Thirty men and women were crowded into the small incident room.
Some sat on rickety chairs while others stood shoulder to shoulder, chatting loudly, body odours mingling with diverse perfumes, aftershaves and burned coffee. Lottie looked for somewhere to sit and, not finding anywhere vacant, leaned against the wall at the back of the room. She watched Corrigan fiddling with a handful of pages, standing in front of the assembled detectives. She should be up there.
Boyd caught her eye and smiled. She grinned back. His smile could do that to her sometimes, just when she intended to scowl. Looking as neat as ever, dressed in a grey suit, his only concession to the weather was a navy sweater over his shirt. Perhaps this could be a ‘be nice to Boyd day’. Maybe? Maybe not.
She gulped her black coffee, jolting energy into her tired mind. Corrigan nodded to her and she hurried to the front of the room before he changed his mind. She faced the team. Kirby’s eyes were red-rimmed, probably from a bout of whiskey drinking. Maria Lynch was bright and bubbly. Was she ever any other way? Boyd dropped his smile and donned his serious face. The team were on edge to get started. So was she.
‘Right,’ said Superintendent Corrigan, silencing the room. ‘Detective Inspector Parker will bring us up to date.’
The faces before her were full of expectation. Her team were good. They had confidence in themselves and in her. She had to deliver. And she would.
She placed her mug on the desk and, pulling down the cuffs of her long-sleeved T-shirt, a habit she couldn’t break, she briefed the waiting detectives on the events of the previous day and night, and delegated tasks.
When she was finished, chairs scuffed along the floor as a heave of bodies shuffled and stretched. The noise increased from a hum to a loud chatter.
‘All hands on deck,’ Corrigan shouted above the din.
Lottie could have sworn she heard Boyd mutter under his breath, ‘Aye, aye Captain.’ She shoved him out of the room in front of her, grabbed her jacket and took a walk over to the cathedral. She had a witness to interview.
Father Joe Burke was waiting for her at the gate. The sky was still moody and dark, and Lottie craved the end of winter.
Tumbling snow obscured the cathedral, now a cordoned-off crime scene. A few early morning onlookers were braving the weather to pause, bless themselves and leave flowers. The two gardaí standing in front of the crime scene tape stamped their feet. They looked frozen. Lottie felt the same.
Lottie shook hands with Father Joe through thick gloves.
‘Come on up to the house for a cup of tea,’ he said warmly.
‘That’d be great,’ said Lottie, glancing at the priest’s bright blue ski-jacket. He had a fur hat pulled down over his ears. ‘You look like something out of the KGB,’ she said, smiling.
He led her round the side of the cathedral, to the house.
It was warm inside the house. Old iron radiators gurgled airlocks into the silence. Tall, dark mahogany cabinets cast shadows up the walls of the tiled hallway through which Father Burke led Lottie.
‘Tea or coffee?’ he enquired, opening the door to a room with décor similar to the hall.
‘Tea, please.’ She needed to expunge the taste left in her mouth from the office coffee.
The priest spoke to a small nun who had appeared behind them. She shuffled off with a sigh, to boil a kettle somewhere in the depths of the house.
‘So, Inspector Parker, what can I do for you?’ he asked, sitting into a claw-footed armchair.
‘I want information, Father Burke,’ said Lottie, removing her jacket and taking a seat opposite him.
‘Call me Joe. We don’t need formality, do we?’
‘Okay. Then please call me Lottie.’
She knew she shouldn’t allow this familiarity. He was a suspect. Second on the scene, after Mrs Gavin, and he’d been in the cathedral at the time of the murder. Except, sometimes informality helped people drop their guard.
‘I notice you have CCTV cameras inside and outside the cathedral. I need access to the discs.’
‘Of course, but I don’t think they’ll be of any use to you. The external cameras haven’t worked since the drastic fall in temperatures before Christmas and the internal ones are trained on the confessionals.’
‘Why so?’ asked Lottie, inwardly cursing a potential dead end.
‘Bishop Connor organised it, so we priests can see who is about to enter. In case we get attacked.’
‘Bit ironic, isn’t it?’ She looked up as the nun reappeared with crockery rattling on a silver tray.
‘And the web cam wasn’t working either. It usually gives a live feed from the altar via the parish website. With the holidays, we couldn’t get anyone to come fix it.’
Another piece of useless information, Lottie thought.
Taking the tray to the table, Father Joe thanked the nun. She disappeared without answer. He poured the tea and Lottie poured the milk. They both sipped from delicate china cups.
‘I need to ask you a few questions about yesterday,’ Lottie said, hurriedly shrugging herself into work mode.
‘Is this a formal interview? Do I need my solicitor present?’ he asked.
She was taken aback but noticed he was smiling.
‘I don’t think a solicitor is necessary at this stage of the investigation, Father . . . em . . . Joe,’ she stumbled over her words. ‘I’m trying to establish a few facts.’
‘Go ahead. I’m all yours.’
Lottie felt her cheeks redden. Was he flirting with her? Surely not.
He said, ‘I did ten o’clock Mass, cleared the altar, locked the chalices and Holy Communion into the tabernacle. The cathedral was empty by then. Normally a few people stay on to pray, but I think the cold weather won out over religion. The sacristan finished up around ten forty-five and he went home. I came over here for a cuppa, then went back to the sacristy after about an hour, to write up next Sunday’s sermon. Mrs Gavin arrived shortly after that and began her cleaning routine. I’d just said the Angelus when I heard her scream, so it must have been after twelve noon.’ The priest paused as if praying.
‘What did you do then?’ Lottie asked. She made a mental note for someone to interview the sacristan. Probably another useless exercise, seeing as he had left before the murder.
‘I rushed out to see what the commotion was about and ran straight into Mrs Gavin. Poor woman, she was hysterical. She grabbed me by the hand and dragged me down to the front pew. I saw the body . . . the woman . . . slumped there. I leaned over and listened for a breath but I could tell she was dead. I said an act of contrition and blessed her. Then I called the emergency services and brought Mrs Gavin up to the altar where we sat until the gardaí arrived.’
His face was pale against the black of his sweater.
‘Did you touch anything around the victim? In fact, did you touch her?’ she asked.