The Sixth Soul by Mark Roberts Read Free Book Online

of school, and from November through to the following July he felt he never quite caught up.
    The weather had improved a little and the sun coaxed a dreamy mist over the flatlands. St Mark’s was a turn in the road away. Rosen switched on the radio, Classic FM. Vaughan
Williams’s take on ‘Greensleeves’
.
He turned it off and stopped the car at the mouth of the entrance of St Mark’s, invaded by the strangest urge.
Turn round, go
home, resign from the case, give in to Baxter and straighten paper clips until you retire or die, whichever comes first
.
    He drove down the lane and parked at the front entrance of the monastery. There was no one there to greet him and, as he got out of his car, he imagined for a moment he was in some place
deserted by all humankind.
    He thought he could smell hops but it was the wrong time of year. Then, he heard a voice.
    ‘Can I help you?’ It belonged to a fat, bald man, sweating through exertion. He wiped his fingers on his dungarees and extended a wet hand that was still caked in dirt. Rosen
recognized the voice from his answering machine.
    ‘Brother Aidan?’
    ‘Yes?’ The monk sounded mildly surprised to be identified. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘You left a message on my answering machine. I’m DCI David Rosen from the Met.’ Rosen showed his warrant card and Brother Aidan took a half-step backwards.
    Mild surprise gave way to something more uneasy. ‘You didn’t reply,’ Aidan answered, defensively. Grey stubble dotted his face and scalp, and there was something rubbery about
his features that made Rosen think of a cheap Hallowe’en disguise.
    ‘I did. What were you doing at nine o’clock last night?’
    ‘We were in evening prayer.’
    ‘That’s when I called you back, Brother Aidan.’
    ‘But who answered?’
    ‘Father Sebastian. I’ve travelled from London to meet him.’
    ‘Well, I—’
    Aidan looked as if he was casting around in his mind for excuses, as if the suddenness of Rosen’s arrival made the meeting somehow a non-starter.
    The prospect of yet another disappointment overtook Rosen.
    ‘We arranged it last night as you were praying.’
    ‘Yeah, yes, I’m sure you did. I’ll take you to him.’
    ——
    W HEN R OSEN FOLLOWED Aidan across the threshold of St Mark’s, he felt the urge to remove his shoes and was glad he’d forgotten his mobile
phone, leaving it in the car.
    ‘There are seven men permanently here, including myself and Father Sebastian,’ Aidan replied to a question Rosen hadn’t posed.
    Above the staircase, a Victorian oil painting of St Dominic, unsmiling and solitary, cast his eyes on Rosen as he made his way up to the upstairs landing and a dark windowless corridor.
    ‘I was surprised by his asking me to call you.’ Aidan smiled but didn’t look happy. ‘You should listen to him closely. He’s – the word
blessed
seems
inappropriate. He’s insightful.’
    Aidan stopped at a door with the number eleven painted onto its dark surface. There was a single scratch mark that cut through the white digits, along with a network of cracks, and made Rosen
think of a DNA helix.
    ‘There are more rooms than men,’ said Aidan, tapping on the door, nervously it seemed to Rosen. Silence. He knocked again, a little more firmly and said, ‘Father Sebastian? You
have a visitor. Father, are you there?’
    In the space of a breath, Rosen recollected the grey acres of his childhood. The central image was of a thin man, his own absent father, with a few possessions stuffed into two carrier bags,
walking away from the front door of the flat, along the landing of the tenement block, never looking back as he turned onto the staircase, never to be seen again.
    ‘He mightn’t be in his room.’ Aidan banged on the door with the palm of his hand. ‘He has hearing difficulties. After Kenya.’
    Slowly, Aidan turned the handle and pushed the door open. Inside the room, a match was struck on a coarse surface, its red tip flaring. The door