Evil Intent (29 page)

‘You can ring the hospital and tell them not to expect me,’ she said. ‘And ring Callie Anson. I’m meant to have lunch with her today. Ring her and tell her I can’t make it. And,’ she added, without a trace of irony, ‘you can pray.’

Traffic was already quite heavy, building up to the morning rush hour, and progress towards the police station was slow. Frances was grateful that the police didn’t try to make conversation. The last thing she needed was a discussion of the weather or the traffic.

They arrived at last, and the two men escorted Frances into the police station.

Now, she thought, Stewart and Cowley were on their own territory. Up till then, her encounters with them had been conducted within her world: at the hospital, at the vicarage. That had given her a certain advantage, at least psychologically. Now
they
had the advantage, and not just because she was literally their prisoner. This was an alien environment for her, one about which she knew nothing, but one in which they worked daily and were totally comfortable.

‘This is the custody sergeant,’ DI Stewart was saying. ‘Sergeant Pratt. We’re going to turn you over to her now. We’ll see you again later this morning.’

The uniformed woman was evidently expecting her. She was also
smiling
, which Frances took as a good sign. ‘Come this way,’ the woman said, leading her into a small room. ‘We need to take care of a few technicalities. I promise you it will be painless. Would you like a coffee?’

On a nervous, empty stomach that could have disastrous consequences, Frances decided. ‘No, thanks.’

‘All right, then. Have a seat.’ As she pulled a form towards her, she eyed Frances’ clerical collar and said, ‘I have to tell you that this is the first time I’ve ever booked in a priest.’

‘What a funny coincidence.’ Frances gave her a tight smile. ‘This is the first time I’ve ever been arrested.’

They both laughed. Frances felt no hostility coming from the woman; rather, there was almost a tenuous sense of rapport. She must have been near Frances’ own age, or perhaps a few years younger. Her greying hair
was cut very short – almost as short as a man’s – and she had a crooked nose which looked as though it had been broken. In spite of that, her face was kindly and her smile pleasant.

‘In that case, I’ll tell you what we’re doing,’ Sergeant Pratt said. ‘First we need to fill out this form, with your essential details. Then I’ll run through what you can expect during your stay with us. And if you have any questions after that, I’ll be happy to answer them, if I can.’

‘Fine.’

‘Name?’

‘Frances Cherry. The Reverend. Mrs.’

Sergeant Pratt’s pen moved across the paper. ‘Do you have a middle name at all?’

‘Mary. But I don’t use it. Frances Mary Cherry sounds a bit odd.’

The sergeant smiled. ‘Parents never know, when they give girls a name, what will eventually come after it. I certainly never expected to have a
surname
like Pratt. My husband’s to blame for that.’

Frances looked at her name badge: it read Sergeant S. Pratt. She was emboldened by the woman’s friendliness to ask, ‘What is the “S” for, then? Susan? Sarah?’

She made a face. ‘Promise you won’t laugh?’

‘Promise.’

‘My friends call me Sally. But I was christened “Salome”. If you can believe it.’

Frances couldn’t imagine anyone less suited to the name, suggestive as it was of sensuality and wild abandon. And in combination with the
down-to
-earth surname, it seemed nothing less than ludicrous. ‘I can see why you go by Sally.’

‘We digress.’ Smiling, she bent her head again to the paper. ‘Date of birth?’

Frances supplied it.

‘Occupation?’

‘Clerk in Holy Orders. That’s the official title.’

‘Height?’

‘Five foot two. Do you need it in centimetres, or is that good enough?’

‘Old money is fine with me.’ And so it went on, until all the pertinent details had been filled in, and the form was passed across for Frances to sign.

‘Now,’ said Sergeant Pratt, ‘I’m going to ask you to hand over all of your possessions, for safe-keeping.’

‘All of them? My handbag?’

‘That’s right. And I’ll need your watch as well, and your belt if you’re wearing one.’

‘My belt? What on earth for?’

For the first time, the sergeant avoided Frances’ eyes. ‘It’s the rules, I’m afraid.’

So she wouldn’t hang herself in her cell, Frances realised. It hit her forcibly, then: she was in custody. Not just here of her own free will to answer a few questions, but in police custody.

She removed her belt and handed it over, along with her watch and handbag. Sergeant Pratt put them all in a large plastic bag and sealed it, wrote out a list of the contents, then had Frances sign it.

‘Now, Reverend Cherry.’

‘Please. Call me Frances.’

The sergeant nodded, with a brief smile. ‘All right. Frances. It’s time for you to think about ringing a solicitor. If you don’t have one, I have a list. After that, we’ll give you some breakfast. It will probably be several hours before you are interviewed, so I’d suggest that you do eat something. It’s not the Ritz,’ she grinned, ‘but the food is fairly reasonable.’

‘No bread and water?’

‘You’ve seen too many movies.’

‘Or cop shows. My husband loves them,’ Frances admitted. ‘Inspector Morse, especially.’

‘Well, then. If you’ve watched cop shows on the telly, inaccurate as they are about a lot of things, you probably know that you can be held here for an initial period of six hours,’ Sergeant Pratt went on. ‘That’s from the time I booked you in, not from the time you were actually arrested.’

‘And then?’

‘Then, in the event that the Inspector wants to keep you here for longer, with my permission – or another custody sergeant’s, whoever is on
duty – he can extend that by another eighteen hours.’

‘That’s twenty-four hours! I could be here overnight!’ she realised, horrified. Graham would go spare.

‘Yes, until this time tomorrow morning. I don’t think it’s likely, though,’ she said reassuringly.

‘After that you have to let me go?’

The sergeant hesitated for just a second. ‘In cases where it’s felt
necessary
, and a superintendent authorises it, I can allow a further twelve hours. After thirty-six hours, if they want any more time, it has to go before a magistrate.’

Frances shut her mind to that possibility. ‘You have a lot of power, then,’ she observed.

‘I’m responsible for the care and well-being of everyone here in
custody
,’ Sergeant Pratt said. ‘Feeding and watering, medical care. Allocating cells and interview rooms. Keeping the solicitors happy. Not to mention all of the paperwork. Believe me, it can be quite a job. I have a detention
officer
to help with the donkey work, but it keeps me busy.’

‘Then I shouldn’t delay you.’

The sergeant leaned back in her chair. ‘Don’t worry. This is my slow time. I’ve just started my shift, about an hour ago. I’ve been round and checked up on everyone who came in during the night. That’s when we get most of our customers.’ She grinned. ‘Drunks. Domestics. The odd
burglar
. You know the sort of thing.’

Frances wasn’t sure that she did. Inspector Morse never dealt with drunks or burglars.

‘I usually catch up on my paperwork about now, until the solicitors start arriving. They start coming in about half-past eight, and then things get really busy. It’s all go after that.’

‘When do you get to go home?’ Frances asked, partly because she was curious, and also because she felt that as long as Salome Pratt was there, responsible for her welfare, she was in safe hands and nothing too terrible could happen to her.

‘My shift ends, theoretically, at three in the afternoon. But there’s always a bit of an overlap with the person on the next shift. I have to fill
them in on everyone and their state-of-play before I hand over.’ She leaned forward. ‘Enough about me, though. Do you have any questions you’d like to ask? Things I haven’t been clear about?’

‘Will I be…in a cell?’ Frances asked, afraid of the answer.

‘Not just now.’ The sergeant gave her a reassuring smile. ‘For one thing, there isn’t one available. It was a busy night, and they’re all full, at least till the solicitors start arriving to bail them out. And I don’t really think it’s necessary. You’re not a danger to yourself, or to society, are you?’

‘Not the last time I checked.’

‘They’re a pretty stroppy lot this morning,’ the sergeant said. ‘Two of them cussed me up one side and down the other, and used a few words I’d never heard before. And I thought I’d heard them all.’

Frances tried to imagine dealing with people like that on a daily basis, and felt thankful that she’d gone into hospital chaplaincy rather than prison chaplaincy. ‘That must be difficult for you.’

Sergeant Pratt’s grin was rueful. ‘Listen. I have three teenaged sons. There isn’t anything I don’t know about dealing with stroppiness. I could write the book on it.’ She added, ‘You have kids?

‘One daughter.’

‘You’re lucky,’ she said succinctly. ‘Girls must be so much less trouble than boys.’

Frances kept her reservations about that to herself.

‘Anyway, I have a little room I can put you in, where you’ll be more comfortable,’ the sergeant went on. ‘With any luck, you’ll be out of here and back home in a few hours.’

‘Thank you.’ Frances was as grateful for the words of encouragement as she was for the preferential treatment.

‘Now. You need to ring a solicitor.’ She produced a photocopied list and a thick directory. ‘If you don’t know one, you can pick someone from this list. Or if you have your own solicitor but need the phone number, here’s the Law Society directory.’ She stood. ‘Come with me. There’s a phone in the room where I’m putting you. Feel free to use it, if you want to ring your husband.’

She led Frances down a short corridor and opened the door of a small
room. It appeared to be a disused office, perhaps in between occupants. There was a desk with a phone, a desk chair, and another chair, which looked marginally more comfortable. The pin board was empty, bearing faint
ghostly
rectangles where sheets of paper must once have been, and the lighting, when the sergeant pushed the switch, was garish and fluorescent. ‘The detention officer will bring your breakfast in a few minutes,’ she said. ‘He’s called Jim. If there’s anything you need, you can tell him. Or give me a shout – I’ll be round and about, and I’ll let you know when your solicitor gets here.’

The room was windowless and airless, almost more frightening than a cell. Frances had never thought of herself as being claustrophobic, but already she could feel the walls closing round her. She didn’t want Sergeant Pratt to go; she didn’t want to be left alone in this room, waiting. Waiting for Stewart and Cowley to begin the third degree.

As if reading her mind, Salome Pratt patted her arm. ‘You’ll be all right, Frances. Neville – DI Stewart – is a good man, and fair. You don’t have
anything
to be afraid of with him, as long as you tell the truth.’

‘What about Cowley?’ Frances blurted.

‘Ah. Cowley.’ Sergeant Pratt’s face darkened. ‘I know I shouldn’t be saying this, but I’m not so fond of Sid Cowley. Fancies himself rather too much than is good for him, if you know what I mean. But DI Stewart will keep him in line. You’ll see.’

A solicitor. Frances sat with the list in front of her on the desk, paging through it. She’d thought ahead of time about what she
didn’t
want – not one of Graham’s parishioners, not one of the the hospital’s solicitors. But she hadn’t progressed any farther than that.

Then, like an answer to prayer, a name came into her head – a name she hadn’t thought about in years. Triona O’Neil.

Frances had met Triona O’Neil back in the heady days of the battle for women’s ordination. Well over ten years ago, now.

Triona had been very young. Much younger than Frances. She was newly over from Ireland, reading law at King’s College, London. A Roman Catholic, but an ardent feminist. She had come along to one of the meetings of MOW – the Movement for the Ordination of Women – and had
enthusiastically 
thrown herself into the cause. When Anglican women achieved the right to be priested, she reasoned, the Romans would eventually follow. Not that she wanted to be a priest herself: she wanted to be a lawyer, the best there was. So she could fight for the downtrodden and the marginalised.

Frances could picture her now, as she’d been back in those days. Thin as a whip, and full of nervous energy, with curly black hair which seemed almost electrified when Triona was on the move. She had that exquisite ‘black Irish’ colouring, with alabaster skin and eyes of a blue as dark as the Irish Sea.

Her moods were mercurial and extreme; her enthusiasms were
infectious
. She was a good person to have on your side, and would make a very dangerous enemy.

She’d been with them through the nail-biting vote, standing with a
banner
in Dean’s Yard on that historic November day. Her banner had read ‘Today Canterbury, Tomorrow Rome’.

And she’d come to Frances’s ordination the following spring. Then Frances had pretty much lost touch with her. There had been a few Christmas cards, and after that …

Perhaps Triona had gone back to Ireland after she’d qualified. Or maybe she’d married, and had a different name.

‘If you ever need a good lawyer,’ Triona had said to her once, ‘I’ll be there for you.’ It had been said in the context of some mild form of civil disobedience which a few of them had discussed – something like chaining themselves to the railings of Church House to draw attention to their cause, rather in the manner of the Suffragettes. Although it now seemed incredibly trivial, if they’d done it they might have been arrested. Might have needed a good lawyer.

She certainly needed one now.

Holding her breath, Frances opened the Law Society directory and flipped to the O section.

Yes, she was there. Triona O’Neil, and she was still in London.