Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

Nodding to the tomb in which there hadn’t, for many years, been anything of Tommy.

‘Huw, I think I’d rather you stayed.’

‘Lass …’ Huw bent to her. ‘It’s part of the deal . Just you and him.’

‘Oh.’

‘I won’t pray for you.’ He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Already done that bit.’

He pointed to the seventh candle.

‘What did you say to him, Huw?’

‘Didn’t need to say much. Callaghan-Clarke’d already been in.’

‘Oh.’

‘Just get on with it, eh?’

Looking slightly irritable, Huw left Merrily in the cold light of the North Transept, the handful of candles a small and lonely glow.

LOL WAS STANDING next to Jimmy Hayter’s champagne Jaguar, the formula fantasy flashing past: he hot-wires the Jag, takes it away, calls Hayter on his mobile with directions.

And then what?

As he didn’t know Hayter’s mobile number or how to hot-wire a car, there wasn’t much point in taking it further. He just stood there, leaning against the front of the Jag, in full view of the picture window identified by Merrily as the window of Sycharth Gwilym’s office.

The sky had gloomed over again and it began to rain. Lol didn’t move. The mobile in his pocket was switched on. Until he had a call from the cathedral, there was nowhere to go.

After twenty minutes, his grey Alien sweatshirt dark with rain, he still hadn’t moved.

He was very cold.

After twenty-five minutes, it stopped raining and Lord Stourport came out.

The walls and ceiling of the fifteenth-century Chantry Chapel of Bishop John Stanbury were of richly foliate stone. It was like being under a copse of low, weeping trees in winter.

‘I’m going to retire, Merrily,’ the Bishop said.

It wasn’t warm in here but he’d taken off his jacket. There was a small green stain on a shoulder of his purple shirt.

‘You always say that,’ Merrily said.

She was sitting next to him, facing the golden-haloed Virgin and Child in the triptych, Gothic-spired, over an altar the size of a boxed radiator.

Bernie Dunmore had lost some weight in the past year and his tonsure had expanded.

‘It is possible, you know,’ he said, ‘to be a Freemason and a priest, without compromise.’

‘But hard, I’d’ve thought.’

‘Hard, yes. My father and two uncles were Masons. When I joined, I was barely out of theological college. For a while it seemed almost compatible. The lodge included two canons and the Dean. Several bishops were still active Masons, then. Not now, of course.’

‘You could’ve left.’

‘Yes, of course you can leave. But they consider that the vows, once made, cannot be revoked.

‘But you never actually did.’

‘Haven’t been to a lodge meeting or a social event for well over twenty years. But it always seemed to me that to publicly renounce the Craft would’ve caused more fuss than it was worth. I’ve never courted controversy, as you know.’

‘Why did you stop going, in the end?’

‘They … they tell you it can’t be incompatible because it isn’t a religion. And then you find yourself asking, but is it an anti -religion?’

‘Anti-faith, anyway.’ Merrily kept her eyes on the Virgin. ‘Gnostic. The search for some kind of God within yourself.’

‘Yes. In a way.’

‘And is it?’

‘Anti-religion? I still can’t decide. We even have Masonic services, as you know, at the cathedral. All I know is that at some stage, I prayed for help. The answer was: get out.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘It wasn’t a problem , Merrily. Not until …’

‘Last week?’

Dunmore was silent for what must have been close to half a minute. It had become darker in the chantry, the stained glass in the window dulled. Merrily sensed that it was raining outside.

‘You were approached,’ she said.

‘Nothing so formal. I was advised that well-intentioned, well-regarded men might be damaged by … your inquiries.’

‘Well-intentioned, well-regarded Masons.’

‘The word was never used.’

‘But the person who gave you the advice …’

‘Was someone who had given me good advice on many occasions, let’s not forget that.’

‘Archdeacon Neale.’

‘It was felt that you were going too far into areas that weren’t essential to what you were being asked to do.’

‘What, you mean God’s work?’

‘It …’ Dunmore gritted his teeth. ‘You always go too bloody deep , Merrily. Anybody else, it would be in and out, a quick blessing, a Requiem. You had to ask questions, even getting Jane to …’

‘What?’

‘Ask questions. At school.’

‘How would you …?’ Merrily thought about it. ‘The history teacher? Robbie Williams?’

‘Richard Williams.’

‘On the square?’

Bernie sighed.

‘Knight Templar, perhaps?’

‘He’s a medieval historian, Merrily.’

‘Bloody hell, Bernie, this is worse than CCTV. Do you know Sycharth Gwilym?’

‘Not personally. I know he’s become a prime mover in this city, fingers in pies.’

‘But Mervyn Neale knows him, presumably.’

‘Yes.’

‘Knight Templar?’

‘ Yes, yes, yes .’

‘Have you come across Lord Stourport?’

‘No. Lapsed. I believe. Look, Merrily, it doesn’t mean they’re all corrupt. It’s done a lot of good. Straightened out men whose whole lives might have been selfish and pointless.’

‘Well, not for me to judge. But, just to put you in the picture, Bernie, over thirty years ago Stourport and Gwilym were both involved in pseudo-Templar rites at the Master House in which women were abused. One of them has never been seen again. She was the mother of Fuchsia Mary Linden, found dead on the railway after her friend was murdered. Oh, and it seems likely that Stourport or Gwilym was the father.’

‘God …’

‘Or possibly a third man who called himself Mat Phobe, who Stourport says is dead. I’ve just been to talk to Sycharth Gwilym, who I’d say is suffering from a severe case of censored-memory syndrome.’

‘What would you expect?’

‘There’s also been … another incident. Someone very nearly killed.’

‘Who?’

‘You wouldn’t know her. And if one of them knew another had committed a murder, would he keep quiet?’

‘I …’

‘Bernie …’ Merrily looked at Bernie Dunmore hard, through the dense, sacred dimness of the chantry. ‘I can’t believe this – you’re sweating.’

‘Don’t … don’t ask me to explain, because I can’t. I cannot rationally explain it. I’m going to retire next year, and I shall leave Herefordshire.’ He had his hands clasped on his knees; he stared down at them. ‘The call I made to you yesterday morning. Forget it. It never happened. Do what you have to.’

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I couldn’t prove anything – I don’t know the half of it. Not yet, anyway.’

‘If it’s a matter for the police, go to the police.’

‘Can’t. Not yet. Bernie, how important – say to the Masonic Knights Templar – would it be to uncover some long-hidden secret at Garway, connected to the original Templars? Big kudos there?’

‘That’s not a question I can answer. Probably be up to the individual.’

‘I’m told some Masons have got quite obsessed over the years about Garway.’

‘Some men, it rather takes them over, yes.’

‘Especially now? The day after tomorrow being the seven hundredth anniversary of the suppression of the Templars. Saturday the thirteenth.’

‘Friday.’

‘It was Friday, when it happened. Friday the thirteenth, which—’