Read Unsafe Convictions Online
Authors: Alison Taylor
When Julie returned to the Willows, the house was echoingly empty, but she knew that as soon as the residents came back, the routine threads of life would fast slacken the taut patterns woven that afternoon. All that was left to be seen of Fauvel’s death was a drying patch on the parquet floor of the hall: by tomorrow, and with a smear of polish, that too would be a memory. On the staircase there were no new tell-tale signs amid the old scratches and wounds that scarred nearly every inch of the once-proud wood, not even on the banister rail over which Debbie had pushed him.
Walking
quietly along the corridor, she climbed the nursery stairs to her flat, switched on lights and the electric fire, and went into the tiny kitchen to make a sandwich and a pot of tea. Pushing aside the sewing machine to make room — the pretty fabric was still trapped under its foot — she set the tea tray on the small table under the uncurtained window.
Outside,
the earth was frozen, the trees fast in the ground, and already frost was braiding intricate patterns on the window-panes. She reached out to touch the icy ridges, and went rigid when a door slammed somewhere in the building. Listening tensely, she waited for other sounds of human occupation, telling herself it was too soon for Fauvel’s ghost to be abroad. He would come later, and more stealthily, when his flawed and beautiful body was cold in the ground, and the time between now and his return would be as much an echoing void as the empty house. She had grown from child to woman closer to him than to her own shadow, and would go from now to her death with his ghost in her heart. He had loved her as much as he loved pain, and even if they were one and the same in his own heart, there had been that brief time in the long solitude of her life when she was able to love in return, before the love became the devil in her soul that whipped her towards all the other tawdry times when she sought out others to make her feel the same. Barry Dugdale was the only one among them for whom her scorched flesh held no terror, and for the first time in her life, she wondered if he too had truly loved her. Gazing blindly through the window, still listening for the sound of footfalls outside her door, she knew that even if he had it was too late now for both of them. They would never be more than prisoners of the question.
The inquest on Fauvel was held in the gloomy, old-fashioned room where the coroner’s court sat in Haughton, and began on a fine spring morning when the silver-birch trees beyond the windows dappled room and occupants with ever-moving shadows. After evidence of identification, Dr Wilfred Spenser, the pathologist who had examined Trisha’s charred remains, agreed that the priest’s multiple fractures and fatal head injuries were consistent with his having fallen from some height. Evidence relating to how that fall had occurred was taken from those staff at the Willows who were present, from Janet Evans, and from Debbie, who explained with great difficulty how and why she had prevented her favourite member of staff from having her much-needed sleep disturbed. Debbie’s further comment about making Father Fauvel happy as an angel in heaven simply drew a sympathetic but distant nod from the coroner, who, within less than two hours, delivered a verdict of misadventure.
The
inquest drew a fairly large audience of still-grieving parishioners, but could not compete with the lure of the funeral, when streams of black-clad mourners flowed along the town’s snow-covered streets to engulf St Michael’s church in a flood of grief. Father Barclay had not been among them, nor had Julie. She disappeared from Haughton two weeks later, without even placing a posy of flowers on Fauvel’s grave. Very few people knew where she had gone, and Dugdale was not one of them.
*
After the inquest, McKenna stood on the courtroom steps, chatting to Cyril Bennett.
‘
Thank God
that’s
over,’ Bennett said. ‘It’ seems to have been hanging over us for months.’
‘
My investigation had to be completed before the inquest could be reconvened,’ McKenna told him. ‘But it’s done with now.’
Bennett
regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Will you be saying any more than what’s already been in the papers? Reading between the lines, it looked as if Father Brett deliberately hid Father Barclay’s letter, and that doesn’t make much sense.’
‘
My job was to find out if
Dugdale
hid the letter. In the end, all we could do was balance the probabilities.’
Bennett
smiled to take away any offence from his words. ‘I reckon you know more than you’re telling. You don’t strike me as one of those policemen who’ll say black’s white just to get a colleague off the hook. Anyway, Dugdale’s not off the hook, is he? I heard he’s not allowed to do more than push a pen and answer the phone, and he has to get permission to do
that
. Still,’ he added, ‘I know you can’t discuss the details.’
‘
But I accept that people would like to know what they are,’ McKenna said. ‘Tell me, how’s Debbie?’
‘
She’s getting on all right, but she misses Julie terribly. We
all
miss Julie, but not for the right reasons, in some cases. She did more work than a lot of the others put together, and she was straight.’
‘
What have you done with the woman who doctored the log book?’
‘
I went through the proper procedures and insisted the management committee sacked her. If she’d left things alone, I’d have done something about the incident as soon as I went on duty and, for all we know, Father Brett might still be alive.’ He frowned, scraping the toe of his shoe on the edge of the step. ‘It’s the butterfly beating its wings in Borneo and causing an earthquake in South America syndrome, isn’t it? Cause and effect.’
‘
It happens. All the time, I’m afraid. Have you heard from Julie?’
‘
No. Have you?’
‘
There’s no reason why I should,’ McKenna replied. ‘I’ve had a letter from Father Barclay, though. He’s setting up a new mission, about two hundred miles south of Bogota.’
‘
He’s a
nice
young man,’ Bennett said feelingly. ‘I wish he’d stayed here. He’d have made a wonderful parish priest, but never mind, eh? I dare say there’s far more of God’s work to do where he is, don’t you?’ Pushing his hands in his pockets, he began to walk down the steps. ‘I wish Julie hadn’t just upped sticks and gone the way she did. She needs to be with people who understand what she’s been through, because Father Brett’s death must have been a terrible blow for her. They were so close.’ He sighed. ‘You know, he always seemed to be carrying some awful burden, and I reckon Julie was the only one who could give him respite. His eyes would light up when she came into the room. It was very moving.’
*
The only parking space McKenna could find on Church Street was two doors up from the old police house where they had lodged in February. The surveillance cameras were still bolted to the walls, and the grilles still fixed over the windows, but there were no signs of life about the place. The churchyard trees, now a sea of green leaves, whispered in the soft wind coming off Bleak Moor, and as Jack slammed the passenger door the rooks erupted, croaking their raucous song. Janet emerged from the back of the car and shut the door with a quiet click.
Single
file, they walked along the narrow pavement, with McKenna leading the way. Janet stepped on his shadow at every pace, half expecting him to be pulled backwards by her weight. Behind her, Jack dawdled, hands stuffed in his pocket. As they passed the Bull Inn, the sign creaked in the breeze, the bull’s face glaringly white in the sunshine.
*
Rene’s front door was wide open, and before the gate was latched behind her visitors she was out on the step to welcome them. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she peered at Janet. ‘Well, my goodness!’ she exclaimed. ‘I hardly recognised you. You
do
look well.’
Janet
smiled. ‘So do you.’
‘
And
you’ve grown your hair. It looks ever so pretty.’ She surveyed Jack and McKenna from head to foot, said: ‘And you two look just the same,’ then took them into the house, along the hall, and out through the back door to a suntrap of a patio. Her garden was a riot of colour, sheltered from the weather and prying eyes by banks of shrubs and a hawthorn hedge dripping with creamy blossoms. ‘It’s a pity Mrs Turner couldn’t be here as well,’ she added, ‘but I expect she’s very busy.’
‘
She wasn’t required at the inquest,’ McKenna told her. ‘So she couldn’t come.’
‘
And I suppose
you
had to get permission off the powers-that-be to have your lunch here, didn’t you?’ Rene asked. ‘Well, never mind. Sit yourselves down while I bring out the food. I did plenty, seeing as Mr Tuttle was expected.’
Jack
’s eyes gleamed as savouries, salads, sandwiches and cakes appeared. Rene smiled at him. ‘Quite like old times, isn’t it? Apart from the weather, of course.’
‘
I don’t know how you put up with snow like that, year after year.’ Making inroads on several dishes at once, Jack added: ‘But to see the place now, you’d think it had never happened.’
‘
It’s always the same,’ Rene said. ‘Once it thaws, it’s just a memory.’
‘
I thought it was quite beautiful,’ Janet commented, selecting her own food. ‘But it must have been a nightmare for the farmers. I expect they lost a lot of sheep and lambs.’
‘
Well, not really.’ Rene set four teacups in four saucers. ‘When there’s bad weather on the way, the whole village helps with bringing the animals off the high moors. We’ve always done it, the able-bodied ones, that is.’ She picked up the teapot. ‘Same with the haymaking, even though machines do most of the donkey work these days.’
‘
I used to go haymaking,’ McKenna offered, biting into a chicken sandwich. ‘With a pitchfork.’
‘
I remember.’ Rene smiled. ‘You’d be out all day turning the hay to dry, then awake all night praying it wouldn’t rain on it.’
‘
I’ve never done anything like that,’ Janet said. ‘My father celebrates Harvest Thanksgiving at the chapel, but I’ve never gone into the mountains to look for lost sheep.’ She grinned. ‘Mind you, I’ve met a few that went missing from
his
flock.’
‘
We’ve
got plenty of
that
sort,’ Rene told her. ‘And so have the Catholics. Then again, who hasn’t?’ She pushed the sandwich plate within McKenna’s reach, and jostled the conversation along the way she wanted it to go. ‘In her own way, even though I’ve no time for the woman, you could call Beryl Kay a lost sheep.’
‘
Really?’ Jack wiped his fingers on a napkin. ‘Why’s that?’
‘
Well, after the servants walked out on her she couldn’t get a soul to go near the place. Folk said she can lie in the bed she made for herself, and they won’t lift a finger to help.’
‘
I can’t say I’m surprised,’ Jack said.
‘
You can’t but help feel a
bit
sorry for her, though.’ Absently, Rene chewed the side of her mouth. ‘My daughter has call to pass her place now and then when she’s visiting the farms that way, and she’s seen the mess. There’s filth painted on the walls, the garden’s a pig tip, the gate’s in splinters, and even some of the windows got smashed. The hooligans were running riot for nights on end.’
‘
The local coppers should’ve sorted them out, then,’ Jack commented.
‘
They did,’ Rene said, ‘but they couldn’t stop the whispering and pointing and jeering every time Beryl showed her face in town, could they?’
‘
She could put a stop to that herself.’ Heaping his plate with salad and sausage rolls, Jack said: ‘All she needs to do is show Smith the door.’
‘
Folk reckon she’s scared of him.’ Picking up a long knife, Rene cut a fresh cream sponge into large wedges. ‘According to the housekeeper, Smith wasn’t the only one telling lies to that madam of a reporter. Beryl was, too. She’d already had a beating off him before that reporter even turned up.’
‘
Why doesn’t
that
surprise me, either?’ Jack wondered. ‘What happened?’
‘
There was a row about the credit card bills Smith was running up, and he ended up going wild. He chucked the telephone through the window, then hit Beryl. The housekeeper said she had a real shiner the next day.’
‘
She could get out of the marriage if she really wanted to,’ McKenna said. ‘And she could afford the best legal brains to help her.’
‘
I know.’ Sighing, Rene offered him what remained of the sausage rolls. ‘She must
want
things to stay as they are, but God knows why.’
‘
Some people enjoy pain.’ Janet put two more sandwiches on her plate.
‘
She’s probably one of them,’ Rene decided. ‘A few days after they’d walked out, the servants went back for the rest of their things, and they took their solicitor with them, just in case. Beryl was on all fours, cleaning out the grate in the study, while Smith sat over her, dressed up to the nines like always. She can’t have an ounce of shame in her body, can she?’
‘
Or pride,’ McKenna added.
‘
Not like that Father Fauvel, then,’ Rene said, eyes bright. ‘He had more pride than was good for anybody, but folk always
did
say pride comes before a fall.’ Malice coloured her voice. ‘Same as it did for that reporter.’ When there was no response from her audience, save for the sounds of eating, she went on: ‘You do
know
her paper’s paid up, don’t you? Fred got ten thousand, Linda got twenty-five, and Smith’s mother must’ve got some cash, because there was an apology and something about “undisclosed damages”.’
‘
What are they doing with the money?’ Jack asked.
‘
Fred went on holiday to Spain, and it near made a new man of him. You wouldn’t think he’d even been near the hospital, never mind at death’s door. Linda’s thinking about using hers as a down payment on one of the village houses. Craig’s always had a mind to live here.’
‘
It’s nice to know some good came out of the bad.’ Janet helped herself to cake.
‘
It’s just nice to
know
,’ Rene said meaningfully, looking at McKenna. ‘If you rely on what you read in the papers, you get less than half the story. And even if you put that together with what folk tell you, you still don’t know if the two and two is adding up to four or twenty-four.’ She put a wedge of cake in front of him, and topped up his tea. ‘Some things are as plain as the nose on your face, but others — well, all you can say is there’s a lot more to them than meets the eye.’ Fidgeting with the table-cloth, she added: ‘I mean, look at what happened with Estelle Ryman. I remember her from when she was a lass, and all you could call her for was having too much side. You’d never imagine she’d end up cracking open her husband’s head like an eggshell, not in a million years.’ She stared pointedly at McKenna. ‘What’s happening with her? Will she be going to court?’
‘
We don’t know,’ McKenna replied. ‘She’s unfit to stand trial at present. She’s in a psychiatric hospital.’