‘Because he knew I was back.’ He slugged the whisky again, leaving his lips wet. ‘The monkey told me.’
His hand was trembling now, in perfect rhythm with his skull. ‘It had been a year. Christ, I hadn’t said a word, nothing, even when some of the old guys at the hostel asked where I’d been. I thought, fuck it, I’m not saying a thing. I thought it’d be OK for a night, two, back in Lynn. I asked the kid to put me in the hostel and he said he could – they had spaces, as long as I was clean. I said I was.’
‘And I’d be inside, out of sight. But the first evening – the night before the fire – I walked, I have to walk, get under the sky. So I went down by the docks, out along
Hendre held up his fist, clutched. ‘Then he said it – just flat, like a line he’d been made to learn. “He knows you’re back.” Just that. Then he pointed at his eye – just like the wop did. Then he ran.’
‘It’s Level One,’ said Shaw, wiping condensation from the windscreen of the Mazda. They were parked in Erebus Street, facing back up towards the T-junction, the dock gates behind them. There were lights on within the Sacred Heart of Mary, the tracery of the windows and the Victorian stained glass glowing in the dusk. White light that spilt from the frosted windows of the Crane. A late summer storm had cooled the air, so that the tables outside were empty, although the pub windows were open, allowing a thin trace of jukebox sound to leak out under the orange street lights.
‘Got to be,’ said Shaw. ‘The sound, the heat, the pipes. We’re out of time today but set it up for the morning, George. I want Level One ripped apart. We should have looked before, because if they were regularly getting rid of human waste down there then having the whole deal there – on the doorstep – it’s perfect.’
Shaw covered his eyes, trying to dredge something from his memory. Something Liam Kennedy had said. I hear voices… We all hear… ‘Down on Level One there’s a room allocated for a group called the Hearing Voices Network,’ he said. ‘Kennedy mentioned it. I saw the door, down near one of the exits to the main car park. Get that checked specifically – I want to know what’s behind that door.’
‘Get to Phillips, or Peploe, and tell them we want Level One sealed off tonight. The areas they have to use, round the lifts, the offices, the rest, we’ll do those first thing and they can have them back. It won’t be there, anyway – my guess is it’s out on the edges somewhere. But let’s do the best we can. Tell Twine what’s up; give him the background. I want everyone up to speed by dawn. All right?’
The doors of the Crane opened and DC Campbell came out. She’d insisted the landlord wake up his grandson Joey – the child Pete Hendre thought was the Organ Grinder’s monkey.
‘Nothing, sir,’ she said. ‘But he was pretty scared. Said he’d never run an errand like that, and he didn’t know anything about any organ grinder. I’ll get family liaison to have another go in the morning. But there are limits. He’s seven years old.’
‘Thanks,’ said Shaw. ‘It was a long shot, anyway. See you tomorrow.’ They watched her walk to a parked Citroën, then make a call on her mobile, before driving off.
Valentine looked at his Rolex. ‘We done?’ he asked.
‘Almost. The statement you got off Father Martin is a perfect match for Ally Judd’s – to the minute. So what’s going on? They’re having sex upstairs while Bryan Judd’s
‘Sure.’ The Mazda coughed into life.
‘And, George. Tonight – finding Pie, then Hendre, that was good work. Well done.’ He thought about smiling but knew it wouldn’t look right. The Mazda was doing 50 m.p.h. by the time it reached the T-junction, then backfired as it turned out of view.
Shaw entered the Sacred Heart by the side door and was surprised to find that, despite the hour, a service was in progress. He found Liam Kennedy just inside the entrance, perched on a pew end, probably to discourage late visitors from the Crane, Shaw guessed.
Shaw knelt beside him.
‘Midnight Mass?’ he said.
‘Tomorrow is the feast – the birth of Our Lady. We’ve always held a service on the eve. A vigil. It’s popular, with those of a certain age. It’s just ending.’
Shaw thought he wouldn’t like to see what unpopular looked like. There were a dozen in the congregation itself, the hostel men gathered separately to one side, in front of the devotional candles, seven or eight of them, like human bundles, motionless, huddled together.
Father Martin was at the altar, his back to the nave,
Father Martin blessed the congregation and asked it to go in peace. Parishioners began to melt away, while the men of the hostel moved as a group down the nave towards the makeshift kitchen. Martin spoke to a few people at the door and then turned to Shaw, already unfurling the stole at his throat.
‘Can I help?’
‘Dinner’s late,’ he said, watching the men cluster around a tea urn which Kennedy had wheeled into the light. A biscuit tin attracted them like birds around grain.
‘Just a treat, actually – they all ate earlier. It’s our feast day tomorrow, so…’ He laughed. ‘A celebration.’ He opened his arms as if to emphasize the contrast between that concept and the gloomy interior of the church.
‘Can we talk alone?’ asked Shaw.
Martin led the way into the small room behind the altar and began swiftly to pull off his vestments.
‘You lied in your original statement – Ally told me the truth this afternoon. I’m sure you know that by now. You were upstairs, in bed, together.’
He was pulling the cassock up over his head and so Shaw couldn’t see his face at that moment, but when he straightened up he was smiling. ‘And why does that matter?’ He pulled the bow on the white surplice.
‘Ally has to live in this street, Inspector. I can leave. I will leave, maybe soon. But she’ll have to live with the truth we leave her, or whatever version of the truth is left.’
‘You think people don’t know?’
The smile again, revealing expensive teeth. ‘You English – sometimes you don’t see yourselves for what you are. People know many things. What they say to your face can be very different. She can live with gossip and innuendo – she does. She despises them anyway. We don’t owe them any kind of truth. But we don’t have to…’ He searched for the colloquialism. ‘Rub their noses in it.’
It was the closest Shaw thought he’d get to a confession, so he moved on. ‘Ally came to see you at six. Bryan Judd died at between seven forty-five and eight thirty. Did you go up to the hospital to see him?’
‘No. I had no reason to.’
‘Not true, Father. Surely, not true. Ally would not have broken off your relationship but for the fact that Bryan had found out about it and wanted her to stay with him. She felt she should. She felt she had a duty. She’d already broken her promise. But perhaps that was a final gift to you?’
Martin looked away and Shaw knew he was right.
‘Did you go up to the hospital to confront Bryan with her betrayal? To force him to release her – openly – from the promise she’d made?’
Martin folded gold-threaded cloth into a wooden chest and locked it.
Shaw believed him, persuaded not by his words, or the logic of his arguments, but by the fact he couldn’t imagine the priest using violence. The hands were too studied in their movements: academic, considered. But he still had that image in his head of the medical certificate hanging in the priest’s study. ‘Do you have access to the medical records of the men here, and at the hostel?’