How the Dead Speak

by Val McDermid

  And God knew there were enough of those in Bradfield, Paula thought. The back streets around Temple Fields and behind Bellwether Square crawled with the flotsam and jetsam of the city. Spice, the drug of choice among the destitute, had hollowed out lives, leaving human husks to stumble around in a haze. People complained the police were failing in their job to keep the streets safe, but what were they supposed to do? There was nowhere for them to take the street people where they could start climbing out of the pit they’d collapsed into. ‘Go on,’ Paula said, when Martinu slowed to a halt.

  ‘So he said that sometimes people died on the streets and there was nobody to claim them. Nobody to give them a decent burial. He said they just got cremated and their ashes scattered like they were rubbish. He said he wanted something better for them. And since the convent was sacred ground, he wanted to bury them here. Only, he’d be breaking the law, taking their bodies away without telling the police or the social services.’ He gnawed at the skin on the side of his thumbnail, his eyes flicking back and forth like a frightened animal.

  ‘He asked you for help?’

  Martinu nodded. ‘He said it wouldn’t happen often. But it does happen, you must know that, in your job. People just die on the streets, and half the time nobody even knows their real name or where they come from. He said when he heard about it happening, there might be times when he’d want to bring them here, so they could have a proper resting place.’

  Steve couldn’t contain himself any longer. He leaned forward, getting in Martinu’s space. ‘And you didn’t think there was anything weird about that? Anything wrong?’

  Martinu grimaced, as if he was fighting tears. But his eyes were dry, Paula noticed. ‘He was a fucking priest. Don’t you get it? You grow up a Catholic, it’s ingrained from birth. The priest can do no wrong. Even when he’s wrong, he’s right. It wasn’t my place to go questioning him. He said it was a kind of blessing, laying them to rest. And all he was asking me to do was dig a hole.’

  ‘How did it work?’ Paula spoke quietly, taking the heat out of the room. ‘Did Father Keenan just turn up with a body?’

  A slow shake of the head. ‘He’d speak to me earlier in the day. Say he’d heard from one of his contacts about a death, that they’d be protecting the body till he could get there. I’d make a grave somewhere in the vegetable garden. There was always somewhere needing cleared out. Then he’d turn up in the evening at my back gate. After dark. He’d drive in, usually with some deadbeat in the passenger seat. I’ve got an old roadworks lantern, the light just comes out in one direction. I used to put that by the grave so they could see it coming from my place but you couldn’t really see it from the convent side.’ He paused again. It was an effort to gather himself.

  Paula waited. Silence could often be the best tool, especially once the accused had broken the seal of their own secret. It was like opening a bag of Maltesers, she thought. Once you’d started, you might kid yourself that you were going to stop. But you couldn’t. ‘I left them to it,’ he said. ‘I never saw the bodies. I suppose they must have been in the boot. Father Keenan would knock on the back door when they’d finished and just say, “That’s us done. God bless you, Jezza.”’

  And so they leaned on him for another hour. Stop, start. Eight bodies, Martinu admitted, though he wasn’t certain about the total. The last one about seven months before. For even though the priest had moved away, he maintained his work with the destitute of Bradfield. No, he couldn’t remember exact dates. He’d given a harsh bark of incredulous laughter at that point. How would he remember the dates?

  Paula had pointed out his obsession with Bradfield Vics; maybe he remembered one of the burials because it was just before or just after a big game?

  At the mention of the club, he’d become agitated. There was, he insisted, no way he paid attention to the dates. He put them out of his mind as soon as they were done with because they made him uneasy. Even though the priest said it was OK, it still made him uncomfortable.

  When they’d started going round in circles, Paula had brought it to a close, leaving Martinu to talk to his lawyer before he was bedded down in a cell for the night. Rutherford had been preening himself all round the incident room, making it clear whose team had scored the breakthrough. Paula was tasked with bringing Father Keenan in for interview first thing.

  Remembering Karim been assigned to interviewing the priest, she went looking for him. He was nowhere to be seen and his interview hadn’t been posted to the incident room. She tried calling him, but his phone went straight to voicemail. No reason to be worried, she told herself. He could have had to hang around waiting for the priest to become available. And worked late enough to feel justified in knocking off for the day. There was no overtime in ReMIT, after all.

  Really, no reason to be worried.

  Paula lifted her head off the steering wheel and drove to the family-run Italian restaurant that was close enough to home to be a regular haven for her and Elinor. That night, they’d arranged to meet a third person for dinner. Paula was almost an hour late, but she knew there would be no recriminations. Elinor and Carol Jordan both understood jobs that required a response to ever-changing circumstances. No overtime for a hospital consultant either.

  During the years when Paula had carried a faintly flickering torch for Carol, it had never crossed her mind to hug her boss. Now that flame was dead, now there was no longer rank between them, whenever they met, it began with a hug. Hugging Carol was a bit like hugging a tree – a slender silver birch, not the thick trunk of an oak, but stiff and unyielding nonetheless – but it was a validation of a friendship. So they embraced, then Paula kissed Elinor on the corner of her mouth and sat down, feeling some of the day fall away from her shoulders.

  ‘We’ve had antipasti,’ Elinor said. ‘And I ordered a family-sized bowl of spaghetti alla nonna to be cooked the moment you walked in.’ She turned and gave the thumbs up to Donatella.

  ‘It’s on its way,’ she called back.

  ‘Thank you.’ Paula let out a long breath and reached for the bottle of Primitivo. Only one glass gone so far, and the remains of that in front of Elinor. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the bottle of San Pellegrino next to Carol. Always a relief.

  ‘You’ll have had quite a day,’ Carol said. ‘Elinor said you were working the bones at the convent. I was surprised, I didn’t think it would be ReMIT territory.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be, normally. Not without evidence of suspicious death, which we all know wouldn’t come till the anthros have had their way with the bones. But Rutherford wanted it and he trampled over Alex Fielding to get it.’

  Carol winced. ‘He may live to regret that.’

  ‘Annoyingly, it’s just as well he did. We’ve not gone public with it yet but there’s another set of remains that are quite distinct from the original discovery.’ Paula reached for the last couple of olives in the bowl.

  ‘That’s weird,’ Elinor said. ‘Do you think they’re connected? Like, someone who knew about the first bodies deciding that was a good place to hide their victim?’

  ‘Victims, plural.’ Paula shrugged. ‘We don’t know yet.’

  ‘It would be an extraordinary coincidence if not. And—’ Carol gave a wry grin as she and Paula chorused, ‘We don’t like coincidence.’

  ‘It’s a strange one,’ Paula said. ‘And here comes heaven,’ she added as Donatella arrived with a steaming bowl of pasta. The aroma made Paula’s mouth fill with saliva.

  The three women took it in turn to exclaim and serve themselves. Carol spooned grated pecorino over her food and said, almost casually, ‘You must miss Tony at a time like this.’

  ‘Not just at a time like this. I’m due to see him soon, I’ll see if he has any interesting insights to point us in the right direction.’ Everyone had their eyes on their plates in a rare moment when discretion trumped curiosity.

  Eating consumed them for a few minutes, then Carol said, ‘Bronwen Scott turned up at my place
the other day.’

  Paula raised her eyebrows, a forkful of pasta halfway to her mouth. ‘What on earth did she want?’

  ‘She’s part of an informal group of professionals running their own small-scale version of the Innocence Project. Working on miscarriages of justice. They call themselves After Proven Guilty. As in—’

  ‘Yeah, I get it,’ Paula chipped in with a wry smile. ‘Innocent until proven guilty,’ she added for Elinor’s benefit.

  ‘In one.’ Carol sipped her water. ‘She wants me on board.’

  ‘That’s a no-brainer,’ Elinor said. ‘That’s right up your street, isn’t it?’

  Carol gave a one-shoulder shrug. ‘I don’t know. I always said you’re only as good as your team. I’ve no idea whether I can cut it as a solo player.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that. Has she dangled something in front of you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ And between mouthfuls, she told them about Saul Neilson and Lyle Tate.

  ‘No body and circumstantial,’ Paula said. ‘Getting a conviction must have been tricky.’

  Elinor put down her fork. ‘I guess that makes overturning it so much harder.’

  Carol gave her a considering look. ‘Is that the sound of a gauntlet being slapped down?’

  Paula groaned. ‘What have you done, Doc? Carol Jordan and Bronwen Scott? The last time you two worked together you nearly destroyed Bradfield Metropolitan Police.’

  Carol grinned. ‘Better run for the hills, Paula.’

  *

  Half a bottle of Primitivo and a complimentary grappa meant leaving the car outside the restaurant. Carol offered to drive them home but their polite excuses tumbled over each other – ‘It’s out of your way,’ ‘It’s no distance,’ ‘I need the fresh air.’ And so Elinor and Paula walked companionably back through deserted streets, still holding hands after all those years, swapping the inconsequential conversational exchanges of two people who know what the other is thinking and feeling about most things.

  ‘It’s good to see Carol doing what she’s best at,’ Elinor said.

  ‘I suppose. I was hoping she’d maybe find something else to be good at. I don’t like to think of her hankering after the life she can’t have any more.’

  ‘She’s lost so much, Paula. She needs something to anchor her to her old self while she works out what her new one is. She’s clearly trying to sort herself out so she can find a way back to Tony. Before you arrived, she admitted she’s seeing a therapist who specialises in treating PTSD.’

  Paula squeezed Elinor’s hand. ‘That’s good news. Let’s hope it helps.’

  ‘I thought she seemed a bit more relaxed this evening. And she’s not drinking.’

  ‘Unlike me.’ Paula gave a wry laugh. ‘A day like today, a decent glass of wine feels like a lifeline to normality. I was looking at those crime scene pics and thinking if Torin hadn’t pitched up with us, he could have ended up like one of those kids. Stuck in some abusive institution or living on the streets. Doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘I know.’ Elinor sighed. ‘I see them all the time in A&E. Young kids, wrecked from drugs and street life. The older ones who’re pretty much derelict from drink and homelessness. Some of them come in just for a place to sit and be warm in the middle of the night. Some of them are having mental health episodes. And some of them are too far gone for us to be of any use. Did you know that homeless people have a life expectancy that’s thirty years less than the rest of us? If we’d been homeless for the last ten years, Paula, we’d be at death’s door.’

  Before Paula could reply, her ringtone cut through the background city hum. She let go Elinor’s hand to dig it out of her pocket. Glancing at the screen, she said, ‘Sorry, I’ve got to . . . ’

  Elinor walked on a few steps, and as Paula raised the phone to her ear, she felt an unexpected jolt of love as she took in her partner, long black hair gleaming under the street light, the familiar planes and angles of her lovely face as striking as when she’d first seen them. She turned away as Karim’s voice spoke. ‘Boss? I just got your message.’

  ‘Where are you? What happened with the priest? Why haven’t you been in touch? Or filed a report?’ She rattled the questions at him without giving him a chance to reply.

  ‘I came home, boss. It was late, there was nothing to say.’

  ‘What? You didn’t see the priest?’

  ‘Yeah, I saw him. But he had nothing useful to say. He knew about the graves but as far as he was concerned, the deaths were all natural and he didn’t take any part in the actual burials. He denied all knowledge of any abuse by the nuns. Boss, he totally had nothing helpful to say.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Karim. You should have filed your report. What did he say when you asked him about the second group of remains?’ A moment’s silence. Paula felt the tension released by the wine reassert itself in her neck. ‘Karim? What did he say?’

  ‘I didn’t get the chance to ask him.’ He sounded sheepish.

  ‘What do you mean, you didn’t get the chance? You were interviewing him, Karim.’

  ‘He chucked me out. He got pissed off with the questions, he didn’t like the implication that bad things had been happening and he’d been part of them. He told me it was over and he just walked out of the room.’

  ‘And you let him?’ Paula’s voice rose almost to a yelp.

  ‘What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t go chasing him through his own house. He’s just a witness, boss. I didn’t have any power to detain him.’

  ‘He’s not just a witness, Karim. He’s a person of interest. The groundsman, Martinu? He gave up Father bloody Keenan when we interviewed him earlier. If you’d phoned in like you should have, you’d be sitting outside his house right now, making sure he doesn’t do a runner.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ Karim whispered.

  ‘Oh, shit is right, Karim. So you’re going back there first thing in the morning with me and we are going to bring him in. I want you outside my house at six a.m. With a decent cup of coffee and a bacon roll. And meanwhile, get your fucking report filed with the incident room and start praying Rutherford doesn’t find out how comprehensively you’ve bollocksed this up.’

  36

  Some people discover they have a talent for music or painting. Pursuing it gives them a mission in life. Unfortunately, some people discover they have a talent for violence and their mission brings misery to everyone around them. Part of the problem is that we all like to have a sense of purpose; it’s hard to turn your back on something you’re good at.

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  It turned out that Matis Kalvaitis wasn’t just a good fighter. He was also a good publicist. Writing the draft appeal against his deportation had occupied Tony for a couple of days. He’d done some research in the prison library. It had an interesting if random collection of law books, which the prisoner on library duty had described as ‘the DIY section’. He’d found what he needed to put together a letter that he thought covered the bases, attaching a note that made it clear what additional information was needed and where it should go. He’d handed it over at the first opportunity and let it slide from the front of his mind, which was by then occupied with writing a chapter on misogyny.

  The next morning, when he’d returned from breakfast, three prisoners were hanging around on the landing outside his cell. He felt the sudden fizz of adrenaline. Had he pissed someone off? Was this a punishment crew? Before he could turn and walk away, one of them called to him. ‘Don’t freak out, Doc. It’s not what you think. Well, not yet, anyway.’

  It turned out that Kalvaitis had been so impressed with what Tony had done that he’d told all his mates. Who had told all their mates. Not only did the shrink write good English, he had nice handwriting too. The kind of writing that would impress a woman, or cheer up a kid or make you look like you weren’t a complete loser.

  Three inmates, three demands. A letter to a landlord demanding that he fix the troublesome toilet in the fl
at where the man’s girlfriend and three kids were living; a birthday message to a mother; and a bedtime story for a three-year-old daughter. ‘It doesn’t have to be long, or fancy. Just a little bit of a story that her mum can read to her.’

  Tony was nonplussed. He hadn’t written a story since his third year at high school. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, dubious. ‘Why can’t you read her a story down the phone?’

  The man’s hands had clenched into fists. ‘If I could . . . ’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s fucking impossible to get on the phone at the right time, you know what it’s like. No point in a bedtime story at three o’clock, is there?’

  And Tony understood. It wasn’t the story that was the issue, it was the reading. He couldn’t write a story because he couldn’t write. He couldn’t read to his daughter because he couldn’t read. ‘I’ll try,’ he said. ‘What does she like?’

  ‘Princesses and space rockets,’ the man muttered. ‘I’ll pay you in phone cards.’

  Which would be fine, Tony thought, if he had anyone to phone. He wasn’t without friends. Paula and Elinor had become close in recent years. He and Torin were mates, going to Bradfield Vics and hanging out on his narrowboat together. And then there was Carol . . . But he’d always struggled with talking on the phone. He felt at a disadvantage when he couldn’t see people’s body language, gauge the changing messages of their faces. Besides, what could he talk about? ‘Thanks,’ he said. At least phone cards were currency. He’d find something he wanted to trade them for.

  But the encounter made him think. He suspected these wouldn’t be the last things he’d be asked to write. As he pushed his laundry basket round the wing, he mulled it over. And remembered hearing about a scheme to combat violent crime he’d read about in a psychology journal. One of the key points where changes in behaviour could be effected, the article said, was when violent men became fathers. They longed to be proper fathers but they didn’t know how; either their fathers had been absent or they’d been abusive in a terrifying range of ways.