‘Yes, he did.’
‘To Father Kenyon?’
‘To God. Although Father Kenyon was certainly there in the confessional with both of them.’
‘Do you know where I’ll find Father Kenyon at the moment?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘I saw him go into the vestry about five minutes ago.’
‘And do you think it will be all right if I disturbed him?’
‘I don’t see why not. I think he only went in there for a smoke. He’s a terrible slave to the weed.’
‘I think I could use a cigarette myself,’ Paniatowski told him.
‘I’ve no doubt you could. It’s always a strain.’
‘What is? A murder investigation?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that. But I do know it’s a strain setting your feet on the right path again.’
‘The only path I’m looking for is the one that leads to the vestry,’ Paniatowski said tartly. ‘Which way is it?’
‘Straight through that door,’ Father Taylor said, pointing.
‘I’ll see you again, Fred,’ Monika said.
‘Yes, I rather think you will,’ Father Taylor agreed.
Paniatowski was halfway between the priest and the vestry door when she heard Father Taylor call out, ‘Oh, Monika, one more thing.’
She stopped, and turned around. ‘Yes?’
‘I just want you to know that when you do return to the Church, I won’t take offence if it’s Father Kenyon whom you choose to welcome you back.’
Eight
The green Ford Cortina, which had belonged to the late Bradley Pine, was parked in the alleyway which ran between the backs of the houses in Gladstone Street and the backs of those on Palmerston Row.
The car, like its late owner, had been put through some very unpleasant and disfiguring experiences. It no longer had its windscreen wipers or indicator lights, and was resting wheel-less on piles of old bricks. The boot had been forced open, and whatever it might once have contained had been removed. And a quick glance under the bonnet revealed to Bob Rutter that the car no longer had an engine.
‘Round here, they’ll nick anything that’s not actually nailed down,’ Sergeant Dix said in disgust. ‘In fact, even if it is nailed down, these buggers will find some way to prise it up.’
‘Do you think this could be the spot where Pine was killed?’ Rutter wondered.
‘I doubt it,’ Dix replied.
‘Why?’
‘Well, for a start, what reason would he have had for even being here in the first place?’ the sergeant said.
Then he chuckled to himself.
‘What’s so funny?’ Rutter asked.
‘I was just thinking – a posh gentleman like Mr Pine wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like this.’
Dix had a point, Rutter thought. Policemen came to Greenfields. Debt collectors came to Greenfields. But anybody who didn’t actually have to visit it steered well clear of the area.
Besides, it was over two miles to the lay-by where Pine’s body had been found, and it seemed improbable that the killer would have taken him from here to there, and then driven the car back to the scene of the crime. It was much more likely that abandoning the car in the alleyway was no more than the last in the chain of events which began with the actual murder.
The vandals who had wrecked most of the car had kindly left the door handles in place, so Rutter was able to open the back door and look inside.
‘Do you think that’s blood?’ he asked, pointing to a brownish, half-moon shaped stain on the back seat.
‘Certainly looks like it to me,’ Dix said.
Rutter glanced up, first at the back bedroom windows in Gladstone Terrace and then at the ones in Palmerston Row. As his gaze fell on several of the windows, the curtains twitched.
He was being watched from nearly every one of those bedroom windows, he thought.
‘What do you think are the chances that, even though there was a thick fog last night, a few of the people who are watching us now also saw the killer abandon the Cortina?’ he asked Dix.
‘Very high,’ Dix told him. ‘It’s almost a racing certainty. A decent car like this one couldn’t go a hundred yards through this area without being spotted. And once it had been spotted, it would be tracked. It was probably being dismantled within a minute or two of the killer abandoning it.’
‘So we’d better organize a house-to-house,’ Rutter said.
‘I suppose we might as well,’ Dix agreed. ‘But it won’t do us any good at all, sir.’
‘No?’
‘Definitely not. As far as this lot are concerned, seeing something is one thing, but telling us about it is quite another.’
‘Even though they’ll know that it’s a murder investigation that we’re working on?’
The sergeant shrugged. ‘If it’s not one of their own who’s been topped, they couldn’t care less about it. There was a young social worker raped in this very alley, not more than a few weeks ago. It was broad daylight when it happened, and the poor girl was screaming blue murder throughout the entire attack. Yet when we started asking questions, there was nobody from Greenfields who was willing to admit they’d heard or seen a bloody thing.’
Father Kenyon was the sort of priest who was much beloved by the makers of sentimental black-and-white Hollywood movies based around the life of New York parish churches.
He was in his early sixties, and had silver hair, a roundish red face and a kindly smile. True, his clothes smelled strongly of cheap cigarettes, and the hint of whisky on his breath suggested he had already taken at least one drink that morning, but these were both permissible weakness in a man who had voluntarily signed away his right to other pleasures of the flesh.
‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about Bradley Pine, Father Kenyon,’ Paniatowski said.
The priest nodded sagely. ‘I can well imagine that you would, and I’ll answer them as honestly as I feel I’m able to.’
‘As you feel you’re able to?’ Paniatowski repeated. ‘And what exactly does that mean?’
‘You must understand that there are certain matters of which I have knowledge that I must keep to myself.’
Even if that does mean a mother will never learn her daughter has been molested by her husband, Paniatowski thought savagely.
But aloud, all she said was, ‘How long had Mr Pine been coming to this church?’
‘I’ve known him for over twenty years. He contacted me when he first arrived in Whitebridge, just as Father Swales, the director of Holy Trinity Orphanage had asked him to.’ Father Kenyon paused. ‘You did know that he was an orphan, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I did.’
The old priest sighed. ‘It is a terrible thing to lose a parent, but from what Father Swales told me, the death of his father was something of a merciful release for Bradley.’
‘Why? Was his father a bad man?’
‘We should not judge lest we ourselves be judged,’ the priest said, with a note of caution creeping into his voice, ‘but, by all accounts, the boy led a miserable life. His father was both a drunkard and a very violent man. Though Bradley never talked about it to me himself, I have seen the cigarette burn scars on his arms with my own eyes.’
Paniatowski felt a wave of sympathy for the dead man sweep over her, then found herself brushing it angrily aside.
‘Yes, well, a lot of us had fairly difficult childhoods,’ she said. ‘Did Bradley Pine attend Mass regularly in the last few weeks of his life?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘And before that?’
‘Not to attend Mass is, as you are probably only too well aware yourself, a mortal sin.’
‘Which he was guilty of?’
‘Next question,’ Father Kenyon said.
‘You heard his confession last night?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Did you talk to him outside the confines of the confessional?’
‘Yes.’
‘And when you tal
ked to him outside the confessional, did he seem worried or disturbed about anything in particular?’
‘I can’t answer that.’
‘But surely, if it wasn’t under the seal of—’
‘Let me ask you a question,’ the priest interrupted.
‘All right,’ Paniatowski agreed.
‘Are you able to divorce what goes on in your interview rooms from what goes on outside them?’
‘I think so.’
‘And I think you are almost certainly deluding yourself, my child. What you encounter in that interview room must be much like what I often encounter in the confessional.’
‘And what is that?’
‘People who are so unsure of themselves – or so terrified – that the mask they normally wear slips off, and the disguise with which they seek to clothe themselves is quite stripped away. We have penetrated their secret selves. We have seen them naked.’
‘I’m not sure I—’
‘And later, when we meet them again – outside the confessional or outside the interview room – we may hear them say the same words as other people hear them say, but we will interpret them differently. Because we understand them better – because we have been given the key to them.’
‘Perhaps you’re right about that,’ Monika Paniatowski conceded. ‘But so what?’
The priest laughed. ‘It doesn’t bother you. And why should it? You’re a police officer, and those you question have no choice in the matter. But my parishioners do have a choice. They come to me because they trust me. They give me the key, rather than my having to seize it from them. And that means that though I may physically leave the confessional, there is a sense in which I will always take it with me.’
‘I’m not asking any of these questions just to satisfy my own idle curiosity, you know,’ Paniatowski said, experiencing a rising frustration. ‘I’m doing it because I’m trying to catch a murderer.’
‘Yes, I quite understand that.’
‘Some people would consider that a worthwhile aim.’
‘Most people would. And they would be quite right to. It undoubtedly is a worthwhile aim.’
‘Then why won’t you help us to achieve it?’
‘Because I am restrained from doing so. And those restraints go far beyond the single issue of catching your murderer. Even if, by speaking out, I could save other lives—’
‘Are other lives in danger in this case?’
‘Not as far as I know. But if they were, I would still maintain my silence, because nothing can justify breaking the seal of the confessional.’
‘Not even the needless suffering of a young child?’
‘Not even that.’
‘But would you go drinking with the man who had made her suffer – the man who continued to make her suffer?’ Paniatowski demanded angrily.
The priest looked suddenly troubled. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he admitted.
Paniatowski took a deep breath. ‘No, of course you don’t,’ she said. ‘Did Bradley Pine say where he was intending to go after he left the church last night – or don’t you feel able to tell me that, either?’
‘I can see no reason why I wouldn’t be able to reveal that particular piece of information if I had it,’ the priest replied. ‘But I don’t. Bradley didn’t tell me where he was going.’
A lorry had arrived to transport the battered and violated Ford Cortina to the police garage, where it would be given a detailed forensic examination, but Dr Shastri – who arrived just before the car was about to be loaded – had insisted that nothing should be moved until she had made a thorough search of the area.
‘If it were women in charge of removing the car, I would have no qualms about letting them go ahead,’ she told Bob Rutter, ‘but men are, by their very nature, such clumsy creatures, don’t you find?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Rutter agreed.
They were clumsy, he thought to himself – in oh-so-many ways.
Dr Shastri gave the area around the battered car a brief inspection.
‘Well, on with the show,’ she said, in a tone not unlike that of a music hall compère.
It would have been generous to describe the floor of the alley as merely unsavoury – the council felt no strong urge to do anything about improving the environment of tenants who rarely paid either their rent or their rates – but the filth and squalor did not seem to deter Dr Shastri in the slightest. She produced a rubber mat from the back of her Land Rover, and was soon kneeling down on it and examining the grimy cobblestones.
A few minutes had ticked by – and she had shifted the mat around several times – before she looked and said, ‘The murderous attack did not take place here, my dear Inspector.’
‘You’re sure of that?’ Rutter asked.
‘Absolutely positive. It is true that if Mr Pine had been killed on this spot, the local rats would have removed much of the evidence – a piece of the human brain is to them what a fine pork roast would be to you or I – but there would still have been bloodstains left behind.’
‘There would have been a lot of blood, wouldn’t there?’
‘A veritable fountain of it. And however diligently the killer had tried to clean it up, he would inevitably have left some traces.’
‘Would you mind taking a look inside the car?’ Rutter asked.
Dr Shastri smiled. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I am willing to do anything at all which will contribute – even in a small way – to making my second-favourite police officer happy.’
She opened the car door, and examined the stain Rutter had spotted on the back seat.
‘Now that is blood,’ she said. ‘And if it is not our little friend’s blood, I would be most surprised.’
‘Shouldn’t there be more of it?’ Rutter asked.
‘Not once the heart had ceased to pump. What we have here is mere seepage.’
‘And you’re as sure that he was mutilated in the lay-by as you are that he wasn’t killed here?’
‘Indeed.’
‘I wonder why the murderer waited until he reached the lay-by before he finished off the job,’ Rutter mused. ‘Do you think it was because it would have been too messy to have done it earlier?’
‘Perhaps,’ Dr Shastri said, cautiously.
‘You’re not convinced that’s the case at all, are you?’ Rutter asked. ‘You’ve got a theory of your own.’
‘I have,’ Dr Shastri admitted. ‘But as I have already pointed out to your superior, the admirable Chief Inspector Woodend, I am more of a plumber than a brain doctor, and my theory may well not be worth a bag of acorns.’
‘I’d like to hear it, anyway.’
‘Even though you run the risk – if you take it seriously – of being sent off on a wild goose hunt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well, on your own head be it. I believe that, initially, the murderer thought that whatever torment was driving him to distraction would be assuaged by simply killing his victim. But by the time he had reached the lay-by, he had realized that was not enough to bring him the relief he needed, and he would have to do more. That is, I believe, when he decided to inflict the final humiliation by mutilating the corpse.’
‘Let me see if I’ve got this straight,’ Rutter said. ‘You think that the idea of mutilation didn’t occur to him until he reached the lay-by?’
‘Essentially. Although, I suppose, it is possible that the urge came over him while he was still en route to it.’
‘So the reason he made the decision to go there wasn’t simply because he needed somewhere quiet where he could finish his work?’
‘That seems unlikely, don’t you think? The lay-by was not so secluded, even in a thick fog. The lorry which drove on to it after the mutilation had been concluded could just as easily have arrived whilst it was still in progress. If what the killer had wanted was total privacy to carry out his grisly task, he would surely have driven the body out on to the moors.’
‘So if that wasn’t the reason he took the body to the lay-by, what did make him choose that particular spot?’
Dr Shastri smiled again. ‘That is a very interesting question,’ she said. ‘An intriguing, infuriating question. And one that, as a simple doctor, I am happy to leave in your much more capable hands.’
Nine
Elizabeth Driver was sitting in the First Class carriage of the local train from Manchester to Whitebridge. Her eyes were taking in the countryside through which the train was passing, but her mind was fixed very firmly on what was awaiting her at the end of the journey.
As the chief crime reporter for a salacious national newspaper which sold copies by the million – but which very few people would actually admit to reading – she was a true queen of her dubious profession. But being a queen could have its drawbacks. To stay at the top required a very delicate balancing act, and she only had to make one little slip – one tiny mistake – to come toppling down. On her good days, she told herself this was no problem, that she could go on for ever. On her bad days, she wondered how much longer she could continue to cap the last sensational story that she’d filed with one which was even more outrageous.
The story she was on her way to cover was a good case in point. For most reporters, the murder of a parliamentary candidate would provide them with all the copy they needed. They had only to report the facts to keep their editors satisfied. But when you were Elizabeth Driver, your editor and readers wanted – and expected – much more.
The death of Bradley Pine held out the promise of more. Driver’s source in the Whitebridge Police had hinted that there were macabre aspects to the killing which had not yet been released to the press.
But that was all her source had done.
Bloody hint!
It was all he could do. He was far too low on the totem pole to give her any of the juicy details she needed if she were to keep ahead of her rivals.
She had a serious problem with the Whitebridge Police, she admitted – and that problem was called Charlie Woodend. Their relationship had got off to a bad start when he had still been with Scotland Yard, investigating the Westbury Manor Murder – and it had pretty much gone downhill since then.
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