Evil Intent (13 page)

They had a long way to go before they had reached the bottom of this case, he realised. It was early days yet, but they had a very long way to go. For one thing, they were dealing with the Church, with too many people who had a vested interest in keeping the lid on unpleasant truths.

He switched on his mobile phone, listened to a couple of messages, and checked in briefly with the station. The body had been formally identified; the post-mortem would be held shortly, and they were of course expected to be there. He imparted the information to the sergeant, who nodded.

‘Where now, Guv?’ asked Cowley, adding hopefully, ‘Could we grab a bite to eat somewhere?’

Neville looked at his watch: it was getting on for teatime, and they
hadn’t
had any lunch. In fact, all that stood between him and the meal he’d had at the pub the night before was a packet of crisps which he’d got from a machine in the hospital. As if reminded, his stomach gave a rumble.

From his pocket he took the list which Leo Jackson had written for him, and studied it. There were nearly a dozen names on the list, all of whom had to be interviewed. All of whom, he noted gloomily, were Reverends. It was going to be a long night.

‘I don’t think we’ll have time for anything like that,’ he stated. ‘Not if we want to be on time for the post-mortem, plus do all these interviews.’

‘But, Guv…’

‘All right, then,’ he relented as Cowley’s stomach echoed his own. ‘Let’s see if we can find a chippie that’s open.’

‘There’s a sushi bar in Paddington Station,’ Cowley suggested. ‘That
would be quick.’

‘Sushi bar?’ He turned and stared at the sergeant in amazement.

‘It’s quite tasty,’ Cowley said defensively, flushing to the roots of his close-cropped blond hair.

Sid Cowley, a fan of sushi? Raw fish, and poncy bits of rice? Wonders, Neville told himself, would never cease.

Callie tried to ring Frances, but found Frances’ mobile wasn’t switched on. She left a brief message to ring her at home.

She didn’t know what to think about Father Jonah’s death. Jane Stanford had imparted the bare facts: he’d been found dead in the vestry of Leo’s church, and it was definitely murder. On her return home, her answer phone held a brief message from Leo, with the same information. He was, evidently, ringing round to all the clergy in the Deanery, or at least those who had been present at the meeting the night before.

She tried to apply herself to her sermon, but was even less focused, more distracted, than she’d been in the morning. So when her doorbell rang she left her desk with some relief.

It was her brother. ‘Thought I’d take a chance on you being in, Sis,’ he announced airily. ‘I have a gig not far from here, a bit later, and was hoping you might be able to give me a bite to eat.’

‘You could have rung,’ she said, trying to sound severe. ‘What if I
hadn’t
been here?’

Peter was unrepentant. ‘I would have gone round the corner and found a caff. But you
are
here, aren’t you? So it’s okay.’

Callie sighed in mock exasperation and went through to the kitchen, Peter trailing behind.

The contents of her fridge were not promising: she hadn’t exactly had a great deal of time to shop for food. There
were
eggs, though, and a
packet
of cheese. ‘Omelette?’ she suggested. It was a favourite standby for her, one of her few culinary specialities.

‘Perfect.’

Peter straddled a kitchen chair, back to front, and watched her as she broke the eggs into a bowl and whisked them. ‘So, Sis. How is your first
week going, then?’

This time her sigh was perfectly genuine. ‘Well, apart from having to see Adam, and apart from being verbally attacked by a priest who thinks…thought…women clergy are the scum of the earth, and then
having
him turn up murdered, it’s been just fine.’

‘Murdered? You’re joking!’

She delved in the drawer beneath the hob and found the frying pan. ‘I wish I were.’

‘Did
you
do it, then?’

‘Certainly not.’ While the frying pan heated, Callie grated a handful of cheese. ‘Though I suppose I had good reason.’

‘Hmm,’ said Peter thoughtfully. ‘Who was he, then? I wonder if he was anyone I knew?’

‘Why should you know him? He was a priest, not a musician.’

Peter laughed. ‘Oh, come on, Sis. I’m gay, right? And this is London. I probably know more priests than
you
do.’

‘Very funny.’ She made a wry face at him.

‘Seriously.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘his name was Father Jonah. Jonah Adi-something. He was Nigerian. That’s about all I know about him.’

‘Doesn’t sound familiar,’ he said, almost regretfully. ‘And I think I would have remembered someone like that.’

Callie dropped a knob of butter into the frying pan and swirled it round as it melted and sizzled, then poured in the beaten eggs. At that moment the doorbell rang again.

‘I’ll get it, shall I?’ Peter suggested helpfully.

‘Thanks.’

He was back in the kitchen a minute later, just as the eggs were
beginning
to set. ‘Police,’ he whispered with a melodramatic raising of his
eyebrows.
‘They want to talk to you, Sis.’

She should have expected it, but her stomach plummeted in instinctive dread. ‘Oh, great.’

‘They seem very nice, though,’ Peter added reassuringly. ‘Not bad looking, either of them. In fact, the younger one is quite cute.’ He grinned.

‘Has any one ever told you that you’re incorrigible?’

‘Frequently.’

The police would just have to wait a minute or two, Callie decided. Unrushed, she sprinkled the cheese over the eggs and watched it melt. At just the right moment, with skill and timing born of experience, in one fluid movement she flipped one half over the other and slid the
perfectly-cooked
omelette onto a plate. She set it on the kitchen table and beckoned her brother. ‘Eat.’ Only then, her heart fluttering with apprehension, did she go through to the sitting room to face the police.

In the absence of any family, Father Vincent Underwood was the one who made the formal identification of Jonah Adimola’s body, as well as supplying the police with a photo of the dead man, taken at last year’s Patronal Festival. In the afternoon a junior police officer had called at the house and asked him to accompany him to the morgue. It had been a deeply upsetting experience for him, and he was glad that he didn’t have to go back out that evening.

Vincent and Marigold Underwood rarely spent an evening together at home; he often had church business to attend to, in his study or elsewhere, and she not infrequently went out with friends. That night, though, she declared that she was coming down with a cold, and cancelled her plans for a bridge evening at Beatrice’s.

Indeed, her eyes were puffy and her voice hoarse, Vincent observed. Her nose appeared to be running as well; she continued to dab at it with a handkerchief, blowing it periodically.

She had also lost her appetite. ‘You should eat something,’ Vincent urged her, but she pushed the food round on her plate listlessly. Neither one of them seemed much inclined to conversation.

By unspoken agreement, they both descended to the kitchen and sat in front of the television set, Marigold in the old arm chair and Vincent pulling up a kitchen chair a short distance away.

Wordlessly they sat through two tired old sitcoms with loud laugh tracks, repeated for the umpteenth time, followed by a cutting-edge drama in which young people with ugly haircuts and uglier clothes spoke in incomprehensible accents and did things together which the Underwoods
had never even contemplated. Then the news came on.

It was a short item near the end of the broadcast, during the section
devoted
to local news. The footage shown was the same that Vincent had seen
earlier:
the church, the crime-scene tape, the voice-over about the murder. This time, though, they identified the murdered man as Jonah Adimola, curate of St Mary the Virgin, Marble Arch, and ended with a few words from a police spokesman. ‘This was an horrific crime,’ he stated. ‘No arrests have been made. We are pursuing our enquiries. If anyone has information relating to this case, please contact the Metropolitan Police on the following number…’

Marigold blew her nose and swallowed hard, looking down at her lap. ‘Terrible,’ she whispered, so quietly that it seemed as if she didn’t mean to be overheard.

Vincent was touched. Marigold didn’t really know Jonah; her contact with his curate had been so infrequent, so impersonal, that she must
surely
be experiencing emotion on
his
behalf. For Vincent to lose his curate like this was most unfortunate, and it pleased him that his wife realised the extent of his loss.

‘Terrible isn’t the word,’ he stated portentously. ‘I just don’t know what I shall do without him. This is a large parish. I can’t possibly run it without a curate.’

She raised her eyes. ‘What…’

‘I’ll ring the Bishop in the morning,’ Vincent decided. ‘And the Archdeacon. I’ll tell them that they’ll need to sort it out.’

The weather girl was now predicting a beautiful day tomorrow,
gesturing
at bright orange suns dotted over the outline of the country.

Vincent switched off the television, then looked at his wife. She was definitely coming down with something unpleasant; her colour wasn’t at all good. ‘Marigold, my dear,’ he said, all solicitude. ‘Shall I fix you a whisky with lemon and honey? That will help you to sleep.’

She hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes. That would be good,’ she said huskily. ‘Thank you, Vincent. You’re very…kind to me.’

It was late evening before Frances made contact with Leo. Every time she tried to ring, his line was engaged, until finally she heard his voice, weary
and verging on hoarseness.

‘Oh, thank God, Leo,’ she said.

‘Frannie?’

‘I’ve been trying for hours.’

‘I’ve had to ring round all the clergy,’ Leo explained. ‘And everyone wants the whole story. I’m sick and tired of repeating myself.’

‘The police…’

‘They’ve been to see you, then? Did you get my message first?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘They came to the hospital, while my mobile was still switched off.’

Leo swore, an Anglo-Saxon expletive which would have sounded shocking from the mouth of almost any other clergyman. ‘What did they ask you? What did they tell you?’ he added. ‘And what did you tell
them
?’

They compared notes and discovered that they had received pretty much the same information from the police, and had given them
corroborating
accounts of the evening’s events.

‘Thank God for that,’ Leo said. ‘And you didn’t say anything about…’

‘About Oliver? No, Leo – of course not. He doesn’t have anything to do with this. And besides,’ she assured him, ‘I just wouldn’t. You should know that.’

‘I do, pet. It’s just that…well, they asked me whether I was alone last night. You know – if there was anyone who could vouch for my alibi, after I’d taken you home. And I said that I was. Alone, that is.’

Frances groaned. ‘So you lied to the police.’

‘I had to,’ he stated. ‘I’m not proud of myself, but I didn’t feel I had a choice.’

‘I’m sure it’s not important.’ She tried to sound confident, reassuring. ‘You don’t need an alibi, anyway. Why should you? They can’t suspect you, surely.’ Then her confidence faltered, and she finished on an uncertain note. ‘Can they?’

Surprisingly – perhaps it was the whisky – Marigold fell into a sound sleep almost as soon as her head met the pillow. Her dreams were formless at first, unmemorable, then she seemed to open her eyes to see her father
standing beside her bed, so real and solid that she felt she could reach out and touch him. ‘It will be all right, Marigold,’ he said in a soothing voice. ‘I’ll sort it. Believe me, sweetheart. No one will ever know.’

Marigold struggled to consciousness, fighting off the mists of sleep, finding herself feverish and tangled in the bedclothes. She switched on the bedside lamp.

No, her father wasn’t there. How could he be? He’d been dead for twenty-five years. He couldn’t sort it. Not this time. No one could sort it this time.

Breathing hard, almost gasping for breath, she turned off the lamp and lay in the darkness, straightening the damp sheets and trying to make
herself
comfortable. But sleep eluded her after that, and for hours she thrashed around, enmeshed in her own misery, tears dampening her pillow.

Callie was anxious to see Frances, to talk to her face to face, but that would have to wait: on Thursday morning she was scheduled to have what was to be a weekly staff meeting with Brian Stanford, and she couldn’t very well cancel that in her very first week.

She went round to the vicarage and was met at the door by Jane, who must have known she was coming but who regarded her with suspicion.

‘Brian is expecting me,’ Callie stated.

‘Yes.’ Jane opened the door wider to let her pass. ‘He’s in his study.’

Callie went through to find Brian reading the morning paper. He shut and folded it it as soon as she entered.

‘Here. Have a seat.’ He gestured to a comfortable leather chair, the twin of the one in which he sat.

Jane, who had followed Callie, hovered at the door. ‘Would you like some coffee now?’ she addressed her husband.

He looked at his watch. ‘Perhaps a bit later, dear.’

She retreated with a fixed smile, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Callie had been out first thing in the morning to buy a newspaper, and though the murder was mentioned on its inner pages, the story contained no more information than had been on the evening news. She nodded towards Brian’s paper. ‘Not very informative,’ she said. ‘Have you heard any more? Have the police been to see you?’

He pressed his thin lips together repressively. ‘I don’t really think we should talk about it, Callie. It’s too serious a matter for idle speculation.’

The implied rebuke stung, yet in a way she was relieved. The murder had so dominated her thoughts; a distraction at this point was to be
welcomed.

‘Fine,’ she said meekly. ‘What shall we talk about, then?’

‘Well.’ He tented his fingers. ‘I’d like this weekly meeting to be a useful one for us both – a sort of a debriefing, if you like. I hope you’ll feel free to ask me any questions you have about the parish, about the people in it, about things that may have happened to you. Tell me about your
experiences,
your expectations. And there is a practical side to it as well – we can
use it as a planning session. For instance, it’s none too soon to start talking about Christmas.’

‘Christmas?’ she echoed. Christmas was so far from her mind that it seemed a complete non sequitur.

‘Christmas. We need to plan the services, decide what your role will be – that sort of thing.’ He leaned over to his desk and retrieved his diary. ‘I hope you’ve brought your diary. It will be an essential part of these
meetings.’

To her relief, she had it in her handbag.

‘Now. Christingle,’ Brian said, thumbing through the back pages of his diary.

A quarter of an hour later, Jane again appeared at the door. ‘I’ve made your coffee,’ she announced, bringing in a tray.

Brian, deep in discourse about the Nine Lessons and Carols, looked annoyed, but he thanked his wife and indicated where she should put the tray.

‘I do hope that’s all right,’ said Jane.

‘I’m sure it will be fine, dear.’

She seemed inclined to linger, but Brian waited pointedly for her to go, his finger marking the place in his diary. Eventually she went, with a little flounce and a clearing of her throat.

Why, Callie wondered, was Jane behaving like that? What did she think Callie was going to do in her absence – seduce her unattractive,
middle-aged
husband?

Callie was still bemused when she left the vicarage. Jane had managed two more interruptions, to collect the coffee tray and to ask Brian when he might be finished with the meeting. She had even extracted a promise from him that he would take her out to lunch when Callie had gone.

On the way back to her flat, Callie made a detour via the nearest shop. Peter’s visit had highlighted the sorry state of her fridge, so she stocked up on a few things – as much as she could easily carry home.

As she climbed the stairs, she could hear the telephone. Sprinting up the last few steps, dropping her carrier bags on the landing, she fumbled for her
key and made a lunge for the phone.

The voice on the other end was tentative, not immediately identifiable. ‘Is this the curate?’

‘Yes, this is Callie Anson.’

‘This is Dennis Harrington.’

She had to think for a second before conjuring up a mental image of the old man she had visited with Brian on Monday. That seemed such a long time ago, on the other side of the gulf that was the murder of Father Jonah.

Dennis explained that he had tried to ring the vicar, but there was no reply, and the recorded message on the answerphone said that in a pastoral emergency the caller should contact the curate instead, giving her number.

‘Has something happened to Elsie?’ Callie asked, jumping to the most logical conclusion.

‘No, it’s not my Elsie. She’s…’ He faltered. ‘Could you come? Now? We need to talk to someone.’

‘Yes, of course. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

She quickly shoved the perishables into the fridge and went back out again, hoping she could remember her way to the Harringtons’ flat,
wondering
what it could possibly be about. Surely the police hadn’t been to see them?

Dennis was waiting for her at the open door of the flat. He was
wearing
the same green cardigan that he’d worn on Monday and the same wary smile; the only thing that betrayed his agitation was the bright red colour of the tips of his prominent ears. ‘Come in,’ he said with excessive
politeness.
‘Kind of you to come so quick, girl.’

‘I’m glad you rang me,’ she said, meaning it.

He lowered his voice and spoke rapidly as he ushered her through to the lounge. ‘Mind you, my Elsie wasn’t keen. She wanted to see Father Brian. Him, or nobody. Especially not some woman. Nothing personal, girl. But she just can’t get her head round the idea, even though I told her what you said. About Jesus and the Disciples and such like.’

She’d actually got through to him, then, Callie realised with some
satisfaction,
even as she wondered anew at what this was all about.

Then she saw Elsie, propped up in the corner of the oversize sofa. She was tiny, birdlike, her eyes bright with tears as she raised them to the newcomer.

Dennis performed the introductions. ‘Elsie, this is our new curate.’ His voice became tender, proud. ‘And this is my Elsie.’

Callie leaned over and took the small, twisted hand in her own for a moment; it felt like an assortment of loose bones in a sac of jelly. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. Your husband has told me so much about you.’

Her words were acknowledged with a nod, but that was enough. She could see that Elsie was by no means a well woman, and she was clearly in distress as well.

‘Would you like some tea, girl?’ Dennis offered.

The suggestion was tempting, but Callie decided it was better to get on with it. ‘No, thanks, I’m fine.’

Dennis sat down next to his wife, and indicated that Callie should sit in the chair opposite them. She complied.

The Harringtons looked at each other; something wordless passed between them, possibly the acknowledgement that he would do the
talking.
He cleared his throat. ‘It’s our son,’ he said. ‘Our Stu. You remember?’ His eyes moved to the photo on the mantel shelf above the electric fire.

‘Yes, of course. He’s in America. Has something happened to him?’

‘Well, you could say that.’ Dennis cleared his throat again, painfully. ‘He rang us this morning.’ He looked away from Callie and spoke rapidly, as though this were the only way he could get through what he needed to say. ‘He said his partner had just died. I thought he meant a business partner. But he meant…something else. His partner was one of them rock-and-roll blokes. A drummer, I think he said. And he died of that AIDS.’

‘Ah,’ said Callie neutrally, as the pieces all fell into place.

Still Dennis did not look at her. ‘He said they’d been together for
nearly
twenty years. That they loved each other. As much as if they were a man and woman, properly wed.’

Elsie spoke for the first time, her voice soft and hoarse with pain. ‘We never even suspected. He was such a handsome boy. So popular with the girls at school.’

‘We never thought our son, our Stu, could be one of them homos.’ The words were almost ripped out of Dennis. ‘Nancy-boys, we used to call them.’

There was a brief silence, as Callie tried to think what the Harringtons
wanted from her. Did they just need to share their shock and grief with someone, or was there more to it? Were they seeking answers to questions they dared not frame, or some sort of reassurance?

‘What did we do wrong?’ Elsie whispered. ‘We tried to bring him up right. We thought we
had.
But we went wrong somewhere.’

Inevitably, Callie thought about her brother.

Somehow Callie had always known Peter was different from the boys she was at school with, even when he was very young. He wasn’t
interested
in playing with the shiny toy cars which their parents bought for him; instead he crept into Callie’s room to play with her dolls and stuffed
animals.
And rather than engaging in rough-house games with the little boys next door, he sought out his sister’s company, though she was nearly four years his senior.

In those days, of course, Callie didn’t have a label for it. All she knew was that her brother was different, and when, years later, it was finally spelt out, she assimilated the knowledge as though she were slipping into an old, comfortable garment. It was not a surprise.

She had no patience with those who claimed that being gay was a choice, or that someone could be made gay, either by family circumstances, early childhood experiences, or some later corrupting influence. Callie had known Peter from his birth, and none of these things had ever altered in the slightest what was already there. Being gay was part of what Peter
was
, the essential him, as much of his make-up as his speckled hazel eyes and his recalcitrant cow-lick, as his self-mocking humour and his musical talent. It had always been there.

She was the first one he told, when he had figured it out for himself. It was shortly after he hit puberty, when the attention of his school-mates was fixed obsessively on girls, and he realised that his lack of interest was all part of the pattern.

At first, he wanted to tell their parents right away. But Callie counselled caution. ‘It’s not that I think you’re going to change your mind or
anything.
You’re young, though, and that’s what they’ll say – that you’re too young to know, that you might change. They might pressurise you to try going out with girls.’

So Callie became his confidant through his teen years. Her time at
university
was punctuated with endless confessional phone calls as he fell in and out of love with alarming frequency. She listened, she consoled; she never judged.

Just before he left school, not quite eighteen years old, he told their
parents,
coupling it with the announcement that he would not be going to
university
as they expected, but planned to make his way in the world as a
freelance
musician.

Their father was a bit stunned at first; like Callie, though, he soon came to see that it was something he’d really known all along.

Their mother found the second announcement far more alarming than the first. He would ruin his life if he didn’t go to university, she stated in no uncertain terms. Callie had done what was expected of her – university, then following their father into the Civil Service – and Peter must do the same. Anything else was unthinkable. They had sent him to a good public school; how could he contemplate wasting their money and displaying such ingratitude?

The admission that he was gay she simply dismissed. He just hadn’t met the right girl yet, she said. Not surprising, when he went to a single-sex school. And everyone knew that public school boys were like that –
experimenting
with each other in the absence of a female alternative. It was a phase. He would outgrow it. Once he went to university, as he surely must, he would meet lots of lovely girls. One of them, she assured him, he would want to marry, and all this nonsense would be forgotten.

Despite the fact that Peter had not gone to university, had not met any girls, and showed no signs of settling down and getting married to anyone, Laura Anson continued to persist in ignoring what she did not wish to believe about her son. Occasionally she still tried to introduce him to daughters of friends, eligible young women of whom she approved.

Needless to say, Peter didn’t take his boyfriends home to meet his
mother.
Callie was the one to whom he’d always introduced them, one by one.

Often she wished that, like Stu Harrington, Peter could find a
long-term
partner.

It wasn’t, she knew, for lack of trying. Peter was both a romantic and an
optimist – perpetually looking for true love, and always certain that
this
time he had found it. Each new relationship was embarked upon with enthusiasm and whole-hearted commitment, and the inevitable
disappointments,
while crushing and painful, were never long-lived. The next time, he continued to believe, it would be different. Mr Right was out there, and any day now he would meet him.

The Harringtons were staring at her, waiting for her to say something. With a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, Callie suddenly thought what it might be. ‘Your son,’ she said gently. ‘Stu. Is he…does he have…?’

Elsie gasped. ‘No! No, not that.’

Her husband reached over and took her hand in his with infinite
tenderness,
then addressed Callie. ‘We just want to you to tell us, if you can, how it could have happened? How could a boy who was brought up in the Church turn out like that? Like Elsie said, what did we do wrong? Or did he get corrupted by Hollywood, by America?’

Callie took a deep breath, aware that her choice of words was
important,
and aware as well that the Harringtons would probably not like them. ‘I don’t think he was corrupted,’ she said. ‘Not by Hollywood or anything else. And I don’t think it was anything you did. Some people are just…made that way.’