‘Edinburgh. And I’ve a better idea,’ Alice said. ‘I’m supposed to be off on Saturday the twenty-eighth. If you like, I could come and pick you up then and take you to Broughton Place myself. How would that be?’
Spontaneously touching Alice’s wrist again, Mrs Foscetti nodded enthusiastically ‘Why not? I’ll wear my smartest outfit, and knock the spots off her!’
10
The young man straightened his striped tie. His first proper assignment as a qualified solicitor and it would have to be advising on an interview under caution. Oh, and not any old interview under caution, just one involving a suspected double murderer. Christ on a bike! Here he was, monkey masquerading as organ-grinder, and all because that fat git McFadden was taking a sickie to go ski-ing.
He glanced warily around the interview room, nauseous with apprehension and increasingly aware that his bladder needed emptying. But all the police personnel seemed eager to start, quivering like dogs in their traps, desperate to catch the passing hare. And even the hare, his so-called client, seemed ready to go. And if this had been for some trivial charge, say, a peeing up a close or a minor assault, then he too might be happily placing his toes on the start line. Presumably, they all imagined that he knew what he was doing. No-one could say that he did not look the part, at least.
On cue, and as soon as requested by the Chief Inspector, he left the room, feeling in some incongruous way as if he had been demoted, now a stage-hand rather than a performer. Thank goodness he had listened to the office secretary again, she knew her onions. Otherwise he would be vainly protesting his right to stay beside his client until he was forcibly ejected, his inexperience exposed for all to see, for all to laugh at. The humiliation just did not bear thinking about.
Obviously, the warnings he had remembered to give his client provided a sort of comfort, justified his initial attendance at public expense. Any difficult or dangerous questions were to be responded to with ‘no comment’, or ‘I’d rather not answer that’, and the consequences of such apparent lack of frankness could be sorted out later. But now, watching the priest through the internal glass window of the interview room, and, worse yet, hearing him, the holy fool appeared to be busy shooting himself in both feet, ignoring all the earlier whispered advice as if it had been imparted in Pushtu. In fact, for all the difference he had made, he might as well give up, enjoy himself instead, relax and take in his surroundings. Plainly, he lacked the requisite gravitas to influence a man of the cloth.
The young policewoman sitting opposite the priest caught his eye. DS Rice, he recalled, from their brief pre-interview conversation. Very tall indeed. And what was the polite word for thin too? ‘Willowy’. Pussy willow. He looked at her face, became absorbed in his study of it, heedless now of anything the priest was saying, or anyone else for that matter. Strange. Pussy Willow’s face was registering concern, distress even, the sort of expression to be expected from an onlooker at an inevitable crash. Unexpectedly, she threw a hostile glance at him, or was it aimed at someone near the door? Either way, he took no notice and carried on, whenever the opportunity presented itself, of studying her.
Unknown to him she was only too well aware of his presence, his grimacing face occasionally pressed to the glass, nose and chin flattened and yellowed. The mouth opening and shutting like a goldfish in a bowl.
‘Truly, I’ve never met Isobel Wilson,’ the priest said imploringly, and Alice Rice watched him intently as he spoke. ‘Nor Annie Wright either. On the ninth I was, as I told you the first time, helping Mrs Donnelly clean my study in the early evening, then I went to my church. I got back home at about eleven, I think. On the evening of the twelfth I was…’ he hesitated briefly, ‘in my church again. I spent the night there.’
‘Anybody else there with you?’ Elaine Bell enquired.
‘No-one.’
‘Sure about that? No-one in the church throughout the entire period that you were there? The entire night?’
‘No-one. I’m sure.’
‘And when did you go there, and when did you leave the place?’
‘I went there at… maybe seven o’ clock, and I left there… about six or so.’
‘Eleven hours on your knees!’ Elaine Bell spluttered in disbelief.
‘I sat some of the time, officer,’ the priest said coolly.
‘Your housekeeper saw you return?’
‘In the morning? Yes, she saw me.’
‘So, Father, if traces of blood, with your DNA, have been found on the bodies of Isobel Wilson and Annie Wright, what exactly would your explanation for that be?’
The priest stared at the DCI. ‘What did you say?’ he asked, incredulous. Elaine Bell repeated every word she had said, and looked expectantly at him.
‘I’d say…’ he paused, meeting the eyes of his interrogators. ‘I’d say… it’s impossible, because I’ve never come across either of those poor souls.’
Alice looked towards the door, spotting the young solicitor framed outside in his usual window, entertaining himself by misting the glass with his breath and then rubbing a clear circle in it with his nose.
As Father McPhail was being taken down to the cell, Alice picked up a list recording the possessions taken from his pockets at the charge bar. His diary, a lottery ticket and a wallet containing a £5 note, a debit card, the photograph of a baby and a biro. While she was reading the diary, Elaine Bell was busy on the phone to one of the turnkeys, becoming increasingly frustrated as the conversation went on. ‘No – I said NOT to put him in the pink cell. I don’t care if all the others are occupied, just shift them around, eh? Why? Why? How about because the priest doesn’t need pacifying in there, or to see “FUCK THE POPE” scrawled on its walls. That’s why!’
At 10.30 a.m. the double doors of St Benedict’s opened, and a sad trickle of silver-haired people emerged, chattering among themselves in a subdued fashion, preparing to brave the snow-glazed church steps that led to the pavement. The celebrant was nowhere to be seen, so Alice buttonholed a stooped old lady, who stood motionless and staring hard down the street as if in search of her lift, to enquire whether June Sharpe was among the congregation. In clipped tones she was directed towards the parish secretary, a dowdy woman in a headscarf, busy cramming her missal into her handbag.
Like an inquisitive jackdaw, the secretary’s head bobbed to the left and right as she scrutinised her fellow attendees, eventually declaring that Mrs Sharpe must have dodged Mass on this occasion. Fortunately, she was able to produce her address, smiling triumphantly at her effortless recall, careless to whom she was divulging the information or for what purpose. Still cupping Alice’s elbow and with reflected sunlight cruelly illuminating a clutch of white whiskers on her chin, she pointed down the road to the junction of West Pilton Gardens and West Pilton View, indicating the woman’s house.
June Sharp turned out to be a fragile, doll-like creature with enormous blue eyes, straw-blonde hair and a wide upturned mouth. When Alice showed her identification, she seemed both excited and apprehensive, guiding the policewoman to her narrow galley-kitchen, while cooing loudly to the baby that was perched on her hip. In the kitchen she immediately bent down to stroke the head of an old dachshund, curled up in its basket, its black lips rippling as it snored contentedly in its sleep. Suddenly the washing machine began to whirr noisily on reaching spin-cycle, and she switched it off, looking first crossly at the machine and then anxiously at the dog to see if the racket had disturbed its rest. But it slept on, an occasional wag of its tail betraying its dreams.