The usual game to be endured. And the quicker it was begun the quicker it would end.
‘Well, I’m asking now, sir.’
‘We’ve got a match from a bloodstain, with the DNA, I mean. And the shit may well soon hit the fan so I’d duck if I was -’.
On Elaine Bell’s unheralded entry into the murder suite he fell silent, watching his superior like everyone else as she patrolled the room, eyes raking the place, clearly in search of something. Approaching Alice’s desk she swept up the blue-and-white-striped mug, breathing a sigh of annoyance as she did so.
‘Bloody cleaners! Rearranging everything,’ she said through gritted teeth. Alice smiled an answer, uncomfortably aware that she was now in close proximity to a hornet, its angry buzz warning that it was liable to sting at any moment. Keep still. Say nothing and it will fly past, she thought, trying to maintain her now fixed smile.
‘And don’t let it happen again, Alice!’ the Chief Inspector spat.
Perhaps she should just shake her head in apparent remorse and remain silent, play safe and avoid any more unwelcome attention, thought Alice. On the other hand, she had no idea what it was that she was not to let happen again, so it might. At any moment. Was she an accessory to mug theft, perhaps?
‘Or you, Simon!’
The DCI’s attention, though not her physical presence, had shifted on to her other sergeant. Unfortunately for him, he was not familiar with the finer points of the Elaine Bell’s body language and blundered in, a sweet still in his mouth.
‘Sorry, ma’am. I’m not sure what you are t… t… talking about?’ he asked nervously, cheek swollen with his humbug.
Instantly, she whirled round to face him.
‘Contamination, DS Oakley, that’s what I’m talking about. It’s thoroughly unprofessional, I’m sure you’d agree. The single hair from DS Rice was bad enough, but your blood… God save us all! Fortunately, being present when the body was found, seeing the scene myself, I got the lab to check the elimination database and, fortunately once more, you’re both on it, but we would have looked complete arses otherwise!’
‘It must have been the b… b… brambles,’ DS Oakley stuttered ‘I was c… c… cut to shreds.’ He looked to Alice for support, and glancing up momentarily at their superior, she nodded her head in agreement.
‘Brambles, alopecia… I don’t care what caused it, but it is not, I repeat not, to happen again. Is that understood?’
The two reprimanded officers nodded again and the Chief Inspector, venom now drawn, bustled out of the room, blue-and-white mug quite forgotten.
‘If only you’d listened, Alice…’ Eric Manson said, with phoney regret.
‘Was that all? The only traces being mine and Simon’s?’ Best ignore his jibes.
‘No, there’s another two, one from blood and the other semen, both less good than those of Simon the Pieman and his dancing bear, but they managed to get a match for one of them at least. The blood. You and I are off to see Mr Francis McPhail of Jerez Street this very evening. They got his DNA in 2005 for drink-driving, and he’s the match.’
When she did not immediately rise from her chair to follow him, he said, ‘Come on, Bruno. Time to perform!’
A woman was on her knees scrubbing the stone landing outside McPhail’s flat, her ample rump waggling slowly in the doorway, following the rhythm of her outstretched arms. Her bucket blocked their way up the stairs.
‘We’re looking for Mr McPhail?’ the Inspector said loudly, ensuring that he could be heard above the din of the cleaning.
‘He’s away at the church,’ she replied, hardly looking up.
‘Which church?’ Alice asked.
‘St Aloysius, further down the road. Obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ whispered the Inspector as they retraced their steps down the stone stairway to the street below.
The exterior of the church was vast but completely plain. No more than a rectangular, red-brick box with shallow slits for windows, each one positioned a few feet below the stark horizontal created by the flat roof. A structure so simplified and bereft of ornamentation as to fill any onlooker not with awe or wonder but instead with a kind of desperate depression; that humanity could waste time, money and energy in constructing anything so dull and mundane. Ambitionless. A piece of architecture either consciously subverting centuries of tradition, churches built to uplift the faithful and glorify God, or dictated by the excessive penny-pinching of a dying faith.
Passing through flimsy, oak-effect doors, they entered a well-lit nave, its white-painted surfaces bedecked with brightly coloured tapestries, each embroidered with a fish, a lamb or a lily, as if depicted by a child. Facing them, behind the altar, a massive stone crucifix was attached to the wall, a relief of the crucified Christ carved on it and the whole sculpture lit by a raft of concealed spotlights. A circlet of barbed wire adorned Christ’s head and his eyes looked upwards seeking deliverance.
As Alice and her companion processed towards the only occupied pews, those next to the altar step, the Inspector whispered, ‘What’s the awful pong, Yogi?’
But he had misjudged how his voice would carry, and his last words echoed around the space – ‘Yogi… Yogi… Yogi…’
‘Stale incense, sir,’ Alice replied, her voice hardly audible, fearful that her words, too, would be magnified as his had been. Arriving at the step, they automatically separated, taking a side each as if they had discussed the matter beforehand. Alice’s gentle tap on the white-haired man’s shoulder made him start with surprise, dropping the rosary he had been fingering to clatter onto the floor below.
‘Very sorry to disturb you, sir,’ Alice began, ‘but you’re not Mr McPhail, I suppose?’
‘No.’ The impropriety of the question, in such a place, was communicated forcefully to her by his stern expression. The next man along, eyes clamped shut in prayer, shook his head impatiently in answer to her query, and the third one in the row did the same, her voice having carried to him. Defeated, she manoeuvred her way back through the empty pew to find the Inspector waiting for her.
‘Any luck?’ he mumbled under his breath.
‘No.’
‘Me neither. The bastard must have gone.’
While they were still engaged in a whispered discussion, an elderly woman joined them and asked in a broad Irish accent, ‘Would it be Father McPhail, now, that you’re after?’
‘It might well be,’ the Inspector replied, smiling politely, and unconsciously adopting her brogue. ‘And where would we find him?’
‘Well, you’ll have to wait your turn like everyone else… he’s taking confessions at the minute. I’m number eight, so you’ll be numbers nine and ten. Keep your eyes skinned, mind, or other bodies after you in the queue will nip in before you and take your place.’
Sitting on the hard bench, Alice watched as Eric Manson, passing the time in between bouts of fidgeting, methodically hunted down any smut available in the Good News Bible, from Susanna and the Elders to Onan and his seed. Each one was discovered in seconds, a testament to the boredom of his own churchgoing years and a retentive memory. She knew them all, of course, and a few more besides; too many masses, benedictions and complines to fill and too little reading material.
After over an hour had limped by, the elderly woman emerged from the side-chapel followed by the priest in his white surplice and purple robe. He beckoned Alice, as if to signal that her turn had arrived, and she rose together with the Inspector.
‘Father McPhail… Father Francis McPhail?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
The dumpy figure seemed untroubled by their approach, as if used to dealing with pairs, handling inseparable couples. Despite his small stature, he had a magisterial air; they were in Christ’s house perhaps, but he was their earthly host. His strange, deep-set eyes looked out at them with an enquiring expression from beneath arched eyebrows. The eyeballs seemed to have no white, vast brown pupils taking up all the space, more like a chimpanzee’s than a man’s.