When Anthony Rathe Investigates

by Matthew Booth

  “The evidence you’ve got is circumstantial.”

  “Who says?”

  “I do. And you do, even if it’s only to yourself.”

  “You don’t know what evidence I’ve got.”

  “I know as much as his wife does. I’m a friend of the family,” he added, as though compelled to explain the situation but the inspector showed no interest. “The motive is your best card, Cook.”

  “Only one set of prints on the candlestick, Rathe.”

  “Easily wiped off before Barclay arrived on the scene and picked it up.”

  “Barclay confesses to being at the scene.”

  “He can’t do otherwise, not with the vicar being there too. What does he say about why he was there?”

  Cook bit a fingernail. “He was worried about Temple’s threat of a court case. He went to Temple’s house to confront him about it but saw him going out. So, Barclay followed him.”

  “To St Augustine’s?”

  A curt nod of the inspector’s head. “He watched Temple let himself in but he didn’t follow. Not at first.”

  “Why not?”

  “Got scared, he says. Crisis of confidence that he’d be able to stand up to Temple.”

  “That fits in with Barclay’s character. He’s not blessed with much backbone.”

  Cook ignored Rathe’s personality assessment. “He knew Temple had lit some candles because he saw the light appear in the windows, so he thought Temple was going to be praying or whatever people do in church at night.”

  “Reasonable assumption.”

  Cook seemed to acknowledge the point. “So, Barclay walked away. Half way down the road, maybe more, he stopped, had a word with himself about being a coward, and he walked back. That’s when he found the body. He says he wasn’t in there alone more than two minutes before the vicar showed up.”

  “The church door was still unlocked?”

  “Yes.”

  Rathe thought about this new information, calculating times and distances. “He saw no one else around?”

  “Not a soul.”

  “Not even Healey coming to check on the church?”

  Cook’s eyes widened. “You losing it, Rathe, or was my last reply in French, or what?”

  “So, if Barclay’s innocent, there’s a very short time frame between him and Healey arriving back on the scene for the murderer to escape. How long was he walking?”

  “Barclay reckons he was no more than twenty minutes from leaving the church, wandering off, having a little debate with himself, and getting back.”

  “That’s enough time for someone else to do it.”

  “In an ideal world,” said Cook. “But we don’t live in one of them. This playing about with time, it’s all a bit shaky for me. Leaves too many people on the scene. Makes it all a bit busy.”

  “It’s still possible, no matter how much it upsets you,” asserted Rathe.

  “Only if you accept it’s true. Which I don’t.”

  “That alters nothing. The motive is your strongest piece of evidence. The rest of it is muck-spreading.”

  “Throw enough shit and something sticks. You know that better than anyone.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It’s what these defence clowns do all the time. Toss some dung around an investigation which has been built up after months of hard work and see where it lands. Just so some rapist, some abuser, some killer can go and do what he does best yet again.”

  “They wouldn’t be acquitted if the case was properly constructed,” muttered Rathe.

  “Sometimes the cases are constructed too well. Or, at least, presented too well. Innocent men get convicted, don’t they?”

  “That’s when the system fails everybody.”

  Cook conceded the point, leaning forward with a smile. “But some innocent men shouldn’t ever have been convicted, should they? It’s only when he’s faced with some fancy words from a man playing up to the press for a bit of publicity that those types are convicted.”

  “I didn’t come here to talk about Kevin Marsden,” said Rathe. His voice was controlled by ice.

  “Those sort of men don’t deserve to have the system fail them,” continued Cook. “They don’t deserve to slice their arms open in the showers because some bastard in a wig and cloak wanted his name showered in glory.”

  Rathe rose from his chair, but his eyes remained fixed on the detective. “Unless you get something more concrete against Nicholas Barclay, you’re going to have to release him, Cook. You know that as well as I do. And when you release him, I’ll be able to talk to him. Because I don’t think he did it, but if you don’t care about that, I’ll have to care for you and find out what happened that night.”

  He held Cook’s gaze for a moment longer before turning on his heel. He had opened the door and stepped into the corridor before Cook called his name. “What makes you think I’m making a mistake about Barclay?”

  Rathe smiled. Cook had conceded some ground and it would infuriate him to have felt compelled to do so. It was a minor, petty victory, but Rathe found it satisfying nonetheless. “Let me answer that with another question. Why would Barclay – or anybody else for that matter – choose that church as the place to commit a murder? What’s so special about that church?”

  Cook shrugged, as disinterested as he could seem to be. “The vicar had given Temple a key, so he could get into the place any old time.”

  “But why there? He could get into his own house, his office, anywhere. The killer could have murdered Temple in any number of places more private than St Augustine’s. So why did the killer choose there?”

  Cook spread out his hands and shook his head. “No idea. I give up.”

  Rathe nodded, his lip twisting in contempt. “Exactly. But I won’t, Cook. Not until I know the truth.”

  For several seconds afterwards, Cook did nothing but stare in anger at the closed door of his office. There was no sound but his laboured, frustrated breathing.

  * * *

  They walked through the cemetery, a slight breeze chilling their faces. The trees rustled and birdsong twittered around them. It was peaceful, calm, far removed from the sounds of the city. The purring of engines, the blaring of car horns, the rumble of trains, all sounds which seemed to have no connection with this area of tranquil stillness. They might have belonged to another world entirely.

  “This is the second cemetery I’ve been to in as many days,” said Rathe.

  “For what reason?” asked the Reverend Thomas Healey.

  “Personal ones.”

  “I did not mean to intrude.”

  Rathe waved away the apology. “The first visit was personal, at least. I was visiting the grave of somebody. Someone I once knew. Sort of.”

  “A friend or relative?”

  Rathe shook his head. “Neither. Just someone I let down very badly.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. We mustn’t punish ourselves for our sins, not if we repent. And from your expression and demeanour, I take it you do repent.”

  “Every day.”

  “Are you a religious man, Mr Rathe?”

  Rathe wondered about that. He didn’t in all honestly think he could say he was. He never attended church, certainly, but he had a fascination for the idea of religion, an awe of its power and influence, and he knew that he found its architecture exceptionally beautiful. But as to whether he believed in God, the crucifixion and the resurrection, and the promise of paradise, he could not answer with confidence.

  “Recently, I’ve become very fond of the special peace you find in churches,” he said. Evasive, but true.

  “Another man I knew briefly said a similar thing to me a few weeks ago.”

  “Was that the man who was killed here, by any chance?”

  Healey turned upon his visitor with a saddened, almost betrayed expression on his face. “Is that why you have come here?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “I want to find out
what happened.”

  “One man took another man’s life by violence, and in sight of the Lord,” hissed Healey. “That’s what happened, Mr Rathe.”

  “I understand that, Mr Healey. But why? And why would anybody choose your church in which to commit murder?”

  “I cannot imagine. I dare not imagine.”

  The old man wrung his hands with agitation as he glared at Rathe with a weary anger in his otherwise kind eyes. Healey began to retrace their steps back towards the vicarage, but Rathe continued to walk with him, regardless of whether Healey was now disconcerted by his presence or not.

  “I believe Mr Temple had a key to St Augustine’s,” Rathe said.

  “I gave it to him. How I wish I had not.”

  “May I ask why you gave him a key?”

  Once more, his words stopped the vicar’s steps dead. “The police asked me the same question. I could not give them a satisfactory answer, so I fear I shall not be able to do any differently for you, Mr Rathe. But, perhaps you will understand better than the detective I spoke to.”

  “I’d like to think so,” said Rathe with a soft smile.

  “You mentioned just now the special peace you find in an empty church,” said Healey and the memory of Rathe’s words seemed to soothe the old man. They continued their slow pace along the path. “And you are right, of course, there is such a peace when one is in the presence of God. It was that same peace which Mr Temple sought. I found him in the church one afternoon. I like to leave the door open some afternoons for individual prayer and personal solitude. Sometimes for my own, if truth be told. One day, this man Temple was sitting on one of the front pews.”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  “Oh, yes. We had a long talk about the church and its history, its design, the size of the congregation. Matters of general interest. Mine can be a lonely life, Mr Rathe, and for someone – even a stranger – to take an interest in the church and my life within it can be a welcome distraction.”

  “I can well imagine.”

  A brief smile put an end to this personal diversion from the subject. “Two days later, he came back. The following day, he was there again. Over the following fortnight or so, it was a regular occurrence. Always in the later afternoon.”

  “And the key. Did you offer it to him, or did he request it?”

  “He asked for it, a couple of days ago. It was then that he confided in me about his faith.”

  This time, it was Rathe who stopped walking, his hand involuntarily reaching out for the vicar’s arm. “His faith?”

  Healey seemed troubled by the subject. “It was strange, looking back. Perhaps at the time I thought it was odd, I don’t recall, but now it seems bizarre. He asked for the key because he said he might want to come to the church at unsocial hours, when he couldn’t expect me to be awake to receive him.”

  “Did he say why?”

  Healey clenched his hands together and his eyes roamed the perimeter of the churchyard. “I should have seen his trouble and offered some guidance on it.”

  “What trouble, Mr Healey?”

  “Temple was a businessman, I’m sure you know that, just as I’m sure you’re aware of the pressures such men face these days. Mr Temple had spoken to me of his own burdens and how they had preyed on his mind over the years. Building up his company, the long hours, the sacrifices, the risks. He was contemplating a civil litigation, he told me, but I did not ask for any details. He simply said that it brought its own anxiety. I got the impression when I first met him that he was a man with a great weight upon his shoulders and that he was carrying it by himself.”

  “Self-made men very often do,” observed Rathe. “And Temple was still a comparatively young man, as far as I am aware. Barely forty years of age, I believe.”

  Healey nodded in agreement. “Towards the end of my time with him, I saw a change in him. I think talking about his problems had enabled him to relive them and see them for what they were. I don’t think they mattered to him any more. I think he had found some way of dealing with them, of sharing the burden.”

  Rathe stared hard at the vicar. “Are you telling me that Temple had some sort of conversion?”

  Healey gave a non-committal gesture. “I don’t pretend to have the authority to say as much, but how else am I to explain his sudden attachment to the church? He confessed to me that he had never been religious in the past but that recently, just prior to visiting St Augustine’s, he had begun to see his daily trials as less significant than the prospect of facing evil in the world.”

  Rathe inhaled a deep breath of air. He felt he needed it, to purge the ramifications of Healey’s information from his soul. “You think he asked for the key so that he could be close to God whenever he chose?”

  Healey gave no direct answer. “He talked about sin, Mr Rathe. In particular, his own, and his wish to be absolved of it.”

  “Did you ask him what he meant by that?”

  “Naturally, but his reply was only a faint smile and a shake of his head. ‘It is a matter for me and those I have hurt’. Those were his words.”

  “Can you think what he meant by that?”

  The old man bowed his head. “I have no wish to speculate. But his obsession with his sins, his wish to be close to God, his realisation that his personal burdens were insignificant compared to the larger issues of the world… I did ask him what he believed had happened to him and whether he believed he had found God.”

  “What was his reply?”

  “That he had not found God, but God had found him. Now, in those terms, Mr Rathe, do you doubt that he had in some way been converted to a path of righteousness?”

  Rathe was staring at the steeple of the church and his eyes never left it as he spoke. “Like you, vicar, perhaps it is wise not to speculate.”

  Internally, however, Rathe was doing just that. If some form of conversion had overtaken Temple, had his murderer been aware of it? If so, the killer might well have known where the most likely place to find Temple had been, which would explain why the murder had taken place in the church. Similarly, he might have found it easy to lure a newly converted man to his favourite place of worship. But it still offered no explanation to Rathe for the specific use of the church as a place to commit murder. Furthermore, what were these sins with which Temple seemed to have been so obsessed, and had he died because of them? Rathe had a sudden sense of the past bearing down on him and, for a moment, surrounded by the stone markers of demise which were scattered throughout the churchyard, he felt closer to death than he had ever done before.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon when Rathe managed to secure a meeting with Edmund Lanyon. The day was shifting into night, the skyline of the city darkening in the fading sunlight as the blues and greys of the daytime skies began to merge into the oranges of dusk before becoming the final blacks of night. Watching a sunset frequently reminded Rathe of Houseman’s poem about that special phenomenon of the passing of the day and its words came back to him now as he sat on the South Bank overlooking the river, waiting for the barrister to keep their appointment. The river had begun to turn that special inky black which the Thames alone seemed able to take on itself and Rathe found himself wondering about the change in urban life which occurs when the hours pass. The replacement of sun with neon, the sound of traffic merging by the pulsating bass lines of riverside bars, the eventual peace of twilight.

  There was that word again: peace. It had been peace Temple had initially craved from St Augustine’s; the peace of his blossoming faith; the darker peace, however shattered, of his death. Peace in so many forms. It seemed to Rathe that so many people had found peace in some way or other but, for him, any sense of harmony seemed still so distant. For once, he did not have such thoughts in the context of Kevin Marsden’s death, but in the death of Richard Temple, for it was that second, violent death which plagued Rathe in the present moment, and which prevented his mind from finding anything approaching its own calm.


  “Mr Rathe?”

  He was brought out of his thoughts by the voice, authoritative and direct, and looking up he saw the patrician yet stern expression of the man who had spoken. White hair was swept back from an intellectual dome of a forehead, and a pair of alert, grey eyes twinkled with arrogant confidence. The arched nostrils of the long nose flared in inquisitive interest at the purpose of this interview and Rathe rose to meet the expectation. His offer of a hand was ignored, being replaced with a slight bow of the head so that there could be no direct allegation of rudeness.

  “Thank you for coming to meet me, Mr Lanyon,” said Rathe. “I appreciate you could have felt no obligation to do so.”

  Lanyon demurred. “I rather think I did, Mr Rathe. Or are you so modest that you think your name would not be familiar to one of your own profession? As I understand it, modesty was never one of your virtues when you were in practice.”

  If Rathe had taken the comment as an insult, he showed no sign of any offence. “I’d like to think that I’ve learned something about modesty recently. Perhaps humility would be a better choice of word.”

  “And what have you learned?”

  Rathe looked out over the river. “Not enough.”

  Lanyon stared at the profile of the younger man. He saw the obvious melancholy which was carved into the features and he recognised the abstract sense of sadness which loomed behind the man’s dark eyes. His reputation as a barrister had preceded Rathe, as far as Lanyon was concerned, and the older man had some measure of regard for him in a professional capacity. However, Lanyon was not the sort of man who could understand any disregard of a sterling career on account of a single error of judgement.

  But, Lanyon argued with himself, he did not know the full facts of the Marsden case. The newspaper reports of tampered evidence were known to him, of course; the media circus of one of the country’s leading defence barristers making the leap to prosecuting Counsel simply, if stories were to be believed, for the sake of the challenge and the publicity; the eventual death of an innocent man by his own hand. These factors were known to Lanyon, just as they were to the rest of the country; but he could have no notion of the personal insights of the players concerned. His reaction to Rathe’s predicament might well have been different, but he recognised the fact that it was not within his rights to judge the man on that basis. Whatever the truth of the Marsden case, it was clear from Rathe’s own demeanour that if anybody felt he should be punished for any sin concerned with the case, he was standing there before Lanyon, gazing sadly over the mighty stretch of water which flowed beside them. And it was likewise obvious that the man’s punishment was being dealt with by his own conscience.