Byron winced.
‘I’d also like to stress that the students choose how far to take it. Some will drop out. Most of them will drop out at some stage. But a small number will cross a threshold and begin to revel in it.’
‘An elite.’
‘I’ve no quarrel with that word. We encourage levels of excellence.’ Byron looked up, narrowing his eyes. ‘Do we need all these lights? It’s not very green, is it? Also a bit like an interrogation. That what this is, William? An interrogation?’
An edge of impatience, now. William Lockley looked at Annie Howe. She stood up, went to the switches on the wall and killed all the lights except for two at the top of the room. The reflections of the conference table vanished from the window and the early glow of the city came up under the long beach of the evening sky.
‘Thank you,’ Byron said. ‘I find light pollution offensive.’
Annie Howe sat down again, next to Merrily.
‘You seem to be saying this is all pure psychology rather than religion.’
‘Finally sinking in, is it?’ Byron looked pained. ‘I mean, do I look like a fantasist? We analysed Mithraism, took it apart, found out how it worked, then reconstructed it for our purposes. The Romans weren’t hippy-dippy spiritual types. They were practical and pragmatic. This is a system for self-development. The only one of us who ever talked about religion was Syd Spicer.’
Merrily said, ‘For confirmation, Syd was a member of the original history club?’
‘Oh, yeah. You could say that.’
‘Along with, erm… Jocko and Greg. And Nasal.’
Annie Howe pushed her chair back, curious. The names would mean nothing to her, but Lockley would know.
‘All dead,’ Merrily said. ‘Like Syd.’
‘What’s your point?’ Byron looked irritated, nothing more. ‘What conclusion could you possibly be drawing from that?’
‘What conclusions was Syd drawing?’
They were all looking at her now, Byron smiling, but not really.
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘You were presumably practising this form of self-development when you were still in the army.’
‘To the extent of our knowledge. We were learning about the use of meditation and visualization to achieve focus.’
‘And it carried on when Syd left.’
‘Sure.’
‘Sometime after you’d both left the army and gone your separate ways, Syd possibly had reason to think it had… escalated? And the other guys, Jocko, Greg… and finally Nasal… had all died. Which he thought-’
‘You baffle me, Mrs Watson. One was a drink-driving smash, one a drunken brawl and the third topped himself in the wake of a distressing domestic incident. What’s your point?’
‘I think Syd was suggesting – to you – that the regime they’d been following had made them… reckless… prone to seeking out violent situations.’
Byron’s expression conveyed an element of pity. Merrily struggled on.
‘Maybe he felt they’d let in something they couldn’t control. Nothing gained without sacrifice, and in this case the sacrifice was their humanity.’
Byron looked at Lockley. How long do I have to suffer this shit?
Merrily looked away and tried again.
‘You never wondered why Syd left the Regiment and immediately threw himself into Christianity?’
‘Syd was religious. He had to think that what we were doing was spiritual, and when he realized it wasn’t he went cold on it.’ Byron smiled. ‘Or did he?’ He sat looking at Merrily. The lines in his lean face were like hieroglyphics in sandstone.
‘Syd was fascinated by all the places where Mithraism overlaps with Christianity. How you could appear to be practising one religion but it was really the other. And nobody would ever know. We used to talk about that.’
‘Oh no.’ Merrily shaking her head, too quickly. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t, eh? You claim to have known him. You never think there were times when his behaviour wasn’t strictly priestlike? I heard he once beat the living shit out of a street dealer who sold his daughter pills.’
‘I-’
Merrily was hit by a memory of what she’d once seen Syd do to a young guy in the Malverns, when they’d needed information in a hurry. His famous evocation of the SAS buzz. The rush you get… when you convince yourself it’s not only justified but necessary. When you know that a difficult situation can only be resolved by an act of swift, efficient, intense and quite colossal violence.
‘We were soldiers,’ Byron said. ‘We knew about immediate action. We didn’t do turning the other cheek.’
Annie Howe stood up.
‘You’ll have to excuse me. I’m afraid I’ve been drinking too much coffee today. Ms Watkins?’
Howe looked at the door and back at Merrily.
‘Oh.’ Merrily rose out of a fugged image of Syd Spicer smoking in his church on a summer’s day, knowing that his deity was entirely OK with that. ‘I’ll come with you.’
Byron leaned back, arms hanging down, limp as empty sleeves, so relaxed. The state of his teeth gave him a dark grin.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Mithras. He really lit Syd’s candle.’
64
‘this isn’t working, is it?’ Howe said. ‘He’s tying you in knots.’
‘Sorry. Tired. Complicated day.’ Merrily backed off towards the top of the stairs. A wreck in sweater and jeans, no make-up, a woman who’d left home too quickly, a long time ago. ‘But I can certainly see why Byron agreed to be interviewed.’
‘ Agreed? ’
Annie Howe moistened her lips, took a long breath, Merrily thinking that, despite the softening effects of early middle-age, they were never going to be friends. Too much rancid history.
‘It’s a set-up,’ Howe said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You’re here to look like a fool, I’m here to witness that. And Jones, quite clearly, is only here because it was suggested to him – presumably by Lockley – that it would be very much in his best interests to get his defence in first.’
‘Defence against what?’
‘With a view to pre-empting any possible police investigation of his activities. Damage limitation. And it’s working, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Well, it…’
Out of Byron’s presence, the flaws in his argument were beginning to show. Here was Fiona: He told me Sam was making a terrible mistake in going into the church, that he was throwing away his life and damaging his country. Was that coming from a man who knew that Syd hadn’t forsaken Mithras?
But what the hell would any of that matter to Howe or Lockley? This wasn’t about theology.
A door opened, and DI Frannie Bliss appeared, cradling a mug of coffee.
Annie Howe didn’t quite look at him.
‘No arrest yet, Francis?’
Bliss said, ‘Good evening, Reverend.’
