The Painted Altar

Chapter Eight

Plot reminder: In the previous chapter Irene interviewed Peter Harvey, the last surviving of the three sons from the farmhouse where Irene had been billeted during the war. Though unable to recall Vincenzo D'Ambra, Harvey mentioned the name of a violent, often drunken guard called Sergeant Reynolds.
In the final secton of this chapter Mary makes a phone call to Griffiths, the deputy head of her primary school who featured at the start of the novel.

~~~~~

Reynolds, I thought, lowering myself back into driver's seat.

Sergeant Reynolds.

I had a name. One with only a distant memory of poor reputation against it, admittedly. A man who had almost without question passed away several decades ago, but who represented a starting point at least. Had my father's murder been a crime of racial hatred? One fuelled perhaps by Reynolds' knowledge of his relationship with Irene? The sergeant it was who'd driven the men to the fields, kept armed guard during working hours. He it was who might have spied something between the lines of sugarbeet - a lingering mutual gaze, a stolen kiss...

Rigorous and exemplary. Those were the adjectives John Simmonds had quoted, the ones from the Home Office circular describing the desired nature of punishment for prisoners caught fraternising with local women.

What if Reynolds had taken them too literally? Taken them much, much too far?

Credible, yes. The scenario was more than believable. Particularly if he'd been able to recruit accomplices to his dark plan. Knew he'd be able to cover it up.

Literally get away with murder.

*

Parking up back in the town centre, I threw a couple of coins into the meter and ducked into the first newsagents I came across. My purchases consisted of a cheap stationary set and first class stamp. The letter I was going to write had to be done so right there in Ravensby. Had to carry the local post mark.

I found my way to the same coffee shop I'd stopped at on the way to church that morning. Though the cup of tea Peter Harvey had made me had helped vibrate my mental faculties back in motion, I faced a hellishly long drive back to Sussex. My insides had been too tossed and squished around by the day's events to feel anything remotely approaching hunger, but I indicated to the spotty youth behind the counter that he hand me the last remaining Danish from the breakfast tray along with my double espresso. The place was quiet, in the kind of dozy mid-afternoon lull conducive to the task in hand. Perching myself at the same window-facing ledge as earlier, I pressed biro tip to lilac-coloured paper.

Dear Inspector Kubič...

I can't remember the exact wording of course, recall only that the letter had been brief, very much to the point. I explained as unemotionally as I could all I knew and all I suspected. The romantic liaison between Vincenzo D'Ambra and Irene Harvey, formerly Brennan. The highly suspicious synchronicity between the former's unearthing and the latter's passing. I urged the inspector to respect my anonymity and to trust that I had the best interests of everyone involved at heart.

After slipping the letter into the box outside the town's main Post Office, I headed back to my car. The roadsign at the central crossroads indicated right for the A1, but strangely somehow, as if acting on subconscious instinct, I found myself spinning the wheel to the left and thus back to the same residential part of town I'd earlier exited.

It wasn't just Irene I was bidding farewell to that day, I realised. So far from home, so isolated and out of the way, I was unlikely to ever find myself in Ravensby again. It wasn't the sort of place one just idly found onself passing through or in the vicinity of. Ravensby was an outpost. The end of the world.