Forgive Me Father

by Paul Gitsham

  ‘Again, what was your relationship like with Father Nolan?’

  ‘Fine. He was a quiet man; kept himself to himself like, but he was friendly enough.’

  ‘I believe that you mentioned in your previous interview that he often helped with the garden?’

  ‘Yes. He was quite a keen gardener. He tended the vegetables.’

  ‘And you never had a falling out?’

  ‘No, we got on fine.’

  ‘What about after he caught you in the bookmaker’s?’

  Shaw scowled.

  ‘He didn’t “catch me”. I’ve broken no laws. I’m perfectly entitled to spend my time in a bookmaker’s.’

  ‘My apologies, I misspoke. Let me rephrase the question. Was your meeting Father Nolan in the bookmaker’s the cause of the argument that witnesses overheard between the two of you?’

  ‘What argument? Father Nolan and I got on just fine.’

  Warren looked at the man carefully. He seemed genuinely bemused. The question had been a gamble, designed to elicit some sort of response from Shaw. It didn’t seem to have been successful.

  ‘Fair enough. We’ll come back to that later.’

  Warren made a show of leafing through his notes.

  ‘Why did you lie to us about your whereabouts on the night that Father Nolan was killed?’

  This did elicit a response. It was a few seconds before Shaw was able to answer.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You lied to us. In your original witness statement taken the day after Father Nolan’s death, you claimed that you received a call about the fire from Deacon Baines at five minutes past ten. That was the first you knew about the fire.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘And that you were at home, watching the BBC News, preparing for an early night?’

  Shaw was clearly conflicted. Would he admit his original lie, or try and brazen out?

  He tried to brazen it out.

  ‘Yes.’ His voice cracked slightly and he took a sip of water.

  ‘I think you’re lying. Why don’t you tell me what you were really doing when Deacon Baines called you.’

  The silence stretched.

  ‘No comment.’

  Warren mentally punched the air. Up unto this point Shaw had answered everything they put to him.

  ‘Are you sure about that, Mr Shaw?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Warren opened the folder again. Shaw’s eyes tracked his movements. From his perspective, nothing good had ever come out of that folder. He had to be wondering what else was in there.

  Warren took his time, angling the folder slightly so that neither Shaw nor his solicitor could see the sheets as he removed them. Or the fact that more than half the bulk of the folder was taken up by a blank A4 pad, a trick that had worked well in the past.

  ‘We know that you didn’t receive the call at home. That is quite clear from the mobile phone triangulation data that I have in front of me.’ He pushed the printed map across the table.

  Shaw swallowed hard, but said nothing.

  ‘This is several miles from your flat. Yet you said that you were at home when you received the call.’

  Shaw licked his lips.

  ‘I made a mistake. I popped out for some milk, I must have received the call whilst I was in the shop.’

  ‘Which shop? It was five past ten.’

  ‘That was why I was in that shop. It opens late.’

  It was getting painful. Warren wondered how much longer Shaw would keep up his lies.

  ‘There is a newsagent within that radius,’ pointed out Sutton.

  Shaw relaxed slightly.

  ‘Unfortunately, it closes at 8 p.m.’ Sutton had no idea if that was true, but it didn’t really matter; everyone in the room knew Shaw was lying.

  ‘I hadn’t realised.’ Shaw’s tone brightened slightly. ‘That’s why I didn’t have any milk on me when I turned up at the fire.’

  ‘Seems a bit of a gamble to drive all that distance, when there’s a late-night garage less than one hundred yards from your flat,’ said Sutton.

  ‘I didn’t know it was open until midnight. I’ve only lived there for a few months.’

  ‘Well you would have had to drive past it to get to this newsagent. Didn’t you notice the blazing lights on the forecourt.’ Shaw blinked helplessly. ‘And I don’t recall saying it was open until midnight, just that it was late-night. Am I right DCI Jones?’

  ‘I believe so. We can rewind the recording if you’d like, Mr Shaw?’

  Shaw slumped in his seat.

  ‘Is this your car, Mr Shaw?’

  Warren pushed a photograph across the table. He could just have read out a description and the licence number, but he felt a photograph of the Volvo on a low-loader, surrounded by CSIs, would have more of an impact.

  ‘Yes.’ His voice was barely a whisper.

  ‘According to Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras, your car left Middlesbury Abbey just after 5 p.m. It then drove across town, arriving in this part of town at approximately twenty-past. Phone mast records confirm that your phone followed this same route, at the same time. And we know that you had your phone on you because you answered it at five past ten. Your phone then remains more or less stationary until that call came in, when you drove straight to the abbey.

  ‘Now I would really like to know what you did in the almost five hours between you arriving here and leaving to drive to the abbey.’

  Shaw looked sick.

  ‘No comment.’

  Chapter 39

  ‘What do you think, Moray?’ asked Sutton. Ruskin had been watching the interview of Rodney Shaw over a video link. Shaw had again denied the murder of Father Daugherty and then requested a break to speak with his solicitor.

  ‘He’s lying,’ stated the young constable.

  ‘Everybody lies,’ said Sutton. ‘I don’t think there’s a person who steps inside that room who doesn’t lie. And that includes us.’

  ‘Bit of a cynical view, don’t you think?’ said Ruskin.

  ‘Not at all, it’s a simple fact of human nature. Everybody lies. All the time. The question is, do the lies matter? Are they important to us or this case?’

  ‘So you reckon that he might be lying about something that has no bearing on our investigation?’

  ‘Perhaps. People lie because they are ashamed of something, or because the truth might get them into trouble. Sometimes they lie because they think that something innocent could be taken the wrong way, or sometimes just because they don’t think the answer is any of our damn business. It’s your job to decide which lies are important and which aren’t. Which lies do you pursue and which do you let go? Which ones do you let slide then pull them up on later? If we can catch them in a lie in one area, it can strengthen our hand in another. Sometimes it’s the little, provable lie that gives us enough justification to get a search warrant. You’ve seen how it works.’

  ‘I suppose it’s true what you say. I certainly saw that when I was in uniform. I remember arresting one guy who’d been accused of shoplifting. We made him empty his pockets, and he copped to the two bottles of vodka he’d concealed in his tracksuit bottoms. But the security guard reckoned he might have something else in his underwear, because he was sitting funny. The bloke swore blind that there was nothing down his undies, and that he couldn’t sit right because he had really bad piles. Anyway, we didn’t believe him, he was definitely lying. So when we took him back to the nick, we arranged for him to be strip-searched. He made a right fuss, and we were like, “mate, you’ve already been done for nicking the vodka, just admit to it. Kicking off isn’t going to make things any better”.

  ‘Eventually we persuaded him to remove his trousers and it turns out he’s wearing his wife’s frilly knickers. They were so small his balls were practically blue, no wonder he couldn’t sit properly.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Took ourselves outside, had a bloody good laugh, then did
him for the stolen vodka. We decided not to mention his lack of cooperation.’

  ‘Exactly. It was a lie that didn’t matter. You know DS Pymm lied to my face first thing this morning?’

  Ruskin was shocked.

  ‘Yep, a straight up lie.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I let it go. Not important.’

  ‘What was it about?’ asked Ruskin, without thinking.

  ‘Well, not that it’s any of your business, but when she came out of the lift this morning, I asked her how she was and she said “fine”.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I knew she wasn’t fine, because she’d just walked across the carpark after some thoughtless idiot parked in the disabled bay because they didn’t want to get wet. She’s been doing overtime and isn’t even due in today. Yet here she is.

  ‘This morning she lied to my face, and said she was fine. I let it go, because I know that she doesn’t want anyone to make a fuss – she has too much dignity to accept help unless she really needs it – and because I trust her judgement.’

  ‘I see what you’re saying, sir.’

  Ruskin stood up and reached for his wallet and keys.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to move my car and buy Rachel a slice of her favourite cake.’

  ‘Good lad, I knew you’d get the hint. When you’re done, go and check out some of Rodney Shaw’s lies.’

  Chapter 40

  ‘The press conference has stirred up a fair bit of interest. Several dozen calls already,’ said Rachel Pymm as Warren came back into the office after his interview with Rodney Shaw.

  ‘Go on, give me the highlights.’

  ‘So far we’ve had calls blaming everyone from radical Islamists to a rogue IRA cell and the illuminati. Lots of helpful folks have asked if we’ve considered it might be revenge for historic child abuse – although none of them actually had anything helpful, they’d just seen it on the news. We’ve also had four confessions, all from our frequent fliers, including our best friend Colin the Crank.’

  ‘Well, he supposedly stitched up Lord Lucan when he was only three years old, so bumping off a couple of elderly Catholic priests should be easy for him.’

  ‘Quite. Maybe we should just arrest him and accept his confessions – we’d clear half the high profile cases from the past twenty years.’

  ‘Anything more worthy of our attention?’

  ‘A couple of people think they may have seen suspicious characters hanging around the abbey, we’re sending someone over to take a statement. But this one is a bit more interesting. Vernon Coombs, a former journalist on the Middlesbury Reporter. He asked for you by name.’

  ‘Don’t they always? Refer him to the press office,’ said Warren.

  ‘He’s not after an interview, he claims to have information that could help us. Besides which, I doubt he’s looking for his next big scoop.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘He’s given his address as Goldfinch Hospice up on Osprey Close. He says to pop by tomorrow morning. I wouldn’t wait too long, it doesn’t sound as though he’s long for this world.’

  * * *

  The interview with Rodney Shaw resumed in the late afternoon. Warren had spent the intervening hours waiting for forensics from the search, and scanning old articles on the Middlesbury Reporter website, written by Vernon Coombs.

  The final article under Coombs’ by-line was dated approximately eighteen months previously, which corresponded with the small article about his retirement from the paper after twenty-two years. The accompanying picture was of a smiling, robust man with neat grey hair.

  Scrolling through the other articles attributed to the reporter, they matched what the short notice about his retirement had stated. His articles primarily dealt with so-called local and community news. It seemed that he was also something of a history buff, particularly when it concerned Middlesbury’s past.

  Little of his previous work seemed to be crime-related, and he wasn’t credited with reports on any of Warren’s own cases. There was no clue as to why he thought he could provide insight in the abbey murders. Warren would have to wait until the following morning to see what the man had to say for himself.

  ‘Shall we start where we left off, Rodney? What were you doing in the almost five hours between leaving work and receiving the phone call about the fire?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Are you sure about that, Rodney? We have evidence that you were not where you said you were on the night of the fire. Juries can be a forgiving lot, but they really don’t like a liar.’

  ‘No comment.’ His voice was firm.

  ‘Do you recognise this mobile phone number? You called it the evening Father Nolan was killed, before you were informed of the fire.’

  Shaw barely glanced at the number. ‘No comment.’

  ‘You call it quite regularly. Every couple of weeks.’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘The night that Father Nolan was killed, he left his room by the ground floor fire exit. In addition to his footprints, we also found traces from your work boots around that door. Can you explain why his footprints and your footprints were down there?’

  ‘I don’t know why Father Nolan’s prints were there, but I did a fire inspection a few weeks ago. They could have been from then.’

  Warren made another note. Shaw didn’t seem nearly as nervous as before. In contrast, Warren was starting to feel that they were going nowhere. They really needed to know what Shaw was doing the night of the fire, but so far they had no evidence that he had even left that area whilst the fire was being set.

  Similarly, they still had no evidence that Shaw was anywhere other than his flat the night Father Daugherty had been killed.

  The interview was stalled until they had more forensics.

  ‘Don’t go anywhere, Mr Shaw,’ instructed Warren as he terminated the interview.

  * * *

  ‘We’re still lacking a smoking gun,’ said Warren. It was late afternoon and Warren was starting to feel the effects of several early starts and late finishes in a row.

  ‘What are you still looking for?’ asked Grayson. At least he’d put some coffee on.

  Rodney Shaw had been arrested at 5 a.m. that morning. Warren was beginning to wish they’d gambled and held back; that way the custody clock would run out at a more civilised hour. At the same time the following morning, Shaw had to either be released, charged or an extension to custody applied for.

  ‘I can get you another twelve hours,’ said Grayson, ‘but you know you haven’t enough for a magistrate to grant the full ninety-six based on what you have so far. You need to come up with the goods by 5 p.m. tomorrow or he walks again.’

  ‘Ideally we need evidence of him leaving the ANPR blackspot and returning within that time period. We’re awaiting CCTV and witnesses for that. Unfortunately, in this case a lack of evidence doesn’t rule him out, it’s easily within walking distance,’ said Warren.

  ‘What about his mobile phone?’

  ‘It’s essentially stationary during that time, but he could have just left it in his car.’

  ‘You’re going to need more than that.’

  ‘I know.’ Warren was too tired to keep the frustration from his voice. ‘We’re awaiting more detailed records for an unregistered mobile that Shaw called at half past five that evening. He calls it regularly, every couple of weeks. Short duration.’

  ‘What about the night Father Daugherty was killed?’

  ‘We’ll know that when we get the records back.’

  ‘What about his movements the night Father Daugherty was killed?’

  ‘He claims not to have been out all weekend. So far his phone records match his account and his car wasn’t picked up on ANPR cameras. His neighbours weren’t around much that weekend and so can’t provide an alibi. He has a bicycle and we are looking for CCTV footage of cyclists in the vicinity of both murders, and forensics on its tires to see
if we can place it in the grounds.’

  ‘This isn’t looking good,’ said Grayson.

  ‘We’ve got some more forensics pending. Professor Jordan found fibres inside Father Daugherty’s nostrils. They have been positively matched to a towel that we found balled up on the floor in the green house, beside a hosepipe and garden chair. He believes that Father Daugherty was essentially water-boarded, and died when it went too far. We’re looking at Shaw’s wardrobe to see if we can find any fibres from the towel. We’ve already found a couple on the wax jacket.

  ‘The chucking him off the bridge was a clumsy attempt to make it look as though he’d killed himself. That might explain why Shaw left the padlock key in the pocket of the coat instead of returning it to the vestry. If he wasn’t expecting Father Daugherty to die in the greenhouse, he might have panicked.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Document Analysis are looking at the note left on Father Daugherty’s dresser. If we can link it to Shaw we have a case.’

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ said Grayson. He placed his cup down carefully. ‘What if Shaw is innocent? Who else are you looking at? What about that disturbed young man that turned up at the home unannounced after Christmas?

  ‘We’ve got teams looking for Lucas Furber and trying to track his whereabouts.’

  ‘Well, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, Warren.’

  * * *

  It was already late when Warren arrived home that night. He’d seen from the drive that the bedroom light was turned off, and knew that Susan would already be in bed at this hour on a school night. He’d sleep in the spare room again.

  She’d left some pasta and Bolognese sauce in a Tupperware container. The note beside it read ‘for tea tonight or lunch tomorrow. Don’t work too hard. Sxx.’

  This was what he hated most about these sorts of cases – policing was a twenty-four-hour business, and as SIO, no matter how hard he tried, he’d end up working silly hours that didn’t overlap with his wife. In the past he’d gone whole weeks communicating with Susan by text message, even though they shared the same bed.

  That would have to change in the future. When he was a child, his father had been away a lot when he and his brother were growing up. If Niall MacNamara had known how his life would suddenly be snatched away when Warren was only 13 years old, would he have made the effort to be around more often?