Killing Time

by Mark Roberts

  ‘I asked my academic tutor about her.’ Jenny’s voice dropped and her hand rose to her mouth, shielding her lips as she spoke. ‘She’s on the autistic spectrum. She has Asperger’s syndrome. Which means she wants to belong but finds it very hard, unlike people who are plain autistic and usually don’t care if they do or don’t belong. My sister’s got Asperger’s, that’s how I know about it.’

  As Hendricks considered the information, he asked, ‘She’s outstanding in a large room full of students like this. How does she hold up in a small room for a symposium?’

  ‘The same. Great. When she’s talking history, she’s fine. Ask her the time of day on the corridor and she’ll run away like she’s seen a vampire.’

  ‘She’s marked your work?’

  ‘She’s a fair marker. Diligent, conscientious. She gives lots of constructive criticism. I wish they were all like her.’

  ‘Do you know anything about her life outside the University of Liverpool?’

  ‘I’ve heard she’s very religious and she lives at home with her father, but that’s as much as I know. I really don’t know anything else about her.’

  ‘Thank you, Jenny,’ said Hendricks, handing her his contact card. ‘If you find anything out or anything seems... unusual, call me on my mobile number. I’ll take her bag to her. Can you tell me where her office is?’

  ‘On the third floor, next door.’

  Hendricks turned to the voice in the doorway and saw Lucy Bell looking directly at him. There was something in her voice like she was breaking up inside.

  ‘You came in here very quietly,’ said Hendricks, standing and making his way to the aisle. Like the creeping Jesus.

  Lucy moved to the spot where she had just been teaching, both hands on the handle of her satchel which she now held in front of her like a piece of armour.

  ‘I’ll go now...’ Jenny hurried down the aisle to the door.

  ‘I was very impressed, Lucy – you nailed so many good points about Stalin.’

  Lucy nodded her head once, let out a soundless, ‘Yes...’ and started walking towards the door. ‘He trained to be a priest but failed. So he turned to politics and did the same again. Only this time, the suffering he unleashed...’

  As Hendricks made his way towards her, he smiled, but she took a backwards step as he came close.

  ‘Why are you asking questions about me?’

  ‘You’re very important to us, Lucy, and we need to find out as much as we can about you so that we can get the best from you and support you to the best of our abilities.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’ She sounded like a small girl wrongly accused in the head teacher’s office.

  ‘No, Lucy, you’ve helped us.’

  ‘Will you go and see my father?’

  ‘One of us will.’

  ‘He’s cross with me. He said I should have stayed with her. How I wish I had now.’

  ‘We’ll call you, Lucy. Keep your phone on at all times, OK?’

  ‘DCI Clay told me to do that and I promised...’

  ‘Brilliant lecture, Lucy, I learned so much. Thank you.’

  29

  4.15 pm

  ‘I’m looking for Father Aaron Bell,’ said DCI Eve Clay to the young man shovelling snow at the gate of St Luke’s Roman Catholic Church.

  He smiled as Clay showed her warrant card and said, ‘Father Aaron? He’s in the church.’ He put down his spade. ‘Let me help you.’

  He skipped up the gritted steps towards the church’s front door and took out a huge metal key.

  ‘Are you Father Aaron’s curate?’

  He laughed and glanced over his shoulder at her. ‘I wish. Nothing quite so grand. I do the garden and odd jobs.’ He stuck the metal key into the large keyhole.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Jack Dare.’

  Jack opened the door and, as he stepped inside, classical music drifted from the altar. ‘Father Aaron! Father Aaron!’

  The music stopped.

  ‘Father Aaron, you have a visitor. Nice to meet you, DCI Clay. I’ll leave you with Father Aaron – it’s back to the snow for me.’

  As she entered the church, the smell of wax threw Clay back to her early childhood in St Clare’s under the loving care of Sister Philomena. In her mind, she saw a picture of herself kneeling next to Philomena in the chapel at St Clare’s, feeling the sister’s protective arm settle round her shoulders as together they sounded the last amen: a woman and her surrogate child at one with each other.

  The memory filled her with the urge to go home and be with her son Philip and her husband Thomas. She fought down the desire this stirred and told herself to get on with the job in hand.

  In front of the altar, a tall man dressed head to toe in black and with a head of thick grey hair pushed a mop up and down the wooden floor. The words poverty, chastity and obedience crossed Clay’s mind.

  Leaving her open umbrella at the church door, she walked down the side aisle.

  ‘Father Aaron Bell?’

  The man stopped mopping, fell silent and looked at Clay as she advanced. He stuck the mop head back in the bucket and propped the handle against the front pew.

  He nodded. ‘I am.’

  Clay showed her warrant card to the priest.

  Father Aaron indicated the front pew, said, ‘Let’s have a seat.’

  ‘Father Aaron, I can hear a hint of an accent there.’

  ‘I thought it was altogether gone. I’m from Scotland originally. Edinburgh, to be precise.’

  Around the intricate stained glass on the wall above the altar, swathes of green paint hung in curls away from the bare plaster beneath.

  Father Aaron genuflected slowly and the effort showed in his face. He settled his large frame on the pew and Clay wondered if the wood was going to support the weight of a man who looked like he’d played a lot of rugby in his younger years. When he folded his hands together, the muscles in his forearms tightened; and as he looked up to the crucified Christ above the altar, Clay knew that the old man was offering up silent prayers.

  Father Aaron turned and looked directly at Clay. She made out a bend in his nose that looked like an old break; either side of his misshapen nose, the man’s eyes were deep brown and had an indelible smile stamped on them.

  ‘You don’t have anyone to help you with the cleaning?’ asked Clay.

  ‘There are some female parishioners who have volunteered to help clean the church and my house next door, but I don’t believe it’s right or decent to expect other people to perform menial tasks that I’m still capable of. I’m not a young man. There may be a time when I have to take up that offer, but at least I’ll know that when I could do it, I did it myself. Jack helps me with the heavier chores.’

  ‘The young man who showed me in here?’

  ‘He’s a good boy. But you’ve come to talk to me about Lucy, right?’

  ‘Right.’ Clay processed a thought. ‘How about Lucy helping you out?’

  Father Aaron laughed and gave the domed ceiling and the heavens beyond a brief but knowing glance.

  ‘She’s just not domesticated. Her head’s full of books. She simply isn’t practical. If I gave her a mop and bucket and asked her to clean the church, she’d end up flooding the building. I gave her a paintbrush and a pot of varnish once and more varnish ended up on her than on the garden fence.’

  ‘Are you sure she didn’t do that so that you wouldn’t ask again?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He smiled and said, ‘I guess you must think it rather odd a Catholic priest having a daughter.’

  ‘I’m clued in. I know you didn’t adopt her.’

  ‘The church wouldn’t have allowed that for many obvious, shameful and alarming reasons. I wasn’t always a priest. I was a married man most of my adult life and Lucy was our only daughter. When Lucy’s mother died, just before she started at Cambridge University, and I was left alone in a big old house in Cressington Park, I felt God calling me to the priesthood. So whe
n she started her second year, I started my training at Ampleforth. They accepted me even though I was in my sixties. I was relatively fit and healthy and there’s a great shortage of priests, so beggars can’t be choosers.’

  ‘What did you do before you were a priest, Father Aaron?’

  ‘I was an entomologist. Insects were my general love, crickets and grasshoppers my greatest passion. As I’d retired and Lucy had left home, I ended up volunteering in the University of Liverpool Veterinary Laboratory Services, Parasitology and Entomology Department.’ He pointed at his head and said, ‘I’m still an entomologist, and always will be. The detail of God’s creation never ceases to amaze me.’

  ‘My son Philip, he’s four. He’s obsessed with insects. He’d love to meet someone who could answer his thousands of questions.’

  ‘That can be arranged, DCI Clay.’

  Father Aaron turned to face the altar again, his brown-eyed gaze filled with love. Clay marked him down as a man who took better care of his church than of his own personal appearance.

  ‘At this moment in time, I’m not exactly happy with Lucy, Detective Clay. She told me what happened and how she’d walked away from the little one. I couldn’t believe it. Lucy is on the autistic spectrum but that’s no excuse. She was trained rigorously by her mother and I on what to do and what not to do in social situations, and she knows what she did was wrong. She didn’t tell me about it until the situation was over and there was nothing I could do to help. She was already on her way to Trinity Road when I found out. How did she get on, DCI Clay?’

  ‘She was very nervous. I interviewed her.’

  ‘DCI Clay? Eve Clay?’ It was as if the old priest had been struck by lightning in the deepest seat of his memory. ‘My oh my... You’re that Eve Clay, aren’t you? It said in the paper, you’re leading the investigation into Marta’s disappearance?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘We have a mutual friend. A nun called Sister Ruth.’

  ‘Sister Ruth who spent two years in St Clare’s when I was four or five?’ Memory flooded Clay, filled her with a silence that made her reticent.

  ‘Did she?’ The priest smiled, and her reticence was overtaken by the need to know.

  ‘Yes. We met again a few years later when she came to work at St Michael’s, the children’s home I moved into after...’ Eve paused.

  ‘Yes, DCI Clay?’ prompted the priest gently.

  ‘After Sister Philomena died and I was moved to my second childhood home. She came to St Michael’s a couple of years after I arrived there and left a few years later. I wasn’t allowed to keep in touch with her. Please, tell me more about Sister Ruth.’

  ‘Her whole life was devoted to caring for orphaned and abandoned children. She was an unsung saint.’

  Was? thought Clay. ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re in touch with her?’

  ‘She lives in Aigburth, in Bethlehem House off Dundonald Road.’

  ‘Is she in good health? Mentally and physically?’

  Father Aaron touched the side of his head. ‘As bright as a newly minted penny.’

  ‘Could you give me her contact details so I can offer to visit her?’

  The smile on Father Aaron’s face faded and he shook his head. ‘Not right now, no. I’d have to speak to her first.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And if Ruth wants you to contact her, I’d have to deliver the request directly. The human touch. I can get the ball rolling today.’

  The door of the church creaked open and Clay listened to the uneven approaching footsteps heading towards the altar. For a moment, she wondered if the person was crippled.

  Without turning his head, Father Aaron said, ‘Hello, Lucy.’

  ‘Hello, Dad.’

  Father Aaron spoke softly. ‘She’s a slave to the rigid lines in her head. She has improved with age and she’ll be full of remorse for what she did earlier, or rather didn’t do. I hope that confirms the impression you have made so far of my Lucy.’

  As she sat in the pew behind them, Clay turned to look at Lucy and saw her father’s eyes in hers. Her jet-black hair glistened with melting snow and when she looked at Clay, her breath condensed on the air.

  ‘Second time we’ve met today, Lucy.’ She showed her warrant card, but Lucy didn’t look at it – just straight through her, as if focusing on the space behind her head.

  ‘DCI Clay, why are you here?’

  ‘Lucy, it’s DCI Clay’s job to ask the questions...’

  ‘I came here to speak to your father. To learn more about you. And to talk to you if at all possible.’

  Clay looked down at the satchel on Lucy’s lap, almost overflowing with books, and then up at the intensity on her face.

  ‘We’re going to be asking you in for another interview soon.’

  ‘I’ve already told you everything I know. What on earth do you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘Lucy! Enough.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thank you for your time, Father Aaron.’ Clay stood up. ‘We’ll be in touch, Lucy. It’s really nothing to worry about.’

  As she walked to the front door of the church, she listened hard, but neither father nor daughter so much as whispered. Acting on instinct, Clay stepped into the shadows around the door, waiting to see what would happen. She opened the door and closed it with a thud.

  Time passed and nothing was said until Lucy broke the silence. ‘I’m sorry, Dad, for leaving that poor little girl on her own.’

  ‘It was a foolish and unkind thing to do, Lucy. What question do I always ask you to ask yourself? Ask yourself the question now and tell me the answer.’

  After a handful of heavy moments, Lucy said, ‘Jesus would not have left that poor little girl’s side for one second.’

  ‘If you’d have acted like Jesus this morning and handed the child over to the authorities, you wouldn’t have the police on your back now.’

  Clay felt something in her heart bend when she heard Lucy sobbing. As the sobs echoed, she felt her shoulders sag with an invisible burden of sadness.

  ‘Dad, I want you to take me for confession.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘In the confessional box, not face to face.’

  She listened as the priest and his daughter shuffled towards the box, and heard the front door of the church creak open. As he entered the building, Jack propped the snow shovel against the wall.

  ‘DCI Clay, are you waiting for someone? Something?’

  She picked up her umbrella and said, ‘I almost forgot this on my way out.’

  The young man smiled, and Clay noticed how the beads of melted snow on his eyelashes gave his eyes an angelic but distinctly sad cast.

  What’s your baggage, Jack? she wondered. Why are you here in St Luke’s with an elderly priest and his autistic daughter?

  ‘It’s been nice to meet you, DCI Clay.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  ‘Father Aaron? He’s not in trouble again, is he?’ laughed Jack.

  ‘Joking aside, no, not at all.’

  Clay looked at her watch and said, ‘I’ve got to go.’

  She watched the young man walking towards the pews. He genuflected and took a place kneeling at the end of the last pew, falling into silent prayer with his head down on his folded hands.

  She listened and heard a sound that felt completely out of place in a church. Somewhere, a grasshopper or a cricket was rubbing its back legs together and chirruping.

  She opened and closed the main door with infinite care, then walked out into the slanting snow with her cheeks burning and a worm turning in the centre of her brain.

  The unspoken question that Father Aaron had posed to his daughter worked deeper inside her head.

  What would Jesus do?

  And Lucy’s answer echoed against the plates of Clay’s skull.

  30

  5.15 pm

  On Facebook, Detective Constable Barney Cole f
ound three matches for Lucy Bell in Liverpool: a twelve-year-old girl; a woman in her fifties and, bang in the middle of her namesakes, the Lucy Bell he was looking for.

  He got onto her home page and saw that the profile picture was quite old – she looked ten years younger, thinner, and the camera had caught her in a good light. The common links between the profile picture and her current appearance were the jet-black hair and the vivid eye-liner.

  Cole made notes in his spiral-bound pad. Lucy was a Eucharistic minister in the Roman Catholic Church and had studied history at King’s College, Cambridge. Her hero was the historian Eric Hobsbawm. She volunteered at Levene House.

  He looked at the door of the incident room as it opened.

  ‘Hey, Barney...’

  ‘Clive!’ Cole raised a hand but kept his eyes on the screen as Winters walked towards him, passing behind Carol White as he did so.

  ‘Hello, Carol. What are you doing here?’ asked Winters.

  ‘It’s nice to see you too, Clive.’ She tilted her head back and squinted at her laptop screen.

  Winters looked at the paused image, and groaned. ‘CCTV from the Picton Road scene. You have my sympathies, Carol.’

  He pulled a chair up and sat next to Cole. ‘You on Facebook in work time, again? What you looking at?’

  ‘Lucy Bell. Eve wants background information before she pulls Lucy in again.’

  Cole scrolled down the page and saw a handful of photos in the gallery. In the first picture she was around three years of age with a man in his late forties.

  ‘I guess that’s her father, the priest.’

  ‘Sergeant Harris said she was asking for him like a little kid,’ said Winters.

  With Lucy aged five and in his arms, Aaron Bell had a short back and sides, jet-black hair and was clean shaven. As she progressed through single figures and into her teens, his hair turned white.

  Cole focused on a picture of Lucy in her early teens, her father standing behind her next to a waterfall.

  ‘Notice anything odd, Clive?’

  ‘Two things. What do you see?’