A flock of gulls flew overhead, the thick, white plumage on their breasts catching the light as they banked together before turning eastwards towards Duddingston Loch, crying like banshees as they left. And he craned his neck to see them, noticed everything about them, savoured everything he saw, like a man whose days are numbered.
Seconds later he was escorted into a dark basement area, the air foetid again, and bustled past the charge bar into a room with ‘Viper Suite’ stencilled on its only door. It was windowless and the walls and ceilings were painted a cement-grey colour with six foot of strip lighting illuminating the sober space. The same young solicitor stood inside, chatting to a bored-looking policeman, and he looked up on Francis McPhail’s entry. His shocked expression confirmed to the priest that his appearance had deteriorated since their last meeting. In less than a week he had acquired an institutional look, greasy hair crowning his ashen-hued complexion, and stained, rumpled clothes adding to the impression. And it went deeper than that; he no longer recognised himself.
Edging towards him, the lawyer attempted to explain the purpose of the procedure, referring vaguely, in a self-conscious whisper, to the fact that identification parades were on their way out and being replaced with this new video-clipping rigmarole. After his brief explanation, the young man looked at the inspector instead of his client, as if seeking an expression of approval, but got none. For a moment, the policeman met the priest’s eyes, but he did not address a word to him, turning his head disdainfully as soon as the AV Operator, Janice, beckoned her prisoner towards a revolving stool in the middle of the floor.
In the simplest language she instructed him to sit down and look straight ahead at the camera. Everything was translated into monosyllables in case she was addressing an idiot. But he heard little, distracted by her curves and the strong scent she was wearing.
‘His tee-shirt will not do, Janice,’ the Inspector said, in a tired voice.
‘Yeah,’ the solicitor agreed instantly. ‘It’s too bright. Far too red, too eye-catching. My client wants it changed.’
Harrumphing noisily to signal her displeasure, the AV Operator bent down to extract a white plastic crate from below the camera shelf and began looking through the items of clothing in it, discarding blouses and hats, and eventually selecting a plain, white tee-shirt which she lobbed, good-naturedly, at the priest.
‘Get your top off, Father, and put that one on for us, please.’
As ordered, Francis McPhail began to tug at the bottom of his tee-shirt, pulling it up his torso and exposing his plump, hairless belly to the gaze of all. As it came up over his head he blindfolded himself, finding that he preferred this eyeless state, whatever he might be exposing to the bright lights and unsympathetic company in the room. Seconds passed, but he did not emerge.
‘Get a move on!’ roared the Inspector, right next to his ear, and the priest clumsily peeled off the last of the garment. Obedient as a child, he put on the substitute that he had been given. It smelt strange, unfamiliar, imbued with a pungent odour from the innumerable bodies it had covered. Impregnated with their fear. Dressed, finally, in a stranger’s ill-fitting clothing, his midriff uncovered like that of a teenage girl, he faced the camera again, and tried to master his face.
‘Up a bit,’ the AV Operator said, and he noticed that she was looking at his image on her monitor, attempting to centre his head on a cross. The Inspector then adjusted the stool until the woman, checking and re-checking the screen, signalled her approval with a thumbs up.
‘OK, son,’ the Inspector began, himself young enough to be his prisoner’s child, ‘sit back on the seat, right, then look straight ahead, then slowly turn your head to the left, centre it again, then turn it to the right. Alright? Got that?’
The priest nodded and attempted to carry out the manoeuvre described, but was interrupted mid-way.
‘No. That’ll not do. Slowly, OK? I said slowly, son. Look straight ahead, then slowly move your head to the left, then slowly back to the centre then slowly to your right.’ As he was speaking he performed the required movements in a dumb show. Then he glanced at his watch, implying that his time was valuable and that he should have been elsewhere long ago. Mortified by his failure, Francis McPhail tried, once more, to obey the man’s commands, this time following them to the letter, and after a further thirty seconds the necessary video had been obtained and the camera switched off. Sensing that the operation was now over he walked towards the door, as if he was free to leave. He wanted to vacate the room to ensure that he caused no further delay, did not hold up their next assignment. They were busy people and his ineptitude had irritated them long enough.
‘Have you not forgotten something, Father?’ the Inspector said.
The priest looked blank. ‘Thank you?’ he said quickly, feeling like a child again, desperate to avoid any more open expressions of disapproval.
‘Your tee-shirt, eh? We need ours back.’
The floor of the cell was slippery, still wet to the touch, from being swabbed with a vinegary mop following the departure of the last occupant half an hour earlier. A metal toilet protruded from the wall, unflushed and uncleaned.
Curled up in a ball on the cement bed-shelf, the priest shivered with cold despite the prison-issue blanket he had wrapped around his body. He should try to pray, he thought, beginning to recite an ‘Our Father’, but found, to his distress, that he had reached the end before realising it, the familiar words now as meaningless to him as a reading of the football results. If his favourite childhood prayer had lost its power, then he no longer had any means of approaching his Saviour.
And yet his need was as great as it had ever been, all his hopes gone after reading yesterday’s newspapers. If the ‘Leith Killer’ was still at large, as the headlines had proclaimed, then why had he not been released? Why was he still being treated as if he was the Leith Killer? But he knew the reason only too well. It was because they continued to believe that he was the girls’ murderer, although someone, in his absence, had stolen his mantle. And his knowledge of his own blamelessness would not deliver him from this ordeal. No. That would only happen if he provided them with proof of his innocence. Otherwise he would grow old and end his days inside. The lab results, however misguided they were, would be more than enough for most juries. Never mind his lies.
He covered his face with his hands, clenching and unclenching his jaw until his molars ached, in torment, reminding himself that he could not afford to tell the truth however tempted he was. Not if the cost of saving himself was the destruction of June’s marriage and the children’s happiness. And he had not even touched her since the birth of their child, content just to look at her, be near her, although no-one would believe that after the last time.
He had cherished that little flaw of hers, her vanity, finding it appealing, endearing, recognising that without it he would never have been allowed through the door. A priest! A man sworn to chastity but unable to resist her singular charms, his vows making him a catch.
And, he castigated himself, it was not as if he was even a good priest in other ways. ‘Know thyself’ the oracle demanded, and he had not flinched from the task. But how could he be a good priest when celibacy was demanded, and he could not keep to it however hard he tried? Oh, but when he had someone to touch, to love, it was so much easier to be kind to the rest of mankind, to understand them. Because he did not love his fellow man, he simply tried, often unsuccessfully, to live as if he did so. And even if no-one else could see the difference, he could and was constantly aware of it: that between the naturally good man and his pale imitator, the difference between gold and fool’s gold. But he had, ironically, come closest to being gold, the real thing, when sinning on a daily basis, seeing a woman and being loved by her. With her by his side he could have been a good priest.