‘How did it work?’ Paula spoke quietly, taking the heat out of the room. ‘Did Father Keenan just turn up with a body?’
A slow shake of the head. ‘He’d speak to me earlier in the day. Say he’d heard from one of his contacts about a death, that they’d be protecting the body till he could get there. I’d make a grave somewhere in the vegetable garden. There was always somewhere needing cleared out. Then he’d turn up in the evening at my back gate. After dark. He’d drive in, usually with some deadbeat in the passenger seat. I’ve got an old roadworks lantern, the light just comes out in one direction. I used to put that by the grave so they could see it coming from my place but you couldn’t really see it from the convent side.’ He paused again. It was an effort to gather himself.
Paula waited. Silence could often be the best tool, especially once the accused had broken the seal of their own secret. It was like opening a bag of Maltesers, she thought. Once you’d started, you might kid yourself that you were going to stop. But you couldn’t. ‘I left them to it,’ he said. ‘I never saw the bodies. I suppose they must have been in the boot. Father Keenan would knock on the back door when they’d finished and just say, “That’s us done. God bless you, Jezza.”’
And so they leaned on him for another hour. Stop, start. Eight bodies, Martinu admitted, though he wasn’t certain about the total. The last one about seven months before. For even though the priest had moved away, he maintained his work with the destitute of Bradfield. No, he couldn’t remember exact dates. He’d given a harsh bark of incredulous laughter at that point. How would he remember the dates?
Paula had pointed out his obsession with Bradfield Vics; maybe he remembered one of the burials because it was just before or just after a big game?
At the mention of the club, he’d become agitated. There was, he insisted, no way he paid attention to the dates. He put them out of his mind as soon as they were done with because they made him uneasy. Even though the priest said it was OK, it still made him uncomfortable.
When they’d started going round in circles, Paula had brought it to a close, leaving Martinu to talk to his lawyer before he was bedded down in a cell for the night. Rutherford had been preening himself all round the incident room, making it clear whose team had scored the breakthrough. Paula was tasked with bringing Father Keenan in for interview first thing.
Remembering Karim been assigned to interviewing the priest, she went looking for him. He was nowhere to be seen and his interview hadn’t been posted to the incident room. She tried calling him, but his phone went straight to voicemail. No reason to be worried, she told herself. He could have had to hang around waiting for the priest to become available. And worked late enough to feel justified in knocking off for the day. There was no overtime in ReMIT, after all.
Really, no reason to be worried.
Paula lifted her head off the steering wheel and drove to the family-run Italian restaurant that was close enough to home to be a regular haven for her and Elinor. That night, they’d arranged to meet a third person for dinner. Paula was almost an hour late, but she knew there would be no recriminations. Elinor and Carol Jordan both understood jobs that required a response to ever-changing circumstances. No overtime for a hospital consultant either.
During the years when Paula had carried a faintly flickering torch for Carol, it had never crossed her mind to hug her boss. Now that flame was dead, now there was no longer rank between them, whenever they met, it began with a hug. Hugging Carol was a bit like hugging a tree – a slender silver birch, not the thick trunk of an oak, but stiff and unyielding nonetheless – but it was a validation of a friendship. So they embraced, then Paula kissed Elinor on the corner of her mouth and sat down, feeling some of the day fall away from her shoulders.
‘We’ve had antipasti,’ Elinor said. ‘And I ordered a family-sized bowl of spaghetti alla nonna to be cooked the moment you walked in.’ She turned and gave the thumbs up to Donatella.
‘It’s on its way,’ she called back.
‘Thank you.’ Paula let out a long breath and reached for the bottle of Primitivo. Only one glass gone so far, and the remains of that in front of Elinor. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the bottle of San Pellegrino next to Carol. Always a relief.
‘You’ll have had quite a day,’ Carol said. ‘Elinor said you were working the bones at the convent. I was surprised, I didn’t think it would be ReMIT territory.’
‘It wouldn’t be, normally. Not without evidence of suspicious death, which we all know wouldn’t come till the anthros have had their way with the bones. But Rutherford wanted it and he trampled over Alex Fielding to get it.’
Carol winced. ‘He may live to regret that.’
‘Annoyingly, it’s just as well he did. We’ve not gone public with it yet but there’s another set of remains that are quite distinct from the original discovery.’ Paula reached for the last couple of olives in the bowl.
‘That’s weird,’ Elinor said. ‘Do you think they’re connected? Like, someone who knew about the first bodies deciding that was a good place to hide
