Blood on the Bones (11 page)

Rafferty wasn't fooled by Father Kelly's show of concern. As usual, the priest had an ulterior motive concealed beneath his black religious robes and Rafferty suspected he knew where this was heading. But he answered anyway. ‘She's fine, Father. Abra's fine now.’

‘That's grand. That's grand. Glad I am to hear it. Be even finer, would be my guess, if you made an honest woman of her.’

But Rafferty, having obtained what he'd come for, not that that amounted to much, wasn't about to let the priest re-assert any kind of authoritarian Catholic hold over him now. So he simply thanked Father Kelly for the drink and the information, such as it was, bid him goodbye and made a rather swifter exit than he had entrance, chased by the question: ‘And when can I expect to see you at Mass?’

‘Sometime never,’ Rafferty muttered under his breath. ‘If I know what's good for me.’

‘I
know it's still very early in the investigation,’ Llewellyn commented after Rafferty had returned to the station and recounted his conversation with Father Kelly, 'but, so far, we don't seem to have many promising leads.

‘Before you rushed off so precipitously, I was about to tell you that Dr Peterson was able to tell me nothing helpful, either,’ he revealed as Rafferty eased his tired body into his chair in his office. He hoped Llewellyn wasn't about to return to his earlier cross-questioning about his litter-bugging. But he was saved from this at least.

‘It's not as if it's likely that any of the nuns can have some dark secret, apart from one of the novices perhaps, as they would certainly have lived in the sinful world more recently than the rest.’

Rafferty, thinking of his own recent encounter with a holy sinner, not to mention his blackmail letter which related to events months past, wasn't so convinced of these conclusions as Llewellyn seemed to be. ‘We don't know that this man's death came about because of any recent event,’ he pointed out. ‘Maybe something from a time in one of their lives prior to taking the veil came back to haunt one of the sisters.’

‘The timescale alone surely makes that unlikely?’ Llewellyn replied. ‘Apart from the novices, all the sisters have lived within an enclosed order for twenty years or more. Why would anyone seeking retribution for old secrets wait so long?’

‘Why indeed?" Rafferty asked, as he again thought of his own secret and the blackmailer who had himself been somewhat tardy in his approach. ‘But they do have occasional visitors. Mother Catherine herself told us that the sisters’ family and friends are allowed to make occasional visits, for instance. So anyone from one of the sisters’ past lives could have gained access and slipped one of them a note along the lines of: ‘Meet me in the shrubbery after Compline. Come alone.’ That kind of thing.’

Llewellyn's inscrutable gaze gave little away, but Rafferty detected a hint of scepticism, a scepticism reduced only slightly when Rafferty reminded him what Father Kelly had told him. True it was, that although Mother Catherine had informed them there had been no such visitors to the convent during the relevant time, she had certainly suffered one memory lapse over the question.

And although, unlike him, Llewellyn tended not to play favourites, the Welshman admitted his preferred suspects were the two men who had regular access to the convent: Father Kelly and Dr Peterson, particularly given the fact that the set of spare keys to the convent was missing.

‘It's just the logistical aspect of which I'm thinking,’ Llewellyn said. ‘Because whereas most of the nuns are given to abstinence, are on the slender side and have their days circumscribed by the demands of their Office, Dr Peterson is not only a big-built man, his time, although presumably as demanding as that of any busy GP, is capable of some flexibility. Given his size, he would surely not have too much difficulty in carrying a corpse across the sisters’ extensive grounds.’

He paused, then asked: ‘What about Father Kelly? Would he be capable of shouldering such a burden?’

‘Doubtful,’ Rafferty replied. 'Admittedly, Father Kelly is pretty hefty, too, but his is more of a whiskey-bloated stoutness. And he must be knocking on for seventy if he's a day. Not exactly designed for carrying heavy weights.' Not unless it was a parishioner's Christmas gift of a box of a dozen Jameson bottles. Rafferty suspected he'd manage that with no trouble at all.

Of course, unlike Rafferty, the Methodist-raised Welshman had no lingering Catholic issues from his youth, which probably explained his more logical thinking. Llewellyn harboured no resentments about the stern, repressive nature of his upbringing, even though, from what Rafferty had learned of his sergeant's own youth, the Methodists weren't above a bit of repression themselves.

Rafferty, struggling inwardly with his growing angst, was already finding the case a strain. How much more of a strain would it become, he wondered after he'd been encountering for several weeks on a daily basis, all the residual, ever-present Catholic issues of guilt, sin and denial that he had hoped were, if not long behind him, at least far from sight, sound and conscience?

But the Catholic obsession with guilt and sin threw a long shadow. Rafferty suspected that, in time, he might even take to lighting candles in the hope that someone up there would help him bring this case to a swift conclusion. Because he was beginning to fear that Catholicism might yet manage to wrap its clinging, insidious tentacles around him for the second time in his life.

Perhaps, subconsciously, he hoped that if he was able to prove that, like Father Kelly, one of the holy sisters wasn't so holy after all, it might strengthen his defences against such ensnaring tentacles. It wasn't beyond the bounds of credibility, because, like fornicating priests, nuns, too, were capable of breaking the tenets of their faith – as many unfortunate orphans and young unmarried mothers in their ‘care’ in the past, in Ireland and elsewhere, could vouch for.

‘Anyway,’ he said as he rubbed eyes gritty from tiredness. ‘The issues of weight and strength aside, in the morning, I want you to make a start on checking out the past lives of the ladies. You might as well begin with the novice, Cecile and Teresa, the postulant.’ He threw Llewellyn a bone. 'As you said, given their ages, they're the ones most likely to have had recent entanglements of the masculine variety.

'While you're starting that particular ball rolling, I shall, tomorrow morning, go and see Mother Catherine again and find out what she can tell me about this young man Father Kelly said visited in August enquiring about the late Sister Clare. I'd go tonight, but it's too late now. According to the list of their Offices that Mother Catherine gave me, they'll have finished their Great Silence and Compline by now and will be tucked up like good nuns in their hard and lonely little beds. I'd rather not end the first day by breaking my promise that I'd do my best to gear our questioning round their daily ritual.

‘But if I can't speak to Mother Catherine tonight, I can at least speak to the troops. I want you to round up as many of the team that you can find and tell them to meet me in the Incident Room in ten minutes. I just want a brief chat to see if any of them can throw any ideas into the hopper before we call it a night.’

It
was after ten o'clock already, Rafferty noted as the bleary-eyed team trooped into the Incident Room. ‘I know it's late,’ he told them as he stood in front of them. ‘I won't keep you long.’

But five minutes later, no one had volunteered any thoughts on the case that might move them forward. To this end, he said, ‘I think what we have to ask ourselves, particularly, is why the body was buried in the grounds of the convent’ – he'd already given up on calling it a monastery as it didn't feel right.

To his surprise, it was Timothy Smales who spoke up in response to his question, revealing that his improving ability wasn't restricted to learning how to preserve a crime scene. Clearly, he had grown sufficiently confident to voice an opinion in front of his more experienced colleagues.

‘Easy, guv,’ he said, glancing sideways at his colleagues, with a pleased little smile for his own knowingness. ‘Because it was one of the nuns that killed the man. They don't hardly go out, so what chance would they have to bury the body anywhere else?’

Rafferty nodded. It was a valid point. Wasn't he thinking along the same lines himself? ‘So you think it's an inside job, Smales?’

Smales nodded and looked to the rest of the team for support. When the young officer got no takers, he shuffled in his chair and swallowed past a suddenly too large Adam's apple. The expression behind the bum-fluff revealed his fear that he'd over-reached himself. But he plunged on.

‘Got to be.’ Smales reached for the support of formality. ‘Sir. I did some Tudor history at school. Some of the goings on at those convents and monasteries would make your blood run cold. That's why Henry VIII shut most of them down.’

Rafferty rather thought Bluff King Hal's religious revolution had had more to do with the fact that he wanted their land and their wealth. A burning desire to usurp the authority of the Pope who had failed to grant his divorce, by giving him a timely poke in the eye, doubtless also figured strongly.

But, aware that the rest of the team was watching him expectantly, waiting for him to reduce Smales to his usual inarticulate unconfident self and that he was waiting along with them, he surprised himself with the realisation that he couldn't correct the poor booby in front of everyone. Perhaps the religious atmosphere of the day had made him more kind and saintly?

Or else, and, he admitted, far more likely, it was the picture he had in his mind of himself at a similar age, blurting out his opinion as a young, wet-behind-the-ears police constable at just another such gathering half a lifetime ago. It struck him that he must have looked and sounded an awful lot like Smales. He'd certainly never forget that feeling of being crushed under the weight of a superior's withering comments.

So, instead of making Smales feel small, he made him feel tall, by saying, ‘That's a good point,’ and was rewarded with a huge grin.

‘Now.’ He looked around the assembled faces. ‘Has anyone else got a worthwhile observation to make?’

But nobody had. Maybe they feared that, having deprived himself of sarcastic indulgence at Smales' expense, he would be looking for another sacrificial victim. But like Smales in his seeking of support, Rafferty also got no takers.

He gave a wry smile. ‘OK. If, unlike young Smales, you haven't anything useful to contribute, you might as well call it a night. I shall want to you all here early tomorrow morning, so make sure you get sufficient beauty sleep.’

As the team shuffled out, muttering surreptitiously amongst themselves, Llewellyn murmured in his ear, ‘You didn't tell them about the missing spare set of keys to the convent, sir.’

‘So I didn't.’ He called the team back, accompanied by smothered groans from several of them, and gave them this information before he dismissed them again.

It
was an hour later before Rafferty felt able to dismiss himself and go home. Abra, his partner, had given up waiting for his return and had gone to bed with a book and a glass of wine.

As he shrugged off his clothes, dumped them in a heap on the floor and climbed in beside her, Rafferty glanced at the book and pulled a face as he saw that it was a hefty romance, and to judge from the cover, it had plenty of steam.

‘Carrying on your love life without me now, Abs?’ he asked plaintively.

Abra shrugged. ‘What's a girl to do, when she's abandoned for yet another corpse?’ She put a marker on the page and closed the book. ‘Or at least, I presume that's what's kept you so busy you forgot to ring?’

Ouch. ‘Sorry. Spare me a ‘hello’ kiss, at least, before you return to your fictional lover.’

Abra tossed her long, thick, chestnut plait provocatively and gave a secret smile. ‘I think I might be able to manage that,’ she told him and she pecked his cheek with a teasingly light touch. ‘Maybe more than one.’ She kissed him again, on the lips this time.

Although tired after the long, stressful day filled with assorted anxieties, Rafferty began to feel some of the strain dropping away. Abra always had the knack of doing that, even when she was cross with him – and God knew his job would give any woman plenty of reasons to be cross. But he knew that, with Abra, underneath, it was a reluctant crossness.

Encouraged by the second kiss, Rafferty leant close and put an arm around her shoulders, while his other hand deftly flipped the book to his side of the bed and opened it at random.

His gaze widened as he read a paragraph. ‘Raunchy,’ he commented. ‘Get you a little hot under the collar?’ he asked softly. Hopefully.

‘Just a tad,’ Abra admitted as she snuggled against his chest.

‘Fancy getting hotter?’

‘Yes, please, kind sir. I've only been sitting here, quietly steaming for the last hour, waiting for you to come home.’

‘Then wait no longer, my Little Hotpot.’

They kissed. Soon, they were both pretty warm and the raunchy book fell unnoticed to the floor.

Later,
as they lay still in each others' arms, Abra returned to an earlier conversation.

‘So, tell me about the most recent competition for your attention.’

‘Our latest cadaver, you mean?’

He felt her head nod against his chest. ‘Mm. You know how I love your romantic pillow-talk.’

Rafferty gave a wry laugh. ‘God, what a silver-tongued smoothie I am. But you did ask. And I bet you'll never guess where this one's turned up. I confess, it gave me a bit of a turn when I heard.’

Abra sighed, tossed her long, chestnut plait behind her shoulder, and said, ‘Just tell me, Joe. It's too late for guessing games.’

‘Our mystery male cadaver only turned up in the local RC convent of all places. In a shallow grave in their grounds. How do you like that for giving a man a Godly twist of the knife in the gut?’

Confidently, he awaited the comfort of some Abra magic, But magic of the sympathetic sort came there none. Not even when he called her 'Abracadabra'. Instead she got a fit of the giggles.