Blood Tears

by Michael J Malone

  ‘You think she’ll talk?’

  ‘Did you see the way she kept looking at Irene? Like she was urging her to.’

  Allessandra nodded in agreement.

  A mobile sets off. Farmyard noises. I shrug and smile in a what can you do kind of way before speaking.

  ‘DI McBain here.’

  ‘It’s Agnes from the Seaview here, Inspector.’

  ‘Hello, Agnes.’ I look over at Allessandra and raise my eyebrows. ‘What can I do for you?’

  At the next morning’s briefing I tell the team everything that Agnes Cowan told me on the phone. The table in front of me is groaning with cakes again.

  ‘Who’s bloody birthday is it now?’ I mumble through a mouthful of sugar-coated doughnut. The diet definitely starts tomorrow.

  ‘Bloody mine, sir,’ grins Dave Harkness.

  ‘You guys please stop buying cakes. I’ve got a date with a heart surgeon if I don’t stop eating them.’ I take another huge bite for comedic effect. This earns some pale laughter.

  ‘Right, Allessandra. Recap for those who couldn’t hear me for the flies buzzing around in the cavity of their skull.’

  ‘The deceased, sir, was a paedophile with a long career behind him. He worked at a variety of orphanages, most of them run by the Catholic Church. He worked as a handyman, janitor guy. Never stayed at any one home for more than five years. Was found out several times, but with the Church’s past Ostrich Syndrome when dealing with abuse cases, he was given no more than a slap on the wrist and a reference for his next job. Where more little girls were subjected to his particular brand of caring.’

  When Allessandra stops speaking, the room is silent for once. Most of the guys here have children of their own and by the looks on their faces, they are thinking about what they would do with a sick man like Connelly. Call me stupid, but I would guess sympathy for the deceased is no longer on the agenda.

  ‘So what light does that shed on the crime?’

  ‘Gives us motive, sir.’

  ‘You bet your life it does. Some equally sick bastard got his revenge. More legwork, guys, to find out whom. I’ve written the names of the homes where Connelly worked on the board.’ I nod at Allessandra, ‘Pair off and go through them. Get dates for when he worked there and lists of the kids staying there at the time who might have been abused by him. Was it just the girls? Or did he go for the boys as well?’

  ‘All of the homes, sir?’ asks Jim Peters, with a sullen look on his face.

  ‘All of them.’

  ‘But the murderer’s MO suggests a religious nutter, sir. Shouldn’t we concentrate solely on the Catholic homes?’

  ‘No. I want them all checked out.’

  ‘But with all due respect,’ the tone of his voice suggests that respect is the last thing on his mind, ‘we could be talking about hundreds of children here. This is a highly stylised crime with strong religious overtones. It’s got Catholicism written all over it.’

  ‘We are investigating a murder, DS Peters. That means we are single-minded. We have a single-mindedness matched only by a jealous lover. We look at every possibility. Every possibility.’ I pause and look round the room making sure every pair of eyes is on me. This case is becoming important to me. I can’t begin to explain why, but I need to transmit that sense of urgency to everyone in the room. ‘We’ve got to know everything. Details that Connelly himself would have forgotten will provide the key to this case. We want to know what he ate, what he wore, what he read. What he thought. Details, guys. Details.’

  Work is doled out for the day. I tell Allessandra Rossi she’s with me. I’m going to one of the first orphanages on the list. The trail will be colder here, but I believe in rolling my sleeves up along with the guys. I don’t ask them to do anything I wouldn’t. Besides, I have another reason.

  ‘So what’s this home called again, sir?’

  ‘Bethlehem House,’ I answer. ‘It’s a convent. Between Glasgow and Kilmarnock.’ What I don’t tell her, but may become apparent, is that I spent my formative years there. I’m about to exorcise a few ghosts and I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.

  Chapter 9

  The building is just as I remember. An impassive row of windows stretches from one side to the other. There are four rows altogether, held together by red sandstone and a grey slate roof. The convent doubled as an orphanage and an old folks’ home: the first floor was for the old people, the second floor was for the children, and apart from the chapel on the third floor I never got to find out what was on the other two floors.

  The drive up to the main entrance circles round a statue of Christ, before stopping below a flight of stairs. Thirteen of them. I counted them as a child. Thirteen to represent Jesus and his twelve disciples, Sister Anna’s voice whispers through the years. She was the nice nun. Everyone liked her. We were always happy when Sister Mary was sick and Sister Anna had to look after us.

  To the right of the building, a path is lined with trees. This was the path we walked every Sunday morning, in pairs, like a line of ducklings, to church. It was on that path, on the way to Sunday Mass, that Margaret Sheridan told me about sex, our hot little heads pressed close together so that no-one would hear what we were saying. If they had heard us we would have earned a fist on the side of the head. Margaret told me that the boy put his thing in the girl’s thing and wiggled it about and then a baby was born. I can still hear my indignant reply.

  ‘You‘re soft in the head. You made that up.’ She swore it was true. I was having none of it and didn’t talk to her all the rest of the way to Mass.

  ‘What’s the joke, sir?’ asks Allessandra. She’s looking at me with a quizzical expression.

  ‘Oh, nothing, Allessandra.’ I smile. ‘A goose just walked over my grave.’

  ‘Looks like it gave you a wee tickle while it was at it, sir.’

  Allessandra looks around her.

  ‘Some place. You sure we should park here? Looks like nobody uses this drive.’

  She is right. The red chips on the drive look as if they’ve not moved in thirty years. That’s because the correct entrance is around the back. I am being indulgent. I always wanted to come in this way when I was a boy, but that was never allowed. Only visiting dignitaries were allowed in this way. Minimum qualification: Bishop.

  I sit in the car while Allessandra gets out. I take a deep breath. It’s been a long time. While I was here it felt like a lifetime. Ten years. I lock up murderers for less now. All I did was have a father on the juice and a mother in the loony bin.

  I try to remember what the boy looked like all those years ago. But I fail. It’s like trying to eat soup with a fork. I have no photographs of that stage of my life. Just a bunch of fractured memories. I was a skinny boy with white-blond hair and scarred knees.

  The nuns dressed the boys in short trousers. I fell a lot. Consequently, picking scabs off my knees became a hobby. I got it down to a fine art. Pick it off too soon and it would only bleed again, but choose the right moment, just when it began to itch and you would find brand-new perfect, pink skin underneath. I grew my thumbnail especially. I would hook it under one edge and peel with care. Then pocket the scab.

  I try to remember Connelly. Was he here at the same time that I was? There was a handyman/gardener type of character, but I can’t remember anything about him other than a vague male shape hunched over a flower bed.

  Allessandra is looking at me strangely again, like I’ve sprouted horns and a tail. We climb up the stairs and crunch across the gravel moat that surrounds the building. More stairs and we enter the recess that feeds the main door. I can barely bring myself to press the buzzer. What if someone recognises me? Perhaps I want them to. Look at me, Sister Mary, haven’t I done well? The boy you said would amount to nothing. I wasn’t the only recipient of that fine piece of character building. It was one of her mantras. She had all manner of insults. Her stubby fingers warmed them up as she fingered her rosary beads.

  Mind you, she must be de
ad by now. She was ancient then.

  The door is answered quickly. A middle-aged face shrouded in the familiar uniform looks at us.

  ‘Yes? Can I help?’ Her face has the colour and texture of putty. I wonder if I push my finger into her cheek, would it leave an indent?

  ‘DI McBain. This is DC Rossi. I believe you are expecting us, Sister.’ The honorific escapes before I realise it. Bloody hell, don’t habits die hard. I haven’t spoke to a nun for more than twenty years and out it slips, like phlegm from a consumptive lung.

  ‘Ah, yes. You’re here to ask about an old groundsman, Patrick Connelly. I’m Sister Margaret. Follow me.’ Her smile is large with welcome and her soft Irish tones caress my ears. She opens the door wide and beckons us in. She leads us to a small room to the right of the door. I was in here once. I remember the location of the room, because it was so unusual that one of the kids would be allowed in. But I had an audience with the Bishop, I remember bragging. I wanted to become a priest and the Bishop came to see me. And tried to talk me out of it. ‘To leave one religious institution,’ he said — his face fascinated me, it seemed twice the size of mine — ‘and join another, without seeing a little more of life on the outside, would be unwise.’

  Excellent advice. Except I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to escape. But I had nowhere else to go. My father hadn’t dried up, my mother hadn’t dealt with her problems.

  Neither of them ever would.

  A table and four hard chairs sit in the middle of the small floor. The walls are bare apart from a crucifix and a picture of Our Lady. We sit down. I try to centre myself and ignore the memories that crowd for recognition. You’re here to do a job, McBain. Remember that.

  ‘As I’m sure you’ll have heard. Mr Connelly is… no longer with us.’

  ‘Yes, I heard,’ Sister Margaret says, her hand hovering over her heart. ‘It shocked us all.’

  ‘Were you resident at this home while Mr Connelly was working here?’ I ask.

  ‘No, I was in our Aberdeen home at that point. Just a novice.’ She smiles. ‘Were you?’

  I hear a barely suppressed gasp from Allessandra. My pulse booms in my ear. ‘I can’t remember, Sister. I think he was before my time.’ Somebody must have remembered my name.

  ‘When were you here?’ She’s all smiles. ‘Sure, it’s great to see one of our old boys has done so well for himself. You a big policeman and all.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister.’ I feel my face heat. ‘Can we get back to Mr Connelly? Is there anyone still here that can remember him?’

  ‘Of course there is.’ Her expression is kindly, almost apologetic for triggering my blush. ‘It caused an awful shock around the building when we saw the news on the telly. Holy Mary mother of Jesus, what’s the world coming to when an old man gets murdered in his own home?’

  ‘Are any of the Sisters available to speak to us?’

  ‘Certainly. Mother will be with you in a moment. She remembers him.’ She laughs, ‘And she’s wanting to speak to you. Soon as she heard your name she was all a twitter. “Why, that’s one of mine,” she said.’

  ‘But Mother Superior must be at least a hundred.’ If the nuns appeared elderly to us children, Mother Superior looked as if she was old when Jesus was a boy.

  ‘No, silly.’ More laughter. ‘We have a new Mother Superior… well, must be a couple since you were here. You’ll remember her better as Sister Mary.’

  Fuck. ‘Ah. Sister Mary,’ I try to smile, but succeed only in baring my teeth. ‘I remember her.’

  ‘Not easy to forget.’ Sister Margaret whispers out of the side of her mouth. ‘Sure you’re all grown up now.’ Her voice is louder now, ‘…and none the worse for wear.’ So the nuns must have known what she was like. If that’s the case, how in God’s name did she get to become Mother Superior?

  Just then the door is pushed open and the object of our conversation brushes in.

  ‘Ray McBain. Stand up and let me look at you,’ she booms and manages to dismiss Sister Margaret at the same time. I do as I am told. Too quickly. But note with some satisfaction that I tower over her.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, would you look at you? My, you’ve turned into a handsome man. A bit on the beefy side, mind,’ she approximates a smile. ‘And you’re a big policeman, we hear. I always said you’d amount to something, Ray me lad.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you…’ It takes me a moment to remember the Ray McBain I’d become. The boy is cramming my psyche. I feel myself begin to shrink. An old fear of this woman saps at my confidence. It’s like I never left the place. I cough, ‘I wanted to ask you about Mr Connelly.’ I review her face as I wait for her reply. It has barely changed. A few more lines, but it’s essentially the same face that controlled a generation of children. And the voice has lost none of its power.

  ‘Ah, poor Paddy. Who on God’s earth would want to do a thing like that?’

  ‘That’s why we’re here.’ The word “Mother” hovers on my tongue. I can’t quite bring myself to use it.

  ‘Surely, you’re not thinking someone here’s responsible?’

  ‘Not exactly “here”, but perhaps someone who was here while Mr Connelly was.’

  ‘But why? He was a lovely man. You children loved him. He was always singing his songs around the place as he did his work. I can’t imagine in a month of Sundays why anyone would take such an offence to the poor man.’

  ‘So you would say he was well-loved?’ I’m enjoying this now. She’s lying through her tea-stained dentures. Trying to protect the Church, no doubt. ‘Did you spend much time with the man yourself?’ I ask, as if I’m at a wake and celebrating the life of an old friend.

  ‘Not that much. He did all of the handyman stuff. But I worked with him in the garden now and again. A garden is such a gift from God, don’t you think?’ She aims this last comment at Allessandra, whom she has barely acknowledged until now. ‘That was my way of relaxing after spending the day with you young scallywags.’ That was an adjective she would rarely have used in her day. Heathens, wastrels, demon spawn, would have spun off her tongue like bullets from a Gatling gun.

  ‘So, no-one would have had even as much as a run in with Mr Connelly?’ I ask.

  ‘Rare is the person who could claim that sort of record, Ray. But he did get on well with most of us most of the time.’ She crossed her arms. I remember those arms, with the sleeves rolled up, washing me in a cold bath.

  I shiver.

  Then another memory of this woman asserts itself in my mind. The day I left here to go to the seminary. She held out a small brown, paper bag with a sandwich inside it. She fumbled with it, making sure it was closed.

  ‘Here.’ She all but shoved the bag into my hand. ‘Can’t have you going away hungry.’ She turned, but not before I saw a solitary tear glide down her cheek.

  I remember standing watching her walk away. Her small black shape receding into the distance of the corridor as I tried to assess what had just happened. The sandwich. The tear. Good grief, I remember thinking Sister Mary must have actually liked me. Someone had to prod me with their finger to remind me that the bus driver was waiting.

  I cough.

  ‘Mr Connelly was a convicted… paedophile.’ I suddenly feel out of sorts. As if my memory isn’t to be trusted. ‘Two girls from this convent testified against him fifteen years ago. It was probably a huge media event at the time. Surely you couldn’t have missed it?’ I realise my tone is a bit too strong. I enjoy it, but need to calm down a little.

  ‘We are closeted here from the world,’ she sits as if her back was lined with the wall. ‘… we rely on good men like yourself to keep us all safe.’ Her expression and her voice are polite, so why do I feel she’s taking the piss?

  ‘Mother Superior,’ I don my professional mask as easily as a frog would swallow a python. ‘I expect you want to catch this murderer as much as we do. We really need your help with our investigation. I apologise…’ although it’s costing me five years of my life. ‘…
for my tone. There is an evil man out there and we need to find him in case anyone else is in danger.’

  She sits down, her hand to her throat. I’d said the magic word… Evil.

  ‘Do you think he’ll come after anyone else?’ Her face is as pale as bleached linen.

  ‘We can’t be sure, but from what we can guess of his motivation, we suspect this is a one-off. A revenge killing for some poor child’s lost childhood.’ My pulse is just getting back to normal.

  ‘Frightful, just frightful. May the good Lord bless his soul.’ She looks into my eyes, her own devoid of emotion. We stare at each other, neither wishing to speak first. I can hear a little boy scream, look away, look away, look away. He is sweating and his legs have lost all strength.

  I steel myself against her gaze, determined I will not move my eyes away first. My mouth is dry. It’s like looking into the eyes of a photograph. I’m getting nothing back.

  ‘Do you have a list of children who were here around the same time as Patrick Connelly?’ asks Allessandra.

  ‘Of course we do, my dear.’ Mother moves her eyes to her. Then straight back to me.

  She smiles, letting me know she could have held my gaze for just as long as it took.

  ‘Sister Margaret,’ she booms. Sister Margaret walks into the room carrying a large ledger. She drops it on the table with relief.

  ‘We thought you might like to look at this,’ she says.

  The book is large. About eighteen inches tall, twelve wide and ten deep. It is bound in black cracked leather and the front is gilded with a Celtic border. Someone has stuck a piece of lined paper on the front and written on it ‘1965 to 1975’. The pages are thick and rustle like a distant thunderclap as I open them.

  A list of names appears before me. Children who spent their formative years here as I had done. What scars do they bear, I wonder? How many have been assimilated successfully into society? How many occupy our jails and mental homes?

  I took my relative success in life for granted until a social worker helping me with a case found out I was brought up in an orphanage. Of the children who are reared in that environment, he informed me, seventy-five percent do not make a positive contribution to society. By that he meant they were junkies, thieves or worse. It shocked me. It’s not usually cruelty that causes it, he told me. It’s the absence of love.