Imago by Celina Grace Page B

first time, Kate felt a twinge of pity for him.
    “How long had this been going on?”
    Father Michael cleared his throat again.
    “Not very long. Several months, I suppose. Perhaps six months.”
    “You can’t remember exactly?”
    “Well, I – no, not exactly.” Father Michael pulled his folded hands under the table, away from their eyes. Kate knew it was because his hands were trembling again.
    He went on, falteringly.
    “We go – we used to go to a hotel near Arbuthon Green. That was where we were driving on the night of Mandy’s death. That was why we were in the area and why Claudia was in my car.”
    Anderton kept his eyes on the man’s hot face.
    “What was the name of the hotel?”
    “It was nowhere very expensive, nothing – nothing showy.”
    “That’s not what I asked.”
    “Yes. Sorry. It’s called The Pines.’”
    “You stayed there how often?”
    Father Michael’s flush had been fading, but now it returned in a renewed, rosy hue.
    “A few times a week. Sometimes on weekends. It depended on whether she could get anyone to look after her daughter.”
    “Anyone?”
    “Well, her mother. She would only let her mother look after Madison. She was very protective of her.”
    His voice shook, and he looked down at his hidden hands. Despite herself, Kate was wrenched momentarily with pity. She tried not to think of Madison and her solemn little face, her big dark eyes. What would they have told her? How do you break something like that to a little child?
    Anderton began the questioning again but Kate, drifting off a little, found herself picturing Father Michael and Claudia. Actually picturing them in bed together. Thirty years or more between them: education, class, even intelligence perhaps a chasm between them. Why had he pursued her? Or had it been the other way around? Had he been kind to her, poor Claudia, who had been so dreadfully treated by another man? Now Kate remembered going to interview her about Mandy Renkin, the way that Claudia had flung her bedroom door open in happy anticipation. She must have thought it was Father Michael who’d knocked.
    What a risk he had taken, though, this priest who was supposed to be celibate, above the temptations of the flesh. No such thing, as Kate had good reason to know.
    Her colleagues would be crawling all over the Mission now, checking computers and laptops and offices, digging into everything to try and prove a connection with the killings. Kate turned her attention back to Anderton, who was wrapping up this session of questioning.
    “I think we’ll take a break, there,” he said, shuffling his papers into a rough stack. Father Michael sat back in his chair, raising his hands to his eyes. His solicitor bent forward and picked up her briefcase.
    Kate was the first out in the corridor. She stood aside as Father Michael was escorted back to the cells; they would hold him for another twenty-four hours and then either charge him with the murders of Claudia Smith and Mandy Renkin or release him. She watched his thin figure disappear as the heavy door to the cells closed behind him. Was it possible that this stooped, bearded man was actually a serial killer?
    “Got a minute?” asked Anderton, directly behind her, and Kate jumped.
    They went to Anderton’s office, but this time, he didn’t close the door. Obviously there were to be no illicit kisses this time. Kate sat down at his desk, feeling a slow droop of her spirits.
    Anderton flung himself into the opposite chair and began to flick through the paperwork.
    “Can you get over to Brannigan’s house tomorrow and start going through it?” he asked, his eyes scanning the papers before him. “Take Theo – oh wait, of course you can’t. Take Rav and Jane and make a start.”
    Kate waited to see if he’d say anything else, something personal, something intimate. He didn’t. He didn’t even look at her.
    “Yes, sir,” she said, numbly, and got up to go. Unable to help herself, she