A Turbulent Priest Read online

  He had the gathering confidence of a man who had made a difficult decision, combined with the bright enthusiasm of an adolescent in love. Percy Peach found it a most irritating combination. Silly bugger wants me to ask him about this woman and his own scandal, he thought. Instead he said, “Good for you, Denis Irwin. Now, can we get back to Father Bickerstaffe? I’m trying to find out who killed him — I take it he didn’t seem to you like a potential suicide?”

  “No. He was very shaken, but I think he still saw himself as a priest. I don’t think taking his own life would have been an option for John.”

  “Right. Think carefully. You’re my last link with a dead man. Do you know if anyone contacted him while he was here?”

  Denis Irwin forced himself to think back carefully, however much he would have liked to air his own problems with a neutral listener. “No one came here to see him, I’m sure of that. He had a letter, the day after he came, because he opened it while we were having breakfast, and it upset him. He crumpled it up and put it in his pocket quickly, without finishing reading it, I think, and he looked quite distressed.”

  “Any phone calls?”

  “Yes. Two at least. He told me he’d had one the first day. Threatening him with violence, he said, if he did what he was going to do. I think it was the same person or persons who’d sent the letter which had so upset him, but I couldn’t be sure. Anyway, he said it wouldn’t stop him, that this was some good he could do, whatever the damage he’d done. I didn’t know what he was talking about and I didn’t ask him. He seemed far too upset at the time, and I thought then that there’d be other opportunities in the days to come, if he wanted to discuss it with me.” He sighed bleakly at the thought of how abruptly their discussions had been terminated.

  Peach said, “So we only have his own word that this call actually took place. But you mentioned two calls.”

  “Yes. I know a little more about the second one, because I was indirectly involved. There’s a phone in the hall outside what we call the common room. I know John had at least that call when he was here, because I had to go and get him from his room to answer it.”

  “When was this?”

  “On the night before he disappeared.” The priest’s rather flat features suddenly lit up with alarm. “Do you think someone was arranging to meet him the next evening?”

  Percy controlled his irritation with this thirty-five-year-old who seemed to have been so protected from some aspects of life. “It seems like a possibility, doesn’t it? It may even have been the person he said had already threatened him. You say you took the call. At what time on that Wednesday evening?”

  “It must have been at about quarter to eight. I was watching Coronation Street, I have to confess. I used to pretend it kept me in touch with my congregation, but if I’m honest I have to confess—”

  “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “A woman. Yes, I’m pretty sure it was a woman. She didn’t say much, but—”

  “Can you remember anything distinctive about the voice? It’s important: it must be obvious to you now that this might have been the person who killed your friend John Bickerstaffe. Or perhaps the person who set him up to be killed.”

  The squat face filled with a mixture of horror and excitement, a familiar combination for Peach. Innocents drawn into murder enquiries almost invariably felt the unexpected glamour of the simplest and gravest of all crimes. There was disappointment in Irwin’s voice as he eventually said, “No. The voice just asked if Father John Bickerstaffe was there and I said I would go and get him.”

  “How long was Father Bickerstaffe on the phone?”

  “Not long. Perhaps two minutes at most.”

  “And did he seem agitated after the call?”

  “I didn’t see him, I’m afraid. He didn’t come into the common room. He must have gone straight back up to his room. I saw him the next morning at breakfast, and again at lunch. He seemed very quiet, now that I look back at it, but I thought he was just wrestling with his problems and he’d talk to me when he wanted to. Those would be the last times when we actually spoke.” He seemed suddenly, belatedly, on the edge of tears with that thought.

  Peach drove from Downton Hall back to the place where the body had been found. The stream which had been in such spate at that time was quiet now, running softly under the old stone bridge towards the spire of the village church a few hundred yards below it, contributing the soft note of water over pebbles to the village idyll.

  He had a more accurate time for the murder, and the place had probably been somewhere near here. How, when and where were almost established now. It was high time to set about finding out who and why.

  ***

  While Peach was pursuing his enquiries at Downton Hall, Detective Sergeant Lucy Blake was visiting a very different house. She was in one of the back-to-back terraces which the original occupants of that country mansion had built for their workers in Brunton.

  The worst of these, the ones with only a shared toilet or a brick cube ‘petty’ at the bottom of the yard, had been cleared in the optimistic housing programmes of the sixties and seventies. But the slightly better terraces, or those in ‘respectable’ parts of the old cotton-weaving town, had survived until refurbishment rather than clearance became the housing buzz-word. It was one of these areas that Lucy now visited, sandwiched between the canal and the old road to Preston: a quiet section of the town, a little run-down perhaps, and with more than its due share of older people who had refused to move out with the passing years. There were good small houses within these streets, houses which had had money spent on them; houses which were trim and well kept without and comfortable within; ‘little palaces’ in the sentimental hyperbole of those who sang their virtues.

  Number Eight Primrose Bank was no palace. You stepped straight into the living room from the street, and the paper on the walls had probably been there for a good fifteen years. The three-piece suite was battered, the table under the window scratched. The print of charging elephants which was the sole wall decoration looked ill-chosen rather than exotic. Lucy sniffed the air apprehensively as she followed the woman into the house. But there was no unpleasant smell: the house had passed the police officer’s first test. Police personnel, like social workers and district nurses, have to go into all kinds of habitations. The smell is their first fear, as any PC who has had to break in to discover a week-old corpse will testify.

  The woman had a grey skirt and a dark green sweater, well worn but clean. She was without rings or earrings; a single pewter brooch was the only gesture towards jewellery, and her long pale face had no make-up. Her dark hair was cut quite short, with a single slide at the crown of her head. Her grey eyes were alert and watchful.

  Lucy said formally, “You are Mrs Katherine Maxted?”

  “Kate Maxted, yes. I’m not too keen on the Mrs, and I haven’t been called Katherine since I was four and my gran died.”

  “Kate, then. You’re divorced?”

  “Not yet. Very soon, I hope. He wouldn’t co-operate — he’d have to pay proper maintenance, wouldn’t he? And regularly. But I should have my divorce in the next month or two, if the bloody lawyers can be persuaded to get their fingers out.” The words were bitter, but there was little animation in her expression of them. Her monotone indicated that she had explained this many times before, in many different contexts.

  “You live here as the only adult?” You didn’t mention men or women nowadays, any more than colour.

  “Yes. I rent the place, or the state rents it for me.”

  There had been a hesitation before she spoke, as if she were working out what it was best to say. When you lived ‘on the social’, you grew used to being cautious about what you revealed of your domestic circumstances. Lucy watched her steadily, without embarrassment. Peach had taught her among other things that a steady scrutiny of interviewees and an absence of the small talk with which most people greased the wheels of social exchange could sometimes unnerve peopl
e. Peach liked to see them unnerved, and Lucy could understand why when she considered some of the results. “And you have the four children of your marriage living here with you?”

  “You know I have. I told all this to the woman in uniform who came yesterday. To save you checking on your homework, they’re aged fourteen, eleven, eight and seven. We were supposed to stop at two, but drink weakens resolution, they tell me. Wish they’d told me in time.” It was all said without rancour, as a series of simple statements of fact, in the same monotone she had used earlier. Lucy began to wonder if there were drugs anywhere in the house’s meagre furnishings; she was becoming more expert in recognising the symptoms of dependency, simply through experience. But it might be no more than a weary apathy about her situation which the woman was projecting. The only adornments to the room which were at all personal were group and individual photographs of the four children.

  Lucy said evenly, “You must bear with me if I check these things, Mrs Maxted. I’m not checking on what you tell the social services. I’m here in connection with a very serious crime. The most serious of all, in fact.”

  “Aye. Murder. Friar Fucking Tuck. Father Fucking Bickerstaffe, the Flashing Friar. I just wish he’d flashed at me, that’s all. I’d have cut it off for him!”

  The anger was startling in its suddenness after the apathy before it. It wasn’t an unusual attitude where sexual offences were concerned, and it didn’t shock Lucy, as Kate Maxted had obviously hoped it might. She was glad, indeed, to see some spirit and emotion back in the woman’s speech and attitude. “I’m told he assaulted your son. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. Wayne. Bloody stupid name, isn’t it? But that was his father all over. Called him after some American cowboy and hoped he’d grow up thumping everyone in sight. That was Dermot all over. But you get used to a name, in time, and it doesn’t matter.” It was the first time she had mentioned her husband’s name. She was suddenly anxious. “Here, you won’t want to interview Wayne again, will you? He spoke to some priest and another bloke about it a couple of months ago. Upset him quite enough, that did.”

  “There shouldn’t be any need for that at this stage. But whatever you thought of Father Bickerstaffe, he’s been murdered. And it’s our job to find out who killed him.”

  “Aye, a team of thirty, it said in the Evening Telegraph. Pity you didn’t put that number on to controlling his bloody antics when he were alive.”

  But it was no more than the ritual complaint of the wronged, the parent bitter on behalf of a child. She was calm again now, even watchful. Lucy said quietly, “We’d have investigated it, if anyone had reported it at the time. Brought a prosecution, once we found it was justified and we had the evidence.”

  “Aye. Well, it’s not my fault you hadn’t. If the lad had only talked at the time, you’d have known fast enough.”

  “Yes, I believe that, Kate. You shouldn’t be surprised that Wayne didn’t tell you, though. Children don’t know how to deal with these things, so they just bottle them up and don’t tell anyone until they’re forced to speak.”

  The woman looked at her quickly, as if she was checking that she was not being patronised. “That’s how Wayne was. One minute sullen as hell, the next in tears with his arms round my neck.” She was silent, savouring the moment when her teenager had suddenly been as close and dependent as a four-year-old again, whatever the dark reason for it.

  “Whatever Father Bickerstaffe did — and I can assure you there are people who’ve done much worse things with children — no one had any right to murder him. We shall find out who did it, in due course.” Lucy hoped she sounded more confident than she felt at that moment.

  Kate Maxted nodded. “I know that. Just don’t expect me to shed any tears over the bastard, that’s all. I’m not stupid, you know. Left school with six O levels, I did. Could have gone on for A levels and university, they said. Wish I had: at least I’d have avoided marrying Dermot Bloody Maxted if I’d done that.”

  “Is your husband still in touch with the children, Kate?”

  “No, he bloody isn’t. Not so much as a birthday card for any of them.” She looked up suddenly at DS Blake as she realised the reason for the question. “So if you think he might have come riding back like John Bloody Wayne to avenge his son, you’re mistaken. Doubt if he even knew what Friar Tuck had done to him, ‘cos I didn’t tell him. Haven’t even spoken to him, this last three or four months.”

  Lucy wondered if something or someone had arrived to divert her in those months. Wouldn’t the normal expression have been simply ‘for three or four months’? The team would need to investigate any liaison she was concealing, in due course. They didn’t know, perhaps never would know, the exact circumstances of this killing, but it could well have been easier for two people than for one to plan it and execute it. She said quietly, “It looks as though we can at least eliminate Mr Maxted from suspicion of murder, then.”

  “Aye, that’s Dermot all over. Never around when the shit begins to fly. You can take it from me he’s no idea what’s happened to his own son, let alone to the sky pilot who abused him.” Discovering the crumpled paper from a Mars Bar down the side of her armchair, she flung it savagely into the empty fireplace, as if the action could relieve some of her resentment against this absentee father.

  Lucy Blake made her first written note during the exchange. They could ignore Dermot Maxted in their investigation, unless he proved part of a larger conspiracy. She said, deliberately low-key, “How did you find out what had been happening to Wayne, Kate?”

  “He didn’t tell me. Looking back, I can see that he came home upset from that youth club at the Sacred Heart once or twice, but I thought it was just adolescence — probably girl trouble, I remember thinking at the time.” She smiled bitterly at the recollection of her mistake. “It wasn’t until this priest and a bloke he said was a psychiatrist came round here and said they wanted to talk to Wayne that I knew there was anything serious. Apparently another boy had mentioned his name. At first I thought Wayne had done something wrong, but I soon realised what had been going on.”

  “And did you go to see Father Bickerstaffe yourself?”

  “No. The priest who came asked me not to — said the diocese was going to deal with it, that he’d be back to see me again in due course to tell me what had happened to Bickerstaffe. He gave me the impression that there might be some money in it for us if we kept quiet: the other man said they’d have to discuss what compensation might be appropriate. But that wouldn’t have stopped me going to see the bastard. Only they whipped him away, didn’t they? He was gone before I could get to him — on the day after they’d been to see me, apparently.”

  “Probably just as well. It wouldn’t have done you any good to see him, believe me. These things are best left to the law.”

  “You mustn’t take the law into your own hands, you mean? That’s what people said to me at the time. But it wasn’t their kid who’d been assaulted, was it? Anyway, some bugger did take the law into his own hands, and saw the bastard off. And good luck to him, I say.” Her jaw jutted forward to emphasise her vehemence, challenging her listener to deny her.

  Instead, Lucy said quietly, “Why do you say ‘he’, Kate? Have you some reason to believe that it might have been a man who did this?”

  For the first time, fear flashed across Kate Maxted’s pale face; it was there only for an instant before it gave way to puzzlement, but it made Lucy wonder if the woman had something to hide. Kate said carefully, “No, of course not. I just assumed it would have been a man. It usually is, isn’t it, when there’s violence about?”

  Now she was appealing to the sorority against men, when a moment ago she had been approving that very violence herself. But you couldn’t often expect logic from the public once emotions were involved, and still less from the mother of an abused child. Lucy smiled back at the intense face. “More often than not it is men, yes, when violence is involved. But we know from the cause of death that this kill
ing could have been by a woman, so we have to keep an open mind.”

  Apprehension stole back into Kate Maxted’s sallow features. “You mean you’ve got me in the frame, don’t you? You mean I could have found the bastard and seen him off.”

  “I mean we would like to eliminate you from our enquiries, that’s all. Just as you have yourself eliminated your husband, Dermot. So that we can concentrate on the people who might really have done this. I need you to tell me where you were on Thursday the twentieth and Friday the twenty-first of August.”

  A slight pause, then an unexpected smile. “You don’t know just when he died, do you? You’re going to find it difficult to pin anyone down if you don’t know any better than that when he was killed.” She didn’t disguise her satisfaction in the thought.

  It was disconcerting when people spotted the weaknesses of which only police personnel should be aware. Lucy tried not to be nettled. “Just tell me where you were, Kate, and let us do the detecting.” At that very moment, had she but known it, DI Peach was pinning the probable time of the murder down to late on Thursday.

  Kate Maxted looked for a moment as if she would refuse an answer. Then she thought better of it and said, “It’s a fortnight and more ago, you know. When the kids are on holiday from school, one day’s much the same as another. I think I was here with the kids on the Friday. Might have gone to the shops in the morning, but I do know I was here at tea-time, because I gave them cottage pie — the young ones like that. Thursday Wayne was playing cricket — he’s pretty good, they tell me. He was picked for the county boys. They played on the East Lancs ground, and my mother took the other kids up to watch him in the afternoon, and then back to her house for their tea.”