The Sun Will Still Shine Tomorrow (33 page)

Sheila Moor looked across, smiled, or was it a frown?

“I know what you’re thinking, Ashley: if only we could get those papers off the island.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. A big mistake on my behalf, I admit, but you have to understand I just didn’t think it were all possible.”

She continued. “It lists every Keepers’ Lodge in the UK and every member. Thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands.”

“So you’re saying we’re pretty well fucked then?”

Ashley and Sheila Moor laughed together. A much needed injection of humour at an hour of desperation.

“They’ll have moved the papers by now, though my guess is they’ll still be on the island. They’re funny that way: everything is here, the spiritual headquarters, so to speak.”

“But it would be crazy to keep them here after everything that has–”

“But nobody knows what’s happened,” Sheila Moor interrupted. “The only two non-Brothers that know what’s happened are you and me, Ashley, and we’re pretty well fucked as you so eloquently put it. Look at us. We’re shackled up like dogs in a locked dungeon twenty feet below ground. Who the hell’s going to help us escape?”

Ashley had to admit it was looking fairly bleak. Where was John Markham? Surely he should be here by now. The evidence they now held between them and the pathologist and those papers: God knows where they were. Surely they could be located, the island wasn’t that big. He was sure John would be here soon.

Sheila Moor was silent once more. She was contemplating… thinking.

She was thinking that there was no way on earth that they were going to get her into the sea. The thought terrified her. The phobia had kicked in as a five-year-old walking on the beach with her father one winter’s day.

Sheila remembered they’d been collecting firewood and sea coal washed up on the beach. The young girl had been throwing sticks into the sea as the waves washed in and out. Running down to chase them as far as she dared then racing back up the beach as they came in again. She’d tripped.

She fell face first onto the sand and been enveloped in a freezing cold blanket of salt water. She’d managed to scramble back to her feet but the natural incline of the beach and the pull of the waves had tipped her backwards into deeper water. The icy cold water of the North Sea had filled her nostrils and lungs as she fought against the hundreds of hands that were dragging her out to sea. Her clothes were cold and heavy, her red Wellington boots filled with water weighing her down. She’d gasped for oxygen as her small head came out of the sea momentarily as she tumbled and rolled. Still the invisible hands clawed and dragged her down, further out to sea. She’d opened her eyes to get her bearings and the salty water bit into the soft tissue like a thousand red-hot needles.

It was no good, she couldn’t fight the hands any longer… too many… so cold.

Her father ran in waist-deep and grabbed at an ankle as it thrust out of the water. He’d pulled the unconscious child from the water and luckily a district nurse out walking her dog was able to revive her.

Sheila Moor had never so much as paddled in the sea ever since.

And – she wouldn’t give them the pleasure of an easy cover-up.

John Markham heard the commotion first. Faint, but nevertheless screaming. A man screaming.

“Listen,” he shouted as Roddam and Jacob Moor looked up from the table they were sitting at with the policemen, plotting and scheming.

“There it is again.”

Jacob Moor cupped his hand to his ear. “It’s coming from the basement; it sounds like our prisoner.”

Roddam grinned. “He’s freaked out, an ex-copper in a cell, their worst nightmare, he’s lost his head.”

“No, not Ashley Clarke. Something’s wrong,” John Markham announced as he made for the door that led down to the temple.

Another scream, louder, the word
help
and Ashley Clarke’s unmistakable panic-stricken cries.

John Markham took the stairs three at a time, sprinted through the temple and over to the cell door. He stared through the barred opening. Ashley Clarke stood in the corner of the room pulling furiously at his shackled wrists. The skin had broken on both wrists and blood streaked his arms. The focus of his desperate attention sat motionless less than four feet away.

Markham pulled at the cell door. It was locked. He turned and ran back through the temple and was met halfway by Jacob Moor, Stephen Kyle and Father Thompson, behind them the policeman, and, at the back, John Roddam.

“The key to the cell,” he screamed.”Where’s the fucking key?” “My briefcase,” replied Jacob, “upstairs, my briefcase.” John Markham didn’t hang around; he barged past the startled group

and ran up the stairs into the bar.

Jacob Moor peered into the cell and watched the last few seconds of his wife’s life ebb away. Father Thompson had collapsed and two of the policemen were trying to revive him. In less than a minute John Markham had located the briefcase, cursed as he realised it had a combination lock and dashed back down through the temple and over to the cell door.

“The combination, Jacob, what’s the combination?” he screamed in panic.

Jacob Moor grabbed the case from John Markham and for a second his mind went blank. He stared up at John Markham, oblivious to all around him. John Markham slapped him in the face.

“The combination, man! The combination.”

Jacob Moor shook his head slowly and John Markham grabbed the case from him. He smashed the case against the corner of the stone wall. The leather-covered plywood split open instantly. He took the case in two hands and pulled it apart like cardboard. The brass key fell to the floor and John Roddam lunged at it, inserting it into the lock. In an instant the cell door was flung open.

Nobody made a move towards Sheila Moor’s lifeless body.

It was too late.

Everyone knew instinctively.

The heavy chain that had held her for the last few hours of her life suspended her body from her delicate neck, her backside three inches from the cell floor. Her face was swollen, blue in colour, her tongue bloated and protruding from her mouth. It was as if her eyes were being forced from their sockets, bloodshot and enlarged, having been starved of oxygen for so long.

“Oh, my God,” cried John Markham, as he sank to his knees.

Ashley spoke in between the tears. “John … thank fuck… where have you been, for Christ’s sake?”

John Markham didn’t answer, didn’t meet his ex-partner’s eyes, couldn’t meet his eyes and at that very moment the terrible truth dawned on Ashley Clarke.

John Roddam was thinking. This time the suicide was genuine. But two suicides on Holy Island in less than a week? Someone somewhere would want some questions answered, that was for sure. John Roddam had a horrible sickly feeling that he just couldn’t shake off.

It was déjà vu for Ashley Clarke.

Sheila Moor’s death had brought it all back, nightmare after nightmare throughout the hours of darkness. He thought he hadn’t slept but then again he must have; how else could his mind paint so vivid a picture?

The tramp outside the tube station waiting… wondering… questioning his judgement again and again.

July 7th 2005.The blasts were known as the 7/7 bombings, a series of coordinated terrorist bomb blasts that hit London’s public transport system during the morning rush hour.

And Ashley might have prevented them.

Just before nine in the morning, the three bombs exploded within a minute of each other on three London Underground trains. Nearly an hour later a fourth bomb on a bus in Tavistock Square.

Fifty-two commuters killed, seven hundred injured.

And the images, body parts strewn across the street… the Underground… and on buses. Lifeless corpses of young people…Always the young.

Students and young professionals with their life mapped out ahead of them. A life they would never see.

And the crystal clear image of Sheila Moor wrapping the chain around her neck. He’d realised immediately what she was doing and he’d begged and pleaded with her to the point of tears for her to change her mind. She’d wrapped the chain around her neck twice, her right wrist barely able to move as it seemed to be glued to the side of her face. She’d been propped up against the wall her legs bent, balancing on the balls of her feet. She snuggled her back flush against the wall then one by one stretched her legs out straight. She’d gasped as the chain pulled tight.

Ashley had screamed at her. He’d wanted to offer an alternative but couldn’t think of any and as her brain was gradually starved of oxygen a ghostly smile crept across her face. Peaceful… at rest… no more deceit… lies… torture.

And as Ashley witnessed the gruesome spectacle he wondered… just wondered if he could turn back the clock would he have done anything different… just like London.

A dream, Claire Macbeth with him in the hours of darkness talking softly and food and water and a glimmer of hope… explaining the facts, buckets of tears and begging forgiveness. A dream... only a dream.

John Markham sat in the cell as Ashley opened his eyes. It must be morning, he thought to himself, no natural light; he wasn’t sure.

“Morning, Ash, sleep well?”

It was a stupid question. Ashley glared at his ex-colleague, his one-time friend.

“You too, Holy John, you’re one of them.”

John Markham sat on the far side of the twelve-foot by twelve-foot room as if wanting to maintain a safe distance between them. He nodded his head.

“Afraid so, Ashley, I’m afraid so. Initiated at twenty-one years of age, a sort of family tradition.”

“So you’re a killer too.”

John Markham sighed, raised himself up to his feet with an effort that suggested he’d been sitting in the same position for hours.

“I prefer to think of myself as an enforcer, Ashley, not so much a killer. I see nothing wrong with what we do ridding our island… his island… of the low lifes of this land. Society’s gone too soft, Ashley. How many times have you done your job and got the bad guys to court only for a judge to give them a slap on the wrist and they’re back on the streets before you can spit?”

Ashley’s mouth was dry; he’d give anything for a hot drink and a toothbrush. He rolled his tongue round his mouth desperately trying to produce some saliva.

“We’ve evolved, John, we have a system. It may not be the best in the world but it works.”

“No it doesn’t, Ashley, it doesn’t work. We’ve got murderers and child killers and paedophiles walking every street in every town in the land. It doesn’t work.”

“So your solution is to murder them, is that so?”

John Markham smiled.”An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the good book, Ashley, the greatest book ever written.”

“Written by charlatans and fraudsters, John, thousands of years ago just like the books on Greek mythology, Hinduism and Buddhism. It’s all rubbish, John.”

“No… it’s not, Ashley.”

“It is. Religion was an invention to control the people, keep them in check. The priests would tell them if they didn’t follow the good book and the written word they’d meet a fate worse than death. A good Catholic priest will instil the fear of the devil into a five-year-old child, tell him if he so much as farts on a Sunday he’ll end up in hell and be tortured with fire for eternity. The good book, John? Don’t make me laugh.”

“Don’t listen to him, Brother.”

Jacob Moor stood in the doorway of the cell, walked slowly towards John Markham. He placed an arm around his shoulders.

“Can’t you see what he’s trying to do, John? One voice in the wilderness, one man who claims he knows it all. Atheists, nonbelievers, John, the world is full of them.”

“Thinkers, John, “Ashley cried out.”People who take a look at religion and form their own viewpoint, people who view the scriptures for what they are… stories. They’re no different to the stories about Norwegian trolls and flying horses and unicorns and fairies at the bottom of the garden, but you don’t believe in them, do you?”

Ashley continued. “But you believe that a figure in the image of a man with a big white beard sits on a cloud and sees everything that happens in the world and listens to every prayer that everyone utters in the world and grants their wishes. I spent fucking hours on my hands and knees, John, as a little kid petrified of the man.”

“Ignore him, John. We know the truth, don’t we?” Jacob squeezed hard. John Markham gazed, childlike at him and smiled.

“Sounds too much like Santa Claus to me, John, a big man with a white beard giving the kids the presents they ask for, understanding every mother tongue of every land and every country in the world
.
Do you still believe in Santa then, John? You sad bastard.”

Jacob Moor took a step forward and aimed a kick in the ribs of Ashley Clarke. Ashley yelped like a stricken dog as the air was forced from his lungs.

“Blasphemer,” Jacob screamed.”I’ll not have that sort of thing under my roof.”

Ashley broke out in cold sweat, breathed in deeply several times.

John Markham stared at Jacob Moor, waited for him to continue, a pearl of wisdom… reassurance. This time Jacob Moor did not deliver a well-timed and thought out reply. He did not deliver one of his marvellous hour-long speeches that John Markham had enjoyed so much over the years. Jacob Moor had the power to persuade.