Cover Up

by Patricia Hall

  The man spun round to face Kate, an unfriendly expression on his face, but Barnard had followed closely behind her and whatever the man had intended to say seemed to freeze on his lips.

  ‘I do know Frankie O’Donnell. I saw him yesterday after the balls-up on our site near the hospital. But I’ve no idea where he went after he reported what had happened and the police left. No idea at all.’

  ‘And you are?’ Barnard asked. ‘We know Mr Jordan’s away, so we don’t really know who to talk to about Frankie. We know he was an old friend of his, from the war Katie says. Maybe we should talk to you instead if you’re in charge?’

  ‘The name’s Dunne, Michael Dunne. I’m deputy to Terry and in charge while he’s away in London. But as I say, I haven’t a clue where O’Donnell went after he left here, though I know Mr Jordan will want words with him as soon as he gets back to Liverpool. There’s no excuse for sloppy scaffolding.’

  ‘Should it have been checked by the foreman?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Of course it should,’ Dunne snapped. ‘It should have been safe, instead of which we find ourselves all over the front page of the Echo, which is certainly not where Mr Jordan will want to be when he’s negotiating in London.’

  ‘Did you threaten to sack him, my da?’ Kate asked.

  ‘I didn’t threaten him with anything,’ Dunne said. ‘I know he and Terry Jordan go back a long way. And the police merely said they would want to take a formal statement on Monday. That’s it for now. Now I really must get on. I’m sure your father will turn up over the weekend. Tell your mother not to worry. He’s probably just drowning his sorrows somewhere. We all know he’s good at that. It must have been a shock seeing a youngster die like that. But if anyone suggests he’s been drunk on the site he’ll be in trouble, both with Terry and the bizzies. There’s no excuse for that.’

  ‘I’m staying at the Lancaster Hotel,’ Kate said. ‘If you hear anything about my father’s whereabouts, perhaps you could leave me a message there? I don’t want to go back to London without knowing he’s safe. My mother’s in a bit of a state.’

  Dunne nodded and turned away, leaving Kate and Barnard standing looking at each other in the echoing hallway.

  ‘It looks as if your father may have had a good reason to disappear,’ Barnard said quietly. ‘His mate Terry Jordan may not be best pleased with him, and from what you say Jordan may be a hard taskmaster rather than a friend when things go wrong. But the police won’t be very happy if he doesn’t turn up to make his statement on Monday.’

  They made their way back into the street and got into the car.

  ‘What do you want to do now?’ Barnard asked. Kate shrugged dispiritedly.

  ‘Will you drop me off at my mother’s for a bit? I need to tell her what we found out, which isn’t much but might calm her down. If the bosses are expecting him back on Monday, then it’s quite possible that’s what he’ll do. He’s not going to want to annoy them more than they’re annoyed already, is he?’

  Barnard reckoned Kate was being overoptimistic, but maybe it might make her mother feel better. He glanced at Kate with a rueful smile.

  ‘I need to find somewhere to stay tonight,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose your place has got any vacancies, has it?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said without much enthusiasm. ‘I got given a poky little room with a single bed because they were so busy with people in town to see the Beatles. I was lucky to get squeezed in at all and most of them will probably stay over to Sunday. They’ll all try to pack into the Cavern tonight, and will be fed up because it’s so small and sweaty and whatever band is playing won’t be the Beatles by any stretch of the imagination.’

  ‘OK, I’ll take you back to Anfield and then try to find somewhere to stay. I’ll pick you up at your hotel about six and we’ll have a meal later. Will that do?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to land you with my messy family in all its glory.’

  ‘It’s an education,’ Barnard said. Kate laughed and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  NINE

  Kate found her mother busy cooking tea for her sisters, who were not yet home from their Saturday shifts when Barnard dropped her outside the house. The city centre had still seemed crowded as they drove through it, and she guessed that Annie and Bernie might have been held up on the bus home.

  ‘I won’t come in,’ Barnard said as he pulled up. ‘I don’t think your mother’s very impressed with me.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about that,’ Kate said easily. ‘I think she knows I make my own decisions now. I hope she does, anyway.’ He kissed her on the cheek before she got out of the car, but he was very aware that she was preoccupied with a lot more than him just now and he drove off quickly without a backward glance as she knocked on her mother’s front door.

  ‘So you spoke to someone at the office about Frank?’ her mother said dully, as if just to confirm her worst fears.

  ‘The man said he’d expect to see him on Monday,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t think anyone will do anything until then, even if he has done a runner. That’s when the police want to take a statement from him, apparently.’ Her mother’s lips tightened as she turned back to the pan that was bubbling furiously on the gas cooker, filling the kitchen with steam. But before Kate could even begin to reassure her, there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Holy Mother!’ Bridie said. ‘Have I not had enough visitors for one day and not all of them welcome?’ She made her way to the door slowly and it tore at Kate’s heart to see how awkwardly she moved. She was becoming an old woman before her time and the blame for that might be partly her own, for disappointing her in so many ways. But, she told herself, it was much more her father’s fault for being the unreliable husband he had always been. The voice in the tiny hallway sounded familiar and her spirits lurched even further into gloom. The last person she wanted to see was the parish priest, Father Reilly, and she wondered angrily how much her mother might have told him to bring him so opportunely to the house.

  A big man, made more imposing by his black cassock and cloak and black biretta, he ballooned into the room behind Bridie, and Kate sensed that he was not the least surprised to see her there.

  ‘Kathleen,’ he said with a bonhomie that jarred with the chilly look in his eyes. ‘It’s good to see you home again, it is indeed. How are you getting on in the big city? I know your mother misses you.’ The thrust was crude but effective, Kate thought, recognizing just how entitled the priest felt when visiting his parishioners’ homes and families.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Kate said quietly. ‘I’m only here on a very brief trip for my work, but it’s good to see the family again.’

  ‘Bridie tells me your father has been having some problems at his work,’ Reilly said. ‘That’s a great pity. I thought when he settled down to work for Terry Jordan that would stabilize him with his own difficulties. Did you not hope that too, Bridie?’ Kate’s mother nodded without saying anything and Kate could see the despair written on her face.

  ‘From what my father told me, Terry Jordan hasn’t always been a totally upright pillar of the community,’ Kate said. ‘Would that be right? Is he really the sort of man my father should be working for? And now da’s in trouble over an accident and seems to have disappeared.’

  Reilly’s fleshy face darkened.

  ‘I think you do Terry Jordan a grave injustice, my dear,’ he said. ‘Your mother will tell you that he was something of a hero during the war. Isn’t that right Bridie? Did he not get a medal for his work as a rescue man?’

  ‘He did,’ Bridie said, without much enthusiasm.

  ‘And now Mr Jordan has become a benefactor to the Church. A much valued benefactor. Have you had time to go and look at the progress of our wonderful new cathedral?’

  Kate shook her head.

  ‘You should, you should, my dear. It says so much about how we have made our mark on this city at last, after being held back for so many years
. Terry Jordan has been a big part of that, you know, and he’s been good to your father.’

  Kate nodded imperceptibly. She could remember the poverty that remained after the war, and her mother had told her how desperate it was in the 1920s and 1930s. But she could not help feeling that the Catholic Church had contributed to the troubles of her community by deliberately keeping them apart from the rest of the city, so she was not surprised when Father Reilly plunged on with what he no doubt believed was his duty.

  ‘So tell me, Kathleen, are you still going to Mass regularly, making your confession?’ The questions came with what was clearly intended as a comforting smile. ‘It can be hard to settle in a new parish if you don’t know anyone, can’t it? Is there a convenient church for you to attend where you live? If you’d tell me where you’re based, I could talk to the parish priest to make sure you’re made welcome. Where are you? Shepherd’s Bush, is it? To be sure, I’ve heard of it, which is more than can be said of most of the London suburbs. Good Irish stock in Kilburn I know of, but I’m not sure about Shepherd’s Bush at all.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Father,’ Kate said, trying to control her irritation. ‘I’m fine.’ She knew what he was doing as well as he did himself and she would not be drawn into the conversation he was trying to provoke. If she admitted anything approaching the truth about her new life, she knew it would throw her mother into a turmoil that would dwarf her worries about her husband, which were now piling on top of her disappointment about Tom.

  ‘So where are you going to Mass?’ Reilly asked, his expression hardening.

  ‘My friend Tess and I have been visiting various churches,’ she lied. ‘We haven’t settled on one we feel at home in yet. I’ll let my mother know when we do.’

  ‘A school friend, was she, this Tess? Teresa is it?’

  ‘College,’ Kate said. ‘You wouldn’t know her. We share a flat.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I really must be going now. I’m having a meal with a friend tonight and need to get back to my hotel.’ She would have stayed longer, but the priest’s intrusion had made it impossible to talk freely to her mother.

  ‘Where are you staying, my dear?’ Reilly asked and Kate flinched slightly. She had not been away long enough for the memory of how closely and relentlessly priests in Liverpool watched and guarded their flocks to have faded.

  ‘The Lancaster Hotel,’ she said reluctantly. ‘On Brownlow Hill.’

  ‘Well isn’t that a coincidence?’ Reilly said, enthusiastic all of a sudden, his eyes gleaming. ‘I’m heading in that direction myself, my dear. I’m going to a meeting at the cathedral site. I could give you a lift and drop you at your door.’ He turned to Bridie and took her hands.

  ‘I’m sure Frank will turn up again soon, Bridie,’ he said. ‘I’ll remember you both in my prayers and your poor son. With God’s help we can still rescue Tom from the sinful influences that have taken over his life. We can always restore a penitent to Holy Mother Church, you know that. Come along, Kathleen.’ Kate looked at her mother and knew she could not refuse the priest’s offer of a lift without upsetting her even more than she had been already today. She sighed.

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ she said. She sat beside the priest in the front of his battered A40, wondering what they could find to talk about that stayed clear of what the Church regarded as her brother’s headlong rush to damnation and the similar fate which would await her if they found out about her unmarried liaison with Harry Barnard, whose worst crime of all was not being a Catholic.

  Father Reilly lurched erratically back into the city centre and Kate reckoned thankfully that he was sufficiently unsure of which gear he should be in to find the energy for conversation of any kind, least of all a pastoral one. But she was taken by surprise when she realized that he was driving past her hotel without apparently any intention of stopping.

  ‘The Lancaster is back there,’ she said loudly, but the priest merely accelerated to go more quickly up the hill towards the university and the skeleton of the Cathedral of Christ the King.

  ‘I thought you might like to see how the cathedral is coming along,’ he said. ‘I think I can get us a look inside.’ Kate took a deep breath, guessing that this was a carefully contrived opportunity for Reilly to grill her more energetically about her lifestyle than he had been able to do in the company of her anxious mother.

  ‘You’ll make me late for my date,’ she objected as he squeezed the car into a parking space close to the building site.

  ‘Come along, my dear,’ Reilly said, heaving his bulk out of the car, his cassock billowing in the sharp wind coming up the hill from the estuary. ‘If I can find him, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. But if he’s not in, we can have a look at the building anyway. And we can have a little chat about what I suspect is your drift away from the Church, which will cause your mother as much grief as your brother’s behaviour. Believe me, I can sniff out a lack of truthfulness, a want of humility, when the faithful decide they are as good a judge of what they should do as their spiritual advisers. There’s two thousand years of wisdom in the Church, and your puny conscience is no match for that. I’ll not have Bridie damaged again, young lady.’

  Kate felt trapped between her rising anger and the knowledge that Father Reilly had the power and the ruthlessness to use his perception of her backsliding to make her mother’s life a misery. She bit back her protests and followed the priest in the direction of the cathedral, down a side alley close to the perimeter fence towards a small prefabricated building where a light gleamed through a window partly obscured by building dust. He knocked on the door, and opened it when a voice called him to enter.

  ‘Father Dominic,’ Reilly said. ‘I’m a bit early for the meeting to be sure, but I wanted to bring this young lady up here with me beforehand. She’s one of my parishioners living in London now and she’s losing touch with her roots and, I suspect, with the Mother Church. I thought if we could show her something of the new building here it might strengthen her faith, quell any doubts she’s having, and impress upon her how the Church is going from strength to strength in her own home town.’

  A tall thin man in clerical dress stood up at the desk and waved them inside, though there was no sign of a smile, only what looked like slight irritation at being disturbed and distracted from the heap of papers on his desk. His face was sallow, his hair iron-grey, and his eyes like cold-blue ice.

  Father Reilly ploughed on, apparently undisturbed by the chilly reception.

  ‘Kathleen, this is Father Dominic, one of the archbishop’s right-hand men and in charge of the wonderful progress of our Cathedral of Christ the King. Kathleen is the daughter of Francis O’Donnell, who works for Terry Jordan’s company.’

  ‘You know Terry Jordan, do you?’ the priest asked, a faint indication of interest crossing his face. ‘A remarkable man.’

  ‘No, I don’t know him,’ Kate said quickly. ‘My father works for him but I’ve never met him, at least as far as I know. Maybe he came across me when I was a small girl, but never since. I only heard his name in connection with the rebuilding of the city after the war, which is why I’m here. To take some pictures for a magazine of the changes that have happened since the bombing.’ His interest apparently aroused at last, the cleric’s eyes brightened.

  ‘Well, we escaped a direct hit here, thanks be to God,’ he said. ‘And the cathedral will be one of the landmarks of the renewed city when it’s completed, which will not be long now. A major landmark, if not the major landmark, wouldn’t you say Father Reilly?’

  ‘Oh definitely,’ Reilly said quickly.

  ‘And I’m sure the archbishop will be interested in the assignment you’re doing, Miss O’Donnell. Liverpool’s suffering is not as well known as it should perhaps be. For very good reasons, I’m sure. Mr Churchill wanted to conceal the damage being done to the ports. The Church was set back like everyone else, so you certainly should be aware how generous Terry the clinic has been in the help he has given to this
project and others.’

  ‘Has he been involved in the building work here?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Not as such, no,’ Father Dominic said. ‘His firm was not large enough to be a bidder when the tendering was done after the war. But as a fundraiser he has been magnificent. A true defender of the faith in the building trade and a generous contributor himself. Very generous indeed. From the sound of it, he has been considerably more loyal to where and what he came from than some members of your family, which will be a grief to us all and to the Lord Jesus Christ and his Holy Mother. A pity. But perhaps this is something you can work on with Father Reilly while you are here. It would be remiss of us not to try to return you to the faith of your fathers.’

  Kate tried to damp down the anger that threatened to overwhelm her, not only at the unwanted intrusion into her own life but also the fact that this man evidently knew about Tom – knowledge which could only have come from the parish priest. She swallowed down an angry retort and turned to Father Reilly.

  ‘I don’t have much time, Father,’ she said. ‘If you want to show me anything of the cathedral, perhaps we had better get on with it.’ The two priests exchanged a glance and Reilly nodded. ‘May I borrow the key?’ he said.

  ‘Do you have your camera here with you, Kathleen?’ he asked. ‘If we go to the viewing platform you’ll get an excellent view of the whole site, especially of the recent work on the crown – the Crown of Thorns, of course, and the crowning glory of the architect’s design. There are those who dislike it. No doubt you’ll have heard it called Paddy’s Wigwam. But that’s Protestants for you, always seeking to disparage.’

  Kate nodded and said goodbye to Father Dominic, who was watching them leave.

  ‘God bless you, my child,’ he said. ‘I will remember you in my prayers.’ Kate thought that sounded more like a threat than a promise, but she nodded and followed Father Reilly out of the door. He led the way to the cathedral itself, where he unlocked a door and took her up some steps leading to a viewing gallery that gave an extensive view of the building work.