A police patrol car drew up outside the church and a tall uniformed officer got out. Peter, who was waiting at the door, recognised the sparse figure topped with rusty brown hair as PC Malcolm Appleton. He stepped forward to meet the young man.
‘Hello sir!’ Appleton evidently remembered him from before Peter’s retirement some six years previously. ‘I got a call to say that someone has found human remains inside the church. Do you know anything about it?’
‘Come inside. Yes. By pure fluke, I happened to be here when they made the discovery.’ Peter opened the outer door and led the way through the porch and then, through a second door, into the church. ‘I gather congratulations are in order,’ he continued conversationally. ‘DCI Porter tells me that you’ve passed your sergeant’s exams.’
‘Yes. I finally got up the courage to have a go, and they weren’t nearly as bad as I was expecting.’
‘I always knew you could do it. Now, let me introduce you.’ Peter stopped next to one of the small tables in the South section of the church. Father Damien and the two organ builders were sitting round it, drinking mugs of tea. ‘This is Father Damien Rowland. He’s the Parish Priest here at St Cyprian’s; and this is Mr Keith Boswell, who’s restoring the organ, and his son, Arthur. It was the Boswells who found the body.’
‘I see. And where exactly is it?’ Appleton asked, looking round the church for signs of where a corpse might be concealed.
‘I’ll show you,’ Peter said. ‘Follow me.’
He continued down the aisle, pointing towards the organ platform. Appleton followed, gazing about him at the unfamiliar surroundings. Along the wall to his right, behind the tables and chairs, there was a line of tall, rectangular windows, each portraying a different stained-glass saint. Each figure had a scroll entwined about its feet, bearing a name: St. Christopher, St. Anthony, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Mary Magdalen. The bright spring sunshine slanting in through the coloured glass dappled the tiled floor with spangles of light.
Part of the “Welcome Area” where Father Damien and the Boswells were sitting, was fenced off by a low wooden rail, forming a large playpen affair. Inside there were a range of toys suitable for the under-fives and a shelf of books for rather older children.
In between the windows, the white-painted walls were adorned with square paintings, hanging at about head-height, each featuring a scene containing people dressed in the sorts of clothes that he had seen in a children’s Bible belonging to his mother. At the bottom of each picture was a number in Roman numerals and a short caption. Looking across the rows of wooden benches on his left, he saw, hanging on a pillar, another painting. It depicted a red heart, with what looked like barbed wire entwined about it. There was a flame emanating from the top of the heart, with a cross inside it. The combination of wire and candle flame reminded him of the Amnesty International logo. On one side of the heart, there was a spear or arrowhead sticking into the flesh. Drops of blood were oozing out of the wound and dripping abundantly. It seemed a very strange thing to have in a building where children evidently came.
‘What’s all that?’ Appleton asked, pointing towards a complicated arrangement of rods and wires on a wooden frame, which stood blocking their way.
‘It’s the innards of an organ,’ Peter told him, squeezing past between the strange contraption and a concrete pillar supporting the arched ceiling. ‘They were supposed to be putting it back on its stand today, but then they found this. Come and see.’
He climbed up on to the platform and knelt down by the hole. Appleton followed suit, peering into the gloom, with Peter directing the light beam to pick out the skull.
‘It’s weird,’ he said, sitting back on his haunches and looking Peter in the face. ‘It sort of looks like a skull, and then again, it almost looks like it’s still alive. Have you ever seen anything like this before?’
Peter shook his head. ‘No. In my experience, once a body’s been dead a day or two the flesh starts to decay and flies get in and you get maggots growing, and the skin turns a green colour and starts to-’
Appleton shuddered at Peter’s graphic description. ‘But in this case,’ he cut in to halt the flow, ‘it’s almost as if the body has just sort of shrunk away, so that the skin is tight on the skeleton. Is it just a head? Or is there a whole body down there?’
‘I think it’s probably a complete skeleton,’ Peter told him. ‘I can’t be sure, because I didn’t want to disturb the scene any more than we had to, but it looks like it.’
‘I suppose I’d better have a look myself.’
Peter passed over the torch, and Appleton lay down on his front and put his head and shoulders down inside the hole in the floorboards. After a minute or two he emerged again, scrambled to his feet and started brushing himself down. He handed the torch back to Peter.
‘You’re right,’ he agreed. ‘It looks like a whole body wrapped in some sort of cloth, which looks like it’s been chewed almost to bits by mice or rats or something. I’d better secure the scene and get on to CID and Scenes of Crime – unless you’d like to do that, sir?’
‘I’m retired, remember. It’s your call. Don’t worry – you’re doing fine.’
‘Thanks, sir. Well, could you just explain to your friends that they need to keep away from the scene and not disturb anything?’
While PC Appleton went outside to call for assistance and to get tape from his car to secure the crime scene, Peter imparted the unwelcome news to Father Damien and the organ builders.
‘How long to do you think it will be?’ Father Damien asked anxiously.
‘Difficult to tell,’ Peter said cautiously, trying to lower expectations without giving the impression that the police were unconcerned about the inconvenience that was being caused. ‘For a start, it may be a while before we can get a forensics team out here. There have been a lot of cutbacks recently and I know they’re stretched to the limit. And then, the Crime Scene Manager may want to leave the body in situ until we can get an expert in to look at it, and that could take some time. That may not be necessary,’ he added hastily, seeing the consternation on Father Damien’s face. ‘Usually, once they’ve taken photographs and done an initial assessment, they can take the body away and do a full examination in the mortuary. I’m just a bit … well, I’ve never seen a corpse quite like this one. They may need to get in a forensic archaeologist or someone else who specialises in this sort of thing.’
‘But are we talking hours or days or …?’ Father Damien left his question hanging, fearful of voicing the possibility that the work on the organ might have to be suspended for a matter of weeks or even more. ‘As you know, we were banking on having the organ back in time for the Easter Vigil. And, even if that’s not possible, we can’t keep people out of the church at the most important festival of the year.’
‘I’d guess it’ll take a day or two. I certainly don’t think you can expect them to be able to start work again today. Maybe tomorrow. They may decide that, once they’ve got photographs of the scene and removed the body, it’s OK for you to replace the boards and install the organ. It rather depends what else they find down there.’
‘What sort of thing might they find?’ Father Damien asked nervously. ‘You don’t think there might be more than just the one body, do you?’
‘Who can tell?’ Peter shrugged. ‘But I was thinking more that there might be evidence of how whoever it is died.’
‘The murder weapon, do you mean?’
‘Possibly. Of course, just because the body has been hidden, we shouldn’t assume that it must have been a murder. Sometimes people do very odd things with dead bodies, even when they die of natural causes.’
‘Well, it looks like we might as well go home,’ Keith Boswell said, getting to his feet. ‘No point us hanging around here all day doing nothing.’
‘Isn’t there anything more you can be getting on with while the organ’s still where it is?’ Father Damien asked, anxious to avoid any delay or to allow the organ builders to move on to another job, in case they did not return. ‘Didn’t you say that you still had some work to do on the casing? New varnish or something?’
‘Be better to wait until it’s in place,’ Keith replied. ‘You never know what damage may get done during the installation.’
‘I’m afraid that you must both wait here until the Senior Investigating Officer arrives,’ Peter told them. ‘They’ll need to interview you about finding the body. And they may need to ask you about the organ and how long it’s been off the platform and so on.’
‘You mean the body could have been put there recently?’ Father Damien asked in surprise. ‘I thought it must have been there since before the organ was built.’
‘I expect you’re right,’ Peter agreed, ‘but, until it’s been properly investigated, we can’t be sure that someone couldn’t have somehow taken up the floorboards and put it in there in the last week or two.’
‘But what about all the dust and stuff down there?’ Arthur asked, speaking for the first time. ‘It looked like nobody had been down there for years.’
‘Yes. That’s how it looked to me too,’ Father Damien backed him up.
‘I know. I agree, but we need to wait until the experts have had a look at it.’
PC Appleton returned with a roll of blue-and-white police tape. Peter helped him to cordon off the crime scene by tying it to four chairs, arranged in a square around the organ platform.
‘Would you like us to move the action and console out of the way to give you more room?’ Keith asked, as Peter squeezed past the naked organ.
‘No. We must leave everything exactly as it was when you found the body,’ Peter told him. ‘The Crime Scene Manager will let you know when it can be moved.’
The older Boswell slumped back down into his chair, put his elbows on the table in front of him and rested his chin on his hands.
‘I’ll go and make us all another cup of tea,’ Father Damien said, gathering up the mugs and escaping through the vestry door