A Journal of Sin

by Darryl Donaghue

  ‘I know they say the world’s a smaller place, it’s so easy to communicate, but the old-fashioned ways of keeping in…touch are still the best.’ His whole body tensed with a nervous pleasure as she nibbled his ear again. ‘Back in a minute, hon.’ She picked up her bag and walked to the ladies. Looked like his luck was in.

  ‘One more for the road,’ he said, with a little ‘I’m gonna get some’ swagger in his voice.

  ‘I’m afraid that was your last, mate.’

  ‘Pubs used to be fun. This is no fun. I’ll be drinking at home from now on like I used to,’ he replied, his chin on the bar, looking up at the landlord through his glass. ‘You been here long?’

  ‘A little while.’

  ‘You must hear a lot of talk from behind that bar. A lot of interesting conversations?’

  ‘People here like to keep to themselves. They come in, they eat, they drink, and that’s about it. I don’t need to know any more than that.’

  ‘I don’t believe that for a second. People around here never shut up.’

  ‘Nothing I pay attention to.’

  ‘What do you think about the missing priest?’ He slid his glass over the bar. It stopped just short of toppling onto the floor.

  ‘He’ll turn up.’ The landlord picked up the coasters and mopped up the wet patches on the bar with a cloth. ‘Everyone’s praying for him.’

  ‘Not everyone.’ The barman stopped and looked at him. ‘There’s at least one person who isn’t.’

  ‘Look, it’s time to go, we’re closing up.’

  ‘Closing? No one’s coming to check. You can stay open all night if you wanted,’ said John, standing up and stumbling one way, then the other, before steadying himself on the stool and then the bar.

  Suzanne rejoined him, shrugged on her leather jacket and hooked his arm with hers. ‘Steady there, let’s get you home. Don’t forget your wallet,’ she said, picking it up from the bar and putting it in her handbag.

  Sarah stood outside the gate. The front room light was on and she saw Amy and Steve through the window. The sooner she spoke to her the better; the closer to the incident, the better the witness recall. The passing of time influences a witness’s memory; some things get forgotten, others are added. Amy had had time to rest and now was the best time to do it. She’d hesitated outside for a while. She held the gate’s cold, metal handle for the third time. This wasn’t like visiting Sean. Father Michael had been missing then and she knew Sean needed to be asked clear questions about his actions that morning. This was now a murder investigation. Teams of detectives should be swarming Sunbury by now and taking on these tasks. Amy was a key witness and some would say the person who finds the body is the also the first suspect. Sarah’d had some basic witness-interview training, but wasn’t anywhere near the standard required for something like this. The hope that Father Michael would return safely was gone. He was dead and she stood, shit-scared, at the end of a front path about to conduct her first interview in a murder enquiry. She opened the gate and knocked on the door.

  Amy’s lounge was impeccable. Sarah sat down on the plush brown sofa and gratefully accepted a large mug of much needed tea. It was just the way she liked it, with only a dash of milk, albeit long-life, and no sugar, made so perfectly she wondered if Amy had a copper in the family. The walls were covered in professional photo collages of her and her husband, Steve. Some from their wedding day, others taken on the beach with two little dachshunds and a few were posed studio sets. Steve met Sarah at the door. She asked him to wait upstairs, as speaking to Amy in private was the best chance of getting the most information. He reluctantly agreed, leaving the two of them alone in the lounge. Amy hadn’t slept and it showed. Her hands shook at the thought of reliving traumatic events and facing a police officer’s probing questions.

  ‘Amy, try to relax as much as possible. I know this is difficult. You’ve seen something very harrowing, something no one should ever have to see.’ Sarah leant forward on the sofa and placed her tea on the table between them. ‘As difficult as it is, I need you to tell me in as much detail as possible what happened tonight. I’m going to be making a note of the things we talk about, okay, but don’t worry about that. It’s only so I know I’ve got all the information I need. If I need you to slow down, I’ll let you know.’ She felt sorry for Amy. She needed support, comfort, all the services normally afforded to significant witnesses, but those were a long way away right now. Sarah was playing the role of investigator, witness care officer and the friend she’d be confiding in were she not sworn to secrecy.

  ‘Where should I start?’ Amy trembled, clutching her clammy palms together. She leant forward, and then back, curled her feet underneath her on the sofa, switching sides from time to time.

  ‘Let’s start with when you left the house.’ The parameters could be expanded if needed. She’d watched ABE interviews with significant and vulnerable witnesses; she hadn’t conducted any herself. For now, she had to get a detailed Q and A and collect as much initial information as possible. Deciding where to take a witness back to was a matter of opinion amongst her colleagues. Some began with getting up in the morning and going through the whole day; others preferred to go straight to crucial details and work backwards. Different witnesses responded to different methods. Sarah’s best guess was between the two and, certainly in this case, she thought easing Amy into the recall was better than taking her straight back to the distressing moment of finding Father Michael in the woods. Amy hadn’t seen the most disturbing injuries, the torn testicles and ruptured penis, an image that flashed in Sarah’s mind as she tried to concentrate on the interview.

  ‘I had both the dogs on leads. They hadn’t got much exercise during the storm, so I’ve walked them a lot since. I got to the paths. They looked clear so I let the dogs run.’ She rocked on the sofa, clasping her hand over her mouth as tears filled her eyes.

  ‘Take your time. Take as long as you need.’ Sarah wrote everything verbatim in her notebook. Slowing down benefitted them both.

  ‘I let the dogs off their leads. Jessie started barking. She stood dead still and kept on barking. It was more of a yelp, I suppose. It didn’t sound like her, the usual noises she’d make. Sorry, I’m rambling.’

  ‘It’s fine. The more detail, the better.’

  ‘I walked past her, thinking she’d just run along behind me. Arthur was by my side, not making a sound. Then, Jessie darted into the woods. I almost lost sight of her. Her yelps were getting further and further away. I ran into the woods. I caught up.’ Her mug shook in her hands.

  ‘Let’s slow down and really concentrate. Take yourself back to the moment you stepped off the path and followed Jessie into the woods. Try and recall the situation through all of your senses and tell me what you heard, what you smelt and, most importantly, what you saw.’ The recall techniques made her feel like a stage hypnotist bumbling through her first performance. There was no doubting they worked when wielded by an experienced detective, something she was far from being. It could take hours for a highly experienced officer to get a few simple sentences out of a distressed witness. Thankfully, Amy was talking.

  ‘I saw a hand first. Just a hand, poking out from the mud. I looked twice, then stared. You know when you can’t really understand what you’re seeing? You look at something a little longer, as if you’re waiting for your mind to make sense of it? Jessie stood still about a metre in front of it. She stopped barking. I saw his face. Through the mud, I saw his face.’ She wept. ‘Who could do that to someone?’

  ‘That’s what I’ll be finding out. Everything you’re telling me is going to help me do that.’

  ‘I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to leave, but didn’t want to leave him just lying there. I felt like I was the one leaving him to die. His eyes looked so alive.’

  ‘Was there anything unusual near him?’

  She took a moment to calm down. The question brought her back into the room. ‘What do you mean?’

  �
��Anything that looked out of place in the woods?’

  ‘No. I don’t know. I was fixated on him, I don’t remember anything else.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I picked Jessie up and came back home.’ Sarah finished her notes. Amy had given a comprehensive account which tied in with the state she’d seen the body in herself, suggesting no one had tampered with it since it’d been discovered. She went through the route and timings again in more detail.

  ‘I’ll just give you a moment. There isn’t much more to go through.’ Sarah calmed her down, made her a cup of tea and gave her some time to herself.

  Steve was upstairs, sat on the edge of the bed. ‘How is she?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s doing well, considering what she’s seen. It’ll take a while to fully come to terms with it, but she seems the strong type. Sorry for being here so late, it’s best to have these interviews as close to the event as possible.’

  ‘It’s okay, we understand. Who could have done something like this?’

  ‘At this stage, there are a few lines of enquiry I’m following. Now it’s more sinister than we first thought, I’m going to try to get a message out to my colleagues so they can send some support out here,’ she said, conscious that the chances of that happening were very slim. ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘We’re Catholic. We go to church every Sunday and confession now and again, so saw him then. Other than that, we’d see him walking around from time to time. He was always on the go for an old fella.’ Steve took off his glasses and rubbed them with a small cloth. ‘Lovely fella. Always friendly, he’d always wave when you saw him. This whole village used to be like that; it’s not like that anymore. It gets more impersonal every year and now this. A murder.’

  ‘Did he ever wear long black vestments?’

  ‘The cassock? No, it’s not often worn over here. He’d have one I imagine, but I certainly never saw him in it.’

  ‘I’m going to have a meeting at the church hall in the next day or so to announce the tragic news. I know it’s difficult, but you have to promise me not to mention this to anyone in the meantime.’

  ‘I won’t. I think we’re going to do our best to forget about it. If that’s possible.’

  ‘Did he have any enemies? Anyone he’d crossed in any way?’

  ‘No, no, I can’t think of any at all. He was a sweet, kind man. He’d lived here for years. Probably known three generations of most of the families in some form or another. He seemed a lot quieter in the past few months. Now that I think about it, I saw him less and less towards the end of last year.’

  ‘Know of any reason for that? Was he ill? Avoiding anyone?’

  ‘He was getting on, so maybe had less energy and the aches and pains we all start complaining about around that age. Aside from that, nothing comes to mind.’

  ‘Was he outspoken on any particular issues?’

  Steve thought for a moment. ‘He didn’t like infidelity. A lot of his sermons were around the sanctity of the family and the importance of raising children in a loving home. A loving two-parent home. I wouldn’t say he was outspoken on it, but it was a recurring theme with him, something I’d say he was passionate about.’

  ‘Thanks for your patience, Steve. I think Amy would like a hug.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Sarah followed him downstairs and waited in the corridor to give them some time alone. After a few minutes, she cleared up her final questions regarding what Amy did after finding the body. She’d come home, told Steve and, once she’d recovered enough to fully talk about it, they drove over to let Sarah know. They hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else and assured her they had no intention of doing so. She updated her notes, finished her tea and left.

  The night had a chill, moist wind and, in her first moment of peace, Sarah realised just how shattered she was. The bloodied testicles flashed into her mind. Amy hadn’t seen the full severity of the injuries; it would be a secret known only to Sarah and his killer. Who was capable of doing such a thing to a man of the cloth? She walked on cobbled streets and past cottages with an endearing quaint charm, under street lamps of nostalgic beauty and beneath the moon of a starry countryside night. One of these idyllic homes housed a killer. A killer with no qualms about skewering a much loved community patron through the penis. The thought of a vigilante attack crossed her mind. Sex crimes by the clergy had hit the headlines again. She couldn’t rule it out and it would explain why the killer had chosen to inflict such brutal injuries. She wondered if a motive lay scribbled on the pages of the deceased’s journals.

  She had to tell people it was a murder investigation and she couldn’t afford Amy or Steve, despite their promises, letting on before she had a chance to announce it. She thumbed through her notes, hoping she hadn’t forgotten to ask anything. She looked at her watch: 03:00. The body needed to be moved, something she couldn’t do alone. As much as she didn’t want to, there was only one person she knew well enough to ask for help. Whether he agreed or not was another question. There was one thing she did know for certain; she was now in way over her head.

  FOUR

  He wasn’t answering the door. Six o’clock was an early start for anyone, but the later she left it, the more chance there was of being spotted. It felt as if she’d hit the pillow, blinked, and was back on her feet. Sarah looked through the windows for signs of life. Nothing. Nothing around the back of the house either. She threw clumps of mud at the upper rear windows in the hope one of them was his bedroom. No luck. Shouting through the letterbox would only draw unnecessary attention but just as she came around to the idea, he came running along the road. He looked sheepish and wasn’t dressed for exercise.

  ‘Sorry, I was out,’ he said, reaching into his pocket.

  ‘I take it you weren’t just out for a jog?’ He hurried the key into the lock.

  ‘No, I erm … stayed out.’ She didn’t want to pry. Well, she did want to pry, but she was here to ask a very serious and very generous favour; gossip would have to wait.

  John’s house was a mess. Piles of magazines lined the hallway, clothes were all over the floor and the sofa, microwave meal boxes littered the sideboard and unwashed crockery covered the coffee table. He ushered her into the lounge while he went to boil some water on the hob. She didn’t touch anything and didn’t particularly want to sit down either, for fear she might stick to the sofa. A huge television sat in one corner of the room, far bigger than the modest lounge required, with some gaming consoles on a stand beneath it. That, and the deep comfort groove in the sofa, told her this was the place he spent most of his time, and, from the three empty whiskey bottles on the floor, she took a guess at what he spent most of his time doing. Amongst the plastic trays on the side table was a photograph of John with a blonde woman. She recognised Brighton Pier in the background from her day trips as a child. John looked younger and healthier, his face fuller, and he stood up straight, with a confidence he’d lost since the image was captured.

  ‘That’s Jenny,’ he said, handing her a cup of tea.

  ‘It’s a nice shot.’

  ‘Thanks. So, it’s a little early. What brings you over here?’

  ‘Let’s sit down.’ He sat in his comfort groove and she found a clean perch on the arm of the sofa opposite. ‘He’s been found, John. I’m sorry to tell you that Father Michael has been murdered.’ She’d given death messages before. The job was often passed down to younger officers, partly for their own experience and partly because no one else wanted to do it. Everyone reacted differently. She’d had everything from being hugged and cooked for whilst chatting about the deceased, to being assaulted and blamed for their passing. John sat perfectly still and stared straight ahead.

  ‘I knew there’d be bad news. Everyone did. But murdered? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. There’s no doubt.’

  ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘He was found by someone walking their dog in the woods. I’ll tell you what I can. He’d b
een stabbed.’ Delivering that kind of information straight up was the best in a long list of bad methods.

  ‘My God. Who. Who could have? Do you know any more?’

  ‘There’s not much more to say.’ It’d all come out at some point. Full disclosure would take place as part of any trial, and the press were always poised to pour confidential details onto the front pages. ‘Did he have any family here? I need to tell his next of kin as soon as possible.’

  ‘I don’t think he does, but can’t be sure.’

  ‘Ok. There’s another thing. Two other things, really. Were there ever any rumours about him committing any sexual offences?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard. Why’d you ask?’

  ‘It’s a consideration given his vocation.’ Revealing the extent of the injuries would only lead to speculation and panic, something she’d have a hard enough time managing as it was.

  ‘Not all priests are paedophiles, you know. I know it’s come up again, but it’s a small minority, if any at all.’

  ‘I know. I understand that, but not everyone does. Sometimes when a group gets labelled their members are targeted as a whole. A paedophile priest becomes all priests; a cheating ex becomes all women; a racist cop becomes all cops. Applying the label prevents critical thought: all of those people are the same, what did you expect? At worst, it leads to murder. Misogynists murdering women; people killing each other over race. I’m keeping an open mind about everything and this could be a vigilante attack on a priest.’

  ‘Surely you can check that out on your police computer?’

  ‘It’d be on there if someone reported it. Trouble is, I can’t access anything from here until the power is up and running again.’

  ‘Be careful who you ask that question. They were fond of him around here; you’ll cause a riot suggesting that kind of thing.’