time.”

“Bury St. Edmunds?” she asked.

“No, no… Gloucester. Edmunds was my second parish. Had to pay my dues to find my way to a London parish. “I didn't want the twins here, but Strand stood his ground, saying they had no other place of refuge, that the world was too big for them. He convinced me to take them in. They live nearby, but in practice, they live here at St. Albans.”

“O'Donahue lived in Bury St. Edmunds,” she told him. “And you never told police of your connection with her.”

“I had none. If she were in congregation there, she did not make herself known to me.”

“But you saw the police report saying where she had once lived.”

“I did, but I didn't think it relevant. I did not know her.”

She nodded, accepting this. “I'm sorry,” she told him, “for ever having suspected you of… of being involved in such evils as… as I did.”

“Nonsense, my dear. It is your job to cultivate a healthy, suspicious, and cynical mind. Without it, where would you be? Shall we go down to Crown's End, to the street bazaar, see if we can learn where Martin has been hiding himself away of late?”

“Do you think it might tell us something?”

“Me, perhaps. I know the young man has been doctoring books. I just don't know why, and this purchase of an altar? I know he's not set up a storefront church anywhere.”

“I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have a look.”

“That's exacdy what I had thought.”

“Where is Strand now?” she asked.

“I'm not sure. He comes and goes pretty much as the spirit moves him, especially of late.”

“Well, then, let's have at it.” It was a phrase she'd picked up from Sharpe.

On exiting the church, just before pushing through the doors, Luc Sante spotted Martin Strand getting into a cab. He pointed at the man in black and said, “It's him-Strand. He's likely off to the bazaar. We must flag down a cab and follow him.”

Jessica rushed out ahead of Luc Sante and waved down a passing cab. They clambered into the cab and with Strand's cab long out of sight, the old man shouted, “Crown's End bazaar.”

“Which end, east or west?” asked the driver.

“Either! Just get us there the quickest possible speed.”

“That'd be east end, then,” replied the cabby.

“Then do it, man! Do it!”

They soon found themselves deposited amid the street bazaar, a series of street hustlers in makeshift cubicles, many surrounding ancient buildings here which by day served as office buildings. Booths and open air stands invited tourists in, the booths three layers deep, some fixed up around ancient pillars. This, the east end of the serpentine bazaar, teemed with shoppers, mostly tourists, but somehow, amid the crowds, Jessica made out the back of Father Strand's head. She feared losing sight of him. Strand moved along briskly just across and down the street from where Jessica stood alongside Father Luc Sante. They froze for a moment, seeing the shadowy, distant figure of Strand looking about before disappearing again into the crowd.

“Where the deuce is he?” Luc Sante wanted to know, waving his cane.

“He's there!” she told Luc Sante, pointing. But Strand's visage, or rather his long golden hair, went in and out of a sea of others. “We need to get closer, or we'll lose him.”

“I'm slowing you down. Go ahead, shadow him as you police people like to say. I shall come along behind you. I don't wish to lose him any more than you do. Go, go!”

She did so, putting all her effort now into keeping Strand in her sight. If anyone at St. Albans was guilty of serial killing, it must be the mysterious Father Martin Strand, she told herself as she became Strand's shadow.

She gazed back once to see if Father Luc Sante followed, and she could see him coming along, slowly but surely. People on the street engaged Luc Sante, called out to him, asked for his blessings. When Jessica returned her gaze to Strand, the man had again vanished. “G'damnit,” she cursed.

Luc Sante, catching up, gasping for breath, asked, “Why have you stopped? Where is he?”

“He's gone.”

“Gone?”

“Vanished.”

“Without a trace?”

“Like smoke… like a chameleon.”

“Oh, and this is exactly where I lost him when last I was here.” Luc Sante jabbed the sidewalk with his black cane.

Circling, staring in all directions, being jostled by the crowd, Jessica said, “Then there must be someplace he is disappearing to, right about here. He can't have stepped into another dimension.”

“Oh, you don't know Strand. He's something of a magician, that one. Had me fooled, and I'm the supposed expert. Let's face it. For all these years, his choirboy looks have gotten him by. He simply is not what he appears to be.”

Jessica began the search through this street-comer madhouse of electric energy, a kind of Sodom and Gomorra of bartering. Every item imaginable could be purchased here, and one of the shops Jessica now stood before must be where Strand purchased his ancient altar. At the same instant Jessica's eyes fell on the incredible array of oaken furniture made to appear ancient. Father Luc Sante, growing excited, pointed it out as well, saying, “This is the shop on the receipt for the altar I told you about, Jessica. This is where he purchased the missing oak altar.”

On entering the shop, Jessica saw that it was filled with an array, indeed the enure spectrum of religious icons and paraphernalia, including crosses as large as the beams on ancient firehouse ceilings. She immediately wondered if Strand had also purchased an ancient cross here, with spikes thrown in to seal the deal? Jessica asked the question of Luc Sante who puzzled it out.

She followed with, “What about having a custom-made brand for the underside of the tongue made here?”

“There is a shop for every taste at this street bazaar,” he assured her. “No doubt there is a shop where this sort of branding is routine, like tattooing now! Or body piercing. Trust me, on this street, anything can be had for a price.”

Jessica could easily imagine it possible here from the evidence of her eyes. For here, staring from every tabletop and street vendor's booth, lay black market items from rhino homs to human skulls, ancient swords too heavy to lift to entire table and chair sets that appeared to have been taken from royal homes, the workmanship that fine and intricate. Here Jessica saw the arcane and archaic, the bizarre and fantastic, including a fellow whose entire stock comprised of branding tools\ Branding irons, both large and small, even miniature in size to create ready-made tattoos without the wait for those able to withstand the pain.