Down Down Down

by L M Krier

  ‘Is there now? Well, that’s only to be expected. I just hope he’s slightly more intelligent than the one who came to speak to me. All you need to do is to keep calm and say as little as possible. Exactly as we discussed.’

  ‘But ...’

  Warren cut across him again, speaking calmly. Conversationally.

  ‘I was called to see young Joey again last night. Such a disturbed young man. So very vulnerable. Once again he spoke so warmly of his one-to-one sessions with you, padre. How the touch of your hand calms him and brings him relief.

  ‘And then there’s Martin now, too. I’ve referred him to you. He’s an older man, of course, but so very distressed and disturbed, although trying to hide it. I sense there are deep-seated mental health issues there. I think he’s going to be another one who will benefit enormously from some time alone in your company.’

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me this morning, father. I’m Detective Inspector Jo Rodriguez, from Stockport Police. This is a nice chapel you have here. Very restful.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s pleasant enough but, of course, very different to the churches I’ve been used to. It has to be plain and unadorned. You’d be surprised at how enterprising the prisoners can be in making a weapon of the most unlikely items.’

  His laugh, as he said it, was high-pitched. Nervous.

  ‘Oh, not much surprises me these days, father. Not in my line of work.

  ‘My family and I are regulars at St Joseph’s. I do like a nice, traditional church building. I know it’s not about the outward and visible sign, but I find some of the modern buildings a bit cold and impersonal.’

  ‘Please do sit down, Inspector. You’re practising, then?’

  ‘Very much so, father, when my work allows it.’

  Jo was working hard to create a relaxed rapport between them, but the chaplain’s nervousness was evident. Jo had no way of knowing whether that was his normal behaviour. He may simply have been shy by nature. He’d known many perfectly law-abiding citizens become nervous wrecks in the face of an unexpected visit from the police. No matter how calm and polite the officers were.

  ‘Please feel free to call me Jo. Inspector is a bit impersonal for an informal chat.’

  Again, the nervous little laugh.

  ‘Very good. Thank you. Jo it shall be. Is that short for Joseph, like your parish church?’

  ‘I have a Spanish father, so it’s actually Jorge. But that’s a bit harsh on the throat if you’re not used to the pronunciation. Growing up in Bolton, it was quickly shortened to Jo.’

  ‘I hope you understand, right from the start, Jo, that I cannot breach the sanctity of the confessional. Anything which a prisoner may say to me in confidence must remain that way. I’m sorry if that interferes with your enquiries, but it’s something on which I’m not prepared to compromise.’

  Jo laughed. ‘Oh, I expected no less, father. It’s a relief to hear you say it. To be honest, there are things I may well confess to my parish priest which I certainly wouldn’t want to get back to the mother of my six children.’

  He was still working hard to make the priest more at ease. It wasn’t having much visible effect. He decided simply to plough on.

  ‘You’ve possibly heard or seen on the news that we’re currently investigating a series of arsons in Stockport. The most recent of which involved a fatality.’

  ‘Indeed. I heard it on the local news. That poor man, God rest his soul. I understand it’s thought he might have been an ex-serviceman?’

  ‘It’s one of the lines we’re following up to try to identify the victim, yes. Now, I know you know a man called William Warren, who is serving time here for an arson which killed a family of four.’

  The chaplain probably didn’t realise that in response to the question, he wiped the palms of his hands, the fingers of which showed a slight tremor, against the thighs of his trousers. But Jo spotted the gesture immediately and logged it away in his mind for future reference.

  ‘Yes, yes, indeed. William is an absolute stalwart of the Listener scheme and is our chapel Red Band. That shows his trusted status and gives him a little more freedom of movement than most prisoners. As you can see, he does a wonderful job of keeping our chapel spotless.’

  ‘A recent convert to the faith, as I understand it, isn’t he? He was not a believer before you came here; is that right?’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s true. But then many people find their true path later in life, don’t they? And I’m so pleased that William did, because of the great comfort he now brings to others.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what gave him his road to Damascus moment, father?’

  The priest shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His struggle with his conscience was evident. He didn’t want to lie to a police officer – certainly not in the chapel – but it was clear he wasn’t comfortable with telling the whole truth.

  ‘It began with a very troubled young man who was sharing his cell. A lapsed Catholic who was completely at sea in here. William very kindly took him under his wing and asked to see me about reintegrating D… the young man in question, back into the flock. That’s how he got started.’

  ‘The young man in question being Duncan Dooley, I take it?’

  A flicker of surprise, and perhaps something else, showed on the chaplain’s face. He clearly hadn’t realised how much Jo knew already.

  He nodded, not risking saying too much. Not trusting his voice.

  Jo switched topics, watching the chaplain’s body language for anything it could tell him.

  ‘Do you ever stay in contact with former prisoners, father? Once they’ve left here?’

  More moving about in his chair. Another subconscious wipe of his hands on his trousers.

  ‘It would be a breach of confidentiality for me to tell you who I see as part of my pastoral duties.’

  ‘I think we both know that it wouldn’t, father,’ Jo told him pleasantly. ‘I’m not asking you to betray any confidences. Simply to confirm or deny whether you still have any contact with former prisoners.’

  The chaplain was starting to go red now. A flush spreading up from under his clerical collar to his cheeks.

  ‘Well, of course, a great many of the men who serve their sentences here are not from this area. So once they are released, they often move back to where they came from and we lose all contact.’

  Jo was starting to feel that changing water into wine might actually be an easier task than this interview. Keeping his tone patient, he persisted, ‘But some of them may well stay in this area. So I’ll ask you again, father. Are you still in contact with any prisoners you met inside this prison?’

  The priest nodded miserably and hurried on, ‘Not many. Just the occasional one in need of continued spiritual guidance from someone they know and are already comfortable with.’

  ‘Thank you, father. And is one of those prisoners Duncan Dooley?’

  ‘So we have the triangle, right there,’ Jo told the team as they got together at the end of the day. ‘A direct link between Warren, the chaplain, and this lad Dooley, who’s now on the outside.’

  ‘And who just happens to be another six-footer, I would say,’ Jezza put in.

  ‘That’s what his records show, yes,’ Jo replied. ‘But don’t forget he has rock solid alibis for all of the arsons except the last fatal one.’

  ‘But perhaps that explains the escalation,’ Jezza pressed on. ‘The first three were being done to get attention. There may be more than one arsonist at work. The first one doesn’t have the bottle to endanger life. When that doesn’t work, after three arsons, a second person takes over and takes more drastic action.’

  ‘We need to talk to Dooley again. More formally, this time. Let’s have him in and ask him about those meetings he has with Father Archer.’

  ‘Boss, he told me and Mike that because he’s an ex-con, he’s watched like a hawk when he visits Warren inside. Security cameras on him. Is it worth trying
to get hold of the camera footage, depending on how long they save it for? And then getting a lip reader to see if there’s anything of interest being said between Warren and Dooley on those visits?’

  ‘Anything’s worth a shot, Jezza. I’m just not sure what information can be passing between those two, though. If the chaplain is involved, and that’s a big if, Warren has ample opportunity to talk to him direct. He’s a trusted prisoner. Does the cleaning, spends a lot of time in the chapel so he has plenty of chances to talk to the priest. What information does he need from Dooley? Jo, what did you make of Father Archer?’

  ‘Nervous. Very. Definitely a man struggling with his conscience.’

  ‘So is he our arsonist?’

  ‘Boss, call me indoctrinated, but I’m really struggling to imagine a priest setting a fire which risked killing anyone. Damage to a property, at a pinch, if they thought they had valid motives to do it. But setting light to a building with squatters in it? I’m really having difficulty with that. Unless they genuinely believed it was empty, like the others were.’

  ‘Like I said, perhaps the priest did the first three but it was someone else for the last one,’ Jezza reiterated. ‘Someone without that sort of a conscience. We need to start looking at the chaplain’s alibis, surely?’

  ‘And his motives. I got the impression that he’s eager to please, particularly to help those under his pastoral care. He could possibly have set the early fires, under the belief that he’s helping Warren to prove his innocence. But I still think Warren would have to have a very powerful hold over him to get him to do anything like that. He seemed genuinely upset at the news of a fatality, and the possibility that it might have been an ex-serviceman.

  ‘So what could Warren possibly have on him to blackmail him into doing it? I’ve checked the chaplain’s background, of course, and there’s not a hint of anything. Squeaky clean.’

  ‘Hopefully my friend Martin might just be able to pick something up from his contact with the chaplain. Get some idea what he might be being blackmailed about, for instance.’

  ‘Boss, can I just add something?’ Martha began. ‘Only Jackie and I went back to try again with our only witness to date to this tall man carrying a bag.’

  She looked towards one of the Uniform officers who’d joined them to help with enquiries.

  ‘We recorded it all, so we could show we weren’t leading the witness. I went through an interview technique of getting him to concentrate on just one aspect of the person he saw at a time. I was particularly trying to pin down the detail about what he’d said about fancy dress, but it not looking like fancy dress.

  ‘We’d already been round all the churches in the area but we hadn’t managed to find any priest who might have fit the bill. No home visits, no sneaky nip into a pub for a swift one before closing. Not even any six-foot priests. Nothing. So we went back to the fancy dress idea.

  ‘Long story short, because it took us a while. I was getting him to concentrate on the person’s collar. Shirt, tie, roll-neck, that sort of thing. Jackie’s good at sketching, so she did some drawings to show him, until he found the thing he was trying to describe.

  ‘Boss, it was a clerical shirt. The sort a priest would wear. Without the white collar bit, which just slips in, I think. So not a dog collar as such but a shirt which would usually have one on it.’

  ‘So do we pull the chaplain in for questioning, boss?’ Jo asked him.

  Ted hesitated.

  ‘We might be overplaying our hand if we do, at this stage. We’ve nothing much to go on yet, only circumstantial evidence. Jo, what was his state of mind? Is he about to do a runner, do you think, or can we leave him for the weekend to see what else we can get on him?’

  ‘Promise not to karate kick me if I’ve got it wrong, but I didn’t get the feeling he was on the point of bolting. Could we discreetly keep him under obs for the weekend? After all, Sunday’s his busy day. So unless something panics him, he might not let his parishioners down.’

  ‘Sort a rota out then, please, and let’s make sure we know where he is and what he’s doing at all times. Then we can review the situation on Monday morning.

  ‘What about Tam Lee and her sidekick? Where are we on that?’

  ‘Boss, Virgil and me tried to find Jimmy Crick last night with no luck,’ Rob O’Connell told him. ‘He must have gone out somewhere straight from work. I discussed it with Jo and we decided to try him this evening, rather than hang about all night. With the weekend coming and the weather as bad as it is out there now, we figured he might just knock off a bit early this evening. We’ll go round to his house now and see what he has to say for himself.’

  ‘Right, good work, everyone. I’ll be in in the morning, Jo. Let’s see if we can’t pull a few more leads together before Monday. And Maurice, I’ve not forgotten we owe you a drink. But for goodness sake go home and try to get some sleep. We’ll do the drinks next week when we might just have made a bit more progress.’

  Ted went to his office when they’d finished and spent some time sorting emails and messages. He was just getting his things together, ready to go home and face another barrage of reproachful looks and allegations of feline abuse from the cats, when his phone rang.

  ‘Ted, you have to be the jammiest bastard I’ve ever encountered.’

  Jono, his contact at the Met.

  ‘And you must have some friends in bloody high places.’

  ‘News to me if I have. What are you talking about? And you must be a mind-reader. I was about to call you. You go first, though.’

  ‘I was going to put someone onto digging into the no doubt murky past of this so-called journo friend of yours from Gibraltar, but we’ve been a bit flat out. You know what it’s like. Then not all that long ago, I got a mysterious phone call. Some bloke – he didn’t say who, nor where he’s from, but he seemed to know the ins and outs of a duck’s arse about your man in Gib – to say there was a bike courier on its way over with a file for me.

  ‘It arrived, but I’m still none the wiser about its provenance. Heavily redacted, with all mention of sources removed. But it’s bloody dynamite, Ted. Stitches up that Mercado bloke like a bloody kipper. Names, dates, places, and most importantly of all, the full money trail. It shows a very strong, clear link between him and his supposed property exhibitions and some of the names on the guest list for those child porn parties with your other good friends, Shawcross and Maxwell.

  ‘Seriously, though, Ted, who are you connected to? This is the kind of file I’d expect to see coming from the Intelligence service. It would have taken us poor plods weeks, if not months, to put together anything as detailed as this. And seemingly coincidentally, it lands on my desk just a few days after you start having trouble with the little scrote in Gibraltar who’s implicated in it up to his arse and beyond. Which means we can jerk his chain and bring him in, for sure.

  ‘So who the hell is watching your back for you, and why? Who do you know in the Spooks? You jammy sod.’

  ‘Can you copy me in on it all at some point, when you get chance? And I honestly don’t know any Spooks. At least, I don’t think I do. Although I’m very grateful to them, and I’m certainly not going to look a gift-horse in the mouth.’

  He didn’t know anyone capable of getting that sort of information at such short notice. But he did know a man who could.

  He wondered if the dossier was Sir Gethin Armstrong’s idea of thanks in advance, an apology for the past, or a bribe to ensure Ted persuaded Trev not only to testify but perhaps also to agree to some sort of a reconciliation with his father. He wasn’t about to mention any of that to Jono, though.

  Whichever it was, Ted was grateful to get Mercado off his back once and for all, to let him get on with trying to wind up both of the cases he and his team were battling with.

  ‘Anyway, what I was about to call you about is connected to your big historical child abuse case and it’s a bit delicate. My partner Trev was a victim of another predatory paedophile you
might not yet have heard about. His father came to see me about it and he’s in touch with parents of other victims. The thing is, I haven’t yet spoken to Trev about this latest development – he’s in Paris until tomorrow – and he’s not going to like it. He hasn’t spoken to his parents for fifteen years and I don’t know yet if he will agree to testify. And if he even does, I want to make sure it’s someone who’ll handle the whole thing with kid gloves. Someone whose discretion I can rely on.’

  ‘Shit, Ted, I’m sorry to hear that. Count on it. If and when he’s ready to talk, I’ll sort it all out myself. Now I know the kind of company you keep, it will be a case of anything to keep you happy.’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  ‘Here’s our boy,’ Rob announced, as a battered white van turned into the road where he and Virgil were parked, watching and waiting.

  ‘Can I be bad cop?’ Virgil asked him, as they opened the doors and grabbed coats to drape over their heads against the deluge. ‘I like being bad cop.’

  They sprinted across the road and came up behind their target just as he was putting the key in his front door. He didn’t hear them until the last minute because of the volume of the rain drumming down and spilling noisily from a gutter which was in need of unblocking.

  ‘Hello, again, Jimmy. DS O’Connell, DC Tibbs. Remember us? Can we have a quick word? And can we come in, please? Only it’s pissing down out here, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  Jimmy Crick had opened the front door and stepped inside. His look towards the two wet officers standing on his doorstep was not exactly welcoming. He was interrupted by a small child, face smeared in chocolate spread, coming running down the hallway, shouting, ‘Daddy, daddy!’

  Ignoring Rob and Virgil, who took advantage of his distraction to step into the house behind him, Crick bent down to pick her up, swinging her high in the air as she laughed in delight. A woman’s head appeared round the doorway of a room at the end of the passage. She frowned as she saw the two men standing there, Virgil trying his best to look looming and menacing but was unable to stop smiling at the little girl who was staring at him.