by Val McDermid
‘She walked in off the street. I came straight from interviewing her to this briefing.’
Rutherford considered for a moment then, mollified, said, ‘And she’s the only one who’s come forward?’
‘So far. There might be more, obviously, but now I’ve heard her story, I wouldn’t be surprised if we struggle to get walk-ins on this one. Those nuns apparently ran a rule of terror and intimidation. And because of the grip the Church still has, those girls feel under threat even now.’
‘Or else they’re so messed up by what happened in that convent that they’re not going to be very reliable witnesses,’ Steve added gloomily.
‘Well, we’ll just have to get past those obstacles. We need strong witness statements, we need strong forensic evidence. Steve, go and talk to the neighbours. Somebody must have seen something. There must have been gossip in the local pub.’
Sophie cleared her throat. ‘We should probably talk to the groundsman,’ she said. ‘That’s his vegetable patch.’
There was a moment of stunned silence. ‘There’s a groundsman?’ Rutherford stuttered.
‘Yes. He lives in a cottage at the back of the convent. He told me it’s his own place, he bought it from the church. And he leases the land to grow vegetables.’
‘He told you? You mean, you’ve spoken to him?’
‘Yes, only briefly, though.’
Rutherford spoke low and slow, emphasising every word. ‘You spoke to the groundsman of a site where forty skeletons have been found and you didn’t think to bring him in for formal questioning?’
Sophie flushed. ‘I was told DCI Fielding’s people had already spoken to him.’
‘And have you found a statement from him in your incident room files?’
‘I haven’t seen anything.’ Her voice was barely above a whisper.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Rutherford exploded. ‘Paula, get your arse over there right away and take a witness statement from this—what’s his name?’
Sophie looked at her tablet. ‘Jerome Martinu.’
‘And if you think he needs bringing in, bring him in.’ Rutherford shook his head. ‘We’re supposed to be the elite,’ he said bitterly. ‘DCI Fielding’s going to have a field day with this.’
‘With all due respect, sir, shouldn’t her team have interviewed this Martinu guy? And if they have and it’s not in the system, it’s not Sophie’s fault.’ Paula’s attempt at conciliation didn’t get her very far.
‘When you get out there, check with Fielding if there’s already an interview. And if there is, where the fuck is it? Then do your own, because I don’t want to rely on Fielding’s shower for such a crucial interview. Got it?’
Paula gave him a level stare. ‘Sir.’
‘Did you record your interview with this woman? What’s her name, by the way?’ He grabbed a marker pen and stood poised at the whiteboard.
‘Louise Brand. I recorded the interview and pinged the recording across to the incident room for transcription.’ Because I am not a fuckwit.
‘Good. Have we got a name for the resident priest at the convent yet?’
‘I’ve just filed it with the incident room. He’s currently a parish priest in Sheffield,’ Stacey said. All this and a meeting with Carol Jordan? Her friend had been working like a woman possessed, Paula thought.
‘Nice work, Chen. Karim, off you go to Sheffield. DI McIntyre, why are you still here?’
Really? Was this how it was going to be? Rutherford had been watching too many ancient TV cop shows, Paula decided. Sooner rather than later, she’d be injecting a bit of Prime Suspect into the mix. But in the meantime, she needed to forge an alliance.
29
Years ago, I had a conversation with an actor who maintained, ‘Once you can fake sincerity, you can achieve anything.’ Even when I had no respect for the people I was dealing with, it was important to behave as if I did.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
Imran Hussein had a favourite line whenever he was introducing his policeman brother. ‘This is Karim. You have to hope he’s a more observant copper than he is a Muslim.’ The rest of his family tutted at Imran, but Karim was pretty sure that deep down they agreed with him and that it grieved his father in particular. But he didn’t believe in the performance of faith for its own sake. His beliefs were his own business, no matter what cajoling, bribery or bullying his father tried in order to get him to Friday prayers.
So when it came to interviewing a priest, he wasn’t going to be in awe of the man’s position or his devoutness. This was the twenty-first century, after all. Father Michael Keenan would be just another witness. At least he wasn’t one of those nuns that Karim feared would be like a massed phalanx of aunties judging him.
But the woman who opened the door of the priest’s grey stone house made Karim feel like he’d stepped back a hundred years. She could have been any age between fifty and seventy. Her greying hair was pulled back in a tight bun, her severe glasses made her eyes shrink to black buttons and her mouth was an unsympathetic line. She wore a floral tabard over a nondescript black dress, the fingers of a pair of rubber gloves poking out of the pouch pocket on the front. She frowned. ‘Yes?’ It was as if her words were rationed and she wasn’t going to waste them on him.
‘I’d like to see Father Keenan,’ Karim said. ‘Father Michael Keenan.’ She remained impassive. He took out his ID and held it out. ‘I’m DC Karim Hussein. From the Regional Major Incident Team.’
‘He’s busy.’ She went to close the door. ‘You’ll have to make an appointment.’
Karim put a hand on the door. ‘That’s not how it works. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell Father Keenan I’m here and that I would like to see him now.’
‘He’s a very busy man.’
Karim smiled. ‘So am I. And I’ve come all the way from Bradfield to talk to him, so I’d be grateful if you’d go and fetch him.’
At ‘Bradfield’, her face had changed. Karim couldn’t say how or why, just that he’d seen a fleeting shift in her tight features. ‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘I need to close the door to keep the heat in.’
He dropped his hand and stood staring at the highly polished brass knocker. A couple of minutes went by. He listened to the cars and buses passing in the road behind him. He wondered whether the encounter would have gone quite so badly if it had been Steve Nisbet on the step.
Karim was on the point of ringing the bell again when the door opened. A thin man in what he thought of as a priest’s uniform of dog collar, cassock and crucifix on a chain peered at him through gold-rimmed granny glasses, a shock of black hair falling across his forehead. Hollow cheeks, a bony jaw and a sharp nose reminded him of a friend of his father’s, Zahid, who believed he was fated to live an ascetic life because that was the meaning of his given name. ‘You’re a policeman, Mrs Grimes tells me.’
‘Father Keenan?’
‘Well, of course, who else would it be in Father Keenan’s house dressed like this?’ His voice was a light tenor, his tone sarcastic, his accent faintly Irish.
Karim introduced himself again and proffered his ID.
‘What does the Regional whatsit want with me? I’m just an ordinary parish priest.’ Keenan frowned, three deep parallel lines between his eyebrows.
‘I’d like to talk to you about your time as resident chaplain at the Order of the Blessed Pearl in Bradesden. I’m sure you’ve seen the news coverage today?’
Keenan cocked his head to one side, like a puzzled hen. ‘What news coverage? I’ve got better things to do with my time than watch TV.’
‘If I could come in?’ Karim took a step forward. ‘This isn’t something we should discuss on the pavement, Mr Keenan.’
‘It’s Father Keenan, son.’ He sighed and stepped back. ‘You can come in, but keep it brief. I’ve got parishioners to visit, letters to write.’ He led the way down a hall whose parquet flooring smelled of lavender polish, into a small room. A sofa and a pair of upright chairs sat aroun
d a low table. The walls were painted a soft green. A crucifix hung over a simple wooden fireplace with a fake coal gas fire. A pair of faded reproductions of Italian Renaissance paintings were the only other decoration. Karim had no idea what they represented, except that one of the figures had wings and so was presumably an angel.
The priest sat on one of the chairs and primly crossed one leg over the other, gesturing to Karim that he should be seated. ‘So now presumably you can tell me what this visit is in aid of?’
‘I’d like to establish some background information before I go into the details,’ Karim said, phone at the ready. ‘I’d prefer to record our conversation, it’s more reliable than notes. And it’s always better to be accurate.’ He produced his most winning smile. He’d spent long enough with Paula to have picked up one or two of her tricks. He pressed the red record button as inconspicuously as he could.
‘What kind of background information?’ Keenan wasn’t making this easy.
‘How long were you the resident chaplain at the convent in Bradesden?’
He gave a long-suffering sigh, a man used to tedium. ‘I was there for five years and seven months. Right up until the closure of the convent and the refuge.’
‘And were you also responsible for the spiritual well-being of the girls in the St Margaret Clitherow Refuge?’ Karim wasn’t sure if that was the right expression but he’d heard it in TV dramas and films.
‘I was.’
‘What did that consist of, exactly?’
Keenan rolled his eyes. ‘The usual duties of a priest. But I suppose you know nothing of that, Constable. I took services in the chapel, I heard confession, I engaged in spiritual discussion with the Mother Superior. Where the girls were concerned, I also prepared them for their first communion. And I gave them religious instruction within a school context. I can assure you there was nothing untoward in my interactions at the Blessed Pearl.’ His voice was haughty, but now he was confident in his superiority, his posture relaxed a little.
‘As you rightly say, I don’t know how things work in the priesthood. How did you come to be the priest at the Blessed Pearl? Did you apply for the job?’
Keenan screwed up his face in disdain. ‘The priesthood is a vocation, not a job. We go where we are sent. My bishop sent me to the Blessed Pearl and so it was my duty to work with the community there.’
‘Had you worked with nuns before? Was that why you were chosen?’
‘I was a priest in an inner-city group practice in Glasgow, then I was chaplain for a couple of years at Deeside University in Aberdeen. So I had experience of chaplaincy but not within a convent.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
He seemed offended by the question. ‘I didn’t become a priest to enjoy myself. I found it fulfilling to work in that community. It was a unique opportunity for a practical ministry as well as the contemplative life.’
‘Not much time for contemplation as a parish priest, I imagine.’
‘Indeed.’ Keenan was apparently determined to keep his own counsel. ‘I think it’s about time you told me why you are here. Has someone made allegations about my conduct?’
‘Would it surprise you if they had?’
‘It would astonish me. Because any such claims would be utterly baseless. But we in the church have become easy targets in recent years for unscrupulous people seeking to make money from lies and false allegations.’ He held a hand up to stop an interruption Karim had no intention of making. ‘I’m not denying there have been appalling cases of child sex abuse committed by priests. But the scale is of it is wildly exaggerated. And I’ve never laid an inappropriate hand on a child.’
The very vehemence of the denial made Karim wonder whether Keenan had even more to hide than he’d first thought. ‘Are you aware that the convent and its grounds were sold to developers?’
The change of tack startled Keenan. ‘Of course. We all knew that. It happened very shortly after it was decided to close the convent.’
‘Why was that decision made?’ Keep moving around, don’t let them settle. Karim could hear Paula’s voice in his head.
‘Not for any sinister reason, I assure you. The numbers entering holy orders have been falling lately. We’d reached a point where very soon there would no longer be enough nuns to run the school and the home. And so the Mother House decided it was better to close the establishment altogether and divide the remaining sisters among the order’s other convents.’ His hand crept up to his crucifix, his long slender fingers caressing the heavy silver.
‘It’s taken a while for the developers to raise the capital and sort out the planning permission but they started work this week. And they’ve discovered human remains in the grounds.’
Keenan showed no surprise. ‘Of course they have. There was a graveyard for the nuns and their previous priests.’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the bodies of up to forty children who are buried under the front lawn of the convent.’
The priest’s fingers stopped stroking his crucifix. He sat stock-still. Not a muscle quivered.
‘What can you tell me about that?’ Karim asked. ‘You were living there. You can’t have failed to notice what was going on.’
Keenan cleared his throat. He uncrossed his legs and attempted a more casual pose. ‘Children die, Constable. It’s very sad, but it happens. The children at St Margaret Clitherow were there because they had no one else. Better to bury them in the grounds of the convent than hand them over to the local authority for a pauper’s grave. I don’t know what the custom is in your culture, Constable, but we believe in proper burial in consecrated ground.’
‘In my culture, we don’t dump our children in an unmarked hole in the ground,’ Karim said, trying to hold his anger in check. ‘Not even in times of war. Not even in refugee camps. We treat them with dignity.’
‘On what basis do you suggest the nuns of the Blessed Pearl didn’t do just that?’
‘There are no grave markers. No coffins. No indication that this is anything other than a front lawn. The kind of place children would run around and play on, not be buried under. And you knew about this?’
For the first time, Keenan looked uncertain. ‘I was aware of the practice, yes. As I said, children die. They fall ill. They have accidents. Many of them arrived undernourished and vulnerable to disease. The nuns arranged the burials in the grounds to keep them close to where they had been cared for. In some cases, the only place they had ever been cared for.’
‘Did you take part in those burials?’
‘I did not. I held a short formal service in the chapel before they were buried, but that was the extent of my involvement.’
‘Did you give these dying children the last rites?’
He looked up at the crucifix above the fireplace. ‘On occasion, yes.’
‘How many occasions?’
‘I really couldn’t say. It was a long time ago.’
‘Forty times?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Keenan flared up, two spots of colour on his cheeks. ‘The convent had been there since 1930. That’s more than eighty years of girls who came through those doors. One death every two years, that’s hardly surprising.’
‘You think?’ Karim couldn’t keep his shock and outrage hidden now. ‘I went through thirteen years of school and three years of university and I was never in the same class as a kid who died. And you’re trying to tell me that the death rate at the Blessed Pearl was normal?’
Keenen flushed but it was clearly from anger rather than shame. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’ He shook his head. ‘The condition some of these girls were in when they came to the convent, you wouldn’t believe. They’d been undernourished since the day they were born. They were frail. They had tapeworms. Diseases of deprivation like TB. They were susceptible to the kind of illnesses that you or I would shake off. It’s amazing the nuns kept so many of them alive.’
Chastened, Karim paused for a
moment before continuing. ‘Nevertheless. We’ve been told that the nuns ran a brutal regime in recent years. That harsh beatings and physical punishments were routine. That girls were punished with solitary confinement.’ Karim had moved well and truly into bad cop now, his voice steely, his gaze uncompromising. ‘You must have been aware of that?’
‘I knew nothing of that. I saw nothing of the sort. Sister Mary Patrick provided the only proper stable home most of those girls had known. None of them ever made any complaint to me.’ Keenan met implacable with implacable.
‘I find that hard to credit. You were living under the same roof where girls were being brutalised and imprisoned, you had a pastoral role in their lives and yet you knew nothing about it?’
Keenan got to his feet. His mouth twisted in a dark smile. ‘We have a saying in the church: “That’s where your faith comes in.” We’re done here, Constable. I’d be obliged if you’d leave and take your shabby insinuations with you.’
‘Just one more thing—’ Karim’s intention to raise the question of the other bodies was thwarted as the priest swept from the room, leaving him stranded. He didn’t know what to do. He had no grounds for chasing the man through his own home. You couldn’t drag a man of the cloth down to a police station just because he gave you the creeps. He stood up, undecided.
The housekeeper appeared in the doorway as silently as if she’d traversed the hall on a cushion of air. ‘I’ll see you out,’ she said disdainfully. As he preceded her down the hall, she said, ‘You’ve some cheek, coming here with your accusations. Father Keenan is a good man. Not like you lot.’
Karim turned swiftly to face her. ‘What do you mean, my lot?’
She gave a tight smile of triumph. ‘Coppers. What did you think I meant?’ She reached past him to open the door. ‘Off you go and bother some other poor innocent. God forbid you should actually catch some criminals.’
The door closed behind him with a sharp snap. Karim let out a long breath. On a scale of one to shit, that had come in somewhere around eleven. He had a sneaking feeling that where Father Michael Keenan was concerned, ReMIT had only just begun.
