The church stood on the corner of Whitefriars Street and Tope Street — a simple chapel of stark geometical lines with long narrow windows in green glass. On the brickwork was a sign — a silver fish, two sinuous lines, crossing once to leave an open tail, just like the brooch on Nora Tilden’s shroud but this one set above the door on which was a wooden panel, painted green, carrying the name.
THE FREE CHURCH OF CHRIST THE FISHERMAN
Shaw stopped, checked his tide watch and the mobile. He still had time before they were due to interview Nora Tilden’s daughter Lizzie at the Flask. He was haunted by an image of the graveside on that day in 1982 when the family would have come together: the small crowd of local mourners and the two black faces amongst them, members — according to Freddie Fletcher — of ‘the Free’.
Had one of them come to regret the decision to show respect, to claim a rightful place in that community? Times had changed in Lynn, the appearance of the east European migrant workers shifting popular prejudice away from the few black families in the town. But back then they would have been marked men: outsiders in a seafaring community renowned for its insularity. He wondered what Nora Tilden had felt about those black faces; she was a member of the ‘Elect’, in a church once dedicated to the emancipation of slaves.
But she also had a husband who’d left her to travel the world, finding comfort in the whorehouses of North Africa.
He heard footsteps and a figure walked out of the mist, as narrow as one of the chapel windows, the head held forward like a vulture’s. Valentine was wrapped in his raincoat, holding the lapels at his throat, a cigarette lit. Shaw noted he’d picked up a new charity sticker: BARNARDO’S, an orange sticky disc stuck over his heart.
‘Pub’s not open,’ he said.
‘George,’ said Shaw, nodding at the chapel. ‘Nora’s church. Some of them turned up at the graveside that day — and two of them were black.’ Low in the sky to the south the sun found a thin patch of mist and appeared as a disc, so that the two lines of the silver fish caught the light, like knives.
Valentine nodded, thinking of the wispy grey hair on Nora Tilden’s skull.
Shaw filled him in on the rest of his interview with Freddie Fletcher.
‘Suspect, then?’ asked Valentine.
‘Get Paul to organize a statement,’ said Shaw, avoiding a direct answer, surveying the chapel’s facade.
‘He’s not just a racist, is he?’ said Valentine. ‘He knows the grave’s open. And he knows whose job it is to fill it in. That’s opportunity, that is.’
‘I know,’ said Shaw, pushing open the door so that they could step into the porch, lined with bibles stacked on shelves. He thought that despite his apparently casual indifference Valentine had a rare gift for seeing the bigger picture, for rising above the detail. He was right in one key respect. In this crime, opportunity was everything. The killer had to have known that the grave was still open.
Shaw picked up one of the bibles, seeing the words without seeing the meaning. They’d been read, all of them, almost to destruction. Several had lost their spines while others were spilling pages that had come free. He thought of the hands that had held them over the years, either open to read or closed and pressed to the chest in prayer. The thought made him feel like a visitor in a foreign land.
A further door led into the chapel itself. It was a simple room with whitewashed walls. Shaw was immediately aware that, once inside, it seemed to be both lighter and colder than outside. He thought he could smell the sea in here, too, and the illusion suggested the walls might be made of salt. In the silence the air rang, and held within it the sound of the sea, as if they were in a giant shell.
They walked down the aisle, some of the wooden parquet blocks in the floor rattling under their feet.
‘Christ, it’s cold in here,’ said Valentine, rolling his shoulders. ‘What are they? Methodists? A sect?’ The last time Valentine had been in a church had been for his wife’s funeral at All Saints. It was whitewashed too, he recalled, and perhaps that was common in seagoing communities. The memory made him feel the guilt of the survivor.
Shaw turned to look back at a modest set of organ pipes set over the door by which they’d entered. ‘Music, at least,’ he said. ‘Rest of it’s a bit joyless.’
Set on either side of the pipes were two portraits in plain gold frames. To the right a man in a severe white wig, the face pinched, the cheeks slightly flushed. It was one of those rare images — Shaw guessed from the late eighteenth century — which actually looked like a human being, even if it was not a particularly attractive human being. The other portrait was of a black man: Caribbean black, with a fine red silk scarf at his throat. Shaw guessed he’d be in his twenties, perhaps thirty, the strong white teeth still intact, the skin tension taut, the eyes searching and intelligent. He couldn’t fail to see again the skull they’d found on Nora Tilden’s coffin. It too had once been clothed in a face like this.
‘Who the hell are you?’ asked Valentine, studying the picture, juggling a cigarette into his mouth.
‘
Shaw stepped forward, holding the warrant card at eye level. ‘DI Peter Shaw — DS Valentine. Just some routine inquiries.’ Shaw wondered if anyone, anywhere, believed that cliche any more.
‘It
Shaw shook it, thinking the pastor was dressed like a travelling salesman, in a cheap suit with shiny black shoes. He looked like the kind of man who’d own a trouser press.
Abney studied the pictures. ‘This man,’ he said, opening a hand out to the portrait of the white man, as if offering a sugar lump to a horse. ‘This man is our founder — Webster Barents. Barents was a follower of Wesley until he decided to set up the church here. That was in 1778. He was a patron of the arts — especially poetry and narratives written by slaves and ex-slaves. It was all part of the movement — the great movement against the slave trade.’ As he said the word ‘great’ he raised his hands for emphasis. ‘Equiano wrote an autobiography in which he told the story of the
Valentine, tiring of the lecture, walked off, examining a list of the church’s previous pastors written in white on black wood. Shaw leant against a pew end, folding his arms across his chest.
Abney ploughed on. ‘The
Abney stopped for emphasis, and in the silence they heard a ship’s foghorn out on the Cut.
‘It was called the “jettison clause” — and was perfectly legal. He threw a hundred and ten live slaves overboard, and ten more threw themselves over — as an act of empathy, I would guess, or possibly just despair. Anyway, Equiano’s telling of this incident caused a sensation.’
Valentine coughed. He was pointing at the list of pastors.
‘George Gayton Melville,’ he said, ‘1807 to 1843.’
Shaw tried to work the generations out. It could be Nora’s grandfather. ‘The Melvilles,’ he said. ‘That’s why we’re here, Pastor. A woman called Nora Tilden, nee Melville, was buried in the cemetery at Flensing Meadow in 1982 — we’ve just recovered her remains. There are some issues we need to clear up. She was buried wearing a silver fish — a brooch.’
‘She was one of the Elect, then — those chosen to be saved by God.’ Abney released a fold in his tie from beneath the waistcoat. On it was a small silver fish. ‘George Gayton Melville was a wealthy merchant. A Cambridge man — Sidney Sussex. He bought and sold fish oil from the whaling trade. He paid for this building to be renovated and modernized out of his own pocket. And he bought the Flask.’
‘The pastor bought a pub?’ asked Valentine, smiling. ‘That’s my kind of religion.’
Abney studied his feet, but when he looked up the smile hadn’t slipped. ‘Well, all the pastors were — and are — part-timers like me. In civvy street I’m an insurance agent.’ He looked at them as if this should be a great surprise. ‘George was a merchant, as I said. When he bought the pub it was actually a kind of seaman’s mission. There was always a bar, but also rooms, a small library, a soup kitchen — you know, hearty food for a few pennies. Beer was just what people drank then — you wouldn’t have touched the water. But the bar was popular and it
