The Trinity (38 page)

“Very well. What’s the Trinity?”

“Well, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—”

“No, no,” says the inspector. “I am referring to the activity of the young man whose life ended in your home. Lee Rodgers. Wasn’t that his name?”

Crowley makes the sign of the cross and a look of melancholy comes across his face. “May God forgive him and give rest to that troubled soul,” Crowley says, with almost a trace of an Irish accent, trying hard to play the role of a good priest. “In all my years in service to our Father, never—
never
—have I had to witness something so unpleasant.”

“Right,” says Holliday, his exasperation evident. “When the sailor was murdered in Dundee, there was a letter left in the cemetery, signed by the Trinity of the White Brotherhood of Eastern Scotland. I take ‘trinity’ to mean three, meaning Lee didn’t act alone. Did he tell you who he was with?”

“No, no, he seemed very much a loner. I think he had one or two acquaintances on the base, as I’ve gone through with the commanding officer and the base master-at-arms, but he seemed to act alone. I think he had an overactive imagination and may have led a fantasy life, thinking he was part of a movement larger than himself. Hence the word ‘Trinity.’ He also had a perverse sense of Christianity, obviously, to do what he did. He intimated to me that the blacks weren’t chosen by Jesus, only the white race. Therefore, he could have come up with the name that he did. He didn’t seem that creative to me, just sort of fanatical.”

“I see,” says Holliday. He ignites a cigarette and offers one to the priest and the constable. Both decline. “Well, here’s the troubling part.” He tells Crowley about the synagogue door in Edinburgh, the desecration in Aberdeen, and the arson in the cemetery in Glasgow, and though it can’t be assuredly related, the murder of the cab driver just outside the cemetery gates.

Crowley acts surprised and horrified. He makes the sign of the cross and says a quick prayer for the cab driver.

“And Father?” asks the inspector.

“Yes?”

“A man fitting your description was seen outside both the synagogue in Aberdeen and the synagogue in Edinburgh. You weren’t alone. There were two others with you.”

The priest hesitates ever so slightly, reaffirming Holliday’s conviction of his guilt.

But his hesitation is interrupted; he wasn’t in Edinburgh with two others. Chris wasn’t there, and he realizes it is a ruse to try to ensnare him.

“Inspector, I do travel to the places you mentioned. I am a bit of a bookworm. I frequent bookstores—and if I can be truthful, I am a fan of your pubs. As they say, wherever you find four priests, you’ll find a fifth.” Crowley laughs. The constable smiles a little, but Holliday’s face remains like stone. “I like my pints, no sin in that, and it isn’t appropriate for a chaplain to drink on base. Therefore, I travel. I meet new people, sample different pubs, and drink my lager. But I do it alone. I daresay, go to any pub from Aberdeen to Dundee with a picture of me in hand and ask if I’ve been in. If I have, ask them if I had companions, and they will say no.”

“Father, I’m talking about incidents outside of pubs, three incidents specifically. You are the only link we have to the activity of Lee Rodgers, and I have not been entirely satisfied with your explanations. May I ask where you were this morning?”

“Here, Inspector, relaxing before Mass, going over my notes. This is Lent, don’t you know?”

“No, I don’t know. Can you prove you were here?”

“No, I live alone. Can you prove I wasn’t here?”

“Not yet. I suggest you make yourself available to us when necessary. Thank you for your time. We’ll be in touch.”

The two policemen shake hands with the priest. Robertson notices that the priest’s handshake isn’t firm like most, but nearly anemic, as if he were shaking hands with a small boy. No grip, no firmness. In order to avoid hitting the priest’s car, Holliday drives onto the grass along the driveway, leaving tire marks in the still brown, perpetually unkempt lawn.

Crowley walks inside. He knows he should be nervous, but he isn’t. He will just be careful. He feels in his heart that his intellect is superior to anything the police can offer. The angels and elves of Valhalla will not let him down. He is to succeed by fate. It is his destiny.

He sighs with relief that the two policemen did not come inside. He sees the maps of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee above the couch, the locales of synagogues and cemeteries clearly marked. He would have been done for if they had come in. Even the bloke policemen could have figured him out, putting two and two together. He sees it as a sign of the intervention of Odin, intervening in a way that Jesus never did for all those years and years of devotion.

He smiles and removes his clothes right in the middle of the living room, leaving them in a pile on the floor. He walks naked to the bathroom, where his musty bathrobe hangs from a hook inside the door. He puts it on without bothering to tie the waist. He puts on a record. Beethoven for a change, the inspiring Ninth Symphony, the slow beginning, the furious conclusion. He drinks glass after glass of his Boer wine, grows quite drunk and mulls over his plans. He has no fear. Odin is here, and he can be as brazen as he wants.

“Bollocks.” Holliday slams the door shut and drives down the lane towards Lutherkirk. “I could have had him. I would love to have him at the station, just the two of us alone in a room. I would beat the piss out of him.” Robertson looks at him, shocked, not believing that things such as confessions gained by force ever actually occur. He thought it only happened on television shows and movies.

Holliday sees the constable’s face and waves his hand at him. “Aye. I’m an honest cop, but please, he had duplicity coming out of his pores. I could smell it. Couldn’t you?”

“He did seem a bit startled when you said he was seen by the synagogues. I noticed that, but otherwise, no, he seemed very natural, very sincere.”

“No,” says Holliday, “he knows something. I think maybe Scotland Yard should get involved with this one, if they aren’t already up here sniffing about. Maybe more pressure is needed. I’d like to interview some of the Americans on the base, talk to some of Rodgers’s coworkers, maybe any mates he might have had.”

“Didn’t he have only one?” asks the constable.

“Yep, the Americans and the MoDP cleared him. They said he had nothing to do with it. I’m sure the Americans didn’t want to dig too deep. One murderous sailor on their hands was enough; they couldn’t stand two, certainly couldn’t explain three. Rodgers, the priest and the third lad, I forget his name.”

“But Rodgers is dead,” thinks Robertson aloud.

“Right.”

“So if our theory about three being involved to make a trinity is correct, then Rodgers has been replaced. Or are we barking up the wrong tree?”

“Ah,” says Holliday, “a detail I’ve overlooked. I would venture to say that Rodgers has been replaced. I’m sure it’s not hard to find another gunman on a base full of cowboys from Texas or Rambos from New Jersey. The Americans seem to go for that, guns and violence and the like. I can’t stand American movies. I get enough violence from life. I don’t need to be entertained by it. So if there is a third, who is he? And how do we find out?”

“I’ll watch Crowley’s house. But I’ll need help.”

“I’ll try to get it.”

They agree the only way to tie up Crowley is to catch him doing something, see where he goes when he leaves, and who comes to his house.

That night, Robertson kisses his wife on the cheek after dinner and tells her he is going on a stakeout. She is confused, as he never has had to do anything like that in all his years of police work. He explains, briefly, about Crowley and Holliday and their suspicions.

“Well,” she says, “I’ll bring you a thermos of tea in a while, maybe some biscuits, too.”

He drives off, past the castle, and parks his car by the rim of the ditch that runs along the side of the narrow lane that leads to the priest’s house. He parks just a few yards from the mouth of the priest’s driveway, the stone cottage visible through the still bare, sporadic trees.

He sees nothing for several hours, sees nothing all through the evening as he dozes in and out of sleep. At about midnight, he sees the priest walk out of the front door, his body swaying as if the wind moves him, although the air is calm. Constable Robertson can see the priest is naked underneath the bathrobe, the paleness of his flesh almost luminescent in the hazy and moonlit sky. He watches as the priest kisses the ground and looks towards the moon.

He realizes now that the priest is indeed very peculiar.

Sunday morning, Crowley drives with a hangover the few miles to the base for Sunday Mass.      

He sees the constable pulling away from his driveway. This doesn’t surprise him. He has developed an alternative plan.

Per his instructions, Chris and Brad are both at the morning Mass. They share the last pew and sit nearly a yard apart. Chris listens attentively. Hinckley stifles yawns.

The Mass is attended even less than it was when Crowley started on the base. Only the very devout remain, and they are disappointed every Sunday. But his Mass is the only game in town, and they are left without alternatives. His Masses have become furious in their brevity; he even talks rapidly to conclude them as quickly as possible.

After the chapel empties, Brad and Chris enter the priest’s office. His mood is somber, and they adapt theirs to match his.

“Scotland’s finest seem to have me under observation, which is fine. It’s actually to our advantage. We will give them nothing.” He removes from his desk two manila envelopes. Each envelope contains a letter identical to the one attached to the cemetery gate in Glasgow.

Chris still has no idea what the letter said.

“Take these and read them. Go ahead, open them.” The priest hands Brad and Chris each an envelope. Brad reads his, his mouth moving slowly, and upon conclusion, after all the words are digested, he smiles.

Chris reads his quickly, staring open-mouthed at the end. “What does this mean?”

“Well, it is identical to the letter I attached to the cemetery gate in Glasgow, and I wish for similar letters to be posted on or near the synagogues in Aberdeen and Edinburgh. Dundee has a synagogue, too, but we will stay away from there for now. That synagogue will be special.”

The priest hands each of them a fifty-pound note. “Today, I want you two to travel to Aberdeen and Edinburgh, by whatever means necessary, and deliver these letters. No smoke, no fire, no bombs, just a note. One hundred pounds should be plenty for train or cab fare, and maybe some extra for a few pints along the way.”

“Father?” Chris asks.

“Yes?”

“Do you really think they—you know, the Jews—will leave Scotland in thirty days, just like that?”

“No, of course not.” Father Crowley smiles.

“So, after thirty days, what do we do?”

“I can only reveal to you things on a need-to-know basis and as Odin reveals them to me. I have a pretty good idea what we’ll do. It may not be on the thirty-first day. It may have to wait until the moon is full and Valhalla tells me the time is nigh. All I will say is that the Jews of this country and the world will think of the Holocaust and wish they hadn’t fabricated such a story.”

“What do you mean?” Chris plays with a book of matches, desperate for a cigarette. The priest intuitively slides an ashtray across the desk.

“The Holocaust was created by the Jews to gain sympathy around the world and to finagle Israel from the British and the United Nations. It never happened. It was a lie.”

“I heard that before, Father. My grandpa said something about that one time, but I wasn’t sure what the Holocaust was,” says Hinckley.

“Your grandfather was correct. I knew you had some knowledge in your genetic makeup.” He pats Hinckley on the back, and the passive compliment and affection causes Brad to smile and straighten up in his chair.