Blood on the Bones

Chapter One

Chapter OneThis novel uses British English, so if there is a word or phrase you don’t understand, there is a handy alphabetical listing at the back.

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'Nuns?'

As Detective Inspector Joseph Rafferty considered what his DS, Dafyd Llewellyn had said, he was filled with so many emotions, he was momentarily incapable of voicing any further words. Which was probably just as well.

But while he waited for one emotion to gain ascendancy, he surreptitiously palmed and pocketed the letter he had received in that morning's post. And even though he had read and re-read it a dozen times since its receipt, the letter's contents still made him go cold all over. He had been worrying about it all day and had yet to decide on a response.

Now, whether he wanted to or not, after the news which Llewellyn had so calmly delivered, he knew he had to put the letter out of his mind. His sergeant was still standing in front of him, presumably expecting some further response and eyeing him as if he was an exhibit in one of the museums he and his new wife, Maureen, preferred instead of having a good laugh in the pub like the rest of the team. Rafferty didn't know which of the morning's two messages was worst: the paper one the postman had delivered or the verbal one Dafyd had just presented to him.

For the moment he was forced to put on a brave face about the latter one at least and be thankful that neither Llewellyn, nor anyone else, knew anything about what the postman had brought. So, although dismayed at Llewellyn's news, and not feeling much like it, Rafferty forced the disbelieving grin that he knew was expected, gazed at Llewellyn's serious, thinly-handsome face, and asked, with little expectation of an affirmative reply, 'You're having a laugh. Right?'

But when Llewellyn – never one of the Essex station's jokers at the best of times – simply stood impassively, his intelligent brown gaze patient as he waited for Rafferty to face up to this latest dilemma, Rafferty added on a plaintive note: 'Aren't you?'

Llewellyn shook his head and with the merest hint of empathy visible in his eyes, added, 'The Mother Superior of the Carmelite Monastery of the Immaculate Conception rang the emergency services to report that one of the sisters had found a body buried in a shallow grave in their grounds. PCs Green and Smales were despatched. They've just radioed through to confirm that there is a body at the location. One that's been partially disinterred.'

He paused, clearly awaiting some further response. And when Rafferty remained silent, he added quietly, 'It's the Roman Catholic convent out past Tiffey Reach and Northway.'

Unwillingly, as though to do so would confirm that which he would rather not have confirmed, Rafferty nodded a gloomy acknowledgement. 'I know where it is.'

But even as he made this despondent reply, a far more likely explanation for the body's presence in the convent's grounds occurred to him and he brightened considerably. Maybe, he would, after all, be able to escape heading up an investigation into the nuns' just-discovered cadaver. The thought was a cheering one. 'Most likely the body of one of the nuns from way-back-when, who died from natural causes,' he told Llewellyn, unable to hide the relief his deductions had brought him. 'Seems to me that such holy ladies, what with their vows of poverty and all, would be likely to have given their dear departed only simple interments years ago. Such burials would certainly save them plenty of the old moolah.'

Llewellyn let him down gently. 'I think not, sir. For one thing, Constable Elizabeth Green said the corpse was wearing a man's watch, and one that looked expensive. And for another, from what they were able to see of the skull, she said it looked as if it had sustained damage consistent with a blow of some sort. And there was no coffin. The body was just laid, naked, in the earth. I don't think a group of holy and modest nuns would give one of their number such a casual burial, do you?'

Rafferty didn't. But unwilling to be so quickly deprived of his escape clause, he muttered, 'Maybe he just genuflected too low in a bout of over-enthusiastic religious fervour and bashed his brains out on a stone floor.' But even as he uttered the thought, he accepted that he was just clutching at straws like some desperate yokel. Llewellyn's next words confirmed this suspicion.

'The damage was to the back of the skull, not the front, according to Constable Green and was inflicted with sufficient force for the victim to suffer severe trauma.'

He's not the only one, was Rafferty’s morose thought, after Llewellyn had revealed the latest details of what, as he had said, sounded horribly like a suspicious death. One moreover, that was, after all, destined to turn into his investigatory baby.

'Constable Green said they've secured the scene. They’re awaiting our arrival, and that of the Scene of Crime team and pathologist.'

Rafferty nodded absently, but said nothing. He was miles – years away – back in the south London boyhood and youth that had not been improved by religion's harsh, unforgiving hand. Some of those old Catholic teachers certainly knew how to administer a caning. And he should know, having been on the receiving end more times than he could count. Strange that all that praying didn't manage to make them kinder human beings, he thought. Why, he remembered—

But Llewellyn's voice dragged him back from his unpleasant recollections. 'Sir?'

The addition of the question mark to Llewellyn's address wasn't lost on Rafferty. He put his reverie behind him for long enough to go: 'Mmm?'

'Would you like me to contact Dr Dally and the Scene of Crime team? Or will you do it?'

Rafferty waved a hand. 'You do it.' No way did he want to give Sam Dally a chance to laugh at his predicament. Certainly not until he'd figured out how he was going to handle it. He gazed into space as Llewellyn turned his back and picked up a phone. 'Nuns,' he muttered again, under his breath this time. What were a bunch of penguin dressers doing getting mixed up in a suspicious death?

He asked himself what he had done to deserve getting dumped with a case in a Roman Catholic convent. Of all the locations for their latest corpse to turn up, this really was Divine punishment at its most inspired. Any location that held even a sniff of Catholicism was normally a place to be given a wide berth by the long since and gladly lapsed Rafferty. It was grim to think he'd now have to voluntarily return to his religious roots.

Then he gave a fatalistic shrug. One thing at least: the nuns' cadaver would help take his mind off his unwelcome letter, if only insofar as a second trauma lessens the pain of the first one.

It was some minutes later, after several low and discreet exchanges, when Llewellyn put the phone down and turned round.

'I managed to contact Dr Dally,' he reported. 'He's confirmed he'll shortly make his way to the scene.'

Rafferty nodded grimly. 'I bet he can't wait. I could hear him laughing from here.'

Sensibly, Llewellyn refrained from making any comment on Dally or his amusement and just continued. 'The SOCOs are also on their way.' Quietly, he added, 'As I suppose we ought to be.'

As his sergeant walked to the door and held it open. Rafferty's fatalism wore off. Now his mouth drooped downward as if he'd suffered a mini stroke. But the only stroke he'd suffered was another one from a supposedly loving God. Morosely, he thought: Oh let joy be unconfined. Because, between his unwelcome letter and the news of the suspicious death at the local RC convent, Rafferty knew deep down to his lapsed Catholic soul, that Sam Dally wasn't the man not to make the most of his opportunity. Purgatory awaited. Several sources of Purgatory, in fact.

And Rafferty knew that these several Purgatories were impatient for his arrival.as Llewellyn said, ‘Shall we go?

He shrugged heroically, like a man with an urgent appointment with the hangman, said: 'Why not?' Even though he could think of a round dozen reasons 'why not', he voiced none of them. Instead, slowly, as though doom really did dog his heels, he rose from his chair, grabbed his jacket against the lowering October skies, and followed Llewellyn from the office to meet his fate, muttering: 'Nuns!' in tones of growing horror as he went, and fingering the letter in his pocket that seemed so hot with threat that he imagined he could feel it burning its way through the material of his jacket to singe his flesh.

Certainly, that morning's letter had already made his day far from pleasant. The suspicious death in the Catholic convent seemed likely to complete the job the letter had started. He only hoped he'd enjoyed the murky sins he'd indulged in a previous life. Because whatever sins he had committed in that incarnation, he suspected he was shortly to pay for them in this one.