Walking into the Ocean (40 page)

It was time to retreat from the tide. She had almost reached the end of the accessible beach anyway. Looking up the strip of sand into the sun, she saw a silhouetted figure approaching. In the quivering mirage of rising heat she made out a cloaked person, who seemed to glide across the shore towards her. The figure raised an arm and slowly moved it back and forth in greeting.

Peter got up by six and skipped breakfast in order to reach Whittlesun Abbey as quickly as he could. He departed the hotel without making any of the numerous calls on his list. Just as he unlocked Sam's old Land Rover, his mobile chimed. He checked the screen. The one person he really needed to reach was Willet.

“Good morning. Did you contact Mr. Hamm, Constable?”

“Left a message again, and your number, sir. But I did take a gander at Mr. Hamm's desk, like you asked.”

“And?”

“Tried not to disturb his papers, mind. Did find a volume of Shakespeare. Thought it odd for a detective's desk. He's put verses down on various bits of paper.”

“Handwritten?”

“No. Typed.”

“Printouts?”

“Yes, I suppose. Some of them. The thing is, they were all about murder.”

“All from Shakespeare?”

“I suppose so. But they all contain the word ‘murder.' Here's the longest one.”

He read:

Thou shalt do no murder, and wilt thou then,

Spurn at his edict and fulfil man's?

Take heed, for he holds vengeance in his hands,

To hurl upon the heads that break the law.

“Did you keep the others?”

“No, sir. There were only four short ones. Recognized one from
Macbeth
.”

Peter rubbed his palm against his eyes.
Richard III
, he recalled. What was Hamm doing Googling
Richard III
? He wasn't. He was simply pairing words in a search, and they were “murder” and “vengeance.” Hamm was passing the time, obsessing, gearing up.
What for?

Necessity is the mother of the parking space, and Peter had no option but to leave the Land Rover on the cement pad where Anna Lasker had met her end. There wasn't a human being in any compass direction; still, he was uncomfortable about advertising his arrival like this. He locked the vehicle, pushing his service revolver, the old-tech Smith & Wesson, under the tyre in the wheel well in the boot; Tommy Verden, he knew, carried a newer Glock 17, favoured by bodyguards. He might have nursed the
SUV
along the path closer to the Abbey, but he also might have broken an axle, and he was content to hike down the slope. It took only ten minutes. The trail fed into the notch between the two hills inland from the Abbey and emerged by the crumbling steps where he had first met Father Salvez.

He started by trying the massive oak doors that gave onto the cliffs at the front of the church. Local police had added a fresh cordon of yellow tape without removing the tatters of the old tape, which flapped in the morning inshore breeze like streamers at a fair. They framed the section where the old priest must have jumped to his death; they served no security purpose. As he had expected, the doors were locked. Any safe access point would do. He soon found a useable path back along the spine of the Abbey, on the eastern flank. He knelt down to examine shoeprints in the fetid muck, and concluded only that they were recent and they were made by an old pair of boots. The path led to a hinged door cut from fibreboard and jammed shut with a block of granite. He was quickly inside and found himself in a covered section of the nave about halfway down the concourse.

For all his preparations at the hotel, he had forgotten his torch, and now he stood in the Gothic gloom adjusting his vision to the shattered interior of St. Walthram's. Towards the front, a column of eerie light arrowed down from the fractured roof, but only served to shield the transept with its contrasting shadows. He had a clear notion of where to search for the crypt. The tourist brochures hadn't mentioned the existence of a crypt, but he was sure there was one, even if stove in and obstructed over time. Salvez was the kind of man who loved hiding places, secret rooms and their mysteries. He also needed a place to sleep on the nights he lingered at the Abbey. Peter hadn't found any of his possessions lying about; they had to be stored somewhere.

He picked his way through the ruins around the transept. Small, shadowed chapels fell away into the dimness on either side of the nave. The front section did have a roof, though it was punctured and offered limited protection against the weather. The haphazard roofing had the dual effect of preserving two of the chapel bays almost intact, while accentuating the Catholic melancholy of the altars within. He examined the chapel on his left and found no succeeding chambers or niches that might hide a door to a crypt. The room to his right, however, presented an array of masked alcoves, arches and hollows emptied of their icons. Normally, a crypt would include a readily seen staircase, wide enough for embalmed bodies and their caskets. The stairs might have been sealed off for safety reasons.

He found it in the darkest recesses of the right-hand chapel, behind an archway that, at first, seemed to lead nowhere. An oak door, ordinary and plainly painted, opened smoothly when he pulled it back by the edge. He sincerely regretted leaving his torch behind. Without much hope, he felt for a light switch along the inner wall of the entrance to the crypt, and encountered his first miracle. A string of small bulbs, strung the length of the staircase, lit up with a sepulchral glow. To be safe, Peter stepped back and noticed for the first time that there was a dusty light switch on the outside wall that would have served just as well. Perhaps, after all, the old priest had used a little of the Preservation Trust's funding for his own comfort.

If so, he hadn't overspent. The lights traced a route downwards to a small room off the base of the narrow steps. It was the kind of space where an ascetic cleric or a custodian of the Abbey might mark time. He pulled the string on another light bulb, and the small room was half-illuminated; it was unheated but fairly dry, a rough sanctum, almost an oubliette, though perhaps not conducive to meditation. The chamber was furnished with a cot covered by a blanket; two more blankets lay folded and stacked at the foot of the bed. A crucifix hung above the pillow. A small desk and chair filled out the tiny cube, and the computer on top of the desk felt oversized in the confined space. He noted that two cables ran from the computer into the granite wall behind it. A tunnel appeared to flow farther back into the church, but there was no way to tell how far without a strong torch.

The ledge behind the desk, partly occluded by the computer, served as a bookshelf; it held a dozen religious texts. The front panel of the desk unfolded forward to create a writing tablet, and the drawer behind it revealed a series of slots containing pencils, a rosary and several small notebooks, which turned out to hold accounts of expenditures on the Abbey. The only colour in the space, aside from the ruby glow from the rosary beads, was a sign printed in orange ink on ragged-edged parchment, which Salvez had taped to the side of the monitor:
ars bene moriendi.
Peter turned on the
CPU
and was amazed when it fired up; the monitor soon lit up with its blue face, and immediately displayed the homepage of the Abbey. Worried that the power might brown out, or be cut off entirely by the weather, Peter found the icon for the priest's email and clicked it. Automatically updating itself, the system listed a half dozen new messages, but all were routine missives from other church groups, so to speak, post mortem.

Out of curiosity, and no particular purpose, Peter checked the history of Google and Yahoo searches. Nothing showed for the last four days, but the listing for the previous week, which the computer helpfully archived, charted what could only be termed a massive search for references to the Rover. Peter counted two hundred news sites that addressed the four murders and two assaults, as well as the Task Force's official page (accessed ten times) and various speculative sites, the kind that always spring up with major crimes; Peter's own adventure on the cliffs was also catalogued. Salvez's interest, nearly a fetish, regarding the Rover disturbed Peter, because he saw no point in it; it correlated neither to the priest's character nor to his professed interests.

More distressing was the complete omission of any sites covering the Lasker tragedy, which at minimum was relevant to the Abbey by the proximity of Anna's death. Also, Peter was now certain that the message from the Book of Luke dealt with Lasker.

Peter shut down the computer and turned his attention to the three words on the casing of the monitor. He had naively hoped that Father Salvez had left behind a personal message for him, but
“ars bene moriendi”
didn't resonate with him. He thumbed through each of the books on the slim shelf. Salvez owned a King James, a New Standard and an elegant New Testament by William Tyndale, which Peter had studied in his English Literature years. Tyndale, if he recalled accurately, had died at the stake during the same campaign of persecution that had sent Henry's railers to pillage sanctuaries like this one. He took down the King James and turned to Luke 21:36, reading aloud to the Abbey stones: “Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.”

Salvez had underlined the passage.

A telephone rang in the depths of the crypt.

At first, Peter thought it was the computer announcing its automatic rebooting, but then he knew that it was just his mobile echoing oddly in the hollow chamber. Ron Hamm's name appeared on the screen. Through a blur of interference, he struggled to make out Hamm's voice; if there was panic there, Peter couldn't distinguish it from the static.

“Inspector, this is Ron Hamm.” Further words were swept away. Peter moved towards the feeble light of the stone stairway, and the reception improved.

“Where are you, Ron?” he shouted.

“I can't hear you too well, Peter. I'm in town.”

“Did Willet reach you?” He was shouting now.

“Not to worry. I'm close. Where are you?”

Close?
What does that mean?
“Close in what sense?”

“I have reason to believe that Albrecht Zoren helped Lasker with his plan.” Possible, Peter conceded. “I also know that Zoren killed the bookkeeper, Sally, to keep her from finding out about the cars and the shell companies.” Peter thought this impossible: he had seen Zoren's face the day of the funeral. “I'm going over to Lasker's.”

“Where are you?” Peter called into the line. The signal faded. The wind in from the Channel was audible down in the crypt. It seemed to be building. The door at the top of the stairs slammed shut.

Peter called out: “Ron?” The phone still worked, but he was losing Hamm. The lights went out in the crypt, leaving merely the lonely screen of his mobile.

“Don't hang up, whatever you do!” he shouted. He scrambled to the top of the steps in the dark. He banged his left arm on the rough wall, hitting his recent wound. Finding the door by touch, he pressed against it. It didn't budge; it didn't appear to be locked, only jammed shut, but the steep pitch of the staircase made leverage against the inner side of the door difficult, his position on the top step precarious.

“Are you there, Peter?” Hamm said.

“Ron, I'm at the Abbey. Stuck in the crypt. The entrance is off the chapel east of the transept. I don't know if I have much air. Can you come over and open up?” There was no answer at first, but then Peter thought he heard a muffled “Yes.”

Peter called into the fading line: “Stay away from Zoren.” But he was met by dead air.

It turned out that he had plenty of oxygen. What he lacked was light and a firm prospect of rescue. He tried to shoulder his way through the door, but it held fast. He found the inner light switch, but it appeared to be dead. Slipping and stumbling down the steps, he paused in the little room to reflect on his options. The glow from his phone was pitiful, but at least the bars showed that his battery had a half charge remaining. He called Hamm back, only to be greeted by the “no reception” lady. Grappling towards the chair next to the desk, he oriented himself to the tiny room and called up his speed-dial list. He even considered trying to reach Verden or Bartleben. Sam's Auto was promising, he thought. But there was a better choice: he called Constable Willet.

There was no reception.

He called Sam, Tommy, Joan, Sarah and the Regional Lab in Whittlesun. He called Vogans. He tried Hamm again. Nothing.

His telephone light would last no more than two hours. He could try the upper door again, but he wasn't hopeful. Feeling round the desk, over and under the computer and along the bookshelf, from which he dislodged half the volumes, he touched the on/off switch on the
CPU
. He flipped it On. The blue screen arrived like a friend. Peter had never participated in what Michael and Sarah called “social media,” other than using email, but now he was faced with choosing his most reliable Best Friend. He considered a quick
SOS
— filled with exclamation points — to Willet, but that could alert Maris and everyone else on the police network to where he was sending from, and he wasn't eager to explain. Sam or Vogans risked a heart attack climbing these hills and, besides, at least one of them might have legitimate reservations about breaking into a Roman Catholic church. In the end, he emailed Tommy with directions to the crypt. Tommy was the one most likely to check his inbox at least once an hour, and, most important, he would browbeat the Whittlesun force to send someone out to the Abbey.

He prayed that the feed to the computer would stay alive. He turned off the mobile and marked the passage of the minutes on the monitor clock. In the spooky blue glow, Peter decided to pass the time by completing his search of Salvez's possessions. He flipped through the remaining tomes in his library, feeling in the dark beside the desk for the upended volumes. He found a few prayer cards, used as bookmarks. But when he took down a well-thumbed volume of Aquinas, a folded sheet fell out. He opened it and read: