A Turbulent Priest

by J M Gregson

  “Funny lot. But not so unusual really, I suppose. A protective mother; a fifteen-year-old who announces he’s gay; a Dad who has never expected it, probably never even thought about it, and can’t accept it.”

  “And a mother who is so scared that her husband will incriminate himself that she tries to see us on her own with Jason.”

  “Doesn’t necessarily mean she thinks Joe Cartwright did it, though, does it? Might mean that she was just embarrassed by the attitude she knew her husband would take, and thought he’d get less annoyed if we saw him on his own. Of course, she wasn’t to know that Percy Peach could make a saint lose his temper, if it suits him.”

  “I could, couldn’t I? You say the nicest things, lass, but I still think you’re only after me for my body. I’m going to give up all resistance, in a minute.”

  She ignored him, knowing his fate and his movements were firmly in her hands. “He’s a homophobic, Joe Wainwright. That would upset his judgement, make him capable of going off to kill the man he believes has set his son on the evil path of homosexuality.”

  “He doesn’t like gays, that’s certain. Whether you could call it a phobia, likely to upset all rational intelligence, is another matter. But if he really believed that his son wouldn’t have been gay without Bickerstaffe’s attentions, I agree that might well have driven him to violence. He needs further investigation, does honest Joe Wainwright. But he’s not alone in that. There are several alibis that merit close scrutiny. Even according to what his wife says, Joe wasn’t in until seven thirty to eight on that Thursday night. Wonder what time he left that pub he was working at in Lytham.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever find the murder weapon?”

  “Not a chance, I should think. My guess is that that length of cord has either been burned or is at the bottom of the Ribble or the Hodder. A man who’s careful enough to empty a corpse’s pockets doesn’t leave a cord in his shed.”

  “Or her shed.”

  “Correct. I haven’t forgotten that a woman like your Kate Maxted could have garrotted an unsuspecting victim as easily as any man. I’m as much a feminist as anyone, when it comes to murder. However, there are some activities for which women are much better fitted than men.”

  And with one bound, he was free. Or rather with one sudden wrench of his hands. In the next ten minutes of intense activity, Percy Peach allowed Detective Sergeant Blake, junior to him in rank and age, to have her evil way with him. A determined feminist he, even in the last stages of exhaustion.

  Thirteen

  Since the trouble at home, Joe Cartwright was more than ever glad to get to his work as a glazier. You had to concentrate when you were working with glass, or it came back at you. There was no time to think of your domestic problems, of that silly young Jason who thought he was queer and his mother who made things worse by indulging him. There weren’t many people in the county who could cut a tricky piece of glass as swiftly and accurately as Joe, and he was proud of that.

  Not that his work on that Tuesday morning was stretching his craftsmanship very far. Fitting sealed double-glazed windows into new houses didn’t call for a high degree of skill, in Joe’s opinion, though the cowboys could still produce a botched job through ignorance and carelessness. It was a bright September morning, but quite sharp: there had been a hint of autumn in the cool air when he had begun his work today. His hands were warmer now, as he applied the mastic to the ready-made windows, sealing the frames against the rains which would pound this western face of the house in the years to come. Joe’s face was a picture of concentration, the tip of his tongue appearing at the corner of his mouth as his fingers moulded the long line of mastic along the edge of the frame, then disappearing as he reached the corner, as if it was tied to his thumb by some invisible string.

  It wasn’t until he had completed the sealing of the window that he caught sight of a reflection of someone behind him in the double-glazed unit, and his activity was suddenly frozen.

  “Good job, that! Nice to see a craftsman at work,” said Percy Peach.

  Joe turned to meet the blandest of smiles beneath the black eyebrows and the bald pate. “It’s easy, this. But it pays the bills. And I get the job for the whole site, if this first house is satisfactory. It will be.”

  “I’m sure it will,” said Percy amiably. “You work for some dodgy people, though, Joe.”

  Joe Cartwright glanced round quickly to make sure the man who had brought him here was not about; Peach hadn’t bothered to lower his voice. “Makes no difference to me how Tom Conlon goes about things,” Joe said. “I’m self-employed, so I pay my own stamp. So long as I’m paid what we’ve agreed for the job, I’ve no complaints. When you work for yourself, you can’t afford to turn away work.”

  They both knew what he was talking about. T.J. Conlon, whose name Peach had seen on the board as he came on to the site, was a man who employed casual building workers ‘on the lump’, without paying insurance or declaring them as workers to the taxman. It was illegal, but it was an abuse which was difficult to keep pace with in an industry like building, where the work moved from site to site and the workforce expanded and contracted almost weekly.

  Peach nodded, studying his man, noting his uneasiness once his hands had stopped working at his trade. “We checked your story about Lytham, Joe. Most helpful, that publican was. Says you left early on that Thursday — round about four thirty. Said you were going to collect materials, apparently. But strangely enough, he doesn’t remember you arriving with anything much on the Friday morning.”

  “That’s where I went. He’s right — I remember now. I collected some small stuff, for a partition I was making in the restaurant. Beading, and a bit of stained glass for the top panels.”

  “Strange that the man who was employing you doesn’t remember you bringing those things on the Friday. Who supplied you? Warners, was it?”

  Warners was the biggest wholesale timber supplier in Brunton. “That’s right, yes. The beading, that is. I had the stained glass in my garage at home.”

  “And yet no one at Warners remembers seeing you that day. And their computer records show no purchase by Joe Cartwright in that week.” Percy’s smile widened; his face swam a little before Cartwright’s frightened eyes, until he thought that when his tormentor finally went away, that white-toothed smile would remain to mock him, like the Cheshire Cat’s.

  “They must have got it wrong. It was only a bit of beading. I reckon they forgot to ring it up to my account.”

  “No, Joe. We both know they didn’t. Just as we know that a self-employed man wouldn’t lose two or three hours’ work to pick up a bit of beading. I think you should tell me where you were between four thirty and seven thirty on that day. Unless you were up in the Ribble Valley killing Father John Bickerstaffe, that is, when you’d be better to wait until you have your brief sitting beside you at the station.” Peach sucked his bottom lip up into the gaps where his upper canine teeth should have been, looking for a moment like a pike swallowing its prey, and then resumed his Cheshire Cat mode.

  “I didn’t kill bloody Bickerstaffe.”

  “Convince me, Joe.”

  “I can’t. I was thinking about our Jason on that Thursday, and I just couldn’t get my head round it. It was only the night before that he’d told me this rubbish about being gay, and I couldn’t think what to do about it. Eventually I knew I couldn’t concentrate well enough to work anymore — I was starting to make mistakes. I went and sat in a big pub in Lytham and tried to work out what to do. I — I was thinking of writing to one of these agony aunts for advice, if you must know. I sat with a bit of paper and a pencil and tried to put together a letter.”

  “And was this cry for help published and answered?”

  “Of course it wasn’t! I never got as far as making up a letter. The more I tried, the dafter it seemed to me.”

  “So there’s no evidence to support this latest story? No crumpled sheets in the depths of your pockets or the back of your
van?”

  “No. I never was much good at writing stuff down. I slung what I’d done down the bog in the pub.”

  “Of course you did, Joe. And no doubt the pub was crowded, and no one will remember a man with a pint and a pencil in a corner.”

  Wainwright looked more and more miserable. “They won’t. It was a big pub in the middle of Lytham — I can’t even remember the name of it. But it’s open all day, and there were a couple of coach parties in. I don’t suppose anyone will remember me.”

  “I don’t suppose they will, Joe, no. Probably not worth our time checking. But if you think of a better story, do let me know. I collect unlikely tales.”

  Joe Cartwright’s fear was right. Peach’s smile lingered vividly in his mind’s eye, long minutes after the man himself was gone.

  ***

  Half an hour later on that Tuesday morning, 8th September, Superintendent Tucker gave Detective Inspector Peach his overview of the case. He had forbidden the taking of notes, and Percy sat on the edge of his chair, leaning forward with an air of such intense concentration that Tucker was in constant danger of losing the thread of his already scanty thoughts.

  “My advice would be to concentrate on this Maxted woman. She’s bound to be pretty desperate, living off the Social Services, with four children round her skirts.”

  “Yes, sir. Good point that, sir.” Peach, wrinkling his forehead to show how earnestly he treasured this banality, wondered how long it had been since women like Kate Maxted moved round the house in skirts. “Handy woman with a garrotting wire, Kate would be, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Tucker’s face fell. His conventional mind still balked at the thought of a woman tightening a wire round the throat of an unsuspecting victim. Though he had long since ceased to read anything except newspapers and official documents, he had been brought up on Dickensian heroines, and the images of Agnes Wickfield and Little Nell still dominated his ideas of young womanhood. The notion of any woman being the agent of violent death remained difficult for him, despite thirty years of marital experience. He said uncertainly, “Don’t rush into anything, Peach.”

  “No, sir.” Peach nodded firmly several times, as if to drive that thought firmly into his dull brain, as if he had been contemplating a headlong leap over Beachy Head until he was checked by his charitable superior. Then he leaned forward. “There seems to be some possibility that there’s a new man in her life,” he said darkly.

  “Ah! You think she’s going to remarry?”

  “Couldn’t say that, sir. Women like Kate Maxted have a habit of living over t’brush, as we say in these parts.” He was gratified to see his chief looking suitably baffled. Served him right for coming from Cheshire. “No sign of a man in the house, but we’re following it up.”

  “Well, do it then. Don’t let the grass grow under your feet. This is a murder enquiry, you know. I’ve got a media conference lined up for tomorrow and I’m looking to you and the team to produce results.”

  “Yessir!” Peach almost sprang to attention, but settled eventually for sitting bolt upright in his chair. He spoke rapidly now, with an air of irresistible urgency. “There’s an older man whose wife has left him with two boys, the younger of whom was assaulted. David Kennedy; very intense man. There’s a very pious Catholic couple, Keith and Pat Hanlon, whose eldest child was assaulted. There’s Joe and Joan Cartwright, whose son says he’s gay and was a willing party, but was technically assaulted because he’s only fifteen. Joe Cartwright thinks he was led astray by Bickerstaffe and wouldn’t be queer without him.”

  Tucker reeled before the machine-gun verbal delivery of this trio. “Following all this up, are you?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. The team is on it now, sir.”

  “I should think they are. I shall need an up-to-date written summary of your progress tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Ready for the media conference. It’s good of you to keep us out of the limelight so that we can get on with the detection, sir.”

  Tucker looked at him suspiciously, but found Peach’s eyes upon that spot a foot above his head which seemed perennially to fascinate the Inspector. “Well, if you’ve nothing else to report, you’d better be getting on with it.”

  Percy sprang to his feet and picked up his chair to return it whence he had brought it. He positioned its feet with extreme care, as if it was important that every detail of the bleak decor of the Head of CID’s room should be preserved. It was the moment for his last turn of the knife. “Your friend Charles Courcey’s turned up,” he said.

  “I don’t know where you ever got this idea that Courcey was a friend of mine, Peach. I certainly never gave you that impression.”

  Not half you didn’t, thought Percy. You were shit scared of doing anything about him, until he disgraced himself publicly. “No, sir. I must have picked up a wrong idea. Him being a big pot in the Masons and so on.”

  “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, Peach, that my Masonic activities are nothing at all to do with my work in the police force.”

  Except that they got you the chair you sit in, you great twit, thought Percy. “Yes, sir. I’ll try to remember that. Anyway, Charles Courcey was arrested last night by the Child Pornography Unit as he re-entered the country. He’s being charged today and held in Wormwood Scrubs. We need to interview him in connection with our Bickerstaffe murder. I thought you might like to go down to London and do it yourself, sir. Being as you’re in charge of the case.” Nominally, that is, O Prattus Maximus.

  “Oh, I’m far too busy for that, Peach. You’ll have to do it yourself.” Tucker brightened. Being as usual months behind with the station gossip, he thought it would irritate Peach to be saddled with a woman officer for a long journey. “Take Detective Sergeant Blake with you. Be good experience for her.”

  And me, thought Percy. A night of passion at police expense. Nirvana. He said dolefully, “If you say so, sir.”

  ***

  It was not more than five minutes after Percy Peach had left Joe Wainwright that another man stole silently to his side.

  Joe was trying hard to become engrossed in his work again after Peach’s disturbing visit, but this man did not wait to be noticed. “That was the filth, Joe, that came a-calling. What did he want?”

  It was a gentle Dublin brogue, and Joe knew who the speaker was before he turned to confront him. Tony Reilly, a big, raw-boned Irishman with a small black beard, great strength and a reputation for wildness. A hod-carrier on the site; a skilled carpenter, capable of more highly paid work than humping bricks, but unable for some reason to obtain it; a man working for Tommy Conlon on the lump because he could get nothing better. Joe Wainwright said cautiously, “It was a CID man, yes. Detective Inspector Peach, if you want his name. Cocky little bugger. He’s looking into the murder of that priest who assaulted the boys up at the Sacred Heart.”

  Reilly nodded. “That’s him. He’s been to the other parents as well, you know. But not to my Kate. It was a girl who went to see her. Young, sturdy, reddish hair, Kate said. She told Kate she was a Detective Sergeant.”

  Joe nodded. “Sounds like the one who came to see us with Peach. Blake, she said her name was. Quite a looker — you’d never have guessed she was a policewoman. And she scarcely looked old enough to be a CID sergeant, but then they look younger all the time to me.”

  “What did Peach want with you today?” asked Reilly.

  Joe paused, wondering how much he should tell this man, who seemed to carry the menace of violence with him like a garment. He’d seen Reilly on Sunday mornings at church, and for the last few days he’d watched him humping huge numbers of bricks about the site. But the Irishman must have a dubious past, or he wouldn’t be reduced to working for Tommy Conlon on the lump. In the end, the need to confide in the face of the pressure being exerted by the police was too strong for Joe, and he said, “He came here asking about my alibi for the time when that bastard Bickerstaffe was murdered.”


  “And when was that?”

  Reilly was eager, too eager, with his question and Joe said quickly, “What’s it to you, Tony?”

  Reilly glanced automatically to right and left, with the hunted air of a man who has suffered and wishes to make sure that he is not overheard. “It’s my Kate. She’s a suspect too, you know. They’ve already questioned her, and from what you say they’ll be back. I want to protect her.”

  Wainwright looked up into the face of the big Irishman. A selfish thought told him that if he could divert some of Peach’s suspicion elsewhere, that could only help him. But his overwhelming feeling was one of relief. There were others who were glad to see Bickerstaffe dead, others in the frame for this killing, as well as him. He felt a common cause with this rough fellow against the police machine. Joe said slowly, “They’re interested in the evening of twentieth August, eleven days before the body was found.”

  “The girl asked Kate about that Thursday. And the Friday as well.”

  “Well, from what they said to us, it sounded as though they were pretty sure that Bickerstaffe was killed on that Thursday evening.”

  The two men looked at each other for a moment, each trying to assess how much the other knew about his movements on that day. Then Joe, attempting to lighten the tension, said, “Serious, are you, with Kate Maxted?”

  He had thought it was a safe question, but he saw the big man’s fists clench at his sides and feared for a moment that they would move to hit him. Then the Irishman said, “Yes, we’re serious. But the police don’t know about me and Kate, and I want it to stay like that.”

  Joe said hastily, “It will, Tony, it will! I won’t tell anyone, now I know you don’t want me to. And certainly not the police.”

  Reilly stared at him for a moment, breathing heavily, then nodded abruptly. “Remember that, Joe. It’s the Social, you see. They come prying round Kate’s place if they think there might be another man around.”