A Thing of Blood (29 page)

Clutterbuck stood back from the prone form at the foot of the altar. I thought he was preparing to land his own kick. Until this evening I’d have thought that he’d be disdainful of committing violence himself. That sort of savagery was best left to underlings.

‘This meeting of the Order of the Shining Knights is now in session,’ he said, ‘and we have here a very special guest — a man in a dress.’

He leaned down and rolled the priest onto his back. The priest groaned and instinctively rolled onto his side and drew his knees up to his chest. Clutterbuck repeated his action, placed his foot on the priest’s chest and told him that if he moved again, he’d put a bullet through his left eye, the specificity of the threat making it somehow more potent.

‘Blindfold him,’ said Crocker from the shadows. Clutterbuck grabbed the hem of the priest’s cassock and tore from it a strip of cloth with which he bound his eyes. He then lifted another part of the cassock and using it as a rag, wiped his face clean. Now Crocker, Oakpate and MacGregor came forward and stood around the priest, who so far hadn’t uttered a sound, apart from moans and whimpers. Oakpate giggled and said, ‘Should I piss on him?’

‘I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire,’ Clutterbuck said. ‘How about you, Brian?’

‘Waste of piss.’

The hollow acoustic in the church disguised the lack of conviction in Brian’s voice.

A sudden burst of brilliant moonlight feebly illuminated the two narrow, stained-glass windows in the wall behind the altar. I looked up at the subtle change in intensity of the light. The window on the left was a representation of St Carthage — whoever he was — and the one on the right was of St Therese, of whom I’d vaguely heard. I was concentrating on the windows because the spectacle of Clutterbuck and his cronies standing over the injured body of the young priest was becoming unbearable. I wanted to flee but I couldn’t leave Brian alone in a situation like this. I also wanted the priest to say something, to protest at this outrage, but he remained dumbly terrified, unless of course one of those kicks had so wounded him that speech was impossible.

‘What’ll we do with him?’ MacGregor asked.

In response, Clutterbuck held out his hand to Oakpate who produced from his coat a flask. Clutterbuck took it and emptied its contents onto the priest’s garments.

‘Auto da fé,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the Order, Brian. If you’ll do the honours.’

He gave Brian a box of matches and no further instructions were necessary. It was clear that Brian was expected to put a match to whatever inflammable liquid had been splashed over the cassock. The priest knew now what was imminent, and he made an attempt to stand. He was pummelled back to the ground and a handkerchief was unnecessarily stuffed into his mouth.

I was paralysed with horror. There wasn’t sufficient light to see the expression on Brian’s face clearly. It’s a big leap from schoolteacher to priest burner, and he must have been in turmoil. Would carrying out this atrocity — and it was something from which he’d never recover — serve the greater good of preventing the assassination of Archbishop Mannix? If he refused he would have no further access to the Order of the Shining Knights. If he struck a match he would be their creature forever — we would all be witnesses. Was this the case with each of the others? Had each of them committed a grave crime under watchful eyes?

I had slipped into a kind of anaesthetised reverie, retreating from the reality before me. I was brought out of it by the scrape of a match along the striking board and the flare of bright fire at its tip. Brian’s face was lit for a moment with the brilliance of a klieg lamp and he was staring down at the priest fiercely, as if he was blaming the young man for putting him in this impossible position. He then dropped the match onto the wet cassock and I cried out, expecting the ‘woomph’ of exploding gasoline. There was no ‘woomph.’

The cassock became decorated with flickering tongues of blue fire, and there was the smell of burning cotton. The priest began ripping the cassock from his body and nobody stopped him. By the time he’d thrown it to the floor the flames had burnt themselves out. Clutterbuck had made a poor choice of combustible liquid. The priest now stood, blindfolded still, and with the handkerchief still in his mouth, shivering, despite his black woollen trousers and white shirt. Clutterbuck removed the gag, and maintaining his American accent, said, ‘You make a crappy martyr, buddy.’

MacGregor stepped forward and punched the priest first in the groin and then in the side of the head. He fell unconscious to the ground.

‘Time to leave,’ Clutterbuck said. ‘Our work here is done.’

Clutterbuck had gone upstairs to change. Oakpate and Crocker had gone home, citing early starts the next morning. MacGregor sat with Brian and me, his face flushed either with whisky or with the almost post-coital heat of lust satisfied.

‘Serves him right,’ he said. ‘A good punch in the balls isn’t going to matter to someone like him, is it?’

Clutterbuck returned, his face washed and his hair neatly combed. He was wearing a bathrobe over his pyjamas. Once I might have thought this elegant. Now I thought he looked like a pale, pale imitation of Noël Coward.

‘Shall I explain?’ he asked me.

‘Attempted murder doesn’t really require much in the way of explanation.’

‘You have a tendency to exaggerate, Will. No one was in any danger of dying tonight.’

I spluttered my disbelief.

‘Only because your fuel wasn’t good enough.’

Clutterbuck laughed.

‘The fuel was perfect.’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘I’m not a murderer, Will.’

‘You’re not seriously going to rationalise what happened tonight.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. The priest was roughed up a bit, that’s all. He can offer it up to the suffering souls in Purgatory, so a good time was had by all. He’ll have a few bruises and a story to tell, and by the time he’s finished telling it he’ll be the hero who wrestled some Yankee anti-Christ and won.’

‘So it was all just a bit of fun, was it? Scaring someone witless and beating him up is your idea of a good night’s entertainment.’

‘It’s a bit like high melodrama, Will. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it isn’t without a point.’

‘And the point is?’

Clutterbuck settled into a chair and swung one knee over the other.

‘The point is that Brian proved himself a worthy member of the Order tonight. We needed to know where his loyalties lay, and as he was prepared, without argument, to drop a lighted match onto what he thought was a highly inflammable priest, I think his loyalty’s been well proven. From the priest’s point of view, and maybe even from Brian’s, I suppose you could argue that it was attempted murder. Neither of them knew that the liquid was pure alcohol or that it would burn itself out without doing too much damage. More of a flambé than anything else. I was careful not to get it on the priest’s skin, although I don’t deny I was tempted. We had you there for security, Will. My fellow Knights argued that because I’d introduced you to them you might at some stage decide to talk to the wrong people about us. We thought you’d be less likely to do this if it meant implicating your brother in something which an unsympathetic policeman might construe as violence with menaces, or worse, and as you were present and did nothing, I don’t think young Father Arsehole, or whatever he’s called, will be offering you absolution if it ever came to a prosecution.’

‘You already knew I wouldn’t say anything.’

‘It’s always good to make assurance doubly sure, and now that both you and Brian are nicely woven into the fabric of our little group we can all rest peacefully.’

Brian, who’d been grinning in an effective rendition of a well-stroked and well-pleased village idiot, suddenly dropped his carefully managed persona and asked with real concern, ‘What do you mean, Will? How does Paul know that you’ll say nothing?’

Fortunately, neither MacGregor nor Clutterbuck noticed the shift in his demeanour.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just that I’d already told Paul that I wasn’t interested in what his group did, and that I certainly wasn’t interested in reporting their activities to the police.’

Clutterbuck could have chosen this moment to tell Brian about Gretel Beech, but he settled for saying, ‘Will and I have an understanding. And now I think we should discuss how and when Brian and Will are going to kill Archbishop Daniel Mannix.’

Chapter Twelve

the unexpected visitor

IT WAS MACGREGOR’S VOICE
that intruded upon the silent world into which I’d fallen. I think the shock of Clutterbuck’s casual confidence that we’d do as instructed had the physical effect of briefly cutting off my air, and I must have blacked out. MacGregor was on his feet and patting Brian’s shoulder, when a few seconds ago he’d been sitting exhibiting the odd, rodent-like twitch that jumped around his mouth and making regular infinitesimal adjustments to his hair.

‘All the honour will be yours,’ MacGregor was saying.

‘Well then, I don’t want to share it with Will.’

He managed to sound both surly and proud of the honour being accorded him. It was a remarkable performance, and one which even I would have had difficulty carrying off. The more Brian said, the more certain I was that he’d make a very fine actor indeed.

‘You can do the deed, Brian, but we’ll need Will there to support you and to help you get away safely,’ Clutterbuck said. ‘You won’t have to get your hands dirty, Will.’

‘You know, Paul, you have a very strange moral sense. Just because I don’t have to pull the trigger doesn’t mean I’m not implicated.’

‘Now you’re getting into philosophy. We’ll be here all night if we go down that path.’

In an effort to elicit more information, I decided to play along.

‘And while we’re busy assassinating the most famous cleric in Australia, where will the brave members of your Order be?’

‘Now you’re sounding snippy. We will, of course, be in church that day, praying hard for your success — the same church where Mannix will go to his eternal reward.’

‘You want Brian to kill Mannix in St Patrick’s Cathedral?’

‘Can you think of a more appropriate place?’

‘He stood up and sonorously declaimed, ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’

MacGregor laughed sycophantically.

‘It’s been an exciting night,’ said Clutterbuck. ‘I think we should all go to bed now and think about Sunday’s assassination.’

‘Sunday?’

‘No time like the present, Will. Nine o’clock mass. The main attraction. Mannix will be there, the choir will be yodelling away. It will be beautiful. He’s a very tall man and he’ll fall very picturesquely at the altar, all those expensive robes flowing around him. Very Thomas à Becket.’

‘I’m going home,’ said Brian. MacGregor said the same and they both got up to leave.

‘I’d drive you to your respective homes,’ Clutterbuck said, ‘but I don’t want to. Too tired.’

‘I’ll walk with you,’ I said to Brian. ‘I think Mother would appreciate having us both in the house tonight.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ said Clutterbuck. ‘You have much to discuss.’

As I passed him on my way out he put his hand on my forearm and said, ‘Don’t imagine you can stop this from happening, Will. If you did manage to get Brian to change his mind, I’m afraid I’d have to call on you to deal with Mannix, and the body of a young woman currently resting peacefully in the Carlton Cemetery might make an awkward reappearance if you refused.’

I didn’t disabuse Clutterbuck of his belief that he had me over a barrel by telling him that Gretel’s killer was already in custody, and his confession was inevitable. I manufactured fearful resignation and simply said that Brian was sufficiently deranged to render him unreachable, and that Clutterbuck could have every confidence in his insane willingness to murder an innocent man.

‘If you knew anything at all about the extent of Catholic espionage in this country you couldn’t possibly accept that Mannix is anything other than a criminal and a traitor. He is the worst of men; a boil that has to be lanced.’

His grip on my arm tightened as he spoke, and his face reddened. I caught a glimpse then of the man he truly was, and I knew without a doubt that no amount of money would protect Nigella from the rages he’d express in private. I must have felt an overwhelming need for a small victory over him because I suddenly told him that Anna Capshaw was dead and that John Trezise had been arrested for her murder. He relaxed his grip on my arm, and said, ‘You were saving that up, were you, for just the right moment?’