Chapter 93
There is still a confessional stall in the chapel at the heart of Coopers Chase.
It is used as storage for the cleaners now.
Joyce had helped Elizabeth clear it out, stacking up the boxes of floor polish on the altar, neatly tucked behind Jesus.
Elizabeth had given the whole place a spruce-up, even polishing the grille.
As a final touch, she had put a pair of Orla Kiely cushions on the hard wooden seats.
Elizabeth had conducted many interviews in her time and brought many people to some kind of justice. If tapes existed of any of these interviews, they had long since been buried, erased, or burned. That was her fervent hope, at least.
Lawyers? No. Procedure? Certainly not. Just whatever worked quickest.
Nothing physical, ever; that wasn’t Elizabeth’s style.
She knew it happened from time to time, but it was never effective.
Psychology was key. Always try the unexpected, always approach from an angle, always lean back in your chair, with all the time in the world, and wait for them to tell all.
Like the whole process was their idea in the first place.
And for that you always needed an angle, something unexpected. Something bespoke.
Like inviting a priest to a confession.
Elizabeth had realized she was very fond of Donna and Chris.
The Thursday Murder Club had got lucky with those two.
Imagine the bores they might have been saddled with.
She knew that even Donna and Chris would have limits, though, and that this was way beyond those limits.
But if she could work her magic with Matthew Mackie, she knew they would forgive her.
And if she couldn’t work her magic? If her magic was just a memory? She had been wrong about Ian Ventham murdering Tony Curran, hadn’t she?
But Matthew Mackie was different. Here was a man who had scuffled with Ventham. A man who didn’t seem to exist, yet was in a photo taken in this very chapel. A man who both was a priest and wasn’t a priest. A man who had brushed over his footsteps.
Until someone had decided to dig up a graveyard. His graveyard?
And a man who was on his way this very moment, when it would have been easier for him to stay home. Was he coming to confess? Was he coming to find out what she knew? Or was he coming with a syringe full of fentanyl?
Elizabeth has never been afraid of death, but all the same, in this moment she thinks of Stephen.
It is cold in the ageless dark of the chapel, and she shivers. She buttons her cardigan, then looks at her watch. She would soon find out, one way or another.