Sabrina & The Secret of The Severn Sea Read online

  The two mourners processed towards the parish church of St. Mary to which he himself had just been appointed. Next minute, there came the awful ruckus of some quarrelsome and unkind dirge, for which there seemed no earthly reason. He could scarcely credit it but a great many nesting birds appeared profoundly upset among their budding branches, which very much upset him too.

  He gave Sasha a pat on the back.

  ‘Relax, it’s just some ghastly rookery overlooking the castle walls.’

  He risked another look at the procession.

  With it walked a man dressed in black who was sobbing his eyes out.

  Suddenly his phone rang in his coat pocket. It was Ellie again.

  ‘How about you tell me where the hell you are?’

  ‘I’m stuck outside Berkeley Castle.’

  ‘Please come to the farm right away. Mother called from Spain. Didn’t I say she would?’

  ‘What does she want now?’

  ‘Can’t trust me to plan my own wedding.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You don’t know what it’s like having her try to muscle in like this.’

  Luke sighed.

  ‘We’ve had this conversation once today already.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean she can sail back into my life just because I’m getting married.’

  ‘Listen, Ellie, Jess is my curse. She doesn’t have to be yours, too.’

  ‘It’s a curse, all right, it’s who we are.’

  ‘But what does she really want, that’s what I want to know?’

  ‘She says she feels left out. Not because she screwed up the past but because of the future.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘So, when am I, like, going to see you, brother? I’m cooking chicken for dinner tonight.’

  ‘Give me the rest of the day to get settled.’

  ‘That’s not fair. That’s not kind.’

  ‘Don’t forget I start work tomorrow.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘As well as your new parish vicar I’m the new visiting chaplain at the local prison.’

  ‘Listen here, Luke, don’t try to be clever.’

  ‘But I have a pile of paperwork to get through.’

  ‘Do what you like, then.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’re stalling, I can tell.’

  ‘Don’t give me that, I’ll see you on Tuesday.’

  ‘Damn right you will. It’s been thirty-five years.’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘Wait, Luke.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Welcome home.’

  Moments later the last of the funeral procession filed into Berkeley Castle’s tree-lined grounds on the way to the church.

  Presiding at such funerals would be his job from now on, thought Luke optimistically, as he restarted the Land Rover’s engine and drove into town.

  A newsagent emerged from his shop’s doorway. He hurriedly unclipped the freestanding, wire billboard on the wet pavement. Displayed the latest newspaper headline for all to see: Second Gruesome Find On Severn Shore.

  *

  Luke did a slow circuit of Berkeley’s once familiar streets as he became aware that his horizon was lit by a visible presence of a different sort. He saw wink at him down narrow streets some intermittent but insistent flashes in a strange Morse code whose true nature he had thought to forget.

  Each dot and dash, each long and short flash were the tell-tale signals of some living creature which tried to awaken his attention?

  He could purposely shut his eyes, if not ignore the silvery snake so close by him. It was high tide on the River Severn.

  There was something about so much water that gave an impression of magnificence, but not necessarily of magnanimity. He felt himself clench the Land Rover’s steering wheel more firmly than he could explain.

  For as long as he had known it the Severn had been a source of both brightness and darkness, as he recalled not only how it had nearly drowned his best friend but had actually killed his grandfather.

  It was said that rivers always gave up their dead, but this was not simply him honouring the family hero, this was the river as reminder.

  He’d always thought that one day that old Sean Lyons would walk back out of the water.

  So strong were the tides that flowed east as far as Gloucester or ebbed west to Bristol that until Tudor times the estuary had been known as the Severn Sea. It still was in Welsh where it was known as Mor Hafren and in Cornish, Mor Havren. The ancient riverine frontier seemed to him to have unfinished business with all manner of people and matters as yet unspoken.

  It was strangely compelling, as if it promised to invite feelings he never knew he had.

  No, he had invited it.

  So here he was.

  He towed his boat past a few houses across the otherwise uninhabited flood plain. They were in an ancient Manor once included in a grant of the Barony of Berkeley, bestowed upon Robert Fitzharding by Henry II of England after he assumed the throne in the twelfth century.

  Sasha sat up beside him and sniffed the air.

  ‘What is it, Sash? You want a wee or something? Not to worry, this is the place if I’m not mistaken.’

  With that he stopped the Land Rover at the end of a long, curving driveway high above the village of Hill and jumped out.

  Sasha followed, not flinching from what they might find.

  Bushes had been allowed to encroach on all sides.

  He did not baulk at the prospect of being challenged, although the chilly silence was sufficient hindrance.

  A bird table stood somewhat incongruously on an oval island dense with small trees and shrubs, right outside a gloomy old house’s front entrance. Sasha barked. It appeared that her nostrils alerted her to some invisible presence to which he was not yet privy. She could uncover the trail of footprints, if not the actual revenant trailed – she was retracing his childhood footsteps.

  A large lake lay at the base of a grassy slope where yellow marsh marigolds shone like cups of gold along its shore. Elsewhere in the grounds stood a dovecote and stables. He was confused and surprised not simply by the number of paths he had to follow, but by the high brick walls that encompassed him on all sides.

  That’s because whenever he had been here before, his friend Jorge had been obliged to sneak him in and out to avoid his cantankerous father.

  At last, there stood Hill House’s very old sundial in the middle of an overgrown lawn just as he remembered it, overlooked by a raised stone terrace.

  Next minute he heard a voice.

  ‘You the new reverend, at all? You Reverend Luke Lyons?’

  ‘I am.’

  A man in blue overalls descended the terrace’s broad steps with a clipboard in his hand.

  ‘Removals. We’ve brought all your stuff from storage in London. A weird lot it is, too. Like a bleedin’ museum, innit? Never moved a stuffed shark before.’

  ‘Bravo.’

  That everything he needed to begin his new life was in that lorry, there could be no doubt, thought Luke. But how past and future would fit together was still a big puzzle to him.

  9

  ‘Sasha, with me!’

  Jorge was alarmed and sickened, not simply by what he had already seen from the roof of No 1 Windsor Terrace but by the confirmation that came with it.

  Whoever wriggled on the spear-point fence did so like a pig on a spit. They had fallen backwards on to the iron railings from a great height.

  On one side the victim’s feet barely touched the garden slabs while on the other his head and arms dangled above the sheer drop into the Avon Gorge. Agony caused him to gasp for breath, but barely could he utter a single intelligible plea for help. His duffel coat was torn at its toggles to expose a hideously twisted hip from which white bone protruded through his ripped trousers.

  And, horror of horrors, Jorge observed, the brow above his one good eye oozed brain. It was Frank C
ordell.

  ‘Careful Sasha. Don’t get blood on your paws.’

  So saying, Jorge donned a pair of white plastic gloves from his pocket. In no way was he going to ruin his black leather ones.

  He mounted the brick wall at the base of the railings. He reached out to the victim, frantic and fumbling.

  ‘Frank? Can you hear me? It’s Inspector Jorge Winter.’

  Honestly, he feared the worst. Cordell suddenly choked. Spat a few words. How long he had been hanging there he could not be sure, but it seemed likely that he had only just regained semi-consciousness.

  ‘What’s that, you say? Speak up Frank, damn you.’

  ‘The Bible? You have it, Inspector?’

  ‘For God’s sake, since when does that matter now?’

  ‘It’s all on account of… Revelation 15:2.’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  Of course he had a Bible somewhere back in the camper van, but this hardly seemed the time.

  But what else was he to do? Cordell had hold of his wrist. He seemed possessed by the Devil.

  ‘In Rex Lyons’s Bible… Gold.’

  Next moment the stricken man groaned and from the corner of his broken mouth poured more blood. A spear had punctured a lung.

  ‘Go easy, Frank. What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘Beware, in the river: and before the throne there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal; and in the centre and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and back… ’

  ‘That’s from Revelation. What about it?’

  ‘Find it before anyone else does. Do right to negate wrong…’

  ‘Not my call.’

  ‘Then burn that Bible before it burns you in hell.’

  Cordell lapsed back into unconsciousness. When someone talked blasphemy it could not be good news.

  ‘Listen to me Cordell, we had a deal. Wake up, you bastard. You said you know why Reverend Luke Lyons has disappeared? You say he isn’t dead. Why?’

  Cordell opened his mouth but not his eyes.

  ‘She will give you the treasures of darkness.’

  ‘Who is ‘she’, Frank?’

  ‘Know this, Inspector… Reverend Luke Lyons never walked into any river.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. The police did a full investigation. There is absolutely no evidence of foul play.’

  Something avaricious burned in Cordell’s good eye as he uttered a few feeble syllables with his reptilian tongue.

  ‘He’s gone to the Devil, Inspector, thanks to his greed. I should never have told him what I knew… I had no idea what he’d do with it… But you can still make it right, you can stop him before he goes any further. Go get the fucker back. Get rich in the process if you must.’

  ‘That’s insane.’

  ‘Luke was your best friend was he not, Inspector?’

  ‘That was a long time ago. What can you possibly stand to gain if I do what you say?’

  ‘The cheating bastard gets to make amends.’

  ‘And if he really is dead?’

  ‘You believe in Lazarus, or what?’

  ‘So you literally think that Reverend Lyons can come back from the dead?’

  Cordell slid another inch down the railings before either of them could realise what was happening.

  ‘That bastard said he was my friend. I thought him an honest person who loved his fellow humans. I hope right now he’s in a living hell. Whatever you do, Inspector, take care. Remember Rex’s Bible: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’

  He recognised Luke 12.34. Had not Luke himself quoted those very words in his written riposte to the Church’s preliminary enquiry into his conduct? On Cordell’s face came a smile. Not that it did him much good. He died.

  *

  Jorge tore off his white plastic gloves. Made a call on his phone.

  ‘My name is Jorge Winter. I need an ambulance and fire brigade. There’s been a terrible accident….’

  Tearing loose the knot in his black tie, he breathed hard to fill his lungs. He did his best to calm his heaving chest. Looked past the stone lions on the prettily decorated loggia and terrace. Saw again the black sailing ship far below in the harbour. He had the impression that it had just come a long way.

  Which was when a prayer suddenly entered his head which he used to give Cordell some sort of blessing:

  ‘Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,

  for my soul takes refuge in you;

  In the shadow of your wings will I take refuge

  Until the storm of destruction has passed by.’

  He reconsidered the inauspicious ramblings of the dead man as he took care to withdraw his highly polished black boots from drips of red. There ended his sympathy. Very little that he had been told so far squared with what he knew of ‘Lucky’ Luke Lyons, but then he hadn’t spoken to him for decades. The best loved person could change a lot over time.

  Rather than solve any queries, that mention of a Bible only posed more questions.

  *

  Part-way through his statement to the Avon and Somerset police Jorge confessed that he was a policeman, too.

  The officers looked blank.

  ‘Sorry to ask, sir, but what does that mean, exactly?’

  ‘Want to ring Gloucester Cathedral? Check out my identity? I’m Inspector Jorge Winter.’

  ‘If it’s all right with you, sir, DI Thompson wants a word.’

  ‘You do what you have to.’

  A short, balding man dressed in a creased grey suit came straight over.

  ‘I don’t even want to think about what you are doing here, Mr Winter.’

  ‘Just doing my job, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘Not right now you don’t.’

  ‘As I’ve told your men, I spoke to the deceased in prison only yesterday.’

  Jorge noted the critical contradiction of the smile on the lean man’s face and registered the cold look in his eyes. Those same eyes grew greyer, as grey as his badly pressed suit, as their gazes clashed.

  ‘You have to forget about interfering in things that don’t concern you, Mr Winter.’

  He looked down at his toes. There was one ugly spot of blood on his boot after all.

  ‘Don’t see how I can, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘This is a matter for the Bristol police now. You have no jurisdiction here in Clifton or anywhere else.’

  ‘I know your arguments already. I don’t need to hear them again.’

  ‘Here’s a thing. If I find you poking your nose into matters that don’t concern you, life will go very badly for you.’

  ‘Tell yourself that.’

  ‘I don’t like people who masquerade as cops.’

  ‘Come on. Admit it. You love it.’

  ‘Now we have all your details, Mr Winter, we’ll be in touch if we need to speak to you again.’

  ‘Fact is, the deceased just left HMPL… not too far from here. His name is Frank Cordell. He may have run into someone who bore him a grudge. Many a newly released prisoner meets his match from a former enemy as soon as he walks free. Some people wait years to settle old scores.’

  ‘Might mean nothing.’

  ‘He was a convicted paedophile, remember.’

  ‘This is my case. You got a problem with that?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Goodbye Mr Winter.’

  ‘Then I’m free to go?’

  ‘Take my advice. Stay out of it. I’ve enough on my plate today already. A man just jumped off Clifton Bridge.’

  Jorge turned his back on the death scene.

  ‘I’m having quite a day, too. You hungry, Sasha?’

  Sasha looked up. It was not a very friendly look but he made no comment. A dog was entitled to her own opinion.

  With that, he decided to walk down to the harbour. To hell with his diet. He felt a sudden need to eat like an Olympian.

  *

  A poster on the wall of a floating restaurant a
t the dockside advertised a performance of Das Rheingold as Jorge ordered lunch. That tale was all about lost gold, too. All you had to do to find it was to renounce love.

  ‘Is that what you’ve done, Luke, my friend? Or has love renounced you?’

  It sounded such an impossible thing to do, like forgoing good food. So saying, he was very conscious of his shaky hands. He did his best to keep tight hold of the spoon with which he stirred his coffee.

  Rattled himself, he tried not to rattle.

  Whereas someone else might have sought professional help for their problems, Luke had chosen oblivion? Sought the mad maelstrom, the unfathomable whirlpool? To leave home.

  The tall ship that had attracted Jorge’s attention from the top of the gorge lay berthed just across the water at Baltic Wharf. The black iron hull with its single funnel amidships was extremely elegant, almost streamlined, with one square-rigged and two schooner-rigged iron masts as secondary sail power. The ship cast its long shadow on the Floating Harbour’s silvery surface while a row of false gun ports along its side gave it the semblance of a warship from long ago.

  There was absolutely no sign of any crew. Its combination of smoking funnel and absolute stillness he could only admit was mildly mysterious.

  ‘Don’t see many ships like that, I must say,’ commented a spiky-haired waitress with black eyelids and matching fingernails. The badge on her shirt said Lucy.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ asked Jorge.

  He did not much feel like eating after all.

  ‘They do say she’s crossed the Atlantic.’

  ‘Who’s her captain?’

  ‘Dunno. But the police are crawling all over her as we speak. There’s a dead body on board, apparently. Don’t know much else about it so far. No one does.’

  ‘Got you.’

  ‘As I said, she hit a storm and sustained some damage.’

  ‘Does she have a name, at all?’

  Lucy studied the silver diamonds on his shirt’s epaulettes.

  ‘You a cop, too?’

  ‘Inspector Jorge Winter.’

  ‘Never had a real cop in here before.’

  ‘Am I that convincing?’

  ‘I think being a cop is sexy.’

  ‘What’s that ship’s name again?’

  ‘Search me. It’s a long walk round to that side of the docks or you can take the bridge across Cumberland Basin.’