Page 24 of The Running Grave

On a shallow shelf attached to the pew in front of Robin lay a number of identical pamphlets, one of which she picked up.

Welcome to the Universal Humanitarian Church!

Our Mission, Our Values, Our Vision

Robin slipped the pamphlet into her bag to read later and glanced around, trying to spot Will Edensor. There was no shortage of good-looking young attendants in orange sweatshirts bustling around the temple, showing people to seats, or chatting and joking with visitors, but there was no sign of him.

Noticing a few congregation members looking upwards, Robin now turned her attention to the ceiling. A mural had been painted there, which was of a very different style to the doll-like people painted around the walls. This looked like Disney’s take on Michelangelo. Five gigantic figures in swirling robes were flying across a Technicolor dawn, and Robin deduced that these were the five prophets of whom Kevin Pirbright had written in his long email to Sir Colin Edensor.

The figure directly overhead Robin was dark-haired, bearded and wearing orange. He appeared to be bleeding from a cut on his forehead and there were bloodstains on his robes. This was surely the Wounded Prophet. Then there was a benevolent-looking old man with a white beard and blue robes who held the rod of Asclepius, a staff wrapped with a serpent: the Healer Prophet. The Golden Prophet was depicted as a silver-haired woman whose yellow robes billowed out behind her; she wore a beatific expression, and was scattering jewels upon the earth.

The fourth figure was a gaunt, unsmiling young man with shadowed eyes. He wore crimson robes and, to Robin’s slight consternation, had a noose around his neck, the rope flying behind him. This, Robin assumed, was the Stolen Prophet, Alexander Graves, who’d hanged himself a week after being forcibly kidnapped back by his family. She found it both strange and sinister that the church had chosen to depict him with a sunken face and the means of his destruction around his neck.

However, it was the central figure that drew most of Robin’s attention. Smaller and slighter than the four others, she had long black hair, wore white robes, and even though she was depicted as airborne, she was trailing waves in her wake. The Drowned Prophet’s oval face had a severe beauty, but, whether because of a trick of the light or not, the narrow eyes showed no irises, but appeared to be entirely black.

‘Are you here alone?’ said a voice beside Robin, who started. The young blonde woman who’d welcomed her at the door was smiling down at her.

‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘my friend was supposed to come with me but she’s got a hangover!’

‘Oh dear,’ said the girl, still smiling.

‘I know, I was a bit annoyed,’ said Robin, with a laugh. ‘She’s the one who wanted to come!’

She’d planned all this, of course: best not to look too keen, too desperate to ask questions; better by far to let her clothes and several hundred pounds’ worth of handbag make their own alluring impression.

‘There are no accidents,’ said the blonde, beaming down at Robin. ‘I’ve learned that. No accidents. You’ve chosen a really auspicious day to come, as well, if this is your first visit. You’ll understand once service begins.’

The blonde walked away, still smiling, as a loud bang to the rear of the temple signalled the closing of the doors. A bell rang somewhere, giving one single deep peal, and the congregation fell silent. The orange-sweatshirted attendants had retreated to standing positions along the walls.

Then, to Robin’s surprise, the first notes of a well-known pop song began to play over hidden speakers: David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’.

The static image on the cinema screen had unfrozen and the orange-clad temple attendants began clapping in time and singing along with the song, as did some of the congregation.

Onscreen, the camera was moving through laughing people throwing coloured powders at each other, and Robin, who’d lived in multicultural London long enough to know, thought she recognised the festival of Holi. The temple lights were slowly dimming, and within a minute the only light was emanating from the cinema screen, where joyful Hindus of both sexes continued to laugh and chase each other, and rainbow colours flew through the air, and they seemed to be dancing to Bowie’s song and personifying its lyrics, each of them a king or a queen who, in this glorious mass, could ‘beat them’, whoever they were…

The film cast flickering, multicoloured lights over the faces of the congregation. As the song faded out, so too did the film, to be replaced by a static image of the Hindu God Shiva, sitting cross-legged with a snake wrapped around his neck, a garland of orange flowers hanging down over his bare chest. A brilliant white spotlight now appeared on the stage, into which a man stepped, and as the brightness had made the surrounding darkness seem so deep, he appeared to have come out of thin air. Some of those watching broke into applause, including all of the beaming attendants, who also emitted a few whoops of excitement.

Robin recognised the man standing in the spotlight at once: he was Jonathan Wace, known to his adherents as ‘Papa J’, the founder of the Universal Humanitarian Church, making an unusual in-person appearance at one of his temples. A handsome, tall and fit-looking man in his mid-sixties, he could have passed in this light for a couple of decades younger, with his thick, dark shoulder-length hair threaded with silver, his large, dark blue eyes and square jaw with a dimple in his chin. His smile was thoroughly engaging. There was no suggestion of bombast or theatricality in the way he acknowledged the applause, but, on the contrary, a warm and humble smile, and he made a deprecatory gesture, as though to calm the excitement. He was clad in a full-length orange robe embroidered in gold thread, and wore a microphone headset, so that his voice carried easily over the two-hundred-strong crowd in front of him.

‘Good morning,’ he said, placing his hands together in the attitude of prayer and bowing.

‘Good morning,’ chorused at least half the congregation in return.

‘Welcome to today’s service, which, as some of you will know, is a particularly important one for members of the Universal Humanitarian Church. Today, the nineteenth of March, marks the beginning of our year. Today is the Day of the Wounded Prophet.

‘This,’ said Wace, gesturing towards the image onscreen, ‘is the kind of image most of us associate with a divinity. Here we see Shiva, the benign and beneficent Hindu God, who contains many contradictions and ambiguities. He’s an ascetic, yet also a God of fertility. His third eye gives him insight, but may also destroy.’

The image of Shiva now faded from the cinema screen, to be replaced with a blurry black and white photograph of a young American soldier.

‘This,’ said Wace, smiling, ‘isn’t what most of us think of when imagining a holy man. This is Rusty Andersen, who as a young man in the early seventies was sent to war in Vietnam.’

The image of Rusty Andersen faded and was replaced by grainy footage of explosions and men running with rifles. Low, ominous music was now playing over the temple loudspeakers.

‘Rust, as his friends called him, witnessed and endured atrocities. He was forced to commit unspeakable acts. But when the war was over…’ The music became lighter, more hopeful. ‘He went home for the last time, packed his guitar and his belongings, and went wandering in Europe.’

The screen now showed a succession of old photographs, Andersen’s hair becoming longer in each one. He was busking on what looked like the streets of Rome; making the peace sign in front of the Eiffel Tower; walking with his guitar on his back through the London rain, past Horse Guards Parade.

‘Finally,’ said Wace, ‘he arrived in a little Norfolk village called Aylmerton. There, he heard of a community living off the land, and he decided to join them.’