Sabrina & The Secret of The Severn Sea Read online

  In surrendering to the bluish-purple lights that rippled across his face, he could sense himself beginning to float in another dimension, halfway between the physical and the mental.

  The vortex of flashing currents whisked him round and round.

  He could have been in Captain Nemo’s Nautilus as it disappeared down the biggest ever whirlpool.

  Instead he was back in a dark boathouse. He was trying to shut out the smell of slimy eels on a man’s bare flesh as he tunnelled into him. He was counting the waves of dark water that lapped the hut’s wooden piles beneath floor and mattress on which he lay. He listened to the smack of each ripple in order to numb the pain’s dull rhythm…

  It was not a human feeling but more animal suffocation, much as a diver resurfaced too quickly in his diving bell.

  …in agony.

  The X-rays passed through his skull like a living force, guided by electronic sensors on the other side of the gantry.

  It was what he imagined dying was like.

  If souls did exist, they had to be this most secret of currents.

  Never before had he sunk so far into himself.

  ‘Reverend Lyons?’

  He opened his eyes. The radiographer was back at his side and holding his arm.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you all right, reverend?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You let out a scream.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Why is that, sir?’

  Luke flexed his trembling fingers one by one in slow and painful motion. He did it the same way the nauseous diver fought cramp in his limbs after he rose from the deepest ocean.

  ‘I relived something.’

  40

  It was all about portion control, Jorge decided, as he cycled through narrow lanes in the shadow of Berkeley Castle.

  The solution was simple: diet boxes. To have ready-to-eat, calorie-controlled meals delivered to his door had to be an advantage – it put the onus on someone else to make him thin.

  All he had to do was to overcome his instinctive dislike of rice, fruit and low-fat cream cheese that came in plastic pots so small that they looked more suitable for newborns.

  Never before had he realised what choice there was in such miserable food. While one box offered a leek frittata breakfast, another would have him eat stewed fruit and granola-topped yoghurt. Lunch was no better. Should he opt for raw mooli and chicken or settle for more cheese on his oatcakes?

  How else, though, could he ever feel more vibrant, lighter and brighter?

  Actually, he felt empty.

  Anyone who began the day with raw cacao chia with coconut yoghurt and a few blueberries was, by definition, going to be desperate for his lunchtime ration of shiitake mushrooms in miso broth.

  Sasha looked at him wide-eyed from his bicycle basket.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said, taking his feet off the pedals, ‘this is the dairy farm I was telling you about. Looks pleasant enough, doesn’t it? Today we stand to learn more about Reverend Luke Lyons and his decision to disappear without so much as a goodbye.’

  41

  As Luke coaxed Sasha towards the crowded quays in Gloucester Docks the sound of music grew louder and louder.

  Excited families converged on the waterside at the start of the Tall Ships Festival and she was not happy about all the noise.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Sash. Didn’t we agree that you must learn to get used to new things?’

  She gave him a baleful look and kept close to his side while he paid £6 to enter.

  Sufficient tall, brick warehousing survived next to the water-filled basins to remind him of the vast quantities of timber, grain, wines and even lemons that had once been offloaded from ships at these wharfs. This had been the beating heart of the city’s trade and commerce for hundreds of years or more. Some of that hustle and bustle was being re-enacted today, just for fun.

  In his hand was the latest copy of Porthole Cruise Magazine.

  The first boats he could rule out immediately, such as the small, Bristol pilot cutter replicas called Kochi and Ezra of Lerwick or the classic yacht Sceptre.

  Determined but impatient, he joined the crowds to walk past the three-masted Earl of Pembroke and the Danish schooner Den Store Bjorn.

  A new inshore lifeboat for the Severn Area Rescue Association at Sharpness was being shown off rather impressively on the water.

  Then, under Sasha’s fearful eye, he paused at a stall selling curried goat, rice and peas.

  The idea was to put them both at ease with a bite to eat. As he did so, two heavily bearded and swashbuckling pirates tipped their hats to a party of pretty girls, before one of them – the taller – turned his smile Luke’s way.

  A heavy cutlass swung wide from his belt and struck his leg.

  Some rice and a few peas went flying.

  ‘Good day, reverend.’

  ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be lovely?’

  Sasha growled.

  Luke glowered menacingly, too, but both Jack Sparrow lookalikes quickly melted back into the crowd.

  A little later, with a glass of cider in his hand, he dodged soldiers in red uniforms and plumed hats; he instinctively shrank from the truncheon bearing peelers dressed in their carefully reconstructed uniforms of long blue coats and stove-pipe hats, who ran round the docks in pursuit of a ‘thief’ as the air reverberated to live battles on the waterfront.

  He was beginning to have doubts about the wisdom of his quest when a black, three-masted ship met his eyes, high and dry in Nielsen’s ship repair yard.

  The closer he went the louder sounded the thumping in his heart.

  ‘Honestly?’ thought Luke. ‘Must I stake everything on one mad throw of the dice today?’

  She looked every bit the ocean going vessel, even if she was a replica of some long lost schooner.

  Here was a ship that could transport its passenger halfway round the world with ease.

  A skeleton hung from chains fixed to the bowsprit where its withered arm proffered a rusty drinking cup to the water. The grinning skull looked real enough. Three smaller skeletons rode the figurehead’s back and looked like those of actual children.

  He was looking at the Amatheia.

  ‘Can I help you, reverend?’

  A man of middling height who wore a grubby eyepatch approached him. He had on a crinkled, black, silver-washed stovepipe hat and a grey scarf while inside his shabby jacket a watch chain dangled from his buff-coloured waistcoat.

  He belonged to a lost age, apparently, with his boots, dark brown trousers and very long sideburns.

  ‘My name is Luke Lyons. I was just admiring the ship. It said in my magazine that she would be here in time for the Tall Ships Festival.’

  ‘She’s in dock for a quick refit, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘It’s Sabrina ap Loegres’s ship, right? Registered in Sweden.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Where will she sail to next, do you think?’

  ‘Honestly, the whole thing is a bit of a mystery.’

  A gangplank bridged the yawning gap between dock and deck.

  ‘I’d really hoped to go aboard.’

  ‘Then you should know that it’s considered unlucky for a priest to set foot on any ship, reverend, even in dry dock.’

  ‘I used to be a ship’s chaplain.’

  ‘Like it or not, it’s for the owner to say, not me. Something to do with Health and Safety.’

  ‘Isn’t it always?’

  ‘My name’s Ray by the way. I work in the repair yard here.’

  Luke could not but wonder at the ship’s beauty and mysterious presence.

  ‘Since you can’t tell me where, perhaps you can say when the Amatheia will next sail, to your knowledge?’

  Ray shot him a peculiar smile.

  ‘Can she, is all that matters.’

  ‘That a problem?’

  ‘First a new crew will have to be found.�
��

  ‘What happened to the old one?’

  ‘Most deserted as soon as she docked and vowed never to return.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘They say she’s the Devil’s ship.’

  ‘Why Devil?’

  ‘I really don’t know any more about it.’

  ‘Will she be ready to set sail by, say, the end of July or the beginning of August?’

  ‘Maybe not even then?’

  Emptiness and silence crowded upon them. The ship was deserted but this was more than simple absence, it really did feel possible that no one would ever come back to sail her. Right now it felt as jinxed as the Mary Celeste. But he didn’t despair, it might yet be the answer to all his prayers. The mood he was in, he would sail the ship all by himself to the other side of the world if he had to.

  He’d do it with Godspeed.

  But before anything remotely like that could happen, there were other, equally vital things he must resolve, thought Luke, such as whether to marry Ellie and Jeremy in church in Berkeley.

  He must decide if her fiancé’s pagan ‘baptism’ ruled out a real one?

  42

  Ellie Kennedy could not believe her eyes. She took her time to unbolt the gate to the yard of Floodgates Farm and focused on Jorge’s blue NATO-style sweater with its Gloucester Cathedral Police patch worn on the left side of his chest.

  ‘Really? You serious, Inspector? The Church has finally decided to take an interest in one of its own?’

  Jorge gave his peaked cap a pat and smiled politely. He was trying not to get mud on his shiny black boots.

  ‘I appreciate you agreeing to speak to me at such short notice.’

  Ellie’s black hair had acquired a streak of grey. Her face was thin and tired, her posture awkward with no sign that she wished to shake his gloved hand. Her voice, surprisingly hoarse, growled at him with a mixture of relief and hostility that were difficult to reconcile.

  ‘When you rang I nearly put the phone down.’

  ‘It really is important I ask you some questions.’

  ‘I will talk to you, Inspector, but only because you’re not the local police.’

  ‘Any truly significant new evidence I will refer on if necessary. For now, though, this is strictly between you and me.’

  ‘Is that my brother’s dog? Is that Sasha?’

  ‘It is.’

  Ellie did not invite him into the farmhouse, but began busily to push her wheelbarrow towards the cowsheds. He could only guess how she was feeling. Surely some definitive clue to her brother’s true fate should have come to light by now?

  Not that he disbelieved the police when they said that they had looked into Luke’s ‘vanishing’ absolutely thoroughly.

  After considerable pressure from the Bishop of Gloucester, detectives had checked hospitals, friends, lovers, plane departures, phone records, everything. His own visit was hardly going to add much, only renew her sense of frustration and misery?

  ‘As I explained on the phone, Luke and I were the very best of friends for the first twelve years or more of our lives. He once fished me out of the river in the nick of time. I could easily have drowned.’

  Ellie waved her pitchfork past his face.

  ‘Thanks to him everything is a bloody mess, Inspector. Because of his selfishness I can’t sleep at night wondering why he did it. Did he really come back to Berkeley just to spite me?’

  Her accusation took him by surprise, not least its vehemence. He covered his mouth as she forked more straw vigorously across the shed’s concrete floor.

  There followed an awkward silence in which they both watched Sasha hunt cats round the cattle pens.

  ‘How well did you and he know each other?’ Jorge asked at last.

  Ellie stepped back and laughed.

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘I really have no idea.’

  ‘Luke and I were born twins in prison. We were both more or less ‘abandoned’ by our parents at birth, if you like. He went to live with our grandmother by the river and I was brought up by an aunt and only later by my mother, Jessica, in Spain. Luke, she said, reminded her too much of Rex, our father, who was murdered in prison in 1990. Rex and Jessica never married. Because Luke chose to call himself ‘Lyons’ after his father and I grew up ‘Kennedy’ like my mother, we didn’t even share the same surname, let alone country. Then, suddenly Luke rang me out of the blue. He’d found out from social media that I was back home in England and getting married for the second time and it so happened that he was returning to his roots in Berkeley, too. We kept in touch via Skype. Ever since the death of my first husband, I have been absolutely determined to recreate a family both for my own sake and that of my son Randal. Having my twin brother back in my life was the icing on the cake – I’d always felt that a part of me was missing. I soon learnt that he had gone off the rails like his father, at least for a time. He’d been the leader of some gang or other in London. Carried a gun to keep others off his turf. He had the tattoo of Sabrina on his neck and an old bullet wound in his right shoulder to prove it. But here he was, a priest, prison chaplain, man of God, call him what you will! He said he was a reformed person and I believed him. That’s how he came to help me arrange my wedding. As I say, he was going to officiate on my big day in St. Mary’s but something changed his mind. I always sensed that he didn’t like Jeremy, my fiancé, for some reason, but mother was right: the sins of the father are soon visited on the son.’

  ‘How so, exactly?’

  ‘Where do I begin? One day, last summer, Luke arrived on my doorstep all battered and bruised. Even Sasha was limping. He told me that he had gone to see some sailing ship or other in Gloucester Docks during the Tall Ships Festival when he was set upon by two old mates of our parents.’

  ‘These men, did he name them, at all?’

  Ellie nodded.

  ‘Slim Jim Jackson and Mel something or other. It was Slim who came snooping round Floodgates Farm in search of scrap metal.’

  ‘What did they want with Luke?’

  ‘They were convinced that he knew where to look for something that the Severn Sea Gang stole forty odd years ago, they were sure it was buried in or near the River Severn. The whole county was talking about it – still is – ever since our mother foolishly mentioned the word ‘treasure’ on TV. They accused him of moving back to Gloucestershire with the specific aim of digging up millions of pounds’ worth of antiques.’

  ‘And did he? Did he know where to dig?’

  ‘Who knows? Then, in his last phone call to me, Luke said he had a plan to get us all out of trouble.’

  ‘Tell me more about the two men who ambushed him. Where can I find them?’

  ‘No one’s seen them round here since last summer.’

  ‘Those antiques have been buried for years. Who put Luke’s attackers up to it, do you think, after so long?’

  ‘Ask my mother. They’re her cronies, not mine. She’s still in Spain with her Costa Del Sol waiter.’

  ‘She won’t answer my calls.’

  ‘It’s because of her that Luke is dead. She set those crooks on to him, I know she did. Is it any wonder that she won’t speak to me now?’

  ‘Did he say anything else about his assailants?’

  ‘I forget. Believe me, my mind is shot to pieces…’

  ‘You’re doing fine so far.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Sometimes not knowing the truth can be worse than the thing itself.’

  Ellie threw down her pitchfork. The job in hand seemed to lose its urgency finally.

  ‘You do realise that my grandmother is dead because of all this? Do you, Inspector?’

  ‘Please call me Jorge.’

  ‘Luke’s return to Berkeley proved too much for her in the end.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

  ‘Know this, then, Jorge, that Gwendolen left half Chapel Cottage to me and half to my brother. Now everyone’s saying that I can’t sell it. Surely there is s
ome way out of this impasse? What if Luke is never found?’

  Jorge whistled Sasha and she returned with a rat whose back she’d broken.

  ‘Without a body there can be no Coroner’s investigation and no death certificate. Therefore, no Grant can be obtained to allow the Executors or Administrators to distribute your brother’s assets, let alone deal with any liabilities. Those assets will remain frozen and no one can claim any inheritance or sell anything he owns.’

  ‘Oh shit.’

  He tried in vain not to dwell on what Sasha was doing.

  ‘See here, Ms Kennedy, if I can show that I have done all I can to find your brother, perhaps then you will be able to obtain a Presumption of Death and/or a Leave to Swear Death Order.’

  ‘A what, Inspector?’

  ‘Such a court ruling would state that Luke is deceased in the absence of a body or remains. Once there is a presumption of death, the Leave to Swear Death Order will allow you to deal with the assets.’

  ‘I can’t understand why we can’t just say he’s dead. Someone found his hat and coat by the river, for God’s sake. Please, I just need some form of closure. I have a child to raise.’

  ‘The reality is that the Coroner, so far, has refused to apply to hold an inquest under S.15 of the Coroner’s Act 1988. Put simply, the Home Office will not consider any application which has not allowed time for the body to be recovered.’

  ‘It’s been over eight months.’

  ‘At present it is not at all clear what is regarded as ‘sufficient time’ since this is open to each Coroner to interpret.’

  Ellie watched Sasha crunch the head off the rat and swallow it whole.

  ‘Suppose Luke is still alive? Suppose he’s lying crippled somewhere in some foreign country? How can it be so bloody difficult to find someone? Surely he must be recorded on some street or shop CCTV somewhere? Has someone used his credit card? I know we were not exactly close. You probably knew him better than I did, but it wasn’t our fault that we grew up strangers. As I said, all that was about to change, we were going to be a family again. He’d even begun helping me to mend fences in the fields, for God’s sake. It’s inconceivably selfish that he would simply do himself in, that he’d leave me alone a few days before my wedding. Have you any idea how painful that feels?’