Divine Poison

by AB Morgan

  Eddie had heard my voice and appeared silently in the doorway of the main office, where Kelly presided over the comings and goings of the team. ‘Can I have a chat in my office please, Monica?’ He was wise enough not to hint at the reason for this request, just as I did not ask, until we were well clear of Kelly’s keen sense of hearing.

  ‘The coroner has opened a new inquiry into the death of Jan Collins. You were with him yesterday. Did he say why?’ I sat staring at Eddie, not knowing which answer to give. Half a lie, or a whole lie. Denial seemed to be the safest option.

  ‘No idea. Sorry. He scrutinised my report but asked me to make it much more comprehensive and was quite critical, actually. He kept me waiting for hours.’ Eddie appeared to accept this and apologised for the interruption to my routine.

  ‘Why? Is it important?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. I had a phone call from DS Adams a few minutes ago wanting to know if your report had been submitted to the coroner or not. He even asked for a copy.’

  I froze.

  ‘Monica, sit down, you look like you’re going to faint.’

  ‘Did you send him a copy? What did you tell him?’ I felt dreadfully sick.

  ‘No, I didn’t let him have a copy, what do you take me for? Jesus, Monica. I told him the coroner had asked for the report well before it was due and that it had been sent on Friday. He wanted to know why the coroner had asked to see you, that’s all.’

  ‘You told him that I’d been to see the coroner?’ I rushed out of the office, straight to the toilets and threw up. Charlie Adams would be furious. He would have worked out that I was the reason for a new inquiry. A new inquiry also meant the connection between the deaths was being looked into, that’s why the CCTV tapes from the Green Man were wiped. Bloody effing Nora! Fuck, shit, and bollocks.

  Sometimes there aren’t enough swear words.

  Eddie thought I had a nasty case of gastric flu and swiftly sent me packing. Firmly rejecting the offer of a lift home, I shakily drove to Folly Farm. Emma was at work, which I only realised when Grandma Frost answered the door. Barely stopping to pass the time of day, I did an about-face and headed to the Lodge House.

  The Braithwaites were both firmly established in their new home office premises and were found beavering away, collating the streams of information coming in. They sat me down with a hot drink and reassuring words.

  ‘He’s fishing. He hasn’t worked anything out yet. Monica, you’re doing a brilliant job. Have you got your laptop with you? Good. We’ll make your reports password protected so that nobody else can print them off and send them. Milo can update Mr Williams to instruct your managers and the police to comply with new security requirements for electronic document storage, transmission or faxed reports. We’ll tie them up in knots for a while.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s fishing, I think he caught a fish. Eddie told Charlie Adams that I had been asked to see the coroner urgently. Charlie will be desperate to know what the meeting was about.’ The words had barely left my mouth when my work mobile rang. It was Kelly. ‘Christ, what now? Hello, Kelly.’

  There was no polite enquiry as to my wellbeing.

  ‘I have a call for you from the police,’ and without so much as an excuse me, she transferred the call.

  ‘Hello, Monica.’ I recognised the caller’s voice immediately. I held my left hand up and bent my little finger while my eyes sought help from the Braithwaites. Both gave encouraging gestures, and without hesitation Mrs Braithwaite leant forward to press both buttons on my earwig fob, which made me pull back with uncertainty as to her intentions. I refocused.

  ‘Is that you, Charlie?’ I asked, trying to gather my thoughts.

  ‘Yes, hi. Sorry to bother you but I’ve received notification that the coroner is opening a new inquiry into Mrs Janet Collins’s death, and I wondered what you knew about this.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Well, I didn’t know until my manager told me. He said he’d heard it from you this morning.’ There were firm nods from both Braithwaites and Mr Braithwaite made a rolling motion with his forearms as if he was about to sing ‘The wheels on the bus go round and round’.

  ‘I’m not sure I can help you.’ I made an exaggerated silent-panic face.

  ‘That’s a shame. I spoke to your manager, Edward, and he mentioned that you were ordered to see Mr Williams, the coroner, on Monday morning. Why?’ Charlie wasn’t mincing his words and I knew he was waiting for further hesitation, or stumbling speech to give away my lies.

  ‘Oh, he was very rude. He demanded to see me, then kept me waiting for hours on end. When I did see him all he did was criticise my report.’

  ‘What did he criticise exactly?’

  I replied straight away. ‘Said it wasn’t comprehensive enough and was sub-standard. I was quite offended. Why? Have you been asked for a report as well?’ I knew full well that Charlie had written the report for the police, but I was careful not to reveal this fact.

  ‘Yes of course. I was the detective on scene just after you had left, as you know. The coroner hasn’t asked to see me, though.’

  I glanced up at the Braithwaites from my chair looking for guidance. ‘Oh, that’s lucky for you, then,’ I replied while reading the piece of paper scribbled on by Mrs Braithwaite. ‘Perhaps the pathologist has questioned something. Look, I don’t really know, Charlie, and to be honest I’ve been sent home from work ill, so coroner’s reports are not on my list of priorities. Being near a toilet is. Probably a bit of food poisoning. Nothing to worry about.’ I was starting to ramble, and Mr Braithwaite made a “cut” gesture across his neck ordering me to stop talking.

  ‘Okay, thanks. Sorry to bother you. I’m sure we’ll get confirmation sooner or later. Get well soon.’ Charlie had sounded distracted as he ended the call. Perhaps he had been just been fishing.

  ‘You did fantastically well. No hesitation, neat and concise. Well done.’ Relieved, I let out a long slow breath, making my lips flap. Mr Braithwaite aimed a finger towards my chest. ‘You might want to turn that off now.’ I’d forgotten about the earwig fob, even though a silent text had come through on my personal mobile to say it was working.

  ‘Did they hear everything?’

  ‘Loud and clear and we now have a lovely voice sample for Charles Adams. Whereabouts in the Midlands is he from? Do you know?’ Shaking my head, I gave a short, snorting nasal laugh. That small fact, Charlie’s accent, I had been correct on. Hurrah. My sleuthing days were not over.

  31

  Max and I stepped out of the taxi, which had pulled up several yards away from the entrance to the Green Man, necessitating use of the umbrella we had taken with us. It was pouring down with relentless, fat raindrops, the gusty wind threatening to turn the brolly inside out. Determinedly we faced it into the wind and ran together towards the door of the pub, making clowns of ourselves as we manoeuvred with the umbrella through the doorway.

  We fell into the warm smoky atmosphere of the pub, mocking each other. There was a decent crowd in the compact bar area. Some customers were sitting in small groups at tables, and the regulars were propping up the bar. Behind it I spotted Karen beaming at me.

  ‘Come to check up on me, have you?’ she joked. ‘I spoke to Pip earlier and he said you’d been to see him. That was good of you.’ I introduced Max, who began his charm offensive by chatting amicably to Karen and asking her about the types of beer on offer.

  ‘I’ll have a pint of that. Your recommendation was spot on,’ Max said as he finished the small sample of an ale that Karen had poured. ‘Do you work here full-time?’ he asked. This could easily have sounded like a bad chat-up line, but somehow Max had the knack of relaxing people into conversations by being genuinely interested. He engaged a few of the regulars in cordial banter about what to look forward to in the coming rugby season, which predictably set the Irish against the English regulars and resulted in healthy wisecracks flying to and fro. Max took the brunt, as the only Welsh rugby supporter to be
found in the building.

  With my husband entertaining the crowds, I pushed the two recording buttons on my fob from the outside of my thin V-neck jumper, and managed to speak to Karen about the events of the previous week. She remembered seeing Ben Tierney. ‘I can’t forget. He was really drunk, but not so bad that he was ranting, like he sometimes did.’ Karen remembered seeing Ben sitting with a man that none of the regulars recognised. ‘He never took his baseball cap off. Ben had four or five pints while I was here. He may have had more, but they were already drinking when I started my shift, so I’m not sure. The bloke in the hat didn’t look as if he’d had much to drink. They sat over there, whispering together. I think Ben started crying, which is why they left.’ Karen pointed to a small round table in a corner by the entrance to the pub.

  Karen turned to an elderly gentleman, sitting on a bar stool to the right-hand side of the bar where he had propped himself against the wall. ‘Joey, do you remember the man who was sitting with Ben Tierney last week? On Wednesday, the night before Ben died?’

  ‘D’ fella in the baseball cap? Sullen lookin’. Don’t know who d’ fella was. Never seen him before.’ Joey flicked the ash from his creased roll-up into the ashtray before returning the cigarette to his nicotine-stained lips. The landlady appeared from the staff entrance behind the bar, and she recognised me immediately. I didn’t even know her name until Karen introduced me. ‘Theresa, this is Monica, she’s Ben’s community nurse.’ Karen then looked at me with a worried expression on her face. ‘Am I allowed to say that?’

  Theresa was keen to talk to me about Ben, and about his parents, and the locals tuned in, to listen to our conversation. They had already had a whip-round and sent Sean and Manuela some flowers.

  ‘Is there anything else we can do to help them? The poor souls, they must be in purgatory,’ Theresa said, wringing her hands and slowly shaking her head. ‘I still don’t know why he was sittin’ with that copper last week …’ This was almost a throwaway line.

  ‘The man with the baseball cap?’ I asked. Max had noticed the change of tone in my voice and gently slid up the bar to where I was standing.

  ‘I can tell them a mile off; coppers. I thought it was strange. Ben had been banged up since the evenin’ before, so what he was doing with a copper? I don’t know. What I do know is that the copper had something over on Ben. He was still interrogating the poor boy, right here in the pub. They were doing what I call “loud whispering”, so I caught what they said before they left. Plod offered to take Ben for something to eat. I could be wrong on this, but from what he said and the way he said it, I think the plan was for Ben to go back to his house with him to have a bite to eat there.’

  ‘Did you tell the police this?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course, I did. I even told them about his missing finger.’ At this I choked on my glass of cider. Incapacitated by coughing and spluttering, I couldn’t speak for a while, so Max tried to rescue the situation by taking up my role. ‘Who, Ben?’

  ‘No, the copper. He had half his little finger missing. I told the police that. They’ll be able to identify him from the CCTV tapes we gave them anyway. Carl followed them up the road a while, on his way home, but he didn’t see Ben go into a house with anyone. We told the police that too. I s’pose they’ll be investigatin’,’ Theresa said.

  The crowd of regulars in the bar began to speculate on the possible reasons for Ben drinking with one of his sworn enemies, but I switched off the fob, satisfied that enough had been divulged to indicate that Charlie Adams had probably been the last person to see Ben alive.

  Suspect number one, intent on killing Ben Tierney, had taken him home and given him a poison sandwich.

  Max and I pretended to enjoy our evening in the pub and our curry afterwards, but both of us realised that we were steadily progressing towards an inevitable moment of reckoning. The unpredictable conclusion to events was coming our way and we had no clue as to how this might happen or what it would entail.

  It was after lunchtime the next day before I noticed that Kelly had phoned my work mobile and had left a message. Apparently, Karen had contacted the office and asked to speak to me personally. Would I please call her on the number provided by text to follow. The message ended with a humdinger; ‘I take it you made a miraculous recovery. Karen seems to think she met you and Max in a pub last night.’ Bugger. I had taken the day as a continuation of my sickness and not made any effort to go into work. That morning I had filled my time with chores by the dozen and hard-core housework to loud music, which took my mind away from the tension of waiting for Father Raymond to call me.

  I decided not to respond to Kelly, but I did pick up the text and speak to Karen.

  ‘Theresa thought you may be interested to hear that the police came to the pub first thing this morning. They asked for the CCTV tapes for last night. Apparently, they have accidentally wiped the tape from last Wednesday, and they want to see if the mysterious man in the baseball cap appears again this week. Theresa told them that it would be highly unlikely but they took the tapes anyway. They won’t see anything because of the rain, so it was pointless. But at least they’re investigating.’

  I thanked Karen for the call and took the time to say how much Max and I had enjoyed the company at the Green Man the previous evening, congratulating her on finding a job that suited her so well. The police must have been clutching at straws to bother with those tapes, I thought. The cameras were outside the building and it had been bucketing down with rain for most of the evening, making it impossible to identify customers as they made their way in and out of the pub.

  I called Emma for advice. She was with the Braithwaites. Neither of us had bothered to ask either of them what their real names were, it was so much easier not to know. ‘You did a brilliant job in the pub last night, you and Max. What a corking bit of evidence,’ Emma said. She was trying hard to bolster my flagging confidence.

  ‘Come off it. You know as well as I do that it’s circumstantial. The say-so of a landlady who believes the man was a copper, and that he happened to be missing half a little finger. We have to get more. You do realise that if Charlie sits watching that CCTV tape from last night, he’ll recognise Max and me straight away. We got stuck in the doorway trying to get in at the same time as the umbrella we were carrying. We stood there for ages laughing at each other. Then, don’t you see, Charlie can make enquiries as to what we were talking about in the pub and we’re blown.’

  ‘But what can he do about it? You’re allowed in a pub with your husband, and as you said yourself, it would be normal to assume you would talk about Ben and ask questions. Charlie doesn’t know we were looking for a half-fingered man. He doesn’t know you were recording conversations in a pub. He doesn’t know that we spoke to Sam in France. He’s trying to find out who knows what, but he’s fumbling around in the dark not knowing what he’s looking for. A new inquiry into Jan’s death has set him wondering, that’s all. He’ll make a mistake sooner or later. At least that’s what the Braithwaites think.’

  Talking things through with Emma always helped me to regain perspective, and to breathe, in between my frantic questioning of events. But I had barely settled down to drink a well-deserved cup of tea when my phone rang again.

  ‘Please don’t let it be Kelly,’ I said, as I picked it up. I looked at the screen. ‘Fat Ray’. Butterflies arrived in my stomach. Good grief, the pair of them were homing in on me now. Him and Charlie. Deep breath.

  ‘Hello, Father Raymond. How’s Pip doing today?’ I asked, trying to sound bright but with a hint of concern. It turned out that Pip was doing so well he had been discharged home that morning. Eager to share his good news with me, he invited me for a slice of cake and a pot of Lyons red label tea the next day. ‘Pip says you deserve proper loose-leaf tea, and not your average teabag tea,’ Father Raymond announced.

  ‘How thoughtful of him. Three o’clock, at the Rectory will be fine. Shall I bring anything along tomorrow, biscuits or more cake?�
�� I asked.

  ‘No, it’s our treat. Just bring yourself.’

  Did I have the mental strength to be the cowardly lion entering the Christians’ den? I wondered.

  32

  I had begun to wonder about Pip and whether or not he could be Jan’s inside man. He fitted the profile. He had a position of trust, perhaps intimacy, within the local Catholic Church and had studied philosophy and theology. At university, he could perhaps have come across Jan Collins, maybe as a lecturer and he as a student. Pip even fitted the bill for the mystery burglar who had carefully put Deefer into the shed while he ransacked our house.

  Sweet Pip was now in the hands of a master manipulator, which gave me two aims for my teatime visit. Firstly, to expose Father Raymond and Charlie Adams as being guilty of murder, and secondly to save Pip.

  I met with Emma, Jake, and Max that evening at the Lodge House. We sat in a cosy huddle, Deefer in the middle of us all, and our attention was directed towards the Braithwaites.

  ‘We are now fairly certain that Charles Adams had the opportunity to carry out the poisoning of Father Joseph Kavanagh. He had attended the Rectory in response to complaints about threats to kill. Ben Tierney was reported as being in the grounds of the Rectory last Tuesday shouting accusations and making threats against Father Joseph. We now know that it was in fact Philip George who phoned the police, and not Father Raymond as we had believed.

  ‘Police reports make no further mention of Philip George in connection with their enquiries into events that evening. DS Adams arrived at the Rectory shortly after Sean and Manuela Tierney delivered a steaming casserole dish containing chilli con carne. He then revisited the Rectory to inform Father Joseph that Ben Tierney had been taken into custody.’