‘And what was he wearing?’ For now, Paula would play the game.
‘The only thing I ever saw him wearing. He would visit Jerome regularly, which is how I came to meet him. Conway would come round to watch football on TV with his cousin. And he invariably wore a Bradfield Victoria top. They are very distinctive, Inspector. Bright canary yellow.’
‘So, let me get this straight. In the middle of the night—’
‘Not the middle of the night, Inspector. It would have been around one in the morning,’ the nun corrected her as if she were a particularly slow student.
Paula acknowledged the correction with a wry smile. ‘In the early hours of the morning, Jerome Martinu and his cousin Mark Conway buried something in a raised bed in the vegetable garden?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What was this bundle wrapped in?’
‘I couldn’t tell. Something light-coloured is all I could make out. There was some sort of tape or rope holding it together.’
‘And the shape?’
‘It wasn’t any particular shape. Quite long, quite bulky.’
‘Like a dead person?’
‘I don’t know what a dead person taped up in a bundle looks like,’ she said disdainfully.
Paula gave herself a moment to get a grip on her temper. ‘Can you remember which of the raised beds this was?’
She frowned. ‘It’s a long time ago. It must have been six, maybe seven years. I don’t know if the beds are still configured in the same arrangement. As far as I can recall, it was the second . . . or possibly the third from the left as I was looking at them from the window.’
‘Did you ask Martinu about it?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Why would I? The garden was his concern.’
‘It didn’t strike you as suspicious?’
The tip of her tongue ran swiftly along the underside of her top lip. ‘I really didn’t give the matter much thought. It was a curious incident, but why would I leap to suspecting a man who had worked for us for years, who was trustworthy and reliable and discreet, of any wrongdoing?’
‘You didn’t think they might be burying a body?’ Paula asked. She was struggling to keep her composure through these ridiculous responses.
‘I am not a police officer,’ the nun said with an air of contempt. ‘I do not view the world through the lens of suspicion. I assumed it was some sort of fertiliser.’
‘Fertiliser? Wrapped in black bin bags? What kind of fertiliser would that be?’
‘Animal carcases make good fertiliser, don’t they? Inasmuch as I gave it any thought, I imagined it might be a dead dog.’
‘A dead dog.’ Paula let the words hang in the air.
‘A passing thought, Inspector.’
‘You’re telling me you thought it was normal behaviour for your groundsman and his cousin to be burying a wrapped-up dead dog in a vegetable bed under cover of darkness?’
Sister Mary Patrick lifted her chin slightly. ‘I had more important considerations than that.’
‘Really. Here’s the thing, Sister. I do have a suspicious mind. And what I’m wondering is whether you kept quiet about what you saw that night because you knew that if you reported Jerome Martinu and his cousin to the police, he’d shop you in a heartbeat. And you had too much to hide to risk that, didn’t you?’
58
Over the years, I’ve met people who are seduced by what they see as the glamour of serial murder. I’m pretty good at walking in other people’s shoes, but I’ve never managed to wrap my head round that. There’s nothing glamorous about serial homicide . . .
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
Campion Boulevard carved a line through the centre of Bradfield that demarcated communities as effectively as the Berlin Wall. On one side, the thriving city centre with its various money-making machines, from shops and bars to insurance headquarters and art galleries. On the other, the former Victorian mill landscape. Some of the old industrial brick buildings had been renovated and transformed into so-called luxury flats that everybody knew were really a different kind of machine for making money. Others stood semi-derelict like rotten teeth in a Victorian smile. In the gap sites between were squat buildings that had been thrown up between the wars to house workers displaced by slum clearance. The flat Lyle Tate had lived in was in one of those jerry-built blocks. A scabby concrete stairwell whose ground-level reek of urine morphed into the funk of stale cooking and rotting rubbish led to an open third-floor gallery that ran the length of the building.
Carol picked her way along the dimly lit landing, accompanied by the sounds that leaked from badly fitting doors and windows. EastEnders theme tune; a man and woman having a shouting match about a pizza; a raucous burst of Amy Winehouse; a throbbing bass line from something Carol was delighted she didn’t recognise.
Lyle Tate’s former home was the last door she came to. Someone had painted it purple, drips and smears making it almost a statement rather than a demonstration of incompetence. A dirty plastic doorbell had a smudge of purple paint down one side. It produced a long deep buzz when she pressed it.
She didn’t have to wait long before the door was opened by a skinny boy in a mohair sweater and fashionably ripped jeans. He had a pair of flip-flops on his feet, revealing toenails painted the colour of black cherries. Sculpted black hair and a goatee emphasised a face like a satyr on a Greek vase, an impression only slightly marred by a scatter of pimple scars around his sharp nose. He looked her up and down with an air of faint amusement. ‘I think you’re in the wrong place, love,’ he said.
‘Are you Gary Bryant?’ Carol asked.
Eyebrows elegantly raised. ‘Oh no, you’ve missed him by about six months. He got sent down for dealing, love. What did you want him for? I don’t mean to be a bitch but you’re very much not his type.’
‘I wanted to talk to him
