[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand by Jim Kelly Page B

black sinuous line of surrounding hills, was already blurred by falling rain.
    A random hail stone fell between them, then twenty, then a hundred. The air filled with the alien aroma of ice and the sound of a million miniature percussions. The source of the falling hail, the blue-black cloud, slid away south, the sunlight flooding in behind, a rainbow vaulting the valley. But the hail still fell from a clear sky and another bank of clouds threatened.
    Shaw expected Heaney to retreat to the bus, but instead she ran, dodging the icy pellets, over the old level crossing towards a clapboard building which looked as if it had once been the town’s old mainline station. It was only as he ran up a set of entrance steps that he saw, improbably mounted on the roof, an onion-dome surmounted by a cross: no ordinary cross, but the triple-cross of Byzantium.

    Inside, beyond a glass porch, the darkness was velvety and it took a moment for Shaw’s eyes to pick out the gilt, glimmering in the light from a single, guttering candle. They were in a room divided by a wooden partition, decorated with a series of icons, Mary, Christ, various saints, all in the distinct style of the Orthodox Church. Crosses, crowns and statues stood in niches. Beyond the partition a lead-grey candelabra hung in what must be the priest’s vestibule, partly hidden by a decorated wooden double-door.
    ‘Welcome to St Seraphim’s,’ said Heaney, shaking her head like a dog, so that melting hailstones flew out, catching the light. ‘There’s a lot of interest within the Orthodox churches in the shrine. I think the Russians have been here fifty years. Mind you, the priests are discreet. I hardly ever see them.’
    ‘I’d have put you down as a lifetime atheist,’ offered Shaw.
    ‘The attraction’s entirely aesthetic,’ said Heaney. ‘I’ve had enough of religion and I suspect the feeling’s mutual. I was expelled by the Sisters of Mercy, Inspector, and that’s an All-Ireland record.’
    ‘And the crime?’ asked Shaw.
    She bit her lip. ‘I stayed home, nursing my mother in her final illness. They said I should have been in school learning the pluperfect of amo , an irony which, believe me, totally escaped them. They said God would take care of Mother. I suppose he did, but not in the fashion I’d hoped. Still, that’s all done now.’
    Shaw, examining the little church in the half-light, found the icons strangely unsettling. Was it the foursquare penetrating eyes, seeking out the watchers’ own? And what eyes; always lidded, full and hooded, as if searching for an image within as much as without.
    ‘I have to visit Walsingham a lot,’ said Heaney. ‘There’s an old people’s home over the back of the new Catholic church and two more on the outskirts. Occasionally, I like to have a few minutes on my own. I can thank St Seraphim for that, if nothing else. Sorry, I didn’t say. I’m in health care, just another bloody bureaucrat of course, based up at the Great Eastern.

    ‘It’s the oddest place, Walsingham. The shrine itself down in the town is a total horror, and the church isn’t much better. I was brought up a Catholic, County Mayo, and even I think it’s over the top. Talk about smoke and bells. Meanwhile, the Slipper Chapel, which is RC, feels like the C of E – so work that out. But St Seraphim’s is rather wonderful by comparison.’
    She reached out a hand and let her fingertips brush one of the icons, a small statuette of the Virgin. ‘I can come here and just sit, and I don’t get that claustrophobic feeling I do in the other churches, that someone’s trying to sell me an idea. I had enough of that as a kid.’
    She gave Shaw a mischievous smile. ‘And, to be frank, the absence of priests and nuns or – God help us – monks, helps a lot.’ The smile deepened and then saddened. ‘Priests, Ireland’s gift to England, just when you’d got rid of them.’
    In his back pocket Shaw felt his mobile buzz.
    A text from DC