The End of the Wasp Season

by Denise Mina

  “No. He’s sworn never to repeat what people tell him in confession. But he’s done that now and it’s a terrible sin, breaking that. Cardinal. He’s trying to make up for that by martyring himself.”

  “Is it not a defense that he was steaming?”

  “When was being steaming ever a defense?”

  They looked back at the house and saw Father Sholtham standing at the kitchen window, watching them in the car.

  “No, but it’s mitigating, isn’t it?”

  “Not for something like that.”

  “So, Mr. Pape, what do we do now?”

  Harris reached back for his seat belt. “Find out who confessed.”

  Morrow looked back as they drove away, saw Sholtham watching them drive off: a big sad man in a picture window that came up to his knees. His hands hung at his sides, loose, fingers curled limp, waiting for judgment to be made upon him.

  The parish house was altogether finer than the council house. Sitting next to the chapel in a city center street, it echoed the needle spire in its narrow pointed windows and the sharp point of the door. The stone didn’t match though. The chapel was made of the native gray stone and the little house next to it was red with blond tracery around the windows.

  “You ever talk to Leonard?” she asked as they got out of the car.

  “Sometimes.”

  “What do you think of her?”

  “Nice. Smart.” He didn’t mention her sexuality and Morrow liked that. “She knows her buildings and antiques.” Morrow fell into step next to him and waited to cross the busy street. “She’s smart.”

  The front door had two steps up to it, steep, loiter-proof. Harris reached up and rang the bell. It sounded like a death announcement.

  “Think she’s a prospect for promotion?”

  Harris didn’t want to answer. “Suppose.”

  “Bannerman’ll be suspended on suspicion and we’ll need someone to step up and take the DS position,” she said, referring to the conversation at the petrol station. “I want you, but, you know…”

  They watched the door.

  Harris cleared his throat, “I get more…you know, with overtime.”

  “Yeah.” They heard someone coming down a stone corridor towards them. “You worried about starting a coup when there’s no one to take over?”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “Well, I’ll be off on maternity. We need a DS. That…calls thing.” The lock scraped back behind the door. “They’ll ship someone in. Don’t know what they’ll be like, do you? Creating a power vacuum.”

  Harris smiled. “That’s word for word what Leonard said. She said that’s what happened when Napoleon came to power.”

  He was just passing on an interesting comment of Leonard’s, but he’d admitted to talking to other officers about Safecall. That made it a campaign. They looked at each other.

  “So, you admit it’s a coup?” she said.

  Harris looked frightened.

  The door opened. “Can I help you?” A tiny, elderly woman with a rayon blouse and unflattering pleated skirt looked out at them.

  “Strathclyde Police,” said Morrow. “We’d like a word about Father Sholtham.”

  The housekeeper was delighted to give up every detail she had on Father Sholtham’s movements the day after Sarah’s murder. She was very angry with him, though she seemed like someone who woke up angry anyway. She kept asking them what would make a man of faith drink like that? Why would he do that? Make himself ridiculous, like that?

  A sober Father Sholtham had breakfast and took morning mass next door at eight. He didn’t take confessions after mass, they weren’t until five p.m., and he began to drink that morning. She noticed he was acting strange but he said he had flu. He left to attend a meeting at a nearby school and she thought he had flu. He seemed unsteady. He had lunch at the school. Then he came home and did some praying in his room. He hadn’t taken any phone calls, she knew because the phone was in the hall. Morrow was keen to get the details of the teatime confessions but the woman kept talking about the prayer in his room, maybe that had sparked him off, why would someone drink like that, to hurt themselves—Morrow cut her off.

  “Who was at confession?”

  “Father Haggerty.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No,” Harris interrupted, “she means who gave a confession to Father Sholtham?”

  “No one,” said the woman. “No one did. Father Haggerty took the confessions.”

  “Father Sholtham didn’t?”

  “No. He was scheduled to take confessions at five p.m., but he went out for a walk and when he came back it was obvious he was very drunk. Didn’t have flu at all. He’d lied earlier. Father Haggerty found him changing for confessions and brought him here. We put him to bed. He’s been drunk ever since.”

  They couldn’t get a list of names out of her for the people who had been at mass the morning before he drank. She only came in at nine and although she often attended mass in the morning before work she hadn’t that morning.

  When they got outside Harris told her that there would be a core group of people who went to morning mass every day and they could ask them if anyone had taken the priest aside afterwards or spoken to Sholtham at length.

  It was only as a long shot that they went to the school.

  FORTY-FOUR

  On the GPS St. Augustus’s was out of town, fourteen minutes on a stretch of motorway that took them over a ridge of high hills and down into a lush valley of rich farmland, big fields and pretty houses nestled in copses of trees.

  As they drove over the head of the hill, a curtain of rain rose towards them, the sunshine behind it lighting it yellow. They could see it race across the valley, the cars and lorries drive straight into it, bright drops exploding on their roofs and bonnets as it washed the dust from the road and passed overhead. Everything they saw seemed brighter afterwards.

  The GPS directed them from the motorway to roads that curved sympathetically around the landscape, around the edge of thick woods, skirting a hillock. It brought them to a single-track bridge, built from the local stone, and down a winding road of low laborers’ cottages, with deep windows and heavy black thatch roofs. A high red wall gradually emerged from the trees and approached the roadside.

  The wall curved into a wide circle framed by twin curved gate houses on either side and black iron gates that lay open.

  “Fucking hell,” said Harris as he turned down the drive, and he didn’t tend to swear.

  Beyond the gates the red gravel drive snaked through first a wood, then immaculate lawns up to a big elegant house. The house wasn’t square to the gate but faced away, slightly diffident. Built on three levels, with a modest columned portico at the front, it looked grand and cozy at the same time. It had been extended but all the new buildings were clustered behind it so as not to spoil the view.

  In front of the house the lawn sloped away, dipping down to meet a small burn with a little arched bridge over it, leading to the tennis courts and playing fields beyond.

  Harris stopped the car. The main door was shut tight and there were no other cars there. As he looked around for clues to the parking area, Morrow watched a troop of small boys coming across the bridge. They were dressed in their gym clothes, tracksuits and big blue fleeces, all flushed, some with sweat-dampened hair. As they were only about ten or eleven years old, the athletics equipment was too big for them to carry comfortably: they struggled with the hurdles, holding them high to their chins and over their shoulders.

  “There must be a car park around here,” muttered Harris. “Unless there’s another way into the grounds.”

  Now that the wee boys were closer Morrow could see their excitement, chatting and hurrying in groups. They took the path that cut diagonally through the lawn, to a changing room entrance around the side.

  “Weans are weans, though, eh?” said Morrow to herself.

  A boy, smaller than the others, came running up behind the car, hurryi
ng to catch up with his friends. He passed them, breathless, pink faced, pumping his little arms at his sides to help him go faster. He saw the last of his companions walking in the door ahead of him and redoubled his efforts, running fast, kicking his feet high behind him, spraying red gravel.

  The soles of his trainers had a familiar three-circle pattern on them. Morrow hurried out of the car as fast as she could and shouted after him, “Son!”

  He twisted, still running, slowing, jogging backwards.

  “Come back here.”

  He didn’t. But he stopped still outside the changing rooms, looked to the door and spoke to another boy who was scraping mud off the side of his black shoe. The boy shouted into the door. A sturdy woman in a red tracksuit came out. She had a whistle and a stopwatch hanging around her neck.

  Morrow flashed her badge. “We’re from Strathclyde Police. These shoes, are they part of the uniform?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’d like to see the headmaster, please.”

  She started at that but didn’t ask why. “I’ll show you,” she said and led them through the changing room door.

  Harris and Morrow followed her through the corridor past the changing rooms. The teacher kept her eyes down as she hung in at the door and shouted like a sergeant major, “McLennan!”

  A tiny high voice came back, “Miss Losty?”

  “You’re in charge for the next ten minutes!”

  “Very good!”

  Miss Losty exhibited tremendous self-control as she led them through the narrow servants’ corridors and upstairs to the school secretary’s office. She never once asked what they were there for but led them and dropped them in the capable hands of a lady in a tan blouse, flashed a smile and left.

  The secretary asked them to wait in the corridor and shut the door while she made a phone call. Moments later she took them down a long, dark corridor with a black and white checked floor to an office with a sign on the door that said “Mr. Doyle—Headmaster.”

  She knocked and opened the door, hung in and said the police were here.

  Wallis Doyle came to the door, shook their hands and introduced himself, examined their ID photographs closely and then welcomed them into his small office.

  The room smelled of air freshener and new carpets. It was very orderly. The window sill of Doyle’s office was lined with stacks of papers and folders, but all the piles were tidy and everything seemed to be where it should. He even had a recycling center in a corner, home-made from empty boxes of crisps, the circular openings color coded: one for newspapers, one for cans and the bottom for glass. Inside each box the rubbish for recycling was tidy, as if it wasn’t really being used but was just there as an example.

  He was courteous, sitting them down in comfortable seats and offering them tea. They said no thanks and the secretary left, shutting the door carefully. He watched the door close and stood at the side of the desk, his hands clasped one in the other. “Well, welcome to St. Augustus’s,” he said as if addressing parents. “What can I do for you?”

  “Yes, Mr. Doyle,” said Morrow. “Sorry, it is Mr. Doyle? Not Father Doyle?”

  “No, no,” he smiled at that idea and showed her his wedding ring, “Mr. Doyle.”

  “We wanted to ask about Father Sholtham’s visit here on Tuesday?”

  “With regard to…?” He cocked his ear.

  Harris looked at Morrow.

  “What time did he get here, who did he speak to, when did he leave?”

  “And why would you be asking that?”

  Morrow cleared her throat. “Because I want to know.”

  They stared at each other, Doyle’s expression cooling towards her. He unclasped his hands and put them in his pockets, leaned his bottom on the desk. “Father Sholtham arrived at twelve thirty-five. He came to the side chapel to tell the choir that the funding for their Malawi trip had been met: one of our parents had agreed to match the money already raised. For every thousand pounds they raised another thousand would be added—”

  “You’re very sure about the time.”

  “We were expecting him at twelve but he was late. The bus was late.”

  “What happened then?”

  “We had a celebratory drink of tea and then he left. I saw him out.”

  “How did he seem to you?”

  He thought about it. “Fine, a little under the weather. I’m assuming this has something to do with his drinking, he certainly wasn’t drunk then. He had a general anesthetic the day before so he wasn’t well, but he didn’t smell of drink. I saw him half an hour later, leaving for the bus and he seemed fine.”

  “Hang on,” interrupted Harris. “You saw him out and then you saw him leave half an hour later?”

  “Yes, from the blue room. It’s on the first floor and I saw him on the driveway.”

  Harris frowned. “Why the time lag?”

  “The buses are infrequent. He would have waited downstairs in the hall. It was raining.”

  “He didn’t take confessions?”

  “No.”

  “And who would he have spoken to while he was waiting down there?”

  “No one.”

  “No one could happen past him?”

  “Oh, sure, easily. It’s free association until classes start back at one fifteen. The boys could come and go but they’d have to be looking for him down there. It’s not a part of the school they hang around in. The games rooms and dorms are over the other side of the campus.”

  Harris nodded. “You didn’t leave him with anyone or see anyone approaching him?”

  “No.”

  “Confession…” Harris shifted in his seat. “It’s not like when I was a boy. You can do it anywhere now…”

  Doyle said nothing but smiled, confused. He’d assumed they were here about the priest.

  “But,” said Harris, “it’s still confession if you can see the priest, if it’s not in a confessional…”

  “Sure. Well, it’s a sacrament but if the priest uses the sacramental forms, they can take it anywhere. A lot of priests prefer to keep it more casual now, especially with younger people, don’t they?”

  “Less intimidating,” suggested Harris.

  “Sure.” He was looking from one to the other, hoping for clues. Morrow sat forward. “On Monday afternoon, the day before, were any of the kids missing from the school?”

  He thought back. “No.”

  “Were there any school trips to Glasgow that day? Sports events or debating teams or anything?”

  “No. Could you tell me what this is about?”

  “Have you heard of Sarah Erroll?”

  Doyle blinked. “No. There aren’t any boys by the name of Erroll here. I could be wrong. Sometimes the parents have different names now, the mothers…What is this about? Who is Sarah Erroll?”

  Morrow didn’t like him. She didn’t like his attitude, she didn’t like that he ran a private school and she didn’t like his tidy-as-a-minister’s-conscience office. “Mr. Doyle, I don’t think you’re being honest with me. You know who Sarah Erroll is.”

  He shrugged. Irritated. “Has she been to visit this school?”

  “You’re not answering my questions. Don’t start pitching your own.”

  Doyle was not a man used to being disagreed with. He bared his teeth in a cold smile and slid off the side of the desk, moving around to sit in his chair, keeping the broad oak surface between them.

  She pointed at the tower of recycled crisp boxes. “There are newspapers in there which covered the story extensively. I think you are worried about answering openly in case it’ll reflect badly on the school.”

  Doyle looked guiltily over at the crisp boxes. “I don’t recall that particular story.”

  “The uniforms the boys wear,” said Harris. “Are they the same for every year?”

  “Yes.”

  “Trainers: where are they from?”

  “Which ‘trainers’?”

  “The trainers. The trainers all the boys w
ear for PE, the black suede ones.”

  “They’re just normal gym shoes. I don’t know the make—”

  “Where do the boys get their uniform—is it a special shop?”

  “No. It’s just Jenners.”

  “In Edinburgh?”

  “Yes. But look, every part of the school uniform is manufactured for general sale. The blazer badges and evening jackets are the only things made for us. Anyone could buy those gym shoes.”

  “You’re not being very helpful, Mr. Doyle.”

  They sat in silence, Morrow scanning the office, Harris staring at Doyle. Doyle was the only person in the room who was uncomfortable.

  He hatched a plan and stood up. “Well, thank you again for coming. I will go through the class records for that day and see who, if anyone, could have been in Glasgow. Our boys are not allowed to keep cars, so it might be worth you checking with the local train station.”

  “I know my job.” Morrow stayed resolutely in her chair.

  “I can access the records but I must ask you to leave now.”

  Harris looked at Morrow. Morrow looked at Doyle and took her time deciding. “I’m phoning you in three hours. If I don’t get the information I need or if I think you’re not cooperating, I’m coming back in uniform with a squad and we’re doing a search. Clear?”

  Doyle held his hand out to his door.

  Morrow stood up and Harris followed her. Doyle tried to get around to the door but Morrow beat him to it and opened it herself. “We can find our way out.”

  “Not at all,” said Doyle and ushered them, shutting the office door and locking it after them.

  The ratchet sounded loud and definitive in the quiet.

  He waved them in front of him and took them in silence down the dark corridor, away from the secretary’s office, through a large door into an oval central hall. It was very cold and empty apart from a gleaming rosewood grand piano and an empty white marble fireplace. The floor above had an oval balcony, overlooked by a domed glass window.

  Doyle shook their hands, avoiding their eyes, and showed them through a door to the top of a short twin staircase that arced down either wall to the front door. He stayed on the balcony and watched them leave.