by F. G. Cottam
‘And I apologize to both of you for my stupidity,’ Dominic said. ‘It must daily try your patience, now we are so few.’
Stephen said, ‘Is it likely that the cardinal will read Daniel Barry’s account?’
‘He might,’ Philip said. ‘What is unlikely is that he will act upon it. Just over 80 years ago the skeptic Monsignor Dubois was shown by our predecessors in the priory here our order’s final proof. His glimpse of Edmund Caul convinced him and we had our last reprieve.’
‘We mustn’t be defeatist,’ Dominic said.
But the contents of the note seemed to have leached all hope and defiance out of their leader. His own stain had been exposed. ‘Edmund Caul is gone forever,’ Philip said. ‘We are left only with hearsay and faith.’
It was Jane Sullivan’s habit to walk to work. She walked along Brooke Drive to Kennington Road, left down Lambeth Bridge Road to the river and once over the bridge, along Horseferry Road until it met Victoria Street and her destination on Broadway. She regarded it, despite the traffic, as a pleasant walk. The view from Lambeth Bridge was spectacular regardless of the weather and was a reminder to her daily of how far she’d come in life from her upbringing in a suburban street on the outskirts of Hull. There was no triumphalism in this. It offered consolation in a sometimes very stressful occupation.
On this particular morning, she paused just after turning right out of her own road and studied the façade of the Imperial War Museum. And she thought of the Scholar’s choice of lyric in the song he had pasted together for her and delivered late the previous afternoon:
Lambeth you’ve never seen,
The sky ain’t blue, the grass ain’t green.
As late as the 1930s, when the song was written, the building occupying the War Museum had been used for a very different function. It was the madhouse, Bedlam, notorious home to lunatics.
There were many who thought that the Whitechapel killer had been an inmate. Either the homicidal madman had been freed from his shackles there to begin his spree, or he had been incarcerated there in its aftermath, with the staff unaware of the achievements in East London of their patient. The favourite theory ran that police had been unable to nail the Ripper because he’d been given sanctuary in the asylum long before they stopped looking for him.
Was it fanciful to think that the Scholar was referencing the Whitechapel murders again in the song? Bedlam was certainly a part of Lambeth Jane had never and never would see. And the second line about the sky and the grass could be said to hint at incarceration. Someone manacled to a bed or trussed up in a straightjacket in a padded cell might hanker for a view of the natural world.
But the reference only worked if the Scholar knew for certain that his bloody predecessor had been locked up there. And he couldn’t know that because nobody living had anything approaching proof concerning the Ripper’s real identity.
Unless, that was, the Scholar had discovered something unknown to history or criminology and had identified the man responsible as a consequence. When she caught him, she thought that she might ask him. She considered his crimes repulsive acts of animal savagery. She thought preening vanity a defining element of his flawed character. She also thought he would be an intriguing individual to question in the relative safety of an interview room.
She wanted to begin the day by examining what the Catholic Diocese of London had collated on the subject of delinquent priests. She didn’t yet think there would be a list and when it was compiled assumed it would be short. But she was anxious to see what progress their administrative people had made. The Archbishop had sounded sincere in his offer of their full cooperation.
But Jane was forced to delay that bit of catching up. There was an urgent request on her desk to join the DC in his office at her earliest opportunity. She’d only just taken her coat off and felt a bit wind-blown. She brushed up in the loo across the corridor from her office door before taking the lift and ascending the two floors to his.
He was standing by the window, facing the view of Dacre Street with his hands clasped behind his back. It was a gloomy view in the summer, Jane thought. The trees in full leaf to either side of the road cast it in permanent shade. There was a copy of the Daily Telegraph on his desk. Without turning to face her he said, ‘Someone is leaking information to the press. Did you vet Jacob Prior?’
‘Yes. Belatedly, but we did. He checks out in every relevant way. He also gave me his personal assurance that he wouldn’t gossip to anyone.’
It was 9.15 on Thursday morning. Julie Longmuir had been murdered at about 11pm on the previous Monday. Jane had been the first person other than whoever was responsible to visit the murder scene, in the early hours of Tuesday. The press conference had been staged at 11am that morning when the media had first been informed that the police were looking for a killer they were calling the Scholar, suspected of four murders in seven weeks. Charlotte Reynard had endured her ordeal of premonition and panic on Tuesday evening. Jacob Prior had suggested they might be looking for a renegade priest on Wednesday, the day the national papers led with the story and the day when Jane had shared Geoff Toomey’s speculations on the killer or killers with her chief.
It was fair to assume that today’s papers would be following up. She expected file pictures of Julie Longmuir at her most glamorous and seductive. She expected heartfelt tributes from her many famous industry friends. Show-business didn’t stint when it came to sentiment. She thought there would be touching recollections of an incandescent talent from someone who had first spotted her at drama school.
There were three stories connected to the case on the Telegraph’s front page. Two of them were by-lined. They had both been written by a journalist called Sandra Matlock. The more prominent ran across two columns under the headline: Is Scholar Rogue Priest? It pretty much echoed her discussion of the previous day in this very office, though it cited ‘sources close to the investigation,’ rather than naming their consultant theologian as the theory’s originator. There were a couple of paragraphs briefly exploring the Death Metal angle at the story’s conclusion.
The second Matlock story was a single column headlined: Dancer in Domestic Drama. This read to Jane like a diary piece at best. It was short on facts and long on speculation, implying that Charlotte Reynard had arrived home the worse for wear after an exhausting day at the rehearsal studio. She had assumed for reasons still obscure that an intruder was lurking in what was inaccurately described as her ‘luxury riverside apartment.’
The piece name-checked the Scholar, the reason Jane supposed for its elevation to the front page. It quoted an unnamed police source as saying, ‘Vulnerable women are going to be rightly afraid until we catch this killer and any woman alone in London is vulnerable until we do. Ms. Reynard might have fallen prey to panic. She might equally have had a lucky escape.’
‘The quote in the Reynard piece sounds manufactured,’ Jane said. ‘Who falls prey to panic in the 21st century? Have you ever heard anyone from our press bureau use that phrase? I haven’t. The boys and girls dealing with press calls to the bureau are mostly in their 20’s. It’s laughable.’
‘Charlotte Reynard is here,’ the DC said. ‘She isn’t laughing. She’s incandescent and probably on the verge of registering a formal complaint.’
She wasn’t waiting in an interview room. She wasn’t there to be interviewed. And the DC had rightly judged that she required delicate handling. She was waiting in one of the conference suites on the top floor equipped with VIP facilities and panoramic views through picture windows. Freshly cut flowers exuded scent in crystal vases. Expensive reproduction prints hung handsomely on the walls.
Charlotte was studying one of these. It was representation of Victorian London by the French artist Gustave Dore. It had been done in charcoal and its lack of colour emphasized the drab bleakness of its subject matter. She by contrast wore a bright yellow cashmere sweater and a blue pleated skirt. Her hair was loose and the neoprene bandage around her ankle was barely
noticeable under the leg of grey tights. Her weight rested on an alloy walking stick. When she turned, she looked a lot better than she had on Tuesday evening. She looked composed and beautiful.
Jane said, ‘There’s nothing in Sandra Matlock’s story that couldn’t have come from one of the people who helped you in the street in the moments after you turned away from your front door, when you were distressed and unguarded.’
‘Nothing other than the police quote the story concludes with.’
‘Anodyne and manufactured,’ Jane said. ‘Nobody from the Met has spoken to anyone about you, on the record or otherwise.’
‘What about the rogue priest story? Did that come from you?’
‘That was leaked,’ Jane said. ‘I’m fairly sure I know who’s responsible and I’ll deal with them as soon as I’ve done what I can to reassure you.’
‘You’re a plain speaker.’
‘I don’t like bullshit.’
‘Then you wouldn’t very much care for my life.’
‘I don’t know, Charlotte. You’re young and beautiful and talented. You have two lovely children and you’re probably financially secure. It isn’t a bad package.’
Charlotte nodded at the picture she’d been studying, the Dore depiction of the London slums. ‘Can you imagine living then?’
Jane walked across. She looked at the detail of the drawing. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about that period and location recently.’
‘Because of the parallels, you mean?’
‘Yes, because of those. I suspect they’re deliberate, self-consciously so, maybe even a sort of homage.’
‘Can we sit down?’ Charlotte said. ‘I can’t put too much stress on the ankle. And there’s something I want to discuss with you.’
She’d been to have ultrasound on her ankle the previous day. The appointment had been at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. The department treating her had been behind schedule and she’d had a lengthy wait before she’d been seen. Afterwards, she’d felt in dire need of coffee and had gone looking for the café built to serve outpatients.
Following signs along the corridors, she’d met someone with whom her charity foundation had sometimes brought her into contact. It was the neurological specialist Alice Cranfield. Whenever she’d met Alice at fundraisers or for meetings of the committees on which they both sat, she’d encountered a woman wearing Margaret Howell suits and Robert Clergerie shoes and Chanel number 5 and a poised gloss always of sophistication.
On this occasion it was different. Alice appeared drained. She was dressed in surgical green. There was blood on her cuffs and her face was pale and its expression set and there were smudges of fatigue under eyes which looked slightly raw. She managed a smile. She swapped a greeting and explained that she’d been in the operating theatre for nine hours solid.
‘You poor thing,’ Charlotte said.
‘It’s what I do.’
‘You must be exhausted.’
‘It doesn’t matter. The operation was successful. Teenage girl, everything to live for, as the cliché rightly has it. You only really feel it when you fail. What happened to your ankle?’
‘I stumbled.’
‘It’s only a personal view, but I’d love to see you dance again. You retired too soon.’
‘If the orthopedics are as good here as the neurosurgery, you’ll get your wish.’
There their brief conversation ended. But its repercussions, for Charlotte, had only begun. She found the café and drank her coffee and thought about what it was to save a life. It was something she knew she had accomplished in an abstract way through her fund raising. But she had never done it in the concrete way that Alice Cranfield did day in and day out.
Alice had the power of life and death. She literally had it in her hands because of her medical expertise and her surgical skill. Charlotte considered that she might have it too. She owed the power to present circumstances and a gift which she’d always slightly despised herself for having.
‘Last night I decided I’d help you. I know what you want me to do. You want me to go to the apartment where Julie Longmuir was killed and see if I can sense any clue that might help you catch the Scholar.’
Jane didn’t say anything in reply. She held Charlotte’s gaze.
‘I was still going to help you this morning.’
‘You’ve changed your mind, about him changing his mind about leaving you alone?’
‘When he spoke to me, he used the Arabic word for fate. He believes events are pre-destined. That means nothing I do can really influence what he decides. My main argument with myself was that I shouldn’t have my choices dictated by someone so vile. My logic was that if I helped you catch him he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else and that would include me.’
‘Then you saw this morning’s Telegraph.’
‘I want to help if I can, Jane. But I can’t risk being thought of as a crank or a freak. I have maybe two years of performing left in me if the prognosis on the ankle proves to be correct and the rest of my body holds up. I think this ability I have is weird and I’ve lived with it all my life. God only knows what other people would think.’
‘No one need know except me,’ Jane said.
‘I just can’t afford for it to become public knowledge. Imagine the repercussions for my kids.’
‘It won’t. You have my word on that.’
She had already mentioned Charlotte Reynard’s Pimlico premonition to Jacob Prior. But she thought it was unnecessary to admit that now, unnecessary and also counter-productive. She was confident that Jacob wasn’t the source of the leak to the press. She’d have bet her next promotion on it. In a way she was doing, because she’d resolved to continue trusting and confiding in him until the case was solved.
‘When would you like me to do it?’
‘I don’t think there’s any time to waste.’
‘I’ve appointments to keep this morning.’
‘Are you back living in Pimlico?’
‘I’ve borrowed a friend’s place in Bermondsey. He’s shooting a movie on location in British Columbia. I’ve got it till the end of August. We’re not going back to Pimlico.’
‘When would be good?’
She smiled. ‘Never,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ Jane said, ‘crass choice of words. When would be convenient?’
‘I could do it early this evening, preferably before dark?’
‘I live less than ten minutes’ walk away from there,’ Jane said. ‘I’ll give you my address and if you can be at mine by 6.30, we’ll get there with hours of daylight to spare.’
Charlotte nodded and Jane felt for the second time since having met the woman a prick of sympathy for her so strong it felt as deep as a needle thrust. She almost winced with the intrusive suddenness of it.
She’d never shared the emotional bond tying this woman to motherhood. She’d never had a sister either. She realized that she had her arms folded defensively across her chest. What was she defending against? It was the Scholar’s baleful shadow, the trauma his spoor or residue might cause so sensitive a soul as Charlotte to endure. She dropped her arms and then held them out and Charlotte closed and hugged her and to her own surprise, she returned the embrace with the same generous strength.
She was as good as her promise. When she returned to her own office, she delayed calling the Archbishop’s people until she’d first called Geoff Toomey.
‘You’ve talked to the press.’
‘I have not.’
‘Specifically, you’ve called Sandra Matlock.’
‘I’d like to see you prove it.’
‘Your nose has been put out of joint by our theologian’s priest theory. You couldn’t attribute it to him directly, because that would have pointed at you. It was privileged information and the loop is tight. You went public on it because you think it crap. You want it disproven and then mocked publically.’
‘I’m not the source.’
‘This is about so much m
ore than raining on your parade, Geoff. And you so don’t get that. ‘Course you’re the fucking source and your phone records will prove it should we hold you to your confidentiality agreement and decide to prosecute you.’
There was a silence on the other end of the line.
‘You’re out,’ Jane said. ‘You’ve breached the terms of a binding contract. Another word to the press and I swear to Christ, you’ll do jail time.’
She called the office of the Catholic Archbishop of London and after a bout of preliminaries was put through to his private secretary.
‘We’ve narrowed it down to three names,’ he said.
‘That’s fast work.’
‘There’s a long and not always honourable tradition of turbulent priests,’ he said. ‘We do what we can to contain and protect them. We have a duty of care.’
‘And I’m sure you do your utmost to fulfill it.’
‘One of the three died by his own hand just over a week ago,’ he said.
‘That rules him out.’
‘I saw your press conference on Tuesday. I read the papers. Forgive me, but are you absolutely sure the same man responsible for the prostitute murders killed Julie Longmuir?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘The defrocked priest who took his life last week regularly paid prostitutes for sex. His attitude to doing so was somewhat perverse. He blamed them for putting him in the way of temptation. He derived gratification while nursing a grudge that grew with every transaction.’
‘We’re sure it’s the same killer, which means we’re down to two.’
‘Two suspects?’
‘One line of inquiry, two leads. Whether we’re talking suspects depends on what you tell me next.’
‘One of the two we traced last night to some sort of new age mission in Central America. He’s been there since the spring.’
‘So we’re down to a single name.’
‘Peter Chadwick.’
Jane wrote down the name on her desk pad and underlined it twice. ‘What criteria did you use to compile your list?’