She seemed amused by his approach and wasn't slow to provide him with answers, even though they weren't the answers he actually wanted.
‘God love you, inspector,’ she said matter-of-factly. 'The normal human urges don't just vanish when you adopt the life of a celibate. A nun is still a human being, so sexual desire is naturally still part of you. Most of the time it is somehow changed, metamorphosed, if you like, into the love of God. So while we deny ourselves physical love, we're open to the energy of it.
'Though – and this might surprise you, inspector, whatever Sister Benedicta told you, celibacy isn't the most difficult demand placed on a nun. For the majority of the Sisters obedience is regarded as the most challenging of the three vows. OK, it's no longer the blind obedience that was once demanded of those leading a cloistered life – we have regular house meetings to discuss and usually mutually agree on things that affect the community – but it's still a submission of self, a dropping of the ego. Not a very popular concept in our hedonistic, ego-driven modern society.
‘But to get back to the sex thing. If you find it difficult to think of nuns and sex in the same sentence, let me give you an analogy you might, as a man and a policeman, find easier to understand. Think of it as you would of a hardened drinker swearing off alcohol. Do you think his urge ever goes away?’
Amused and bemused in about equal measure by Sister Rita's own stout forthrightness, Rafferty shook his head.
‘The sexual energy is still there, still demanding fulfilment, much like the hardened drinker's urge to have ‘just the one'.’ Sister Rita laughed. ‘Just the one’ can be all it takes, can't it? Whether that one be having a drink or losing your virginity. The first can lead you straight back to alcohol and the second can leave you pregnant.’
With a muscular heave, she lifted another box full of apples into the wheelbarrow and trundled it towards the shed while Rafferty walked companionably beside her.
‘As Sister Benedicta told you, I was married once. And I always enjoyed the physical aspect of marriage. But then, when my husband died, I started to become interested in the more spiritual side of life. I suppose you could say I ‘got the call', if that doesn't sound presumptuous, ridiculous, even, in this day and age. But abstinence from sex is still, even now, a big thing for me. Though I received my last sexual proposition from a man a long time ago. So I guess I'm pretty safe in my celibacy now.’
They had by now reached the shed. ‘Allow me,’ Rafferty said as he heaved the box off the wheelbarrow and onto the shelf. The shed was large and almost full of such boxes.
‘That's the last of the apples harvested,’ she told him with satisfaction. ‘Now, I must get on with spreading the compost.’
He accompanied her back down the path to the vegetable plot and watched as she picked up the spade left ready earlier for the purpose and began shovelling rich dark compost out of the large green bins and on to the soil that had produced their summer crops. She worked quickly, methodically, and Rafferty watched her industry with the fascination of the idle bystander.
‘You never had children?’ he asked her bent back after some five minutes of this. ‘I ask only because, from my understanding, the contemplatives’ opportunities to see their families are very limited.’
Sister Rita raised her eyes from her energetic compost-spreading to look quizzically at him. She took the opportunity to stand upright and ease her back for a few seconds.
‘No,’ she confided sadly. ‘I was never afforded the joy of motherhood. It was, for many years, a great sadness to me. If I had been granted such a blessing, I would never have entered an enclosed order, probably, for that matter, never become a nun at all.’
Until then, she had worked in that diligent, wholehearted manner, which, as she had previously explained to him, God expected from all His Brides, whatever their current endeavour.
Even murder? he mused. Did God expect that, also to be offered up? It didn't seem likely. But hey, he thought, immediately back in his normal cynical, lapsed, mode, this is the Catholic Church, we're talking about here. Killings were their forte, whether they be burnings, hangings or disembowelments. In his heart, he doubted that the soul of the Catholic Church had really changed much over the centuries. It was simply that the law no longer permitted their previous indulgence in blood-letting.
Sister Rita dug her fork into the soil, but this time she didn't turn it over. Instead, she leaned on its cross-member, staring down at the turned soil, and – proving that she had understood his drift all along and had been merely teasing him, she neatly wrong-footed his intention of implying that Sister Cecile had confided rather more than was wise.
‘I get the impression, inspector, that you feel this man's death might be a crime of passion. Am I right?’
‘It's one possibility we're considering,’ Rafferty admitted.
Smiling, she nodded. ‘Let me guess. I noticed you having an earnest conversation with young Cecile before the tolling of the bell for Sext. You're thinking of our little novice, am I right? Our little novice and her undesirable ex-boyfriend.’
Rafferty neither confirmed nor denied it. But he rather thought he'd given himself away.
Undeterred by his silence, Sister Rita continued. ‘Cecile, our pretty young novice with the violent and obsessive ex-boyfriend, would, I suppose, in a policeman's eyes, be a natural for a crime of passion, especially with most of the rest of us being so old and raddled. But you're mistaken, inspector. Do you think we wouldn't notice if her old boyfriend turned up on our doorstep, demanding to see Cecile? He hasn't.’
Was Sister Rita lying? He wondered. Or was she simply unaware that it had been Nathan McNally who had been the first of the building firm's employees to turn up to repair their leak?
Quietly, he observed. ‘You seem very protective of her, Sister.’
‘Of course I'm protective of her. Apart from the fact that I'm Mistress of Novices, we're family here. We care for one another. It's what families do, most of them, anyway. And it's good to have some young blood around the place. She and Teresa liven us old women up no end.’
Rafferty was thoughtful as he took his leave of Sister Rita. She had admitted that she felt protective of the young novice. It seemed likely that a similar desire to protect her was felt by the other older nuns. He had certainly noticed something similar in Mother Catherine.
What would they do? he wondered again, if Cecile's ex had spotted her while he was here trying and failing to repair the leak and had turned violent? Surely, as he had earlier believed, they would attempt to restrain him? Even nuns wouldn't put up with a violent male destroying the peace of their home without doing something to stop it. Especially Catholic nuns, with the entirety of their faith urging them on to protect one of their own against the violent unbeliever.
And when you thought that the one they would at the same time be protecting was one of their two newest chicks…
It was certainly a possibility that Nathan McNally had bumped into Cecile while he had been working at the convent. And given that he didn't sound the type to turn the other cheek when he had an unexpected opportunity to revenge himself for her rejection of him, it was plausible that he could have ended up being somehow mortally injured during any struggle to restrain him. Was it also possible that the sisters had decided, most un-Christianly, to deny him medical aid?
Or had he died too quickly for such aid to be summoned? If the latter was the case, had they then held an impromptu house meeting, taken a majority vote and decided that least said was soonest mended, for Cecile's sake?
Rafferty didn't know and wouldn't even have the scenario as a definite possibility until they had identified the corpse.
He had already decided to waste no more time in trying to get that identity established. And now he took out his mobile phone. But it rang before he could make the call.
His caller was Llewellyn, who was still tracking down the elusive past lives of the sisters. He had turned up some information from the past li
fe of Teresa Tattersall, the young postulant, which seemed to offer as many possibilities for murderous protectionism from the other sisters as did that of Cecile.
Like so many youngsters of today, Teresa had been tempted by the shallow pleasures afforded by drugs, lured on by a ‘loving’ boyfriend who had had ulterior motives for turning her into a drug addict.
‘Apparently, she got hooked very quickly,’ Llewellyn's quiet voice murmured into Rafferty's ear. 'Her dealer, like most of that breed, first got her to fall in love with him and then used the innocent naiveté of his young victim to get her hooked on drugs. Once hooked and unable to afford to pay for the increasing quantities she craved, he pushed her into prostitution.'
‘More a case of Mary Magdalene than Holy Mary, then?’ Rafferty replied. ‘Though, seeing as she's nearly at the end of her six-months as a postulant and is about to be ‘dressed’ as a novice, it seems our particular Magdalene must have managed to renounce prostitution and drugs.’
‘True. But not before she suffered several relapses. She found religion after the last one of these.’
‘I suppose even young women who find religion are likely to suffer the usual temptations of this modern generation, including drugs. Why wouldn't they, when it's well known that so-called respectable doctors, bankers, financial types and even politicians, aren't averse to using drugs to unwind?’
‘Also true. But unfortunately Teresa Tattersall went in for something rather more serious than weekend unwinding. Her dealer boyfriend got her on crack cocaine, which, as we know, is one of the most difficult forms of addiction from which to wean one's body.’
‘Nice chap. And how did he respond when it dawned on him that her getting religion had lost him the income he gained from selling her body?’
'He responded much as you might expect. Violently. She had to flee in the night to escape him, with just the clothes she stood up in.
‘She was fortunate in that she was picked up wandering the streets in a distressed state by Dr Peterson while he was out on his rounds. He got her into a clinic and once they had managed to help her on the road to recovery, rather than have her living in some cheap bed-sit and at risk of falling back into the old routine, he persuaded Mother Catherine to let her come on retreat to the convent.’
‘Where she found her vocation.’
‘As you say.’
After instructing Llewellyn that he would meet him back at the station, Rafferty ended the call and went in search of Teresa.
‘I'm not proud of what I did,’ Teresa told Rafferty earnestly when he questioned her. ‘But who hasn't done things in their lives of which they're ashamed?’
Not me, that's for sure, thought Rafferty. And as he recalled Father Kelly and his ‘casting stones’ sermon, not to mention the white lies that had attracted the attentions of a blackmailer, he was forced to acknowledge the truth of this thought. It was certain that, like Father Kelly himself, he was unlikely to be in a position any time soon to gather throwing stones.
But it was a continuing revelation that a person could still join a religious order even if their entire life didn't match some perfect ideal. Just as well, probably, he thought. As he'd pointed out to his mother, even nuns, like priests and policemen, were only human.
What was it Sister Rita had said about modern society? That it was hedonistic. Hedonistic and, presumably, rather too fond of its shallow pleasures than was good for it.
As he left the convent and walked towards his car, Rafferty found himself wondering if the Teresa who had found ordinary life required the prop of drugs, wouldn't find the more demanding life of a nun required the same prop.
Could she have relapsed and contacted her old boyfriend dealer? Asked him to come to the convent? Trading what? Surely not her body? But she had nothing else to trade as the nuns were permitted only sufficient income to buy soap and other personal necessities.
Was it possible the foolish girl had allowed the peace of the convent and the quiet goodness of the other nuns to blind her to past reality? Had she hoped to persuade her ex-dealing boyfriend to part with the drugs for free, for the good of his soul?'
Surely even a young nun couldn't be that naïve? Particularly one who had already been lured into prostitution once?
Still, as Rafferty drove to the station, he turned the possibility over in his mind and found it an interesting one. For all he knew, it might even be what had happened and with the same result as he had envisaged with regard to Cecile and her undesirable ex-boyfriend.
After all, Teresa had already proved to be sufficiently naïve to let herself be duped into addiction and prostitution. And as his experience as a policeman had sadly taught him, there were no depths of gullibility into which young girls, who thought themselves still ‘in love’ weren't capable of falling.
Clearly, they would have to speak to Teresa again and try to discover if she had indeed, fallen by the wayside in her vocation and her life. But that would have to wait for a bit. For Rafferty currently had the bit between his teeth and had already set his next course. He wasn't about to be distracted from it now.
The expert they used for facial reconstruction was based at the university. Professor Amos was, first and foremost, a forensic anthropologist, but he was also a talented artist, one with flair, imagination and a remarkable propensity for accurate facial reconstruction. It was a rare combination of talents.
The professor had done some astonishing reconstructions for them in the past. And Rafferty, as he shook the professor's hand and he and Llewellyn followed him into his office, was hopeful he would be able to perform his magic again.
After he had once more explained precisely who they were and what they wanted – Alexander Amos carried the stereotype of the absentminded professor to its ultimate – Rafferty was never sure whether Amos was truly that absentminded or whether it amused him to pretend be so – the professor, who was still only thirty-eight, nodded his head with its premature shock of grey hair.
‘Of course, Inspector Rafferty. I remember now. You said on the phone that you wanted a reconstruction done on the skull of a man found in the convent at Elmhurst.’
Rafferty nodded. ‘That's right, Professor. We've had no luck in identifying him using other means, so I'm in your hands and hoping you work your usual magic.’
Professor Amos smiled. ‘I suppose, to the lay person, it is magic.’ He stood up, and, with all the eagerness of the born enthusiast, asked, ‘Would you like to see a reconstruction I was working on earlier?’
Rafferty amused by the deliberate use of the ‘Blue Peter’ expression familiar from both their childhoods said, ‘I'd love to. Should I bring the sticky back plastic?’
Professor Amos grinned and shook his head. ‘No sticky back plastic required. Come with me.’ He led the way into his workroom and pointed over to what looked like an almost finished reconstruction. The face appeared incredibly lifelike.
‘This one's a rush job for one of your colleagues in Braintree. The skull wasn't complete, but as your colleagues didn't manage to find the torso, it was all we had, incomplete or not. It was a difficult reconstruction because of that. The skull underpins the basic form and structure of the face and this one came to us in over eighteen separate pieces. It was like piecing together a jigsaw, a three-dimensional jigsaw. We were fortunate in that we had sufficient pieces so that we were able to build them into a skull, cast it and then use it as the foundations for the facial reconstruction.’
‘How do you decide on the form of the face?’ To Rafferty all skulls looked remarkably similar; he found it difficult to understand how anyone could build up a recognisable face from so little.
'As I said, it's the skull that provides the form and structure for the overlaying flesh. The layman, of course, finds it all but impossible to see beyond the dreadful, rictus grin and gaping eye sockets so popular in horror films. And when the skin and muscles decay, the character goes with them. It's our job to put it back. We work from a knowledge of around twenty t
o thirty five anatomical landmarks – key tissue depths that are scattered all around the face, but their greatest concentration is around the mouth and between the eyes.
'The reconstruction starts with small pegs used as depth indicators for each landmark which are fixed to the skull or a cast of it to indicate the flesh depth and then we apply the clay between the pegs. With these basic flesh depth markers in place, it's possible then to fill the gaps and start on the features, The width of a nose, for example, is roughly the same as the distance between the inner corners of the eyes. The corners of the mouth lie directly below the inner borders of the iris, and lay over the back edges of the canine teeth. Ears are roughly the same length as the nose, apart from in the elderly where the size of the former are proportionately longer.
‘It's not an exact science, of course. Fortunately, an exact likeness is not always necessary. As I'm sure you and Sergeant Llewellyn know from your own experiences. Often it's enough simply to provide a sufficient likeness to jog someone's memory.’
‘Makes you wonder how we managed without it,’ Rafferty commented. ‘We'd certainly be stumped in our current case if facial reconstruction wasn't available. Who was the bright spark who came up with the idea, Professor?’
‘Systematic facial reconstruction really began with the work of a Russian anthropologist back in the 1920s and thirties. He used to measure the tissue depth on the faces of cadavers awaiting dissection at Moscow's medical college.’
Llewellyn nodded. ‘I remember reading about that. Wasn't his most famous reconstruction the face of Tamerlane, the Mongol king?’
The professor beamed at this show of interest. ‘Quite right, sergeant. You're well-informed.’
Rafferty, always hyper sensitive to feelings of inferiority that he wasn't likewise well-informed, forced back the ready frown and made himself concentrate on what the professor was saying.
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