by Stav Sherez
The incident room was packed with bodies this afternoon, shuffling in from the cold, their clothes steaming and dripping melted snow, the uniforms hungover and huddled in the back. Carrigan ran down what they’d learned from the Maxteds. ‘We shouldn’t cling to the fact that they haven’t spoken to her for nearly two years. It may be nothing to do with the case,’ he warned them. ‘Could be just plain old screwed-up family dynamics, but it’ll make it harder for us to trace her whereabouts over the last few months.’ He brushed his fingers through his beard and shuffled through his notes. ‘Karlson, did you manage to find out anything about the family?’
Karlson unwrapped his long spindly legs from the stool like a spider and picked up his iPhone. ‘I looked up the parents,’ he said. ‘They’re both relatively well known, filthy rich too. The father, Miles Maxted, is a pretty controversial figure in his field, has some interesting ideas about child-raising. There’s a Wikipedia page on him. His basic theory seems to be that parental love conditions the child to be unprepared for the heartless cruelty of the world – a place where this love can never be replicated, leaving the child forever longing for something that not only can he never have but that doesn’t even exist.’
‘Yep, a nice guy all round,’ Carrigan said, impressed by Karlson’s précis.
‘What about looking at Facebook, Twitter . . . ?’ DC Singh suggested. ‘We should check Emily’s social networking sites, see what she was up to.’
Carrigan chided himself for not having thought of it earlier and nodded. ‘Miller? Anything new to report?’
Geneva took a sip of her Coke and updated them on what she’d discovered earlier, still unsure as to what it meant, the traces and connections all hazy and just out of reach. She’d convinced herself that there was no point mentioning the house on Hatherley Crescent or the smiling man on the other side of the door. Carrigan would dismiss it, the evidence was circumstantial at best, but she’d felt something when the door had opened and she couldn’t describe it, even to herself. It wasn’t the man‚ or at least it wasn’t just the man, it was as if something dark and trapped had rushed out of the house, sensing its chance. She knew it was stupid, her feelings probably far more to do with Lee’s text, and she tried to put it out of her mind as she continued. ‘Mother Angelica, Father McCarthy and at least two of the other nuns who died in the fire were involved in the 1973 Chiapeltec strike. It began as a normal strike but that first night a bomb went off, inadvertently killing the mine owners’ families. The next day they retaliated and a lot of people were murdered. No one knows who placed the bomb, but the Scarlet Fire, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members later joined the Shining Path, were suspected. A month later, Mother Angelica was transferred back to London, having only served three years of a five-year residency.’
‘That’s all very interesting,’ Carrigan said, seeing Geneva’s mouth tighten. He could tell she was hungover and irritable, her eyes a little smaller and more pouched than normal. ‘But it’s ancient history.’
‘How about thirteen months ago?’
Carrigan’s eyes shot up. ‘What happened thirteen months ago?’
‘Two of the nuns travelled to Peru.’ She just about resisted the urge to smile when she saw the look on Carrigan’s face. ‘It gets better,’ she continued. ‘On the first trip, two nuns flew out to Peru but only one came back.’ She shuffled through her papers till she found the right one. ‘I looked up the nuns’ travel records, they were in the file Holden sent us. Sister Glenda and Sister Rose travelled to Peru in November of last year. The strange thing is that there’s no record of Sister Rose returning. I checked with immigration and they have her leaving the country but not coming back in. A month later the convent replaced her with a new nun.’
‘Maybe she liked it so much she decided to stay there?’ Jennings quipped.
‘She’s a nun, it’s not up to her,’ Geneva replied. ‘And if she was transferred there, why is there a travel requisition form in her file and not a transfer request?’
‘What do you think happened to her?’ Carrigan asked, his voice careful and soft.
‘I don’t know yet, but it all ties in to the convent ceasing their charity work, I’m sure of it. They did this a few weeks after Sister Rose didn’t return from Peru. It doesn’t make sense. They spent years building up their outreach programmes – why shut them down? With the economic situation as it is, why did they give up their charity work just when it was needed the most?’
Carrigan stopped his note-taking. ‘Do we know why the nuns travelled to Peru?’
‘I phoned the diocese and spoke to Holden. He told me he would have to get back to me on Sister Rose’s whereabouts but he confirmed that the nuns had gone to attend church conferences in Lima . . .’
‘But?’ Carrigan could see something small and mischievous in Geneva’s eyes.
‘I checked the conferences Holden mentioned and cross-referenced them with the nuns’ dates of travel. All three conferences were on dates that didn’t tally with the nuns’ trips.’
Carrigan looked over at Geneva and shook his head. ‘It’s a good story but I’m still not convinced it has anything to do with the fire. It’s far more likely that the nuns’ crusading activities pissed off the wrong people and that the fire was in retaliation for that.’ He saw their faces slump further as he updated them on Byrd’s information. ‘This man, Viktor,’ Carrigan said, pointing to the photo on the wall behind him, ‘is now our main suspect and we need to focus all our energies on finding him. We know he visited the convent. We know he was outside, watching, while the fire was blazing. I think the nuns pissed off this Duka guy and he sent his lieutenant, Viktor, to have a word with them. The fact he made three visits to the convent tells me the nuns were none too eager to stand down. Duka gets pissed off and sends someone, maybe Viktor again, to torch the convent.’ He could sense Geneva’s stare burning a hole in the side of his head and ignored it.
‘Quinn’s just gonna love this,’ Karlson chuckled, a leering grin across his face. ‘Can’t wait to see you trying to explain to him how this case just got a whole lot more fucked up than it already was.’
‘Thank you for that, John,’ Carrigan replied. ‘As you’re so eager to see the ACC’s reaction, I’ll make sure you’re there with me when I hand in my report.’
Karlson’s eyes sputtered momentarily then muted. Shooting the messenger was one of Quinn’s most firmly held beliefs.
But Carrigan felt no pleasure in goading his sergeant. Karlson was right – Quinn had wanted an easy solve, a firebug recently out of jail or an accident, but the more they looked into this case the more it seemed to spin out in contradictory directions, each path at seeming right angles from the others, layered and dense with history and occluded years.
‘We should at least check the nuns’ financial records,’ Geneva said and Carrigan turned swiftly, ready to be angry at her, but when he saw her face, the seriousness and weight of her eyes, he stopped and said, ‘Why?’
‘For years the nuns were involved in funding all this outreach work in the community. They were spending a lot of money and then it stops dead.’ Geneva looked up from her notebook, a hard bright gleam in her eye. ‘I want to know what they’ve been doing with all the money they previously would have been spending on good works.’
Carrigan considered this. It was a good question and he was disappointed in himself for not having thought of it. ‘We’d need to get a warrant and Quinn would never allow it.’
‘I know,’ Geneva replied. ‘Which is why I took the liberty of asking Berman to see if he could hack into the diocese’s server.’
Carrigan stared at Geneva then turned his attention to Berman. ‘And . . . can you?’
Berman avoided Carrigan’s gaze, using the opportunity to examine his keyboard. ‘It won’t stand up in court but it’s quicker than a warrant.’
Carrigan thought about this for a moment. He looked around the room. ‘Everyone OK with this?’
No one blinked o
r shook their heads. Slowly, everyone nodded.
‘Good,’ Carrigan said and turned to Berman. ‘Can you get us into their financial accounts?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ the DC answered. ‘The convent was a registered charity, it existed on donations. That means the records are in there somewhere.’
‘Do it,’ Carrigan commanded.
Berman typed in a string of commands on two keyboards at the same time. They all hunched impatiently over the desk as the screen flashed a long list of numbers. It was scary what was out there, Carrigan thought, every keystroke and kink of your personality, all the words you gushed out drunk at three in the morning, the fired-off jokes and offhand gossip, and it was all stored and waiting in a cold underground room for someone to retrieve it.
A couple of minutes later, Berman nodded imperceptibly and a smile crept across his face.
Carrigan almost ripped the page from the printer. He scanned the dense sheet of numbers, then scanned it again because it wasn’t at all what he’d expected.
‘What is it?’ Geneva said, noticing the quickening in his features. He passed the account sheet across the table. ‘The nuns had over a million pounds in their account as of last month,’ Carrigan stated, watching everyone’s eyes curl in surprise. ‘Berman, can you get their monthly statements?’
A minute later more paper came crunching through the printer. Carrigan stared down the long list of figures. ‘Money was coming in every month to the nuns’ account. Different sums from several different payees. Berman, I need you to get a list of donors to the convent. Anything over a couple of hundred pounds.’
‘No problem,’ he replied, but Carrigan was too ensnared by the balance sheets in his hands to notice.
‘There’s a monthly standing order going out of the convent’s account,’ he said, each word slow and deliberate. ‘Twenty thousand pounds on the sixteenth of every month. Same destination each time.’
Berman scanned his screen and copied the sort code and account number of the bank that the money was being paid into, then punched the information into a search engine.
He moved his face closer to the screen until his nose was nearly touching it. They could all hear his breathing as the data flashed up. ‘The transfers are all routed to the same place,’ he said. ‘The sort code refers to a Banco National branch in Cusco.’
‘Cusco?’ Geneva repeated.
A small grin escaped the side of Berman’s mouth. ‘According to this, the nuns transferred almost a quarter of a million pounds to Peru this year.’
27
Geneva stood outside the small stone church nestled in a sleepy cul-de-sac in the wilds of Lewisham and smoked a cigarette as the snow filled the folds of her jacket and smudged her lenses. She’d been too tired, hungover and red-eyed to put her contacts in that morning and the weight of her glasses was an unexpected thing, it had been so long since she’d last worn them.
She’d left the briefing buzzing with theories and speculation and spent the last two hours glued to the computer screen, zooming and clicking and making notes, the case now pushing her along on its own rhythm.
But what she read only confused her further. She didn’t know if the events at Chiapeltec had anything to do with the case or if they had nothing to do with it. She wasn’t sure how Sister Rose, the missing nun, fitted in. Maybe Carrigan was right and this was nothing more than a feud taken too far, the nuns naively getting into deep water with some nasty drug dealers. But no, that didn’t feel right. She was sure the nuns’ activities in Peru were pertinent to the case despite how persuasive Carrigan’s counter-theory had been. She needed more evidence to back up her hunches. This was an unfamiliar and murky world, one she knew nothing about, and she was only beginning to realise how deep and layered and alien it was. She knew she would never understand the case unless she understood the underlying contexts behind it and so she’d called the editor of the Catholic Tribune and asked him to direct her to someone who could help.
She stubbed out her cigarette and opened the gate to the church grounds, walking past the cracked gravestones and dead flowerbeds and up an overgrown winding path to the front door.
Her first thought was that Father Spaulding looked like a caricature of a monk – a ten-year-old’s Disney version of a brown-robed holy man. Spaulding was extremely bald, extremely short and extremely fat – a man composed of squashed circles placed atop each other. He had saggy jowls, small kind eyes and a nervous laugh.
‘Detective Sergeant Miller.’ His accent was the last thing she’d expected, high and tremulous, yet with a musical lilt to it, an accent only heard in black-and-white movies, dashing officers gathered together in the mess hall on the eve of a momentous battle. ‘Do come in.’
The silence struck her immediately. Though the church was only a few yards away from the high street with its crack dealers and boarded-up shop-fronts, in here, with the door closed, she could have been in another century. She followed Father Spaulding through a long narrow corridor, dark with paintings of virgins and popes, and into a surprisingly bright and airy front room.
‘I was just about to have my lunch,’ Spaulding said as he directed her to the wooden table at the centre of the room. ‘You simply must join me.’
Geneva pulled out a chair, staring at the food on display. The monk was eating alone but there were several plates, enough food for three or four men. Spaulding sat down slowly, hitching his robe and sighing as he carefully placed a napkin on his lap. He pointed to a plate of sliced meat the colour of burnished mahogany. ‘Those are from a small monastery in Switzerland,’ he said. ‘They make the best cured beef in the world. It’s so good it really should qualify as a sin.’ His laugh was full and belly deep, his whole body shuddering.
She looked at the food and felt sick. The last hour swirled in her mind. She’d finally called Oliver and reluctantly agreed to meet him that night to discuss the issue of the house and the money he owed her. The grease on the monk’s lips made her feel queasy but he kept insisting and she forced herself, taking a small piece of black bread and a slice of meat. She bit into it hesitantly and before she knew what she was doing she was reaching for another helping. The dry and bitter taste which had coated her mouth all morning was replaced by the smoky tang of the beef, the subtle hand-rubbed herbs and peppery spices.
Spaulding watched her with amusement as he picked up an olive then studied it before placing it between his lips. ‘You said over the phone you were investigating the fire?’
Geneva nodded, her mouth still too full to attempt speech, and pulled out her notebook.
‘A most terrible thing,’ the monk said. ‘But not for them, of course. They are now sitting at Jesus’ side, the problems of the world, the problems of their bodies and brains, all gone.’ He picked up a dusty green bottle of wine and tilted it towards her. She placed her hand flat across the top of her glass.
‘Oh, come on now, this food tastes so much better with a little wine.’
Spaulding filled her glass. The wine looked unusually dark and viscous, and when she took a sip, the flavour was rich, complex and smoky, maybe the best wine she’d ever tasted.
‘I was looking into Mother Angelica’s past,’ she explained, pulling out the tangled mess of print-outs and scrawled notes from her bag. ‘And I read about the strike at Chiapeltec, the bomb, the ensuing massacre.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Spaulding nodded. ‘What times those were . . . priests and nuns taking up arms, the whole continent seduced by the promises of liberation theology.’
‘I saw you wrote several books on the subject but, to be honest, I don’t really understand much about it.’
Spaulding finished off a slice of salmon, took a sip of wine and, despite her protestations to the contrary, topped up her glass. ‘No need to be embarrassed. There are not many people in the modern church who know that much about liberation theology any more. The Vatican have been rather successful in that.’
She picked up the edge to his words, the way he sa
id this thing out the corner of his mouth. ‘Not fans of it, then?’
Spaulding laughed. ‘Dear me, no, you could say that, though I would put it a bit more strongly.’
An idea started to form in her head and she wrote it down, then took another sip of wine. She hadn’t meant to, was trying to slow down, but it tasted so good and her hangover was finally clearing.
‘Liberation theology is exactly what it says on the tin,’ Spaulding explained. ‘A theology of liberation.’ He leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table. ‘It is also an intrinsically South American thing. It follows from the prophetic tradition of the missionaries and the Jesuit Reducciones, having its roots in great men such as Bartolomé de las Casas, Antonio de Montesinos and Brother Caneca, but it is also a purely modern phenomenon.
‘In the 1950s and sixties, Latin America went through a rapid process of industrialisation. Countries that for centuries had been predominantly rural suddenly transformed themselves in a very short space of time. The new factories and sweat shops led to an increased exploitation of the poor. The villagers who could no longer afford to farm migrated towards the cities and found work, often under the most brutal of conditions. This led to a series of uprisings in search of a living wage, health and safety restrictions, an end to oppression.’ Spaulding stopped and looked up at the ceiling. ‘The world often works in contradictory ways and the uprisings gave the militaries and right-wing political parties the excuse they needed to wrest control of the political machine. Hence you get the years of Latin American dictatorships, the screaming bodies under the football stadium and black-suited death squads roaming the night-time jungles. Anyone who complained of injustice or tried to organise the workers was beaten, tortured and killed. The local parish priests in the villages and countryside saw this violence and oppression with their own eyes and when they met as a body they knew that something had to be done, that the church could not stand by and watch its people be destroyed. And so, liberation theology was born, Marxism no longer held a monopoly on historical change, Christ had taken over.’