‘Somebody here for you. From ReMIT.’
She rolled her eyes in the unmistakable FFS expression. ‘Give me a minute. Let me finish here.’ Irritation made her Scottish accent unmistakable. ‘And you, from ReMIT? Wait outside.’
Sophie backed out through the tent flap. Fuck. Why had nobody thought to mention that Alex Fielding was a woman? Was it a genuine oversight or had her supposed misjudgement on the team-building exercise made her a target for humiliation? Now she was stuck here, the only officer who manifestly had nothing to do.
Thankfully Fielding didn’t keep her waiting long. She was probably the smallest police officer Sophie had ever seen. She’d heard Scottish people were shorter, so maybe their standards for joining the police were literally lower. Fielding sized her up, sharp eyes nested in wrinkles, mouth tight in a sardonic smile. ‘Nobody told you I was a woman, did they?’ Although she was small, her presence was substantial.
Sophie shook her head. ‘No, ma’am. I just presumed . . . ’ She felt herself blush under the unsparing scrutiny. ‘Sorry, ma’am.’
‘Paula McIntyre still hasn’t learned how to play nice, even though she’s finally made DI.’ Fielding sighed. ‘So, why are you here?’
This was just getting worse. Clearly Rutherford hadn’t bothered to tell Fielding he was swiping her case out from under her. Suddenly she wanted urgently to pee. She cleared her throat. ‘ReMIT are taking over the lead on the case. I’m here to introduce myself as the case manager. DI Valente. Everything will be going through me.’
‘Is this some kind of a joke? This is not a ReMIT case. I’ve got a team on the ground who actually know what they’re doing. As opposed to a shop assistant.’ Fielding scowled. ‘Yes, DI Valente, your reputation precedes you.’
‘DCI Rutherford believes we’ve got particular skills. He can provide valuable leadership,’ Sophie tried.
Fielding’s expression shouted scorn more eloquently than words could have managed. ‘So you are going to manage the room? And I suppose you’ll be expecting me to provide bodies to do the donkey work? Because you haven’t got that many bodies, have you? Christ, I’ve got more bodies in that tent than you’ve got in your whole team.’
‘That is what DCI Rutherford envisages, yes, ma’am. I’m here as a courtesy. I’ll be setting up the room back at Skenfrith Street as soon as I’ve walked the crime scene.’ Sophie had no idea where that came from, other than the instinct that the only way to deal with bullies was to pay them back in their own currency.
Fielding waved her arm in a mocking bow. ‘Good luck with that,’ she said, no possibility of missing the sarcasm in her voice. ‘Be my guest. We’ll just get on with the grunt work like the good second-class citizens we are. I’ll liaise with Rutherford about how we staff up the room. Just remember, though. He’s not my boss. He’s my equal in rank. Be careful where you walk, DI Valente. Literally and figuratively.’
She turned on her heel and stalked back inside the tent. Sophie’s sense of relief was palpable. She walked to the far end of the tent, considering Fielding’s parting shot. She took her time to absorb the scene before she messed up by walking through the middle of it.
Now she could see the former convent in its full decaying glory. It was a huge sprawl of a building, with a central castellated tower in the middle, flanked by smaller versions at the four corners of the three-storey building. The stucco that covered it had probably been white originally, but it was flaking off in places. Spreading rust stained the areas round the joins in the drainpipes, moss crawled up unevenly from ground level. In its heyday, it must have been an awe-inspiring sight. Considering the backgrounds of the kids she imagined ending up here, it was more likely to have made them think of horror movies.
The perimeter of the property was marked out by a high stone wall lined with dense shrubbery and mature trees. The open ground to one side of the main frontage was the site of intense activity. A couple of dozen people in white suits were working with trowels and hand spades in a series of holes of different depths, breaking up what had obviously been a lawn. Surrounding the house was more lawn, surprisingly well-tended. It didn’t look like the grounds of somewhere abandoned five years before.
She walked to the far corner of the frontage and turned down the side. Once she was a few yards from the corner, the activities in the rest of the grounds were invisible. Just the subdued mumble of generators and the occasional raised voice indicated what was going on out of sight.
Another grassy area, and beyond it, near the shrubbery, neat rows of vegetables. Beyond them, raised beds full of healthy-looking plants. The nuns might have gone but someone was taking care of these grounds. Sophie rounded the next corner and beyond a narrow strip of grass she saw a walled graveyard. Curious, she crossed the lawn and entered via a double wrought-iron gate, wide enough to accommodate a coffin and pall-bearers. There must have been a couple of dozen grey granite crosses, all similarly inscribed. On the top section, IHS. Across the middle, the names of nuns in plain lettering. Sister Mary Catherine, Sister Theresa, Sister Mary Joseph, Sister Margaret Mary, and so on. Dates of birth and death. Then RIP. It reminded her of a small-scale version of the military cemeteries she’d visited on a school trip to the First World War battlefields. In the furthest corner stood a slightly larger version of the cross. Same lettering, but this time the long arm of the cross read, Father Joseph Peter Toner, 1912–1975.
She couldn’t have explained why, but Sophie found herself gazing up above the treetops to the sky where thin skeins of cloud straggled across the blue. In spite of her suspicions about what these nuns had presided over, she was strangely
