The Mannequin House (22 page)

‘A church?’ said Inchball; there was a note of disappointment, almost disgust, in his voice.

They stepped through into a paved courtyard. A single mature lime tree towered over a park bench, its abundant foliage more than enough to fill the space with leafy calm. At some deep level of his being, Quinn felt an impulse to linger. Although the courtyard was narrow, there was comfort in the seclusion it offered. More than that: hope of some kind of restitution, or at the very least of refuge.

‘This case has just taken a turn for the darker, Sergeant. And in truth, it was dark enough already.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Think of the young man, Spiggott. He was in love with Amélie. Imagine the impact on his psychic and emotional stability on discovering that she has been sleeping with his natural father – or the man he believed to be his father. Furthermore, we cannot rule out the possibility that Amélie had slept with both Blackley and Spiggott. Or that one of them had forced his attentions on her. And in that case, imagine the impact of that on
her
once she discovered the connection between the two men!’

‘What you sayin’? You think she could have topped herself, after all?’

‘Doctor Prendergast raised it as a possibility.’

‘I thought he said it warn’ possible?’

‘Well, yes, granted. On the evidence we have so far, it is impossible. There may be something we have overlooked.’

‘And you think we’ll find it here?’

‘Amélie was a Catholic. According to the Irish maid, Kathleen, she attended Mass here. If there was something troubling her – something of this magnitude – it’s reasonable to speculate that she might confide in her priest, is it not?’

Inchball gave a noisy dismissive sniff. ‘’Ere, what about this bleedin’ monkey though? Ain’ we supposed to be looking for that?’

‘Ah, yes. Shizaru. It would be rather nice to find him for DCI Coddington. Where would you go if you were a frightened fugitive, Sergeant?’

Inchball shrugged and looked up at the ecclesiastic facade ahead of them. ‘A church?’

‘It can’t do any harm to look, can it?’

‘But I ain’ a monkey!’

‘The reality is he may have gone anywhere. Which surely gives us licence to conduct our search anywhere, does it not? And if, while we look for him, we ask the people we meet questions regarding other matters that are of interest to us, no one can object to that, can they?’

Inchball gave a small smirk of appreciation and nodded for Quinn to lead on.

The door closed with an echoing boom, which was quickly swallowed into the prevailing hush.

The scale of the church’s interior was the first revelation: surprisingly grand, given its narrow frontage. Quinn thought in passing how it must have rankled with Blackley to have had this prime commercial plot withheld from him. In truth, the impression of scale came mainly from the building’s height. Stone arches drew the gaze up to a vast space beneath the vaulted ceiling. Quinn didn’t know much about church architecture, but he recognized that the building was not as old as it aspired to be. It was done in an ancient style, but the fabric of the structure, as revealed in the bare stone walls, was suspiciously pristine. An example, he imagined, of Victorian Gothic revival.

Christened in the Church of England, Quinn had been brought up notionally as a churchgoer; that is to say, he was dragged along now and then, mainly during his early years, and in a desultory fashion. Neither of his parents had been particularly religious: his father, not enough to prevent him from taking his own life; his mother, not enough for her to receive any consolation for that dire event. As far as Quinn knew, she never set foot in a church again after her husband’s funeral.

At the time of crisis in his own life Quinn had tried to make sense of the world by the exercise of extreme rationality. He was a medical student and considered himself a scientist. He had not sought solace. He had not turned to prayer. He had simply tried to get to the bottom of the mystery of his father’s death. And the attempt had almost driven him mad.

His illness had cut short his studies. But it had also awoken in him what might be called the detecting instinct.

He had failed to solve the mystery of his father’s death – failed, because the only solution acceptable to him was that his father had not taken his own life. That was a solution that the available facts refused to allow. His way out of this impasse was to believe that there were circumstances as yet undiscovered which would provide the solution he craved. He could not see that this was an act of faith, every bit as irrational as the belief in God that he had come to reject.

He had come to trust in the idea and act of detection, that there were solutions to mysteries, and that they were discoverable, given time and patience. It had felt like a vocation. He had entered the police.

Of course, this church was subtly different to the one he had been taken to as a boy. But as soon as he was attuned to the difference, the signs of its Roman denomination leapt out at him. The abundant flash of gold, the flickering of candles. Rich hanging drapes and ornate crucifixes. The quiet, but inescapable opulence everywhere.

The walls were crowded with paintings, not just of Christ but of obscure saints with gold leaf haloes. Mary, too, was much in evidence, both in paintings and statuary. The most prominent piece was a painted statue of her holding an infant Christ. Quinn felt an inexplicable knot of emotion at his throat as he considered it.

The altar was like a massive elaborate sideboard, a priest’s magic box, both ridiculous and impressive. The glinting candelabra seemed like levers waiting to be pulled to operate the machinery of faith.

From somewhere the parish priest had appeared, dressed in the cassock favoured by Roman Catholic clerics. Quinn was surprised by the man’s unassuming appearance. His mildly enquiring face, myopic eyes blinking behind wire-framed glasses, was the sort that was easily forgotten, if it was noticed in the first place. If Quinn’s reaction was anything to go by, the tendency was to look at the robe rather than the face, to be impressed by the office not the man. He was short too, which added to a general sense of physical negligibility. In point of fact, he was a little on the plump side.

‘May I help you?’ He was softly spoken but not timid. His smile was gently encouraging, eyes unafraid as they stared searchingly into Quinn’s. In that steady gaze Quinn glimpsed a surprising strength. He wondered whether there was more to the offer of help than he had first assumed. He felt that the strange little priest could see the trouble in his heart. He experienced an unfathomable urge to reach out and hold on to the man as if his life depended on it.

‘We are police officers. This is Detective Sergeant Inchball and I am Detective Inspector Quinn of the Special Crimes Department. We’re investigating the death of Amélie Dupin. I believe she was a parishioner of yours?’

The priest nodded. ‘I wondered how long it would take you to get here.’

‘You were expecting us?’ said Quinn.

‘Yes, of course. He’s in the sacristy. I’ve spoken to him. Prepared him. He’s ready to talk to you.’

‘Who is?’ For one absurd moment, Quinn thought the priest was talking about Shizaru.

‘Peter.’

‘Peter who?’

‘Peter Spiggott. I presume that’s who you’re here to see?’

‘Spiggott is here?’

‘Yes.’ The priest caught the preparatory bristling in Inchball’s stance. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t go anywhere.’ He glanced towards a doorway in the side of the church, towards the rear. ‘He can’t get away without coming through here. I’ve locked the other door.’

‘Is he a
Catholic
?’ Quinn was not quite sure why he felt the need to ask this question, or why it came out in such an incredulous, almost angry tone. It seemed as appropriate a way to express his amazement as any other.

‘No. Not yet. I’m working on it, of course. What he is, is a hater of Mr Blackley. That we have in common. It’s not the only thing that has drawn us together. We both loved Amélie. I, as her priest and confessor. He . . . well, his relationship with her was problematic, shall we say?’

‘Guv,’ Inchball cut in. ‘Shouldn’t we . . .?’ He angled his head towards the sacristy door, the movement tense and minimal.

Quinn nodded.

Slowly, silently, with infinite care, Inchball withdrew a revolver from inside his jacket.

‘No!’ cried the priest.

Quinn gestured for Inchball to put the gun away. At a further signal from Quinn, the two policemen swept, with the stealth and suddenness of spiders, towards the sacristy door and threw it open.

The door on the other side of the room was open inwards, giving a glimpse of brick wall outside. An empty camp bed, the blanket discarded untidily on the floor, was the only sign of Spiggott that they found.

Sergeant Inchball jerked his head towards the open door. ‘I suppose you want me to . . .’ But before he could give chase, the little priest darted across the room and outside.

A
moment later, two men returned. The priest and a young man with a lean, unhappy expression.

‘I managed to prevail on Peter to come back. I told him you would listen to his side of the story and not prejudge him.’

‘I didn’t kill Amélie,’ Spiggott insisted.

‘Did you rape her?’ asked Quinn.

‘Rape her?’ Spiggott’s face was already drained of colour. It turned from white to grey. His whole being seemed to shrink in on itself. ‘She was raped?’

‘Sweet Mary, mother of Jesus, as if that poor girl hadn’t suffered enough . . .’

‘Wait till I get my hands on that monster.’ A grim intensity sharpened Spiggott’s stare.

‘Who do you mean,
monster
?’

‘Blackley, of course. That’s who did it. Blackley raped her. I’d swear on it. And he killed her. He must have.’

‘Benjamin Blackley? Benjamin Blackley Senior, just to be clear?’

‘Yes.’

‘Those are very serious accusations, Mr Spiggott. If you have information concerning Mr Blackley and Amélie, why did you not come forward before now?’

‘Because I knew you wouldn’t believe me.’

‘But why run away?’

‘To get away from Blackley. You don’t know what he’s capable of. I was afraid. I needed time to think. As soon as I heard about Amélie’s death I knew he was responsible. But I couldn’t go to the police. Blackley would just deny it and I had no evidence. Somehow he’d turn the tables on me. I needed to think things through. To come up with a plan. I knew this was the one place that Blackley would never come. I knew that Father Thomas would be sympathetic.’

‘You were afraid, you say? Of your own father?’

‘You know about that? Who told you?’

‘It doesn’t matter. You’ve been making trouble about it. There are plenty of people who have heard you.’

‘He
is
my father. All I have been doing is stating the truth.’

‘But he doesn’t acknowledge you?’

‘Of course not! He has his
reputation
to maintain. I first came to him five years ago. After my mother died. She told me on her death bed what my true heritage was. Of course, Blackley denied it then. But he tried to buy me off all the same. He gave me that pathetic job to shut me up. Why would he have done that unless he felt guilty?’

‘Perhaps he felt sorry for you. That doesn’t prove you were his son. I imagine a wealthy man like Blackley has all sorts of individuals making claims on him.’

‘But my claim is valid!’

‘That was five years ago, you say?’

‘More or less.’

‘And you kept quiet about it until recently? Kept your head down, got on with the job? Is that so?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why the change?’

‘That day when I first went to him he refused to acknowledge me, of course. He was angry. He swore. He threatened me. Then, when he saw I wouldn’t be browbeaten, that I was determined – he changed his tune. Oh, he still wouldn’t admit it, though he did admit that he remembered my mother. He seemed quite upset by the news of her death. And then he offered me the position. I thought, I allowed myself to hope, that one day he might acknowledge what he could not then. I felt as if I was on probation – to see if I would pass muster as his son. “We’ll see,” he had said. “Come and work for me and we’ll see.” Those were his final words of that first interview. No doubt he wanted me in the store so he could keep an eye on me. I do believe I was being spied on. There was a man. A curious man with a monocle. But I didn’t mind. I had invested all my hopes in the half-promise of that “We’ll see”. But I came to realize that he had no intention of acknowledging me, ever, no matter what I did. “We’ll see” was just to keep me in line. To make sure I behaved myself.’

‘And then you met Amélie?’

‘Yes. I dared to hope . . .’ Spiggott corrected himself: ‘
We
dared to hope . . . that we might one day marry. If that was to be, I realized that I needed to improve my prospects. So I went back to Blackley and restated my claim. His position hadn’t changed. I’d done everything he’d asked, but he still wouldn’t acknowledge me.’

‘Why did you run away just now?’

‘I didn’t run away. I went outside for a breath of fresh air. I was only in the passageway.’

‘But Father Thomas had locked the door.’

‘Yes, and he left the key in it.’ Spiggott swung the door to, revealing the key still in place on the inside.

‘Well, that explains
that
little mystery!’ said Father Thomas cheerily.

‘I didn’t realize I was a prisoner.’ Spiggott glared resentfully at the priest.

‘It was for your own good, Peter. I was worried about you. Some of the things you said last night . . . I was worried what you might do.’

‘You hate Blackley as much as I do. You called him the devil incarnate.’

‘Yes, and I am sure that he will be judged and receive his punishment in the next world.’

‘I don’t believe in the next world. I want him punished now.’

Quinn intervened. ‘What exactly were you worried about, Father?’

The look Father Thomas directed at Spiggott was unexpectedly stern. ‘Peter said some rash things last night. I had a duty to take them seriously.’