Forgive Me Father

by Paul Gitsham

  Around the world, over a billion people had been baptised as Catholics. Some, like Bernice, followed the church’s teachings, barely questioning them, whilst others paid lip-service at best.

  So why were he and Susan even here? They rarely, if ever, attended Sunday service, unless with her parents or with Granddad Jack. Were they here for their own sake, or just because it was ‘what was expected of them’? Were they being hypocrites?

  He remembered the six months before they got married; they’d attended church every Sunday thus ensuring the church wedding that both of them had dreamed of. How many times had they been back since then?

  He knew without question that their children would be baptised. But would they be doing it because they wanted them to become full members of the Catholic Church, or again, because it was expected of them? Or because the nearest primary school to their house ‘Required Improvement’, but the Catholic school further down the road had been rated as ‘Outstanding’ by OFSTED?

  A cynic might shrug and say, ‘so what?’ Play the game to get what you want. Giving up an hour every Sunday morning was a small price to pay for a beautiful church wedding. Attending a few classes and having a priest pour water over your bewildered child’s forehead was worth it to get them a decent education – and a damn good excuse to have a party afterwards.

  But what about those other expectations? The automatic assumption that a priest and his actions were, by definition, sanctioned by God, and that even questioning them was sinful, was what had allowed abuse to flourish in an organisation that should have been on the forefront of preventing it.

  Then there were the implacable dictates that even married couples avoid contraception, or shun IVF, even though neither option had even been conceived of two thousand years ago. Warren still felt angry at the pain Susan had gone through over the summer when Bernice had described their plans to use IVF as ‘ungodly’. Bernice had eventually apologised, after Susan had made it clear that she would play no part in her future grandchildren’s lives if she didn’t back down. But they still avoided broaching the subject with her.

  Warren was angry, because if ever there was a time that Susan needed her mother’s support it was now, and he resented the unnecessary barriers that inflexible doctrine had built between them.

  At the pulpit, the priest was talking about God’s mercy and his love for all of his children. Warren tasted bile in his mouth.

  If God loved all of his children then why had He allowed Gary Hastings, himself a practising Christian, to come to such a brutal end, leaving an unborn child that would never know their father’s touch, and a fiancée who would never walk down the aisle with the love of her life? If it was all part of some master plan, too divine for man to comprehend, then count Warren out.

  Looking around the church that he had grown up in, Warren found himself coming to a sobering realisation.

  This might be the last time he set foot in here.

  And he didn’t know whether he should be upset or relieved.

  Chapter 59

  ‘Andy Harrison here.’ The announcement wasn’t really necessary, given that the crime scene manager’s name appeared on Warren’s phone screen. And if that didn’t work, Warren couldn’t think of any other men he worked with that had such a broad Yorkshire accent. The retention of his native inflection was remarkable given that the man had worked in this corner of Hertfordshire for well over half his life.

  Assuming that his accent was still authentic, of course; Warren recalled an uncle from Liverpool who’d seemingly kept his Scouse accent for the fifty-plus years he’d lived in Birmingham. It wasn’t until the mourners were several pints into his wake that one of his sisters, who’d remained in the North West, admitted she couldn’t understand a word her brother had said towards the end of his life. ‘It was like watching a film full of Hollywood actors who learnt the accent by watching reruns of Harry Enfield.’

  ‘What have you got for me, Andy?’

  It was 2 p.m. and Susan was driving the couple home, leaving Warren free to answer and make calls. Ordinarily, they’d have enjoyed a long, leisurely lunch, followed by a lazy afternoon, with slices of birthday cake washed down with multiple cups of tea, but Warren had been too busy to linger.

  Saying goodbye to Granddad Jack so early had been harder than Warren expected. He was 91 years old – how many more birthdays would they have with him? Would he even live to see his first great-grandchild? Granddad Jack would be the first to know if Warren and Susan’s appointment the next day yielded good news, Warren vowed.

  Warren pushed the thoughts away; he recognised the signs. Overwork, lack of sleep and so many dead bodies always conspired to make him maudlin. When it was all over, he resolved to take Granddad Jack away for a bit of a holiday. Easter was only a few weeks away, and with the overtime he was accumulating he should be able to take a few days off over the school holidays with Susan.

  ‘We may have a window for the timing of Lucas Furber’s death,’ said Harrison. Warren had already ascertained that nobody had seen Furber coming or going from the derelict garages where his body had been found.

  ‘Brilliant, take me through it.’

  ‘The site was full of rubbish. It looks as though he’d been here for some time. I called Professor Jordan and he confirmed that Furber’s last meal was a Sainsbury’s cheese and broccoli quiche, probably consumed within six hours of death.’

  ‘Sounds delicious.’

  ‘Amongst the rubbish, we found the packaging. The quiche had a use by date of Monday March the ninth.’

  ‘That narrows things down. Do we know how long these quiches stay on the shelf before they reach their use by date?’

  ‘Even better. The barcode had been replaced by a reduced-to-clear sticker. Fifty pence. I contacted the shop and they reckon that the sticker and that level of reduction is only applied towards the end of the day that the food expires. Assuming that he bought it at the nearest store to the garage, that particular store marks food down after about 7 p.m. A number of the local homeless community know this and tend to pop in then to see if they can snag a bargain. As long as they don’t harass staff or customers, the manager doesn’t do anything to discourage them.’

  ‘That’s fantastic, Andy. There’s no guarantee he ate it immediately, but it gives us a last time that he was reliably seen. I’ll get Mags to seize the CCTV from all the Sainsbury’s in the area to see if we can pick him up.’

  Warren hung up then immediately dialled into the office, passing on Harrison’s information. Assuming that Harrison was correct, this meant that Furber had died several days after both Fathers Nolan and Daugherty had been killed, leaving his name on the suspect’s board.

  It also meant that Rodney Shaw had been released from custody some days before Furber’s death. Based on what Professor Jordan had told him about the doctored heroin, could he have been Lucas Furber’s killer? Shaw had supposedly been clean of drugs for decades, and was no longer part of that scene. Might that explain why he was ignorant of the effects of mixing hospital-grade morphine with street heroin?

  But if Shaw was the killer, what was his motive?

  Chapter 60

  The Social Media Intelligence Unit had been busy over the weekend, sending Rachel Pymm several interesting snippets that she’d asked to share with Warren and the team after Susan dropped him off at CID.

  ‘They found a reference to Father Daugherty on Survivorsonline. It didn’t come up immediately because the poster had misspelt his surname D-O-H-E-R-T-Y, and the website’s search engine isn’t very sophisticated.’ Pymm had drained her latest cup of nettle tea, leaving what appeared to be a pile of sodden leaf-litter at the bottom of her mug. She noticed the direction of Warren’s gaze and glared at him, as if daring him to comment. He decided not to rise to the challenge. He already knew that the suggestion he was going to make at the end of the briefing wasn’t going to be received well, and he didn’t want to antagonise her before he even broached it.

 
‘Well, we’ve got it now, what did they find?’

  ‘There is an ongoing discussion about “priests who got away with it”. The original thread is ancient, it was started about eight years ago, shortly after the site first went live. Somebody claiming to have been at Saint Thomas Aquinas school, at the time of the alleged incident, posted the story about Father Daugherty about five years ago. They don’t claim to have been abused by Father Daugherty themselves – according to their other posts they were on the site for unrelated reasons to do with an abusive relative – but they reckon they knew the girl who made the allegation.’

  ‘I assume from the title of the thread that they don’t believe she made it up?’ said Sutton.

  Pymm’s slightly frosty tone when she replied made Warren wonder if Sutton had already commented on Pymm’s beverage before he had arrived.

  ‘No, the poster claimed it was successfully covered up by the church and the school. The account is riddled with factual inaccuracies, not least the spelling of his name, and the poster admits that they don’t remember all the details, but it’s similar enough to what we know happened to definitely be the same event. At the end of the post, they said he had been moved to a retirement home.’

  ‘Could that be the connection? Is that how the killer is targeting his victims?’ asked Warren. ‘Searching the website for priests that have retired?’

  ‘I can’t imagine it would be too difficult,’ said Sutton. ‘How many priests listed on this site are coming up in posts with keywords related to “retirement home”?’

  ‘And with that in mind, how many retirement homes dedicated to retired clergy are there likely to be? Presumably all the residents in the home are on the electoral roll?’ asked Pymm.

  ‘Good point,’ said Warren. ‘A few seconds online would reveal if they are registered at the home for voting and council tax. Check that out please, Moray, also see if they are on the public electoral roll or if they’ve ticked the box to avoid being included; that might help narrow down who would be easily able to track them down. In the meantime, what were the responses to that original post, Rachel?’

  ‘In the days immediately following the post, there were a handful of replies – mostly of the “another bastard’s got away with it” variety and the thread was buried in the archives. In total the website’s software records it as having been viewed eighty-six times. Without access to the website’s server logs though, we can’t know if those were unique views, or the same few people viewing the thread multiple times. We also don’t know if the page views were recent or from years ago.’

  ‘So that leaves a number of potential suspects,’ summarised Warren. ‘Firstly the original poster, themselves a survivor of abuse, who claims to have known Olivia Mason, the girl who accused Father Daugherty. If they truly believed that Father Daugherty “got away with it”, they could be evening the score on her behalf.

  ‘Then there are the people that viewed and replied to the post. Make a note of any usernames from people that replied and scan their usage history, cross-reference the usernames of those replying to the posts and see if any names come up on both.

  ‘Tony, look at raising a warrant to see if we can persuade the website owners to release their server logs so we can identify users that viewed the post but didn’t contribute.’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ cautioned Pymm.

  ‘It’s also possible that our killer doesn’t use the same username each time,’ said Sutton. ‘He could have multiple identities to disguise his tracks.’

  ‘Let’s hope not; if we can’t actually link a username to a real-world person, it isn’t much use to us,’ said Warren.

  ‘The abuse allegations about Father Daugherty were posted five years ago. What triggered them to start killing now?’ asked Ruskin.

  ‘Many abuse survivors keep silent for decades,’ pointed out Pymm.

  ‘I agree, but there must have been some sort of incitement,’ said Sutton.

  ‘Carry on digging, maybe that will give us a clue to their identity,’ ordered Warren. ‘Of course, there is one connection that is glaringly obvious; both of these priests took early retirement for mental health reasons and Bishop Fisher approved them moving into the home. We should speak to the diocese to see if any other residents moved to the home on the say-so of Bishop Fisher because of mental health concerns.’

  ‘I think we’ve got more chance of persuading a Bulgarian internet service provider to comply with a search warrant, than getting the Catholic Church to cooperate with that sort of request,’ replied Sutton.

  ‘Well, we won’t know if we don’t ask,’ said Warren trying mightily to keep his tone light-hearted. ‘In the meantime, Rachel, get onto the social media team and ask them to replicate that search to see if any other priests are coming up. They might be in danger,’ ordered Warren.

  ‘Already ahead of you,’ said Pymm. ‘Their search is ongoing, but another name has already popped up. Back in April 2014, somebody calling themself “Innocencelost1980”, posted a request for information about a Father Wilfred Dodd, that the poster claims worked at the Venerable Thomas Tichborne School for Boys, a Catholic boarding school for boys in Essex in the Nineties. The school closed down a few years ago. One of the replies claimed that he had retired when the school closed.’

  Warren flicked through his notebook.

  ‘Are you sure about that name? There’s no Father Dodd listed as being resident at the home, or working there as a volunteer for that matter.’

  ‘That’s what it said. This post was also less than a month before the one questioning what had happened to Father Nolan. The posters had different usernames, but they could still be the same person.’

  Warren tapped his teeth thoughtfully; finally a concrete lead, rather than some enigmatic online persona that may not even truly exist.

  ‘If the school only closed a few years ago, I wonder what the head teacher is doing these days?’

  Monday 16th March

  Chapter 61

  It was Monday, the first day of a new week. Most of the team sitting in front of Warren had been in at least one day over the weekend. Warren had been right the day before; Rachel Pymm had not been impressed when he’d told her to take some of her rapidly accumulating annual leave. She was vital to the success of the team, but useless to them if she ended up sick. He’d have to convince Sutton to take some time off also, the man looked exhausted.

  Despite this, Warren always felt there was something symbolic about a Monday morning briefing; a chance to regroup, recap and reset.

  Helped by doughnuts, naturally.

  Several paper bags had already been torn open and the table top was covered in a crust of sugar.

  ‘Lucas Furber’s death has finally been published in the Reporter.’

  Warren held up the copy of the weekly paper he’d bought along with the doughnuts.

  ‘Luckily for us it’s a slow news week, so we’ve got the front page, along with a picture. I also spotted it on the billboard outside my local newsagent. I checked online and it’s top of the page on their website. Let’s hope it jogs a few memories. I’m told there are plenty of posters up in homeless shelters and outreach centres, so hopefully we’ll hear something soon. Mags, what have you got for us?’

  ‘I’ve got a list of the licence plates for all the cars in the vicinity of the locksmith’s on the days that the keys to the chapel and the undercroft were copied. Twelve cars were seen on both days, none of which have any obvious links to the abbey or anyone associated with it. According to the DVLA, eight of them are registered to local residents, and were photographed at traffic lights on the main thoroughfare travelling one way in the morning rush hour and the opposite direction in the evening.’

  ‘Commuters, by the sounds of it,’ suggested Sutton.

  ‘Three others look to have been doing the school run, and the last one is registered to a sandwich delivery firm, it shows up all over the place for about twelve hours each day.’

 
‘Damn. So the killer didn’t drive there?’

  ‘Not in his own car, no. However, there are a handful of private hire cab firms that operate in the area, and several of them crop up.’

  ‘Get their records. Maybe the killer used a cab so that his own car doesn’t appear in the area.’

  Warren looked thoughtfully at the suspect board. Only two names really stood out; Rodney Shaw and Lucas Furber. Warren wasn’t sure about either of them. Sometimes Warren thought Shaw was their man; other times he seemed on the cusp of being ruled out. As for Lucas Furber, he had been alive at the time of both priest’s murders and seemed to have a deep dislike, even hatred, aimed at clergy, but now he was dead himself, probably murdered. It could just be by chance, of course; Furber had lived on the edges of society, who knew what he had got himself into? However, Warren didn’t like those sorts of coincidences. Which therefore meant that even if Furber had killed one or both of the priests, somebody else was also involved. On the other hand, perhaps Furber had nothing to do with the priest’s deaths, but had known who the killer was. Was his death a way of silencing him?

  Chapter 62

  Dr Ethan Massey was a robust man in his late sixties.

  ‘I spent the last six years of my career as head of St Joseph’s, but my fondest memories will always be of Thomas Tichborne. I started there as a newly qualified teacher back in 1970, would you believe? Teacher of history, then head of department. A few years at St Philip as head of sixth form and deputy head, and then finally back to Thomas Tichborne in 1998 as headmaster; it’s hard to imagine when I look back on it.’

  Warren was sitting opposite Massey in the man’s living room. The former teacher clearly had a fondness for antiques, the room was filled with aged wooden furniture, including a tall grandfather clock with a glass front, exposing a swinging pendulum. The time on the clock’s face reminded him belatedly that he and Susan had an appointment at the clinic later that afternoon. Warren had already calculated how long he could stay before he absolutely had to leave. He berated himself for not delegating the interview; unless Massey was a little less long-winded, he’d have to leave before the interview finished or phone Susan to tell her he’d be late. Given that she’d reminded him not once, but twice the evening before, neither option was attractive.