A Journal of Sin

by Darryl Donaghue

  ‘I’m worried about her. She’s very thin, a little sickly looking and hardly says a word.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. She’s in good hands. Tom can afford any medical service she needs and if she wasn’t happy, she’d tell someone.’

  ‘What if she couldn’t?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be talking nonsense, dear. I thought you appreciated your time away from work, and now you’re sitting here suggesting she’s her husband’s captive? Not everyone is like those people you meet a work. This isn’t some crime den, you know; this is Sunbury.’ Reminding her a priest had been murdered would have won Sarah’s point. It was a picturesque town with a strong community and deep-rooted traditional values. It also housed a murderer, a burglar, an obsessive drunk, a violent thug and an obnoxious, if well-loved, community leader; none of which, she imagined, were in the brochure.

  Sally was right; she did struggle to switch off. Mark once caught her eyeing up a few likely shoplifters during the weekly trip to Tesco. Policing was a twenty-four-hour commitment and the job expected officers to deal with crime wherever they encountered it, whether on duty or off.

  ‘It’s just that –’

  ‘It’s just that nothing. What goes on behind closed doors is no one else’s business. You can’t help it, of course; nosing around is part of your job, but the rest of us were brought up to keep ourselves to ourselves.’

  ‘Okay, I guess that ends that conversation.’

  ‘You should put an end to your suspicious nature. That man’s been a godsend for this town.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ They were as stubborn as each other. ‘It’s time for bed, I’ll help you upstairs.’ The bannister moved as Sally leant on it; Sarah added it to the list of required home improvements. ‘Remember to use the bell if you need anything.’ She tapped the old-fashioned school bell on Sally’s bedside table. She had received it as a retirement present on her final day at St Rosemary’s Primary after thirty-five years of loyally, and patiently, trying to educate England’s future leaders. The next generation of layabouts, she’d called them, but Sarah knew she secretly loved them. Teaching had given her a purpose and passion that retirement lacked.

  ‘I did manage to cope without you, you know.’ She smiled as she pulled the blanket to her chin. ‘That reminds me. Grace came around earlier today. She said she has something to tell you, about John. Terribly important, she said.’

  Great, she thought.

  ‘Try and get some rest tonight, dear.’

  ‘I will. I’ve got some reading to do first.’

  TEN

  Tom loves Sunbury: if it was printed on a t-shirt, they’d all be wearing one. No one else could see through his charismatic facade. His public persona was a sharp contrast to the venomous side Sarah had seen at the edge of town. He’d hooked her in too at first. Back at the church hall, he’d come across as a believable, credible individual with a strong social conscience and love for the town. It was just all a little too cosy: community leader, interest-free loans and a wealth of people willing to sing his praises.

  She rolled the numbers to the correct combination, her father’s birthday, and opened the green lockbox. She’d arranged all the books in date order and kept them downstairs in the larder. Not ideal, but it hadn’t been an ideal week. The church should be sealed off, with an officer guarding each entrance. Father Michael’s quarters should be top of the SOCO job list and be in line for a meticulous search for every strand of hair, every DNA cell and every clothing fibre. Someone else would have made all the big decisions. She’d be on the bottom rung of an investigation like this, privy only to certain bits of information and having to carry out the more menial actions; more than likely she’d be standing on the church door, preventing anyone entering. Instead, she was running the show.

  The past three days had encompassed the entire spectrum of a whole career. She’d been on the ground looking for clues, leading the public in a search of the woods, answering questions as a senior officer would in a press conference, having to think like a forensic science expert and having to come up with results fast, all while trying to take care of her mother, worrying about her welfare as the isolation of the town wore on and constantly missing her own family. She wasn’t sure she was making the right calls; she worried she’d missed something key and the answers were somehow staring her in the face. All she could do was keep going.

  She steadied the short leg of the circular table with an old, folded newspaper and sat down. Reading through all two hundred and thirteen journals was a long task and starting earlier would have made more sense, but she didn’t want her mother seeing any of it. She didn’t need the stress at her age; losing a friend was traumatic enough without knowing the sins of the town lay written two flights down from where she slept. A curse upon the house, she’d say. Background noise may help her stay awake. The wind-up radio was stiff at first, but she soon got into the rhythm. It crackled, zipped and hissed into signal. Jimmy’s Late-night Love-in was playing ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’, by the Everly Brothers. Not the best song for an all-nighter; she’d prefer to spend the night with Bobby McGee or Layla.

  The family Bible sat between Dorothea Brande’s Wake Up and Live and Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess. She opened it to the book of Galatians and read from the beginning, ‘…if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such as one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ…. Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.’

  She wasn’t religious. She’d been brought up in the faith, however slowly slid away from the church in her teens. At age fifteen, she began pretending to go to church. She’d leave the house on a Sunday morning, walk to church, pick up a newsletter as proof of her attendance and head into town to meet her friends. She dropped the facade when she went to university. Sally had asked whether she’d found a local church and Sarah always replied no, not yet. She joined the debating society, and ‘science versus religion in schools’, a popular topic in the debating arena, was the first session’s subject.

  She’d argued against the religious organisations as outmoded purveyors of social control, who used barely historically accurate texts to subjugate people in different parts of the world, and she deemed that allowing those ideas, along with their ideas of how human life developed, to prosper within the school system was to allow charlatans and scoundrels access to our children. This view didn’t exactly represent her personal opinions, but it did make one of the opposition cry, which, at the time, she saw as a victory. She had a spiritual side. She understood why people flocked to religion for answers in a sometimes frightening world, but she refused to be a part of a church that preached poverty, yet housed their leader in a city worth billions of pounds. If people wanted to explore their spiritual side they could do so directly to whatever God they believed in or, as she prefered, through their relationships with each other and the natural world.

  She recognised the next Bible passage. The stories never left, like lyrics to old songs she hadn’t heard in years. ‘…Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”’ Father Michael had written these two passages and kept them in his bedside cabinet, kept them close. A photo of her family sat by her bedside. Something to remind her why she worked so hard, why she got up in the morning. Were these Father Michael’s reminders? A daily reminder that he’d been granted the divine power to forgive, and the responsibility that came with it, no matter how severe the burden.

  Wednesday 9th to Thursday 31st March 1991. The first book looked clean; too clean to have been buried in a pot pla
nt for nearly twenty years. The first page read:

  ‘I don’t want to start this. The Code of Canon law forbids me from revealing the sins of the penitent; however, I will use this journal to record my concerns about the people of this town, should the day come when I need to break my promise to God and need to recall certain facts. These shall be kept under lock and key and I will not speak a word of them to anyone. Forgive me all who read this.’

  She turned the pages, looking for something that stood out, looking for what drove him to make such a decision that went against everything he believed in. All the entries were written with a blue fountain pen, in impeccably uniform handwriting. He’d recorded no names and written them in a way that made it hard to identify anyone at all; deliberate encryption in case someone found them, or they were discovered after his death. The first twelve books consisted of four frauds, numerous petty squabbles and an uncountable amount of wife coveting, amongst other things. It’s a good thing no one keeps any oxen around here, she thought. Reading such private information gave her an uncomfortable thrill. Nothing so far suggested a reason why he’d started this record in the first place. His first-page thoughts had a heavy tone, the tone of a man deeply afflicted by the sins of his flock. Up to this point, the townsfolk had been naughty at best.

  The news interrupted Jimmy’s Late-night Love-in; it was midnight already. She could not tune the radio in as well as Sally, so only heard every few words.

  ‘In today’s news, war continues in the Middle East with both sides refusing … car bomb exploded in Iraq killing fourteen ….Whilst at home …… troubled NHS. A spokesman said it’s … in sports, the injured ...’ The floods weren’t even mentioned. Nothing about the situation on the roads or when the communication masts would be up again. People still suffered, but the world had moved on.

  Sarah skimmed through the pages of the next journal. In 1992, someone sodomised a cow, whilst others defaulted on their taxes and 1993 was a terrible year for anyone believing in true love.

  An entry in Monday 1st August to Wednesday 31st August 1994 focused her mind back on task:

  ‘He came back again. I nearly stopped writing all of this down, thinking he wouldn’t come back. But, three years on, in he walked. His confession was like the last time. He told me the same horrific details. I can’t write the names, but I’ll never forget them. I know those boys he talks about. Knew them when they were young and I know some of them still today. How do I face them knowing what he did?’

  There were further details a few months later:

  ‘He came again today. The Unrepentant Man. Every time he talks about the same vile acts. He enjoys it. He doesn’t come seeking forgiveness; he comes seeking an audience.’

  She scanned the pages for any other mention of this Unrepentant Man. He only came once or twice a year throughout the nineties. Father Michael had diligently recorded all the confessions in between: the minor thefts, family fallouts over will readings, the occasional punch up and suchlike. These were written with the same organised, neat and clear handwriting that he’d had at the start, but when it came to the passages about the Unrepentant Man, the words became more of a blue scrawl. Even the books were in a worse condition, with tatty covers and well-turned, dog-eared pages. Over the years, he’d added personal reflections, as well as documenting the thoughts of others:

  ‘It is a heavy cross to bear. I know it’s my duty to hear him, but I am struggling with this test. As much as I suffer, I have to continue on regardless, for now at least. The more I write these journals, the more I know I’ll need them someday. I’ve counselled him to stop, to turn himself in to the police, anything, but he won’t. I can do no more; I cannot break my vows.’

  Father Michael’s situation had him questioning his vocation. He’d started these journals thinking he may one day have to break the inviolable sacramental seal, risking excommunication from the Church. For all the thousands of words written in the journals, those first few lines must have been the hardest to write. The decision to consider breaking his vows, vows he’d devoted his life to, would have torn him in two.

  It was soon one in the morning. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep all week. Her attention drifted from the page and her head nodded forward, causing her to sit up with a start.

  In 2005, another pattern started to emerge – a marked increase in confessions of infidelity. Nothing criminal, all consensual, although some mentioned paying for sex and their guilt over doing so. After a few months of this, Father Michael mentioned ‘a lady of loose morals.’ She wondered why if the men were confessing their infidelity, why the woman in question was the only deviant he referred to:

  ‘I would like to know who she is, but cannot ask her name. How many men will come to see me about their guilt of sleeping with this same woman? Or is there more than one taking money for sex? It is the whole family that suffers, family that should be held sacred.’

  She wondered why he recorded every sin, rather than focusing on the one person who concerned him most. The Unrepentant Man’s sins far outweighed those of anyone else in the journals and it was he who’d prompted the journal in the first place. She thought of her own life. If someone broke the laws she protected, she could act. Legal powers allowed her to make enquiries, arrests and to hold people to account. At the end of a bad day, when she felt the pressure of the world’s worries, she could go home and talk to Mark or go for a drink with the girls. Father Michael had had no one. The more he heard, the more the anguish and misery built. The sheer weight of carrying the sins and concerns of an entire parish had dug deep into his shoulders. The journals had been his release, his reaction to deeply concerning thoughts of apostasy and a way to placate and understand the frightening world outside the church’s door.

  Towards the end of December 2008, his tone changed. The uniform handwriting wavered to an inconsistent script, with letters no longer sitting on the lines and afterthoughts written horizontally on the edge of the page:

  ‘The guilt is too much. I know God will judge him, but should he hurt another child, how could I forgive myself knowing I could have done more. I’ve got to stop this; how can Bishop Foster say silence is my divine duty? It is distressing that someone of such influence and prestige would wield it in such a horrific way. I must break the sacramental seal and take whatever consequences come my way.’

  Influence and prestige. It was the only sentence that gave any hint as to who he was talking about. Influence, prestige and being around back in the nineties brought to mind only one person. Tom. The Sunbury of fifteen years ago may have been a very different place, and what Father Michael had considered influence and prestige may differ from her take on it. Still, she knew what her gut told her.

  The rest of the book was illegible. Pressure on the pen had caused too much ink to flow, spoiling the shape of letters and turning the words to indecipherable pools of blue. It had all become too much. He’d made his decision and Sarah was certain that if she could find this Unrepentant Man, she would find Father Michael’s killer.

  ELEVEN

  Sarah visited Suzanne the following morning. Her son’s Toy Story duvet was pulled up to his neck. He lay on the sofa sleeping soundly. His chubby cheeks lacked colour. The room lounge smelt of Lemsip and Vick’s VapoRub.

  ‘He’s not been well,’ said Suzanne. ‘Just give me two minutes and I’ll be with you.’ Suzanne touched his forehead and tided away the medicine bottles.

  ‘Take your time. What’s his name?’

  ‘William. Billy. He’s five this year. I still worry whenever he gets sick.’

  ‘I’m not sure that ever goes. I’ve got two girls, twins, and I’ll be worrying about them well into adulthood.’

  ‘Twins, that’s quite a blessing.’ Suzanne perched on the sofa’s arm and pressed a damp cloth to Billy’s head.

  ‘Sometimes.’ They smiled. Suzanne refilled Billy’s water, making sure it stayed cool, and tucked him in a little tighter.

  ‘Let’s go upstairs, I
don’t want to wake him.’

  They walked along the landing to the master bedroom. Sarah felt the plush red carpet under her bare feet. The large, four-poster bed on the other side of the room, with white, gold-tipped columns and a veil falling on each side, would have looked at home in an Arabian Nights-themed hotel. The closest Sarah had come to a themed hotel was a weekend at Alton Towers whilst she was dating Mark. She imagined Suzanne would fly to Dubai for the same effect.

  ‘Nice bedroom.’

  ‘Thanks, I designed it myself. The whole house in fact. I was far more passionate about the design than I have been about anything I’ve done since living in it.’ Design wasn’t something Sarah really considered at her house. She had a few nice travel photos – lots of the family – and the rooms were colour co-ordinated to a point. Nice, simple and homely. Suzanne’s was more of a show home; a little too clean and lacking that comfortable lived-in feel.

  ‘Sorry for coming round like this, I just have a small favour to ask really.’ Suzanne stayed quiet, so Sarah continued. ‘It’s about John.’ She raised her eyebrow and smiled from the side of her mouth. ‘What? You two fall out?’

  ‘We never really fell in. I don’t know what he’s been telling people, but we’re not, it wasn’t, well, you know.’

  ‘I think I do. He’s in a bad way.’

  ‘A bad way?’ Her concerned look suggested they hadn’t completely fallen out. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He got into a fight. With Sean.’

  ‘Jesus.’ She rolled her eyes and walked to the other side of the bed. She plumped the pillows and straightened the already neat bedspread.

  ‘He’s drinking a lot too; I was wondering if you could just check in on him from time to time? He doesn’t seem to know many people around here and he said he was … friendly, with you.’