Evil Intent (14 page)

‘You mean he was
born
like that?’ Dennis demanded incredulously. ‘Born perverted?’

‘Perverted is a harsh word,’ Callie said. ‘These days, most people don’t think in those terms. We’re more enlightened than we used to be. Being gay isn’t any better or any worse than being straight. It’s just…different.’

Dennis’s mouth worked wordlessly, and he narrowed his eyes at her with such suspicion that Callie was sure she knew what he was thinking: he was wondering, no doubt, whether she was one of
them
as well.

‘No,’ she said to his unasked question. ‘I’m not gay. But I have a
brother
who is, so I do know what I’m talking about.’

‘Aren’t you…ashamed of him?’ whispered Elsie. ‘Ashamed to admit that he’s…like that?’

‘Not at all. He’s my brother, and he’s the way God made him. That can’t be wrong.’

‘But it
is
wrong!’ Dennis sat upright, his hand gripping Elsie’s. ‘It’s a sin!’

‘Father Jonah said so,’ Elsie added. ‘When Father Brian was on holiday, he came to preach at All Saints.’

‘And he said as it was a sin,’ Dennis continued firmly. ‘A horrible,
horrible
sin. A perversion of nature, and a sin against God.’

Father Jonah, Callie registered in a part of her brain. Did the Harringtons know that Father Jonah was dead? ‘Not everyone in the Church feels that way,’ she said.

‘But it says it in the Bible!’ Dennis stated. ‘Father Jonah told us so. See if you can explain that, missy!’

Callie sighed to herself. Where to begin? ‘Jesus never said anything about it – not that we know about, anyway. He didn’t say a great deal about sex at all, as a matter of fact.’

Dennis stirred uncomfortably at the mention of a word his generation didn’t much like to be spoken aloud in public.

‘The only story I can really think of is the one where the woman is caught in adultery,’ Callie went on. ‘And Jesus doesn’t condemn her. He says that it is not for us to judge each other.’

‘But this is worse than adultery,’ Dennis insisted. ‘It’s unnatural. And the Bible says that men who…you know … with other men should be put to death.’

‘That’s the Old Testament,’ she pointed out. ‘The Old Testament also says that men who trim their beards or cut the hair on the side of their heads should be put to death. And I don’t see that happening very often these days.’

She caught the ghost of a smile on Elsie Harrington’s face, and began to think that perhaps – just perhaps – she was beginning to reach them.

Callie and Frances managed to catch up with each other in the afternoon, and as it was a beautiful early October day, unseasonably warm, they
decided
to meet in Hyde Park, where the open spaces afforded them a privacy which would not be possible in the hospital café.

The sky was a pale blue, with a few high clouds which cast no shadows;
the leaves of the trees were touched with colour, shimmering liquid gold in the sunlight. The two women met at the north end of the park, near Lancaster Gate, where an area of Italianate columns and fountains acted as a sun-trap.

They hugged, then sat for a moment on a bench, hardly knowing where to begin. Then Frances said, ‘Let’s walk, shall we?’

‘Good idea.’

They set off along one of the wide paved walkways, taking the turning signposted towards Kensington Gardens and the Peter Pan statue. Strolling in companionable silence, they found it difficult to broach the subject that was so much on their minds.

Callie opened with a relatively neutral topic. ‘Have you had a busy morning, then?’

‘Yes.’ Frances shook her head ruefully. ‘I had to deal with the family of a man who died yesterday. They really needed to talk to someone about it all. You know – those little, simple questions like “Where do people go when they die?” and “What is the meaning of life?”. How about you? You’ve been busy?’

‘I had a meeting with Brian this morning.’ Callie hesitated. ‘And at lunchtime I had to go and talk to some parishioners who have just found out that their son is gay.’

‘They didn’t take it well, I presume?’

Callie grimaced. ‘Not at all. They’re quite elderly. It was a great shock to them – they didn’t have a clue.’

‘Why didn’t Brian talk to them, then?’

‘He was out when they rang, and they were desperate.’

‘Well,’ said Frances, ‘you probably had more constructive things to say to them than Brian would have done.’

‘I’m not sure,’ Callie confessed, clenching her hands into fists in her pockets. ‘They seemed convinced that being gay is about the biggest sin in the book – the Bible, that is. Father Jonah had told them that it was a
perversion
of nature, and that AIDS is God’s judgement on wicked sodomites. Can you believe it?’

‘Father Jonah?’ Frances echoed, startled, and Callie realised that she had
brought up the subject without meaning to.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m not even sure they knew about…well, about what happened to him. To Jonah.’

‘Have the police been to see you?’ Frances asked abruptly.

‘Yes. Late yesterday afternoon. I tried to ring you, after.’

‘I took the phone off the hook,’ Frances admitted. ‘I was afraid…well, I was just afraid. They tracked me down at the hospital after lunch,’ she added. ‘Two policemen. DI Stewart, the older one was called. He gave me his card. And a younger blond one.’

‘Those are the same ones who came to see me. They knew all about the…the altercation on Tuesday night. They knew I was involved.’

‘Leo told them, I believe.’

Callie made a face. ‘I thought Leo was your friend.’

‘Do you think they wouldn’t have found out?’ Frances gave a sharp,
bitter
laugh. ‘Vincent Underwood would have fallen over himself to tell them. At least Leo was able to put in a good word.’

‘Why would he need to?’ Callie glanced at her friend. ‘I answered their questions. I told them the truth about what happened. I’m sure you did, as well. What do we have to be afraid of?’

Frances stopped walking; Callie took another step, then halted and turned to face her. ‘Did they tell you how he died?’ Frances asked quietly.

‘He was murdered. Strangled, apparently.’

‘With my stole,’ Frances stated.

‘Your stole? But…oh, my God.’

‘I left it in the vestry after the service. I was going to collect it later.’

Callie had to remember to breathe. The mental image was so vivid, so horrible, so obscene. ‘But they can’t …’ She couldn’t finish her sentence.

‘They can,’ Frances whispered. ‘Oh, Callie. I’m sure they think I killed him. They didn’t come out and say it, but I know that’s what they think.’

On Thursday afternoon, Neville and his sergeant met up for a quick meal of egg and chips at the station’s canteen to compare notes. Neville had spent the morning attending the brief, formal inquest – at which an open verdict had been recorded – then holding a press conference. Cowley had
been dispatched to St Mary the Virgin’s clergy house to oversee a search of the premises.

‘Guv, the man was more than a loner – he was a freak,’ he stated as they sat down with their trays. ‘A religious nutter. He didn’t have a life.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘No telly. No personal letters. Just a load of boring old theology books – shelves and shelves of them.’

Neville looked at him sceptically. ‘He can’t have spent his whole life reading theology books.’

‘Well,’ Cowley admitted, ‘there were some magazines, as well. On his bedside table. A stack of them. “New Directions”, they were called.’

Neville choked on a chip. ‘“Nude Erections”? Porn? Good God, man.’

Cowley grinned, enjoying his boss’s confusion. ‘Not quite, Guv.’ He spelled it out for him. ‘N-E-W, D-I-R-E-C-T-I-O-N-S. Religious stuff – they all had pictures of crucifixes and statues on the cover. Nothing saucy, believe me. Not a tit or a bare bum in sight.’

Both hungry, they applied themselves to their food in silence for a moment.

‘Diary?’ Neville asked between bites, shoving a bit of egg onto a chip with his knife.

‘It was on his desk, Guv. I checked it.’

‘And?’

‘Just church services and meetings, apparently. It was all in code,’ Cowley mumbled through a mouthful of chips, then swallowed. ‘I rang his vicar, that Underwood bloke, to ask him about it. Turns out that MP is Morning Prayer, EP is Evening Prayer, and M is Mass. Oh, and FIF is Forward in Faith. Underwood explained that it’s a society against women priests. He went to their meetings regularly.’

‘No unexplained dates or assignations?’

‘Zip.’ Cowley tapped the side of his nose. ‘Not that he put in his diary, anyway.’

‘Computer?’ asked Neville hopefully.

‘No computer. All his sermons were on file, all in long-hand.’

Neville sighed with regret. ‘So no Internet porn, then.’

‘Like I said, he lived in the stone age. No mod cons. If he used a
computer
at all, he used someone else’s. Maybe at the library or something.’

‘That won’t help us.’

Sid Cowley gulped down half a cup of strong, hot tea, shoved his tray aside and lit a cigarette. ‘What now, Guv?’ he asked.

‘I just can’t believe that the man didn’t have any secrets,’ Neville mused, almost to himself. ‘It’s not natural. There must be something we’ve missed.’

The sergeant bristled, as if he had been criticised. ‘Believe me, we turned that place over. There’s nothing else to find there.’

Neville drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Got any plans for tonight, sunshine?’

‘What did you have in mind?’ Cowley looked at him suspiciously.

‘Clubs. Pubs. Soho, the West End. Take that photo we got from Underwood. I’ve given it to the press, but take a copy with you. Ask around. See what you can find.’

‘What are you going to do, then, Guv?’

‘I’m going back to see Frances Cherry. I have a few more questions for her.’

Callie bought a copy of the evening paper as she made her way home,
shaken,
from her meeting with Frances.

She put the kettle on and brewed a pot of tea, feeling she would
probably
need more than one cup to settle her down. Half afraid of what she would find, she leafed through the newspaper to see if it was any more informative than the morning paper had been.

The evening paper had indeed caught up with the story, having decided that it was a rather juicy one: not just a run-of-the-mill murder, but one involving the Church, with the potential for some rather choice scandal. The upper half of page five was devoted to the story.

Their reporters had evidently scratched around for someone with unsavoury knowledge about the dead priest, but their story revealed that they’d come up empty-handed. ‘Father Jonah Adimola was a model priest, admired and beloved by all who knew him,’ the article began, beneath a
large and rather dramatic photo of him in a chasuble. ‘His outspoken beliefs and adamant public opposition to women priests had made him a few enemies on the larger stage, yet his private life was seemingly above reproach.’

Callie scanned the article quickly, looking for Frances’ name, or her own. She discovered that the writer was more subtle than that.

‘Our reporters spoke to members of Father Jonah’s congregation at St Mary the Virgin, Marble Arch, all of whom are stunned by their curate’s murder. Everyone told the same story: he lived alone in the clergy house. He did his job, and did it well. As far as anyone knew, he had no secrets, and nothing to hide.

‘Father Jonah Adimola, aged 31, came to London from Nigeria as a mature university student. He read theology, then went on to train for ordination in the Church of England. He was unmarried, and seems to have had no ties to the large Nigerian community in London, instead spending all of his time in his parish.

‘Yet someone murdered Father Jonah Adimola on Tuesday night, in the vestry of St John’s Church, Lancaster Gate, where he had been for an evening meeting. Police confirm that the post-mortem results indicate he was strangled, and that the murder took place at some time between eight p.m. and midnight. They confess themselves baffled at this seemingly motiveless crime.

‘Father Vincent Underwood, the vicar under whom Father Jonah worked, declined to be interviewed, declaring himself too grief-stricken to talk to the press.’

Callie’s tea grew cold, forgotten as she read the article over and over again. What, exactly, were they trying to imply?

‘Seemingly above reproach.’ ‘As far as anyone knew, he had nothing to hide.’ Did that mean the writer, or the police, suspected that he
did
have something to hide? Were people, in fact, protesting too much?

Father Jonah’s death was not an accident, and that left two choices. Either, Callie thought, it was a random crime, with Father Jonah an
unfortunate
victim who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or he had been targeted. If he had been targeted, then there must have been a motive. No
matter what people said about his blameless life, there must have been something in it which had made someone want to kill him.

Yes, he had hated women priests; she had experienced that for herself, but as difficult and upsetting as she had found his antagonism towards her, there had been nothing personal in it. He hated what she stood for,
without
making any effort to know
her
as a person.

He had also hated what was, for him, the sin of homosexuality. There had been a glimpse of that as well that night, when he’d jumped to
conclusions
about her and Frances, and it had been more than confirmed by what the Harringtons had said.

Was that hatred, too, an impersonal one? Or was there something in it which touched him more closely than he would ever have admitted?

As Callie had discovered, especially at theological college, often the men who spoke most loudly against homosexuality were the ones who feared it most, either because of their own experiences or their
unacknowledged
desires. Was Jonah Adimola one of those men?

Did he, in fact, have something to hide?