But he knew why. Because she was so pretty, so easy to talk to, and she needed his help. And she was married, for heaven’s sake. She should have been safe. She wore a ring, had three children, one of them soon to take first communion from his hands. Wasn’t friendship, pure and simple, enough any more? How had he so misjudged things?
Suddenly her eyes opened.
‘You’ve had your chance, Father!’ she exclaimed, humiliated, looking at him angrily and drawing back into her chair.
‘Laura, I’m a priest …’
‘Don’t bother apologising,’ she replied, cutting him short, standing up and walking towards the door, the tray of plates and cutlery forgotten. Turning back to face him, she added: ‘And don’t fool yourself that I fancy you – that you’re attractive or anything. Others might think so. Not me. I was lonely, bored. Anyone would have done. You were available, that’s all.’
Sitting in his favourite armchair that evening, with the lights out and the cat on his knee, he stroked the beast’s warm, creamy back. His affection for Satan was straightforward, could not be misunderstood by woman or cat. He was still feeling bruised from his lunchtime encounter. Taking a swig of his Rioja, he allowed it to travel all around his mouth, until, satisfied with its notes of vanilla and toast, he let it trickle down his throat. What was going on? In the last few days more unpleasant things seemed to have happened to him than in the whole of the preceding fifteen years. It was as if someone had taken a great paintbrush and splattered black and red paint onto the beige canvas which, up until then, had been his life. And in retrospect, beige had been pretty good. His old life, even if he had been in a rut, had a lot to recommend it. That rut had provided shelter from the storm; a degree of invisibility from the unwanted attentions of half-cut youngsters and lonely women.
Thoughts of Laura Houston invaded his mind again, making him cover his face in embarrassment at the debacle and curse himself for his folly. ‘Unworldly’ was how he had recently described a particularly clueless colleague, but the word fitted him. Better. Worst of all, he had wanted her. But, thank God, thank God, he had not actually touched her. At least he had not done that.
Needing someone to talk to, he picked up his phone.
‘Hugh?’
‘Vincent? What on earth … it’s the middle of the night over here, you know.’
‘I know – but I need to speak to you. You know the rules.’
‘OK. OK. What is it?’
Leaving nothing out, except his weakness for rare roast beef, he described the events of the last few days.
‘I warned you about dog-collars …’
‘Thanks. But I think it was a little bit more personal than that. It’s never happened before, you know. And I’ve been a priest for nearly fifteen years.’
‘It doesn’t affect them all in that way, obviously. Anyway, it’s not so bad. You’ve done nothing – been a bit naïve, stupid or whatever. But you never touched her, there was no affair or anything like that, was there? All it amounts to is a few meetings, nothing more. No harm done. She’ll recover. You’ll recover and you won’t set yourself up as a marriage counsellor again in a hurry.’
‘Ever.’
‘What are you doing about the youths?’
‘I got the local community policewoman to look in on them.’
‘No, about Father Bell.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Well, you said that they said, one of them said, that he was a paedophile, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. They called me one too, I told you.’
‘What do you know about him?’
‘Very little.’
‘In that case, you’ll have to find out …’
‘Hugh? Hugh?’
The phone was dead. The problem lay not in the telephone line from Kinross, despite the gale blowing in the darkness outside, but in the one leading to the mountain town of Trongsa in the kingdom of Bhutan. It had happened before, many times, and still Hugh refused to use a mobile. ‘Pointless,’ he’d say. ‘None of my parishioners have one.’
Father Vincent let out a sigh. He could not answer for somebody else, particularly somebody he hardly knew, but, thinking about it, he had no reason to suspect his fellow priest. At their only meeting, when Bell had first moved into the adjoining parish, he had seemed an amiable man, ordinary enough. With his luxuriant black beard, he had resembled Hergé’s Captain Haddock, but his manner was mild, no danger of shouts of ‘Blistering barnacles!’ from him. He appeared gentle, ineffectual even. On first impression, he came across as a shy, reserved sort of person. Such a man could not be a paedophile surely? They were hard, ruthless creatures, capable of a high degree of cunning and manipulation. Certainly, the few he had come across in his previous career as a solicitor had been like that.
In his head he could hear Hugh’s dismissive response to such an argument. Knowing him, he could guess the very expression he would likely use: ‘You know next to nothing about those men.’ Then, adopting his usual tactic he would probably go on, try to goad him into action, taunting him: ‘But it’s easier just to hide your head in the sand, and not bother, isn’t it? The boy was lying about you, Vincent, so he must have been lying about Father Bell, mustn’t he? You know it doesn’t follow. Still, you just ignore his fury, ignore the boy’s knowledge of Father Bell’s house. If you want a quiet life, best turn a blind eye. But face up to what you’re doing.’
He could write the script himself. Unsettled, consumed suddenly by the need to do something, Vincent stood up, dumped an annoyed, meowing Satan onto the floor and began striding up and down his small sitting-room. A moment later, the cat, dodging to avoid being mown down by the pacing figure, knocked over the full glass of Rioja. A large, blood-coloured pool spread out on the green carpet. Hastily, the priest rushed into his kitchen to find the salt. Returning, he sprinkled it all over the wet patch, watching with relief as the layer of white grains gradually became stained by the red wine. The parish could not afford to replace anything nowadays, and even rugs were expensive.
Suppose Father Bell was a paedophile? What then? What exactly was he supposed to do about it? Expose him, obviously, and stop him from hurting and abusing any more children. But how, how did one find out if he was one? How could it be done without alerting the world to what might be, most probably was, a truly hideous and false allegation. It was all preposterous. He was no private investigator, had no experience in such matters, no feel. Blundering about blindly might well make things worse, cause monstrous offence.
Looking down on the stained salt, he shook his head. But, as Serena Lindsay would say, ‘Something must be done,’ and this time she would be quite right. Just as Hugh had been. Otherwise he would be, effectively, complicit. If only he had gone to the Markinch Wine Gallery instead of Sainsbury’s, then he would not have encountered the drunken youths, never heard them make that frightful accusation. But he had heard them, and could not pretend otherwise. He must do something, because there was no one else.
Tomorrow he would go to the man’s parish and find out all that he could about him. His old friend Barbara Duncan was the person to see. She was a one-woman listening station; GCHQ could learn from her. None of her seventy-plus years in the field had been wasted. But skill would be required of him too, in such a delicate exercise; otherwise intelligence might travel in quite the wrong direction.
CHAPTER FOUR
Hunched in his car on the Leslie Road with the heater blasting hot air into his face, he looked, for the third time, at his wristwatch. Three minutes still to go before their appointment, plenty of time in which to finish his fag before entering yet another no-smoking zone. He needed the nicotine, felt ambivalent about the whole exercise. Barbara was invariably fun to see, but she was also formidable, and quite capable of working out what he was really up to. Then the slander would be loose, run free. Outside, the rain streamed down the windscreen, sliding off the curved bonnet and splashing onto the pavement below. The gutter had been transformed
into a foaming brown river with litter, like little boats, swept along in its current. The few pedestrians unlucky enough to be caught in the deluge scurried along with their heads tucked into their chests, zigzagging from side to side to avoid the puddles, finding themselves splashed instead by passing cars. Thick white condensation misted the windows of the car and, together with the blue haze of cigarette smoke, obscured his view of Barbara Duncan’s home.
Her house, one of the grandest in the old ‘fermtoun’ of Scotlandwell, sat back from the road, screened from it by a high stone wall. Above the wall, only the upper storeys of the Victorian building were visible, with their carved barge boards and barley sugar chimneys, the tops of the apple trees in her orchard in the foreground. In more devout times, the minister of the nearby Portmoak Parish Church had lived there. The current minister, a woman, was quartered in a bungalow in one of the nearby dormitory estates in Kinross, Sutherland Place, or, as it was fondly known by the locals, ‘Spam Valley’.
‘Island View’, as the former manse had been rechristened, currently functioned as a Wolsey Lodge offering bed and breakfast to the rich and discerning, word of mouth amongst its middle-class clientele producing most of its custom. Barbara Duncan, recently widowed, enjoyed the company of her guests and had developed a small guided tour for those who wanted such a thing, showing off the best of the family portraits (which included a Wilkie), her collection of samplers and her late husband’s stuffed birds.
Forcing himself to step out of the car and into the pelting rain, dropping his glowing dog-end into the overflowing gutter, Father Vincent yanked up the collar of his anorak and strode towards Barbara Duncan’s door. As he waited, rain dripped down his forehead and into his eyes, a few drops trickling down his neck and onto his chest. A minute passed and still nothing stirred behind the closed door, until his hopes began to rise. Maybe she was not in and he would simply have to return home, having tried but failed. Shivering, he turned to leave, when a voice close behind him said: ‘Father Vincent, how lovely, and exactly on time as always.’
‘Tribute for the Queen,’ he said, placing a jar of honey in her hand.
‘Your own?’ she asked delightedly, holding it against the light as if to marvel at its amber colour. A couple of black particles were discernible, suspended in the viscous fluid.
‘No, I’m a drone – but my workers, yes.’
Shown into her spacious kitchen, he found a tea laid before him that was worthy of the Green Hotel. There was a plate of egg sandwiches, garnished with cress, another of cucumber and a third of ham. A container of warm potted shrimps and pre-buttered toast appeared from the oven. Two cakes were on a cake stand, one a shiny black gingerbread, the other a Victoria sponge with strawberry jam glistening between its layers. The silver teapot was warming on the Aga, and she had even gone to the trouble of making butterballs for him to spread on the gingerbread. He looked at her, smiled and sighed.
‘What a wonderful sight!’
‘You sound like Mole in The Wind in the Willows,’ she said, delighted by his reaction.
‘And you,’ he replied, ‘are like Ratty and Nigella all rolled into one. Perhaps with a twist of Gordon Rams–’
‘Don’t go there. Tea?’
‘I will, thank you.’
They talked easily, each enjoying the company of the other, moving from the dangers to swimmers of the toxic algae blooms in Loch Leven, onto the latest McCall Smith novel and thence to the antics of a cabinet minister’s wife, seamlessly, and without effort on either side. The old woman took satisfaction from feeding a man, particularly one not spoilt or blasé from a constant diet of home-baking. And he was, she thought, always so charmingly appreciative. Nowadays, in this uncivilised, housekeeperless age it was the least the women of the parish could do. Not that, from the look of him, he was wasting away.
‘I’ve made flapjacks, if you could manage one?’
‘I’ve room for no more,’ he said, patting his tummy contentedly.
‘Not even a small one? I made them especially for you. Go on!’
‘Just one then.’
The time had come, he decided, to start trying to find out what he needed to know.
‘Father Bell,’ he began. ‘He was in Lanarkshire before, wasn’t he?’
In fact, he had no idea where the man had come from, but he suspected that she would.
‘No, he was in Helensburgh,’ she replied, busy struggling with the lid of the flapjack tin. ‘He left in a bit of a hurry, I gather. Woman trouble, I understand. You may know, I suppose?’ Hers was a casual enquiry, light as a fly dapped on a loch, made as if no answer was expected.
He ignored it.
‘He’s been here now … what, a year? Could it be so long already?’
‘Over a year. I’d say a year and a half. He came in June and I started up my B&B a couple of months before,’ she answered, preoccupied, still battling with the lid.
‘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.
The Good Priest Page 4
