The room was empty but for a workbench, in heavy wood, which had survived the blaze. On it were various pieces of laboratory equipment. Most of the glass was smashed except for a spherical jar, a rack of test tubes, and what looked like a filter. ‘Big boy’s chemistry set,’ said Hinde.
‘Drugs – it’s a factory, right?’
Hinde shook his head. ‘Don’t think so, Peter. Fire Investigations Unit took some stuff away, but they know
‘Right – thanks for the heads up.’ Shaw looked round the basement walls. Up against one was the shadow of a set of shelves, not horizontal but criss-cross, creating a pattern of lozenge shapes, like a garden trellis. Within each of the spaces was the ghostly outline of the bottom of a wine bottle.
‘Château Dosser,’ said Hinde, laughing. ‘But not a single bottle. And before you ask – this isn’t a wine-making kit, or a still.’
Shaw filed the image away in his mental library.
‘Find much?’ asked Valentine, intrigued, when Shaw was back in the street.
‘A chemistry set, but no sign of drugs, and what looks like the remains of a wine cellar – long abandoned. So no – nothing that makes sense, anyway.’
They’d arrived at the church and Shaw cricked his neck looking up at the lime-green cross. ‘Where’s this Kennedy, then?’ he asked, checking his watch, surprised it was still just 12.58 a.m.
Valentine shrugged. ‘Squad car rang – Kennedy’s pretty tired, so they stopped for a tea at one of the all-night places on the Tuesday Market. Should be any minute.’
There was a light in the downstairs window, but as they watched it went out. Then a bedroom light came on, for a few seconds only, before it too went out.
A police squad car took the T-junction turn at 60 m.p.h. and slid into the kerb. Liam Kennedy got out, picking the sweaty T-shirt away from his narrow chest. He stood looking at the church, fidgeting, switching his weight from foot to foot.
Shaw nodded. ‘You OK? We need to talk – briefly.’
‘I need to check inside,’ said Kennedy. ‘We could talk then. I’ve got a room here, in the basement.’ He broadcast a smile, which Shaw judged he thought was charming.
The main doors of the Sacred Heart of Mary, under a high-pointed neo-Gothic arch, were locked, but along the side of the building ran a path to a single door over which hung a light bulb in a metal frame, like a miniature iron maiden.
Kennedy laid a finger to his lips and pushed the door open. The nave was unlit, a little moonlight struggling through the sickly blues and reds of the Victorian stained glass. Shaw stood, waiting for the subtle jigsaw of greys and blacks to form itself into an image. The smell was pungent: human sweat, lavatory cleaner, and something
Kennedy stepped close. ‘The hostel – number 6 – is home to only four men at any one time. It’s designed to provide a bridge – a real home, for a month, maybe three – for those who’ve got themselves a job. Here at the church we look after the less fortunate. A dozen, twenty a night. We do our best.’ He held out his hands to indicate that, while that was not enough, it didn’t mean God wasn’t pleased with him.
Shaw tried to keep his reactions to Kennedy as neutral as he could, but he recognized it would be a struggle. In his short career he’d found more evil than good in organized religion, more exploitation than salvation. And he couldn’t suppress the question: what were this young man’s motives for working here, amongst the broken? Perhaps, he thought, he was broken too.
The front sets of pews in the church had been removed, stacked to one side, and in their place mattresses laid out in two neat rows. On each lay a man; most of them just covered in a sheet, wrapped by constant movement into mummies. One lay on the cool wooden floor, only his hand left on the mattress. The outer door closed behind Shaw with a thud on an automatic spring, and one of the figures stirred, crying out ‘Slainte! ’ – an Irish toast.
They followed Kennedy behind the altar into a small room. A table with green baize had a rip in it, and the unshaded light bulb made the bare, unpapered walls look stark. A row of pegs was empty except for a surplice and a Tesco bag. In one corner stood a large metal filing
Kennedy opened a narrow door with a key, flicked a switch, and turned his body slightly to one side with practised ease so that he could drop down a flight of stairs.
‘It’s a bit hot,’ he said, greeting them at the bottom. Behind him was a lagged boiler, oil-fired, ticking in the silence. ‘We can’t shut it down because it provides hot water – for here, and the house. In winter, it’s snug – in summer, I try and keep the skylights open.’
At ceiling level there was a line of frosted-glass windows in one wall, heavily barred and letter-box narrow. The boiler room was neat and swept, as was a corridor which led away down the length of the church above, lit by three more bare light bulbs. Off it was a door into a bedsit, with a kitchen and toilet to one side. The narrow horizontal window here was open too, held up by a wooden stay, revealing the leaves of a fig tree in the graveyard above.
‘It’s not the crypt of St Paul’s, is it?’ said Shaw.
‘It’s home,’ said Kennedy. In one corner stood an easel, half a dozen twisted oil-paint tubes in the wooden gutter. A light sketch in pencil covered a piece of cartridge paper, the lines too thin to reveal the subject. There was a desk and a computer – a slim white laptop. Kennedy touched it like an icon. ‘I’m setting up a website for the church. I can do that – design and so on. I’ve done it before.’
He tucked his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans. ‘How can I help?’ he asked, the accent leafy-suburb London. ‘Ask anything – I won’t sleep, not now. Those poor men,’ he added, his eyes pressed quickly closed.
‘Aidan has some very serious burns; he’s still unconscious. I think there are concerns the shock may be too much – although he’s still young, and strong.’ Kennedy looked away, his voice catching. ‘Pete’s got minor burns, and the smoke’s really got his lungs, but he’ll be fine. He’s under sedation.’
‘Four beds, you said. Where are the other two men?’ asked Valentine, noticing a crucifix set above the door. The last time he’d been in a church had been for a funeral, and the memory, suppressed for so long, was making him anxious. He didn’t recall the service itself, or anything anyone had said about his wife, but he could catch the precise smell, a kind of polished dampness. It was there again now, like a spirit.
‘Well – Pete was only stopping a few nights – he’s one of our old boys.’ Kennedy laughed, but didn’t get any response. ‘He was here last year, in the summer, but he’s up on the coast now at St John’s, Hunstanton. And doing very well. He had to come back to Lynn – probate on a will, I think; I don’t know the details. So there are actually three places vacant – Aidan’s the only permanent resident at the moment. But we can’t push people who aren’t ready. The hostel is supposed to be a haven, you see, a safe place. So there’s a process: criteria,’ he added, proud of the word.
‘A process you’re in charge of?’ asked Shaw.
‘It’s my job,’ said Kennedy. ‘I’m the hostel warden,’ he said, puffing up. He stood up a bit straighter, too, knowing he’d just taken responsibility for something that