‘It’s taken a while for the developers to raise the capital and sort out the planning permission but they started work this week. And they’ve discovered human remains in the grounds.’
Keenan showed no surprise. ‘Of course they have. There was a graveyard for the nuns and their previous priests.’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the bodies of up to forty children who are buried under the front lawn of the convent.’
The priest’s fingers stopped stroking his crucifix. He sat stock-still. Not a muscle quivered.
‘What can you tell me about that?’ Karim asked. ‘You were living there. You can’t have failed to notice what was going on.’
Keenan cleared his throat. He uncrossed his legs and attempted a more casual pose. ‘Children die, Constable. It’s very sad, but it happens. The children at St Margaret Clitherow were there because they had no one else. Better to bury them in the grounds of the convent than hand them over to the local authority for a pauper’s grave. I don’t know what the custom is in your culture, Constable, but we believe in proper burial in consecrated ground.’
‘In my culture, we don’t dump our children in an unmarked hole in the ground,’ Karim said, trying to hold his anger in check. ‘Not even in times of war. Not even in refugee camps. We treat them with dignity.’
‘On what basis do you suggest the nuns of the Blessed Pearl didn’t do just that?’
‘There are no grave markers. No coffins. No indication that this is anything other than a front lawn. The kind of place children would run around and play on, not be buried under. And you knew about this?’
For the first time, Keenan looked uncertain. ‘I was aware of the practice, yes. As I said, children die. They fall ill. They have accidents. Many of them arrived undernourished and vulnerable to disease. The nuns arranged the burials in the grounds to keep them close to where they had been cared for. In some cases, the only place they had ever been cared for.’
‘Did you take part in those burials?’
‘I did not. I held a short formal service in the chapel before they were buried, but that was the extent of my involvement.’
‘Did you give these dying children the last rites?’
He looked up at the crucifix above the fireplace. ‘On occasion, yes.’
‘How many occasions?’
‘I really couldn’t say. It was a long time ago.’
‘Forty times?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Keenan flared up, two spots of colour on his cheeks. ‘The convent had been there since 1930. That’s more than eighty years of girls who came through those doors. One death every two years, that’s hardly surprising.’
‘You think?’ Karim couldn’t keep his shock and outrage hidden now. ‘I went through thirteen years of school and three years of university and I was never in the same class as a kid who died. And you’re trying to tell me that the death rate at the Blessed Pearl was normal?’
Keenen flushed but it was clearly from anger rather than shame. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’ He shook his head. ‘The condition some of these girls were in when they came to the convent, you wouldn’t believe. They’d been undernourished since the day they were born. They were frail. They had tapeworms. Diseases of deprivation like TB. They were susceptible to the kind of illnesses that you or I would shake off. It’s amazing the nuns kept so many of them alive.’
Chastened, Karim paused for a moment before continuing. ‘Nevertheless. We’ve been told that the nuns ran a brutal regime in recent years. That harsh beatings and physical punishments were routine. That girls were punished with solitary confinement.’ Karim had moved well and truly into bad cop now, his voice steely, his gaze uncompromising. ‘You must have been aware of that?’
‘I knew nothing of that. I saw nothing of the sort. Sister Mary Patrick provided the only proper stable home most of those girls had known. None of them ever made any complaint to me.’ Keenan met implacable with implacable.
‘I find that hard to credit. You were living under the same roof where girls were being brutalised and imprisoned, you had a pastoral role in their lives and yet you knew nothing about it?’
Keenan got to his feet. His mouth twisted in a dark smile. ‘We have a saying in the church: “That’s where your faith comes in.” We’re done here, Constable. I’d be obliged if you’d leave and take your shabby insinuations with you.’
‘Just one more thing—’ Karim’s intention to raise the question of the other bodies was thwarted as the priest swept from the room, leaving him stranded. He didn’t know what to do. He had no grounds for chasing the man through his own home. You couldn’t drag a man of the cloth down to a police station just because he gave you the creeps. He stood up, undecided.
The housekeeper appeared in the doorway as silently as if she’d traversed the hall on a cushion of air. ‘I’ll see you out,’ she said disdainfully. As he preceded her down the hall, she said, ‘You’ve some cheek, coming here with your accusations. Father Keenan is a good man. Not like you lot.’
Karim turned swiftly to face her. ‘What do you mean, my lot?’
She gave a tight smile of triumph. ‘Coppers. What did you think I meant?’ She reached past him to open the door. ‘Off you go and bother some other poor innocent. God forbid you should actually catch some criminals.’
The door closed behind him with a sharp snap. Karim let out a long breath. On a scale of one to shit, that had come in somewhere around eleven. He had a sneaking feeling
