Crime in the Choir

by Catherine Moloney

  Nothing stirred.

  Noakes was looking at him curiously.

  ‘Not enough sleep, Noakesy.’

  The other grunted sympathetically. ‘I’ll drive, boss,’ he said and Markham subsided with relief into the passenger seat.

  God, it was nearly Christmas. A time of innocence. A time for children. And here they were following a coffin trail to the House of God.

  He felt almost light-headed.

  The star went forward and halted over the place where the child lay.

  The age-old Christmas story. But no comfort to him. There seemed precious little chance that any sign or portent would lead them to Julian Forsythe. Unless they could break Woodcourt.

  Again, that spasm of unease.

  ‘Step on it, Noakes,’ he said tersely. ‘Blues and twos if you must.’ Then, his voice sinking almost to a whisper, ‘Can’t afford to let him out of our sight. Not even for a moment. I think we’ve got ourselves a serial killer.’

  The cathedral car park was deserted. Not a vehicle to be seen.

  Markham’s heart skipped a beat.

  ‘Where the hell’s the surveillance van?’

  Noakes shot the DI a look. Such vehemence from his self-contained boss was rare. Again, he had the feeling that something about this case came closer to home than Markham cared to admit.

  Still, there was supposed to be a static unit covering the cathedral. So, where was it?

  The two men stood uncertainly by their car under the gunmetal sky.

  Suddenly, Dr O’Keefe appeared around the corner of the cathedral. Markham’s heart contracted once again as he took in the principal’s anxious countenance and uncharacteristically headlong gait.

  ‘Everything OK, sir?’ Noakes’s voice sounded unnaturally hearty.

  ‘Not really, Officers.’ The usually suave O’Keefe sent Markham a glance of mute entreaty. ‘I seem to have, well, mislaid Canon Woodcourt.’ He gave an embarrassed laugh, but the forced levity could not disguise the shapeless suspicions dimly stirring in his mind. In that moment, Markham could tell that O’Keefe was filled with compunction for having wronged the canon even in his thoughts. Seeing this, he would have staked his life on the principal’s innocence of involvement in the conspiracy.

  ‘When did you last see Mr Woodcourt, sir?’ asked Noakes, stolidly unflustered.

  ‘Let me see … the meeting with Dr Harris – that’s the suffragan – had to be adjourned when he was called away. Some sort of pastoral emergency at the university apparently. The canon and I walked back to school together.’ O’Keefe scuffed his feet guiltily through the snow. ‘Dick suggested to your lads they drive round to the back and Joan would rustle up some hot drinks and food.’ Again, that nervous laugh. ‘Figured they’d drawn the short straw, you see. Not exactly The Sweeney.’

  ‘And then what?’ prompted Noakes inexorably.

  ‘I went off to check on Nat Barton. I’m almost certain Dick said something about needing to catch up with paperwork. It was a while before I thought to look for him.’ O’Keefe looked wretched. ‘I had some idea that the staff ought to stay together,’ he concluded miserably.

  The cathedral, thought Markham, the cathedral. Its bulk brooded before them like some great somnolent beast. As he looked towards it, the whole edifice seemed to vibrate with a mysterious warning.

  Snow blindness, the DI told himself as his vision suddenly blurred and dark spots danced behind his eyelids.

  His heart beat thick and fast, but through its throb he felt something else. A feverish tingling like an electric shock. As though a voice somewhere within the sanctuary cried out to him, ‘I am here! Help me!’

  Julian Forsythe! The murdered boy was beckoning him wildly, eerily, urgently to the site of his annihilation.

  I am coming!

  ‘The crypt.’ The words fell almost involuntarily from Markham’s lips. Under the same irresistible influence, he turned to O’Keefe. ‘Who has access to it?’ Markham’s voice was faint, as though the air had been sucked from his lungs.

  ‘They must have missed it in the sweep. Or been directed away from it. Do not disturb the dead!’

  ‘The undercroft is open most days between 10am and 4pm. Anyone is welcome to worship in the side chapels, though the Bishops’ Chapel is generally kept locked as it contains graves.’ O’Keefe now sounded distinctly strained. ‘Look, Inspector, you’re surely not implying—’

  Noakes cut across him. ‘Who has keys to the Bishops’ Chapel?’

  ‘Well, members of the Cathedral Chapter – the Dean, Precentor and Canons.’

  Canons.

  The two police officers looked at each other before moving as one towards the cathedral. When O’Keefe made as if to follow, Noakes barred the way.

  ‘Best you wait here, sir,’ he instructed in tones which brooked no argument.

  Later, Markham was unable to recall their route through the shadowy spaces down to the underbelly of the cathedral. But he would remember for the rest of his days the sight that greeted them at the threshold of the Bishops’ Chapel. The cavernous chamber was brilliantly lit by candles in great sconces, the air thick with heat and the smoke of some foul parody of incense. Woodcourt, clad in Eucharistic vestments, seemed oblivious of their presence. Had he used drugs to induce some hellish auto-erotic trance, Markham wondered in stupefaction.

  Julian Forsythe lay stretched out on a granite altar, seemingly asleep, surrounded by an array of vessels in brass, silver and copper. He had been dressed in some obscene outlandish garment which left his neck and shoulders bare.

  Woodcourt’s gaze met Markham’s, but it was empty, no vestige left of the civilized clergyman who had welcomed him to St Mary’s with such avuncular charm. The DI knew then that he had failed to see behind the mask of a killer who was right beside him.

  There was no time to process the transformation. Even as Markham threw himself at the deranged cleric, part of him noted the ornate candlesticks that he had last seen on the high altar. Curse him! Perhaps he should kill him, send him to his infernal master... He looked once more at the unconscious boy, and then at the curved scimitar gleaming in Woodcourt’s hand. Uttering an incoherent cry, he launched himself at the canon and felled him to the ground. The weapon clattered to the stone floor. Woodcourt’s expression remained the same, the cold flat eyes devoid of all expression. Initially transfixed by the scene, Noakes must have followed close behind, because he was lifting the unconscious boy from the altar, crooking him tenderly in his arms.

  Markham waited until Noakes, who had not spoken a word, had left the chapel, and then he proceeded to overturn the vessels from the filthy altar on top of its sacrificing priest.

  The red mist descended.

  As he loomed over the ordained killer, the blood roaring in his ears, the past caught fire from the present. Suddenly, Markham was back in that bedroom where the demon lurked and his childhood had ended. The beast beside the cradle. The stepfather whose memory he thought to have buried fathoms deep rose before him. He could almost hear that malevolent chuckle. Blindly, his heart full to overflowing, he seized a candlestick.

  15

  Exhalations Laden With Slow Death

  Two hours later, Markham and Noakes sat waiting in a small side-ward at Bromgrove General Hospital.

  Markham hated these places with their endless corridors, harsh strip lighting and whitewashed walls which leached the colour from the faces of visitors and patients alike, so that everyone wore the same blanched pallor. He closed his eyes, transported to those last awful days at his mother’s bedside in this same hospital when, with pitiful incoherence, her face grey with effort, she had broken down and begged forgiveness for her failure to protect him. As dissolution beckoned, a film of contrition clouded her eyes like a shadowy harbinger of the final veil. He could still see the outlines of her cancer-ravaged body under the bedclothes and the softening of her drawn features as the morphine took effect. However deep her sleep, she clutched his hand as though it was a talis
man she feared to relinquish – proof that she was absolved of guilt for those years of childhood abuse to which she had turned a blind eye. Somehow, he had found the words to set her free, compassion overcoming years of banked down rage. After it was over, looking down at her serene features, Markham felt that she was once again the carefree parent of his earliest impressions whose pale lips bore traces of the smiling tenderness she had always shown him. Like a spring that had long been buried underground, his anguish had gushed over him in a scalding flow. Around him in the hospital, babies were being born into the world. He found himself praying fervently that his mother was beginning the world. The world that sets this one right.

  While the DI was wrapped in his thoughts, Noakes studied his boss with an intentness he did not normally risk. Even with a quarter of an inch of stubble, his face putty-coloured and his suit crumpled, Markham had attracted a steady flow of admiring glances. His dishevelment and the violet shadows under his eyes mysteriously enhanced his air of distinction and gaunt, brooding abstraction. And then there’s me, thought Noakes resignedly. Talk about Beauty and the Beast!

  The guvnor had almost lost it back there. Hadn’t looked like himself at all. As though he wasn’t seeing the cathedral but was somewhere else entirely. His expression was murderous, full of black churning hatred, the veins on his forehead standing out like ropes and his face running with sweat. He looked capable of anything. Woodcourt would have copped it then and there but for the principal’s arrival on the scene. Thank God O’Keefe had ignored the instruction to stay put. His calling out to Markham broke the spell.

  Although oblivious of Noakes’s covert observation, the DI’s thoughts were running in the same groove. Back in the cathedral, the parameters of the rational world had dissolved so it seemed that his long-dead stepfather peered out at him from behind Woodcourt’s eyes. The demon had slipped his leash, plunging Markham into hell.

  If he had succumbed to the vile intoxication of violence which momentarily unhinged him, then it would have been game over. Glittering career and stellar prospects snuffed out in one fell swoop. Olivia’s faith in him shattered. Markham supposed he should feel grateful to O’Keefe for his intervention – the sharp cry which had brought him to his senses before he could smash Woodcourt to a pulp and beat him until he screamed for mercy. A small shameful part of him, however, craved that bloody retribution which as a child he had been powerless to exact.

  Of course, the principal knew. The long look he had exchanged with Markham held shrewd knowledge mingled with a pensive sympathy. Yet the DI felt obscurely reassured that O’Keefe would preserve omertá.

  How had it come to this, he wondered despairingly. Over the years, he had somehow managed to seal off that childhood violation, locking his squalid secret in a box. That box went into a second box, which in turn was enclosed in another. Like those sinister Russian nesting dolls which, when taken apart, resemble a series of miniature coffins.

  But the memories would not stay buried, swarming to the surface in an unstoppable vampiric eruption.

  The pain. The shame. His stepfather’s rancid breath and questing, rasping fingernails.

  Seeing Woodcourt hanging over Julian Forsythe like some great bat had touched a hidden chord in Markham’s mind, bringing back the searing recollection of his own degradation in an illuminating flash more terrible than any lightning stroke.

  Oh God, Noakes was going to think he was off his trolley and liable to start climbing the walls any minute!

  ‘Right, Sergeant.’ Markham mentally congratulated himself that his voice was steady. ‘What’s happening with Woodcourt?’

  He grimaced at the other’s suddenly wary expression.

  ‘It’s all right, man, I just want an update on his mental status.’

  ‘The uniforms who delivered him to HQ said it was really freaky,’ replied the DC. ‘He just kept talking total gobbledygook while snickering one minute an’ crying the next.’

  For all his rigid self-control, Markham shivered.

  ‘The worst bit came when they went past Bromgrove Crescent,’ continued Noakes.

  Sir Philip’s residence.

  ‘Woodcourt gave a sort of shriek. Then he began gobbling and growling. Like an animal. Gave the lads quite a turn. Felt as though they had Hannibal Lecter in the squad car. They had to hold him down.’

  Markham fought down bile as he recalled the canon next to the crib in the entrance hall at St Mary’s – his hand resting proprietorially on Nat Barton’s shoulder – chatting cosily about the tradition that oxen in the farm sheds would be kneeling by moonlight in homage to the infant Christ at midnight on Christmas Eve, just as they knelt at His birth so many hundreds of years ago.

  Woodcourt, the Devil’s walking parody, narrating the sacred Christmas story.

  What a grotesque perversion.

  ‘Not fit for interview then,’ was all he said.

  ‘No way, boss. It’ll be the men in white coats for him.’

  So, he gets away with it.

  Noakes had an uncanny ability to read his guvnor’s mind. ‘Look on the bright side, sir. At least we’ve nailed the bastard. Folk in high places will put it about that Woodcourt was a grade A nutter on some sort of mad crusade. Religious mania or some such. Remember the Yorkshire Ripper and all that ‘Mission from God’ malarkey. The News of the Screws’ll lap it up. No headlines about pervy priests and a vice ring, just some moonshine about hearing voices.’ He gave a bleak chuckle. ‘DCI Sidney can sleep easy. It’ll all be squared away.’

  ‘Not if I have bloody well have anything to do with it!’ The DI’s tone was so venomous, that Noakes flinched. ‘Woodcourt was likely behind half a dozen murders,’ spat Markham. ‘Him and Soames. And God knows who else.’

  He laughed. It was a horrible sound without any merriment. Noakes flinched again.

  Suddenly, Markham slumped in his chair.

  ‘I’m sorry, Noakesy.’ His voice was gentle now. ‘They can’t spin this. For God’s sake, they can’t!’ Almost pleadingly he added, ‘What about the cold cases? Those kids from way back. Jonny Warr and the other poor little sods chucked away like trash.’

  ‘Woodcourt’s lost his wits and ain’t going to recover any time soon, Guv. Sir Philip’s dead.’ Noakes’s voice held a warning. ‘They’ll lay everything at Woodcourt’s door and close the book.’

  Markham sat still and cold as marble, his head sunk between his shoulders.

  Noakes cleared his throat. ‘Alex Sharpe and his missus seem to have done a bunk.’

  The DI’s head came up. ‘He could be the weak link, Noakes,’ he whispered. ‘That downtrodden wife of his certainly knew something… Now I think about it, Sharpe seemed oddly watchful of Julian and Nat. Almost as though he was afraid to let them out of his sight.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Noakes nodded thoughtfully. ‘When we were up at the school searching for Julian, I overhead one of the kids talking about him and Nat being jinxed. Turned out that Nat had nearly gone over a balcony in the cathedral when he was on his own there with Woodcourt. Apparently, Sharpe arrived in the nick of time and grabbed hold of him.’

  The hope in Markham’s bloodshot eyes was painful to witness and his breath was shorter now.

  ‘We’ll have to wait for the forensics on Sir Philip, boss.’ The warning note was back again. ‘Even if Sharpe turns up, there’s no saying we’ll get answers. He might decide to keep shtum…’

  ‘You mean they’ll have him lawyered up before we get a decent crack at him.’ The little colour in Markham’s face had gone in a moment. His features were working and he looked close to tears.

  Again, Noakes wondered what was eating him. He had never seen the DI this close to losing it over a case. As though what had happened to Julian, Nat and those lost boys had reawakened some secret agony. As though it had raised a curtain on something that Markham had hoped to keep hidden…

  Was it possible his guvnor had been a victim of child abuse?

  Noakes looked at Markham as if seeing
him for the first time, noting the hollowed temples and jaws, the deep lines round his eyes and mouth, the expression of despair.

  Will he ever tell me?

  When hell freezes over.

  ‘Gentlemen?’

  A crisply efficient voice cut across this silent colloquy.

  An attractive blonde wearing a sharply pressed red tunic had materialized in front of them.

  ‘I’m Christine Green, the Sister with responsibility for this ward.’

  She looked at Markham with some concern, seeming to trace, with her experienced clinician’s eye, the history of the case in the sunken rings round his eyes and the tight set of his lips.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve had a long wait,’ she said in softened tones. ‘Can I arrange some hot drinks and sandwiches for you?’

  The DI uncoiled his tall, spare form from the uncomfortable plastic chair.

  ‘Thank you for your consideration, Ms Green.’ His voice was eager. ‘If it’s all the same with you, we’d like to see Julian.’

  ‘Of course.’ The woman smiled at them. ‘I should warn you, he’s still quite drowsy and disorientated but otherwise fine.’

  ‘Has he been, like, interfered with?’ Noakes blurted it out, his beefy pugilist’s face brick-red with embarrassment.

  ‘As far as we can tell, no.’ Christine Green paused delicately. ‘Which isn’t to say that he might not have suffered some form of abuse.’

  ‘You mean he was being groomed?’ Markham demanded abruptly.

  ‘I’d say it was a strong possibility.’ She smoothed non-existent creases from her uniform. ‘Coming round from the opiate, Julian was incoherent and rambling at first. But clearly something nasty went on. He kept shouting about the Devil lying in wait for him. There’s old bruising and some scarring on his arms and legs, and he was frightened of physical contact – got hysterical when the SHO was examining him.’

  Markham looked as if he was going to be sick.