Dying Of The Light

10

The young man straightened his striped tie. His first proper assignment as a qualified solicitor and it would have to be advising on an interview under caution. Oh, and not any old interview under caution, just one involving a suspected double murderer. Christ on a bike! Here he was, monkey masquerading as organ-grinder, and all because that fat git McFadden was taking a sickie to go ski-ing.

He glanced warily around the interview room, nauseous with apprehension and increasingly aware that his bladder needed emptying. But all the police personnel seemed eager to start, quivering like dogs in their traps, desperate to catch the passing hare. And even the hare, his so-called client, seemed ready to go. And if this had been for some trivial charge, say, a peeing up a close or a minor assault, then he too might be happily placing his toes on the start line. Presumably, they all imagined that he knew what he was doing. No-one could say that he did not look the part, at least.

On cue, and as soon as requested by the Chief Inspector, he left the room, feeling in some incongruous way as if he had been demoted, now a stage-hand rather than a performer. Thank goodness he had listened to the office secretary again, she knew her onions. Otherwise he would be vainly protesting his right to stay beside his client until he was forcibly ejected, his inexperience exposed for all to see, for all to laugh at. The humiliation just did not bear thinking about.

Obviously, the warnings he had remembered to give his client provided a sort of comfort, justified his initial attendance at public expense. Any difficult or dangerous questions were to be responded to with ‘no comment’, or ‘I’d rather not answer that’, and the consequences of such apparent lack of frankness could be sorted out later. But now, watching the priest through the internal glass window of the interview room, and, worse yet, hearing him, the holy fool appeared to be busy shooting himself in both feet, ignoring all the earlier whispered advice as if it had been imparted in Pushtu. In fact, for all the difference he had made, he might as well give up, enjoy himself instead, relax and take in his surroundings. Plainly, he lacked the requisite gravitas to influence a man of the cloth.

The young policewoman sitting opposite the priest caught his eye. DS Rice, he recalled, from their brief pre-interview conversation. Very tall indeed. And what was the polite word for thin too? ‘Willowy’. Pussy willow. He looked at her face, became absorbed in his study of it, heedless now of anything the priest was saying, or anyone else for that matter. Strange. Pussy Willow’s face was registering concern, distress even, the sort of expression to be expected from an onlooker at an inevitable crash. Unexpectedly, she threw a hostile glance at him, or was it aimed at someone near the door? Either way, he took no notice and carried on, whenever the opportunity presented itself, of studying her.

Unknown to him she was only too well aware of his presence, his grimacing face occasionally pressed to the glass, nose and chin flattened and yellowed. The mouth opening and shutting like a goldfish in a bowl.

‘Truly, I’ve never met Isobel Wilson,’ the priest said imploringly, and Alice Rice watched him intently as he spoke. ‘Nor Annie Wright either. On the ninth I was, as I told you the first time, helping Mrs Donnelly clean my study in the early evening, then I went to my church. I got back home at about eleven, I think. On the evening of the twelfth I was…’ he hesitated briefly, ‘in my church again. I spent the night there.’

‘Anybody else there with you?’ Elaine Bell enquired.

‘No-one.’

‘Sure about that? No-one in the church throughout the entire period that you were there? The entire night?’

‘No-one. I’m sure.’

‘And when did you go there, and when did you leave the place?’

‘I went there at… maybe seven o’ clock, and I left there… about six or so.’

‘Eleven hours on your knees!’ Elaine Bell spluttered in disbelief.

‘I sat some of the time, officer,’ the priest said coolly.

‘Your housekeeper saw you return?’

‘In the morning? Yes, she saw me.’

‘So, Father, if traces of blood, with your DNA, have been found on the bodies of Isobel Wilson and Annie Wright, what exactly would your explanation for that be?’

The priest stared at the DCI. ‘What did you say?’ he asked, incredulous. Elaine Bell repeated every word she had said, and looked expectantly at him.

‘I’d say…’ he paused, meeting the eyes of his interrogators. ‘I’d say… it’s impossible, because I’ve never come across either of those poor souls.’

Alice looked towards the door, spotting the young solicitor framed outside in his usual window, entertaining himself by misting the glass with his breath and then rubbing a clear circle in it with his nose.

As Father McPhail was being taken down to the cell, Alice picked up a list recording the possessions taken from his pockets at the charge bar. His diary, a lottery ticket and a wallet containing a £5 note, a debit card, the photograph of a baby and a biro. While she was reading the diary, Elaine Bell was busy on the phone to one of the turnkeys, becoming increasingly frustrated as the conversation went on. ‘No – I said NOT to put him in the pink cell. I don’t care if all the others are occupied, just shift them around, eh? Why? Why? How about because the priest doesn’t need pacifying in there, or to see “FUCK THE POPE” scrawled on its walls. That’s why!’

At 10.30 a.m. the double doors of St Benedict’s opened, and a sad trickle of silver-haired people emerged, chattering among themselves in a subdued fashion, preparing to brave the snow-glazed church steps that led to the pavement. The celebrant was nowhere to be seen, so Alice buttonholed a stooped old lady, who stood motionless and staring hard down the street as if in search of her lift, to enquire whether June Sharpe was among the congregation. In clipped tones she was directed towards the parish secretary, a dowdy woman in a headscarf, busy cramming her missal into her handbag.

Like an inquisitive jackdaw, the secretary’s head bobbed to the left and right as she scrutinised her fellow attendees, eventually declaring that Mrs Sharpe must have dodged Mass on this occasion. Fortunately, she was able to produce her address, smiling triumphantly at her effortless recall, careless to whom she was divulging the information or for what purpose. Still cupping Alice’s elbow and with reflected sunlight cruelly illuminating a clutch of white whiskers on her chin, she pointed down the road to the junction of West Pilton Gardens and West Pilton View, indicating the woman’s house.

June Sharp turned out to be a fragile, doll-like creature with enormous blue eyes, straw-blonde hair and a wide upturned mouth. When Alice showed her identification, she seemed both excited and apprehensive, guiding the policewoman to her narrow galley-kitchen, while cooing loudly to the baby that was perched on her hip. In the kitchen she immediately bent down to stroke the head of an old dachshund, curled up in its basket, its black lips rippling as it snored contentedly in its sleep. Suddenly the washing machine began to whirr noisily on reaching spin-cycle, and she switched it off, looking first crossly at the machine and then anxiously at the dog to see if the racket had disturbed its rest. But it slept on, an occasional wag of its tail betraying its dreams.

‘Pixie’s being put down today – at two o’clock,’ the woman said, her large eyes brimming with tears, giving a graceful wave in the direction of the basket, ‘and I have to collect Nathan from nursery at twelve o’clock, I’m afraid. So I’ll have to go then, Sergeant Price.’

‘Rice,’ Alice corrected gently, ‘Sergeant Rice.’

‘Mmm… Sergeant Price,’ the woman nodded, ‘that’s what I said.’

‘It’s about Father McPhail,’ Alice continued, disregarding what she was being called. ‘I’ve a few questions about him. If you could help us, it might help him too.’

‘Oh. Yes?’ Her voice was childish, unnaturally high-pitched.

‘Can you tell me, did you see him on the night of Tuesday the ninth of January?’ The woman hesitated, searching the policewoman’s face as if to read the desired answer, before tentatively committing herself.

‘Yes.’

‘What time did you see him?’

‘He came here,’ she paused again, looking enquiringly at Alice, ‘he came here at about… seven o’clock in the evening?’ It sounded more like a question than an answer.

‘And at what time did he leave?’

‘I didn’t leave.’ Mrs Sharp looked puzzled.

‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t have made myself clear. When did he leave?’

The woman sucked in her cheeks, apparently thinking, before replying in her strange treble, ‘Maybe one, two o’clock? That sort of time…’

‘And on Friday the twelfth of January, did you see him at any point on that date?’

‘No,’ she shook her head like a petulant child ‘I haven’t seen him since he left the parish.’

Confused, Alice asked, ‘but… I thought you just said that you saw him on the ninth?’

‘Oh… yes,’ the woman replied, unperturbed by her illogicality, if aware of it at all.

‘So you did see him on the ninth, then?’

‘I did, yes.’ Mrs Sharp smiled broadly, as if pleased that she had provided the correct answer.

‘And what about the twelfth?’

‘What about it?’ She seemed bemused.

‘Did you see him on that date?’

‘Eh…’ she looked into Alice’s eyes, as if to find the solution there. ‘No. No, I don’t think so… then, again…’

‘Mrs Sharp, I really do need to know!’

‘Then yes… yes, I did see him on the…’ she paused, ‘…whatever date you said.’

‘I simply need to know, Mrs Sharpe. Did you, or did you not, see Father McPhail on -’

The query remained incomplete as the phone rang, Mrs Sharpe starting at the sound. She picked the receiver up as if it might be dangerous, and placed it warily to her ear.

‘Oh, George, it’s you… Yes, I am going to do it… I’ll get it all done before lunch, honestly… Well, I can’t go at the minute – I’ve got someone with me…’ She faltered, looking Alice in the eye. ‘I’ve someone with me… No, just a salesperson. A woman. Mmm… I’ll get rid… honestly, everything will be ready in good time.’

‘My husband. We’re having a party this evening,’ she offered, apologetically, before continuing. ‘Frankie, er… Father… was here on the ninth because, well… he wanted to see me. George was away on business. We just talked, of course, that’s what we do. Talk and talk for hour after hour.’

‘That’s fine,’ Alice replied. ‘We’ll need, obviously, to take a statement from you – you know, for the trial.’

‘Trial? You never said anything about a trial!’

‘No. Sorry. It’s simply that we’ll need a statement from you confirming when he was with you – and then you may be called as -’

‘I’m very sorry,’ Mrs Sharpe said, ‘but I can’t give a statement. I can’t do that. I don’t mind telling you here, between the two of us, right, but nothing more than that. I can’t say anything that might get back to George.’

‘Why not? Your statement will be needed, you know. Without your testimony he might be wrongly convicted.’

‘Look, I’m saying nothing to no-one, I’m afraid. I’m not supposed to see Frankie, you know! If my husband thought I had, he’d kill me. Honestly. Last time he threatened me, threatened to divorce me, said he’d get custody of Nathan…’

‘I’m sorry too, Mrs Sharpe, but we really do need your help. If necessary, we can compel -’

‘Compel! What are you talking about? You can…’ she hesitated, exasperated, racking her brain to think of a suitable torture, ‘pull my toenails out, if you like, but I’m saying nothing. I’ll deny I said anything to you. It wasn’t true what I said, anyway, I haven’t seen him since he left St Benedict’s. That is the truth if you want it. I’m telling you the real truth now!’

‘I’ve told you, Alice, the man who did it is inside, banged up in Saughton,’ Elaine Bell said testily, holding down a piece of shortbread in her tea as if to drown it.

‘Yep,’ Simon Oakley added, ‘give it a rest, eh? The woman may well be competent, compellable, blah, blah, blah, but she’s also a waste of space, so what’s the point?’

‘The point is…’ Alice tried again, aware that the rest of the squad did not share her view, ‘that she can provide an alibi for McPhail for the likely time of the first murder.’

‘Alibi my arse!’ Eric Manson said forcefully. ‘Provide an alibi, my sainted arse! They had it off together, OK? Forbidden love, like that holy mag implied – then it ended. But she thought she could help him, so she blabbed away, and it sounds as if she said whatever came into her head.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Alice replied. ‘She couldn’t know, then, I mean, what would help him. It might have helped him to say she hadn’t seen him on the ninth. Anyway, if she was only helping him with that kind of lie, why didn’t she begin by saying that he was with her on the second occasion too?’

‘Doesn’t know which way’s up or lost her bloody nerve, I guess,’ DC Littlewood replied, never lifting his eyes from the computer screen.

‘Look, sergeant,’ Eric Manson said with a weary sigh, ‘let’s get real, eh? They had a fling, it all went pear-shaped…’

‘Yes,’ Alice interrupted. ‘But why did she tell me that he was with her if he wasn’t?’

‘Because,’ Elaine Bell said, rolling her eyes, ‘she thought it might HELP him! You asked about a particular time. Obviously, that suggested that an alibi for that time might be needed. Without too much thought she fabricated one… and when things finally sank in, or she got muddled or whatever, she lost her nerve. Anyway, Alice, the question you should be asking yourself – if you don’t believe she was lying,’ and she pointed at her sergeant, ‘is why she’s not prepared to assist us, even with her lies? Why she’s gone back on everything she said!’

‘But I told you, ma’am,’ Alice said, exasperated in her turn, ‘she told me her husband would divorce her, beat her up, take the kids…’

‘Nope,’ Elaine Bell shook her head, ‘from what you said she’s just not very bright. To begin with, she thought she could help him, the priest I mean, get her oar in, say whatever. Then realisation dawned and she didn’t fancy lying on oath and losing her children and so on. Remember, she openly admitted to you they were lies!’

‘Well,’ Alice said, sounding more confident than she felt ‘I still think we should follow it up…’

‘Jesus H. Christ!’ Eric Manson bellowed. ‘We’ve got our man in the pokey! What more do you want? Have you not noticed or something? Everything fits together. The man’s a priest, eh? The poor cows are left in a position of p… p… prayer. Geddit? He doesn’t screw them, being celibate, just arranges them into a praying pose. And then – get over this if you can – he leaves his DNA on them. And it’s not an odd hair fibre or something easy to talk your way out of, no, it’s his blood. Explain that if you can. Because he can’t for sure. He denies going anywhere near them! Ever!’

‘Quite,’ Elaine Bell added. ‘It would be a complete waste of everybody’s time to spend another minute on her. She won’t help him and she certainly won’t help us.’

‘Yep,’ Simon Oakley said, unwrapping a Crunchie and looking at it fondly, ‘The woman’s a liar, Alice, on her own admission. Best leave it, eh?’

They stood, side by side, outside the front door of the tenement in Jerez Place while the forensic team searched the priest’s flat for anything to connect him to the killings. Alice glanced longingly at her companion’s hat, a broad-brimmed leather Stetson, before shaking her head to get rid of its layer of accumulated snow.

‘It’d be too big,’ he said, as if reading her mind, and she smiled, impressed again by his perspicacity.

‘Think they’ll find the knife?’ he added, staring listlessly down the street, his eyes alighting on a woman wrestling with a buggy, her upended toddler bawling beside her.

‘Nope,’ Alice replied, unwilling to re-open the argument and risk a further bruising for the doubts that she continued to harbour. She knew only too well that they were irrational anyway; she did not have any alternative explanation for the blood traces. Best change the subject.

‘Got anything planned for tonight, Simon?’

‘No. You?’

‘Nothing much. Ian’s going to an exhibition in Dundas Street. A friend of his. I might join him if I get off in time. You could come too, if you want?’

‘No thanks. I’m staying in. Broke up with my girlfriend a couple of weeks ago, and I keep hoping she’ll phone. Maybe even come and collect her stuff. She’s still got a key, but I don’t want to miss her.’

A waddling figure, head down against the blowing snow, approached them from the Fort Street direction, bags of shopping swinging and banging alternately against each leg. It was Mrs Donnelly, and she looked aggrieved at the very sight of them.

‘Can I not get back in yet?’ she demanded in a cross tone.

DS Oakley shook his head, edging to his left to allow her to share the little shelter that they had found below a stone lintel. For a few minutes they stood together in disharmonious silence until Alice’s phone went, and she fumbled in her pockets for it, fingers rigid with cold. It was the crime-scene manager to inform her that they had found a woman’s blue scarf in a cupboard in the priest’s bedroom, and to ask if was to be accorded priority at the lab.

‘What does it look like?’ she asked.

‘As I said, blue – baby blue – and it’s got pink tassel-like things hanging off it.’

‘Hang on a sec.’ Alice passed on the description of the scarf to the housekeeper, who answered excitedly, ‘It’s mine – my scarf! But I gave it to him. He kept borrowing it, so I gave it to him.’

‘Jim,’ Alice said ‘don’t worry. No priority with the scarf. Are you lot nearly ready? We’re freezing out here.’

‘Almost finished. At worst, another five minutes.’

‘Any photos of the priest up there?’

‘Aha, loads. There’s pictures taken at Nunraw, some of his first -’ Mrs Donnelly began, thinking the question was directed to her, her face falling when Alice raised a hand to silence her, trying to make out the crime-scene manager’s words against the din.

‘Plenty. I’ll bring down a selection for you.’

‘Why do you need photos anyway?’ Mrs Donnelly said bitterly. ‘You’ve got Father after all? Probably took a mugshot, or whatever you call it, too.’

Simon’s eyes met Alice’s, but neither of them felt inclined to tell the housekeeper the truth. That any individual suspected of killing two women was considered capable of doing almost anything, and that time, effort and public money would now be spent in an attempt to discover if Father McPhail was responsible for other, as yet unsolved, crimes. And photographs of him at all ages, from boyhood to middle age, would be required to that end.

Alice’s phone rang again, and this time the crime-scene manager’s booming voice was audible to the three huddled people.

‘I’ve just put them in a box, dear, d’you want to come and collect them?’

As Alice started to move, Mrs Donnelly threw an accusatory look at the policeman, communicating wordlessly that if he was a gentleman he would be the one to climb the many flights of stairs, and carry the heavy weight down.

‘I’ll go,’ Simon said, acute as ever, tipping the brim of his hat to let the snow fall off and stamping his feet before entering the tenement block. Once he had gone, Mrs Donnelly shuffled towards Alice.

‘Sergeant,’ she whispered, heedless of the fact that they were now alone together, ‘did you find that Sharp woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could she not help this time? Explain where he was, I mean?’

Alice shook her head.

‘Before…’ Mrs Donnelly said distractedly, looking into the middle distance, ‘before, she was always the reason, always the reason. When I didn’t know where he was, I mean. He’d be there with her. And it got them both into awful trouble. The Bishop was merciless with him. Actually, I’m quite sure it was perfectly innocent this time, but… he just couldn’t keep away from her. It was as if she’d cast a spell on him. I met her once, just the once, she seemed a silly woman to me.’

Stacked in the cardboard box were four photographs, all of them in frames. The first one Alice picked out was of a small boy dressed in a white, long-sleeved shirt and white shorts, staring hard at the camera with unsmiling, deep-set dark eyes. A woman’s hand, encased in a mauve glove, rested on the boy’s shoulder. The size and uneven edge of the snap suggested that the rest of her had been cropped from it. A gawky youth clad in bell-bottoms figured in the second, his long wavy hair parted in the middle and a shy grin on his face. In the next a man was robed in priestly vestments, a solemn expression on his face, shaking hands with a cardinal, and a handwritten caption at the bottom read ‘10^th October 2005. The Retreat.’ The final image was more difficult to make out, the glass in its frame partially opaque, a star-shaped crack across it, but it showed a young man and a young woman, arms around each other’s shoulders, their laughing profiles close enough to kiss. As Alice was examining the double portrait more closely, she became aware that someone was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder at it.

‘Alice,’ the DCI said, extending her arm to take the picture from her as if by right, ‘we’ve just heard from the lab that one of the eliminatory samples we took in the Portobello area, on the fourteenth of January, matches the semen stain on Isobel Wilson’s coat. The sample came from a man called Malcolm Starkie. He’s listed at ‘Bellevue’ in Rosefield Place. Crown Office want him spoken to right now. Could you do it?’

An old fellow, muffled in a thick overcoat, held the door open for her as he was leaving and Alice found herself in a tiny hall, decorated in fine regency stripes with a minute chandelier dangling below the ceiling rose. A clumsily-constructed reception desk, painted in white gloss, divided the room in half. The woman behind it was speaking in a hushed voice down the telephone. When she saw Alice she gestured for her to approach, crooking a finger at her and putting down the phone with her other hand. No farewells were, apparently, thought necessary.

The oddness of the receptionist’s looks ensured that first impressions of her would not be easily forgotten. She was wafer-thin, almost two-dimensional, with a complexion as pale as death itself, and short-cropped, blue-black hair. Unnaturally dilated pupils shone through electric blue lenses, and they contracted as soon as they focussed on Alice.

‘Have you an appointment?’ She demanded sharply.

‘No, but I’ve come to speak to Mr Starkie. I’m Det -’

‘Well,’ she was cut off mid-word, ‘without an appointment there’s no hope of seeing him today, I’m sorry to say.’ The woman hesitated momentarily before adding, ‘unless, of course, it’s an emergency?’

Alice explained her business and was escorted to the waiting room, an even more cramped space, furnished with a few cane chairs and a coffee-table. Inside an anxious-looking woman sat, and on her knee a small girl rocked contentedly back and forth. Alice nodded at the woman, collected a torn copy of Hello and stood by the window, looking out onto the nearby red sandstone church.

‘Mrs Rice?’ a man’s face peeped round the door, his mouth open in a wide smile as if to allay any misplaced fears, but looking nervous all the same. The mother immediately rose, pulling her surprised child by the wrist towards the fellow and made to follow him.

‘We’re your twelve o’clock appointment, Mr Starkie, and my meter’s going to run out.’

‘I’ll be very quick with… ah… Mrs Rice,’ the dentist said in a placatory tone, recognising the genuine patient and withdrawing immediately into the hallway.

The air in the surgery was sweet with the scent of oil of cloves, and a female hygienist scurried out of it as soon as they walked in. Alice perched herself uneasily on the edge of the reclining dental chair, but Malcolm Starkie remained standing, arms crossed defiantly on his chest, long legs wide apart. As he listened to her, the reason for her visit slowly dawning on him, he closed his eyes, putting one hand on his forehead, but said nothing.

Waiting for him to respond, she took in the surgery, noting a mantelpiece covered with family photographs, pride of place going to an oval portrait of a smiling middle-aged woman dressed in a cherry coloured cardigan. Adorning each wall was a blown-up photograph of an owl, their huge eyes staring at the patients as if at prey. Seeing her gaze on the birds, the man began to speak. ‘I took them. That one…’ he pointed, ‘is a snowy owl. A female. This one’s a barn owl…’ Then, stopping mid-sentence, he ran his fingers through his hair.

‘I didn’t even know her name,’ he said slowly, ‘until I read it in the papers. Isobel Wilson. We never say much, converse… I was at home when those girls were killed. I’m almost always at home. When I’m away I wish I was back. Printing my photos, watching the television or whatever.’

‘Could anyone else confirm that you were at home those evenings, those nights? Your wife, maybe, even a neighbour, someone like that?’

‘My wife died last January. A neighbour possibly, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I hardly know either of them.’

‘So when did you last… er… see Isobel Wilson?’

‘I can tell you exactly, officer, on Saturday. On Saturday the sixth of January, to my eternal shame…’

‘Sir?’

‘Our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.’