Blood on the Bones (15 page)

‘As the convent's medic, the body could be said to be practically buried in his back yard. And given that he, like Father Kelly, had the run of the place, either one could have helped themselves to the spare key from the key cabinet.’

As the flow of traffic slowed sufficiently to let Rafferty enter the roundabout, Llewellyn remarked, ‘Perhaps that would be all the more reason for him to bury it there. He's presumably an intelligent man. Nobody would think he would be so foolish as to bury a body in a place with such close connections to himself.’

‘Mm. Whatever he thought – I know what I think. And that's that it doesn't bring us any further forward.’

Rafferty thumped the steering wheel in frustration. ‘If only we can discover the victim's ID. His identity has got to be the key to his death. But until we have that key…’

Rafferty,
although mostly lacking in reasons to be cheerful, at least had one cause for celebration. Because even though another working day was drawing to a close, his ma, unaccountably, had failed to get in touch with him and issue instructions as to how delicately he was to treat the holy sisters. It could hardly be that she hadn't by now heard the news, as the media, both print and TV, had seized on the discovery of the body in the convent with something approaching relish. He supposed that, for them, the story had it all: violent death, religion and presumed sexual repression.

Rafferty could only hope that no one tipped the media off about Dr Peterson's unorthodox and, at the time, illegal, early practises.

Because if they did and then also discovered what an old sinner was the nuns' priest, they would quickly put two and two together till they had come up with a complete, unabridged, unholy brew, that would put Rafferty and his investigation plumb in the middle of an extravagant media frenzy.

Tired at the end of another long day, Rafferty felt almost relieved to learn on his eventual arrival home that one of his many anxieties about the case was about to receive its validation.

For his ma was at the flat waiting for him.

It seemed that his ma
had decided to wait to give Rafferty the benefit of her opinions as to how he should conduct his current investigation until she was able to catch him at home and speak to him in person, it being so much more likely that she would be able to sway him to her views in the flesh than over the phone.

Rafferty opened the door to his living room and saw her, sitting with Abra on one of the new armchairs in their recently updated living room, a mug of tea, unusually for Kitty Rafferty, ignored and skinned over on the small table in front of her.

His ma, as anticipated, when he was foolish enough to blurt out the possibility, was scandalised that he could even think of suspecting one of the holy sisters of murder. She even wagged her work-worn forefinger at him as she told him: ‘For shame.’

‘Why shouldn't I suspect one of the sisters?’ he demanded as he shrugged out of his coat and jacket, left them, still entwined, falling off the back of the settee, and threw himself on the second armchair. 'Or all of them, for that matter?

‘OK,’ he conceded as he saw his ma's scandalised expression, 'I agree, they may have more cause than the rest of us to suffer from housemaid's knee, but aren't the sisters human beings just like you and me?'

‘Well of course they're not,’ his ma told him, indignantly. ‘The very idea.’ Even her recently permed, unnaturally dark curls seemed to crackle with outrage at his remark. ‘They gave up the world and all its sins when they took the veil. They're the latest in a long line of holy women. A fact you might recognise if you ever read that book about the lives of the saints that I lent you.’

His ma had the, to Rafferty, unfortunate habit of trying to rekindle what she called his ‘lost’ faith and was forever finding him religious books at the library. He wouldn't mind, but she also expected him to pay the library's fines when he forgot to return them. If she ever got an inkling that his rebuttal of Catholicism had just received a severe check…

He curbed the thought instantly, in case a process of osmosis transferred the thought to his ma's head. Instead, he set about arguing his corner.

‘But a change of clothes and accommodation doesn't take the woman out of the nun. Or the propensity to sin out of her, either,’ he pointed out. He warmed to his theme. 'And presumably, they all lived in the wicked world before the veil beckoned, so, equally, all must also have been as familiar with the temptation to sin as the rest of us. They all have pasts – lives they led before they entered the cloister. And no one, not even a woman convinced she has a religious vocation, becomes a saint overnight, in the same way that no one becomes a wicked sinner over a similar timescale. Each level of sainthood or sinning has to be built up, bit by bit. Probably takes years of practise, which seems to me to indicate that for a fair chunk of their lives, the sisters are likely to have fallen well short of sainthood.' He repeated what he had already said to Llewellyn. And received an even more unwelcoming response. ‘Maybe the past caught up with one of them.’

‘As it has with you so often?’ his ma taunted. ‘I seem to recall that you did your best to wriggle out of self-induced trouble more than once. For instance, look at what happened only this April just gone-’

Rafferty frowned warningly at her. But she had another, more urgent, argument she was keen to pursue, so she abandoned this reminder and continued with her religious inquisition. Thankfully.

Because Abra knew nothing about what had gone on in his life back in April. Neither did she know about the blackmail letter he had received. And he would very much prefer it if both stayed that way.

Rafferty risked a quick, assessing, glance at Abra. Her expression was thoughtful. Her gaze settled questioningly on his face, as if she was trying to discover clues to what his ma meant.

He scowled inwardly, which was as much as he dared do. But all he needed was for his ma's comment to spark questions from Abra.

Really, he thought, like Father Kelly, his ma knew way too many of his guilty secrets. But he refused to let that deter him from putting his point of view, even though he had never yet won a single debate or argument with his mother. Besides, he hoped it might yet distract Abra from pursuing any desire to question him herself.

He waited for his ma to pause for breath. It took some time – once Kitty Rafferty got into her stride there was no chance of stopping her till she ran out of oxygen – but at last, he had his chance.

'And as for the nuns being saints. Sainthood is as sainthood does, wouldn't you agree, Ma? I mean, look at St Thomas More as an example. He wrote scurrilous letters to Martin Luther, calling him all sorts of ugly, unchristian, names for daring to find fault with the Catholic Church – though the Lord knows, given its many and varied corrupt practises, there was plenty of fault to find.

‘Hardly a Christian turning of the other cheek. Yet that didn't prevent More being made a saint. See what I mean? Even saints aren't always one hundred per cent saintly.’

‘St Thomas More was defending his faith,’ his ma told him, indignantly. ‘Which he had every right to do. Maybe you'd find God smiled on you more often if you defended the faith a bit more. Or even practised it,’ she added tartly.

Rafferty, accepting, at last, that he would never manage to persuade his ma that one of the holy nuns might be guilty of a greater sin than failing to defend their faith, decided not to waste his time in attempting the impossible any longer. He was too tired to take his mother on in an argument over religion. But he was convinced that it was in those years when one of the sisters' saintliness was in its lowest form – in their past lives, before they decided to take the veil – that he believed he was likely to find the richest pickings.

‘OK,’ he said, as if in capitulation. ‘If you don't fancy one of the sisters as a suspect, what about their GP, Dr Peterson? Or Father Kelly? You've always said the priest was the ‘Greatest sinner in the parish', Ma,’ he unkindly reminded her. ‘Maybe it's time you enlightened me on some of his other sins?’ he suggested. ‘Apart, that is, from the booze and the women.’

But, for once in her life, his normally loquacious mother was discretion itself. And although Rafferty had guesses in plenty, he didn't actually know anything for sure. All he had was innuendoes, neighbourhood gossip and his ma's idle chitchat.

Father Kelly's fellow Catholic priests had proved – during countless scandals and Rafferty's own questioning of the two who shared the Priests' House with Father Kelly in particular – that they were as good as his ma at keeping secrets and protecting their own.

His ma had chosen an inauspicious time to copy Father Kelly's aversion to sharing secrets, whether those from the confessional, or any other sort.

Rafferty could see that his ma was in a quandary. She clearly, desperately, wanted someone other than one of the sisters to be in the frame for the murder. The difficulty about that, of course, was that the only other viable suspects were her parish priest and a doctor.

Clearly, the thought that the first was in some way implicated in a violent murder and unconsecrated, secret burial, was impossible for his ma to accept. Which left Dr Stephen Peterson as the least undesirable person in the frame. But the trouble was, for ma, that would never provide a neat solution to her dilemma. For ma revered the medical profession. She thought doctors were gods and always had.

Rafferty wondered if she would still think this particular medical man quite so godlike if he revealed that he'd gone in for performing illegal abortions in his younger days.

But as his ma had never taken a vow of silence to still her wagging tongue, and as he felt that Peterson was entitled to expect discretion for forty year old sins, his ma's quandary continued as he decided not to reveal this particular titbit.

‘There must be someone else,’ she insisted. ‘Someone you've missed.’

Rafferty shook his head. He was amused to see his ma's forehead crease in evidence of furious thought. Clearly, she was determined to come up with another suspect for him to seize on. He knew, from the light of triumph that appeared in her eyes but moments later that she had managed to hit on such a suspect. He waited, curious to find out the identity of this person.

‘Big old house like that convent must need a lot of maintaining,’ his ma, the builder's widow, pointed out. ‘I know the sisters are pretty self-sufficient, but I don't suppose they're so self-sufficient that they are able to do all their own building repairs. You want to check if they've had any building work done recently, Joseph.’

No I don't, he thought. He had plenty of suspects already without trawling for more.

But his ma was right, of course, as he admitted to himself. Even if it pained her to need to pin the blame on someone in the building trade. It was the family business, after all and both Rafferty's younger brothers and most of his cousins and the uncles who hadn't retired, were involved in various aspects of the trade. It was a possibility he should really have thought of for himself, he silently confessed.

It wasn't until Rafferty promised to further investigate this particular line of inquiry, that ma finally decided to postpone more debate on the subject, and allowed him to drive her home.

After he had pulled up at the kerb outside her Council house, as usual, she managed to have the last word.

‘You'd do well to go to confession, my lad,’ she told him. ‘You with so many heavy sins blackening your soul.’

‘And what sins would they be, Ma?’ he asked. ‘It wasn't me who murdered the wretched man. All I'm doing is trying to find the killer. Even God doesn't condone murder, surely?’

His comment received nothing more than a contemptuous sniff. She didn't dignify it with a reply. Instead, she changed tack entirely and attacked from a totally different direction.

‘You're living ‘over the brush', for one thing,’ she informed him. 'And if you don't know that already, you should. Haven't I done my best to bring you up Christian?

‘For another, I don't suppose the baby that Abra lost earlier this year was intended to be the first of many. So fornication can be added to the list.’

‘Jesus.’ Rafferty scowled as his mother's words reminded him what it was that he'd so hated for years about the Catholic religion. His ‘Road to Damascus’ revelation now seemed a long way in the past.

‘And you take the Lord's name in vain way too often,’ she briskly informed him. ‘They're all sins, my son,’ she reminded him, more gently. ‘Whether you like it or not. Come the Day of Judgement you'll be called to account for them. All I'm saying is that you'd do well to get some of your sins squared away before that day comes.’

Why aren't I surprised? Rafferty asked himself, as his ma's voice shook with the tiniest trace of a sob, and she added, ‘I don't want to think of you burning in Hellfire.’

It wasn't an appealing prospect to Rafferty, either. But he said nothing. Sometimes, with his ma, when she had her religious hat on, it was the best way.

Softly, before she got out of the car, she added another piece of advice. ‘And I'm thinking it might be a good idea for you to make another confession. One to Abra. About what happened back in April. I take it you've never told her?’

Rafferty shook his head.

‘You should, is my advice,’ she told him. ‘Secrets between couples are never a good idea. Take my word for it.’

Rafferty, after he had escorted his ma to her door, checked the house for burglars and said goodnight, was driving home when it occurred to him to wonder what secrets his ma might have concealed in her past.

Once again the thought popped into his head to wonder whether his mother, in her lonely, youthful widowhood, might have been one of the silver-tongued Father Kelly's lady conquests. His ma, like Father Kelly, was more than capable of berating a person for their sins while their own sat comfortably upon them.

He shook his head. It was something he found impossible to contemplate. Besides, while his ma's sins might sit as comfortably upon her as a cat upon a sofa, she had too much pride to be numbered among the multitude of women who were reputed to have warmed the priest's bed.