The Redeemed (19 page)
Authors: M.R. Hall
'He's playing games with you, Mrs Cooper,' was Alison's blunt
assessment.
'Why would he?'
'He's a fanatic. Plausible, but the maddest people often
are.'
'How would you get hold of a criminal record? It's not an
employer's copy, it's come out of a Crown Prosecution Service file.'
'Maybe he's using a private investigator. A lot of my old
colleagues from CID have gone that route. I dare say they could tickle up a few
contacts in the CPS if they needed to.'
'He hasn't got the money, he's a penniless priest.'
'But think what he's got behind him.' Alison handed back the
criminal record with a dismissive frown.
'I can't see why the Catholic Church would go out on a limb
for a convicted murderer.'
'It's not about him, is it?' Alison said. 'Priests are like
politicians, they tell you what you want to hear. With his own kind, I
guarantee all the talk will be of false prophets and wolves in sheep's
clothing. Every night when he flogs himself, your Father Starr will be praying
for the Mission Church of God to be torn to the ground.'
Jenny said, 'Before I saw this, I'd made up my mind to
certify cause of death and close the file.'
Alison gave her the sort of pitying look that could only come
from an ex-detective who believed she had seen it all. 'Sometimes I think not
even you know what drives you.'
Eva Donaldson
had dialled only
six different numbers in the final fortnight of her life.
Ringing each in turn, Alison established that they were Decency's Bristol and
London offices, Michael Turnbull and Lennox Strong's direct lines, the Mission
Church of God's main switchboard and Freddy Reardon's mobile. She had called
Freddy five times in eight days, but she had spoken to Lennox Strong only
twice.
Protocol dictated that Jenny should have sent Alison to
interview a potential witness, but there were occasions, and this was one of
them, in which she couldn't entirely trust her officer to put her prejudice
aside. She told herself it was an exploratory visit, that she was approaching
Freddy merely for background information. It was stretching the rules to their
outer limits, and as she parked beneath the tower blocks of the Langan Estate
she stopped to reconsider. Who was she doing this for? Was it really for Eva?
Did she actually need to be here or was she allowing herself to be bullied by
Starr? She stared through the windscreen at a carrier bag drifting across a
scrubby patch of grass littered with crushed tins and broken glass and hoped
for an answer. None came.
It was an image of McAvoy which formed behind her eyes. She
pictured his face the day she confronted him in the courtroom, at the moment he
confessed his fear of what, or more precisely the one, he had called the
'author of all this sadness'. He had managed at one and the same time to be
both a wicked and a good man who feared for his soul. During the months since
he had gone, Jenny had scarcely dared acknowledge the fact that their coming
together had been something far more than mere sex could consummate. Without
exchanging a word, they had both known that she was offering him a route to
redemption and he was doing the same for her. It might have happened, only in
wringing out the truth he had killed a man, and then thrown himself into
purgatory, leaving her to face the conclusion alone.
The lift that took her to the fifteenth floor of the Molyneux
Tower was plastered with obscene graffiti and smelled so overpoweringly of
ammonia that it burnt her nostrils during its painfully slow ascent. Bursting
out of the doors, Jenny found herself looking down a long, noisy corridor. As
she made her way along its full length to number 28, she was assailed by the
sound of domestic arguments, barking dogs and the heavy thump of bass
permeating the flimsy apartment walls.
The woman who eventually shuffled to the door and half-
opened it looked old enough to be Freddy's grandmother. Eileen Reardon was
heavily overweight with unkempt greying hair that straggled to her shoulders.
A loose, kaftan-style dress did little to disguise her bulk. Around her swollen
neck she wore a pewter Celtic cross.
'Mrs Reardon?'
The woman peered at her suspiciously.
'Jenny Cooper. Severn Vale District Coroner. I called
earlier—'
'Freddy's not back yet.' She looked Jenny up and down. 'I
suppose you want to come in.'
'If you wouldn't mind.'
Mrs Reardon moved back along the small, stuffy hallway. Jenny
followed her into a dingy living room. The only natural light was the little
that leaked around the edges of shabby, tie-dyed drapes tacked permanently over
the windows. Two mismatched sofas smothered in cheap ethnic throws were
arranged on either side of a low table. The air was stale with the smell of
Indian incense and cigarette smoke. Jenny had the feeling that Mrs Reardon
spent most of her waking hours in this room.
'Would you like some coffee?' Mrs Reardon asked.
Jenny eyed a collection of filthy mugs sitting next to a
grubby ashtray. 'No thanks. I'm fine.'
She took a seat and noticed her host's badly swollen ankles
and the wheezing sounds she made as she lowered herself onto the sofa opposite.
A heart condition, Jenny thought, and wondered if Mrs Reardon was even aware
that she was ill.
'You want to talk to him about this girl, do you?' Eileen
Reardon asked in a manner which suggested that she didn't approve of Eva
Donaldson.
'Yes. Did you know her?'
'No,' she said, as if the idea was ridiculous. 'I don't go in
for any of that.'
'Church, you mean?'
'All that puritanical stuff. I ask you, who cares? She
regretted her past - so what? So do lots of us.' She gave a self-conscious
laugh.
'She seemed to have a lot of time for Freddy.'
'He's that sort of boy, friends with everyone.'
Jenny glanced at a rickety set of bamboo bookshelves jumbled
with books on the New Age: titles on crystals, auras and chakra healing.
'I know,' Mrs Reardon said, following her gaze, 'Freddy and I
aren't exactly peas in a pod, are we? I'm afraid I haven't read the Bible since
I was at school, if I ever did then.' She shrugged. 'Whatever works for you, I
suppose.'
'How did Freddy get involved with the Mission Church?' Jenny
asked as innocently as she could. 'I've got a son almost the same age, I can't
imagine how it happens.'
'I don't remember,' Eileen said dismissively, 'probably someone
at school. It seems to be a bit of a craze - a weird one, but I suppose that's
the point. You don't rebel by doing something your parents would like.'
'You don't quite approve.'
'It's not the only way people get better, I know that much.'
'I'll confess, I was there yesterday. I saw him speaking. He
gave the impression that he as good as owed his life to the church.'
'I was helping him, too,' Mrs Reardon said defensively. 'I'd
been giving him healing for three years. They can't take all the credit.'
'He said he'd been suffering from depression.'
Mrs Reardon shifted her large mass uncomfortably beneath her.
'You can give it a label if you like. I don't put much store by doctors,
personally, especially psychiatrists.'
Jenny gave an understanding nod, hoping she would tell her
more. It worked.
'Freddy lost his father when he was younger and didn't get on
with the man I was with,' Mrs Reardon said. 'But once the quacks get their
claws into you it's hard to escape. I never wanted him in hospital but you're
just the parent, you don't count for anything.'
Becoming agitated, she heaved herself to her feet. 'Where is
he? He said he'd be here by now.' She produced a cordless phone from amidst a
heap of clutter on the table and dialled his number.
'Freddy, it's Mum. Where are you? She's here, waiting for
you.' She sighed. 'I don't care, it's up to you. Please yourself. All right, I
will.' She stabbed the off button with a puffy finger.
'Is everything all right?'
'He doesn't want to talk to you in front of me.'
'I don't want to force him.'
Mrs Reardon was quiet for a moment, then suddenly flared.
'How about telling me what the hell it is you want from him?'
'He was one of the people Eva spoke to a lot before she died.
I just want to know what she said.'
'I'm not stupid. He was at church the night she was killed,
we went through all that with the police. He's only a boy - why can't you
people leave him alone?'
'I'm sorry. I didn't mean — '
'He's got nothing to say to you. He's had enough trouble
without you stirring it all up.'
Jenny wondered if it was Freddy or his mother who was the
more fragile. Her face was beetroot; she laboured for every breath.
Deciding there was nothing to be gained by imposing herself,
Jenny said goodbye and let herself out.
She could tell it was Freddy skulking on the bench at the far
end of the stretch of grass, even though from this distance all she could see
was a shadowy outline, stooped forwards staring at the ground. She hesitated,
in two minds whether to disturb him. She was tempted not to upset his delicate
equilibrium, but the mother in her wouldn't let her leave him looking so
pathetic. She had to make contact, if only to offer some reassurance. She
approached slowly, picking her way around the broken beer bottles, giving him
every chance to retreat, but he wanted her to come, she could feel it.
'Hi, Freddy.'
He was silent for a moment, then said, 'I told them. I didn't
touch her. I didn't even know where she lived.'
'Of course,' she said gently. 'It's hard to explain how I'm
different from the police, but I am, very. My job is to find out how someone
died.'
'She was stabbed by a nutter.'
'It certainly looks that way, but I have to make sure all the
facts are known. I don't feel the police asked all the questions that needed to
be asked. That's why I'm talking to people who knew her, people like you who
knew what was going on in her life before she died.'
'Nothing was going on,' Freddy said.
'Do you want to tell me what you talked about on the phone?
She called you a few times in her last week.'
'I was in her study group. We talked about that, how the new
people were doing.'
'Did you ever discuss anything else? Did she talk to you
about her life outside the church?'
Freddy shook his head.
Jenny could see why Eva might have taken him under her wing.
Any thoughts she had entertained of a sordid connection between them
dispelled. He was like a much younger child at the mercy of his moods, trusting
and easily hurt.
'I get the feeling she was very precious to you,' Jenny said.
'It wasn't easy for her. People treated her like some sort of
saint, but she was only human. She had feelings like everyone else.'
'What do you mean?'
'She got tired and depressed sometimes, but that's what your
friends are for. Eva prayed for me when I first went to church and I prayed for
her.'
'What did she get depressed about?'
'All the work she had to do, what people expected of her.'
'She talked to you about that - the demands of her work?'
'Sometimes. It wasn't that big a deal. She was tough. Tougher
than most people.'
Jenny wondered why Eva would choose a vulnerable teenage boy
as a confidant, and presumed it was because she felt unthreatened by him.
Michael Turnbull and his immediate colleagues were educated and successful. No
matter how high her media profile, Eva would always have felt their inferior.
Even the most pious would have seen her as the ex-porn star.
'Freddy, do you think she was in any sort of trouble? Was
anyone threatening or hassling her?'
'She never said anything.'
'She didn't get any problems from people who knew her from
before?'
'She never talked about that,' Freddy snapped. 'When you're
born again, that's it, you're changed for ever. There's no need to go over the
past. Your sins are taken away. The Holy Spirit drives out the bad spirits,
that's the whole point.'
Jenny nodded, longing to put a comforting arm around him.
'That's what her book's about.' He looked at her with
wounded, accusing eyes. 'I bet you haven't even read it.'
'I've started,' Jenny lied.
She could see he didn't believe her. 'You might learn
something,' he said. 'God changes people. Not just a little bit, completely.
And for ever. All you have to do is let him.'
His heartfelt belief made her feel doubly deceitful. The idea
that Freddy's closeness to Eva had tipped into a frenzy of murderous emotion
seemed absurd; she despised Father Starr for having planted the poison in her
mind. He was worse than a sly detective, moving in the shadows, forming
baseless theories to suit his prejudice, not even man enough to tell her where
he was getting his grubby information from.
Jenny said, 'Freddy, I'm going to be straight with you. I may
have to call you as a witness at my inquest. I know how much you've changed
since going to church, but the fact that you've a criminal record will come
out. I'm just preparing you for that.'
Freddy shrugged. 'I waved a knife at my stepdad. It was
stupid, but so was he. I told the police he did far worse to Mum, but they
weren't interested in that.'
'I see you got a supervision order.'
A hint of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. 'It's like
Eva said, it was all part of God's plan.'
'What happened?'
'The social worker took me to a psychiatrist and put me in
hospital. They said I was psychotic. Maybe I was.' He looked at her with the same
bright expression with which he'd greeted her the first time they had met. 'The
doctor told my mum I could be on pills for the rest of my life. You should have
seen his face after Lennox had prayed for me. He wouldn't believe it. He said
it must have been my hormones or something. I haven't had pills for over a
year. I don't need them any more. I've got peace of mind.'
'Which hospital was it?'
Freddy paused, a hint of suspicion in his eyes. 'What do you
want to know that for?'
The rock returned to Jenny's throat, bigger than ever.
'Was it the Conway Unit?'
'Might have been.'
'And was there a nurse called Alan Jacobs there?'
Freddy was quiet for a moment. 'He was one of them.'
'Was it him who told you about the Mission Church?'
'No. He had
nothing to do with it. I thought you said you weren't like the police. I've had
enough of this. You people are all the same.'
He shot up from
the bench and took off across the grass.
'Freddy
—
'
He broke into a
run and didn't look back.
