“What then about Strand?”
“Yes, how much do we know about Luc Sante's apprentice?”
“Actually, I've done a deeper background check on Strand,” Richard informed her even as he started down the stairs.
She fought to keep up, asking, “Really?”
“Didn't care for him when I met him at the church the other day. Don't know precisely why, but I gained an ill feeling just being in his presence. Too-I don't know-solicitous, asking about the case, seeking some sort of picture as to where we are on it. A bit too crowding.”
Jessica knew the familiar cop thinking, that if someoneparticularly a civilian-showed too much ready interest in the specific details of a case, suspicion bloomed.
Jessica stared back at the Royal Institute as Richard climbed into his squad car. Surprised, she saw that embedded within its ancient niches, high above them, gargoyles again looked down on her movements.
“Let's get out of here. See if we can't locate the terminus of that canal and an entry point,” he suggested as Jessica climbed into the passenger seat. They sped away, carrying the map of the underground passageways, canals, and mine shafts of the Marylebone area with them, locked away in Jessica's camera. Richard had mentioned someone at the Yard, expert in handling photographic evidence, who would develop and enlarge the photos for them. But before returning to the Yard, they would have a look to determine just how difficult it would be to get inside that ancient mine shaft below Marylebone.
Richard drove for the area where Luc Sante's church seemed a focal point. A few blocks from the RIBA, Richard pointed out a cemetery nearly hidden by the urban streets and said, “There is Marylebone Cemetery. Odd that the Crucifier, if he is working out of this district, doesn't simply dump his bodies there, but then…”
“Then it would break with his ritualistic obsession. If he is attempting to resurrect his own victims, he needs to follow a strict regimen, which obviously includes a clean body of water.”
Richard laughed. “Just try to find a clean body of water in this city.”
“Pull over,” she suddenly asked.
“What for?” he asked.
“I want to see the cemetery, up close. I love old cemeteries, and this one looks ancient.”
“That much is true.” Richard pulled the car to a stop, and Jessica climbed out, peering now through the gates of Marylebone. Richard trailed after with the map of the area in his hands. “Look here,” he said, pointing at the opened map.
She did so, and Richard continued, “This cemetery stands as close to our Royal Institute as it does to St. Albans.”
“It's a fantastic find, this place.” Her voice took on the tone of a schoolgirl with a crush. “I love it.”
Richard merely shrugged and Jessica began strolling among the headstones, many green with lichen and age, and she men tally read off the names and dates of the people housed in this city of the dead. While she did so, Richard continued on about Martin Strand. “I ran a second check on our choirboy, Strand, but he came back as polished as a schoolboy's apple.”
“Which only makes you even more suspicious, no doubt,” she replied, pulling her eyes from the grand old cemetery.”
“Actually, he looks more suspicious by the moment, Jessica.”
“What do you mean?”
“He worked his way through various jobs to gain enough money to go to seminary at Westminster Seminary for the Clergy.”
“And?”
“One of his jobs was as a lengthsman.”
“A lengthsman? And what is a-”
“A caretaker around damns, canals, regulating water flow. That sort of thing. He would have had keys made up. He would know where every canal and clapper bridge in the city lies.”
“Clapper bridge?”
“They're bloody prehistoric bridges, built before recorded time some of them. The Romans often built over them, or rather demolished them and built new structures over them.”
“Are there many in London?”
“Oh, no one knows for sure. Not so many in London as you will find in the West Country, actually. They're normally something in the area of six feet long by four or five feet wide and a foot thick, but only the carefully placed stone masonry remains, you see. The bridges were laid over boulders spaced two or three feet apart to get across streams and some remain here and there over canal junctures.” She seemed more intent on reading headstones than listening to him. He pushed the map of the area again into her face, making her halt, ending her stroll, and saying, “Look here at these areas I've circled.”
Jessica stared now at the marked map, at the circled areas, indicating coal mines which once thrived in and around London. In her ear, Richard said, “Most will have associated with them canals for transporting the coal out. There is an exhaustive number, but I intend to put a surveillance team at every single one, to watch for unusual activity. That is, if I can sell this whole notion, half-baked as it sounds, to Boulte, of course.”
“So Strand's job, the job that got him through seminary, would have been enough to make him intimate with the waterways here? He would know every body of water in the city.”
“And the system of underground canals, like the one we saw in the replica of Marylebone Mine. He would know of the shortest and simplest routes to and from the mine.”
Her mouth agape, her eyes staring out at the traffic and the world outside the cemetery gates, Jessica concluded, “Then it must be Strand. We have him. We have the nails to crucify the Crucifier.”
“Hold on. We have nothing but a packet of speculative conjectures
… Strands, if you will, strands of loose circumstantial facts, none of which the Crown prosecutor would take into a courtroom, I assure you.”
“Then we've got to get the evidence we need against Strand.”
“You're assuming Father Luc Sante innocent in this, but remember, we early on agreed that no one could be working this hideous circus alone.”
Jessica tried to imagine the old man who spoke so eloquently on the subject of evil, who had devoted a lifetime to the scrutiny of evil, who wished to create a psychotherapy of treatment in cases of evil and demonic possession. She tried to imagine how Luc Sante himself might be taken over by the evil he combated. He had warned her of this very real danger. Yes, the possibility existed, but she resisted finding Luc Sante guilty. “It… it simply cannot be. Look, Luc Sante is an old man. This horror could be going on about and around him, and he might not know,” she submitted for Sharpe's consideration.
“Perhaps, perhaps,” he replied noncommittally.
“How do we get the evidence we need?”
“We could take what we have at this point to Boulte, and do a surveillance of the area, or better yet have a full-out mucking of this canal and approach it from all sides.”
She readily agreed. “Every passage we can locate beneath the city that might converge on this canal running between here and St. Albans needs to be cut off.”
“Definitely dme we mounted an all-out effort, but we can't have this leaking out. The gossipmongers get hold of this news, and the Crucifiers are forewarned, and we'll find 'zip,' as you Yanks say.”
“Perhaps we can enlist Copperwaite? Inform a few trusted others?” she suggested.
“Copperwaite can no longer be trusted.”
“I suspected as much.” She came onto a stone bench and sat, Richard joining her where bushes and tree branches reached out to them among the headstones.
“Stuart has his eyes on a prize extended before his nose. Boulte's filing a charge with our internal monitors to look into my recent conduct, as when I stepped off from the scene the other night. 'Fraid young Coppers got caught up when trying to cover for me. Boulte's known for turning his people against one another. Too many eyes on a crime scene to manage secrets, really. My fault really.”
“Are you sure that Copperwaite is a part of this witch-hunt against you?”
“ 'Fraid so. Can't blame him, really. It's his career on the line, too, and I put it there. He did at first try to cover for me. It's been a long time coming between Boulte and me, really. Not any worry of yours.”
