Eleven Days (26 page)

Roger Holden was on the phone, laughing at something in a booming baritone as he watched Carrigan and Miller barge into his office, his expression unaltered except for a quickly subsumed frown.

‘I would say what a pleasant surprise, Inspector.’ Holden put down the phone. ‘But somehow, I don’t think this is going to be all that pleasant.’

‘That would be entirely up to you,’ Carrigan replied.

Holden looked down at the folder on his table then carefully closed it. ‘Yes, quite,’ he answered. ‘May I ask how the investigation is going?’

‘As well as can be expected,’ Carrigan said. ‘We’re just trying to tie up some loose ends and there are a few questions you can help us with.’

Holden smiled but this time there was no warmth to it. ‘Fine, but I’m afraid we’ll have to keep this short. I have a video conference with the Vatican all day tomorrow and I need to prepare . . .’

‘Why did you lie to us?’ Geneva interrupted.

Holden turned towards her. His face was expressionless but a small muscle jumped under his right eyelid. ‘I don’t believe I lied to you, Miss . . . ?’

‘It’s Detective Sergeant Miller, as you well know,’ Geneva replied, taking a thick handful of papers from her bag. She took her time shuffling through them. They’d talked about their strategy on the way over. She would present her latest findings on the nuns, press Holden for why the church was covering up, and then Carrigan would come in swinging with the final blow. She took a little more time than was necessary finding the right papers and coughed and took off her glasses and wiped them on her blouse and put them back on. ‘You told us you only had a minor argument over theology with the convent but that wasn’t true, was it?’

Holden twirled the ring on his finger, mouth pursed. ‘What exactly do you mean, Miss Miller? I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific if you expect me to answer you.’

Geneva bit the inside of her lip. Since talking to Father Spaulding she’d been doing further research, staying up late, long scratchy hours on the Internet, waste-of-time phone calls, digging and delving into old files and dusty archives. ‘You said that it was a minor dispute but I’ve heard it was much more serious than that.’ She passed over a photocopied page of the
Catholic Tribune
from last July. ‘It says here that the convent was involved in a dispute not only with the diocese but also with their own order. It says the dispute went up the chain all the way to the Vatican.’

Holden considered her silently for a moment. ‘And you believe everything you read in the press?’

‘No, Mr Holden, I do not. Which is why I sent an official request for information to both the Vatican and the order’s headquarters in Rome. I didn’t think they would get back to me but they did. I was told that the convent, Mother Angelica in particular, had been censured three times in the last five years. When I dug a little deeper, I discovered that there’s a motion floating around the Vatican to excommunicate the nuns. It looks as if – had the nuns not been murdered – they would have been excommunicated from the church at the beginning of the new year.’ She passed across the relevant papers and typed transcripts. Holden picked them up and perused them slowly, stroking his chin and nodding his head as he did so.

‘You must understand that we in the church like to keep things in house,’ he finally said. ‘I imagine it’s not too different from the police force. You have your own internal investigation department and so do we; likewise we do not publicise every little coming and going within the church.’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

The edge of Holden’s mouth crumpled slightly. ‘Yes, the convent was under investigation and yes, there was a motion for excommunication that the order was going to vote on after Christmas, but I can’t see how that has anything to do with your case.’

‘Everything that happens has something to do with the case,’ Geneva said. ‘And the fact you lied to us in the initial interview is something we do not forget. You made this seem as if the nuns were just innocent victims of some crazed arsonist – wrong time, wrong place – yet the more we find out the more that theory flies in the face of every bit of evidence. The nuns had secrets, Mr Holden. These secrets leave traces. We’re giving you one last chance to explain before we take this further.’

Holden stared at her, a silent calculation clicking away in his eyes. ‘What exactly did you want to know?’

Geneva smiled to herself, relieved and a little surprised that she’d read him right. ‘What did the nuns do to get themselves excommunicated?’

‘They took things into their own hands,’ Holden said, and this time there was something else in his expression other than the usual disdain. He blinked, then pressed a button and told his secretary to hold all calls for the next fifteen minutes. ‘I wasn’t lying when I said it was a matter of theology.’ He leaned forward, sighing, his arms crossed in front of him. ‘Mother Angelica was stationed for several years in South America. I’m sure your research has led you to an understanding of this thing called liberation theology? Mother Angelica became too involved in the worldly sphere when she was in Peru. She got herself into a little trouble and had to be transferred.’

‘You’re talking about the Chiapeltec massacre?’ Geneva pulled out a set of grainy black-and-white photos and spread them across the table. ‘I would call that more than a little trouble.’

‘There were death threats against her,’ Holden conceded. ‘We moved her to England to save her life.’

‘And to save your reputations, right? You put her here, right under your noses where she couldn’t get into trouble.’

‘You really don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?’ Holden said, a slight amusement in his tone. ‘You have no idea.’

‘Then tell us.’

‘We had to relocate Mother Angelica because of the death threats. I wasn’t lying about that.’

‘Death threats from whom? The government?’

Holden nodded. ‘There was that, but we were more worried about the threats coming from the other side, from the workers and survivors of Chiapeltec.’

Geneva felt something in her chest pop. ‘Why . . . why would they want to kill her?’

‘You know about the bomb which killed all those people, derailed the strike and led to the massacre? We got word that rumours, credible rumours at that, were spreading through the villages that Mother Angelica had brought in the Scarlet Fire. That she’d okayed the use of the bomb. We had no idea whether this was true or not but it was enough that people believed it to be so. We had to get her out of there.’

Geneva sat back, stunned. She let the words run through her brain and nothing in there contradicted them. ‘Do you think it’s possible what happened at the convent is a direct consequence of that?’

Holden shrugged. ‘People kill each other for nothing, Detective Sergeant, you know that. For something like this, who’s to say?’

‘So, you brought her back here to get her out of harm’s way, but it didn’t work, did it?’

Holden leaned back, eyes plagued with useless hindsight and careful deliberation. ‘We monitored her closely and, for many years, it seemed that the change of location had served its purpose. Mother Angelica poured herself into outreach work, into helping the homeless and drug-sick and many other worthy causes. The church lifted the censure, happy that she’d focused her liberationist tendencies on more fruitful ground.

‘Then we began to hear rumours. That she was recruiting nuns who’d fought alongside her at Chiapeltec. That she was withdrawing from her missionary work. That she’d finally finished the book she’d been working on for so many years.

‘One of the nuns who left the convent after a dispute with Mother Angelica told us about this book – a calculus of violence – a mathematical procedure which would tell you whether violence in any particular situation was justified or not. You can imagine the furore this caused when news of its contents leaked out. The church does not sanction violence under almost any circumstances, certainly not violence by an individual.’ Holden shook his head, in resignation, despair or disapproval, Geneva couldn’t tell. Maybe all three. ‘What these people failed to understand was that Jesus was not some bearded anarchist liberator saving the oppressed from the tyranny of the state, but a spiritual liberator who saved them from the tyranny of their own hearts.

‘We approached Mother Angelica and voiced our concerns but she wouldn’t listen to us. She was called to the order’s headquarters in the Vatican and told about the excommunication ruling. She refused to recant the book’s teachings and stop publication. The excommunication was only a formality after that.’

‘This was all about a book?’ Geneva said, surprised, despite herself, at what some people chose to stake their lives on.

Holden laughed. ‘Isn’t everything?’ He sipped carefully from his glass. ‘The difference here is that Mother Angelica’s book wasn’t theoretical – it was meant to be used as an instruction manual in direct action. Its publication would have been a severe embarrassment to the church.’

‘More so than what they were doing in Peru?’

Holden stared at Geneva. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.’

‘No, of course not,’ Geneva replied. ‘We, however, do know that Father McCarthy was involved in running a compound in rural Peru that the convent was funding. We know Emily Maxted met him there.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Holden replied. ‘Our remit is London, not Peru or anywhere else.’

‘Still, kind of convenient for you that they all disappeared in a puff of smoke,’ Carrigan said.

 Holden turned slowly towards him, his face pale and rigid. ‘What, exactly, are you insinuating?’

‘I’m not insinuating anything, I’m just making a statement. The excommunication of the nuns would have been bad press – and you’ve had a lot of bad press recently. This solves the problem rather neatly.’

‘You’re not seriously suggesting . . .’ Holden paused. ‘I’m going to speak to ACC Quinn about this. He’s a good friend of the bishop, as you well know. It’ll be interesting to see what he has to say about your theories.’

‘At this point,’ Carrigan continued, knowing he was almost halfway there, ‘all we know is that these nuns of yours were not the perfect, saintly beings you made them out to be. They made enemies in South America. Five of them had been tortured for their beliefs. They were involved in things we’re only just beginning to grasp. And we now have strong indications that this may have led to their deaths.’ He paused, watching Holden carefully. ‘The eleventh victim, Emily Maxted, was spending a lot of time at the convent. She even slept in a room downstairs. We need to know why she was a regular visitor and what she was doing there that particular night. We know she knew Father McCarthy. He’s the only one left alive who knows what linked Emily and the nuns. And you keep telling us he’s unavailable, on retreat, whatever. It almost sounds like you’re trying to cover something up. We need to speak to him, Mr Holden.’

Holden’s gaze drifted to the grey filing cabinets lined up against the far wall, then back towards the two detectives as he considered this, or pretended to be considering it, his fingers tapping against the armrest. ‘No,’ he finally said. ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge his whereabouts. I suppose you could try and get a warrant but you’ll have to go through ACC Quinn first.’

‘I thought you’d say that,’ Carrigan replied. ‘So, you see, we have a back-up plan . . .’

‘Back-up plan?’

‘We need to find Father McCarthy and we need to find him ASAP. As you’re not willing to give us the information, we have no choice but to go public with our inquiries.’ He stopped and waited, faintly aware that he was holding his breath.

‘Public? Do you mean . . . ?’

Carrigan tried not to smile. ‘A full press conference, this time telling the public everything we know about the nuns.’

‘You can’t do that.’ Holden was leaning forward, his arms clenched against the table, fingers pressing tight against the edges.

‘It’s the only option you’ve left us with.’

‘What . . . what are you going to say?’

‘Exactly what we have. That we believe the nuns were sheltering escaped prostitutes. That they were running a safe house for these women and that the Albanians weren’t particularly happy with this turn of events and burned down the convent to teach them a lesson.’

Holden’s face had gone white. The phone on the table started ringing but he barely looked at it. ‘Whores?’

‘We believe the nuns were no longer happy to feed the homeless or minister to the junk-sick, that they had stepped up their “work” and were running a shelter for escaped women, women who’d been trafficked as sex slaves.’

‘Oh my God,’ Holden said, his head collapsing into his hands.

‘You can imagine what the papers will do,’ Carrigan continued, feeling the crackle and buzz running through each word. ‘Full-page spreads, shocked commentaries, calling you up non-stop for quotes. With Christmas only a few days away, this will be their big story. Now, I know how much bad press the church has garnered over the last few years, seems you can’t open a paper any more without reading about a paedophile priest or some former altar boy suing the pope. As press officer for the diocese, I’m sure it’s the last thing you or your bosses would want.’

Holden stared at Carrigan, motionless as a marble statue. He finally looked down at the table and picked up the phone. He spoke briefly to his secretary then typed something on his keyboard. ‘I have to step out for a moment. I’m sure you two can see yourselves out.’ He stood up, looked down at them, frowned and left the room.

Carrigan got up, closed the door and walked over to the row of filing cabinets lined up against the far wall.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Each time I mentioned Father McCarthy’s whereabouts, Holden glanced in this direction,’ he explained, pulling open the top drawer of the nearest cabinet. The metal screeched against the sides, making Geneva jump. ‘Keep an eye on the corridor,’ Carrigan told her as he bent over the cabinet and started flicking through the folders.

She opened the door and looked out, then ducked back in. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said, but he could hear the lack of conviction in her tone.