The Janus Stone

CHAPTER 16

The DNA results show that the body under the doorstep is a girl. The post-mortem confirmed that the child is less than six years old. Father Hennessey, Nelson decides, has some explaining to do.

This time there is no cosy walk in the grounds. Nelson interviews the priest at the local police station. A car is sent to fetch him and when he arrives Nelson is sitting unsmiling behind a desk. Clough is also in the room and as Hennessey enters Nelson says into the tape machine, ‘Interview commencing at fourteen hundred hours. Present: Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson and Detective Sergeant David Clough.’

Father Hennessey smiles politely and takes a seat opposite Nelson. He shows no surprise at his hostile reception nor does he make any attempt at small talk. He waits calmly for Nelson’s first question.

‘Father Hennessey,’ he’s damned if he’s going to call him ‘Father’ again, ‘you mentioned two children who went missing in 1973.’

They have looked them up, of course. Nelson was hoping to find Elizabeth Black’s dental records to compare them to the skull but there is no record of Elizabeth ever visiting a dentist. And, after 1973, both children vanish completely.

‘Yes,’ says Father Hennessey, looking intently at Nelson.

‘Could you tell us a bit more about their disappearance, please?’

Father Hennessey sighs. ‘It was in the evening. The children had some free time before bed and most of them were playing in the grounds. Supervised, of course. Sister Immaculata called them in about six and there was no sign of Martin and Elizabeth. At first we thought they were just hiding. Martin had a… mischievous sense of humour. But then, after we searched the house and the grounds, we began to get worried.’

He pauses and Nelson says, ‘When did you call the police?’

‘Almost immediately. They searched the house and grounds too. Some of the staff got quite upset. But nothing was found. Then they switched the search to the wider area.’

‘Did you search? Personally?’

Father Hennessey’s pale blue eyes look past Nelson. ‘I searched all night,’ he says at last. ‘The house, the grounds. Then I rode around Norwich on my motorbike, looking in alleyways, abandoned houses, anywhere I thought they might hide.’

Clough interjects. ‘You had a motorbike?’

‘It’s not against the law, you know,’ replies Hennessey mildly.

‘And in all this searching,’ Nelson cuts in, ‘did the police ever dig up the grounds?’

‘No.’

Goons, thinks Nelson. They were probably too taken in by this saintly motorbiking priest. They would never assume that he could have killed the children. Well, Nelson is different.

‘Did they look in the well?’ he asks.

Now Father Hennessey looks surprised. ‘No. It was boarded up, cemented over. No child could have fallen down it.’

Nelson says nothing, playing the silence game. This time he wins.

‘Have you found something in the well?’

‘We’ve found a child’s skull,’ Nelson tells him. ‘A child of five. A girl.’ ‘Under six’ is what the autopsy report says but he wants to shock Hennessey into saying something indiscreet.

Father Hennessy certainly looks shocked. His lips move silently, presumably in prayer. He asks, ‘Is it Elizabeth?’

‘We don’t know for certain,’ says Nelson, ‘yet.’ He sees no reason to add that they might never know as they have no DNA of Elizabeth’s. But he wants Hennessey to think he will find out. Nelson, the fearless seeker after truth, scourge of wrongdoers.

‘How could the skull have got in the well?’ asks Hennessey, still sounding shaken. He takes a sip of water. Suddenly he looks an old man.

‘You tell me.’

‘I have no idea.’ Sharper now. Hennessey is pulling himself together.

Silence again. Clough asks, ‘Did you get on well with Martin and Elizabeth?’ The change of subject, of tone. An old interrogation standby.

But Hennessey is equal to it. He looks directly at Clough. ‘Yes. They were lovely children, very bright, very loving. They’d had a traumatic time, with their mother dying and were… damaged.’

‘Damaged?’ says Nelson sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

‘These things leave scars, Detective Chief Inspector. Martin was angry, angry with his mother for leaving him, angry with the world for letting it happen. Elizabeth was easier. She was very sad, very insecure. She clung to Martin, refused to be separated from her teddy, that sort of thing. But they were getting over it, slowly. Martin was exceptionally bright. I tried to encourage that. I gave him books to read.’

‘What sort of books?’

‘All sorts. He was interested in science and history. I gave him books about the Greeks and the Romans. He was fascinated by the idea that the house could have been built on a Roman site.’

Nelson remembers Ruth’s comments about Roman pottery found on the site. So the priest had known that, even then.

‘So you had a close relationship with the children?’

Again the priest meets his eyes squarely, almost defiantly. ‘Yes.’

‘And the other staff members?’

‘Everyone loved Elizabeth. She was a very lovable child. Martin was… Martin was more difficult.’

‘We’ve spoken to Sister Immaculata –’

‘Have you?’ Hennessey leans forward eagerly. ‘How is she?’

‘In reasonable health,’ Nelson replies coldly, ‘mentally unimpaired,’ he adds.

Hennessey nods. ‘Good. She’s had a hard life, poor woman.’

Nelson ignores this. ‘She says that Martin was a troublemaker.’

‘As I say, he was angry.’

‘Did he have uncontrollable rages?’ asks Clough sympathetically.

For the first time, Father Hennessey looks angry. ‘No, he did not have “uncontrollable rages”.’ His voice puts irritable quotes around the words. ‘Nor did he kill his sister in a fit of demonic temper, as I imagine you’re implying. He loved her. They were exceptionally close.’

‘Unnaturally close?’

‘No, naturally close. They were a brother and sister with no one else in the world. Don’t you think they would be close?’

‘I assume nothing,’ says Nelson. ‘You knew them. I didn’t. I just want to find out who would kill a child and throw its head down a well. Now whoever did that, they were unnatural.’

Father Hennessey looks at him. ‘Unnatural maybe,’ he says in his quietest voice, ‘evil certainly.’

The drive home is silent apart from Clough chomping his way through two packets of Hula Hoops. Nelson is conscious that they haven’t really got much further. Father Hennessey had seemed shocked at the discovery of the skull but he had also seemed genuinely surprised. Not surprised enough though to blurt out any confessions. Not that Nelson ever really thought he would; Father Hennessey is a cool customer. Controlled, hard almost, despite the surface warmth. Does this make him a murderer?

‘Do you think he did it?’ Nelson asks Clough as they speed through several picturesque villages (‘Kill your speed, not a child!’).

‘The priest? Maybe. Easy enough to kill them, hide the bodies and bury them later. The cops didn’t even dig up the grounds.’

‘Bloody muppets.’ Nelson grinds his teeth. ‘Do you think there’s anyone still around from those days?’

‘Maybe Tom Henty. You know, the desk sergeant at Lynn. He’s been around for donkeys’ years.’

‘Good idea. I’ll talk to him.’

‘Do you think Hennessey did it?’ Clough looks curiously at his boss

‘I think he’s hiding something,’ says Nelson slowly. ‘Something to do with the children. Maybe he’s covering up for someone.’

‘What about that nun? Judy said she was a nutter.’

‘No she didn’t. She said she was as sharp as a needle.’

‘Same thing. The nun could have killed them.’

‘Why?’

‘Maybe she abused the little girl and the boy found out.’

‘Your mind’s like a tabloid.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s not a compliment. Pretty hard to dispose of the body of a twelve-year-old.’

‘If they’re not dead, where are they then?’

‘That’s the question. We’ll widen the search. Try to find some relatives in Ireland. Talk to other people from the home. Nine times out of ten, missing people turn up right back where they started. It’s almost as if they can’t keep away.’

‘Do you think they’re alive?’

‘The boy maybe. He was old enough to look after himself. The girl… I think the girl might be our skeleton.’

‘Well, it would be a bit of a coincidence if she isn’t,’ says Clough, probing his empty Hula Hoops packet with a moistened finger, ‘two dead children on one site.’

‘Yes,’ says Nelson thoughtfully. He is thinking about the site – it has held a children’s home, a churchyard and maybe even a Roman villa. Who knows how many other incarnations it has had, how many deaths it has witnessed? He shakes himself mentally. What’s the matter with him? He’s starting to think like Cathbad.

‘You know what was funny?’ says Clough, finally abandoning his search in the packet. ‘How much he talked about love.’

‘Priests do that.’

‘No. It was creepy. He said the girl was “lovable”. I think that’s a bit weird.’

Nelson considers. Was it weird? He had dismissed Hennessey’s remarks (‘Everyone loved Elizabeth’) as standard priest-speak but what if Clough is right? Is something more sinister at work here? Is ‘lovable’ an odd word to use about a five-year-old girl? Does he mean, in fact, that he was in some perverted way in love with her?

‘That’s what the nun said. It was in Judy’s report. She said Hennessey believed the boy needed “love and attention”.’

Nelson is rather impressed that Clough has remembered this. But then again, it’s a sad world if no one is allowed to love children.

‘Maybe he did love them,’ he suggests, ‘in a non-sexual, fatherly way.’

‘Jesus,’ scoffs Clough, ‘you’re sounding like a right Godsquadder.’

‘Rubbish,’ says Nelson angrily, pulling out onto the motorway with the minimum of care. ‘I’m just not jumping to conclusions. Never assume, that’s what my first boss used to say.’

‘I know. It makes an ass out of you and me.’ Clough looks out of the window. Nelson wonders if he’s getting a bit above himself. A good spell in the archives tomorrow will take him down a peg or two.

‘Tomorrow,’ he says coldly, ‘you can start the search for the kids’ family. And look up the Land Registry for the house. I want a list of everyone who’s ever owned the site.’

‘Jesus,’ mutters Clough, in a distinctly non-religious tone.