A Turbulent Priest

by J M Gregson

  Tucker tried to control his sigh of relief. “So your visit to London was rather a waste of time, was it?”

  “Well, sir, it provided valuable experience for DS Blake.” And for Percy Peach as well, if you did but know it, sir. Took us several minutes to untangle the sheets yesterday morning. Percy felt a seraphic smile of recollection threatening his round face and hastily resumed his official mode. “Charles Courcey obviously didn’t kill Bickerstaffe himself, sir. Wouldn’t have had the bottle for it, in my opinion. But there is some evidence that he and his paedophile chums employed a hitman to do the job.”

  “Some evidence? Really, Peach, you should know by now that you need more than vague phrases like that to convince an old hand like me. Unless you can offer me something more tangible than—”

  “I can, sir. A payment was made two days before the murder to a known hitman. Name of Tucker.”

  Percy kept his face perfectly straight on the name; he had practised the feat for some minutes before he came up to his chief ‘s room.

  “Tucker?”

  “Tucker, sir.” Then, as if the name had only this minute struck a chord, Percy’s face lit up with a wonderful thought. “I say sir, the man’s not a relation of yours, is he? Every family has its black sheep, but this would really be a turn-up for the books. I can imagine what the journalistic crowd would make of this, and—”

  “The man is not a relation of mine, Peach! Get that into your thick skull! If Tucker is indeed his name.” The Superintendent peered with dark suspicion at Peach across the big desk.

  “Oh it is, sir. Really it is. Of course, it might be an adopted name, with a man like that. Criminals often choose to adopt the names of celebrities, apparently.” Peach was studying the spot two inches above his chief’s head again, with his face cleared of all expression.

  “Has this man — this Tucker — been arrested?”

  “Unfortunately not, sir. He’s gone to earth. I doubt whether he’s even in the country, if he did it.”

  “How much was he paid?”

  “Five thousand pounds, sir.” Peach waited with blank features to see if Tucker registered what he had registered when he heard that, but his chief made no comment. You’re as daft and out of touch as I always thought you were, Tommy Bloody Tucker, thought Percy. And it’s not up to me to dispel the black clouds of your ignorance. Superintendent.

  “This contract killer will be our man,” said Tucker decisively. He waved Peach from his presence. “I may have to contact Interpol presently,” he said airily.

  ***

  It was morning break-time at the Sacred Heart RC Primary School, Headmistress Mrs H. MacMullen, BA. Percy Peach studied the green board with the gold lettering by the school gate, watched the raucous mass of young humanity in the playground for a moment, then moved on impulse into the cool silence of the church beside the school.

  Percy had been reared as a Catholic boy. Thirty years ago, when he had been as noisy and unthinking as those noisy seven-year-olds he had watched for a moment in the playground, he had had the blind certainty in his God that only a child of that age can possess. He had lost his belief long ago, but the habits bred in the very young die hardest of all, and he found himself genuflecting before the altar in the empty church. He knelt for a moment, bending his stubborn knees in prayer to the God who just might after all be there. It was just as well to play safe with these things, he told his more cynical self, as it tried to reassert itself.

  He even asked the Almighty to be merciful to the person or persons he would eventually arrest for the murder of Father John Bickerstaffe, late priest of this parish. He would never confess to anyone that he had done any such thing, not even to Lucy Blake, though he felt very close to her now. What he felt and what he did in this church were entirely between him and this God who almost certainly didn’t exist.

  Percy wandered to the back of the deserted church, inspected the rotas for cleaning, for shutting the church, for serving Mass. He noted the reappearance on this week’s list of servers of the name of Jamie Hanlon. There was no sign of Jason Cartwright, or Thomas Kennedy, or Wayne Maxted. But there was nothing significant in that: they hadn’t been regular servers at Mass before they were assaulted by Bickerstaffe, so they were hardly likely to appear on the lists of servers with the new priest. Percy ignored the stoup of holy water by the door as he left the church: you had to draw the line somewhere.

  He wandered round the side of the deserted church and knocked at the door of the presbytery. Martha Hargreaves was expecting him, had seen him go into the church and approved. There is more joy in heaven over the return of one repentant sinner than… Martha couldn’t remember the rest, but it meant there was always hope, even for a policeman.

  She had coffee waiting for him and they chatted surprisingly easily across the cups, this old-fashioned, pious spinster and this dapper taker of felons. He took her through her description of the man who had called at the presbytery to try to retrieve Charles Courcey’s letter to Bickerstaffe, but she could not be any more precise than she had already been to the uniformed constable five days earlier. “It was dark and he was muffled to the eyes. And I sent him packing pretty quickly. I couldn’t see much, except that he was tall and dark and fairly young. Is it important?”

  “Probably not,” said Percy. This certainly wasn’t the hitman the paedophiles had commissioned to kill Bickerstaffe; probably no more than a minor bit of muscle retained to frighten less resolute citizens than Martha Hargreaves. Time to change the subject. “Used to serve Mass myself, in the old days,” said Percy, stretching his short legs out before him and biting into a home-made ginger biscuit.

  “Those experiences are always with you, until the day you die,” said Martha. “Or so they tell me. I never got further than cleaning the brasses, myself.” Was there a hint of resentment at the female lot there, even from this most loyal and traditional of church servants?

  “Notice young Jamie Hanlon’s back on the roster.”

  She looked at him suspiciously, but he was smiling and relaxed, looking past her to the picture of Saint Theresa on the wall behind her. “Aye. He’s had a talk with the new priest, Father Brown, and told him he wanted to come back.”

  “Good thing, I expect. I notice you even have a rota for shutting the church up at night, nowadays. Pity it’s necessary, but I’m afraid it is.”

  “Expect the police are too busy with other things to protect churches.” Martha sniffed disgustedly.

  “Afraid that’s so,” said Percy, not at all put out. “Murders, for instance.”

  “And other things. It’s a nasty world. Not like the one I was brought up in. Even people who call themselves Catholics don’t go to church every Sunday, nowadays.” She offered it as the ultimate evidence of declining standards, and Percy was secretly inclined to agree with her.

  “I see the Hanlons are on the roster. Keith Hanlon was supposed to lock up the church on the night of the twentieth of August, I noticed.”

  “The night when Father was killed.” The old eyes stared at him steadily, letting him know that she read her papers and listened to her television like younger people, that she was aware of what he was about.

  “Yes, we believe it was that night. I don’t suppose you know if the rota was observed that night, or whether there was any switch? I know you close the church up yourself sometimes, when someone can’t take their turn.”

  Martha studied him with her head a little on one side, then allowed herself a small, rather tired smile. “The roster was observed, as you call it, on the night of the twentieth. Pat Hanlon shut up the church at seven o’clock. I popped out myself to check that the church was safe — having no priest in residence, you see. I put my head out just before The Archers came on, and I saw Pat Hanlon leaving. Does that disappoint you?”

  “Not at all. It’s a bit of information, that’s all. It’s my job to gather information, you know. You must be glad to see things getting back to normal, to have a priest in the house
again. I expect the parishioners are, too. The Cartwrights are back at the Sacred Heart, are they?”

  Martha looked at him keenly, then offered him the plate of her gingernuts, as if that confirmed her approval. “They’ve never been away. They’re always at Sunday Mass — they came even when we were being serviced by the priests from St Mary’s.”

  “And the Kennedy boys? Are they back?”

  “No. The father’s never been, but the boys came regularly on Sundays when Father Bickerstaffe was here. I haven’t seen them since then. They might be going down to St Mary’s, of course.”

  But you don’t think they are, any more than I do, thought Percy. He imagined the look of triumph on the ageing face of David Kennedy when he saw his boys ceasing their attendance at the church he hated. “What about Kate Maxted?”

  “She’s at Mass and Communion regularly enough on Sundays, and her children with her. And so’s your man Reilly.”

  “You know about that?”

  Martha smiled a smile of infinite experience. “Of course I know. I don’t gossip, but they don’t trouble to disguise it. Father Bickerstaffe knew, and he was hoping they’d get together properly. Said it would be the making of Tony Reilly. He’s the kind of old-fashioned Irish Catholic who smashes faces in on Saturday nights and is there at the Communion rail on Sunday mornings, Father said. But there’s a good man underneath. And Kate Maxted deserves a good man. She had a rotten husband, but she’s devoted to her children, is Kate.”

  They talked a little longer, as Peach prolonged the fiction both of them shared that this was a social visit. He found himself enjoying her company. When you dealt for so much of your time with villains and their associates, it was tempting to linger with someone as genuine as Martha Hargreaves.

  ***

  In the murder room set up at Brunton CID, Peach did at the end of that Thursday afternoon what the Superintendent in charge of the case should have been doing. He reviewed the latest evidence from the extensive team assigned to a murder investigation.

  “What’s Tommy Bloody Tucker doing?” he asked Lucy Blake, who had been bringing the computer files up to date whilst he visited the presbytery at the Sacred Heart and then checked the latest findings on their suspects.

  “Very little, apart from panicking. He’s cut out all overtime here until his namesake the contract killer is located. He’s put out a nationwide alert for Francis Ward Tucker, on suspicion of murder.”

  “Fat lot of good that will do! It’s one of the skills of the contract killer to disappear completely when they’re most sought by people like us. Anyway, he didn’t kill John Bickerstaffe.”

  “Courcey seemed to think he might have.”

  “Courcey knows bugger all about murder! No more than Tommy Bloody Tucker, our esteemed leader and superprat.”

  “Why are you so certain of that?”

  “Because of the price, my chicken! Five grand isn’t the price for a murder. Not from a professional killer like Francis Tucker. Not when he knows the people hiring him can call on the money of Charles Courcey and others.”

  “So how do you explain the five thousand pounds?”

  “A down payment. Five thousand at the outset, to set things in hand, another ten, perhaps fifteen thousand when the killing is successfully achieved. There’s no evidence that this second and larger sum was ever paid: it’s been checked and re-checked. This man got his five thousand, was setting up the killing in his own time. Only someone stepped in and did his job for him. Deprived him of the final fee, but also of any risk. Five thousand quid for nix. Make yourself scarce for a while, in case news of the down-payment leaks out and the boys in blue come looking for you.”

  Lucy said dully, “I didn’t know the price of a killing.”

  “It’s not fixed, and you won’t find it in any of the manuals. You look at what’s happened recently, at the rare occasions when a professional contract-killer is brought to book. Birmingham, last year. I wouldn’t expect you to know. I wouldn’t expect Tommy Bloody Tucker to know, but he damn well should!” For an instant, Peach’s real resentment and frustration burst out.

  “So what next?” said Lucy Blake.

  Peach was on his feet. “Time for a bit of bluff,” he said decisively. “It’s my guess the people who did this haven’t the heart for deception, for brazening it out. Let’s go!”

  Seventeen

  The clouds had dropped in low over the narrow brick streets of the old cotton town, emphasising the rapidly shortening September days, bringing in a very early twilight, reminding everyone that autumn was at hand.

  For Percy Peach, who had been a cricketer of note in the Lancashire League until two years ago, it was sad to see that the boys on the spare land they passed had abandoned the summer game and were chasing a football in their shrill groups; another cricket season was over. Lucy Blake was driving the police Mondeo; glancing sideways at her companion, she was surprised to see how grim he looked, his lips set in a thin line, his forehead furrowed with a frown. Usually when they were near to an arrest he was exhilarated, driven forward by the lust of the hunter near his prey, that essential quality of all successful CID officers.

  He gave her terse directions, no more. Eventually she risked a quick, “Why so grim?”

  He glanced at her for the first time, affording her a quick smile, a gratified recognition that she should catch his mood so quickly.

  “This job gets to you, sometimes. I should be glad we’re wrapping this one up. And of course I am — that’s what the job’s about. I just wish it could have had a different outcome, this time.”

  It was the first time in years he had been prepared to declare so much of himself, to reveal a crack in the facade of Percy Peach, clear-headed, ruthless thief-taker and hardman of Brunton CID. He found his admission more of a relief than he would ever have expected, so much so that he wanted to enlarge upon it. “There are kids involved. Kids who are going to lose good parents.”

  “You know the answer to that. We solve crimes; we don’t play God. We pin down the criminals: it’s up to the courts to take account of the circumstances which surround a crime. You’ve told me that often enough.”

  He twitched a little, partly with his impatience at the familiar phrases, partly with his resentment that he should find this weakness in himself. “I know all that. Perhaps in this case I’ll be hoping for once that the court listens to the trick-cyclists. I don’t know how I’d have reacted myself if I’d had a son abused, do I?”

  “No. None of us knows what we’d have done.” She wondered for a moment if she would ever have a son by this still surprising man beside her, then steered herself away from such dangerous ground. “Fortunately, we don’t have to speculate. We may bring people to justice, but what form that justice takes has nothing to do with us.”

  “No. You’re right, of course — it’s the only way we can operate. But we see enough of that justice to see how flawed it can sometimes be. I hope these kids don’t end up with Social Services.”

  They were almost at the house, and she said no more. And Percy Peach, like a man donning the mask of brisk efficiency, was his normal dynamic and aggressive self by the time he rang the bell by the door of the cramped modern detached house.

  They could hear the sound of children’s voices from behind the building, but these modern houses were built so close to each other that it was not clear whether the shrill sounds came from the rear garden of this house or from one of its neighbours. The white-faced woman who answered the door led them into the lounge of the house and they saw with relief that the garden was deserted. Peach took in the tidy, well-worn furnishings, the empty garden, the soundless house, all without taking his eyes from the woman who had led them here. He sat down with Lucy Blake as she gestured towards one of the room’s twin sofas.

  Only then did he say, “You seem almost as if you were expecting us, Mrs Hanlon.”

  “I wasn’t. I don’t know what you—”

  “Children out, are they?”r />
  “Yes. They’re with their cousins. They’re having tea at my sister’s house. She’s like a second mother to them — even more so since that — that trouble Jamie had.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “They’ll be in presently, if you want to—”

  “No need for that, Mrs Hanlon. Your husband’s here though, is he?”

  She looked towards the door, where her husband had appeared without a sound, as if responding to a stage cue. “I heard the voices,” he said. He spoke almost apologetically, thought Lucy Blake. Keith Hanlon came into the room, took his wife’s hand, and pulled her gently to sit beside him on the sofa, directly facing the two CID officers. There was a pause. He glanced down the garden towards the black ashes of his bonfire, invisible in the gathering gloom to all save him, before he said, “What can we do to help you, Inspector Peach? I thought we’d said all we had to say to each other when you came here on Saturday.”

  “If you really want to be helpful, you could tell us exactly how you killed Father John Bickerstaffe,” said Peach quietly.

  He might have been asking for directions to a destination, not accusing a man of the gravest crime of all. Kevin Hanlon did not react physically, save to put his hand on the wrist of the wife who had flinched so palpably at his side. He said with a forced calmness, “You’d better have good reasons for saying that.”

  He hadn’t denied it, and neither had she, Percy noticed. Time to implement the bluff, to make a few bricks out of precious little straw. “What happened to Jamie appeared to have hit you hardest of all the parents involved. That doesn’t make you murderers, of course. But you had your story of where you both were at the time of the murder very well rehearsed: you gave us the details of what you were supposed to have been doing between five and seven thirty on Thursday the twentieth of August as though you had been over it many times before you spoke to us.”

  Hanlon looked down at his hand, which had slid down now to cover his wife’s, thinking furiously, feeling his way into speech before she could say anything revealing. “I’m prepared to admit that we had talked about that before you came here on Saturday. But it doesn’t mean we killed the man who had assaulted our son. We knew he’d been murdered: it’s only natural that we should have anticipated your questions, that we should have thought carefully about exactly what we were doing at the time he was killed.”