Turbulent Priests (Dan Starkey 3) (33 page)

‘Give me a good reason why,’ I said, sniffing up.

‘Because I’ll shoot you if you don’t,’ he barked.

Duncan gave a sour laugh. ‘Tommy, for God’s sake wise up, you’re going to shoot us anyway.’

‘Well, just keep it down, eh?’

I looked at Duncan again. ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘for cheering me up.’

He gave a little shrug.

Tommy was the only gunman directly threatening us. The rest had retreated out of the wind to the shelter of the hall steps; they could also hear better the wind coming from
within as Flynn fought his last stand. I hadn’t met Tommy before; he’d stared in at us in the church hall earlier in the day; beardy, bulky, a sheep’s lifeless eyes.

‘You were in my class at school, Tommy,’ said Duncan.

‘So?’

‘Nothing. Just that now you’re probably going to have to shoot me.’

‘So? You’re a heretic and pornographer.’

‘You believe that?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Because Father White says?’

‘Yes.’

‘You believe everything he says?’ I asked.

‘Sure.’

‘Why believe him and not Father Flynn?’

‘Because Father Flynn’s not well.’

‘Who told you that?’ asked Duncan.

‘We know he’s not well. He’s mental. He’s saying all sorts of crazy stuff.’

‘Like what?’

‘About stupid gas driving us nuts.’

‘You don’t think he could have a point?’ I asked.

‘Of course not,’ he said and gave us a pity-the-poor-misguided-fools sigh. ‘He’s just lost the faith.’

‘You don’t think the likelihood of the Messiah being born on Wrathlin is just as crazy as some gas driving us nuts?’

‘That’s exactly the argument I’d expect a heathen to come up with.’

‘Tommy,’ asked Duncan, ‘could you really shoot us?’

‘I could.’

‘You must really hate us.’

‘I don’t hate you at all. I just love Christine. And if Father White says killing you two will protect her, then that’s fine by me.’

‘It won’t be on your conscience then.’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘Good,’ I said, ‘that’s nice to know.’

A jumping to attention on the steps, then the door opened and Father Flynn, followed by Father White and the rest of the Council, emerged. They appeared, if anything, even more sombre than before, although sombreness is a difficult thing to judge where religion is involved; in a religious type, sombreness can often be taken as the equivalent of a broad smile in a non-religious type. It goes with the territory. A priest who comes on like Laughing Boy isn’t to be trusted.

As the councillors formed themselves up, the gunmen hurried down the steps, then stood in a loose semi-circle behind Duncan and me. They gazed reverentially up at our jury. The councillors spread out along the top step, almost equally split around Father White. Flynn stepped down into the yard and walked the few yards to us. It was difficult to judge from the set of his eyes the outcome of those heated discussions. His face was pale, but so was everyone’s; it was a pale afternoon, chilled by the grey clouds above and the rush of the freezing Atlantic winds up the hill to the church.

Flynn stood before us, nodding his head slightly, then clasped his hands behind his back.

‘I never wanted this to happen,’ he said simply, then sucked in his cheeks and looked beyond us, down the hill towards the harbour. Not finding any solace there, he turned slightly, then peered back at Father White, who nodded. ‘I have asked that you two, and I, be allowed to leave the island immediately, and that we give our word to tell no one of what has gone on here.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said.

‘Unfortunately this request has been refused.’

I tutted. Duncan’s head dropped. My head rarely drops without the influence of alcohol. I tossed a defiant look in the direction of the Council. I would get to the screaming and begging soon enough.

‘The thing is,’ Flynn said, ‘I fully understand the position Father White and the rest of the Council find themselves in. If you believe in something, especially if it is something as important as this, then you have to stick to your guns, literally, in this case. Give it everything. Don’t let anyone put you off. That is what they are doing. I sympathise, because I felt the same way. Now, because of recent revelations we are all aware of, I am no longer able to believe in the idea of Christine being the daughter of God. She’s a remarkable girl, but I can’t say that she is anything more than that. I have argued my case, but I could just as well be wrong. I hope for the sake of the people behind me here that I am. But I see now that I cannot stand in their way.’

‘That’s a little short of an endorsement,’ I said.

‘I have pleaded with them not to carry out their threat to execute you and Duncan,’ said Flynn.

‘Thank you,’ said Duncan.

‘Unfortunately that has also fallen on deaf ears.’

‘Oh.’

‘So the story of Christine will never be written. At least by your hand, Dan.’

‘That’s what publishing’s like, Father,’ I said.

He gave me a sad little grin. ‘Always ready with a good line, Dan, always ready.’

‘Comedy is easy. Dying is hard. What’s your punishment, three Hail Marys?’

‘Oh, I don’t think they could afford to let me away that easily, Dan. No. I’m afraid when it comes to punishment, I’m down there in the dust beside you. It’s only right.’

And he sank to his knees. Then shuffled round.

The three of us looked up at Father White.

‘I can’t believe he’s going to kill you as well,’ said Duncan.

Flynn gave a little shrug. ‘What else can he do?’

‘What else indeed?’ Father White stepped down into the yard. His face seemed to glow. Triumphant. All-powerful. He stopped before Duncan. He placed his hand on the teacher’s head. Petted his hair for a moment, then suddenly clenched his fist and pulled his scalp sharply up, lifting Duncan’s not insignificant body a couple of inches off the ground. ‘What would you have us do?’ he spat, his face snarling up. He forced Duncan’s head round until it faced Flynn. ‘This priest,
this colleague, this friend of mine, this primary supporter of Christine, turns out to be the serpent in the Garden of Eden. What would you have me do, keep him alive so that he can spread more of his poison? So that he can infect everyone, turn everyone against Christine? No! Indeed, no!’ He let go of the hair, raised his hand and punched a fist into the sky. ‘God is watching us, and it’s with God’s blessing we’re doing this!’ he proclaimed.

‘Amen,’ said at least three of the councillors. The rest nodded. Sombrely.

It seemed about the right time to put my spoke in. ‘Have you actually put it to Christine, then?’ I ventured.

White snapped round. ‘Put what?’

‘Our execution.’

He blew air disdainfully out of his nose. ‘I don’t need to.’

‘You made a big case for it before. Before Mary Reilly escaped.’

He grabbed my hair. Twisted. Quite possibly he wanted some of it for himself. He pressed his face into mine. Disappointingly, he had nice breath. ‘Yes, we were prepared to try her, we needed to show everyone the evil that was abroad. That was important. But the sort of evil you three have been responsible for is of a much more insidious nature.’ He let go of me. ‘Mary Reilly was clearly mad,’ he said, ‘and thus more easily discredited by public debate, but you three are altogether more lucid, more capable of spreading your misguided rubbish than she ever was.’

I looked up at the councillors. ‘And all of you agree with this?’

They nodded, one by one, no shyness about it, no avoiding the eyes of a doomed man. I shrugged. Perhaps my last shrug on this mortal coil. ‘Oh well, fair enough then. Who am I to interfere with the democratic process?’ I coughed up. I spat. ‘Sorry, did I say democratic process? I meant mind-warped fascist fantasy bastards intent on murder.’

An evil smirk slipped onto Father White’s face. ‘Is that it?’

I shook my head. ‘Led by a bald cunt who wouldn’t know a Last Supper from a pastie supper.’

He shook his head mock-sadly. ‘As a last will and testament, Starkey, it does you justice. Embarrassing and forgettable.’

‘Maybe, but at least it makes me feel better, you arrogant self-satisfied radiation-saturated fucker.’

A couple of the gunmen let loose with a titter. A stern look silenced them.

‘Not for long,’ said the priest, then stepped along. ‘Is there anything you want to say, Frank, before the end?’

Flynn nodded. ‘I want you to know that I forgive you. All of you.’

‘Thank you, Frank, And we forgive you.’

Another step along. ‘What about you, pornographer? Anything to say to us?’

Duncan mumbled something. His eyes remained fixed on the ground.

‘What’s that?’ White asked, kneeling down.

Duncan turned his head up suddenly, and spat in the priest’s face.

The shock of it sent him sprawling onto his back in the
dust. He righted himself quickly, heaved to his feet, just as Tommy the gunman crunched the butt of his gun into the back of Duncan’s head. Duncan fell silently forward, instantly unconscious.

White ran a sleeve across his face, looked at the damp stain. ‘Do it,’ he said.

Tommy stood back a little, then raised the pistol and centred his sights on the back of Duncan’s head. He looked up at Father White. The priest nodded. He looked up at the line of councillors. They nodded too. He looked at Father Flynn. He shook his head.

‘Don’t do it, son,’ said Flynn.

‘Shoot him and be done with it!’ White shouted.

‘He’s Christine’s father,’ I said. ‘Tommy, you know that, don’t you?’

Tommy hesitated. Looked back at White. ‘He’s not, is he?’

‘Of course he’s not. God is Christine’s father. You know that.’

‘You’ll go straight to hell,’ I said.

Tommy looked back at Flynn, then realigned his shot.

‘He’s Joseph,’ said Flynn. ‘You’re going to murder Joseph.’

Tommy looked up to the Council for help. They weren’t much help. He looked round to his fellow gunmen.

‘Pull the trigger,’ one of them said.

Still he hesitated. A rolling sweat broke across his brow. Father White, impatient, moved swiftly across to the reluctant executioner and grabbed the gun from him. Tommy reversed out of the semi-circle. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

The priest cradled the pistol in his hand for a moment then stepped forward and stood above the unconscious young teacher. He straddled the body, raised the gun, mouthed an almost silent prayer, then shot him. Twice.

40

Blood, pumping like that, has its effect.

The gunmen, the councillors, the priest they were loyal to, had all been involved in murder before, but murder of a different kind. I could tell that from their hang-jawed faces: the government man, Mary and Murtagh, the young priest, the pair we would never identify, had all been killed in the murky dark of a Wrathlin night, in the panic of a drunken argument, in the leaping shadows of a wild-grown field. This was different: the shuddering body of a man they all knew, his life force spraying out of a butchered head, lying in a churchyard on a crisp autumnal day. They stood stock-still. Stared. No one objected when I reached into my pocket and produced a knot of kitchen roll and dragged it across my bloody face.

Father White, gun still in hand, administered the last rites.
If anything represented the madness that had overtaken Wrathlin, it was this. And no one else seemed to think it strange.

Then he stood and looked at me. It could only have been for a few seconds, but it was enough time for me to cram through my mind what I needed to: my farewells. The bodies we had discovered in Mulrooney’s field had been real enough, but long dead, and thus also a little unreal. Duncan’s blood on my lips was the ultimate reality, the flavour of death.

If I was ever considered important enough to warrant an obituary in my local paper I hoped that this was what they would say: that he was a good man. That he was born with a bone deficiency: very few serious ones. That he laughed and drank and enjoyed himself because that was what life was for. That he regretted any hardship or pain or death that he had caused and hoped that It would forgive him. That he’d had a wonderful life and he wanted to thank James Stewart and Humphrey Bogart,
Zulu
, The Clash and Sugar Ray Leonard for all the good times, for the beat of Charles Bukowski and Dr Feelgood, for the taste of Harp, Tennent’s, Rolling Rock and other absent friends. That he loved his wife. And that he loved his child.

I took a deep gulp of the wind, salt-ridden, biting, beautiful wind, and stared resolutely back at Father White.

‘Good shot,’ I said.

Beside me, Father Flynn was flying through a hundred whispered prayers, eyes shut tightly.

Death stepped behind me. Cool metal pressed hard
against my skull. In those last moments I sought perfect composure.

Goodbye Patricia.

Goodbye my love.

Jesus, that’s a Glitter Band song. I can’t have that as my last . . . Bang.

But not bang – honk.

Horn.

Honk.

Horn.

Hesitation. A relaxation of the metal.

Honk. Honk. Honk. Roar of heavy engine.

I opened my eyes. Turned, as everyone else looked behind me.

And over the brow of the hill came a tractor.

The tractor pulled a two-wheeled trailer.

And behind the trailer came people. Lots of them.

Father White stepped away from me, the gun hanging loose at his side. He looked back at the councillors, caught them swapping confused glances. With radon-inspired choreography they stepped down into the yard as one.

The tractor and trailer heaved through the gates. I could see now that it was driven by Dr Finlay. He was thumping his hand up and down on the horn. Beside him in the cab stood Moira and Christine and Patricia. Behind the trailer came the ladies of the parish, half of them in aerobic
tracksuits. And behind them, stretched out way back down the hill, others, dozens upon dozens of ordinary people, the fishermen, the shopkeepers, the housewives, the kids. There was something about them, a look, a provocative tenseness that suggested that they were drawn to the churchyard by something more than their allegiance to Christine. It became clear what it was when Finlay wheeled the tractor round until it faced back out of the yard; he flipped a switch which disconnected the trailer. It rolled back a couple of yards and then flipped up onto its wheels, disgorging the rotting remains of six familiar corpses.