Evil Intent (6 page)

For over a year Heather had been travelling round the world, stopping for a while whenever she needed money for the next leg of her journey and working at whatever menial job she could find – waiting tables, cleaning hotel rooms, operating the till at a supermarket. She’d been to Australia, New Zealand, and India; at the moment she was in America. She had, she’d just told her mother, taken a job as a fund-raiser with an animal rights
charity
in which she believed passionately. She was on a three-month contract, which she hoped might be extended – especially as she had fallen in love with one of her co-workers. As a result, she would not be home for Christmas. She was sure, she said, that her parents would understand. There was always next year.

Frances
did
understand. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t bitterly
disappointed.
She hadn’t seen Heather in more than a year, and she’d been
anticipating
her return in time for Christmas and her twenty-fifth birthday, which would follow just after. Heather rang infrequently and emailed
intermittently
from far-flung Internet cafés; Frances longed to see her, to
reassure
herself that Heather was well and happy. Now that did not seem
likely
to happen any time soon. She tried to console herself that at least Heather’s characteristic lack of success in love meant that she would be back at some point: the new romance was as unlikely as those which had preceded it to display any sort of longevity and keep her on the other side of the Atlantic for more than a few months.

So when Frances went to pack up her gear for the service – a cassock alb and stole – her mood was more reflective than defiant.

She always preferred cotton albs, crisply ironed and snowy white, but they did not transport well, so for travel she kept a polyester cassock alb which would come out of her case as wrinkle-free as it went in. Her stole should be seasonal green; she discovered, though, that she had left her green one at the hospital. She picked up her ordination stole, which had been specially made for her in a spirit of jubilation and triumph after the vote to ordain women: it was fashioned of rough white silk, on which were painted in blue the names of all the women mentioned in the Bible. It was a beautiful thing, but it was also a statement, bound to ruffle feathers amongst the misogynists at Clergy Chapter. Frances hesitated for a
moment, then thought of Leo’s cheerful disregard for their sensibilities, and put it in her case.

As she walked along towards the rectory of St John’s, Lancaster Gate, Frances tried to switch her thoughts away from Heather and to prepare herself for meeting Leo’s new lover, Oliver Pickett. She didn’t have any ironclad preconceptions about him. Her mental picture of him was vague at best: a professional man, perhaps, around Leo’s age. Perhaps black,
perhaps
not.

What she was not expecting, though, was the young man – scarcely more than a boy – who opened the door to her at the rectory. Slim and tall, with a flop of straight golden hair which almost obscured one very blue eye, he wore an immaculate white T-shirt and a pair of artfully faded jeans. His feet were bare: slender, long and pale.

‘I’m Oliver,’ he said in a soft, unaccented voice. ‘You must be Frances.’

Trying to mask her astonishment, she took the hand he extended. ‘Nice to meet you,’ Frances said; all the while she was thinking ‘Leo must be mad.’ Mad to fall in love with a child like this, mad to send him to the door when the person who rang the bell might have been anyone – a casual caller, a parishioner, even the Archdeacon or the Bishop.

Leo was waiting for them in the upstairs sitting room, where he had just finished laying out an elaborate tea. He gave Frances his customary bearhug, then draped an arm round Oliver’s shoulders. ‘This is Oliver,’ he announced, glowing. ‘Isn’t he gorgeous, then?’

There didn’t seem to be any proper response to that, so Frances made do with a smile.

Somehow she found enough things to say to Leo as they had their tea. Afterwards she couldn’t have told anyone what those things might have been. Oliver Pickett, for his part, was almost entirely silent. He sat on the polished wood floor at Leo’s feet, smiling enigmatically.

Leo did most of the talking; he was almost manic in his excitement. Most of the time he rested his hand on Oliver’s head, his fingers twining in the golden hair. Once in a while Frances saw him stroke the youth’s downy cheek with a hand she would not have thought capable of such delicate,
tender
movement. She had known Leo for years, and never had she seem him
remotely like this: the man was clearly besotted to the point of madness.

Whatever she managed to say to Leo, carrying on an ostensibly normal conversation, her real consciousness was of an interior dialogue.

‘I thought you said you were being careful,’ she wanted to say to him. ‘Don’t you know what might happen if people found out?’

But who was she to cast a cloud over Leo’s happiness? Oliver didn’t seem to mind Leo’s caresses, so what business was it of hers? And Leo was unquestionably happy.

She cared about Leo, that was the trouble. He had always been there for her, had been enormously supportive and a good friend. She was helpless in the face of the passion which now gripped him, seemingly rendering him incapable of rational thought. If she had felt uneasy yesterday, when Leo told her about Oliver, now she was positively terrified for him. What could – what should – she, as a friend, do?

Nothing. She could do nothing. He hadn’t listened to her when she had tried to warn him yesterday, and he wouldn’t listen to her now. He was like a runaway freight train, careering towards self-destruction. All she could do was watch, and pray: pray that her worst fears would end up being unfounded, that Leo would come to his senses, that he would somehow get over it – or get away with it.

Callie took special care as she prepared herself for the Clergy Chapter meeting. Usually a brush through her hair and a swipe of lipstick would have been sufficient. But tonight she would be meeting people for the first time, making an important first impression on them.

And Adam.

She would be seeing Adam.

Callie knew that she should no longer care what Adam thought of her. It wasn’t important. He probably wouldn’t even notice what she looked like.

Once he had thought her beautiful, Callie remembered, looking in the mirror. He had told her so, though no one else ever had. He was the first and the last. The Alpha and the Omega, she thought wryly.

It was for Adam that she had grown her hair. When she’d met him, and
for years before that, she’d worn it quite short – easy to care for, if not
stylish.
But Adam had said that he liked longer hair, so for two laborious years she had grown out all of the layers. Now it was a chin-length bob, shiny and smooth even if the colour was an undistinguished brown. She had to admit that it suited her, framing her face.

On that terrible day when Adam had told her about Pippa, one of her first impulses was to cut her hair, to hack it off herself with nail scissors if necessary. Fortunately she had resisted that self-destructive urge, realising even in the extremity of her pain that it was Adam she wanted to hurt, and cutting her hair would hurt only herself. Now she was glad she hadn’t done it.

She applied her make-up with care, choosing a bolder shade of lipstick than she usually wore; perhaps, she thought, it would boost her confidence.

Not beautiful, she told herself when she’d finished, standing back from the mirror to get the full picture. No, not beautiful – but she looked
attractive
and respectable. Curate-like, even. That would have to do.

She looked at the clock. If she didn’t hurry, she would be late.

In just a few minutes, ready or not, she would see Adam.

Jane Stanford’s Tuesday had started out well. She, like her mother before her, adhered to the old routine: laundry on Monday, ironing on Tuesday. And though she found washing a chore, she had never minded ironing. One of her chief joys, in fact, was to be found in transforming Brian’s clean white surplices and albs, wrinkled and stiff as boards, into crisp garments fit for him to wear at the altar or the pulpit. It was, she felt, part of her high calling.

So she was humming to herself at the ironing board when the post came through the letterbox. With practised ease she whipped a snowy surplice off the board and onto a hanger, then, as Brian was out, she went to collect the post.

Most of the letters were addressed not to her but to Brian; she
appropriated
the bills for herself, and put his letters on the desk in his study. One of the letters, though, was intriguing enough for her to take it along with her as she went back to the kitchen. The envelope revealed that it had been sent from St Cuthbert-in-the-City.

St Cuthbert-in-the-City was one of the glorious Wren churches in the heart of the City of London. Each year before Christmas they hosted a gala charity concert, followed by a reception at one of the livery companies; tickets were very expensive and much sought after. Jane had never even contemplated the possibility of attending until the year before, when the newly appointed incumbent, a good friend of Brian’s from theological
college
days, had sent them a pair of complimentary tickets.

It had been the highlight of Jane’s year. In her best Laura Ashley frock, she had revelled as much in the company of the great and the good as in the music, and the reception had been outstanding, with delicious food and freely flowing champagne.

Now, she hoped, the envelope would contain the promise of a
repetition
of that splendid evening. And her hopes were not disappointed: two tickets nestled in the envelope. With a smile, she propped them on the
mantelpiece
and returned to her ironing.

When it was all done, she went out to do a bit shopping. She felt that a
celebration was in order, and wanted to prepare a special meal for Brian – perhaps the housekeeping money could stretch to a steak and kidney pie.

But on the way to the butcher shop, she passed a charity shop and stopped to look at the display in the window, her attention caught by a dress on a headless dummy.

It was a deep royal blue velvet, with long sleeves and a nice neckline – not too high nor too low. Instinctively she knew that it would suit her, bringing out the colour of her eyes.

For several minutes Jane stood and looked at the dress. Her Laura Ashley would do, she told herself. She’d always felt good in it. But a little voice at the back of her mind countered that she owed this to herself. No one wore Laura Ashley any longer. Last year the women had been dressed in frocks such as this, frocks which made her Laura Ashley seem dowdy and outdated.

It wouldn’t hurt to see how much it cost. That didn’t commit her to anything. So she pushed the door open and went into the charity shop. The woman at the till was happy to check the price: a mere twenty pounds. ‘That’s a real bargain,’ she confided. ‘I’d buy it myself if it fitted me.’ She looked Jane up and down. ‘Would you like to try it? I think it should be your size. I can whip it off the mannequin in a jiff.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Jane demurred. ‘I don’t want to put you to the trouble.’

‘No trouble at all. That’s what I’m here for.’ Deftly the woman took the dress off of the dummy and carried it to the tiny changing room.

Jane undressed in the confined space, then slipped the dress over her head and contemplated herself in the mirror.

It looked as though it had been made for her. A perfect fit, and just the right colour.

‘Oh, it suits you!’ the woman said when Jane came out to show her.

That was all the confirmation she needed. ‘Yes, I’ll have it,’ she said impulsively. ‘It
is
a bargain, isn’t it?’

While the woman wrapped the dress, Jane glanced at a rack of assorted clothing next to the till. At the front was a negligee – pink chiffon and white lace. It was, thought Jane with a rush of nostalgia, almost identical to
the one she’d so carefully purchased for her honeymoon. For their wedding night, in fact. Brian had loved it.

That negligee was long gone; Jane had been a size eight in those days – a mere slip of a girl – and now she was a size fourteen.

She checked the one which hung before her. It was a size fourteen. And it was priced at only two pounds. ‘I’ll take this as well,’ she said, and put it on the counter.

In fact, Jane realised as she left the shop with her prizes, she was
feeling
a bit frisky. She began to make plans for the evening. First she would cook a special dinner for Brian – it couldn’t be steak and kidney now, but another one of his favourites would do; he liked chicken casserole and dumplings nearly as well, and the money left in her purse would stretch to a nice bit of chicken. There was a good film on the telly tonight, so they could watch that, and afterwards she would slip into the negligee and
surprise
him.

The chicken was already in the pot when Brian arrived home. ‘I’m exhausted,’ he declared, sniffing the air appreciatively. ‘I’ve been on the go all day.’

‘We’ll have a nice, quiet evening,’ promised Jane, smiling to herself.

Brian shook his head. ‘Not a chance, I’m afraid. I did tell you that I had Clergy Chapter tonight.’

‘But you usually don’t go to that,’ Jane reminded him. He
had
mentioned
it, and she had discounted it. Brian always said that after a hard day of work in the parish, the last thing he needed was to sit around with a bunch of clergy moaning about their problems.

‘I thought I would this time,’ he said. ‘For Callie’s sake. She doesn’t know anyone in the deanery, except for that new curate of Richard Grant’s, so I really need to go and make sure she meets everyone.’

Jane bit her lip; she could see that he had made up his mind, and she wasn’t going to talk him out of it.

‘She’s nearly run me ragged,’ he said. ‘Callie, that is. We’ve been all round the parish today. We did a baptism visit and a bereavement visit. She’s a very quick study, Janey. She’s going to be a great help to me here in the parish. You’ll see.’

‘How nice for you,’ she said stiffly.

‘What has
your
day been like?’ he asked a bit later, as she spooned dumplings onto his plate.

‘Oh, the usual. Ironing, shopping.’ Jane paused. ‘But I do have some news. Something that arrived in the post this morning.’ She fetched the tickets and laid them on the table beside his plate.

‘Ah, the concert!’ Brian picked up the tickets with a smile. ‘I’d hoped he’d send these again this year,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d take Callie. There will be so many people from the diocese there – useful people for her to know. It never hurts to treat the curate to a nice evening out, eh?’

Jane turned her head away so he wouldn’t see the tears.

It seemed to Callie, tucked in what she hoped was an inconspicuous way into the far end of the middle row of the chapel at Leo’s church, that the most dramatic events of the evening must surely have occurred at the very beginning.

The meeting of the Deanery clergy was to begin with an act of worship, a short Eucharistic service. Callie had arrived early, and chosen her seat without a word to anyone. She’d tried not to look at the other clergy as they arrived, composing herself for the evening by kneeling in prayer. With her eyes closed, she’d had a sense that the chapel was filling up, that
someone
was in the row with her.

At the sound of the bell she stood, and her attention was on the altar party as they arrived: Frances, wearing her ordination stole, and a massive black man in a chasuble. They turned to face the congregation, and the black man raised his hands. ‘The Lord be with you.’

It was then that the drama began.

‘Infidels!’ boomed a resonant voice.

A second voice, softer and accented, said, ‘Church-killers!’

Two men seated near the front pushed their way past the man next to them, towards the centre aisle. Callie had just a fleeting impression of them as they stormed past her: one was florid-faced and white-haired, the other as black as ebony. Both were wearing black cassocks.

After the service the clergy trickled towards the church hall, where the
urn steamed away comfortingly and one of the women of the parish spooned coffee granules into styrofoam cups.

Callie hung back, wishing that Frances would appear. She’d had rather a shock during the service, when the time came to exchange the Peace: she’d turned round to find that Adam was behind her. He’d clasped her hand warmly, looked into her eyes, and said, ‘Peace be with you, Cal.’

For the rest of the service she’d been shamefully distracted; her hand still burned from his touch, and she was sure she could feel his eyes on the back of her head.

She knelt at the end of the Eucharist, trying to pray, hoping that he would be put off from trying to speak to her.

It seemed to work; when she eventually rose from her knees, he had gone, and she was alone in the chapel.

But she realised that she couldn’t stay there indefinitely, and perhaps Frances had gone into the church hall already.

When she got into the hall, though, Frances wasn’t there. Callie
hovered
in the doorway and assessed the situation.

Adam was in one corner, talking to a tall, wiry man in an open-necked shirt. Brian Stanford was nearby with an elderly man in a black shirt. Everyone, styrofoam cups in hand, seemed to be engaged in conversation. And she, it appeared, was the only woman in the room, apart from the one who presided over the urn.

If this had been a Barbara Pym novel, Callie reflected, the woman at the urn would have been elderly or middle-aged, wearing a hat and capably pouring out cups of tea from a large, battered metal pot. But this one
didn’t
fit that mould at all: she was quite young, with spiky red hair and a gold ring through one nostril. And the beverage on offer was instant coffee.

Callie headed for the table. She didn’t really want coffee, but she felt that holding a cup in her hand would be some sort of defence.

‘Sorry about the brew,’ said the young woman cheerfully. ‘It’s pretty nasty stuff, even if it is fair traded.’ She proffered a plastic bowl of sugar. ‘This might help.’

‘I’ll take it as it comes,’ Callie said.

She turned from the table and noticed that there was one person on his
own, standing slightly to the side and nursing his coffee with a bemused expression. Callie thought that he looked a rather nice man, with an
expressive
mouth and attractive eyes; in spite of the fact that he was wearing a black clerical shirt, which she had vowed to avoid, she decided to risk
talking
to him.

‘Are you new here, too?’ she ventured. ‘This is my first time. I don’t know anyone.’ Anyone but Adam, she said to herself. Adam, and Brian Stanford.

‘Actually,’ said the man, smiling at her, ‘I’m the speaker. And I don’t know a soul. Except by reputation, of course.’

They chatted for a few minutes; she discovered that he was a recently ordained priest who had come to it even later in life than she had, after a career as a solicitor, and that he had a wife who was an artist. ‘It was touch and go,’ he told her. ‘She’d always said that she would never want to be married to a priest, as her father was one, and she knew what it entailed to be a vicar’s wife. That was before we were married, before it ever occurred to me to be ordained.’

‘You must have managed to change her mind,’ Callie observed.

‘Well, it got to be crunch time. We’d been together for a few years, and everything was fine, but when I was accepted to train for ordination, we knew that we either had to make it legal, or go our separate ways. Maintaining the status quo, continuing to live together, wasn’t an option as far as the Church was concerned. So something changed her mind. I’m not sure it was me.’ His mouth twisted in a self-deprecating smile. ‘Perhaps it was divine intervention. But it’s very reassuring, in a way. I know that she must really love me, to have married me in spite of the way she feels about the Church.’

‘She hasn’t come round, then? Joined the Mothers’ Union? Taken up baking?’

‘No, she still hates it.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s what
I
had to accept – that Lucy would never be a traditional vicar’s wife. And I wouldn’t want her to be,’ he added earnestly. ‘She’s a very talented artist. That’s her
vocation,
just as the Church is mine.’

‘Callie,’ called a voice off to the side.

She turned to see Brian Stanford, who had another man in tow.

‘I wanted to introduce you to Benedict Burton,’ he said. ‘A retired priest in the Deanery who helps us all out by taking the odd service or covering for our holidays. I’ve been trying to convince him that he’ll like you.’

That, Callie thought, was not a very promising start. ‘Hello,’ she said warily.

The man nodded. He appeared to be quite advanced in years, his shiny head covered with liver spots rather than hair. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m sure you’re a very nice person.’

‘Benedict isn’t very keen on women priests,’ explained Brian in a hearty voice.

The other man shook his head. ‘It makes me sad, that’s all. That the Church of England should take a decision like that all on its own. And why change things that have worked for centuries?’ There were tears in his rheumy blue eyes. ‘It’s no longer the Church I grew up in, the Church I’ve served for so many years.’

Callie found herself feeling unexpectedly sorry for him: things
had
changed, and as she knew in her own life, change was usually painful. ‘Why have you stayed?’ she asked him. ‘You didn’t have to stay.’ There was, she knew, money on offer for those who were unable to accept the new order, and many had taken it.

He bowed his head. ‘Because it’s my Church,’ he said with touching simplicity. ‘I may not agree with the direction it’s taken, but it’s still my Church. And unlike others, who don’t believe that women’s ordination is valid, I only go as far as to say that it’s valid but irregular. Irregular,’ he repeated. ‘To say it wasn’t valid would be to cast doubt on my
own
ordination.’