by Stav Sherez
‘You’re talking about the Chiapeltec massacre?’ Geneva pulled out a set of grainy black-and-white photos and spread them across the table. ‘I would call that more than a little trouble.’
‘There were death threats against her,’ Holden conceded. ‘We moved her to England to save her life.’
‘And to save your reputations, right? You put her here, right under your noses where she couldn’t get into trouble.’
‘You really don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?’ Holden said, a slight amusement in his tone. ‘You have no idea.’
‘Then tell us.’
‘We had to relocate Mother Angelica because of the death threats. I wasn’t lying about that.’
‘Death threats from whom? The government?’
Holden nodded. ‘There was that, but we were more worried about the threats coming from the other side, from the workers and survivors of Chiapeltec.’
Geneva felt something in her chest pop. ‘Why . . . why would they want to kill her?’
‘You know about the bomb which killed all those people, derailed the strike and led to the massacre? We got word that rumours, credible rumours at that, were spreading through the villages that Mother Angelica had brought in the Scarlet Fire. That she’d okayed the use of the bomb. We had no idea whether this was true or not but it was enough that people believed it to be so. We had to get her out of there.’
Geneva sat back, stunned. She let the words run through her brain and nothing in there contradicted them. ‘Do you think it’s possible what happened at the convent is a direct consequence of that?’
Holden shrugged. ‘People kill each other for nothing, Detective Sergeant, you know that. For something like this, who’s to say?’
‘So, you brought her back here to get her out of harm’s way, but it didn’t work, did it?’
Holden leaned back, eyes plagued with useless hindsight and careful deliberation. ‘We monitored her closely and, for many years, it seemed that the change of location had served its purpose. Mother Angelica poured herself into outreach work, into helping the homeless and drug-sick and many other worthy causes. The church lifted the censure, happy that she’d focused her liberationist tendencies on more fruitful ground.
‘Then we began to hear rumours. That she was recruiting nuns who’d fought alongside her at Chiapeltec. That she was withdrawing from her missionary work. That she’d finally finished the book she’d been working on for so many years.
‘One of the nuns who left the convent after a dispute with Mother Angelica told us about this book – a calculus of violence – a mathematical procedure which would tell you whether violence in any particular situation was justified or not. You can imagine the furore this caused when news of its contents leaked out. The church does not sanction violence under almost any circumstances, certainly not violence by an individual.’ Holden shook his head, in resignation, despair or disapproval, Geneva couldn’t tell. Maybe all three. ‘What these people failed to understand was that Jesus was not some bearded anarchist liberator saving the oppressed from the tyranny of the state, but a spiritual liberator who saved them from the tyranny of their own hearts.
‘We approached Mother Angelica and voiced our concerns but she wouldn’t listen to us. She was called to the order’s headquarters in the Vatican and told about the excommunication ruling. She refused to recant the book’s teachings and stop publication. The excommunication was only a formality after that.’
‘This was all about a book?’ Geneva said, surprised, despite herself, at what some people chose to stake their lives on.
Holden laughed. ‘Isn’t everything?’ He sipped carefully from his glass. ‘The difference here is that Mother Angelica’s book wasn’t theoretical – it was meant to be used as an instruction manual in direct action. Its publication would have been a severe embarrassment to the church.’
‘More so than what they were doing in Peru?’
Holden stared at Geneva. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.’
‘No, of course not,’ Geneva replied. ‘We, however, do know that Father McCarthy was involved in running a compound in rural Peru that the convent was funding. We know Emily Maxted met him there.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Holden replied. ‘Our remit is London, not Peru or anywhere else.’
‘Still, kind of convenient for you that they all disappeared in a puff of smoke,’ Carrigan said.
Holden turned slowly towards him, his face pale and rigid. ‘What, exactly, are you insinuating?’
‘I’m not insinuating anything, I’m just making a statement. The excommunication of the nuns would have been bad press – and you’ve had a lot of bad press recently. This solves the problem rather neatly.’
‘You’re not seriously suggesting . . .’ Holden paused. ‘I’m going to speak to ACC Quinn about this. He’s a good friend of the bishop, as you well know. It’ll be interesting to see what he has to say about your theories.’
‘At this point,’ Carrigan continued, knowing he was almost halfway there, ‘all we know is that these nuns of yours were not the perfect, saintly beings you made them out to be. They made enemies in South America. Five of them had been tortured for their beliefs. They were involved in things we’re only just beginning to grasp. And we now have strong indications that this may have led to their deaths.’ He paused, watching Holden carefully. ‘The eleventh victim, Emily Maxted, was spending a lot of time at the convent. She even slept in a room downstairs. We need to know why she was a regular visitor and what she was doing there that particular night. We know she knew Father McCarthy. He’s the only one left alive who knows what linked Emily and the nuns. And you keep telling us he’s unavailable, on retreat, whatever. It almost sounds like you’re trying to cover something up. We need to speak to him, Mr Holden.’
Holden’s gaze drifted to the grey filing cabinets lined up against the far wall, then back towards the two detectives as he considered this, or pretended to be considering it, his fingers tapping against the armrest. ‘No,’ he finally said. ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge his whereabouts. I suppose you could try and get a warrant but you’ll have to go through ACC Quinn first.’
‘I thought you’d say that,’ Carrigan replied. ‘So, you see, we have a back-up plan . . .’
‘Back-up plan?’
‘We need to find Father McCarthy and we need to find him ASAP. As you’re not willing to give us the information, we have no choice but to go public with our inquiries.’ He stopped and waited, faintly aware that he was holding his breath.
‘Public? Do you mean . . . ?’
Carrigan tried not to smile. ‘A full press conference, this time telling the public everything we know about the nuns.’
‘You can’t do that.’ Holden was leaning forward, his arms clenched against the table, fingers pressing tight against the edges.
‘It’s the only option you’ve left us with.’
‘What . . . what are you going to say?’
‘Exactly what we have. That we believe the nuns were sheltering escaped prostitutes. That they were running a safe house for these women and that the Albanians weren’t particularly happy with this turn of events and burned down the convent to teach them a lesson.’
Holden’s face had gone white. The phone on the table started ringing but he barely looked at it. ‘Whores?’
‘We believe the nuns were no longer happy to feed the homeless or minister to the junk-sick, that they had stepped up their “work” and were running a shelter for escaped women, women who’d been trafficked as sex slaves.’
‘Oh my God,’ Holden said, his head collapsing into his hands.
‘You can imagine what the papers will do,’ Carrigan continued, feeling the crackle and buzz running through each word. ‘Full-page spreads, shocked commentaries, calling you up non-stop for quotes. With Christmas only a few days away, this will be their big story. Now, I know how much bad press the church has g
arnered over the last few years, seems you can’t open a paper any more without reading about a paedophile priest or some former altar boy suing the pope. As press officer for the diocese, I’m sure it’s the last thing you or your bosses would want.’
Holden stared at Carrigan, motionless as a marble statue. He finally looked down at the table and picked up the phone. He spoke briefly to his secretary then typed something on his keyboard. ‘I have to step out for a moment. I’m sure you two can see yourselves out.’ He stood up, looked down at them, frowned and left the room.
Carrigan got up, closed the door and walked over to the row of filing cabinets lined up against the far wall.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Each time I mentioned Father McCarthy’s whereabouts, Holden glanced in this direction,’ he explained, pulling open the top drawer of the nearest cabinet. The metal screeched against the sides, making Geneva jump. ‘Keep an eye on the corridor,’ Carrigan told her as he bent over the cabinet and started flicking through the folders.
She opened the door and looked out, then ducked back in. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said, but he could hear the lack of conviction in her tone.
‘It’s the only way we’re going to find Father McCarthy,’ he replied, opening the bottom drawer. ‘And that’s more important than confidentiality issues right now.’ He went to the next cabinet, stopped and looked at her. ‘You have a problem with this?’
She shook her head and he turned back to the cabinet.
The files were arranged alphabetically. There were several Father McCarthys and it took Carrigan a couple of minutes to find the right one. A burst of footsteps sounded from the corridor outside. Carrigan quickly replaced the file and waited until they receded, holding his breath. Geneva stuck her head out the door, then gave him the all-clear.
The folder was thick and bulging with stray papers, photos and official documentation. It would have undoubtedly made for very interesting reading. A door slammed somewhere outside, followed by raised voices echoing down the corridor, getting closer. Carrigan flicked to the back of the file and looked at the last entry. It was a transfer form for Father McCarthy, dated 15 December and signed by Roger Holden. Carrigan scanned the photocopied sheet until he saw the address stamped in the bottom left-hand corner. He took out his notebook and started copying it down. Geneva glanced out the door and immediately popped her head back in, signalling that someone was coming. Carrigan finished writing and replaced the file in the cabinet. He crossed the room and showed Geneva the address.
She stared at it for a long moment and was about to say something when her phone rang. Carrigan’s beeper went off at the same time. They looked at each other silently. Geneva scanned the text Jennings had sent. She saw Carrigan fiddling with his phone, trying to access his inbox, and turned towards him. ‘They’ve found Nigel.’
40
They sat and waited on the cold metal benches while the pathologist got the body ready. Carrigan had booked their train tickets to Yorkshire for tomorrow and he was impatient to talk to Father McCarthy, his feet tapping the tiled floor. Orderlies came and went, their faces turned into blank expressions of boredom as a shield against the mounting horror of their days. Like emergency rooms, Christmas was the busy period in the morgue.
Geneva’s phone broke the silence. She ignored the sharp looks and narrowed glances and checked the display. There were no messages from Oliver. There were no messages from Lee. She’d sent Lee a text in reply to his. And then she’d sent another one because the first wasn’t quite what she’d wanted to say. But he hadn’t answered and she wondered if that part of her life was over too.
Milan was waiting for them downstairs, drinking from a large mug of milky coffee and flicking through a book in French. A radio was sitting on a shelf behind him, blaring fuzzy football commentary in what sounded like Serbian, a shock of cracking consonants and garbled imprecation, spluttered, spoken and shouted.
‘Ah, Mr Carrigan,’ Milan said, brushing back his hair and getting to his feet. ‘I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon. I sent your superior the latest . . .’
‘This is about the body that came in a couple of hours ago,’ Carrigan interrupted, his eyes scanning the humped tables, each corpse a mystery to itself and others.
‘Of course, I should have known that would be one of yours too,’ Milan said. ‘They all like this, your cases?’
‘That’s what your predecessor thought.’
‘And look where that got her.’
Carrigan closed his eyes. He felt frazzled and enervated, so tired he could barely stand straight. He knew it wouldn’t be long. Could feel it in every twitch and ping of muscle. Too much coffee, too little sleep and the spiralling data from the case all burning through his synapses like runaway horses. ‘Just tell me what you’ve got.’
‘Okay. Yes. Very interesting. I only managed to have a quick look but that tells me almost all I need to know. Your man did not die easy, someone certainly had their fun with him.’
Geneva exchanged glances with Carrigan, the giddy exuberance of only an hour ago replaced with a raw dread in her eyes as Milan walked over to the nearest gurney and pulled the sheet. Both Carrigan and Geneva had to swallow down their revulsion as they stared at what remained of Nigel the Nail.
It didn’t look much like a human body any more. There were small red marks and huge black swellings dotted across his torso and legs. He was missing two fingers, four toes and his right eye. His mouth had been sewn shut with fine white thread and in the dazzle of lights it looked as if he’d swallowed a spider-web. He vaguely resembled the man in the mugshots and photos. He barely resembled a man.
‘Are you sure it’s him?’ Carrigan asked.
Milan laughed disdainfully and lifted the corpse’s arms, the skin quivering like jelly as the broken bones settled within. Milan turned the arm around and they could see that the burns and marks stopped at Nigel’s fingers. ‘They made sure to leave his fingertips untouched,’ Milan said, ‘the fingers they left him with, that is.’
‘How long has he been dead for?’
‘Between twelve and twenty-four hours.’
Carrigan noticed the pathologist seemed distracted even as he was talking to them, his head tilting in a tell-tale gesture towards the radio whenever the announcer’s voice suddenly rose in pitch as it did now. Milan’s whole body stiffened. The radio blared and roared and the announcer shouted – GOAL! – a punctured holler that almost blew the speakers, the one word repeated like a burst of machine-gun fire, transcending all language and culture. Milan squeezed his eyes shut and sighed and turned back towards the body.
‘They took their time with him,’ he said, pointing to the long serrated ridge of scars and wounds along Nigel’s torso, a tapestry of burn and blister, the colours blending from pink to yellow to stark black. ‘This was done over a period of days, not hours, understand?’
Geneva’s head was spinning. ‘Tell me exactly what they did to him,’ she said, her voice distant and brittle.
‘What didn’t they, young lady?’ Milan sniffed, his lips disappearing behind his bushy black beard. ‘The people who did this, they were artists in their field. The Tintorettos of torture. The Picassos of pain. See those black and brown marks?’ Milan pointed to a set of curiously uniform wounds on Nigel’s torso. ‘Best guess is they used a cattle prod, and they used it repeatedly, mainly down below,’ he said, indicating Nigel’s groin. ‘There is not much left of the private areas,’ he pointed to the dark smear of bruises spiralling up both thighs. ‘They spent a lot of time on this region . . .’
‘Jesus.’ Geneva looked away but the bright gleaming metal surfaces and gargled sound of blood sluicing down the drain wasn’t much better. ‘How can anyone’s body stand so much pain?’
‘You’d be surprised at how much the body wants to survive even long after the soul has given up,’ Milan said. ‘Of course, it helps that whoever did this kept reviving him.’
‘Revi
ving him?’ Carrigan leaned forward, shocked by his own capacity to still be shocked by the acts of men.
Milan indicated a faint line of bruises along Nigel’s chest. ‘Those are from a defibrillating machine. This man was artificially revived several times so that he could face more torture. He was . . .’ Milan blinked, cocking his head towards the radio, his attention snared by the commentary. Carrigan glared at the pathologist, walked over and turned it off.
‘There’s only ten minutes left,’ Milan protested.
‘Good,’ Carrigan replied. ‘Gives you an incentive to hurry up and tell us what we need to know.’
Milan stared at Carrigan, then shook his head and turned towards the corpse. ‘They tortured this man with a variety of instruments. We’ll send the tool marks off to the lab but there’s not much doubt they’ll find these men used screwdrivers, chisels and pliers, as well as more sophisticated electrical devices. We’ll know better once I open him up, but it’s not going to be pretty in there, that I can tell from the outside.’
‘They did all this to get information?’ Geneva asked.
Milan shook his head, his eyes almost disappearing behind the black bags of skin couched underneath his lids. ‘You still don’t understand, do you? This has nothing to do with information. This kind of torture is way too extreme for that, the man wouldn’t have been able to speak. No, this was for fun, or for what some people call fun, or for something I don’t even want to think about.’
‘You’ve seen this kind of thing before, though?’ Carrigan said.
Milan looked down at the floor. ‘I thought that by coming to this country I wouldn’t see such things again . . . but nowhere is really different from anywhere else, is it?’
‘It was a professional job, then, in your estimation?’