A Turbulent Priest

by J M Gregson

  They went into a square room which was almost obsessively neat. No sign here of the toys they had noted in the Hanlons’ house; there was a modern desk under the window, a small cottage-style three piece suite, prints of what looked like Chester on the walls. A compact hi-fi tower stood in one corner of the room, but there was no television set. As if he registered their thoughts, Kennedy said, “The boys don’t come in here much. They prefer the back room with the television. I like to keep this place tidy.”

  Lucy Blake said, “You have two sons, I believe.”

  “Yes. Liam is sixteen now. It was Thomas, my younger son, who had the trouble at the youth club.” He spoke without hesitation or embarrassment. Obviously it was the euphemism he had decided upon and he would stick to that phrase.

  “And you live here alone with your sons?”

  “Yes. My wife and I were divorced six years ago. I was given custody of the children.” He had addressed all his remarks to her, as if he found it easier to talk to her than to Peach. Yet he had a monkish look; one might have anticipated that this ageing ascetic would have been soured towards all women by the failure of his marriage.

  Because he seemed almost to expect it, Lucy said, “It’s unusual for a man to be given custody when a marriage breaks down, isn’t it?”

  “She went off with someone much younger than me. She didn’t want the boys. They’d have got in the way of her new lifestyle.” He looked past her, not at her, while he spoke the bare phrases. He had a slight, mirthless smile and she wondered how much anguish his staccato delivery of the facts concealed. Yet it was he who had led her to those facts, he who had seemed to want the family background made clear.

  In an attempt to bring his attention back to her, she said, “The authorities must have felt you would provide a good home for the lads, or they wouldn’t have left them with you.”

  He smiled at her then, the first real warmth they had felt from him. “We get on well enough together, the three of us. We’re all odd in our own ways, but most of humanity is like that. The problems come when people don’t recognise it.”

  This sounded dangerously like philosophy to Percy Peach. Philosophy wasn’t as bad as sociology or psychology, but it was suspect, and he took it as a cue to intervene.

  “Difficult for the boys, though, not having a mother.”

  “Not as difficult for them as having a bad mother. An increasing number of children have to manage without one parent or another, these days, Inspector. Or has that escaped your notice?”

  Sarcasm was a brave weapon to employ against Peach. He looked at Kennedy with his head on one side for a moment, his face expressionless save for a widening of the dark eyes beneath his bald dome. With his black moustache, he looked for all the world like a miniature Oliver Hardy, about to hit poor Stan Laurel over the head for his latest faux pas. Then he said, “It hasn’t escaped my notice, no. Many of those children end up in the hands of the police, you see. Their lawyers usually offer a bad home environment as mitigating circumstances when their offences come to court. But I’m glad to hear you’re coping manfully. Came to grief up at the youth club though, didn’t he, your Thomas?”

  For a moment, Lucy thought Kennedy was going to spring at Peach. Then he controlled himself, forced himself to fold his arms as he sat in his armchair opposite his tormentor. The effort it cost him was evident in the unevenness of his breathing as he said, “That would have happened if Thomas had had both parents and his grandparents around. That man — that so-called priest — deceived other people as well as us.”

  He was unable to bring himself to name Bickerstaffe, just as he had been unable to bring himself to name his wife, thought Peach. Ascetic men were often unable to name the thing they found most loathsome, just as frigid women could not name the organs of sex. He said, “That seems to be true enough. You had no suspicions about what was going on up there?”

  “No. The parents are often the last to know in these cases, it seems. Liam had attended the youth club for a year or so, with no trouble. When Thomas seemed to be enjoying himself up there, I thought it a good thing for him to be mixing like that.”

  He was defending himself now, a thing he had never expected or intended to do, thought Lucy. Percy’s penchant for getting under people’s skins usually made them reveal more about themselves than a more polite approach. Peach said, “Probably it was a good thing for young Thomas, until this happened. Brought him into contact with the opposite sex, for one thing. Excellent thing that, when he was living in an all-male household.”

  “He’s barely fourteen. And there are girls enough in his class at school.”

  “Not the same, though, is it? Bit of social mixing, outside school hours, not under the eagle eye of teachers or parents, good thing, I should think. Not that I’ve any kids myself. Must be difficult, handling adolescents on your own.”

  Kennedy looked at him, calmer now, but not troubling to conceal his dislike. “We get by. We have our ups and downs, but we get by. Is this leading anywhere?”

  “Not sure, really. It’s giving us a picture, I suppose. Roman Catholic yourself, are you, Mr Kennedy?”

  “No. I don’t have much time for any established religion. My wife was a Catholic, and I allowed the boys to be christened in that church, on condition they were allowed to make their own minds up about religion as they got older. I may say they have now rejected it.” He could not restrain a look of satisfaction.

  Peach himself had been brought up in an atmosphere of stifling, unquestioning piety, of priests in elaborate robes and thuribles swinging with incense. In due course, when he was about nineteen, he had rejected it all. Somehow he felt the boys in this house, wrestling with the problems of belief when they were no more than children, under pressure from a father longing to hear them declare their agnosticism, had had things much worse than he had. He said, “But you didn’t object to the lads attending a Catholic youth club.”

  Kennedy spread out his hands without moving his arms: it was a curiously cramped gesture with which to indicate his liberality. “I am a broad-minded man, Inspector Peach,” he said, apparently unaware that his appearance and bearing had indicated exactly the opposite to them. “If they enjoy themselves in an environment where the religious overtones can only be minimal, I have no objection. And one of today’s religious buzz-words is ‘ecumenical’, so the club officially welcomes all faiths. I don’t think there are many kids there without Roman Catholic connections, mind you.”

  “There won’t be now, at any rate,” said Peach robustly. “Not when the news of Father Shirtlifter gets round the town. And it will, you know, however much they try to hush it up. The victim’s background is bound to come out during the murder trial, for one thing.”

  “You think his death is connected with his offences?”

  “Oh, I’d expect so, wouldn’t you? There are plenty of people still around who think hanging’s the appropriate penalty for child abuse. It was probably one of them. Bickerstaffe was garrotted with a piece of thin rope or wire. About as near as you could get to hanging.” Percy, that bitter opponent of psychology, beamed happily at this awful amateur sally into its realms.

  There was a sound of movement behind the door at the rear of the room. David Kennedy called, “Thomas? Come in here, will you?”

  A thin boy, who looked less than his fourteen years, came reluctantly through the doorway, blushing furiously behind his horn-rimmed spectacles. Peach wondered if he had been listening behind the door, and the boy’s first words confirmed his suspicions. “I just came in from the back,” he said. “My bike’s got a puncture and I’m trying to repair it.”

  “This is Detective Sergeant Blake and this is Detective Inspector Peach,” said his father, and the boy shook hands solemnly with each of them in turn. “They’re just here to ask a few questions. I knew they were coming.”

  The boy nodded abstractedly, as if he did not need such reassurance. “Are you here to find out who killed Father Bickerstaffe?” he said.<
br />
  Lucy smiled at him, but received no answering grin. He stood there a little owlishly, head on one side, full of a gauche intelligence. She hoped there was no bullying at his school, for he looked a classic victim for the unthinking cruelties of teenage boys. “We don’t expect to find that out by speaking to your father, Thomas. But we are trying to find out facts about Father Bickerstaffe, yes. And eventually, when we assemble enough facts, we shall know who killed him.”

  “I hope you find who did it. He wasn’t a bad man, you know. He just liked — well, touching people. He went a bit too far, that’s all. But he stopped, when he knew you really wanted him to. It was partly my own fault, you see. I should have stopped him earlier than I did.”

  David Kennedy, who had watched him indulgently until now, said with sudden harshness, “There is no blame attached to you, Thomas. None at all. We’ve had all this out before. I think you’d better get back to your bike now, leave us to sort this out; I don’t suppose we’ll be long.”

  They looked more like grandfather and grandson than father and son, and the boy ignored him, did not even look at him. He repeated, his old-young face taut with the thought, “I hope you find who killed him. He was a good man, really. He didn’t deserve to be killed like that.”

  They divined in that moment that he thought his father might have done this, that this puny figure was wracked at nights by the thought that the only adult who was close to him might have done this awful, unthinkable thing. He needed to talk, perhaps for hours, to someone who would listen with more understanding and sympathy than this anchorite of a father. Peach smiled at him, said with more kindness than Lucy had seen in him before, “You’re right, Thomas. We’re trying to build up a picture of Father Bickerstaffe — that’s the way we work, you see, when someone’s been killed like this. And it’s good to hear from you that you thought he had these good qualities. We’ll find out who killed him in due course, don’t you worry about that.”

  The boy looked with them at his father to see his reaction. David Kennedy managed a strained smile. He said, “Your generosity does you credit, Tom. I don’t think you can help us here, though.” It was the first time he had used the diminutive of the boy’s name, and it emerged as an appeal. His son looked at him for a moment, nodded abruptly, and turned to leave the room. But the politeness which had been bred into him was too strong for him to leave like that: at the door he remembered his manners, turned and said, “I’ll say goodbye, then.”

  “Goodbye, Thomas,” said the detectives in unison and the boy, reduced again to the embarrassed young teenager who had come so diffidently into the room, slipped out of it again. He had lost his self-consciousness only in the moments when he had spoken of the dead man and the search for his killer.

  It was the first time they had seen any of the children who had been abused by Bickerstaffe. Both of them had been called upon to investigate much greater abuses of children than those perpetrated by that sad and lonely figure John Bickerstaffe. But the sight of that slight, bespectacled boy, still not quite certain of how seriously he had been affected by what had happened, reminded them vividly of the traumas of abuse, of the passions which must have been aroused in the very different homes affected by the dead priest’s activities.

  Peach did not moderate the aggression of his approach to Kennedy with that thought. “Difficult for you, when you found out what had been going on up at that youth club. Being a single-parent family, I mean. And an all-male one, at that. And you so much older than most fathers, with such an age gap to breach to get close to your children.”

  Kennedy seemed about to flare up at that. Then he said through clenched teeth, “We coped. We’ve coped with worse than that, in our time.”

  “Really? Tell me how you coped, Mr Kennedy. When did you hear?”

  “About the middle of August. A man called Farrell came round and asked to speak to me. He said he had the authority of the diocese. He was employed to counsel people, when things like this happened, he said. It became obvious as we talked that he was a kind of trouble-shooter for situations like this. It shows how many of them they have.” The last phrase came out with triumphant satisfaction, as if even amidst this personal tragedy he could not resist noting this corruption in a religion he despised.

  “And you knew nothing of what had been going on before this?”

  “No. Thomas hadn’t said anything to me. Apparently Liam suspected, from one or two things he’d let drop. And Thomas had decided he wasn’t going to go up there anymore. But I didn’t have any inkling of the abuse until that man Farrell arranged to see me. There were others as well as Thomas, he told me.”

  “There were indeed. We are speaking to all the parents involved. What was your reaction when you heard, Mr Kennedy?”

  “I was shocked, of course. But not really too surprised, when I thought about it. Celibacy is an unnatural state for a man. Any religion which favours it is asking for trouble like that.” Again the personal tragedy was translated into a general attack upon an institution. They were left wondering how celibate a life Kennedy himself had led since the departure of his wife. He had the intensity of a man whose personality was off-balance. A man who would surely need a more personal outlet for his reaction to his son’s suffering than a particular religion.

  “Did you go to see Father Bickerstaffe?”

  “I tried to. This chap Farrell who came round didn’t want me to, but after we’d talked to Thomas and found just what Bickerstaffe had done, I felt I wanted to confront the man. I rang the presbytery and made an appointment to see him the next night, but when I went up there, he wasn’t there and his housekeeper either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell me where he’d gone.”

  “And what would you have done, if you had been able to confront him?”

  “I don’t know. Had it out with him.”

  “And what would that have involved?”

  “I don’t know. How can I, when it never happened?”

  “It’s a legitimate question, nonetheless. You must see that, now that the man lies dead in the mortuary and we are investigating his murder.”

  “Perhaps. But I have no very clear idea of what I would have done.”

  “Would you have offered him violence? Did you plan to hit him?”

  “No… I don’t know. It would have depended on what attitude he took, I suppose.” Suddenly, this very still figure ran both hands through his grey hair, a gesture more startling because he had been so static before it.

  “Did you speak to your ex-wife about what had happened?”

  “Yes. I thought it was perhaps my duty to let her know, even though the boys didn’t want me to.”

  “And how did she react?”

  “Hysterically. She screamed about the priest, even though she hadn’t seen the boys for over a year. Talked about vengeance.” He shook his head sadly, but they could see he took some satisfaction from the uncontrolled and unhelpful reaction of this mother he now despised. “The boys were right — I shouldn’t have bothered to inform her.”

  “Tell us where you were on the afternoon and evening of August twentieth, please.”

  The grey eyes flashed a look of open hostility at his interlocutor. “That’s when he died, isn’t it? You think I might have killed him.”

  “Yes. I think any one of half a dozen people might have killed him. It’s my job to think like that, you see. And to ask the right questions.”

  Even Lucy Blake was shocked by Peach’s directness, by his refusal to back off into the comfortable platitudes they all used at times. Perhaps he had sensed the contempt in which his occupation was held by the ascetic individual on the other side of the room; perhaps, as usual, he was playing this rally by instinct, that instinct which so often sought out the weakness in other people’s temperaments.

  Kennedy was clearly upset by his bluntness, but could find no flaw in his logic. He said, “I can’t remember where I was, at this distance.”

  “Were you at your place of work on th
at afternoon?”

  “I expect so. And before you ask, I don’t clock on and clock off, so there won’t be any convenient record for you.”

  “Or for you, Mr Kennedy. It would be convenient for both of us if you could be eliminated from this enquiry.”

  “I was probably late home. I often am on a Thursday. We have a meeting where we assess what we have been doing and plan the following week’s work.”

  “So what time would you have arrived here on that night?”

  “About seven thirty, I suppose. I leave a frozen cottage pie or something like that, and Liam heats it up for the two of them in the microwave. The boys could confirm that.”

  But what they couldn’t confirm is where you were between five and half-past seven, thought Peach. And you know that as well as I do, David Kennedy.

  ***

  Percy Peach got his game of golf on Sunday afternoon. What is more, he played where town met country, in the clear bright air of the North Lancashire Golf Club, not the more plebeian Brunton Golf Club, where Superintendent Tucker was forced to hack his way round. Tucker had been rejected by the North Lancs because he could not meet the handicap requirements; it was a rebuttal which had been made the more bitter a year or so ago, when the North Lancs had accepted the younger and more proficient Inspector Peach with alacrity.

  Percy, who had been a batsman skilful enough to take on the professionals in the Lancashire League, had initially found golf a frustrating game. But today, when he was content just to be away from the job for a few hours and breathe deep of the moorland air, he played well. The match was over by the fifteenth, but Percy finished with a flourish by making a birdie at the difficult eighteenth. He and his partner pocketed their modest winnings, showered, and sat exchanging banter over pints of bitter in the thinly peopled bar. As in all civilised places, personal phones were banned in the clubhouse, so Percy retired to the privacy of a cubicle in the gents’ cloakroom to ring in to the station to check if there were any messages for him.