Potter's Field

by Dolan, Chris;

  The hit man had disappeared again. Apart from anything else, this was getting embarrassing. If what the Corrigan woman said was true he could be sitting on a high branch watching them right now. Could survive for a decade without shifting from the same tree.

  Coulter had uniforms fanning out from every exit off the track. Up onto Maryhill Road, Great Western Road, down into “the Valley”, a tough little pocket of houses just north of them. He had resisted dredging the canal for the murder weapon. So expensive and ridiculous odds.

  Coulter knew in his bones he wasn’t going to find Lennon. He should have stayed in the station. But the morning air was helping him think.

  Take Lennon out of the equation… Could Whyte have killed Sy Kennedy? The Docherties – how did they fit in with Pacchini and the Mulholland girl? Kids like that. God knows the stuff that must happen. The Kanes – he’ll give them the grilling of their life in an hour, dead foster son or no. Kennedy simply an avenging father? And then Casci’s near-illegible emails and unintelligible phone messages about chain reactions or something. Coulter had tried to get back to him ten times this morning, but he was incommunicado. And Irish priests. Casci and Maddy. Connolly was Irish, not Jamieson.

  He checked his watch. He’d have time to pass by Connolly and Jamieson’s church, before giving the Kanes a going-over. He nodded to Russell to about-turn. Russell was loving his boss’s confusion. All this running from pillar to post for nothing. So was the heron. Staring at him, like he was the dumbest animal in the world.

  “Chapel? Darren? You mad?”

  Jackie Mulholland had cleaned up the flat, spruced herself up a little. The ashtray in front of her was still full to brimming and the air in the room post-nuclear fallout. Ricky Graham was still a fixture, too. He hadn’t made the same effort as Jackie – he looked as if he hadn’t washed in a week.

  “Matter of fact, Jacks, I think he did.”

  “What?”

  “Your Darren. Snuck about the Pineapple. I saw him. Couple o’ times.”

  “What were you doing down by the chapel?”

  Ricky’s eyes darted from Maddy to Jackie to Belinda. Belinda in particular seemed to intimidate him. “It’s next to the pub. Outside having a fag, I seen him once coming oot.”

  “Darren? In the church?”

  If they’d told her her son unzipped up the back and was really a lizard from space she couldn’t have been more surprised. She took a long hard drag on her fag and shook her head slowly from side to side. What a world.

  Hip-hop music came from down the hall, from Darren’s room, where he was getting dressed after a shower. He’d just come home and he was going straight back out. Jackie didn’t know where.

  “Be in in a minute.”

  They sat in awkward silence, like a lull in conversation at a dinner party. Maddy was in no mood for patience, or lulls. She was following a trail of events, like a tracker Indian sniffing and listening to the earth. Is this what Coulter feels when he’s close to a catch? What a fox or a hunting dog senses, in their skin, their bowels. “So, Jackie,” she made a supreme effort, “you’re looking well.”

  The woman’s daughter wasn’t long buried, but Jackie Mulholland got so few compliments that she beamed happily. “Ta. Trying to cut down on the bevvy and that. Less chips. Taking a bit o’ pride in myself. Franny always telt me I should.” At the uttering of her child’s name, her eyes filled, and she became confused and desperate again.

  Frances telling her mum to find some self-esteem. Maddy saw a cycle of tragedy being acted out in this house. Mother, daughter and son each urging the other to be good to themselves, to improve. While each, on their own, sank further into their own little hell.

  “Will I make a cuppa?”

  “Don’t bother. He’ll be here now, eh?” Maddy got up and walked to the door. The tingle in her skin was saying if she didn’t move quick she’d miss whatever it was she was following. “Darren?” She shouted out.

  No answer. The radio had stopped playing noisy rap. She went out into the hall, shouted over him. The door was ajar. She could see the bed and floor was a jumble of clothes, magazines, CD boxes. On the wall, posters of Henrik Larssen and Craig Bellamy, Marilyn Manson, a couple of women pop stars gyno-gyrating. “Darren! You decent? Can I come in?”

  No reply. She pushed the door further open. Darren had gone. Maddy about-turned, rushed out, up the hall, towards the door. Belinda joined her. Jackie and Graham just stood in the hallway and let them go. One mother needed to know what happened to her son. Another shrank back from the hell of something happening to both her children. “Miss?” she said as Maddy was half out of the front door, “he’s wearing his trackies.”

  La Signora Rosa di Rio walked through the graves of the Necropolis. Strange that a place of death can be so beautiful. Especially when the summer sun is rising high in the sky and you have the person you’ve loved most in your life dying. Just through there – through that window at eye level to her where she stands on a little mound behind John Knox’s tomb.

  She had sat for days now, by Nonno’s bedside. Papà’s bedside. They’d all called him granddad since Maddy was wee, but Vittore was Rosa’s daddy. By any book you could read on the subject he was lousy at it. Worked too hard, didn’t spend much time with her, got her working in the chippy when she should have been studying for exams, had a temper on him… But she worshipped the ground he walked on. His heart, his smile, his songs. And the fact that he was always there.

  Yet he was beautiful. The daft songs he’d sing. Putting her on his feet to dance when she was wee. Embarrassing her with his stupid patter but making all her friends howl with laughter. The lovely, mysterious songs he sang from the old country. Taking her for walks along the beach. Giving Packy – her ill-chosen mate – a hard time, then easing up on him when he saw she wasn’t going to change her mind, though he still knew it was a disaster.

  Creating two worlds for her – not just one. The security and realness of a home, an income, a place to belong. Holiday Girvan. The Rimini of the Lower Clyde, bustling and fast and a place where you could make a living. He had the whole family working like pit ponies non-stop for two years, saving up, and then they’d go, with fistfuls of lire, back to Italy. For a month every two years, they were kings over there. Rosa, a princess. An exotic princess in a castle on a hill in Elba.

  But Italy was more than that. Nonno had given them a mythical home. There was more to her than there was to other people. Rosa di Rio had an entire world the others knew nothing of. Italy was lodged inside her, like an extra engine, a secret heart. She had a heaven to go to.

  And now the man who gave her all that was dying. Just over there. Might even be dead by now. She was sixty years old. A mother. A divorcee. She was fine for money. She had a wonderful, successful daughter who was good to her, who was a friend. She had other friends and other interests. But, without Nonno, Rosa didn’t think she could live. She stood on the hill in the Necropolis beside John Knox’s tomb, and bubbled like a baby. Not Nonno… Not her daddy. Babbo couldn’t just leave her.

  There had been no answer at the parish house. Coulter, Russell and Webb tried the church door. It was open. Russell was like Indiana Jones entering the Temple of Doom. The riches it held, the fascination – and the lair of everything Popish, scheming, malevolent..

  The place was in darkness. It was an old church – high and cold and, in the dark, vast. Once their eyes got used to the gloom, they could make out the altar, miles ahead. A little light there, an electric candle. Coulter remembered hearing something about the light that never goes out. The three men stood in silence, listening. Not a sound. Russell turned to go, but Coulter remained still.

  “This place isn’t empty.”

  “What,” said Russell, in wonder. “You mean… there’s a presence?”

  Coulter looked at him. “No, you moron. People.”

  It wasn’t a hunch or a detective’s sixth sense. It was good hearing. Sounds from the far wall. He walked towards t
hem, Webb behind, Russell trailing. Voices, half-whispering, secretive. Crossing the main aisle they could see the doors clearly.

  “Confessionals.” John Russell hissed, as though he’d just spied a porthole to the abyss.

  They walked as quietly as they could manage – which on tiles in a huge echoing church wasn’t too quiet at all. Eventually, Coulter could make out one of the voices.

  “Yes you fucking will.”

  “What did he say?” asked Russell. The unexpected words, spat out with venom, hollow-sounding in the ghostly acoustics, felt as if they came from inside Coulter’s head. He moved closer still, Webb and Russell tiptoeing behind, like a Vaudeville comedy routine.

  “They’re here now,” said the bitter voice.

  “They are of no concern to me.” This second voice was a higher vibrato, constricted.

  “Render unto Caesar.” The first voice was calmer now, but still full of contempt.

  Coulter opened the door warily. Mike Jamieson was kneeling back in the shadows. Coulter could interpret the scene from what he knew about confessionals. There was a grille in the far wall. The young priest was kneeling beside it. It took a second or two longer for him to realise that the grille was not only open but that an arm protruded from behind it, and held Jamieson firmly by the neck. The young priest’s eyes were popping and his voice was strangulated: “It is the Confessor’s duty to give penance and absolution.” He squinted round desperately at Coulter as if asking for confirmation of the theological point.

  The arm, sleeve rolled up to reveal knots of hard, hairy muscle, tightened more. The voice was ironic. “Not until the Confessor knows you are genuinely repentant and that you mean to make amends. You little prick.”

  “Another man can’t judge that,” Jamieson wheezed. “Only God can.”

  It wasn’t any sense of the divine or mystical that kept the three policemen still and watching the extraordinary little scene. Nor even a hunch that something was going to be revealed, but the sheer freakishness of the situation.

  “Then I’ll absolve myself.”

  The hidden tormentor laughed. “First you have to tell yourself your sins. Out loud. Go on, tell us, ‘I have sinned in thought, word and deed…’ ” The fist’s grip got harder yet, and Jamieson struggled to breathe at all.

  “Not the sin you think. I acted in good faith.”

  “You’re a horse’s arse.” The Irish accent was full of disdain. Then the tone changed, becoming pleasanter, almost conversational. “Did I hear visitors enter? Miss Shannon?”

  “This is Detective Inspector Coulter,” Coulter said to the hairy arm, like he was addressing some vengeful, disembodied power.

  “Better still. Inspector, Michael Jamieson is guilty of murder.”

  The fist let go of the young priest’s throat and withdrew back inside the grille. Jamieson nursed his neck and, still rasping, said “I’ve never killed anyone in my life.”

  Coulter still wasn’t sure whether to make a move or not. Russell fidgeted behind him, his worst nightmare of chapels come true.

  “I was dragged in here against my will. Violently.”

  “Directly or indirectly,” the Monsignor continued unconcerned, “he’s not prepared even to tell God. But murder certainly, and perhaps more than one.”

  Jamieson looked down at the floor for a moment, then stood up, took a deep breath, and did something none of the policemen had ever seen before. With his thumb he touched the top of his lip, then his chin, then either side of his mouth. Then he walked to the door. Coulter, Russell and Webb stood back to let him pass.

  “I am guilty of no crime. Not in your book, or in God’s.” He stood, stooped and coughed, supported himself with one hand on the back of the last pew, the other loosening his dog-collar, pulling it back from the lesions Connolly’s gnarled old hands had made on his neck. He spoke to the policemen but looked directly ahead, towards the altar and the flicker of electric candlelight. “You are the murderers.”

  Coulter, Webb and Russell looked at one another, knocked a little off balance by the accusation. “Come again?” said John Russell.

  “You. Your world. The world that despises children. That condemns them to the gutter. That abuses them morally, physically—”

  “And you don’t live in this world,” Coulter cut the sermon short.

  “I oppose it. I try to help.”

  “Not everyone would appreciate your particular brand of assistance, Michael.” Connolly had appeared behind them, emerging out of an unseen door. His arms lay at his sides, but his fists were still red and clenched. He turned his back on the young priest to speak to Coulter.

  “Michael told me about a young girl—”

  “You made a vow, Brendan!” For the first time, free of the older man’s physical threat, Jamieson managed to regain some authority in his tone. The use of the Christian name and the haughty manner sounded like a confident new generation shaking off the Old Guard. Connolly ignored him and spoke to Coulter. “I do not believe my colleague’s confession was made with the necessary humility and contrition. But the only part of it I need to reveal is a name.”

  “You may not break the sacred seal of the sacrament, Monsignor.”

  “No confession was made here, Michael. You just admitted it yourself – I dragged you in there.”

  “What is a true confession and what is not isn’t a judgement for you to make! Have you forgotten the vows you took and what they mean?”

  Connolly thought for a moment, and replied. “Perhaps I have. And I believe my judgement to be the right one.” He turned to Coulter. “During our… discussion, Michael Jamieson refused to elucidate on certain questions I asked him. Questions that I needed the answers to after a visit from a colleague of yours.”

  “Maddy Shannon.”

  “Michael was… reticent. Though he seemed to think that he could convince me of certain theological points. But he gave me enough information for me to make a full written statement, which may be of use to you.”

  “You mentioned a name, Monsignor.”

  “I deny ever having had this conversation with you!” Jamieson sounded very sure of his ground. “Do not believe a word he says. He is an old man, easily confused.” He moved away from his pew to stop Connolly saying any more, but all the older man needed to do was raise his arm halfway to his chest for the younger to back away.

  “Father Michael knew Frances Mullholland.” The Monsignor looked at the ground, as though it was he who had confessed something dreadful. “I’d heard Michael complain of the girl’s behaviour. With good reason. But I never realised…” He shook his head at himself.

  “You should have seen her,” Jamieson said, quietly, his voice even. “Well you can. Walk down any street in this city…” He looked as if he might stop talking, so Coulter nudged him on. “Children out of control. You can’t pass a group bigger than two or three without being threatened, spat at. Mocked.”

  “So what was so special about Frances?”

  “They all sneer and scorn at everything sent to help them. Everything beautiful. On a higher plane. It doesn’t have to be like that. We should all be helping them, pulling them out of this rut, this…. Hell they’re in. Saving them from themselves. I tried to help her. Frances. Her and her brother. Her whole family—”

  “You also know Darren Mullholland?”

  “He came to see me. After I spoke in his school. I spotted him immediately, the sorry state of him. He told me he had trouble at home. He was worried about his mother and his sister. And then I met her, Frances, and it was like meeting a child possessed.” He clasped his hands on the back of the pew, as if praying for release. “She swore at me. And laughed – laughed outright at my cross. She called on her friends, and they laughed and sneered and spat too.”

  “You think this is a new phenomenon?” Connolly stared in disgust at him. “You are really so easily offended?”

  “I wasn’t offended. Not for myself. I was offended on behalf of Our Lord, of the Churc
h. Dismayed, deeply troubled for the soul of that poor child and her Hellish cohort.” He chose now to look past Coulter and for the first time address Russell and Webb, that they might understand. “We’ll keep sliding downhill until someone has the bravery, the… decency to stop it. To tackle the evil.”

  “Evil. Being cheeky to your elders.”

  “Violence, Monsignor. Drugs. Lost souls, utterly lost. Sexualised before they’re into their teens. What hope have they got.” Jamieson turned back to Coulter. “Frances was as bad as I’ve seen. She and her friends. Every word they spoke an insult to the Lord, and a cancer on their souls. They blew smoke in my face. Every time I went to the school or the Parish they pursued me. They pursued the Church. Christ himself. One of them bared her breasts at me. Frances lifted her skirt.” Jamieson put his head on his clasped hands, shaking in disbelief. “It only showed how young she was. How innocent that demon child should have been.”

  “Organisations like Faith and Family, gentlemen,” Connolly broke the silence, his tone even, almost light, “began in Brazil and spread quickly to other predominantly Catholic countries. Tragically, they’ve found willing disciples here now.”

  “Look into her eyes and you could see the real Frances, the true girl. Faint, but still there. A shining innocence, drowning in a sea of filth and hate and despair.”

  Connolly ignored him. “They believe that a baptised child will go to Limbo in death, no matter what crimes it has committed.”

  “And you don’t?!” Jamieson swivelled round to glare up at the old man.

  “The subject, as you should know, Michael, of the nature and traditions surrounding Limbus Infantium is being deliberated upon in Rome now and throughout the Church. But, even if I do accept the doctrine, I do not believe I have the power or the right to send them there.”