SENTINEL: an exciting British detective crime thriller Read Free

Rowland imagined himself playing the role of a persecuted disciple; he liked the idea; it appealed to something deep within his soul. Made him feel closer to his crucified Lord.
    The vicar started walking. At least the church was safe for a little longer. On the night the councillors voted for demolition one of them had suggested with a sneer that, if the parishioners did not like the decision, they could complain to the Almighty. The vicar had extended that to include the more temporal Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs which announced that it would give due consideration to the clergyman’s plea for a planning inquiry. No such assurance was made for the houses and the bulldozers duly did their job.
    Rowland turned his coat collar up against the teeming rain which had blown in over the city. The vicar felt once more the familiar knot in the depths of his stomach as he approached St Mark’s; he had grown more wary, less trusting over the months of the campaign. He hesitated as he always did before pushing his way through the large timber door. He had not taken the escalation of threats against him lightly. The incidents had been the final straw for many among a congregation already down to twenty, their desertion leaving the vicar to administer to less than a dozen hardy and determined souls, all of them elderly.
    ‘God be with them all,’ murmured the vicar as he entered the church. ‘And me.’
    God might not have been with him but he quickly realised that someone else was, when he saw, over to his left, a figure standing deep in the shadows thrown by the candles at the altar, silently surveying him. There was something strangely familiar about the man but the vicar could not quite place it as he peered into the faint light. As he watched, the man melted into the darkness.
    The vicar was uneasy but not yet unduly alarmed; despite the threats, he had continued to insist that the church remain open during the day to offer succour to the needy. Despite the warnings from congregation members that he was risking his personal safety, he was not about to abandon the principle now. The policy meant that St Mark’s had long been a regular haunt for homeless people seeking shelter from the wind and the rain, and the vicar assumed that it was one such person now. He had always argued that they were the people to whom the church should be reaching out; besides, the Reverend Rowland had an abiding faith in the power of Christian love and the goodness of human beings.
    It was a couple of moments before the clergyman realised that there was another man in the church, a squat, shaven-headed man with a scar on his cheek who was walking up the aisle towards him and who did not, judging from his appearance, seem to share the clergyman’s faith.
    ‘Well if it isn’t the Reverend Rowland,’ sneered Neil Garvin. ‘About fucking time.’
    ‘Can I be of assistance?’ asked Rowland, his voice tailing off as he caught sight of the baseball bat in the man’s hand. ‘Now hang on a minute, there’s no need for any of that. Whatever your problem is, I am sure we can discuss it amicably.’
    ‘But you’ve already been warned, Reverend,’ said Garvin in a voice laden with menace, ‘and you just would not listen, would you? You just would not fucking listen. Kept opening your damned fool mouth. Well, time to learn how stupid that was.’
    ‘I will not be driven out of the Lord’s house by a thug like you,’ said the vicar, trying to keep his voice steady but feeling the bile rising in his throat. ‘I have told you people before that there is no way that I will allow the forces of evil to triumph over the good in this world and what’s more if you really think…’
    ‘The time for talking is over, you sanctimonious little shit,’ said a voice behind him.
    The clergyman turned round to face Des Cranmer.
    ‘Let the first man who is without sin strike the first…’ began the vicar.
    He was not allowed to finish the