The Good Priest Read online

  Inside, the space was partitioned, and in the part of it which functioned as an office, Douglas Templeton was enjoying his elevenses of a jam doughnut and milky coffee. His feet rested on a small, rusty filing cabinet and he was absorbed in his newspaper, reading about the runners in the two o’clock at Hamilton. It had been a quiet morning. Since ten o’clock, the office phones appeared to have gone dead and some kind of maintenance on the line had now cut off the internet connection too. When the priest came through the door, absent-mindedly forgetting to knock, Templeton rose instantly, surprised and thinking for a moment that it was his boss. He was the only other person who came into the office without knocking, most others obeying the sign on the door. Doughnut in hand, he scrutinised his visitor, spotting his dog-collar and realising that he was a clergyman of some sort. He wondered anxiously if he was about to be given some bad news.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked warily.

  ‘Are you Dougie – Douglas Templeton?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’m Father Vincent, from St John’s in Kinross and I know your wife.’ The priest hesitated, still working out in his head the best way to introduce the topic in which he was interested.

  ‘Charmaine – is she all right, has something happened to her?’

  ‘No, no,’ the priest said hastily. ‘I’m sorry, I mean your ex-wife, Elizabeth.’

  ‘Oh, OK, her. What about her? Would you like a seat?’ Templeton returned to his own revolving chair, spinning on its base and gesturing to his visitor to sit down. He put the remains of his doughnut back into its paper bag and licked each of his fingers in turn.

  ‘Thanks. I’d like to talk to you about something a little odd, some furniture polish that you gave her. It was pink. I know it might sound a bit peculiar, very peculiar in fact, but you’d be doing me a great favour if you could tell me a bit about it.’

  ‘Polish? That’s what we manufacture, that’s our business. What do you want to know?’ the man asked, relieved it was nothing more serious and happy to talk about anything else. The rain outside suddenly began to fall more heavily, pounding the roof and almost drowning out the end of his question.

  ‘Anything you can tell me, really. Where it’s sold, what it’s supposed to be used on.’

  ‘The pink stuff … was it in a screw-top jam jar?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘No problem. We only made a tiny batch. It was experimental, you see. It worked as a polish all right, buffed up everything nicely – beeswax is always good for a shine – but nobody liked the smell. It was a bit sickly, that’s what the feedback was. And it’s too expensive, too expensive for the domestic market at any rate. Why do you want to know about it?’

  ‘So who got it – to try out or whatever?’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. Nobody. Nobody got it.’

  ‘Well,’ the priest said tentatively, conscious that he was trespassing on the man’s time and goodwill, ‘you got it, and Elizabeth got it. I don’t mean bought it. So, apart from you, what other employees …’

  ‘Oh, OK. Sorry. I got some and Colin got some, that’s it,’ he said. Then, catching the eye of an employee who had popped his head around the open door, he added, ‘Now, if you don’t mind, we’re a bit busy this morning.’

  ‘Another leak – it’s dripping through the main seam again, boss,’ the man said, shaking his head in disgust.

  ‘Colin? Colin who? Where does he live? Is he at work today?’ the priest asked, rising from his seat, nodding at the newcomer, eager to get across that he understood the crisis and did not intend to waste any more of Templeton’s precious time.

  ‘Data protection, I’m afraid – I can’t tell you these things.’

  ‘I just need to know where he lives.’

  ‘Hang on a sec. Father Vincent you said, eh?’ the man asked, swinging round in his chair, smiling. He smiled, said ‘Bucket!’ to his colleague and waved him away dismissively.

  ‘Yes,’ the priest answered, still standing in front of the desk.

  ‘Oh, you’re the one who visited my boy, eh? In the jail … in Perth Prison. I know who you are now. Thanks for that. He appreciated it. I appreciate it. Colin Gifford, that’s your man, but he’s not in today or tomorrow. He stays at Caple Cottage in Crook of Devon, but to be honest it’s little more than a bed and breakfast for him. He’s never there. On his days off you’ll likely find him at the Green, drinking or curling or, more likely, drinking and curling.’

  ‘I think I’ve met him – played against him.’

  Driving back home on the northern side of the loch the priest found himself in a queue of cars which had formed behind a tractor. Blue-grey smoke was belching from its exhaust as it chugged along, straining to pull its load of round bales. On impulse, he drew in to the car park at Burleigh Sands, intending to sit in his car among the Scots pines to think, have a smoke too, while waiting for the line of traffic to get out of the way.

  Crossing his arms over the steering wheel, he rested his forehead against them. So, now he had met Elizabeth’s former husband. And he was an unexceptional man, and, thank God, not the murderer. From his accent, he must have been brought up in Kinross-shire, or Fife at the furthest, and he had a high, light voice, quite unlike the deep, sonorous tones that had resonated in the confessional box. What, he wondered, had been the draw for her? His boyish looks, possibly, but what else? There must have been more than that. Maybe they had been at school together, first loves, familiar and safe with each other. But how could a woman as … as original, as unique, as beautiful as Elizabeth have fallen for him? He raised his head from the wheel, looked at his watch and lit a cigarette. It was twelve-thirty already. He was busy, had a funeral to prepare for and the accounts to do as well. It was all pointless, anyway, none of his business, and, plainly, she now had a new man in her life. Hal, the slimy Lothario. Whoever the hell he was.

  The grave had been dug at the eastern end of the old parish churchyard at the Kirkgate, within a few yards of the Bruce Mausoleum. On three sides the land fell away, merging, finally, into the tussocky marshland that bordered the loch. As he intoned, ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ his words were lost; the rustling sound made by the wings of a dozen swans as they came in to land on the loch drowning him out and, momentarily, distracting the mourners from their thoughts. There could not be, he thought to himself, a finer place in all the wide world to be buried, to rest while waiting for the last trump.

  A cordon of hills ringed the graveyard. Beyond the shimmering body of water, with its pale reed-fringed shores, lay, far to the east, the Lomonds. To the south, the soft contours of the sleeping giant merged into the low mounds of the Cleish hills. Even from the north and the west, it was sheltered, the undulating slopes of the Ochils forming the third side of the triangle which protected it. Coming to from his reverie, he moved away from the graveside to leave room for the cords men to lower the coffin into the dark earth. As, working wordlessly together, they manoeuvred it in, veins bulging on a couple of the older men’s red foreheads, a new sound broke the silence. A clinker-built dinghy, its outboard motor phutphutting its way doggedly onwards, was heading towards Castle Island, leaving a white trail behind it. The coffin now lowered, the priest threw a handful of sandy earth onto it, trying to make sure that he was downwind of everyone. As the soil clattered onto the wood, a loud sobbing to his right started up. Instinctively, he put his arm around the dead woman’s daughter, Helen Compton, causing her to sob louder yet.

  ‘You’ll be coming to the wake, won’t you Father? Father Roderick said he would,’ she whispered, dabbing her eyes with a hankie and trying to regain her usual self-control. ‘We’re having it at home, just as Mum would have wanted. She wasn’t one for hotels.’

  By the time he had changed out of his robes, the rest of the mourners had arrived at Swansacre and wasted no time in finding the drink. Most of them had glasses of wine clasped in their cold fingers. A few men had, somehow, found the whisky, and determined to wa
rm themselves up, uncorked it and helped themselves, hoping it would be taken for a dark white wine. Tiny triangular sandwiches were doing the rounds and Jean’s old Dachshund, Tizer, wandered between the guests’ legs as if searching for his late mistress. A couple of young children, dragooned into assisting as waiters, bumped into people, giggled, and spilled their bowls of crisps. Giggling yet more, the pair crawled on the floor to retrieve them, competing with the dog to get to them first. The crisps they gathered up went back into their bowls, fluff and all, until their mother, scarlet-cheeked and unamused, snatched the bowls from them, reminding them in a hissed whisper that this was a wake, not a party.

  Helen Compton, catching sight of the priest as he came in, rushed over to him with a glass that she had filled in advance with him in mind. Handing it over, she murmured her thanks and, then, seeing how chilled he looked, tried to create a path for him towards the open fire.

  As he went towards the warmth, he felt a couple of hands pat him on the shoulder, enough to reassure him and let him know that his return was welcome and that the life of the parish might continue as it had done before. Standing with his legs apart, allowing the crackling flames to warm his back, he viewed the people in the room. A teenager, one of the Morrisons, was slumped against the wall with a bored expression on her perfect features. As she stood there her little sister was using one of her legs as a climbing frame to raise herself from the floor. Once upright, the toddler began to wail loudly until the girl swung her upwards, plumping her onto her shoulders. From this lofty perch, the child watched everything going on, now calm, letting out an occasional sniffle and licking her Ribena-stained lips. It was, the priest realised, one of the things that he had missed most in the Retreat; the bustle of lives, young, untidy and colourful lives. The noisy, fruitful chaos of it all. In the nuns’ orderly household there had been quiet, calm, peace even, leaving aside the occasional short-lived spat between the sisters, but a tomb would offer much the same. He wanted the sights and sounds, the smells, the clashing colours, the messiness, in a word, of family living. Such a life demanded energy from all, but it gave far more than it took, and already he felt revived, more alive than he had for a long while.

  ‘Father Vincent!’

  He turned to see Donald Keegan standing, smiling, beside him. As before, the man looked too hot, but this time he was encased in an over-tight charcoal-grey suit, its black buttons straining to contain his rounded belly; a striped tie, loosely knotted, protruding below the hem of his jacket.

  ‘Donald!’

  ‘I thought I might see you here. Allan, or somebody or other, told me that they’d allowed you back.’

  For a second the priest bristled at the policeman’s choice of words. But, reflecting that he was being too prickly, he raised his glass as if in a toast and said, ‘They have. I’m home at last. Didn’t you get my messages?’

  ‘No, I’m just back from a couple of days’ leave. Don’t look so surprised. I’m off-duty. What did you need to tell me?’

  ‘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 b
e 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.’