St Benet's

by David Blake

  ‘By harassed, I assume you mean arrested for drunken assault.’

  ‘But never charged.’

  ‘No. Well. There’s a first time for everything. Anyway…’

  Returning to the folder, Tanner opened it enough to retrieve a single sheet of A4 paper which he positioned squarely in front of the suspect.

  ‘According to your statement, for every evening we asked you to account for your whereabouts you said that you were, and I quote, “At home, with my wife.”’

  ‘Yes, and…?’

  ‘Don’t you ever go out, or is it that you don’t have any friends?’

  ‘Of course I’ve got friends, I just don’t feel the need to spend every waking hour with them, that’s all.’

  ‘Not even at the weekends?’

  ‘Presuming you didn’t drag me all the way in here to talk about my social life, is there any chance we can move this along?’

  ‘Of course. So, for the evenings in which you’ve said you were at home with your wife, is there anyone else who’d be able to vouch for you?’

  ‘Yes, my wife, given that she was there with me.’

  ‘Apart from her?’

  ‘Well, you can ask the cat if you like, but I’m not sure she’ll be of much use.’

  ‘Apart from your wife and your cat?’

  ‘Who else is supposed to be there?’

  ‘Someone other than a close relative?’

  ‘Sorry, no, but had I known I was going to need someone to verify where I was on the nights in question, I’d have invited a homeless person in for a cup of tea.’

  Tanner gave Mitchell a thin smile, paused for a moment, and then asked, ‘Have you seen today’s issue of the Norfolk Herald?’

  ‘No, why? I suppose it has an article in it about a talking cat?’

  ‘Remarkably, no, it doesn’t,’ said Tanner, feigning surprise.

  Opening the case file, he pulled out a photocopy of that day’s front page. After glancing down at it himself, he turned it around and laid it on top of the statement for the suspect to see.

  ‘I believe that’s a photograph of you?’ he asked, pointing at the black and white image.

  As Mitchell stared down at it, his heavily lined suntanned face visibly drained of colour.

  ‘I - I’ve not seen this,’ he said, as he began scanning through the article.

  ‘So you said. Do you confirm that the man pictured is you, albeit a younger version?’

  ‘It is, yes, but…’

  ‘Does the name Claire Judson ring a bell?’

  Glancing up, Mitchell said, ‘Who?’

  ‘Claire Judson? She was a schoolgirl who was brutally raped and murdered back in 1976.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of her.’

  ‘So why have you been placing flowers by her grave every week, possibly since the time she was killed?’

  ‘I haven’t!’

  ‘We have a very reliable eye-witness who says that you have.’

  ‘Well, whoever it is, they’re lying.’

  ‘And what possible reason would they have for doing that, I wonder?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Maybe you should ask them?’

  ‘So you’re saying that you’ve never heard of Claire Judson, and you’ve never attended her grave before?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Not once?’

  Mitchell hesitated for just a fraction of a second, before repeating, ‘Never, no!’

  ‘So you won’t mind taking part in a line-up to see if our witness can point you out?’

  Mitchell’s eyes dropped to his hands, which were clasped so tightly together on top of the table that the whites of his knuckles were showing.

  Sitting back in his chair, Tanner gave Cooper a discreet nod as a signal for him to take over.

  Leaning forward, with his elbows on the table, Cooper said, ‘Whilst you’ve been waiting here so patiently, we’ve been having a little look around your house.’

  ‘I bet my wife appreciated that,’ mused Mitchell, half to himself.

  Ignoring the comment, Cooper continued by saying, ‘And you’ll never guess what we found?’

  ‘Would I win a prize if I did?’

  ‘Quite possibly,’ he replied, removing an old colour photograph from the file which he placed down on the desk for the suspect to see.

  ‘Do you recognise this person?’

  Mitchell’s eyes flicked down briefly, but he didn’t speak.

  ‘She certainly is attractive,’ continued Cooper, somewhat absently, as he picked it up to take a look for himself. ‘For a fifteen year old schoolgirl, that is.’

  Mitchell began staring at his hands again.

  ‘So, do you know who she is, or not?’

  ‘No comment,’ came his muted response.

  Turning the photograph over, Cooper said, ‘OK, but I’m going to have to assume that you do, especially as on the back is written, For my darling Gary. That is your first name isn’t it, Mr Mitchell? Gary?’

  The man said nothing.

  ‘We found it in a box up in your loft, along with some letters.’

  Replacing the photograph on the table, Cooper delved back into the case file to pull out a small bundle of folded pieces of paper, some pink, some blue, all scrawled over with the same swirly handwriting.

  Opening up the first one, he began to read.

  ‘My darling, Gary. I can’t stop thinking about you, especially the way you rub yourself up against my…’

  ‘All right!’ Mitchell exclaimed, his face flushing with embarrassed anger. ‘Yes, I knew Claire Judson. So what? It was over forty bloody years ago!’

  ‘Well, for a start, Mr Mitchell,’ continued Cooper, ‘from what we can make out from these letters, you were very obviously having sexual relations with her, which would have been fine had she not been only fifteen years old at the time. That, I’m afraid, makes you a child molester.’

  ‘Look, it wasn’t my fault! She told me she was eighteen! How was I supposed to know that she wasn’t? I mean, just look at her, for Christ sake!’

  Picking up the photograph again, Cooper said, ‘To be honest, Mr Mitchell, I’d have to agree with you.’

  Leaving Cooper to admire the girl, Tanner sat forward again to say, ‘I assume you’re now also willing to admit that you know where she was buried, and that you have visited her grave before?’

  ‘OK, yes, I have, but only a couple of times.’

  ‘Specifically?’

  ‘Literally twice! Once after she was buried, and once more after the trial.’

  ‘The trial where they acquitted the priest who’d been accused of having raped and murdered her - Martin Isaac?’

  ‘If that’s what his name was, then yes.’

  ‘Are you honestly trying to tell us that you didn’t know his name?’

  ‘At the time I did, of course, but surprisingly, after forty-three years, I’d somehow managed to forget.’

  ‘But you remember that it was exactly forty-three years ago?’

  With a shrug, Mitchell said, ‘I suppose it’s not every day you find out that your girlfriend’s been murdered.’

  ‘Did you love her?’ asked Tanner.

  ‘We had good sex, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘So, she was just another girl. One of many?’

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘And yet, after all these years, you’ve still kept the letters she wrote to you?’

  ‘In the loft, yes. But as I’m sure you’ve already discovered, there must be a lifetime of crap up there.’

  ‘Maybe, but I can tell you something we didn’t find.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Letters from any other girls. If she was just one of many, where are all the rest?’

  ‘OK, look, I suppose you could say that Claire was my first love, but that doesn’t mean I’ve spent every day since then pining after her. Life moves on. I got married, had children. I’m now a grandparent. As I said before, it was all a very lo
ng time ago.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Maybe you can tell us when you first suspected that Martin Isaac, the priest who was acquitted of having raped and murdered the love of your life, was actually guilty?’

  ‘The thought never crossed my mind.’

  ‘So, you were happy to go along with the court’s decision?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Even though the only thing that saved him from having to spend a lifetime behind bars was the last-minute alibi produced by a couple of his fellow priests?’

  ‘If he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it.’

  ‘But you think he did, though, don’t you? That’s why you went back to her grave after the verdict, to swear you’d take revenge?’

  Mitchell shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  Tanner allowed a heavy silence to descend on the room, before asking, ‘What I really want to know is, how you found that letter.’

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘The one sent to the Cardinal, after the trial, signed by the very priests who’d given Martin Isaac the dodgy alibi, demanding he be excommunicated from the Church.’

  ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Don’t you read the Norfolk Herald?’

  ‘Only if I have to, which fortunately, I don’t. I mean, it is utter rubbish.’

  ‘Generally, I’d have to agree with you,’ Tanner said, ‘but recently they do seem to have been hitting the mark. For example, yesterday’s front page story was about that letter I just mentioned. It said that it proved Martin Isaac was guilty all along, and that the Church had persuaded a couple of priests to provide alibis simply to save them from the embarrassment of having a priest on their books who was a child rapist, and a murderer to boot.’

  ‘Well, as I said, I’ve never heard of the letter.’

  ‘Yes, in much the same way that only five minutes ago you said you’d never heard of Claire Judson, and yet we’ve since learnt that she was the love of your life.’

  ‘But I had a good reason for denying I knew Claire Judson, which was the same reason I didn’t come forward at the trial. She lied to me about her age. Had I known she was only fifteen, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near her.’

  ‘Unfortunately, Mr Mitchell, now that you’ve been caught lying to us once, it’s going to be very difficult for us to believe anything you say from this point forward.’

  ‘But I didn’t know anything about the letter!’

  ‘Can you at least admit to having known about what happened to the two priests?’

  Mitchell glanced over at his lawyer, who just shrugged back at him.

  ‘I’ve heard about it, yes, but I had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Do you want to know what I think?’

  ‘Not really,’ he said, and reverted to staring back at his hands.

  ‘I think you’re telling the truth, in part at least. Claire Judson was your first love. But based on the fact that you’ve kept all her letters, as well as her photograph, plus the fact that we have an eye witness who says you’ve been placing flowers beside her grave every week for some considerable time, means that you’re still in love with her, even after all these years.

  ‘I also think that you’ve always believed Martin Isaac raped and murdered her. And when you were somehow able to unearth the letter sent to the Cardinal demanding Isaac be excommunicated from the Church, you considered that to be the proof you’d always been looking for. So you set out to avenge Claire’s death, just as you’d promised you’d do after the trial, by first cutting the throat of the man responsible, then executing the priests who enabled him to be acquitted. And you did so whilst playing into the hands of the Norfolk Herald, and the types who read it, by making it look as if Martin Isaac was the evil satanic worshipper everyone thought he was, and that he’d raised himself from the dead to seek revenge on those who’d had him kicked out of the Church.’

  ‘OK, look, I admit to having been in love with Claire, at least I was at the time. And yes, even after all these years, I’ve never forgotten her. But I’ve not been back to her grave since after the trial, and the idea that I could cut someone’s throat, or do what the paper said had been done to those priests, I mean, good god! What sort of a monster could have done such a thing?’

  ‘A monster like you, Mr Mitchell!’ said Tanner, picking up the case file, standing up and walking out, leaving DI Cooper to close the session by leaning into the recording device to say, ‘Interview suspended at 11:54.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  AS COOPER CAUGHT up with him in the corridor, Tanner said, ‘We need to know if Mitchell’s DNA or prints can be matched to anything forensics have found at the murder scenes of Martin Isaac, Father Richard or Father Michael.’

  ‘As well as at the cemetery, where Hannah Beal was found,’ added Cooper.

  ‘Of course, yes. All we need is one single piece of physical evidence to tie him to any of those locations, and we’ve got him!’

  Bursting through the double doors, Tanner filed off towards his desk where he could see Jenny waiting for him, leaving Cooper to head for his own work station.

  ‘How’d it go?’ asked Jenny, as Tanner approached.

  ‘Well, he has been carrying a torch for Claire Judson all these years. He admitted that much, at least.’

  ‘But I assume he didn’t own up to the murders?’

  ‘Fat chance! The most we could get out of him was that he’d visited her grave before, but not nearly as often as Father Thomas told us he had. Talking of whom, is there any news from the medical centre?’

  ‘They’ve said that his neck’s been badly bruised, but there’s no lasting damage. But as he may not be able to eat anything solid for a while, they’re recommending that he stays there for a couple of days.’

  Perching herself on the edge of Tanner’s desk, she looked up at him to ask, ‘So, what’s next?’

  ‘I’ve asked Cooper to chase forensics to find out if either Mitchell’s DNA or prints match anything found at the various crime scenes.’

  ‘And if they don’t?’

  ‘I’m fairly sure they will. It would be exceptionally difficult for him not to have left some sort of physical evidence behind, not after what he’d done to them. The problem is, it may take a while, and we don’t have all that long to hold him before we’ll need to go cap in hand to the magistrate to ask for an extension.’

  ‘Don’t we have enough evidence for one?’

  ‘All we have at the moment is what we found up in his attic, which is purely circumstantial. So whilst we wait for forensics, I’m hoping we’ll be able to sneak Father Thomas out of the medical centre to attend a line-up, to see if he can identify our man, and preferably within the next…’ Tanner glanced down at his watch to add, ‘…sixteen and a half hours.’

  ‘If he can, would that be enough to charge Mitchell?’

  ‘We’d still need the physical evidence, but it would help any application for an extension. I don’t suppose any of the neighbours surrounding St. Andrew’s church said they saw anything suspicious? Unfamiliar cars parked up, or strangers hanging about?’

  ‘None that have said so. But I’ve had an idea that may be worth a shot.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You know how you were talking about re-opening Claire Judson’s murder investigation, to see if it would shed light on any of this?’

  ‘And how Forrester wasn’t too keen on the idea. Yes, I remember.’

  ‘Well, I was thinking that it may be beneficial for us to have a chat with old Tommy Mills, the DI you replaced when he retired. I know that he started working here in the seventies, so it’s possible that he can still remember something about what happened. If he does, it would mean that we’d be able to find out some of the details, but without officially re-opening the case.’

  ‘Now that, Jenny, is what I call a good idea. I don’t suppose you know where he lives?’

  ‘No, but it should be in the system, unless he’s
moved to Spain, of course.’

  ‘Let’s hope not. OK, see if you can dig out his address, and then give him a call to ask if he’d be happy for us to come over. Meanwhile, I’ll have a chat with Forrester to fill him in on how we got on with Gary Mitchell.’

  ‘No problem; but may I suggest you don’t tell him that we’re planning on seeing Tommy. I doubt speaking to an old colleague can be classed as re-opening a murder investigation, but I’m not sure he’d see it that way.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep it to myself; for now at least.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  FORMER DETECTIVE INSPECTOR Tom Mills, or Tommy as he’d been affectionately known, had what many would consider to be the perfect retirement home. From the front drive, where Tanner parked, the house was nothing out of the ordinary, a single-storey dwelling with two dormer windows set into a sloping tiled roof. It was the location that made it special, and that was only apparent when he and Jenny were led through to the back of the house.

  ‘Wow!’ exclaimed Tanner, as he stepped through a large patio door onto a decked veranda, a mug of steaming hot coffee in hand.

  Laid out in front of him was a peaceful stretch of the River Bure, which glided past with untroubled majestic beauty.

  ‘That’s quite a view.’

  As he was guided towards a black wicker armchair, he added, ‘And you have a sailing boat as well!’, gesturing over towards a large dinghy moored up to a small dyke to the side of the house, one that was evidently much loved, judging by the way its smooth black hull and varnished wooden foredeck gleamed in the sunlight. ‘It’s a Wayfarer, isn’t it?’ he asked, deliberately showing off his newly acquired knowledge of all things nautical.

  To Jenny, Tommy said, ‘I thought you said he didn’t know anything about boats?’

  With the merest hint of a smile, she replied, ‘I think that’s the full extent of his knowledge.’

  Turning to Tanner, Tommy said, ‘It is a Wayfarer, yes. The Mark One version, to be precise, but I hear you have something a little larger?’

  ‘Well, yes, but it has to double up as a home as well, so it needs to be. However, if I’m to be honest, I think I’d prefer the set up you have here.’