Free The Sixth Soul by Mark Roberts

nineties?’
    Harrison reiterated, ‘Father Sebastian? The Vatican?’
    ‘Two tasks, Robert. Try to come up with the goods as quickly as you can.’
    Harrison shrugged as he walked out of the kitchen into the adjoining room. As Rosen followed him, Harrison stopped, turned.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘If you see Baxter, tell him I’m coming in to see him.’
    ‘Sure.’
    Rosen stared at Harrison. Harrison looked away.
    ‘When you’ve finished on the internet and with the Vatican, leave everything you find on my desk.’ Satisfied that Harrison was aware that he was on to him, Rosen said,
‘OK, Robert, off you go.’
    Harrison left and Rosen returned to the kitchen, bringing back the sour aura of the exchange in the other room.
    Rosen smiled but said nothing. He could feel a cold twitch between his shoulder blades, a tender place for a long knife.
    ‘Where did you get this Capaneus thing?’ Parker said.
    ‘A Roman Catholic priest called Father Sebastian.’
    ‘Who’s this Capaneus? I’ve never heard of him,’ said Bellwood.
    ‘He’s pretty obscure. A thirteenth-century necromancer, who abducted and murdered six pregnant women, and cut them up for the foetuses.’
    There was a dense silence in the kitchen.
    ‘I know what you’re all thinking,’ said Rosen. ‘That this is desperate. I don’t care if it makes me look stupid.’
    He turned to Parker and Willis. ‘Call Gold or Feldman. If they can, get them to bring John Mason here to look at the hair and the print, but don’t let the originals go. If they
can’t get him, we’ll have to cast around for other forensic artists.’ He smiled at Bellwood. ‘OK, Carol, let’s go and see the old lady at number 35.’

15
    A t 35 Brantwood Road, Rosen positioned himself just out of the old lady’s line of vision and pressed record on his dictaphone.
    ‘Well, I was her best friend as far as neighbours go but that was a long time ago and it was all very tragic and, well . . . it was heartbreaking.’
    In the brief journey from the front door to the living room, Rosen had learned, though Bellwood had not asked for the information, that the old lady was ninety-seven years old and that for forty
years she had been a primary-school teacher.
    Bellwood, on a low sofa, looked up and smiled at Mrs Nicholas seated on the high armchair opposite as she folded her arthritic hands in her lap, cleared her throat with a genteel cough and fixed
her attention on her.
    ‘Are you ready?’ asked Mrs Nicholas. ‘If you have any questions could you please save them until the end.’
    ‘Of course.’
    And put your hand up first
, thought Rosen, with the faintest yet clearest sensation that their luck was turning.
    ‘Isobel Swift was the kind of neighbour anyone in their right mind would wish for. Nothing was too much trouble for her. She kept herself to herself but when you needed a helping hand she
had an uncanny knack of being there in the right place, at the right time. She was married to Harold and they had one daughter whom they simply doted on, Gwen . . .’ She paused in her
delivery and sighed under the weight of memory.
    ‘I’ll come to that later on. Isobel wasn’t just a woman who had an eye to help those immediately around her, oh no, she had a much broader social conscience than that. After
she had Gwen, she found she couldn’t have any more children because something went wrong at the birth. I don’t know the details, we didn’t dwell on such matters in those days, but
I suspect she had a hysterectomy. But after she’d had Gwen, Isobel and Harold – he was a lovely man, a true gentleman – decided they were going to foster abandoned children from
London orphanages. I kept count. Twelve long-term foster-children . . .’
    Rosen made a mental note to pull the Social Services records. Twelve long-term foster-children, and yet Isobel Swift had lain dead and undiscovered in her bed for eighteen months. His focus
returned to the old lady.
    ‘. . . and my goodness,