Yesterday's Sins

by James Green

  ‘I was in the Civil Service.’

  Charlie made up his mind. This placement man was wrong. This was no apprentice priest. If this man wasn’t another Moustache then Charlie was the Pope.

  ‘Goodbye, Elspeth.’ The priest turned to Charlie. ‘We’ll be on our way now we know you’re both all right. I can see Elspeth needs to rest. Please let me know if there is anything I can do.’

  ‘What time will Mass be in Copenhagen tomorrow, Father?’

  ‘Ten thirty.’

  Charlie nodded his thanks. The priest shook his hand and smiled. The man called Costello came to Charlie. They looked into each other’s eyes as they shook hands and Charlie suddenly felt that this could be the one who had come to kill him. He had seen killers before. He was sure he was seeing one now. It was in the eyes, the way he looked at him. That meant that if he was right, there would be no more frightening, next time it would be for real.

  After they left, Charlie went and sat by Elspeth, thinking. If Costello was the one then the clock would be running. Charlie would have to move very quickly.

  ‘Will you have to go to America?’

  Charlie pulled himself out of his thoughts. ‘America?’

  ‘To get help from the FBI.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I should be able to make contact through the embassy. I’ll go tomorrow after Mass.’

  ‘Going to Mass is nice. I’m glad you’re going, I wish I could come with you.’

  ‘No, don’t even think about it. You rest and get well.’

  Elspeth smiled at him.

  ‘You know, somehow I feel better, as if everything was getting back under control. I don’t know why but that’s how I feel.’

  ‘Good.’

  Charlie was pleased, that was exactly how he wanted her to feel. He had worked very hard to get her to feel like that. Charlie was in control, she could rely on Charlie and trust him because she believed in him. Just one last thing and he could go.

  ‘The papers and television will be covering this, it’ll be quite a story. If they get wind of who you are, the Elspeth Allen of the books, they may bother you. If they do, remember what I told you, you have nothing to say. If you know nothing and say it often enough they’ll go away. They can’t make a story if there’s nothing to say. You know nothing.’

  ‘All right, if you say so.’

  ‘I do say so. I’ll have a word with the nurse or doctor to make sure you’re not bothered while you’re in hospital. Now, get under the clothes and get some sleep. I’ll come in tomorrow as soon as I can.’ He kissed her then went to the door, switched out the light and left.

  SEVEN

  ‘I know very little about them. He’s American, she’s English. He writes cookery books in her name. They were already living in Nyborg when I came to Copenhagen. They seem a nice couple.’

  ‘I don’t like him.’

  ‘What do you mean, not like him? You don’t know him.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No, I told you what I know, which is very little.’

  ‘Do you think he could be wrong?’

  ‘Wrong? About what?’

  ‘No, him. Could he be, well, wrong?’

  ‘In what way “wrong”?’

  Jimmy poured the last of the Tuborg into his glass, as Father Udo Mundt waited for an answer.

  ‘It’s difficult to explain.’

  ‘Take your time. I’ll get us both another beer.’

  Udo got up and went to the kitchen, collected two more plastic bottles and returned to the living room. Jimmy watched him as he sat down. He liked this man, he was calm, patient and kind and he never intruded. He was a man you could talk to.

  ‘I used to be a copper, a policeman ...’

  Udo smiled.

  ‘I know what a copper is, Jimmy, I think everyone knows what a copper is.’

  Jimmy pulled the top off his bottle and poured some beer.

  ‘I was a detective sergeant in North London.’ He took a drink. ‘And I was bent.’

  Udo pulled the top off his Tuborg and poured some beer. He didn’t look up as he asked his question.

  ‘Bent as in corrupt?’

  ‘As in corrupt.’ The conversation stalled for a minute. Udo let it. He took a drink. You didn’t hurry someone when they were telling you things like this and you didn’t show any curiosity. You waited and you listened.

  ‘I took money and I did things. Bad things.’

  Jimmy waited for some sort of response. He wanted the priest to make it easier for him. Priests were supposed to help. Udo understood so he helped.

  ‘Bad things?’

  ‘How bad can you imagine, Udo?’

  ‘Oh, very bad I should think, just about as bad as it gets.’

  ‘Then you’ve got it.’

  Udo made sure his face registered nothing. Jimmy tried to struggle on but somehow he couldn’t find the right way. Once it would have been easy, he thought. I was a bent copper. I took money. I hurt people. My wife died. I smashed up a couple of blokes and was given early retirement to cover it all up. I went away, thought about things and decided to become a priest. That’s me, take it or leave it, I don’t give a shit one way or the other.

  But now he was going to try and tell it properly and he found he really did give a shit after all.

  ‘I had a wife and two kids. I told myself I was doing it for them. I’d got mixed up with a bad crowd as a young man. I found I liked it, I could have been good at it. I knew how to hurt people so I fitted in. A mechanic, they called me. But Bernie, she was my girlfriend then, well it wasn’t a life for her. So I decided that if I knew about the bad guys and how they did things the best thing to do was to stay in the business but move to the other side of the street. So I became a copper.’

  Udo sat very still. Jimmy wasn’t really talking to him, he was trying to talk out his past, trying to face the man he had once been. If he did, it would be hard and painful. So Udo waited. ‘Anyway, when I became a detective I got in with another bad crowd, bent coppers this time. Like I say, I took money and did other things, but I told myself I was doing it for my family, it was all for Bernie and the kids. I told myself that, at home, I was a good dad and off duty, I was a good Catholic.’

  Jimmy sat forward, hunched up, looking at the carpet. He felt sick. Then he looked up at Udo. ‘My daughter got married and went to Australia. My son became a missionary priest. They both left home and got far away from me, as far away as they could. They didn’t want me in their lives.’ He could taste a bitterness in his mouth, like after you’d vomited. Maybe he was going to throw up. God knows, he was sick of it all. ‘I deserved it, I know now I deserved it, but Bernie didn’t, she didn’t deserve to lose her kids. And she didn’t deserve never to see her grandchildren in Australia. But she stuck by me. I was doing it all for her, so that one day I could say, look at all this money, Bernie. It’s for you. Now you can have a nice house. You can visit Eileen and the kids. You can give Michael money for projects. You can do whatever you like, it’s all yours.’

  Udo watched. Tears were running down Jimmy’s face. This was a man suffering, saying out loud to another person the sort of man he had been and, maybe for the first time, truly regretting what he had done to his family, to others and to himself. It wasn’t a confession, it was a confrontation, perhaps even an execution. This man was bringing out his old self and confronting not only what he had been but what he had done to those he held most dear. This was a man trying to lay to rest a ghost that had haunted him for a long time.

  ‘But she died. Just like that, she died. There was nothing I could do. So I was left with all that money and ...’

  Fuck all else, were the words that almost came out, but he held them back. It was a small thing, but now life was no more than a series of small things and he tried to get them right. The big things he left alone. He had tried changing the big things and he knew he couldn’t, so he stuck to the things he could change. He tried not to swear now, at least not out loud. Ber
nie had never liked bad language.

  ‘Money and nothing else. After the funeral I had a bit of a breakdown, I suppose. I was angry, I lashed out. I hurt a couple of blokes – I sort of took it all out on them. One was a heavy villain and, when he got out of hospital, I was going to be found in little bits distributed across London so I was given early retirement to cover everything up and I hopped it.’

  Jimmy looked up at Udo who sat very still watching him. He wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hands and sat back. He took a drink then poured himself some more beer, it was something to do.

  ‘Udo, I’ve looked into the faces of thugs, pimps, liars, cheats and not a few killers in my time and that guy’s face has most of those in it. Whatever he is, he’s not just a nice bloke who writes cookery books. And I’ll tell you something else, he doesn’t like me. When we shook hands at the hospital you could see it in his eyes, the way he looked at me. There’s something wrong about that guy.’ Jimmy waited. He’d said what he wanted to say – now it was up to Udo.

  ‘You said that when you retired you decided to become a priest. How long ago was that?’

  Jimmy didn’t want to think about those years, they weren’t great memories.

  ‘It took time, it needed thinking about.’

  ‘I can see how it would. So, how long?’

  ‘A long time. Can we leave it at that?’

  ‘OK. So, if you wanted to be a priest, why wait what you call “a long time” and then settle for a placement like this? Why not just apply to Rome or wherever and begin training?’

  ‘I did, I applied and started training. I was a Duns College student.’

  ‘Duns College?’

  ‘It’s a funny set-up, a sort of one-at-a-time college for mature men of independent means who can pay for their own training and never need to get paid by the diocese where they work as a priest. They don’t turn up often so, as I say, Duns College is a funny set-up. It comes and goes. It’s really just an office in the Vatican, some headed notepaper and an honorary rector when needed. It gets wheeled out when a suitable candidate comes along. All the training is done by other places in Rome.’

  ‘So why are you here on a placement starting all over again? Why aren’t you still in Rome?’

  Jimmy paused. This was going to be tricky.

  ‘I’d been a detective so I was asked to do a job for the rector, me and another bloke, a sort of research job, finding things out about somebody. When it was over the rector thought I should go away and think about things. She wrote to me after I’d gone and told me if I still wanted to consider training for the priesthood she would get me a placement to see what a parish priest’s life was like. I thought about it, then said, OK, and here I am.’

  It sounded thin to Jimmy; he hoped it didn’t sound quite so thin to Udo.

  ‘Tell me, the name of this honorary rector you did the research for. It wouldn’t have been someone called McBride would it, Professor Pauline McBride? An American, black?’

  ‘Yes, how did you know that?’

  Udo smiled at him. The smile turned into a grin. ‘That explains a great deal, Jimmy.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘Oh yes. You see, I was asked to take you on this placement by Professor McBride. Oh, she didn’t ask personally, you understand. If you know her at all you’ll know that isn’t her way. The actual request came through a Monsignor, but it was made clear that the request originated with her. And if you know the professor at all well, you will know she is not the kind of person you say “no” to. So here you are. But when I was told to take you on, I asked myself, why would an Englishman with no foreign languages be put on placement in Copenhagen? You will agree it’s an odd thing to do?’

  Jimmy nodded. He could see how anyone would think so.

  ‘This job you did for her, this research job – you said there was another man?’ Jimmy nodded again. ‘And what became of him when the job was done?’

  ‘He died. It turned out he was a very sick man.’

  ‘I see.’

  Jimmy hoped he didn’t, for his own sake. For a short while they both sat in silence. Then Udo began again.

  ‘So you think Charlie Bronski might be a bad lot?’

  ‘It’s possible, if not now, then before.’

  ‘Perhaps a retired crook, you think? Living off his ill-gotten gains? Come on, Jimmy. He writes cookery books. How many retired crooks write cookery books?’

  He was right of course, Jimmy knew that. What sort of villain wrote cookery books and retired to a small seaside town in Denmark? It was none of his business but Jimmy’s mind couldn’t leave it alone. He didn’t like Charlie Bronski. He was too smooth and he asked the wrong questions. He had been nearly blown up in the morning and by the evening he was as calm as you please, making polite enquiries about Jimmy’s placement while his wife was across the room in a hospital bed. He was in control of himself, very tight control. That was the problem, Jimmy decided, that was why he was wrong. He was too much in control. Bronski was used to that kind of pressure and he could deal with it. What sort of person could do that? Not a cookery book writer.

  ‘Look, Udo, I shouldn’t have said anything, it’s none of my business. Even if I’m right about Bronski I don’t want to get involved. I should have left it alone. I don’t want any trouble, not for me, or you, or him, not for anybody. Whatever he was doesn’t concern me. If, now, he’s a nice married guy who writes books, let him get on with it.’

  ‘Somebody doesn’t agree with you. Somebody blew up his car.’

  ‘You think somebody tried to kill him?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so. How else does a car blow up?’

  ‘What about some sort of accident. A gas leak, something like that?’

  ‘That doesn’t work, Udo. If it was something in the garage and starting the car set it off, how come he and his wife were watching when it happened?’ Jimmy might not want to get involved, Jimmy might want to be a priest, but Jimmy’s mind was still a copper’s mind and the questions kept coming whether he wanted them or not. ‘Why wasn’t he in the car? Why plant a bomb and then give your target time to get clear?’

  ‘Good question, Jimmy, but there’s another one. If it was a bomb, how did he know to get clear? It doesn’t seem to make much sense whichever way you look at it.’

  And Jimmy suddenly understood why his mind wouldn’t leave it alone. Because it made no sense. It made no sense if Bronski was a nice bloke, happily married, who wrote books. It might begin to make sense if Bronski was not only wrong, but very wrong.

  ‘I don’t know what this is all about but I was in London during IRA bombing campaigns and I know enough to know that if someone puts a bomb in a car they don’t delay it so the target can get out and get clear. It goes bang and you’re dead.’

  ‘Which means what?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I bet Bronski does.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I can’t, I don’t even want to be. But I don’t like the way he looked at me and the way he asked his innocent questions. I’ve interrogated plenty of people and I’ve been interrogated, by experts. He was sniffing for something. God knows what, but he was sniffing.’

  ‘“Sniffing”?’

  ‘If he is a wrong ’un, he’ll be an extra-careful man just at the moment, he’ll be looking out for something.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘How should I know? But he’ll be looking. When he looked at me you could see the wheels turning, what’s an Englishman doing on a placement in Denmark? Maybe he had me pigeonholed as someone using this placement as cover to look into him. He said it was a funny place for an Englishman to do a parish placement.’

  ‘He’s right, it is very unusual.’ Udo paused. ‘I have never asked because I don’t want to intrude but as you’ve brought it up. Why Denmark? Why Copenhagen?’

  Jimmy didn’t answer.

  ‘May I make a guess?’

  Jimmy n
odded. Why not?

  ‘Denmark is not a Catholic country. Our community here is mostly foreigners. If you wanted to be somewhere ... how shall I put it ... somewhere out of the way, unnoticed, this placement would suit you very well.’ Jimmy remained silent. ‘Is anybody looking for you, Jimmy?’

  ‘You could say something like that.’

  ‘I think I did just say something like that.’

  ‘Yes, they’re looking.’

  ‘And it is to do with the job you did for Professor McBride, your research job?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if you were found would you be arrested?’

  ‘Oh no. Whatever else might happen, I wouldn’t be arrested.’

  ‘I see, except of course I don’t. But it’s none of my business, so I think I’ll leave it there. As far as I am concerned you are here exploring whether you have a vocation, that is enough.’

  ‘I can see why Bronski gave me the once-over. Apart from being English I’m not exactly your usual vocational candidate, am I? I don’t look like a bright young graduate who got hooked by the university chaplain.’

  ‘I don’t know, are mature students so uncommon? So, what do you think? He’s a gangster of some sort whose past may have caught up with him and he suspects you’re part of that past, come looking for him?’

  ‘He’s something and he took a serious interest in me and, like I said, it wasn’t because he thought we might be friends. Maybe he thinks I’m police. I was, remember, and maybe it still shows if you know what to look for.’

  Udo didn’t like it. If Jimmy was right about any of this it could get very messy.

  ‘Do you think he might do anything? About you, I mean?’

  ‘If he does, his first move would be to try and check me out. If he’s got contacts in London he could get questions asked. But that won’t matter.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘My story will stand up. I was a copper, my wife died and I took early retirement. It’s all in my record. I’m an ex-copper. End of story. But if he’s here lying low, I doubt he’d want to break cover, so I don’t think he’ll contact anyone.’

  ‘And Rome?’