The Good Priest (18 page)

Beside him in bed that night, their flesh touching, she might fume over his thoughtlessness for never repairing the weak flush in the toilet or letting the lawn turn into a jungle. But he bore no grudges against anyone, meeting her annoyance with genuine sweetness, and long ago having forgotten that they had had an argument, never mind what lay behind it. Although he was in his late forties, his plump, cherubic face remained doughy and unlined, and he looked what he was, a middle-aged, overgrown boy. Peter Pan made a conscious decision not to grow up. Allan Ross had not been so deliberate about it, but fate had decreed that, like an axotl, he would remain in a permanent state of immaturity.

The faith of his birth, Catholicism, with its inescapable emphasis on sin, had never suited him. Consequently
on marriage to Audrey he had taken the opportunity presented to him, abandoned his religion and adopted a new allegiance, one more in keeping with his own tastes. The Episcopal Church, into which he had been received, appeared to lack passionate attachment to anything very much, was neither dogmatic nor bombastic and required very little from its followers: token appearances in church at Christmas and Easter, the provision of regular donations in little brown envelopes and Audrey's participation in the occasional Bring and Buy sale. Membership of it was less tribal, less demanding, he had concluded, than that of Alyth Anglers or the local tennis club. It brought with it no clubhouse cleaning, no open days with compulsory attendance, no quiz nights or committee meetings. Loyalty was desirable, but not required.

That morning, Police Sergeant Ross was relaxing, his coffee mug clamped between his hands, and his feet up on his desk, when a head appeared around his door.

‘Vincent!' he said, pleased to see his younger brother. They had arranged a meeting, but not for another ten minutes.

‘I'm early, I know. Does now suit?'

‘Yes. Derek's out, looking into a report of a stolen car on Reform Street. Take a pew. He'll not be back for a bit.'

The priest sat down, feeling slightly uneasy at occupying someone else's desk and finding himself faced with a screensaver showing an unfamiliar woman in an eyepoppingly low-cut dress. In front of the screen, a crushed Coke can rested on a plate with an abandoned, half-eaten sausage roll. A pile of thick blue folders was balanced
precariously on the edge of the usual occupant's metal in-tray, half the contents of one of them spilling onto the desk.

‘Did you ask about …' Vincent began, realising how tense he was when the phone on his brother's desk began to ring and in response his shoulder muscles went into spasm.

‘It'll go onto voicemail in a second,' Allan said, ignoring the call and finishing off the contents of his mug, placing it, carefully and centrally, on his favourite coaster. It was a memento from an unusually protracted post-match session in the Braes and had been given in honour of the number of pints of lager he had managed to down.

‘Yep. I did ask about …' he continued, catching his brother's eye, ‘and nobody knows anything about it. No theft was reported. It was a green book, you said, a book of names, eh?'

‘Yes. Big. Leather. It contained names and addresses, and, I suspect, more. It may have had other details about the people listed in it. I don't know, I've never seen it myself.'

‘After your call I went and spoke to the DCI, Donny Keegan, about you. Donny said …'

‘About me, Al? But why on earth? I specifically asked you on the phone just to see what you could find out, behind the scenes … casually. To leave me out of it. That was the whole point. I don't know what's going on, I told you that, and I didn't enjoy my last visit from your colleague, Mr Spearman. I was hoping to keep myself out of the picture this time, as far as possible. I'm in a difficult
enough situation as it is, Allan, a very difficult situation. I wish I could explain …'

‘Yes, but … I know Donny, you see. We were at Tullieallan together and it seemed the quickest way, the best way. You know, to go to the top and everything. He's the main man, he was in charge of the whole investigation. He won that bottle of your mead I put in the raffle, by the way. I could have farted around for ages asking people about it and never found out anything. I just took my chance when it came and, when I saw him, I asked outright.'

‘What did you say?'

‘To him?'

‘Yes. To him.'

‘Nothing much. I said that you were convinced that a book had been stolen from the office when the Bishop was assaulted.'

‘Shit! Allan, I never said that!' Vincent interrupted, shaking his head. ‘I just wanted you to find out
if
anything had been taken. I never said that anything had been stolen. You've stuck a stick into a hornet's nest.'

‘Come on, Vincent,' Allan replied, looking crestfallen. ‘You're talking to me, remember. I know you. I knew you must have been pretty convinced, otherwise you wouldn't have asked me. That's right, isn't it? I went to the very top to find out for you, and I have. I've done it. Nothing was taken.'

‘OK. Yes, yes, you have, Al. And thanks very much. Thanks for looking into it for me. I'll give you a ring tonight, OK?' Vincent rose from the chair, hardly aware
he was doing so, but obeying some sixth sense which was telling him to get out of the place as quickly as possible.

‘One second, Vincent,' Allan said, rising with him and crossing the room to stand opposite him. ‘Donny wants to see you. He's in the station today. But don't you call him Donny, mind. Chief Inspector to you. I told him that you were coming here. He thought that a little chat might be in order.'

‘A little chat?' the priest replied, feeling his stomach lurch at the words. His brother's open, anxious, childlike eyes, now fixed upon him in concern, told him everything that he needed to know about his own folly. None of this was Allan's fault. The man, despite a career in the police force spanning over twenty-five years, possessed no guile. Entrusting him with such a delicate task had been like asking a hen to polka or a goldfish to croon. Subtlety formed no part of his vocabulary and his only experience of calculation, abandoned with pleasure decades ago, involved blackboards and chalk. He had, as Vincent had anticipated, shown little curiosity as to why his brother might be interested in the assault on the Bishop. A fleeting reference to ‘my employer' had sufficed to quell any scruples. Then, artlessly and characteristically, he had moved on to matters of real interest to himself and therefore, surely, to the whole world: Gloria's likely results in her nationals, and the escape of Martin's pet rat. Allan Ross's life centred around his family, plus football, and from one day to the next he did not think about his brother. It was not that he did not care about him. Reminded of his existence, he cared deeply. But in contrast to the vivid primary
colours in which he viewed his own life and that of his immediate circle, the pastel shades of priestly life passed him by.

‘Yes, Donny said he'd like a wee chat with you. Don't worry, Vincent, he's one of the good guys. One of his sisters-in-law, Susie Drysdale, lives in Kinross, you know at the farm, the one at the far end of the loch? You'll get on just fine together; he goes to Our Lady of Succour in Dudhope Crescent.'

‘I certainly do – feels as if I'm never out of the place! Would now be all right for our chat?' a cheery voice said, as a large man in plainclothes advanced into the room. The sleeves of his pink shirt were rolled up, revealing golden-haired, fleshy forearms, and he looked hot. There were dark stains in his armpits and his brow glistened under the strip lighting.

‘Yes, now's fine,' Allan Ross replied, as if the remark had been addressed to him. Knowing that there were only two chairs in the room, he added, ‘I'll get us another one, eh. It'll just take a tick.'

‘No need,' Detective Chief Inspector Keegan replied. ‘This'll only take a second. You could go and help out at the charge bar, Allan. I'll speak to Vincent – if I may call you Vincent? – on my own, for now.'

‘Of course, sir,' Allan Ross replied, retreating through the door, coffee mug in hand.

Seated once more before the image of the busty woman, Father Vincent dragged his eyes away from her cleavage and forced himself to concentrate on his surroundings. He tried to shrug off his anxiety, remind himself that he had
once viewed the police as no more than adversaries in a game. ‘Plods' they had called them in the solicitors' office and gown room. But the old professional insouciance that he had worn like armour and which had served him so well had gone, and suddenly he knew how his clients of old felt, naked and afraid, in the lion's den. However innocent they might be. In here, canon law would come second to the criminal law.

‘Vincent,' the man began, addressing him almost matily, as if they were colleagues or friends, ‘Allan told me about the book. Can you tell me how you came to first hear anything about this theft?'

‘No, Chief Inspector Keegan, I'm afraid I can't.'

‘No?'

‘No.' Now, he thought, the informality would be ditched. But he was wrong.

‘Of course, silly of me,' the policeman exclaimed, smiling and leaning forward. ‘I'm very sorry. My fault entirely, Vincent. I should have made something quite plain from the outset. I spoke to Sergeant Spearman after he saw you the last time and I understood what you were trying to get across to him. He didn't, he's a bluenose, you see. A black Protestant – practically a Wee Free in some of his attitudes. No knitting on Sundays and so on. But, as one of the faithful, I understood … correction, understand, completely. Com-plete-ly. How you'd first heard, I mean. So you need have no worries on that score. No worries at all.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Now that we've got that little issue out of the way,' the Inspector continued, keeping his eyes unswervingly on the
priest as he spoke, ‘and we know that the Bishop's attacker is dead …' He paused momentarily, as if waiting for the priest to say something, interrupt him, before continuing. ‘Meehan, the man who attacked the Bishop is dead.'

‘You're sure he was the Bishop's attacker?'

‘Means, opportunity, motive, confession in the note. What more could you ask for? We've no doubts. Why, have you?'

‘I know Raymond's voice.'

‘And? I have to have something to work on, Father. The Monsignor found it entirely plausible, and he knew the man too. Have you nothing else to add?'

‘I know Raymond's voice, that's all I can say.'

‘Right, well, if that's it we'll turn to the book for the moment, shall we? The book that Allan told me you're concerned about and which was, supposedly, taken from the Bishop's office. The one with the addresses and so on in it. Can you tell me anything else about it?'

‘Just to clarify things in my own mind, Chief Inspector, are you telling me then that a book
was
reported stolen? I thought from what Allan said that nothing had gone missing.'

The policeman leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, cogitating, and inadvertently displaying his oval-shaped sweat stains in their entirety. Less than two minutes had passed but, already, he had learned one thing. Allan and Vincent Ross might be brothers but they required very different handling.

‘No,' he began, ‘no, I'm not saying that at all. In fact, I can confirm that no report of any theft was made when the
Bishop was found. Allan was entirely correct. No church property was found in Meehan's house either. But I'm interested in you, Father, very interested. I'd likely be – after all, you knew about the attack before anyone else …'

‘I told your sergeant, I wasn't involved in any way,' Father Vincent retorted, frowning unconsciously, unnerved by the note of accusation that he was sure he could hear creeping into the man's tone. Before he knew it, he might fall foul of criminal law or canon law, or both.

‘Relax, Father. Relax. I told you, I understand completely how you knew. I'm not suggesting for a second that you were involved. All I want to know is what you think is in the book.'

‘I'm getting muddled. Are you talking about the book that hasn't been stolen?'

‘Yes.'

‘The not-stolen books, plural, no doubt. I imagine the Bishop has a fair collection of them, of books that haven't been stolen. Anyway, I still don't understand, if there is no stolen book then there can be, surely, nothing in it? Have I misunderstood something – was a book stolen then?'

‘No. Focusing purely on the book you're interested in.'

‘I've never seen it, or its contents. It's an employment record of sorts, I think. Full of black marks.'

A frown crossed the policeman's face. Seeing it, it occurred once more to the priest that Nicholas Rowe might have been playing games with him. Manipulating him and disturbing him, just for the fun of it. It would be in character. He had a reputation for deriving pleasure from the grilling that he subjected priests to when their accounts did
not balance, befuddling them with his talk of fixed assets, double-entry bookkeeping and contingent liabilities.

But, more likely, the book had indeed been stolen and he – no, Monsignor Drew – had failed to draw the police's attention to their embarrassing, their compromising loss. Perhaps they had only discovered that it was missing days later. But without a report to the police there would be no search for it, and it might never be found. Crucially, its contents would not be exposed. If they were, the police would be desperate to get their hands on it, and for their own reasons, not just to solve the reported crime. In amongst the few drunks, lechers and embezzlers within the Secret Archive, would be a fair number of paedophiles.

‘We'd be interested in that.'

‘But if it hasn't been reported as stolen?'

Sighing good-naturedly, the Inspector nodded his head at the priest's words, and, as if he followed and accepted his logic, he answered, ‘You're right, of course, Father. Incidentally, Allan told me about your present little difficulty, your present troubles and travails. I hope you can return to Kinross soon. Hell has no fury and all that. Take it from me, one who knows all too well what they can be like once they've got you by the short … well, once they've got you. Women, eh? We can't live with them, but we can't live without them. Well, most of us. One other thing. A very important thing. A favour, if I may.'