Part 14 (1/2)

He listened in silence as McIntyre offered a brief history of events on New Hope and then outlined the aims of the expedition. Then McIntyre, tired of his own voice, said, 'Do you think demonic possession could have destroyed the New Hope community?'

'Destroyed it, no.' Degrelle said; 'afflicted it, without reasonable doubt. The heretic Ballantyne was almost certainly a servant of Satan.'

McIntyre had never heard the reformed slave master called a heretic before. Degrelle's use of the term reminded him that the Vatican had its own historians, its own intelligence network and its own take on theology.

'Why do you say that?'

'There is compelling anecdotal evidence that Ballantyne was able to work what his followers construed as miracles. He got the power to play his tricks from somewhere. It was not from the Almighty.'

When Degrelle spoke, it was like listening to words chiselled from stone. He was a gift from G.o.d, McIntyre thought, if he could be persuaded to go.

'Your Cardinal has sanctioned your partic.i.p.ation in the expedition.'

'I have no interest in debating the theoretical fate of the New Hope blasphemers with your motley collection of so-called experts.'

'But your Cardinal would like you to go.'

'What he actually said, Mr McIntyre was that the choice was mine. The notice is short. I suspect the task will be arduous. The island is d.a.m.ned. But the tormented souls there deserve a chance of salvation, however misguided and sinful they were in life.'

'You're saying you'll go?'

'I have my duty as an ordained priest. My mission is to save, Mr McIntyre. My vocation is to serve. Therefore, I will travel on your expedition.'

'We would like to break the story of your partic.i.p.ation on the front page of tomorrow's edition of the Chronicle,' McIntyre said, reaching into his pocket for his mobile.

'How many column inches are you thinking of?'

'The whole of the front page,' McIntyre said. 'Interest is at fever pitch. Your eleventh hour recruitment is a dramatic development. We're literally talking breaking news.'

'Excellent. You can send a photographer round to do a portrait shot in situ this afternoon. I take it you will have a background story on an inside page?'

'Of course we will.'

'I have some pictures, career highlights, if you will, inside. They should ill.u.s.trate the story very nicely. I will email high resolution scans to your picture desk as soon as we conclude our conversation.'

'I cannot tell you how pleased I am you've agreed to do this,' McIntyre said.

'It's my calling,' Degrelle said. 'I know the history of the island. The entreaty comes late, but it must be answered. The will of G.o.d must prevail if we are to be spared. One cannot escape one's duties in life. The circ.u.mstances really give me no choice but to go.'

'Great,' McIntyre said. 'Terrific.' The deal was done. The exorcist was in. His mind had already moved on, was now on those Ballantyne miracles, which a little extra-terrestrial technology would have enabled, he thought, with consummate ease.

'You ought to know, if you don't already, that I have what is these days termed a history, with one of your experts.'

'Oh? Which one is it?'

'Karl Cooper,' Degrelle said, 'the cosmologist who believes humanity has had a helping hand from elsewhere in the universe.'

'And what's your take on that?'

'G.o.d made man in his own image, Mr McIntyre. Or so it is written in the Book of Genesis. And the Cardinal told me you were raised a Catholic, so you should be familiar with the first commandment.'

'The one about wors.h.i.+pping false idols,' McIntyre said, with a smile.

'Indeed. Who do you have in mind to write the background piece about me in tomorrow's paper?'

'Lucy Church is already on it, in the hope that you would agree to partic.i.p.ate. Are you familiar with her writing?'

'I am a fan,' Degrelle said.

Philip Fortescue had suspected for quite a long time that the fate would link him in some important way to the long dead slave vessel master whose sea chest lay in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the museum where he worked.

His own experience with the chest had been an unpleasant one. It had taken place during his one inventory of its contents, five years earlier. And it had come as a dismaying shock to him. He'd been completely unsuspecting of anything out of the ordinary. His predecessor as Keeper of Artefacts had died suddenly and left his successor no warning concerning the old iron-braced box and its h.o.a.rd of maritime keepsakes.

Fortescue had only learned of the chest's accident-p.r.o.ne reputation after his own encounter with it. What had happened that afternoon five years ago had made him curious to discover more about both Seamus Ballantyne and his malicious h.o.a.rd.

It was only after his ordeal in the museum bas.e.m.e.nt that he learned about David Shanks and the theft. He learned too about Elizabeth Burrows. When he saw her picture, a formal shot taken in cap and gown at her degree congregation, he recognised her straight away. By then, the suicide with the pale face and dark eyes had become familiar to Philip as the apparition sometimes haunting him.

His mistake with the chest was provoked by disrespect. He should have trusted the growing feeling of dread he felt as he lifted out the items it contained and examined them. It was not a normal feeling. It was the sort of fear he thought later that enabled our primeval ancestors to survive when stalked by some large and cunning beast. They had escaped only because they obeyed the instinct and bolted.

He didn't. He told himself not to be so stupid. He was six months into his new job and finding it an excellent fit. He wouldn't run away from a routine task in the museum bas.e.m.e.nt on the strength of a feeling for which he could find no rational cause. No matter how strong the presentiment; and it was almost overwhelming in its clammy grip on him, he resolved that he would ignore it and complete the task in hand.

He came across the bracelet of teeth that La.s.siter would be disturbed to identify as human carrying out the same rite five years on. He held it up to what limited light the feeble overheads down there allowed, stretched taut between his extended thumb and forefinger. The teeth glittered and the bracelet, shaped thus, seemed to grin gleefully at him.

He slipped it over his wrist. It felt loathsome across his fingers and he was forced to swallow in terror as his heart thumped and fluttered with an accelerating beat. So he slipped it over his wrist, defying his screaming nerves, to do what he would have done had he felt in the mood for a bit of jocular mischief; instead of filled, as he actually was, with abject terror.

The teeth closed around the skin. They moved and chattered and then bit him hard and he screamed and wrenched the circle of dead bone and enamel off and did what he should have done much earlier and slammed shut the chest lid and fled.

There had been two bracelets, originally. Elizabeth Burrows came to him one night, months later, and confided that. He woke and she was there, silhouetted by the pale curtain over his tall bedroom window, standing poised in the still darkness an hour before dawn. There had been two bracelets, she said. And she had stolen one of them during her scholarly examination of the contents of the chest in the autumn of 1971.

She couldn't explain why she had taken it, she said. She could have understood her own motive had she taken something that had belonged to Rebecca Browning. She had admired Rebecca Browning greatly. Had Ballantyne's chest contained something of hers, a locket or a ring perhaps, she could have understood herself coveting and stealing such an intimate keepsake in a moment of impulsive weakness.

The bracelet she had taken had never belonged to Rebecca. Elizabeth was sure of that. It had been in Ballantyne's possession, must of course have been to have been in the chest at all. But she did not honestly think it could have been his, either. She could not imagine him adorning himself with such a gruesome and barbaric embellishment. He'd been a mercantile seaman from Liverpool, not a Barbary pirate.

The bracelet she stole performed an interesting trick, she told Fortescue, as he lay petrified in his bed and listened to her whispered account.It sat still and innocent on the surface of the desk in her college room until night fell. And then it dragged and chattered across the polished wood and shaped itself as a mouth in slivers of pale movement and it spoke to her.

'It lisped,' she said. 'It lisped out secrets n.o.body should hear. And hearing them was unbearable and I couldn't make it stop and so in the end I sought the comfort of death to end the nightly torment of what I was being told.'

The ghost of Elizabeth Burrows never spoke to him again after making this strange confession. He was grateful for that. But he would see her sometimes on the edge of his vision, in a pub or a coffee bar, pretending to read a book and watching him, quizzically.

Her features were as striking in death as they'd been in life, but the sight of her wasn't a comfortable one. Looking at her was disconcerting and he thought that staring back at her might even be a dangerous thing to do.

After his experience with the chest, when he felt fear, whether it was rational or not, he respected it for the warning he knew it to be. He never looked directly back at her during his fleeting encounters with Elizabeth's ghost. He didn't want to risk provoking her. So he couldn't read her expression. And he didn't dare try to discover why she continued to take this morbid interest in him.

He felt more than just sympathy for Edith Chambers. She'd undergone the ordeal of her dialogue with the ghost of Jacob Parr without complaint. He thought her stoical, much braver than he was. It was the reason he'd agreed to help her.

She needed help and he had the expertise to be able to provide it. He had the museum's research facilities at his disposal. He had the catalogues of most of the maritime archives in the country on his computer hard-drive. He had member-accounts and access codes and census and parish records available to him pretty much at the press of a b.u.t.ton. Not many people could be better placed than he was to trace Thomas Horan's lost or hidden journal.