LITMIR.BIZ

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who resembled a badger woken up from hibernation too soon.

      ‘Come in,’ he said, throwing wide the heavy wooden door and causing it to creak alarmingly on its hinges.

      Father Malone rushed ahead of her into the same room they had been shown a few nights ago. He threw open the curtains and whisked away a pile of newspapers from an upright chair, gesturing for her to sit down. The carpet looked like it could do with a good hoover.

      ‘Aren’t there any ladies of the parish who could come in to give you a helping hand until Mary is able to return?’ she asked.

      ‘Too many, that’s the trouble. If I let one in to help they’ll all want to do it and then it’ll be …’

      ‘Needlepoint at dawn,’ Mhairi finished with a grin.

      ‘Something like that,’ he said.

      Mhairi fished in her handbag and brought out the two evidence bags that Farrell had given her. Father Malone saw what she was doing and started to look anxious.

      ‘Do you recognize this rosary?’ Mhairi asked, passing the sealed bag to him.

      The priest looked at it carefully then handed it back.

      ‘No, it’s not one I’ve seen him use.’

      ‘How about this little ornament?’

      She handed him the other bag, feeling nauseous again as she remembered where it had been found.

      Again, Father Malone stared at the item intently through the plastic.

      ‘It looks like it might have been removed from a nativity scene but I can’t say it’s ringing any bells with me, I’m afraid,’ he said.

      ‘If you need any religious items, like rosaries or statues, can you tell me where you would get them?’ asked Mhairi.

      ‘Well, there’s a place in Edinburgh I know we have used. Let me just look up the address.’

      He retrieved a battered address book from the old-fashioned sideboard and flicked through the pages. He then wrote an address down and handed it to her.

      Suddenly, the door-knocker sounded with a thump causing them both to jump. Father Malone went to answer it, and Mhairi put the items carefully back in the zip compartment of her bag before standing up and following him out.

      Father Malone was having a whispered conversation with a craggily handsome man in jeans and a fisherman’s sweater. As she approached silently there was something in their body language that made her feel uncomfortable, as though she was intruding.

      ‘Look, it’s not a good time. The police are here. You have to leave …’

      ‘Don’t mind me,’ Mhairi said behind them.

      Father Malone sprang back from the door as though he’d been stung, his face flushing deep red. An expression of annoyance flitted across the other man’s face but Mhairi couldn’t tell if he was annoyed with the priest or annoyed with her for interrupting them.

      Mhairi thanked Father Malone and walked down the steps, resisting the impulse to look back and see if the man had been ushered inside. What was that all about, she wondered?

      Back at the station, Mhairi checked in the evidence bags. As she went past DCI Lind’s office he glanced up and beckoned to her to come in. Although she’d been pulled up by him a few times, she had a lot of respect for the DCI. He always strived to be fair and, unlike a lot of the blokes in the station, he had never tried to come on to her.

      ‘Come in, Mhairi,’ he said. ‘How was the post-mortem?’

      ‘Absolutely gross, Sir.’

      ‘It’s something you never quite get used to, which is probably a good thing. Anything useful come out of it?’

      ‘It looks like he was strangled with some rosary beads. He also had his head bashed in, er, I mean a depressed fracture of the skull, but that wasn’t the cause of death, Sir.’

      ‘What else?’

      Mhairi’s face screwed up in remembered disgust.

      ‘They pulled out an ornament of a baby from his digestive tract, Sir.’

      Lind raised his eyebrows.

      ‘And I thought this case couldn’t get any weirder,’ he sighed.

      Mhairi returned to her desk, called up the digital images of the rosary and religious icon she had taken earlier, and emailed a query to the address Father Malone had given her. This case was really freaking her out. She’d never known anything like it.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      Farrell sat behind his desk and pulled an overflowing basket towards him. So much for the concept of a paperless office. The reports on his desk were multiplying like bacteria. He pulled a sheaf of brightly coloured charts that had been sent up by the civilian intelligence analyst towards him. Quickly scanning them, he soon realized that they told him nothing new. There simply wasn’t enough data available yet to pinpoint any specific patterns forming. He took a sip of the mud-coloured coffee he had grabbed on the way up and pulled a face. Pure gut rot. He glugged it down anyway. Needs must. If they could uncover a motive in this case it might lead to the killer. What had the dead priest done that had been so heinous it had led to his murder? Could he have interfered with somebody’s kid? Farrell thought back to his own years as an altar boy and couldn’t recall a single instance when Boyd’s conduct had made him uneasy. It didn’t fit the mode of killing either. An outraged father would have charged at Boyd like a bull at a gate. There would have been no finessing at the crime scene. Unless, of course, the killer had dressed it up to look like a nut job to throw them off the scent. It was no good. He was going round in circles. Glancing at his watch, Farrell realized it was nearly time for the final briefing of the day.

      On the way to the MCA room he decided to pay a visit to the tiny fingerprint lab, where any prints from the murder crime scene would be undergoing analysis. A middle-aged civilian woman was hard at work with her back to him, and he couldn’t for the life of him remember her name.

      ‘Hi there, er …’

      She spun round to face him and was wearing a name tag. Saved.

      ‘Barbara, how’s it going?’ he said, aiming for a jovial tone. Name tags might be the answer to his prayers, on the one hand, but he always felt uncomfortable having to read it off a woman’s chest. That was a whole other can of worms in the hermetically sealed politically correct goldfish bowl they all had to operate in these days.

      Not being inhibited by any rank she promptly shot him down in flames.

      ‘Now then, Inspector Farrell, it’ll take as long as it takes. There’s no point going out of your way to try and butter me up. When I get something you’ll be the first to know. Now, was there anything else, or will I be getting on with my work now?’

      ‘Yes, just you carry on,’ said Farrell, turning swiftly on his heel. Talk about taking no prisoners. Feathers distinctly ruffled he headed for the MCA room.

      The alarm on his watch beeped. He reached into his pocket automatically, to pop a pill, then withdrew his hand. Surely one day wouldn’t hurt? He was already shattered and didn’t want to take anything with a sedative effect, however minimal.

      In the MCA room, Farrell started briefing the Investigation Team, which got bigger and bigger all the time as more and more officers became involved. Initial door-to-door enquiries had drawn a blank. No one had seen or heard anything. Time to widen out the search.

      ‘DS Byers, any leads thrown up by HOLMES?’

      Byers gave a hollow laugh.

      ‘Are you kidding, Sir? All the initial statements have been fed into the system and it’s throwing

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