by LJ Ross
But now, the effort had drained her, and she looked all of her sixty-three years in the unforgiving light of the midday sun.
“You gave an excellent speech,” he said.
She took another drag of the minty smoke, then looked down at the canister with distaste.
“Times like these, this muck just doesn’t cut it,” she muttered, and heaved a sigh. “You know what I was thinking about, while I was up there, Alex?”
He waited.
“I was thinking about the fact he might be sitting there, in one of the pews, revelling in it all,” she spat, waving away the question he hadn’t bothered to ask. “Niall told me about your theory that it’s one of our own, and that he wouldn’t miss the chance to come to the funeral.”
“It might not be a ‘he’,” Gregory corrected, and she looked shocked.
“I can’t believe it.”
“The act itself, or the fact a woman might have committed it?” he asked.
“Both.”
He wasn’t surprised. Most people couldn’t bring themselves to imagine it, particularly of the ‘fairer’ sex.
“At Southmoor, I work primarily with women,” he explained. “Although violent crimes tend to be perpetrated by men, believe me, some women are just as capable. I meet them every day.”
Maggie rubbed a hand over her temple to ease the pounding headache that was presently drilling a hole in her skull.
“Nobody in the town has a history of anything like this,” she said. “I made it my business to know. Connor and Niall ran a check on every person in the neighbourhood.”
“They might not have a history of murder,” Gregory said. “But they do now.”
She swore, then tugged a rosary from her pocket and kissed it quickly, before she was condemned to hell and damnation.
“What I want to know is why,” she said. “That woman never harmed a soul in her life.”
Gregory moved to lean back against the tree trunk beside her, settling his long body beside hers.
“Why kill anyone?” he was bound to say. “But, in this instance, I think the killer saw something in Claire that triggered their innermost need.”
“Need? For what?”
“I don’t know, yet. I need to understand who Claire was,” he explained. “At times like these, it’s natural to focus on her killer, to imagine them as all kinds of monster, but the fact is they look just like you or me. The key to finding her killer is to look at Claire and understand what she represented to them.”
“Con and Niall have tried,” she said. “They’ve looked at her life every which way.”
Gregory gave a small shake of his head, trying to find the words to explain.
“It isn’t so much what she did in her life; whether she worked as a teacher, whether she had friends and so forth. It’s what it all adds up to; the substance of the woman, and how she appeared to others.”
“She was normal,” Maggie muttered.
“There’s an interesting word,” he replied. “I haven’t met many ‘normal’ people. Perhaps that’s what set her apart.”
Maggie looked past him, across the cemetery.
“There’s one person who knows the innermost thoughts of the folk around here,” she said, and nodded towards the priest, whose long robes brushed against the grass as he made his way to the vestry door. “It’s a good place to start.”
* * *
The abbey was almost deserted by the time Gregory ducked back inside. Without hundreds of warm bodies lining its pews, the air was cool and whistled through the cracks in the old stone walls. Autumn sunshine filtered through ornate stained-glass windows lining either side of the nave, but the rainbow colours did little to relieve the oppressive atmosphere and his eye was drawn to an enormous golden crucifix suspended above the altar. The weeping effigy of Christ had loomed over Claire Kelly’s coffin during her funeral, and he was reminded of one of his early sessions with Cathy Jones.
“Is religion important to you, Cathy?” he’d asked.
“Of course, Doctor. I almost lost my faith, after Emily was taken from me. When Christopher was taken as well, I couldn’t imagine why a benevolent god would let my sweet babies die.”
The salt might have had something to do with it, he’d thought. Or the malnourishment and chronic sleep deprivation. Inducing illness was a classic symptom of factitious disorder imposed on another, more commonly known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
“I found my faith again and I pray each night that you and the other doctors will come to your senses. When I was at home, I used to have a crucifix on my bedside table. Do you think they’d let me have it back?”
Gregory thought of his patient back at Southmoor, praying fervently to whichever god would listen. Her disordered mind was convinced her bereavement had been an act of divinity, but he wondered what Claire Kelly’s killer had thought as they stood inside the hallowed walls of God’s house.
Had they prayed for forgiveness, or had their sins already been absolved?
Did they believe they were on a divine mission, or one entirely of their own making?
From the shadowed cloisters, the priest watched the play of emotions on his face and wondered if he knew how much he wore on his sleeve.
“Doctor Gregory, isn’t it?”
The mask slipped back into place and Alex turned with a smile to greet the priest of Ballyfinny.
“Father Walsh?”
“Sean.”
He shook hands with a man of average height, with a smooth, rounded face and mild brown eyes. During the funeral service, the priest had seemed much taller—bedecked in golden robes and with the weight of two thousand years of Catholic dogma behind him, rather than the plain black cassock and clerical collar he now wore.
“Maggie said you wanted to speak to me about Claire.”
“If it isn’t an inconvenient moment, Father.”
Walsh shook his head and indicated a carved oak door.
“Let’s make ourselves comfortable,” he said. “It’s been a hard morning, and I’m sure we could both use a cup of tea.”
Gregory followed the man to a side door, consciously slowing his footsteps to match the priest’s slower pace. At Southmoor, the next crisis was never far away, and he’d developed a habit of covering the ground quickly. But here, in this rural corner of the world, the pace of life was much slower.
It took some adjustment.
“Did you know Mrs Kelly well, before she died?” he asked, ducking his head inside a small doorway leading to the priest’s study.
“As well as any of my congregation,” Walsh replied, making his way across the room to a kitchen area, where he set a kettle to boil. “I knew Claire to be a regular churchgoer, who came to Mass every week with her family. I took up the position here in Ballyfinny two years ago, after Father Quinion passed, so I’m afraid I missed little Emily Kelly’s baptism and the Kellys’ wedding.”
He plopped a couple of tea bags into mismatching cups, while Gregory looked on.
“Where were you before?” he asked.
“Here, there, and roundabouts,” the priest smiled. “Before coming here, I was five years in Kenmare. That’s down in Kerry,” he added.
Gregory looked around the room, which held the musty smell of mildew he associated with older buildings and nursing homes. It was dominated by a large oak desk, which was scrupulously tidy. Along one wall was a bank of locked drawers, which he assumed contained the parish files. On the walls were a series of paintings and framed tapestries, each depicting a religious theme, in case one should forget where they were.
“Aside from being a regular here, how did Claire seem to you?” he asked. “Was she a happy woman, for instance?”
Walsh carried two steaming cups to an overstuffed sofa at one end of the room, and gestured for him to sit.
“I had Connor Byrne in here when it first happened, asking much the same question,” he said, settling himself at one end of the faux-leather Chesterfield with an awkwa
rd squeak of fabric. “And I told him what I’ll tell you now: Claire Kelly seemed to be a very happy woman.”
Gregory took a sip of tea, then cupped it in his hands to warm them.
“Father, I’m aware of the rules surrounding confessionals, but since Claire Kelly has passed away, I assume the threat of excommunication no longer applies.”
Walsh removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, then propped them back on his nose.
“It’s a common assumption for laypeople to make,” he said. “But, on this matter, the Church is clear. The secrecy of a confession is maintained even after the penitent dies. If I were to reveal the contents of Claire’s confession, or that of any other person, it would lead to automatic excommunication.”
Gregory was silent for a long moment. In his own profession, he abided by strict codes of conduct, so the idea of respecting confidentiality was not alien to him. However, should a patient ever reveal something that conscience dictated was worthy of reporting to the police, he would have no hesitation in doing so in order to prevent a greater evil—confidentiality be damned.
But then, he did not believe in eternal damnation, like the man seated before him.
“Would those rules still apply, even if a man—or woman, say—came to you to confess a murder?”
“Yes, even in those circumstances.”
Gregory bore down against a rising tide of frustration.
“What if I were to put it another way, Father. Let’s say, in a hypothetical scenario, you were concerned about one of your flock and believed them to be in danger. Would you report your concerns to the police?”
“To do so would invite questions about how I came to be concerned,” the priest replied, with a small smile. “I realise this can be hard to accept, but no confessor can be asked to dispense with the need for secrecy, even if he might wish to reveal the contents of a confession to prevent an imminent threat.”
Gregory raised his mug in a parody of ‘cheers’.
“That’s quite a powerful position to be in, Father. I wonder if Liam Kelly would take the same view.”
Walsh didn’t flinch.
“God willed that man should be left in the hands of his own counsel,” he replied, softly.
“Yeah,” Gregory muttered, setting the mug down. “Unfortunately, the rest of us have to deal with the consequences. Thanks for the tea, Father.”
“Alex?”
He paused.
“My door is always open to those in need. Remember that, my son.”
CHAPTER 10
“This is the murder wall.”
It was an evocative name, Gregory thought, as he came to stand in front of the long notice board dedicated to Claire Kelly inside the single conference room at the Ballyfinny Garda Station. Unlike the usual boxy, sixties-style architecture he had come to expect of police and government buildings the world over, the town’s Garda were housed in a charming, stone-built feat of Victorian architecture that brought to mind visions of Dixon of Dock Green, or something equally nostalgic.
The reality was very different. Where Sergeant Connor Byrne might once have relied upon common sense and compassion to police the community he served, that community had begun to lose faith that Claire Kelly’s murderer would ever be brought to justice and so demanded the kind of investigative policing found more frequently in cities with high murder rates, and ambitious local politicians. The town called for action and more Garda officers on the streets—as if their presence alone would deter the kind of abnormal mind that had been driven to take a life.
Nonetheless, the mayor had answered the hue and cry, applying pressure so that guards were transferred from neighbouring counties, while her eldest son accepted a temporary transfer from divisional headquarters to preside over the investigation—as well as his brother, whose authority was subordinated by the presence of the inspector who shared his name.
Now, amid the thrum of photocopiers and the plaintive ring of a telephone at the front desk, both men joined Gregory in the Major Incident Room, where they scanned the wall.
“Have there been any developments?” he asked.
“None,” Niall said. “We re-interviewed all the neighbours on the street, Claire’s family, her friends and work colleagues. Nobody remembers seeing anything unusual around the time she died.”
“And their movements are all accounted for?”
“Every last one of them.”
Gregory took a step closer to the wall, where a large, blown-up image of a blonde woman was positioned front and centre. In life, Claire Kelly had been an attractive woman of twenty-nine; a school teacher with a loving family and the type of girl-next-door looks other women envied and men desired. It was a dangerous bracket; a kind of median zone where she appeared neither off-putting nor inaccessible to a certain type of predator.
In other words, an ideal target.
“We’ve got a man watching her grave, but there were no reports of suspicious activity during the funeral,” Connor put in.
“It doesn’t mean he wasn’t there,” Gregory said, moving slowly along the wall as he studied each image in turn.
A number of smaller photographs had been tacked to the wall depicting the crime scene and important people in Claire’s life, spreading out from her central image in a spider diagram of red string and drawing pins. All of the information was held on a digital case file and there were computer programs that served the same purpose, but he happened to agree there was no substitute for the immediate impact of a physical wall.
“What’s your working theory?” he asked. “You’ve already told me you believe it was someone from outside the area.”
Niall folded his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits in what Gregory recognised as a fighting stance.
“Sex crime,” he said, bluntly. “It’s true, we’ve found no semen at the scene, or on Claire, but who’s to say the bastard wasn’t impotent? You hear about that sort—the type who can’t get it up and then take it out on women.”
Connor nodded his agreement.
“We heard all you said about it being someone from the town,” he added. “But, God’s truth, there isn’t anybody here who fits the bill.”
Gregory leaned against one of the freestanding desks and braced his hands either side, choosing his words with care.
“I’ve seen cases where killers or rapists attack without being able to enact the sexual element to their fantasy,” he said. “But I read the autopsy report you gave me, and it was categorical. There was no evidence of sexual assault. In cases such as the one you’ve described, the assailant usually at least attempts to follow through.”
He looked up at the pictures of Claire, then back at the other two men in the room.
“The autopsy report also said the initial, immobilising blow struck the back of her head. You’ve told me the weapon was most likely a heavy ornament from the table in her hallway. That tells us something very important.”
“He was quick,” Connor remarked. “And an opportunist.”
“She turned her back on him,” Niall muttered, and sat down to rest his forearms on his knees in a gesture of defeat. “Claire turned away from him.”
Gregory nodded.
“Claire Kelly either knew her killer or trusted them enough, in a very short space of time, to allow them entry to her home. She was pregnant, too, which usually means higher levels of self-preservation.”
“Could have been a delivery man,” Connor argued. “Or some salesperson.”
“It could,” Gregory nodded. “Except nobody remembers seeing a van or an unusual car parked outside. They would have had to bring their own transportation to pull this off, unless they knew the area or lived nearby.”
He pushed away from the table and walked to the board again, this time looking into the smiling, slightly cocksure eyes of the man Liam Kelly had been a month before his world had changed irrevocably.
“I know you don’t want to believe it, but I think you have to accept it,” he said. �
�The likelihood is, somebody watched her come and go, took the time to learn her routines. They couldn’t have made several trips to the area without being seen, unless they’re already part of the landscape.”
Connor kicked the edge of the wall, and began pacing the floor like a caged animal.
“Bastard’s sitting right under our noses,” he snarled.
“Aye,” Niall agreed, in a tired voice. “He’s been sitting here all along.”
CHAPTER 11
The three men spent another hour going over the facts, then began to dissect the minutiae of Claire Kelly’s life. She was the second daughter of a respectable, working-class family, who’d attended the local school before university in neighbouring Galway, and had a loyal circle of friends from both counties to show for it. Leafing through the statements given by them and her work colleagues, many of whom she counted as friends, Gregory began to form a picture of a wholesome, clean-living woman who had been universally liked. She had no criminal record; not even a token point on her driving licence for speeding.
It made him suspicious.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked. “What’s missing from the file?”
Connor opened his mouth to speak but one look from his brother silenced him.
“What makes you think anything’s missing?” Niall asked.
Gregory raised the sheaf of paper he held in his hand, then dropped it on the table.
“Nobody’s this squeaky-clean,” he said.
The other two shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
“It came out when we were taking a statement from a bloke called Tom Reilly. He’s the headmaster at the school where Claire worked,” Niall said, heavily. “The man’s married with two kids and his wife was one of Claire’s friends. He claims they had an affair a couple of years ago, and begged us not to tell anyone. Said he needed to get it off his chest, in case we found anything at her house and tried to pin him with her murder.”
Gregory frowned.
“It doesn’t seem consistent with her personality,” he murmured, but then his face cleared as he remembered something from her medical records. “When was this alleged affair?”
