Perfect Remains

by Helen Fields

  ‘She’s just a child,’ he said.

  ‘I know. But she trusted you, straight away. She must have felt you understood her. You were different,’ Ava finished. Callanach glanced up briefly to find her staring at him. She returned her eyes quickly to the road and he looked back down at his phone. He found what he’d been looking for just as they arrived at the school.

  ‘What?’ Ava asked as he swore loudly in French.

  ‘St Gerard Majella,’ Callanach said. ‘He’s the patron saint of expectant mothers.’

  Ava parked the car and they walked up to the imposing gates, although this time the wrought iron barriers did not open automatically. Instead, a young nun appeared and addressed them from inside.

  ‘Sister Ernestine is busy. She asks that you make an appointment.’

  ‘And I require access to information relating to the deaths of two babies,’ Ava said.

  ‘We’ll need to see some paperwork,’ the nun said. It sounded like a line she’d been instructed to say.

  Callanach stepped forward. ‘I’m not entirely certain that Sister Ernestine would enjoy media attention. A delay will mean more parties having to share the information we already have.’

  There was a hushed conversation through a walkie-talkie system, a buzzing noise and magically the gates opened. Sister Ernestine managed to free herself from whatever onerous duties had detained her and was waiting inside the front door.

  ‘Come to my office,’ she said, motioning towards the route they’d taken before.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Ava said. ‘I have cause to believe there is evidence here and witnesses who need to be secured immediately. Unlock the inner door, please.’

  ‘This is private property,’ Sister Ernestine insisted. ‘The parents of these students pay a great deal of money for their education. I won’t have you rampaging in and upsetting them.’

  ‘Let us through,’ Ava said, stepping up in a manner that made her determination quite clear but which stopped short of threatening. Callanach enjoyed watching it. Detective Inspector Turner was a force to be reckoned with.

  Sister Ernestine unlocked the inner door with a face that could have melted metal. Ava and Callanach made their way up the stairs as uniformed officers secured the lower floor. Along a corridor was a classroom which they entered quietly. The girls stood up automatically, showing an almost military respect to the visitors.

  ‘My God,’ Callanach said. He’d had his suspicions in the car but hadn’t expected this.

  ‘They’re all pregnant,’ Ava said, staring at the girls. ‘Every one of them. This isn’t a school, it’s a maternity unit!’

  ‘We look after these girls’ spiritual, physical and educational needs. They are kept safe here, away from prying eyes and corrupting influences.’

  ‘You mean corrupting influences like independent advice about contraception and terminations?’ Ava asked. ‘Do these girls leave this school at all? Who provides their prenatal care? Where do they give birth?’

  ‘We have a fully equipped medical unit and we only use the best doctors and nurses.’

  ‘That’s why the fees are so high,’ Ava noted. ‘John Costello paid a fortune to have his daughter kept here. I want to see your records. I’ll need the medical notes of all the girls who’ve given birth in the last month.’

  ‘That’s not going to be possible,’ Sister Ernestine said. ‘Those are confidential. You’ll need to provide me with specific names.’

  ‘Felicity Costello made a pact with two girls she met here that they would leave their babies to die in order to expose what was happening at this school. So you will give me access to those records.’

  ‘Felicity Costello was an ungodly slut who lay with a boy then refused to confess her sins.’

  ‘So help me, I will do everything in my power to have this place shut down. The medical staff who deliver babies here are witnesses. I want names and contact details in my hands within five minutes.’ Ava was fuming. The girls in their lesson looked stunned, a few were tearful, many more were grinning at the spectacle.

  ‘Rebecca,’ one of them shouted.

  ‘Shut up, she’ll cane you,’ another hissed.

  Sister Ernestine tried to shut the door between the corridor and the classroom but Callanach stuck his foot out and held it open.

  ‘Rebecca. Was she a pupil here?’ he asked the group. There was a long pause before some of the girls began to nod. ‘Does anyone feel able to give me her surname?’ he asked, but at this there was silence, the girls glancing nervously between themselves then over to Sister Ernestine. Callanach tried a different tack. ‘And has anyone here been caned by Sister Ernestine?’

  ‘Do not answer that question,’ the nun who had been giving the lesson ordered.

  ‘You are interfering with a criminal investigation,’ Callanach snapped back.

  ‘This is an outrage,’ Sister Ernestine cried. Ava stood between her and the girls, leaving the pupils no doubt about who was in control.

  One pupil raised a hand. Callanach thought the girl was asking permission to speak until he saw the red welts across her palm. She was heavily pregnant, pale and obviously exhausted. Another followed suit, and finally one girl lifted her mid calf-length skirt and turned around to show the same marks across the backs of her knees.

  ‘Sister Ernestine, you are under arrest for assault. Come down to your office with me. I’ll need access to all the pupil records and I will caution you there.’ Ava took the nun by the arm and led her along the corridor. Callanach looked at the expectant faces before him. As much as he wanted to get more information from them, each child was below sixteen years of age. His choices were either to obtain parental consent to interview – and what an irony that was after the parents had placed the girls there – or to get a social worker to accompany them. Anything said now would be off the record and heavily criticised later. The girls were vulnerable, and their health was the primary consideration. Proper procedure had to be followed.

  ‘Sit down, please. I’d like you to remain calm. Uniformed police officers will come in and take your names. A doctor will be in attendance to inspect any injuries and answer questions. We will have to contact your parents but we’ll be advising them that you must be seen by medical professionals independent of this school and in liaison with Social Services. You don’t need to be scared any more,’ he said.

  Female officers entered and took over. Callanach went down to Sister Ernestine’s office. He looked again at the windows and doors.

  ‘The security wasn’t to keep intruders out. It was to keep the girls in. What exactly was it you thought they were going to do? Have sex? Only that seems a little late to be effective,’ Callanach said.

  Sister Ernestine threw him a glare of unadulterated loathing and clutched the cross that hung on a chain around her neck.

  ‘What they were going to do was commit a mortal sin. You think that only evil men with predatory thoughts kill people? Women do it every day, all over the world, thousands of them. Every one of the girls here had expressed the desire to do the same. We saved their souls and the lives of the babies inside them. We stopped them from becoming murderers.’

  ‘You force these children to carry their babies to term when they want terminations, is that it?’ Ava paused in the middle of opening drawers in the Sister’s desk.

  ‘I protect the sanctity and value of human life. They weren’t children when they were shaming themselves, were they? Why should their unborn babies suffer for their sins?’

  Two uniformed officers arrived at the door.

  ‘Take her in for questioning,’ Ava said. ‘And bag this up as evidence.’ She handed over the cane that Callanach had noticed during their first visit. ‘We’ll need to interview all the girls before we can be sure how many counts of assault she needs to be charged with.’

  ‘You’ll answer to the Lord for stopping our work here,’ Sister Ernestine said.

  ‘I answer to the courts, it’s a fairer system,’
Ava said, her back already turned as she continued her search.

  ‘There’ll be retribution. If not in this world, then I will pray to God you answer in the next,’ the nun snarled, taking full advantage of how unwilling the uniformed officers were to use force to get her moving.

  ‘In the place you call Hell, you mean, Sister?’ Ava responded, neither turning around nor raising her face from the paperwork as she did so. ‘It’s an interesting debate, I grant you, the existence of a place of punishment and pain. The definition matches exactly what you’ve created here and in so many other aspects of your religion. For the child who’s told his mother remains in Purgatory because she committed suicide. For the wives of the men in Africa who’ve contracted HIV because you preach that condoms are sinful even when they use prostitutes. For the women broken and exhausted from having so many children in third world countries because you tell them it’s wrong to use birth control. There are many places one can describe as Hell, Sister Ernestine. One I am particularly familiar with is Edinburgh prison, and you are in the privileged position of not having to die before finding out what it’s like. Be sure to exercise your right to a lawyer. You’re going to need one.’

  Callanach waited until they were alone. ‘There’s going to be a media frenzy,’ he said. ‘It will need to be contained until the other girls are found. You can’t trust that their parents won’t just send them off somewhere else.’

  ‘It’s going to take some time to go through the files,’ Ava said. ‘Word’s going to get out faster than I can complete the investigation. That’s if the good sisters haven’t been on the phone to the parents already.’

  ‘What can I do to help?’ Callanach asked. ‘I’ve got a witness coming into the station in two hours but until then I’m all yours.’

  ‘Could you talk to Felicity again? Try to get Rebecca’s surname out of her. Maybe if she knows what we’ve done here, she’ll feel able to give us more information. I’ll have you picked up. I’m going to be a while.’

  ‘You’re going to be all day,’ Callanach said. ‘Let me see what I can do.’

  A squad car returned him to the station where the social worker met him in reception.

  ‘Mr Costello is insisting he talks to Felicity before you interview her again,’ she said. ‘And he’s brought the lawyer back with him.’

  ‘That was fast,’ Callanach said. ‘What sort of state is Felicity in?’

  ‘She’s okay but she doesn’t want to speak to her father.’

  ‘Did she give any clear reason why not? You’d think she’d want some support from her family,’ Callanach said.

  ‘Depends what you call support. But the short answer to that is no, she wouldn’t explain. If you can get anything out of her about it, I’d be grateful. Mr Costello isn’t exactly my idea of a loving father, however much he was paying in school fees,’ the social worker said.

  ‘Give me ten minutes with her. You keep the parents and lawyer out of the way.’

  ‘But I need to be with you if you’re going to continue the interview,’ the social worker said. ‘There’ll be a complaint otherwise.’

  ‘I’m not interviewing her,’ Callanach said. ‘I will be having an off the record conversation to clarify a point with a witness. I’ll make sure you get a copy of my notebook afterwards. Which room’s she in?’

  They went in different directions, Callanach with a can of Coke and a bar of chocolate in his hands, the social worker wringing hers. It wasn’t exactly protocol but there was too much at stake to play it all by the book. If they didn’t act fast, the school would spread its silence until they’d get nothing from any of St Gerard Majella’s former pupils and that would be a dire miscarriage of justice. As Felicity was a defendant, he could interview her alone if the safety of other people was in immediate jeopardy. It was a stretch, Callanach thought, but this was one loophole he was going to have to exploit for the sake of making progress.

  ‘Felicity,’ Callanach said, handing over the food and drink as he sat down. ‘There’s no video recording, no one’s listening. The social worker is keeping your parents busy and you don’t have to see the lawyer if you say no. We’ve been to the school. DI Turner is still there. All the girls are getting proper medical attention. Those who need it will be transferred to public hospitals.’

  ‘Does Sister Ernestine know it was me who told you?’ she asked. Callanach saw the fear on her face and resisted the urge to express in plain terms what he thought of Sister Ernestine.

  ‘You don’t need to be afraid of her any more. She’s been arrested for assault and she’ll go to prison. Felicity, we still need your help. The two girls we talked about, one of them was called Rebecca, is that right? We have the school records so we’ll figure it out soon enough, but if you can give me the other name we can find her faster and that would be better.’

  ‘They’ll be in trouble,’ she said, ‘and it’s not their fault.’

  ‘Tell me what you can. If there’s a way to stop them being prosecuted, we will.’

  ‘The nuns only keep you there until you’ve had the baby, then you go home. You have to register your child and your parents decide if you’ll keep it or give it up for adoption. Sarah Butler was first.’ Felicity paused to open the drink. ‘The nuns insisted that we confess. We were supposed to talk about what we’d done to accept our sinfulness. Sarah refused to tell them anything until she was about to give birth and then it was like she broke.’ Felicity was shaking, biting the skin at the edge of her nails so hard that her middle finger was bleeding.

  ‘Go on,’ Callanach said. ‘Nothing worse can happen.’

  ‘Sarah told Sister Ernestine that she’d done nothing wrong, that a man had forced himself on her. It was her priest. When Sarah told her parents what had happened they’d refused to take her to the doctor to get the morning after pill. Sister Ernestine called her a liar but you could see she was telling the truth. Everyone knew it. The nuns beat her, even though she was so big with the baby she could hardly walk. They always beat you where the baby wouldn’t be hurt, on the hands, arms and legs. Sister Ernestine was still beating her when the first contraction came and still she didn’t stop.’

  Felicity was crying. Not the wailing sobs of a teenager but the still, unconscious weeping of a child forced into adulthood through grief, pain and fear.

  ‘And Rebecca?’ he asked before Felicity couldn’t bear to talk any more.

  ‘It’s Becca Finlan. She couldn’t cope with being pregnant, not from the first day I met her. She was only thirteen. I would see her clawing at her stomach, punching herself. She thought her body was being invaded. At night they used to strap her to the bed so she couldn’t hurt herself. It was sick. The nuns told her God was punishing her for her dirtiness. She was convinced she would die giving birth. She never told us who the father was but sometimes, when she talked about her uncle … you know.’

  Callanach did know. ‘Was there no way of getting help, not through the nurses or by telephone?’

  ‘All the staff obeyed Sister Ernestine. They all thought the same way as her. Your mobile phone gets taken away when you arrive. There was no internet, no landline. Parents could visit but we were never allowed out. We were cut off from everything and everyone. I didn’t see my twin sister for months. I missed her so much.’

  ‘What about your father?’ Callanach asked quietly. ‘Did you miss him?’

  Felicity’s face contorted. Her hands formed hard fists in her lap and her shoulders hunched up. She did not respond.

  ‘Felicity, I know that what goes on inside families is often secretive and difficult to discuss. But if you need help, if there’s something I should know …’

  ‘He thinks I’m trash, all right? That’s what he called me when I admitted I was pregnant. He sent me to that … prison just so he didn’t have to look at me. I told him it was my life and my body, and that I would make my own decisions. He just laughed. He told me I was wicked and that I’d burn if I didn’t repent,’ Felicity sna
rled.

  ‘And your mother? How did she react?’ Callanach asked.

  ‘My mother?’ Felicity laughed, but there were tears in her eyes and her arms were clasped firmly across her stomach. ‘She did what she’s always done. She sat in a corner and nodded as my father spoke, and didn’t say a word against him. I used to think she was scared of him. Now I just think she’s pathetic. She came to visit me every Sunday afternoon. Do you know, she didn’t look me in the eyes once? I showed them the marks from the beatings and my father said they should have hit me harder. He said I needed the lust thrashed out of me. So no, I don’t want to see either of them. I don’t care where I end up. I’m not going home.’

  Callanach knew how it felt to be judged by a parent. Unconditional love was a mirage. It faded when you got too close to it. He wondered briefly what his mother was doing, and if she regretted cutting ties with him. Felicity had every right to have expected more.

  ‘I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. I promise to do what I can to help and I know DI Turner will feel the same.’ Callanach stood up to leave as Felicity threw herself into his arms, clinging like a toddler, her face a mess of tears against his shirt. If he pushed her away she would believe his sympathy to have been nothing more than an information gathering ploy. Against every instinct, he forced himself to let her sob against him until she had calmed down and taken what comfort she needed.

  Callanach saw the social worker at the door and nodded for her to enter.

  ‘You’ll need to get a child protection order from the court,’ he told the social worker as he gently extricated himself. ‘Felicity, we won’t let anyone else hurt you. You will still have to deal with the charges against you and Social Services will organise a solicitor. In the meantime, though, you won’t have to go home. Okay?’ He handed the social worker a piece of paper with the notes he’d scribbled in the meeting, slipped out of the room and dialled Ava’s mobile. ‘The girls you’re looking for are Rebecca Finlan and Sarah Butler. Felicity says Sarah’s pregnancy was the result of a priest raping her. Parents and nuns were aware but did nothing. It sounds as if Rebecca suffered a breakdown during the pregnancy and I suspect she may be self-harming or a suicide risk. There’s a question mark over her uncle’s involvement. You need to reach them fast.’