False Tongues (10 page)

Ray shook his head; Lilith's heart sank. Then he explained. ‘Yes and no,' he said. ‘He's here, all right. A young kid. Stabbed, for sure. But I've had a call, just a few minutes ago, from the police. The parents are on the way. They'll be here pretty soon to identify him.'

Lilith couldn't suppress an uncharacteristic, face-splitting grin.

Chapter Six

The chocolates had started appearing on Margaret Phillips' desk at Christmas; the first was a chocolate reindeer, sitting in the middle of her desk on a Monday morning. She had assumed it was a thoughtful gesture from her new secretary, Hanna Young, to whom she had mentioned her fondness for chocolate. But Hanna had—reluctantly, Margaret perceived—claimed herself unable to take credit for it.

Every Monday after that, there had been another chocolate. Most of them were small offerings, a single rich bite which Margaret recognised as having come from the posh confectionary shop in All Saints Passage. On the Monday nearest to Valentine's Day, though, there had been a chocolate heart. And today, of course, there was an Easter egg, fist-sized, wrapped in colourful foil. She rolled it round her desk bemusedly, considering the mystery.

No note, ever. She'd never seen anyone sneaking into her office, yet it was always there waiting for her on a Monday morning.

Margaret's office was on the ground floor of the Principal's Lodge, immediately adjacent to the chapel, so anyone in college, potentially, could be passing its unlocked door on a Monday morning. It was a wide open field; she might never know who was responsible. That wasn't going to stop her from enjoying the chocolates, whatever their source.

Tempting as it was, she would save the egg till after lunch, Margaret decided. She would hate to appear for the opening session of Deacon's Week with a smear of chocolate round her mouth. And the opening session, temporarily delayed by the late arrival of the facilitator, could begin at any moment.

Her secretary—or PA, as Hanna preferred to style herself—came into Margaret's office, waving a cordless phone. ‘He's nearly here,' she announced. ‘He says he's just caught a taxi at the station, so he'll be here in about ten minutes.'

‘Oh, good.' She would go across in a few minutes, then, and meet him at the porters' lodge.

Hanna crossed to the window and looked out into the courtyard. ‘Just a few stragglers,' she observed. ‘Mad Phil is in a rush—I don't suppose he knows there's been a delay.'

Margaret perceived a note of disapproval in her secretary's voice. ‘I don't think that punctuality has ever been a priority for Dr Moody,' Margaret said, smiling indulgently; as far as she was concerned, his slipshod time-keeping was far outweighed by his other unquestionable gifts. Keith Moody was, by a long way, the most popular tutor at the college, loved by his students. There was always a waiting list for his tutor group: that, in Margaret's experience, was unprecedented, and a good indication of his positive qualities.

Not that she knew him very well on a personal level. In her year and a half as Principal of Archbishop Temple House, Margaret had got to know some members of staff better than others. Keith Moody seemed to her to be a very private man, so the things she knew about him were largely matters of observation and hearsay. She knew that he was a middle-aged bachelor with a receding hairline and spectacles, that he had been on the staff for several years, that he favoured professorial tweed jackets and bow ties. She knew about his punctuality issues and his popularity, that in addition to being considered highly intelligent and theologically astute, he had a reputation for being both kind and fair-minded. And there was one other thing she knew.

‘To be honest, I've always wondered,' Hanna said. ‘Why does everyone call him “Mad Phil”? Isn't his name Keith?'

‘The Reverend Dr Keith Moody,' Margaret confirmed. ‘It's a bit of a long story, and it goes back a few years. Before my time, obviously, but the way it was explained to me by a helpful student, it started with a typo. On the college's prospectus, I believe. There was a list of the tutors, with their qualifications behind their names, and the type-setter left out a comma. So instead of “MA, D Phil,” it said “MAD Phil.”' She found a bit of scrap paper on her desk and wrote it out, showing it to her secretary. ‘Like this.'

Hanna nodded. ‘Right.'

‘And then there was the Harry Potter thing. I haven't read the books myself,' Margaret confessed, ‘but I believe there's a character in them who's called “Mad-Eye Moody”?'

‘I haven't read them, either, to be honest,' admitted Hanna.

‘So apparently one of the ordinands at that time, who was a big Harry Potter fan, thought the typo was funny and decided to call her tutor “Mad Phil Moody.” And it stuck.' Margaret shook her head; it seemed a poor joke to her. But it was now firmly entrenched in college usage, and Keith Moody didn't seem to mind, so there was no point trying to put a stop to it—even if she had the power to do so. She herself always referred to him as “Dr Moody,” feeling he was owed that much respect.

Margaret tucked the chocolate egg into her cassock pocket, looking forward to the delayed gratification of eating it. ‘I suppose I'd better think about going across to meet our facilitator,' she said.

‘Would you like me to come with you?' Hanna suggested. ‘Or I could go and fetch him, and bring him back here.'

‘That's not necessary. And I'll need to take him straight on to the lecture hall. We're already half an hour late.'

And what a joy it was to get outside on such a glorious day, Margaret reflected as she walked along the courtyard toward the porters' lodge. The temperature was perfect—even her cassock felt a bit too warm—and the combined scents of the trees and flowers made a heady perfume.

A taxi was just pulling up at the gates; a man was getting out. A distinguished-looking man, with a thin, kind face and a sheaf of silky silver hair. He smiled at her and took her outstretched hand.

‘Margaret Phillips,' she said. ‘You must be Canon Kingsley. Welcome to Archbishop Temple House.'

‘Please, call me John.' He followed her through the porters' lodge and into the courtyard, carrying his rather battered case. ‘I'm so, so sorry about the delay,' he apologised. ‘I spent Easter in London with my daughter, and it didn't even occur to me that the trains might not be running properly on the Bank Holiday. Apparently there was some sort of problem on the line last night, and everything was backed up.' The canon stopped, forcing Margaret do to the same. ‘Oh, what a wonderful spot!' he exclaimed. ‘It's like a little oasis, isn't it?'

‘We like it,' said Margaret, with proprietorial pride.

***

Dead. Not missing. Not injured. Not skiving off with his friends somewhere. Dead.

Sebastian was dead.

Miranda's brain refused to process the information. On some level she understood what they were telling her, but it had no relation to reality.

She had seen death, many times. It was part of her job. She worked hard to save lives; she wasn't always successful. The people whom she worked on in A & E, though, were often on the brink of death when she encountered them. For them it was a small step, her efforts to save them fruitless.

But Sebastian? Sebastian was life. The very essence of life.

Life, from the moment she felt that first small kick. She'd been a bit ambivalent about the pregnancy before that—how would it affect her career?—yet as soon as she'd felt that kick, there had been no doubt that it was the best thing that had ever happened to her. And then holding newborn Sebastian in her arms, seconds after his birth. A wriggling baby, gulping hungrily for air. Toes clenching, fists waving. Even his hair—those black curls, in astonishing profusion already—had seemed alive.

As a toddler, as a boy, he crackled with energy. Some children were lethargic; Sebastian was the opposite of that. Even when he was sleeping there was something about him that seemed ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. And when he entered his teens, a time when so many children morphed into slug-like beings, conserving their energy for physical growth, he had retained his vitality. It was his natural state, without benefit of caffeine.

Now they were trying to tell her that he was dead. Stilled, inert. Forever.

Impossible.

The Irish police inspector and his objectionable Cockney sergeant had gone. They'd been replaced by someone else, a nice young Italian who had said complimentary things about her coffee machine. Miranda trusted his air of competence to the extent that she'd given him instruction in using the machine—the first person ever to be allowed to touch it. He'd mastered it quickly, producing very good coffee on his first attempt. He would be with them for a while, he said; they called it Family Liaison.

But it was time for him to take one of them to the mortuary, he told them. The police needed a formal identification; it was a necessary step in their investigation.

‘I'll go,' Richard offered.

Miranda shook her head, adamant. ‘We'll both go.'

If she didn't see it for herself—Sebastian, dead—she would never really believe it. In her head, maybe, but not in her heart.

***

As she and Val slipped into seats at the back of the lecture hall, Callie did a quick visual check: Adam was safely seated in the second row, on the other side. She realised, with a shock of painful honesty, that there might have been some subconscious force at work in making her the last to arrive. It meant that she was in control; she could sit wherever she wanted without the danger that Adam would come in after she did and sit next to her.

Not that she couldn't handle sitting next to Adam, but—Callie justified to herself—she had been in enough of these situations to know that they were likely to be broken up into smaller groups, or even pairs, to carry out various exercises. It wasn't something she even wanted to think about doing with Adam.

She and Val weren't quite the last, she observed with a smile as her former tutor pushed the door open and took a seat nearby. Not surprising, really: Mad Phil had been late to every tutorial she'd ever had with him, and would have been late for their weekly tutor group breakfasts as well if they hadn't been held in his house. As it was, she and Val had had to organise the cornflakes, put the kettle on, and make sure there was enough milk.

He looked round, seeming surprised that proceedings were not yet underway. Val leaned in his direction and whispered, ‘We're waiting for the facilitator. He's been delayed.'

Mad Phil nodded, smiling at the two of them. ‘I'm not surprised. He was never any better at being on time than I was.'

Callie processed that statement. ‘You know him, then?'

‘Oh, yes.' Their former tutor scooted along a few seats, stopping just behind them, and leaned forward to whisper to them. ‘He was my training incumbent, years ago. I was the one who suggested asking him to do this week.'

‘So who is he?' Val asked, adding, ‘Jeremy doesn't know him.'

‘John Kingsley. Retired priest. Spent most of his career in Malbury Diocese. For years he had a parish near Ludlow—that's where I was his curate. Then he was a canon at Malbury Cathedral. Now he's retired, and lives in Ludlow. I haven't seen him for a few years, but we keep in touch.' Mad Phil smiled, a fond expression on his face. ‘He's one of the best. One of those old-fashioned kind of priests that the church used to be full of, but are few and far between these days. A wise old bird. Absolutely genuine. Terrifyingly so, sometimes.'

Callie wasn't sure what that meant. How could someone be terrifyingly genuine? She was about to ask for clarification when the door swung open and the Principal came in, escorting a man with silver hair and an apologetic smile.

‘This is Canon Kingsley,' Margaret Phillips addressed them. ‘He's going to be leading us this week, and I'm sure we'll all be learning a great deal from him.'

The next half hour—a discussion of the relationship between curate and training incumbent—went by quickly, until that inevitable moment when they were asked to find a partner for one-on-one role-playing. Callie, who hated that sort of thing, turned reluctantly toward Val, only to find that Val had already been claimed by someone else. She looked round, panicking, to see a man bearing down on her with intent.

‘Callie! I haven't seen you yet,' Nicky Lamb said accusingly. ‘Come and be my partner, darling.'

‘Nicky!' She smiled at him, relieved. Nicky was so beautiful that people just naturally smiled at him, Callie had observed, but that didn't stop her from doing it as well.

He kissed her on both cheeks. ‘You're looking uncommonly well, darling.'

‘And you. But you always do.'

‘Flatterer.' Nicky took her hand and led her to the back corner of the room. ‘Let's get away from all of these ghastly people. With any luck they won't notice that we're not role-playing.'

‘We're not?'

He shuddered. ‘Not in a million years. We're catching up, one-on-one. Apparently we have twenty minutes to do it.'

‘Oh, good.' What a relief, thought Callie. ‘I thought you and Tamsin would be partners,' she added. It was the perpetual elephant in the room: everyone knew that Tamsin was in love with Nicky, but no one ever said so directly.

Nicky shook his head. ‘No way. Tamsin actually
likes
this sort of thing. Role-playing—it appeals to her inner drama queen.'

‘And not to yours?'

‘I don't have an inner drama queen, darling,' he smirked. ‘My drama queen is right out there, for all the world to see.'

That was the honest truth. ‘How does that go over in your parish?' Callie asked him.

‘Oh, they're fine with it. Mostly. They learned right away that what you see is what you get, with me. And it
is
Brighton,' he added archly.

‘Well, yes.' Hairdressers, interior designers. The gay capitol of Britain.

‘Actually, London must be much the same. Isn't it?'

Callie thought about that for a moment. ‘Maybe some places in London. The traditionally spiky churches in the East End. Not in my parish, though.'