'What if I were to tell you that I had had a "word"?'
'God spoke to you?' Jenny said.
'If you wish.'
'And that's why I should put my neck on the line? The Ministry of Justice are already piling the pressure on me to steer clear.'
'You've rowed against the tide before. Alec McAvoy told me himself.'
'Can you please not mention him again?'
Father Starr persisted. 'I'm appealing to your conscience, Mrs Cooper. Something is not right.'
Jenny shot up from her chair and turned to face him. 'Do you know what I think? I think you're reading all sorts of things into this that don't exist. You're dramatizing, casting yourself in the middle of some imaginary struggle between good and evil, when the simple truth is Craven killed her.'
She started off across the stone floor, the click of her heels ricocheting like bullets off the cathedral's unadorned walls.
Starr jumped up and pursued her. 'Mrs Cooper—'
She kept on walking. 'I'm sorry, but I can't be used this way.'
He came alongside and reached into his shirt pocket. 'Please. I didn't know whether to show you this.' He brought out a folded piece of paper. 'I still don't.' There was anguish in his voice. 'Really, I've prayed, but I've no idea what's right.'
Jenny came to a reluctant halt. Avoiding her gaze, Starr handed her the single sheet.
'I've heard Eva Donaldson was friendly with a boy,' Starr said. He swallowed a guilty lump in his throat. 'His name's Frederick Reardon.'
'I've met him,' Jenny said. 'What of it?'
'He's got a violent past.'
She looked at the unfolded document. It was a standard printout from the Criminal Records Bureau. Two convictions were listed beneath Freddy Reardon's name. Both were on the same date a little over two years ago: possession of an offensive weapon and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
'Where did you get this?' Jenny said.
'That I can't say,' Starr said.
'How did you know about Freddy?'
Starr shook his head. 'I didn't. This was given to me.'
'I've told you all I can,' Starr said. 'Make of it what you will.'
With a look that told her his loyalties lay to a far higher authority than hers, he said a hurried goodbye and walked quickly away.
'He's playing games with you, Mrs Cooper,' was Alison's blunt assessment.
'Why would he?'
'He's a fanatic. Plausible, but the maddest people often are.'
'How would you get hold of a criminal record? It's not an employer's copy, it's come out of a Crown Prosecution Service file.'
'Maybe he's using a private investigator. A lot of my old colleagues from CID have gone that route. I dare say they could tickle up a few contacts in the CPS if they needed to.'
'He hasn't got the money, he's a penniless priest.'
'But think what he's got behind him.' Alison handed back the criminal record with a dismissive frown.
'I can't see why the Catholic Church would go out on a limb for a convicted murderer.'
'It's not about him, is it?' Alison said. 'Priests are like politicians, they tell you what you want to hear. With his own kind, I guarantee all the talk will be of false prophets and wolves in sheep's clothing. Every night when he flogs himself, your Father Starr will be praying for the Mission Church of God to be torn to the ground.'
Jenny said, 'Before I saw this, I'd made up my mind to certify cause of death and close the file.'
Alison gave her the sort of pitying look that could only come from an ex-detective who believed she had seen it all. 'Sometimes I think not even you know what drives you.'
Chapter 12
Eva Donaldson had dialled only six different numbers in the final fortnight of her life. Ringing each in turn, Alison established that they were Decency's Bristol and London offices, Michael Turnbull and Lennox Strong's direct lines, the Mission Church of God's main switchboard and Freddy Reardon's mobile. She had called Freddy five times in eight days, but she had spoken to Lennox Strong only twice.
Protocol dictated that Jenny should have sent Alison to interview a potential witness, but there were occasions, and this was one of them, in which she couldn't entirely trust her officer to put her prejudice aside. She told herself it was an exploratory visit, that she was approaching Freddy merely for background information. It was stretching the rules to their outer limits, and as she parked beneath the tower blocks of the Langan Estate she stopped to reconsider. Who was she doing this for? Was it