Blood on the Bones

by Evans, Geraldine

  ‘Good old Hissing Sid?’ Rafferty took another deep gulp of his tea. It was piping hot, strong and well sugared, just as he liked it. He studied Llewellyn's face through the steam. It was as aesthetic and serious-looking as that of any religious and he commented, ‘I know you said a religious life held no appeal, but I can still see you as a monk.’

  Llewellyn didn't even slop his tea at this remark, but just said, ‘Easier than you could see yourself as one, I imagine?’

  ‘True. I could never be a Holy Joe, me.’ Rafferty raked his hand through his unruly auburn hair. ‘The tonsure would be bad enough, but those sandals would finish me. Well that and the lack of se–’

  ‘Yes, I think we've already established that particular drawback.’ Llewellyn straightened his already immaculate jacket and observed, ‘For me, it would be the clothes. I understand that even monastic orders that don't wear the habit, buy their clothes from charity shops.’ The elegantly attired Welshman gave a faint shudder.

  Rafferty laughed. ‘Perhaps you'd suit being a Catholic priest better. They're done up like the Christmas fairy for much of the year.’

  ‘Possibly. If I was of the appropriate religious conviction. But as we've already discovered, neither of us has the requisite vocation. And, apart from any other consideration, in my case, there's my wife to bring into the equation, and in your case, there's my cousin, Abra, and Mrs Rafferty.’

  Rafferty fixed on the second person whom Llewellyn had named. ‘Ah, yes. Ma,’ he said, before he paused reflectively. ‘I wonder what she'd have to say if I renounced the world and the grandchildren she's still waiting for me to produce?’

  ‘It's probably as well that you're unlikely to find out.’

  Rafferty nodded, finished his tea and observed, ‘Time to get back to work, I think. Back to the real world and its complications. Let's have the next sister in, Dafyd. The sooner we get these interviews finished the sooner we might be able to get on with solving this murder.’

  Sisters Agnes and Elizabeth were next. Like the round and rosy Sister Perpetua, both were currently on kitchen duties. Though, with such a small household to cater for, three sisters to do the cooking struck Rafferty as over-egging the pudding, especially as the well-rounded Perpetua was surely sufficiently enthusiastic about her food to be able to prepare and cook three simple meals a day without assistance.

  Sister Agnes, Cynthia Mayhew, as was, was tall and thin, with a long nose that, to Rafferty, indicated that the woman would be naturally inquisitive. However, it must be a trait she did her best to subdue because she neither asked nor volunteered anything until nearly the end of their session.

  And although Sister Rita had claimed that each of her fellow nuns was anxious to help all they could, it seemed that Sister Agnes, at least, didn't enjoy her colleague's robustness at the disturbance of her normal routines. Rather than showing a desire to be helpful, she seemed on edge, even a little resentful of their presence.

  Her voice, unlike the warm tones of Sister Rita, and the jolly chirrups of Sister Perpetua, was thin, with a tendency to high-pitched cut glass, which set Rafferty's teeth on edge. And when she finally allowed herself to give in to the aristocrat's natural inclination to take control, her first question was one that common sense should have told her was impossible for him to answer.

  ‘How long is your investigation likely to last, inspector? I understand that you, too, have your duty to do, of course, but this man's death and the presence of so many worldly people is upsetting some of the older sisters. Most have been here so long, our daily routine is all they are used to, you see.’

  Whether it was, as she claimed, really upsetting the older nuns – although Sister Ursula, clearly the oldest member of the community had shown little sign of any such discombobulation – certainly, it was upsetting Sister Agnes, whose hands clutched anxiously at the folds of her habit.

  ‘I understand that,’ Rafferty told her quietly. ‘Mother Catherine has already provided me with list of your routines, and I promised her I'd do my best to work round them. But, as to how long our investigation will take, I'm afraid it's in the lap of the gods.’

  Sister Agnes's long nose dipped in acknowledgement of this. ‘Then I shall, of course, pray to the one, true, God, to aid your endeavours.’

  Rafferty wondered whether he was meant to shout, ‘Hallelujah’ at this. He felt like telling her not to bother with praying on his account, as God had, in the past, generally shown a singular disinclination to aid him in anything. Instead, he thanked her for her promised prayers. Maybe God might more readily respond to the prayers of a religious nun than a backsliding sinner? he thought as he showed her out, she having, like the other sisters, denied all knowledge of the convent's cadaver or how it had ended up in its temporary resting place.

  The second of her two co-workers in the kitchens, Sister Joseph, the former Margaret Andrews, was, for all her sixty-five years, meek, mild, very shy and appeared unwilling to say boo to a goose or, indeed, much else at all. She couldn't have been a greater contrast to the tall, thin and aristocratically nervy, Sister Agnes or the short, round sister Perpetua with her rosy benevolence.

  Two of the other nuns, Sisters Bernadette and Elizabeth, had been visiting a sister convent in the north of England for the past two months and had only returned a couple of days ago, so, if Sam Dally was correct in his estimated time of death, both were unlikely to have had anything to do with their man's death.

  Rafferty wasn't surprised to learn, as nun followed nun into the office which Mother Catherine had provided for them, that each holy sister professed her ignorance of how the dead man had come to end up buried in their grounds.

  Most of them appeared to be genuinely troubled at the discovery of his body and that he had presumably been interred without religious ceremony. And who could blame them for that? They had chosen the contemplatives' life above other, more worldly orders, seeking only to dedicate their lives to prayer. But now, the wickedness of the world outside their isolating walls had intruded. Perhaps, in the process, it would destroy their serenity for ever?

  It certainly would, if – a possibility that Rafferty already had reason to consider – one of the holy nuns turned out to be their murderer.

  As for the rest of the community, Sisters Bernadette, Elizabeth, Cecile the novice and Teresa Tattersall the twenty-nine-year-old postulant, their current duties were respectively in the infirmary, keeping the chapel pristine and fit for the glorification of God, maintaining the community's website which Sister Cecile had set up some months previously, and doing the craft work that helped to fill their coffers, they had also been unable to shed any light on the man's death or burial.

  Strangely, given the requirement that they love their fellow man, only the young novice, the pretty, twenty-six year old – and, from the clue of her eyebrows beneath the all-concealing pale veil – natural blonde, Sister Cecile, shed any tears over the man's sudden, violent end.

  ‘Please forgive me.’ She wiped her eyes after she had followed the last of her colleagues into the temporary interview room they had been allocated. ‘I don't know why I'm so upset. It's not as if I can have known the dead man. Mother is always telling me I must master my emotions or they will master me.’

  Cecile gave him a wobbly smile as she mopped the tears from her creamy skin. 'I'm afraid I'm still striving for serenity, but it's proving elusive as yet. Clearly, I'm a long way from being ready to take my final vows.'

  Rafferty, in spite of Mother Catherine's attempts to convince him otherwise, still appalled that such a pretty girl should choose to ‘waste’ her youth and beauty by shutting them away behind a convent's walls, was similarly inclined to be over-emotional.

  He smiled sympathetically, and told her. ‘You're young yet. I imagine this is your first contact with death?’

  She gave him an uncertain nod.

  ‘I don't suppose even your Prioress, admirable as I'm sure she is now, was quite so in control of her emotions when she was your age
.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ she asked, clearly finding difficulty with the idea, but equally clearly, rather taken by the suggestion.

  ‘Sure of it,’ Rafferty affirmed. Though he admitted to a certain thankfulness that the Mother Superior wasn't around to hear him say it.

  To have attained her current rank indicated a truly awesome mastery of ordinary human weaknesses.

  But after ten minutes of questioning, it was clear that the young novice, like the rest, was unable to tell them anything much. Whether they were all really unable or simply unwilling and involved in a conspiracy of silence for reasons of their own, Rafferty was as yet, unable to discern.

  When the young novice glided through the door, rather less smoothly than the Mother Superior, and back to her duties at the computer, Rafferty, who sympathised with the elusiveness of her serenity, sat back and remarked to Llewellyn, ‘Looks like we've got the religious version of the three wise monkeys here, Daff. Shame they've multiplied.’

  Llewellyn's lips twitched. ‘Indeed. And though they still, it seems, see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil – I can't believe that they don't sense the presence of evil and have a pretty good idea from whence it springs.’

  The nuns, perhaps because they were unused to inconsequential chatter, had mostly shown themselves to be sparing with words.

  Rafferty could only hope this propensity altered the next time he questioned them. Maybe, if he was to get more revealing chatter, he'd have to liberate the communion wine and encourage the sisters to make free with it.

  'Let's just hope that between them, Sam Dally, the forensic anthropologist and the forensic entomologist, can pin down a shorter timescale for the man's likely death. Hope, too, that we're able to quickly identify him. One thing I find hard to believe is the sisters' denial that our cadaver could possibly have any connection to the convent or any of its inhabitants.'

  Llewellyn nodded his agreement. ‘And if it wasn't for the fact that the spare keys to the building are missing, it would not be easy for some outsider to gain access without the assistance of at least one of the community. If the murderer wasn't admitted via the normal route, he would have had to scale the walls–’

  ‘Dragging a corpse behind him for good measure,’ Rafferty interrupted, to add the thought that had already occurred to him.

  ‘Quite.’

  Llewellyn's tightly-drawn lips expressed his displeasure at this description. Rafferty chose to ignore his sergeant's silent reproof. 'Though why an outsider would choose to bury his victim here at all when he – or she, which would be even more unlikely if we are talking about an outsider – has miles of countryside, not to mention the North Sea close at hand.

  ‘No.’ Rafferty shook his head. 'The outsider as murderer scenario is too bizarre for words. And it's a damn shame those spare keys to the convent are missing as it confuses the issue. But I think – unless either the doctor or Father Kelly turn out to be the culprit, having helped themselves to the spare keys – that we may well have already met our murderer.'

  But the thought that their killer might well turn out to be a contemplative nun was bizarre and really rather chilling. It meant that this case looked set to become the very devil.

  Chapter Five

  By the time they had conducted all the preliminary interviews, it was nearly nine o'clock at night, but before he left the convent, Rafferty instructed Llewellyn to go and see Dr Peterson, the community's general practitioner, and take a statement.

  He started to add that they would go to see Father Kelly together afterwards – he knew, from previous acquaintance, that the old priest was something of a late bird – when, just in time, it struck him just how many mutual memories he and Father Kelly shared; more recent ones as well as ones stretching back to his youth and boyhood, memories that he would prefer the mischievous priest not to share with Llewellyn. So, after voicing one word of this latter idea, he carefully bit his lip on the rest.

  ‘You were about to say something,’ Llewellyn noted.

  ‘Was I?’ Rafferty queried with what he hoped was a suitably vacant expression, before he added, ‘Well, if I was, it's gone to where those three wise monkeys keep their nuts. And I don't much fancy going there. But you feel free.’

  Llewellyn wisely decided he didn't much fancy going there, either. Instead, after accepting his inspector's statement with the equanimity with which he greeted most of the mercurial Rafferty's pronouncements he asked quietly, ‘And what will you be doing?’

  It was a question put so quietly, that Rafferty, who fully intended to skive off for purposes of his own before he did anything else, wondered if his astute sergeant suspected something of the sort. The suspicion made him defensive.

  ‘Me? I'm going to visit Father Kelly, the convent's priest. See if he can shed any light on this business. If he's got any sins he wants to get off his chest, he might more readily confess them to a fellow Catholic, even if it is to one of the lapsed variety. You can contact me on my mobile if there are any developments.’

  He didn't reveal that before he went to see the priest, he intended heading back to the station for purposes of an entirely personal nature.

  As Llewellyn had said, the RC convent was situated on the north-western edge of the old Essex market town of Elmhurst. To reach the police station, Rafferty had to cross the River Tiffey at Tiffey Reach and pass the ancient, ruined Priory.

  After his recent experiences, he shuddered as he passed its night-cloaked and starkly broken stones, with their reminder of religion's inclination for violent retribution. And, before he turned left into Cymbeline Way and the back doubles' approach to the police station, he was, for once, relieved to see the bright lights of Mammon in the form of the shopping centre illuminate the sky

  Inclined, now he was free from observation, to fret and brood about his morning's post, he inevitably found that fretting and brooding achieved nothing but a thumping headache.

  Once parked up in the police station car park, Rafferty scurried up to his second floor office and swallowed a couple of pain killers. Then he removed from his pocket the letter he had received that morning, and read it again.

  ‘Got yourself into a fine mess back in April, didn't you, Nigel? Fortunate for you that your boss never found out about that alter ego business. It's my hope that he never learns of your duplicity during the Made in Heaven murder case. You must share this hope, I'm sure. Perhaps I can help resolve your difficulties and ensure your secret remains just that? I'll be in touch, inspector.’

  Appalled all over again at the letter's implied threat, Rafferty sat back and did some more useless brooding as yet another chill sweat slicked over his face and neck.

  Who could have sent such a letter? he wondered again, as possibility after possibility Schumacher-ed its way across his mind and were as speedily rejected. It took, he thought, a person with a particular mindset to write blackmail letters. A person, for instance, with a liking for power over others. A person with a certain arrogance.

  He didn't, of course, need to ask why his unwelcome correspondent had sent the letter. His guilty conscience provided reason enough. Two beautiful young women were dead, after all. And even though he hadn't killed them, their fate still troubled him. But what troubled him even more, was why his correspondent had waited till now to write to him, as the business to which the letter referred had happened months ago.

  What did the blackmailer want? The usual money? At first Rafferty thought that this was unlikely. Because, after racking his brains, off and on, since he had received the letter, considering and discarding possible suspects, he had, just before he had departed from the convent, come to the inescapable conclusion that his blackmailer was most likely to be found amongst his one-time fellow members of the Made in Heaven dating agency. Which one, though? That was the question.

  All were well educated professionals with incomes to match, so why would they think it worthwhile, not only to risk damaging their high flying careers, but also
to risk a prison sentence, in order to blackmail him and extract part of his strictly-limited police income?

  At first he had thought his conclusion made sense. But later, during their mostly fruitless questioning of the nuns, it had struck him that the saying 'the rich get richer while the poor get poorer', had been coined for a very good reason.

  With their frequently extravagant lifestyles, the rich proved every day just how much they liked money. And the more of it they managed to pile up, the more they wanted, even if the means of acquiring it were morally reprehensible. Shady businessmen with their backhanders proliferated. Shady politicians, ditto. Greedy insurance and pension salesmen more interested in increasing their commissions and bonuses than in ensuring their clients were sold the most appropriate policies for their needs, had all, in recent years, featured frequently in the news.

  The country was full of the financial and other scandals of the monied-classes. He thought it possible that some amongst them wouldn't turn their noses up if the opportunity for a lucrative spot of blackmail presented itself.

  It was his firm belief that the worst elements of such classes had a preference for keeping the mass of the population uneducated and ignorant, particularly about financial matters. Feed them a steady diet of mind-rotting swill such as soaps and TV reality shows and they were likely to lose any discernment they started out with.

  The proles as milch cows, in fact. Always there to have more squeezed out of them. The proof for this was certainly there: the mass of people were more appallingly educated than ever before, the same applied to their equal lack of financial education.

  It all went to prove that wealthy people were often greedy people, uncaring of how many poorer folk they robbed of their futures. They were mean, too, as many charity collectors would confirm.

  OK, a chunk of the rest of the population shared such traits. But Rafferty had always thought the monied-classes were a breed apart when it came to ruthless self-interest. You only had to look at the scandals attaching to government ministers of whatever political colour to realise there was little to which they wouldn't stoop.