Revelation

THE LIBRARY had its usual hushed atmosphere, seated barristers leafing through law books with stern, concentrated expressions, while elsewhere students grubbed through cases with puzzled frowns. I went and looked over the high shelves. The law books were organized by year, and there were fewer of them for the last century. From the time printing came in, more and more books of law cases had been collated, but the books from the middle of the last century were still few, and handwritten. I found the volume I wanted, a yearbook from 1461. It was ancient and battered, the leather covers stained and in places torn. I took it to a desk in a secluded part of the library away from the windows, lit by candles.

The report on the case was a long one, as though the reporter, like my fellow-students, had revelled in the gruesome details of ripped-open bodies. It had indeed been in Norwich, in the summer of 1461, that a young man called Paul Strodyr had been arraigned, tried and convicted of the murder of nine young women over the previous five years. Six had been prostitutes, three were described as 'respectable young women'. Reading between the lines, it appeared that it was the death of the respectable women that had galvanized the city. There seemed to have been a tremendous hue and cry that had ended with Strodyr's cousin reporting that he had seen him covered in blood on the night of the final murder. After a guilty verdict was brought in he had admitted committing the crimes, and had raged against the evil of prostitutes, said that God desired them to be destroyed.

Several things struck me. The first was that Strodyr was not a man of status and power like de Rais, but a farm labourer. There was no evidence of obvious signs of madness — the reporter said that he was a cheerful, friendly young man who worked on the local farms. Apart from that the report was silent on details about Strodyr — he was sentenced to hang, but if he had said anything from the dock it was not recorded.

I put the book down and sat thinking. So Guy was right, there had been cases of apparently pointless mass murder before. In this case the murderer had been caught. But Strodyr's ordinary background and the fact that no one seemed to think him strange only stressed the difficulties we faced in finding our killer. And in a city the size of London, perhaps ten times the size of Norwich then, how much harder to find a single man. I thought again of the murderous child I had encountered a few years before; if he had lived would he have been another Strodyr, another de Rais? I could see no way to tell.

I WENT BACK to chambers and worked for a while. I jumped when the door opened and Barak came in. He looked tired and smelled of sweat, but was smiling.

'I have the addresses,' he said. 'And some news.'

I threw down my quill. 'On a Sunday?'

'I went down to Augmentations this morning. There were a lot of clerks there, trying to sort out the mess this reorganization has made. I managed to chivvy them into getting the Westminster records. I got the addresses and a register of payments with them.'

'Well done.' Yet I thought it sad that he should choose to work on Sunday, when he might be at home with Tamasin.

He sat down opposite me. 'The infirmarian himself has not been in to collect his pension since December. Just before the first murder, the cottar. His name is Goddard, Lancelot Goddard.'

'Did you get his address?'

'Yes. It is a poor street near the Steelyard. I've been down there—'

'You did not try to see him by yourself—'

'Of course I didn't,' he said impatiently. 'I asked around the neighbours. They said there had been an ex-monk that rented a house there since Westminster Abbey went down three years ago. He kept apart from the locals, thought he was a cut above the shopkeepers and the like who live there. He left in January, saying he had inherited a house from his mother. I went to the place where he used to live; it's boarded up. Then I went to see the landlord; he's in the next street. He said the monk was a good tenant, quiet and always paid on time. He confirmed the story of the inheritance, said the monk came to tell him he was going, left the landlord with a month's rent in hand.'

'What did this Goddard look like?'

'A man nearing forty. Distinctive. High cheekbones and a big mole on the side of his nose. Tall and well set up, dark hair.'

'What about his assistants?'

'I got their addresses. One, Cantrell, lives in Westminster still, the other out near the old Charterhouse. At a tavern, called the Green Man.'

'A tavern.' I raised my eyebrows.

'So it seems. That's Lockley, the lay brother.'

I nodded. As he was not a monk, he would not have got a pension. But a tavern was a far cry from a monastery.

'What do you think has happened to Goddard? It is strange he vanished in January. Do you think—'

'That he could be the killer? Hold on, Jack, there could be another reason he disappeared.' I looked at him seriously. 'He could be another victim.'