DI Armstrong frowned, but nodded.
‘I know Victor Brionne’s new name. This is what I ask. If I give you the name, and you find him, will you tell me where he is before you do anything and allow me to talk to him first? After that he is all yours.
DI Armstrong stood and moved away Anselm followed her gaze towards the bare window arches of the old nave. Tangled streamers of vermilion creeper drifted lazily where fragments of glass had once conspired to trap the sun for praise. The swish of the leaves was like a faint pulse, or distant water on a beach of stones. Turning back to Anselm she said, ‘All right. What’s he called?’
‘Berkeley, Victor Berkeley’
Anselm’s bargain had come at a price he had not foreseen. She was taking not only him on trust but also the world he represented, its history, its old stones, once considered sacred without question.
Anselm walked DI Armstrong to her car. He said, ‘Thank you for the warning. ‘
‘It’s nothing.’
They walked a little further and Anselm, suspicious, said, ‘One other thing. Have you any idea how Father Andrew knew in advance of our first meeting that Milby had slipped a word to the Press about Schwermann?’
She stopped, smiling broadly, suddenly young and no longer a police officer, simply herself: ‘Yes. I told him.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Anselm frequently observed that the fears he entertained turned out, in the end, to be groundless; but he’d never learned the trick of disregarding new ones at their inception. Like the man in the Parable of the Sower, Anselm invariably found himself unable to protect the seeds from the rocks. A case in point was Victor Brionne, the mention of whose name had only ever caused him to stumble.
Yet again someone had come to Larkwood with something to say; yet again Father Andrew had summoned Anselm to deal with it; and yet again the person concerned had been brushed by the past, only this time it was simple. Delightfully simple.
‘He’s in his mid-fifties, I’d say’ said the Prior. ‘Altogether engaging. I’ve put him in the parlour.’
They walked down the spiral stairs leading from Anselm’s room to the ground floor. Shafts of sunlight cut through slender windows like a blade. The monks passed through light and dark in silence, to the low patter of their steps.
‘He wants to talk about Victor Brionne. I didn’t get his name.’
He had the poise of a relaxed subject before a sculptor. His short hair was silvered throughout, contrasting with vital and arresting eyes. He sat with one arm resting midway upon a crossed leg.
‘Father, for reasons that will become clear, I’d rather not introduce myself. I’m in a delicate situation which forces me to sneak around on tiptoe. ‘
Returning a smile, Anselm said, ‘I’m intrigued.’
‘What I have to say is not particularly exhilarating, but it’s probably worth knowing. You see, my mother knew Victor Brionne.’
Anselm’s eyes widened. He focused afresh on the clean features, not unduly marked by life’s capricious tricks, the black roll-neck pullover, the soft suede shoes.
‘They were very good friends. From what she said I think he would have liked to marry her, otherwise I can’t think why she would have kept his name in mind.’ He laughed lightly easily ‘It’s one of our quirks, I suppose, that we all remember the people we might have married.’
‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ said Anselm.
‘But it wasn’t to be. He became a casualty of the war after all, through sheer bad luck. He was struck by a falling chimney stack weakened by the Blitz. I can’t understand the divine arrangement of things whereby a man could survive a world war and then be killed by bricks tumbling out of the sky.’
‘I know,’ mused Anselm sombrely ‘I’ve never yet been able to reconcile providence with experience. But I keep trying.’ He moved on, ‘Your mother met someone else?’.
‘Yes, but she never forgot Victor. She can’t have imagined what his past involved. It’s strange to think that my father could have been Victor Brionne, a man who worked alongside a Nazi war criminal. Even so, none of us really know our parents.’
Anselm warmed to the reflective modesty of his guest and said, ‘Except, perhaps, when they’ve gone.
‘Yes, and then it’s too late.’
They smiled at one another as through opposite windows in parallel buildings.
The visitor said, ‘I’ve told you this because I expect there must be plenty of people who would like to find Victor, and, to speak plainly, neither I nor anyone in my family particularly want to get involved. We live a peaceful life far away from those times. My mother’s dead, so she can’t make a statement to the police, and I wouldn’t relish tabloid attention on the little we know made into a feast for the curious. Our link with the man was a very long time ago and we’d like to leave it like that.’
‘That’s most understandable.’
‘I realise that keeping my name back must be unattractive,’ said the visitor, ‘. but it’s as an excess of caution, not distrust. Should anyone ever knock on our door, and that’s possible, I’d like to know in advance that the Priory played no part in the finding, however accidental it might be.’
‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ said Anselm, thinking of Brother Sylvester whose progress towards sanctity had left the discretion of the serpent well behind.
‘As long as you are obliged to house your guest, if I can put it like that-’
‘You may; that’s exactly the situation-’
‘Then this could be the place where those with a legitimate concern will come. So do feel free to repeat what I’ve said, but I’d rather it was left unattributed.’
‘I understand.’
In certain circumstances Anselm had a fondness for death. It tended to resolve all manner of complications for the living, especially in families, though few were prepared to admit it. But this was an example of the principle’s wider application. The death of Victor Brionne might have caused grief elsewhere but it simplified things enormously.
The visitor stayed for Vespers and afterwards Anselm walked him to his car.
‘I’ve a long drive ahead.’
‘I won’t ask where to,’ replied Anselm. At that moment his eye latched on to the distinctive red lettering of The Tablet, a Catholic weekly lying by the back window Anselm always read it cover to cover, after which he feigned intimate knowledge of world and religious affairs. As the visitor slammed the car door, Anselm, unable to restrain his curiosity, stepped closer — he’d noticed the small white address label. He just caught Mr Robert B… and then the vehicle crunched away across the gravel.
Anselm waved farewell. It had been one of those encounters, all too short, that could only end with pages left unturned. In the withdrawn life of a monk it wasn’t every day that Anselm met someone like Mr Robert B. The vehicle moved slowly and Anselm noted the stickers on the rear screen: ‘National Trust’, ‘Whitley Bay Jazz Festival’, ‘Cullercoats RNLI’ — each a snapshot of a life’s enthusiasms.
Walking back to the Priory, Anselm thought he wouldn’t say anything to DI Armstrong just yet. Her research would confirm what he’d been told. The death of Victor Berkeley would become public knowledge and he could write to Rome and let them know that the old collaborator had been struck by bricks from heaven.
And while he was smiling to himself, the one peculiarity of his conversation with Robert B struck him. At no point had they mentioned the identifying feature of the dead renegade: his false name, the name by which he must have been known.
Chapter Twenty-Two
