by Stav Sherez
He spent the next fifteen minutes walking the basement, checking through each mound of ash and dust, pressing his face against the walls, looking for marks and signs, traces and anomalies, but he found nothing of interest. He came to a stop in the centre of the room and closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it had been like when it was full of people. It was a useful trick in getting an idea of what should and shouldn’t be present. He imagined the nuns coming down here to pay their respects or doing the washing, cleaning the mould from the stones, maybe using the tools he’d found in the back corner . . . and then his eyes flicked open and he looked at the far wall with its desk and bookcases and then he looked at the opposite wall, a line of three tombs running along its length, and then back again.
He scanned each wall in turn, sensing something awry, some shift of perspective, and then he went upstairs.
He looked to his left, then to his right. The light was better here on the ground floor but he was certain it was more than just that. He approached the front door, then turned and counted his steps all the way to the back door. He could hear a van or SUV parking outside, the sound of a TV from a neighbouring house, a cat screaming somewhere in the night.
He took less time going down the stairs, knowing which were weak and which would hold him, and when he was in the basement he repeated the procedure again, counting steps from front to back. He did this twice to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake and then he did it once more because it didn’t make any sense.
The basement was five paces smaller than the ground floor. He tried to think of any reason this might be but came up with none. He looked at the workshop, then at the opposite wall.
Three tombs lined the length of it, placed head to toe, a two-foot gap separating one from another. Carrigan ran over to the wall, almost tripping, pulling down some of the emergency lights by accident as he stumbled and righted himself. He stared at the dark dappled surface. Roamed his torch across every brick and grout but it was nothing more than a plain brick wall.
He stepped back, a little disappointed, and examined the tombs. He checked each tomb in turn, running his light down into the space where rock and wall met, and it didn’t take him long to spot the fine tracery of scratches veining the floor and radiating in an arc from the far edge of the middle tomb. He thought of the pricket stand upstairs and aimed his light into the gap between the tomb and the wall but it was too narrow to see what lay behind.
He bent his knees and pressed his shoulder against the side of the tomb. He pushed, his shoes sliding on the floor, and felt the tomb give slightly. He leaned into it, encouraged, and pushed harder, certain he was about to dislocate his shoulder.
The tomb shifted. He stopped, got his breath back, then, using his legs for support, he continued until one end of the tomb was several inches away from the wall. He squeezed himself into the gap and, using this new leverage, pushed the tomb further back. The stone slid and screeched against the floor but it was surprisingly easy and he wondered if it had been designed expressly for this purpose. He got back to his feet and peered into the gap. This time he didn’t need the torch to see that the wall wasn’t brick all the way down.
Concealed behind the tomb, at the bottom of the wall, was a small horizontal wooden door. It was flush to the floor and about three feet high and five across. At the bottom of the door there was a single ring-pull made of brass. Carrigan put his torch back in his pocket, squatted down, his back tight against the cold tombstone, and pulled.
Nothing. No movement at all.
He curled his fingers around the ring, tensed his shoulders and pulled harder. This time there was a single muted click and Carrigan felt a rush of stale air hit his face as the door-flap swung open.
15
The traffic was backed up all the way down Vauxhall Bridge Road. Geneva was watching Singh texting in the seat next to her, the young constable’s attention fixed on the small grey screen, her fingers moving in rhythmic counterpoint to her expression. Geneva couldn’t begin to imagine what could be so engrossing. She turned and stared out at the snow-sculpted pavements, the shuffle of shoppers and workers sludging through the muck and slush on their way to someplace better, and tried not to think of her own flat, the letters on the coffee table and shrill demands waiting on her answering machine.
Singh was still texting as Geneva parked outside the diocese’s office. She’d spoken to Holden after the briefing, having caught him on his way out, and he’d agreed to let her go through the archives tomorrow morning. She’d put the phone down and stared at the mountain of files on her desk, not wanting to go home, then glanced across the table at Singh and said, ‘You up for a late one?’ Singh had nodded and Geneva saw relief brighten the young constable’s face. For Geneva, late nights had always been one of the perks of the job.
The seminarian who answered the door wasn’t the same young man as before and yet there was an uncanny similarity between the two, as if they’d been sourced from the same mould.
‘He didn’t say anything to me about this.’
Geneva flashed her warrant card. ‘I spoke to him a couple of hours ago and he okayed it with me. You want me to go back to the station, tell a judge you’re refusing us entry and come back with a warrant?’
The young man’s face blanched at the word ‘warrant’, despite his best efforts to hide it. ‘I’m afraid Mr Holden’s gone home for the day,’ he said.
‘That’s perfectly okay,’ Geneva replied. ‘It’s the archives we want, not him.’
The young man moved back, as she’d known he would, not wanting to brush up against her as she stepped past him. She noticed his eyes linger just a little too long on her legs and she gave him one of those smiles that always worked for her in bars. His cheeks turned a surprising shade of crimson as she held out her hand and introduced herself.
‘Rupert.’ His palm was soft and hot and she couldn’t feel any bones underneath the padded folds of skin.
The archives were located in an extension of the second-floor library. Rupert led them past long tables populated by silent young men hunched over ancient handwritten books, a grim concentration on their faces, and into an annex full of rusty filing cabinets and dusty stacks of paper.
The silence in the room was startling. It was as if someone had turned off the city with the ease of flicking a light switch. Geneva took out her notebook, pencils, laptop and a can of Coke. She turned to see Rupert shaking his head, pointing to the can, then to a sign saying ABSOLUTELY NO FOOD OR DRINK. ‘Thanks, I think we’ll be okay.’ Geneva waited, but Rupert didn’t budge.
‘I’m afraid I can’t leave you in here alone.’ He avoided her eyes, focusing instead on the floor, examining his shoes as if seeing them for the very first time. ‘It’s diocese policy.’
‘You think we’re going to steal these documents?’
‘I don’t know what you’re going to do. No man can know what another man will do.’
‘Woman,’ Geneva corrected.
*
They went through the grey creaky cabinets until they found the files for the convent. Geneva was disappointed by how thin they were, wondering if Holden had filleted them after receiving her phone call. She spread the files across a table which Rupert had obligingly cleared for her. She scanned the sheet Holden had given her yesterday and matched each name to a separate folder.
There were ten folders for ten nuns. The nuns’ names were Irish, English, Scottish and Spanish. Geneva gave Singh the first five off the top and took the rest for herself. Rupert sat perfectly still and silent as the two detectives spent the next forty minutes going through each folder then swapped, hoping to catch anything the other might have missed. Geneva took notes, cross-referencing and underlining, but it was so early in the case that it was impossible to tell what was pertinent and what was not. There was nothing obvious, no criminal records, no red flags, but, after going through the material for the third time, she thought she could begin to discern the faintest flutter of repetition
and coincidence.
She reread the nuns’ biographies, their qualifications, the work they’d done, the institutions they’d been part of, but nothing further struck her and she realised she was looking at this the wrong way. She asked Singh to arrange the files in the order in which the nuns had joined. She noticed that Rupert had moved his stool a few feet closer to the table and that there was a flicker of interest in his eyes which he couldn’t hide. She waited until Singh was finished, then scanned the folders on the table, but she already knew what she would find.
‘Mother Angelica had been at the convent longer than anybody else,’ she said quietly.
Singh came closer and stared at the files. Geneva had placed each victim’s photograph at the top of her file. Laid out like this you could see the variety of expression and personality behind the strict habits and wimples and, for the first time, Singh saw the nuns as separate individuals, each with their own distinct history, and realised why Geneva had done it this way.
‘Which means,’ Geneva added, ‘that all the nuns who were there when she joined have since left.’
‘Maybe they just didn’t get on with her?’ Singh said, then caught herself. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t be making jokes . . .’
‘No,’ Geneva interrupted, ‘I think you might be on the right track. There’s been a lot of turnover in personnel. The last nun to leave, Sister Rose, left just over a year ago and was replaced a month later. In fact . . .’ she checked the dates again, ‘everyone who died in the fire had been hired during Mother Angelica’s tenure. It’s almost as if she’d been recruiting them.’
‘Why would she do that?’ Singh looked up from her stack of files.
‘Maybe she knew them?’ Geneva thought about the dispute and how quickly Holden had dismissed her idea that the nuns had killed themselves because they thought the end of the world was coming. It made sense of the many contradictions of the case – why the nuns had died sitting peacefully at their tables, how anyone would know the exact time they’d all be gathered together, the locked room. She turned towards Rupert. ‘Always ten nuns, right?’
‘Always.’
‘Can you find out how many died while serving at the convent?’
Rupert was up before she’d finished asking. He crossed the room and sat down at a small table, logging on to a dusty white PC. Geneva watched his eyes, intense with concentration and excitement, as he waited for the results.
Both his eyebrows shot up at the same time. ‘Only two,’ he replied.
‘If only two were replaced because of death then we have to assume that the others left voluntarily. How unusual is that? Does the diocese deal with such things, Rupert?’
‘No, that all goes through the order’s headquarters in the Vatican.’ He looked as if he was about to add something so Geneva kept her mouth shut. ‘Unfortunately, it’s not as unusual as it once was,’ he finally said. ‘It used to be that once you took your vows you stayed wherever the order told you to but a lot of things like that have changed recently.’
‘What’s the most common reason for a nun to transfer?’
‘Clash of personalities, mainly. Still . . .’ he said, thinking about this, ‘for that number of nuns to leave the convent would be unusual even these days.’
It gave her an idea, the slightest glimmer of an idea, and she went through the paperwork and reread the deployment records, this time paying close attention to the dates. What did it mean, if anything, that seven nuns had left the convent since Mother Angelica had become abbess?
Geneva pulled out the relevant sheets and put them next to each other, then double-checked. The records had a detailed list of all postings, foreign and domestic, that the nuns had held. Geneva scanned names and dates and places, amazed at how their reach extended across the globe. Four of the nuns had done missionary work in the Holy Land, five had been in Africa, three in the Philippines, two in China and one in Papua New Guinea. But seven of them had spent time in South America.
She wrote down the dates and locations in her notebook. She cross-checked the list again. Some of the nuns had spent years in that continent while others were there for only a short period, but there was just one place where all seven nuns’ paths had crossed. Peru. 1973. August to November.
She turned towards Rupert, catching his eyes roaming her skirt then pretending to look at something else, maybe the pattern of tiles on the floor. ‘And how unusual would it be for them all to have been stationed in Peru at the same time?’
Rupert looked surprised. ‘Not so unusual for them to be in Peru. Each nun normally does a few years of missionary work,’ he explained. ‘But at the same time? And in the same convent? That’s a big coincidence.’
‘Yes it is,’ Geneva replied, looking down at the records again. All seven nuns had spent the autumn of 1973 in the San Gabriel region of south-central Peru. She told herself not to leap to conclusions. Maybe it was nothing more than that they’d developed a bond in that far-flung posting and that Mother Angelica trusted them, naturally giving them first refusal when a place opened up at the convent.
Geneva made copies of the files she needed, thanked Rupert and started packing her things away when she remembered something that Gabby, the schoolteacher, had mentioned. ‘Rupert? That computer of yours, does it have details of the charity work that the nuns were involved in?’
‘No,’ he replied, seeing Geneva’s face fall. ‘But I can get the register from the library, that should have the details,’ he offered.
Geneva smiled and crossed her legs, watching Rupert exit the annex, his body taut with excitement and hurry. ‘Men . . .’ She shook her head and turned towards Singh, seeing the sudden weight in the young constable’s eyes that her joke had elicited.
‘Husband problems?’ Geneva knew that Singh had got married last Christmas – she’d also noticed that all the wedding photos surrounding her desk had mysteriously disappeared a couple of months back.
Singh nodded and stared at the bright hard ring on her finger. ‘He was never like this before we got married.’ She sounded sad and defiant and a little pissed off all at the same time. ‘Wants me to quit the job, can you believe that?’
‘It doesn’t surprise me.’
‘He never said a word before we got married. Said the job made me even sexier in his eyes. Now all he talks about is me quitting, settling down and, fuck, I know what’s coming next.’
There was no advice Geneva could give. She’d screwed up her own marriage. She had a bitter ex-husband who was trying to cheat her out of her half of their house and a head full of bad memories. ‘What are you going to do?’
Singh looked up from her files with a muted rage in her eyes. ‘I’m not fucking quitting. Can you imagine me sitting at home with a baby, watching daytime TV, doing the laundry, talking to other mums in the playground? I’d rather be a nun.’
They both laughed and were still laughing when Rupert came in. ‘What’s so funny?’ he said, blushing bright red, and they laughed even harder, unable to stop for a few moments.
When they were done, Rupert showed Geneva how to use the charities register and after fifteen minutes she found what she was looking for.
The convent had a long history of good works and philanthropy – Holden had been right about that, at least. They had run kitchens and emergency clinics during the Blitz, soup lines and doss houses in the bleak ravaged years which followed. In the last couple of decades they had opened youth centres in blighted areas of Ladbroke Grove, been involved with the Terrence Higgins Trust, run workshops for troubled teens and fed the constant army of homeless that trudged through London’s streets day and night. They had also initiated drug rehabilitation programmes and organised neighbourhood watch teams to deter roving dealers, unhappy with the police’s efforts to do the same. It was a large and admirable CV but it all stopped dead a year ago.
The outreach programmes had been shut down, memberships of boards and charitable organisations had been resigned, funding had ceased, and all of
it over the space of a few weeks.
Geneva sat up abruptly, checked her notes and thought about this. ‘We have reports that a priest named Father McCarthy was a regular visitor to the convent.’
Rupert nodded. ‘Each convent has a diocesan priest attached to it. They come almost every day to conduct masses.’ He typed something into his computer, his expression turning into a frown. ‘Father McCarthy was not their diocesan priest, a Father Malone was.’
‘Would it be strange for another priest to visit?’
‘To visit, no. To visit regularly, yes.’
‘Do you have a photo of him? It would be extremely helpful for our inquiries.’
Rupert punched something into the keyboard and swivelled the monitor so that Geneva could see. A black-and-white photo of Father McCarthy took up half the screen. She looked at Father McCarthy’s face but she didn’t look at it for long. There was something unsettling about the priest’s expression, the way his eyes were hard and cold and seemed to stare out of the computer and into her very soul.
‘Can you pull up his file?’
