He put the car in its garage alongside the vicarage. He'd have to have a word with Joseph be more firm with him. He hated any form of unpleasantness, though. And, of course, Joseph had worshipped here all his life, whereas he was a newcomer, relatively speaking.
No, he'd teach by example. Jesus washed His disciples' feet; he, Gerry Wilde, would strike the flag. Then he would leave it for Joseph to put away. Maybe that would impress upon the old man that he meant what he said. He took his tower key from its hook in the kitchen and set off across the graveyard to the church.
In the ringing chamber the six hemp ropes, with their coloured sallies, hung through the guides in the ceiling. The vicar noted that one rope was shorter than the others. That meant that the big tenor bell was in the vertical position, on the backstroke, ready to be set swinging with the minimum of effort at the next bell-ringing session. He locked the chamber door behind him and put the key in his pocket. If he was going up the tower he didn't want anybody touching the ropes. One ton of bell was poised to fall he didn't want it falling on him.
He was puffing like an asthmatic tuba player when he reached the belfry, and the pain in his chest had returned. Fortunately it was the wrong side for his heart. There was a walkway skirting the bells, with a handrail for extra safety. Nevertheless he kept a wary eye on the inverted tenor as he made his way to the bottom of the wooden ladder that led the last few feet up on to the roof.
The bolt in the trap door slid back easily, and a moment later the Reverend was outside, on the roof of his tower. He'd only been up here a couple of times before. The noise was deafening. What had been a moderate breeze at ground level was a gale at this height. The flag material was slapping and cracking with a ferocity that seemed as if it would rip to shreds, and the ropes were lashing against the mast. First of all he wanted to admire the view. He'd heard that you could see Lincoln Cathedral from up here. He peered in the right direction in vain. A few degrees to the left the columns of steam from the Trent Valley power stations were plainly visible.
"Twentieth-century cathedrals," said the vicar with distaste, and started pulling on the rope.
He untied the flag and bundled into his arms it was impossible to fold in the swirling wind. As he was walking towards the trapdoor a wayward corner flapped up across his face. He pulled it away with his hand, but this allowed another fold of material to fall to the floor. The Reverend Wilde's right foot stepped on it and his left one became tangled in the beloved flag. He fell headlong into the open trap. His arms were enmeshed, so he could not use them to halt his progress, and he shot head first down the wooden steps, like a tobogganist down the Cresta run. Had there been anybody else in the church they would have heard the crack of his neck snapping as he hit the bottom, but there wasn't.
Chapter 4
Big Bernard Firth, captain of the team of bell-ringers at St. Peter and St. Paul's, was last to arrive for their weekly practice session of the Exercise, as they called it. He unlocked the door to the ringing chamber with his personal key and they went in. One of the others switched on the spotlights that were fixed to the ceiling, bathing the floor of the room in a dramatic glow.
"Right," said Bernard, 'let's not mess about, I'm thirsty already. You lot pull off and I'll catch up."
The other five began pulling on the ropes of the lighter bells, setting them swinging silently in the belfry. As they swung higher almost reaching the vertical, the clappers struck the sides, causing them to sound. Soon they fell into the familiar rhythm. Bernard grasped the brightly coloured sally at the end of his rope and watched and listened for his cue to commence.
They vicar's body lay on the Union Jack, on the walkway that skirted the bells. The wind had teased and pulled at the flag until a large portion of it was enveloping the wheel and rope of the tenor bell.
Bernard Firth tightened his grip, recognised his opening, and pulled.
"Bloody 'ell, it's stiff," he cried, as the big bell came over the centre and started to fall, but without its usual urgency.
"Spect it's full of pigeon shit," declared one of his colleagues.
"Ask Gerry to tell old Joe to oil the bearings," suggested another.
"What's happened to Gerry? Nobody's seen him for two days," stated a third.
At that moment the ceiling above them exploded. For the briefest second they all saw the vicar hurtling out of the floodlights, Union Jack trailing behind, like a victorious Olympic skydiver on his lap of honour. Then he thudded, leadenly, on to the stone-flagged floor. They stood in a circle, open-mouthed and horrified, gazing at the broken heap at their centre, oblivious to the bells above them saying:
Dong-ding-dong… dong-a-dong… ding-dong… dong… dong… dong.
The search for little Georgina was fruitless and depressing. We conferred with other forces who had missing kids on their books but it was a futile exercise. Usually there was a car or a stranger spotted near the scene of the disappearance, but we didn't even have that. Most had occurred in rural areas or on quiet council estates, but this one had happened in the middle of town during the rush hour. Only the grief was the same. You can only put all your resources into a job like this for so long. The world doesn't stand still while you look for a lost child. Slowly the urgency drains away as you run out of places to look, suspects to interview. Other crimes, some serious, demand attention, so you have to divert officers towards them. And every day that passes saps what little faith you had that you would find her alive.
Then the note came.
Dewhurst rang the office at eight in the morning to say that there was a ransom demand in his post. I told him not to touch it again and to wait. We were with him in ten minutes.
He'd opened the letter in the kitchen, standing at the work top It's not the way I would have expected a businessman to conduct his affairs, but he said the envelope had caught his eye. Normally one glance tells him what's inside, but he hadn't recognised this one, so he'd opened it. It sounded reasonable. The address on the white self-sealing envelope was typed on a label. The note, lying alongside, had resumed its folded position. I smoothed it out, using my pen and a fingernail.
It was composed of letters cut from newspapers and glued to a sheet of white paper, like you see in TV thrillers, except that all the letters were of different sizes. It said:
RAISE HALF A MILLION IN NEXT 7 DAYS TO SEE HER AGAIN. CASH
Our tame forensic boffins are at Wetherton, about fifty miles away. I manoeuvred the letter and envelope into a plastic bag and labelled it CP4, with the date, while Sparky raised one of the Nigel Mansells in Traffic to rush it there. Then I rang Professor Van Rees and asked him to give it the full treatment.
Van Rees is a magician. Everywhere we go, everything we touch, we leave something behind and we take something with us. It's called the Exchange Principle. A hair, a flake of skin or a bead of sweat; that's all he needs. Eighty per cent of the human race are what's known as secretors. They leak blood cells into their other body fluids. The letter was the first and only contact we'd had with Georgina's kidnapper. With just a little piece of luck the Professor would be able to give us a genetic profile that would pick him out of a trillion zillion others. All we'd have to do was test them all.
"How much does a DNA analysis cost?" asked Sparky, as we drove back to the station.
"Not much these days," I replied.
"Could be just a nutter, jumping on the bandwagon, you know."
"Well, he's still lowlife. He deserves to be behind bars."
Sparky was silent for a while, except for the noise he makes when he clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He does it when he's deep in thought.