Chapter and Hearse (12 page)

Hector Leanaig sagged like a man stuffed with straw reeling from a punch in the solar plexus. ‘I may have killed my daughter, Rhuariadh, but I didn't murder her.'

‘But she's as dead,' said the Sheriff bleakly, ‘as if you had.'

The Laird made a visible effort to straighten himself up. ‘What are you going to do?'

‘Me?' Rhuariadh Macmillan gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I'm not going to do anything, Hector Leanaig. No, I'm going to leave that to poor wee Jeannie here…'

‘Jeannie?'

‘Aye, man. She's going to haunt you here for the rest of your life.'

Preyed in Aid

‘You're wanted, Seedy.' Inspector Harpe greeted his old friend Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan with the unwelcome message as he crossed the threshold of Berebury police station ready to report for duty.

‘Who by?' asked Sloan cautiously. He was head of the tiny Criminal Intelligence Department of ‘F' Division of the Calleshire force and a naturally careful man. Actually he thought he could guess who wanted him.

‘Him upstairs, of course,' replied Harpe.

Sloan's step very nearly faltered. A request for attendance from his superior officer, Superintendent Leeyes, was never a good sign. Least of all did it cheer first thing in the morning on a dreary January day, the more especially when it was a day which fell at that low point towards the end of the month when memories of festive cheer had faded and the office Christmas decorations had been taken down but not yet decently put away for another year.

‘How is he today?' he asked Harpe warily. The barometer outside the police station measured the ambient temperature and pressure of the county of Calleshire. The atmosphere inside the police station, on the other hand, tended to be calibrated against the current state of the Superintendent's temper.

Inspector Harpe gave this question some thought before he replied. ‘Quiet.'

That, thought Sloan, could be good or bad.

‘Very quiet,' added Harpe judiciously.

‘Too quiet?'

‘Could be.'

‘Did he say what…'

‘He wants to know all that you can tell him about the Reverend Christopher Carstairs.'

‘The Vicar of St Leonard's?'

‘None other.'

Detective Inspector Sloan drew breath and tried his best not to damn with faint praise. ‘I should say he's well meaning, always trying to do his best, but more than a bit on the naïve side.'

‘Gullible,' translated Harpe.

‘And too compassionate by half,' finished Sloan.

‘Always takes the side of the underdog.'

‘That's exactly what I told the Super too.'

‘And?'

‘He wants you to see if there's anything known against.'

Sloan raised his eyebrows. ‘Wouldn't have thought so myself for a moment, but I'll run a check.'

A few minutes later he was in his superior's office and saying, ‘No, sir. Not a thing. Nothing known at all against Mr Carstairs. I've double-checked.' He coughed and enquired delicately, ‘Were you expecting there to have been, then?'

‘There was always the off chance,' said Superintendent Leeyes, not lifting his eyes from a sheet of paper on his desk, ‘that the man might have plenty of previous and it's always just as well to make sure first.'

‘No form of any sort,' insisted Detective Inspector Sloan firmly.

‘It was just a thought, Sloan, that's all.' The Superintendent sounded almost wistful.

‘Clean as a whistle,' said the Inspector, mystified.

The Superintendent essayed a little laugh. ‘We can't say the same about Matthew Steele, though, can we?'

‘Matthew Steele?' echoed Sloan, even more puzzled. Actually, he would have said that Matthew Steele didn't have one single thing in common with the Vicar of St Leonard's Church in Berebury, except, perhaps now he came to think about it, a well-developed way with words. ‘No, sir. Record as long as your arm. You name it and Steele's done it. Done quite a lot of time for some of it too.' He paused. ‘But not for all of it,' he added with heavy significance. ‘Oh, no, not for all of it by any means.'

‘And more talkative than a murmuration of starlings,' groaned Leeyes.

‘But never a canary, sir,' pointed out Sloan.

‘Steele never sings about anything,' snorted Leeyes. ‘You don't have to tell me.'

‘Always plenty to say for himself, though, when we take him in, has our Matthew Steele…'

‘Talk the hind leg off a donkey.'

‘He'll argue the toss with anyone,' agreed Sloan, ‘but it doesn't usually amount to much.'

‘That's not going to be a lot of help to me,' complained Leeyes.

‘Should have been a lawyer,' said Sloan, wondering where all this was leading.

‘Or in the pulpit,' suggested Leeyes unexpectedly.

‘Not with his lack of principles,' said Sloan, realizing too late that, in standing up for men of the cloth, he'd inadvertently impugned the whole legal profession in passing.

With wholly uncharacteristic passivity, Superintendent Leeyes let this go by. Instead he went off at a tangent and asked if Sloan could tell him exactly when Ash Wednesday was.

‘Not offhand, sir, but I'll look it up for you,' promised the Detective Inspector, even more puzzled.

‘Do.' The Superintendent waved his hand. ‘It's quite soon, isn't it?'

‘A couple of weeks, at least…' Sloan's mother would know. She was a great churchwoman and would have the date at her fingertips. Bound to …

‘That's what I meant, Sloan. Soon…'

‘Easter's a movable feast, of course, sir, which is why the date varies from year to year,' murmured Sloan, mentally trying to connect Matthew Steele, con man and common thief, with any religious festival at all. He found it was just as difficult to equate ‘a couple of weeks' with ‘soon'. In Superintendent Leeyes's terminology, ‘soon' usually meant within the hour at the very latest.

‘Of course,' said Leeyes humbly. ‘I'd quite forgotten that the date isn't always the same.'

‘That's why, sir, I can't tell you straight away when it will be.' On the other hand, unlike Matthew Steele, the Reverend Christopher Carstairs would obviously have a simple and straightforward link with Ash Wednesday on whatever date it happened to fall this year.

‘Yes, of course,' said Leeyes, again unnaturally in agreement.

Sloan cleared his throat and asked, ‘Has Steele been up to something again, then, sir?'

‘Not that I know of,' said Leeyes.

Detective Inspector Sloan took a deep breath and said, ‘Actually, sir, we think he may have been on the Tilson Street job.'

‘The Calleshire and Counties Bank one?'

Detective Inspector Sloan nodded.

Superintendent Leeyes cocked his head to one side. ‘Robbery with violence, wasn't it?'

‘One of the girl tellers was hit over the head and the Bank Manager threatened. But it's only a hunch, sir, that Steele was involved. There's no way we can prove it. Not yet, anyway. Probably not until we can find the proceeds. We're doing all we can, of course, but it hasn't amounted to much so far. Is that the problem?'

The Superintendent shook his head. ‘No, no, Sloan, it's not that. It's just that he and I are both in this church business at St Leonard's together.'

Sloan raised his eyebrows. ‘You and Steele, sir?' Privately he was absolutely certain that Matthew Steele had orchestrated the Tilson Street bank job. All the Berebury CID needed now was hard evidence to prove it, but Sloan didn't want to say so. Not just now. Not until he knew what all this peculiar prevarication was about.

‘Him and me,' said his superior officer regretfully.

‘Sir?' If he couldn't finger Steele, then finding what had been stolen would be the next best thing …

‘The two of us.' Leeyes grimaced. ‘That's the trouble – or, rather, part of the trouble.'

Sloan frowned. This could be serious. In the police book, the Superintendent's consorting with known criminals would be considered a bad thing. Having anything to do with the likes of Matthew Steele – as opposed to actually having him on a charge for anything that could be considered wrong doing – would be a risky business for any policeman, let alone a full-blown Superintendent. ‘Where, sir,' he asked tentatively, ‘does Mr Carstairs come in, then?'

‘It was all the Vicar's idea in the first place,' said Leeyes, his eyes still cast down on the paper lying on his desk. ‘He's asked Steele too – not that he wanted to do it either, I gather, but the Vicar's a persuasive sort.'

‘And what's Steele got to do with the Vicar?' asked Sloan pertinently.

‘Steele's been repairing the church tower of St Leonard's for weeks now,' said Leeyes.

‘He has, has he? I didn't know that.'

‘I expect that's how the Vicar got to know him – and, come to that, it's probably why Steele didn't like to refuse to do it.'

‘And does the Vicar know that Steele's got a bad record?' asked Sloan, still in a verbal fog.

‘I shouldn't think so for a moment,' said Leeyes. ‘But they've got trouble in their belfry. And before you ask, not bats.'

‘At least there's not a lot Steele can nick in a church tower,' said Sloan, ‘though we decided long ago that you couldn't ask for better cover for burglary than a builder's business. A covered van, ladders and a good excuse for going equipped with as many tools as you like…'

‘And for parking in odd places,' contributed Leeyes.

Sloan hesitated. ‘But I still don't see where you come in, sir.'

‘I think,' the Superintendent grunted, ‘that my wife may have had a hand in it.'

‘Ah…' Sloan made a non-committal sound deep down in his throat.

‘Only,' put in Leeyes with haste, ‘because she was trying to be helpful, of course.'

‘Of course,' agreed Sloan guardedly. By all accounts, the Superintendent's wife was a force to be reckoned with. Both at home and away, so to speak.

‘You see, Sloan,' said the Superintendent, waving a hand, ‘she's one of Mr Carstairs's flock – that's what you call it, isn't it?'

‘A member of his congregation,' translated Sloan.

‘That's it, Sloan, exactly. Mrs Leeyes attends St Leonard's Church every Sunday without fail.'

‘And?' Sloan still couldn't see yet where all this was getting them.

‘And,' said Leeyes hollowly, ‘she went and volunteered me to take part in one of their Lent debates at the church.'

Sloan smothered a promising remark about it being very good for the Superintendent's sins. This was only partly because his superior officer had never been known to admit to having transgressed in any way. Self-preservation came into it too. He said instead, ‘I think I'm beginning to get the picture, sir.'

‘I knew you would,' Leeyes said, seizing on this and pushing the sheet of paper on his desk over in Sloan's direction. ‘Look. It's all here on this.'

Detective Inspector Sloan picked the paper up and read it. It was a letter from the Reverend Christopher Carstairs, Vicar of St Leonard's Church, Berebury, saying how much they were all looking forward to the participation of Police Superintendent Leeyes in an active debate with Matthew Steele at the church as part of their Lent Awareness Programme and enclosing a copy of a poster advertising it.

The Superintendent pointed a stubby finger at this. ‘Have you got to the bottom line yet, Sloan?'

‘Yes, sir,' said Sloan, hoping his lips hadn't been visibly twitching as he read that the subject of the debate was ‘Original Sin'. ‘I see what you mean now, sir.'

‘But have you got to the very bottom, Sloan?'

Sloan ran his eye further down the poster until it lit upon the debate's subtitle: ‘Would You Adam and Eve It?' This example of Cockney rhyming slang was displayed in eye-catching capital letters.

‘What do you think of that, Sloan, eh?'

‘Very trendy, sir.'

The Superintendent nodded dispiritedly. ‘That's what I thought too.'

‘And you, sir, I take it,' murmured Sloan, ‘will be there to put forward one view…' He scanned the rest of the letter, struggling not to let his voice quaver.

‘That's part of the trouble.'

‘And –' Sloan took a very firm hold too of his facial expression, reducing it to the deadpan rigidity required of a public servant on distasteful duty – ‘sir, have I got this right? Matthew Steele will be taking the opposite one.'

‘Exactly, Sloan.'

‘For or against original sin existing?'

‘That's what it's all about,' said Leeyes tightly.

‘Did you get to choose which, sir?' enquired Sloan diplomatically.

‘The Vicar,' ground out Leeyes between clenched teeth, ‘decided that I would want to take the orthodox police view.'

‘Well, that's all right, then, sir, isn't it?' said Sloan.

‘No, it isn't!' howled Leeyes.

‘Sir?' Sloan decided he really should have paid more attention at his Sunday School classes. He hadn't known at the time, of course, that he was going to be a policeman.

‘I've got to argue that man is equally ready to do either good or evil and has the freedom of will to choose between the two,' said the Superintendent.

‘Ye-es,' said Sloan uncertainly. ‘Well…'

‘And Matthew Steele,' snarled Leeyes, ‘gets to take the Vicar's personal theological stance. He's even given him a text.' He looked down. ‘Romans chapter 7, verse 19: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”' He snorted. ‘I ask you, Matthew Steele!'

‘That must be a first,' said Sloan sourly.

‘It means that he's going to be able to argue that he doesn't have any choice whether he commits crimes…'