Gritting his teeth, and following the noise behind his furniture, he laid eyes on a furious Carmichael pinning Elspeth Martin to the ground, a discarded baseball bat about a foot from her hands, and his four pets sitting round them booing enthusiastically. The young woman struggled like a man as he dialled 999 and called for back-up, and it was all Carmichael could do to hold her. His superior weight won in the end, though, and when a patrol car arrived he had her firmly pinned down and sat securely on her chest to make sure she didn’t get up again before assistance arrived.
The officers from the patrol car cuffed her and read her her rights, and Falconer then explained who she was, and that he had been about to arrest her himself earlier this evening. That changed the complexion of things, and they took her back to the station to be booked in like her fellow group members for questioning in the morning. The baseball bat was wrapped up and covered, one each end, by evidence bags, and put lovingly into the boot of the patrol car. Forensics would be able to extract a story from that, and what a story it would be.
As the uniformed officers led a hand-cuffed Elspeth Martin off the premises, Falconer thanked Carmichael for forgetting to post his letter, then, at Carmichael’s imbecilic expression, explained that if he hadn’t gone out to post it he could not have come in time to save him, Falconer.
‘But she might have got us both, sir,’ replied Carmichael, looking a little shaken after his encounter with such a violent young woman.
‘I doubt it, big, strong chap that you are.’
‘She was so strong, though. Chris described her as chubby, but there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her. She was solid muscle, and she knew how to use it.’
‘Well, come on in, now, for that cup of tea. I could do with a bit of company for the next half hour or so,’ Falconer urged him.
‘Not until you’ve had that arm x-rayed, sir. It could easily be broken, the strength of that one.’
‘OK, but you’ll have to drive me. It’s too painful to use, so I suppose we’d better get on down to the hospital.’
‘She could’ve killed you, sir, if I hadn’t come back.’ Carmichael spoke in a chilled voice.
‘I know, and I wouldn’t have been the first, either.’ replied Falconer, beginning to shiver, not just because of the temperature, but because of the shock.
Chapter Sixteen
Friday 12th November
Falconer didn’t leave the hospital until a little after one in the morning, with his arm heavily bandaged and splinted, but not plastered. He was told it would probably give him considerable pain for the next week or so, but that it wasn’t broken, just badly bruised, bone as well as flesh. During that time he wouldn’t be able to drive or to operate machinery, and he should be careful not to put too much strain on it.
Carmichael drove him home and promised to pick him up in the morning, but not too early as he needed his rest after a shock like that. Those girls could just stew in their own juices until his inspector was rested enough to question them, as far as the sergeant was concerned, and, for once, Falconer didn’t disagree with him.
When Carmichael came to collect him the next morning he was still in pain and woozy from the painkillers. They only dulled the sensation of injury in his arm, and he was glad not to have to drive. He’d had to have a strip-wash because he’d been told to keep the bandages on his arm dry, and although this was no problem usually – he’d had to do it countless times in the army – he was used to being able to use his right arm to get to all those secret little nooks and crannies, and his left hand just wasn’t up to the job.
On the lavatory he’d had a minuscule moment of envy for Arabs, who were supposedly proficient with their left hand at this sort of thing. He had never before realised how very necessary and difficult it was to wash just one hand really thoroughly. And getting dressed had been sheer torture, especially getting his injured arm into a shirt and jacket, with the hard plastic and metal splint under the bandages making it an even harder job.
The cats had had to make do with a perfunctory scattering of dried food in their bowls, and a rather lackadaisically poured stream of water into their bowls, and were sulking at the lack of attention.
Breakfast was out of the question, and he had already decided that he’d get something from the canteen when he got to the station. Maybe Carmichael would be kind enough to cut up his food for him so that he could get away with using just a fork.
He wasn’t looking forward to interviewing Elspeth Martin – she of the twin personalities: one, mild and gentle, and careful not to sin; the other a wild beast that slew fellow human beings without an ounce of guilt. Weirdly, he began to work out how many grams there were in an ounce, then realised this bizarre train of thought was probably a side-effect of the painkillers, and tried to distract his mind with other thoughts. Elspeth Martin behind bars – now there was something to think about!
And the Christmas decorations! They seemed to have sprung up in every shop in every street, and it was still November. It seemed like only a few days ago that all the shops had been stuffed with Hallowe’en goodies, and now here was Christmas, ready to be rolled out like a magic commercial carpet. Slade blared from some outdoor loudspeakers as they rounded the market cross, and he felt as if he had been cheated out of the last bit of his year before all that nonsense started again.
In the station canteen he decided that, if Carmichael were to be ‘mother’ with his breakfast, he might as well treat himself to a full English. By God, he’d earned it! And he had the bandages to prove it!
They sat in silence, as Carmichael gravely cut his bacon, egg, sausage, and fried bread into bite-sized pieces, and Falconer looked on fascinated. No one had done this for him since he had been a young child, and it made his feel quite nostalgic for the lack of responsibility that being in the nursery meant – except for the duration of Nanny Vogel’s reign, that is.
As he was thus wrapped in nostalgic thoughts, he became aware of Carmichael speaking to him. ‘What was that?’ he asked, guiltily, wondering just how long his reverie had lasted.
‘I just wondered if you’d like me to feed you, sir,’ repeated Carmichael, holding up a forkful of bacon which dripped egg yolk. ‘Open wide, sir.’
‘Shut up and give me that fork, Carmichael. Someone might see! For goodness’ sake, I’m not totally incapable. I just can’t use my right arm and hand at the moment.’
Completely unoffended, Carmichael confessed that he couldn’t do anything with his left hand; it was just another tool for holding things. As far as eating went, if he tried it, he knew he’d shove the food up his nose, or somewhere else inappropriate.
‘That’s as may be, Sergeant, but I’m perfectly capable of feeding myself, left-handed or not. But thank you for the offer, anyway,’ he added, in a quieter voice. The man’s heart was in the right place, even if his brain worked a little differently from the norm.
‘Are we going to interview that Martin woman after you’ve eaten?’ asked Carmichael, after he’d gone back to the counter and come back with three bacon rolls for himself.
‘I thought you’d had breakfast at home,’ commented Falconer, inspecting Carmichael’s loaded plate.
‘I did, sir, but you know how it is. I’ll need the fuel, so I might as well fill the tank while I’ve got the opportunity. And what about this Martin?’
‘We’ll get straight on to her. She’s got a lot of questions to answer, and it’s obvious we’ve got our killer after what happened last night.’
‘She’s built like a weight-lifter, sir. I don’t know what Chris was on about when he said she was chubby. I mean, I know she wears baggy clothes, and all that, but there’s not a scrap of fat on her, and she can certainly fight her own corner. At one point I thought she was going to get the better of me.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’re going to be in that room beside me. I don’t fancy my chances against her at all. She’d make mincemeat of me in just a couple of minutes.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re not supposed to agree with me, Carmichael. You could at least say I had a slight chance.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Carmichael was keeping out of this one, and sat happily on the fence, eating his bacon rolls.
‘Oh, and by the way, let me explain to you what those cult members wore around the tops of their legs,’ said Falconer, loading his fork with a tidy pile of baked beans.
Carmichael was still shocked if far better acquainted with the usage of the cilice when they left the canteen and went off to carry out the interrogation of their number-one suspect.
When they got to the interview room Martin was already there, PC Starr just inside the door on guard, although what use she’d have been against this mauling monster, Falconer had no idea. Then he remembered how many self-defence courses Starr had been on, and he had to admit that she’d have also had the advantage of being light and quick.
The tape was started and the interview began. Martin sat at the other side of the table, no solicitor present, and no desire to have one there. ‘I’m accountable only to God for my sins, whatever you say,’ she had stated, for the tape, and had left Falconer a little flustered at the confident tone in which she’d said this.
‘I want you to tell me what you were doing on the night of Monday the first of November,’ he said, wondering how she would respond to direct questioning.
‘I did a number of things. Which of them would you like me to tell you about?’ Boy! She was cool!
‘Did you see a Mr Steven Warwick, who had been working at the Strict and Particular Chapel in Steynham St Michael?’ he asked.
‘Only briefly. When I killed him,’ she answered, still unruffled.
‘So you admit that you killed him?’
‘Of course I do. Lying is a sin.’ It all sounded madly logical, when looked at from her point of view.
‘And murder isn’t?’ Falconer was aghast.
‘Not when you’re the Lord’s instrument, and are smiting a sinner,’ was her reply.
‘But … how did you know you were the Lord’s instrument?’
‘He told me, when I prayed to him for an answer.’
‘An answer to what?’
‘To what should be done about Mr Warwick. He was a married man, and he was committing adultery with a married woman.’
‘So, why didn’t you kill her as well?’ This interview was lurching into the realms of fantasy.
‘Because it’s always the man’s fault. And anyway, I could get round to her any time I wanted. But I had other fish to fry, shortly after that.’
How had fish got themselves into the questioning? Was it the symbol of Christianity she was going on about? For a moment, Falconer’s head swam as the painkillers gave him another psychedelic jolt, but he managed to say, ‘So, tell me about it,’ in a reasonably normal voice.
‘I knew what had been going on in the chapel, because I overheard them one evening, arranging another one of their little meetings as they were leaving the chapel. It was obvious what they’d been up to. And I knew he’d be there that day, finishing off, and God had told me to smite him, so I went there with the Lord’s work to do.’
‘So what exactly happened? Did he just stand there while you took a swing at him? And what was it you hit him with? It certainly wasn’t the baseball bat.’
‘I took in a tyre iron from the boot of my car.’ So that might explain the oil stains on his clothing, thought Falconer. ‘I had a loose cape on, so it was easy to hold it beneath the folds of that. I simply told him that I had a message for him from a woman in the village. I said she’d told me to tell him she’d left him a note to change the time of a meeting: very vague I was, so that he’d think I didn’t know what they were up to. I said she’d told me she’d hidden it in the pages of one of the hymn books, on the top shelf of that bookcase that held hymn and service books.
‘Of course, as soon as he started looking for it he ignored me, and I got out the tyre iron and gave an almighty swing at his head, and that was that. Down he went, like a sack of coal. My old gran used to burn coal, and she said that was what they’d use in Hell because it burnt so hot.’
Ignoring this last aside, Falconer continued his questioning, which had definitely developed an air of unreality which complemented the semi-detached mood the tablets had created for him. ‘Where did you get the table cloth you covered him with?’
‘That was on top of a cupboard in the tiny vestry. I just shook the dust out of it before throwing it over him.’
‘And you didn’t have any difficulty moving him?’
‘I didn’t expect to, because I work out, you know. I like to be in control of my body, and keep it in as good a shape as I can, so that I’m fit to do the Lord’s work when he calls me to it. But he was a really big man for me to lift up on to that altar, and the first time I tried it I dropped him face first on to the front corner of the left-hand side. Caught him right in the eye, that did, as I found out when I turned him over. What a butterfingers I felt. Not enough upper body strength!’
‘So how did you find out that Chris Roberts was an undercover policeman?’ That was the thing that Falconer wanted to get to the bottom of. He’d sent Roberts undercover, and he wanted to know how that cover had been blown.
‘Easy as ABC,’ she answered. ‘I gave him a lift, and he wanted to be dropped off at that big roundabout just outside the town. It was a doddle keeping him in sight until he finally reached where he lived. I parked at the end of the road, feeling quite excited, as I’d gone to school with a girl who lived opposite.’
‘But you’re in the halls of residence,’ interrupted Falconer, puzzled that she wasn’t still living at home.
‘My parents and I don’t see eye to eye about my beliefs, and they ‘encouraged’ me to leave by paying my rent for the room. And I didn’t give a fig. I knew I made them feel uncomfortable, but that cut both ways. I didn’t approve of the way they ate too much and drank too much alcohol. My mother was also a terrible gossip, and I found that sinful as well. So I went.
‘But there wasn’t anything to stop me calling in on an old friend and asking a few questions, now was there? As it happened, she was out, but her mother asked me in for a cup of tea, and I told her all about this chap at college that my best mate fancied, and said I thought I’d seen him go into the house opposite.’
‘“Oh, that’ll be Mrs Roberts’ son, Chris,”’ she said, with no idea of the consequences of what she was about to tell me. “Mrs Roberts had a stroke, you know,” she rambled on, “but luckily her son, Chris, is in the police force, so he was able to get transferred down here to look after her for a while.”’
‘Well, that was it, as far as I was concerned. We had a traitor in our midst, and he must be removed. I prayed about that. The baseball bat was a gift from a relative when they’d gone on holiday to the States, and the good Lord suggested that I might like to try it out.’
My arse, he did! thought Falconer. ‘But you didn’t put him in the chapel. Why not?’
‘Because I didn’t want what had happened being tied up with our group, and this was more personal. If you remember, I told you once before that I like Chris, but you didn’t take any notice of the use of the past tense. I had liked him, until I found out what I did about him: him being a police spy and all that. Anyway, I just loaded him into the car and drove him somewhere out of the way. How did I know that doctor was going to come along and find him?’
‘So you left him for dead?’
‘Of course I did. If I start a job, I like to finish it.’
‘So, how did you distract Chris enough to whack him into that state?’
‘I said I had to get something out of the boot, so would he be good enough to shove the habits on the back seat. I left mine on top of the car, so it’d take him just that tiny bit longer. By the time he’d got them both through the car door, I’d got the bat out of the boot, and just swung like fury, and the Lord must have been in me, because I caught him hard enough for him to be sl
ightly out of it. The rest of the beating was easy.
‘I was horrified when you thought you were breaking the fact that he was in hospital to me, when I thought you were going to tell me he was dead. That was why I was so upset. I hadn’t done the Lord’s work efficiently enough.’
This was all said in such a matter-of-fact voice that Falconer’s blood was chilled, and while on that topic, he wondered at her amazing sang froid, to have done all that she had done, and not turn a hair.
‘What about Quentin Raynor? You weren’t punishing him just for being the husband of an adulteress, were you?’
‘Absolutely not! He’d met Jocasta somewhere; I don’t know where, but I knew that he had been seeing her on the quiet. In fact I’d overheard them in a coffee house in the town, arranging to meet in the chapel. Of course, that wasn’t what they actually said, but I knew very well what they were up to. She didn’t give any details, because there were other people around, but she slipped him a piece of paper under the table, and just whispered, “Midnight. Read the note.” Luckily I can lip-read. I’ve got a deaf cousin, so I learned all about it.’
‘So how on earth did you stop Jocasta from being there to meet him?’
‘Something cropped up, or I don’t know quite how I’d have managed it. She got a phone call at the end of the day, when we were finishing up the coursework for the week, and she asked me to stay behind after the others had left.
‘She told me she had to go and collect something that evening, straight after the inner circle gathering – there was something about there being no one else available to do it, and that she’d have to fill in. Her problem was that she’d arranged to meet someone, and she couldn’t just phone or text him now, because he thought his wife was on to him, and he couldn’t get a pay-as-you-go mobile until after the weekend, because he was too busy.
‘Perhaps I could get a message to him, letting him know that she’d have to rearrange, and for me not to worry about anything, because she was hoping he would be another convert to the inner circle, and would give us access to another generation through him.
Strict and Peculiar (The Falconer Files Book 7) Page 19
