He could put it off no longer. Gently, Markham told his girlfriend about the discovery of Nicholas Saddington’s body.
‘So, someone deliberately trapped him in the sarcophagus while he was still alive?’ The grey-green eyes were wide with horror and every vestige of colour had disappeared from her face.
‘It looks that way. Unofficial word from the pathologist is that he had a heart attack and died from shock.’ He reached down and caressed the tumbling red hair. ‘So, it would all have been over quite quickly.’
No need to tell her about those torn and bleeding fingernails. Looking at the sweet face, he couldn’t bear to open the lid of the Pandora’s box of secrets.
‘D’you think this is connected to Sister Felicity?’
Olivia’s voice was a mere thread.
‘I don’t think it’s mere coincidence.’ Markham stood up abruptly. The lamps were lit, but the uncurtained windows seemed to reflect the room mockingly. ‘I think the same person killed them both.’
He turned back to her.
‘We had a couple of students at the station. Leo Wolfitt and Ted Kelleher.’ Despite his efforts to keep the words emotionless, they sounded like a challenge.
Olivia seemed to shrink a little into herself.
Finally, ‘They’re good workers, both of them,’ she said faintly.
‘They certainly don’t suffer from low self-esteem.’ It was like the cut of a lash, and Olivia recoiled still further.
Damn, he hadn’t meant to sound so sharp, but there was something about Wolfitt, in particular, that left a bad taste. And not just the covetous way he looked at Olivia.
‘We’re checking to see if there’s a link to Sister Felicity. With their twisted mindset, anything’s possible.’
Now why had he said that? With self-disgust, Markham realized he wanted to hurl these poisoned barbs, wanted to get the subject of Wolfitt out into the open, wanted to find out if he’d made a pass.
Olivia, sensitively responsive as a piece of the finest crystal, looked at her lover in dismay. With a sinking of his heart, Markham saw her colour up as though she had drunk a great draught of scorn.
‘I’m going to bed,’ she said quietly, the quick rising light and fire the only outward sign of her resentment.
And with that she left him to thoughts that were none of the pleasantest.
On the other side of Bromgrove, after the day’s police activity, St Cecilia’s Church was finally quiet save for the murmured voices of the community reciting the office of Vespers.
This is the end of those who boast.
Like sheep they go down into the underworld, and death is their shepherd.
8
Seeds of Discord
RAIN WAS FALLING, SOFT and steady, as ‘Batty’ McDermott turned into the forecourt of St Cecilia’s early on Wednesday morning.
For a moment, he stood looking at the community cemetery, boggy with pools of muddy water, almost as though to slake the thirst of those waiting under the simple white crosses for the Second Coming.
Batty might be homeless but he had his standards, priding himself that he never touched liquor on church premises, as though this would be some kind of blasphemy. Suddenly drymouthed, he checked the pocket of his shabby dungaree trousers for the half-full bottle of whisky before wistfully withdrawing his hand. He’d hold out for a cuppa, he told himself virtuously.
Parking his battered tartan shopping trolley, festooned with carrier bags, in the vestibule, Batty respectfully removed his grungy cap (as though he could hear his old sergeant bellowing, ’Tek off your caps ’n’ belts going in the ’ouse of Gawd’). Then he shuffled into the church before sinking with relief into a pew at the very back on the left of the nave.
He liked St Cecilia’s. Father Hassett never badgered him to clean himself up or nagged him about finding a roof over his head. The priests seemed to understand that individuals of the more independent kind didn’t want to be tied down. Sometimes, they invited him in for a plate of dinner and gave him items they thought might come in handy on his travels. Father Calvert had even presented him with a little medal of Saint Gerard Majella who was supposed to keep an eye out for folk down on their luck or ‘gentlemen of the road’. Yes, all in all, he enjoyed dropping by the monastery. Who knows, there might even be a bacon butty going. The old man’s stomach gave an anticipatory rumble at the thought.
But for now, it just felt good to take a load off, safe from being ‘moved on’, his oversized tweed coat and dilapidated George boots gently steaming in the drowsy stillness. Suddenly, a shaft of sunlight poured through the stained glass windows above the high altar, sending rainbows dancing about the nave in a multicoloured carousel.
Batty’s eyes felt heavier and heavier.
There was no harm in having forty winks. And then he’d try his luck with Brother Malachy. He did the tastiest doorstops of all …
Batty was woken by the sound of voices floating into the church through the open window above the high altar. He knew this was where the priests prayed together by themselves, their responses rising and falling like a lullaby.
But these voices were angry. Disorientated from his slumbers, he caught snatches of accusatory dialogue, distorted as though reverberating in an echo chamber.
Then a name he recognized made Batty sit up straighter.
Sister Felicity.
The nun who’d died.
His rheumy eyes filled with tears.
He had been very sorry to hear about that. Like the priests, she was always kind and looked the other way if ever she saw him coming out of the outhouse round the back of the convent.
Sister Felicity.
Her name again. He strained his ears to the utmost, but couldn’t make sense of it, the words interweaving and blending in a dizzying antiphonal.
‘… damned forever for that … no other way … the greater good … sin begets sin … secret … who else might she have told … in too far now … murder … God forgive me …’
Looking up in the direction of the sound, Batty saw dark shapes flitting across the domed rafters like great bats. The sun had gone in while he was sleeping, the dancing rainbows ambushed by spectral shadows.
And then it was over. The cacophony fell silent, replaced by an eerie calm.
Batty shifted uncomfortably in his pew.
Slowly, he fumbled for the whisky bottle, as though fearful that he had taken a swig unawares.
The bottle was still half-full, so it couldn’t be that.
He peered apprehensively around the church, but there was no-one else there. The stained glass saints gazed down with their usual remote indifference. Nothing to see here, move along.
Maybe this was it. The DTs or whatever they called them. Maybe he was going up the spout – imagining things, hearing voices…. Better not tell anyone, or he’d end up in the loony bin.
On the other hand, he needed to get it off his chest.
Glancing across the nave to the south aisle, the tramp’s gaze fell on a plaster statue situated discreetly in a niche to the right of the confessional boxes.
A young man wearing a neck to ankle black cassock with white collar and rosary beads hanging from his waist. Clasping a crucifix, he stared soulfully into the distance as if hearing voices of his own.
Saint Gerard Majella.
Batty looked hopefully at the statue as though for inspiration.
Then it came to him.
He’d speak to a priest. But not one of the St Cecilia’s lot, he told himself cautiously, else he might cause offence and queer his pitch. The priests were great altogether and never gave him any grief, but talk of murder … well, that was something else entirely. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, his mate Paddy always said.
After all, he couldn’t even be sure if the voices he’d heard were male or female. And he had been eavesdropping…. It would be just like him to have got it all wrong.
P’raps it was someone who didn’t want to go to confession in the regu
lar way, herded down in the church with everyone knowing your business. P’raps whoever it was up there just wanted to offload … bad thoughts, stuff like that.
And yet … Sister Felicity was mixed up in it somehow.
Batty felt he was getting in a bit deep, but then his gaze wandered back to the statue and he brightened.
If he told another priest, they would know what to do. And they’d have to keep him out of it. Batty hadn’t been to confession for about twenty years, but he knew priests weren’t supposed to name names.
He tapped the side of his red-veined nose, delighted at his own sagacity.
Now he was getting somewhere.
He would try the proddie church St Peter and St Paul over behind Denefield Park next to the new Asda. Batty was a Catholic himself and the church was very different from St Cecilia’s – no frills and fancies, just a place to pray from the Bible and sing, from all he could make out. Still, a priest was a priest when all was said and done.
Mr Crane the vicar always seemed in a hurry. Mrs Crane had a booming sort of voice which hurt Batty’s ears and made him think of Social Services. They might think he’d been on the sauce or making it up or something. But there was a new curate with an easy-going way about him … always made Batty a cuppa when he called at the back door of the vicarage. Nice young fella. Now, what was his name? Light something or other….
Lightwood, that was it.
Well, he’d tell Mr Lightwood about it. That would get him off the hook.
Batty ducked his head to the statue of St Gerard in a comical quasi-salute, as though to thank his heavenly benefactor for coming up trumps. Then he heaved himself to his feet, genuflected unsteadily to the altar – nearly toppling over in the process – and shambled back to his possessions in the porch.
Opening the door, he saw that it had started to rain again, glittering sheets advancing across the forecourt in filmy squadrons.
Sunshine and showers. All seasons were alike to the tramp.
Time to see if he could cadge breakfast in the monastery. And maybe a smoke too.
With the odd tortoise-gait peculiar to his wayfaring life out in all weathers, Batty headed for the house next door.
He did not hear a desperate murmur from behind him in the church’s depths, the words wrung from someone’s very soul. The Latin would have meant nothing to him if he had.
‘Crux sancta sit mihi lux. Non draco sit mihi dux.’
Let the Holy Cross be my light, Let not the dragon be my guide.
Summer had turned wild and robust, Markham thought wonderingly as he stood at the window of his poky cubicle in CID, watching as rain lashed down and grey-white clouds scudded in urgent squalls across the sky. The leylandii which screened the station from Bromgrove High Street cringed and swelled then cringed again, their foliage intermittently stirred into wild bursts of applause before subsiding into an uneasy calm.
With the arrival of cooler air, the DI felt a surge of new energy. In the outer office computers were hooked up, blackboards and foolscap attached to easels ready for witness lists and movement charts. For evidence logs and clues. Out of that pattern, he knew, a murderer would one day walk. And Markham would be waiting.
That afternoon, he and Noakes planned to attend Father Thomas’s obsequies at St Cecilia’s. In due course, there would be funerals for Sister Felicity and Nicholas Saddington. Suddenly, Markham’s fleeting euphoria evaporated. Wasn’t this the story of his whole career in CID? Replacing one ghost with a fresher one? Trying to outpace his memories?
Impatiently, he turned his thoughts back to the investigation, trying to recapture the earlier momentum.
Whoever killed Sister Felicity and Nicholas Saddington had forfeited that ‘peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience’. But murder was plotted by human cunning, and such cunning could justify anything.
Even a third murder.
These reflections were interrupted by the arrival of Noakes, fresh from his first assignment, an interview with Sister Lucy at Talk Bromgrove, part of the town’s NHS Foundation Trust. A qualified nurse with diplomas in mental health care, she had worked there as a psychological wellbeing practitioner for the past nine years.
The DS had clearly given some thought to the question of suitable attire for a clerical funeral, since his clothes for the day – most un-Noakes like – came perilously close to forming an almost respectable ensemble: olive cavalry twill trousers, checked shirt, subdued Rotary tie and lightweight hacking jacket, all minus the usual adornment of decaying food.
Markham’s lips twitched. ‘Congratulations, Sergeant. You look eminently … appropriate for a funeral.’
‘The missus said I wasn’t to disgrace her,’ the other growled. ‘What with her and the Women’s Guild going to be there.’ For all his mutinous expression, Markham knew that Noakes was privately very proud of his bossy wife’s standing in their little community. His sartorial efforts were certainly a vast improvement on recent days when he had looked more like a demented gondolier than the number two detective in a high-profile murder investigation.
Noakes hadn’t wanted to interview Sister Lucy.
‘D’you think we’ll get any more out of her, Guv?’ he had grouched the previous evening when Markham dished out the team’s tasks. ‘I mean, she looked a few sandwiches short of a picnic when we spoke to ’em all in the parish centre.’
‘She’ll be in her natural habitat down at Talk Bromgrove, Noakes, so hopefully more relaxed.’
‘Habit-at. Geddit.’ The DS guffawed. ‘You’ll be slaying ’em in the aisles tomorrow, Guv.’
‘Hardly, since it’s a funeral, remember.’
Now Noakes was trying to locate his dog-eared notebook (purely a matter of form given his indecipherable scrawl) while simultaneously battling the plastic wrapping on a tomato baguette.
‘D’you fancy some of this, Guv? They’ve got a halfway decent canteen down at Sister Lucy’s gaff.’ Flushed with victory, he waved the anaemic looking item in Markham’s direction.
The DI repressed a shudder.
‘No, you’re all right, Noakesy. Don’t mind me.’ As if he needed to say it.
The DS cheerfully proceeded to chow down. It’d be a while till eats after the funeral, so might as well get some fuel on board.
Markham, meanwhile, fastidiously sipped his own lukewarm coffee.
‘You were right about her being more relaxed, Guv.’ Noakes had got his second wind. ‘It was pretty cosy – beanbags, squashy sofas an’ what have you … heck of a lot cheerier than the convent any road.’
Personally, Markham knew which he preferred.
‘Sister Lucy looks as though butter wouldn’t melt, but I reckon she enjoyed having a rant about Mother Clare an’ all. Sounds a right old witch, that one.’
‘A clash of old and new outlooks,’ Markham suggested.
‘Yeah, summat like that. Sister Felicity and Mother Clare didn’t agree about lots of stuff … women priests …’ Noakes was rather vague at this point, but then picked himself up. ‘They jus’ didn’t like each other,’ he added, shaking his head sadly at the degeneracy of womankind.
The DI nodded encouragingly.
‘That’s what happens when you put a load of females together. Not natural. Just cos they’re stuck in that convent doesn’t mean they’re going to be all holy. Some of ’em are quite scary ackshually. That Mother Gregory’s huge.’ He consulted his squiggles. ‘An’ Mother Ursula can’t have been too happy neither, cos it turns out Sister Felicity was thinking about giving up being a nun.’
‘Ah, another piece of the puzzle. Of course, we only have Sister Lucy’s word for it.’
Markham hated the thought of returning to the convent with an agenda to ferret out and unfurl twisted feelings like so much emotional origami. But it would have to be done. Maybe if he went back there, something would jump out at him. Some connection that he was missing.
‘An’ there was no love lost between the nuns and Saddington,�
� Noakes rumbled with his mouth full. ‘What with Sister Felicity telling his missus to go ahead an’ have the disabled kid. Sounded like he managed to offend everyone from Mother Ursula down to the handyman—’
‘Handyman?’
‘Jack Griffiths. Sound bloke. Champion darts player too.’ Noakes made it sound like a guarantee of moral probity.
‘But we’re no nearer seeing how the murders fit together…. Sister Felicity and Saddington.’ Markham crumpled his paper cup and chucked it into the wastepaper with unnecessary violence. ‘OK, we know from Sister Lucy there was all this negative energy swirling around, but it takes us no closer to finding the killer.’
‘Don’t forget St Columba’s, Guv. Could be something there.’ Back to the hieroglyphics. ‘Sister Lucy said it turned out one of the families was living right here in Bromgrove on the Hoxton. Name of Phillips. Finding that out gave her and Sister Felicity the heebie-jeebies big time.’
The Hoxton. Bromgrove’s notorious sink estate. Popularly known as Scrote Central.
‘That’ll have to be checked out along with last known movements for the other relatives. For all we know, the answer’s buried somewhere in Central Records. I’ll get Doyle onto computer checks.’
The DI knew his sergeant’s attitude towards automation was highly ambivalent, and that he looked upon modern technology as having been invented to make lying easier. Better to put Doyle on data.
Noakes broke into a sly grin. ‘There was a big debate on abortion down at the uni a month back. Students Union gig or summat. Sister Felicity was one of the speakers. Wiped the floor with those two smart alecs we saw the other day.’
That was an interesting piece of information, Markham thought, imagining with some relish how Leo Wolfitt must have hated being trounced by a nun of all people. A nun!
Then, with a sinking heart, he remembered Olivia and the way she had looked at him the other night when he had let his jealousy show.
Disappointed in him. Hurt by his distrust.
Falling in love with her had filled empty places that he never knew were empty, had salved a lifetime’s loneliness, had given him freedom from the ghosts of his abused childhood.
Crime in the Convent Page 11
