Evil Intent (20 page)

‘I may have to take time off work, if it’s not at the weekend. Sounds like it will be worth it, though.’

Lilith tuned in to the conversation on her other side. ‘Did you see this morning’s
Globe
?’ a woman in a bilious green dress demanded indignantly.

Her companion, whose nose was in unfortunate disproportion to the rest of her face, shook her head. ‘My husband won’t have that rag in the house. What did it say?’

‘That horrible Richard Grant. You know, from that happy-clappy church up the road.’ Green Dress made a face as if she had a bad smell under her nose. ‘He had the nerve to say that Father Jonah deserved to die!’

Big Nose gasped. ‘No!’

‘Those Evangelicals. They think they know everything.’

‘Oooh. I just wish Father Vincent would talk to the
Globe.
He’d set them straight, all right,’ Big Nose stated.

Father Vincent himself, having divested himself of his sumptuous
vestments,
was moving round the room in his black cassock, making soothing
noises to his parishioners. Though she was too far away to be able to hear what he was saying, Lilith turned her attention to him, watching his body language and his face.

He was good at it, she soon realised. There was a certain aloofness about him that seemed very reassuring, if a bit condescending. But judging by the faces of those he spoke to, condescension seemed to be what they wanted from him. A scornful phrase of Richard Grant’s lingered in her mind: ‘Father knows best’. He’d said it as a condemnation of
Anglo-Catholicism,
a denunciation of the need to defer to an all-wise priest rather than establishing a personal relationship with Jesus.

Presumably Father Jonah had also wielded that sort of authority
within
the parish.

The congregation seemed inclined to linger, everyone needing to have a word of comfort or reassurance from their priest. Lilith waited: she was in no hurry, and the fruits of her eavesdropping would provide her with
material
for future stories. After a bit, though, they began to drift off to their Sunday lunches, and eventually it seemed as though Father Vincent was about to follow suit.

Lilith approached him, smiling. He gave her an enquiring look.

‘Father Vincent?’ she said in her most obsequious voice.

‘Yes?’

‘I was wondering whether I might have a word with you. About Father Jonah.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘I’m Lilith Noone, from the
Daily
Globe
.’

Father Vincent regarded her for a moment, as if weighing up his options. Then he nodded his head. ‘Yes, Miss Noone. Yes, I’ll talk to you,’ he said in measured tones.

He arranged two folding chairs facing each other, while she took her notebook from her handbag.

His cassock, she observed as they sat down, was made of a finely woven, expensive-looking cloth, piped round the edges with satin. The sleeves had turned-back cuffs with little satin-covered buttons, and the garment had been skilfully cut so that the buttons did not strain round the contours of his ample stomach. It almost certainly had not been bought off the peg.
Father Vincent, then, must be rather better off than the average clergyman. Did he have private means? Lilith jotted a cryptic note, reminding herself to look him up in
Who’s Who.

He pre-empted her first question. ‘It’s a terrible business,’ he said
heavily.
‘Who would have thought it? Last Sunday he was here. And now …’

‘Now he’s dead,’ Lilith finished for him. ‘And the police don’t seem to be making any progress in finding out who killed him.’

He frowned. ‘It should be obvious, shouldn’t it? I’ve told them so myself. And your story in yesterday’s paper – clearly you know as well as I do that it was that woman who did it.’

‘Frances Cherry?’

‘Of course. Who else? She was the one who hated him, because he had the courage to speak the truth to her, to expose the lie she’s living.’

‘The lie?’ Lilith echoed, her interest quickening. Was Frances Cherry perhaps having an affair?

‘Her delusion that she is a priest.’ Father Vincent folded his plump white hands over his portly belly. ‘Anyone who knows anything about
theology
will know that it’s no more possible to ordain a woman than to ordain my wife’s cat.’

In his smugness and self-certainty, Lilith thought suddenly, he was not unlike Richard Grant. She suspected that neither man would welcome the comparison.

Callie’s sermon had gone very well; she’d been complimented on it by
various
people after the service, and only a few of them had been patronising. And much as some had muttered about the tediousness and irrelevance of Harvest Festival, Callie had quite enjoyed it. Inappropriate as it may have been to sing ‘We plough the fields, and scatter’ in the centre of London, she’d found it a refreshing change from the bland hymns of the long weeks after Trinity.

She’d gone home afterwards, and found that the flat seemed
unaccountably
empty to her, the hours stretching out to Evensong and beyond. She tried ringing her brother; receiving no reply, on impulse she rang her
mother
instead. After all, she needed to see her mother at some point: why not
this afternoon?

‘I hope you’re not expecting to be given lunch,’ Laura Anson said. ‘You know that I never cook on a Sunday any more.’

‘No. I’ll eat something before I come.’ Callie made herself a sandwich and heated up a tin of soup. As she ate, she allowed herself to dwell on the subject which she’d managed to banish from her mind during the morning service: the events of the previous evening.

What had it all been about? she asked herself. She’d had a wonderful time, and had laughed more than she had in ages. Though she and Mark came from very different worlds, they seemed to have much in common. Conversation had never lagged; there had been no awkwardness between them.

But there seemed to be no hint of romance, either.

He’d been courteous, friendly. Nothing more, surely.

Had she just imagined that spark of pleasure in his eyes when he’d seen her?

Maybe he was gay. Somehow she didn’t think so: after years of exposure to her brother’s friends, Callie’s ‘gaydar’ was pretty finely honed, and Marco exhibited none of the signs.

Maybe he was married, or in a relationship.

Maybe he was just looking for a friend.

Or maybe, she told herself with a wry smile, it was all about the
blooming
dog. Would he have gone to so much trouble just to soften her up so she would agree to take the dog?

Why did it matter? Did she fancy him, then?

She did find him very attractive, Callie admitted to herself. And then she realised, with a little shock, that it had been at least twenty-four hours since she’d thought about Adam. Surely that must be some sort of record. Something to be celebrated, even.

Callie poured herself a modest glass of wine from the bottle in the fridge, partly in celebration and partly to fortify herself for the visit to her mother.

Why had she said she’d go? It had to be done, she told herself
philosophically.
And at least it would take her mind off Mark.

The sun was dropping towards the horizon, its rays angling sharply, as Leo Jackson, dressed in jeans and an open-necked shirt rather than his clericals, walked through Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon. Indian summer
continued
unabated, with a lingering warmth in the air, and the park was full of skateboarders, dog-walkers and babies in push-chairs. The leaves of the trees were well advanced in their annual transmutation from green to gold.

Leo, though, scarcely noticed any of it. He was in a state of emotional turmoil.

His steps quickened as he approached the Albert Memorial, which gleamed an almost impossible gold in the slanting sunlight. Leo had always enjoyed the overblown statement of grief – mingled with an aggressive assertion of Empire – which was the Albert Memorial. He particularly loved the enormous sculptures at the corners, depicting the four
continents,
and had a special fondness for the be-tasseled camel which
represented
Africa; its rather stupid face betrayed no alarm at the woman in the Egyptian head-dress who straddled its hump so precariously, one arm cradling a crook while the other reached out to rest its hand on the
well-muscled
naked shoulder of a handsome young man.

Leo walked straight past the camel without a glance, his eyes searching instead for a human figure.

Oliver was there, sitting on the steps with his back to the gigantic
representation
of the Prince Consort. Leo, his heart pounding, forced himself to approach slowly, while all he wanted to do was run to Oliver and sweep him into his arms. He knew that he couldn’t do that; he couldn’t even touch him, not out here in public.

‘Hi,’ said Oliver casually, squinting against the rays of the sun, as Leo stood a few feet in front of him at the bottom of the steps.

Leo opened his mouth, wanting to say so much but managing only ‘Hello.’ He rocked back on his heels, his eyes feasting on his beloved. It seemed like weeks – months – since he’d seen him, though it had been a mere five days. Often as his thoughts had lingered on Oliver’s beautiful face, he had forgotten how very blue the eyes, how very golden the hair – rivalling the gilding on Albert himself, he told himself with besotted wonder.

‘You said this was important,’ Oliver reminded him after a moment.

‘Yes.’ Leo sat down on the steps with a careful foot or so of space between them, and turned his face away from Oliver, looking across at the Royal Albert Hall. No point beating round the bush, he told himself. ‘I’ve had a letter,’ he said. ‘They want to make me a bishop.’

‘A bishop?’

The alarm in Oliver’s voice drew Leo’s eyes back to his face. ‘Don’t worry,’ Leo said quickly. ‘It won’t make any difference. Not to…us.’

‘But it will have to make a difference. I mean…you know. You know what happened before. That other bloke.’

‘This isn’t the same situation at all.’ Leo had been through it all in his own mind, over and over, so the words came out in a practised stream. ‘In the first place, no one knows. Not about you, not about
us
.’

‘That woman knows,’ Oliver pointed out. ‘The one who came to tea.’

‘Frannie. She’s my friend. She won’t say anything – I can promise you that.’

‘You can’t be sure.’

Leo nodded firmly. ‘I can be sure. Frannie won’t give us away.’

‘But what if someone
does
find out?’

Again Leo turned his face towards the Royal Albert Hall, unable to bear the strength of the emotion engendered in him when he looked at Oliver. ‘I won’t give you up.’ He said it with simple force. ‘Never. Nothing is worth losing you. It’s taken me so long to find you, and I couldn’t bear to go on without you.’

‘So you’re saying …’

‘If it came down to a choice, I’d choose you.’

‘But you’re willing to lie about me, so that you can be a bishop. Why don’t you just tell them to stuff it?’

This was something else Leo had had ample time to think through, relentlessly examining his own motivations and aspirations. ‘It’s not as
simple
as that,’ he said. ‘I’m not an ambitious man – not for myself, anyway. I’ve never gone out of my way to seek preferment. I’ve never cosied up to
people
who could advance my career.’ He stretched his legs out. ‘As a black man, though, and a gay man, I owe it to other people like me to take what’s offered. To be their spokesman, their advocate, if you like. I feel I can
change the system more effectively from the inside than from the outside. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘I think so.’

‘The system is going to change. The
Church
is going to change. It has to. I want to be a part of that change, and I do think that I have something to offer.’ He swallowed. ‘The day will come when we, and people like us, can be together without being afraid of being found out, or of what others will think. That’s what I long for, and what I hope to help bring about.’

‘It’s all very well to say that, but it’s in the future. Where does that leave us now?’

Leo sighed painfully. ‘This is the difficult bit. For now, we’ll just have to stay apart. Until everything is signed and sealed. It’s the sacrifice I…we…have to make. And it will be as hard as hell. But it won’t last
forever,
and then we can be together again.’

‘Yes,’ said Oliver. ‘Yes, I understand.’

Mark had promised to ring in the evening to talk about the dog, so after Evensong Callie went back to her flat as quickly as possible. She could hear the phone ringing as she mounted the stairs and made a mad dash to answer it, her heart thumping.

She reached it in time, but it wasn’t Mark: it was Peter.

‘Hi, Sis,’ he said breezily by way of greeting.

‘Oh, hi.’ Callie tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

‘My call-minder said that you rang and didn’t leave a message. Hope it wasn’t anything important.’

‘I just wondered what you were up to this afternoon, whether you were free.’ She sighed. ‘I went to see Mum instead.’

‘Oh, Lord.’

‘It had to be done. I hadn’t been in more than a week. She was starting to be a martyr about it.’ Peter, she knew, would understand all too well.

‘I just don’t get it,’ he said. ‘She never seems glad to see us. She does nothing but complain when we’re there. But if we don’t come, she puts on the martyr act.’

‘Well, that’s the way she is,’ Callie said philosophically. ‘She isn’t going
to change.’

‘Enough about Mum,’ Peter pronounced, and the tone of his voice altered. ‘Sis, I have to tell you. Something wonderful has happened.’

‘You’ve met someone,’ Callie guessed.

‘Yes! He’s fantastic. He came to the club where I was playing last night, and…well, what can I say?’

‘Spare me the gory details,’ she laughed.

‘Well, I’ll spare you the
gory
details, at least, but I have to tell you about him. He’s a fashion designer. Very high powered, apparently.’