When Anthony Rathe Investigates Read online

  “You knew one of the men you discovered in the church, is that right?” he asked now. His voice was harsh, practical, the hoarse whisper of a man not to be crossed.

  “Not very well, but I knew the… ” Healey struggled to find the words. “The man who died. I knew him, yes, inspector.”

  Detective Inspector Terry Cook stood up, stretching his spine as he did so. Any more sitting about and the temptation to lie down would be too much. “Tell me exactly what you did know about him.”

  “There’s not much to tell. His name was Richard Temple. I had met him only a few weeks ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Here, at the church. I found him sitting on one of the pews, in silence, alone with his thoughts.”

  “Just wandered in off the street, did he?”

  Healey could not fail to detect the tone of voice. “Some people do, inspector. Some people need peace once in a while and there is no greater peace than within the sanctuary of God.”

  Cook’s expression remained impassive. “I’ll take your word for it, Father. I don’t see much of any sort of peace by and large.”

  “I’m not a priest,” said Healey. He looked up at the bemused Cook. “You said father. That applies only to Catholic priests. I’m not a Catholic.”

  Cook made no reply. The niceties of religious etiquette didn’t seem to him to matter very much when brutal murder was the business in hand. “Did Mr Temple say why he needed this special bit of peace?”

  “No,” replied Healey, his head lowering once more. “And I never asked.”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t let him in last night. So, he must have had a key, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How come?”

  “I gave it to him.”

  “Why?” pressed Cook.

  “Because he asked for it.”

  “You’re going to have to give me more than that, Father. Didn’t it strike you as a bit odd, him asking for a key? You don’t just give random people keys to the church like those wafer things you dish out, do you?”

  “I’m not a Catholic,” repeated Healey. “I don’t perform mass. And, no, I don’t give out keys to anybody.”

  “So why did you give one to Richard Temple?”

  Healey’s eyes widened and his mouth hung open impotently. It was a question for which he could offer no answer. “I don’t know. Not really. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try,” demanded Cook.

  Healey shook his head, giving a slight shrug of his shoulders. “It seemed somehow important for him to have a key.”

  “Important to you or him?”

  “Both. But to him especially. And, if he needed help and I could offer it by giving him a key, that made it important to me too. So, important to both of us.”

  “When did you give it to him?”

  “A couple of days ago.”

  “Was it a spare, or did you have it cut just for him?”

  “It was a duplicate.”

  Cook fell silent for a moment and he began to kick the gravel of the pathway with the toe of his shoe. “What about the other man, the one you found with the body? Know him?”

  A brief shake of the head. “I’ve never set eyes on him before.”

  “His name’s Nicholas Barclay. Ever heard of him?”

  “Never.”

  “Sure about that, sir?”

  “Of course. I don’t know him.”

  “You’ve no idea why the two of them might be in your church?”

  The shake of the head again. “None. How do you know who he is, this other man? Surely he fled as soon as I left the church.”

  Cook nodded and a smile might have flickered across his thin lips. “He ran off, all right. But a bloke legging it down the road covered in blood attracts attention. He was picked up less than half a mile from here.”

  “I see,” murmured Healey.

  “He’s sitting in that patrol car over there. I had him brought back here, so you could identify him as the man you saw in the church. Get me?”

  “Yes, I understand that. And it is. Him, I mean. He’s the man I saw.”

  “But you can’t give me any reason why Barclay would be with Temple in your church and why one of them might be lying dead, with the other one standing over the body?”

  Healey’s voice rose, with frustration, fear, and sadness. “How many more times must I make that clear to you?”

  Cook squatted down on his haunches, peering into the vicar’s face. “This is important, sir, and I want you to give me the truth. Did you see Nicholas Barclay kill Richard Temple?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Positive?”

  “Absolutely. Mr Temple was already dead when I came into the church. This man, Barclay, was standing by the body, his hand covered in… blood.”

  “You didn’t see Barclay strike Temple with the candlestick?”

  Healey sighed and shook his head, suddenly feeling exhausted. “I did not. And I thank God that I did not.”

  Cook rose to his full height. “I hope He listens to you, sir. He doesn’t listen to me much.”

  “Perhaps it is you who is not listening, inspector.”

  There was very little to be said in reply to that. Cook shrugged and walked away from the vicar, keeping his hands deep in his pockets. He gave a brief yawn and the thought of food crept into his brain. Conspiratorially, his stomach gave a faint rumble. Cook ignored them both. He refused to be bullied by his own body. He looked over to where Nicholas Barclay was sitting in the back of the patrol car. Thin, nervous, with dark hair gone wild with the trauma of the night. The expression was vacant, the eyes wide but lifeless. Shock. Or guilt. Cook had seen enough of both, but sometimes it was difficult to tell them apart. His stomach complained again and with an optimism quite unlike his nature, Cook thought it might not be long before he could satisfy his basic need for sustenance. He had no doubt in his mind that Barclay had murdered Temple. The vicar himself was proof enough of that. To Cook, the simplest answer was often the right one, and it was difficult to argue with the facts. All he needed to know was why. He looked back at Barclay, those thin features flickering blue in the glare of the official lights. A weak looking man, frightened by what he had done, allowing all sorts of dark scenarios to play out in his head, no doubt. Cook knew the type. It wouldn’t take long to bully him into explaining why he had been driven to murder. Not long at all.

  And then, Cook could enjoy a good English breakfast and a few hours in bed. He felt he deserved it.

  * * *

  Rathe handed the woman another tissue. The tears had begun to subside but the last few moments had been uncomfortable to endure. For both of them, he suspected, but for himself particularly. He had felt the human instinct to comfort the distressed woman, but it had been overtaken at once by the similarly human failing of the deep sense of inadequacy. Nothing he thought to say seemed to offer any practical comfort; his words seemed to be nothing more than empty platitudes, no matter how earnestly he may have intended them to be. So he had simply let her cry until her eyes could shed no more, content for silence and time to offer that support which he felt unable to give.

  Caroline Barclay had always struck Rathe as a handsome woman, certainly capable of attracting a man with more presence about him than Nicholas. Rathe had never understood the bond between them. Caroline was vibrant, gregarious, always ready with an opinion which would be delivered with a smile; Nicholas was almost insignificant beside her. A man who hadn’t found his place in the world, who was unsure both of his abilities and his responsibilities, never wishing to provoke an argument, even if it meant he would condemn himself to submission when he knew he was in the right. So eager to keep the peace that he never made any mark. And it was not that Caroline should find him so sexually attractive that all his other faults could be forgotten. Lank rather than slim, weak rather than sensitive, his face timid and his demeanour apprehensive. He was kind, no doubt, and Rathe couldn’t think for a moment that he did
not love his wife, or vice versa, but it had always seemed to him to be a mismatched coupling.

  In contrast to Nicholas’s ordinariness, Caroline seemed almost incredible. Rathe could never bring himself to say that she was beautiful, because her features lacked the delicacy which he felt should always be present when assessing true beauty. But it was impossible to deny that the high cheekbones and the noble expression were not striking. Her profile was aristocratic, the nose prominent without being intrusive, and there was a feline pout to the small mouth. Her clear green eyes were prone to shine with intelligence and vitality, so it saddened Rathe to see them dimmed with grief as she stared up at him.

  “He didn’t do it, Anthony,” she said. “You know Nicholas. He can’t get rid of a spider in the house without releasing it alive into the garden. The idea of him… doing what they’re saying he did is ridiculous.”

  “He was standing beside the body with blood on his hands, Caroline,” Rathe felt compelled to say.

  “Don’t tell me you’d have no way of getting round that in Court.”

  “I don’t practise any more.”

  “But if you did… ”

  Rathe paused for a moment, his mind contemplating the idea of being back at the Bar, standing in a Courtroom, his voice echoing around the room, commanding respect and attention. Once, the thought would have thrilled him and massaged his self-regard with all the oils and lotions of profound pride, but now his stomach baulked at the memory. The vision of his robes and wig, which once had been resplendent, seemed to him now to be visions of rags and decay. The wig had become cobwebs, the black robes shredded and tattered with neglect. The images came with their own curses: the face of Kevin Marsden, his pleas for mercy as he was taken down, the clamour of the press as they rushed to make their by-lines, and the animal howls of Kathy Marsden as her son disappeared from view. So vivid in his head, so heavy on his conscience.

  “Do you think he did it?” Caroline asked.

  “I can’t say. I don’t think I want to say.”

  Caroline lowered her gaze and, in that minute, Rathe felt an overpowering sense of disappointment. Not his, but hers; he had let her down in that moment and he felt that both of them were aware of it.

  “Then you won’t help us?” she said, her voice lowered to a whisper by the weight of her regret.

  “I want to, Caroline,” he insisted, “believe me, I do. But I don’t know what you want me to do. I can’t defend Nicholas because I’m not at the Bar any more. Even if I was, it would have to be at a trial, and that’s a long way off. The best I can do,” he added, after a heavy pause, “is tell you what I would say if you had approached me in Chambers, looking to instruct me. OK?”

  “All right,” she conceded. He tried not to think about the barely noticeable note of hope in her voice.

  “I warn you, Caroline, it isn’t good news,” he insisted. “Nicholas is found at a crime scene, beside a body. A candlestick is stained with the victim’s blood and Nicholas has got the same blood on his hands because he says he touched the wound. In shock, yes, but nevertheless. What’s more, he confesses that his fingerprints are on the weapon because he picked that up in the same state of shock. But his are the only prints on it. And he ran away from the scene before the police arrived, which makes him look like a man with something to hide. All that gives the police a fair bit to work on and it doesn’t look good for Nicholas. Not by a long way.”

  “I know all that, Anthony, and I know how it looks. But you wouldn’t be afraid of taking that on if you were acting for him, would you?”

  He wouldn’t, he had to confess that to himself. Certainly not if those facts and inferences stood alone, but they didn’t. “When does Nicholas say he last saw Richard Temple?”

  “A couple of nights ago. We’d been invited to dinner. Turned out Richard had too. If we’d known, we’d have made some excuse.” She lowered her gaze. “Nicholas was drunk before we arrived. He had tried to sort things out with Richard. He just made a fool of himself.”

  Rathe sighed. “Do the police know that?”

  “Yes. Nicholas told them all about it. You don’t have to say anything, Anthony. I know a public argument between them isn’t going to help things.”

  Rathe was pleased he had been spared the necessity of stating the fact himself. “Whose invitation was this?”

  “Edmund Lanyon. You know him, I suppose. He’s one of yours, after all.”

  Rathe knew the name, but he was not personally acquainted with the man. Lanyon was older than Rathe, a member of a different set of Chambers. There had never been any occasion, perhaps never any reason, for their paths to cross. “What about this motive the police say Nicholas has, Caroline? You’d have to get over that hurdle too.”

  “I don’t accept it is a motive. Not for murder.”

  “Richard Temple was about to ruin you, Caroline.”

  “All he did was sack Nicholas,” she protested. “That’s not a motive for murder.”

  “Nicholas had cost Temple a fortune. He’d been trusted to work with one of Temple’s major clients and he made a mess of it. You’ve got a marketing executive worth millions trusting a new employee with an important contract and that trust Temple showed wasn’t repaid. Instead, he ended up having to pay out a king’s ransom to protect his reputation. Temple was talking about suing Nicholas for professional negligence, Caroline. That would have put you both on the streets. And that is a motive for murder.”

  Caroline had begun to shake her head in defiance of the facts. “Nicholas had been begging for another chance. And he would have made it up to Richard Temple, I know he would.”

  “That doesn’t help him,” Rathe said. “Because the police will say that if Nicholas did beg for forgiveness and Temple rejected him then Nicholas would be even more inclined to hatred and violence. Can’t you see that?”

  Caroline’s eyes had filled with tears once more but it seemed to Rathe that this time they were tears of anger and frustration rather than pure grief and panic. “I still refuse to accept that my husband met Richard Temple in that church and battered him to death. I just don’t believe it, Anthony.”

  She would have said something more, but the expression on Rathe’s face silenced her. His brow had creased into a frown over those dark, austere eyes and his lips had pursed in confused concentration. It was as though some fact or some idea had been made clear to him but its consequences and inferences were disturbing to him. He began to pace the room, slowly, working out what it was which had occurred to him.

  “Anthony, what’s wrong?” Caroline asked.

  “The church,” he said. “Why were they in the church at all? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What are you saying? I don’t understand.”

  In truth, nor did Rathe, not at that moment. But when he turned his glare upon her, Caroline Barclay saw that his eyes had brightened and she thought she recognised something of her old friend’s tenacity and determination, which had been so dimmed over the last few months, come alive inside them once more. Then, a smile crossed briefly over his lips and hope began to swell in her heart.

  * * *

  “I thought you’d buried yourself away somewhere dark and nasty to mope after what happened.”

  “I had.”

  “So what’s all this about? You being here now?”

  “I don’t want you to make the same mistake I did, that’s all.”

  Cook leaned back in his office chair and smiled. He stretched his arms behind his head and latticed his fingers. He wondered why he had felt compelled to grant the interview. It was not as though he and Anthony Rathe had any sort of bond of affection or friendship; quite the contrary, if truth be told. They had been professional antagonists: representatives of the two respective halves of the criminal justice system. The detective who collated evidence and sought punishment for a crime; the barrister who tested the evidence in Court and saw that justice was done. It was an ideal and both men knew it, but there was a tension with
in it, at least on Cook’s part. He dealt with the violence on the streets, the blood and guts of crime, and the effects and consequences of it on the lives involved. Rathe’s milieu had been the theatre of justice, the costume drama of the Courtroom, where the crime was documented in ring-binders and where any number of intellectual tricks might be played in order to ensure that one side won and one side lost. For Cook, justice was a duty; but as far as he was concerned, for Rathe, it was nothing more than a professional game. Several times, Cook had seen known villains walk free because of some abstract parry or manipulation of events played by the defence team, in several cases by Rathe himself. Each time, the acquitted villain had offended again. Every man had a right to a defence; but every victim had a right to closure. There had been times when Cook wondered how Rathe and his ilk could sleep at night. When the Marsden case was laid bare and its tragic climax known, Cook had felt no emotion. When he learned that Rathe had walked away from his own life in disgrace, he had smiled.

  “Why would I make the same mess you did?” he asked now.

  Rathe remained motionless in his own chair, across the desk from the inspector. The office was sufficiently spacious for him not to feel claustrophobic, but he was close enough to Cook to detect the signs of a tired man. Long hours, bad food (if any), endless cups of coffee, functioning not on energy recharged by sleep but on adrenalin injected by the lack of it. He saw the broken veins in Cook’s eyes and the stubble on the chin, but he also saw the shrewdness in that blue glare and the determination behind that day old beard.

  “I don’t think the Temple murder is as straightforward as it looks,” Rathe said. “I don’t want you to stop looking just because you think it’s cut and dried.”

  Cook laughed but there was no humour in it. “Good of you, Rathe, but don’t you worry about me.”