A Turbulent Priest

by J M Gregson

  “Yes. I see that. And you can be sure I won’t tell anyone, least of all the police.” Joe Wainwright had the feeling that the Social wasn’t the real reason for Reilly’s command of secrecy, that it had been added as an attempt to justify his reaction. But he had more sense than to speculate about the real reason.

  He didn’t know a lot about Tony Reilly, but he knew he was not a man to cross without risking violence.

  Fourteen

  Percy Peach was enjoying himself. He liked busting people’s alibis. He liked even more confronting people to tell them their stories had been busted. Best of all, he liked to confront puritanical people like David Kennedy, who prided themselves on telling the truth and never having to deal with anyone as dubious as a policeman.

  They were at the huge electrical works which had become the biggest employer in the town since the decline of King Cotton had closed most of the mills. Peach had half-expected that Kennedy’s work in the research department would have seen him wearing a white coat, but he was dressed instead in a dark grey suit, well worn and a little out of fashion. Kennedy, Percy reflected, was probably a man without either the money or the inclination to pay much attention to fashion. He had his own office, but it was a tiny cubicle of a room, a sixth of the size of the top-floor office Tommy Tucker afforded himself at Brunton nick.

  That thought brought with it a grudging sympathy for Kennedy, who looked in his anxiety even older than his fifty-seven years: his lean face was drawn and his grey eyes looked very tired under the silvering hair. But Peach conjured up the anxious face of the man’s thin, bespectacled son Thomas, who had been abused by the priest and had patently feared that it was his father who had extracted the ultimate revenge for that assault.

  Kennedy had closed the door carefully behind them on the busy world of the factory and his laboratory. This ensured that, as they sat opposite each other and talked with their feet tucked beneath their chairs, his bony knees almost touched the thicker ones of DI Peach. He said, “What brings you here to my place of work, Mr Peach? I thought we said all we had to say to each other on Sunday.”

  “Did you, sir?” Percy’s surprise was manifest, his black eyebrows arching high into his bald dome. “Oh, I didn’t think so. Not by a long chalk. But then, I don’t suppose you’d be familiar with our methods.”

  “I would not, I’m happy to say.”

  “Well, we’re thorough, you see, sir. Plodding, but thorough. Unimaginative sometimes, I shouldn’t wonder, but methodical.”

  “Really. One would question that sometimes, in view of the number of serious crimes which go unsolved.”

  “You might well wonder about that; indeed, I do myself, sometimes. Still, our clear-up rate on murders isn’t bad round here, not bad at all. I don’t suppose you’re a betting man, sir, but you might do well to put a tenner or two on us finding out who killed Shirtlifter Bickerstaffe by the end of the week, if you get the chance.”

  Kennedy indicated his contempt with an acerbic smile. “You still haven’t seen fit to tell me why you’re disrupting my work schedule today.”

  “No. Well, let’s put that right, then. When people spin us a tale, we like to check it out. That’s part of our method.”

  “And whose tale are you checking out today?”

  “Yours, Mr Kennedy, as you’ve no doubt guessed by now. And it’s been found wanting.” Percy didn’t need to add ‘I’m glad to say’. His beaming smile, stretching further across his round face than David Kennedy would have thought possible, was more eloquent than words.

  The scientist licked his lips, found them surprisingly dry, and said, “You’re saying that something I told you is wrong? I doubt whether it is, but until you enlighten me about what I said, I shan’t be able to recall—”

  “Your story about where you were at the time when Father Bickerstaffe was being murdered. That’s what’s wrong, Mr Kennedy. It’s always of great interest to us when someone lies about their whereabouts at a time like that.” Peach’s smile had vanished as abruptly and completely as it had arrived. His coal-black eyes seemed to be peering into the older man’s very soul. “You said you were late home that evening, that you didn’t arrive until half-past seven because you were detained here by a meeting of the research staff. No such meeting took place on that particular Thursday: I’ve confirmed that with your colleagues in the last half-hour.”

  “Then there wasn’t any meeting. It must have slipped my mind that we didn’t meet on that particular Thursday — we usually do.”

  “Slipped your mind, Mr Kennedy? A mind like yours, that prides itself on being precise? It’s only just over two weeks ago. I think you can do better than ‘slipped your mind’, if you try a bit harder.”

  “I don’t care for your tone, Inspector Peach. It sounds to me as if you’re accusing me of lying, and—”

  “We’ll let the court be the judge of your honesty, if it comes to it.” Percy’s tone was at once curt and disappointed. People who were used to being honest and straightforward rarely made effective liars when forced into it, and Percy preferred the challenge of less synthetic opposition than this. “We’ll accept that you weren’t home until seven thirty on that day. You’d better tell me where you were between four thirty, which seems to be the last time anyone I’ve spoken to was aware of you round here, and seven thirty.”

  Kennedy was looking at Peach’s brightly polished black shoes. Everything about this awful little man seemed to be black or white. He kept his eyes on the shoes as he said, “I was here. I was in the laboratory until sometime after five, on my own. Then I made myself a mug of tea and sat in this room. I was thinking about what had happened to my son, what long-term effect it might have on Thomas.”

  “You didn’t go out to a pub for a drink? Somewhere where we could check if anyone saw you?”

  “I don’t drink, Inspector.”

  No, you wouldn’t, you starchy bugger, thought Peach. But you might just have been out in Bolton-by-Bowland, waiting for the man who had done this to your son, the minister whose church you hated almost more than his deed. Perversely, he found himself hoping it had not been so. Kennedy, whatever his personality, had not the qualities of a criminal. But that was the trouble with murder: it made its own rules, driving people who were not normally intemperate to take violent actions under the stress of extreme emotions. Percy looked at the baldness among the thinning grey hair of the head cast down before him and spoke more quietly. “Think carefully, please, Mr Kennedy; I assure you it’s in your own interest. Is there anyone — a cleaner, perhaps, or one of the security staff — who could confirm that you were here during those hours?”

  Kennedy thought, or gave the appearance of thinking. “No. I don’t remember seeing anyone. I don’t think there was even anyone in the car park when I left. There were only a couple of cars still there at that time.”

  Peach stood up. “Don’t leave the area without letting us know,” he said formally.

  “With two boys dependent on me? Your guarantee of my whereabouts is Liam and Thomas, Inspector.” David Kennedy sounded bitter as well as resigned about the ties his boys had brought to him.

  ***

  The stress of a murder investigation takes its toll on even the most devoted of couples. The Hanlons were well aware of that on the cool Tuesday evening of the eighth of September.

  Pat watched her husband in the bedroom as he went through the pockets of his suits and jackets for what must have been at least the fourth time. He was aware of her attention, and as the futility of his search became more and more apparent, he grew irritated with his wife. “Can’t you find anything better to do than watch me?” he rapped at her, his frustration turning as she had known it must upon the nearest target.

  She smiled at him, her pale anxiety its own rebuke, and went down to the kitchen and the evening meal for the family. She checked the potatoes, put the cauliflower on to boil, placed the cutlery precisely on the white Formica of the round table beneath the window at the other end
of the big kitchen, took the lemon meringue pie out of the fridge and cut it precisely into slices. She smiled her first real smile in hours as she did that: however careful she was, she knew the children would argue about the portions, would know whose turn it was to choose first. If only adult life could be as noisy and carefree as theirs; if only parental problems could be no more important than who got the extra crumbs of a favourite dessert.

  Yet even as she went through the mechanics of meal preparation, hoping in vain that the routine tasks she knew so well would soothe away the pain of her anxiety, she knew that the simplicity of childish life was no more than another illusion. Why else did she and Keith watch Jamie so apprehensively to see what effect that awful business with Father Bickerstaffe was having upon him; why else did they fear for its effect upon the three girls behind him in the family?

  She went and called for the children when the meal was ready. They came tumbling into the room, arguing with each other, lifting her a little as usual with their collective energy, their capacity to look forward with lively anticipation to the morrow. Pat wished she could still do that. She looked automatically at Keith when he came down from their bedroom and sat down with his back to the window. He gave her a little shake of the head, then his face twitched with a little spurt of silent indignation that she should still be watching him so closely.

  He was quiet during the meal, answering her queries about portions abstractedly, failing to come up with his usual series of questions to the children about what had happened to them in their days at school. The meal seemed to Pat to proceed by conversational fits and starts, with periods of heavy silence punctuated by two of the children speaking at once, but perhaps she was imagining that. She found it increasingly difficult to distinguish between what was real and normal and what was merely the product of her over-active and febrile imagination.

  Jamie was also quiet tonight. She was sure at least that she was not imagining that. The fourteen-year-old scarcely spoke as he picked his way through his braised steak, new potatoes and cauliflower, normally his favourite meal. And when the girls’ voices shrilled in the ritual dispute over the first choice of the lemon meringue pie, he did not join in, but smiled absently and waited his turn. Almost as quiet, in fact, as his father: Pat caught her son glancing speculatively at Keith as the father of this normally animated family maintained his abstraction from what was going on around him.

  Jamie lingered when the girls went off to their rooms, only too anxious to avoid the washing up. Usually Keith directed this task, summoning the family to help him in a rota of impeccable fairness, but tonight Pat and Jamie did the dishes. She was happy as always to be alone with her eldest child and only son, reinforcing that unique intimacy between them that seemed as strong as ever, even as he moved towards the trials of adolescence. Tonight, as they conducted the routine task in diligent silence, she was aware with a mother’s intuition that he had something to say to her, and for the first time in many hours her anxiety was subsumed in her curiosity as to what Jamie’s concern might be.

  It was not until he was drying the last of the crockery that Jamie spoke. He polished the big dish which had contained the steak with elaborate, unnecessary care as he said, “I thought I might go back to serving Mass next week, Mum.”

  Pat said, “Are you sure you’re ready, love? There’s no need to prove anything, you know.”

  “No. But I’d like to. I enjoy serving, being a part of the Mass.” He didn’t like to add that it made it all go much more quickly, when you had to concentrate hard. You were supposed to enjoy the Mass, to feel the uplifting quality of your worship of the Lord, he knew. But there was enough of the schoolboy in Jamie to find boredom coming easily, to seek for ways of making his time in church pass quickly through involvement.

  “Well, that’s good. That you want to be involved again, I mean.” The old vague hope that her only son might become a priest, might become a minister in the faith which meant so much to her, prodded again at the back of Pat’s mind. “You can go down to St Mary’s. They have two masses every morning there, and I’m sure they’d be glad of someone as experienced as you to add to their serving roster.”

  “I thought I’d go up to the Sacred Heart. It’s much more convenient, and Michael said the priest they’ve got standing in up there at the moment is really nice. Mike’s hoping he’ll get the job permanently.” He saw the look of fear on his mother’s face, the desire to protect him which he no longer needed. “It’s all right, Mum, it is really. I’m over the shock of all that now.”

  Even now, Pat thought, they could not refer to what had happened in specific terms. At least, she couldn’t: she had a sudden apprehension that Jamie’s circumlocutions were a concession to her. She said dully, “Are you sure it’s wise to go back so soon? These things have more of an effect than we realise, sometimes.”

  “Mum, what happened to me was no big deal. Father Bickerstaffe was a sad man, I realise that now. But he didn’t really force his attentions on me, once he had to accept that I didn’t want them. Much worse has happened to lots of boys at school. I’m lucky living in a family like ours.”

  So he’s been talking about it to the other boys, Pat thought. Exchanging notes on how they’ve been abused, how far it went. She felt a sharp pang of jealousy at her son’s growing up; others were now intruding upon the intimacy with her son which she had for so long thought her own preserve; others were bringing to him news of experiences she could never bring. She forced a smile. “All right then, if you’re sure. I’ll make enquiries for you, tomorrow, if you like.”

  “There’s no need, Mum. I called in on my way home. Had a little chat with Father Brown — that’s the name of the new priest. Only he’s not like Chesterton’s detective Father Brown: he’s young and slim, not middle-aged and tubby.” Jamie gave a nervous little laugh, as if to excuse his small treachery in taking this initiative.

  “You’ve worked it all out for yourself, haven’t you, love? That’s good, though. It’ll be nice to see you on the altar again, when I’m at Mass. Makes me feel I’ve got a personal involvement in what’s going on in the worship of Our Lord. I’m sure your Dad feels the same about it, too.”

  Jamie almost told her that he had only gone back on the altar to fight the boredom of the Mass. He felt again the stifling arms of their religion about him, confining him, making it difficult for him to breathe clear air, like incense in a crowded church. He wanted to be his own man, to find his own ways of belief. Even to discover and explore his own doubts, in due course: the other boys at school were doing that. But you weren’t allowed to have doubts, not in this house. He forced a smile for his mother, turned abruptly, and went thankfully away to his room.

  ***

  The train was speeding southward, even drawing away from the stream of traffic that was breaking the speed limit on the M 1. Percy Peach, offered Southern Comfort at the buffet bar, told an uncomprehending barman that that was a contradiction in terms.

  “Mum said we could have stayed at my Aunt Amy’s,” said Lucy Blake when he returned. She was wearing a finely woven wool sweater which matched the ultramarine of her eyes and accentuated the dark red of her hair. It also revealed the curve of her splendid breasts with a pleasing lack of ambiguity. A service to humanity, it was, reflected Percy, taking those out of the constrictions of a police uniform and into the plain clothes of CID. Plain clothes! That was clearly an expression which dated from the days before there was any strong female presence in the service.

  “Don’t like the sound of Aunt Amy,” he said. “Sounds like she’d insist on big bloomers, with elastic at the knee.”

  “Winceyette, I should think, and double gussets! She’s older than Mum.”

  Percy snuggled closer to her ear, ignoring the tinny overflow from the Walkman of the glazed youth sitting opposite them. “I love it when you talk dirty!” he muttered. “Tell me more about the colour of your smalls.”

  “They’re not winceyette. And that’s all I’m
telling you for now. These things should come as a surprise.”

  “I only hope I don’t come as a surprise,” said Percy. “You sexual teasers can go too far, you know. I hope they’re very small smalls.”

  And on that happy tautology, he settled back into his seat and closed his eyes, secure in the anticipation that there was to be much more than teasing this night. Better get a bit of kip while I can, he thought, to husband my resources. There might not be too much sleep later, and he would need to be sharp in the morning to deal with Droopydrawers de Courcey.

  He fell into a pleasant alcoholic doze, treasuring the image of Tommy Tucker’s idea of punishing him with the company of the delightful DS Lucy Blake.

  ***

  It is one of the regrettable features of modern life that churches have to be shut up at sundown, to protect them from the larceny and worse which might be visited upon them by the choicer specimens of the society we have produced.

  The Sacred Heart, being a small enough parish to warrant only a single priest, had a rota of parishioners to perform this task. Keith Hanlon was on this list, but tonight Pat Hanlon had undertaken the task, as her husband was otherwise occupied. She had in truth been glad to get away from Keith, feeling more strongly than ever the strain which had mounted like a tightening wire between them since the announcement of the death of Father John Bickerstaffe.

  Dusk dropped in early with autumn approaching. When she slipped into the small, high-roofed church, it was only a few minutes after half-past seven, but it was already almost dark within these high, quiet walls. She locked the door behind her, then went forward to where two candles guttered their last flames in front of the side altar, with its statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She slipped her coin into the collection box, heard it fall unnaturally loud against the metal base as she picked up the slender white candle and lit it from the dying flame of the one lit hours earlier by some anonymous supplicant.