The Blood That Stains Your Hands (33 page)

A bitter laugh from me. Nothing from him. We walk out the building in silence.

*

I
guess this was how it had to be when I finally came home, when I finally came to sleep in my own bed for the first time since she'd been there. Knackered and drained, no thoughts of alcohol or depression or of the woman I'd decided was the love of my life. No thoughts. Just needing to tumble into the shower, fall into bed.

Walk into the flat, close the door behind me. Jacket on a peg in the hall, walk into the sitting room. Don't turn on the lights. As ever the room is illuminated by the lights from outside. The thought creeps back into my head. Will the girl be here?

She'd wanted me to find her body, right? That was all. She'd wanted to be found, so that her mother could bury her. The thought of her drifts away.

I walk into the middle of the room and stand in silence. Looking out the window. Suddenly my brain, which has been switched off, begins to wake up. But I wish it wouldn't. It has nowhere to go tonight, other than sorrow, the great weight of sadness. All this death, love found and immediately lost, that haunting little girl. And where are we for it all?

One more dead body, one less suspect.

The reflection of the red light on the phone blinks in the window. Have that feeling that comes over me sometimes, the feeling of such desolation that nothing could make it worse. It's never a thought I regret. Usually my mind is so low, so fucking low, that things can't get any worse.

I walk over to the phone. Grace watches me. One new message. I press the button, the crackle of the answering machine fills the room with such a sad sound. Any sound would be sad. The room demands silence.

'Hey...'

Oh, God. The voice jumps happily out into the darkness. Philo. I more or less fall onto the sofa, the crippling punch to the midriff taking the feeling from my legs, from the rest of me.

'Just got in. Thought I'd leave you a message. Another one. I know, you'll be thinking I'm one of those weird...' She laughs. There's a nervous buoyancy about her voice. 'You know... Anyway, it was lovely... gosh, you know that. I'll stop going on. There's some things I need to sort out. I'm involved in this thing, this stupid thing, with... about the churches, bringing the churches back together. David'll be so pissed off if he finds out. Well, that's what I thought. Anyway, I think he might know. He's coming over shortly. That might be the end of me and the church.' Pause. I stare at the red light. 'A lot of things might be coming to an end. Hey, look, I'll see you in a couple of days, OK. You can talk to me.' She laughs again. 'Just wanted to say... you know, just called to say... oh, God, I can't say it after that!' More laughter. 'I love you, Sergeant. There! Said it. OK, OK, I'm going. See you. Bye!'

Click.

––––––––

W
alk back into the office. Still pretty busy for after midnight. Morrow at his desk. Gives me a glance, looks a little longer than is probably polite, nods, head back down.

What's there to see? Dried-in rain, sweat and tears. No jacket.

Straight to Taylor's office. The boss showing no sign of going anywhere. He looks up, a small shake of the head when he sees it's me.

'Your dedication is admirable, Sergeant...'

Close the door behind me, cut him off with the obvious fact that I'm not here to chew the fat. Take my mobile out my pocket. Knowing no other way, I put it on record and held it beside my land line while I replayed the message.

Hearing it the second time wasn't so bad. Had already started putting the walls up. This third time will be a breeze.

'Philo Stewart left me a message the other day, after she got home from my place. I only just listened to it.'

'So, not long before she died?'

I play the recording. Listening to it, but without hearing it. One of those. I know what it says.

He lets it run through, then asks me to play it again. This time I don't even listen. I could recite it, could probably have recited it after the first time I'd heard it. Her voice, soft and funny and insecure and nervous. Her voice, saying words. That's all I hear now.

'David, we presume, is the Reverend Jones down at St Stephen's?'

Nod.

'How would he get to hear about the gang of five? Or six, if we count the dead vicar.'

'That's a lot of people to keep their mouths shut,' I say. 'Who knows what kind of agendas any of them had?'

'The most obvious one to have told him would've been Mrs Stewart, but that message there suggests otherwise, doesn't it? You met this guy?'

'Spoke to him last Sunday.'

'What d'you think?'

'He reminded me of Hitler.'

He makes some sort of rueful acknowledgement of the analogy, then gets to his feet.

'Bugger it, Sergeant. It places him at the scene of one of the crimes. The guy's a suspect. Let's get on to him.'

Taylor heads to the door. Stops as he gets to it, his fingers poised on the handle. Looks at the floor before he says anything. I know what's coming, head it off at the pass before we get into some shit about how I'm feeling.

'I'm fine,' I say.

'You sure?' he says, looking up.

'Come on. Work to do.'

Then Taylor is out the door, me in his wake.

*

H
alf an hour later, seven of us sitting in the small operations room beneath that tangle of whiteboards, a bunfight of names and lines and connections. Middle of the night, nobody tired.

Taylor has just entered, having previously given everyone the instructions to get what they could on Reverend Jones and bring it to the table. Pulls out the seat, sits down.

'We've got definite information that places Jones at one of the crime scenes. Enough to get him in here, enough to be able to get his DNA and hope we can also tie him to, at the very least, the scene of Mrs Christie's death. Not enough for court. What else have we got?'

Looks at DI Gostkowski, the first to his right.

'Phone records?'

'Of course,' she says. 'Of the previous four victims, the only one to have called the Reverend Jones was Mrs Stewart, but that makes sense, as she ran the Bible study group at the church. There were eleven calls in the last two months between them. Nothing from any of the other three. Now, this is interesting. There was a call from a mobile phone, the owner of which we have been unable to identify, to Mrs Stewart on the day of her death. This same number also called the Reverend Forsyth several times over the last few weeks.'

'Bingo,' says Taylor, his voice low, the word barely audible. Not looking at her, scribbling in his notebook.

'If we can tie that phone to Jones...' she says. 'All the better, in fact, if we get a warrant to search his house and find the phone itself.'

'That'd be great. Still not enough in itself, of course, but it certainly has value.'

He nods at Morrow. Morrow shakes his head.

'Nothing from the correspondence of Mrs Henderson. She wrote to him, often, but he never replied. Haven't been able to dig up any connections between the others. I'll need more time with regard to Forsyth. Get onto it in the morning.'

Another nod from the boss. Eyes move onto Eileen Harrison. Hey, the gang's all here. Yep, there are seven of us. There's an adjective to go with that, but I can't quite think of it. The Something Seven... No, it's gone.

Shit. Mind is going. Tired. That's all. Tired with the long day, tired with the feeling of cold and damp, tired with the effort of not thinking about the girl and her body rotting in an unmarked grave for the last forty-seven years, and the strange fact that the grave wasn't unmarked, that there was a quote added to the headstone, and how did that happen? And tired, more than anything, or maintaining the denial, from not thinking about the phone message from Philo, of not thinking about what she said at the end, those three words which she said to me, that I never got to say to her, tired from forcing myself to think of that phone message as evidence rather than the heartbreaking, crushing weight that it actually is.

I stare at the table. People talk. This is how it's been for much of this investigation, after all, isn't it? The inquiry has been continuing, and I've been on the periphery. What's my job supposed to be? My overall job? I have the daily duties as part of an investigation, the go and speak to him and look at the next thing and check whatever piece of paperwork. But it should also be on me to have Taylor's back when it comes to overall perspective. Keeping tabs on everything. Complete overview. I'm his right-hand man on that. I really ought to know everything.

And what do I know? Very, very little. Off chasing my own demons, as usual.

Taylor lays his hands loudly on the table, bringing the meeting to a close. Bringing his detective sergeant to attention. Checks his watch. In a Mexican yawn kind of way, so do most of the rest of us. 1.57 a.m.

'Sorry,' he says, although there's no actual trace of apology in his voice, nor need there be. 'Final push, let's just get at this and nail the fucker. The sergeant and I are going over there now to bring him in. This is what we work to. Give it another hour or two, go home, get a few hours sleep, then back here in the morning. We can get a day off when the job's done. Stephanie, get the paperwork on the go for the house search.'

She nods. Taylor gets up and walks from the room, his usual manner, no unnecessary words, no rousing talk. Doesn't need it. Everyone, fortunately, is a lot more switched on than I am.

––––––––

S
itting in the car, the drive no more than the length of Main Street. He's given a couple of uniforms warning that they should be ready to follow in fifteen minutes. We'll call. Doesn't want to turn up too heavy-handed in the first place, although ultimately he might make the judgment to bring the vicar in with the backup.

'We're remembering this guy might have a gun,' I say, halfway along the road, when the thought suddenly occurs to me that the guy might have a gun.

No Bob on the CD player. Bob doesn't play when you're on your way to make an arrest. Maybe on the way back. If it doesn't go badly. Taylor likes to ease the passage of a suspect into police custody with a bit of Dylan.

'Yes.'

'You don't want to—'

'No,' he says. 'The one way to guarantee turning a discussion into a gunfight, is to take a gun.'

'It could be a bit one-sided,' I say. Just paying due diligence to the discussion. Don't really believe that the guy will be a problem either.

'He won't use a gun,' says Taylor.

The manse for St Stephen's is one up the road from the church. Taylor parks outside and we get out the car. Stand still in the early morning. The darkness of 2 a.m. The air is damp, the ground sodden, but it's not currently raining. Quiet, but for the underlying hum of the nearby city, and lone cars on the motorway, down the hill, away on the other side of the river.

The house is dark, no sign of life in the church, except a night light over a rear entrance.

'There's no family?' says Taylor.

'No.'

Up the garden path, rings the bell, stands back. The quiet beauty of the 2 a.m. bust. So often a dog will start barking at this point, a child will start crying. There will be footsteps on the stairs, locks being thrown, a voice shouting through the door.

Nothing. He looks up at the bedroom window, then rings the bell again.

'Where did you speak to him?' asks Taylor. 'In his office?'

'Yep.'

'Which is in the church?'

Another nod.

'Still at work?'

'Maybe he's one of those Margaret Thatcher types. Only needs two hours of sleep a day.' And even that's taken hanging upside down from a beam in the loft.

Taylor waits another moment or two, and then walks down the road and into the church grounds. Tries the handle of the back door beneath the light. The door's open.

'Somebody's home,' he says, his voice low.

Step lightly into the corridor, close the door behind us. Completely dark inside bar a sliver of light from a barely open door at the end. Having been here before, I know the walls are lined with posters and announcements about the church, drawings from Sunday school, simplistic pictures of Jesus blessing children. The light is coming from his office.

We walk forward, our shoes sounding incredibly loud on the wooden floor. If he's there, he'll hear us coming.

I get to the door first, push it open and walk in, Taylor behind me. Reverend Jones is at his desk, same position in which I previously spoke to him.

'Sergeant,' he says, eyebrow raised. 'I wondered who was calling at such an hour. Seems late to be conducting routine police business.'

Taylor steps forward, holds out his ID.

'DCI Taylor,' he says. 'Can I ask you where you were at six o'clock this evening?'

That's the moment when you intrinsically know if you've got them. Right there. The first hint, out of the blue, that you're on to them. Virtually anyone can prepare for it, but when they don't know it's coming, it takes a real pro to balls it out.

He hesitates. There's the golden moment, the moment when we both think, you fucking, stupid loser, you might as well just give it up right now, and then he waves the hand of deceit to the side and says, 'Here, I think. Yes, yes. Here all along. It's been a long couple of days, what with Mrs Stewart... you know.'

'That must've been hard,' says Taylor, with not an iota of tone in his voice to indicate any empathy with that thought. 'She was the leader of the Bible study group?'

'Of course,' he says.

'When did you see her last?' asks Taylor.

Another hesitation as he pretends to think. As ever, even with someone this calculating, when put on the spot you can see the calculations whirring through his head. How much do the police already know?

If he's got the balls, he has to admit he saw her just before she died. Except, we know he was interviewed by Gostkowski, and said he hadn't seen her since the Sunday. The guy's in a tricky position, but if you're going to commit multiple murder...

'Sunday,' he says. 'At church.'