Innocent Blood

Eleven

Wednesday was gray and chilly. The wind had a nasty saw-toothed edge to it and rain was forecast for later in the day. More than sixty guests came to St Luke’s for Danny’s funeral service, including Frank’s father and mother; Margot’s mother; Carol and Smitty; Mo and Sherma; Lizzie Fries and her partner, Walford; Joe Peruggio, their executive producer, and his wife, Sharleen; Rick and Lynn Ashbee, as well as Frank’s agent Nero Tabori and most of the cast of Pigs. Frank and Margot sat together but they didn’t touch each other or exchange more than two or three words, even though Frank could feel the pew shaking as Margot sobbed. She wore a black hat with a black veil. Frank couldn’t help thinking that she looked like a grieving widow in a Charles Addams cartoon.

Reverend Trent climbed into the pulpit, thirtyish but pinkly bald, with circular glasses, so that he looked like the boy at school who always went home in tears.

‘We have all shed tears for young Daniel today, but none grieves as sorely as Christ, our Lord, who always weeps when one of his little ones falls asleep and never re-awakens.

‘We saw only the early morning of Daniel’s life, and we shall never know what he could have become if he had reached his noonday hour. But I can tell you this: he would have shined as brightly as the sun high above, and the world will be a dimmer place without him.’

Before he finished, Reverend Trent said a prayer for the hundred and six victims of the bomb that had demolished Studio V at Panorama-TV, and condemned Dar Tariki Tariqat. ‘A group of people are terrorizing our community – a group who have acted without pity and without remorse. They are slaughtering our friends and our loved ones without discrimination. They took young Daniel away from us, and his schoolmates, and his teachers, and yesterday they took away over a hundred more innocent lives.

‘We pray for the souls of all of those lost, that they may find eternal peace and happiness in Heaven. In spite of our anger, we also pray for all of those misguided people who have conspired in these terrible outrages, that they may look into the mirror and see how evil they have become, and what misery and anguish they have caused, and repent.’

He hesitated, and then he said, much more quietly, ‘I hold out very little hope, however, that they will.’

There was an even longer pause, as if he were trying to make up his mind if he really ought to say any more. But eventually he lifted his head and took off his glasses, his lower lip trembling with passion. ‘If it were possible for us to ask the Lord our God to act on our behalf as a vengeful God, and to show no mercy to those who have broken his Commandments, then I have to confess that I, for one, would ask Him now.’

They stood under the overcast sky and Danny’s casket was lowered in the ground. Frank threw a handful of crumbly soil on to the lid, and then Margot did the same.

‘So that’s that, then,’ she said.

He looked at her, but the smokescreen of her veil made it impossible for him to see the subtleties of her expression. Did she mean that this was the end of their life as parents, as Danny’s dad and mom – or that this was the end of their marriage altogether? He didn’t know how to ask her, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to.

Without another word, Margot walked off and linked arms with Ruth. Frank was left alone by the graveside. He stared down at the casket and thought of what Francis Bacon had written: ‘Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark.’ Now Danny was in the dark, forever. Frank knew that Danny hadn’t forgiven him, but he prayed that he wasn’t afraid.

Somebody came and stood close beside him. When he turned around, Frank saw that it was Nevile Strange, wearing a black shirt and a black necktie and a very long black overcoat, and carrying a black Homburg hat.

‘Very moving service,’ said Nevile.

‘Yes.’

‘I like a clergyman who can show some genuine Old Testament wrath once in a while. Nothing like an occasional smite to keep the sinners shaking in their shoes.’

Frank took a last look down at Danny’s casket, and then he turned away. ‘We’re having a few drinks back at the house. Are you going to join us?’

Nevile replaced his hat. ‘Actually, I need to talk to you, but this may not be the time for it.’

‘Why not? Things can’t get very much worse than they are already.’

‘Oh, you mean the seance. That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. It didn’t turn out to be very helpful, did it? Not as far as your marriage is concerned.’

‘Not only the seance.’ Frank told him about the graffiti that had been smeared over Margot’s paintings. ‘I even began to believe that maybe I did do it, that I drove back home from my sister’s house and ruined her paintings in my sleep.’

Nevile laid his hand on Frank’s shoulder. ‘It wasn’t you, Frank; that’s for certain.’

‘Oh, no? If I didn’t, who did?’

‘Well . . . there’s a remote possibility that Margot did it herself, so that she could blame you for it, as a way of conceptualizing her anger toward you. But personally I very much doubt it. I suspect that there are other forces involved here.’

‘When you say “other forces,” you mean what? Like, spirits?’

Nevile shrugged. ‘We can always discuss this another time.’

‘Nevile, I know what I saw on the patio, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it really was Danny. A friend of mine . . . well, you may think this is offensive, but a friend of mine even suggested that you rigged it somehow – that it wasn’t really a spiritual manifestation at all, but some kind of optical illusion.’

‘And what do you think about that?’

‘If it was an optical illusion, I don’t see how you could have found the time to set it up, to be honest. Or why. My friend said you might have done it for the money – you know, to induce me to pay for more seances. But I can’t believe you would go to those lengths just for five hundred bucks.’

Nevile smiled. ‘Your friend is perfectly entitled to have doubts, Frank, especially about this particular seance. This was the very first time that anyone apart from myself was actually able to see a spirit, as well as hear it. So believe me, I think it could have been a fake, too. Not a fake in the sense that your friend obviously means – not a con-trick with lights and mirrors. But a spiritual impersonation. Another spirit, pretending to be Danny.’

‘When you first walked into the house, you sensed another presence, didn’t you? That little girl, maybe.’

‘That’s true, but she was only eighteen months old, wasn’t she, when she died? Far too young to stage an elaborate deception like this. Children who pass over, you see, they never grow older. In fact nobody who passes over grows older.’

They had reached Nevile’s shiny old Mercedes, which was already speckled with rain. ‘No,’ said Nevile, as he took out his keys, ‘I think we’re talking about an adult spirit here. It was the way Danny spoke, mostly. He said something like, “You didn’t care . . . you took away my whole life because you didn’t care . . . and not caring is the greatest sin of all.”’

‘That’s right.’

‘Don’t tell me Danny ever spoke like that. I didn’t know him, Frank, but he was only eight years old, wasn’t he? I don’t think I’ve heard any eight-year-olds speak like that.’

Frank thought about it. ‘I guess you’re right. It didn’t hit me before. I couldn’t think about anything else except how much Danny hated me, and was never going to forgive me.’

‘Mull it over, Frank. It could be very important. If it wasn’t Danny, then we should try to find out who he was, and why he went to such lengths to deceive you.’

Margot approached them. She had lifted her veil and draped it over her hat. Her eyes were reddened but her lips were thin and tight and she wore no lipstick.

‘I’ve asked Nevile back to the house,’ Frank told her.

‘I suppose I can’t stop you.’

‘I’ve asked him as our guest, Margot.’

‘All right. So long as he doesn’t conjure up Danny’s ghost again. I don’t think our friends would find it very