John Sley shook his head. ‘You couldn’t have done anything. If he’d decided –’ He stopped the thought there and the silence was profound, marked by the cooing of a wood pigeon.
‘He’d tried to kill himself before, hadn’t he?’ asked Dryden, happier now the subject had been broached. ‘The windows of the flat were thrown open when they found him. Did you, any of you, ever think he’d try to take his own life?’
Marcie Sley’s hand went to her throat. One man, thin, with a small, silent dog held by a rope lead, lit a roll-up cigarette.
‘Like you said, he’d tried before,’ said Marcie. ‘But when I saw him I thought he was well – almost happy. He hadn’t been drinking – I know that.’
Dryden thought about the electricity meter stuffed with cash, and the malt whisky.
‘There was a friend in particular, wasn’t there – Joe, was it?’
Several heads nodded. ‘I’d really like to talk to him – you know, some more background, Perhaps he visited him?’
‘Joe likes his privacy,’ said John Sley. ‘We could pass a message.’
Dryden jotted his mobile number down on his card. ‘He can ring any time. What did you say his surname was?’
‘We didn’t,’ said Sley, seeing them to the door, where he called the dog to heel.
‘Thanks for the beers,’ said Dryden as they edged out. ‘Security’s good round here. Kids nick the veg, do they?’
‘If they do, they don’t do it twice,’ he said, shutting the door in Dryden’s face. Beyond the frosted glass he saw Sley’s back retreat towards the convivial glow of the fire; but for them the Gardeners’ Arms was closed.
6
Charlie, The Crow’s lightly soused news editor, rang Dryden before they’d got off the Jubilee Estate.
‘That you?’ Dryden noted the edge of panic and the subtle background noise that could only be the bar of the Fenman. He heard glasses kiss in a toast and the sickly notes of the Christmas number one.
It sounded warm and friendly – but he wasn’t going there.
‘Henry’s read the piece on the child-abuse claims – it’s all fine,’ said Charlie, taking a slurp. ‘But the lawyers sent him an e-mail. They wanted to know – you did put this stuff to the priest, yeah? You said no comment in the copy – but was that no comment after he’d heard what we were going to say or no comment because you couldn’t get to him?’
‘The latter,’ said Dryden, as Garry danced on his toes, eager to join the ritual Fenman session.
‘Shit,’ said Charlie, aware that he should have asked the question sooner.
‘But we didn’t name him,’ said Dryden.
‘The lawyers say that might not be good enough. Anyone who knew the set-up at St Vincent’s knows who we are talking about. Henry says can you get round there and have another go – if you can’t get through, drop in a note with the details on it and tell him to get back asap if he wants to make a comment. That way we’re covered. Well, we’re better off than if we don’t do it, anyway. OK?’
Dryden felt the beginnings of a headache, and the cold was penetrating between his shoulder blades, inserting a sharp pain like a knife wound.
‘It’s pointless,’ he said, clicking the phone off. ‘Arse coverer.’
Dryden rang Humph and set Garry free, the junior reporter heading off towards town. The cabbie picked Dryden up at the bottom of the steps that led to Declan McIlroy’s flat. The Capri’s interior was now heated to Humph’s preferred temperature: 82°F. There was a smell of warm plastic, bacon and dog. Boudicca lay on the back seat, the greyhound’s great head the only part of her body on the tartan rug.
‘She was sleeping,’ said Humph, reproaching Dryden for the call.
‘Sorry. It may have escaped your notice, but I have to work for a living. Lane End. Chop-chop.’ Dryden ran a hand through his thick black hair, letting the fingers stick like a comb. This was the kind of useless errand he’d become a journalist to avoid. If the priest objected to anything in the story it was entirely academic as the paper had already gone. The presses were turning, there was no going back.
He looked at his face in the rear-view mirror: the green eyes dimmed, the immobile medieval face set on precisely geometric lines beneath the shock of black hair: he ran a hand through it again and tried to relax.
Humph edged the cab through the Jubilee and out down a long drove which turned regularly at right-angles to zigzag out of town into the Fen. They passed a derelict pumping station and a clay pit before reaching a hamlet of discarded council houses, now owned by a local housing association. Entertainment consisted of a telephone box and a bus stop, both of which had been vandalized. Just beyond stood St Vincent’s, another stunning example of the modern Catholic Church’s inability to build an inspiring place for worship. It looked like the living quarters from Noah’s Ark, a brick shed, the only decoration a life-size copper figure of Christ on the cross over the door which now bled green blood down the façade and over the doors.
Next door was the presbytery: a Victorian house, not unlike a seaside B&B, with bay windows and some stone decoration at the pinnacle where another simple cross was hung. The garden was over-neat and stone flagged and if it had been a B&B it would have had a sign in the window saying ‘No Vacancies’. A young priest, a gold and purple football scarf covering his dog collar, was hurrying towards the church. ‘Excuse me, Father,’ said Dryden, stepping out of the Capri. He felt an overwhelming memory of guilt, the legacy of that Catholic childhood.
‘Father,’ he said again, catching the young man up. He was in his mid-twenties, his face blank and devoid of charity, but a wave of well-cut blond hair hinted at vanity.
‘I’m looking for Father Martin. Is he in?’
‘He is here for those that need him,’ said the young man, and Dryden imagined a thunderbolt delivering instant retribution for the odious piety.
‘At home?’ he asked, nodding towards the presbytery.
The young priest’s eyes flickered towards the church.
‘I’ll be brief,’ said Dryden, walking on.
The young man dogged his steps: ‘He’s praying… I really think…’
But Dryden was through the padded door and into the body of the church. A single candle burnt in the gloom by a side altar and the crucifix which hung over the main altar was brutally bare: an oak cross without decoration. A Christmas tree stood in a side chapel, unlit. A crib of cardboard stood in the nave, but most of the two-dimensional figures had fallen over. Father Martin was sitting alone on one of the plastic chairs close to the confessional boxes. Glancing in the stone dish which held the holy water, Dryden noted that it was frozen.
He let his shoes slap against the polished parquet flooring and Father Martin stiffened as he took the seat behind: the priest’s hair was cut cruelly short at the back, the exposed neck red and sore.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dryden, trying to take his eyes off the flickering red light beside the altar.
Father Martin didn’t acknowledge him.
‘I’m from The Crow. There have been further allegations about St Vincent’s during your time as principal. I did call yesterday – at the house – but there was no answer. I should put these allegations to you in case you wish to make a statement.’
The priest turned. Dryden tried not to react to the birthmark, a livid red scar which covered one cheek and encircled the left eye. In compensation for this disfigurement the rest of Father Martin’s appearance was immaculate: the still-black hair combed flat, any grey obscured by Brylcreem, the dark cassock dust free. He smelt of coal-tar soap, and Dryden saw that his fingernails, where his hand rested on the chair-back, were white and trimmed, the skin underneath a baby-pink.