With Our Blessing

by Jo Spain

  *

  ‘We have a development.’

  Tom had gathered his team in an empty office.

  He struggled to keep his voice even. He didn’t want them to get too excited. He filled them in on Linda’s visit and her initial assessment. Then he landed the whammy punch.

  ‘The emails that were sent to Father Seamus were sent by Sister Bernadette . . .’ He paused.

  ‘What more do we need?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Physical evidence would be nice, but if we could press her into a confession . . .’ Ray answered.

  ‘Ray’s right,’ Tom said. ‘I want you two to take her in for more formal questioning.’ He wanted somebody other than himself to interrogate her now. He’d deliver the final blow, when it was needed. ‘Put the email evidence to her. This means she was in Mother Attracta’s office at night – she was the one breaking in and messing with the woman’s head. Another deception.

  ‘Ciaran, Laura, try to find out where she could have brought Mother Attracta – where the nun was actually killed. Ciaran, maybe Ronan could help with that. Does she have family or friends we don’t know about on the way to Dublin whose house she could have gone to . . . somewhere that’s empty? If there’s physical evidence to be found, that’s where it is. What is it, Laura?’

  ‘Are we dropping the laundry girls avenue, sir?’

  ‘No, Laura. I want to know how many girls that priest raped. And let’s not shut down any avenue until we have confirmation that the killer is, in fact, Sister Bernadette. If it is her, we can’t even be certain she worked alone. But right now, she is the priority.

  ‘Right, Ray, find Sister Bernadette and take her to the station – if that’s okay, Ciaran? She needs to understand this is serious now. If she refuses, place her under arrest. I want her out of here so we can search her room and try to find out from the others where she could have brought the victim. I’m not entirely convinced yet she’d have had the physical strength to carry out these murders, but stranger things have happened.’

  He didn’t say it aloud, but if Sister Bernadette was their killer he wanted her in the station so she could cause no further harm – either to herself or to somebody else.

  ‘I’ll have one of the lads heat up the interview room and get ye some sandwiches and tea,’ Ciaran called after them.

  Tom walked to the hall and noticed the door to the corridor was ajar. He’d meant to go in earlier just to take a quick look, but it had slipped his mind.

  Inside, Emmet was giving Ellie a lecture.

  Ellie was glowering at her superior, her arms crossed defensively. Her boss sighed and gave her shoulder a conciliatory pat. She winced and turned away, spotting Tom.

  ‘Never bloody good enough,’ she snapped, storming off indignantly.

  Tom raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You only learn through criticism,’ Emmet called, innocently, at her retreating back.

  ‘Emmet . . . a word, please.’

  Tom joined the other man in the corridor. He shivered in the frigid air. The smell of candle wax assailed his nostrils, for some reason evoking memories of funeral homes. The large glass windows gave the corridor a fishbowl effect. At night, with the lights on, people would be able to see in, but anyone inside wouldn’t see out as well. It was an unpleasant thought.

  ‘We have movement, Emmet. I have a suspect but I have no confession. And as of now, no physical evidence. You said there was something under the priest’s fingernails?’

  Emmet nodded. ‘Yes, DNA, probably scraped when he tried to defend himself. Ellie should have caught that at the scene.’ He looked over Tom’s shoulder. ‘Feisty, that one. I love that in a woman—’

  ‘Maybe if you’d come down immediately, she wouldn’t have been covering two sites on her own,’ Tom interjected. ‘That Jack seems bloody useless.’

  ‘Jack?’ Emmet said, puzzled. ‘I didn’t send him down.’

  Tom squinted at Emmet, his brain processing. ‘She said he asked to come down.’

  They both heard a cry, and then the sound of the front door opening.

  Ray and Michael were walking Sister Bernadette to the car.

  The nun looked back at her home and, in doing so, caught sight of Tom and Emmet watching from the corridor.

  She shook her head mournfully. Tom immediately felt guilty. It looked as though he was hiding.

  Ray opened the car’s back door and gently protected the nun’s head as she got in.

  No sooner had the vehicle pulled out of the drive than the door to the corridor burst open.

  Sister Concepta stood before them, her fists balled by her side, her face a furious shade of red. She was shaking with anger.

  ‘You stupid, stupid man,’ she raged at Tom.

  He was completely taken aback. He’d seen the woman angry. Not this irate, though.

  ‘Sister—’ he began.

  ‘Don’t! Don’t you dare say anything. I’ve told you, Sister Bernadette could not have done this. You want to know the truth? Those two deserved to die horribly. But I’m more capable of killing them than Bernadette. She is a truly good woman. And you are putting her through this. I can’t let you . . . I need to . . .’

  Whatever else she wanted to say was lost in an anguished sob, which broke from her lips and convulsed her body.

  Sister Clare, who had also appeared, turned Sister Concepta round and tried to embrace her. The nun allowed herself to be held for a second, but then realized who was doing the embracing.

  She pulled back, and Tom saw something like a sneer cross her face.

  ‘Don’t you dare comfort me,’ Concepta snapped at the other woman. ‘You were as bad as Mother Attracta. You don’t care what happens to Bernadette.’ She stormed off.

  Sister Clare stood there, looking like she’d been slapped.

  Tom was left reeling at the passion and fury Sister Concepta had displayed.

  Emmet moved towards the door, the whole display a little too awkward for him. ‘Excuse me, please; I think I’ll do some work.’

  A gloom had descended on the convent.

  Chapter 49

  Darren, Ciaran’s deputy, had set out a platter of generously carved roast beef and horseradish sandwiches and a large pot of piping hot coffee.

  A recording device sat on the end of the rectangular table. A foot above it, a plain clock adorned the otherwise bare wall.

  ‘Have you eaten, Sister?’ Ray asked the nun, as they sat down.

  ‘Strangely, I have no appetite at the moment, Detective.’

  The nun was pale, her forehead creased with worry. She was trying to hold herself erect in the chair but was failing. Her shoulders sagged from the weight of what was being implied.

  ‘Do you know why we asked you to accompany us to the station?’ Michael asked.

  ‘You think I’m a murderer. I’ve already spoken at length with your inspector.’

  ‘Sister, when did you realize that Father Seamus had raped girls in the convent?’

  Ray spoke quickly, as though the premise of the question had already been established as fact.

  Sister Bernadette balked. ‘What do you mean?’

  She was flustered. The right nerve had been struck.

  ‘Well, that was the reason you sent the emails, wasn’t it? When you realized that he’d raped those girls and got away with it.’

  Sister Bernadette looked from one to the other of the detectives, her face betraying confusion, realization, then distress.

  Her final expression was acceptance.

  Just two questions in and Sister Bernadette had adopted the demeanour of a defeated person about to unload. Maybe she wanted it over.

  ‘Ah,’ she said at last. ‘How did you know I’d sent the emails?’

  She hadn’t denied it. That was a good start.

  ‘You didn’t hide your tracks very well,’ Ray answered. ‘You used Attracta’s computer, but our IT expert tracked the internet search history and found the Latin American website you’d subscribed to.
’

  She laughed, unnerving both of them.

  ‘I’m no technological expert. I worried something like that could be done, though. That’s why I didn’t use the computer I shared with Concepta.’

  Sister Bernadette spoke lightly, but her manner was still resigned – like someone who’d been caught out and could do nothing about it. She’d obviously decided to face her predicament with dignity.

  ‘So you don’t deny you sent the poison messages? The ones that read . . .’ Michael picked up a sheet of paper and started to read the lines printed on it.

  Sister Bernadette held up her hand. ‘There’s no need. I know what they say. I don’t deny it.’

  Ray looked to the coffee pot. ‘Do you mind, Sister?’

  ‘My goodness, no. Drink, eat, do what you have to. Looks like we’re here for the long haul.’

  Michael poured the coffee, and a glass of water for Sister Bernadette.

  ‘When did you figure it out?’ Ray asked.

  ‘When Sister Concepta and I were going through the files. It didn’t take long. Girls who’d been in the convent since they were children? I do some nursing up in the old folks’ home and eventually Barney Kelly started to talk to me. It took a while. He hates nuns. But he knew I’d been a missionary, and in his mind that was enough to differentiate me. So he told me about his suspicions.’

  She took a sip of her water. ‘I tried to raise it with Mother Attracta. Of course, she dismissed me out of hand. You know the quote? “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.” ’

  Ray took a deep breath. Everything rested on this next question. In the absence of forensic evidence and witnesses, a confession was the key to this case.

  ‘Is that why you killed her? Because she let those rapes happen?’

  Sister Bernadette sighed and sipped from her water again. She looked up at the clock, back to the tape recorder, and then at Ray.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She didn’t take those girls seriously, and more were raped because of it. So I killed her.’

  *

  Ray feared his heart might have stopped.

  He looked at Michael – to make sure he’d heard it too. Now that she’d admitted it, he couldn’t put the questions in his head in order.

  ‘I’m going to do it again,’ Sister Bernadette spoke again. Her face was dark, threatening. ‘You’ll want to know my next target. It’s a former Taoiseach.’

  The two detectives looked at each other, confused.

  Sister Bernadette chortled. ‘Yes, as the state’s political leader, he could have intervened. Instead he just let the Catholic Church impose a moral code fit for the eighteenth century.’

  Ray shook his head slowly. She’s lost it, he thought. Stark raving mad.

  She stared at him.

  Then she snorted. ‘For heaven’s sake. You think I’m serious. I didn’t kill Mother Attracta. I didn’t kill Father Seamus. And this might come as a shock, but I’ve no intention of killing a former head of government either. My goodness. Yes, I sent those emails. But I didn’t follow them up with murder. They are my greatest crime. I’m mortified and ashamed of them. Not of their content, but because I didn’t have the courage to speak those words directly to Father Seamus. I feared you’d find them, and you have.’

  Inwardly, Ray groaned.

  Outwardly, he tried to look as though he was still in control of the interview.

  ‘Sister, bearing in mind you admit to sending those emails, you can see why we have brought you in for further questioning. I searched the biblical reference you used for the email address. “Vengeance is mine”? It was your vengeance you were referring to, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, Detective. The passage you take those words from, if you read it properly, refers to the Lord. Vengeance is his, not mine. This isn’t some Hollywood movie. Do you think – what is it they say? – I’m “packing” under this habit? That I’m on some sort of holy crusade for justice?’

  She laughed, and sat more erect. ‘If you are honestly thinking of charging me with murder because I sent anonymous emails, I have little faith in your ability to ever find the person who committed these crimes.’

  She glared at both of them. The humility and dread were gone. They had been replaced with righteous indignation.

  Ray was unsure what to do. She could be an extremely clever woman who was playing them, but everything about her manner told him otherwise.

  He looked down at his notepad and swallowed. ‘You sent the emails, Sister. Did you make anonymous calls to Father Seamus accusing him of these things? Did you contact the police?’

  She shook her head. ‘No and no. I spoke to Mother Attracta and Sister Concepta. Concepta had come to the same conclusion herself, anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean, Sister Concepta came to the same conclusion?’

  Sister Bernadette narrowed her eyes. ‘Everyone in the convent knows exactly what happened to those girls, even if they won’t admit it.’

  Ray sat back from the table. ‘Everyone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Why didn’t someone do something about it?’ The nun scoffed. ‘Why do you think? Half are in denial, half are in fear. Where was my proof? I made the most innocent remark to the newspapers about the laundry, and all hell broke loose. Don’t you understand? It’s called speaking out of school. I went as far as I could.’

  Michael placed his elbows on the desk.

  ‘But is it as far as others in the convent would go?’ he asked. ‘Sister Concepta seems like a good woman. How did she react when she found out what Father Seamus had done?’

  ‘Please don’t do that.’ Sister Bernadette’s voice was scathing.

  ‘Pardon?’ Michael looked puzzled.

  ‘Jump from me to her, to someone else, and someone after that. Isn’t it enough to drag me in here without a shred of evidence to prove I killed anyone, without subjecting others to it as well?’

  Ray cleared his throat. ‘Sister, we’d like to take a DNA sample from you. You can either volunteer it or we can obtain an arrest warrant.’

  The nun looked disturbed.

  ‘Also,’ Ray added, ‘I need you to tell me if you have any family or friends who reside in or own houses between here and Dublin. Or if you yourself own or are renting any properties.’

  He’d taken back control of the interview, but he didn’t feel any better for it.

  Chapter 50

  Tom cursed. He and Laura had just eaten the creamy chicken and mushroom pie that the sisters had left for them. The atmosphere in the convent had changed. The nuns were cooler now that suspicion had fallen very obviously on one of their own.

  The inspector hoped fervently they could get this wrapped up sooner rather than later, though that was looking less likely after the phone call he’d just taken.

  ‘What is it?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Ray. He says Sister Bernadette admits to sending the emails but to nothing else. They’re taking her DNA.’

  The door flew open and Ciaran came in, his face flushed with excitement. Hot on his heels was Ronan.

  ‘Is it related to Sister Bernadette?’ Tom asked, standing up. ‘Did you find a property?’

  Ciaran shook his head. ‘No. Nothing there, Tom, sorry. It’s Catherine Farrell. Ronan went back to trace activity on the account she used to pay for the house next door to Father Seamus—’

  Ronan interrupted. ‘Inspector, I think you should know that I was recruited in the States because of my hacking skills. I had to breach—’

  Tom held his hand up. ‘Don’t say anything more, Ronan. What I don’t know . . .’

  There was no correct way for a senior garda to finish that sentence, but the other man got the gist.

  ‘Ciaran, make sure you get the warrants for that account sorted, asap. And retrospectively request that information. Right, tell me what you found.’

  Ciaran deferred to the younger man. It was Ronan
’s discovery, and he should be the one to reveal it.

  ‘She’s been renting a lock-up for the last six weeks. Just outside Portlaoise. It appears to be a furniture storage facility in an industrial estate. You get a key; you can back your vehicle right up to the door of the unit and store whatever for the period of time you’ve rented. There’s security on site, but not in each individual warehouse.

  ‘There’s an office that’s staffed during the day to deal with administration, but it closes at 6 p.m. Unfortunately they don’t have CCTV trained on the doors of the units, or on the entrance to the facility itself. But I found something that is going to blow your mind . . .’ Ronan paused.

  He was starting to enjoy police work.

  ‘Don’t leave us hanging,’ Tom blurted.

  ‘Three weeks ago, the company went live with a computerized security system. It’s very basic, it just logs times unit doors are opened and closed. Apparently, last summer the company had a problem with an employee using the master key to break into the lock-ups and steal small items. The owners didn’t automatically miss their possessions because these are generally people moving house with lots of gear in storage. But a pattern was identified. The company sacked the employee and set up this system so owners can check online to make sure their unit hasn’t been accessed.

  ‘The company decided to use the system for a month to make sure it worked before advertising it as a security feature. I’m not sure if they were taking liberties on disclosure, but it certainly worked in our favour. Catherine Farrell wouldn’t have known her key use was being recorded. The company thought we already knew about it when Ciaran rang, and they were pretty forthcoming with their records after that. Probably afraid you’d pull them for not informing their clients.

  ‘Anyway, Catherine – or someone – opened her unit at 1 a.m. last Thursday morning. She exited it at 11.30 a.m. She returned to it at 4 p.m. Thursday evening, leaving twenty minutes later. Her final visit was at 10.30 p.m., and she exited at 2 a.m. on Friday morning.’

  Tom felt his jaw drop.

  The visits to the lock-up matched the timeline for Attracta’s abduction, killing and removal to the Phoenix Park. The final visit could have been a clean-up operation.