Lucy opened her bag and took out Grandpa Arthur’s revolver. She cocked the hammer. ‘It’s already loaded.’
‘Do you propose to do it yourself?’
‘No.’ She stretched from her seat and handed it to Brionne. ‘I intend to sit here telling you every detail I know about Agnes, everything I know about my father, and everything about myself — and I will go on until you either shoot me or yourself.’
Brionne held the gun with a look of dark, drunken fascination. Gingerly he raised the barrel, his eyes glazed and black. He bit a cracked lip and a spurt of blood ran on to his chin.
‘I suggest you go now.’
8
‘Father,’ said a thin woman, walking down the path from an open front door, ‘I saw you passing and, well, I wondered if you could say a prayer for a special intention.’ She wore a head-scarf and florid apron, the combination redolent of wartime courage: wives on their knees scrubbing doorsteps, despite the nightly visits of German bombers.
‘Of course,’ said Anselm, retracing a few steps. Every street was the same, he thought: hidden behind each small facade was a universe of disappointment and hope.
‘We don’t see our kind here very often,’ she said, nodding significantly at Anselm’s habit and tilting her head down the road towards the other kind.
‘I see,’ said Anselm. A bitter, foreign urge to slap the bony face warmed him like a flush of blood.
‘I’m Catholic, of course, like your good self.’
‘I’m sorry but I’m an Anglican,’ lied Anselm, his hand rising, the palm open; he put it on the gate.
‘Oh,’ she replied, discomfited, pushing stray dyed hairs under the scarf’s fold. ‘That must be nice.’
‘It is.’
‘Lovely Well, then.’
‘You have a special intention?’
‘Well, I won’t trouble you, it’s just one of the family playing up
… won’t go to Mass… not a problem for your sort…
Anselm heard the clip of a gate and looked round. To his amazement there was Lucy wavering on the pavement, her hands loose by her side. He ran, exclaiming, ‘Are you all right? What are you doing here?’
Dreamily Lucy looked aside to the bay window Anselm swiftly followed her drugged gaze: towards Victor, swaying uncertainly the barrel of a gun pointing at his face. Anselm rushed for the door, throwing his full bodyweight against the lock. He bounced back, mocked by strength. Wildly he struck it again, as though its tongues and grooves had given out all the needless griefs he’d ever known. And then, across a pause in the hammering, came a deafening short crack. Lucy cried out, like at a birth. Anselm held his breath until the tightness in his chest pushed out an oath. The woman in the apron and scarf scampered indoors to ring the police.
Chapter Forty-Four
1
The provision of an ambulance for Victor Brionne struck Anselm as incongruous given the circumstances. Standard procedure, said Detective Superintendent Milby with disinterest, dropping the gun into a plastic sample bag. He handed it to a colleague who stored it with the damaged book. ‘All in a day’s work,’ he added, surveying the waste of Victor Brionne’s life. Empty bottles, scatterings of fag-ash and an open packet of broken biscuits lay upon the floor.
‘Pig,’ said Milby
An officer bending over an armchair recovered a set of keys, holding them up like a fish at the market.
‘Ah, they’re mine actually’ said Anselm.
The Detective Superintendent scrutinised his old adversary but let the puzzle pass. He said, ‘Any chance of a favour?’
‘Depends.’
‘The girl wants someone to explain to her grandmother what’s happened. Bit unwell apparently. More your scene than mine.
‘What’s going to happen to her?’ asked Anselm flatly gesturing towards Lucy
‘Firearms. You know the game.’
‘Favours sometimes have a price.
‘You should have been in the Drug Squad.’
Anselm urged the arresting officer to contact DI Armstrong, to ask if she would visit Lucy at the station. And then he accepted the offer of a lift to Chiswick Mall in a Detective Superintendent’s carriage.
Anselm spoke assurances to Agnes.’ trying to assuage her trapped anxiety. He pulled his chair closer to the bed so as to read the alphabet card, but then the housekeeper entered pushing a television on a small serving trolley.
‘Vicar, now is not the time to speak of The Last Things,’ she admonished. ‘You may preach, but after the news.
2
Lucy sat on a bench opposite the Custody Sergeant’s desk, waiting to be processed. Beside her sat Father Conroy summoned at Father Anselm’s request.
‘At least you didn’t pull the trigger,’ said the priest.
‘Would it have made any difference?’
‘I was never that good at moral theology. But I do know about people who send other people to prison, and they think there is a difference. ‘
The declaration carried a weight. With the peculiar acuity that comes with anxiety, Lucy asked, ‘Have you been to prison?’
‘Yes.’ He scratched the hairs on his thick arms. ‘Several times.’
A liberating curiosity surfaced over the panic. ‘What for?’
‘Working with street kids in Sao Paulo.’
‘You got locked up for that?’
‘It’s a touch more involved, so, but you can’t make a home for those little divils without upsetting people.’
The arresting officer summoned Lucy with a flick of his finger. Her pockets were emptied and she signed forms that she didn’t read.
‘Now, get your dainty skates on,’ said the Custody Sergeant. A waiting WPC took Lucy firmly by the elbow and escorted her down a colourless corridor to a cell. The heavy blue door slammed into position. Keys turned and jangled. The square peephole opened and banged shut. And, to the echo of withdrawing footsteps, Lucy started to cry.
The lock rattled as iron turned on iron. The door opened and DI Armstrong entered the cell. She sat on a chair fixed to the wall and said: ‘You have been extraordinarily stupid.’
Lucy lifted her hands helplessly as if she didn’t understand what she had done. She continued to cry, increasingly terrified by the working out of the legal process upon her.
