Dead Man's Prayer

by Jackie Baldwin

  After a few minutes he felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle a warning. He spun round. DSup Walker was standing with his back against the closed door. The expression on his blowsy face was even more ugly than usual.

  ‘Sir?’ Farrell asked, careful not to rile the man.

  Walker approached slowly. Farrell resisted the impulse to back away from him and stood his ground. Everything in the older man’s stance was suggestive of barely contained aggression. When he stopped he was so close Farrell could see the broken veins on his nose and smell last night’s whisky on his breath.

  ‘I knew you were trouble as soon as you walked in the door,’ Walker hissed.

  ‘Sir?’ said Farrell.

  ‘Everything was chugging along nicely; the odd domestic murder every couple of years, just to spice things up a little, give us some respect. Then you show up. All of a sudden everything’s gone to Hell.’

  ‘That’s hardly my fault, Sir,’ protested Farrell.

  ‘Think about it,’ Walker continued relentlessly. ‘You’re a Catholic priest with a history of dodgy past shenanigans, like exorcisms. All of a sudden we’ve got a murdered priest, a little boy turning up in a church, and another one missing. I’m telling you I don’t like it. Something smells bad and I’m hoping it’s not you, Farrell. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Abundantly, Sir,’ snapped Farrell, seriously riled himself now.

  ‘Word is we’ve got all the national press on the way. I don’t need to tell you that the police usually get a rough deal from these bastards. I want the investigations wrapped up and someone in the frame pronto.’

  ‘Anyone particular spring to mind, Sir,’ asked Farrell.

  ‘I’ll be watching you, Farrell, make no mistake about it. And if I need to hang out anyone’s arse to dry …’

  ‘I’m guessing that would be mine, Sir.’

  ‘Now we understand each other,’ said Walker, and stomped heavily off.

  ‘Always a pleasure,’ muttered Farrell after his departing back.

  After work, Farrell forced himself to go along to Wetherspoons for a quick drink with Sergeants Byers and Stirling and a bunch of others, detectives and civilians alike. He’d never been into the ritualistic piss up but politics dictated he fake it now and then. Recent events had been harrowing for everyone and he reckoned they all needed to blow off steam. As he looked around the cavernous interior of the pub he couldn’t help but marvel. Last time he’d lived in the town it had been a hollowed out ruin of an old church; the remaining fluted columns a defiant last stand against secular indifference.

  Just then, Farrell’s eyes were drawn across the crowded bar. Mhairi was with a young man who looked somewhat the worse for wear and was trying to get a little too friendly.

  Byers nudged Stirling.

  ‘Well if it isn’t the tart with a heart,’ he sneered.

  ‘Don’t talk about the lass like that,’ admonished Stirling.

  ‘Look at her! She’s asking for it, isn’t she?’ continued Byers, undaunted.

  Farrell turned on Byers, causing him to take a step backwards in surprise.

  ‘Watch your mouth, Byers,’ he snapped. DC McLeod is part of this team and I won’t have her spoken about like that.’

  Byers glared at him but said nothing further.

  There was an awkward silence. Farrell tossed three tenners on the bar top.

  ‘Have a round on me.’

  As he was turning to leave he glanced over again at DC McLeod and their eyes locked. She flushed and turned away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Mhairi didn’t know what to expect as she entered St Aidan’s alongside Farrell on the morning of the funeral. Awkwardly she copied Farrell as he genuflected while making the sign of the cross. She had never been to a Requiem Mass before and felt the sombre atmosphere permeate her bones as she sat down. Stealing a sideways glance at her boss, she saw that he was chalk white. His eyes were downcast and he appeared to be praying. Crikey, looked like the observations were down to her. As subtly as she could manage she slowly glanced around, seeing members of the team in all directions. They had paired into couples to draw less attention and drafted some uniforms in as well. She saw Byers lean towards a female constable, no doubt intending to make some wisecrack, and saw him quelled with a look. The church was absolutely mobbed and everyone was dressed in black and sat with heads bowed, or whispering quietly to each other.

  The ornate coffin was at the top of the centre aisle, close to the altar, with one large wreath of lilies on top of it discharging their intense sweet scent into the mourners. The sight of it made Mhairi shudder. Ever since she had read The Ka of Gifford Hillary by Dennis Wheatley at the age of twelve she had been terrified of being buried alive. Not much chance of that in this case.

  Suddenly the organ struck up and with a collective rustle everyone stood and began to sing ‘Amazing Grace’. To her horror, Mhairi felt the first pricking of inappropriate tears. She hadn’t thought it would happen here because she was on the job but it seemed to make no difference. Every time she was at any event with stirring music she could not stop herself blubbing. Oh no, this was bad, very bad. She would be a laughing stock if anyone clocked her. By the time the last strains of the music had faded away her face was drenched with tears and snot. As they sat down she felt an ironed handkerchief being pressed into her hand by Farrell and surreptitiously repaired the damage.

  She noticed an elderly woman, who she took to be Boyd’s sister, sitting at the front with her head tilted back as though she had a bad smell under her nose. With a jolt she also recognized Elspeth and Barry sitting with little Jamie off to one side, near the rear door.

  The Mass was being conducted by an elderly priest. Father Malone was assisting. Proceedings seemed to go on forever with the congregation kneeling, standing, and sitting in patterns Mhairi could not anticipate. As the priests circled the coffin uttering the immortal words ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust …’, while swinging a heavy gold contraption wafting incense, she found her emotions veering wildly out of control again. It was all just so sad. She could see why people became drawn to religion. There was a bleak kind of comfort in these rituals of farewell.

  Finally, the coffin was processed out of the church to the stirring music of ‘How Great Thou Art’. There had been no scenes, no drama, just a regular funeral.

  As they left the church all the mourners were funnelled into a line, forcing them to pass through a team of uniformed officers taking names, addresses, and digital images. Most people were accommodating but a few got a bit uppity and had to be leaned on. As instructed, Mhairi had taken up a position beside the doors in case anyone tried to make a run for it. A minor scuffle broke out and she took a step forward, craning her neck to see what was going on. Suddenly she received an almighty shove that pitched her forward onto her knees. She turned angrily to see a flame-haired woman legging it across the car park and disappearing round the corner. Radioing to one of the uniforms to come cover her position she tore off in pursuit but there was no sign of the woman anywhere. She hadn’t been the only one trying to slither out the side and escape the queue but she had been the only one who cared enough about getting away to assault a police officer. Unfortunately, Mhairi hadn’t got a good enough look at her to issue a description or even to hazard a guess at her age. Redheads in Scotland weren’t exactly a rare occurrence.

  Once her breathing had returned to normal she radioed Farrell, who was on his way to the graveside, then headed back to the station, annoyed with herself for letting the woman slip through her fingers like some probationer. Maybe she would get a better look at her when the video footage came in this afternoon.

  Back at the station she chased up the outstanding forensic reports, trying to inject the maximum amount of urgency into her voice. Then she sat back in her chair, temporarily overwhelmed. The amount of work she’d had to do since Farrell burst on the scene was unprecedented in all her time in the force. Never had she had to deal with tw
o such complex and sinister investigations. Her stomach lurched with dread as she thought about the dog team arriving that afternoon to search for signs of little Mark in the woods. Barry and Elspeth must be out of their minds with worry yet they had taken the trouble to go to Father Boyd’s funeral this morning, all the while having to live with the uncertainty of whether they would be having one of their own soon for a much-loved child.

  With renewed determination she opened up the digital footage from this morning and began the laborious process of cross-matching photos to names and addresses and ticking those off the list of names on the parishioner database they had constructed from the book given to them by Father Malone.

  The bishop had prohibited the use of cameras inside the church so, to her intense frustration, there were no images of the redhead anywhere. Mhairi’s gut told her that the woman had information pertinent to the investigation but there was simply no way she could think of to track her down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Farrell slipped away from the graveyard in advance of the mourners. As expected, only a small number of those in the church had made it out here to this serene resting place in an elevated position overlooking the hurly burly of the town below. Boyd’s sister had stood with a countenance carved from granite throughout. Farrell was unable to determine whether her stony features spoke to her upbringing or to her relationship with her brother.

  Father Joe Spinelli had been there, leaning heavily on the arm of a younger priest unknown to Farrell. By tacit agreement they had given each other a wide berth under the circumstances.

  Glancing at his watch he figured he had time to drive out to the woods, where the police dog team would shortly be arriving. Although, strictly speaking, it wasn’t his investigation, he figured that DI Moore could do with his support and experience at what could turn out to be a particularly distressing scene.

  He turned into the small muddy area adjacent to the woods where a handful of sombre SOCOs conversed in low voices with DI Moore and DS Stirling. The police dog van pulled in just as Farrell was exiting the car and he saw it was Michael Patmore at the wheel; a consummate professional he had worked with before.

  Farrell quickly introduced Michael and his partner, Pam Kelly, to those assembled before DI Moore brought them up to speed on the missing boy. With a grimace, she produced a sealed bag with Mark’s comforter and a worn teddy and handed them over.

  ‘His mother tells me these were the items he had on him most of the time. I’ve also brought one of his trainers.’

  ‘Excellent. We’ll see what Barney makes of these,’ said Michael. ‘Barney is trained to find missing persons. The other dog, Charlie, is trained to sniff out cadavers.’

  The Alsatians that bounded out the back of the van were so huge that Farrell took an involuntary step back. He needn’t have worried. The dogs’ intelligent brown eyes never left their handlers as they went through a well-rehearsed sequence of commands.

  Finally, the items were presented one at a time and Barney was let off the leash into the woods with Michael jogging after him. Pam and Charlie followed at a more sedate and rambling pace. Everyone else remained where they were, too tense for small talk.

  A tremendous barking rent the air followed by a whistle. Hearts sank. They’d found something.

  DI Moore and the two SOCOs suited up and walked off in single file into the woods. After what seemed like an eternity Moore came back on her own, her face ashen, and clutching a number of evidence bags.

  ‘No body, as far as we can determine. The only hot spot was a shallow pit covered by leaves and sticks in which we found these.’

  She held out the bags so that the others could see the contents through the clear plastic. A small pair of green joggers, a yellow T-shirt, cream jumper, and a pair of black trainers with socks stuffed inside.

  ‘He’s messing with us,’ said Farrell. ‘It’s almost as if he wanted us to find these items.’

  ‘Does that make it more or less likely he’s killed the kid, though?’ asked DS Stirling.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ replied Farrell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The next morning Farrell was shown into the comfortable consulting room as soon as he arrived. Instead of remaining behind her desk, Clare came round and gestured for him to take one of a number of easy chairs grouped round a small table. When they were seated she reached over and took his hand.

  ‘How are you holding up?’

  The warmth and understanding in her voice almost did for him. Gently, he pulled his hand away and cleared his throat. She took her cue from him and sat back in her chair, once again the cool professional.

  He ran both cases by her in their entirety, well, almost. He left out the bit about the potential intruder at Kelton and the personal stuff. No point in muddying the waters. She might think he was imagining things, becoming ill again. After he had stopped talking she continued making notes then pulled out a pair of glasses to study the crime scene photos relating to the murder and also those taken in the church where the boy was found.

  ‘There are some broad similarities between the two cases,’ she said. ‘Both have been carefully planned and executed down to the smallest detail. The perpetrator in both cases could arguably be making a point, several points actually. It’s as if he’s left us signposts. Either he’s playing with us or deep down he wants to be caught. There’s deferred gratification in the case of the boys, which suggests the person who took them is highly intelligent and still very much in control.’

  ‘What do you make of the fact that one of the boys was found in a church?’ asked Farrell.

  ‘Could be coincidence,’ Clare mused. ‘After all, it was no longer consecrated, was it?’

  ‘Been deserted for ten years.’

  ‘Could have simply been a good place to stash the boys undetected or could have had resonance with his underlying theme.’

  ‘There was a faint smell of incense,’ offered Farrell, feeling faintly embarrassed.

  ‘Did anyone else notice that?’ asked Clare, subjecting him to intense scrutiny.

  ‘Not that they can recall,’ he answered. That look again. Was his former illness always going to stand between them? ‘Then there was the mirror in the church with the note on it.’

  ‘Do you know for certain that it wasn’t there before?’

  ‘We can’t say for sure but I would have thought that was highly unlikely. When was the last time you saw a clergyman comb his hair before delivering a sermon? Besides the frame of the mirror would have been tarnished by now in such a damp place,’ said Farrell

  ‘Maybe he told the boys it was a magic mirror to make them feel under constant surveillance and so render them more compliant?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Makes sense, I suppose,’ said Farrell.

  ‘It would be a consistent frame of reference with the book of fairy tales,’ said Clare.

  ‘The level of aggression is entirely different in the two cases,’ Farrell said. ‘In the case of Boyd the murder is a violent one.’

  ‘The little boy that was recovered, on the other hand, didn’t have a mark on him. Although we don’t know whether that is the case with Mark. Both boys seem to have been fed and given bedding,’ said Clare. ‘Also, the whole bedtime story thing is very strange. Why go to such lengths to care for the children?’

  ‘My gut feeling is that it might be the same person behind the murder of Boyd and the abduction of the kids,’ said Farrell. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying but it doesn’t fit any crime pathology that I’m aware of,’ Clare replied. ‘In my opinion there would need to be a link between Boyd and the kids or their family for that to be a plausible theory. If the choice of victims was entirely random and we were dealing with your run-of-the-mill serial killer, then I would expect to see a pattern in victim choice and also in the way the victims were killed. Most pathological killers wouldn’t switch from killing an adult to abducting, maybe killing, a
child. It would be one or the other. Also, we still have no idea what his intentions are in relation to Mark. Whether he intends to kill him, hang onto him, or let him go.’

  Farrell slumped in his seat. She was right, dammit.

  ‘Look,’ Clare said gently, ‘why don’t I cook you dinner tonight? We can chill out afterwards, watch a DVD. No pressure. After the last few days I reckon that’s just what you need. Doctor’s orders.’

  Despite himself, Farrell stiffened. Clare looked exasperated.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, stop being so touchy. I meant it as a joke,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry, dinner sounds wonderful. Around eight OK?’

  ‘Perfect. And I promise to leave my stethoscope at the office,’ she said.

  As he left the building Farrell felt his jaw start to ache and realized that he was smiling. Almost immediately, the smile was replaced by a frown. What had possessed him to agree to go round to her place? He should have just made an excuse. He was getting way too old and set in his ways for this carry-on. What would she expect from him? What if she tried to … stop right there!

  Farrell reined himself in with effort and refocused his mind on the case. Where did his old nemesis Baxter fit in? Was he the murderer or had he really come back to the town simply because it was where he had grown up? Apparently he had a rock solid alibi for the night Boyd was killed, but rocks have been known to split apart with the right tools. Maybe he’d been working in concert with the killer, manipulating him behind the scenes? That was certainly a possibility. Farrell knew that when it came to Baxter he was ready to bark at shadows, but whether those shadows were real or imaginary it was impossible yet to say.

  Back at the station, he checked in to the MCA room to see what his team had come up with in his absence.

  ‘Stirling? Any feedback on how the tails are doing?’

  ‘Nothing interesting so far, Sir. Baxter is moving up the food chain. Seems to have taken up golf, would you believe? He apparently had lunch in the clubhouse with some flash bird from Edinburgh, name of Moira Sharkey.’