Blind Faith (25 page)

He wondered where she could be.

Just then the lift doors opened and two policemen
emerged, accompanied by an official of the Temple. They
marched straight across the floor towards where Trafford
was sitting but it was not until they were standing before
him that he realized it was him they had come for.

'Trafford Sewell,' said the Temple official, 'you're under
arrest for crimes against faith.'

Instinctively Trafford turned to look at Cassius. His face
was frozen with fear.

After Trafford had left the building to go to work Chantorria
had shaved her head. Then she had put on her whitest
bikini and the halo of which she had previously been so
proud, but which she now wore upside down. She had then
gone to Dirty Sexy Filthy Bitch and bought a small cat-o'-
nine-tails from their S&M range. With this she had begun
walking through the district whipping herself and shrieking
at the top of her voice that the Lord and the Love should
smite her down for the sinner that she was. Eventually, with
her back lacerated and bloody, she arrived at the Spirit
House to which she had been denied entry the previous day.

Once more she stood on the step and begged to see the
Confessor. Once more she was refused but this time she
screamed and shouted at such a pitch that Confessor
Bailey came to the door and threatened to call the police
if she did not leave.

'Punishment is all I deserve,' Chantorria protested.
'There can be no forgiveness for me. I want to confess.'

'Confess then and clear off,' Confessor Bailey replied.

'My husband had our baby vaccinated while I stood by
and did nothing!' Chantorria screamed. 'Now the Love has
taken Caitlin away from me as punishment for defying him.'

This was a very much more significant confession than
Bailey had been expecting and he immediately had
Chantorria brought into the house and taken down to the
cellar while the Community Inquisitor was summoned.
During the wait Bailey, unable to contain his horror at
Chantorria's crime, took up his whip and flogged the
weeping woman as she lay writhing on the wet stone floor.
All the servants of the house were called to witness the
punishment and the largest and strongest of them took up
the lash when the Confessor tired.

Bailey had just called for cakes and wine to give him
strength and ordered his men to chain Chantorria to a
rough wooden table when Brother Redemption arrived.
The Community Inquisitor was rarely seen in daytime; he
was a creature of darkened rooms, gloomy cells and the
night. Unlike most officers of the Temple, he was thin, but
such flesh as he had was covered in tattoos. His body was
a tableau of occult symbols and hellish nightmares in
which various devilish creatures performed acts of sex and
torture on sinners. On his forehead the legend
Ask not for
whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee
was written in Gothic
script. Brother Redemption travelled about the parish in a
rickshaw drawn by four convicted felons. Inside the
rickshaw he kept his instruments of torture, and these were
carried in when he swept into Bailey's Spirit House
demanding to be shown the wretched sinner who had
poisoned her baby. No screws and clamps were necessary
to force a confession because Chantorria was only too
anxious to unburden herself.

'I am a sinner! I deserve my punishment,' she sobbed
from the table on which she lay in chains. 'My husband set
our family on the path of defying the Lord!'

'Bring her up to the street,' Brother Redemption ordered.

'Perhaps, Brother,' the Confessor protested, his face red
and his lips wet, 'I should keep the girl here for now. I
know the wretched woman and it may be that more would
be learned if I were to deal with her personally.'

Confessor Bailey was standing at the foot of the table on
which Chantorria had been spread. He had divested
himself of his magnificent cloak and golden thong and
was naked apart from his white thigh boots and the
bejewelled piercings that adorned his private parts. These
flashed and glinted in the dim cellar light.

'Bring her up to the street,' Brother Redemption repeated
and turned on his heel.

Confessor Bailey was furious to be dismissed in such a
manner but the Inquisition was not an organization that
even he could cross. Chantorria was dragged back up from
the cellar and out into the street, where a jeering crowd
had assembled. There she was bound by her wrists to the
back of the rickshaw and forced to run behind it as Brother
Redemption whipped up his four convicts and drove away.

Trafford was taken from his desk at DegSep then by boat
to the headquarters of the Lake London Inquisition. This
was a truly terrifying edifice, spoken of only in whispers,
and it occupied the great dome of what had once been the
city's foremost cathedral. Known to all as the Booby, in
shape it reminded people of a surgically enhanced breast.

The lower section of the cathedral was unoccupied as
it was at the mercy of the capricious Thames flood tides.

A reinforced concrete floor had been installed at the base
of the dome, some sixty feet above the waterline, and on
this floor a labyrinth of cells and offices had been
constructed. Even though the great half-ball of space had
been partially filled, it still retained something of its
former acoustic qualities and as Trafford entered he could
hear the groans and screams of tortured souls echoing
around the building.

Having been marched about halfway round the vast
circle, past cell after cell containing a broken, whimpering
object of human misery, Trafford was thrust into what he
immediately saw was a torture chamber. There were racks,
chains, hooks and cages, a glowing brazier that housed
branding irons, knives, clubs, spikes, pincers, skewers,
pliers and any number of objects, the terrifying uses of
which Trafford could only guess at.

Six people were already present in the chamber: a guard,
a large man who worked the bellows that heated the
brazier, a man at either wheel of the rack, a hooded
Inquisitor and, finally, a shaven-headed woman hanging
unconscious from a rusty iron grid, naked but clothed in a
crimson bodysuit of congealing blood. Trafford recognized
her with a shudder. It was Chantorria.

'Good afternoon, Trafford,' said the Inquisitor, removing
his hood. 'My name is Brother Redemption and I am the
Temple-appointed Inquisitor for your district. On my face
you will see written
Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for
thee
, and no face ever displayed a truer sentiment. Your
wife has told us that you like abusing children.'

Trafford tried to block out the horrifying scene that lay
before him and to think. When they had arrested him they
had not told him what crime of faith he was accused of,
but since they had also arrested Chantorria and the
Inquisitor had mentioned abusing children it seemed a
fair guess that his arrest concerned the vaccination of
Caitlin Happymeal.

Despite the terror churning in his stomach, Trafford saw
in this a glimmer of hope, because it meant that possibly
they knew nothing as yet about his Humanist activities.
Certainly they would execute him for having his child
vaccinated but with Caitlin Happymeal gone Trafford did
not fear death. Pain certainly, but not death. All Trafford
cared about now was Sandra Dee, whom he loved, and his
fervent belief in Humanism and the redeeming power of
reason. For Trafford, his only duty left on Earth was to
protect these things and so in that moment he conceived a
plan. If they knew about the vaccination then their
purpose would be to discover how it had been achieved, or
at least by whom. Trafford therefore resolved to avoid
giving them Cassius's name for as long as he could physically
stand it, in the hope that Brother Redemption would
assume that this was his only secret and would neglect to
pursue other lines of investigation.

'Whatever I did I did alone,' Trafford replied. 'Neither
my wife nor anyone else had anything to do with it.'

'And what did you do, Trafford?' the Inquisitor
enquired.

'I have nothing to say to you.'

'Ah, so it's a secret, is it?' said Brother Redemption.
'Chantorria tells me that you are a keen keeper of secrets.
Is that true?'

'I can't tell you. It's a secret,' said Trafford and a second
later he lay sprawled on the concrete floor, his jaw aching
from the guard's punch.

'Did you arrange to have your daughter vaccinated?'
Brother Redemption asked.

'What does it matter now?' Trafford gasped. 'She's
dead anyway.'

'The appropriate response to a question is an
answer, Trafford.'

Trafford received a vicious kick from behind. He did not
look up from where he lay with his cheek pressed against
the wet concrete. He watched sideways as Brother
Redemption's boots crossed the floor and stopped at the
foot of the grid from which Chantorria was hanging.
Trafford heard the harsh clang of metal against metal and
then, with a grim, soggy kind of thud, Chantorria's limp,
beaten body fell into Trafford's line of vision, her bruised
face scarcely three feet from his own. He had thought she
was unconscious but now her eyes opened and they stared
at each other across the concrete.

'I'm sorry,' Trafford said.

Chantorria struggled to reply.

'I deserve this,' she whispered, her lips fat and crusted
with blood. 'We both do. We defied God.'

'If God approves of the way you've been treated then he
should
be defied,' Trafford answered. 'He's no better than
the Devil.'

He must have been kicked in the head at this point for
he lost consciousness, and when he regained it he found
himself chained to the same grid from which Chantorria
had fallen. His face was pressed hard against the metal.
His naked body was dripping with icy water and through
the bars he could see the guard standing with an empty
bucket in his hands.

'The prisoner is awake, Inquisitor,' the man said.

Trafford listened as footsteps walked round the grid
behind him until once more Brother Redemption came
into sight.

'Your wife tells me that you posted a birthing video that
was not your own. Is that so?'

'Yes, I did do that.'

'Might one ask why?'

'Because I believe that a person has a right to privacy.'

'Weren't you proud of your birthing video?'

'Why should I be proud of a natural event for which I
can take no credit?'

'Because the Temple urges you to be proud of every
single aspect of yourself, Trafford – your size, your colour,
your opinions, your choice of body jewellery. Unless
of course you have something to hide. Do you have
something to hide?'

'I have nothing of which I'm ashamed, if that's what
you mean.'

'I'm fascinated then. If you had nothing to be ashamed
of, why on Earth would you desire privacy?'

Trafford thought for a moment.

'Because I consider it fundamental to my sense of self.'

'Or perhaps it's because you're a pervert and a heretic.'

Trafford did not reply.

'Perhaps,' the Inquisitor continued, 'you desire privacy
in order that you may pursue your reading? What is
this, Trafford?'

Trafford's heart sank as the Inquisitor produced a copy
of
The Origin of Species
, which Trafford had last seen
underneath his bed and wrapped in the cover of a celebrity
magazine headlined
When bum lifts go wrong. Celeb saggy
arses at the beach.

'It's a book about natural history . . . I like natural history.'

'Trafford, reading the work of the Antichrist Darwin is a
crime against faith.'

'I know that. I am a faith criminal.'

'Where did you get this rubbish, Trafford?'

'I found it. I often find books. I keep my eyes open all
the time. There's quite a few still around if you look. In the
attics of derelict buildings mainly and rotting in landfills
of course. All sorts of things come to the surface when the
water table rises.'

Trafford could see the Inquisitor's face through the bars
and tried to read on it whether he was being believed. But the
watery blue eyes into which he stared gave nothing away.

'I read a page or two,' Brother Redemption said. 'It
seemed like absolute shit to me.'

'I expect that's because you're as stupid as you
look, Brother.'

'Five,' said Brother Redemption. Trafford heard a snap
and a rush of air and instantly his back was split open with
a pain such as he had never before experienced. Four more
lashes followed and when the whipping was done he was
weeping and screaming for mercy.

'Earlier today,' the Inquisitor went on, 'your wife
Chantorria went to her Confessor and told him that you
had Caitlin Happymeal inoculated. Is that true?'

'Yes, it is.'

And despite the pain he was in, Trafford drew strength
from the fact that the Inquisitor seemed to have moved on
from his interest in books.

'She said that you acted against her wishes,' Brother
Redemption said. 'Is that also true?'

'Yes, it is. She told me not to do it. She begged me.'

'Then perhaps she will be spared. That will be a matter
for Solomon Kentucky and the will of the people.'

Trafford saw Brother Redemption's attention turning
back to the copy of
The Origin of Species
that he was
holding. The Inquisitor's eyes glanced downwards and he
began idly flicking through it. Trafford struggled to think
of something to say to divert his attention.

'If Chantorria confessed all this voluntarily,' Trafford
asked, trying to keep his voice steady, 'why was it necessary
for you to beat her?'

To his relief the Inquisitor snapped the book shut with
a grunt of contempt and hurled it into the brazier.

'It was necessary to discover whether she was telling the
truth or not,' he replied. 'She is clearly a witch and witches
are cunning.'

'She is not a witch.'

'She allowed the good people of her community to
believe that she was holy when in fact she was harbouring
a heretic and a devil baby. Doesn't that seem like the work
of a witch?'

Trafford did not answer. His strength was bleeding out
of him from the deep wounds on his back.

'Who vaccinated your child, Trafford?' the Inquisitor
asked in the most casual of voices, and with that question
Trafford knew that the true ordeal was about to begin.

'I shall never betray him,' Trafford replied. 'He tried to
save my baby. I'll never tell you.'

'You will, Trafford.'

'Never.'

'Ten,' said the Inquisitor.

Ten more lashes followed, by the end of which Trafford
was semi-conscious. Next they branded the word 'heretic'
on his stomach and his buttocks and stretched him on
the rack.

All through this agony Trafford kept the face of Sandra
Dee in the forefront of his mind. It was for her that he was
holding out. Cassius was the diversion that would lead
Brother Redemption away from the secret of the library. If
they discovered that, Sandra Dee would be caught.
Trafford even began to hope that he might die before he
gave way and then the secret would be truly safe.

As they stretched him they applied electricity to his
genitals and began to remove his fingernails.

It was then that Trafford's strength finally deserted him.

'Enough,' he cried. 'The name you are looking for is—'

'Cassius,' said the Inquisitor.

Trafford was shocked. He struggled to find some clarity
in the crimson confusion of his thoughts.

'I don't understand,' he whispered finally.

'What's not to understand?' Brother Redemption asked.
'It was your colleague Cassius who pushed the poisoned
needle into Caitlin Happymeal. I've known from the start.
All the pain you have been through has been for nothing.
I was just curious to see how long you'd hold out. Call it
professional interest.'

'But . . .'

'Trafford,
of course
we knew. You
knew
we knew, if only
you'd bothered to think about it instead of trying to be a
hero. When you first told Chantorria that you had been
approached by a Vaccinator it was on the day of a Fizzy
Coff, and you said it was a colleague who had come to
you. You told her, she told us. From there it was the
simplest process of elimination to alight on Cassius.
Unfortunately, unlike you, he was a little too quick for us.'

'He escaped?'

'He's dead.'

'You killed him?'

'He killed himself. Straight after you were arrested. Went
to the men's bath and rest room comfort area and took
poison. He knew which way the wind was blowing.'

Trafford said nothing but deep inside himself, despite
the terrible pain, his soul was flying. Cassius was a hero! If
he'd been caught and tortured the secrets of so many
would have been revealed: Vaccinators, Humanists and
Sandra Dee most certainly. But he had protected them all;
he had silenced himself before he could be made to speak.

'So, as I say,' Brother Redemption went on, 'your agony
and the loss of those three fingernails were for nothing. I
must say, you held out remarkably. In fact I had very nearly
decided to stop. We don't want you dead, after all.'

'Why would you care? You knew my secret anyway. Does
it really matter if you kill me now rather than later?'

'Of course it matters, you bloody fool,' said Brother
Redemption. 'The Temple needs you. You and your wife
have made fools of the elders. They trumpeted your brat
as a miracle baby and then she died. Now we know why
she died.'

'From cholera.'

'Sent by the Love because you defied him. Now it's your
job to confess your sins to the nation that they might
understand the full story of the cursed child Caitlin
Happymeal.'