by AB Morgan
I had visions of Sean and Manuela, sitting in church giving money each week at the offertory. Bread, wine, and bribery. They were supporting the very organisation that had allowed abuse of their son, and who were instrumental in his death. A sick irony.
‘It’s a monstrously large financial empire,’ continued Tam in earnest. ‘The attempts to investigate the financial misdealings and misappropriations involve the Freemasons and the Mafia, as well as European politics. No one is ever charged, and allegations are vehemently denied by the Vatican, just as they do for any whiff of scandal. Organisations trying to expose these underhand business dealings are discredited or slammed as being anti-Catholic cults. Look up the name Calvi when you get the chance, and the Trinity Foundation. You’ll soon see what I mean.
‘Sexual abuse is covered up, and there are cover-ups of cover-ups. The deaths in Lensham are a small part of a scandal of such incredible magnitude that it’s almost impossible to comprehend. The Vatican or the Freemasons have sent in a sweeper here, to clean up a minor mess created by the exposed allegations from Ben, Jan, and Nick. In their world, this is a trifling matter, but nevertheless instructions from the Vatican are being followed.’
I sat transfixed, listening intently to every single word being said by Tam Aitken.
‘There was a directive in 1962 ordering the strictest secrecy to be maintained within the Catholic Church relating to any sexual scandal. The problems, in the shape of the offending priests, were moved within the Catholic Church to different dioceses, not reported to the authorities. This effectively means that the interests of the church are put before that of justice. Father Joseph had to be disposed of as a matter of course, as he seems to have been moved back to the diocese where he previously committed acts of abuse against children. An error by the church.
‘You worked out that no one is to be trusted, because otherwise you would have gone to the police. You haven’t. You also delayed coming to me.
‘Why? I’ll tell you why, because none of us can go to the authorities with any certainty of justice. Aitken, Brown and Partners provide legal services for a large organisation representing adult survivors and the families of those abused as children. We have no connection to government. The only route left to us is to involve the IPCC where we find police mishandling, and for exposure in the press. To go the route of the Spotlight team. Ever heard of them?’
Emma perked up. ‘Yes. I had an email back from them yesterday, otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting with you today.’
I didn’t know this snippet of important information and threw my friend a quizzical look.
‘Sorry, Mon, I didn’t tell you at the time, I thought you’d enough to contend with. Anyway, Max said to leave you alone for the day.’ She turned to look back at Tam. ‘Spotlight confirmed who you were and that, as well as our local problem, you’re in the middle of exposing a significant case at a school, where abuse by catholic monks has been going on for thirty years. The Spotlight reporter said the police in Yorkshire have taken over a year to investigate, and the repercussions could be substantial.’ Emma sighed and placed her chin into her hands, elbows propped onto the table.
‘What is it about the Catholic Church? Remaining celibate isn’t natural, so it’s asking for trouble to expect grown men to remain so, in my view. You really do have to ask yourself if all the denominations provide safe havens for the sexual deviant and then blatantly deny any wrongdoing.’
Emma’s voice was getting louder and her tone more heated until Jake put his hand on her shoulder in an effort to restore calm. She shrugged it away. ‘It’s my soapbox and I’ll stand on it!’ she said, turning on him. Then she smiled, realising that her opinions were not being challenged.
Tam was nodding and drumming his fingers on the table as Emma spoke. He allowed her outburst to continue, as if accustomed to these, before he continued.
‘Aye, we’ve taken on a number of cases as a firm, and wee cracks are beginning to show in the armour of the Vatican but we desperately need the press to enlighten the wider public. You’d be surprised at the efforts gone to and hindrances put in place to undermine justice.’
We returned to the immediate problem of our own safety. Jake is a farmer, Max an engineer, Emma and I nurses. We knew nothing about investigative journalism and exposés in the press. Out of our depth and paddling furiously, we had managed to get this far without getting ourselves killed.
‘Can I straighten one thing out before we move on? What Jan wrote in those journals, was it total fiction?’ I asked.
‘No, far from it. She was a remarkable woman. The storyline was based around a set of true events, but the background was based on Jan’s historical knowledge and hush-hush work for the Home Office after the Cold War. Names and initials were changed in the journals to protect people, but the stories were true, as is the information on poisoning.
‘We think there is a sweeper out there who knows his poisons. We had hoped to catch him like a fly in a spider’s web.’
I was struggling not to become emotional. ‘So, the comment that two boys, now men I presume, are involved in investigating this abuse is true. They were in the boys’ home in the 1970s. Who is the one true Jesuit then?’
‘No idea, sorry, everyone, I’m not sure what Jan was trying to communicate. You’ll have to tell me. The Jesuits are a powerful group in the Vatican. It may be a good line of enquiry.’
‘We were hoping to hand everything over to you and walk away,’ Jake said. ‘We’re clearly caught in the middle of something far larger than we realised. We have murders, not suicides, and sweeper assassins as well as an unknown guardian. Max was right. Who are the goodies and who are the baddies?’
24
It was our turn to inform Tam Aitken what we knew of a man with a half finger, about the methods of poisoning that we had hypothesised, and our suspicions about Father Raymond. The police were considered unreliable by default, as despite being reported to several times over the last four years, by Ben, they did nothing. The police were sure to label us as conspiracy theorist cranks. They had failed to investigate Jan’s death sufficiently enough to cast doubt on her death.
Detectives had been defective.
They hadn’t managed to make any connection between Jan’s death and that of Liam Brookes, even when I had gone to the trouble of identifying that Nick was using a false name. Was this down to sloppy police work, disinterest, or deliberate avoidance? It was impossible to know why they had not pursued any of these matters.
Tam tried to round the facts up. ‘Whoever our sweeper man is, it’s possible that he believes his job to be complete. You haven’t reported your suspicions to the police, and there’s no way your contact with me can have been common knowledge. It’s the four of you who have taken it upon yourselves to investigate further. You can walk away if you so wish.’
‘We’ll think about it,’ I said.
It seemed wrong to cut and run.
Max asked Tam for advice on how we should handle Father Raymond and our planned meeting with DS Adams. ‘Tell me about their connections with the other victims,’ Tam said with a strong note of intrigue.
Meanwhile, Jake was despatched to the barn to collect our spaghetti diagram, flip charts, and Sylvanian tree people. Despite the seriousness of the subject, we still had to smile at the incongruous sight of Nick and Jan hedgehogs, cocktail stick flags in their heads. Tam, however, was delighted at the thoroughness of our deliberations. ‘Well I never did …’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘This is magnificent work, people.’
As I sat silently watching Emma setting up our investigation HQ materials, there was a creeping realisation that I had revealed important information to the Coroner’s Office which implied that I was suspicious about the cause of death for Ben Tierney.
‘It’s not magnificent. I think I might have dropped us in the soft and smelly.’ I had asked the pathologist to consider anticholinergic toxicity. ‘What did you say exactly?’ asked Max when I recounted what I
could recall of my request. The disapproving looks said it all.
‘I shouldn’t worry too much. How is that going to cause a problem?’ Jake tried to maintain order and convince Emma that their family life had not been placed in jeopardy.
‘It might be a problem if the police are informed by the pathologist or if the coroner asks for you to explain yourself,’ Emma confirmed.
I hadn’t quite finished undermining my friends’ faith in me. ‘Also … I asked for help from the French police, indirectly through Sam at the Hôpital Corbet. He’s a really bright lad, so I led him to believe that Liam Brookes and Nick Shafer were two different people. He was the one who told me about Half-finger-man pretending to be Liam Brookes and about the HRT patches and about the laptop being broken.’ My confession was made in the spirit of contrition.
Tam interjected as an intermediary. ‘There you are. Without taking that risk, we would be short on facts and information. Your biggest danger areas are the two main subjects here,’ he said, pointing to Father Raymond-mouse and to Half-finger-man-mouse. ‘One is unknown; the other is a suspect by virtue of his proximity to the victims. Father Raymond cannot, however, have killed Nick. His whereabouts were known. He was feeding Jan’s cat and was in the UK. As far as we are aware, he has all his fingers. Digitus intactus.’ He paused. ‘Sorry, that was my effort at levity.’ For once, none of us laughed.
‘I think it’s Half-finger-man who is our sweeper,’ Tam concluded. ‘However, if Father Raymond is following Vatican policy, I suppose he may be under suspicion for the poisoning of Father Joseph. But the question would be, why now? He’s been in Lensham for six months, you say.’ He looked me directly in the eye and fixed me with a benevolent smile.
‘Monica, you’re closer to Father Raymond than anyone else we have available. Can you probe for information?’
I wasn’t certain that I had the energy left to be that good an actress, but my loyalty to Jan and Ben drove me to agreeing to this proposal. ‘I’ll try. But what about Charlie Adams? Can’t we ask him to investigate and support him in reporting his superior officer to the IPCC?’
Emma shook her head, ‘Mon, we don’t even know if we can trust him. He hasn’t been in the area long. He came to you for help, but we don’t know why he had the need to do that.’ Emma was right as usual.
Max, Jake, and Emma were waiting for me to say something.
‘What?’
‘We have no choice really, do we. Can you and Max handle Charlie Adams and Father Raymond? We need to keep the kids safe. We’ll do any background work to help.’
I understood completely what Jake was asking us to do, but Max didn’t even wait for my reply, and he was passive in his aggression.
‘No problem. We’ll be the front men on this one. See if we can get ourselves killed into the bargain, shall we? Although I should be all right but Monica will be most likely to be the next victim, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Max! They have to protect the children. We all do.’ I was shocked at my husband’s attitude.
Tam, without hesitation, played the advantage.
‘Not just your own children, remember. If we can expose the cover-ups, we’ll be preventing the abuse of many hundreds of children and be providing justice for adults who lost their own childhoods to abusers.’ He said this in muted tones, but deliberately and slowly. The meaning was not lost on me, and I knew, looking at Max, that he was now regretting his hasty protest. I saw him mouth an apology to Emma and Jake, who waved their understanding.
‘This is not beyond you,’ continued Tam, holding my gaze. ‘We only need evidence of the crimes. Evidence of one murder will be enough. Push the coroner to question the deaths, but be careful. Find Half-finger-man and we’re halfway there. Pardon the pun. He might have disappeared back to wherever he comes from, but if there is a chance, then we should try. If the police are covering up then we ought to get evidence of that, too.’
‘More questions than answers again,’ Emma said, verbalising my thoughts.
Max spoke. ‘Okay. I apologise for what I said and for being a right selfish bastard. I’m worried about Monica, that’s all. She’s been through an awful lot lately and we’ve hardly slept for days. Sorry, everyone.’
I was caught up in my own thoughts for a moment, accepting the fact that it was me that was about to place myself within poisoning range of a man with half a little finger. If I cocked up, I could place my dearest friends, their children, and my one and only soul mate, in danger. Whether I wanted to or not, I couldn’t walk away. Too many cases of abuse had passed through the doors of mental health services, as if there were an abhorrent insidious virus with several mutations working its way through mankind. Changing the future for children and improving the present for adult survivors was the only way forward.
‘How do you suggest we handle DS Charlie Adams tomorrow?’ I asked.
‘Stick to Emma’s original, plan. Suss him out, set him up and play stupid.’
‘The last one is easy …’
Tam Aitken left the farm, having given us his direct contact details, and advised us not to email with correspondence or put his name into our phones. He became “Big T” on my personal contacts list. It felt altogether better that we had shared our fears with Tam and helped us to realise that we had not worked ourselves up into a form of exaggerated hysteria. What Tam had confirmed was that we had stumbled upon the tip of a monstrous iceberg. We couldn’t melt it but we could help to chip away at it.
Max dropped me at home with Deefer and then indulged his other love by heading for the bike club with Robbie, but not before I made him check every single window and door, put on all the outside lights, and lecture Deefer about the role of a guard dog.
Sitting down at the kitchen table, with a notepad and a pen, I began to define the subjects for discussion the next morning with Charlie Adams. I had two columns. One on the left for ‘safe subjects’ and the other for ‘don’t go there’.
I was confident that I could confirm how I had discovered by chance that my friend’s missing lodger, Nicholas Shafer, was in fact Liam Brookes. I could also disclose that there had been a mysterious break-in at the Lodge House.
Discussing Jan’s death as a suicide was also a safe topic, and it would even be possible for me to suggest Jan’s brother as the likely culprit responsible for the apparent burglary at Jan’s home before she had died. That had a high probability of being correct. However, Father Joseph’s death was a mystery and Ben Tierney’s was still under investigation, so, given my enquiries at the Coroner’s Office, it would be better to avoid that subject if possible. The ace up my sleeve would be my own delicate mental state; I could feign memory lapses if necessary, I decided.
Confidence was returning. Charlie Adams would have to prove himself, thus giving Max and me the upper hand. He could not know what we had already discovered unless we saw fit to tell him, and he would have to be a man of the highest integrity before we entrusted him with any information.
My thoughts were interrupted when my mobile phone rang, making me jump. Max was calling me. ‘Mon, are you sitting down?’ Max was whispering loudly into the mouthpiece at his end.
‘Yes, why? And why are you phoning me from the bike club? Are you in the toilet?’
‘No, I’m outside. I don’t want to be overheard. Why are you whispering?’
‘Because you are.’
‘Idiot. Listen, I needed to tell you this before I forget the details. Get a pen. Got one? Okay. Peter Lynch is here, rather the worse for wear.’
It took me a second or two to work out who Max was referring to.
‘Detective Inspector Oaf, you mean.’
‘Yes, that’s the fella. He and his cronies have had a liquid lunch, which seems to have turned into a liquid afternoon tea. They’re really loud and obnoxious. He’s been shooting his mouth off about your boy’s argument with an express train. The bloody graphic details are enough to turn your stomach, but I guess you know that. The police are assuming s
uicide, as we thought they would, but the important information is about who was doing the chasing that day. Father Raymond and a man called Philip George. Now who could he be?’
I knew the answer straight away. ‘That’s Pip, he attends the Pathways Project with Jan’s friends. He’s a lovely man, wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’
‘Well they were both at the Rectory together when your boy ran past. That’s why they were chasing him. Is Pip a close friend of Father Raymond?’
‘I don’t really know. I suppose it would be all right to ask him that question myself, unless he has a missing finger, of course. I’ve never noticed one before, but then again, I wasn’t looking.’ Obsession with half-fingers was driving me to distraction. ‘I don’t think either of them knew Ben very well, so I wonder what made them run after him like that.’
‘Before I go back in, you might want to hear the other news that old Foghorn Leghorn upstairs told the whole clubhouse. Frank Hughes didn’t get bail. Apparently, he had a poor-quality solicitor whose arguments backfired, so he’s on remand. One less thing to worry about. I’m going now. Robbie and I might have a few beers, so can you pick us up later? We’ll collect the bikes tomorrow. It’ll be a good excuse to get rid of cheerful Charlie once we’ve had enough of him. I’ll ring you when we want to come home.’
Everything was right with the world. Max and Robbie were at the bike club drinking beer, just as they should be. I was at home, radio on for company, with the dog, watching the leaves fall from the trees in the garden and being irritated by state of the lawn, which needed a cut.