The Good Priest (27 page)

‘So, just you and Kyle have looked at the book?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Just the pair of you?'

A telephone began to ring in another room and Hal exclaimed, ‘I'll be back in a minute – but I've just got to answer this. I have to. I'm selling a Regency commode to someone in New York. It's worth a fortune. I'll have to answer that.'

Alone in the room, the priest went over to the foot-stool, removed the glue-pot and inspected the green leather-bound book. On the first page he read, ‘Diocese of Inchkeld'.

Without a qualm, or even a thought, he put it under his arm and headed for the showroom. As he left Orwell Antiques, he glanced at the blonde woman and gave her a friendly smile. Hal, low-life that he was, was not the killer of the priests. Kyle had had his chance. Finally, the book could speak for itself.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The woman with the pashmina gravitated, Hal noticed, back to the carved mahogany washstand several times. Each time she felt the wood with the tips of her fingers, trailing them lovingly along its highly polished surface. On the third occasion, she picked up its price-label. As she did so he watched her, surreptitiously scanning her face to see her reaction to the inflated price-tag. Her expression gave nothing away. Her curiosity apparently satisfied, she wandered over to a glass case with a dusty stuffed capercailzie in it and then threw a casual glance at a reproduction breakfast table. Hal didn't take his eyes off her.

‘How much for the stand?' she asked him, bending over, her back turned as if she was interested in the knife case on top of the table.

‘Fifteen hundred, as the label says,' he replied, coming towards her, ‘but it's a lovely piece, isn't it? A real gem. It's late eighteenth-century English.'

‘It's such a shame there's no basin, no ewer with it,' she replied, turning and eyeing him with a slightly disappointed air. ‘You don't have them somewhere else, do you, through the back or whatever? Without them I'm just not sure … not for that kind of money.'

‘No,' he said, ‘they'll have been broken long ago. But you don't see many of the stands about nowadays, do you? You used to be able to pick them up all over the
place, particularly at the big country house sales, but not nowadays. A lot have been shipped off to America.'

Clutching the Chihuahua more tightly, she looked at him and suddenly flashed a broad, artificial smile, her carmine lips in an unnaturally wide arc.

‘Well, Choo Choo and I like it. And it's her birthday. What'll you take for it?'

‘Oh, on Choo Choo's birthday? In that case, twelve-fifty with my good wishes and many happy returns. How old is she?'

‘How old are you, baby?' the woman asked, looking into her pet's bulbous black eyes and pouting at it. ‘She's thirteen, she says. In doggy years that's thirteen, but in human years more like ninety-one. An old, old ladykins. This …' she added, looking first at the little dog and then at the shopkeeper, ‘could well be her last birthday. So, surely, an extra-special present would be in order?'

‘Fine. Twelve hundred, but that's my last offer. I have to say Choo Choo has impeccable taste. She's homed in on the jewel in my collection.'

‘Yes,' the woman agreed, kissing the tiny dog's head, ‘she has a nose for quality, doesn't she? You see that oak commode over there – the one with the japanned decoration?'

A tall young man wandered through the door marked ‘Private' at the back of the shop, a bacon roll in one hand and a mug of tea in the other. His long auburn hair had been scraped back into an untidy ponytail, emphasising his perfect cheekbones and heavy-lidded eyes. The crotch of his low-slung black trousers reached mid-thigh level, and he moved his hips like a dancer, avoiding the
pieces of furniture effortlessly, never spilling his tea. As he came closer to the pair, the Chihuahua opened her eyes wide, curled her freckled lips to reveal a set of minute dagger-like teeth and growled. By way of reply, the youth widened his own large eyes and bared his perfect teeth, terrifying the dog so that she released a volley of high-pitched yaps.

‘Choo Choo!' said the woman, giving the animal a sharp tap across its muzzle, ‘manners! This isn't your shop.'

‘Or yours,' Hal said, looking hard at the smirking boy.

‘Dad,' the young man said, ‘I need to speak to you.'

‘In a minute, Rick, in a minute,' the man replied, stroking the pet's dome-shaped head with his forefinger in an attempt to pacify it. ‘I'm busy with a customer.'

‘I don't really like commodes – other people's … it's just the thought, isn't it?' The woman wrinkled her nose. ‘But that wee card table near the window. I'd give you five hundred for that …'

‘The label,' Hal said, beginning to get annoyed at her assumption, true though it was, that he would haggle over everything, ‘says a thousand.'

‘Label says “no”, then?' she replied, putting on a glum face like a clown's, and sweeping her pashmina back over her shoulder as if readying herself to leave.

‘No, label says a thousand, and I say eight hundred. Since it's Choo Choo's birthday.'

‘Mmm. Eight hundred. Do you know, it's my birthday too?'

‘Ninety-one-year-old twins are you, then?' Hal remarked drily.

‘No, we are not. Seven-fifty, that's my last offer.'

‘Done.'

After the woman's credit card had been lightened and she had departed with a spring in her step, Hal finally turned his attention to his son. ‘God bless Choo Choo. Long may she live … to shop,' he said, writing ‘Sold' on the two labels with a marker pen.

‘Where's the book?' Rick asked, lowering himself on to the embroidered seat of a bow-legged armchair, mug still in his hand.

‘Don't sit on that!' his father shouted.

‘OK, OK! Take it easy!' Rick said, leaping up as if stung and splashing tea across his shirt.

‘It's got woodworm, Rick. I've treated it, but with your weight it'll come crashing to the ground. That's why I'm describing it as “an ornamental chair”.'

‘Junk would be nearer the mark. Right. I'm needing to go now. So, where's that book gone?'

‘What book?'

‘The big green one – the one that was in the living-room, the one you said you picked up in a job lot in Edinburgh.'

‘I don't know. In the living-room, I expect. That's where it was.'

‘It's not there,' Rick said crossly, swallowing the last of his roll and putting his mug down on a sideboard.

‘Don't do that, it's wet. Pick it up. It'll leave a ring. The book must be there. I haven't touched it. What about Kyle, have you checked with him?'

‘No, he's not in. He wouldn't touch it anyway, he
doesn't know what a book's for. You must have shifted it, Dad. Think.'

‘Me, dust anything? Christ, Rick, I don't need to think. I haven't touched the bloody book, OK? If it's not there someone else must have shifted it.'

‘Who would have? You threw that cow Ellen out, remember?'

‘I don't
know
who and I haven't got time for this. It'll be there, OK?'

‘Who else has been in there recently?'

‘Nobody! What do you want with it anyway? It's not yours. Now, push off, I've got work to do.' Hal suddenly put his hands to his head. ‘Christ! I know who was in there.'

‘Who?'

‘That bloody priest – that crazy, sodding priest from Kinross. I don't believe it, the wee bastard's taken my book!'

Sitting in his armchair, a chilled glass of Sancerre in his hand, Father Vincent opened the book on his knee. There, in Stevenson's unsightly scrawl, was the first entry. It had been added to and amended in different coloured inks.

Immediately, he turned to the entries for ‘M' and found:

It was evident that he had not done so. The entries relating to him continued for another two pages, covering a spell in Rome, teaching at the Scotch College, and then ministering to a further four towns within the diocese. In the margin, opposite his current address, was an ‘X' in red biro and the figure £1,000 written in pencil. Father Vincent turned over several blank pages, searching for the entry for Callum Taylor, his nose aware of a strange, dry peppery smell. The notes on him were much shorter.

Opposite that entry there was another ‘X' in red biro and ‘Try £500?' written in pencil. After a Yarrow and a Youngson he came across the entry for Patrick Yule.

Father Vincent read on, appalled, flicking through the further catalogue of crimes and excuses contained in the next two pages. In Ireland the man had been moved on several times as he had in New Mexico. By 1975 the police had, finally, become involved and he had been imprisoned for five years. Thereafter, a formal process of compulsory laicisation had been instituted, but the decision of the tribunal, that Yule be dismissed from the clerical state,
had been overturned on appeal to the Roman Rota Tribunal. It had substituted for the dismissal only a seven-year period of suspension. Opposite the man's final address in the village of Cleish was, once more, a red ‘X' and an entry stating ‘£3,000+'.