The Good Priest (24 page)

‘Later – after the wake or in private. It may be nothing, nothing at all. I don't know. It's a small world, isn't it? I didn't realise that you knew the Comptons.'

‘I don't really, well, not very well, but Kate, my wife does. Kate … Kate!' he said, touching a woman with a page-boy haircut on the shoulder and interrupting her conversation with her neighbour. In response, she glared at him.

‘This is Father Vincent – remember I told you about him? His brother works with me at the station in Dundee.'

‘Aha,' she replied, looking underwhelmed by the news. As if he had done his duty by making the introduction, the policeman then whispered, ‘Now, I'm needing a top-up, if you don't mind,' and began to make his way between the other guests in the direction of the buffet table.

‘Get me one and all, Donny boy,' his wife called to the retreating figure.

‘You've a sister who lives in Kinross, I understand?' Father Vincent began, suddenly feeling hungry and wishing he could follow her husband to the buffet.

The woman laughed uncertainly. ‘Sisters, Father, plural!'

‘Oh,' he said, feeling more relaxed after managing to snatch a couple of sausages on sticks from a passing plate, ‘I knew you had one, living at the farm by the loch – Mossbank, isn't it? But you've another one here too, have you? I'd no idea. How can I have missed her?'

‘That's easy,' Mrs Keegan said, downing the last of her red wine and scanning the room for her husband and her refill. ‘She's a pagan, doesn't come to church or anything. She's unmarried, very definitely unmarried, if you know what I mean. Rather despises those of us who have tied the knot, I suspect, like her sisters, Susie and me. She's an old-fashioned radical feminist of the crop-haired and dungareed school. No children for her, just her bloody … sorry, just her job. That particular Miss Mann is loaded, the cow. Sorry, Father, sorry, her important, well-paid job as … as …' She began to laugh uncontrollably, tears forming in her eyes. ‘As a tax inspector! Or, as I prefer to call it, a professional leech!'

‘This should be your last one, my angel,' Keegan said, passing a full glass of wine to his wife and then watching nonplussed as she handed her empty glass to the priest, muttered ‘toilet' and made a bee-line for the door.

‘She's emotional, she was very fond of Jean. We came back specially for the funeral,' Keegan said, apparently feeling the need to explain his wife's conduct. ‘We could follow her, talk outside?'

‘Right.'

Standing in the hall, the hum of conversation from the front-room barely audible, Donald Keegan sampled his whisky. A woman edged past him, looked at his glass and murmured, ‘You're the lucky one, aren't you?'

He winked at her and then, as she moved away, asked the priest, ‘Is this about your quest for the missing book?'

‘Yes and no. Those three recent murders may be connected …'

‘Hold on, you'll need to remind me. There's a lot of it about.'

‘Dennis May, Callum Taylor and Patrick Yule. They were all priests once – and paedophiles, apparently, too.'

‘How on earth do you come to know that?'

‘A priest, also a paedophile, told me about May and Taylor. He's in Perth Prison. Someone else told me about Patrick Yule.'

‘Is the Perth man reliable?'

‘To the best of my knowledge.'

‘The other source?'

‘Utterly.'

‘Christ, Vincent, that sounds like dynamite to me. Bloody dynamite. I'm not involved with any of those cases, so I don't know what they know. But I can easily find out who is. May will be dealt with by someone in Lothian and Borders. Taylor … don't know who again, but I'll find out. They'll call you in, they're bound to with that stuff. Do you think this is connected in some way to the book? Because that one is my bag.'

‘Possibly. Did Dominic Drew really say nothing to you on the night? About its disappearance?'

‘Who?'

‘Monsignor Drew. He handled things while the Bishop was in hospital.'

‘Never heard of him. Father Tony Cross was our contact. Vincent, I'll pass your information on to whoever is in charge ASAP, and well done by the way. And I meant what I said, if you need any help, any help at all, just give me a ring. Don't forget, I understand your little difficulty,
you know I do, but, if we are talking about stolen property, then I can use
all
the resources available to me. I'll give you my home number and you could put it in your phone. I meant to give it to you the last time I saw you. Call me any time, eh?'

By way of response Vincent simply nodded his head. But, gazing into his burly ally's kindly face, he could have kissed him.

Walking through the doors into the curling rink, Father Vincent shivered, regretting immediately that he did not have more layers on. There were only four figures on the ice, grouped together in the distance, and two of them appeared to be male. The man he was looking for might be among them. One, apparently recognising him, waved, and though he was not sure who he was, he immediately and automatically waved back. In the raw cold, his glasses had begun to steam up.

‘Is Colin Gifford with you?' he called to the unknown man, surprised when he put a hand to his ear to indicate that he had not caught what he had said. The echoes in the vast open space had distorted his words, turning them into gibberish. Determined to find his quarry, he decided to join the group on the ice. A pair of blue slippers was lying, as if discarded, by the edge of the rink, and he pulled them over his black brogues and set off towards the four curlers. As, he drew closer, he realised that the quartet was composed entirely of females. The bulkiest of them pointed at his shoes and said hoarsely, ‘You shouldn't be in those slippers, Father. They're mine,
I left them there for a friend – I thought you were him.'

‘I'm sorry, I assumed they were finished with,' he replied.

As the woman glared at his feet, she suddenly sneezed, slipped and began to fall over. Arms flailing, she grabbed at his jacket, yanking him forwards so that he almost fell onto the ice himself. Meantime the woman saved herself from falling by grabbing at the handle of the broom in her neighbour's hand. The other woman, who had been enjoying the little drama of the shoes, all but toppled herself on finding her broom suddenly yanked like the rope of a church bell.

‘Christ Almighty, Virginia!' she expostulated, still reeling.

‘I had to, Fiona,' Virginia replied, righting herself, ‘needs must.'

‘So, Father, you'll not have come onto the sheet for a game, I'm thinking,' the third woman said.

‘Quite right,' he replied, ‘and I'd better get off here before I cause another accident. I was looking for Colin Gifford. Someone told me that he'd probably be here today.'

‘He's here all right,' the woman's nearest neighbour chipped in, slip-sliding in his direction and catching Fiona's elbow, briefly, to steady her again.

‘He's in the bar preparing himself for the next competition – working out the strategy for next week's match,' Virginia said. Her eyes were watery and her nose tinged red with constant blowing.

‘With the aid of a little tipple as usual,' the third woman added, laughing, picking up the granite curling stone beside her as if it weighed no more than a bag of crisps.

‘Which bar? The one in here, or do you mean Jock's Bar in the Hotel?'

‘No, the one in here. You'll find him upstairs annoying Betty as usual. You'd think he had no home to go to.'

The atmosphere in the bar was lively, chatty, scented with sausage rolls and alcohol, and warmer in every sense than the rink. A middle-aged barmaid stood behind the bar, her chin propped up on her elbow, watching the players through the open expanse of glass overlooking the ice. One of the curlers, sliding on one knee, was just about to release a stone.

The second it began its leisurely journey towards the house at the opposite end, the barmaid murmured, ‘On you go, on you go, you beauty!'

‘Sweep, Enid, sweep!' another spectator shouted a few moments later, standing up in his frustration, convinced the woman's stone was going to stop short, unconsciously miming a frenzied sweeping action himself.

Spectators occupied many of the seats, their glasses on the tables in front of them and their attention divided between their drinking companions and the action going on below them on the ice. As the priest approached the bar, a ruddy-faced farmer who knew him said cheerily, ‘I seen you sliding all over the shop. Can you no' walk on water then, Father?'

‘No, he cannae,' his drinking partner butted in, ‘but he can drive out demons, so you'd better watch yourself, Davie boy. Is that not right, Father?'

‘Haven't had much practice lately – but I'd happily give it a go.'

‘Wish he'd turn that water to wine …' Davie replied lugubriously, peering into the little water jug on the bar, an empty whisky glass beside it.

‘That's Jesus. Father just does wine to blood, you numpty,' the man's wife said, shaking her head at the display of ignorance.

‘Have you seen Colin Gifford about, Sue?' the priest asked her.

‘Good to see you back here, Father.' she replied. ‘He's over there, behind the newspaper.'

The man in question was slumped on a bar-stool, an empty pint glass in front of him, pen hovering above his crossword. Defeated by the clue, he had turned to the barmaid for help.

‘Four down, Betty. Six blanks and four blanks, OK? “Party food for a donkey”?'

‘Mmm … got any letters?' she asked, nodding at Vincent by way of acknowledgement and adding ‘Father'.

‘Father? That's an “F”. Both words begin with “C”.'

‘I know, I know. Crème caramel … cream crackers … chipolatas …'

‘Donkeys are vegetarians, woman, for Christ's sake!'

‘Maybe not by choice, Colin?' the barmaid replied testily. ‘This is party food, remember!'

‘What about …' the priest said, coming and standing beside the man, ‘carrot cake? Would that fit?'

‘Mmm, it would,' Gifford replied, already writing it in, ‘and it goes with “corncrake” and “arrow”, so it's bound to be right. Well done – give that man a drink, Betty. Make it a double. No, a treble. What'll you have, Father?'

‘I'll not have anything at the moment, thanks, but I wondered if I could ask you a question about your work? I saw Dougie yesterday, and he told me you'd be here. I just need to know something about the trial polish that the factory produced, the bright pink stuff?'

‘Rightio, fire away, I'm with you there,' Gifford replied, slightly blearily, the pen back in his mouth and all his concentration ostensibly on the crossword once more.

‘Did you get any of the stuff?'

‘Aye, three jars, but I chucked them all out. I tried it on a wooden chair in the kitchen, but I couldn't stand the smell. Poofy, if you know what I mean. Tell me, does a dromedary have one hump or two?'

‘One,' Vincent said.

‘Right. That'll be “got the hump”, then.'

‘Babs'll get the hump if you don't get home for your tea, Colin.'

‘I'm off, Betty. Tell the old camel that, if she phones,' the man replied, slipping off his stool and jamming his rolled-up newspaper into his jacket pocket.

‘Before you go,' the priest asked, ‘did anyone else get the stuff apart from you and Dougie?'

‘No. We only made a wee batch. None of them liked it right from the start. The boss said we may as well give it a try but, like I said, I couldn't hack the smell.'

‘Do you know if your boss gave it a try too?'

‘He may well have done, aye. Jackie Shand doesn't do waste. He's a mean bastard. Counts a' the pennies. That's why he's the boss.'

The telephone in the bar rang. ‘That'll be Babs now,' Betty said, ‘she's like bloody clockwork that one.'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Running back to his car, his jacket tented over his head to protect himself from a shower of hail, the priest's mind was buzzing with Colin Gifford's words. He knew the manager, and had long pitied the man. Not because he had a marked squint and suffered from psoriasis, although he did. Not even because money was his real god, although it was, but because he was a cuckold, had been cuckolded many times. His wife, Jemima, a woman who perfumed the air of the confessional box with the stifling scent of Opium, availed herself of the sacrament only in certain circumstances. Usually when her latest affair had come to an end, but once when she had shocked herself with a one-night stand involving several Bacardi Breezers and a sales rep. The apparent sincerity of her contrition was, however, undermined by her habit of immediately seeking solace, a fresh distraction, in other arms. He had lost count of the number of times it had happened.

Putting on his safety belt, he speculated on the identity of her current lover. A Protestant, he hoped, as he jammed the clip into the socket. It seemed no time since she and a recently cast-off lover had met outside the confessional, eyeing each other like hostile dogs, both seeking absolution for their shenanigans together. Only he, in his privileged position as confessor, knew that; and neither of the pair witnessed his wry smile as they confessed all. As always, Barbara Duncan had been ahead of the pack,
observing acidly that Jemima seemed to have a very fast turnover amongst her male acquaintances. With effort, he had managed to look suitably uninterested, conscious that every movement of his facial muscles was being watched. No doubt Jemima Shand's affairs would continue. Unfortunately, she was more likely to understand Einstein's theory of relativity than to appreciate the necessity for a firm purpose of amendment when making her confession. To her way of thinking, the sacrament was there to be used like a laundrette; only one that cleansed her conscience rather than her dirty clothes.