The Resurrection of the Body, page 1
Praise for The Resurrection of the Body
‘She wrote a fully thought-out 80-page novel in a day – sure makes you wonder what she might do if she took a couple of weeks … the story has mystery-thriller suspense as well as several intriguing depths … terrifically impressive’ The Independent
‘An assured tone and decidedly bold denouement – a talent to watch’ Financial Times
‘A compelling, impressive tale’ The Times
‘Ingenious and provocative exploration of faith, fact and fantasy. Put it in your suitcase’ Hampstead & Highgate Express
‘A skilful portrait of a man’s inner turmoil’ Good Housekeeping
‘Hamand aims at more than a tricksy re-telling of an old tale … miracle and science, truth and myth, clash and interweave in the raw glare of modernity’ Catholic Herald
‘A whodunnit, a ghost story, an original treatment of the crisis-of-faith theme – even, as the tale comes to its uncomfortable close, a full-blooded horror story’ Coventry Evening Telegraph
‘This is just one of those books you don’t want to put down’ Lancashire Evening Telegraph
‘Hamand creates a remarkable tension between the strong sense of place and “ordinary life” and the mystery, the uncertainty of mind and spirit. This is a truly crafty game with the mystery/crime genre – post-modernism meets the Creed’ Sara Maitland
‘Her work is outstanding – taut and tightly structured with a wonderful narrative drive’ Kathy Lette, LBC radio
‘A rattling good read’ Richard Chartres, Bishop of London
Contents
Praise
Title Page
Author’s Note
The Interruption in the Church
The Police Ask Questions
The Accusations Begin
Time in my Study
To St Bartholomew’s Hospital
The Man Dies
The Easter Service
The Body Vanishes
The Encounter with Jim
The Young Journalist
The Gardener
The Police Arrest Jim
The Painting in the Church
The Article Appears
The Incident in the Rose Garden
The Limits of Theology
The Police Call
The PCC
The Scent Goes Cold
The Detective Chief Inspector Accuses
The Man in the Street
The Fish Restaurant
The Evening in the Vicarage
The Discovery in the Vestry
Tessa
To Abney Park Cemetery
The Trouble with Harriet
The House in St Mark’s Rise
The Archdeacon’s Visit
The Article in the Newspaper
The Bishop of Stepney
The Intruder
To Bart’s Again
There Can Be No Doubt
The Brush with Death
The Psychiatrist
The Recovery
The Prostitute’s Flat
The Reckoning
ALSO BY MAGGIE HAMAND
Copyright
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Author’s Note
The Resurrection of the Body was originally written during a competition held in London in March 1994 to write a novel in 24 hours under examination conditions. It was the outright winner of the World One-Day Novel Cup, and the original version, just 23,000 words long, was published with the two runners-up by Images Publishing within 48 hours of their receiving the winning manuscripts. The novel was then expanded to almost twice that length for publication by Michael Joseph in 1995.
In expanding it, I left alone the existing text, just adding here and there where necessary and correcting any errors. Twenty-one chapters in this book are therefore much as they were written for the competition, while eighteen are completely new. One reason why I chose to expand the book this way was that I was anxious to keep the sparse style and narrative drive which seemed to be a product of the intense pressure under which the original version was written.
While all the locations in this book are real, including the parish church of St Michael and All Angels, London Fields, the characters are purely imaginary. However, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those people who helped me in my researches and generously gave up their time and expertise to make the details in this book as realistic as possible.
Maggie Hamand, 2008
he Interruption in the Church
It was Good Friday, shortly after one o’clock, in the middle of the three-hour devotional service. The reading had just ended and the church was in perfect silence as we prayed. It was so still and calm that you could hear the background hum of traffic and the distant crying of a child. I looked down at the bowed heads of the diverse congregation, both black and white; the smart, middle-class professionals who had moved into the attractive Victorian housing in the area, the old East Enders like Sidney who had been born in the terrace a hundred yards away and still remembered the bomb falling on the house next door when he was only six, the black women from the grim estate round the corner.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of raised voices in the street. At first I took no notice of the disturbance. I could hear shouting, rough voices, and then someone starting to yell quite near us, right outside the church. Looking back, it was obvious that there was a great deal of distress in that voice, and had I put my prayers aside and acted then I might have been able to prevent what happened. In any case, I took no notice; in fact the sounds did not alarm but only irritated me, breaking as they did into my intense concentration, and I put them firmly to one side and withdrew back into my prayers.
The door at the back of the church banged and there was a scuffling in the vestibule. I looked up and my eye caught that of Chris Shaw, a local author who was one of the churchwardens; once before he had dealt very capably with a drunk who had wandered in from the pub round the corner during the middle of our confirmation service. He nodded to me, as if to say ‘If it gets any worse I will go and deal with it.’ Then came a sound which I shall never forget, a dreadful, powerful, bewildered cry; and through the open door came a man, lurching forward, staggering, holding his hands to his side.
I had never seen the colour of fresh blood before in such profusion, so bright, splashed everywhere, like scarlet paint. The man sank to the floor and we all rose to our feet at the same moment, like a wave. Somebody ran to the door and out on to the porch; someone else rushed to my office to use the phone. Chris’s wife Anne, a doctor, was beside the man in an instant, calling out instructions; I remember seeing all this and feeling paralysed, powerless, unable to move.
My reaction shocked me. I have seen many terrible things in my time, people suffering and dying, but this was different, too violent and sudden; I didn’t want to have to look at this. There I had been, in prayer contemplating the wounds of Christ on the cross, but presented with real wounds I was shivering with fear and ineptness. I forced myself to cross the floor and kneel beside the man. Anne was in charge; I asked her, ‘Can I help you?’
Anne was pulling away the man’s clothes, already soaked in blood, and asking for something to cover the wound. Someone came from the vestry with the linen and handed it to her; Mercy was cutting into a tablecloth with scissors. Anne told me it was important to sit him upright and turn him to one side, because the lung was punctured and he would have difficulty breathing, and that if he lay flat he would probably choke. In an urgent whisper she told me to support him leaning on one side so that blood didn’t flow from the injured lung into the good one. So I knelt behind him, holding him awkwardly under his shoulders, while they folded squares of linen and tore strips to cover and bind the wound.
After this there was silence, because there was nothing we could do. The ambulance was on its way; Mercy was impatient, muttering, ‘Oh Lord, why do they take so long?’ The man’s face, as I looked down on it, was pale and damp, sticky with sweat. He had an olive complexion, which now took on a greenish tinge, almost the putty-coloured look of a newborn baby, and his eyes were very dark. For a moment I couldn’t help thinking of how close are the processes of birth and death. The man tried to say something, but I couldn’t distinguish what it was, and when they asked me about it afterwards I was not even sure that it was English. This effort seemed too much for him; he began to cough up blood and a pale, frothy liquid appeared on his lips. His eyes dimmed and all his being seemed focused on the terrible struggle to draw breath. Anne, with her clinical detachment, was doing everything she could; one of the other women, Mary, patted his hand and talked soothingly to him as you would to a sick child. I blessed her for this. I myself could say nothing; I could only pray silently, and wait for the ambulance to come.
My arms began to ache with the strain of supporting the heavy body. Mary held his limp, pale hand within her own plump, dark ones, massaging it gently as if by doing so she could transfer some of her own warmth and energy into him. As she stroked his hand she turned it over and I saw that the blood which I had thought must have got there when he put his hand to his side came from a deep wound across the palm, as if it had been slashed or pierced with a knife.
Now, with intense relief, I heard the siren in the distance, then another out of tune with it, then a third, all steadily growing stronger. The police arrived first. I could hear their voices outside i
Their movements were quick, efficient, though they took their time, putting an oxygen mask to his face, inserting a drip into his arm, dressing the wound. They lifted him on to a stretcher and then, with a burst of fuss and movement, he was gone from the church. A shaft of sunlight suddenly pierced the air, shining through the stained glass below the roof and casting dappled patterns on the floor, lighting up the trail of blood. We heard the ambulance start and the siren fading swiftly as it roared away down the road.
he Police Ask Questions
My parish is in Hackney, in London Fields, one of the poorest boroughs in the country. The church is a miserable-looking building on the outside, dull red brick and all awkward lines and angles, and too many slabs of bare brick wall. But inside it is quiet and pale and cool, smooth cream plaster and a domed white roof, built on the Byzantine plan in the late 1950s by Cachemaille-Day.
On two sides of the square interior are six paintings depicting various Biblical scenes showing the intervention of angels. First there are Adam and Eve driven out of Eden and the angel with the flaming sword. Across the nave Jacob wrestles with the angel. Then come the four New Testament scenes; the annunciation, the nativity with heavenly hosts, the agony in the garden of Gethsemane with the angel keeping watch, and the angel at the empty tomb.
In the centre of this calm space we all stood bewildered. How could we carry on the service after this? Even as I hesitated, wondering how best to proceed, one of the policemen took me by the elbow and indicated that we should step outside into the vestibule. He was very calm and polite; even the police seemed to understand that we had all been, as it were, in a trance – that it was not appropriate to ask the questions they needed to in the church, in the middle of a service.
I felt very strongly that I couldn’t just abandon the congregation at this moment. I asked the others, while we were gone, to carry on, for the choir to sing the next hymn and Chris to do the reading. Then I followed the police sergeant outside into the vestibule.
I was shocked at first by the quantity of blood on the floor. It lay in irregular puddles, smeared here and there by dragging feet, and there was a trail running through into the church; I realised with horror that I had some on my shoes. There were several policemen standing there, looking nervous and uncomfortable, and outside, in the pale spring sunlight, I saw several cars parked across the road, their blue lights flashing. Police radios crackled noisily as they relayed incomprehensible messages. A few passers-by had stopped and were staring; the police were already beginning to put tape across the entrance to the church.
I led the sergeant into the room which we used as a crèche and sat down heavily on a chair.
I should say straight away that I do not have much trust in the police. Living where we do, I suppose that I tend to see the worst of them. Recently we had had a great deal of trouble with them, because they had come to the churchwarden Mercy’s house with a warrant to arrest her son, who had been in trouble with the police over some petty crime. When Mercy said he was not there they had roughly pushed her aside and searched the house. In doing so they had broken or damaged some of her things, and in great distress she had left the house and come to see me. The police had followed her and, Mercy said, assaulted her. When she arrived at the vicarage she had broken glasses and a black eye. The police accused her of assaulting them and brought a charge against her (which had still to come to court). I had gone to see Detective Chief Inspector Stone at Stoke Newington Police Station and told him what I thought about the incident, that I knew that Mercy would never harm anyone, that she was our representative on the East London Deanery Synod and that people who would speak up for her would include the Bishop himself.
Perhaps this sergeant knew about this case because at first he seemed ill at ease; he wouldn’t look me in the eyes and paid too much attention to his notebook. But whatever he may have been thinking initially he soon put to one side, and his manner became entirely businesslike.
He said they wanted to evacuate the church. There were certain things they needed to do, fingerprinting, looking for the weapon which might have been discarded, for any traces that might point to the identity of the attacker. Police cars were out now in force, combing the streets, looking for anyone suspicious, and the police helicopter had been requested. First of all, he wanted to know if anyone had seen the man who carried out the assault. At this point one of the police constables put his head round the door and said that one man had run out into the street as soon as the victim had entered the church, but had seen no signs of anyone running away. We all said that we had seen no one. The sergeant made a note of this and said they needed access to the front of the church so that they could begin straight away. Of course it was a bank holiday weekend and this would cause some problems, but they needed to get a police photographer and the forensic people to work as soon as possible, though they might not be available until the next day. Meanwhile it was very important that the scene of the crime should not be disturbed.
I said that this would not be a problem, but urged them to be as quick as possible. Of course the church had to be prepared for our Easter services, and since the Easter Vigil began before dawn on Sunday, everything had to be ready the night before.
I was wondering if it would be their responsibility or ours to clean away the blood when they had finished.
The sergeant said he was sure everything could be done by then. He asked if there was any way the congregation could leave the church without coming through the vestibule and perhaps disturbing the evidence. I explained that there was another door, at the back, which led to my office and to the church hall. We agreed to evacuate the church and continue the service in the church hall. The police were happy for the service to continue but they wanted to talk to anyone who had heard anything, or might know the man who had been assaulted, and that it would be helpful if they did this as soon as possible.
I said that I was sure that nobody knew him. I had never seen him before myself. He had certainly never been a member of the congregation.
The sergeant continued his questioning in that mannered, precise way that policemen have. First he needed a description of the victim. How old was he?
I told him that it was hard to say. He had thick, dark hair, no trace of balding or greying, but his complexion was slightly battered, as if he had led an outdoor life. I guessed that he was in his early to mid-thirties. He had black eyes, a straight, if not slightly Roman nose and full lips. His skin was not quite white but not dark either, perhaps Middle Eastern, or southern European – Spanish, perhaps. But it was hard to say because of the extreme pallor caused by shock and loss of blood.
He tried to establish whether the assault had actually taken place in the vestibule, which seemed likely from the quantity of blood on the floor. I told him I had heard shouting in the street, only a minute or two before the man entered the church. I couldn’t distinguish any words, but I had the feeling that it was English; yes, undoubtedly one of the men had a rough, East-End accent. The cry that he had given at the moment of the stabbing seemed to come from inside the vestibule. I added that the man himself had said nothing, he had tried to speak but no words had been distinguishable, and I couldn’t say what language he had used. We had taken nothing out of his pockets, hadn’t looked for any identification. I was sorry, there wasn’t much more I could say.
Searching my mind for anything else that might be relevant, some little detail that might have escaped me or be of some importance, I mentioned the cut I had seen on the man’s hand. I noticed something cross the sergeant’s face then, a strange kind of expression, not a smile, exactly, nor a sneer. He made a note in his little black book. Mary, sitting behind me, said she had noticed there were cuts on both his hands. Again, he wrote this down, with a little flourish.
