Shulman reached into his pocket. ‘Would you like this?’ he asked, showing them his key ring, upon which hung what looked like a tiny, flat hand made of metal. ‘It’s a Chamsa, a Hand of Miriam, a present from my niece in Israel. It’s a symbol of protection.’ He took it off the chain and laid it on the table. ‘If you ask me how far I go before I think the symbolic turns into the practical, it’s the Torah scrolls, and anything where God’s name is written, like a Mezuzah, which comprises particular verses from the Torah put in a case and fixed on a doorpost. Not apt for a non-Jewish household, of course, or I’d send one over. But as to the supernatural. .’ He shook his head. ‘The rabbis of the past are meant to have been able to do things like having calves appear or making birds burst into flame with their voices, though why you’d want to do that I have no idea. But that was because of their deep understanding of the natural world. Whatever you’re facing here, in the end it will turn out to be something that is founded in nature.’
‘Thank you,’ said Quill, adding the Chamsa to the other objects.
Sefton noted that there was no reassuring glow there either. He hesitated a moment before placing the final object on the table, in front of the clerics. It was a wooden stake.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Irfan. ‘You think you’re looking for a vampire?’
‘No,’ said Quill.
‘Ah, so you’re planning to drive that through the chest of a person?’
‘No.’ Franklin stepped back from the table. ‘I draw the line there. And so should you.’
There was silence from the coppers. Sefton put the stake back in the holdall. It didn’t matter, anyway. Costain had assumed his poker face, as if this was just to be expected.
Shulman sighed. ‘I wish I knew what it is you’re going through, all of you.’
‘I think,’ suggested Franklin, ‘you could do with being blessed, this time as people.’
Costain, Ross and Quill sat down in turn for Franklin to say some words over them and touch their heads.
Sefton remained standing. He studied again all the various things Franklin had blessed, but still no glow, no weight, no added feeling to them.
The blessings finished, now these futile people were looking to him. The proof of their uselessness was sitting before him. And even that, now they could see it, hadn’t convinced Costain to free himself from his fears, hadn’t made the other two politely show the clerics out. Sefton almost wanted to laugh. ‘I. . just don’t believe in God,’ he declared. And then he wanted to say sorry, damn it.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Quill, ‘neither do I! Neither does Ross, I should think! But we need all the help we can get, so-’
‘Kevin, please!’ said Ross.
The use of his first name was more moving than he’d expected it to be. As was her appeal. But. . Sefton only shook his head.
‘Well,’ said Quill, ‘I don’t think I can order you. That’s got to be in contravention of something.’
‘It’s important to me,’ said Sefton, ‘not to do this. It’s. . who I am.’ He realized, as he said it, that this was the first such declaration of anything that he’d ever willingly made out loud. Franklin came over and took his hand. Sefton tensed and warned him. ‘Don’t try and do anything against my will.’
Franklin sighed. ‘I myself, just me, Toby Franklin, hope that you find the strength you need. To misquote a phrase: though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, may you fear no evil.’
‘I hope so too,’ said Irfan. ‘Whatever you’re going through, it’s clearly real to you.’
Shulman came over. ‘You’ll like this,’ he said. ‘We prefer the term “benediction”, because, you know, “blessing”. . in the end it’s about throwing blood on something. It’s what the word actually means. But don’t worry: it’s not something I’m going to do to you.’ He raised his hand. ‘Praised are you, God, ruler of the universe, who made good people like Kevin here. There you are, it’s sort of sidelong.’
‘I’ll send you a crucifix,’ suggested Franklin. ‘But all it will mean is that I’ll be praying for you.’
‘I will be too,’ confirmed Irfan.
‘All of us,’ said Shulman.
Sefton looked to the others, and he realized this was the first supportive thing anyone who wasn’t a copper had yet said to them about what they were going through. It had too much of an effect. It was too seductive.
‘Thanks,’ he said. But he didn’t fully mean it.
After the clerics had left, Costain sat holding the various objects in his hands, looking for any sense that these were not now what they had been before. There was nothing to detect. He felt as he had when he’d been a kid, and had put his hands out for the communion offering, without knowing he shouldn’t, and had munched down quickly on the wafer that was just a wafer, and had felt quite drunk after a sip of wine that was just wine.
‘They won’t work,’ said Sefton, addressing him for the first time in days, but with noticeable anger in his voice.
Costain had tried to make himself apologize for the fight, but he couldn’t manage that. And he was getting the growing feeling that mere apologies weren’t going to cut it, anyway. ‘If it’s about belief, more people believe in this than-’
‘Maybe all this weird shit we’re discovering is for the people who weren’t included by the major religions, who got fed up with it not working, who needed something different.’
‘I think I might. . have to try to believe.’ Costain said it honestly, then looked to Sefton, hoping for some fellow feeling.
‘Great. What will you think about me, then?’
‘What?’
‘The gay thing.’
Costain wanted to say that wouldn’t make a difference, but realized he didn’t honestly know what any particular church would expect of him.
‘You think you’ve seen Hell,’ said Sefton, before he could reply. ‘So you’ve got a gun to your head. If I was them I wouldn’t take you.’
SEVENTEEN
Westminster Halclass="underline" an enormous public edifice with a stage at one end; a vaulted ceiling; marble steps; polished doors with metal lock plates that collected fingerprints. The smell of a library, the echoes of a concert hall. It was Saturday morning, and the match would be on Wednesday. Quill stood in the entrance area, forcing himself not to habitually watch the people that passed by, carrying boxes or pushing carts. A poster indicated that there was a New Age fair today but, looking at this lot, he’d have guessed that anyway. He stood out like a sore thumb and he knew it. No UC was he, especially among this lot with their long hair and sandals and tattoos. He was concentrating on his coffee, on not letting his hangover drag him even further down. He was trying to ignore the red hue of the light penetrating every window, the way the building seemed splattered with blood. He wondered what that was about, before he found a bronze plaque describing the building’s history. This once high security venue, actually part of the Houses of Parliament, you could now hire out, thanks to this cost-cutting government, for your collectors’ fair or your union meeting. The metal detectors had been moved to where it joined with the lobby of Parliament itself. This was where Charles I had been tried, among many others, where they’d demanded his head and signed the death warrant. It had then had Cromwell’s severed head sitting on the roof for twenty-five years. It was where coronations had been celebrated, too. The place smelt of royalty, of being afraid of something flighty and a bit random when it wanted to be, and a bit too real when it didn’t.