The Good Priest (6 page)

‘Let me do that.'

Smiling, she handed it over. In seconds, he had opened it, passed her a flapjack and taken one for himself.

‘He'll have fully settled in now – Father Bell. It takes a little while, of course,' he continued, mouth now halffull.

‘Mmm.'

‘Now he's settled in, he'll have started up all the normal groups, I dare say?'

‘Yes,' she replied sounding a little puzzled, as if unsure where the conversation was going.

‘A ladies' prayer group?' he persisted.

‘He has. We've thirteen members presently. Two new ones joined us just last week. It's thriving. We meet on a Tuesday evening.'

‘Football?' Father Vincent enquired.

‘A ladies' football group?' she sounded amused. ‘Yes, I'm on the right wing.'

‘No, no,' he laughed. ‘Sorry, I should have made myself clear. A boys' football group … team, you know, games for the lads. Has he set one up? Is he good with the children, the youths and so on?'

‘Why?'

He would have liked to tell her, to confide in her. But the allegation was too scandalous, too dreadful to share; and doing so he might even give it some kind of spurious credence. Instead he sipped his tea, took another bite from his flapjack and began chewing, trying to give himself time to formulate a convincing answer.

‘Because …' he began, now chewing on air but needing a few more seconds, ‘because it's an important part of parish work, helps keep the kids off the street. Out of trouble.'

‘Football? In this day of computers, Game boys and Xboxes?' she replied, eyebrows cocked, a sceptical smile on her lips. ‘I don't recall you starting up anything like that, Vincent. Did you?'

‘No,' he conceded, ‘it's not my sport. But it could be Father Bell's, for all I know, and a very useful one to have. You need something to keep their interest, the youths, I mean. I suppose the youth group, if he has one, meets in his own house, eh?'

‘They could well do,' she replied, not trying to hide her bemusement at his line of questioning. ‘I've no idea where they meet. Not exactly being a youth myself. You should ask Father Bell about that when he gets back. He'll tell you all about the football, boys' groups and so on. If you need to know …'

‘When he gets back? Is he on holiday at the moment?'

‘No, he's not. He's in Ward 10 of the Infirmary. I sent him a get well soon card only today. He was in his car, and was involved in a road traffic accident somewhere near Blairingone, I gather. Another car went smack into him, stoved in the driver's side, and carried straight on. Dreadful! But do tell me, Vincent, why exactly are you so curious about him?'

‘Well, he's a neighbouring priest and,' he replied, adding quickly, and as if as an afterthought, ‘incidentally, how did your hives do over the summer? Mine were
very
productive.'

Beekeeping, often thought of as a solitary hobby, is, in fact, a competitive sport featuring the beekeeper as manager, coach, sports doctor and groundsman all rolled into
one veiled figure. Gold medals for the clarity of the honey (his had already failed her inspection), the perfection of the comb and the purity of the wax, amongst other things, were all at stake. Barbara Duncan knew fighting talk when she heard it.

‘One hundred and thirty pounds from the two. You?'

‘Double my body weight.'

Momentarily, her jaw dropped, and then she said, ‘Rubbish!'

By way of reply, he simply widened his eyes at her. Looking hard at him, letting him know his ploy had not worked, she drained her teacup in a leisurely fashion and continued: ‘As I was saying, Vincent, why are you so curious about him?'

As her question hung in the air, the telephone rang and she answered it immediately, showing by her excited expression that she knew her caller well.

‘It's Joan,' she mouthed. Joan was her only and much-loved daughter. She worked for an NGO in Mozambique and did not contact her nearly often enough to satisfy her limitless maternal interest.

The priest stood up, whispered ‘Thank you,' in return, waved and left the room.

Afterwards, he went over his encounter with Barbara Duncan several times. It had not been by any means a waste of time, he decided, but he could have handled it better. Sherlock Holmes or Father Brown would have left with the information they had come for. Still, he was a beginner, new to this game. By now word would have spread
about his visit to her; she would have regaled others with it, describing his uncharacteristic discretion, remarked on the fact that he had been less forthcoming than usual. It was a tactic he had witnessed her using, deployed to see what her audience already knew. He should be grateful, really, having participated in many a master-class with her. One valuable lesson he had learned. Without that phone call, he might have cracked and inadvertently disclosed something of his purpose. He would not get himself in that situation again, for sure. But, all in all, and to his surprise, he had found the whole episode oddly exhilarating – enjoyable, even.

Opening the double doors of the cupboard in the sacristy, he moved the Tupperware box containing the unconsecrated hosts to one side and reached for the bottles of communion wine. Holding them up to the light, he saw that one was full and the other half-full. More would have to be ordered from Hayes and Finch, and soon, or else the faithful would have to imbibe one of his bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon again. Surely someone would notice the difference, and comment on it? Hayes' stuff was sweet as fermented Irn-Bru.

He must, must,
must
attend to his desk, otherwise chaos would prevail. Red bills were already flying through the letterbox. There were no Mass cards left and he was behind with the registers too. If only administration was not so dull.

An old picture of Pope Benedict XVI, his dark eyes glittering in their deep sockets, caught his eye and he looked away. Ratzinger seemed so unsympathetic, resembling
Fester from the Addams Family, and too far removed from his image of the Good Shepherd for his taste. John XXIII was The Man. Or maybe Francis; they had chosen a good one this time.

Hearing the sound of footsteps on the floor of the church he removed the Wild Myrtles CD from its sleeve, wiped it on his cassock and put it into the player. A few of their tracks were religious and the rest were in Finnish, so no one would be any the wiser. And they had lovely voices, those women, particularly the contraltos.

Trade in the confessional was slow. With luck, the allotted time might be up, and if so he could finish for the night. He looked at his wrist, and was dismayed to see that he had left his watch by the sink in the kitchen. Surely it must be eight o'clock by now, he thought. If, as he suspected, it was after eight, on any other night he would, by now, be sitting down to eat supper in his kitchen. But that evening, to be on the safe side, he decided to stay another few minutes in case anyone else showed up. Latecomers were not unknown.

As he waited, he amused himself by planning his own funeral. One thing was certain; he would not be taken out in his box to that frightful dirge ‘Be Still My Soul'. No wonder the mourners today, despite their sly drams, had shuffled out, sniffing and red-eyed to a man, after that so-called ‘Service of Celebration'. He would have something rousing, something reviving, like ‘Shine, Jesus, Shine' or ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain'. Either would add a spring to people's step, and there were enough of those sorts of
joyous hymns even if a few of them were infantile. The coffin would be willow-woven, perhaps, or cheap oak? Whatever he chose, there would be no brass fittings for some poor furnace-man to have to fish out from the ash, wondering whether he had got a charred humerus or a coffin-handle instead.

Who could be trusted to do the eulogy, to strike the right note? If Hugh did not go first then he would be the obvious choice. But would Hugh choose him? What the hell, there could be no reciprocation in these matters anyway. Hugh had a feel for these things, was able to extol the deceased's virtues while touching as lightly as a butterfly on their vices, and thus making them recognisable. He would even raise a quiet laugh. Would Hugh advert to his fondness for drink, he wondered. But it was not a vice, not a failing, simply a fondness. A fondness for golf or making things out of matchsticks would not be described as a vice. Wine writers like Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson and Robert Parker were held in high esteem, and they had sunk gallons of the stuff in the name of research. Tonight he would try out the Chilean Merlot with its lovely smooth tannins; it should go well with the lamb.

All thoughts of his evening meal fled when a bolt of pain shot through the heel of his left foot. Cramp! Drawing in his breath, he bent down and stroked it, and finding no relief, decided to remove his shoe. As he stretched out his toes, he decided to liberate his other foot from its slightly tight brogue as well.

With his right shoe still in his hand, a strange, unfamiliar smell suddenly reached the priest's nostrils. It was not
the scent of his freshly laundered socks but an unusual odour, one more like raspberries, with a touch of Dettol and paraffin running through it. Unconsciously, he breathed in more of the aroma, trying to analyse it into its constituent parts, when a loud baritone voice startled him, booming out from the other side of the confessional box: ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.'

Between lengthy pauses, the man began to list his misdemeanours, giving an incoherent description of each one. As he spoke, the scent of raw whisky began to drift through the mix and, smiling to himself, the priest inhaled the heady fumes, trying to guess the brand. Bruichladdich or another of the Islay malts, at a guess.

Every so often, as if he had lost his place, the man would return to an earlier trivial sin, repeating himself before alighting on a new, equally slight one. It was as if he had something momentous to confess, something huge, crushingly heavy, but lacked the courage to put it into words and, instead, was skirting round it. Twice, he banged on the wooden partition with the heel of his hand, looking for a speedier reaction, and then he shouted, ‘Wakey, wakey, over there!'

Though he'd given the man some leeway in recognition of his drunken state, Father Vincent finally told him to keep his voice down, warning him that the CD had come to an end and others might be listening in.

‘Listening to me?'

‘Yes, to you. Who else?'

‘You not want to hear my confession or something?' the man bawled, sounding outraged at the idea.

‘No, and there's no danger of that. I'm simply concerned about privacy. Your privacy,' Vincent explained, trying not to lose patience. ‘Others may hear what you are saying to me. If you shout …'

‘The earwigging bastards! Right!' the man said, slurring his words even more and sounding angrier. ‘I'll give them something to make it worth their while, eh?'

‘No, don't!'

‘Here's the one you've all been waiting for …'

His words were followed by a theatrical drumroll, made by the man's knuckles rapping on the partition of the confessional and his feet drumming on the wooden floor.

‘For Heaven's sake, be quiet!' the priest ordered, infuriated by the man's lack of respect for him, for the church and the sacrament. For everything that mattered. Was he insane? He sounded deranged, as if it was more than just the drink talking or, more accurately, shouting.

‘Listen up, people! Listen up, the lot of you!' the man bellowed. ‘Tonight – tonight I killed Jim Mann. Did you all get that? Tonight I
killed
somebody. But it's all right – I got it, all right. I got it, and that's what really counts!'

Laughing, the drunkard stumbled out of the confessional, smashing the small wooden door back on its hinges in his haste to leave. On the other side of the grille, the astonished priest bent down, groping amongst the lumber on the floor for one of his missing shoes.

CHAPTER FIVE

In the pitch-black of his bedroom, Father Vincent screwed up his eyes and turned onto his side once more, rolling his duvet with him as he did so to make a snug cocoon. A few seconds later, he turned over again to lie on his back. After hours of tossing and turning, his bedding was in total disarray; one pillow had gravitated towards his feet, the other had fallen to the floor and the bottom sheet had worked itself loose from the mattress. Sleep would not come to him, had eluded him since he had been woken by the National Anthem blasting from the radio by his bed. At two o'clock he had made himself a cup of cocoa and, holding his nose, forced himself to drink it. Two hours later he had searched in his medicine cabinet for a particular cough mixture, remembering, from a previous cold, the warning on the label. It had advised against driving and the use of machinery after taking it, due to its drowsiness-inducing qualities. But four swigs of the mixture, a double dose, had failed to knock him out, despite the two glasses of Norton Privada Malbec which had preceded it down his throat.

The man had confessed to murder! In his fifteen-plus years as a priest Vincent had heard it all; every one of the seven deadly sins, from youthful, rosebud lips, moustachioed mouths and toothless, puckered maws. An alphabet of sins, venial and mortal, and the Ms had gone from masturbation to moodiness, but never as far as that
one. Never murder, bloody murder. If only, he thought, I could turn the clock back! I would listen in contentment to an unending stream of dull, drab and petty sins and never utter a word of complaint. Welcome the very sound of them, be happily pecked to death by ducks, offer up thanks for it.

Someone had been killed and canon law decreed he could not tell a soul about it. The killer's gory handprints might be all over the confessional box, their fingerprints, too, and minuscule traces of their DNA. Tomorrow, Mrs Thorburn or Mrs McMullen or, God help us all, Mamie, would flick their feather-dusters over those very surfaces and, if they did the job properly, would remove all traces of the killer's presence. Unless, of course, it had all been made up, the bizarre fantasy of some inadequate attention-seeker?