Forgive Me Father

by Paul Gitsham

  Indicating left, he pulled into the car park of the Albion. A chain pub, it still had a good menu. Even on a Friday lunchtime, it was quiet and the two men were able to find a secluded table where they wouldn’t be disturbed.

  ‘Well, if I’m going to break my diet, I may as well do it properly,’ announced Sutton as he ordered the gourmet burger and chips, with onion rings. Warren ordered the same, along with two halves of lager.

  The two men made small talk until their drinks arrived. Sutton’s son Josh was preparing for his final university exams and thinking about going into teaching. Warren offered to ask Susan if she could arrange a bit of work-shadowing.

  After raising his glass in a silent toast, Sutton took a mouthful, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and replaced his drink on the table.

  ‘So, why are we here? What couldn’t you discuss back at the station?’

  Sutton was the sort of man that appreciated the direct approach, so Warren decided not to prevaricate.

  ‘What do you have against Bishop Fisher and the Catholic Church in general?’

  Sutton took another mouthful of beer.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Why have you been so snide about Bishop Fisher’s reluctance to discuss what has been said to him in confession?’

  ‘You know why. I don’t agree with the notion that religious beliefs put a person above the law.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t think that a person should be able to commit a crime, go to confession, and be absolved of all wrong doing.’

  ‘So you don’t believe in confession and the forgiveness of sins?’

  ‘No, I believe in that completely. I believe that God forgives the truly repentant, but I don’t accept that such a confession should then spare the guilty from repercussions on Earth. And even if I did accept that, why is it only open to members of that particular religion? Why should members of a particular faith be shielded from their actions? Isn’t the law the same for all?’

  ‘But they aren’t shielded from their actions. They are still responsible for them in a court of law.’

  ‘I’m not just talking about the sinner, I’m talking about the priest that hears the confession. I fundamentally disagree with the idea that a priest can withhold information that others would have to disclose. Even legal privilege or medical confidentiality doesn’t go that far. If a lawyer or a doctor hears about a crime, or a planned crime, they have to disclose. If a pupil comes to Susan in confidence and tells her about abuse – either to them or someone else – Susan is required by law to pass that information on. This so-called “seal of the confessional” is morally wrong when it seeks to circumvent those protections.’

  Sutton was voicing many of the arguments that Warren had himself considered, some of which he had even put to Fisher. But Sutton’s vehemence seemed out of proportion. They were police officers; they spent half of their working lives trying to persuade people to give up secrets that they would rather not. Why was he so angered by this situation?

  ‘The seal of the confessional is surely there to encourage the penitent to confess fully, to face up to what they have done,’ said Warren. ‘If they thought that the person hearing their confession was going to tell everyone what they had just heard, then they wouldn’t tell them everything. Isn’t part of the reason for people confessing their sins that because facing up to our failings is the first step to overcoming them?’ Warren was playing Devil’s Advocate to a degree, but he felt he needed to probe deeper to understand his friend’s anger.

  ‘Yes, that I agree with.’ Sutton took another sip of his drink. When he started talking again, his voice was quieter, more reflective.

  ‘You know my history. I started going to church again after my divorce from Angela. One of the first things I did was sit down with the vicar and confess everything. I told him about the affair that destroyed our marriage. I told him about my failings before then as a husband, and as a father, and I told him about the things I still did that I was ashamed of.

  ‘The longer I spoke to him, the more I found myself revealing. I was uncovering things that I’d kept hidden even from myself. Things that I needed to address before I could move on and be a better dad to Josh and a better person to his mother. And later, a better husband to Marie.’

  ‘But could you have done that if you thought the vicar would tell other people what you had just told him?’ asked Warren.

  Sutton thought about it before he answered.

  ‘Perhaps not. But the point is that nothing I told him was illegal. I was confessing to being an arsehole, not a bloody child molester. Priests should not be given immunity from legally obtained warrants. If a magistrate has deemed our line of enquiry legitimate, then we should be able to insist that a priest answers questions in the same way that anyone else does.’

  ‘But nobody is compelled to answer our questions. Suspects always have the right to remain silent,’ Warren pointed out.

  ‘Which the jury is allowed to interpret as they see fit. Besides which, it goes back to what I said before about being compelled to disclose knowledge of a crime. If a priest knows of a crime – especially one such as child abuse – then they must report it to the authorities. Failure to do so should result in prosecution, the same as with any other person in a position of trust. End of.’

  Warren’s reply was interrupted by the arrival of their food.

  ‘What makes this a “gourmet burger”?’ asked Sutton, after the server had left.

  Warren recognised the attempt to change the topic and decided to park the discussion for the time being.

  ‘I think it’s the wooden stick holding it together,’ he suggested, as he set about dismantling the construction. He’d given up asking for burgers without garnish years ago; it was fifty-fifty at best that they’d pay any attention to his instruction. He’d found through long experience that if he then complained, it simply meant that he ended up sitting without any food for ten minutes, watching everyone else eat, as his meal disappeared back into the kitchen, only for the same burger to return with the lettuce and tomato removed, and most of the mayonnaise scraped off. He may as well do that himself; at least his food would still be hot by the time he ate it. Besides which, Susan liked salad, and he usually passed it over.

  ‘Help yourself to my lettuce, Tony. I’ve seen how much you enjoy those healthy lunches Marie has been making for you.’

  It was hard to be entirely sure what Sutton mumbled through his mouthful of burger, but it sounded suspiciously like ‘bugger off’.

  * * *

  With lunch over, the two men ordered coffee. To Warren’s surprise, Sutton ordered decaffeinated.

  ‘Marie’s been nagging me to cut down for ages, I thought I’d give it a go now and again. See if it stops the palpitations and acid indigestion.’

  ‘You should probably get that looked at,’ said Warren, ordering a cup himself. It couldn’t hurt, he supposed.

  ‘Nah, I’ve always had it; eating and sleeping at odd times and too much caffeine.’

  ‘Well, Rachel Pymm will be delighted,’ said Warren.

  Sutton scowled. ‘If you say a word to her, the track list for DCI Warren Jones’ “Guilty Pleasures” will be emailed to the whole team.’

  Warren laughed, before falling quiet again. As they’d eaten, Warren had mulled over what his friend had said. On the surface, it rang true. Sutton was one of the most fair-minded people that Warren knew. It was well within character for him to be affronted by the apparent double-standard that allowed a person hearing confession to abrogate their legal and moral responsibility to report crimes of which they were aware. Even worse was the implication that a penitent could make a full and frank confession of the most heinous of crimes, safe in the knowledge that their confessor would take that knowledge to their own grave.

  Like Sutton, Warren believed that whilst absolution could be granted in the eyes of God, it did not absolve the sinner of any Earthly punis
hment. When he judged the mood was right, he said as much.

  By now, Sutton was more relaxed. The fire had gone; but Warren wasn’t convinced that he had got to the bottom of the other man’s anger. Eventually, he said so.

  Sutton sat back and let out a huff of air. For a moment, Warren thought the man was going to walk out. But eventually his shoulders slumped.

  ‘Hell, if I can’t tell you …’

  He paused.

  ‘You know that I’m a born-again, right?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And that I attend St Peter’s, the Anglican Church on Parson’s Lane.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t always. Anglican I mean.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was born a Catholic.’

  ‘Oh. I had no idea.’

  ‘Well you wouldn’t, unless you look right back in my personnel file and see that I attended Cardinal Manning Roman Catholic comprehensive.’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve ever looked.’ Warren could see that the other man was clearly wrestling with something deeply personal.

  ‘When I was there … things … happened to some of the kids.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, you weren’t …’

  ‘No, thank God. My old man was a copper, remember. He and his mates would have been right round and beaten nine shades of shit out of them, then made sure that there was no evidence they were even there. But I heard of things happening to kids that I knew. One of them was a bit more forthright than some of the others and he openly claimed that he’d been touched inappropriately by one of his English teachers, Mr Benson.

  ‘To be honest, we never thought Benson liked boys, because he creeped the girls out so much, but anyway, this lad wasn’t having any of it. He went right to the headmaster, a monk by the name of Brother Carmichael, and told him what had happened.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I never found out exactly what happened in that office, but all I know is that we never saw the kid again.’

  ‘He disappeared?’ Warren was shocked.

  Sutton laughed mirthlessly. ‘Nothing that dramatic. He was expelled. Two days later, the headmaster gave an assembly on how lying was one of the deadly sins and how bearing false witness could ruin the lives of good men and women. He never mentioned the kid by name of course, but we all knew who meant. And all the way through it, I remember this look of smug satisfaction on the face of that bastard English teacher. He’d gotten away with it. At the end of the assembly, as we filed out the hall, I looked back and saw Benson being patted on the back. One of the maths teachers even gave him a hug. It was as if he was the victim.

  ‘So there you go, lesson learnt. They look after their own.’

  Sutton drained his coffee in one gulp, before continuing, a look of grim satisfaction on his face.

  ‘Of course, the fucker couldn’t keep himself out of trouble. Ten years later, he was jailed for molesting his own nephew. He did it from when the kid was six until he turned fourteen and finally told his mum. The bastard even called Brother Carmichael as a character witness, for all the good it did him. Nothing was ever said about the allegations from school – even if anyone did bring them up, I imagine they’d be classed as hearsay and ruled inadmissible – but at least justice of a sort was done.’

  ‘And that was why you left the church?’

  ‘Yeah, pretty much. I stopped going the moment I left school. Later, when I realised something was missing from my life, I couldn’t bring myself to go back to the Catholic Church, so I joined the Church of England. It’s pretty much the same, to be honest, but with different hymns and some of the vicars wear frocks outside church as well as when they are at the pulpit.’

  Warren smiled at the man’s attempt at humour.

  ‘But you must realise that the seal of the confessional holds true in other religious faiths, not just Catholicism? And that the Church of England has its own dirty secrets.’

  ‘Yeah. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though.’

  A thought suddenly struck Warren.

  ‘Tony, what was the name of that kid you went to school with?’

  Sutton smiled.

  ‘I’m ahead of you there. He died about eight years ago from throat cancer. And before you ask, Brother Carmichael died in 1990 and Mr Benson has been pushing up the daisies since 1996. I cross-referenced the residents of the retirement home with priests that worked at my old school, and there were no hits.’

  ‘Oh well, worth a try. It would have been a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?’

  Chapter 81

  By late evening, the suspect column on the whiteboard had a new name.

  ‘Deacon Gabriel Baines. Bishop Fisher’s right-hand man, and the self-described business manager for the retirement home.’ Rachel Pymm gesticulated with a laser pointer as she spoke.

  ‘We started looking at him seriously, when it became obvious that many of the reasons why Rodney Shaw is our prime suspect could also be applied to Baines.’

  She took a sip of water.

  ‘Baines was born in 1956. After a degree in business from Durham university, he took up a position at Merkitt’s Bakery a family-owned company, eventually being promoted to the board. Along the way, he married Erica, the daughter – and heir – of the company’s founder.

  ‘In addition to his work on the board, Gabriel Baines became increasingly involved in his local church. Obviously, as a married man, he couldn’t become a Catholic priest, so he became a deacon, and was ordained in 1997.

  ‘Because of his experience in business, including seeing Merkitt’s through a rather rocky patch during the Nineties’ recession, he volunteered his services to help sort out the finances of his local parish. It was then that he first met Bishop Fisher.’

  ‘When was that?’ asked Sutton.

  ‘Probably about 1999 or 2000.’

  ‘Before the opening of the retirement home then?’

  ‘Yes. That didn’t open until 2004, and it was by working with Baines that Fisher was able to put together a financially sound proposal to both the diocese and English Heritage.’

  ‘So Baines has been a part of the home since the very beginning,’ stated Warren.

  ‘In which case, it’s quite plausible that he knows all about Fisher’s little secret, and probably knows which of the residents have a murky past,’ said Hutchinson. He’d already filled the team in on the details he’d uncovered about Father Madden.

  ‘OK, I get that, but why now? And why the parallels with the original sixteenth-century murders?’ asked Sutton.

  ‘As to why now, it could have been a long time in the planning,’ said Pymm, ‘or perhaps he only found out the identity of those priests relatively recently. In terms of parallels with the original murders, don’t forget I found a suggestion in the notes left behind by Vernon Coombs that he was one of the people that helped him research the abbey’s past. Whatever he found, it was enough for Coombs to make a note that he needed to buy him a pint to say thanks.’

  ‘It’s still a bit circumstantial,’ said Sutton.

  ‘I agree, but he may have form in this area,’ said Warren. ‘Rachel, do you want to continue?’

  ‘In 2003, his father-in-law, the owner of Merkitt’s Bakery, died. His wife had passed away some years previously, which meant that the company went to his only child, Baines’ wife.’

  ‘Are we suggesting that Baines killed his father-in-law to get his company?’ Sutton.

  ‘No. The old man died after his third heart attack in as many years. He was a chain-smoker, overweight and rather too fond of a drink. There was nothing suspicious about his death at all. However, his daughter was grief-stricken and less than a year later, she did die suspiciously.’

  ‘How?’ asked Hutchinson.

  ‘An overdose of prescribed sleeping pills, washed down with whiskey. Baines came home late after midnight mass. He said his wife was already asleep in bed. It wasn’t until he tried to wake her Christmas morning
that he realised she was dead.’

  A ripple went around the room.

  ‘Pills and booze. Sounds familiar,’ said Sutton.

  ‘What did the coroner say?’ asked Hutchinson.

  ‘Inconclusive. There was insufficient evidence to rule whether she deliberately took an overdose or did so by accident. Mrs Baines was known to be having trouble sleeping, and had been depressed since the death of her father, who she was very close to. That Christmas would have been the first one without him.

  ‘On top of that, her marriage to Gabriel Baines was known to be strained, in part due to her excessive drinking. There was some tittle tattle that he may have been growing a little too close to one of his parishioners, but that was never confirmed.

  ‘Rumour has it that he had been trying to get her to attend marriage counselling, but she was reluctant to speak to their priest. Despite her husband’s position within the church, she wasn’t known to be especially religious, and she had openly scoffed at the idea of marriage counselling from an avowed celibate.’

  ‘What happened to the company?’ asked Sutton.

  ‘They had no children, and Mrs Baines herself was an only child, so Gabriel Baines inherited the lot. Six months later, he sold the whole company to their biggest rivals, and pocketed about one-point-two million in cash.’

  Sutton let out a whistle.

  ‘So let’s go through this,’ said Warren. ‘Gabriel Baines has worked with Bishop Fisher since the early days of the retirement home’s founding. Somehow, he finds out about the past of some of the residents. Either Fisher told him, or he found out another way. Then what?’

  ‘At some point, he helps Coombs in his research and realises the irony that five hundred years ago, the abbey suffered from, and covered up, the same sort of abuse that the modern church is still wrestling with,’ said Sutton.

  ‘And so he decides to even the score? Fulfil some sort of karmic cycle?’ suggested Hutchinson. ‘It sounds a bit far-fetched.’

  ‘This whole case is crazy,’ said Sutton.