“Does it matter?” asks Ron.
Chris supposes it doesn’t. “He knows where Johnny is. But even Elizabeth wouldn’t be able to get it out of him.”
The men nod.
“Joyce, maybe,” adds Chris, and they all nod again, smiling this time.
“You don’t smile very often, Detective Chief Inspector,” says Ibrahim. “If you don’t mind me saying so? That’s just an observation.”
“If Elizabeth knows someone who knows someone who knows someone,” says Chris, “then why isn’t she here? Why send Starsky and Hutch when Cagney and Lacey could have come and done the job?”
“Starsky and Hutch, very good,” says Ibrahim. “I would be Hutch, more methodical.”
There is a boarding announcement and the three men gather their belongings. Chris sees that Ron has a walking stick with him.
“First time I’ve seen you using a stick, Ron.”
Ron shrugs. “If you’ve got a stick, they let you on the plane first.”
“So where are Elizabeth and Joyce?” asks Chris. “Or don’t I want to know?”
“You don’t want to know,” says Ibrahim.
“Oh, great,” says Chris.
97.
Candlelight is flickering in the chapel. Elizabeth and Matthew Mackie are inches apart, in the confessional.
“I see no point in dressing it up. And I don’t want forgiveness—yours or the Lord’s. I just want it on record. I want someone to bear witness, before I die and it’s all dust. I know there are rules, even in the confessional, so you must do whatever you need to do with this information. I killed a man. This was a lifetime ago, and for what it’s worth, he attacked me and I defended myself. But I killed him.
“Go on.”
“I was living in digs in Fairhaven. I don’t know if you’re the type to judge me, but I had invited him home. Stupid, perhaps, but you were probably stupid back then too. That’s where he attacked me. The details are grisly, but that’s not an excuse. I fought back, and I killed him. I was so frightened; I knew exactly how it looked. No one had seen what happened, so who would believe me? They were different times, you know that; you remember that?”
“I remember.”
“I wrapped the body in a curtain. I dragged it to my car. And that’s where I left it while I thought what to do. This had all happened very quickly, that’s what you have to understand. That morning I had woken like everybody else, and now here I was. It seemed so absurd.”
“How did you kill him? May I ask?”
“I shot him. In the leg. I hadn’t thought he would die, but he bled and he bled and he bled. So much blood, so quickly. Perhaps if he’d made a noise it would have been different? But he just whimpered. In shock, I suppose. And I watched him die, as close as I am to you now.”
Silence in the confessional. Silence in the chapel. Elizabeth has locked and bolted the door. No one is going to come in. And, of course, no one is going to get out. If that was the way this was going to end.
“Then... well, then I sat and I wept, because what else was there to do? I waited for the hand on my shoulder, for someone to take me away. It was so monstrous. But as I sat there, and I sat there, and I sat there, nothing much happened. No one knocked, no one screamed. There was no lightning. So I made myself a cup of tea. And the kettle still boiled, and the steam rose, and I still had a body, wrapped in a curtain, in the boot of my car. It was a summer evening, so I turned on the wireless, and I waited until dark. And then I drove here.”
“Here?”
“Saint Michael’s, yes. I worked here for a time. I don’t know if you knew that?”
“I didn’t.”
“So I drove through the gates, and I switched off my lights as I drove up the hill. The sisters would always sleep early. I kept driving, past Saint Michael’s, past the hospital, and up the lane to the Garden of Eternal Rest. You know it?”
“I know it.”
“Of course. And I took my spade, and I don’t want these walls to crumble around us, but I chose a grave, of one of the sisters. It was right at the top, where the earth was soft, and I dug. I dug until I hit the wood of a coffin. Then I walked back to my car. I tipped the body out of the boot and out of the curtain. I hadn’t had to remove any clothes, because he was naked when he attacked me, you understand. And so I dragged the body up the path, through the headstones. It was hard going, I remember that. At one point I cursed, and then I apologized for cursing. I got the body up to the hole, and then tipped it into the grave. On top of the coffin. Then I took my spade again, I filled in the grave, and I said a prayer. Then I walked back to my car, I put the spade in the boot, and I drove home. That’s as plain as I can tell it. “
