The Resurrection of the Body (6 page)

T
he Police Arrest Jim

It was nearly midnight that evening when I received a phone call from the police station to say that Jim Jeffries was there helping them with their enquiries, and that he had specifically asked them to telephone me and let me know.

I was puzzled and taken aback. I groped around in the dark for the flex to the bedside lamp and finally managed to switch it on. Harriet too was awake, wide-eyed and
staring
at me. ‘Does he want me to come up there?’ I said.

‘No, sir, I don’t think there would be any point. You wouldn’t be able to talk to him.’

‘Is he under arrest?’

‘Yes.’

‘This isn’t to do with the murder, is it?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not able to give you that information.’

I tried to think rapidly. I suppose I was angry and
confused
at having been woken up so abruptly. ‘Please let me speak to Detective Chief Inspector Stone.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I was just passing on a message.
Detective
Chief Inspector Stone is not available.’

I hung up. I turned to Harriet and said, ‘They’ve arrested Jim.’

‘Why?’ She sat up, running a hand through her tangled hair, and reached for the glass of water by the bed.

‘Perhaps they haven’t found anyone else to arrest. They’ve got to be seen to be doing something.’ I was also, of course, thinking of Sidney. He couldn’t have been
stupid
enough to inform the police, could he? And I didn’t think he had any particular reason to cause trouble for Jim.

I couldn’t go back to sleep; neither could Harriet. We lay in the darkness, tossing and turning. She lay close to me and after a while I started to stroke her back and then her thighs; she caressed me in return, also wanting to make love. There was a particular tenderness between us that night, as if she sensed my anxiety and wanted to comfort me and I, too, wanted to reassure her. Finally
satisfied
by one another, we fell asleep in the early hours, Harriet lying curled up in my arms.

In the morning at breakfast time I rang the police
station
and was told that Jim had been released just twenty minutes before. He must have come straight to us, because as soon as I had put the phone down the doorbell
rang. Harriet let him in, and we went into the study. The children were running round, making a terrible noise, and Harriet was screaming at them because their breakfast was going cold.

Jim looked terrible. His face looked grey with lack of sleep and his clothes were filthy. He had an ugly bruise just under his left eye.

‘The police did this,’ he said, pointing to it. ‘I want to know what’s going on. Who put them on to me?
Somebody
in the church put them on to me. Who was it?’

I was shocked at his appearance, but I wanted to hear the whole story first. I said, ‘Please, Jim, sit down.’

‘Who was it?’ He was insistent.

‘I can’t answer that question, Jim.’

‘Why?’

‘Jim, calm down, and let’s talk about this. If you haven’t done anything wrong, you haven’t got anything to be afraid of.’

I regretted saying this at once. In the first place, we know only too well that many innocent people go to jail because the police feel they must make a case against someone. Second, it was all too likely that Jim had not been going straight, and that while I didn’t believe that he was capable of murder, he might have been up to other things that were no good.

He waved his finger in the air. ‘If I find out who it was I’ll kill him.’

‘Well, that’s why I can’t tell you, Jim.’

‘Was it you?’ He leaned forward suddenly,
threateningly
. I shook my head.

‘Why don’t you sit down and tell me what has happened.’

He finally sat down in the old armchair. He told me that the police had twice been to talk to him about his movements on the morning of Good Friday. He had told them he was in bed at home and that he’d had a touch of flu. But when they had checked with his landlady, she had told them that she had definitely heard him going out, and that she remembered this because she was surprised he would go out so early on a bank holiday. They had searched his room, and found that there was no bread knife, in fact, no sharp knife at all.

‘I told them I always ate sliced bread and I never bought a joint of meat, but they kept going on and on about it. I told them it wasn’t any of their business. Then they asked me why I was lying to them. I said OK, I had gone out, and that I had gone for a walk in the park, and that there weren’t any witnesses, and that’s why I didn’t want to tell them because I knew they were trying to pin this murder on me.

‘Well, then they said they wanted me to come in and talk to them and I said, no way. They went on for hours like this and finally they said they were arresting me. I know better than to start a fight with them, that’s just playing into their hands, so I went with them. One of them just hit me here, for no reason, just as I was getting into the car.’

I said nothing. It was more than likely that Jim had resisted or provoked them, but I didn’t want to suggest this, having no proof, and knowing what had happened to
Mercy. Jim stood up, went over to the window and stared out. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, as if he were afraid that in his anger he would be unable to control them.

‘I really wasn’t up to anything, Richard, I swear to you. Can’t a man just walk round by himself thinking without being arrested? I was thinking about if I should come to church or not. I wanted to come. It’s warm, and there’s company. But I didn’t feel I should come if I didn’t believe in it all. What do you think, Richard?’

I said softly, ‘I think you should have come.’ I was stricken with the realisation that Jim, in his way, was more honest than I was. He felt he had to believe certain things before coming to take communion, while I
consecrated
the bread and wine without even knowing deep down what I thought I was doing. How could I tell him what was in my heart?

He turned and looked at me. His eyes were very sad, and suddenly he wasn’t angry any more. He said, in a quiet voice, ‘Anyway, they haven’t got anything on me. They can’t prove a thing, can they? They had to let me go. You’ll back me up, won’t you, if it comes to anything? You’ll give me a good reference.’

‘Yes, of course I will.’

‘Thanks for listening.’

I showed him to the door.

T
he Painting in the Church

When I crossed the road to the church later that morning to get ready for our Wednesday service, I noticed a police car across the road. My step quickened, expecting some news, but no one was waiting by the door to my office. I checked in the playgroup hall, but the mothers told me that no one had been asking for me. I unlocked the door between my office and the main church and there, at the back of the hall, standing in front of the painting of the baptism, was Detective Chief Inspector Stone.

I crossed the gleaming polished floor and went to stand beside him.

Stone looked straight ahead, not acknowledging my presence at first. Then he asked, ‘Who did this painting?’

‘A man called Durfield.’

‘Did he do the frescoes?’ He waved his arm at the
pictures
on the wall.

‘They’re not frescoes. They were actually painted on canvas and fixed to the wall. Yes, he did them all.’

‘I have to say you were right. The resemblance is quite remarkable.’ He took from his pocket a photograph of the corpse. The face had that odd, disembodied look which even in a photograph tells you that the person is dead. This is the greatest argument in favour of the soul that I can think of. When people are alive, even if they are gravely ill and in a coma, there is still something in their faces, some tension, some spark. Probably a doctor could explain it to me, could give a reason, something to do with rigor mortis or the configuration of the muscles, I don’t know, but a dead person is undoubtedly and unmistakably dead, even in a photograph.

When they let me view my mother’s dead body, at the age of six, I said at once, ‘But where has she gone?’ As a child I could see immediately that she was no longer there. I have felt the same thing, again and again, when I have gone to look at a dead person. Now I stared at the photo of the man with fascination.

‘We are doing an artist’s impression for the papers,’ said Stone. ‘I thought I might ask the artist chappie to come up and have a look at this.’

I said I had no objection.

‘This man, Durfield,’ said Stone. ‘Did he use a live model?’

‘I believe he might have done.’

‘Could I speak to him? Just on the rare off-chance, you know, we have to follow up every angle, that he might have been related to the deceased.’

I had a sudden intuition, then, that this business had also got to Chief Inspector Stone. I could see that he
didn’t
know which way to turn, that his investigation was getting nowhere, and that he was seeking a rational
explanation
for all this as desperately as I was.

‘I can look for his number. I must have a record of it somewhere. I believe he was living in Suffolk. He must be quite an age by now; I do hope that he hasn’t died, but I’m sure I would know of that.’

He followed me into my office and I went through the drawers of my desk. I found the address and telephone number and gave it to Stone. Then I said, ‘Perhaps it would be better if I spoke to him. It might be difficult for him, talking to the police.’

Stone nodded. I dialled the number myself. I was lucky, he was in; a rich, frail voice answered me.

‘Is that James Durfield?’

He confirmed that it was.

‘This is Richard Page, the vicar at London Fields … you remember? I wanted to ask you … the model of the painting of the baptism of Christ. Was it a real model that you used?’

He said that it was painted from his head. It was, as he remembered, modelled on the head of Christ in Piero della Francesca’s ‘Resurrection’ which is in the National Gallery.

It is curious how, in all ages and in every different style
of sculpture or painting, the face of Christ is instantly recognisable. It is something to do with the thin,
elongated
face, the long, straight, high-ridged nose, the heavy eyes, the sensual mouth. Add to this long hair and a beard and the image is complete; so familiar that we feel that if we saw him we would recognise him in the street.

I thanked Durfield very much, told him how much the pictures meant to me, asked him, as an afterthought, if he would mind writing about them for the parish magazine.

I hung up and looked at Stone.

‘Did you hear that?’

‘No.’

‘It was from a painting in the National Gallery.’ I wrote the artist and title down on a piece of paper and handed it to him. ‘Perhaps you could go and study that next.’

He made an angry sound in his throat, almost like a dog growling, and then turned abruptly on his heel, and left the room.

T
he Article Appears

To my relief the article in the
Hackney Gazette
on
Thursday
outlined the story of the murder and the missing body, but very little of my interview with the young journalist. In fact he had reported my words rather accurately. I spread the newspaper out across the desk in my office at the church. There was an artist’s impression of the dead man, but I didn’t think it was a good likeness. The police were urging anyone who knew or had seen this man to step forward.

Over the last few days, several members of the church had come up to me and asked what I thought about these strange events. Most of them said it lightly, laughing, almost making a joke of it, but I could see that underneath
many were perturbed. Mary, clearly, hadn’t kept what she had seen to herself. One or two people asked me if I thought Mary was all right, because she was sure that what had happened meant some special sign had been sent to her, or to the church. Tessa told me that she told the women’s prayer group all about it at their meeting on Wednesday.

Tessa stood in front of me now, peering at the paper. She was in a hurry, her hair was disarrayed, and her trousers bulged oddly because she hadn’t taken off her bicycle clips. She said that she was a little anxious about all this. People in the church were taking different sides and wanted to know more clearly what I believed, she said. Liberalism was all very well, but I was aware, like her, that there were many people in the church who did have a more simple and more literal faith. I was always careful in my sermons not to advocate too strongly one view or the other, because I knew that my church was
particularly
mixed, containing recent immigrants, black
people
who had been born and raised here, poor white East Enders and well-to-do professionals and intellectuals. When speaking, I always tried to find the points of
agreement
and not to cause too much controversy. I knew that I was forever in danger of alienating one group in
satisfying
another.

No one had ever taken me to task about my sermons, and I often wondered whether that was because no one really concentrated on them. As long as I had a good beginning and a safe conclusion, the likelihood was that not too many listened to what went on in between. But
perhaps, if the congregation were looking to me for some leadership, maybe to quell their understandable fears that something supernatural was going on, it was time for me to speak out clearly. Certainly I would give it some thought.

I looked up at Tessa, who was hovering near the door. ‘Perhaps I should say something,’ I said. ‘If not in a
sermon
, then possibly in the parish magazine.’

She turned back towards me, urging me in her quiet way. ‘I think it would be a good idea.’

‘Are you in a terrible hurry? You don’t want to have a cup of tea?’

Tessa glanced at the door, then at her watch, and then smiled. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but I’ll just have to lock up my bicycle.’

While she went outside I boiled the kettle and poured the tea. Tessa came back and sat on the edge of the
armchair
.

‘What did Mary say at the prayer group?’ I asked her.

Tessa said, ‘She felt that God was sending her a special message. She said that whatever anyone else said, she knew when she saw this man’s face that it was the face of our saviour. She said that she was a little hurt that you didn’t really believe her.’ Tessa paused, looking at her hands. ‘She said that you thought it might have been the man’s brother.’

Then, as I sat with the warm mug of tea in my hands, I realised that something very odd had happened. It hadn’t occurred to me at all that Mary might have had some kind of vision. Instead, I had taken it as a statement of absolute
reality that Mary had seen a man who looked like the dead man. I felt myself going hot all over with a kind of embarrassment.

‘What’s the matter, Richard?’

I sipped my tea. ‘Oh, I was just thinking that I hadn’t handled Mary very well, that’s all. I must think about it, and have a talk with her.’

Tessa got up from her chair, put the empty mug down on the tray, and came over to me. She put her hand on my arm and squeezed it gently. ‘Oh, I’m sure you handled her much better than I did,’ she said. ‘But do write that article. Do you promise?’

‘I promise.’

She took her hand off my arm, and hovered in the room for a moment. The faint aura of some perfume hung about her, and I was reminded for a moment of Harriet. I looked up at Tessa and smiled. Then she suddenly said, ‘I must go,’ backing away from me and nearly colliding with the coffee table. She was gone in an instant, leaving me to my thoughts, and for some reason which I couldn’t
understand
I felt abominably uncomfortable.