Who killed God?

Who Killed God:- It's either the prophesied second coming which would make this the New, New Testament or about a very dangerous man and the emancipation of women.

TITLE: WHO KILLED GOD?

"Nothing is to be said in favour of riches and high birth, which are easy ways to evil."

Socrates

PROLOGUE

Five hundred years ago, the King of England showed his royal middle finger to Pope Clement V11 and Catholicism. This gave HenryV111 a new wife, ownership of all the wealthy Catholic monasteries and placed himself as head of the Church of England. Through the accident of birth and not intelligence or prowess, a position of power is maintained to this day through royal lineage. The writer, Christopher Hitchens’ contemporary perspective on this is "The slobbering, bat-eared dauphin, Prince Charles becomes head of the armed forces and the church."

Power is illusory and as false as the prodigious codpiece on HenryV111's armour. Power is a three-legged stool, the theatre of royalty designed to bolster general public loyalty, the armed forces, and the church.

The military, by its very nature, takes orders. Even though orders are not always good or intelligent, obedience is absolute. This is underlined by the still valid Mutiny Act of 1689, which defines mutiny as an 'Organised act of disobedience or defiance by two or more armed forces members. And, sometimes obedience is enforced, as in the example of soldiers in the First World War. They were required to leap out of their trenches at the sound of whistles that signalled an attack to begin. As one British survivor succinctly put it, "What they don't show in films or write about in books is the military police standing at the back of the trenches with their guns drawn. When the whistles blew if you didn't ‘go over the top’ (the phrase that described leaping out of the trench usually into a hail of machine-gun fire) they, the military, police, shot you." The military leg of the power stool is enshrined in compliance. It only requires control of the most senior military hierarchy to control its entirety.

The monarchy's leg of the power stool depends on a level of public support, so it must tread carefully or potentially face calls for a republic. Although royals seem to have two left feet at various times as they trip over, sexual scandals and interference by them in political decision-making. However, they are afforded protection through arcane laws and soft-hearted and soft-headed adoration, especially at the time of a royal birth or wedding. Any royal event has the royal family participants dressed up in military regalia to underline their privileged power position.

The church is the most wobbly leg of the three-legged power stool. Falling attendance numbers and clerical sexual scandals have made it vulnerable.

Politicians are not the fourth leg. For centuries they have been toy things for the wealthy and secretive powerbroker; The Unicorn Society.

The Unicorn Society, this most powerful and secretive of societies, does not indulge in brash Davos Conferences, secret handshakes or crude lobbying of politicians. Instead, even their internal communications occur through a mysterious, osmosis like process. A thought, idea, or directive passes through the group by a word spoken, a picture shown, or a gift.

The Unicorn Society decided that the stability of the power stool was under threat because of the church’s weakness. For them, this meant that their control of the levers of power was under threat. They decided that they would remove one of the three legs of the power stool to create a vacuum. A vacuum that they would fill with something of their own making. Their target would be the church, and the public face of their attack on the church would be The Hymnists.

The ground was set for a power struggle.

God knows where it would end.

Chapter One

"I killed him."

'Arry', as he pronounced his name in a heavy London accent, is the desk sergeant at Bardsley Police Station. Following two tours of duty in Afghanistan with the British Army, he joined the police force. As a soldier, he'd been pragmatic about killing the enemy and had seen all the horrors that modern armaments do to the human body. As a policeman, he had attended many bloody car accidents and the occasional murder scene. Harry Manning considered himself a detached but experienced observer of the human condition and that there was little that could shock him.

Standing behind his elevated desk in the charge room at Bardsley Police Station, he leaned forward, resting on his crossed arms and studied the person in front of him. Belonging to a religious order given the black suit and white clerical collar, the Reverend John Hammond stared back at Harry.

"And, who did you kill?" said Harry smiling.

"God."

"God?" asked Harry, still smiling.

"God".

Unperturbed, Harry said," OK, we'll take down a few details, then you can have a chat with a detective."

He had already decided which detective he would get to speak with the reverend. Harry's opinion of detectives was that they were about as much use as tits on a bull. And he considered the biggest tit of them all, Detective Constable Cooper. The detective was called "Coops" or behind his back, "Chicken Coops" or "Chicken Shit". Coops also received Easter Eggs, the occasional boiled egg with a sad face drawn on it and the rare card saying he was doing an "eggcellent job" or suffering from an "eggistential crisis". At Bradley Station, the police are known for their biting humour, not wit.

Harry phoned the detective's room and asked for "Coops". He had decided that the Reverend John Hammond was a "fucking nutter" and dropping him on Coops would be good for a laugh.

"We've got a Reverend John Hammond here who claims he's killed someone."

"You've got him in cuthdardy?" said Coops, who for the umpteenth time had had his two front teeth, that were both crown implants, fall out. His original front teeth had been knocked out by a "fucking nutter" who Coops had been arresting. He knew that his toothless speech amused everyone, but his dentist couldn't fit him in for a few weeks.

Grinning, Harry mimicked Coops saying, "Yes, we have him in cuthdardy, and I'll put him in interview room three."

"Harry, you're a prick."

"C'mon, Coops, I'm only taking the pith," said Harry, quickly putting the phone down.

As Coops made his way to interview room three, he felt a tingle of excitement. A murder case is a way to move up the promotional ladder. Grabbing his tie, he pushed it into and beneath his shirt. A simple precaution given that the person who had dislodged his front teeth in the first place had used his tie to pull him into the thrown punch.

Coops was fond of his interrogation techniques. He had once brought in an angle grinder to shorten the front legs of the steel chairs on which people sat when being questioned. The goal was to make the person feel uncomfortable as they had to constantly stop themselves from sliding forward and off the chair. Harry, the desk sergeant, informed Coops that he would be arrested for damaging police property if he did this. It also confirmed for Harry that Coops was a 'tit'. The biggest, most useless 'tit' on the bull.

Entering interview room three, Coops stood opposite John Hammond and dropped a heavy folder on the desk that sat between them. It landed with a loud whoomp! This was Step One in Coop's interrogation technique - an attention-getter. He would follow this up with a question that he thought would unsettle the interviewee and give him, Coops the psychological edge.

Coops jutted his jaw forward, mangling the pronunciation of 'thug' asked, "Are you a fug?"

John asked, "Fug?"

Coops struggled with his toothless pronunciation and repeated his question more slowly, "Are you a fug?"

John looked at him quizzically but wanted to be helpful, "Fug. No, no, I'm Welsh."

Coops sat down and dejectedly realised he'd lost his psychological edge. Frustrated, he thought," Fuck the dentist and fuck the fucking nutter that knocked his front teeth out." He looked around the interview room. The grey painted walls reflected his mood. How could he control an interview sounding like a Disney cartoon character? Coops was unknowingly using his most successful ploy so far; he wasn't saying anything. He sat staring at nothing. The tension in the room built as Coops silently thought about his failures. His workplace was crap. No one liked him. His home life was crap. Life with Eva, his wife, was crap. The marriage to her had come about after one too many drinks, a fumble in the pub car park and promises of undying love. Lovemaking, insisted on by Eva, was once a week on a Thursday night following her pottery classes. She repeatedly watched the movie Ghost and became misty-eyed during the pottery wheel scene famous for its eroticism. It was during their last Thursday night bedroom session she had moaned, "Mmm Harry," that Coops finally put two and two together. Harry was the name of Eva's pottery class teacher. Coops had angrily asked, "Ether? Ether?" through the gap of his missing teeth. Although he was trying to shout indignantly, "Eva! Eva!" it sounded more like a call for the anesthetic. She took it as encouragement and became more animated. For Coops, Eva's passionate utterances had also brought to mind the image of the desk sergeant Harry. This finished off what little passion he had been able to muster. Confronting Eva, she said that he must have imagined it. He hadn't imagined the bloody smile on her face as she went to sleep.

A nervous cough from the Vicar John Hammond brought his thoughts back to the interview room. Coops looked at the figure in front of him, a bemused face surrounded by black hair and a rapidly turning grey beard. The hair, wiry and curled, spiralled outwards. Deep smile lines surrounded his dark eyes.

Somewhat resignedly, Coops said," OK, tell me what happened".

"When I was a boy, my father was in our local church choir. Oh, what he could do with 'Rock of Ages," John said wistfully.

"What's thiff got to do with killing thomeone?" Coops was starting to feel that his speech problem was overwhelming any chance of making this interrogation anything other than a comedy show.

"Well, it's the context, you see," said John, his Welsh accent pitching the “you see” higher.

Coops grunted.

"Because my Dar was in the choir, we spent a lot of time at the church. The Welsh church is strict. Not as strict as the Scottish, but we do enjoy a little bit of fire and brimstone. I know everyone thinks that all the Welsh can sing like Tom Jones, but I do not have that gift. At the church, I saw how the vicar was looked up to, and I thought that was for me. Those years with my father at church were the crucible where my faith was forged. I thought my belief was unshakeable. Yes, the church was my 'Rock of Ages with a cleft for me'. Did you know Augustus Toplady wrote that hymn? What a great name."

John paused and gathered his thoughts. He pressed his hands flat on the table as though steadying himself.

"Today, that rock was shattered. In truth, I had had some serious self-doubts. It was so evident my Bishop told me I was becoming too reflective and I needed to look outwards. So this afternoon, I was sitting on a bench at the side of St Lukes church, and I was meditating on my faith and purpose."

"OK tho your rock is thattered," said Coops trying to move things along.

"He came and sat on the bench. However, I wasn't aware of when he sat down as I was distracted by my thoughts. It was only when he spoke that I noticed him."

"Dethcribe him for me," said Coops.

"I think he was about 30 years old, unshaven, a bit dishevelled. Oh, and he was wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt. 'Never mind the bollocks'. And yes, he had a Scottish accent. Not so broad that I couldn't understand him but distinctly Scottish. He said that I seemed deep in thought. I remember saying that, unfortunately, our beliefs are tested from time to time.”

John again became lost in his thoughts about what had happened that morning. He had been surprised how he had opened himself up and described his emotional turmoil to the man who had sat on the bench. He had also talked of how members of the congregation came to him for advice or guidance. It felt like he was sitting in a dodgem car being buffeted around. Staying with the funfair analogy, he explained that as he looked for answers, he was like one of those machines where you position a claw that drops to pick up a stuffed toy. Invariably the toy slips out of the claw's grasp.

"That's what it's like. I grasp for answers, but they slip away."

"What do you mean?" asked Coops.

"It's what I said to him. Then he said he might be able to help me because…well, he said he was God."

"God?"

"Yes, God."

"OK". Coops felt that this was 'fucking nutter' territory and reached up to his tie to ensure it was still tucked into his shirt.

"I suppose I should have been a little more patient with him. Every church draws a number of, let's say, fragile souls that struggle with reality. John, at the time, was weary from his thoughts. "Sometimes even vicars can feel overwhelmed and less charitable. I said prove it."

"Then?" asked Coops as John paused.

"He said you want me to do some magic tricks? Water into wine? Plague of frogs? I thought I'd humour him and asked, Wouldn't God know how to prove it to me? What shocked me next was he was suddenly sitting on my legs, almost my lap, facing me. But that was nothing to the shock I got when I realised that he was holding a gun pointing towards his chest. I don't know how he did it, but he held my right hand with my finger on the trigger. He then said, Here's proof."

Chapter Two

"Bloody Hymniths," said Coops re-entering the interview room.

John had become used to Coop's speech problem, but he wondered why the writers of hymns had upset Coops so much.

Coops dabbed at his bloody lip with a handkerchief.

The interrogation had been interrupted by a cacophony that seemed to be made up of raucous hymn singing and an alarm bell. Coops had rushed from the room.

It looked like a rugby scrum in the custody area as police tried to control a group of eleven men dressed in punk versions of choir robes. Adding to the oddity of the scene, the men were screaming out a raucous and crude version of the hymn, Abide with Me, "In sex, in sex O lord, ride with me, ride with me".

The Hymnists were the brainchild of The Unicorn Society, whose objective was to undermine the shaky foundations of the Church. The concept was simple, make the Church a laughing stock. With a repertoire of bawdy hymns, adapted from the originals, The Hymnists would gather outside and sometimes inside churches and lustily sing. This second approach caused their arrest and arrival at Bardsley Police Station.

Coops consulted his notes in the interview room and said," OK, John. God said, here's proof".

"He pulled the trigger. Well, his finger was on mine, so I suppose I also pulled the trigger."

"What happened then, John?"

"Well, he was blown backwards, and there was a huge hole in his chest. And blood. Lots of blood."

"What did you do then?"

"I panicked. I could see he was dead. I did not doubt that. I went to him. His eyes were open, but he was dead. I must have been in shock. I couldn't think straight. I started to run to the Church to phone for an ambulance, and then I thought this couldn't be real. So I ran back to him. I may have done this a few times. I was baffled. As God is my witness, no, that's silly. In all truth, I'm not sure what I did then, but I realised I must confess. So I came here."

Coops stared at the man in front of him and thought, "fucking nutter." But his ingrained training meant he had to do everything by the book. His evaluation of John, though, had softened. Yes, he was a "fucking nutter" but not an objectionable, punch in the mouth nutter. Coops looked at John Hammond, and his attitude toward him softened. John looked like an innocent, naive man. In a leap of thought, Coops considered that he would like to know this man as a friend in a different world. Coops thought that John Hammond was someone he could trust. "Alright, John, I'm going to organise a nithe cup of tea for you. While you enjoy that, I'll take a look up at your Church."

John was exhausted by the events of the day. He rested his head on the table and fell into a fitful, dream-filled sleep. His dream took him back to the church bench.