Absolution (35 page)

‘Yes, I was.’ He smiled to himself, as if thinking about something recent and finding the memory pleasant.

‘Why?’

McTiernan looked at her for a moment. She felt a shiver run through her and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, knowing the next thing out of McTiernan’s mouth would be a lie. He had spent too long thinking about it. And there was something else, a subtle change in the expression: those friendly blue eyes were not so friendly now. ‘Could you tell me why you left in such a hurry?’

‘I met somebody. Shagged her as well. Is that a crime?’

A different reaction. Eat your heart out, Viktor Mulholland. Female intuition says McTiernan has feelings for the second one. He’s lying.
Protection and devotion…

‘Is it?’ he persisted.

Costello raised one eyebrow, inviting him to continue.

‘I don’t chase women, but I take it when it’s offered. I was chasing some bad memories. It was in the same lane that… well, you know.’

‘I think I do know, Mr McTiernan.’ For a minute their
eyes locked. He looked away first. ‘I would like her name, even if she’s married. I can be discreet.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know her name.’

That she didn’t believe.

The Three Judges was crowded even on a Thursday night, which suited them fine. It was warm and cosy in the booth, and a draught rushed at their ankles every time the door opened. It had been raining steadily for the last three hours, driving even the most committed smokers indoors. On the television Davina McCall was screeching with excitement about something nobody was interested in watching.

The squad were sitting at the back of the pub, heads down in a scrum formation. McAlpine was biting on the skin round his thumbnail, gnawing to relieve the tension. He had had a shower and a change of clothes, but the bruising on his skin had darkened, and his face looked thinner. Anderson was sure healthier-looking people had walked out of Belsen. It was the end of a long day, at the end of a long week, and there was a faint hope resolution was not far away. It just wasn’t there yet. McAlpine looked tense, sitting slightly apart, giving the impression he no longer belonged, but Anderson was glad he was there.

‘We have to get this closed and get it closed soon,’ said Batten as an opening gambit. ‘Remember, this is an unofficial meeting, so if we come up with any touches of genius, they get minuted as tomorrow’s briefing. I’ve met DCI Quinn, and I share your misgivings; she’s already counting the biros in the office. But enough said. We have to get closure on this now; we are so close. How’s Helena doing, Alan?’

‘She’s fine. She went in to work for a couple of hours. The show must go on, as they say.’ A slight colour flamed in McAlpine’s eyes and then died. ‘Quinn’s already in my
office, you say? I didn’t make it in to tidy the desk. I’ve been in the hospital. They wanted to X-ray me again. I’ve a broken clavicle.’

‘Good for you,’ said Anderson. ‘Peter made less fuss when he broke his, and he’s only five.’

‘Right,’ said Mulholland, ignoring them and spreading out a sheaf of photographs in front of him. He held up the original one of Elizabeth Jane, and another of her looking very different. ‘This is the most recent; we got it from her mother. There were only four weeks between these two photographs, but look: the shorter hair, the highlights she had put in for the wedding – ’

‘Which she had dyed back again. Gail Irvine reckoned the last-minute fuss about the turquoise bridesmaid’s dress would be enough to turn Paula homicidal,’ Costello put in, starting to feel a bit light-headed. ‘Good thing she and her fiancé were both at his mum’s that evening.’

Anderson spoke up. ‘You remember I spoke with Shand? And he said he’d discussed the whole Elizabeth Jane situation at the Phoenix, suggested getting her to go down there so one of the other priests could get involved? O’Keefe went berserk, absolutely apeshit. Said he hadn’t spent years working to get the refuge up and running just so some bored middle-class bint could come in and use the place to stage her attention-seeking charades. His actual words were stronger.’

‘He has a strong ego, O’Keefe. No doubt about that,’ said Batten thoughtfully.

‘And about Arlene, Shand said it was common knowledge she was not a misguided little innocent battered by social injustice. He advised O’Keefe against being alone with her or with any of the girls.’

Batten nodded. ‘He’s a shrewd judge of character, then.’

There was a frustrated silence round the table while the barmaid appeared with a tray of drinks, jostling her way through a couple of guys leaning against the booth, watching the TV. One, his hood still pulled up from the rain outside, had elbowed Costello twice already. Any more of it and he was going to get his brown Barbour covered in orange juice.

Anderson caught her eye. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘He’s had it rewaxed; you can smell it from here. It’d just be a waste of drink. Talking of which, I’ll join the Boss in a malt. Christ knows I deserve it.’

‘So, as the good doctor here predicted, our friendly serial killer, Christopher Robin, sees all these women as part of the monstrous regiment,’ said Mulholland to Costello, misquoting John Knox.

‘What are we discussing? Manslaughter or woman-slaughter?’ she said bitterly. ‘I don’t see any guys getting cut up and left to bleed to death.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Batten, peacemaking again. ‘This is starting to have the right feel about it.’ He put his hand over the photograph, dropping his eyes to look at Arlene’s pixie-ish features: the upturned nose, the exaggerated epicanthic fold over the eye. ‘Bitches? Manipulators? It’s a good hypothesis, but we need to look behind it, to see what Christopher Robin sees.’

McAlpine was not seeing anything except a daft bint with a new hairdo. He closed his eyes.
Bitches. Manipulators.
Was that how Christopher Robin saw Helena? How Leask had seen Anna? No, Leask had said that it was Anna who’d taught him a lot. She had died to save her child. And he had been ashamed of the way he’d thought about her.

‘Well, tomorrow O’Keefe will be back in the Phoenix, Leask will be down from Ballachulish, and McTiernan will be back to finish his window,’ added Mulholland. He nodded
at Costello ‘And I’ll have a root around his toolbox, if I get a chance. I’ll keep it legal – only if in plain sight and all that.’

‘So tomorrow we get them all on the same menu. How lucky can we be?’ Anderson looked at his watch. ‘Right, troops, home-time. Big day tomorrow. We can sleep easy tonight; Quinn is having all the main players watched. Unofficially,’ he added.

Mulholland left quickly, clearly glad to get away. Batten wandered back to the bar. Anderson got up to leave, then took one look at the Boss and sat down beside him. He looked hard at Costello.

‘I’m too wound up. I’ll stay on for a bit,’ she said, understanding quickly. ‘Too wound up. I’m not sure I’m getting this. I’m not sure I’m getting any of it. I need to hear how Wyngate got on trawling the books of White’s the Joiners. I want something concrete.’

‘Don’t we all? Wyngate wasn’t hopeful when I spoke to him.’

‘He’s playing us along, this Christopher Robin,’ said McAlpine, grinding the edge of a beer mat into the table. Anderson resisted the urge to take it off him. ‘Is McTiernan in the frame?’

‘Yes, but the White’s set-up looks well run and secure. It would have to be, if they’re sending a guy with McTiernan’s record out to jobs. I’d say O’Keefe looks tastier.’ Anderson got up to order another drink.

‘Look at that face, jumped on, pulped.’ McAlpine stared at the mess that had been Arlene. ‘That was McTiernan, I’ve no doubt. I’ve had the benefit of seeing his work before. All these comments about what a nice guy he is? Exactly what I heard the last time. He’s a vicious little sod. His mother insisted he was brought up a Catholic, yet she had the morality of lesser pond life, so there’s your religious
conflict. I’d run down that joinery job; get forensics to go over it.’

‘But he admits he did the work, so that gets us nowhere,’ Costello pointed out quietly.

Suddenly McAlpine’s face was in hers. ‘I told you he was clever! I’ve seen what his feet do to a face, and I’ve seen it with these eyes. So don’t give me any crap. He’s guilty. He shagged one of them, for God’s sake, and he knew where the other two lived. And anybody with half a brain cell could work out where I live after that bit in the press. Helena was left wide open by that!’ Costello recoiled in her seat, her head jammed up against the Barbour jacket behind her, feeling queasy in a reek of lanolin and linseed. ‘Do your job, Costello. You’re looking for a trigger? Well, how about: McTiernan gets out of prison and all this starts. You’re looking for a motive: his mother thinks so little of him that she abandons him as a baby, and the only thing she gives him is the guilt that goes with being brought up Catholic.’

Anderson held his breath until he caught sight of the time. ‘Christ, I’d better be going. Costello, can you take these back to the station?’ He held up the photographs. ‘And make sure the Boss gets… somewhere.’

‘Don’t tempt me,’ Costello glowered. ‘Just put a broom up my arse, I’ll sweep the floor as I go.’ She fumbled as she put the photographs back in the envelope. She stopped at Arlene’s picture. The high sweep of her cheekbone, her hair well cut and off her face, made her look almost classy, a million miles away from the common tart she had appeared to be on the slab. ‘It’s funny how that picture changes her. Maybe she was getting somewhere after all,’ she said to nobody in particular. She noticed Anderson had left a full half-inch of Talisker. ‘But at the end of the day her wee boy is still going to grow up without a mother. Is he another Sean
McTiernan in the making? Another Christopher Robin?’

‘We all have choices, Costello,’ whispered McAlpine.

‘Yes. Having a father I didn’t know and an alcoholic mother, I should be a serial killer… well, on the days I’m sober. But all I’m admitting to is a HobNob addiction.’ She swigged the Talisker to dramatic effect. ‘Like you say, it’s all a matter of choice.’

‘But you do have your ghosts.’

‘Yes, I do.’ She caught McAlpine’s eye and longed to stroke that bruised face. ‘Indeed I do.’

‘And that gives you the fire in your belly to do the job right. Not all ghosts are bad.’ McAlpine began upending the photograph between finger and thumb. His voice was dead, his mind elsewhere. ‘We should be looking backwards, not forwards. It’s our past that makes us what we are. And sometimes it comes back to haunt us. Or worse.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Someone I once knew. I think. I mean, I think I knew her. I think I still do. I don’t know. I’m too tired to think straight. Now you know why I drink. Keeps the demons and memories away.’

Costello smiled and took another slug of Anderson’s Talisker.

The minister was sitting behind the desk, a mug of tea and a plate covered with toast crumbs to one side, opening that morning’s mail and placing the bills in a neat pile, while enjoying his late breakfast. Even though he was casually dressed, his shirt and collar were tucked precisely underneath his jumper. He could have been any minister in any church attending to his office duties.

The whisky the night before had warmed Costello to the best night’s sleep since the case had started. Now she could feel the anger come back; now she was ready to take on the world in general and George Leask in particular.

She knocked at the already open door. ‘Mr Leask?’

The minister rose from his seat and nodded to her very politely.

‘Hello. Police, I know, please come in,’ he said. ‘Oh, it’s you, Mr…’

‘Mulholland.’

Leask sat back down. His hair ruffled, his fine features slightly reddened as if he had been caught in foul weather, he had a wholesome attractiveness about him when he smiled with sincerity, like Dr Kildare. Costello summed him up as a man that women would trust. She smiled back at him. There was a flickering response in the ice-blue eyes. Costello wondered if he was shy. Or gay.

‘Where were you last night, exactly?’ she asked, her voice tough but friendly.

‘I drove up to Ballachulish. Just a quick up and down. I’m sorry for going off like that, but after the events of the last few days, I felt I really had to get away. To tell you the truth, I needed all my strength to come back. I did leave a number,’ he added defensively, directing his words over Costello’s shoulder to Mulholland. ‘I’d spoken to DCI McAlpine.’

‘Well, you’re talking to me now,’ Costello persisted.
‘We
believe there might be a link between the murders and this place… or with one of the staff,’ she added deliberately, keeping her voice hard. This man believed in the wrath of God. He wouldn’t scare easily. ‘How well did you know Arlene Haggerty?’

He pressed his palms together. ‘Oh, I knew her. We tried to offer some help.’

Suddenly Costello smiled her sweetest smile, the one that charmed confused old ladies. ‘I asked
how
well. I mean, you belong to a faith that objects to an air ambulance landing on a Sunday because it’s the Lord’s Day, yet you happily help a girl who is out drinking, and, worse, on a Sunday night. I don’t get that.’

Leask steepled his fingers and chose his words with care. ‘That’s why you do your job and I do mine.’

‘Sorry if I offended you, but it is difficult to understand.’

‘I know she sold her body for money. That should have outraged me, I suppose, but
saddened
would be the word I would have chosen. She was also, for the record, slightly antagonistic to those who didn’t belong to the Church of Rome.’ For the first time Costello saw Leask smile with genuine humour.

‘I was born in Glasgow. You get used to it. You sound as though you quite liked her.’

‘She had an inquiring mind.’

‘An inquiring mind?’

‘Yes, we talked about faith and belief. People are not always as they seem, DS Costello.’

‘You can say that again.’ He looked at her with those blue eyes. She didn’t look away. ‘But she talked with Thomas more than she did with me.’

‘Father O’Keefe?’

‘Yes.’

Costello made a conscious effort not to glance at Mulholland. ‘Did she get on well with him?’