Evil Intent (19 page)

They were just going for a pizza, she told herself as she surveyed her wardrobe after a lingering bath. Nothing heavy. Nothing formal. She should probably dress quite casually. Certainly not clericals.

Jeans, then, but not the ratty pair she’d worn on her day off when she’d so unfortuitously run into Adam and Pippa.

And with the jeans, perhaps a nice jumper. She pulled out one in which she always felt good – deep cherry red cashmere, with a flattering neckline.
Peter, whose taste in clothes was impeccable, had bought it for her last Christmas.

She put it on, and surveyed herself in the mirror. Not bad. And besides, it was just a casual date, she reminded herself. A pizza. Nothing more.

Round her neck she fastened a chain with a delicate hand-fashioned
silver
cross, an ordination gift from Frances. She brushed her hair and put on a little make-up.

No matter what she told herself about this evening, Callie felt like she was sixteen again, getting ready for her first formal date. She caught herself smiling into the mirror, her cheeks flushed becomingly and her eyes bright.

‘Snap out of it,’ she said aloud, scowling at her image. ‘It’s just a pizza.’

They’d made arrangements to meet at the corner of Farringdon Street and Clerkenwell Road. Callie saw, as she approached, that he had got there first; he was looking off in the other direction, watching a boisterous group of youths who surged along the pavement.

He was better looking than she had remembered, Callie realised: when they’d met, she’d viewed him through the filter of her Adam-misery rather than assessing him on his own merits. His black, curly hair was
attractively
mussed, and he had a beautifully shaped mouth.

He saw her, and his mouth curved in a spontaneous smile which lit his face and reached his brown eyes.

Callie’s stomach flip-flopped. Unlikely as it seemed to her, this
gorgeous
man was unmistakably glad to see her. 

Mark led Callie through the streets of Clerkenwell, seeming to know
exactly
where he was going.

‘I hope you don’t mind coming this far,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit quieter than the West End. Leicester Square has some good places to eat, but it’s no place for law-abiding people on a Saturday night.’

‘I’ve never been to this part of London before,’ she admitted.

‘Little Italy. I grew up here.’

They passed by Italian restaurant after Italian restaurant; as the enticing smells wafted out towards them, Callie grew hungrier and hungrier, her mouth watering. Lunch seemed a long time ago.

‘This looks like a good place,’ she said longingly as they walked under a red restaurant awning. A large group of people sat round a table just inside the window, tucking into delicious-looking food: crisp-
crusted
pizzas, bowls of fat olives, glistening salads, pasta dripping with sauce. It reminded her of Venice, and she saw that it was called La Venezia.

‘No,’ said Mark, continuing to walk. ‘We’re not eating there.’

‘You know of somewhere better, then?’

He turned and grinned at her. ‘No. There’s no better restaurant in London. But we’re not eating there.’

Perhaps it was too expensive, Callie told herself, disappointed.

‘If you must know,’ he added, ‘it’s my family’s restaurant. My parents run it. And we’re not eating there tonight.’

The place he took her to instead was just round the corner. ‘They do wonderful pizzas here,’ Mark promised her as the waiter led them down a flight of narrow stairs into a sort of cellar. The walls were painted white, and the decor was like something out of a movie, classically Italian:
red-and
-white checked tablecloths and wax-encrusted chianti bottles holding candles. It was atmospheric, even romantic.

They looked at the menu and ordered food, discovering that they both loved mushrooms and pepperoni on pizza. The waiter brought fizzy water and a bottle of wine.

‘I shouldn’t,’ said Callie.

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘I have to preach tomorrow morning. My first sermon.’ But she allowed him to pour her a glass.

They talked, their conversation as effortless and natural as it had been at their first meeting as aeroplane seatmates. He asked her about her new job; she found herself telling him about her first week, and the difficulties of getting up to speed when there were so many new people she needed to get to know. She told him about the Harringtons, about her various home visits to parishioners and other activities of the week. And she talked at some length about Brian, and her hopes for establishing a good working relationship with him.

The one thing she didn’t want to talk about was the murder. Somehow it didn’t seem appropriate to introduce it into the conversation when she was having such an enjoyable evening, so she skirted round the subject, and Mark didn’t bring it up either.

He did, though, talk to her about his work as a policeman. His job, he told her, was nothing glamorous, and nothing high profile. He worked as a family liaison officer, which meant that he was on hand to deal with people who had suffered some sort of violent crime within their families. It was a difficult job in many ways, and often open-ended as far as results went, but satisfying for someone who liked working with people as he did.

The pizzas arrived, and Callie found hers as good as Mark had
promised.
They managed to polish off the whole bottle of wine by the time they’d finished the main course; Callie was feeling distinctly mellow when the tiramisu arrived, then discovered that it was not only delicious, but redolent with alcohol.

‘It seems to me that we’re both in the people business,’ Mark summed up. ‘Our jobs are pretty similar, as a matter of fact – dealing with folks who are in pain and need help. We have different employers, that’s all. I work for the Metropolitan Police, and you work for God.’

That struck Callie funny, and she laughed with alcohol induced mirth. Mark joined in, which set her off all the more; soon they were both limp
with laughter.

The waiter, smiling indulgently, presented them with tiny glasses of a pale yellow liqueur along with their coffee. ‘On the house,’ he said.

‘Oh, I really shouldn’t,’ Callie demurred, but nonetheless she downed in in one gulp. It burned all the way down, bringing tears to her eyes. She choked. ‘What
is
that?’

‘Limoncello.’ Mark took a more demure sip of his. ‘Italian fire-water.’

‘Oh, help.’ She reached for her water glass and drained it, then took a gulp of coffee, which she discovered to be scalding hot and strong enough to strip paint. Was she making a fool of herself? she wondered in the part of her brain which was still functioning. It wasn’t like her to be so carefree, so talkative, so uninhibited.

‘Seriously, Callie.’ Mark pulled his coffee towards him and gazed down into the dark murk rather than looking at her. ‘I realise we haven’t known each other for long. But I do feel that…well, there’s something I want to ask you. It’s a bit cheeky, and feel free to say no.’

Oh, Lord, she thought: was he about to make an indecent proposition?

‘Have you ever thought about having a dog?’

‘A
dog
?’ She stared at him, wondering if she’d heard aright.

‘There’s this lovely little dog,’ he rushed on. ‘She belongs to the family I’m dealing with at the moment. But they can’t keep her because of what’s happened. They were going to have her put down. I couldn’t bear that, and said I’d try to find a home for her.’

‘A
dog
?’ Callie repeated, still in shock.

‘I’d have her myself, of course. But my hours are so long and irregular. It just wouldn’t be fair. It seems like you’re different, though – you work pretty close to home most of the time, from what you’ve said, and you’re in and out of your flat all day. And you’re so close to Hyde Park, for walking.’

‘A dog?’ This time her tone was speculative.

‘She’s a lovely dog. And she’d be good company for you,’ he added.

That much was true: how nice it would be, Callie thought, to come home to find something waiting for her. As a child she’d always wanted a dog, but her mother had claimed herself to be allergic to them, thus
effectively
closing off any discussion of the matter.

A dog. ‘Why not?’ she said it recklessly, knowing that she was tipsy, that she might regret it in the morning.

Then again, she might not.

On the surface, at any rate, normality had reasserted itself in the Underwood household. Routines were resumed: Vincent was busier than ever with church services, and Marigold was once again lunching and spending evenings out with her friends. The only references to Father Jonah’s murder were indirect, as Vincent kept Marigold apprised of his campaign with the Bishop. ‘I don’t know how he can possibly expect me to carry on without help,’ he complained after each fruitless phone call. ‘I mean, how am I supposed to have High Mass without a deacon?’

But while Vincent was away at church each morning, Marigold went out to the newsagents. She avoided their usual newsagent, the one who delivered their copy of the
Telegraph
each morning. Instead she went rather farther afield, to an anonymous shop just off Oxford Street. There she would buy a copy of every daily domestic paper, then hail a taxi to take her home with her burden. Back at home, in the privacy of her bedroom, she combed through the papers and clipped out any item having to do with the murder. Already she had quite a collection.

Sunday morning’s paper yielded a rich harvest as well. The broadsheets had sober reports of the murder as part of their weekly news overviews, and the tabloids continued with their attempts to find a fresh and sensational angle.

The Globe on Sunday
once again featured a story by Lilith Noone, with the usual photo of Father Jonah blown up large under the screaming
headline
‘Did This Priest Deserve to Die?’

She had, it seemed, spoken to Richard Grant, ‘the respected Vicar of Christ Church, Westbourne Terrace’. He had expressed the opinion that Father Jonah’s murder demonstrated God’s hatred for idolatry and Romish practices.

‘Even if, as Richard Grant believes, this murder was God’s judgement on faulty theology,’ the article concluded, ‘it was carried out by human
hands. The police have yet to discover whose hands they were.’

Marigold’s own hands shook as she wielded the scissors.

It was time, thought Lilith, to view those Romish practices for herself. As far as she’d been able to tell, no member of the press had yet been
successful
in getting Vincent Underwood to speak to them; she was ready to have a go, and Sunday morning at his church seemed the best place to try.

She arrived in plenty of time, to make sure of a seat. She needn’t have worried: the church was far from full. Somehow she suspected that the same would not be true of Richard Grant’s church, a short distance away geographically but as different as it could possibly be. She’d had a peek into Christ Church after her interview with Grant, and had seen what must once have been an ornate interior, now stripped of decoration. The pews had been ripped out and replaced with folding chairs, and the main feature at the front of the church was not the altar, but a large projection screen and a platform for musicians, equipped with microphones, loudspeakers and a drum kit. Grant had told her that they filled it every Sunday with young and old, people from all walks of life. People who loved the Lord Jesus and were eager to hear His Word proclaimed.

All Saints, where she’d been in unexpected attendance at Morning Prayer, had been very different from Christ Church, of course, and she expected that Vincent Underwood’s church would be similar to that one. But nothing she had seen the day before at either church, or indeed at the church where the body had been found, could have prepared her for the sensory splendour of High Mass at St Mary the Virgin, Marble Arch.

The church interior itself was beautiful to look at, a Victorian
confection
of stone and carved wood and stained glass. Colourful statues, some bedecked with tiny gold crowns, were attended by ranks of flickering
candles.
The main altar, and the altars in the side chapels, were covered in
fabrics
rich with embroidery and held elaborate silver crucifixes and towering candlesticks.

Even before the service began, the smell of incense was strong, as if it permeated the very walls of the place, mingling with the candlewax and the flowers.

The ringing of a silvery bell heralded the start of the service, and the sparse congregation struggled to its feet. A robed choir entered singing, processing in a cloud of fragrant smoke behind a huge silver cross. The priests followed; there were three of them, two of them quite elderly,
wearing
vestments so heavy with gold that it seemed impossible that the men remained upright within them.

Lilith was vaguely able to follow the service. Mostly, though, she just drank it in: the ethereal voices of the choir, the chinking of silver chains, the chiming of silver bells and the chanting of the priests, the choking haze of incense, the intense pinpoints of light from the candles shining through the smoke. Sounds, sights, smells. For the faithful, the other senses would have been engaged as well, as they tasted the communion wafers on their tongues and felt the wine going down their throats in a warming stream, as they touched their foreheads and breastbones and shoulders in their
elaborate
crossing rituals.

This was Father Jonah Adimola’s world, Lilith told herself. Only last Sunday he would have been a part of all this, wearing those very vestments and chanting those timeless words. At that moment she experienced a
revelation:
it would be impossible to find out what had happened to him
without
comprehending that fact.

The police were looking in the wrong place. They should be here.

After the service she took her time. First she ascertained from a member of the congregation which of the priests was Father Vincent Underwood. As she’d suspected, he was the youngest of the three, though even at that he must have been pushing sixty, with his florid face and thatch of white hair.

Everyone seemed to be drifting towards an adjoining room, so Lilith followed. She discovered that coffee was on offer, weak and tepid and
barely
drinkable, but she bravely struggled through a cup as she hovered on the fringes of the crowd, eavesdropping on conversations. Fortunately for Lilith, it wasn’t the sort of church where the regulars made any effort to greet visitors, nor did they view them with suspicion. Visitors were a fact of life, to be taken for granted and tolerated, if not necessarily encouraged to return.

She wasn’t surprised to find that the main topic of conversation amongst the congregation was their dead curate, and speculation ran riot.

‘Who do you think killed him, then?’ said an elderly man with copious hair sprouting from his ears to a younger man in a spotted bow tie.

‘It must have been that woman. I read about her in the paper. That
hospital
chaplain. She was a flaming feminist, wasn’t she? Just the sort who couldn’t stand a man like Father Jonah.’

‘Well, no one else could have done it. I mean, you couldn’t ask for a
better
priest than Father Jonah,’ opined Ear Hair.

‘I’m surprised the police haven’t arrested her. D’you think they will? Or will she get away with it because she’s a woman?’ speculated Bow Tie.

‘A woman, and a priest.’ Ear Hair shook his head. ‘Or at least she
thinks
she’s a priest, even if some of us know better.’

Bow Tie sighed. ‘When’s the funeral to be? Have you heard anything about that?’

‘I asked Father Vincent,’ Ear Hair stated. ‘He says it won’t be just yet, as the police haven’t released the body. But when in happens, we won’t have seen anything like it. A Requiem Mass with all the bells and whistles.’