The Sixth Lamentation Part 16

'Because you cannot escape the sensation that you have taken someone else's place.' He looked closely at the wall. 'It's like a debt to heaven.'

They stepped outside, back into the churchyard. Salomon Lachaise said, 'When I was a boy my mother used to say that h.e.l.l was the painless place where everything has been forgotten. '

'That doesn't sound so bad.'

'It couldn't be worse.'

'Why?'

'Because there's no love. That's why there is no pain.'

They walked beneath a milky sky shot with patches of insistent blue. Anselm looked up and asked, 'Then what's heaven?'

'An inferno where you burn remembering all that should be remembered.'

3.

Cathy and Lucy finally made it to the Turkish baths. There were three rooms linked by arches. Each got smaller and hotter than the one before. For twenty minutes they sat upon the white-tiled seats of the first chamber. Steam swirled around them. Their heads slowly fell under the weight of bone as strength drained away At a nod from Cathy they moved into the next phase of affliction; when Lucy thought she could bear it no more, Cathy gestured towards a small, empty compartment. None of the other users had been in there. The heat was overpowering. Lucy slumped in a corner, blinded by sweat, until she was so weak she could barely lift her limbs. Cathy leaned against the wall, her eyes tightly closed. Through the burning fog Lucy could just see the small scar upon the flushed cheek. It kept the lead, always a fraction redder.

Cathy slowly raised an arm, pointing to a swing-door adjacent to the entrance. 'You first,' she breathed.

Lucy staggered back, blinking rapidly, her eyes swimming from the sting of salt. She pushed through the door into a bright room by a small pool. Somehow she lay on a table.

'That was h.e.l.l,' she said. 'I'm never coming back as long as I live.'

'It's not over yet, love,' said a deep voice. A woman with thick muscles appeared, armed with a huge lathered sponge. At its touch upon her toes Lucy howled. It was too much. The lightest contact was like merciless tickling. Lucy shrieked until she was hauled off and pushed towards a warm, gentle shower. When she emerged, the woman with the muscles gave her a shove and Lucy toppled into the pool of freezing water. When she surfaced she was ready to die. Death had lost its sting.

Lying on a padded leather divan, wrapped in a warm towel, Lucy had her first experience of transcendence. By her side on a small table was a mug of hot, sweet tea and a bacon sandwich. Cathy lay upon a parallel couch.

'I believe in G.o.d,' said Lucy 'I'm told a bishop died of a heart attack in a place like this.'

'No better surroundings.'

'I don't think he made it to the pool.'

'He coughed it on the table?'

'So it seems.

'What a way to go.

Cathy reached for her sandwich and said, 'Did you take my advice and invite the Frenchman out?'

'I did, actually,' replied Lucy 'Where did you go?'

'A monastery. '

Cathy chewed thoughtfully 'Before that you had a meal in a crypt.' She licked melted b.u.t.ter off a finger. 'Where to next time?'

'A pub, I suspect. '

Chapter Twenty-Four.

1.

Lucy met Pascal on a wet pavement outside Sibyl's Cave on a Friday night. She said, 'It's seething.'

'We'll be all right: He rubbed his hands confidently, as if about to spin a couple of dice down the felt. He winked and Lucy bridled. She couldn't split the gesture from scaffolds and whistling beery cheek. He said, 'I have a good feeling about this.'

Pascal had obtained Max Nightingale's phone number from Father Anselm. The meeting was set up. Apparently he'd been keen. When Pascal had told Lucy she'd felt a sharp, churning disgust. 'Good,' she'd said.

Lucy yanked at the pub door, releasing from the bright hallway a gasp of heat and noise. The lounge was packed with compet.i.tion, professionals loudly shedding the pressures of work. They glanced into a small smoking room. Thick blue swirls hung above the tables like belchings from so many garden fires. Empty gla.s.ses stood in tight crowds. A young girl in a short black skirt pushed past gripping a damp cloth. They forced their way towards the veranda entrance. Pinned to a jamb was a forbidding notice: Private Party. Through the window panel Lucy saw suits, legs crossed while standing, wine gla.s.ses pressed to the chest: the boss was leaving. Pascal pulled her by the arm towards the debating room.

The appet.i.te for argument was on the wane - young bloods were heading for the bar or home, leaving disparate cl.u.s.ters of older men. Where were the women? thought Lucy Her gaze shifted and she saw Max Nightingale sitting in a corner. On the table was a black motorcycle helmet. It stared at Lucy and she thought of an empty, severed head. They joined him, pulling up chairs.

'Who's Sibyl?' asked Max Nightingale. Lucy noticed dark grime beneath his nails: a trace of his grandfather's dirt. Catching her glance he said, 'Paint. I've been painting.'

'Papered cracks?'

'No, pictures.'

'Oh.'

'Sibyl?' he repeated.

Pascal said, 'She's the maim player in a tragic myth, a mystic who pushed off death and spent centuries in a cave. She wrote out riddles on leaves but left them to the mercy of the wind.'

Max Nightingale stared back blankly 'I thought she was the landlord.'

Lucy laughed, against the will to scoff ... she who hadn't known either.

Pascal said, 'You asked a question at the Priory - about Agnes and a child. Where did you get the name from?'

'My grandfather.' He spoke frankly quickly 'Do you know who she is?'

'No.'

Pascal seemed to see suspicion and caution peeling away 'I'd like to ask you a question, but first I just want to say something.'

Max Nightingale removed the helmet from the table. A s.p.a.ce opened up, flat, ready to be crossed. Lucy regarded it with horror.

Pascal said, 'We've been born on different sides of a nightmare, but it's worth saying ... I've got nothing against you.

Max Nightingale flinched. Then, recovered, he said, 'Ask me your question. '

Lucy heard a shuffle: standing almost over them was the man she called The Don.

2.

Brother Sylvester must have enjoyed one of his flashes of competence, for he managed to transfer a telephone call from the switchboard to the extension where Anselm was to be found. The shock of the feat momentarily distracted Anselm's attention from DI Armstrong's words: 'We've put all the evidence to Schwermann during the interviews. He said only one thing, a quotation: "Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust."'

'I'm sorry, I can't help you there. '

'I don't need help, thank you. It's from Goethe's Faust. Translates as "Two souls dwell, alas, within my breast." I think it's am admission of sorts.'

'But it won't get you very far with a jury'

'I realise that. Anyway, the investigation is over. We're going to charge him tomorrow with murder.'

'Joint enterprise?'

'Yes.'

Anselm had a premonition of what was to follow 'As for Victor Brionne, or Berkeley, nothing has turned up. There are no records to show that he ever lived or died, not under those names.

Anselm thought back to the charming Robert B, legs crossed, confiding the little he knew; coming to Vespers and taking his time in parting.

DI Armstrong said, 'Brionne has been a very cautious man. He must have changed his name again - perhaps by deed poll, or simply by claiming his papers had been destroyed: that would have been fairly easy for a refugee after the war. Either way, there's little chance of finding him. It is as though he never existed.'

3.

'May I join you?' A warm smile lit The Don's face, among a shock of white hair, from his scalp down to the beard. In his hand was a pint of beer. Without waiting for a reply he drew up a chair and sat down.

'I recognise you, actually,' he said, nodding to Pascal, 'from the television.'

Max Nightingale opened his mouth to speak but the stranger said, 'Well, well, here we are, four open minds round one table. There's nothing we cannot question and, as so often happens in the dialogues of Plato, our combined ignorance can lead us to the truth. The blind can lead the blind after all.' He smiled cheerily 'Look,' said Max Nightingale, 'we're in the middle of something.'

'I'll join in.'

'I'm sorry, but-'

Pascal interrupted: 'Max, this is the debating room. I should have said ... anyone can partic.i.p.ate ...

'So,' said the man with the white beard, looking amiably round the table, 'what's the subject?'

Pascal said, with strained patience, 'We haven't got one.'

'Then let me oblige,' and rather too quickly he said: 'My thesis is that getting hold of the truth requires us to distinguish different kinds of narrative - symbol, allegory, parable and the like. Now, one of the main problems is when one form of discourse pretends to be another ... myth or fable masquerading as fact. Story dressed up as history. '

Max Nightingale looked deeply bored.

The stranger said, 'Have any of you read the Narnia books?'

While Pascal and Max Nightingale seemed irritated at the interruption, Lucy was relieved. It was an interlude in a difficult meeting, that was all. Pascal could ask about Brionne's name after the discussion was over. There was no rush. She said, 'I've read them, several times. '

He smiled winningly and cried, 'But you haven't tried talking to a lion, have you? It's just a myth about good and evil and the lion wins.

Lucy noticed Pascal's face darkening with a sort of expectation.

The stranger said, 'There's no difficulty in that instance because there are no facts, it's just fiction. But what happens when fact and fiction mix?' He raised his gla.s.s. 'Let's take the Holocaust, for example.'

Lucy shivered at his serene manner, the use of charged language without reverence.

He smiled, saying, 'How much is fact and how much is fiction?'

'Let's go,' said Pascal, standing up.

'Am I the voice of temptation in your wilderness?' he pouted.

Lucy glanced at Max. He had paled and seemed unable to respond. She rose, picking up her coat. The straps of her rucksack were tangled round her feet. Her purse fell out, coins rolling under the table. A number of people close to them turned at the noise. An old man nearby grimaced and pulled himself up, his head inclined towards Pascal and his tormentor.

'Come on,' snapped Pascal.

'Let's take the Schwermann trial, said The Don, supremely relaxed. 'He might be convicted. But who'll question the old fairy tales?'

'Lucy, please, come on,' said Pascal.

The old man lumbered over and grabbed the Don's shoulder, tugging at the cloth. He shouted, '.I've had enough of you, clear off. Go on, get out. '