The Reaper

Twenty-five

'If that was your idea of 'low key,' what happens when you pull out all the stops?"

George Mitchell tried to let Somerville's sarcasm pass him by. Silence was the best option.

"You dash up the aisle like a demented bride and knock the communion wine out of the priest's hand, assuming it was poisoned? Is that discreet policing? What were you doing in the church in the first place? Don't answer that. I don't wish to know." Somerville turned to one of his team. "What's the latest on Mr. Sands?"

"He's fine, sir. Gone home."

"Fully recovered, then?"

"He fainted."

"I don't blame him. I would have fainted if I'd seen this buffalo bearing down on me."

"He says he thought he must have swallowed poison. He passed out with the shock."

Somerville turned back to George. "So having created mayhem, stopped the service, splashed wine over the bishop's hand-embroidered vestments-a laundry bill that puts us over budget for this year and the next-you charge the Rector of Foxford with attempted murder and march him over here in cuffs and hand him to the custody sergeant. Not what 1 asked you to do, was it? Jesus Christ, what a foul-up."

George could have said he had perceived a real danger to the lives of two crucial witnesses, but he knew there was no defence after the bear garden he'd made of the communion service. He just thanked his stars he was uniform branch, not CID. Somerville could rant to kingdom come. The fact remained that he'd asked a uniformed officer to do a job that should have gone to a detective.

Somerville raked a hand through his hair and groaned. "So how do we unscramble this mess?"

There was an uncomfortable silence in the major incident room. Finally he said to George, "When you arrested him on suspicion of murder, did you mention which murder?"

George thought about it and shook his head. At the time, he'd thought Burton was dead. He would have given Burton's name if he had given any, but he had not.

"That's a small mercy, then. You'd better leave us while you're riding high."

George left.

Somerville looked at his watch. "Let's go to work on this tosspot. We've had him in the cells for an hour already."

Otis Joy sat behind the table in the interview room looking as you would expect a priest mistakenly arrested to look: puzzled, troubled and innocent. He was no longer in his church robes, but he had the air of a Christian martyr.

Somerville couldn't help being affected by it. "This isn't the way we wanted this to be, Rector," he admitted humbly once the taping procedures had been explained. "It's been triggered by events beyond my control. PC Mitchell-the officer in the church-exceeded his brief. He shouldn't have been there."

"It was sacrilege," said Joy, seizing the high ground.

"Possibly."

"No, Chief Inspector. Not possibly. Certainly."

"All right, have it your way."

"If the bishop is worth his salt, he'll demand an enquiry from the Chief Constable."

"We'll see."

"About what happened in the church and what's happened to me since."

"Have you suffered any violence?"

"To my reputation, yes. Three hundred people saw me handcuffed in church."

"Not without cause."

"The man fainted. He wasn't poisoned with the blessed sacrament. It's a revolting idea."

"I said PC Mitchell made a mistake."

"Is that where the buck stops? With George Mitchell?"

Somerville had no answer.

Joy went on, "I know him pretty well. He respects the church. He must have been under orders."

"He was supposed to invite you here to help us with our enquiries into a suspicious death."

"He arrested me for murder."

"If you want to make an issue of this," said Somerville, "you are here on a murder rap. We exhumed the body of Gary Jansen. The results of the forensic tests came in today and traces of poison were found."

"That doesn't surprise me," said Joy-and he didn't appear surprised either.

"You know he was poisoned?"

"Oh, yes."

At first it seemed Somerville hadn't heard, but after a moment's delay he exchanged a triumphant glance with the detective inspector sitting beside him, turned back to Joy and said, "How do you know?"

"Sorry. Can't say."

"Why not?"

"I don't betray a confidence."

"What do you mean-someone confessed to you?"

"No, no. We don't go in for confessions in the Church of England, except in the General Confession. 'We have done those things which we ought not to have done.' "

"If you know someone poisoned this man, it's your duty to inform us."

"I'm not taking lessons from you about my duty."

"You're bullshitting, Rector. You know about this because you poisoned Gary Jansen yourself."

"Is that the reason I'm here? You believe I murdered Gary?"

"Yes."

"Then you'd better release me. I didn't."

"We've obtained a search warrant. We'll go through the rectory until we find that poison."

"I'd say, 'Be my guest,' but in the circumstances…"

"Don't come it, with me, Rector. You're going to go down for this one. We have the proof."

If they did, it made no impact on Joy in the next twenty minutes. They fired questions at him and nothing of substance emerged before the door of the interview! room opened and Somerville was asked by one of his team to step outside. "This had better be important," he said.

It was.

A man called Terry Rye had contacted Bournemouth Police after recognising a picture in the Daily Mail of a woman reported drowned. She was named as Cynthia Haydenhall. Terry Rye remembered seeing the same woman at Cobb's Marina in Holes Bay, Poole, shortly before Christmas. She'd visited one of the boat owners, a man called Bill Beggarstaff, and gone aboard his motor-cruiser, the Revelation, which was a state-of-the-art job, a forty-footer, one of the biggest in the marina. The boat had left the marina the same morning and not returned since.

Somerville was chastened. "I was bloody sure Cynthia was one of Joy's victims."

"Could it be another alias?" said the sergeant, trying to be upbeat.

"Beggarstaff? If you believe that, you've got to believe the Rector of Foxford owns a motor-cruiser worth a couple of hundred grand. On his stipend, he couldn't pay the mooring fees, let alone the price of a boat."

"So it's someone else?"

"Someone she thought was her sugar-daddy, I expect. Some rich crook who had what he wanted from her and dumped her overboard."

"If she boarded the boat in Poole, why did her car turn up in Bournemouth?"

"Beggarstaff must have moved it there. Are Bournemouth going to pick him up?"

"When they find him, sir."

"Fat chance. By now he'll be on the Costa del Sol with all the other ex-pat villains."

He went back to Otis Joy and bluffed. "Things are not looking good for you, Rector."

"Really?"

"We're closing in. But let's concentrate on Gary Jansen, shall we? We have a witness who saw him going into your rectory a matter of hours before he died."

"That's no big deal," said Joy. "Gary asked to come. He had some idea that his wife and I were over-friendly. I put him right and he went on his way."

"You weren't friendly with her?"

"I said 'over-friendly.' You know what I mean. I'm friendly with everyone in the parish, or try to be. I'm not so daft as to start relationships."

"Did he eat or drink anything while he was with you?"

"No."

"You say you put him right. Was there a fight?"

Joy closed his eyes. "I'm a man of God, Chief Inspector. I don't fight. It was a civilised chat."

"This 'man of God' stuff wants examining. You claim to be an ordained priest."

"I am."

"You went through a service, yes."

"I went through theological college."

"St Cyriac's?"

"Yes."

"For about a year. According to their records you were at a Canadian college before that."

"Is that a crime?"

"There's no record of you at the Canadian college. Someone else with a similar name was killed in a car crash. You took over his name and came to England claiming to be trained."

"It's official-the change of name. It appealed to me when I read it somewhere. It is allowed, you know."

"What were you called before that?"

"Brown. John Brown. Otis? Joy has a better, ring to it, you must agree."

"Where did you study before you started at St. Cyriac's?"

"This is sounding more and more like an interview for a job. I was in Canada. I had private tuition from one of the staff at Milton Davidson. That's why you won't find my name in the register."

Somerville knew nothing about training for the priesthood. He was floundering. He terminated the interview and had Joy returned to the cells.

Under PACE, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, he was required to review Joy's detention after six hours. In theory, they could keep him for up to thirty-six before applying to a magistrate for an extension, but it had to be justified. There had to be some prospect of formally charging the man.

The whole thing had been set in motion too soon. He had George bloody Mitchell to thank for that.

"The search of the rectory had better turn up something we can pin on him," he said to his sergeant. "When did they go in? Two hours ago?"

"Roughly."

"Contact them. See what they've got."

The sergeant called the team at Foxford. He reported back to Somerville: "Sod all, so far. It's a big building, but they've done all the obvious stuff already."

"The poisons in the cellar?"

"There were a few harmless things in a wooden cabinet: some aspirin, indigestion tablets, a cure for mouth ulcers, ointment for athlete's foot, Alka-Seltzer."

"The bugger's changed it all over."

"Very likely. He's way above us plods."

"We're not going to stick anything on him," said Somerville, all his confidence drained. "We can strap him all day and all night about crimes he won't admit, and he'll never roll over."

"Can't we get him on the embezzlement?"

"That's a job for the fraud squad. It takes months-and you can bet the bloody books have disappeared with Rachel Jansen."

"So a murderer walks free?"

"We're in the real world, sergeant."

Otis Joy was released from custody at nine fifteen that evening. In a philosophical mood, he returned to the rectory and found it ravaged by the search team. He packed a few things into a rucksack and put his Moulton bike in the boot of the Cortina and drove out of Foxford for ever.