The Reckoning

by Jane Casey

  I made my way through the cordons and barriers, showing my credentials when challenged, and fetched up in the poky hallway of the property at the same time as Derwent himself, who had been heading in the opposite direction. He spread his arms wide as if he was going to embrace me and I stiffened, but he stopped a couple of paces away from me. Up close, I could see that the smile on his face was not one of welcome. And if I’d needed any confirmation of his mood, his first words would have taken care of that.

  ‘At long fucking last. You took your time.’

  I didn’t say anything. I had actually got there in record time, hitching a lift from a copper I’d bumped into at court. He was picked up in a high-performance unmarked car and the driver had been delighted to show us what it could do, even hindered by London traffic.

  ‘Where’s the body?’

  ‘Bedroom.’

  As if in response, a camera flash exploded in the room at the end of the narrow hall.

  ‘Down there, I take it.’ I looked around, seeing stained carpet and floral wallpaper that was inescapably 1980s. There was a little cup mounted on the wall by the door, a sponge in the bottom. A holy water font, I realised with a slight shock, peering in to see that the sponge was soaking wet. It was in regular use.

  ‘What’s that?’ Derwent nodded towards the font.

  ‘It’s there so you can bless yourself with holy water whenever you enter or leave.’

  ‘For luck? Doesn’t seem to work, then. Not for this poor bugger anyway.’

  ‘It’s not luck. It’s religious.’ I spoke more sharply than I should have. I could see the glint in Derwent’s eyes as he registered that he had annoyed me. But there had been a font in my grandmother’s house in Ireland; I had loved the ritual of making the sign of the cross on the threshold every time I’d passed it. The cheap white plastic font hanging askew on its nail took me back, although hers had been china, with a painted cross in gold, a treasured souvenir of a parish pilgrimage to Lourdes. I remembered standing on tiptoe to reach the font. The cold water on my fingertips, on my forehead. The look of approval on her face. Part and parcel of the experience of being on holiday in Ireland, it was an innocent memory and not one that I wanted to have tainted by murder.

  ‘Don’t try to tell me religion and superstition are two different things.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Not least because theological discussions with the inspector would be neither fun nor productive. ‘So what happened? Who’s the latest victim?’

  Derwent flattened himself against the wall to let a crime-scene technician pass by and grimaced. ‘We’re in the way. That’s the kitchen through there. I’ll bring you up to speed.’

  The kitchen was small and old-fashioned but essentially orderly. It was minimally furnished, too small for a table and chairs but with a wooden stool placed under the counter by the door where you could sit and eat in relative comfort. A gingham curtain screened the lower cupboards from view, and open shelves above held a random selection of mismatched china and glass, which made me feel at home, given my haphazard domestic arrangements. There was a small larder. A half-empty jam jar stood beside a block of butter on a saucer, and behind that there was a loaf of bread. On the shelf below there was a box of teabags and a small container of sugar. Derwent bent and tweaked open the tiny fridge, scanning the interior. There was something poignant about the pint of milk lodged in the door, the piece of cheddar wrapped in cling film, the sliced ham and tomatoes already arranged on a plate for a meal that would never be eaten, the utter lack of anything self-indulgent. A calendar hung on one wall, the picture for March a kitten climbing on curtains. Nothing was written on it and I flicked back through the months, seeing blank pages, cute baby animals, an empty life.

  The only sign of anything out of place was a mug with a teabag in it standing on the counter top near to the elderly gas cooker, where a kettle had tipped sideways off its burner. It looked to me as if someone had been interrupted in the act of making a cup of tea and replaced the kettle on the hob without paying sufficient attention to setting it down properly. Water lay in puddles on the cooker and the floor.

  Quite suddenly, I didn’t want to know anything more about the victim, or what lay in the bedroom, down the narrow hall. I wanted to leave the dismal kitchen, the badly lit hall with its pathetic font hanging crooked on the nail. I didn’t want to confront the reality that I was standing in a crime scene.

  ‘Dead body of the day is Mr Fintan Kinsella, aged eighty,’ Derwent announced, out of tune with my mood as usual. He had put the emphasis on the second syllable of the surname as English people tended to. Kin-SELL-er. ‘He’s one of yours.’

  ‘One of my what?’ I snapped.

  ‘Irish.’

  ‘In that case, his name is pronounced KIN-sella.’

  He waved his hand, unmoved. ‘He’d been living here for nine months.’

  ‘Where was he before?’

  ‘Hospital. He had a bad heart. Before that he was in a retirement home for priests up in Liverpool. He spent quite a bit of the 1970s interfering with young boys in his parish, apparently.’

  I closed my eyes for a second. It had only needed that. ‘Convicted?’

  ‘Eventually. No one made any complaints against him until the rest of the court cases started to hit the headlines. Then they all tried it on. Father Fintan was not what you’d call a serious offender. He did football training with the young lads, liked to watch them in the showers afterwards. Used to suggest that some of them might like to have baths in the parish house while he held the towel. No touching, by all accounts. Not pleasant, not legal, but not as bad as some of them. I get the feeling that most people didn’t take it too seriously until they realised there was money in complaining.’

  I didn’t necessarily accept Derwent’s version; the publicity for other trials may have brought victims forward but not for money, necessarily. For justice.

  ‘He was retired a few years when they came looking for him. He admitted it straightaway. That and the fact that he was in bad health got him a non-custodial sentence. The stress made him collapse – which put him in hospital. He had a major heart operation and came through okay. Then he had nowhere to go once he’d recovered. The retirement home didn’t want him back as he wasn’t a priest any more. I suppose they thought he might corrupt the others.’

  That wolfish smile again. It made my jaw clench involuntarily. I forced it open to ask, ‘So how did he end up here?’

  ‘He worked in this part of London when he was younger. The flat belongs to a family who live in this area, ex-parishioners who’d kept in touch with him. The mother lived in this place, but she died last year. They found out what had happened to Father Fintan when they got in touch to see if he could do the funeral. And when they heard he needed somewhere to stay, they offered it to him for free. Needs a bit of doing-up but he didn’t care.’

  ‘You’d have thought they would have wanted him to stay well away, given his past.’

  ‘Christian charity, I suppose.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe they didn’t believe Father Fintan could have done such a terrible thing. And apparently the mother was devoted to him.’

  ‘People believe what they want to believe.’ I looked at him, puzzled. ‘How did you find out all of this?’

  ‘With the help of Mrs Mary Driscoll, who was sort of an unofficial housekeeper for him. She’s the one who found the body at ten this morning.’

  Only a couple of hours earlier. ‘What did Dr Hanshaw say about time of death?’

  ‘The usual guff about not being able to be sure. But I got him to say it was probably not long before the body was discovered. This morning rather than last night.’

  ‘That should help a bit. Did Mrs Driscoll have a key?’

  ‘She did indeed. She lives down the street. Did the shopping for him, cleaned the house, washed his clothes and hung them out to dry. You’re more than welcome to interview her later. I’ve had an earful already. All I asked was how she knew the vic
tim.’

  ‘Sounds as if he was living very quietly,’ I commented. ‘He wouldn’t have had many opportunities to come to people’s attention if she was doing all his shopping and cleaning. Did he go out?’

  ‘Went to Mass every day. Asking for forgiveness, probably. Other than that, nothing.’

  I had noticed the small grey church built of dressed stone in the nineteenth century, probably for the benefit of Irish immigrants. It was a couple of hundred yards from the ex-priest’s house – not a long walk. It wouldn’t have been a strenuous outing. ‘Was he well known in the local community?’

  ‘Not by the younger generations. Some people remembered him working here according to Mrs Driscoll, but most of them didn’t know about the conviction.’

  ‘And no hint of that sort of behaviour while he was here – now or then?’

  ‘She didn’t say anything about it.’ Derwent shook his head. ‘Like I said, ask her. If you can. I couldn’t get a word in.’

  ‘He was living in total obscurity and they found him anyway.’

  ‘Someone did, yeah.’

  ‘Our guy?’

  ‘Looks like. Bit of a fucking coincidence if someone else is killing paedos.’

  ‘Was he tortured?’

  ‘He sure was,’ Derwent said carelessly, leaning up against the wall as if we were talking about football or the weather and not lethal violence. ‘As soon as the room clears out a bit I’ll take you down to see the body.’

  ‘I don’t need to,’ I said too quickly. ‘I mean, I’ll see the autopsy reports.’

  ‘No substitute for smelling the fear, Maeve.’ He straightened up. ‘Let’s go and have a look now.’

  ‘Now?’ I stepped back involuntarily.

  ‘Lost your nerve?’ His eyes were glittering with pleasure.

  ‘No.’ I swallowed. ‘But I don’t want to dash in there if it’s crowded. I might as well see the rest of the place first.’

  ‘Won’t take you long. But come on.’ He was looking amused as he led the way out of the kitchen and down the hall; he knew that I didn’t want to be there, that I was playing for time.

  ‘Bathroom.’ He flicked on the light. Lilac tiles, forest-green bath, sink and toilet: a blindingly bad combination that should never have been attempted. A brown towel hung from a hook on the wall. Mould was blooming on the ceiling and the room smelt fusty, but it was basically clean.

  ‘The living room is at the back.’ Another small room, this time with dark-brown carpet, a print of da Vinci’s Last Supper on the wall, a gas fire, a small radio. No television. The chairs looked hard, uncomfortable, and only one wooden-framed armchair showed signs of use. A crumpled pink cushion was squashed against the back of the seat. A lonely life, I thought, looking around. A sad life. There was a small brass crucifix on a table near the window, and a missal lay on the floor by the chair. The view was on to the garden, an uninspired patch of grass.

  ‘The back door’s at the end of the hall.’

  I followed Derwent. He turned a key in the frosted glass door and pushed it open with a flourish. ‘Voilà.’

  The garden was just as bleak as it had looked from inside the house, the grass surrounded by high fences belonging to the neighbouring flats. Derwent looked without comment at the clothesline and bird feeders that were the only other features. The line had plastic pegs clipped along it at intervals, ready for use. The bird feeders were three-quarters full, as if they had been topped up the previous day. One of the neighbours had a tree that was in full blossom, and tiny petals drifted across the grass with every breath of wind. They collected against the fence like a wavering frill of antique lace. At first glance it looked pretty, but the petals were already shading to brown as they rotted.

  He had lived quietly. He had kept himself clean and the flat tidy, with the help of Mrs Driscoll. He had taken pleasure in looking after the little birds who visited his garden, and not much else. He had kept his faith if not his status, spending his days in prayer either at home or in the local church. He had been a nice enough man to keep the loyalty of those he’d served during his time in London, and a decent enough man to admit his guilt when challenged.

  He had also been an abuser, a manipulator, a powerful man in his community who had taken advantage of his position and caused harm to innocent children. Very few people were entirely bad, or entirely good for that matter. I wasn’t going to judge him either way. I didn’t need to. He was the victim in this case, not a suspect, and I would work as hard to find his killer as anyone else’s.

  And to do that, I needed to see where he’d died. I turned back to Derwent. ‘Let’s see the bedroom.’

  ‘Follow me.’

  The scene-of-crime guys were finishing up when we went back to the hall and we waited as they filed out past us lugging bags and camera equipment. Bringing up the rear was one I recognised as Tony Schofield, a prematurely bald officer who lived on his nerves. To me, he had always seemed too highly strung for his job, but he had recently been promoted and was now officially a crime-scene manager. He nodded to us.

  ‘Straightforward enough. We’ve done pictures and dabs and Dr Hanshaw’s released the body. I’ll send in the mortuary men when you’re finished.’

  ‘Anything we should avoid?’

  ‘Try not to get human tissue on your clothes, I suppose. It’s hell to get out.’ He saw the look on my face. ‘Sorry. Bad joke.’

  Derwent clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t give up the day job for a life in comedy, mate.’

  ‘Probably not a good idea.’ Schofield laughed nervously, then reverted to serious. ‘No, the room’s clear. Obviously take the usual precautions.’

  The inspector looked at me. ‘Waiting for something?’

  I was waiting for a miracle that might mean I didn’t have to open the door, but Father Fintan hadn’t got one so why should I? I snapped on thin blue latex gloves and used my elbow to push the door open, touching it as little as possible. I stepped in, moving to one side to allow Derwent to follow me. There was just enough room for us to stand side by side at the foot of the bed. The room was small, papered in navy dotted with bulbous red cabbage roses. There wasn’t much in it apart from the bed, a small wardrobe and a chest of drawers that did double-duty as a bedside table. Someone had left the light on in the centre of the ceiling, but it was struggling to do much about the general gloom. The only good thing you could say for the wallpaper and the overall ambience was that it hid the worst of the blood spatter.

  The body was lying across the bed, fully clothed in a white shirt, a navy cardigan and black trousers, though the shirt and cardigan were unbuttoned and the trousers weren’t fastened. Thick grey socks bulged over tartan slippers. His hands were laced over his stomach, silver rosary beads looped around them, as if he had been praying when he died. The hands were waxy, the nails long but well shaped, the fingers short. He had been a small man but not thin: his stomach was domed. It was hard to say much else about his appearance because his head was, to all and intents and purposes, gone. Bits of bone and brain matter had exploded across the bed, coating the coverlet and headboard in blood and unidentifiable mush. What was left was not readily identifiable as human.

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Yep. Being blasted in the face with a sawn-off shotgun won’t do much for your complexion.’

  I had already noticed the holes in the bedcovers from stray pellets. ‘One shot, do we think?’

  ‘Shouldn’t have taken more.’

  ‘Risky, in a place like this, with neighbours all around. And not in character for our killer to be so direct.’

  ‘One shot isn’t that risky. People ignore that sort of noise because they don’t know what it is.’ Derwent stepped over to the window, peering out at the view of a blank wall. ‘And he did take a roundabout route to killing the not-very-good father.’

  ‘You said he was tortured. How?’

  ‘See the rosary beads?’ I nodded. ‘He was branded with them. Heated on the gas burner in the
kitchen or the fire in the sitting room, I’d say. There was an oven glove on the floor in here. Looks as if the killer didn’t want to burn his fingers.’

  Now that I knew what to look for I could see a chain of blisters in the shadow of the open shirt. I frowned. ‘That’s horrible, but it sounds a bit half-hearted for our guy. It’s a long way from castration and amputation.’

  ‘We don’t know what else occurred. He could have knocked out teeth, broken bones in his face – that sort of thing. Plenty of tooth fragments in this room – there’s just no way to tell whether they were shot out of his head or beaten out of it. It’s gone now, but they recovered a heavy wooden crucifix from under the bed. It had been hanging on the wall.’ He pointed at a large nail near the bed and now that I looked I could see a darker patch of wallpaper where dust had settled behind the cross. ‘It was a big thing, two feet long. Loads of trace evidence – blood, hair, that kind of thing, as if someone had used it as a bludgeon. You could do a fair bit of damage with that.’

  ‘Mm. It’s still not what you’d call an escalation. But then, Kinsella’s crimes weren’t as bad as those of the other two victims, arguably. If you accept that the killer is making the punishment appropriate for each of them based on their record, it sort of makes sense that he wouldn’t be as violent.’ I sounded abstracted even to myself.

  Derwent was studying me. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Maybe that he’s losing interest.’

  He looked sceptical. ‘Do you really think he couldn’t be bothered? Does this look like going through the motions to you?’