A Turbulent Priest

by J M Gregson

  “And where were you that day?”

  “I was here. Putting my feet up. Watching an old video a mate lent me. The Piano. Not the kind of thing you can watch with kids around, I can tell you. They have a low boredom threshold where romance is concerned.”

  Alone then, and free of the kids, on the Thursday. Lucy made another note. “I have to ask you formally, Kate: have you any idea who killed Father John Bickerstaffe?”

  “No. I might not tell you if I did know, but fortunately I haven’t a clue.”

  “All right. We may need to speak to you again in due course. In the meantime, if you think of anything which may help us to arrest a murderer, you must remember that it is your duty to report it to us immediately.”

  She held Kate Maxted’s eye as they both rose to their feet. The woman ‘looked for a moment as if she would protest, would deny any obligation to help the police in this. Then she nodded abruptly and opened the single door to the street outside.

  She stood in the doorway, watching the police car until Lucy Blake drove round the corner at the bottom of the street and disappeared. In the silence which followed, she could hear the high-pitched excitement of children enjoying their morning break in the playground of the primary school three streets away. She turned back into the house, shut the door, and went to the phone in the kitchen beyond the living room.

  “The police have been again. CID this time… No, a woman. Detective Sergeant, I think she said she was… No. She asked a lot of questions, but I didn’t tell her about us. If she speaks to the kids she’ll find out though, won’t she?… No, perhaps not. They don’t seem to know just when he died, which is something… I suppose you’re right. But come whenever you can. I need you. You know that.”

  ***

  Martha Hargreaves was finding it difficult to adjust to living in a presbytery without a priest.

  Her life had been built for so long upon service that she felt guilty when she had no one to serve. She told herself to treat this time between priests as a holiday. That worked for about a day and a half. Then she began to feel guilty again. She cleaned the rooms which did not need cleaning. But she could not cook for a man who was not there, and her own meals seemed hardly worth the trouble she had taken for so long over those of others.

  So when at nine o’clock on Friday night there came a ringing at the door of the presbytery, she hurried cheerfully to open it. It must be at the least a parishioner with some parish task for her. It might even be the canon from St Peter’s with news of a new priest to follow poor Father Bickerstaffe.

  It was neither of these. It was a man with a long coat, a woollen hat, and a scarf wrapped about his face. He reminded Martha of the rebels she had seen in Sean O’ Casey plays, when the church dramatic society had put on daring productions some years earlier. She could only see his eyes as he said gruffly, “Father Bickerstaffe had some papers for me. I’m to come in and get them from his rooms.”

  He made to push past her, but Martha barred his way, surprising him. The modern church housekeeper has had to get used to being firm with those who think church houses an easy touch for their depredations. “Father’s gone away. Who are you?”

  The man was impatient with her delay. “I know he’s gone away, woman. I know he’s dead. But there’s things in his room he’d left there for me. Things he’d want me to have.”

  “What things? If you describe them to me, I’ll look for them, and perhaps you can have them tomorrow. You’re not coming into this house tonight.” Martha stood with arms folded on the step above him, an ageing Joan of Arc protecting the Lord’s servant and his house.

  “You wouldn’t know, woman. I’ll need to see them for myself. It won’t take me five minutes.”

  “It won’t take you any minutes, because you’re not coming in here. Anyway, there’s nothing left in Father’s rooms to interest you. The police have taken everything away.” Though she had spent all her life in Lancashire, she pronounced `police’ in the Irish way, with a long ‘o’, as her mother had always done.

  Martha was scared, despite her resolution that he should not pass, for the front door of the presbytery after dark was an isolated place, invisible from the road. But apparently she had said the right thing with the mention of the police, for the man recoiled a step from her. “When was this?”

  “Two days ago. Last Wednesday.” She sensed the strength the news was giving her. “Four of them, there were. A Scene of Crime team.” She brought out the phrase triumphantly.

  “Did they take much away?”

  Martha didn’t know. But she knew now how to repel this man. “Lots of things. Everything that might help them to find out who had had dealings with Father Bickerstaffe, they said. I should try Brunton Police Station, if I were you.”

  She watched the man’s disappearance between the blackened stone gateposts with considerable satisfaction, then took her pounding heart back indoors. She pressed the big bolt which had not been used for years across the door before she went into her warm kitchen to make a cup of tea. While the kettle was boiling, she rang the police station to tell them about her caller.

  Eight

  Charles Courcey pushed back his immaculate white cuff and looked at his watch. Twenty to twelve. In twenty minutes it would be over again for another month.

  Many of his Parliamentary colleagues paid lip service to the clinic in the constituency as a valuable part of an MP’s duties. Kept them in touch with their voters, they said. Proved to their constituents that they had a real link with the Parliament that often seemed so distant and so faceless. Some of the masochists even held them once a week.

  Once a month was quite enough for Charles Courcey, though his Press releases always said once a fortnight. Only made the buggers moan more, if you gave them too many opportunities for complaint, in his view. And some of the most consistent complainers hadn’t even voted for him. Some of the people who contacted him here even had the face to tell him they hadn’t voted for him. Charles always said that was an example of real democracy at work, of a member representing not a section but all of his constituents. But behind his wide smile there was an irritation that pathetic people like this should have the cheek to ask for his help.

  An old woman came in now to ask if her dying husband could have the medals he thought he was entitled to from his service in Crete in World War II. He promised to investigate and let her know: ten minutes’ work for his secretary on Tuesday. A couple wanted his help against a council who had passed a neighbour’s plans for a two-storey extension which would take away much of their light. He diverted them expertly into writing to the next bureaucrat in the stages of planning appeal. It was three minutes to twelve and he was fastening up his case when a dapper little bald man with a black moustache came bouncing into his room.

  “You’re rather late, I’m afraid. We finish at twelve and I have another appointment, you see. If it’s a quick one, I might just squeeze you in, I suppose. What is it that’s troubling you?” Charles switched to his polite but brisk mode and forced a smile on to his broad lips.

  The short man regarded him aggressively, without according him any immediate reply. He sat down uninvited in the chair opposite the MP. Then, as if it were an afterthought, he produced his warrant card and held it a foot from the florid face opposite him. “There are a lot of things troubling me, sir. But probably only one that you can help me with. How long it takes depends on you. You are, I presume, Charles Courcey, MP for the Hodder Valley?”

  Charles decided on the hauteur he normally found effective with London policemen. “I have the pleasure of being your honourable member, yes. Now—”

  “Not mine, sir. I’m from Brunton, you see. We’re Labour there. Not that it would make any difference to this if you were Monster Raving Loony.”

  “I see. Well, I am indeed Charles Courcey. In fact, if you want to be totally pedantic —” the honourable MP looked as if he expected Peach to be just that “— the old family name is ‘de Courcey’, but in
these egalitarian days I thought a simple Courcey would be enough. Don’t want to gather votes from simple snobbery, do we?”

  “Don’t we, sir? Well, I don’t claim to know a lot about politics. I understood it was your father who dropped the `de’ after the bankruptcy, when he started to trade again, but it really doesn’t matter now. Of course, if it comes to an arrest, we like to have the name exactly right. And my name is Peach, sir, Detective Inspector Peach, if you want to be totally pedantic.”

  Courcey licked thick lips, which had abruptly ceased to smile. “You’re saying you want to talk to me about a police matter? Well, it goes without saying that I shall be anxious to give you whatever help I can. But I don’t see that there will be very much I can do for you. Er, what is it that…?”

  The muscular, aggressive figure had interrupted him previously. Now, when he expected to be cut short, Peach let him wander on, until his syntax and his words petered out. He regarded Courcey steadily for a moment. Then, without taking his eyes from the increasingly disconcerted face, he called over his shoulder, “Come in here and shut the door, DS Blake, will you?”

  A young woman with rich red-gold hair appeared as suddenly as the Inspector had done, closed the door unhurriedly and placed a chair alongside that of Peach. She drew a notebook and a small gold ball-point from her shoulder bag and regarded the heavily built man on the other side of the desk as calmly and unblinkingly as her Inspector.

  Courcey had been glad to see that the Detective Sergeant was a woman. He had a vague feeling which probably went back to his public school days that a female presence would be softer and more accommodating, making this odd situation malleable, when he had decided how he wished to shape it. He was deprived of that comfort before Lucy Blake even spoke, for he found the shut door and the four eyes fixed so watchfully upon him quite unnerving. Peach eventually said calmly, “We are investigating the murder of a Father John Bickerstaffe, Parish Priest of the Sacred Heart Church in Brunton.”

  Courcey licked his too-mobile lips, tried to imagine himself putting a point in one of the House Committees, where everyone said he was quite effective. “Then I fail to see how I can help you, Inspector. I’m not a Roman Catholic myself, and Brunton as you know is not part of my constituency. I don’t think I’ve ever visited the church — the Church of the Sacred Heart, did you say it was? I’m sorry this poor fellow has been murdered, but I really don’t see how I can be of any assistance in your investigation…”

  Peach had used that trick again, he realised: let him ramble on with his futile justifications, becoming ever less sure of his ground as he waited for the interruption that did not come. The Inspector now lifted the black business briefcase he carried and set it on the very edge of the big desk which separated the two men. He opened the lid, positioning it carefully so that it obscured the MP’s view of what he was extracting. Peach looked at the single sheet of paper for a moment himself, while Courcey grew increasingly anxious. Not until the MP fancied he could hear his own heart beating did Peach pass the sheet across the desk to him. Courcey was conscious of Peach’s fingernails, unexpectedly spotless and well groomed, as he took the sheet and tried to stop the trembling of his own hands. Like a lawyer completing a necessary formality, the Inspector said, “Would you confirm for me that this is your writing, sir?”

  ‘Thanks for the return of the magazines. Sorry to hear you don’t feel able to join our little group at the moment. Let me know if you reconsider. In the meantime, you might find these pictures of passing interest…’

  The rest of the words dissolved into dancing hieroglyphics before Courcey’s horrified eyes. He strove to find his voice, to steady his pulse, before he looked up to face the four eyes he knew would be studying his reaction to this. He found he could not face these people down. He remained looking at the desk, forcing himself to concentrate fiercely upon his words, as he said, “This is just a short note, so I couldn’t be sure. I write a lot of notes, you know, in my job. And I… I don’t recognise the content. Not at all.”

  “The calligraphy experts seem quite certain this is your hand, sir. One of our sergeants had a note from you, you see, scribbled on the end of a letter from the Minister for Social Services when he asked you to help with the rehousing of his mother. Apparently the word ‘Sorry’ and the ‘Yours’ at the end were almost identical in the two samples.”

  “Well, I’ve never put much faith in these so-called handwriting experts myself, and if that’s all they can find to—”

  “Oh, I agree with you there, sir. They seem to presume a lot from a few simple strokes.” Percy allowed himself his first smile since he had entered the room, its effect the more dazzling because it was so unexpected. As swiftly as it had arrived, it was replaced by a look of concern. “But the courts do seem to place a lot of reliance on them, these days. And our calligraphy lady is apparently one of the most reputable.” He noted with delight the nervous flick of apprehension which twitched the heavy eyebrows of his subject with the mention of court. He’d had more reaction from this decadent bugger than you got from many a teenage yobbo nowadays, he thought happily. He hadn’t lost his timing.

  Courcey looked up at him for the first time in two minutes. “This is signed ‘Chris’,” he said. He pushed the note back across the table. “Quite clearly, if you look at it.”

  Peach did not. He said, “I noted that, sir. I also noted in our station copy of Who’s Who that your third name is Christopher. Charles Walter Christopher Courcey, if I remember right.” He rolled the names around his mouth as if savouring a fine wine.

  Courcey said dully, “But I never use the Christopher.”

  “Not in your public duties or pronouncements, no, sir. But in your private activities, those you would very much like to prevent from becoming public, it seems that you prefer to use this other name.” He put the paper back into his case, so carefully that his action clearly suggested that it might in due course become Exhibit A in some criminal court.

  Courcey tried not to watch the lid of the briefcase closing on his future. He tried bluster. “Now look here, Inspector whatever-your-name is—”

  “No! You look here, Mr Courcey.” Peach’s voice cut like a whip across his opponent’s face. It was the first time he had raised it since he had appeared so suddenly in the room. “I believe that you wrote this note. I also believe that you sent with it photographs which could lead to a prosecution under the Obscene Materials Law. I also believe that you sent someone to attempt to retrieve these materials from the presbytery of the Sacred Heart Church in Brunton last night, because you hoped they still might be found there. You’re in no position to dictate to me, Mr Courcey, so I suggest you do not add threatening a police officer to your other offences.”

  Peach gave a tiny nod to the woman at his side. She watched the MP as his world began to collapse around him. He had always seemed a large-framed, jovial figure when he appeared on television or in person to make public pronouncements. Now that frame seemed to grow visibly smaller as the shoulders slumped forward. She said quietly, “I think it’s likely that other police officers will want to speak to you in due course, Mr Courcey. Paedophilia is a serious crime, and the law about photographs of children is still quite explicit. They will want details of the membership of the ring into which you tried to draw Father Bickerstaffe, and an account of its activities. This morning, Inspector Peach and I are concerned with a murder investigation. We have reason to believe that you threatened Father Bickerstaffe. You can see why that must interest us.”

  He looked at her with wide, sad eyes for a moment, as if he could not believe that an attractive woman would say such things to him. Perhaps with his tastes, thought Peach, the last woman he had been close to was the school matron. For a moment, it looked as though Courcey would try to bludgeon them with words again. Then he shrugged wearily and said, “He wouldn’t join us. He was just a Holy Joe with a weakness for stroking boys. I realised that, when it was too late. We had thought he might give us access
to his youth club, you see, but he drew back at that. I should never have sent him the photographs.”

  He was weary now, near to tears, bowed down by his self-pity, looking in vain for some way out of this. Peach savoured his despair for a moment; paedophiles never touched the chord of sympathy in him which he occasionally felt with other criminals. Eventually he said, “Did you kill John Bickerstaffe? Or cause him to be killed?” This privileged debaucher was not a man likely to do his own dirty work.

  Courcey had his forehead in his hands now. “No. I got someone to ring him, when we found he’d been removed from his church. At that Downton Hall place. To threaten him he’d better keep his mouth shut or it would be the worse for him. He’d said he felt he had to reveal what he knew about us, you see, and we couldn’t have that — well, you’ve seen the photographs.”

  “And when he refused to co-operate with you, refused to agree to keep his mouth shut, you had him killed.”

  “No!” He looked up at them at last, his eyes at once hunted and desperate to be believed. “It’s true he said he couldn’t guarantee to remain silent. I don’t know what would have happened, if I’m honest. I’m not the only one with a public reputation to guard, you know. But he disappeared, before we could decide what to do next. Then we heard that he was dead.”

  “That must have been a great relief to you.”

  “It was, I can tell you.” In his exhaustion and despair, the words were out before he could stifle them. He looked at them dumbly, a politician shocked by his own spontaneity.

  Very shortly an ex-politician, thought Peach grimly. He said, “We shall need to speak to you again in due course, in connection with our murder enquiry. And other officers will inevitably wish to interview you in a different context. You may wish to consider your position over the weekend: I think that is the correct Parliamentary phrase.”

  ***

  Superintendent Tucker had enjoyed his Saturday morning. He hadn’t played very good golf, but he’d enjoyed the bright day and the clear air, with its early cold giving way to a sun which still had pleasing warmth in it in early September.