Free Confession at Maddleskirk Abbey by Nicholas Rhea Page A

had been called away to hospital.
    ‘There could be something there for us. Do you think my teams might turn up something useful from the cameras?’
    ‘I thought if we searched the images that show peoplequeuing for confession on Saturday evening, we might find our killer among them. I know it’s a shot in the dark and I have no firm evidence of what the priest heard from the killer, but if we can identify him, it would be a good beginning.’
    ‘Him? Why do you think it’s a man?’
    ‘I just thought—’
    ‘Never pre-judge, Nick. Killers can be male or female. If we search that security film, we’ll be looking for a man or a woman. Although our victim was stabbed, deeply stabbed – would a woman have the strength to do that? And extract the dagger afterwards? Sometimes knives cannot be hauled out of stab wounds due to the suction.’
    ‘I thought his neck had been cut—’
    ‘Cut, yes, and stabbed down to the vertebrae. I’ve seen it on the computer screen direct from the slab in the morgue. A deep thrust, Nick. Entry at the back of the neck. With a very sharp and short tapering blade. Like a stiletto. Stilettos are still around, Nick, even if they are out of fashion. So if – and I stress if – your monk heard someone confess to a stabbing, whatever the weapon used, it is of interest to us.’
    ‘There’s no way of knowing whether he heard a confession to murder, Mr Napier.’
    ‘There isn’t but this is a very interesting development, Nick, and something I might have overlooked, so thank you. Neither you nor I want to lose favour with the brethren in this place so leave this to me. I’ll keep you out of it. I’ll obtain that security film as part of our overall inquiry and when it comes to searching, I’ll get one of the monkstables to identify those who were queuing for confession. I suspect most will be regulars, local people known to the priests, but it will be a good start. I accept there may have been strangers among them. I hope we can trace them and have words. Who knows, we might also obtain a confession to a stabbing! How does that sound?’
    ‘You’ve put my mind at rest, thanks.’
    ‘This could be the breakthrough we need. I appreciate yourefforts, Nick. Now show me that confessional box? If it’s going to be an integral part of our enquiries, I need to have a look at it.’
    During the short walk, Nick asked Napier, ‘Have we an identity for our victim?’
    ‘Nothing, no. We’re having his fingerprints checked as I speak; we got some good images from the body. DNA samples have been taken as well but DNA analysis takes longer. If he hasn’t any convictions, his fingerprints won’t be much help. Failing that, we’ve now got details of who made his shoes, jeans and T-shirt, so we might be able to trace them to a local retailer who can remember him buying them. If he used a credit card, we can trace him. In other words, there’s a long way to go, always slow and time-consuming. But we usually get there. And a motive? At this stage I haven’t a clue except we might have got ourselves into something big so we must put a name to him. Now, have your monkstables discovered anything I should know about?’
    ‘Only the stabbing question. They’ve not had reports of anyone missing from their places of work or their usual haunts – apart from Father John – and we’ve no leads on identification of the victim, no sightings in this area. Ah, here we are, this is the entrance to the south transept.’
    Nick led him up the steps and into the transept. A monk was in the organ loft practising and the entire abbey church was filled with his sacred music, the composer of which was unknown to Nick but he thought it was the music of one of the Gregorian chants.
    ‘Nice,’ whispered Napier. ‘Music like that always pleases me.’
    ‘This is the confessional.’ Nick showed him the door in the wall on the north side; it was a solid oak door with small opaque glass panels near the top to