‘I’ve not said I’m in yet.’ Carol could feel the stubborn set of her jaw muscles right up into her temples.
‘You will be.’ Bronwen stood up. ‘You’re welcome to stay here and read the file. Or take it away with you, if you prefer to work in your own space. I have to get back to court before the wheels come off. Bloody baby barristers who need propping up every step of the way.’ Carol was glad not to be the bloody baby barrister in question. ‘Get back to me when you’re ready to talk strategy.’
And she was gone. The traits that made her such a formidable and irritating adversary could, Carol saw, make her a powerful and maybe even inspirational ally. She checked the time. She had just long enough to take a quick pass through the file before her next meeting. She could skim the surface, and if she was lucky, she’d stub her toe on something that disrupted its smoothness.
On the second page, she found the secret that had lurked behind Saul Neilson’s public face. He was gay. Which was only an issue in the UK at this point in the twenty-first century if your father was a prominent Pentecostal Christian minister. A regular on Thought for the Day. Saul didn’t want to hurt or disappoint or embarrass his parents – whom he loved and respected – so he hid that part of himself.
Her years as a cop working the twisted side of the street had taught Carol that a life of pretence always created tensions, pressures and fears that had a nasty habit of bursting like a boil, covering the conventional surface of a life with purulent fallout. So it had been for Saul Neilson. He’d avoided gay bars and clubs, but the advent of internet dating apps had allowed him finally to have a sex life, even if it was deeper in the closet than Narnia. But Saul didn’t want to risk casual hook-ups that might have consequences; he preferred to keep the transactions businesslike so he used rent boys. Not via agencies, where there would be a record of credit card payments. No, Saul had gradually built up a small discreet stable of young men who would come to his flat for hectic sex, take their payment in cash, and leave. He was paranoid about his privacy, using burner phones to contact them and not going back too often to the same rent boy.
Carol paused for thought. No body cases were notoriously difficult to prove. Juries liked the incontrovertible fact of a corpse. Hell, detectives liked the incontrovertible fact of a corpse. Killers often believed that successfully disposing of a body meant they couldn’t be successfully prosecuted. History had proved them wrong, time and time again. But those results gave the prosecution more ammunition to convince a jury that it was perfectly valid to convict on a supposition.
Was that what had happened to Saul Neilson? Based on her first look, Carol thought there was every chance that he was telling the truth. But finding evidence of that would be a long hard road, with no guarantee of success. And this time, she’d be doing it without backup. No Tony to help her make sense of the twists and turns of human behaviour. She wasn’t sure whether she was ready for that.
But maybe she was ready to take a small step. Carol trusted her instincts and her skills. She’d give Saul Neilson the courtesy of reading his file with the attention she’d have paid to any case that had crossed her desk when she was running a murder squad. But that was all.
Something she could walk away from. Definitely.
22
I’ve always found it useful to see the crime scene while the body is in situ. It’s a distressing experience but it’s invariably more informative than crime scene photos. Once the initial discovery of the victim and the forensic examination of the crime scene have taken place, there’s not much practical use for the profiler. Nevertheless, I try to stick around as much as I can, because not all the ideas that are tossed around in the investigation make it past the ‘random thought’ stage. And you never know which shreds of information will illuminate the profiler’s process down the line.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
Stacey considered she had good reason to feel pleased with herself. From the electoral roll she had the official names of the nuns who had been at the Blessed Pearl when it had closed down. Unofficial access to the last census had given her ages for most of them. Armed with that knowledge, official registers had given her dates of birth for almost all of them. She’d cross-checked with the electoral rolls that covered the other three UK convents and discovered that all but two of the Bradesden nuns had ended up there.
Knowing that her colleague preferred hard copies, she took the printouts across to Paula and laid them out in front of her. ‘I think it’s reasonable to assume that these two apparently missing nuns’ – she tapped two names with her Blackwing pencil – ‘have ended up in the order’s house in Galway. I managed to get hold of the convent rosters.’ She shuffled the papers and put a different one in front of Paula.
‘I’m not going to ask.’
‘Good move. By the process of elimination, the two nun aliases not accounted for in the English convents are Sister Mary Patrick and Sister Brigid Augustine.’
‘Sister Mary Patrick was the Mother Superior,’ Paula said, thoughtful. ‘Makes you wonder if the church found out what had been going on at Bradesden and decided to close the place down while the going was good.’
‘If they knew, then surely they wouldn’t have sold the site for development?’
‘Good point. Maybe they knew there was abuse
