A Turbulent Priest

by J M Gregson

  He didn’t even mind when his companions asked about the murder of the Brunton priest over their clubhouse drinks at lunchtime. His position as the controller of the enquiry into this major local sensation made him seem rather a VIP in the bar. He gave a lordly overview of the situation and rather vague account of the progress made so far. When people pressed him for more detail, he shook his head sagely and smiled. There was much more he could tell if he chose, he implied, but they must understand that professional responsibilities forbade it at this stage. Eventually, after he had directed his team towards a few areas he had already noted as suspicious, there would be an arrest. He would reveal all to them in due course, when the time was appropriate.

  All this was suggested rather than openly stated, but Tucker gave a good performance as the Great Detective. Indeed, it had become more polished with practice, for he had acted out the role in public many times. His listeners did not detect the cracks in the facade as the egregious Peach would have done. With that thought, Superintendent Tucker began wondering once again whether he could not arrange a transfer for that odious little man; let some other unfortunate have the burden of his perpetual insubordination. But that familiar vision of Eden was followed as always by its contrary note of caution. Peach, however uncomfortable he made life, got results, and it was on those results that his own reputation had largely been built. Tucker always claimed modestly that he ran the most efficient CID section in Lancashire; with retirement not too far away, he could not afford to remove the chief pillar from his temple.

  These reflections over his third gin and tonic were interrupted by the club steward. There was a call for Superintendent Tucker on the members’ phone in the hall. “No rest for the wicked — I was lucky to snatch the morning away!” said Thomas Tucker. He caused the maximum disturbance in the crowded lounge as he made his way between the noisy Saturday lunchtime tables to the hall. Might as well let these people know who he was and how hard he worked.

  “It’s Peach, sir. Sorry to disturb you in your well-earned rest. I know it’s these very necessary breaks from the routine of investigations which give you the overview we all rely on so much, and I’m naturally—”

  “What is it, Peach? It had better be something bloody important, for you to disturb me here!”

  “Yes, sir. Indeed, sir. Just keeping you up to date with developments in a murder case, as your guidelines say we ought to. But perhaps I’d better leave it until Monday. Use my own initiative, sort of, if you judge that this can be left to me. Yes, well, sorry to have disturbed you. I’ll—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Peach what the hell is it?” The prospect of a weekend of wondering just what he had refused to hear, of worrying about what on earth Peach working on his own initiative would get up to, was worse than anything the man might produce for him now.

  Peach savoured the moment, timing his bombshell to drop with maximum effect into Tommy Bloody Tucker’s sanguine weekend world. “Well, I thought you’d like to know that Lucy Blake and I have been roughing up an MP this morning. Well, me, really. DS Blake didn’t have a big part in it, the man not being very susceptible to a flash of suspender. Still—”

  “Peach! You’re telling me you’ve approached an MP with-out even clearing it with me first? Don’t think I’m going to—”

  “I was trying to tell you what I intended on Thursday, sir. After I’d talked to Joe Jackson and his scene of crime team. It was all in his report of the SOCO team’s findings at the Sacred Heart presbytery. Perhaps you didn’t get the chance to look at it, sir. I can’t think you could possibly have overlooked it. Being as meticulous as you are, I mean, and—”

  “Peach! I rely on you to bring me up to date and you know that. You saw me on Thursday afternoon and never mentioned—”

  “Didn’t get the chance, sir. ‘I’ve plenty of things to be busy with, if you haven’t. Off you go and push things forward,’ you said. I took it that you were telling me to get on with things, sir, and being as the MP seemed the most urgent item, I’ve been to see him this morning, as soon as he was back in his constituency. While you were out on the course recharging your batteries, sir.”

  Game, set and match, thought Percy. You’ve tied yourself up neatly in the knots of your own idleness and now you can flounder in your own bullshit. He savoured both metaphors while he listened to Tucker breathing hard at the other end of the line; he could picture him thinking how he might best retrieve the shreds of his own control. It was a pleasingly lengthy pause.

  Then Tucker said heavily, “I’ll need to see you.”

  “Very well, sir. Will you come in to the station?”

  Another pause, shorter this time, while Tucker worked out that an unwonted appearance at Brunton CID on a Saturday afternoon would betoken a personal panic and affect his image. “No. You’d better come round to my house.”

  “Right, sir. DS Blake and I are off to see another pair of suspects this afternoon — no rest for the wicked, as I believe they say. But we could call in after that. Say about half-past four? Give me the chance to meet your delightful lady wife again and—”

  “You won’t be meeting Barbara. This is strictly business, Peach. And come alone. The things I want to say to you aren’t fit for DS Blake’s ears.”

  “Confidential, sir? I understand. I look forward to an informed exchange of information and a view from aloft on how the case stands at the moment. Good of you to make the time for me! Conscientious to a fault, as always.”

  Percy rang off before he could be contradicted. It was a pity when you had to work on Saturdays. But at least the Rovers were playing away. And a bit of innocent mischief always helped to lighten the day.

  Nine

  Keith Hanlon watched anxiously for the return of his wife. They were a close couple. When he saw her pale and distraught, as she had been for the last five weeks, it affected him too. Neither of them had slept well since they had found out about young Jamie and what had happened to him.

  Pat looked bowed down with care as he saw her, shoulders slumped, coming through the gate. He knew that she was apprehensive about this interview with the CID people: he wasn’t looking forward to it himself, God knew, but he’d had to pretend he was treating it lightly, to try to lift her spirits. At least they were close to each other, very close; that had carried them through other crises in their life together, and it would carry them through this. Compared with the loss of a child in infancy twelve years ago, Jamie’s trouble was a minor cross to bear. The boy was in good health, and any psychological scars would soon heal, he told Pat. Boys were very resilient at that age.

  But he knew that while Jamie was at the centre of this earth-shattering affair, it wasn’t only their son’s experience that troubled Pat. They were good church folk, the Hanlons, imbued with a serene faith when even the most devout of their contemporaries seemed shaken by doubt. They attended Sunday Mass with their four children, usually taking Communion.

  And in an era when the sacrament of Penance had become suspect for many Catholics and a source of ridicule from those outside their Church, the Hanlons still went readily to Confession every month.

  That, indeed, was part of their trouble, Keith thought. The small parish of the Sacred Heart was served by a single priest. So they had made their Confessions to Father Bickerstaffe and sought absolution from him. During the time when that man had been doing such unthinkable things with their son, the parents and children alike had been professing their sins in the darkened box of his confessional, taking the host from his fingers at Communion. It felt sometimes as if their Church as well as its minister had betrayed them. The Hanlons’ whole world had collapsed.

  Pat said as she came in, “Mary said it was no trouble to take them for a couple of hours — they were playing happily enough with hers when I left. She’s been very good through all this, you know.”

  “Indeed she has. And it’s good of her to take our lot on a Saturday, when she’s three of her own at home. That’s one of the few co
nsolations in all this, Pat. People have been very good, very understanding.”

  Except for that awful woman in the supermarket, she thought, who had implied that Jamie must have led the man on, that it was really mostly his fault. She hadn’t told Keith about that. He’d been so inflamed — almost unbalanced — about Father Bickerstaffe that she didn’t know what he’d have done about that woman; probably gone straight round to make the woman eat her words. And that wouldn’t have done anyone any good, least of all poor Jamie. She said, “It was a woman who rang to make the appointment. Detective Sergeant, she said she was. Took me by surprise, somehow, a woman being involved in things like this. Perhaps she was just making the arrangements.”

  As in many things, Pat Hanlon found it more comfortable to be a little behind the times. Her husband said gently, “I think women are fully involved in police work now. Even in detection, I believe.”

  “Still, it’s not very nice for a woman, being involved in clearing up things — things like what happened to our Jamie, is it?”

  She still had the image of women in the likeness of the Blessed Virgin, he thought, the source of gentleness and light, of passive suffering, like Mary at the foot of the cross. Even he knew that all women weren’t like that, that modern women needed more outlets for their brains and skills — and yes, even for their goodness. He said, “It’s good to have more women in the police force, I think, Pat. Women will find it more easy than us men to bring comfort into the lives of those who have been wronged, surely?”

  “There should be more thought given to the victims of crime.” She said it dully, as though she were repeating a political slogan, or promulgating some new Christian dogma, he thought. He wished her anger could have been more violent and spontaneous when they found out about Jamie, as his had been. She might have suffered less, in the long run. Now she looked through the window and said in the same automatic, unvarying tone, “This must be them now. A man and a woman.”

  Against her strange calm, Peach brought an infusion of energy into the room. “Detective Inspector Peach and Detective Sergeant Blake,” he said, thrusting his hand at each of them in turn. “Good of you to see us on a Saturday afternoon. But you’ll understand we want to clear this up as quickly as possible. Murder doesn’t wait for anyone.”

  Keith found himself resenting this breezy expedition. “You can’t expect us to be as keen to catch the man who killed him as you are. After what he did to our son, I mean.”

  “Man or woman, sir. We have an open mind on that. And I understand your feelings, but murder is murder. We can’t turn any blind eyes to it.”

  Pat Hanlon nodded. “It’s our Christian duty to give all the help we can, Keith. Father Bickerstaffe didn’t deserve to be killed, whatever he did. Vengeance is the Lord’s, not any man’s.”

  “Indeed, madam. Just so.” Peach, beneath his briskness, was more observant than people realised. He had already taken in that this was a family home, where the children came first and there was no doubt much love. There were toys in the corner, a series of school photographs of children at different ages, singly, but also in pairs and trios on the mantelpiece and the sideboard. The room was spotless, the twin sofas and the single armchair well worn but also well cared for. He’d put his wages on the belief that there were pictures of footballers and pop stars on the bedroom walls of the children’s rooms upstairs. He walked over and picked up the picture which was in pride of place on top of the television, a family group with the parents sitting on the sofa and the four children around them. “Very nice group,” he said. He pointed at the only boy. “This must be Jamie.”

  “That’s him, yes, our eldest. He’s fourteen now.”

  “Better tell us what happened to him, then. Best to start from the beginning, I always think.”

  Keith Hanlon looked for a moment as if he would refuse. Then he looked at his wife and said, “There isn’t a lot to tell. But what there is is extremely distressing for us, as you may understand. Jamie joined the youth club as soon as he went to secondary school. We encouraged it, so long as it didn’t affect his homework. But it seemed a good thing in that respect — he was so keen on the youth club that he got straight down to work as soon as he got home from school, worked hard at it so that he could have an hour at the youth club when he’d finished. We were glad to see him enjoying himself. And we do have three other children to look after as well, you know.”

  Lucy Blake said, “You shouldn’t feel guilty because you didn’t notice anything. Parents very rarely do. Children find it difficult to talk about anything like this, even when there’s a close relationship. Sometimes that only seems to make it more difficult for them. Even when the abuse is much worse than it was in this case.”

  Pat Hanlon looked for a moment outraged, as if there could be no greater evil in the world than that which had befallen their boy. She said inconsequentially, “Jamie was an altar boy at the church. He served Mass for Father Bickerstaffe, quite often. There’s a rota for Sundays, but Jamie served nearly every Saturday.”

  “And did the priest make any advance to him on those occasions?”

  “No. Not after Mass.” Keith Hanlon cut in quickly. “I’m sure even a man like Bickerstaffe wasn’t prepared to debase the very heart of his religion with such things.”

  A Puritan, this, thought Percy Peach. A man not prepared to entertain the unthinkable, and thrown right off balance when it happened to him. He said, “I know you’ve been through this before, but tell us how you found out what was going on.”

  Hanlon glanced again at his wife before he began his account. “Jamie had been going to the youth club less and less frequently. It seemed odd, because he’d always enjoyed it so much and — and we knew he was quite keen on one or two of the girls who went there. In an innocent, adolescent sort of way, you understand. He’s a good Catholic boy, is Jamie.”

  Percy recalled that expression. It was exactly what he had been, at Jamie’s age. And look what had happened to him. He said hastily, “Quite. So he no longer wanted to go to the youth club. Didn’t you suspect anything?”

  “No. I told you, we’re a busy family. He just seemed a bit moody, but that’s what you expect of adolescents, isn’t it?” He sounded like a man who had read it in a book, but still didn’t believe his children would give him many teenage problems.

  “But I understand you were the first parents to suspect what was going on. Something must have made you suspicious eventually.”

  Pat Hanlon said abruptly, “No, I don’t think anything did. Perhaps it would have been better if we had been more suspicious by nature. We thought he was safe while he was doing things at the church, you see. We were even rather pleased about it, I think.” She spoke about it wonderingly, as if it was years in the past rather than just a month ago. “Then one day he said he didn’t want to serve Mass any more. I said had he got doubts about his faith and he said no, he wouldn’t mind going down to serve at St Mary’s in the town, but he didn’t want to serve at the Sacred Heart any more. I pressed him a little about exactly why, and he suddenly collapsed into tears.”

  Lucy Blake felt a sharp pang of sympathy for this boy she had never met and probably never would, beset by parents at once so caring and so ignorant of the world. It was Keith Hanlon who continued the sorry tale. “I came in at that point from the office — I’m a solicitor’s clerk in Brunton. I thought at first that he must have done something very wrong, when I saw his mother so upset. When I sent her away I got it out of him — got him to tell me what that — that priest had done to him.” Even with the repetition of what he had now told several times his breath became uneven with emotion. It could not have been easy for the boy with this clumsy innocent of a parent, thought Lucy. He must have had to be very explicit before his father accepted what had been going on.

  She said, “Forgive me, but we need the detail, and I’m sure none of us wants to take Jamie through this again. What exactly did Bickerstaffe do to Jamie?”

  The Hanlons did
n’t ask why they wanted this, didn’t realise that it was because they were interested in the parents’ reactions to what had happened, not the thing itself. They were so innocent, so used to unthinking obedience to authority, that they perhaps scarcely realised in their emotional state that they were being studied as murder suspects. Unexpectedly, it was Pat Hanlon, speaking as though the details held an awful fascination, who said, “Father Bickerstaffe touched him, wanted to stroke his legs. Then he put his hand down Jamie’s trousers and — and fondled him. Then the priest took him into a private room at the back of the hall and — well, he tried to get Jamie to touch his… his thing.” She shuddered, looked for a moment as if she might be physically sick and then went on. “Apparently he said it was just a bit of fun, that it was part of growing up for boys like Jamie, that he’d enjoy it once he got used to it. It went on all the time, Father said, and Jamie should try it if he wanted to get extra pleasure out of life.”

  She had stared unseeingly through the window as she took them through all of this. Now she turned and looked at them, as if surprised to see them giving her such attention, and said, “That’s all, I think.”

  Peach said, “It didn’t go any further than that? There wasn’t any force used, any suggestion of rape?”

  Keith Hanlon looked as if it was the first time he had even considered the idea that things might actually have been a lot worse. “No. When Jamie resisted, he didn’t use any physical force, I suppose. But you must understand that our boy had no idea what was going on.”

  Unless Jamie had picked up a little smutty schoolboy suggestion from school, thought Percy, he wouldn’t be forearmed in this innocent home, least of all against a priest. He would have had the ritual ‘don’t talk to strange men’, but in this house ‘men’ would never include priests. He said, “And what were your reactions when you found out what had been happening, Mr Hanlon?”