by Jack Gatland
‘Did you ever see either Gabrielle or Angela after the birth?’ Billy turned to a new page in his notebook.
‘Both, actually. They came to find me specifically,’ Father Lawson rose now, walking to the side of the pews and picking up a glass of water. He took a mouthful of water, swallowed, and then finished the glass before placing it down and walking back. It was a simple motion, but Anjli couldn’t help but wonder if he did this to gain himself some valuable thinking time.
‘Angela learned somehow that her parents weren’t her real ones, and came to speak with the nuns in Poplar,’ he continued. ‘She was looking for closure, and the nuns realised that she had to be one of Sister Nadine’s daughters. And no,’ he raised his hands, ‘I was not there that day and have no idea what possessed the nuns to pass off the babies as other people’s children. All I can think is that they genuinely believed that these girls were brought to them by Angels.’
‘So the nuns passed her to you?’ Anjli was walking now, pacing around the front pews as she tried to work the logistics out.
‘Yes,’ Father Lawson replied. ‘They said that they couldn’t help anymore. Angela Martin came to visit me here in Deptford, and then a week later, out of nowhere, Gabrielle Chapman started attending confession in my Birmingham Diocese.’
‘And you didn’t find that strange?’ Billy asked. Father Lawson leaned in.
‘To be honest, I thought nothing of it at the time,’ he explained. ‘You see, I was utterly convinced that it was Angela, playing some kind of game with me. I don’t think I ever met the real Gabrielle.’
Anjli walked back to the two of them, motioning for Billy to rise.
‘Thank you for your time,’ she said, shaking Father Lawson’s hand and then, strangely, bending over to kiss it. Father Lawson pulled it away.
‘No, that’s only for Cardinals,’ he explained. 'I’m happy with a handshake or a fist bump.’
‘Sorry,’ Anjli replied with an embarrassed smile. ‘Dunno what came over me there.’
‘You’re not the first one to do it, so don’t worry,’ Father Lawson smiled in return.
‘I like your tattoos,’ Anjli pointed at the two sets of dots on Father Lawson’s hand. ‘What do they mean?’
Father Lawson pulled his hand back automatically, before pausing and bringing it back into view. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve had them so long, I forget they’re there.’ He showed the five dots.
‘I was given these by a tribe in Africa,’ he said. ‘They used dots to tell stories, and they invited me to create my own, as a way of bonding with the tribal leaders. This set, the ones that look like the five on some dice? It’s based around the Gospels; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John stand around the figure of Christ in the middle.’
‘And the other one?’
‘The Holy Trinity,’ Father Lawson looked down at the tattoo, a faint smile on his face. ‘The Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’
Anjli nodded, putting her notebook away. ‘That’s a lovely story to have on your hands,’ she said. Confused why the interview was ending so quickly, Billy shook hands with Father Lawson and then, almost frogmarched out by Anjli, he looked to her in confusion when they emerged outside.
‘What the hell?’ he asked. ‘I still had questions!’
Anjli kept him walking.
‘That’s not Father Barry Lawson,’ she said. ‘When he put his hands together in prayer, I saw something. When I kissed his hand? I was checking his fingers and needed a closer look.’
‘Never took you for a hand fetish kinda girl.’
Anjli punched Billy on the arm as they continued out of the gate and onto the street. ‘Idiot. The tattoos.’
Billy shrugged. ‘I thought that was a lovely story, of how he integrated with the indigenous tribes.’
‘They’re prison tattoos, Billy,’ Anjli explained as they arrived back at Billy’s car. ‘Five dots in that pattern are known as the quincunx; the four dots are the walls or the gatehouses, the dot in the middle is the prisoner. It’s found on people doing long stretches. And the three dots is a common prison tattoo that means my crazy life.’
‘What, that prison is crazy?’ Billy looked back to the church, as if expecting Barry Lawson to be following them.
‘No, it’s given to show that the inmate is crazy.’ Anjli climbed into the car. ‘Come on, we need to get back to the lab before I wipe any fingerprints off the glass I just stole. I want to know exactly who that was we spoke to, as it sure as hell wasn’t the priest we were supposed to meet.’
‘He said that Stephen Lawson was dead,’ Billy looked back to the church.
‘Yeah, I don’t think that Stephen’s the dead one in that relationship,’ Anjli replied as she started the car and pulled out into the Deptford traffic.
17
The Calvary Cometh
Macca Byrne smiled as he reached Monroe, standing tall, barring the way to Stripe, still cowering beside the Altar. PCSO Holland was now sitting on a pew across the church, as if by staring at the floor he wouldn’t be a part of this, and Monroe wished more than anything that he could give the coward a punch in the teeth before Macca and his men started.
But they never started as a gunshot, echoing through the church, stopped them.
It was as if everything paused for a second; nobody moved and then, slowly, oh so slowly, Macca and his men started turning back towards the door of the church, as if awaiting a second, more fatal gunshot to strike.
At the rear of the church, beside the door to the nave, stood Doctor Marcos, a vicious-looking gun in her hand, aimed at the ceiling where she’d most likely fired. Monroe fought back an irrational urge to shout at her for possibly creating an incredibly expensive hole in the church roof and instead quietly thanked whichever Guardian Angel was looking over him at that moment.
‘Bringing knives to a gunfight? That’s not the Birmingham way,’ she said, walking towards the small congregation, keeping the gun aimed at Macca as she did so. ‘Also, the numbers seem a little out of whack here. How about I kneecap a couple of you to make it fair for the old man?’
‘You with him?’ Macca asked with the assuredness of a man who had faced people with guns before. Doctor Marcos grinned.
‘I’m not with him, if you get what I mean, but I do work for him, so yeah.’ She cocked the gun, the click echoing ominously in the empty church. ‘Now then children, I suggest you get the hell away from my Detective Chief Inspector before I forget I’m police and I blow your goddamned balls off.’
His wicked looking butterfly knife hidden away once more, Macca raised his hands, slowly backing away from Monroe, allowing Doctor Marcos to pass by.
‘Understood,’ he said. ‘We were just leaving, anyway. This was a misunderstanding. We’d heard that a Paedo was touching a teenage boy in here.’
‘Well, then I admire your civic mindedness,’ Monroe replied, his racing heart finally slowing down. ‘And now we’re all friends here. If you wouldn’t mind sending your boys away, Mister Byrne, I’d really like to have a chat with you.’
‘Yeah? About what?’ Macca turned angrily at Monroe with the face of a man who didn’t expect to be questioned. ‘You gonna ask me the same questions that all the other Feds ask? You got nothing on me.’
Monroe shrugged.
‘I’d be surprised if they asked you these questions,’ he said casually. ‘I was intending to talk to you about Moses Delcourt and Gabrielle Chapman. Or is it Angela Martin?’
Macca stopped, as if the statement had thrown him off track for a moment.
As Macca Byrne looked to his men, Monroe could see there was the slightest chance that the young gangster might have actually had considered this; but as Macca went to reply, in the distance they could hear the faint sound of police car sirens.
‘Sorry, I called in the cavalry,’ Doctor Marcos smiled. ‘didn’t think that PC Useless there would do much police work.’
Macca spat on the stone floor of the church, glaring now at Doctor Marcos as she walk
ed over to Monroe, gun still aimed at her opponents. ‘You want to talk, while she wants to arrest me.’
‘Actually, I really want to shoot you.’ Doctor Marcos waved the gun again. ‘It’s amazing what they let you get away with in the police force.’
‘A minute ago, you wanted to cut me,’ Monroe interjected to Macca. ‘Amazing how fast change occurs, isn’t it?’
Macca moved forward, but Doctor Marcos stopped waving the gun around, now aiming the weapon directly at Macca’s head.
‘Please, try it,’ she said. ‘I have kill trophies. I 3D print them up myself. I could always do with another. And who do you think an inquest would believe? Little old me, scared for my life or you? The knife wielding thug and son of a crime lord?’
For the first time, Monroe saw the gun close up, and almost stepped back in surprise. It took everything he could to bluff it out, turning back to Macca.
‘I can’t let you have the kid,’ he said. ‘But know that I will find the murderer.’
But Macca Byrne wasn’t listening, already pushing his crew out of the nave door and into the early evening before the police could catch them. He looked back to the Altar before leaving, staring directly at Stripe now, who’d emerged from behind the Altar to watch Macca leave.
‘You’d better hope they keep your parents in the nick,’ he hissed. ‘Because when mummy and daddy get out, I’m gonna make sure you never see them again.’
And with that Macca Byrne joined his crew, running off into the Birmingham evening.
Now alone in the church, Monroe looked to Holland, who currently wore the expression of a man who was about to be violently sick, as he sat on the pew at the front of the nave.
‘You puke in here, laddie, and I’ll wipe it up with your goddamned face,’ Monroe snapped, his face red with anger. ‘Sit on that pew and cuff yourself. Abetting a criminal. Christ almighty. And you!’ Now he turned back to Doctor Marcos. ‘Does SCO 19 know you stole one of their Glocks?’
‘Yes!’ Doctor Marcos snapped back irritably. ‘Well, probably. I mean, I’d discussed with them about examining the comparisons between ammunition and simunition markings in barrels. Andrews seemed interested in seeing the results, so I took that as permission to borrow one of them.’
‘And filling it with blanks?’ Monroe replied. ‘At least I hope to god they were blanks!’
Doctor Marcos answered this by pulling the magazine and passing it to Monroe. In it he could see the simunition rounds, the plastic heads of the bullets filled with blue paint.
‘I’m a chemist,’ Doctor Marcos explained. ‘I knew what was likely to happen the moment I saw Peter Pan and his band of merry reprobates enter the churchyard on a mission, and I had a forensics kit in my car. I mixed some things together, threw it to the floor, so it smashed in the test tube and made an enormous bang that covered the sound of the glass.’ She smiled. ‘By the time they turned, all they saw was a woman with a gun. Bang.’
‘And a bloody paintball gun at that,’ Monroe groaned. ‘What would you have done if they called your bluff?’
‘I would have shot them in the face,’ Doctor Marcos shrugged. ‘Didn’t you ever see Byker Grove on TV? They spent a year with that subplot.’
Monroe held out his hand.
‘What else did you steal?’ he asked. Reluctantly, Doctor Marcos pulled out a simunition grenade. Monroe snatched it from her hand, pocketing it.
‘You’re a nightmare,’ he muttered. ‘When we get back, I want that Glock passed onto whoever runs the SCO 19 teams up here.’
Deciding instead to ignore this, Monroe turned to face Stripe, now standing beside the Altar.
‘You’ve been a hard boy to find,’ he said. ‘And there seem to be many people looking for you.’
Stripe nodded.
‘You gotta keep my Mum and Dad safe,’ he said. ‘Macca’s mental. He’ll hurt them.’
Monroe looked to Doctor Marcos briefly. ‘At the moment, laddie, I’m more worried about keeping you safe,’ he said. ‘Now, tell me more about Father Lawson?’
At that point the door to the church crashed open, and three police officers moved into the nave, looking around in confusion.
‘You’re late, boys,’ Monroe said. ‘Macca Byrne and his men were here, but it was all a massive confusion.’
The police officers moved to the side as DCI Bullman stormed into the church, striding purposely down the middle of the nave towards the Altar.
‘I left you for ten minutes,’ she snapped. ‘That’s all it took for you to create an incident that’s taken up half my team.’
‘No offence DCI Bullman, but I think your team has people on it that are creating their own incidents,’ Doctor Marcos said, pointing with the gun at PCSO Holland. ‘That little shit there was the one who alerted Macca’s gang to our whereabouts. Or, rather, the small child that they were hunting.’
‘This one?’ Bullman walked over to Holland, staring down at him. ‘You sent Macca Byrne a message?’
PCSO Holland said nothing, a slight nod of the head his only answer. Bullman nodded to herself, as if accepting this.
And then she brought her arm back and swung at PCSO Holland, punching him hard in the face, sending him tumbling off the pew and onto the cold hard floor of the church.
‘Take this little bastard to the cells,’ she said to the police officers who had entered with her. ‘And have him take the uniform off. I won’t have him shame us anymore.’
As the police officers escorted Holland out of the church, Bullman walked back over to Monroe.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know.’
Monroe shrugged. ‘It happens to all of us,’ he replied. ‘Literally. A few weeks ago we learned that one of our own was passing on information and actively hindering a case. Grassing to a wannabe gangster is non-league compared to what we’ve seen.’
He looked to Stripe.
‘That said, you can understand why I feel untrusting towards your team right now,’ he said. Bullman went to reply, to contest this, but stopped, nodding. There wasn’t a thing that she could say right now to build trust in her team, when one of them had literally thrown police into harm’s way.
‘I can see why you’d think that,’ she replied. ‘And from now on Alfie Mullville—’
‘Will be in my care,’ Monroe interrupted, holding a hand up to stop Bullman’s angry response. ‘You can be as pissed off as you want right now, but I just had six men threaten my life with knives, brought here by the man you sent to liaise with us. I trust you, but currently my faith in your Crime Unit is a little tarnished right now.’
‘So what, you’re stealing my case?’ Bullman squared up to Monroe, who shook his head.
‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘We have our own case that seems to link with your case. And anything we learn we’ll immediately share with you. But the boy stays with us. And I’d suggest you put his parents somewhere safe and witness-protection like for the moment too.’
He looked around.
‘And who the hell looks after this place?’
There was a polite cough and Monroe turned to see a small, overweight man in a clerical collar standing by the church entrance.
‘And where were you when we needed you?’ Monroe asked.
The man stepped forward, holding out his hand.
‘Father Dulaney,’ he said softly. ‘I was out back when I saw Macca and his boys enter. I thought nothing of it until the police arrived.’
‘A gang of six thugs enter here looking for a square go at me and you thought nothing of it?’ Monroe was astounded. ‘Am I missing something here?’
Father Dulaney shrugged apologetically. ‘Mister Byrne is a regular here,’ he explained. ‘I assumed that he was here to pray.’
‘Macca Byrne is a devout Catholic?’
Father Dulaney paused before answering, as if trying to find the most tactful explanation here.
‘Let’s just say he was a fan of confession,’ he said.
‘Did
he confess to you or Father Lawson?’ Bullman asked, realising what the priest was insinuating.
‘Oh, Mister Byrne and many of his friends preferred Father Lawson,’ Father Dulaney said. ‘That’s why I found it strange that Mister Byrne was here today, but not unnatural. You see, Father Lawson is at his other church right now.’
‘Other church?’ Now it was Bullman who looked confused. ‘He has more than one?’
‘Oh yes,’ Father Dulaney looked nervous now, as if giving away some kind of terrible secret. ‘The numbers of new, ordained priests have fallen over recent years, down eighty percent in some areas of the UK. Because of that, we have more churches than priests right now, and many of our new priests come from Africa. We find ourselves spread thin, so to speak. Many of us will have ‘linked’ churches; that is, churches that are not a priest’s particular parish, but will have a connection to the priest, ensuring that they will spend some of their time there, over their own parish.’
‘Basically, you’re saying that you time-share priests?’ Monroe asked. Father Dulaney smiled.
‘That’s pretty much exactly what I’m saying,’ he replied. ‘Father Lawson has his own church in London, but for years now has also been coming up here to take confession, and perform some of our services.’
‘And both Gabrielle Chapman and Macca Byrne came here to see Father Lawson,’ Monroe spoke it as a statement rather than a question, turning to Bullman.
‘Well, bodies aside, now I know we’re working on the same case,’ he said. ‘The Father Lawson he’s talking about is the same one we’ve been looking for. And there’s an entire circle of people we’re seeing here that not only seem to know everyone else, but are all connected to both Gabrielle Chapman and Angela Martin. Who, according to the fingerprints in police records seems to be the same person, even though we have two bodies with different ones.’
Monroe looked to Stripe, still standing by the Altar.
Poor little bugger hasn’t got a clue what he’s gotten himself into, he thought to himself.
But that wouldn't stop Monroe from using the boy to find out the truth.