Forgive Me Father

by Paul Gitsham

  Bishop Fisher paused.

  ‘Nothing I can talk to you about.’

  Warren bit back a four-letter retort; it wouldn’t be professional, and besides swearing at a bishop seemed wrong. However, his voice was an angry hiss as he bent closer to the elderly priest.

  ‘Just remember, Your Grace, you could have told me who the killer’s next target was. We could have protected him.’ Warren glared at him. ‘Be under no illusion – if Father Madden turns up dead, this is on you.’

  Bishop Fisher met Warren’s stare, unblinking.

  ‘The seal of the confessional goes both ways, DCI Jones. Those asking for forgiveness know that when they partake in the sacrament.’

  Chapter 72

  By 2 a.m., a thorough search of the house had been made. The residents were all in the main dining room, huddled in small groups, answering questions posed by Warren’s team. Even Fathers Kendrick and Ramsden were there, having insisted that they be brought downstairs so that they could be with their brother priests. Father Boyce, clad in his pyjamas and dressing gown, fussed over them, ensuring that they were comfortable and not over-tired. The three sisters, somehow already dressed in their grey habits and wimples, ensured that nobody ran out of tea.

  So far though, nobody knew where Father Madden had vanished to. Those who had spoken to him over the past few days had been adamant that whilst he was as worried and upset as everyone else in the small community, he otherwise seemed to be his usual self.

  Outside in the main grounds, teams were searching, their torches flashing, as they progressed outwards from the house.

  ‘How the hell can an elderly priest in need of a hip replacement go missing?’ asked Sutton for the umpteenth time.

  None of the pairs of officers standing watch at either of the two entrances, or the fire exit, had seen anyone leaving the house since before 6 p.m.; long before Father Madden had disappeared.

  The only ground floor windows not visible to the teams were locked or permanently fastened for security reasons, and there was no way Father Madden had shinned down a drainpipe.

  The rain had finally stopped and Warren and Sutton were standing outside, hoping the cold air might revive them when even caffeine was failing. The scrunch of gravel heralded the arrival of a small van.

  ‘Looks as though the search dogs have arrived,’ noted Sutton.

  The two men led the dog and its handler upstairs to Madden’s room.

  ‘We’ll let him have a good sniff of the clothes in the laundry basket and then see if he can track him,’ said the handler. ‘I have to warn you though, this is Father Madden’s room so it’ll be full of scent. He might get confused.’

  ‘Well, do what you can. If he can’t pick up his scent from inside the house we’ll try outside.’

  Corbett was a highly excitable springer spaniel. After a good sniff of Madden’s discarded underclothes, he started racing around the room, eagerly exploring. Warren tried not to wince. Everyone in the room was wearing paper suits, and Corbett was wearing disposable booties, but he knew that they were running the risk of compromising the crime scene before the CSIs had even started – however, it couldn’t be helped. Whilst there was even a slight chance that Father Madden was still alive, finding him took precedence.

  Eventually, Corbett headed for the open door. Out in the corridor, he pressed his nose against the floor and trotted determinedly away from the stairwell, in the direction of the sash window at the far end of the hallway.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ muttered Warren. ‘There’s nothing up there, the window is locked and we’re on the first floor. There’s no way Father Madden could climb out of there.’

  Nevertheless, Corbett was on a mission. A metre or so from the window, he stopped, turned to his left and stared at the wall.

  ‘Is he confused?’ asked Sutton.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said the handler.

  The wall in front of the dog was panelled oak.

  Corbett whined and gave a small bark.

  Warren stepped forward. He tapped the wood experimentally, listening to the hollow thunk. Moving a pace to his left, he tapped again. Another hollow thunk. Another pace. This time the noise was less hollow.

  ‘Get Rachel Pymm on the line,’ Warren ordered, ‘and ask her about any priest holes.’

  Chapter 73

  ‘Did you not think it might be helpful for us to know that the house has secret passageways running through it?’ asked Warren. He was aware that his voice was unprofessionally harsh, but he was beyond caring. He’d been awake for over twenty hours, after weeks of similarly punishing routine and had lost track of the volume of coffee he’d drunk to stave off exhaustion.

  For his part, Gabriel Baines looked embarrassed.

  ‘They were part of the original eighteenth-century structure, built by Howard Langton himself to protect his family, and other Catholics, in the event that there was another crackdown.

  ‘When we decided to convert the house into a retirement home the ones that we knew about were all boarded up because they aren’t safe anymore and they’re full of rats and other vermin. Some of our residents in the past have been a bit … confused at times, and we didn’t want any accidents.’

  Warren, Sutton, Baines and Bishop Fisher were in the bishop’s office, along with the head of the search team. Rachel Pymm had just arrived after a blue-light escort via the CID office. Her pyjamas were visible under her long over-coat, and her hair was sticking up at odd angles. Pymm had been sound asleep when Warren’s call went through. Her husband had beaten her to her handset and had been furious that she had been disturbed.

  ‘She needs her sleep, for Christ’s sake, she’s absolutely exhausted. What sort of a manger lets an employee with her medical condition work those sort of hours …’ That was the point at which Pymm had finally wrestled the phone away from her husband. She’d clearly placed her hand over the mouth piece, but he could hear her angrily hissing something about ‘not needing her husband to fight her battles for her’.

  Warren felt wretched, but he knew that’d he’d had no choice. Rachel Pymm had found the plans during her research, and probably knew more about them than anyone else alive, other than the killer.

  ‘Most of the priest holes were little more than hollow spaces, where a priest or other fugitive could hide out until the danger had passed,’ she said, as he helped her spread out photocopied sheets from Vernon Coombs’ boxes of research. Warren was familiar with the idea of priest holes, having visited several Warwickshire-based former Catholic homes such as Baddesley Clinton with his grandparents as a child.

  ‘However, this particular compartment was an escape route. A vertical shaft that runs alongside the main chimney to help disguise it within the house’s original dimensions. There was an exit on each floor, hidden behind wooden panelling. It ends below the house’s basement and then runs underground to escape the house.’

  ‘Where does it emerge?’

  ‘Down by the old cloisters,’ she replied.

  ‘We found an old entrance years ago, but we bricked it up.’ Baines sounded desperate.

  ‘What’s the betting it isn’t anymore? Get a team down there, batons drawn. If the killer is still in the tunnel we don’t want him escaping.’

  The wait for confirmation that the tunnel exit was covered by officers was barely two minutes, but seemed far longer. Warren was well aware that every second that passed was another second that Father Madden was potentially in danger, but the elderly priest had been missing for over five hours now. The chances were that he was already dead.

  Warren raised the radio to his lips.

  ‘Everyone in position?’

  Quiet affirmatives rang in from the team by the tunnel exit, as well as teams stationed at the hidden entrance on each floor.

  ‘Execute.’

  At Warren’s command the forced entry specialist next to him rammed a crowbar between the wooden slats. Warren cringed as the ancient panelling splintered, but there was no
other choice; there was no telling if the original, exquisitely engineered mechanism still worked and they needed to preserve the element of surprise.

  The panels swung out effortlessly.

  The sound of repeated blows echoed from the floors above and below.

  ‘The other entrances must still be blocked up,’ said Sutton as he shone his torch into the dark space beyond.

  ‘Well, that wasn’t put there by Howard Langton,’ remarked Warren as the light reflected off an aluminium ladder.

  Sutton leaned into the shaft, looking down.

  ‘Shit, we’ve found him.’

  * * *

  The rope had been tied around a support beam and was over a storey in length. Easily enough to snap Father Madden’s neck.

  An inspection of the entrance down by the old cloisters revealed it had been unblocked. That made it easier for the body recovery team to reach the dangling priest. Even then, somebody had to climb up the ladder to help ease him down to the officers. It had also made it easier for the killer to escape. The rope had been carefully cut either side of the knot; it looked suspiciously similar to a pile of coiled ropes that Warren remembered seeing in photos of the tool shed.

  ‘There’s no way that was suicide,’ said Sutton. ‘Madden was far too frail to hang off a ladder whilst hooking up a noose, then close that hidden panel and step off.’

  ‘I think our killer is beyond trying to make it look like a real suicide,’ said Warren. ‘He knows that we know it’s a murder. What’s the betting that within those boxes of research there’s a report of someone been found with a noose around their neck and a suicide note pinned to the abbey gates?’

  ‘Shit. You know Rachel is going blame herself for this, don’t you? She and her team have been ploughing through those old diaries looking for any hints of who the next target might be.’

  ‘I’ll speak to her, there’s no way she could have foreseen this, and besides without her we’d have been blindly clambering into a dark hole, with no idea who or what awaited us.’ He shuddered. ‘Anyway, there was nothing on the Survivorsonline site to give us a clue who might be next, so knowing the probable method would have been little use.’

  ‘I know one person who probably knew,’ said Sutton darkly. ‘I’ve a mind to go down there and arrest that arrogant bastard.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For knowing exactly who in this rotten place is a paedophile and therefore on the killer’s list.’

  ‘And charge him with what? Don’t you think I’ve thought about this? I’ve even spoken to DSI Grayson about it.’

  Sutton snorted. ‘Oh, please. You know Grayson will never stick his neck out over this. He has three years to go and he wants one more promotion because he’s still on the final salary pension scheme.’

  ‘He won’t stick his neck out, because the CPS will never let us charge. Arresting a revered Catholic bishop and demanding he breaks his oath? Christ, Tony, use your common sense. It’d be a career-ending move for everyone involved, right up to and including the Chief Constable.’

  ‘Then maybe I’ll just go down there and lock us both in his office until he tells us what he knows.’ Sutton was breathing heavily, the anger radiating off him.

  ‘Now you’re just being silly.’ Warren shook his head. ‘Go home Tony. Get some sleep.’

  Thursday 19th March

  Chapter 74

  Five hours of intermittent sleep was not enough. Nonetheless, Warren was back in at midday. Grayson had led the 8 a.m. briefing in Warren and Sutton’s absence.

  As Tony Sutton had predicted, Rachel Pymm had taken her failure to predict the latest killing personally and Warren’s first job was to reassure her.

  ‘Rachel, I’ve seen what you are dealing with. Photocopies of handwritten diaries in old-fashioned English, covered in Vernon Coombs’ illegible notes.’

  ‘It’s all there though,’ said Pymm. ‘Father Nolan and Father Daugherty’s deaths were just as described in the diaries.’ She pushed across a pack of sheets. ‘Now Father Madden’s death is also here. Vernon Coombs spotted the link immediately.’

  ‘Vernon Coombs spotted the link between Fathers Nolan and Daugherty and the historic killings after the deaths had taken place, he didn’t predict them, nor did he predict the death of Father Madden,’ said Warren firmly. ‘On top of that, Simon Scrope confessed to both of those killings in his deathbed confession. He didn’t survive long enough to name his other victims or describe how he killed them.’

  Pymm didn’t look satisfied. Warren continued.

  ‘Without your research last night, I’d have been sending officers down a ladder into a darkened shaft, with no idea what was at the bottom. For all we knew, the killer could have been standing at the bottom with a knife, or a can of petrol. If nothing else, you saved us hours of waiting for a tactical response team to make the shaft secure, so we could get that poor man down and start collecting evidence.

  ‘Vernon Coombs made studying the abbey his life’s work. He didn’t anticipate the deaths. I can’t expect you to do in a few days what he couldn’t do in years.’

  Pymm let out a blast of air between her pursed lips. When she spoke, her voice was shaky.

  ‘Then why am I doing this? If the best my team and I can do is help us find the victims after they’ve already been killed, then what are we contributing to this investigation? You’d have found them eventually. We just can’t decipher his research fast enough.’

  Warren waited before he said anything, allowing her to compose herself. He could see that she wasn’t listening to him.

  ‘What you are doing is vital work, we need your team’s findings.’

  ‘I just don’t feel like a police officer anymore.’ Her eyes were shining. ‘Before I got ill, I loved being out there, chasing leads, interviewing suspects …’ She broke off, her voice catching. ‘When Mags and I interviewed Rodney Shaw, I suddenly realised how much I missed it. Damn it, I was good at my job, and now …’ She gestured towards her crutches. ‘I feel like an IT technician.’ She sniffed.

  Warren looked at her with concern. In the months since the detective sergeant had been assigned to Middlesbury, he had come to rely on her judgement and expertise. As the unit’s ‘officer in the case’, she was the person in charge of keeping track of all the information flowing into the investigation and driving the HOLMES2 database. It was a job that had been performed in part by Gary Hastings, and before him by DS Pete Kent, and Pymm was proving to be at least their equal. In all that time, she’d never complained once. He knew that it was stress and fatigue that was making her voice her frustrations, but maybe he should have spotted the signs sooner. Had he even asked her how she felt about her place on the team, or had he just taken her for granted?

  It was clear that he’d been pushing her too hard. He’d belatedly assigned a small team to assist her with processing the diaries, but should she even be involved to the extent she was? Doubtless she found it fascinating – he knew from speaking to her that she was an amateur history buff, and a long-term Middlesbury resident – but was it too much for her?

  From the moment Pymm had been moved to the unit, she had brought a sense of fun and humour to a department that was still coming to terms with the loss of Gary Hastings. Her merciless teasing of fellow newcomer Moray Ruskin was matched by her willingness to give up her own time to teach him and anyone else tips and tricks for using the force’s computer system and trawling the wider internet more efficiently.

  She wasn’t afraid to nag Warren and Sutton about their caffeine intake and how important it was to have a healthy diet, but always insisted her children bake two batches of anything they were trying out, bringing in the ‘test run’ to share with her colleagues.

  But the pace of the last few days was taking its toll on her. Her eyes had dark smudges beneath them, and he had noticed that she seemed to be moving more slowly; most tellingly, she hadn’t played a prank on Ruskin for weeks. Her husband had been right to castigate him for phoning
her in the early hours of the morning.

  ‘Rachel, you of all people know investigations don’t work like that. A case like this generates thousands of leads, some of which are more important than others, many of which lead nowhere. But we have to investigate them all. What you are doing is an essential part of this investigation. Even if you don’t discover that magic clue that solves the mystery, when the case comes to court, everything you’ve done has helped build that case.’

  Pymm nodded, but she still didn’t look convinced.

  Warren steeled himself for what he knew was going to be an awkward conversation; but as her superior officer, he had to broach the subject.

  ‘Rachel, I’ve noticed that you’ve been working a lot of overtime lately …’

  ‘Don’t even go there!’ she snapped.

  ‘I have to,’ said Warren firmly. ‘The well-being of my officers is an essential part of my job, and I have to make sure that you are all rested and taking care of yourselves.’

  Pymm glared at the desktop, before finally her shoulders slumped.

  ‘No, you’re right, I am tired. We all are. Even Duracell Bunny Ruskin, is feeling it. You and Tony were up all night.’ She motioned toward his coffee cup. ‘I know that you are running on caffeine and adrenaline as well, because this case is so important …’

  ‘And so are you,’ said Warren as gently as he could. ‘The last thing we need is for you to overdo it and go off sick.’

  ‘I know my own limits,’ insisted Pymm. Warren wasn’t entirely sure he believed her, but what could he do? Pymm was stubborn. Probably even more stubborn than Tony Sutton. But then she had to be.

  Warren was no expert on multiple sclerosis, although he’d made it his business to find out more about it since Pymm had joined his team. From what he knew from her personnel file and what information Occupational Health and Pymm herself had shared with him, Pymm had lived with the condition for several years. She had the relapsing-remitting form of the disease, meaning that she enjoyed long periods of relative remission, interrupted by unpredictable relapses, that could leave her unable to work for days or weeks. What caused the relapses was unclear, but Pymm had herself identified prolonged periods of stress as a potential trigger.