Evil Intent (25 page)

Callie spent the morning with Brian, whose fortnightly turn it was to take assembly at the local primary school. This time, he told her, she would observe and assist. Next time she could do the lion’s share of it, while he watched her. And the time after that, she would be on her own. School assemblies, he made it clear, were a curate’s province, freeing up the vicar for more important parochial responsibilities. What those responsibilities might be, he didn’t say.

At lunchtime she hurried home to Bella. The heavy rain, early on, had prevented more than a token walk first thing in the morning, but the rain had eventually given way to watery sunshine and she was anxious to take her for an extended walk while she had the chance.

They headed for the park, where Callie was glad to see that only a few
of the leaves had come down in the storm. Under the newly-washed sky the rest seemed, all at once, to have transformed themselves, flaunting shades of ochre, crimson, russet, copper, lemon and lime in numberless
combinations,
unique as snowflakes.

Even as a child, Callie had looked forward to autumn, the start of the academic year, with its promise of new beginnings. She’d loved all its
trappings:
crisp new apples tucked in new lunchboxes, pristine new exercise books, and new pencils, freshly sharpened, in shiny new pencil tins. Though she knew that autumn was the winding-down season of the year, sliding towards winter, to her it had always been an exhilarating time.

After the daytime warmth of the past few weeks, in the wake of the storm it seemed suddenly colder, with a definite autumnal nip in the air. That didn’t seem to bother Bella, who trotted along quite happily, sniffing all the interesting scents which the rain had brought out. But Callie found, after a while, that her fingers were getting cold. And when she turned towards home, she saw that a black cloud had bubbled up behind her,
looking
more ominous by the minute.

She didn’t have an umbrella: a mistake, she knew, as the first fat drops pelted down.

They weren’t all that far from the council flats where the Harringtons lived, and on impulse Callie started off in that direction at a brisk walk, Bella trotting along eagerly at her side. She was already quite wet when Dennis opened the door. ‘Well!’ he said. ‘You look like a drowned rat, girl. Come on in and dry off. I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘I’ve got my dog with me. I hope you don’t mind.’

Dennis bent over, creakily, and fondled Bella’s ears. ‘No, I don’t mind. I like dogs. I didn’t know you had one.’

‘I’ve only had her for two days.’

‘I used to have a dog myself,’ he said, straightening up. ‘When I was just a lad. A little terrier, he was. Name of Spot. I suppose you can guess why.’ Dennis chuckled. ‘In them days, dogs had names like that. Spot, Blackie, Rex, Prince, Daisy.
Dog
names. Not like nowadays, when you hear people calling their dogs “Henry” and “Cynthia” and such like.’

‘Her name is Bella,’ Callie told him with pride. ‘It’s Italian for “beautiful”.’

‘She is that,’ he acknowledged. He led her through to the lounge, which was empty and chill, and switched on a bar of the electric fire. ‘That’ll warm you a bit,’ he said. ‘That, and a good cup of tea.’

‘Is Elsie…’

‘Not so good today,’ Dennis admitted. ‘Had one of her bad turns this morning, did my Elsie. The doctor came out and all. Said that bed rest was what she wanted.’

‘Oh, then perhaps I’d better go,’ Callie said.

‘Not at all, girl.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘She’s doing what the doctor ordered – sleeping. And I’m glad of the company, to tell you the truth.’

He made tea for both of them and brought it through to the lounge. Callie accepted it with gratitude, while Bella sat decorously at her feet.

‘I was watching the telly a bit ago,’ Dennis said. ‘Saw on the news as our Area Dean is going to be Bishop of Brixton.’

‘Leo?’ Callie exclaimed. ‘That’s great!’

‘You know him, then?’

‘Not very well,’ she confessed. ‘I’ve met him once or twice.’

Dennis tapped the side of his nose. ‘I suppose they put it on the telly because he’s…you know. Black. There aren’t many black bishops, are there, and I reckon the Church wants everyone to know that we’re moving with the times.’

‘He’s a good man,’ Callie said stoutly. ‘My friend Frances Cherry thinks the world of him.’

‘Ah, now.’ Dennis put down his tea cup. ‘Would that be the Frances Cherry we’ve been reading about in the papers?’

Callie sighed; she should have known that Dennis would read the
Globe.
‘On Saturday, yes. But you mustn’t believe everything you read in the papers.’

‘Oh, I meant today’s paper, girl.’

‘Today?’

‘I think it’s in the bedroom.’ He got up and tiptoed from the room, returning half a minute later with a tabloid. ‘Right here,’ he indicated,
opening
it and pointing. ‘Sure sounds to me like she’s involved with that
murder.
Bad business, that. Doesn’t do the Church no good for priests to go round killing one other.’

‘Frances had nothing to do with it!’ Callie said sharply as she reached for the paper.

‘How can you be sure?’ He shook his head. ‘Mind, I’m not saying you’re wrong, girl, but in my experience, there’s no smoke without fire.’

Lilith read the press release about Leo Jackson’s appointment with great interest. Religious affairs – other than in the strictly literal sense, as in ‘Vicar Bonks Organist’s Wife’ – were not usually the province of the
Globe.
But what a fantastic story she could write about this – nothing, she was sure, that any of the other papers would do. Already she could visualise the headline: New Black Bishop linked to Priest’s Murder.

Great stuff – and it would show that supercilious bastard what
happened
when you crossed Lilith Noone. She hadn’t imagined that her
opportunity
for revenge would come quite so soon, and in this form. Almost a gift from God, she decided, smiling to herself.

She sketched something out on her computer, then decided that she’d better run it by her editor. Email was the most efficient way to do that, so she sent the first draft off to him and worked on polishing and expanding it until she received his reply.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said tersely. ‘Not our kind of story.’

Lilith was incensed and stunned. Not our kind of story? What did he mean? True, the other papers probably wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole, but the
Globe
never backed away from stories because they were a bit
controversial,
or teetering on the brink of libel or good taste. That was their speciality, for God’s sake.

She picked up the phone and rang him.

‘It’s a great story,’ he said in a conciliatory voice. ‘But I just don’t think we want to go there. Not at the moment.’

A nasty suspicion struck her. ‘It’s because he’s black, isn’t it? The race card, and all that.’

He didn’t deny it. ‘It’s speculative, that’s all. And negative.’

‘Everything we do is negative,’ she said bluntly.

‘I disagree. We’ve been building up a lot of sympathy in the black
community
with your articles about the murdered African priest. That’s the sort of thing we want, Lilith. A black victim, and the system doesn’t care. As long as it’s the system – and the police – that we keep pressurising, everyone will be happy.’

‘But…’

‘Your pieces have been great up till now. Just right. Give me another one like that for tomorrow, and I’ll print it gladly.’

It was not what she wanted to hear. She slammed the phone down. What on earth was she going to write about?

Frances checked the list of new hospital admissions. When people put ‘C of E’ as their religious preference on their admission form, she liked to pay a quick call on them and offer them the opportunity to receive the
sacrament
, or just to talk.

It was a bit of a nonsense, really. Most people who weren’t actively something else – Roman Catholic, Baptist, Muslim – put down ‘C of E’, and very few of them had any interest or involvement whatever in the Church. Almost all were the ‘hatch, match and dispatch’ sort of Anglicans, who liked the Church to be there at significant moments in their lives, but didn’t want it to impinge otherwise. Still, even amongst the majority of nominal Anglicans there were those who considered their hospitalisation to
be
a significant moment, warranting the presence of a priest. Perhaps they were dying, or perhaps they were frightened, or lonely.

Many sent her away, of course; it was those who didn’t who were often her most satisfying and rewarding contacts. After all, she’d first met Callie Anson at the bedside of her dying father.

Her first ‘cold call’ of the afternoon turned out to be a middle-aged man facing a major operation. He had no family, seemingly no friends, and he was terrified. He wasn’t interested in the sacrament, but he did want to talk.

An hour later, with the promise of a visit the next day, Frances moved on. This time it was an elderly woman, also alone. She’d been passing the time with magazines and newspapers, which were strewn about her bed,
and received Frances with scepticism.

‘I’m not really a churchgoer,’ she warned. ‘Christmas and Easter, if I’m lucky. You won’t want to talk to me, I reckon.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Frances assured her. ‘I just wanted you to know that I’m here, if you do want to talk.’

‘I don’t hold much with women priests,’ the woman said frankly.

Frances’ smile didn’t waver. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that, and sometimes it was stated far more bluntly and hurtfully. She’d visited people who refused to receive the sacrament from her, who demanded to see one of her male colleagues instead – a ‘real’ priest, as they usually put it. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you’d rather talk to someone else, I can arrange that.’

‘Wait a minute.’ The woman stared at her, narrowing her eyes. ‘You’re that Frances Cherry, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I’m Frances Cherry.’

The woman’s hand scrabbled amongst the pile of reading material on her bed. ‘The one in the
Globe.’

Now her smile felt fixed, artificial. ‘I was mentioned, yes. A few days ago.’

‘Today!’ said the woman as she triumphantly retrieved the tabloid. ‘It says, near enough, that you killed that black man. If it’s true, why haven’t the police arrested you? What are you doing
here
, when you should be in gaol?’

Frances’ mouth went dry with shock. She put out her hand for the paper, but the woman withheld it, clutching it to her chest. For a moment they were frozen like that, staring at each other, then Frances turned and fled.

Marigold came home from an afternoon of shopping, feeling more like
herself
than she had for some time; retail therapy always did the trick for her, and it was a shame she hadn’t tried it days ago. New shoes, new bed-linens, and a fashionable new winter coat had been purchased and would be
delivered
in a day or two.

She would be going back out later for a bridge evening, so she’d asked the daily to prepare a light supper for her and Vincent.

They ate in the dining room, the table properly laid, though it was only
cold: smoked chicken breast, salad, and fruit.

‘Have you had a good day?’ she asked dutifully.

Vincent, facing her across the table, shook his head. ‘The Bishop still hasn’t done a thing about getting me some help. I just can’t keep up this pace, Marigold. And a church with the importance and prominence of St Mary the Virgin – it’s just not right.’

She made soothing noises.

‘It’s because we’re High, you know,’ he went on.

Marigold nodded. She’d heard it all before.

‘If we were some lower-than-the-floorboards Evangelical lot, or
flaming
liberals, they’d be falling all over themselves to sort it out.’

She spooned some chutney onto her plate. One of Vincent’s adoring churchwomen had made it, and it was really rather good. Better than
store-bought
– even Fortnum’s.

Vincent was working himself up to a rant. ‘And speaking of flaming
liberals,
to add insult to injury, they’ve gone and made that Leo Jackson a bishop! Bishop of Brixton, if you please!’

‘Did I know that?’ She frowned, trying to remember.

‘It’s only just been announced today. I heard it on the news.’

Marigold said what was expected of her. ‘That’s appalling.’

‘Appalling is the word. And unfair! He’s much younger than I am, he hasn’t been ordained as long. He wasn’t even born in this country!’

‘It’s because he’s black,’ she pointed out. ‘You wouldn’t
want
to be Bishop of Brixton. Bishop of Kensington, maybe, but not Brixton.’

He scowled at her, in one of those moods where he was not prepared to listen to reason. ‘That’s beside the point! They’ve had plenty of chances to give me preferment, if they’d wanted to. But again and again I’ve been passed over, because of my Churchmanship. It’s out-and-out
discrimination,
I tell you! These days you have to be a wishy-washy liberal to get
anywhere
in the Church. You have to overlook the abomination of women
so-called
priests, for a starter. They promised, when they passed that
lamentable
act, that we traditionalists wouldn’t be discriminated against. But they lied about that, like they’ve lied about so many other things. We few who hold to the true faith of the Church are the ones who have been
marginalised
and ignored.’

‘I’m sure you’re not being ignored,’ she tried to soothe him. It was the wrong thing to say.

‘Just name one traditionalist, one member of Forward in Faith, who’s been promoted! You can’t, can you?’

Marigold sighed to herself, relieved that she was going out.

Before she left, an hour later, she put her head round the door of Vincent’s study to let him know she was going. His back was to her; he was on the phone. The Bishop again, she supposed – bothering him at home, most likely. That was certain to endear him to the Bishop and the Church hierarchy.