Reprobation Page 14

  ‘To be honest with you, I don’t see why not, if she’s awake. She’s not going to have any other visitors this week, sadly. But she’s very weak and on a lot of morphine, I’m not sure whether you’ll get anything.’

  As Father Anthony took them upstairs, he explained that Lily Taylor was eighty-two, had terminal lung cancer, and had been placed here six months ago by her family but then effectively abandoned. ‘Very strange because they seemed like a nice family – her son and daughter and so on – but apparently she wasn’t well-liked, even by them. An evil person, those were their words – can you imagine? I know not all old people are angels, but still, you’d think…’

  He trailed off as they had reached a small hospital room where the door was ajar, and Swift and Quinn could see a desperately frail elderly woman lying in a hospital bed. Her skeletal body was almost consumed by the pillows on which she was propped, and a plastic oxygen mask hung around her neck ready to be used. Her breathing was audible and laboured, and her half-closed eyes vaguely watched the television screen in the top corner of the room, which was showing some soap opera with the sound turned off. A nurse was in the room taking a reading from the monitors, and she smiled and leaned forward to Lily, almost shouting. ‘You’ve got some visitors, Lily.’

  In a moment that made Swift start to well up again, the old lady’s eyes widened slightly and she opened her mouth and turned to them, perhaps expecting to see someone in particular and then realising it wasn’t them. Swift leaned forward vaguely.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Taylor. We want to ask you a few questions about Andrew Shepherd.’

  There was no response from Lily, and the nurse said, ‘She can’t hear you, detective. You need to speak up.’ Swift squirmed with embarrassment. He remembered how much he had hated having to go and visit old folks’ homes for his school community service – struggling for things to say, the stale smell – and how he had envied those to whom it came naturally. Quinn took over, sitting next to Lily and taking her hand. ‘Andrew Shepherd,’ she shouted. ‘Is he your friend?’

  The old lady’s eyes brightened and she looked straight ahead of her, lost in memories.

  ‘Andrew. My saviour. A wonderful man.’ Her voice was a croak, pitchless and breathy, barely there at all. She turned to Quinn and patted her wrist with her shaking hand. ‘He saved me, it’s true. I am saved.’

  ‘What did Shepherd say to you when he last visited? Can you remember?’

  ‘He said he can’t come back. But it’s alright, he gave me the last dose. And it’s our secret. They don’t know about me, you see. All I have to do is wait now.’

  Suddenly she gasped, and then closed her eyes and was silent. Swift and Quinn looked at the nurse in panic, but she said, ‘It’s OK. She just needs a bit of oxygen. And some rest.’ Father Anthony had been standing behind the detectives and put a hand on each of their shoulders to signify that the visit was over.

  ‘As you can see, she’s a little delirious. You won’t get anything more out of her today.’

  The detectives got up, smiling their thanks at the nurse and leaving Lily Taylor to her own personal purgatory. Outside the room, Swift asked Father Anthony, in a whisper without really knowing why:

  ‘Is it possible that Shepherd could have tampered with her medication? Given her something?’

  ‘I mean, to tamper with the drip – very unlikely, but not impossible I suppose. To have slipped her something… well, we don’t search people when they come in. But her condition hasn’t altered, I mean if anything she’s living longer than we would have expected. So he hasn’t harmed her.’ They began to walk back down the corridor. ‘What sort of thing do you mean? You mean he wanted to watch her die? Is he one of those playing god types?’

  Swift and Quinn looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

  As they got back into the car, Quinn said, ‘What a lovely man, that Father Cuthbert. I feel bad that he feels bad. Don’t tell me, you didn’t like him.’

  ‘No, no, he was sound. But why was he so apologetic? He was helping us, not the other way round.’

  ‘Well, I suppose he’s pretty shocked that he let loose a murder suspect in his hospital. I mean, imagine the damage he could have caused in there?’

  ‘Yeah. Not good for their reputation I suppose. But it appears no harm done in there at least. Did we actually learn anything?’

  ‘Other than some minor tracing of Shepherd’s movements three weeks ago, and more confirmation that he’s a bit of a nutter, not really. Pieces of the puzzle I suppose.’

  13.

  Helen and Mikko were sitting on an aeroplane waiting to take off, Helen in a parallel universe where she wore a floral dress with a man’s coat over the top and went on a plane with that same man. She had told Margaret that she was going to stay with her mother, knowing that Margaret would check and discover she was lying, and somehow not caring. And she told herself that with this trip to find the third geneticist she was researching something eschatological; perhaps even an academic paper might result. In the seat next to her, Mikko looked exhausted. His eyes were sunken and had deep shadows under them, and without his usual black eye make-up he looked older and more fragile. She wondered when he had last been home, been taken care of by family, and thought that his life was perhaps no less constrained than hers – living on a bus, never left alone, constantly being judged. It was late on a Friday afternoon, and the flight from Manchester to Nice seemed to be filled with hen and stag parties who were already at varying stages of merriment. Mikko looked around him at the revellers. There was a raucous group of women all wearing sparkly halo headbands and matching white polo shirts emblazoned with ‘Gemma’s Angels’. Some of them were kneeling up in their seats to chat across the aisles, ignoring the hostess’s pleas to put on their seatbelts ready for take-off. And no doubt by design, there was a group of young men wearing devil horns and matching red football shirts proclaiming them to be ‘Ste’s Sexy Beasts.’

  ‘This is a proper flying piece of reprobation right here,’ said Mikko. ‘What does the nun make of this then?’

  Helen smiled. ‘This is my first time on a plane actually.’

  ‘Oh my God, seriously? You’ve never flown?’

  ‘Never! I took a vow of poverty, remember? I can’t afford plane tickets. And also a vow of obedience. So no holidays. I did go to Amsterdam once, to an academic conference funded by the University. I gave a paper on Satanism there, in fact. But that was on the Eurostar, and let me tell you it was so difficult to persuade the Deaconess to give me permission that I haven’t tried since.’

  ‘Amsterdam… nice. I have also been known to get up to some satanic activity in Amsterdam. Man. So you’re an aeroplane virgin? I mean, you’re an everything virgin. Sorry.’

  ‘Indeed. That’s the other vow. Chastity.’ she said looking straight ahead and feigning as much interest as she could in the laminated safety instruction sheet.

  He went quiet, and looked out of the window, smacking his lips repeatedly in some personal drumbeat. A sudden roar of mutual laughter from the Angels and the Sexy Beasts further down the plane provided a welcome distraction, as the stags and hens began to shake the seats and throw crisps at each other. Helen and Mikko both looked back and smiled at each other.

  ‘Is it always like this?’ asked Helen.

  ‘Only on EasyJet. And never take the flight to Prague on a Friday night – oh my god those guys put Total Depravity to shame.’

  The sky was turning a deep red as they took off, and in that moment of universal human disbelief, that leap of faith as an aeroplane leaves the ground, Helen automatically gripped both arms of the seat. But his hand was there too on the central arm, and as they accidentally touched and looked at each other and then looked down in embarrassment, she wondered whether this whole thing hadn’t been a terrible mistake. She quickly took her hands away, took out the wooden cross which was hanging on a necklace underneath her dress, and began fingering that instead.

  Relaxing into the se
nsation of flying, and anxious to distract herself, Helen took out of her rucksack a red folder – the dossier she had collected. She began sifting through the papers, mainly sheets she had surreptitiously printed out from the university and convent computers. Biological dark matter, Calvinism and genetics, the labrys… academic papers written by Clancy, Shepherd, and Baptiste. But the largest section of the file, simply because he constituted the easiest aspect to research, was that on Laurent Baptiste, and his fabulous and infamous life since leaving genetic research. Mikko peered over Helen’s shoulder.

  ‘Oh, is that your research? This is super-exciting – is it a holiday, or are we on the trail of a murderer?’ With this he made a faux-fearful movie trailer voice. ‘I am so pumped for this. So tell me all about this Baptiste.’

  ‘Well. Research is what I do. And I have a lot of time on my hands, I suppose.’ Helen wasn’t sure whether he was making fun of her or not. ‘Baptiste was a statistician, so it figures, I suppose, that he was able to make a lot of money in casinos. He now owns a chain of them across the world, plus two hotels in Monaco, one of which we are staying in, I believe.’

  ‘Yes. I booked us into the Paradise. Separate rooms, of course.’ He leaned in knowingly, wagging his finger. ‘Fun fact – his other hotel in Monaco is called the Underworld.’

  ‘No, really?’

  ‘No, not really. It’s called the Monaco Grand. But that would be cool though, right?’

  ‘Anyway. There’s lots of information about Baptiste because he lives a sort of celebrity, party lifestyle. Used to date a supermodel apparently.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Helen looked at him with faux exasperation.

  ‘I did! And I bet you knew that because I bet you googled me the way you googled this guy. Come on, admit it. She actually turned out to be a fucking bitch to be honest with you.’

  ‘I can neither confirm nor deny having googled you. Anyway, what’s most interesting, I think, is this. When you type the three names into Google together – Shepherd, Clancy, Baptiste – you get their research papers, the Wellcome Institute, et cetera et cetera… and then you get…some anomalies… But scroll down a few pages, and eventually you get to this.’ She turned the page. ‘Grantchester United Reformed Church. It’s just outside Cambridge. Or was – it doesn’t appear to exist anymore. But look, on the Grantchester village website there’s this report from their annual AGM, July 1999. And here’s the photo of their central committee – I printed it out.’ She rummaged around until she found the paper, and showed him a slightly pixelated colour photo of a group of around twenty people squinting into the sun. Standing together on the back row were Shepherd, Clancy, and Baptiste.

  ‘So at one time, at least, they were all Christian. Practising Christians. Reformed Christians.’

  Mikko studied the photo. ‘Actually that Genome guy Clancy didn’t say if he was religious or not.’

  It was almost dark when their taxi arrived in Monaco. November in the south of France offered a balmy twenty-one degrees Celsius, and both Helen and Mikko enjoyed the sensation of relative warmth on their skins after the bitterness of the northern European winter. The Paradise Hotel perched on one of the craggy corner clifftops of Monaco, a pink alabaster monolith with a neon red sign that began flashing as soon as the sun began to set, and continued flashing until dawn. The red flashing was accompanied by a slight electrical buzz that would irritate anyone trying to sleep in the rooms nearby. However, it was expected that guests at the Paradiso would sleep mainly during the daytime, the night-time being reserved for the restaurant, the rooftop club, then the casino. As they moved through the revolving doors to enter the hotel lobby, Helen was mesmerised by the fleet of luxury cars on display outside – Lamborghinis in fluorescent colours, Hummer jeeps in ghostly matt paint – and she accidentally swung round in the doors a second time. Mikko laughed, ‘What, you’ve never seen a Lamborghini before? I have like two of those at home.’

  ‘Do you really?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I do not. Metal musicians do not make any money at all. Unless they’re in Metallica.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means,’ said Helen vaguely, looking around wide-eyed and child-like at the ostentation surrounding her. From the reception desk they could see the entrance to the casino; there was no door, just a wide entrance like a gaping mouth that led into a red carpeted windowless space so vast she couldn’t see the end of it, so that she imagined it must be cut into the very mountainside itself.

  Mikko had booked two single rooms on the same floor, and they parted to deposit their things and prepare for the evening. Helen threw her bag on the bed and sat down next to it, marvelling at the thought of a real duvet instead of a rough blanket, of using hotel toiletries that weren’t carbolic soap, of not having to wake up at five-thirty the next morning for Lauds. But I am here for research. I am an eschatologist on the trail of a theological mystery, possibly on the trail of a murderer, and I am completely in control of this situation.

  A few minutes later Mikko knocked on her door and they headed up to the rooftop bar where, she had read on gossip websites, Laurent Baptiste was wont to permanently hang out. The rooftop was filling up with beautiful bodies. A DJ was playing house music, and lights flashed. Despite the warm weather, flaming torches had been lit at intervals, bathing people’s faces in half-light. They were high up here, and were able to survey the realm of Monaco laid out before them; a whole country clinging to a tiny hillside, a retreating army of high-rises forced onto the coast with nowhere further to go. Chased across the mountains and teetering at the water’s edge. Peach and silver skyscrapers crammed on top of each other like one enormous piece of quartz, shards erupting towards the sky. The principality was as a hydra, continually sprouting concrete and glass. Mikko watched an impossibly beautiful woman walk past.

  ‘This definitely feels like Paradise,’ he said.

  Helen felt more uncomfortable than she had ever been, far more so than at the heavy metal concerts. She supposed the atmosphere here was what you might call sleazy, and at least, she supposed, nobody would be leering at her. And yet she still wished she was wearing make-up like the other girls, had her hair highlighted, wasn’t wearing these awful leather sandals and charity shop dress. She had lingered in the duty-free shop in the airport, considering whether to buy some product or other to improve herself, but not having any idea what that would be, or any money to buy it. They perched at the bar, and Mikko ordered himself a whisky and her a glass of champagne.

  ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea, Mikko? I don’t seem to tolerate alcohol very well.’

  ‘It is definitely a good idea. Cheers.’

  They looked around but there was no-one who fit the description of Laurent Baptiste, so they sat for a while, contentedly people-watching. And how enthralling it was; she wondered where on earth in the world all these people had come from, and how they had so much money. After a while, two young women tottered over and stood at the bar next to them. They wore tiny shorts that appeared to Helen to be made of plastic. The heels of their shoes must have been over six inches tall, she thought, while those breasts could not possibly be real. They were fascinating and she found it hard not to stare, but Mikko had already turned to them and asked one of them a question.

  ‘Excuse me, miss. Do you know where we can find Monsieur Laurent Baptiste?’

  The woman began to speak in stilted English with a heavy Russian accent, so Mikko switched into fluent-sounding Russian and began an animated conversation with the two women that seemed, to Helen, to last several minutes. She noticed and pondered the bizarre streak of jealousy that she felt. Mikko finally turned back to Helen.

  ‘So, she said, amongst other things,’ he smiled teasingly, ‘that when Baptiste is not here, he’s usually on his boat. It’s down there in the marina, and she said there’s usually a party going on so we can’t miss it. Called the S… something beginning with S… Soterion, that’s it.’

  ‘Of course’ said Helen.
‘What else. Soterion means salvation in Greek.’

  ‘Let’s fucking go then.’

  ***

  They walked down the winding roads and stone staircases that took the city state down to the yacht marina, which was overlooked by the royal palace. Here the most expensive yachts in the world had been herded in, like prize specimens in an enclosure. They bobbed almost imperceptibly in the dark; giant wedding cakes on an unstable tray. They were somehow ungainly and bovine, with decks piled upon decks, some with helicopters absurdly balanced on top, almost tied on. One even had a jeep precariously balanced on one side of the deck, causing it to lean unsteadily. This was a competition in which size mattered more than anything. Most of the boats were quiet and dark, locked up for the winter, but further down the jetty, in pride of place outside the Monaco Yacht Club, they could see lights and hear voices, laughter, music. When they got closer they saw the gold lettering of the ‘M/Y Soterion’ lit up, a red carpet on the dockside, flanked by a uniformed sailor and a security guard who was visibly armed.

  Mikko went up to them. ‘Good evening, sir. We are looking for Laurent Baptiste. Is he in?’

  Both men automatically stepped forward to block the entrance to the gangway.

  ‘Mr Baptiste is not available right now, sorry. You will have to leave.’

  Mikko put up his hands to show that no hostility was intended. ‘OK, OK, we’ll leave. But do me a favour, just tell him it’s about the OS1. Go on, humour me.’

  The sailor and the security guard whispered to each other, and the sailor went inside. A couple of minutes later he came back out on to the deck and called, ‘Please, come aboard.’

  Mikko and Helen stepped gingerly along the narrow wooden gangplank onto the boat, where they were asked to remove their shoes, and a door was slid open into the yacht’s main living area. It took them a few moments to get their bearings in this unfamiliar place which had a dizzying amount of gold and chrome, including a floor-to-ceiling pole, and odd, disorienting soft lighting. The sofas were coated in red velvet and, it appeared, so were the walls, while the thick, plush carpeting was black. There were several seating areas, occupied by groups of impossibly glamorous people, and in one corner a DJ was absurdly playing dance music far too quietly. It was immediately obvious who Laurent Baptiste was. He was sitting on a long sofa at the back of the room, flanked by two very young and very tall women with expressionless faces. He looked as bored as they did, and was clearly drunk. On the low table in front of him was a bucket of champagne and a scattering of glasses, vodka and whisky bottles, ashtrays. He didn’t get up but called and beckoned to Mikko and Helen. ‘Welcome, friends. Please, sit down.’ He spoke perfect English but with a strong, almost affected French accent. He had lustrous, thick dark hair, and a slightly unkempt beard and moustache. His body was that of someone who had probably been very muscular in the past, but who had softened to flab and paunch. ‘So what can I do for you? You who know about OS1? Let me guess, you are looking for the serial killer Andrew Shepherd. But you are not from the police, I see. Unless they have vastly improved their undercover disguises.’