Текст книги "Cemetery Lake"

Автор книги: Paul Cleave

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chapter forty-nine

I’m anxious to listen to the tapes but I have no way of playing them. I dump the contents of the evidence bag on the passenger seat. There are perhaps forty tapes inside it. I open the accounts book and seeit’s a log of some kind. The dates seem to match

up with dates scrawled across the sides of the microcassettes.

I start looking through the bank statements. There are over two hundred and fifty of them, one for each month. Random amounts

and dates and names. I look in vain for Henry Martins’ name, but what seemed like a random connection between Rachel Tyler and

Henry Martins suddenly seems a lot less random.

I toss everything back into the bag and pull away from the

kerb.

I hit the mall and again struggle to find a car park. Late Saturday afternoon and it seems nobody in this city has anything better to do than come out shopping an hour before the mall closes. At the electronics store the only thing they have in stock for recording conversations is digital, but they suggest another couple of shops to try. I finally find what I’m looking for.

‘Last one in stock,’ the guy tells me. ‘Hardly anyone uses them any more. Even secretaries use digital.’

“I have a thing for old technology.’

I get back to my father’s car only to find that a trolley has

strayed from the flock and smacked into the back bumper, creating a small dent that I know my dad will spot around the time I’m

turning the car into their driveway. This is the reason, he’ll tell me, he didn’t want to lend me the car in the first place. If he realises that I’m driving without a licence, then that will confirm it. Fuck, if we can put a man on the moon, surely the digital age will reach a point where trolleys can guide their way back into the supermarket by themselves.

I load fresh batteries into the tape recorder and pick a tape at random. I’ve been pretty certain about what to expect, and when I push play my suspicions are confirmed after just a few seconds of hissing.

‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.’

‘How long has it been since your last confession?’ Father Julian’s voice is deep and clear. It makes me shiver to hear a dead man’s voice, and I feel sick to know he was violating all of the people on these tapes. The other voice could be anybody.

It’s a male. Could be twenty years old. Could be eighty. ‘I’ve done it again.’

‘Done what again?’

I look at the names Julian has neatly written into his log. The confessional is supposed to be completely anonymous, but I

suspect the reality is thatit’s not. I think at minimum the priest has a good idea who they’re talking to because it’s likely to be somebody from their congregation.

‘Cheated. On my wife. I know it’s wrong, Father, but the

problem is I can’t help it. It’s like another person takes over. It’s like I know what I’m doing is wrong but at the time I can’t consider the consequences.’

‘Maybe you do consider them but choose to ignore them.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe that’s true. It would explain a lot.’

I push the stop button and fast forward the tape for a while.

When I push play I hear Father Julian’s voice.

‘.. . to realise you are hurting more than just yourself.’

‘ know, I know.” It’s a woman’s voice. ‘It’s just that, well, sometimes I can’t help it. It’s like a different person takes over.’p>

‘Perhaps you should look at it from another…’

I push stop. Jesus, is this everybody’s excuse? That they aren’t responsible for anything in their lives? That their actions are justifiable because another person takes over?

‘I’m a different person when it happens. I’m no longer me,’ Quentin James told me as he stood by the grave he had dug, waiting for me to forgive him.

Was that my excuse too?

Maybe. But I don’t think so. I wasn’t switching between

personae. Alcohol made Quentin James the man he was, and

he would live with a foot in each of those worlds, existing as two separate men. I’m different. Quentin James made me into a

different kind of man, and there’s no going back from that. There is only one Theodore Tate.

When I get home my body is exhausted but my mind is still

racing with excitement:it’s a weird combination that makes me

want to sleep but at the same time pace the room. I don’t get to do either, because walking from the driveway to my house I’m

brought to a stop by Casey Horwell and her cameraman. I don’t

see a van anywhere, and assume they must have been camped out

in a dark red sedan parked opposite. Again Horwell is wearing

enough make-up to look like the media whore she is. I can see

the thin lines and cracks in the foundation. She smells like stale coffee. I lower the bag of tapes and statements and hold it to my side, out of sight of the camera.

‘Mr Tate,’ she says, getting into my face. ‘It hasn’t taken you long to get behind the wheel of a car since losing your licence. You manage this, and you’re a suspect in the murder of Father Julian.

Your friends in the department you seem exceedingly proud of

must really be working overtime to keep you out of jail.’

‘I thought reporters liked asking questions, not giving

statements,’ I say, immediately wishing I was saying nothing.

‘Actually we do both.’

‘Just not accurately.’

I start to move around her, but she side-steps into my way.

She probably wants me to push her, and that’s exactly what

I feel like doing. I want to grab her by the arm and escort her off my property, but then I change my mind and go with a different tactic.

‘Would you care to tell us how the murder weapon came to be

found in your garage?’

‘What murder weapon?’ I ask.

‘The hammer.’

‘What hammer?’

‘The one that killed Father Julian.’

‘Who’s Father Julian?’

She frowns a little, unsure of where I’m going with this. ‘The man whose church you have been parked outside of for the last

four weeks.’

‘What church?’

The frown becomes a deeper crease and breaks a line into her

make-up. ‘Is this a game to you?’

‘What game?’

‘People are showing up dead and you’re the only

commonality’

‘What’s a commonality?’

The creases deepen. Her smirk fades, quickly replaced by her

annoyance, and beneath the surface of her make-up a different

Casey Horwell is simmering.

‘Where is Sidney Alderman?’ she asks.

‘What’s an Alderman?’

She turns to her cameraman. ‘That’s it,’ she says, and the

camera is lowered.

‘You’re fucked,’ she says. ‘We got you on tape driving into the street, and that makes you look bad.’

‘You think that’s the best you can do?’

‘Actually no. You haven’t seen the best I can do, but you will.

Come on, Phil,’ she says, turning to her cameraman, ‘let’s go.’

‘Wait,’ I say.

‘What for?’

‘Your source. Who is it?’

Are you that fucking stupid? You think I’m going to tell

you?’

‘Just tell me this. Is it a cop?’

“I’m not telling you anything.’

‘Is it a cop?’ I ask, and this time I yell it at her.

She takes a step back, and the cameraman swings his camera

back up and starts to film me again.

“I suggest you back down, Tate.’

And I suggest you think about what you’ve got yourself into,’

I say. ‘This source of yours, if it’s not a cop, then who can it be, huh? Who else can possibly have fed you all that bullshit about the murder weapon, huh? There’s only one possibility. You’re

being played, Horwell, and you’re too stupid to know it, and

when you figure it out you’ll be too arrogant to admit it. But you’re responsible for anything that happens now, you get that?

If you keep that name to yourself and it turns out to be the guy who killed those girls, and he kills again, then that’s on you. You get that? You keep your mouth shut and don’t go to the police, you’re as good as helping him.’

‘Fuck you,’ she says. ‘You don’t know a damn thing. You’re

some washed-up private detective who thinks he can do what the hell he wants and get away with it, just because his daughter got herself killed. You think her death is going to keep people feeling sympathetic towards you even after all of this? You’re the one who’s arrogant and stupid, Tate. Your career is fucked and I’m going to make sure of it. You’re a piece of shit murderer who isn’t going to keep getting away with it. And you’re going to see me every single day of your trial and I’m going to expose you to the world as the man you really are.’

I feel like jumping on her and slapping her until she gives up the name of her source, but that’s not going to happen, especially with the cameraman standing here probably hoping I do. I just

have to trust that the tapes and the statements will tell me what she won’t.

I move past her and shut the door. I stand in the hallway, my

heart rate up, feeling angry at her and also angry at myself for letting her get to me. I go into my office and sit down, but I can’t focus on anything. I leave the tapes and the bank statements on my desk and I head out to the lounge. I switch on the CD player and turn the music up and walk around my kitchen, opening

up cupboards looking for something to eat, and end up making

myself some coffee. I need something to calm me down, and I

decide coffee isn’t it, and I let it sit on my bench and watch it go cold. The anger starts to fade. I do what I can to push Casey Horwell from my thoughts, and when she is far enough in the

background I go back to the office and sit down with the bank

statements.

I reckon the original statements would have changed colour

and style as the bank updated its logo and even its name from

time to time but the printouts all look identical. I start adding up the amounts, comparing them against the logs Father Julian

kept. Over the years he has taken in almost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in deposits. He has made the exact same amount in withdrawals. The deposits are from the people on the tapes

who didn’t know their Bless me, Father, because I have sinneds weren’t the first steps up to salvation but steps down into Father Julian’s world. The logs go back twenty-four years. So do the

bank statements.

The logs and statements and tapes all add up to blackmail.

There really isn’t any other way to see it. Over the course of twenty-four years Father Julian blackmailed more than a hundred people. The amounts are different, and this probably reflects two things – the amount the victim was earning, and the amount the victim had to lose if his or her secret was found out. Maybe those being blackmailed never knew who had their secret. Could be they suspected, but people with secrets might be paranoid enough to believe someone more than just their priest knows. For almost a quarter of a century Father Julian played with fire. He must have known it would eventually burn him. Or perhaps it burned him

the entire time. He was taking the money and using it to put out smaller fires.

In the end the fire got him. He recorded somebody who

wasn’t willing to pay, and that somebody knew I was following

the priest and would be an easy target to frame. It wouldn’t have been hard. Just flick on the TV and there I was, covered in blood one night and accused of murdering the caretaker, and a month

later accused of stalking the priest.

But that’s only a theory. And if that’s the way it went down,

then Father Julian’s death wasn’t related to the girls dying. Still, it would be a hell of a coincidence, although one that is entirely possible. Does that coincidence allow for the fact Henry Martins was the manager of the bank where Father Julian kept his tapes?

Julian must have selected his victims carefully, blackmailing

only those he knew were non-threatening, those who for a price could have it all go away. He never tried to blackmail me, but I’m sure he recorded the session. Maybe he was scared of what I would do to him if he tried. I’d already confessed to one murder.

He knew I was capable of another.

The anger kicks in and suddenly I wish Father Julian was still alive just so I could do something to him – I don’t know what exactly, surely not the kind of ‘Quentin James’ something, and I try not to let my mind drift there. I’d hurt him. Hurt him a lot.

The bastard refused to tell me about the confessions he had heard from the man who killed those girls – and, what’s worse, he

must have known who those girls were. He found within himself

the ability to blackmail people, to break the confessional vow he had with God in order to make money, but he couldn’t bring

himself to save those girls. How could a man with such mixed-up priorities live with himself?

Maybe blackmailing was still a step away from actually

revealing the sins he’d heard in secret. Could be he never shared any of the confessions, and never planned to. Does that mean

he wasn’t breaking the confessional seal? I figureit’s a technical question that could only be answered by a man caught up in the dilemma it poses.

I wonder if he knew the fire was coming for him. Part of me

thinks he did, part of me is sure he accepted it.

I go through the logs and bank statements, looking at the

payments Father Julian was making. He doesn’t pay anybody for

longer than sixteen years but he pays some of them for less. Some considerably less. Most of the names are here, but not all of the people in the photographs are, and the number of names suggests there are more children out there than Father Julian had photos for, and there could be more children out there who aren’t on

these lists – children Father Julian fathered and was unable to take responsibility for. I wonder which names line up with the Simon and Jeremy I found on the backs of the photographs, and

suspect I’m only a few phone calls from finding out.

These are Father Julian’s child payments for the children he

had in secret. The question is how many people could have

known? I don’t know, but I’m pretty certain Henry Martins did.

chapter fifty

The logs are chronological and well detailed, and there are far more confessors here than there are victims of Father Julian’s blackmailing. Before I look for them I head back two years into the dates and I find my name. Then I find the correct tape. I put it into the machine, not sure that I’m prepared to hear myself from so long ago, not prepared to hear the man I used to be. I cue it up to the time stamp Julian listed. I’m not sure, either, where I stand in my belief of God, or where I stood on the matter two years

ago. Part of me didn’t believe in God, another part hated Him, and a third made me sit inside that confessional booth with the need to tell somebody what I’d done. Since then I have learned to live with my own secrets.

I catch the last few seconds of somebody else’s confession,

there are a few moments of silence, and then my voice. It sounds different. It sounds emotional, which comes as a surprise. At the time I thought I was completely detached.

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

I close my eyes, and for a moment I’m back there, back in the

confessional, dirt beneath my fingernails and a shovel in the boot of my car. Father Julian’s voice plays from the tape and at the same time I remember his words, voicing them in my mind a moment

before I hear them. He sounds calm. We could have been talking about anything, and at the time I remember being curious about what might have been the worst confession he’d ever heard. Was mine going to be it? Or would mine be tame? And if Father

Julian was listening to the confessions of cold-blooded killers, why in the hell wasn’t he doing something about it?

‘What does it make you, Father, when you commit a sin and

feel nothing?’

‘I think that…’

‘Does it make me human? Am I still a man, Father Julian, or

am I a monster?’

‘The fact you are here answers your question. However, what

you do next also counts.’

‘I’m not going to the police.’

‘You need …’

‘He killed her, Father. He killed her and he probably would

have killed others.’

‘That doesn’t make it right.’

‘But it doesn’t make it wrong either.’

I press stop and the voices shut off. If I could go back in time, would I do the same thing again? I don’t know. I think of Patricia Tyler and her request of a promise – Make him pay, she told me. Make sure he can never hurt another girl ever again.

I eject the tape and start unspooling the thread, not needing

– or more accurately not wanting – to hear the rest of what I had to say. I can learn nothing from it. All it can do is make me hurt.

I carry the tape outside and touch a match to it. It shrinks and melts and the recorded memory burns away. Father Julian never

blackmailed me and I figure he never blackmailed anybody else

who was confessing to murder. It would have been too dangerous for him.

I sit back down inside. I start drumming my fingers, and then

I go back into the list of names. I scroll through them, looking for something else, and soon I find Sidney Alderman’s name. I

check the date. It’s a week after his wife died. I hunt out the tape and cue it up.

‘I guess you would call it a sin,’ Alderman says. His words are slurred. ‘Does that make us even?’

‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Drinking? Yeah, and why the hell not? She’s gone. I need

something to keep me company.’

‘You still have your son.’

‘My son? You mean your son, don’t you?’

There is a pause that stretches out long enough for me to

think the rest of the tape is going to be blank, but then Father Julian’s voice cuts back across the speaker and the conversation continues.

‘She told you.’

‘Part of me always knew. Or at least suspected.’

‘I’m sorry, Sidney.’

‘That’s it? You don’t want to give me an excuse? You don’t

want to tell me you accidentally fucked my wife and got her

pregnant?’

‘Please, Sidney, I didn’t mean anything to happen.’

I press stop. Jesus, just what kind of man was Father Julian?

How many marriages did he end? I press play. Both men are

dead, one because of me, and perhaps the other because of me

too. The two ghosts from Recent Past carry on talking. Neither could know they would end up sharing more than just Lucy

Alderman and would share a similar fate.

‘Yeah, well I didn’t mean anything to happen either.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Bruce … he’s, well, he’s different now. I see him differently.

He’s not my son and I don’t know what to do about it. One thing I do know is, I don’t want you anywhere near him.’

‘Are you going to leave?’

‘Leave? No. I’m not going to leave. See the thing, Father,’ he says, almost spitting out the word Father, ‘is this. She’s dead because of you. And I want you to know that. I’m going to be here every day for the rest of my life and you’re going to see me around, and you’re going to remember.’

‘What do you mean she’s dead because of me?’

‘Come on, Father. You can figure it out. You read the papers,

right? That guy who killed her, he said she stepped out from nowhere.

Well that ain’t quite true. She was pushed out from nowhere.’

‘You pushed her?’

‘I hated her. She lied to me. She cheated on me. She kept the same fucking lie all those years. Were you still screwing her, Father?’

‘You killed her?’

‘You can’t do anything about it except see my face every day.

I want that guilt to kill you. It’s killing me. Does that make us even?’

‘I… I don’t…’

‘I thought it would make me happy. But the funny thing is, it

doesn’t. In fact I feel worse. I love her so much. I blame you, and I want to kill you, but I don’t have the courage.’

‘Sidney, you need to …’

‘Don’t tell me what I need to do. You know, I even bought a

gun. I was going to use it on her and then on you. But I can’t.

What happened to Lucy, well, that will hurt you more than what I could ever do.’

‘What about Bruce ?’

‘Don’t you dare tell him any of this. Any of it.’

I press the stop button. The caretaker’s grief is ten years old but it still sounds fresh. A month ago he told me he always thought about what I’d done after my daughter was killed and wished he’d had the courage to do the same thing to the person who killed

his wife.

I think about what he did and I wonder if it justifies what I

did to him. I wonder if there is some symmetry there, him lying on top of the coffin of the woman he loved, the woman who

betrayed him, the woman he killed.

I eject the tape, put it back into the plastic cover and set it aside. I go through the rest of the log, looking for names that will stick out, knowing there has to be something here though I can’t think what. That’s part of the problem: all I’ve been doing is thinking, and suddenly I’m hitting a wall. There’s an answer somewhere in this list of names,it’s in these tapes, but I’m so involved in it all that I can’t see anything for what it is.

What am I missing?

I get up and walk out of the room. I leave it all behind me, the names, the numbers, the tapes and the dates, knowing that I need to clear my head so I can at least…

The dates!

Of course!

I head back into the room and I look at the timeline I’ve created.

If the killer confessed, then presumably he did so on the same day or in the days immediately following the girls’ disappearances.

The first date I look at is the day Henry Martins was buried.

The log says there was a confession that night. The log says the confession was made by Paul Peters. I find the corresponding tape and jam it into the machine. I wind it forward. Suddenly I feel more apprehensive about what I’m about to hear than I did of the other two confessions. This could be the recording of a man who did nothing more than steal his neighbour’s apples, or it could be the confession of a monster. I press play.