A Turbulent Priest

by J M Gregson

  It was in that unlikely spot that the investigation into the murder of the Reverend John Bickerstaffe took an unexpected turn. “There’s been one call for you, Percy. A woman called Cartwright. Apparently you and Lucy Blake had arranged to see the Cartwrights tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Yes. They’re the last of the parents whose sons were touched up by John the Lad. Cartwright’s self-employed, so he’s able to get away to see us then.”

  “That’s right. But this call was from Mrs Cartwright. She wants you to go in the morning, when her husband isn’t there. She says there are things you ought to know about what Bickerstaffe did to her son. And she wants the boy to be there himself.”

  Eleven

  Superintendent Tucker was determined to assert himself. “Now look here, Peach! Just sit down and listen, will you?” DS Peach dropped gracefully on to the seat before the big desk, as attentive and alert as a vigilant panther. “Just don’t speak until I’ve finished what I have to say. I don’t want your silly comments making me lose my thread. Now, this MP. You’ve gone charging in without my permission, trampling all over any sense of decorum, ignoring the protocol which any reasonable officer knows must be observed in dealing with VIPs. You have embarrassed me personally, and what is more I am sure it will emerge in due course that you have embarrassed the Brunton force as a whole. I’ve been thinking about this over the weekend, and what emerges is that you’ve gone too far this time. Well, have you nothing to say for yourself?”

  Peach’s eyes widened alarmingly. His almost non-existent neck disappeared completely as his shoulders rose towards his ears. He gave every appearance of a man seized by a paroxysm. Finally his control broke and breath burst out like a missile from his overtaxed lungs. “Beg pardon sir! You said I wasn’t to speak. Wasn’t to offer any of my silly comments. Has that order now been rescinded?”

  Tucker sighed, resisting the impulse to hurl the paperweight on his desk at the earnest bald dome which he surely could not have missed. “You’re not a boy soldier on an army parade, Peach — however infantile your behaviour may be. I expect some form of reaction when I give you a dressing-down.”

  “Yes, sir. Some form of reaction: I’ll try to remember. Thank you, sir.”

  “Now, what you’ve got to do is to try to retrieve the situation. An apology is called for. If Charles Courcey is still in the constituency, you must arrange to see him personally and tell him that you were over-reacting, that it was merely an excess of zeal which led you to make the accusations you did. Oh, I don’t say you shouldn’t investigate him, but there are ways and means, Peach. Ways and means. MPs are influential men, controlling the destiny of all of us, and that is a fact that you should bear in mind when you go blundering into situations which you can’t handle.”

  He doesn’t know, thought Percy. Oh, thank you, God, he doesn’t know! He hasn’t heard the radio or television news this morning, he hasn’t seen the papers. “Yes, sir. I’ll do whatever you say, of course. You have an overview which those of us beavering away at the crimeface don’t always perceive. Even now, when most of the public might not think we should be going easy on a wanker like Courcey, you see things which the rest of us are missing, put the whole of CID out on a limb because you see a reward which none of the rest of us can even envisage at this moment. I must say it’s wonderful to have the responsibility for a controversial course of action accepted by a Superintendent who can see just what the issues—”

  “Controversial?” Tucker seized on the danger-word in this seething linguistic torrent. “What do you mean, controversial?”

  Percy noted the rising note of panic with the approval of a connoisseur. “Well, I just thought with him resigning and going into hiding, you wouldn’t want to be associated with him. Still, if he’s a friend of yours, you’d want to stick by him, I know, however courageous a course that might seem to others without your integrity.”

  The danger-words were tumbling one upon another now. ‘Controversial’ had been followed by ‘courageous’ and ‘integrity’. Tucker felt the sweat breaking out, hot then swiftly cold, under his armpits, round his crotch, at his temples. He repeated hoarsely, “Resigning? In hiding?”

  “You haven’t heard the news, sir? Too busy worrying about the various cares of office, I expect. Too busy safeguarding the people who depend—”

  “I had to take the dog for his walk. Barbara went to the over-fifties keep fit. The little devil ran away from me.”

  Peach was torn between the twin visions of the large and lumpen Barbara Tucker in a leotard and of her husband chasing a disobedient Yorkshire terrier. He stared blissfully over his chief’s head and said, “You didn’t have time to listen to the news, then?”

  “I didn’t even have time for bloody breakfast, Peach. What the hell has been going on?”

  “Charles Courcey handed his resignation to the leader of the Conservative Party last night, sir. Personal reasons, he said. There’s a witch-hunt on, but the Press haven’t been able to find him. Rumour is, he’s skipped off abroad. Paedophilia squad want to interview him — that’s got out to the papers. Discreet leak from party headquarters, I should think.” Peach’s round face lit up with a sudden thought. “I say, sir, you aren’t hiding him at your place, are you? I remember you saying on Saturday that he was a Grand Master. Very brave it would be, but I know you wouldn’t let an old friend down, and I suppose in Masonic circles—”

  “Courcey is no friend of mine, Peach. Never will be, never has been. Get that into your thick skull. I want you to register it and remember it. Is that quite clear?”

  Percy allowed a look of puzzlement to creep back over his features by degrees. It was a considerable performance, extending over several long seconds. “But I thought you said just now that I was to apologise to him? It’s going to be difficult with him not around, and it won’t be popular with the paedophilia squad or the public, but I’m sure I can do something. Perhaps if I put a statement out to the Press on your behalf, saying that he’s a good chap and we’re sorry if we ruffled his feathers, it would—”

  “Peach! Will you for God’s sake shut up and let me think? Of course, today’s news puts a new slant on things, a new slant altogether.”

  “No need to apologise, sir?”

  “No. Of course not. In fact, you should be out there trying to find out if he has any connection at all with the murder of Bickerstaffe, not wasting my time here with your inanities.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away, sir. I’ll get back on to the case this instant. And if Courcey or any other of your Masonic friends have been chasing little boys’ bums or murdering priests, I’ll make sure you’re the first to know.”

  What a lovely way to begin the week, thought Percy. What a way to cheer up a Monday morning! His heart sang with the joy of it as he went back down the stairs to rejoin the real world.

  ***

  He picked up DS Blake and went to see Mrs Cartwright without her husband, as the lady had requested.

  Joan Cartwright was not at all what they had expected. She was a blonde, blue-eyed woman in her early forties, running a little too fat if you were a cruel woman, pleasantly plump if you were a lascivious male. She had her hair cut to a medium length, but its severity was removed by the wide waves which curved it gracefully to her neck; her regular, rounded features were set into a face which seemed to drop into a smile as its normal expression. DS Lucy Blake thought she was a pleasant, maternal woman, who seemed anxious to help. DI Percy Peach, who had gathered some experience in the field after his marriage ended, thought she was every lonely drinker’s ideal of a friendly barmaid.

  The one way in which she conformed to their expectations was that she was apprehensive. She greeted them at the door of the modern detached house, glanced like a nervous tortoise from side to side as they introduced themselves, and led them swiftly into a lounge dominated by a huge three-piece suite, as comfortable and rounded in its contours as the lady of the house. Peach sank into an armchair which threatened to envelo
p him and said, “We came to see you on your own this morning because you requested it, Mrs Cartwright, but you must be aware that we shall still need to speak to your husband in due course. There is no need for us to see your son at this stage, unless you think it would serve some useful purpose. Our task is to investigate murder, not child abuse.”

  She brushed a stray strand of yellow hair away from her forehead impatiently, as if she sought to remove their misapprehensions with the gesture. “I understand that. But there are things about Father Bickerstaffe’s abuse of Jason that are different from the other cases. I thought you needed to know about that.”

  “And without your husband present.”

  She smiled, that ready smile they were already beginning to think of as natural to her. “When you meet Joe and hear his attitudes, you will understand why we wanted to speak to you without him here.”

  While the two CID officers looked at each other and tried not to anticipate what was coming (first rule of the training school), she went across to the door and called up the stairs, “Jason? The detectives are here.”

  There was the sound of a teenager’s noisy descent of the stairs before a boy much larger than they expected burst into the room, thrusting out his hand to shake theirs in adolescent gaucherie. “Jason Cartwright,” he announced breathlessly. His mother’s genes were very obvious in the boy. He had her fair hair and blue eyes, her rounded features and her openness of countenance. But he was already nearly six feet tall, and his plumpness was different from hers; it was puppy fat which was already falling away. In two or three years his face, like his body, would be leaner than it was now, as he stood before them on this bright September morning. “I should really be in school,” he said, “but Mum said I could take the morning off to talk to you.”

  Lucy Blake smiled. Of the three people in the room, she was the nearest in age to the boy, and she felt the appeal of hours stolen from under the noses of the pedagogues. She said, “We’re investigating the death of Father Bickerstaffe, not his behaviour at the youth club, Jason. That’s why we haven’t spoken to the other boys involved in the things that went on at the Sacred Heart — well, we spoke to Thomas Kennedy, but only because his father called him in to see us. However, your mother thought there was a particular reason why we might want to hear what you had to say.”

  The boy looked at his mother, then back at the two strangers in the room. The speeches he had rehearsed all night refused to come now to his lips when he needed them. He said awkwardly, “Well, it’s just that — that Father Bickerstaffe and me — well, it wasn’t quite like the other lads.”

  Lucy, who thought she knew now what was coming, spoke hastily, thinking to forestall a harsher reaction from Peach. “Are you telling us that you weren’t abused by Father Bickerstaffe?”

  “No — well, yes, that’s what I’m saying, really, I suppose.”

  Lucy glanced at Joan Cartwright, who appeared distressed for her son, but perfectly calm in her own demeanour. “Are you telling us that what took place between you was a willing exchange?”

  The boy’s relief was manifest as he seized on the phrase. “Yes, that’s it. A willing exchange. That’s exactly it. He didn’t compel me into anything. You can’t call that abuse, can you?”

  “How old are you, Jason?”

  “I’m fifteen. Older than all the other boys involved. I knew what I was doing. No one was corrupting me.”

  “Nevertheless, Jason, if you are under sixteen, the law says you are still a child. And anyone having sexual exchanges with a child is guilty of abuse.”

  “Then the law is an ass, as Dickens says it is.” Jason could not conceal his satisfaction in delivering a quotation newly acquired. “I knew what I was doing and I did it freely.”

  For the first time since the boy had come into the room, Peach spoke — quietly and with understanding, to Lucy’s great relief. “It doesn’t much matter what the law says now, Jason. Father Bickerstaffe is dead. We’re not here to follow up what happened between the two of you, but to find out anything which might have a bearing on how he died.”

  Jason nodded, seeming suddenly near to tears. “He was a nice man, really, was Father Bickerstaffe. He wouldn’t have hurt anyone. Wouldn’t — wouldn’t have forced himself on anyone who put up any real resistance. But I know he shouldn’t have interfered with those children. I’m not stupid.”

  “No, I can see that, Jason. But you’re saying that what he did with you was different from whatever he did with the others.”

  “Yes, I am. Whatever the law says. I know I’m gay, you see, so I knew just what I was doing.”

  He had announced his message at last, as he had been determined he would. He glanced at his mother and received a little nod of acknowledgement. Peach studied him for a moment, deflating the drama of his announcement, waiting to bring him back to the matter in hand. “All right, Jason. Your sexual preferences are not our concern, now that Father Bickerstaffe is dead. What we need to know is anything at all which might have a bearing on that death. I’m sure you know by now that he was murdered.”

  “Yes. Ten days before his body was found in that river. I’ve read all about it in the papers. Killed in cold blood.”

  That was the boy’s own addition to the scanty facts published, though it was almost certainly true. They imagined him watching the television news, scanning the newspapers for every scrap of information about the last hours of the man he now romanticised as his dead lover. And in that moment of silence, they clearly heard the sound of a vehicle pulling on to the drive outside.

  Jason was at the window in a flash, looking in horror at the white van with ‘Cartwright Glass’ boldly lettered upon its side. “It’s Dad!” he said unnecessarily. “I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep away.”

  His mother tried to calm him with her ready smile. “He didn’t know the CID were coming here this morning. He’s home for an early lunch, that’s all. You’d better let me handle this now. You’ve said all you wanted to say.”

  But before the boy could leave the room his father entered, as abruptly as a fireball. “What the hell’s going on here? You lot were supposed to be coming this afternoon. I wanted to be here to know what was being said.”

  He was bristling with fury. Lucy saw Percy preparing to counter-bristle, but fortunately Joan Cartwright got in first. “I invited them here, Joe. In fact, I asked them specially to come this morning. You’d have had your say, in due course. Detective Inspector Peach made it clear at the outset that they’d want to speak to you later, whatever was said now.”

  “And just what has been said? I suppose this daft twit has been telling you he’s as queer as a coot? Stupid young bugger!”

  Before Jason could come back at him, his mother said sharply, “I think you should get off to school, now, Jason. You’ve missed most of the morning already.”

  For a moment, it looked as if the boy would argue. Then he turned and moved out of the room with the same strange mixture of grace and awkwardness with which he had entered it. He paused momentarily as he passed his father to stare down defiantly into the older man’s angry face from no more than eighteen inches. Joe Cartwright glared in frustration at the blank face of the door for a moment after it had closed upon his departing son. Then he whirled and said, “I want to know everything the boy’s said. I’m entitled, as his father.”

  Peach was more in his element with this truculence. “You’re entitled to nowt, as a matter of fact. We haven’t conducted any formal interview, and if we had there was a responsible adult present with Jason. Anyway, he didn’t tell us much. Just said he was gay. That he was a willing party in whatever went on with Father John Bickerstaffe.”

  Fermenting his anger, thought Lucy Blake, knowing that a man carried away by his emotions might reveal more than a calm one. If that was Peach’s intention it certainly worked. Joe Cartwright shouted, “That’s bollocks! Jason’s a child, and that bloody priest led him astray. Hanging’s too good for the likes of him!”
<
br />   Peach wondered how often he had heard that vehement cliché, from police and public in almost equal measures. Playing this fish was going to be too easy to give him much satisfaction. “You sound like a man who’s quite pleased that Bickerstaffe is dead, Mr Cartwright.”

  “Too right I am. World’s well rid of anyone who corrupts the young like he did.”

  “You think he tried to corrupt your son?”

  “Course he did. And now the silly young bugger thinks he’s queer. He’d have been right as rain without that priest.”

  “Jason says not. He says he’d decided he was gay before he had any sexual dealings with Father Bickerstaffe.”

  “What bloody Jason needs is a bloody good hiding — pardon my French.” He glanced first at his silent wife and then at the impassive young face of Lucy Blake, then addressed his words to Peach in what sounded almost like an appeal. “He’d be chasing skirt like any other fifteen-year-old if it wasn’t for the slimy hands of that bloody priest.”

  Peach smiled. An open, innocent, conciliatory smile. To anyone who knew him, it would have been a danger signal, but Joe Cartwright did not. Percy said, “It’s not always as simple as that, Mr Cartwright, as I think you realise really. It may not be easy being gay, but not many people now would think of it as an affliction.”

  “Gay!” Cartwright wrinkled first his nose and then his whole face in disgust. “What a bloody word! Queer, we always called those buggers, and queer they bloody are, if you ask me. No son of mine’s going to grow up to be a poof, if I’ve anything to do with it.”

  “Unfortunately, you may not have. Who do you think killed Father John Bickerstaffe, Mr Cartwright?”

  Joe was shaken by the sudden change of tack, but too far into his theme to see where it was leading him. “How the hell should I know? Someone whose kid was interfered with, if you ask me.”

  “Which I did. And you’ve just told us how you think Jason was interfered with. And it’s interesting that you seem to be more angry about it than anyone else we’ve met. That would make you a leading suspect, wouldn’t it?”