SENTINEL: an exciting British detective crime thriller
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Authors: JOHN STANLEY
SENTINEL
John Stanley
Published by
THE BOOK FOLKS
London, 2015
© John Stanley
Also by John Stanley, a murder mystery suspense available now on Kindle:
Detectives hunt down a serial killer in this exciting crime fiction thriller with an enjoyable twist
When a body is found in a house on a street marked for demolition, Superintendent Danny Radford and his team immediately come up against the actions of the developers and local activists, all of whom seem intent on thwarting their investigation. As more bodies are discovered it becomes clear a serial killer is at work, but will the interference of politicians into the police’s work allow the murderer to avoid Radford’s efforts to bring him to justice for his homicidal games?
Polite note to the reader
This book is written in British English so some spellings, words and phrases may differ from those typical of North American usage.
Table of Contents
Darkness and early afternoon winter mist had started to shroud the city centre yet again as the two men pushed their way through the heavy oak door and walked into the chill of the dimly-lit church. They stood at the entrance for a few moments, their eyes darting left and right in the silence as they sought out movement in the shadows until finally they were content that the building was empty. The last thing they wanted was witnesses to what they were about to do. Slowly, cautiously, they advanced down the aisle towards the row of flickering candles lined up next to the altar, their footsteps echoing on the cold stone floor.
Des Cranmer, a wiry, dark-haired man with a nose that had been broken too many times, looked up at the crucifix hanging on the wall behind the altar and silently crossed himself. His faith had long since deserted him; not since childhood had he believed, but nevertheless the last witness he wanted was from above.
‘Haven’t been in a church since I were a kid,’ said his accomplice, not noticing the gesture and unaffected by the sanctity of their surroundings. He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Sunday School. Fucking load of good it did me, eh, Des? Ended up nicking the Easter eggs. Me first appearance in Juvie, that was. Shopped by the fucking vicar. Turn the other cheek, my arse.’
‘What happened?’
‘I got a ticking off from some do-gooder magistrate. As for the vicar...’ Neil Garvin unzipped his leather jacket and pulled out a baseball bat, ‘let’s just say this won’t be my first man of the cloth. They never did find out who did him over.’
Cranmer produced his own bat as Garvin glanced round the church.
‘OK,’ demanded Garvin, ‘you said that he’d be here so where is he?’
‘He’ll be here, Neil. He always comes in this time of day. Regular as clockwork is the reverend.’
‘How come you’re so sure?’ asked Garvin, fingering the end of the bat and looking suspiciously at his accomplice. ‘You’re not one of them fucking God-botherers, are you? I ain’t got no time for them twats.’
Des Cranmer said nothing but looked up again at the crucifix and gave the merest shake of the head, almost without realising that he had done it. Memories of a stifling childhood spent as a clergyman’s son came back to him, the endless services, the patronising Sunday school teachers, the tedious garden parties on the lawn with the old dears from the women’s fellowship clucking like hens – and his father’s holier than thou diatribes about sin as the old man went into his well-rehearsed routines whenever his son did anything wrong. The Lord might forgive things but Des Cranmer’s father did not. Carried his grudges with him wherever he went – and Cranmer had done much that required forgiveness in the many years that he and his father had not spoken.
Despite the sour memories, Cranmer began to feel ever stronger the sense of unease that had dogged him ever since they had been given the job the previous day. He had few morals, he always said that money was his religion, always had been, always would be, but roughing up a vicar came close to crossing the line, as far as Des Cranmer was concerned.
Cranmer looked across at his friend; he knew that Neil Garvin did not have any lines left to cross. As Cranmer watched his accomplice search the church, occasionally tapping a pew with his bat, a movement in the shadows over to his left caught his eye. The thought that they were being watched set his pulse racing; neither of them could afford to be caught, not with their records.
Garvin had managed to keep out of prison for the best part of a decade but his record for violence would count against him should he stand in a dock again. For his part, Cranmer was only four years out and he did not want to go back so, with the magistrate’s words of warning from his last appearance ringing in his ears, he peered hard into the half-light but could make out nothing among the shadows.
‘I don‘t like this,’ said Cranmer, his voice sounding louder than he had intended as it reverberated round the church. ‘Something ain’t right, Neil.’
‘Not having an attack of conscience, are we?’ sneered Garvin. ‘See, we’ve come too far for that, Dessy boy. Besides, I told you, the man’s a fucking tea-leaf. Hand in the collection tray. Deserves everything he gets. Eye for an eye, isn’t that what the Bible says?’
‘I know, Neil, but it’s too public. What if someone comes in? Sees us doing him over?’
‘It’s a fucking church,’ said Garvin, who had now reached the far side of the pews. ‘Who’s going to come in, especially on a wet Friday afternoon?’
‘Even so.’
‘Stop worrying. You’d better be right about him turning up, mind. Our orders are to get this done as soon as possible. Yer man does not like to be kept waiting, you know that.’
Garvin walked up the aisle and slammed his bat hard into a pew, relishing the sound as it reverberated round the empty church. ‘He’ll wish he had never been born by the time I’ve finished with him.’
‘Just a warning,’ said Cranmer, his anxiety growing at the violence of the gesture. ‘He said just to warn him off, remember. Just a few bruises. Enough to make him keep his mouth shut.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Yeah, but…’
‘If he dies, he dies,’ said Garvin. ‘I should have finished off the last one, maybe this one won’t be so lucky.’
Cranmer said nothing.
Lurking deep in the shadows, the figure watched them in silence. He had listened to their conversation with growing alarm. They had got it wrong. The vicar was his, now here they were talking about killing him, talking about taking away what was rightfully his to take. The message that was his to deliver and his alone.
‘Just a warning,’ murmured the man. ‘It’s just supposed to be a warning.’
He spoke too loud and thinking that he had heard a voice, Cranmer looked over in the man’s direction once more. The figure felt a shiver of unease run down his spine and shrunk back into the darkness. No need to show himself now. His time would come. It was just a matter of patience. As long as the vicar survived their murderous assault...
Not realising that he was the subject of such intense interest, the Reverend James Rowland walked with heavy tread across the wasteland towards his church, stepping carefully in the fading late afternoon light to avoid the jagged edges of the half-bricks and the shards of broken glass strewn across the muddy ground. Half way across the sodden expanse, he paused for a few moments, turned his coat collar up against the drizzle and stared sadly at the church. It was not meant to be like this.
He wondered how many more times he would be permitted to gaze up at the building as its vicar. Although regarded by many as a naïve man, he was not
tha
t naïve. Like his beloved Jesus, he knew that time was running out and that within the community there lurked a Judas, ready to sacrifice him with a kiss. The vicar looked round at the wasteland; this blasted site was his Garden of Gethsemane.
‘Oh, my Lord, why have you forsaken me?’ he murmured then looked round with a guilty look on his face.
Looking at the wasteland with its remnants of demolished homes, Rowland sighed. Greater powers than his Lord were at work in the city, seeking to take his church from him, and well the Reverend Rowland knew it. Instinctively, he looked behind him; the reverend had been convinced for weeks that he was being followed. Unsure as to whether or not it was true, he suspected the onset of early paranoia. An understandable side-effect of recent events, he reasoned, an inevitable consequence of all that he had gone through.
The clergyman had voiced such concerns to his curate a few days previously only to be told that it was not paranoia because plenty of people did indeed hate him. Enemies were to be found everywhere, he had decided, even in the House of God. Particularly in the House of God.
‘God give me strength to forgive them,’ he sighed, returning his attention to the church and starting across the rubble again. ‘Would they know not what they do.’
They
had done a lot to forgive, in the vicar’s opinion, and, what’s more, they had known exactly what they were doing. Just a matter of weeks ago, St Mark’s had been at the heart of a thriving community, standing sentinel over rows of terraced Victorian streets bustling with life. Now, though, the houses were gone, crushed by bulldozers that had rolled in one morning as dawn was breaking pale and damp over the northern city of Leyton, their scoops cutting a swathe through more than 150 years of history.
Led by the vicar, the local people had spent months fighting to prevent the demolition but councillors were so enamoured with their idea for modern apartments and glass-fronted shopping centres, so bedazzled by slick drawings and plastic 3-D models, that they could not, would not, did not want to, hear voices of dissent. Especially not from a fresh-faced young clergyman in his first parish, who regularly invited the media into his church to listen to his fiery sermons in which he denounced the city council. Too many powerful people had been made to look too foolish for the vicar to go unpunished. That was how James Rowland reasoned things out and he was not the only one.
The bishop stared at his chaplain then looked down once more at the piece of paper lying in front of him on the large mahogany desk. It was shortly before 5pm and they were sitting in the bishop’s spacious lamp-lit office in the detached diocesan headquarters which stood in their own wooded grounds on the edge of the city. The central heating had just come on and the radiators were making a wheezing sound.
‘Are we sure this is right?’ asked the bishop, bleakly scanning the rows of figures on the document again. ‘I mean, could there not have been some kind of mistake?’
‘Would it were so, Your Grace,’ said the chaplain, who was sitting on the other side of the desk, looking considerably less concerned than the bishop. ‘However, the auditor says there can be no doubt about it and, in my experience, auditors tend not to make mistakes. Dull they may be but thorough for all that. No, the good reverend appears to have siphoned off the best part of eleven thousand pounds over the past five months. Possibly more. Donations to the fighting fund mainly.’
‘Are we sure it is him, Charles?’ Hope in the voice. ‘Not someone else who has been at it?’
‘Ah, the trusting nature of the devout Christian man. Who else could it be exactly?’
‘He’s not the only one who handles the cash at St Mark’s.’
‘Maybe so but take it from me, the little lick-spittle is behind this. James Rowland is a petty thief. Not so petty, indeed. Eleven thousand is not to be sniffed at.’
‘This is the last thing we need with less than three days to go,’ sighed the bishop and looked down at the piece of paper again. ‘Any more bad publicity now could destroy everything we have worked so hard to achieve.’
‘We?’
The bishop wafted a hand.
‘OK, Charles, you. I am aware how much work has gone into brokering the deal with our Mr Hankin.’ He looked down at the piece of paper again. ‘Why on earth did Rowland do it?’
The chaplain shrugged. ‘The Devil presents temptation in all its forms, I find.’
A glib answer and well Charles Garfield knew it but he also knew that uttering such platitudes was crucial to his grudging acceptances by colleagues who regarded him with suspicion.
‘And Rowland of all people,’ sighed the Bishop again, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘I mean, after all the publicity the man’s been getting. I tell you, we should have closed the place down when we had the chance.’ The bishop wafted the piece of paper. ‘This could bollocks everything up.’
‘Does it not also present an opportunity, though?’ The chaplain reached for the delicate bone china cup in front of him and took a sip of tea. ‘I mean, you
have
been wanting to get rid of him for months.
His little weakness has given you all the ammunition you require, surely? On a plate, as it were.’
Bishop Joseph closed his eyes at the joke. The Reverend Charles Garfield allowed himself a smile. The bishop was famed for his lack of humour and gently winding him up had become one of the chaplain’s joys in life. That and the freedom that he had been given to do his job as he saw fit, no questions asked or at least none he was prepared to answer. God’s Fixer was his own secret description of himself – and how he loved working with naïve people.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Garfield, noticing the bishop looking at him expectantly. ‘No one will listen to him bleating on about saving his church when this gets out.’
‘Maybe not, Charles, but I have no desire to reveal publicly that one of our clergy has been stealing. Especially James Rowland. Our public standing is already at a poor enough level as it is.’
‘Then just fire him. You’re a bishop, you can do what you want. Why should people not know the truth about him? The public are remarkably fickle. It would not take them long to turn on him.’
The bishop looked at his chaplain suspiciously. ‘I do hope you have not said anything, Charles.’
The chaplain assumed his best innocence expression. ‘Who, me?’ he said.
The bishop looked down at the piece of paper again.
‘Fuck it,’ he said.
‘Very liturgical,’ said the chaplain approvingly.