Father Dominic’s stomach growled a welcome, his hand resting against his cassock. ‘Bless you, my child. Have you come for me to hear your confession?’

The person nodded, hardly visible through the metal grille, the voice a low whisper.

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

‘When was your last confession?’

‘Many years ago.’

Father Dominic shifted his position; the bench was hard on a bony posterior. ‘But you are here today and want to repent of your sins?’

Again the low whisper, impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman. ‘Yes.’

‘What sins have you committed, my child?’

There was a momentary pause before the person continued. ‘I am guilty of anger and pride. I have been very lonely for a long time, Father. Too much alone …’

‘Go on.’

‘… I have slept with women, even paid for a prostitute. It was wrong, Father, but I was lonely, a long way from home, and I needed comfort.’

The same old story, the priest thought. ‘Are you married?’

‘No. And I have dark thoughts, terrible thoughts, Father.’

‘Like what?’

‘Hatred.’

‘You must rid yourself of these thoughts. They are an insult to God—’

‘But I can’t rid myself of them,’ the voice replied, ‘and I have such bad dreams. Every night the dreams come. Always the same.’

Father Dominic shifted his position, and his stomach growled again. Embarrassed, he touched his belly, pressing his finger into it in the hope of stopping the noise. He would hurry this along, he thought, then eat.

‘God forgives everything. I will give you a penance—’

‘There’s more, Father.’

There would be, the priest thought, irritated. ‘Go on, my child.’

‘This is my confession and as such you cannot break my confidence. What I tell you, you can tell no one else.’

Father Dominic nodded. ‘I cannot break the oath of the confessional, no.’

‘It would be our secret.’

‘Yes. Apart from us, only God would know.’

There was a long pause. For a moment Father Dominic thought the person had left, slipped silently out of the booth, but then the voice continued.

‘I let someone down. I should have helped them and I didn’t. I did in the end, but by then it was too late.’ The whispering paused, took in a slow breath. ‘I live with that – knowing I could have saved a life and didn’t.’

Wrong-footed, the priest found himself taken aback. This was not what he had expected. ‘Did you take a life?’

‘No. I watched someone else take a life.’

‘Have you told the police about this?’

‘Yes, Father, I told the police. But it was a long time ago and everyone’s forgotten it now. I was punished, but that wasn’t right – the real culprits got away with it …’ Again a long pause, a blurred image behind the grille, Father Dominic straining to see who was talking. And failing.

‘Did you give false witness?’

‘No!’ the whisperer said sharply. ‘I told the truth.’

‘Then God will punish the evildoers.’

‘But will He, Father?’

Sudden anger in the priest’s voice. ‘You doubt God?’

‘Why should I believe in Him when He allows such injustice?’

‘It is not our place to question God!’

The whispered voice continued. ‘Did Father Luke believe that too?’

A sick feeling crept over the priest, a curdling memory stirring at the back of his mind. He felt suddenly claustrophobic in the booth and attempted to loosen his white dog collar, his hand shaking. The confines of the confessional were closing in on him, the musty smell of wood and furniture polish sticking in his throat.

‘Father Luke is dead.’

‘I know. He was murdered outside the Brompton Oratory only the other day,’ the voice replied softly. ‘How does it feel to have lost your ally, Father? To know that God does catch up with evildoers in the end. And that next time it will be your turn—’

‘Who are you?’

‘You know me, Father Dominic,’ the voice said, suddenly no longer a whisper but a voice the priest knew only too well.

‘Laverne!’

‘Yes. And before you decide to leave the confessional in a hurry, think again,’ Nicholas said coldly, ‘and listen to what I have to say. I know what you did. What I exposed ten years ago was the truth—’

‘You went to the press! You attacked a priest, you abused the Eucharist. You tried to discredit the Catholic Church, of which you were a serving member.’

‘You and your kind discredited the Church long before I blew the whistle. I thought I could stop what you were doing, but I left it too late. Patrick Gerin died.’

‘He committed suicide!’

‘He was murdered!’ Nicholas retorted. ‘You know it and I know it. If you didn’t put the rope around his neck, you drove him to it. And no one wanted to know. Instead I was made out to be lunatic, a fantasist. Well, the Church might have gagged me once, but not this time. You’re trying to keep me quiet again. Trying to stop me going public with what I know. You lied, priest. You lied to the police—’

‘What!’

‘You told them that I’d phoned Father Luke, implied that I wanted to settle an old score with him. You set me up—’

‘I didn’t!’

‘Forgive me for not believing you.’

‘A man did call him – I overheard the conversation,’ Father Dominic blundered on, his hands pressed against the grille which separated them. ‘He said it was you. Father Luke said it was you. He believed it was Nicholas Laverne.’

‘It wasn’t. Besides, he would have recognised my voice.’

‘From so long ago? No, Father Luke was getting deaf, he had trouble with voices.’ The priest was pleading, clinging to the grille. ‘Believe me, he thought it was you. He was afraid, he was older, he had—’

‘A bad conscience.’

‘We didn’t do anything!’ Father Dominic replied. ‘It was just discipline. We weren’t bad priests, not like those you hear about sexually abusing boys—’

‘Someone else said that. As though it lessened what you two did.’ Nicholas was thinking rapidly. He could see that the priest was afraid and was telling the truth. Someone had rung St Barnabas’s church, posing as him. And Father Luke would have believed them, thinking Nicholas was coming back to take his revenge. But it hadn’t been him.

‘It wasn’t my fault!’ persisted Father Dominic. ‘I was only trying to help the police when I told them about the phone call. It was the natural assumption to make. You’d been our enemy once, you could be our enemy again.’

‘But why now? After so long?’ Nicholas asked, trying to find out what the priest knew and if he would give himself away about the Bosch secret.

‘I don’t know why you came back!’

‘I didn’t come back.’

‘Someone came back. Someone posing as you.’ Father Dominic was panicking, shaking. ‘No one expected to hear from you again. We thought it was all in the past. It was old history from ten years ago. We thought it was forgotten …’

Nicholas slumped back on the bench. He had been sure that he had been framed by the Church, the death of Father Luke the means to silence him. After all, another scandal would be devastating to a religious order that had been tainted by recent claims of abuse. An order that had seen some of its highest members go unpunished.

But if the Church hadn’t set him up, who had?

Nicholas looked back at the grille, the priest’s hands still pressed against it. ‘Don’t lie to me—’

‘I’m not lying!’ the priest cried. ‘I swear I’m not lying. Someone killed Father Luke, and if it wasn’t you, who was it?’

Nicholas pressed his own palms against the grille, feeling the priest’s flesh hot against his skin. ‘Swear it! On your soul, swear that you are telling the truth. If you lie to me now I’ll find out, and I’ll send you to Hell personally.’

Forty-Five

Mark Spencer had to admit that Honor had pissed him off with the crack about looking down her blouse, but he wasn’t deterred. He liked her too much to give up and was eager to find a way to impress her. Which had just fallen into his lap. Having overheard her phone conversation, Mark had picked up on the name Carel Honthorst, and his unrelenting curiosity had done the rest.