Unholy Dying (29 page)

“So what I did was the equivalent of preventive medicine—preventive policing, shall we call it? I hope so. But I don't think that's why I did it. And I don't think it was because I liked Father Pardoe and didn't at all like the Bishop. Do you think I can suddenly have developed a passion for abstract justice?”

“Stranger things have been known. Mind you, coppers with a passion for natural justice usually never get beyond constable rank.”

“How do you work that out?” Oddie asked.

“It plays havoc with their conviction rate.”

“Cynic. Come on, let's see if the Shipley people would agree to our going to the Learys and bringing in their promising son.”

Charlie and Oddie heard the voices as soon as they got to the front gate.

“I just want to know what's biting you—what I'm being accused of.”

It was a loud, assertive male voice.

“I'm not accusing you of anything.”

“Mary Leary” mouthed Oddie to Charlie. The latter raised the latch of the gate with the utmost care, and the two slipped like cat burglars into the evergreen-shaded cover of the front garden.

“Don't give me that. I know you when you've got a funny idea. You go all quiet and sullen. You suspect I'm up to something.”

“I always suspect you're up to something, and you usually are.”

Then there came a younger, female voice.

“You're getting it wrong as usual, Dad. That's not what's biting
her, because this is different. Mum, something's eating away at you, and it has been for days. I think you're
afraid
.”

“Don't be silly, Donna.”

“I'm not being silly, Mum. For God's sake, I've
seen
your hands shaking. You've got some idea, and it's driving you crazy. Knowing you, it's got something to do with this family, and if so it's got to be one of the men in it.”

“Donna! I've never made any distinction—”

“Mum, don't worry. It doesn't bother me. It's made me freer. But I do know, however you might resent it now and then, and however you may hate Dad's roving eye, it's the men who count with you.”

“Well, you could have fooled me,” said the male voice, with the practiced tone of one airing a grudge and avoiding the main issue. “Half the time I think the two of you are ganging up on Mark and me.”

“Don't give me that!” said Mary Leary, her voice suddenly suffused with bitterness. “You two do exactly what you want—kings of the castle. The men in your family always have, Con. And the women cook and wash and iron and
take
whatever you care to dish out to them. I'm fed up with taking.”

“Mum, you're changing the subject too. What we want to know is, what's up with you?”

“Nothing's
up
.”

“All right, then, why have you been going so often to the basement? What's so fascinating about the sports cupboard?”

“Donna, don't even—”

At that point, seeing through the laurels a tall, well-built boy or young man loitering up the street, a worried expression on his face, Oddie regretfully rang the doorbell. The voices immediately ceased. The next sound they heard was not footsteps
down the hall but the raising of the gate latch. Charlie stepped forward, his ID held at eye level.

“We're police officers.”

The boy's expression suddenly changed. From mere worry the look involuntarily changed to fear.

“What is it? I thought you'd talked to Mum. Is it about Julie Norris?”

Charlie was saved from replying by the door opening. The man in the entrance was an older version of the boy: not so tall, though, and with a much more assertive manner.

“We're police officers,” said Oddie, and again both presented their IDs.

“Police officers? But you've talked to Mary, haven't you? I've nothing to add to what she's told you. I don't get involved in parish politics. It's enough for me if I go to Mass once in a while.”

“Could we come in, please?” said Oddie, unalterably polite. “It's not about parish business we've come. We need to speak to more than your wife, sir.”

The man reluctantly stood aside. As they walked down the hall and turned to the left, into the room from which the voices had come, he kept up a litany of complaint, which, as often happened, was progressively rolled into a great ball of grievance.

“This is very inconvenient. Can't you make an appointment? I was planning to go back to the shop and work late. And I expect Mark is off to cricket practice.”

“I am,” said Mark.

“You're not,” said Oddie. The boy's brief spurt of aggression gutted and went out.

“Then will you tell us what all this is about?” demanded Conal Leary. They were standing around in a group, the Learys
facing the two policemen. Oddie did not suggest that they all sit down.

“Let's be clear,” he said. “This family is involved in our inquiry, an important one, and much deeper than just in a fringe way. I don't know, Mrs. Leary, if you told your husband about our earlier talk?”

She swallowed.

“Only in a general way.”

“Then let me tell you, sir, that we are now fairly sure that the dead man, Cosmo Horrocks, first got on to the Father Pardoe story by hearing you and a friend of yours, Derek Jessel, probably, swapping gossip over lunch on a train.”

“What? But that's impossible. We kept our voices so low—”

“Sometimes low voices carry just as well as raised ones, particularly if the voices are naturally loud ones.”

“Anyway, what of it? What are you accusing me of?”

“Nothing. But you can't be happy, I should have thought, about having started a process that led to murder. Your son”—he turned to Mark, who was standing over by the window trying to suppress an expression of alarm on his handsome face—“is involved in a variety of offenses, some trivial, some serious; some nothing to do with the Horrocks case, some very much to do with it. He is in deep trouble, and I shall be taking him immediately to the Shipley station. As I believe he is still a minor—”

“Sixteen,” said Mark very quickly.

“Sixteen. Then you will have the right, sir”—he had turned back to Con Leary—“to sit in on the questioning, you or your wife.”

“Are you going to
charge
my son?”

“At the moment we're at the stage of questioning. Let's take things one step at a time. I shall take your son to the station and
hand him over to the Shipley force. I suggest the best thing, sir, is for you to follow in your own car. My sergeant here has things he'd like to ask your wife. If she wants to be at the station—”

“Of course I want to be with my son!”

“Then I'm sure Sergeant Peace will bring you along when you're finished with him. Shall we go, Mark?”

He looked at the boy. Suddenly he seemed remarkably unattractive. The best features and the most even tan don't help when fear is contending with petulance in your face, and lurking behind the eyes there is an incipient impulse to blubber. For the first time Oddie realized he ought to think of Mark Leary as a boy. It seemed to Oddie, remembering the conversation they had just overheard, that Mark had been brought up to think of himself as cock of the walk, and now at the first major crisis of his life he was showing just how uncertain and inadequate that indoctrination had left him. Oddie put out his hand and took him by the arm.

“Come on,” he said, and led him out to the car.

Conal Leary's tendency to fume and shout, which had been kept under control while Oddie was still in the room, now began to rear its head again. He turned on Charlie, his face getting redder and redder by the second.

“Can you
tell
me what all this is about? I mean, am I allowed to have some
idea
what my son is supposed to have
done
? Or am I just some bloody member of the
public
who pays your bloody
wages
and is treated like
dirt
for the privilege?”

“Con—” said his wife. He whipped around to her.

“Oh, yes, and am I supposed to slip off meekly down to the police station while you and this black—”

“That's enough,” said Charlie, taking a step toward him. “Don't say anything you'll regret later. You'll need to be as together as you can be. I can't tell you what your son is being
questioned about, but I can say he's in a lot of trouble, facing a variety of possible charges, and you really should be down there with him, not making things worse by saying things you'll regret later.”

“Con, please go. So you're there for him.”

“Your wife is right. He needs you now,” said Charlie.

Con Leary looked from one to the other. He was in uncharted waters and, like his son, completely out of his depth. Suddenly he barged through them, fumbling for his car keys, and was out the front door.

“
Please
don't mind him,” Mary Leary pleaded. “He's not really rac—”

“Water off a duck's back,” said Charlie cheerfully. “If I got steamed up about that sort of thing I'd be going off like a whistling kettle all day. I just wanted him to do what is most useful to you all at this moment.”

“Could I sit in when you talk to Mum?” asked Donna, emboldened by his cheerful mood.

“No!”
said her mother.

“No, you can't,” said Charlie. “You're getting it the wrong way around: your mother can sit in if I want to talk to you about your brother. Because you do know something about what's been going on, don't you?”

“No . . . just suspicions. There are lots of rumors at school.”

“Well, we'll probably see how we go with what we've got already, and maybe talk to you later on. I'm sure you hate the idea of women being sent out of the room to make a cup of tea, but you are the only possible pair of hands at the moment, and a cup of tea would be very welcome to me, and I suspect to your mother. So—?”

Donna stood stock-still for a moment, her brow lowering, then she turned and left the room.

“Now,” said Charlie, gesturing Mary to a seat and sitting down himself to face her, “tell me what it is that's been worrying you these past few days.”

“Nothing's been worrying me. Where would you get that idea?”

“From my boss, who talked to you, from your friends, who are puzzled, from your family. Why have you been going upstairs and downstairs to the basement?”

She did a double take, then exploded.

“You listened! You stood outside and listened to a private conversation.”

“We were outside, and we overheard. OK, we listened. This isn't Boy Scouts' trivia we're engaged in, you know. Now tell me what's been of so much concern down in the basement.”

She launched herself straight into the most obvious of lies.

“Nothing! It's where all the sports gear is kept. The summer season is just starting, and both Con and Mark are keen sportsmen. There's a lot of stuff to wash and iron and put away.”

“Mrs. Leary, I don't get annoyed at being called a black bastard, but I do get itchy when people treat me as if I were a fool. Now, tell me what it is in the sports cupboard that has been worrying you.”

“Nothing has. It's just all their clothes—”

“Or maybe something that should be there that isn't?”

“Everything's there that should be.”

“
Now
. That's it, isn't it? Something was missing from the cupboard and now it's back. Mrs. Leary, it would be much better for your son if you told us what it is that went missing.”

She looked at him fiercely.

“How could it be better for Mark? Betrayed by his own mother. Anyway, this has nothing to do with Mark.”

“Did you suspect whatever it was that was missing had been used by your husband? Is that it?”

“I don't
know
!” she wailed. “I don't know anything. But I do know all about Con and women, I know someone had connected him with this Julie Norris, and that he'd been talking about the Pardoe case and Pardoe's connection with her on the train, and somehow I thought—well, I just jumped to the conclusion he must be involved in some way. He usually is. I thought it might be financial too, because Con is up to any trick going. Of course I wondered about Mark, but I couldn't think of any connection at all between him and this murder.”

“Right,” said Charlie as she came to a halt. “You have a choice, Mrs. Leary. Either I phone the local station and we get a couple of uniformed helpers and we take everything from the sports cupboard for forensic examination. Or you take me down there and you point out what went missing and has now been put back. It's up to you.”

Mary sat there, her hands clasped, her head bent—sat there, it seemed, for an age. Donna came in with a tray, and suddenly her mother got up, looking away from her daughter to shield her eyes from her, then led Charlie down the hall to a little door under the stairs. She switched on a light, then led the way down bare wooden steps. As they came to the bottom Charlie saw a snooker table, bodybuilding equipment he recognized from his days as a gym attendant, and a cheerful mess of sporting this and thats: a putter, wicket-keeper's gloves, a punching bag. Mary Leary led the way across the basement, bumping into things, her eyes were so full. Then she threw open a cupboard door, and Charlie saw shelves of sports clothes, a golf bag bulging with clubs, cricket bats, and a snooker cue. Mary Leary pointed to the murky depths of the cupboard's interior.

“The Indian clubs?” Charlie asked. “Don't see them much these days.”

“No. They've just sat there for years. They were Con's father's, or grandfather's, I don't know which.”

“And one of them was missing?”