Dying of the Light (20 page)

Understanding nothing, Alice climbed the last few steps to her flat, arguing with herself, wondering whether or not she had made the right decision. Mrs Foscetti wanted to thrill her sister with her unheralded appearance, but the
element of surprise would be lost if Miss Spinnell learned beforehand of her twin’s existence. On the other hand, seeing Mrs Foscetti in the flesh, Miss Spinnell might now die of fright, thinking it an apparition. Or, and worse again, at their advanced age either twin might now expire of natural causes before the Saturday meeting arrived, and Alice would then be responsible, solely responsible, for their failure to meet again in this life.

Everywhere stank, everywhere smelt. Nowhere felt clean. Wherever Francis McPhail went, his nostrils were filled with the same stale stench, a mixture of old urine,
disinfectant
and unwashed human flesh. Even in the prison van it was present, periodically obliterated by new smells, the tired scent of exhaust fumes, nicotine and the tang of spilt diesel. So when, finally, he climbed down the step onto the St Leonard’s Street car park he stood for a moment, motionless, on the tarmac and inhaled deeply, reviving himself with the purity of the cold air, ridding his lungs of the captive atmosphere of Saughton.

The blue of the sky above him had never seemed bluer, the white of the billowing nimbus clouds scudding past more startling or sun-filled in their brightness. If only time would stand still, here and now, he thought, then he would begin to feel what happiness was once more. Not in the old way, when he had been needed, respected, revered even – that belonged to the past – but in a cleaner, simpler way. Unencumbered and unregarded. Instead, somehow, he would have to try to store enough happiness in this single instant to sustain himself for a lifetime. The absence of male bodies crowding round about him,
milling
aimlessly at his elbow, felt like luxury, as did the near silence of the place. No incessant, foul-mouthed chatter or music on the radio to intrude into his thoughts,
muscling
their dreary way into his consciousness. And without
the crowding, the noise and the smells, he could achieve a state of near serenity, sufficient peace to let his mind roam freely, wander to beloved people and places.

A flock of gulls flew overhead, the thick, white
plumage
on their breasts catching the light as they banked together before turning eastwards towards Duddingston Loch, crying like banshees as they left. And he craned his neck to see them, noticed everything about them, savoured everything he saw, like a man whose days are numbered.

Seconds later he was escorted into a dark basement area, the air foetid again, and bustled past the charge bar into a room with ‘Viper Suite’ stencilled on its only door. It was windowless and the walls and ceilings were painted a cement-grey colour with six foot of strip
lighting
illuminating the sober space. The same young solicitor stood inside, chatting to a bored-looking policeman, and he looked up on Francis McPhail’s entry. His shocked expression confirmed to the priest that his appearance had deteriorated since their last meeting. In less than a week he had acquired an institutional look, greasy hair crowning his ashen-hued complexion, and stained,
rumpled
clothes adding to the impression. And it went deeper than that; he no longer recognised himself.

Edging towards him, the lawyer attempted to explain the purpose of the procedure, referring vaguely, in a
self-conscious
whisper, to the fact that identification parades were on their way out and being replaced with this new video-clipping rigmarole. After his brief explanation, the young man looked at the inspector instead of his client, as if seeking an expression of approval, but got none. For
a moment, the policeman met the priest’s eyes, but he did not address a word to him, turning his head
disdainfully
as soon as the AV Operator, Janice, beckoned her prisoner towards a revolving stool in the middle of the floor.

In the simplest language she instructed him to sit down and look straight ahead at the camera. Everything was translated into monosyllables in case she was addressing an idiot. But he heard little, distracted by her curves and the strong scent she was wearing.

‘His tee-shirt will not do, Janice,’ the Inspector said, in a tired voice.

‘Yeah,’ the solicitor agreed instantly. ‘It’s too bright. Far too red, too eye-catching. My client wants it changed.’

Harrumphing noisily to signal her displeasure, the AV Operator bent down to extract a white plastic crate from below the camera shelf and began looking through the items of clothing in it, discarding blouses and hats, and eventually selecting a plain, white tee-shirt which she lobbed, good-naturedly, at the priest.

‘Get your top off, Father, and put that one on for us, please.’

As ordered, Francis McPhail began to tug at the
bottom
of his tee-shirt, pulling it up his torso and exposing his plump, hairless belly to the gaze of all. As it came up over his head he blindfolded himself, finding that he
preferred
this eyeless state, whatever he might be exposing to the bright lights and unsympathetic company in the room. Seconds passed, but he did not emerge.

‘Get a move on!’ roared the Inspector, right next to his ear, and the priest clumsily peeled off the last of the
garment
. Obedient as a child, he put on the substitute that he had been given. It smelt strange, unfamiliar, imbued
with a pungent odour from the innumerable bodies it had covered. Impregnated with their fear. Dressed, finally, in a stranger’s ill-fitting clothing, his midriff uncovered like that of a teenage girl, he faced the camera again, and tried to master his face.

‘Up a bit,’ the AV Operator said, and he noticed that she was looking at his image on her monitor, attempting to centre his head on a cross. The Inspector then adjusted the stool until the woman, checking and re-checking the screen, signalled her approval with a thumbs up.

‘OK, son,’ the Inspector began, himself young enough to be his prisoner’s child, ‘sit back on the seat, right, then look straight ahead, then slowly turn your head to the left, centre it again, then turn it to the right. Alright? Got that?’

The priest nodded and attempted to carry out the manoeuvre described, but was interrupted mid-way.

‘No. That’ll not do. Slowly, OK? I said slowly, son. Look straight ahead, then
slowly
move your head to the left, then
slowly
back to the centre then
slowly
to your right.’ As he was speaking he performed the required movements in a dumb show. Then he glanced at his watch, implying that his time was valuable and that he should have been elsewhere long ago. Mortified by his failure, Francis McPhail tried, once more, to obey the man’s commands, this time following them to the letter, and after a further thirty seconds the necessary video had been obtained and the camera switched off. Sensing that the operation was now over he walked towards the door, as if he was free to leave. He wanted to vacate the room to ensure that he caused no further delay, did not hold up their next assignment. They were busy people and his ineptitude had irritated them long enough.

‘Have you not forgotten something, Father?’ the Inspector said.

The priest looked blank. ‘Thank you?’ he said quickly, feeling like a child again, desperate to avoid any more open expressions of disapproval.

‘Your tee-shirt, eh? We need ours back.’

The floor of the cell was slippery, still wet to the touch, from being swabbed with a vinegary mop following the departure of the last occupant half an hour earlier. A metal toilet protruded from the wall, unflushed and uncleaned.

Curled up in a ball on the cement bed-shelf, the priest shivered with cold despite the prison-issue blanket he had wrapped around his body. He should try to pray, he thought, beginning to recite an ‘Our Father’, but found, to his distress, that he had reached the end before
realising
it, the familiar words now as meaningless to him as a reading of the football results. If his favourite childhood prayer had lost its power, then he no longer had any means of approaching his Saviour.

And yet his need was as great as it had ever been, all his hopes gone after reading yesterday’s newspapers. If the ‘Leith Killer’ was still at large, as the headlines had proclaimed, then why had he not been released? Why was he still being treated as if he was the Leith Killer? But he knew the reason only too well. It was because they
continued
to believe that he was the girls’ murderer, although someone, in his absence, had stolen his mantle. And his knowledge of his own blamelessness would not deliver him from this ordeal. No. That would only happen if he provided them with proof of his innocence. Otherwise he
would grow old and end his days inside. The lab results, however misguided they were, would be more than enough for most juries. Never mind his lies.

He covered his face with his hands, clenching and unclenching his jaw until his molars ached, in torment, reminding himself that he could not afford to tell the truth however tempted he was. Not if the cost of saving himself was the destruction of June’s marriage and the children’s happiness. And he had not even touched her since the birth of their child, content just to look at her, be near her, although no-one would believe that after the last time.

He had cherished that little flaw of hers, her vanity, finding it appealing, endearing, recognising that without it he would never have been allowed through the door. A priest! A man sworn to chastity but unable to resist her singular charms, his vows making him a catch.

And, he castigated himself, it was not as if he was even a good priest in other ways. ‘Know thyself’ the
oracle
demanded, and he had not flinched from the task. But how could he be a good priest when celibacy was demanded, and he could not keep to it however hard he tried? Oh, but when he had someone to touch, to love, it was so much easier to be kind to the rest of mankind, to understand them. Because he did not love his fellow man, he simply tried, often unsuccessfully, to live as if he did so. And even if no-one else could see the difference, he could and was constantly aware of it: that between the naturally good man and his pale imitator, the difference between gold and fool’s gold. But he had, ironically, come closest to being gold, the real thing, when sinning on a daily basis, seeing a woman and being loved by her. With her by his side he could have been a good priest.

He smiled ruefully at his own perverse, unorthodox analysis, pulling the blanket tighter, his hip now beginning to ache on the unyielding bed. In this world, he mused, some were born good, drawn instinctively to the right path, naturally kind in thought and deed, not prone to judgement and compassionate in their conclusions. And then there were the others. The vast majority, people like him, born without that grace but trying to live as if they had been blessed with it; performing generous acts, not artlessly, but as a result of a calculation to ascertain what the ‘right’ thing to do was. The end result, of course, was the same in terms of the act performed, but one sprang from the heart and the other from the head.

Well, he comforted himself, he had done his best. Apart from the women, anyway. But who, dying of thirst, could think of anything other than water? Whereas with that thirst sated, there was nothing that he could not have accomplished. And as a result of his weakness June had suffered once before, but it would not happen again, he would not be responsible for her unhappiness this time, never mind the children’s or that husband of hers. Their son would have a father, even if it was not him. The other women had emerged relatively unscathed from their
contact
with him and she would too.

Anyhow, it must be faced, his days of being a priest were over whatever happened to him now, because he was no longer fit to be a servant or a leader. Even if they would let him, and they would not. He had been too frail a barque for the journey he had set himself, holed from the start. But any other life was unthinkable; he did not know himself without his dog collar.