A Turbulent Priest

by J M Gregson

  Peach’s smile was blander than ever, his face at its most open and enquiring. Joe Cartwright, realising too late where his fury had led him, said, “It might. And I’m still glad the bugger’s dead. But I didn’t kill him.”

  Lucy Blake flicked open her notebook, poised the tiny gold ball-point above it. “Where were you on the afternoon and evening of the twentieth of August, Mr Cartwright?”

  He looked at her as if amazed that an attractive young woman should be turning the knife like this in the wound which Peach had made. “Can’t remember, just like that, can I? That’s getting on for three weeks ago.”

  Peach smiled a more threatening smile, the sort that Torquemada might have admired in one of his apprentice torturers. “Eighteen days ago, Joe. Take as much time as you like. When you come up with a story, we’ll note it, then check it out. Routine, it’s called.”

  The glazier looked at him as if he would have liked to hit him. It was Joan Cartwright who said nervously, “You were over at Lytham, Joe. You were there for the whole week before the Bank Holiday weekend. That cafe that was having the conservatory put on to make extra space.”

  “Not a cafe. A pub-restaurant. But she’s right: I was glazing an extension they’d had put on to their dining room. It took me the whole of that week — they wanted it open for the Bank Holiday trade, so I had to finish it. Bloody hot work it was, too, in the sun we had that week.”

  Peach looked at him evenly, watching for any flick of nervousness over the reddish features. “So you were there on the afternoon DS Blake asked you about, that of Thursday the twentieth of August?”

  “I told you. I was there all week. Working late to get the work finished, wasn’t I, Joan?”

  His wife’s blonde, blue-eyed head nodded, her habitual smile flowing back in her relief. “He was late home every night that week. Seven thirty or eight, it would be. And that would include Thursday.”

  He gave them the name of the pub in Lytham St Anne’s readily enough, seemingly only too anxious for them to check him out and clear him. Lucy Blake said, “And where were you on that day, Mrs Cartwright?”

  She looked surprised that she should even be asked to account for herself, and her husband was preparing to bluster protectively when she said coolly, “I was here on that day. Jason and I had our meal early, without waiting for Joe to arrive home. We knew he’d be late, and Jason was going out with a friend. My son will be able to confirm that for you, I’m sure.”

  Peach said courteously, “Thank you. The more people we can eliminate from our enquiries, the better, from our point of view.” He whirled suddenly upon Joe Cartwright. “So, are you going to tell us now who you think killed Father Bickerstaffe, Joe?”

  For the second time in three minutes, the stocky man looked like a middleweight who had been stopped in his tracks by a body blow. “How the hell should I know?”

  “Oh, come on, now. You just said first that you were glad he was dead and secondly that you thought the likeliest killer was someone whose child had been abused. You must have been thinking about it — assuming you don’t actually know, that is.”

  “Of course I don’t know! And if I did, I wouldn’t bloody tell you. That bastard had it coming to him!”

  “On which note of co-operation, we shall leave you. For the moment. I would remind you that if you think of anything or find out anything which bears on the case in the next few days, it is your duty to report it to us immediately. Ask for DI Peach at Oldford nick and I’ll be round here like a hungry whippet.”

  Peach waved to the blonde head of Joan Cartwright and the thunderous face beside it as Lucy drove him away.

  Twelve

  Percy Peach rolled on to his back and looked at the crack in the ceiling. “I still can’t believe it,” he said. Lucy Blake, her head resting comfortably upon his arm, followed his gaze. “It’s there all right,” she said. “Nothing to worry about, though. A bit of filler and a coat of paint and you wouldn’t even see it.”

  “Not the ceiling, you daft haporth! You and me, I mean.”

  “Oh, that. Well, I can’t quite believe it either. Perhaps I’m just sleeping with my boss to get on in my chosen profession.”

  Percy grinned up at the ceiling. “If tha were serious about that, tha’d be in bed with Tommy Bloody Tucker. Now that would be a fate worse than death, lass.”

  Lucy Blake smiled, stirring her legs beneath the duvet, settling the back of her neck more comfortably into the crook of his arm. She liked it when he thee’d and tha’d her, called her ‘lass’ and ‘daft haporth’. She hadn’t been called that since she was a little girl with her granddad, and you hadn’t been able to buy a halfpennyworth of anything since long before she was born. But the Lancashire speech was a sort of intimacy between them, setting off this most unexpected alliance from their workaday selves and the squalid side of the world which they inhabited there.

  “Tha’d better not tell thy mother what th’art up to,” said Percy. “She’ll have thee home and locked up if tha does.”

  Lucy giggled, and the tremor ran through her naked body in a way which had a disturbing but wholly predictable effect upon Percy Peach. “Tha’rt right there and no mistake, Sir Jasper!” she said. She wondered indeed when she was going to tell her mother about this. A relationship with a divorced man, ten years her senior. It wouldn’t sound too good to a mother who lived in a country village and clung to the ways of an older, more ordered world. And no mention of marriage, as yet. That was as much her choice as Percy’s: she wasn’t sure yet where this attachment was going, though she knew that for both of them it was more serious than they pretended.

  “So who do you think killed our priest?” she said, thrusting away thoughts of her mother and stretching lazily against the cool sheet.

  “You choose your moments!” said Percy, struggling to control an insistent manhood. He sought her hand, entwined his fingers in hers resolutely to prevent them straying to more exciting regions. “I used to think about the Rovers to try to slow down lustful thoughts. Now it has to be work!”

  “I know who you’d like our killer to be.”

  “And who would that be, oh mind-reader?”

  “Charles Courcey, MP and Junior Minister in Her Majesty’s Government.”

  “Ex-MP. And ex-Junior Minister. And if you ask me, Her Majesty is well rid of that bugger. But you’re right, if we could pin it on Charles Courcey, I’d be delighted. Not that I bear the obnoxious sod any ill will, of course.”

  “And not that you’d like to see Thomas Tucker announcing the arrest of a senior Mason.”

  Percy’s grin became seraphic. “Ee, that would be wonderful, lass, wouldn’t it? Reet grand, that would be! But life’s not like that. The slimy sod’s got an alibi for that Thursday night. He was in London, he says, waiting for a vote in the House. But he’s not the kind who’d do his own dirty work, anyway, is Charles de Poshboots Courcey. If he was involved, he’d have some other daft bugger putting the cord round poor old Bickerstaffe’s neck. But if he gave the orders, we’ll have him, however long it takes.”

  “But what had he to gain by killing the priest?”

  “Ah! We’ve clarified that, my pretty one. Whatever his weakness for boys, Bickerstaffe seems to have been as horrified by the hardcore child pornography photographs that Courcey sent him as the rest of us. He was about to blow the gaffe on the paedophilia ring that Courcey and his friends were running. That sturdy lady Martha Hargreaves didn’t let that fellow into the presbytery to retrieve the letter Courcey had written to Bickerstaffe, but we already had it. Evidence, that letter will be, if we ever bring Lord Snooty to court. Dying breed, the spinster-housekeeper, more’s the pity.”

  “Unlike the spinster-policewoman.”

  “Ah! Now they have different virtues altogether.” Percy succumbed to temptation and shifted his hand to a softer and more intimate area. “If you’re going to go through the rest of the suspects, I’ll just hold on here for a bit, lass.”

  “A bit
’s all you’re capable of, Squire Peach, at your advanced stage of life,” said Lucy. She turned cautiously to deny him access. “I hope our killer doesn’t turn out to be Kate Maxted.”

  “Don’t know her. Didn’t see her, you went on your own.” Percy’s voice was muffled by a rounded shoulder, his mind not on the conversation but on the activities of his exploratory hand and fingers.

  “She’s a feisty lady, Kate. I liked her. And don’t do that, I’m trying to concentrate on the case.” She shut her legs, suddenly and with amazing strength. Percy’s cry was a mixture of pain, surprise and pleasure. He withdrew his hand, slowly and reluctantly. “Eh, but you are strong, lass! And in the most unexpected places, too.”

  “Just concentrate, please, DI Peach! Kate Maxted: single mother; four children between seven and fourteen, the eldest of whom, Wayne, was assaulted by Bickerstaffe. No husband around, and no maintenance for the children from him. She lives in a terraced house in Primrose Bank, clean but very basic. She’s obviously dependent on financial support from Social Services.”

  “She’d be Tommy Bloody Tucker’s chief suspect, then. Primrose Bank and on the social means criminal, to Tommy. Bright enough to have planned this killing, is she, your Kate Maxted?”

  “Not mine. And just keep your hands still and let me think, will you? Yes, she’s a bright woman. Battered by life with a brutal husband, trying to cope with four children on her own with no money, but bright enough. Proud of it, even: she made a point of telling me she could have stayed on at school to do A levels. And it’s not just book learning: you can’t survive as she has without learning a lot about the mechanics of living.”

  “Opportunity?”

  “I asked her about Thursday and Friday, because we still didn’t know then that he’d died on the Thursday evening. She’d no alibi for the Friday, but that doesn’t matter now. She says she was at home with the kids at teatime on the Thursday — we’d have to question them to confirm that, but she didn’t strike me as the type to let her kids lie for her. Besides, she’s shrewd enough to know that four children will soon contradict themselves if you ask them to tell lies for you.”

  “So she didn’t do it herself. What’s the chance of her having a partner in crime to do the dirty deed?”

  Lucy was silent for so long that he began to divert himself with the charms of a smoothly rounded buttock. Then she said, “There might be a man around — or even a woman, I suppose. There was nothing I could put my finger on, but I got the impression there might be someone.”

  “Ee, I do like something I can put my finger on, lass,” said Percy, and attempted to demonstrate his liking.

  She dug her nails forcefully into his wrist, “You might have your finger cut off, if it makes me lose my thread. Let’s agree that Kate Maxted might be involved in some way, and can’t be eliminated without further investigation. Your turn now. Let’s have your views on Keith and Pat Hanlon.”

  “Ee, lass, but you’re a hard taskmaster! Well, they’re good Catholics, with all that that implies. I was brought up on people like the Hanlons, until I strayed on to the primrose path and ended up with a scarlet woman like you.”

  “Are you saying that makes them less likely to have killed? Their duty to observe the fifth commandment? ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and all that?”

  “By no means. Murder recruits its servants everywhere —must remember to quote that to Tucker, it sounds rather good. Not biblical, but my very own. I always suspect people who quote scripture at me and talk about their Christian duty. Pat Hanlon did both: ‘Vengeance is the Lord’s, not any man’s’, she told her husband. I distrust people who try to live their lives by dogma, just as I distrust politicians who parrot slogans at me.”

  “I hope it’s not the Hanlons, though. They seemed a genuinely close-knit family, very attached to their children.”

  “Agreed. Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily make them less likely to kill. They were probably more outraged and distressed by what happened than anyone. Like Kate Maxted they have four children, but in their case only the eldest is a boy.”

  She nodded, arresting Percy’s straying hand and taking it tightly in hers again. “And that’s Jamie, the lad who was assaulted. Their first-born, and their cherished only son. Would that mean the abuse hit them even harder?”

  “It might. As might the fact that they were the last to expect what was going on. There was a kind of innocence about them: they couldn’t believe a priest would do such things, until the evidence was set before their eyes. Jamie was an altar boy, who regularly served Mass for Bickerstaffe. It must have made the betrayal even more shocking and their bitterness even deeper.”

  “Do you think there was enough bitterness for them to have killed Bickerstaffe?”

  “I don’t know.” Percy rose a little in the bed, propped himself on one elbow, reluctantly forced himself to consider the case. “That suffocatingly pious atmosphere, that notion that a priest defiling his cloth was almost more shocking than his defiling of their son, took me back to my boyhood. I didn’t think there were households like that anymore, at once so pious, so genuinely caring for their children, and so blind to the world outside their religion. I found their piety obfuscating things for me, masking what they really felt.”

  “I know what you mean. I felt there were naked human emotions like hatred seething underneath the standard pious phrases. But the Hanlons weren’t so innocent that they didn’t expect to be questioned as suspects. They had their stories ready about what they were doing on that Thursday afternoon. I’m sure that they’d discussed it before we arrived.”

  “I’m sure of that too. But it doesn’t make them more likely to be guilty. Even the innocent know that they’re likely to be questioned, so they think about what they were doing at the time of a murder. By the time we saw them, the papers had printed the news that Bickerstaffe had been dead for about ten days before the body was found, so they knew that that Thursday was a key day.”

  “And if we accept what they say, they were nowhere near Downton Hall. But of course, they’re alibi-ing each other from the time when Keith Hanlon says he left that solicitors’ office in Preston. That’s been checked out, by the way. He left there around half-past four.”

  “If it was the Hanlons, they’re both involved. It’s difficult to see two such pious buggers taking the law into their own hands and killing a man. But there’s no doubt that Bickerstaffe’s treachery hit them very hard — perhaps harder than it hit any of the others. Good Catholic families stick together — ‘The family that prays together, stays together’, they used to tell me when I had to recite the rosary as a child. Perhaps the parents also take vengeance together. But perhaps that’s also my own prejudice against a religion I no longer accept.”

  “Percy Peach with hang-ups! I’m finding more hidden depths all the time.”

  Percy snuggled down again. “So am I, if you’ll only let go of my hand. I’ll soon show you—”

  “David Kennedy. What about him?”

  “Ooh, you are firm, lass! And so am I. If you’ll just feel here you’ll soon see just how firm—”

  “DI Peach! Behave yourself. Tell me whether you see David Kennedy as a murderer.”

  Percy sighed. “All right. He’s a real passion-killer anyway, is that Kennedy. Can’t see him in bed with a randy redhead, doing her a bit of good from the charity of his heart. Ow! You know, your elbows are really sharp, lass. Not like the rest of you at all. You should be careful with them. David Kennedy, then. A Puritan, if ever I saw one. And Puritans who go over the top always go further than other people. Look at Cromwell. When you were educated by the Irish Christian Brothers, you were always being made to look at Cromwell.”

  “All right, so Kennedy’s a Puritan. And Percy Peach doesn’t like Puritans. Is that all you have to offer about him as a suspect?”

  “No. He’s an older Dad than all the others. Nearer to a grandfather, in age: fifty-seven, I think. His wife left him for a younger man and he’s b
ringing up two teenage boys on his own. All stress factors. And he’s by nature a very intense man, is David Kennedy. And intensity often spills over into violence. You saw how he wanted to hit me when I riled him a bit.”

  “But that’s no guide. If everyone who wanted to hit Percy Peach was a murderer, the prisons couldn’t contain them.”

  Percy smiled at the ceiling and stretched ecstatically; Lucy retained a firm grip on his hand. “Flattery will get you anywhere, my girl. But there’s more. Kennedy doesn’t like the Catholic Church — in fact I’d say he hates it to the point of unbalance. He associates it with his wife and her desertion. He couldn’t wait for his boys to reject the religion. Think how savage he must have felt when a representative of that faith assaulted his younger son. Curiously enough, I think the fact that the Hanlons are obsessed with Catholicism and the fact that David Kennedy hates everything about it makes both of them more likely to have resorted to violence when Bickerstaffe abused their boys.”

  “So you think they’re the strongest candidates?”

  Percy protested. “You’re putting me on the spot now.” The notion suggested a lascivious move, and he made a determined effort to reach another spot, but was foiled by a resolute police officer. He sighed. “I don’t know who would be my strongest candidate, to be honest. I do know that I don’t really want it to be either of them. I think the Hanlons are a close family, with loving parents struggling to give their kids standards in a difficult world. And David Kennedy may not be my type, but I think he’s a bit of a hero too, in his own way, though I’d never let him know I thought that. He’s doing his best for two sons who may not always appreciate his efforts, and has done for years. If we had more parents like Kennedy and the Hanlons, there’d be less crime for us to struggle with.”

  Lucy found herself wondering just what sort of parent Percy Peach might make. That was a dangerous area, and she said hastily, “That only leaves the Cartwrights, among our major suspects. What did you make of them?”