‘You haven’t changed a bit, Talbot. You’re still a cheap bastard.’
He grinned crookedly at her and offered her his arm, which she took.
They left the bar together.
Twenty-four
He wasn’t afraid of death.
Why should he be?
At thirty-eight years of age, the Reverend Colin Patterson had already stood over enough burials and interments to know that those who went beyond went somewhere better. It was always the relatives his heart went out to. He hated to see suffering, and many times in the past ten years he had struggled to find the words to ease the suffering of those who had lost someone close. It was never easy. It wasn’t always possible. But he did his best. That was all God had ever asked, that he did his best.
He would do his best in the army too.
Patterson had thought long and hard about his decision to join the army as a chaplain but he felt that he could do more good there than here in this part of southeast London. He needed a challenge and, despite his family’s protests, he felt that challenge would come amongst fighting men, not amongst the parishioners he’d known and ministered to for the last decade.
His mother had mentioned Bosnia, Belfast and the Falklands, although he’d respectfully pointed out that particular conflict had been over since before his ordination. She had been unimpressed. It could happen again. If not there then some other godforsaken corner of the world.
Patterson had listened attentively to all her arguments, but his mind had been made up before he’d even mentioned it.
He paused beside one of the graves near by and straightened a metal vase which
had been blown over by the wind. As he straightened up he glanced at the headstone: in loving memory of a dear father and husband. Patterson smiled affectionately and continued his walk.
The cemetery gates were opened at nine and he’d already seen a number of people moving around the large necropolis which was Croydon Cemetery.
A number of them he knew by name, the others he was on nodding terms with.
The priest glanced at his watch.
He was due to conduct a burial at eleven.
Plenty of time.
There was a bench to his left, beneath a large oak tree which had already shed several dozen of its large leaves:
they lay like a yellow carpet over the graves beneath the tree.
A bird was singing higher up, its shrill calls wafting pleasingly on the gentle breeze.
Patterson made for the newer area of the cemetery where the more recent interments were sited. The path on which he walked sloped down gently, past a tap which was dripping water. He stopped and turned it off as he passed.
Lives were like drops of water, one of his teachers had told him shortly before his ordination: fragile, precious and so quickly gone.
Patterson wondered how many he would see go in his position as a chaplain, lives taken not by old age or disease but by violence. By explosions, by bullets. By war.
He would see men die, he knew that. But he had no fear for his own life. Why should he?
As he rounded a corner he saw the first splash of colour.
Red. Vivid and almost dazzling.
The colour of blood.
It took him a second to realise that the paint was spattered across a headstone.
Patterson took several hesitant steps towards the stone, his eyes narrowed against the sun which was burning so brightly above him.
He saw that the paint was also on another stone.
He made out letters this time. Words.
GOD IS FUCKED
smeared on a white marble stone.
CHRIST CUNT
scrawled over a plinth.
‘Oh no,’ Patterson whispered.
Another headstone had been smashed, shattered by a heavy instrument. Pieces of stone were scattered over the dark earth.
He saw something else on the ground near by, on a grave.
It was excrement.
More of it was smeared on a white marble headstone close to him.
Patterson shook his head.
Not again.
One of the graves had been dug up.
He hurried across to it and saw that the stone had not been touched but, instead, daubed with something. A symbol. A shape?
Earth was scattered everywhere. The coffin was lying at the graveside, the top smashed in. There was more paint on the polished wood, more writing.
CUNT
Further on, to his left, he saw more earth had been disturbed. Another box had been disinterred, dragged from its resting place so that it stood almost vertically in the dirt.
There was black paint on the lid of that box and, again, no words, just a symbol. The same symbol as had been painted on the gravestone.
It took Patterson a moment to realise what it was. His mind was reeling.
In red on the stone. In black on the casket.
The sign he saw was a pentagram.
Twenty-five
There was a sharp crackle as another wasp flew into the ‘Insectocutor’ mounted on the wall of the cafe.
Catherine Reed looked up and noticed that there were already half a dozen charred shapes displayed on the glowing blue bars, like tiny hunters’ trophies.
Apart from herself and Phillip Cross, there were only five people in the cafe.
A couple was chatting and laughing at a table close to the door. Over to her right a man was poring over a newspaper, one finger constantly pushing his tea cup from side to side on the Formica-topped table.
One of the white-aproned waiters was chatting to a young woman who had a map of London laid out on the table before her. Cath watched as the waiter pointed to the map every now and then.
An older man, rugged and unkempt, sat alone in one of the booths at the far end of the cafe, an overcoat wrapped around him, despite the warmth inside the building. Steam rose in a steady cloud from the top of the tea urn perched behind the counter, where two more members of staff were talking while one buttered bread.
A television set, the sound turned down, sat high in one corner close to the door, the performers speaking and moving silently for those who cared to glance at them.
The air smelled of fried food and coffee.
Phillip Cross took a sip of his tea and looked at Cath. ‘How did your meal go last night?’ he asked, trying to inject some kind of interest into his voice.
‘Your brother, wasn’t it?’
Cath regarded him silently for a moment.
‘He’s got a few problems at the moment,’ she said, quietly.
‘What time did he leave?’
‘About eleven. Why?’
