Guilty as Sin Read online

  I blinked. It was written in a style so archaic I’d be surprised if anyone got beyond the first paragraph.

  ‘Bas relief panels?’ she asked. ‘What and where are they?’

  ‘Those sort of sculptures behind the altar. Got a torch?’

  The carved wood panels behind the altar were so dirty and ill-lit it was hard to tell what they depicted. The Seven Deadly Sins, according to the sheet. The beam picked out what I thought must be gluttony and possibly sloth.

  ‘Do you know what the other sins are?’ I asked, off-hand. She was a vicar’s wife, after all.

  ‘Apart from lust? Not a clue. And the carvings themselves don’t exactly enlighten me. But I take it they’re worth a bob or two?’

  ‘To a collector, maybe. This sheet says they’re Dutch or German. No dates given.’

  She reread her copy. ‘What a rubbish leaflet. Turgid and uninformative. OK, the Lady Chapel: what’s in there?’ She led the way, pointing at heavy mustard-coloured velvet curtains behind the altar. ‘And what are those hiding?’

  I pulled them back to reveal a hideous set of tiles listing the Ten Commandments, in case a previous generation had had a mental lapse like mine with the Sins. ‘Any thieves would be welcome to them,’ I suggested.

  She threw her head back and laughed. ‘Straight from a High Victorian public loo! My God, no wonder they keep them under wraps.’ Turning round, she pointed. ‘What about that picture? The Mother and Child – a bit High Church for this place. Bells and smells next. Not an original, I take it?’

  ‘A Murillo in Bredeham?’

  ‘OK, point taken. No value.’ She pointed at the crude wooden and glass frames that had been fixed round some fourteenth-century memorial brasses. ‘Oh, Lord, I suppose someone thought they might be strong enough to withstand crowbars. Even I’d get in there in one minute flat. Anything else?’

  I led her back to the font: Norman and no doubt valuable, but granite and sturdy.

  ‘Now, you’ve only got a wooden cross on the altar. Don’t you have any church plate? What do you use for Communion?’

  ‘Oh, the chalice? And the silver plates – patens?’

  ‘Right. I’d guess they’d be in the vestry – heavens, another curtain,’ she groaned as she pushed it aside. ‘Not even a sturdy locked door.’ She pointed accusingly at a couple of battered metal cupboards six or seven feet high, one army brown, the other RAF grey. Surplus, no doubt. ‘Look, someone’s labelled them, just in case the would-be thief’s in a hurry: Altar candlesticks and Crucifix. Second-best Chalice and Paten. All in cupboards you could jemmy open in a trice, even if someone had remembered to lock them.’ She tried the door. It opened. There was no need to comment. ‘I assume the best silver’s in the safe, such as it is. Combination? Hell’s bells, anyone could open that too – well, you could.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  She led the way back into the nave. ‘There are rich pickings here, all right. Multiply this by other old churches in the area. In the county. Heavens, in the whole country.’

  It was as if someone laid a cold hand on me. ‘What if the thieves come back?’

  ‘Some of my colleagues have the theory that lightning doesn’t strike twice – that the thieves will have been put off and try somewhere else. I don’t share it,’ she added.

  ‘Hidden cameras are the obvious answer, aren’t they? Your colleague DS Hunt had me fix one in the room of someone she suspects is being robbed by her carers. Before you ask, it was because you techies were too busy, and I could sort it in the shake of a lamb’s tail.’

  She looked around speculatively. ‘There are plenty of places to hide one … Yes, why not? You want me to get the camera and you’ll do the biz?’

  ‘Absolutely … Hang on, aren’t we about to commit a mortal sin? Aren’t you supposed to get someone’s permission to put things in churches? The vicar’s?’

  She sat down hard on a pew. ‘Not the vicar’s. Absolutely not. He’s just a paid serf. I think it’s the churchwardens’. And they can’t do it on their own if it involves the fabric. The PCC – people like your Griff – have to apply for permission of the diocese, something called a faculty. And damned time-consuming it is. Shit. Sorry, God.’ She covered her face with her hands, surfacing as she ran her fingers back through her hair. ‘I’ll have to get our crime prevention people to advise the PCC here and the diocese as a whole in the strongest possible terms to install CCTV and everything else where it hasn’t been done already.’

  ‘Which will all take time and money,’ I said delicately. ‘Do the police actually need all this permission? I’ve read about cases where listening devices were planted in suspects’ homes – I bet no one knocked on the door and asked them.’

  ‘That’s done on the authority of someone much higher up in the pecking order than I am – and it’s with a specific target. I don’t think generally keeping an eye on a church that hasn’t even asked for it, let alone given permission, would work, do you?’

  ‘But if you happened to have a little gizmo just lying on your desk and I just happened to pick it up when I came to see you about something …’

  ‘We’d need a plausible something.’

  ‘Maybe your computer had a glitch. No, Phil knows it didn’t.’

  She didn’t even try to stifle a yawn.

  ‘Lord, look at the time,’ I said. ‘Come on, we’ll think of something.’

  ‘I hope so. And I’ve got an important meeting tomorrow I’ve still got to prepare for …’

  It looked as if she hardly had the energy to lock up and walk to her car.

  ‘If only we had a spare bed at the cottage I could offer you,’ I said. ‘Seat belt, Freya.’

  ‘Shit!’ She set the car in motion. ‘This camera – I suppose you wouldn’t have time tomorrow?’

  ‘As it happens, I would.’ Tomorrow was the day Harvey was coming in person to collect his vase. Griff assumed he’d arrive in the middle of the day, having driven up from Devon in the morning. I suspect that was exactly what Harvey wanted me to think, and that he’d turn up soon after nine, having stayed overnight somewhere close. ‘I could come over to Maidstone, if that’d help.’

  ‘Are you sure? Really sure? I know how many hours you to put in too … Thanks. About eleven?’

  As she stopped the car in front of our cottage, I asked a question that had been nagging away at the back of my mind. ‘Why were you so cagey with Phil?’

  ‘In a case like this it pays to be cagey with everyone. Me and you, Lina.’

  I couldn’t argue with the first half of her sentence. Once she’d sounded off about me and nearly got me killed when the wrong person overheard her complaints. So I nodded. ‘Love to Robin and Imogen,’ I said, closing the car door quietly to avoid waking the neighbours.

  TWENTY

  I was meandering along Maidstone High Street, killing time, when who should I run into but Spencer, swinging a carrier bag from an upmarket men’s shop. He looked a bit embarrassed, as if I’d caught him in something shameful, but promptly invited me for coffee. I could have said I’d just had one: I was only a couple of paces from the Moonlight, after all. But I made no objection when he fell into step with me, as I still had the small matter of Dodie’s outings to float. It wasn’t until I mentioned we already had a rugby player onside that he showed any interest. Then, piqued perhaps, he declared that he’d enlist the help of some lads from his club. I’d given him what he saw as the opening he’d been angling for – an invitation to pop round to the cottage to let me know how his recruitment drive was going. I was just going to ask him to text me first when my mobile warbled: Griff, telling me that Harvey had been and gone.

  But what if he came back? I was glad I had to see Freya – it was just the excuse I needed not to hurry home to my workroom, to be trapped there if he did. Suddenly – and how paranoid was this? – Spencer, simply because he was a big man, acquired a value as a potential bodyguard.

  What was I thinking? The on
ly danger Harvey posed was to my heart. Despite everything, that was why my adrenaline surged, not because I was afraid of violence. And I certainly didn’t want, in Griff’s phrase, to lead Spencer on. Not fair to anyone.

  ‘Sorry. That was the police – about that little incident at the church last night,’ I lied, continuing, ‘They want me to go and look at some mugshots.’ In for a penny …

  ‘Mugshots? Does that mean the men let you see their faces?’ he exclaimed, in what almost sounded like irritation at the thieves’ inefficiency.

  ‘They were supposed to be workmen – that was the scam,’ I explained. ‘And I suppose if a team of scaffolders turned up in balaclavas or ski masks it might have given a few clues about their real intentions.’ For some reason I didn’t mention all the regulation Health and Safety gear they were wearing.

  He shrugged. Griff and his chattering friends would have demanded every last detail, as the meat and drink of village gossip. Spencer didn’t even ask how I was involved – though if I’d been keen on someone, it would have been the first thing I’d have wanted to know. Not a man for empathy, our Spencer. And thus not a man for me, not in a thousand years.

  Turning in the general direction of the police station, I started my farewells. But it seemed he was going to walk with me. Setting a spanking pace wouldn’t shake him off, of course, but it would mean we didn’t have much breath for conversation.

  We’d just left the pedestrian area when I went flying. I was so close to a lorry that I felt its tyres lift my hair – or it might have been fright. But I didn’t end up under its wheels – firm hands on either side grabbed me and yanked me back on to the kerb. Either side? To my right was Spencer. And still holding my left arm hard above the elbow was a complete stranger, a woman in her sixties, I’d suppose. Right now she was staring at my feet.

  ‘It’s not as though you were wearing silly shoes,’ she declared. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with the pavement. What on earth were you doing?’

  ‘Can’t hold her drink,’ Spencer said, with what was meant to be a smile but looked like a smirk. ‘Last night’s booze too,’ he added, obviously enjoying the woman’s shocked expression.

  ‘Ignore him,’ I said crisply. ‘He thinks it’s the first of April. Thank you so much for saving me – I hope you didn’t hurt yourself in the process?’ On the weirdest of impulses I flipped her one of the business cards I always keep in a side pouch of my bag. ‘Just to say thank you: if ever you’re Bredeham way, I promise you a nice discount on anything you might wish to buy.’

  ‘Antiques? China?’ she read, holding the card at arm’s length. ‘Well, I love my china. I may take you up on that.’

  ‘Please do. Without you I might have been as flat as that card – and a good deal messier.’ We shared a laugh I didn’t quite feel. How had I ended up in such danger?

  We said our farewells. I added one to Spencer, who said he thought he deserved a bit more than a business card for his part in my rescue.

  ‘Not on the edge of a busy road you don’t,’ I declared. ‘I’d best be off – it wouldn’t do to keep the police waiting, would it? Cheers!’

  As I’d expected, Freya was at her desk, up to her elbows in files when I was escorted to her office. ‘Talk about a workaholic,’ I greeted her.

  ‘Takes one to know one,’ she retorted. ‘Take a pew. OK, what do you know about Philip Russell? Phil the Pill, they call him – right?’

  ‘Right. And I know zilch apart from his drug-dispensing activities. He handled the situation well last night. Afzal considers him an alpha male but doesn’t – or should that be and doesn’t – like him. Male hackles rising. But he served us a wonderful meal, didn’t he?’

  She ignored my little jibe.

  ‘And Phil spotted a mistake the GP had made in a prescription when Griff was getting over his bypass, so in theory we both approve of him.’

  She nodded without enthusiasm. ‘All the same, I didn’t come along last night by accident. I blew the date deliberately. I didn’t tell you afterwards because I shouldn’t be telling you at all. Only Robin thought you ought to know. Russell’s got a conviction for assaulting some driver after an accident.’

  ‘Road rage? Bloody hell!’ Not being married to a clergyman gave me a certain licence, after all. A woman who self-harmed; a man who’d harmed others. Not a good combination at all. ‘Thanks. How long ago, as a matter of interest?’

  ‘Nine years. He pleaded guilty to common assault, escaped prison by the skin of his teeth because he’d got a pristine record and he’d already signed up to an anger management course. He paid a whopping fine. Nothing since, not even a parking ticket, before you ask. Absolutely no record for domestic violence, to be fair, or any other crimes against the person. But …’ she shrugged.

  My voice rose in an embarrassing squeak. ‘Domestic violence? Has he had a partner? He didn’t mention one. Nor, to be fair,’ I added ruefully, ‘did I happen to mention my past, of course. It wasn’t that sort of confessional evening.’

  She nodded sagely. ‘Much too early in the relationship. Have you chewed him over with Griff yet?’

  ‘He was already snoring when I got home last night. And I left early this morning to avoid Harvey Sanditon.’ To my horror, I burst into tears. I don’t do tears, not even wet sniffles. But they poured down my face. ‘I’m sorry,’ I managed, as she thrust wads of tissues at me. ‘I nearly fell under a lorry earlier and it seems to have rattled me a bit.’

  ‘I find this helps.’ She put half a four-finger KitKat in my hand. She added, through her half, ‘I thought your Harvey was a perfect gent.’

  ‘A perfect married gent. But there was a problem …’ I embarked on a stuttering and hiccupping account of the Torquay evening.

  ‘Yes, I’d call that a problem,’ she said, when I finished. ‘I’m surprised you agreed to mend it for him after that, verbal contract or no verbal contract. Let him sue, I’d have said. And for all it’s a nice vase, surely someone else could have stuck it back together. No? You’re that good?’

  I murmured a couple of museums I did work for.

  ‘Wow. I never realized … Well, this Harvey bastard ought to have been on his expensive knees begging you. Mind you,’ she continued with a cackle, ‘at his age, he might have had difficulty getting up again! Now, these here guys you interrupted last night. For all his history, I think it was a good job you had Phil with you last night. Those photos of yours show blokes remarkably similar to e-fit images we’ve put together from witness accounts of other incidents, as it happens, even if your old dears weren’t much help. And yes, I’ve asked our techies to virtually remove things like spectacles and goggles and to liaise with Devon and Cornwall techies to see if we share the same villains. With churches in mind, I don’t suppose you’ve got any memories at all of the guy who socked you down in Dockinge? I just want to put everything together for the national team so we don’t look too much like country bumpkins. Yes, I absolutely think there’s enough to suggest that our friends last night might be part of a much bigger picture. It’s a shame: I’d have liked to deal with it in-house, but as I said I simply don’t have the resources. I’m asking that Conrad Knowles of yours to liaise between them and our victims. He’s due a bit of a career boost, I gather.’

  ‘Have you talked to him yet about the assault on me? And the one on Mary?’ Something else she didn’t know about, obviously.

  When I’d given an abbreviated account, she sighed. ‘The trouble is, I’m so immersed in budgets I only see people like Knowles in passing. I’m a bloody pen-pusher, not a cop these days. I deal with the broad picture rather than tiny brush-strokes. Which is why coming out last night was a bit of a treat, in a weird way. But I’ll make a point of seeing him. I like to know when people are attacked, even when they’re just threatened. Though it really doesn’t sound as if the two are connected – posh man in posh car for one, church burglars in truck for the other.’

  ‘Quite. Except that the thugs might have a boss-man �
� Anyway, I did a bit of homework for Conrad on the Dockinge church robbery. There was an extra stall at the antiques fair there the day I was hit. No one knew anything about it, and the owners disappeared without paying for their site. I don’t know if he’s had time to pursue that lead. Or if he managed to check to see if Dockinge village hall has any CCTV.’

  ‘How do you get on with him – Knowles?’

  Some change of tack! I blinked hard. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Straight question. No subtext, honest.’

  ‘Are you asking how well he performs his duties as a detective or how I like him as a human being? There’s a world of difference.’ When she continued to stare, carefully blank-faced, I continued, ‘For all I’ve not seen many results from him, which may not be his fault at all, he’s a nice enough guy. He sent for Carwyn when I was in hospital. And any friend of Carwyn’s is a friend of mine, surely.’

  ‘Are you and Carwyn still an item?’

  Where was that coming from? ‘Until you told me about his record, I thought that was why you were so sniffy with Phil – you thought he was making a play for me, and I was betraying Carwyn’s trust.’

  ‘So are you? An item?’ She produced another KitKat from her drawer, again giving me half.

  A slow meditative chew gave me time to work out, not necessarily the answer I’d give her, but the one I’d give Carwyn if he ever asked. Which he wouldn’t, of course. Neither of us had ever even mentioned the change. Perhaps that was why Conrad Knowles had felt awkward about any references to France – because Carwyn had let fall hints that all wasn’t well. I looked up from the second KitKat finger. ‘Not really. But we’ve not ended the relationship formally, as it were. And I’ve said nothing to anyone, not even Carwyn, and certainly not Conrad. So I’d rather you didn’t, please.’

  ‘I won’t. Except to Robin, who’ll want to pray for you.’

  ‘Not a getting-back-together prayer, please. Now, I know you’re busy, but there are another couple of names I should float. Another crime here on your patch, another connection with Devon. Again, the groundwork’s been done by Devon and Cornwall Police, but a DS of yours, Fi Hunt, is aware of them and may already have more information.’