Crime in the Convent

by Catherine Moloney

  ‘What’re we going to do about this lot down at the university, then?’ Noakes asked.

  ‘They’re calling themselves the League of Atheists, apparently.’

  Noakes snorted so hard, that some of his Coke went down the wrong way.

  ‘League of Atheists!’ he spluttered. ‘Jumped up little gits, more like. If they don’t believe in God, why can’t they just say so?’

  ‘They see themselves as a revolutionary movement,’ Markham commented patiently. ‘Activists against oppression by the religious establishment.’

  ‘Oh aye.’ Noakes scowled ferociously. ‘An’ what about the imams? Are these lefties targeting mosques as well? Or is it just our lot?’ He slammed down his can. ‘Look, Guv, ten to one it’s just some snowflakes who got skelped at school an’ need straightening out.’

  ‘There’s rather more to it than that, Noakes.’ Suddenly, the darkly handsome DI appeared much older than his thirtyfive years, the finely chiselled features somehow withered and haggard in the half-light of the office.

  ‘Have you heard of pro-choice, Sergeant?’

  Noakes scratched his frowsy head.

  ‘Is it something to do with the crazies who go around ranting about abortion an’ showing folk pictures of foetuses in jars?’ He shuddered. ‘Our Natalie said something about it when she was at Bromgrove Secondary. Part of their health and social development whatchamacallit. The missus was furious, said she’d have kept Nat off school that day if she’d known. Wrote to the head about it an’ all.’

  ‘You’re thinking about the pro-life lobby, Noakes. They’re the ones against abortion.’ A quiver passed over his face. ‘The pickled foetuses would be part of their propaganda kit all right.’

  Noakes looked at his boss attentively.

  ‘Pro-choice are the other side,’ Markham explained, ‘championing a woman’s right to choose abortion without any restriction.’

  ‘OK, but what’s it got to do with St Cecilia’s?’ The DS seemed none the wiser.

  ‘Well, the nuns started out as a teaching and nursing order. Nowadays most of them are retired or involved with pastoral outreach – working with the homeless, bereaved, drug addicts, students.’ It being apparent from the dour expression on Noakes’s face that he regarded the last two categories as practically synonymous, Markham hastily continued, ‘In the seventies and eighties, the order ran a care home in Bromgrove for unmarried mothers, encouraging women to keep their babies.’ He consulted the folder in front of him. ‘There was some involvement with the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children too.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’ Noakes clearly didn’t. ‘How does that make ’em bad people?’

  ‘It doesn’t.’ Markham felt a twinge of razor-sharp discomfort, as though the heat was an invisible needle digging into his skull. God, the sooner they got out of this airless torture chamber the better.

  ‘Abortion arouses strong passions,’ he said slowly. ‘The Catholic church has always been strongly anti-abortion, so nuns and priests make handy scapegoats for the rabble rousers.’

  Briefly, Noakes wondered where his boss stood on it all, but something about the set of Markham’s mouth warned him not to ask. He knew Olivia was some years older than the DI, but it didn’t appear children were on the cards. ‘Those scrawny career women don’t want to spoil their figures,’ sniffed Muriel a propos no-one in particular, but Noakes knew whom she meant. Somehow, he felt sure that Markham’s girlfriend wanted children but there was something in the way …

  With a jolt, he returned to the present and the DI’s hard stare.

  ‘Not nodding off on me are you, Sergeant?’

  ‘Just thinking, Guv.’ Noakes squinted across the desk. ‘Are we going to, er, lean on these students?’

  ‘I have a feeling the ring-leaders may hail from outside the university – professional agitators and the like. But yes, I think we need to pay a visit and get the lie of the land.’

  Markham’s headache was intensifying. He longed to sit on a sun-warmed seat, letting the summer soak into him like balm, instead of suffocating under paperwork and risk assessments.

  As though reading the DI’s mind, Noakes jerked a thumb at the folder.

  ‘The Super giving you grief about it, Guv?’

  Superintendent Bretherton – or ‘Mr Nicely-Nicely’ as he was more popularly known – plumed himself on “pro-active policing” when it came to harmonious community relations.

  ‘Well, the paperwork’s certainly piling up … and I have a nasty feeling there may be another angle to this.’

  Noakes waited expectantly.

  ‘I think there may be a connection with the St Columba abuse case.’

  ‘But that was yonks ago, Guv … in the seventies, wasn’t it?’ The DS frowned, then struck his forehead. ‘Hold on a minute … Didn’t that scuzzball Gavin Conors from The Gazette write summat about it – raking up the juicy tidbits, that kind of stuff?’

  ‘Yes, he did an exposé – or what passes for one at The Gazette – after it emerged there were some under the table pay-outs by the Catholic church a few years ago. All ex gratia – no admission that nuns or clergy had done anything wrong.’

  ‘Why would the church cough up unless…?’

  ‘To kill the rumours, Noakes. Make the embarrassment go away.’ The DI was trenchant, his expression tense. ‘Unfortunately, it made it look like St Cecilia’s had something to hide.’ His words dropped into the stillness of the office like stones. ‘Sister Felicity – she’s the one who’s counselling Olivia – and another nun were accused of ignoring systematic physical and sexual abuse.’

  ‘Were they wrong ’uns, then?’ The DS was typically blunt.

  ‘Difficult to say at such a distance of time.’ Markham rubbed his temples distractedly. ‘They were just young women, only recently qualified as nurses. They probably deferred to the Principal, Father Vincent O’Malley. He died before the scandal blew up.’

  ‘Did anyone end up doing time, Guv?’

  The DI breathed out slowly.

  ‘No.’

  Noakes kicked the leg of Markham’s desk by way of relief to his feelings.

  ‘Things would be done very differently now, Noakes. But back then … kids were regarded as unreliable witnesses … the lay staff all backed each other up … and it was a Catholic care home, so the bishop was pulling strings like billy-o.’ The DI’s fingers drummed an angry tattoo on the folder. ‘There was closure of a sort because the place was shut down, but nobody was formally called to account.’

  ‘D’you think someone’s out for revenge on St Cecilia’s, Guv?’

  ‘It’s a possibility. The convent’s had some poison pen stuff.’

  ‘Burn in hell, that kind of thing?’ Noakes enquired with lugubrious relish.

  ‘Pretty much,’ agreed Markham. ‘But the latest one stood out. He quoted from memory: ‘If you want to stay alive, then get out of Bromgrove, you evil bitches.’

  ‘Blimey!’

  Markham refrained from telling the DS about correspondence hinting at sexual shenanigans amongst the lecherous nuns and priests of St Cecilia’s order. The purple prose, with its strong overtones of The Thorn Birds, had been entirely predictable, even wringing a reluctant chuckle from him. But that last letter felt different, breathing such fierce hatred, that the very paper had seemed flammable in his hands. Frankly, it bothered him and he had learned the hard way not to ignore ‘copper’s hunch’.

  ‘What about the priests?’ Noakes enquired. ‘Have the fruitcakes threatened ’em too?’

  The DI was circumspect. ‘Not in so many words.’

  ‘That figures.’ Noakes nodded sagaciously.

  Markham raised his eyebrows interrogatively.

  ‘Well, with them being blokes, they can take care of themselves, but the nuns are a soft target.’

  Despite the sticky heat of the office, Markham felt a sudden chill run down his back.

  ‘Mind you,’ Noakes added, struck by a happy thought. ‘N
ow the monastery’s come into pots of money, they’ll see the nuns right.’

  ‘Pots of money … oh yes, Olivia mentioned something about that. The priest who’s just died left the monastery a fortune, didn’t he?’ Markham was ruminative. ‘But I imagine there’ll be probate and other formalities to attend to, so they won’t be able to splash the cash on renovations and security just yet…. In the meantime, we need to do a recce and arrange some interim precautions.’ He met Noakes’s eyes frankly. ‘They’re good people, these priests and nuns, Sergeant, but what you might call unworldly.’

  ‘Head in the clouds.’ Noakes diagnosed the deficiency. ‘An’ all that fancy dress. T’aint natural. Give me the C of E any day.’

  Oh God, once the old warhorse got going with the anti-Catholic bigotry, there’d be no stopping him.

  ‘We’ll call at the convent this afternoon, Noakes,’ the DI said briskly. ‘I’d like you to hunt up a DC, if there’s any to be found.’

  ‘How about Doyle, Guv?’

  ‘Excellent. By all accounts, he’s shaping up well since joining CID.’

  ‘Once I got his love life straightened out, it was plain sailing, Guv. Those dippy dolly birds were screwing with his head, but he’s going steady now with that nice lass in Traffic.’

  ‘Well, get onto it would you,’ Markham said hastily before the DS could supply further details of DC Doyle’s amatory tribulations. ‘If necessary, we can poach him from Vice.’

  ‘I’ll clear it with “Titchmarsh” Taylor.’

  Noakes lumbered to his feet, the circles under his armpits now two vast continents.

  Suddenly, the subject of their conversation put his head round the office door.

  DC Doyle showed no sign of wilting in the heat, despite ginger hair and pink and white complexion which made him the butt of much teasing. Markham was pleased to note the new air of confidence acquired since his promotion to CID. While not by any means a sharp dresser, he looked crisply business-like in an off-the-rack suit and tie. With his open, good-natured face and loose-limbed charm, he would smooth down any feathers ruffled by Noakes.

  ‘Sir, sorry to interrupt but there’s been a call from that convent around the corner from St Cecilia’s.’

  It was as if Markham had received an electric shock.

  ‘There’s a nun gone missing.’

  The DI was already on his feet. He and Noakes looked at each other, the same dark thought was in both their minds – the anonymous hate mailer had got there first.

  4

  The Fowler’s Snare

  COMING OUT OF THE station into the white glare of the day was like plunging into a fiery river through which they had to swim like mad to reach the underground car park on the other side of the station forecourt. The day’s heavy torpor somehow swaddled all sound, so that even the noise of traffic passing on Bromgrove High Street seemed to come from far away. And yet Markham felt hyper-aware, as though everything he saw was twice as bright and sharp.

  In no time at all, they were at the Convent of Bon Secours, driving up to the neat sandstone house which basked lazily in the hot August sunshine.

  Nothing could have appeared less sinister. And yet Markham was filled with a sense of foreboding as he looked up at the basrelief engraving ornamenting the pediment above the front door.

  The figure of St Michael the Archangel weighing souls against sin, a dragon writhing at his feet in a pit of fire.

  It felt like an omen.

  Mother Ursula bustled out to meet them, her plump comfortable features puckered with concern. She was accompanied by a thin sandy-haired nun with a cooped-up look and long supercilious teeth that gave her the air of a disdainful dowager. Introduced as the superior’s assistant Mother Clare, Markham decided that he didn’t much care for her.

  ‘It’s Sister Felicity,’ Mother Ursula panted. ‘She’s gone missing.’

  Markham felt a tightening under the ribs.

  Olivia’s friend.

  ‘When did you last see her, Mother?’ he gently asked the flustered superior.

  ‘At Compline in the chapel. That’s our night-time prayer at eight o’clock.’

  ‘Can you show us?’

  They followed the two nuns down highly polished wooden corridors to a modest little whitewashed room with two rows of pine choir stalls along either side and a row of upright red vinyl chairs in the middle. As in the corridors, the floor was of plain waxed wood, so highly polished it was like the surface of a mirror. A square alcove framed a modest altar of apricot-coloured marble behind which, high up on the wall, two narrow rectangular stained glass windows depicted haloed saints in glory, shafts of diamond dust swirling in the sunshine which streamed through the richly-coloured panes. A simple oak holy water stoup, tabernacle and lectern were the only other items of furniture.

  Not very fancy, thought Noakes, looking about surreptitiously for statues and holy pictures. RCs were supposed to be keen on smells and bells, but this was dead plain.

  As though reading his mind, Mother Ursula turned to the DS. ‘We try to avoid distractions in here,’ she said kindly, endeavouring even in the midst of her distress to put the big, shambling detective at ease.

  ‘And nothing out of the ordinary happened at Compline?’ Markham prompted.

  ‘No, nothing. We just said our usual prayers, asking the Lord to grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.’

  Mother Ursula’s face crumpled and she looked close to tears. ‘Then we went to our rooms,’ she said.

  ‘So, nobody saw her after that, luv … er, Mother?’ Noakes shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other.

  ‘No…. At the weekend, our timetable is more flexible and members of the community have time to themselves…. Some “me time”, you might call it.’ She forced a tremulous smile. ‘But Sister Felicity was due to see someone for counselling here at ten o’clock, only she didn’t turn up. That wasn’t like her – she’s very conscientious about her clients – so we checked her room.’ Mother Ursula’s voice was choked. ‘The bed hadn’t been slept in at all.’

  Markham ushered the distraught woman to a chair, and Mother Clare sat down next to the superior, patting her arm perfunctorily. DC Doyle slipped out of the chapel to fetch a glass of water.

  ‘Had anything happened in the last few days to upset Sister Felicity?’

  ‘Well, there was dear Father Thomas’s death last Saturday. They were great friends.’

  A tightening of Mother Clare’s lips suggested not everyone approved of this closeness between Sister Felicity and the priest.

  ‘But no true religious fears death,’ insisted Mother Ursula, ‘and she knew Father Thomas was ready to go. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” That’s what he told her.’

  ‘Did anything else happen?’ Noakes screwed his face up in search of inspiration. ‘Did she squabble with one of the other nuns, summat like that?’

  Mother Clare contemplated the DS with an expression of vinegary distaste.

  ‘That would be a sin against charity,’ she said icily. ‘Of course, out in the world …’ Meaningfully, she left the sentence unfinished.

  DC Doyle was back with the water. Gratefully, Mother Ursula smiled up at the tall, lanky figure and gulped it down.

  Something moved behind Mother Clare’s eyes as though in recollection.

  ‘Sister Felicity was … indisposed … when Father Calvert came on Thursday to talk about Father Thomas,’ she ventured.

  ‘But that was heartburn, wasn’t it?’ Mother Ursula sounded bewildered. ‘She explained afterwards, she thought it was indigestion from those tomatoes we had at lunch.’

  ‘That must have been it,’ the assistant concurred smoothly. ‘And of course, she was overcome when Father Calvert talked about Father Thomas’s generosity, leaving everything to the Order.’

  ‘Did Sister Felicity have any special visitors this last week?’ DC Doyle wondered. ‘I mean, if she was counselling people, then presumably some
of it was, well, upsetting or sensitive stuff.’

  Mother Ursula revolved the suggestion in her mind. ‘That’s possible, though clients’ sessions were absolutely confidential … Mother Clare can print you off a list.’

  ‘And Sister Felicity’s personal file …’ Markham had to ask.

  Mother Clare was aghast. ‘That’s confidential.’

  ‘I’m afraid nothing is confidential now,’ came the firm reply.

  ‘Of course, Inspector.’ Mother Ursula’s voice was faint. ‘You will have that too.’

  ‘Would you show us Sister Felicity’s room?’ To Markham, the chapel suddenly felt stifling, his lungs filled with the scent of incense, candles and faith. He could feel the edge in himself – the blood pounding in his ears, a humming in the teeth – and badly wanted to escape.

  The nuns escorted the three men to a small bedsitting room with an en suite on the first floor. It was bare to the point of austerity. Markham took a swift inventory of the bedroom: wooden floor, single bed with white counterpane, pine desk and chair, anglepoise reading lamp, dresser, bedside table, crucifix and two small icons on the cream-painted walls. The bathroom was equally utilitarian. He nodded to DC Doyle who, unobtrusively, began to check the contents of the dresser. Mother Clare swiftly averted her eyes.

  The DI opened the drawer of the bedside table and drew out a black leatherette Bible. The King James version, he noted approvingly.

  There was a tasselled bookmark between its pages. Withdrawing it, he noticed that a faint pencil line had been drawn next to a passage of text. Softly, he began to read, ‘“But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit, as a carcass trodden under feet.”’

  Despite the heat in the close, stuffy little room, he shivered.

  ‘It’s a prophet’s denunciation of the corrupt pagan king of Babylon,’ Mother Ursula explained. She looked puzzled. ‘Sister Felicity may have needed to check a reference … or she could have been using the passage for meditation.’