The Good Priest (23 page)

‘What do they recommend?'

‘Apparently, my kidney, spleen and lung yang isn't working properly. So then the yin accumulates and that's
why there's all that water under my skin, waterlogging it. That's my problem.'

‘I see.'

‘I'm taking something, some herby pills that Joe from the Chinese takeaway got for me over the internet. A type of water pill, he says. But I've found bathing the ankle helps too. You're supposed to use herbs, onion-skins and the like, boil them up and let them cool down and then stick your feet in it. I just go on using the same old infusion, time after time, it's easier. I've dyed my legs in the process – yellow, like a Chinaman's. That's the stuff, over there,' he said, pointing at a basin in the corner of the sitting-room.

Vincent wandered over to look at it, realising as he drew close to it why it was that the house now smelled so odd. A dead moth floated on top of the cold dark fluid.

‘You made it yourself?'

‘I did. You have to be open-minded nowadays, Vincent,' the old man said, getting to his feet. ‘Other cultures, other civilisations, other religions even. But for the aborigines, you know, we'd not have the wheel. Now, parish matters. Tomorrow, you'll need to take Jean Fleming's funeral service.'

‘She's died, has she?' Vincent said, saddened on hearing the news although he had been expecting it. The only surprise was that she had lasted so long.

‘Well, put it this way, it'll not be a pet hamster in the coffin, Vincent,' the old man chuckled, shaking his head at the stupidity of the question. ‘She's to be interred in the Kirkgate. The service is scheduled for two-thirty tomorrow. I'll be glad not to have to be the one standing at
the grave in this weather. My balance is so bad I'd be in danger of falling in.'

Kinnesswood is a small village clinging on to the very skirts of the Lomond Hills, perched precariously on the high ground, with the flat, turf-bearing fields of the plain below and the calm waters of the loch less than a mile away. The main road to Leslie snakes its narrow way between the jumble of stone cottages, crow-stepped and pantiled houses scattered along and overshadowing it. Wherever one looks the hills loom large, simplifying everything, dwarfing the cottages and making them seem like the abodes of hobbits.

Having waited patiently for the red fish van from Pittenweem to move on and unblock the street, the priest turned left opposite Drummond Place and found himself in a narrow yard which terminated in the premises of the Barr Chemical Company. This business was housed in a run-down brick building with dusty, opaque windows and an elm seedling growing out of its cracked, leaf-filled guttering. Its asbestos roof had large cracks in places, and one corner appeared to have been chipped off.

Inside, the space was partitioned, and in the part of it which functioned as an office, Douglas Templeton was enjoying his elevenses of a jam doughnut and milky coffee. His feet rested on a small, rusty filing cabinet and he was absorbed in his newspaper, reading about the runners in the two o'clock at Hamilton. It had been a quiet morning. Since ten o'clock, the office phones appeared to have gone dead and some kind of maintenance on the line had now
cut off the internet connection too. When the priest came through the door, absent-mindedly forgetting to knock, Templeton rose instantly, surprised and thinking for a moment that it was his boss. He was the only other person who came into the office without knocking, most others obeying the sign on the door. Doughnut in hand, he scrutinised his visitor, spotting his dog-collar and realising that he was a clergyman of some sort. He wondered anxiously if he was about to be given some bad news.

‘Can I help you?' he asked warily.

‘Are you Dougie – Douglas Templeton?'

‘I am.'

‘I'm Father Vincent, from St John's in Kinross and I know your wife.' The priest hesitated, still working out in his head the best way to introduce the topic in which he was interested.

‘Charmaine – is she all right, has something happened to her?'

‘No, no,' the priest said hastily. ‘I'm sorry, I mean your ex-wife, Elizabeth.'

‘Oh, OK, her. What about her? Would you like a seat?' Templeton returned to his own revolving chair, spinning on its base and gesturing to his visitor to sit down. He put the remains of his doughnut back into its paper bag and licked each of his fingers in turn.

‘Thanks. I'd like to talk to you about something a little odd, some furniture polish that you gave her. It was pink. I know it might sound a bit peculiar, very peculiar in fact, but you'd be doing me a great favour if you could tell me a bit about it.'

‘Polish? That's what we manufacture, that's our business. What do you want to know?' the man asked, relieved it was nothing more serious and happy to talk about anything else. The rain outside suddenly began to fall more heavily, pounding the roof and almost drowning out the end of his question.

‘Anything you can tell me, really. Where it's sold, what it's supposed to be used on.'

‘The pink stuff … was it in a screw-top jam jar?'

‘That's right.'

‘No problem. We only made a tiny batch. It was experimental, you see. It worked as a polish all right, buffed up everything nicely – beeswax is always good for a shine – but nobody liked the smell. It was a bit sickly, that's what the feedback was. And it's too expensive, too expensive for the domestic market at any rate. Why do you want to know about it?'

‘So who got it – to try out or whatever?'

‘That's what I'm saying. Nobody. Nobody got it.'

‘Well,' the priest said tentatively, conscious that he was trespassing on the man's time and goodwill, ‘you got it, and Elizabeth got it. I don't mean bought it. So, apart from you, what other employees …'

‘Oh, OK. Sorry. I got some and Colin got some, that's it,' he said. Then, catching the eye of an employee who had popped his head around the open door, he added, ‘Now, if you don't mind, we're a bit busy this morning.'

‘Another leak – it's dripping through the main seam again, boss,' the man said, shaking his head in disgust.

‘Colin? Colin who? Where does he live? Is he at work
today?' the priest asked, rising from his seat, nodding at the newcomer, eager to get across that he understood the crisis and did not intend to waste any more of Templeton's precious time.

‘Data protection, I'm afraid – I can't tell you these things.'

‘I just need to know where he lives.'

‘Hang on a sec. Father Vincent you said, eh?' the man asked, swinging round in his chair, smiling. He smiled, said ‘Bucket!' to his colleague and waved him away dismissively.

‘Yes,' the priest answered, still standing in front of the desk.

‘Oh, you're the one who visited my boy, eh? In the jail … in Perth Prison. I know who you are now. Thanks for that. He appreciated it. I appreciate it. Colin Gifford, that's your man, but he's not in today or tomorrow. He stays at Caple Cottage in Crook of Devon, but to be honest it's little more than a bed and breakfast for him. He's never there. On his days off you'll likely find him at the Green, drinking or curling or, more likely, drinking and curling.'

‘I think I've met him – played against him.'

Driving back home on the northern side of the loch the priest found himself in a queue of cars which had formed behind a tractor. Blue-grey smoke was belching from its exhaust as it chugged along, straining to pull its load of round bales. On impulse, he drew in to the car park at Burleigh Sands, intending to sit in his car among the Scots
pines to think, have a smoke too, while waiting for the line of traffic to get out of the way.

Crossing his arms over the steering wheel, he rested his forehead against them. So, now he had met Elizabeth's former husband. And he was an unexceptional man, and, thank God, not the murderer. From his accent, he must have been brought up in Kinross-shire, or Fife at the furthest, and he had a high, light voice, quite unlike the deep, sonorous tones that had resonated in the confessional box. What, he wondered, had been the draw for her? His boyish looks, possibly, but what else? There must have been more than that. Maybe they had been at school together, first loves, familiar and safe with each other. But how could a woman as … as original, as unique, as beautiful as Elizabeth have fallen for him? He raised his head from the wheel, looked at his watch and lit a cigarette. It was twelve-thirty already. He was busy, had a funeral to prepare for and the accounts to do as well. It was all pointless, anyway, none of his business, and, plainly, she now had a new man in her life. Hal, the slimy Lothario. Whoever the hell he was.

The grave had been dug at the eastern end of the old parish churchyard at the Kirkgate, within a few yards of the Bruce Mausoleum. On three sides the land fell away, merging, finally, into the tussocky marshland that bordered the loch. As he intoned, ‘I am the resurrection and the life,' his words were lost; the rustling sound made by the wings of a dozen swans as they came in to land on the loch drowning him out and, momentarily, distracting
the mourners from their thoughts. There could not be, he thought to himself, a finer place in all the wide world to be buried, to rest while waiting for the last trump.

A cordon of hills ringed the graveyard. Beyond the shimmering body of water, with its pale reed-fringed shores, lay, far to the east, the Lomonds. To the south, the soft contours of the sleeping giant merged into the low mounds of the Cleish hills. Even from the north and the west, it was sheltered, the undulating slopes of the Ochils forming the third side of the triangle which protected it. Coming to from his reverie, he moved away from the graveside to leave room for the cords men to lower the coffin into the dark earth. As, working wordlessly together, they manoeuvred it in, veins bulging on a couple of the older men's red foreheads, a new sound broke the silence. A clinker-built dinghy, its outboard motor phutphutting its way doggedly onwards, was heading towards Castle Island, leaving a white trail behind it. The coffin now lowered, the priest threw a handful of sandy earth onto it, trying to make sure that he was downwind of everyone. As the soil clattered onto the wood, a loud sobbing to his right started up. Instinctively, he put his arm around the dead woman's daughter, Helen Compton, causing her to sob louder yet.

‘You'll be coming to the wake, won't you Father? Father Roderick said he would,' she whispered, dabbing her eyes with a hankie and trying to regain her usual self-control. ‘We're having it at home, just as Mum would have wanted. She wasn't one for hotels.'

By the time he had changed out of his robes, the rest of the mourners had arrived at Swansacre and wasted no time in finding the drink. Most of them had glasses of wine clasped in their cold fingers. A few men had, somehow, found the whisky, and determined to warm themselves up, uncorked it and helped themselves, hoping it would be taken for a dark white wine. Tiny triangular sandwiches were doing the rounds and Jean's old Dachshund, Tizer, wandered between the guests' legs as if searching for his late mistress. A couple of young children, dragooned into assisting as waiters, bumped into people, giggled, and spilled their bowls of crisps. Giggling yet more, the pair crawled on the floor to retrieve them, competing with the dog to get to them first. The crisps they gathered up went back into their bowls, fluff and all, until their mother, scarlet-cheeked and unamused, snatched the bowls from them, reminding them in a hissed whisper that this was a wake, not a party.

Helen Compton, catching sight of the priest as he came in, rushed over to him with a glass that she had filled in advance with him in mind. Handing it over, she murmured her thanks and, then, seeing how chilled he looked, tried to create a path for him towards the open fire.

As he went towards the warmth, he felt a couple of hands pat him on the shoulder, enough to reassure him and let him know that his return was welcome and that the life of the parish might continue as it had done before. Standing with his legs apart, allowing the crackling flames to warm his back, he viewed the people in the room. A teenager, one of the Morrisons, was slumped against the
wall with a bored expression on her perfect features. As she stood there her little sister was using one of her legs as a climbing frame to raise herself from the floor. Once upright, the toddler began to wail loudly until the girl swung her upwards, plumping her onto her shoulders. From this lofty perch, the child watched everything going on, now calm, letting out an occasional sniffle and licking her Ribena-stained lips. It was, the priest realised, one of the things that he had missed most in the Retreat; the bustle of lives, young, untidy and colourful lives. The noisy, fruitful chaos of it all. In the nuns' orderly household there had been quiet, calm, peace even, leaving aside the occasional short-lived spat between the sisters, but a tomb would offer much the same. He wanted the sights and sounds, the smells, the clashing colours, the messiness, in a word, of family living. Such a life demanded energy from all, but it gave far more than it took, and already he felt revived, more alive than he had for a long while.

‘Father Vincent!'

He turned to see Donald Keegan standing, smiling, beside him. As before, the man looked too hot, but this time he was encased in an over-tight charcoal-grey suit, its black buttons straining to contain his rounded belly; a striped tie, loosely knotted, protruding below the hem of his jacket.

‘Donald!'

‘I thought I might see you here. Allan, or somebody or other, told me that they'd allowed you back.'

For a second the priest bristled at the policeman's choice of words. But, reflecting that he was being too prickly, he
raised his glass as if in a toast and said, ‘They have. I'm home at last. Didn't you get my messages?'

‘No, I'm just back from a couple of days' leave. Don't look so surprised. I'm off-duty. What did you need to tell me?'