A Turbulent Priest

by J M Gregson

  His statement had the desired effect. There was a buzz of interest even among these professional cynics, as they saw their column inches expanding and visualised their headlines. Tucker spent the rest of the conference emphasising that however damning and regrettable were the charges facing Charles Courcey in connection with paedophilia, there was as yet nothing tangible to link him directly with the death of Bickerstaffe. The former MP for the Hodder Valley was merely one of a number of people being investigated — his audience must surely understand that he couldn’t identify these other individuals.

  Alf Houldsworth attempted to restore his lost status in the journalistic tribe. “You mean you haven’t a clue yet who killed our local priest?” he asked cynically.

  An irritated Thomas Bulstrode Tucker crossed his metaphorical fingers and determined to wrap up the briefing on a positive note. “On the contrary, our enquiries are now well advanced. I shall be surprised if I do not have an arrest to report to you in the next few days.”

  He stood up, his panache restored. He would have been less pleased with himself had he known he was repeating exactly the sentiment which had been voiced to Courcey earlier that morning by his bête noire, Percy Peach. For Peach was a man with whom Superintendent Tucker very rarely chose to agree.

  ***

  The door of the house in Primrose Bank opened before he could use his key. Tony Reilly glanced back at a street which was reassuringly deserted beneath the dim lighting before he moved into the little terraced house.

  He smiled at her and said, “There’s no need for all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, you know. Covering our traces and leaving it until after dark until I come.”

  “You can’t be too careful with the Social. Nosy lot of buggers, they are, and there’s folk round here as would be only too pleased to tell them I’ve got a man coming into the house.” Kate Maxted shut the front door firmly behind him as they went into the brightly lit living room at the front of the house and sat down.

  Yet both of them knew that it wasn’t the Social Services snoopers who were Kate’s concern. It was their involvement in an altogether grander sort of crime that made them cautious. She looked at the clock. Half-past eight. Another day almost over, with nothing more to disturb them. No news must be good news, in these circumstances. She said, “They still haven’t made any contact with you, have they, the police?”

  “No. They came to the building site, the other day — well, one of them did. Cocky little bugger with a moustache. I kept out of the way: I have to, being on the lump. But it was Joe Cartwright he was interested in, not me. Wanted to tell him his alibi didn’t hold water. Shook Joe up a bit, I can tell you.”

  Kate smiled. “Shook him even more when their Jason announced he was gay, I’m told.” She was comforted by the thought that the police were following up other people, not them. She found herself wishing selfishly that Joe Cartwright might even be arrested. “I haven’t seen this bloke Peach. He’s a nasty piece of work, by all accounts. It was a woman who came to see me. She seemed quite nice.”

  “I know, you told me. But you need to be careful, all the same. You can’t trust them, these police.” He pronounced it in the Irish way, with a long ‘o’ in the first syllable.

  She said, “Anyway, you’re here now. I need you, Tony.” And with that simple affirmation, they were in each other’s arms, stroking each other’s shoulders, soothing away the pains and the anxieties of the day.

  Their comforting didn’t last more than a few seconds. There came a violent knocking at the door Kate had so recently shut. The pair stared wide-eyed at each other; a child cried out upstairs. Kate shouted at the blank panels of the door, “Who is it?”

  “It’s the police, Mrs Maxted,” said the muffled voice of Lucy Blake. “We need to talk to you some more.”

  Tony Reilly looked for a moment at Kate, then went without a word from either of them into the big kitchen which was the only other room on the ground floor and shut the door behind him.

  Kate had scarcely opened the door to the street than Peach was in the room. Lucy Blake followed him more quietly, with a glance at Kate that was almost apologetic. Peach looked round the brightly lit room, taking in the cleanliness among the sparse furnishings, the battered three piece suite, the ancient television set, the school photographs of the children. Nothing stolen here: nothing good enough for that. He walked over to the door to the kitchen and threw it open. “Better come in here and join us, Tony. I’ve had a long day and I’m too tired for parlour games.”

  The big Irishman came like a shamefaced child into the room, stood confronting the Detective Inspector, who was six inches shorter than him but just as muscular. He made no move, but it was clear that he was controlling a natural instinct to hit Peach, and equally clear that Peach was going to do nothing to conciliate him.

  Kate Maxted said desperately, “Shall we sit down to discuss whatever it is you want to talk about? It doesn’t cost any extra to sit, you know.” Her brittle laugh rang round the small room, and the four of them sat down almost in unison, watching each other as carefully as if it was a necessary stage move they were trying out for the first time. Kate said to Lucy Blake, “I thought I’d told you everything you needed when you called on Friday.”

  Percy gave her the smile of a lion who has cornered a very tender goat. “You didn’t really think that though, did you, love? Because you’d concealed quite a lot from my colleague here. For a start, you didn’t tell her that you were cohabiting with this fine figure of a man, did you?”

  Reilly clenched his huge fists, pressing them against his thighs. “That’s between me and Kate, that is. Or between me and the husband that’s deserted her and his children and never sent her a penny of maintenance.”

  “Or between you and the Social Services claims department,” said Percy calmly. “But I’m not here to save the taxpayers’ money, Tony me boy. I’m not even interested in your working on the lump for Tommy Conlon, even though we both know you’re breaking the law there. We’ve got bigger fish to fry, haven’t we?”

  Reilly glared at him for a moment before he said un-convincingly, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh, but I think you do, Tony. Murder. The asphyxiation by means of a wire round his neck of Father John Bickerstaffe, parish priest of the Sacred Heart Church and sometime minister to you and the lovely lady beside you. Garrotting, if you prefer the technical term.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “No? Then why be ashamed to reveal your relationship with Mrs Maxted? Why skulk away and hide like a guilty thing when we come here tonight? Conduct of a guilty man, I’d say that is. And I have considerable experience in these matters, you see. So you’re going to have to work hard to convince me, Tony.”

  “It’s the Social, isn’t it? Kate and I are serious about each other. This woman’s the best thing that’s happened to me in twenty years. But until I have a regular job and we can shack up together properly, we can’t afford for them to know. There’s four children to think about, you know.”

  “I know there are, Tony. I’ve been giving some thought to those children, you see. And particularly the eldest one, Wayne. The one who was assaulted by Bickerstaffe.”

  Kate Maxted came in before her lover could speak. “We’ve got over that now. And in any case, it was nothing to do with Tony.”

  Peach rounded on the woman, his face full of an earnest seriousness, as if it was important to him that he should convince her. “Really, Mrs Maxted? I’m afraid I would have to dispute both of those things. You seemed quite furious about what Bickerstaffe had done to your son when DS Blake here spoke to you on Friday.” He looked up at the ceiling, appearing to call up a quotation he had memorised carefully before he left the station. “As far as I’m aware you said, ‘Father Fucking Bickerstaffe, the Flashing Friar. I just wish he’d flashed at me, that’s all. I’d have cut it off for him!’ Hardly sounds like a woman full of Christian forgiveness, does it? And as for it being nothing to do wi
th loverboy here, he’s just told us how serious he is about you and your kids. Your hurt would be his hurt, I’d say, wouldn’t you? And very nice too, for you to have some support in an uncaring world. But it does seem to argue that I can’t leave either of you out of the frame for the killing of the man who abused Wayne, doesn’t it?”

  Reilly said, “Kate had nothing to do with killing that bloody priest, and you can’t pin it on her!”

  “I don’t want to pin anything on her, Tony. Strange as it might seem to you, I’d like to eliminate the pair of you, if possible. It would make my job easier, and believe me after a long day that’s one of the few things that appeals to me. But you aren’t making it easy for us, either of you. A woman who conceals a lover and a man who is trying to conceal a history of violence.”

  Reilly sat bolt upright, and it seemed for an instant as if he would rise and challenge Peach. “You can’t pretend that I’m—”

  “Oh come on, Tony, I’m not pretending anything, and you must know it. When I found a man with your skills working on the lump, a skilled chippy who could turn his hand to plastering as well, I had to wonder why. So I checked your record, and there it was. Assault and GBH. Nearly killed a man, the last time. Four years in Walton Jail, Liverpool. Might have been less, if you hadn’t hit a warder and lost your remission. Quite a man with your fists, aren’t you, Tony? So perhaps also with a length of wire, I thought to myself, when I’d finished reading your record. Especially when he wants to impress the woman he loves, I said to myself. Now I’m saying it to you!”

  The two men had risen during this last speech of Peach’s. They stood confronting each another now, not more than a foot apart, looking into each other’s faces and breathing heavily, like prize fighters waiting for the bell. Lucy thought Reilly was going to hit Peach, and at that moment she would scarcely have blamed him.

  But miraculously, the Irishman’s control held. After a few seconds, he turned abruptly away from his opponent and said harshly to the wall, “I didn’t kill yer man. I haven’t hit anyone since I met Kate. And I’ve made her a promise: I won’t.” He turned back to face the Inspector. “Not even you, Peach.”

  Percy did not move. He confronted his man steadily for a moment longer, then said abruptly, “Where were you between five p.m. and eight p.m. on the twentieth of August, Tony Reilly?”

  “That’s when he was killed, isn’t it?”

  “It is. Where were you?”

  “I finished work at Tommy Conlon’s site at five. Perhaps just before that, if I’d hodded enough bricks for the brickies to start on in the morning.”

  “Pity. Your mates could have vouched for you if you’d been working later. Where were you after that, then? If you say in a pub on your own, I might find it difficult to believe you.”

  With the facts as they stated them, either Kate Maxted or Tony Reilly or both might well have been out near Bolton-by-Bowland at the time when Bickerstaffe was killed. Reilly glanced down at Kate, who was still sitting white-faced on the sofa below him. She gave him a quick nod of encouragement and he said, “I was here, with Kate.”

  There was a pause before Lucy Blake said quietly, “That’s not what Kate told me on Friday. She said she was here on her own. That she watched a video of The Piano while Wayne was playing cricket and her mother had the other kids for tea.”

  Kate Maxted said, equally quietly, “I wasn’t telling you the truth. Well I was, except that I wasn’t on my own. Tony came here soon after five and we were together for the next three hours or so.”

  There was a long pause. Kate’s statement that her man had been with her at home might be worth no more than a wife’s assurance that her husband had been with her at the time a crime was committed. It might also be as difficult to disprove. Eventually Peach said, “Have either of you anything to add to this; any further changes to make in your stories?”

  Both of them shook their heads. Peach said to Lucy, “It’s worth about as much as a wife’s statement of support for a husband, I suppose.” All four of the people in the room knew that that meant absolutely nothing, and he left the thought hanging in the air.

  Sixteen

  Superintendent Tucker looked at DI Peach across his huge desk with unusual smugness. “Well, the rest of us got on with the work whilst you and Detective Sergeant Blake were frittering away the overtime budget in London,” he said. Twenty hours after the conclusion of his media conference, he was still basking in the comfortable feeling of success it had brought him.

  “Yes, sir. It was a consolation to us in our lonely night in the metropolis to know that the investigation was being carried forward with such verve and pace here. Have you actually made an arrest, or is that to happen this morning?”

  Tucker’s air of bonhomie slid to the floor and scurried away beneath his filing cabinets. “I didn’t say the case had been concluded in your absence, Peach. Nothing like that. Just that the necessary work was being carried forward energetically.”

  “Energetically. Yes, sir. I see. Perhaps you could just bring me up to date with how things have moved in the forty-two hours since I left here on Tuesday afternoon. I haven’t had a chance to talk to the team yet. I came straight up here to get the latest from the man in charge.”

  Tucker’s flapping hands looked like the wings of a stricken pheasant above the leather of his immaculate desk. “I didn’t say there been any great progress, did I? I’ve been busy with the things you never pay any heed to, Peach. The things you just expect to take care of themselves.”

  “Yes, sir. I suppose that’s true. I suppose I just assume that if we catch the criminals the public will think we’re doing our job. Silly of me, really.”

  “Absurdly over-simplistic.” Tucker, unaware of any irony in Peach’s view, repeated a phrase he had made into one of his clichés, then lurched into another one. “For the twenty-first century, I mean. It’s time you took more notice of the world at large. While you were away, I conducted a most successful media conference. Television, the national dailies, the locals, they were all there. And I think I can say with all modesty that I gave a most telling performance.”

  “Yes, sir. With all modesty, I see, sir. I heard about it last night, sir, as a matter of fact. From Alf Houldsworth.”

  Tucker’s face clouded. The local rag’s sceptic was the last man he would have chosen to relate the story of his success. “Houldsworth asked one or two questions himself, in his usual cynical way. I was rather pleased with the way I answered them. I trust he was duly impressed by the conference?”

  “He said you were your usual self, sir. He’d had rather too much to drink at the time, but I suppose that means that he was impressed.”

  Tucker was foolish enough in his vanity to chance his luck. “Didn’t he say anything more specific?”

  Peach fixed his frowning focus upon the ceiling in the intensity of his concentration. “I really can’t recall his exact words, sir. There was some reference I didn’t understand to a fart flying round a vacuum, but I couldn’t really be more specific. It was nearly closing time and Houldsworth was far gone, as I said.”

  Tucker’s face was thunderous, but he could not catch the eye of his man; Peach’s gaze remained obstinately upon the ceiling. “Yes, well, I’m surprised you have time to spend drinking with such people, in the middle of an investigation.”

  “Oh, I thought we were almost at the end of the investigation, sir. And I’d just been to see a suspect, you see.” Peach dropped into his intoning voice, as if he were reading from a notebook or a file. “Second visit to Mrs Kate Maxted at eight thirty-five on the night of Wednesday, ninth of September. Concluded at nine o-four. Following upon interview at Wormwood Scrubs Prison in London with Charles Courcey from nine o-seven to nine thirty-eight on the morning of the same day.”

  “Yes, all right, you had a long day, Peach. There’s no need to remind me of that. I expect my officers to work long days, when there’s been a murder.”

  “Yes, sir. No objection to that, si
r. You must drive us just as hard as you drive yourself, sir, as always.”

  Tucker looked at his man suspiciously. Peach’s eyes were back with him now, or almost. They seemed to be fixed upon that spot two inches above his head which the Inspector found perennially fascinating. The Superintendent said cautiously, “What did Charles Courcey have to say for himself?”

  “Not very much, sir, as far as our murder went. The paedophilia charges are not our concern, of course. Courcey was rambling on about being led astray by his friends in this area, sir. And being let down by people he’d helped in happier times.”

  The alarm bells clanged as urgently as a fire engine’s in Tucker’s contorted mind. “Masonic friends, you mean?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir. I never mentioned the Masons, as you have always told me they have no connections with these things. But now you mention it, I rather think he was talking about the Masons in North Lancashire, yes. People he’d helped up the social ladder who hadn’t helped him in his hour of need, he said. That might well be the Masons, sir, I suppose.”

  Tucker wracked his brains furiously, trying to remember if he had canvassed Charles Courcey directly in his campaign to become Master of his Lodge. He couldn’t remember; there were so many people he had spoken to, so many evenings of ingratiation over the years. “Ramblings, you said. Probably just that, from a desperate and disturbed man. And of no relevance to this case. So I don’t think there would be any need to put them in your report.”

  For seconds which seemed to the agonised Tucker to stretch into minutes, Peach gave the issue his consideration. Then he said, “No, sir, I suppose not.” It wouldn’t be difficult to leave out things which had never occurred, after all.