Blood and stone, p.1
Blood and Stone, page 1
Alan Jones read English and French at university, going on to complete a Masters and a Doctorate in Education. He has extensive experience of teaching creative writing and literature. He is also an enthusiastic jazz drummer. He lives in Canterbury and is married to that precious thing, a Librarian.
Also by Alan Jones
Surrogate (Matador, 2020)
Copyright © 2021 Alan Jones
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Contents
Part One Aftermath
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Part Two Distraction
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Part Three Repercussion
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
No need to panic, Molly Harrington told herself.
Actually, as she well knew, there was every need to panic.
Jennifer Ormiston, host of the morning show on Digital City Radio and part of the station’s DNA, hadn’t shown up this morning. There’d been no call, no text or email, nothing on social media. She’d cut it a bit fine before but never failed to show. Deborah, the morning show’s producer, had suggested re-running the previous Tuesday’s programme, but pointed out to Molly that Jennifer was also down to carry out an interview at 11.15 with Councillor Stella Delaney about the widely criticised plans for a new multi-storey car park. They both knew that only Jenny could carry that off.
Hence the panic, and hence Molly’s decision to drive out to Jennifer’s place of residence to see what the hell was going on.
As she got out of the car, Molly looked up at the block. Nice flats but, from what she’d heard, a bit overpriced, especially out here, way beyond the city limits. Since taking on the stewardship of Digital City, she couldn’t remember having to drive to the home of any presenter to drag her out to work, yet here she was. Of course, managing Jenny Ormiston had never been easy; she’d had to speak to her more than once about the odd colourful phrase, the odd inappropriate come-on to a guest. If it weren’t for that interview with Delaney…
She got out of the car and looked around the car park. Four other cars, all neatly parked in their bays, and that one there, next to the wall… She walked over to the red Mini Clubman she recognised as Jennifer’s car. As she approached, the alarm went off at a startlingly loud volume. Inside, the glovebox was open, and a pair of leather gloves had been left on the flap. In the back seat, Jenny’s famous bright yellow jacket had been thrown hastily down.
She walked over to the entrance to the block and pressed on the button next to Flat 41. Nothing. Pressed again. Still nothing. She heard a car draw up behind her. The sound of a rapid exit and clattering heels as a woman in her mid-thirties approached the main entrance.
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for Jennifer…Jennifer Ormiston. Flat 41.’
The woman looked her up and down.
‘You police? You don’t look like police.’
‘No, not police. I’m the station manager at Digital City – you know, the radio station.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Can you let me in? I need to contact Jennifer urgently. She should be conducting an interview in…’ She looked at her watch. ‘In something like twenty minutes.’
‘So that’s what that bitch up in the top flat does, is it? I’m more Classic FM myself. I’ve tried passing the time of day with her, but all she ever does is brush past with a tired smile on her face.’ She paused, as if weighing up what she should do. ‘You got a business card?’
‘Oh, yes, of course.’ She fished out a card from her shoulder bag. ‘Here.’
‘Thanks; just in case, you know…’
‘Of course, that’s fine.’
Inside the building, she took the lift, just catching the ‘Good luck’ from the echoing stairwell. Emerging at the fourth floor, she pressed the bell of Flat 41, heart pounding as though she’d climbed the stairs. It emitted a tinny version of Jennifer’s breakfast show jingle. She pressed again but, as she did so, noticed the narrow gap between the door and the jamb. It was obviously on the latch. She pushed the door open and took a single step inside. Keys on the hall table to the left.
‘Jenny?’ Nothing. ‘Jennifer?’
As she moved further into the hall, a strong feeling that she really shouldn’t be doing this came over her, but a glance at her watch told her there were only seventeen minutes to the interview. She could detect no noise from anywhere in the flat, no streamed music, no radio or TV on in the background. She walked through into the lounge, a spacious, sparsely but tastefully furnished room with panoramic views but no evidence of Jenny’s recent presence. The kitchen opposite was scrupulously clean and surprisingly large, its central island perched on expensive wood flooring, its units blindingly white and glossy, with dark red wall tiles behind. It could have been installed yesterday, ready for the first to view.
At the end of the hall, the door to the main bedroom was open. Inside, the sliding doors of the fitted wardrobe gaped wide, something like twenty pairs of shoes neatly stacked under an array of colourful dresses and tops and a rack of blue jeans. The quilt had been turned back neatly on the bed. As she approached the door to the second bedroom, down a corridor to the left, she saw it was closed.
Jenny was clearly not in the flat, and Molly’s visit was turning from the professional to the purely inquisitive. Time to go and, reluctantly, cancel the meeting with Stella Delaney at the last minute and think of some way to fill the air-time. Then, later, she would have to consider the matter of where Jenny actually was. She’d done a bunk, but why?
Molly wondered if she had time to use the loo before she left. Surely, thirty seconds wouldn’t hurt, would it? A short way further along the corridor, she could see the open door of what she took to be the bathroom, the frosted glass of the window above the basin clearly visible. As she approached, she could hear for the first time a noise, the drip-drip of water from a half-closed tap. This merely intensified her need to pee, and she entered the bathroom with both hands already reaching up under her skirt.
She was thus completely unprepared for what she saw. To her left, in a curvilinear white bath tub entirely detached from the wall and raised from the floor on Queen Anne legs was Jennifer Ormiston. Her face was turned towards the door, as if in challenge, the eyes staring. Her right arm was hanging loosely over the side and a pool of water had accumulated on the floor.
Molly was drawn, despite herself, towards the bath. Three or four feet from it, she stopped, no longer needing to come any closer. Frozen where she stood, she took in the odd pinkness of the water, the mess of Jennifer’s left wrist, the sheer bulk of her naked body, half-submerged. Then she felt the wetness between her own legs and the room circling and growing dim. As she dropped, her head struck hard wood and one of her arms sent something scuttering across the floor.
An antique bath tap continued to sound in the echoing, abundantly tiled space – drip, drip, drip. But now there was no-one at all who could hear it.
Part One
Aftermath
Three weeks earlier
One
It’s all over now, she thought. Finished. In the past.
Louise Bryant was sitting in the café opposite the church, her church, the church where that man had had control of her life for so long. As she looked across at the forbidding darkness of the building, now seeming squeezed in amongst retail units and town centre flats, she wondered whether, now he was gone, she would be able to return to the church itself and resume her active faith with the new, younger priest. He would surely reach out positively to her, wouldn’t he?
The café itself brought back memories of another time, a time before the whole of her life had turned inside-out, before the idea she had been thinking about in this very place, at this very table, had turned sour. Of course, it was not the same in here now, she thought; there were new owners and they had brought with them a new look, a new splash of bright blue paint, work by local artists on the walls, better coffee and pastries, and, needless to say, higher prices. All the same…
Since the court case, she had been very careful about leaving the house. Her husband had told her not to be so paranoid, but her natural caution took control. She went to the supermarket very early in the morning and avoided local shops altogether. She immersed herself in housework and persuaded Edward to cancel the newspaper. She kept her contacts online to a minimum, deliberately avoiding social media. Today was really the first day she had ventured out into the town and sat in a public space like this, open to the looks and nudges of other pedestrians and customers. She had taken the safer route through the park, and the few people she had come across had seemed oblivious to her identity. Thus far, no-one in the café, which was in any case mostly full of tourists, had looked meaningfully or judgementally at her. She could feel her body and mind very slowly begin to relax.
Nevertheless, she remained painfully aware of who she was and what had happened to her. She was the woman who had had a child with her husband’s brother, who had shamed herself in the eyes of her church and allowed her child to be snatched from her. The miracle was, though, that the child had survived, traumatised and broken but still alive, and that it was her God, the God with whom she had been told she needed to make her peace, who had allowed in his mercy for this to happen.
Except, of course, that it hadn’t been God alone who had brought back little Sammy to her. It had been Sergeant Timothy Laughland. It had been the sergeant who had fought against the idea that her child had been taken by a paedophile, who had persisted to the very end and saved her child from the wreckage of an old Ford in a country lane.
Now, they had been told, Sammy might soon be returning home from the residential paediatric hospital in which he had been cared for by specialist child psychologists. Naturally Edward would deal with the situation in his usual way, with a kind of cool practicality and efficiency. But would she be able to cope as easily? And that question, of course was the real reason she was here in the café; without realising it, she had come to prepare herself for the short walk across to the church, for a meeting with the new priest, for the comfort that only her church could give her.
She looked at her watch: almost twelve, the time of her appointment with Father Davidson. It would take her only a matter of seconds to cross the pedestrianised street, enter the church and walk past the confessional to the priest’s office, the room where she’d had those difficult, distressing meetings with Father Christian. She was determined not to be late, but felt suddenly overwhelmed by doubt. Perhaps it was time for a clean break with her faith and her church, and anyway she had not discussed this meeting with Edward. There would have been no point in any such discussion, of course, Edward’s tolerance of her religious belief having been stretched to the limit and beyond by Father Christian’s part in the abduction of Sammy.
She raised herself from the table and went to pay at the counter. She recognised the woman who took her money; she had worked in the café for years and had been re-employed by the new owners. The woman smiled at her as she gave her her change, a smile that was full of sympathy and discomfort in equal measure. Somehow, it was this smile that saw off any doubts she might have. As she went through the door of the café, the bell rang loudly as it had always done and she headed across the street with renewed purpose.
She entered the church through the dark wooden door to the right; there was a door on the other side for those leaving the church, as though those coming and going might rise to an unfeasibly large number. It creaked in the way that was still so familiar to her, but it was, she reflected, not a sound she had heard recently. As she made her way in and walked down the right-hand side of the pews, the dark, aromatic interior of the church momentarily struck her blind. Her sight readjusted itself as she reached the confessional and made her way past the altar to Father Davidson’s office. The door was slightly ajar; this would never have happened in Father Christian’s day. She came forward and tapped lightly to announce her presence.
There was a shuffling inside before a head poked itself around the edge of the door. It was a youngish head, and its eyes communicated a mixture of emotions, delight and warmth, but also alarm and trepidation. Louise was shocked by her own reaction. She had known the new priest would be in his late thirties, but the face that was framed in the elongated space between the door and its frame looked much younger.
‘Ah, Mrs Bryant, is it? Do come in. Have a seat…’
He opened the door wider and spread out his right palm suddenly and awkwardly, stepping back as she entered. And now, as she lowered herself on to exactly the same chair she had sat in when Father Christian had breathed foully at her and accused her of being sinful in her pursuit of IVF, she felt the full weight of what she was about to do. Who would begin the conversation, and what could she possibly say? The fresh face in front of her seemed suddenly aware of her discomfort and gave a short nod, accompanied by a relaxed smile. It was a round, pleasant face, below rather a close-cropped, receding hairline, a face that seemed to tell her he would take charge of this conversation, if that’s what she would prefer.
‘Mrs Bryant…’ He looked down at an opened file on his desk. ‘Louise…shall we begin by saying a prayer?’
This was exactly the right thing to do, thought Louise, impressed by the way her new priest had understood the delicacy of the situation. And so they spent a minute in prayer. It was not a prayer she had heard before; it was slowly delivered and contained words like ‘forgiveness’ and ‘recommitment’. She assumed by the end of it that it was a form of words made up by Father Davidson himself, a feat which also impressed her, as perhaps it was meant to.
‘I sense, Louise…is it OK to call you Louise?’ She nodded. ‘I sense this meeting between us would be easier if I were to, as it were, kick us off?’
‘Yes, thank you, Father.’
He leaned forward on to his elbows, so that his face was a foot closer to hers, clasping his fingers together and leaning his chin on them.
‘So we should begin, perhaps, with the whole matter of Father Christian’s role in the misuse of Church funds, and subsequently in the abduction of your child.’ He had become suddenly a little more business-like, as though it helped him to breach the awkwardness between them.
‘I can’t…I can’t…I’m ashamed to say I can’t find it in my heart to forgive him for what he did.’ This came unbidden from Louise. She had heard him say ‘abduction’ and ‘child’ and a dry, tense fury forced her to speak.
‘That’s completely understandable, Louise. It would be asking a lot of you to forgive him under the circumstances.’
‘And the courts, what the courts decided…’
‘Yes. The verdicts must have surprised, even shocked you.’
‘That’s putting it mildly.’
‘Yes.’ Father Gregor Davidson leant back again on the hard wooden chair, which creaked underneath him, as though assaulted by her vehemence. He tapped his thumbs together, contemplating what to say next. Instead of kicking things off, he had somehow ended up defenceless in front of an open goal. ‘Yes, well, indeed…’
