Nene led the way through the rusted iron doorway into the white light beyond. They were standing at the point where the narrow stone gutter of the nave met that of the south-west transept at a right angle. More than a hundred feet below them was the old cloister garden, set out in geometrical neatness like a model village. A golden retriever ran in tiny circles on the grass lawn illuminated by the yellow light streaming out from the French windows of the Bishop’s House.
Above them the sloping roof climbed to its apex, almost lost against the lead-coloured sky, and behind them the massive bulk of the West Tower rose up towards the low clouds, its outer walls studded with the heads of decorative imps and demons put there nearly eight hundred years earlier to ward off evil. A couple looked like Dryden’s relatives.
There was no handrail, just a low stone wall at knee height. Dryden, a dedicated physical coward of extraordinary range, felt the back of his knees wobble. He attempted a cough and produced instead a squeal of remarkable pitch and strangulated stress which everyone kindly pretended not to notice.
As they paused to catch their breath the snow began to fall at last – a sigh of relief from an overburdened sky. The large wet flakes seemed to make the heavens brighter as they fell in damp clusters. The fall accelerated visibly, quickly obscuring everything except the walkway on which they stood.
Nene, who was probably in his mid-fifties but looked older, wheezed with the effort of the climb and leant back against the stone until his breathing returned to normal. In the frost his lips had an unhealthy blue lustre.
Dryden took in the rooftop world. The darkness had gone in the flood of white but nothing was visible. Almost nothing. Through the blizzard a bright halogen-blue lamp stood out, about fifty feet along the transept gutter. Dimly a group of silhouettes was gathered round the light. It looked like a Christmas card of the nativity.
This was clearly their destination. With sickening inevitability Dryden considered the journey that lay ahead. He took the first step unasked, knowing that any delay could result in embarrassing hysterics. Fleetingly he considered how much of his life was focused on doing things he feared just to prove to himself he wasn’t a coward. The gutter was floored with a once treacherous layer of ice. One of Nene’s men had taken a pick to it, scouring the ice deeply to provide a safer footing. The stonework glittered around them with the first signs of a hoar frost and the snow was swaddling the ranks of gargoyles. Griffins, imps, dragons and cockatrices stared out into the white night.
As they approached the group it broke from its stiff tableau to reveal a crouching gargoyle where the crib of the nativity should have been. To Dryden the stone figure appeared to be some kind of horserider seated on a mythical animal – part dragon, part lion. Nene stepped round it and stood back on the far side, putting a foot casually up on the stone parapet for support.
All moments of recognition are emotionally charged. Most bring delight but in the few seconds it took Dryden to realize exactly what he was looking at the short black hair on his neck bristled and he felt the lurching impact of disgust. Logically his brain assembled the evidence of his eyes: the dry wisp of hair still clinging to the rider’s bowed head, the exposed yellow-china bones of one hand attached to the gargoyle’s neck with lichen, the verdigris-covered remains of an overcoat. But it was the skull he would remember. The yellowed dome was marked by the tiny canals which had once carried blood to the brain – an intelligent pattern now interlaced with the silver mucous trails of slugs, one of which, orange and fat, was heading for the dark safety of the unseen eye sockets.
‘Jesus,’ said Dryden.
One of the three men in the group that they had joined crossed himself. An owl flew through the lamplight and disappeared instantly into the snowfall.
Most of the body had collapsed into the gutter. There was no flesh left on the exposed hand, arm, or the skull – most of which was tucked unseen into the wing folds of the stone gargoyle’s back. The attitude of the body suggested that he, or she, had tried to stand, using the gargoyle as support, but had only managed to raise one arm to the task before death had intervened. Lichen, like glue, had fixed the scene.
‘Jesus,’ said Dryden again, automatically searching his overcoat pockets for the cigarettes he had given up ten years before – except for the packet he kept in Laura’s room for the ritual evening smoke. Nene recognized the gesture and produced a packet, leaning gingerly across the body to offer one. They lit up in silence and flicked the ash and match over the gutter’s edge.
Stubbs, even more colourless now in the white world of snow, produced a crisp white notebook: ‘Mr Nene?’