‘Yeah, it’s that vow of obedience lark, innit,’ added Noakes importantly.
‘Indeed.’ The DS was rapidly getting the hang of spiritual lingo.
Markham’s amusement faded at the thought of the correspondence the diminutive nun had shown them, her cheeks mottled with agitation and shame. Carefully avoiding specifics which might have identified the writer, the most recent correspondence held a chilling menace. Lurid descriptions of caverns ablaze with fire and brimstone re-echoed to the sound of biblical curses.
Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels.
Every tree that yielded not good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire.
The way of sinners is made plain with stones, and in their end is hell, and darkness, and pains.
In due time, their foot will slip; the day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.
‘Not much turning the other cheek or owt like that,’ as Noakes put it succinctly.
I don’t like it one bit, Markham had thought to himself even as he reassured Sister Lucy that the team would be reviewing the St Columba files.
Now he said, ‘It’s a long time to wait for revenge.’
‘Mebbe summat set ’em off … triggered it.’
‘Could well be, Noakes.’
‘Or someone might be using the St Columba thing as a cover …’ Doyle cracked his knuckles, tripping over the words in his enthusiasm. ‘To send us in the wrong direction … Make us think Sister Felicity’s death relates to child abuse—’
‘When it’s about something else entirely,’ concluded Markham. ‘Yes, we can’t exclude anything.’
He turned to the DC. ‘Doyle, I need you to pull the St Columba paperwork. Also, you might want to familiarize yourself with that file on the university’s League of Atheists and drop by the campus.’
The DS belched happily and gave an ironic thumbs up. ‘Good luck with that, lad. We’re talking looney tunes.’ Then, in a tone not totally devoid of malice, he added, ‘Of course, with you being a grad-u-ate, you’ll probably be bezzie mates in no time.’
At that moment, Markham’s mobile rang.
Trouble, thought Noakes, observing the guvnor’s stony expression.
He was proved right when Markham announced, ‘That was DCI Sidney.’ Somehow, the DI refrained from adding, ‘Shoot me now,’ but his two subordinates got the gist. No doubt Slimy Sid was keen to ensure they got their priorities right.
Don’t frighten the horses.
‘And of course, Inspector, I need hardly tell you that discretion must be your watchword.’
Yep, it was every bit as bad as Markham had feared. The DCI was busily narrowing their terms of reference in his own inimitable way.
‘I’ve had Bishop McGettrick on the telephone,’ Sidney said unctuously. ‘He’s simply appalled, but sadly not surprised… A dreadful consequence of the drugs menace.’
So, that’s the way the wind was blowing. The church wanted this squared away as an act of random violence. An intruder high on drugs.
At all costs the investigation was to avoid St Columba, the League of Atheists, pro-life, hanky panky between priests and nuns … indeed, pretty much anything that might conceivably embarrass the religious or civic authorities.
Sidney was nothing if not predictable.
Markham’s gaze travelled to the DCI’s Wall of Fame, as the montage of pictures showing him hobnobbing with the great and good was irreverently known. Surprise, surprise, there he was slobbering all over the bishop. It’s a wonder he wasn’t kissing McGettrick’s ring.
The DCI stroked his crisp little goatee with an air of smug satisfaction. No doubt he imagined it counterbalanced the buzz cut, thought Markham sourly. Naturally, the air conditioning was working in his office, so he had the advantage over his two sweaty subordinates.
‘It’s most likely as you say, sir, though of course, we can’t rule anything out at this early stage.’
A vertical crease appeared between the DCI’s eyebrows.
‘Otherwise the journos might start banging on about cover ups an’ police corruption,’ added Noakes with his well-practised air of sunny innocence.
Well done, Noakesy. Now watch him backtrack.
‘Naturally, naturally. All angles, of course.’
Nothing like the spectre of complaints to the IPCC for concentrating the mind.
With a testy wave of the hand, they were dismissed. Reversing into Miss Peabody’s office, they found the great man’s PA looking unusually flustered, her marcel waves drooping. Clearly, the weekend overtime was no compensation for Sidney’s bad mood.
‘You look as if you’ve lost a pound and found a penny,’ Noakes observed jocularly. ‘What’s up, luv?’
‘Superintendent Bretherton’s due any minute, and the DCI wants statistics on all religious hate incidents for the past twelve months. I know I put it down somewhere …’ She pattered off into the outer office.
The two men exchanged glances.
All bets were off.
Perfect!
The final notes of Gluck’s Air from ‘Orpheus’ swelled to fill the sombre shadowy spaces of St Cecilia’s Church before slowly dying away.
Nicholas Saddington rested his hands on the organ keyboard in a blissful moment of self-congratulation. That was how it should be done. A pity nobody was around to hear it now that all the Sunday Masses were done.
A secretive little smile played about his batrachian features as he contemplated the higher prospects opening before him. Now the tables were going to be turned with a vengeance.
All good things come to those that wait. And God knows he had been kept cooling his heels long enough while those snotnosed clerics, with their air of unassailable rectitude, treated him like some sort of feudal retainer.
Valerie would be pleased, he thought with a sense of vicious satisfaction. She was always nagging him to be more assertive. ‘Stand up to them, Nick,’ was her endless refrain.
A faint ripple stirred the flat waters of his self-approbation.
What if he overplayed his hand? Could he honestly say he knew his adversary?
Impossible.
The game was worth the candle.
And yet, what was he to make of that encounter the other day?
At that moment came a sound of rustling from the darkness below. Peering out from the organ loft, the broad abyss of silence seemed suddenly awful in its depth. His heartbeat was hammering into it like a kettledrum.
That’s enough music for tonight, my lad, he told himself, whistling nervously to cover the spasm of apprehension. Fumbling in his haste to be gone, he quickly stashed his music books and sheets in a pile on top of the organ console. Switching off the lights, he felt his way down the narrow stone spiral which led down from the loft.
At the front door, he glanced quickly behind him.
Nothing there save for the scattered points of glowing gold from the candle stands winking at him like cats’ eyes.
Then the door was locked and he was gone, the summer night enveloping him in its inky embrace like a reproachful lover.
6. Shades of Darkness
‘WELL, WHAT WERE THEY like, then?’
Muriel Noakes’s impatience burst out midway through the Monday evening chicken casserole (‘Mary Berry’s summer classics’).
‘What was who like?’
‘Don’t be tiresome, George. You know perfectly well what I mean. The nuns, of course.’
Natalie Noakes, a buxom permatanned blonde whose purple nails rivalled the sprouting broccoli for virulence, rolled her eyes.
Her father grunted. ‘Oh, harmless enough, I s’pose.’
Then, as something more was clearly expected, ‘Well, you know … jus’ a group of women living in each other’s pockets …’
With a sigh, Muriel spoke as to a child who was hard of hearing.
‘How did they take Sister Felicity’s death?’
Noake
s realized he was in for it.
‘Er, the superior—’
‘Mother Ursula.’
‘Nice woman, that. Proper upset she was…. Her deputy—’
‘Mother Clare.’
‘Yeah, all holier than thou and looking down her nose.’
‘I’m sure I don’t understand why she’d want to take that attitude.’ Muriel bristled, her eyes narrowing to slits. ‘With you being a person of standing in the town. And a churchman.’
‘Oh, she gave us the fish eye all right. Cos we asked if Sister Felicity had any enemies.’
At last they were getting somewhere.
‘And did she?’
Noakes cleared his throat uneasily.
‘Well, er, you know … Nuns … an’ priests … Folk sometimes get funny ideas….’
‘Not half.’ Natalie sniggered. ‘We used to imagine the nuns were all at it with that lot in the monastery.’
Muriel shot her a withering look, but the girl continued undeterred. ‘Mind you, they’d have to be desperate. I mean, they all look like skinned rabbits in the convent … no makeup … an’ the clothes!’ She shuddered delicately.
It chimed so closely with his own prejudice, that Noakes felt an obscure sense of shame.
He thought back to what Markham had said when they left the convent after breaking the news of Sister Felicity’s death. ‘Don’t start imagining they’re all inadequate or sexual misfits with some sort of death wish,’ he had said. ‘Nuns and priests aren’t running away from life. They’re living it more abundantly.’ He hadn’t really understood what the guvnor was driving at, but the note of respect had been loud and clear.
‘I didn’t mean anything about ’em doing stuff like that,’ he said gruffly, a beetroot stain creeping up his beefy sunburnt neck. ‘More like risks from prowlers an’ nutters … people who hate the God Squad.’
‘The God Squad,’ echoed Muriel faintly. ‘Where on earth do you pick up expressions like that? Not from Gilbert Markham, that’s for certain.’
‘The inspector’s dead dishy.’ Natalie contemplated her manicure with all the complacency of a leading light in Bromgrove’s jeunesse dorée. ‘Too old an’ you can’t understand half of what he says, but when he looks at you it’s like he can see inside your mind…’ Pushing back her cuticles, she added blithely, ‘But that dippy teacher’s welcome to him.’
There was a pregnant pause.
‘Right, Mum.’ Natalie had other fish to fry. ‘I’m off. Pilates tonight.’ Followed by a snog fest with the instructor, though she saw no need to share that information with her parents.
She headed for the hall, Muriel clucking and fussing in her wake.
Noakes sat enveloped in a postprandial stupor. Through the open windows of the kitchen-diner – heavily faux-rustic in tribute to Muriel’s Scandinavian phase – the sound of bees foraging from flower to flower seemed to deepen the stillness. He felt himself nodding off …
Then Muriel was back, summer pudding loaf and cream at the ready. (Mary Berry again.)
He was a few mouthfuls in before she returned to the subject of the hour.
‘Now I know you can’t divulge details of the investigation, George.’ This with an air of long-suffering virtue. ‘But I do hope the nuns are going to do something about security … especially if there’s some kind of vendetta against them.’
‘This pud’s champion, luv.’
No terrier at a rat hole ever displayed more patience or more pertinacity than did Muriel Noakes on the trail of her quarry.
‘Well, are the nuns taking precautions?’
Her husband resorted to diversionary tactics.
‘That Mother Gregory’s a caution,’ he said.
‘Let’s see … oh yes, the tall one with the big beaky nose. What about her?’
‘When Mother Ursula was giving us the grand tour today, we walked in on her having a crafty fag.’ He chuckled at the memory. ‘She jumped like she’d been shot an’ shoved the stub in her cardigan. Burned a hole right through it.’
Muriel sucked in her cheeks.
‘C’mon, luv, no need to look like that,’ he said mildly. ‘They’re entitled to some treats, the poor cows.’
‘Oh, no doubt.’ Her stately forbearance seemed to fill the room.
Then she returned to the attack.
‘But seriously, George, d’you think this is about someone out to get the nuns?’
‘Early days, luv, early days,’ her husband replied pacifically. ‘We haven’t caught anyone drawing pentagrams on the walls yet.’
This levity was misplaced.
‘One hears such terrible stories … and that crowd of undesirables at the university are bad news. I just thank God that Natalie never bothered with higher education.’ Non-acquisition of the requisite A Levels being a mere bagatelle as far as Muriel was concerned.
She looked beadily at Noakes.
‘Of course, Sister Felicity was very friendly with some of the priests from the monastery…. Quite a favourite with the rector. Then there was Father Thomas … people said they were thick as thieves.’
A compression of the lips indicated there was more to come.
‘She certainly wasn’t shy when it came to speaking up at the Women’s Guild and the ecumenical meetings. Very outspoken for a nun.’
From which it might be deduced that Muriel felt Sister Felicity had fallen short of true conventual propriety.
‘Well, times have changed, haven’t they, luv,’ he temporized. ‘Nuns are able to have their say now like anyone else.’
‘Humph.’
The air twanged with Muriel’s disapproval.
‘The trouble started with women’s rights, if you ask me. Proper nuns in the old days were always covered from head to toe with only their faces showing. Now it’s all pullovers and skirts, or suits and skimpy little veils.’ Her lips made a strange rictus as though she was about to blow a raspberry. ‘You’d be hard pressed to know that some of them are nuns at all.’
Noakes scratched his chin and looked up at the ceiling, hoping that this meditative posture would be taken for assent.
Without warning, Muriel changed tack.
‘Olivia Mullen’s in and out of St Cecilia’s quite a lot these days,’ she observed, certain white dints coming and going in her nose. ‘From what Eve Griffiths says, it sounds like she’s “got religion”.’
Muriel noticed George’s face take on a mulish expression. What was it about that red-haired chit which made him come over all protective? You’d think he’d be able to see past the “little girl lost” act. But then, men were hopelessly naïve when it came to women like that!
‘Hopefully, St Cecilia’s will have a calming effect,’ she continued majestically. ‘Make her less skittery.’
Noakes mumbled something through a mouthful of summer pudding, tucking in as though his life depended on it.
Satisfied that she had cut Olivia down to size, Muriel felt she could afford to be charitable.
‘How is she finding things now that she’s left teaching?’
‘Oh, she’s keeping her hand in down at the uni. Creative writing classes or some such.’
Suit her to a tee, that would, drinking coffee all day with the other drop outs.
‘Oh good, I’m sure it’s such a relief for Gilbert to see her more … settled.’
Noakes smacked his lips. ‘C’n I have seconds of this, luv?’
‘No, you can’t, George. We’ve got the regionals coming up, remember. I’ve let your outfit out once as it is.’
Like many big men, Noakes was light on his feet. He had met Muriel on the dance floor at Bromgrove’s Palace Ballroom, instantly drawn to the statuesque chestnut-haired woman standing under the glitter ball with her head thrown back, laughing at something her partner had said. I wonder if I could make her laugh like that, he had thought, before seizing his chance in an ‘excuse me’.
They took their dancing very seriously, so Noakes acquiesced to his wife’s fiat wit
hout demur.
‘Why don’t we kick off our shoes an’ take a spin round the garden,’ he suggested shyly. ‘By way of practice, like.’
‘George Noakes!’ The dragon melted, bestowing an indulgent smile on him. ‘There’s the washing up to do.’
‘Leave it till later… Go on, Mu.’
‘I don’t know what the neighbours will think.’
‘That I’m a lucky fella.’
And with that, Noakes won the day.
While Noakes tripped the light fantastic in his garden, Markham was on his way to the Convent of Bon Secours, having dropped Olivia off at the university for her Monday evening seminar.
A long and frustrating day had culminated in the disagreeable discovery that three of Olivia’s students on the BA Creative Writing course were prominent members of the League of Atheists, their photofits and other personal details having been passed to him by DC Doyle earlier that afternoon. It had given him a bad turn to see the League’s President, Leo Wolfitt – lean and bearded with narrow, vulpine features – hail his girlfriend from the top of the steps outside the Humanities Centre with an insouciant ‘’Lo, Liv’.
Liv. His name for her.
Forcing down the bile which had risen in his throat, he turned a cheerful face to Olivia before watching as she skipped off happily to join her students. It was good to see her looking eager and expectant, the shadow cast by Sister Felicity’s death temporarily lifting. No need to spoil the moment. He would be meeting Mr Wolfitt tomorrow at the station to ‘clear the air’, though he doubted that truth and transparency were much in that gentleman’s line. Wolfitt’s face had lit with swift warmth at the sight of Olivia, but Markham had a sudden fleeting awareness of malign energy seething and bubbling behind his friendly exterior, like the lava which seethed and bubbled unseen behind the smiling slopes of a dormant volcano.
Ten minutes later, the DI was drawing up in the convent forecourt, his gaze drawn as before to the figure of St Michael the Archangel looming over the front door, engaged in his eternal battle to save souls.
For a moment, the DI leaned against his car, inhaling the scents of summer, gazing with pleasure on the immaculately kept herbaceous borders that glimmered green and silent in the evening light.
Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set Page 47