Scott Mariani - The Sacred Sword

It wasn’t long afterwards that he hit paydirt, in the form of a highly esteemed and well-known psychotherapist called Dr Nora Gibbs, shrink and hypnotist to sports personalities and television celebs. Purely by chance, one of Penrose’s growing network of investigators stumbled across an old legal case and happened to report it back to his employer. It appeared that two decades earlier, when Nora Gibbs had been Nora Jamieson and a student at Sussex University, she’d been arrested in possession of amphetamines, cocaine and a quantity of magic mushrooms, which she’d been distributing to her fellow students — one of whom ended up hospitalised as a result. It had been a minor scandal at the time, but nobody had ever before dug up the connection with the famous Dr Gibbs.

Two days after Penrose’s tip-off, the celebrity shrink received an anonymous letter giving her very specific and clear instructions on how to avoid revelations about her past being leaked to the national media. Some time later, a very well-known male TV presenter, who’d been receiving hypnotherapy treatment from Dr Gibbs for stress and depression, suddenly recovered deeply repressed and hitherto undreamed-of memories of serious sexual abuse at the hands of the nuns and priests at the Catholic boarding school he’d attended in his youth. The TV presenter, shaken and angry but eternally grateful to his shrink for having made him aware of his forgotten past, went public with his allegations. Despite the lack of a single shred of evidence, the ensuing storm was enough to bring about the closure of the school. A retired priest called Father O’Rourke narrowly avoided being lynched by a mob that gathered outside his home, and died soon afterwards of heart failure.

It was Penrose 2, God 0. He would lie awake at night, savouring the ingenious brilliance of his coup and fantasising about what he could achieve if he had more money to spend. With a big enough budget, he could bring the whole rotten thing down. Squash all of the cockroaches flat. By now he was hard at work researching his second book, Murdering for God, a scabrous condemnation of every war atrocity and act of violence ever perpetrated in the name of Christianity. Meanwhile, he’d launched his brand-new website along with its own popular discussion forum that attracted enlightened thinkers and militant atheists from all over the world.

He was rolling.

It had been one rainy early October day, heading back to his car after a hard afternoon’s lecturing of a group of second-year anthropology students, that the Hand of Fate had reached out to Penrose Lucas in a very unexpected manner. And his life had changed.

The stranger was loitering near a sleek black Mercedes that Penrose had never seen in the University staff car park before. The Mercedes looked brand new. The number plate was private. The man was about forty, greying above the ears, lean and sharp-featured. He was wearing a dark suit and a camel coat that was worth Penrose’s monthly salary. His shoes gleamed on the wet tarmac. As Penrose approached his car, the man stepped away from the Mercedes and walked up to him. ‘Professor?’

Penrose stopped. The man was smiling and looking him right in the eye.

‘Yes?’

‘My name is Rex O’Neill,’ the man said. ‘I represent The Trimble Group.’ He reached into the pocket of the camel coat and came out with a business card. Penrose took it. The card was shiny and black, completely blank except for the organisation’s name embossed in gold across the front. No number or address.

‘The Trimble Group? What’s this about?’

O’Neill smiled. ‘Don’t bother trying to look us up, Professor Lucas. You won’t find us. But we’ve been watching you, and have taken a special interest in your work.’

‘My work?’

‘I’m not talking about your academic career,’ O’Neill said with a twinkle. ‘Let’s just say that your… extracurricular activities have been closely monitored by the people I work for. You’re a very clever fellow, aren’t you?’

Penrose’s legs weakened and his guts twisted. ‘What are you talking about? Am I in trouble?’ He was convinced that this was some kind of reprisal against him. Someone had been spying on his spies. Now the Church of England had sent hired thugs out to ice him. He was ready to bolt like a scalded cat.

‘Relax, professor. Quite the contrary.’ O’Neill reached into his pocket, and instead of pulling out a gun he produced a crisp white letter-sized envelope, which he handed to the terrified Penrose. ‘Go on, open it.’

Penrose hesitated, swallowed hard and then tore open the envelope. Inside was an unsigned cheque. It was made out to him. The name at the bottom was The Trimble Group. The amount was one hundred thousand pounds. Penrose gaped at it.

O’Neill chuckled at the look on his face. ‘That’s just a very small taster. My employers have a proposal to make to you. If you’re interested in hearing it, meet me in the bar of the King’s Lodge Hotel at midday tomorrow. I’ll take you to meet them. They’ve come up from London specially to make your acquaintance.’

‘I don’t understand. Who are your employers?’

‘One step at a time, professor. If once you hear the proposal you’re not interested in proceeding any further, there’ll be no hard feelings. The cheque will be signed and the money’s yours. But if you agree to come on board… well, let’s just say the rewards will be considerable for someone of your qualities. My employers believe you’re just the man for us. In fact, the only man for us.’

Penrose stared again at the cheque. This was no practical joke. It was real. Had to be. ‘Come on board what?’ he said. ‘Just the man for what?’

O’Neill only smiled. ‘See you tomorrow, Professor Lucas,’ he said, and walked away towards the black Mercedes.

After he’d finished watching the video recording, Ben sadly poured himself a measure of Glenmorangie from the Arundels’ drinks cabinet. So much for Simeon’s enemies, he thought as he took a long sip. The ladies of the Little Denton Women’s Institute probably posed more threat than some pumped-up egomaniac of a professor.

Ben had that feeling again that he was being watched. He looked down to see the dog peering curiously up at him with one ear cocked.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Scruffy,’ he said out loud. ‘What now? Good question.’ The answer was clear. Ben gazed across the room at the picture of Jude Arundel that sat on the piano. He had to find him and tell him what had happened.

The Arundels’ well-thumbed address book lay on the coffee table. Ben flipped through it and saw it was crammed with numbers, as if Simeon had listed half his parishioners in there. Under J he found a mobile number for Jude. He dialled the number on his phone, holding his breath and searching for the right words to say. How did you tell a complete stranger in the middle of the night that their family had been wiped out?

After two rings, Ben was put through to voicemail. He left a brief message, not wanting to say too much and asking for Jude to call him back whenever he could. He sighed again and slumped into an armchair. Time passed. His mind whirled until mental exhaustion forced him to close his eyes and his chin sank towards his chest.

The landline phone jangled from across the room, startling him. He raced over to it and snatched up the receiver. ‘Is that Jude?’

There was a pause on the crackly line, followed by a man’s voice.

‘Simeon? It’s Wes.’

His accent was American, and he sounded agitated. Before Ben could say anything, he went on: ‘Listen, I didn’t reach Martha’s yet. I’m calling from the road. They’re onto me. I… damn it, this line’s terrible. Hello? Can you hear me?’