But maybe a woman wasn’t the best person for the job anyway. Rutherford’s hazy knowledge of the hierarchies of Catholic life made him suspect that although the Mother Superior was always perceived and portrayed as ruling her nuns with a rod of iron, she herself was answerable to the convent’s resident priest. Ultimately, women were pretty powerless in the church. They couldn’t even be priests, not like in his Church, where they had no pope or bishops telling them what to do. The Church of Scotland had even had women Moderators, which was the nearest they got to having someone in charge. But if you’d always been subject to the authority of men, maybe it would make more sense to have a man asking the questions.
He sighed. This was the downside of having a small handpicked team. When you were in a live investigation, you were always stretched. And it was never a good move to pull in local officers for the truly crucial interviews. Everybody might theoretically be after the same result – answers, a conviction, an appropriate sentence – but too often office politics got in the way. He wasn’t anywhere near sure enough of DCI Alex Fielding to entrust the vital interviews to members of her team he knew even less well than his own players.
Karim was keen but too inexperienced. And besides, although Rutherford daren’t say it aloud these days, he had a suspicion that culturally he might be inclined to defer to older women. Steve was persistent, a grafter who’d dig and dig and dig, but the big question mark for his boss was whether he had the finesse to handle this. And besides, Paula had asked for him to sit in with her on the interview with Martinu.
Alvin Ambrose might not be the first name in the frame when it came to finesse either, but Rutherford liked what he’d seen of him so far. In spite of an intimidating physical presence, he could put people at their ease. ‘Gentle giant’ was a cliché but it was credible enough for people to buy into. And there was a popular misconception that if you looked like a heavyweight boxer on his day off, you weren’t going to be too bright. Maybe Ambrose could lull the nuns into a false sense of security.
*
And so Alvin found himself on the outskirts of York, driving through an estate of modern brick boxes. He thought he’d lost his way; it didn’t look like convent country to him, despite the twin towers of York Minster peeping over distant rooftops. But at the end of what he feared was a culde-sac he arrived at a wide gateway in a high stone wall. A discreet sign on the right-hand gatepost announced that he had reached the Mother House Convent of the Order of the Blessed Pearl. At the end of the short driveway sat an elegant Georgian house. Perfectly symmetrical around a pillared porch with a circular window above it, three storeys of windows divided into small panes, eight windows to a side. It was hard to tell how far back it extended but Alvin had a hunch it was a lot more than one room deep. How did these nuns end up with such grand accommodation? Last he’d heard, they were supposed to be all about poverty, chastity and obedience. Still, as Meatloaf pointed out, two out of three ain’t bad.
As he grew closer, he could see his first impression wasn’t quite borne out close-up. It reminded him of a soap star he’d once met in the course of an inquiry. The distance of the camera lent her a perfection that across an interview room table felt more like a clever disguise. Up close, the flaws and the passage of time were perceptible. So it was with the convent. The paint on the window frames had gone one winter beyond its prime; the masonry showed signs of wear round edges and corners that were no longer precise; and he could just make out something surprisingly sturdy growing out of the huddle of chimney pots that adorned one gable.
He parked on the tarmacked area in front of the building. His was the only car there, but a narrow drive ran round one side of the building, a sign saying PRIVATE leaning at a slightly drunken angle beside it. Alvin got out, shaking each leg like a dog that’s been confined for too long. He took his time walking up to the door. More Western gunslinger pace than Tactical Support Group raid. He knew he was looking smart enough for the encounter. His wife Esme wouldn’t let him out of the house unless he looked enough like the good guys not to be mistaken for a villain. So, dark grey suit, pale blue shirt, peacock blue tie. Because a man had to have a splash of colour, right? Otherwise he’d be just like anyone else. When he’d first said this to Esme years before, she’d hooted with laughter. ‘Alvin, you couldn’t be less like anyone else,’ she’d said, reaching up to pinch his cheek.
As he often did, he remembered reading the opening of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, where Philip Marlowe itemises his smartest outfit then observes, ‘I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.’ OK, Alvin was a cop, not a PI. And he’d
