Stubbs unsnapped a silver-topped collapsible walking stick. ‘Great believer in being there in person. Allows the intuition to flow freely. Know what it’s telling me now?’
Opening time? thought Dryden, but shook his head.
‘It’s telling me you’re going to find out who killed that young man. You’ve certainly got a better chance than my son.’
He sailed off on an ocean of whisky.
Tavanter leaned on the pew end and slipped into the seat beside the reporter. He looked exhausted and closed his eyes as if in prayer.
Dryden had planned the question: ‘What would Tommy have thought?’ It invited self-incrimination, self-justification.
Tavanter took the question seriously as Dryden knew he would. He placed his fingers together in a little steeple of thought. ‘Not much.’ The voice was languid and modulated, like a priest’s during confession. ‘Tommy’s faith was rooted, if at all, in rural ignorance. He knew no better. Not an excuse that could be called upon by those here today.’
‘I’m sorry. This isn’t the right place for questions.’
‘Quite wrong!’ It was nearly a shout. Tavanter opened his eyes as though seeing the inside of the chapel for the first time. He cast them up to Dr Mitchell’s sickly ceiling. ‘The very place, Dryden. I’ve asked all my best questions in front of God. My tragedy is that it appears to be a lousy place to expect answers.’
Dryden wondered where to start. But Tavanter saved him the trouble. The priest of St John’s had been interviewed three times by the detectives in the Tommy Shepherd case in 1966.
‘I didn’t see Tommy again after he went missing that summer. It wasn’t through lack of trying. We were very close. I went to Belsar’s Hill but they said he was in Ireland. They were lying of course, but they must have thought I’d go to the police.’
‘Tommy never tried to use your relationship to get help, money, a place to hide?’ Dryden was fishing, the file had been circumspect, but reading between the lines had been easy enough.
‘That would presume our relationship was physical, which it wasn’t. For the record, that is actually a matter of regret to me. Especially today. But no, Tommy had no basis for blackmail.’
Dryden thought of the hunched decaying remains on the cathedral roof. He’d never thought of Tommy as a human being, let alone a lover. In his experience murder wasn’t something that happened to real people, people whose going left other lives empty. Murder happened to cardboard cutouts who appeared on police WANTEDposters. Chalk outlines on the pavement.
‘Tommy could have lied. The circumstantial evidence of your relationship would have been enough to raise questions. It could have been very damaging.’ Tavanter was lost in the past. Dryden brought him back by touching the hem of his cassock: ‘Did he try?’
‘That’s all true. But frankly Tommy was no fool. Far from it. He knew exactly where he had me, in the palm of his delicate hand. He knew I’d do almost anything for him anyway, he didn’t need to resort to blackmail. I was looking for him.’
‘So you’ve no idea who was capable of killing him?’
‘Oh, I’ve got lots of ideas. Take our esteemed deputy chief constable. What if Tommy hadn’t been at the Crossways that day?’
‘But he offered to tell the police who was. He sent them a letter.’
Tavanter let his eyes rest on Dryden’s. ‘But did he say he was there himself? If he had turned in his friends – an act of betrayal he was more than capable of, by the way – any one of them could have cleared Tommy. Where would that have left Stubbs? As the detective in charge of the case he was responsible for verifying the fingerprints. They could have lied to take Tommy down with them, but that would have required a collective act of revenge. Unlikely I think. If Stubbs faked the evidence and Tommy gave himself up, the future deputy chief constable’s career was over. What about that for a motive?’
‘Is it as good as money?’
Tavanter smiled. ‘My fortune?’
‘Certainly a fortune spent on good deeds, but a fortune nonetheless. And spent. The AIDS centre in Cambridge was built with your money I believe, and is still run with it. Quarter of a million? Half a million?’
‘Yes. Oh yes. More. And we sceptics know that all charitable giving is selfish. I enjoy running the centre. It has given me a purpose in life. Status. Friends. A place of my own. So you think I killed Tommy to get the money?’
‘No. No, I don’t. But, for the sake of the argument, the money wouldn’t have had to be the reason for his death. It’s just that whoever did it would have got the money anyway, and faced the problem of finding somewhere to spend it. It was no small amount – if he got a share from the Crossways and his winnings, it was a small fortune. Well invested, a large fortune.’