by M. R. Hall
‘I don’t believe anyone has ever asked them to.’
‘Have you been to the Mission Church? What they’re achieving with children is very moving.’
‘God isn’t sentimental, Mrs Cooper: consider what happened to his son. We all enjoy interludes of happiness, but it’s through our suffering that we progress.’
‘All I have to offer is unrelenting pain and hardship—’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Captain Bligh. You must have seen The Bounty?’
‘I don’t believe I have.’
‘It’s the line he uses to entice loyal men to join him when the mutineers cast him adrift.’
‘And does he prevail?’
‘Yes. He survives and the mutineers become marooned in a paradise that turns into a hell.’
Starr nodded in amused approval. ‘I must watch it. But I can assure you, no matter what you may have heard, I’ve no desire to persecute a crew of mutineers. My concern is purely for Paul Craven, and of course the truth.’
‘What makes you so certain he’s innocent? It must be something more than what he tells you.’
Starr said, ‘You’re impatient with me, Mrs Cooper.’
‘Do you blame me?’
‘What if I were to tell you that I had had a “word”?’
‘God spoke to you?’ Jenny said.
‘If you wish.’
‘And that’s why I should put my neck on the line? The Ministry of Justice are already piling the pressure on me to steer clear.’
‘You’ve rowed against the tide before. Alec McAvoy told me himself.’
‘Can you please not mention him again?’
Father Starr persisted. ‘I’m appealing to your conscience, Mrs Cooper. Something is not right.’
Jenny shot up from her chair and turned to face him. ‘Do you know what I think? I think you’re reading all sorts of things into this that don’t exist. You’re dramatizing, casting yourself in the middle of some imaginary struggle between good and evil, when the simple truth is Craven killed her.’
She started off across the stone floor, the click of her heels ricocheting like bullets off the cathedral’s unadorned walls.
Starr jumped up and pursued her. ‘Mrs Cooper—’
She kept on walking. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t be used this way.’
He came alongside and reached into his shirt pocket. ‘Please. I didn’t know whether to show you this.’ He brought out a folded piece of paper. ‘I still don’t.’ There was anguish in his voice. ‘Really, I’ve prayed, but I’ve no idea what’s right.’
Jenny came to a reluctant halt. Avoiding her gaze, Starr handed her the single sheet.
‘I’ve heard Eva Donaldson was friendly with a boy,’ Starr said. He swallowed a guilty lump in his throat. ‘His name’s Frederick Reardon.’
‘I’ve met him,’ Jenny said. ‘What of it?’
‘He’s got a violent past.’
She looked at the unfolded document. It was a standard printout from the Criminal Records Bureau. Two convictions were listed beneath Freddy Reardon’s name. Both were on the same date a little over two years ago: possession of an offensive weapon and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
‘Where did you get this?’ Jenny said.
‘That I can’t say,’ Starr said.
‘How did you know about Freddy?’
Starr shook his head. ‘I didn’t. This was given to me.’
‘What’s going on? Who’s doing this?’ Jenny demanded.
‘I’ve told you all I can,’ Starr said. ‘Make of it what you will.’
With a look that told her his loyalties lay to a far higher authority than hers, he said a hurried goodbye and walked quickly away.
‘He’s playing games with you, Mrs Cooper,’ was Alison’s blunt assessment.
‘Why would he?’
‘He’s a fanatic. Plausible, but the maddest people often are.’
‘How would you get hold of a criminal record? It’s not an employer’s copy, it’s come out of a Crown Prosecution Service file.’
‘Maybe he’s using a private investigator. A lot of my old colleagues from CID have gone that route. I dare say they could tickle up a few contacts in the CPS if they needed to.’
‘He hasn’t got the money, he’s a penniless priest.’
‘But think what he’s got behind him.’ Alison handed back the criminal record with a dismissive frown.
‘I can’t see why the Catholic Church would go out on a limb for a convicted murderer.’
‘It’s not about him, is it?’ Alison said. ‘Priests are like politicians, they tell you what you want to hear. With his own kind, I guarantee all the talk will be of false prophets and wolves in sheep’s clothing. Every night when he flogs himself, your Father Starr will be praying for the Mission Church of God to be torn to the ground.’
Jenny said, ‘Before I saw this, I’d made up my mind to certify cause of death and close the file.’
Alison gave her the sort of pitying look that could only come from an ex-detective who believed she had seen it all. ‘Sometimes I think not even you know what drives you.’
TWELVE
EVA DONALDSON HAD DIALLED ONLY six different numbers in the final fortnight of her life. Ringing each in turn, Alison established that they were Decency’s Bristol and London offices, Michael Turnbull and Lennox Strong’s direct lines, the Mission Church of God’s main switchboard and Freddy Reardon’s mobile. She had called Freddy five times in eight days, but she had spoken to Lennox Strong only twice.
Protocol dictated that Jenny should have sent Alison to interview a potential witness, but there were occasions, and this was one of them, in which she couldn’t entirely trust her officer to put her prejudice aside. She told herself it was an exploratory visit, that she was approaching Freddy merely for background information. It was stretching the rules to their outer limits, and as she parked beneath the tower blocks of the Langan Estate she stopped to reconsider. Who was she doing this for? Was it really for Eva? Did she actually need to be here or was she allowing herself to be bullied by Starr? She stared through the windscreen at a carrier bag drifting across a scrubby patch of grass littered with crushed tins and broken glass and hoped for an answer. None came.
It was an image of McAvoy which formed behind her eyes. She pictured his face the day she confronted him in the courtroom, at the moment he confessed his fear of what, or more precisely the one, he had called the ‘author of all this sadness’. He had managed at one and the same time to be both a wicked and a good man who feared for his soul. During the months since he had gone, Jenny had scarcely dared acknowledge the fact that their coming together had been something far more than mere sex could consummate. Without exchanging a word, they had both known that she was offering him a route to redemption and he was doing the same for her. It might have happened, only in wringing out the truth he had killed a man, and then thrown himself into purgatory, leaving her to face the conclusion alone.
The lift that took her to the fifteenth floor of the Molyneux Tower was plastered with obscene graffiti and smelled so overpoweringly of ammonia that it burnt her nostrils during its painfully slow ascent. Bursting out of the doors, Jenny found herself looking down a long, noisy corridor. As she made her way along its full length to number 28, she was assailed by the sound of domestic arguments, barking dogs and the heavy thump of bass permeating the flimsy apartment walls.
The woman who eventually shuffled to the door and half-opened it looked old enough to be Freddy’s grandmother. Eileen Reardon was heavily overweight with unkempt greying hair that straggled to her shoulders. A loose, kaftan-style dress did little to disguise her bulk. Around her swollen neck she wore a pewter Celtic cross.
‘Mrs Reardon?’
The woman peered at her suspiciously.
‘Jenny Cooper. Severn Vale District Coroner. I called earlier—’
‘Freddy’s not back yet.’ She looked Jenny up and down. ‘I suppose y
ou want to come in.’
‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
Mrs Reardon moved back along the small, stuffy hallway. Jenny followed her into a dingy living room. The only natural light was the little that leaked around the edges of shabby, tie-dyed drapes tacked permanently over the windows. Two mismatched sofas smothered in cheap ethnic throws were arranged on either side of a low table. The air was stale with the smell of Indian incense and cigarette smoke. Jenny had the feeling that Mrs Reardon spent most of her waking hours in this room.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ Mrs Reardon asked.
Jenny eyed a collection of filthy mugs sitting next to a grubby ashtray. ‘No thanks. I’m fine.’
She took a seat and noticed her host’s badly swollen ankles and the wheezing sounds she made as she lowered herself onto the sofa opposite. A heart condition, Jenny thought, and wondered if Mrs Reardon was even aware that she was ill.
‘You want to talk to him about this girl, do you?’ Eileen Reardon asked in a manner which suggested that she didn’t approve of Eva Donaldson.
‘Yes. Did you know her?’
‘No,’ she said, as if the idea was ridiculous. ‘I don’t go in for any of that.’
‘Church, you mean?’
‘All that puritanical stuff. I ask you, who cares? She regretted her past – so what? So do lots of us.’ She gave a self-conscious laugh.
‘She seemed to have a lot of time for Freddy.’
‘He’s that sort of boy, friends with everyone.’
Jenny glanced at a rickety set of bamboo bookshelves jumbled with books on the New Age: titles on crystals, auras and chakra healing.
‘I know,’ Mrs Reardon said, following her gaze, ‘Freddy and I aren’t exactly peas in a pod, are we? I’m afraid I haven’t read the Bible since I was at school, if I ever did then.’ She shrugged. ‘Whatever works for you, I suppose.’
‘How did Freddy get involved with the Mission Church?’ Jenny asked as innocently as she could. ‘I’ve got a son almost the same age, I can’t imagine how it happens.’
‘I don’t remember,’ Eileen said dismissively, ‘probably someone at school. It seems to be a bit of a craze – a weird one, but I suppose that’s the point. You don’t rebel by doing something your parents would like.’
‘You don’t quite approve.’
‘It’s not the only way people get better, I know that much.’
‘I’ll confess, I was there yesterday. I saw him speaking. He gave the impression that he as good as owed his life to the church.’
‘I was helping him, too,’ Mrs Reardon said defensively. ‘I’d been giving him healing for three years. They can’t take all the credit.’
‘He said he’d been suffering from depression.’
Mrs Reardon shifted her large mass uncomfortably beneath her. ‘You can give it a label if you like. I don’t put much store by doctors, personally, especially psychiatrists.’
Jenny gave an understanding nod, hoping she would tell her more. It worked.
‘Freddy lost his father when he was younger and didn’t get on with the man I was with,’ Mrs Reardon said. ‘But once the quacks get their claws into you it’s hard to escape. I never wanted him in hospital but you’re just the parent, you don’t count for anything.’
Becoming agitated, she heaved herself to her feet. ‘Where is he? He said he’d be here by now.’ She produced a cordless phone from amidst a heap of clutter on the table and dialled his number.
‘Freddy, it’s Mum. Where are you? She’s here, waiting for you.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t care, it’s up to you. Please yourself. All right, I will.’ She stabbed the off button with a puffy finger.
‘Is everything all right?’
‘He doesn’t want to talk to you in front of me.’
‘I don’t want to force him.’
Mrs Reardon was quiet for a moment, then suddenly flared. ‘How about telling me what the hell it is you want from him?’
‘He was one of the people Eva spoke to a lot before she died. I just want to know what she said.’
‘I’m not stupid. He was at church the night she was killed, we went through all that with the police. He’s only a boy – why can’t you people leave him alone?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’
‘He’s got nothing to say to you. He’s had enough trouble without you stirring it all up.’
Jenny wondered if it was Freddy or his mother who was the more fragile. Her face was beetroot; she laboured for every breath.
Deciding there was nothing to be gained by imposing herself, Jenny said goodbye and let herself out.
She could tell it was Freddy skulking on the bench at the far end of the stretch of grass, even though from this distance all she could see was a shadowy outline, stooped forwards staring at the ground. She hesitated, in two minds whether to disturb him. She was tempted not to upset his delicate equilibrium, but the mother in her wouldn’t let her leave him looking so pathetic. She had to make contact, if only to offer some reassurance. She approached slowly, picking her way around the broken beer bottles, giving him every chance to retreat, but he wanted her to come, she could feel it.
‘Hi, Freddy.’
He was silent for a moment, then said, ‘I told them. I didn’t touch her. I didn’t even know where she lived.’
‘Of course,’ she said gently. ‘It’s hard to explain how I’m different from the police, but I am, very. My job is to find out how someone died.’
‘She was stabbed by a nutter.’
‘It certainly looks that way, but I have to make sure all the facts are known. I don’t feel the police asked all the questions that needed to be asked. That’s why I’m talking to people who knew her, people like you who knew what was going on in her life before she died.’
‘Nothing was going on,’ Freddy said.
‘Do you want to tell me what you talked about on the phone? She called you a few times in her last week.’
‘I was in her study group. We talked about that, how the new people were doing.’
‘Did you ever discuss anything else? Did she talk to you about her life outside the church?’
Freddy shook his head.
Jenny could see why Eva might have taken him under her wing. Any thoughts she had entertained of a sordid connection between them dispelled. He was like a much younger child at the mercy of his moods, trusting and easily hurt.
‘I get the feeling she was very precious to you,’ Jenny said.
‘It wasn’t easy for her. People treated her like some sort of saint, but she was only human. She had feelings like everyone else.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She got tired and depressed sometimes, but that’s what your friends are for. Eva prayed for me when I first went to church and I prayed for her.’
‘What did she get depressed about?’
‘All the work she had to do, what people expected of her.’
‘She talked to you about that – the demands of her work?’
‘Sometimes. It wasn’t that big a deal. She was tough. Tougher than most people.’
Jenny wondered why Eva would choose a vulnerable teenage boy as a confidant, and presumed it was because she felt unthreatened by him. Michael Turnbull and his immediate colleagues were educated and successful. No matter how high her media profile, Eva would always have felt their inferior. Even the most pious would have seen her as the ex-porn star.
‘Freddy, do you think she was in any sort of trouble? Was anyone threatening or hassling her?’
‘She never said anything.’
‘She didn’t get any problems from people who knew her from before?’
‘She never talked about that,’ Freddy snapped. ‘When you’re born again, that’s it, you’re changed for ever. There’s no need to go over the past. Your sins are taken away. The Holy Spirit drives out the bad spirits, that’s the whole point.’
Jenny nodded, longing to put a comforting arm around him.
‘I’ve started,’ Jenny lied.
She could see he didn’t believe her. ‘You might learn something,’ he said. ‘God changes people. Not just a little bit, completely. And for ever. All you have to do is let him.’
His heartfelt belief made her feel doubly deceitful. The idea that Freddy’s closeness to Eva had tipped into a frenzy of murderous emotion seemed absurd; she despised Father Starr for having planted the poison in her mind. He was worse than a sly detective, moving in the shadows, forming baseless theories to suit his prejudice, not even man enough to tell her where he was getting his grubby information from.
Jenny said, ‘Freddy, I’m going to be straight with you. I may have to call you as a witness at my inquest. I know how much you’ve changed since going to church, but the fact that you’ve a criminal record will come out. I’m just preparing you for that.’
Freddy shrugged. ‘I waved a knife at my stepdad. It was stupid, but so was he. I told the police he did far worse to Mum, but they weren’t interested in that.’
‘I see you got a supervision order.’
A hint of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. ‘It’s like Eva said, it was all part of God’s plan.’
‘What happened?’
‘The social worker took me to a psychiatrist and put me in hospital. They said I was psychotic. Maybe I was.’ He looked at her with the same bright expression with which he’d greeted her the first time they had met. ‘The doctor told my mum I could be on pills for the rest of my life. You should have seen his face after Lennox had prayed for me. He wouldn’t believe it. He said it must have been my hormones or something. I haven’t had pills for over a year. I don’t need them any more. I’ve got peace of mind.’
‘Which hospital was it?’
Freddy paused, a hint of suspicion in his eyes. ‘What do you want to know that for?’
The rock returned to Jenny’s throat, bigger than ever.
‘Was it the Conway Unit?’
‘Might have been.’
‘And was there a nurse called Alan Jacobs there?’
