Unsafe Convictions

by Alison Taylor

  Tuesdays and Fridays were laundry days, Mondays and Thursdays for cleaning, and on Wednesdays she went to the supermarket. On Saturdays she always found a reason to go into town, because she loved Haughton’s weekend busyness, the full-to-bursting shops, the ritual tea and cakes in one of the High Street cafes, and the gossip. And wouldn’t she have a tale to tell tomorrow, she thought, about that Lewis woman and her godless behaviour. The two girls who came in on Thursdays to do the presbytery’s heavy cleaning would by now be up to their elbows in the filth of the policewoman’s bungalow, and she would go later to inspect the cleaning, collect the things on the list the woman gave to Father Brett, and take them over to the hospital. As a devout Catholic, she would also hand over a piece of her mind with the knickers and bras and toiletries, because it was a terrible sin to try to take your own life, and she did not for one moment expect that Father Brett had chastised the woman. He was too kind-hearted to upset a soul in torment, even if it was deserved. She sighed, because he was too kind-hearted for his own good, in her opinion. He had rushed off to Manchester very early that morning on another mission of mercy, and now he was out again, chasing his own tail trying to catch up with himself, despite being bothered by the police when he should have been having his lunch in peace. And he needed a rest, she thought, because he had not been himself these past weeks.

  She finished putting away his clothes, then plumped his pillows, although he made his own bed every day. He even did some of his own washing, too, which was amazing. She was in the bathroom scouring the sink when the doorbell jangled. Before she was half-way downstairs, the caller was banging at the door, and when she opened it she encountered the rather frightening police inspector who had been earlier.

  ‘Where is he?’ Jack demanded curtly. ‘His car’s not here. Where’s he gone?’

  She pressed her hand to her breast. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must have some idea. Think, woman!’

  ‘Mind your tone!’ she bridled. ‘There’s no need for rudeness. Father Brett had a bite to eat after you left, then went out as usual, about the parish business.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jack said, ‘but I’ve got to find him.’ He frowned at her. ‘Did he have any phone calls?’

  ‘I didn’t hear it ring.’ She shook her head. ‘But there might have been some messages from this morning. I only answer the presbytery phone. Father Brett’s got his own number.’

  ‘Show me.’ Jack took her arm and almost dragged her along the hall.

  Heart pounding, she opened the study door, and pointed to the machine. He closed the door in her face, then began punching buttons to rewind the tape. When he played it back he realised Fauvel had pre-empted him: all but a few words of the first message were obliterated, and Jack only learned that some time in the hours before he died, Neville Ryman had called.

  Chapter Seven

  At the Willows, the residents were out in the snow, trudging in circles, wandering in aimless squiggles, or standing like smaller monoliths under the viaduct’s hard shadow. They looked hardly human, McKenna thought, slewing to a halt. The bird-like man he had seen at the end of the lane by Trisha’s house flapped gauntly around the car, then seemed to fly away when he opened the door and, looking for his footprints in the snow, McKenna fancied he saw only the marks of a large bird’s claws, scratches in the white carpet that glistened in the sunshine. Janet’s car was parked by the steps, beside a glossy mulberry-coloured saloon.

  He ran up the steps, face stinging, battered body complaining, and came up hard against the massive door. He hammered on the panels, bruising his hands, leaned on the bell-push, hammered again, then almost fell to his knees when the door opened. Janet gazed down at him, her face as white and glistening as the snow, then moved aside like a sleep-walker to let him see what lay on the parquet floor behind her. It looked like a monstrous rook that had crashed to earth and, as he watched, it began to drag its shattered body towards him, half-open eyes weeping tears of blood.

  Janet muttered ‘ambulance’ and ‘priest’ before she tottered away to the office. Stupefied, McKenna waited, while the body inched onwards. He should have offered his own small comfort to the dying man, but by the time he could bring the words to mind, it was too late, and so, like Kathy Broadbent, Fauvel went without sustenance on his last journey.

  Part Sixteen

  Friday, 5th February

  Late Afternoon

  Chapter One

  Long before it would be extinguished at sea level, the sun had already dropped below the high horizons around Haughton, and where the frail afternoon sunshine had thawed the surface snow the bitter touch of twilight hardened the landscape with a glassy luminescence. Under a pellucid sky glinting frostily with stars, Gaynor drove slowly across Dark Moor, tyre chains biting deep into the tangle of frozen ruts left by other traffic. The outside temperature display on the dashboard flicked to minus nine degrees at the moment her mobile began to bleep. Seeing Davidson’s personal number come up, she was tempted to ignore the summons, but as ever, curiosity bested her.

  ‘If you’ve packed, unpack,’ he said. ‘And if you’re already on the road, turn around.’

  ‘Why?’ Her voice was sullen. ‘Not two hours ago, you were ordering me out of town before I cause any more mischief. Anyway,’ she added spitefully, ‘haven’t I got to be on hand when McKenna’s stooges raid your office?’

  ‘Things have changed.’ She heard the rustle of papers. ‘There was a fatal attack in Ravensdale earlier on, and now there’s an update on the wire services naming the victim as fifty-one-year-old Neville Ryman, police superintendent as was.’

  ‘So?’ Gaynor sniffed.

  ‘So his wife’s in custody. She bashed a hole in his head, with a rock intended for McKenna. Ryman shoved him out of the way.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Eyewitness account given by a neighbour to a local hack.’

  ‘How could the neighbour possibly identify McKenna?’

  ‘She was helped by a very aggrieved local copper, after Mrs Ryman had gone berserk and attacked four of his mates.’

  ‘I see.’ Gaynor drew into the verge, the car’s nearside wing hard by an overhanging drystone wall capped with icy blue snow. ‘What have Ravensdale police got to say?’

  ‘I’ve no idea because I haven’t contacted them. I thought you’d like that pleasure. And a comment from McKenna would be pertinent, don’t you think? In the public interest, of course.’

  *

  Ravensdale police headquarters batted her back and forth like a ping-pong ball from one close-mouthed officer to another before the force’s press officer finally came on the line to tell her that a statement would be released in due course.

  ‘Do me a favour!’ She all but sneered. ‘We know Superintendent Ryman’s dead, and we know his wife’s in custody. It was either a straightforward domestic, or something to do with the Stanton Smith case. You can’t keep people in the dark for ever, especially about an investigation like McKenna’s.’

  ‘Nobody’s being kept in the dark! The media were fully briefed at the outset, Ms Holbrook, you included. And you all know better than to expect a blow-by-blow account of an investigation such as McKenna’s.’

  ‘From where I’m standing,’ Gaynor replied smugly, ‘which, of course, is alongside the general public, his investigation is fast becoming an unmitigated disaster. Dugdale’s marriage is history, Trisha Smith’s father had a heart attack, Wendy Lewis tried to top herself, and now Ryman’s dead. You can’t seriously think we’ll just stand by patiently waiting for some anodyne police statement?’

  ‘Ms Holbrook, before you indulge in any more rash comment, or further transgress the bounds of legitimate journalistic inquiry, I seriously think you should consider your own position. You’ve already made yourself extremely vulnerable.’

  Gaynor smiled to herself. ‘Haven’t I just?’ she agreed. ‘But, you know, I can’t help wondering if that’s only because McKenna and accountability inhab
it different planets.’

  ‘I’m not prepared to discuss this matter any further. As I said, we will issue a statement in due course.’

  ‘Well, when you do, you won’t neglect to explain why McKenna was at the Ryman house, will you?’ She heard a sharp intake of breath. ‘And why Mrs Ryman intended to kill him, rather than her husband?’ She disconnected before he could respond and punched her fist in the air.

  *

  McKenna had gone to ground. She rang the Church Street house and Haughton police station, her heart thumping with trepidation in case he actually responded, but failed to locate him at either place. Pondering her next move, she gunned the motor and set off. Once over the crest of the moor, with Haughton below her in the deep-blue shadow of the valley trough, she could see the strobing lights of emergency vehicles somewhere on the hill where Dent viaduct bisected her view. Half skidding around the bend near where yesterday she had dropped her mysterious passenger, she expected to come upon a pile-up, hut all she saw was a press of people on the pavement, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands. Their breath rose above them like smoke.

  Nosing the car to a halt on the opposite side of the road, Gaynor crossed over, and began to nudge her way through the crowd. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked a small fat woman in a padded jacket who was craning to see past those in front. ‘Who lives there?’ she added, peering through a phalanx of bare trees to the large house beyond and a forecourt littered with vehicles.

  ‘The retards,’ the woman responded, without even turning. Like an overfed rodent, she sniffed the air, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘The who?’ Gaynor was puzzled.

  ‘The mental defectives,’ the man beside her said. He wore an old greatcoat, with a flat cap rammed on his head, and the pulsating reflections of the lights turned his features into fluid forms.

  ‘But what’s happened?’ Gaynor asked again.

  ‘Something,’ the man offered, nodding to himself. ‘There’s police there, and ambulances.’

  ‘There’s no fire engines, though, so they can’t’ve set themselves on fire,’ the woman said. ‘It’s not like it was when that woman was killed. You couldn’t move for fire engines then.’

  ‘And the bishop didn’t come that time, either,’ the man added.

  Trying to elbow her way into a body of arcane knowledge as she had edged into the crowd, Gaynor said: ‘I don’t understand why the bishop should be here.’

  ‘He isn’t now,’ the woman told her. ‘He went off with one of them foreign coppers.’

  ‘But why should he come at all?’

  The woman turned to stare at Gaynor, and stated the obvious. ‘You’re not local, are you?’ Looking her over, she pursed her lips while she counted the cost of the beautiful fur-lined jacket, then turned sharply away as a windowless transit van with Haughton Cleaning Co. Ltd’ on its blue-panelled sides came up the road. When the van turned into the driveway, there was a collective tensing of shoulders and a hissing breath from the crowd.

  ‘There’s a mess, then,’ the man said, with grim pleasure, watching the van come to a stop in the forecourt and discharge a cargo of three men in matching blue overalls.

  ‘A mess?’ Gaynor echoed.

  ‘Blood,’ the woman said, her eyes gleaming. ‘Maybe brains as well. Them cleaning people only get called in when there’s a mess nobody else’ll touch.’

  Opening the van’s rear doors, the overalled men extracted plastic crates and industrial cleaners, then carried them into the building. Within minutes, a stretcher party brought out a sheeted body and bumped it into the back of a waiting ambulance. Slamming doors, the ambulance drivers backed away, turned, and came slowly down the drive, siren silent, lights stilled. The crowd watched greedily, then eyes swivelled back to the house as soon as the ambulance was out of sight.

  Figures began to hurry back and forth from the house to the other waiting vehicles, but Gaynor’s view was frustratingly segmented by the trees and the bobbing heads. She pushed forward, her nose assaulted by a medley of smells, her gloved hands impatiently tapping obstructive shoulders and backs, and reached the front of the crowd to find herself all but entangled in a low, thorny hedge. She kicked her way through, heedless of the damage to her leather jeans, and crunched over the carpet of crackling frozen leaves beneath the trees until she had a clear view of the forecourt. Moments later, other brave souls followed, their warm breath lifting the hair at the back of her head.

  The front door of the house was wide open. In the shadowy interior, Gaynor could just discern movement, then people started to come out into the growing dusk, creeping down the steps arm in arm for support. A faller sat in the snow gaping vacantly around for assistance, to be hauled upright by others hurrying efficiently from the house. Before long, they were all shut up in cars and a small minibus, and ready to leave, and as soon as they were out of the way, two uniformed policewomen emerged, struggling with an overweight red-haired girl who slumped between them, weeping and howling. Followed by a tall thin man with half-moon spectacles, and a woman carrying a physician’s bag, they climbed into one of the police cars, and sped away. Gaynor herself gasped, like the watching crowd, when the next to emerge was her erstwhile passenger, once again dressed in the fur-trimmed duffel coat and now flanked by an emaciated young woman with short dark hair and a ghastly pallor.

  ‘Well!’ someone behind Gaynor breathed. ‘Wouldn’t you know she’d have something to do with it?’

  There was a murmur of assent.

  ‘Why?’ Gaynor asked, turning towards the speaker. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Kathy Broadbent’s bastard.’

  ‘Who’s Kathy Broadbent?’ Frowning, Gaynor looked at the jumble of faces and hard eyes.

  ‘Don’t you know anything?’ The voice snapped at her, as brittle as the air, then the speaker looked past her, concentrating on the drama beyond.

  Gaynor turned in time to see the two women being driven away in another marked police car, then, like her companions, she waited for something else to happen. One of the overalled cleaners came out to collect yet another crate from the back of the van, then there was a hiatus. She could see shadows flitting back and forth inside the building, and lights went on behind various windows, and as quickly went off again. As the air turned colder by the minute, the crowd became restive, hut no one left. Someone pointed to a mulberry-coloured car now partly visible behind the cleaners’ van, and said: ‘That’s Father Fauvel’s car.’ Someone else replied: ‘Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?’ Gaynor peered at it, wondering if it were the same car she had seen yesterday, and if Father Fauvel were therefore the man whose attack on the duffel-coated woman she had intercepted, then felt her heart skip a beat when McKenna materialised at the top of the steps. He glanced at the gaping faces, walked to one of the cars, and drove quickly away. Pushing willy-nilly through the crowd, Gaynor ran to her own car and, speeding recklessly down the treacherous road, caught up with him by the derelict mill.

  Chapter Two

  The housekeeper was in the kitchen, watched over by two middle-aged nuns from the convent down the road, and the sounds of her grief swelled through the presbytery like the surge of a tide. Standing over Jack while he bagged and labelled the tape from Fauvel’s answering machine, the bishop remarked: ‘She’s Irish, you know. They do like to celebrate a death, don’t they?’

  ‘So I believe,’ Jack said, wishing the man would go about his own business and leave him to do his. ‘Don’t you think you should see if she’s all right? She seems to have thought a lot of Father Fauvel.’

  ‘We all did,’ the bishop mourned. ‘This is the most terrible tragedy. I can’t think what the parish will do without him.’ He sat down rather suddenly in the swivel chair beside the desk. ‘The nuns will take care of the housekeeper,’ he added. ‘They’re very good at such times.’ He clasped his hands, frowning up at Jack. ‘Why are you taking that tape?’

  ‘It’s evidence.’

  ‘Evidence of what?’


  ‘I’m sorry, Your Grace, I can’t discuss it.’ Jack placed the bag to one side, then began to search the desk, while the bishop displayed his growing anxiety with a succession of facial contortions and white-knuckle hand clasps.

  Finding nothing of apparent significance, Jack closed the desk drawers, picked up the bag and his briefcase, then said: ‘This room will be sealed for the time being, along with Father Fauvel’s bedroom, after I’ve had a look around.’

  The bishop leaped to his feet, scurrying after Jack. ‘Why?’

  Once in the hall, Jack nodded to the scene-of-crime officer waiting for him to finish, then began to mount the stairs, the bishop hard on his heels. ‘All sudden or unexplained death has to be investigated, Your Grace,’ he said. ‘The information is then presented to the coroner and an inquest.’

  ‘Father Fauvel’s death was indisputably nothing other than a dreadful accident.’

  ‘Reaching that judgement is beyond our remit, I’m afraid.’ He walked along the close-carpeted corridor towards the room that the near-hysterical housekeeper had identified as Fauvel’s, and opened the door.

  The bishop jumped in front of him, barring the way. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he demanded. ‘If it must be done, this is a task for the local police.’

  Jack edged past. ‘Please excuse me.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ the bishop nagged, as Jack opened the double doors of a beautifully carved mahogany wardrobe.

  ‘Father Fauvel was already included in Superintendent McKenna’s investigation,’ Jack replied, ‘so the chief constable asked him to investigate the death.’ He finished examining the wardrobe’s contents, searched the bedside cabinet, tipped up the neatly made bed, then turned his attention to an antique oak coffer against the opposite wall. ‘In any case,’ he added, ‘it’s better that we do it. Some conflict of interest might arise with the local police.’ The coffer was filled with vestments and robes of office. One richly embroidered chasuble was a work of art in its own right.