We drove round to the square chapel in the Gorbals. Sam explained on the way that she’d nearly sold the magnificent Kestrel after her parents’ death, but simply never got around to it. I was grateful for her tardiness. We pulled up outside. There were some folk milling about. Chapel-goers in their Sunday black.
‘Are you sure we shouldn’t call the police?’ she asked for the third time.
‘And tell them what? A well-regarded priest of a prominent chapel is in cahoots with a drugs baron and arranged to have me murdered? And the very same pillar of the community was there the night before Hugh Donovan was found drowning in enough evidence to hang him twice over? How do you think they’d take it?’
She raised her hands, palms up, over the steering wheel. ‘So we just pop in for a wee chat? Maybe beard him in the confessional and hope he’ll do the talking?’
‘I want to see his face. When he sees mine. We’ll take it from there. OK?’
‘OK.’
We got out and walked up the short path to where people were standing and talking to each other.
A wee white-haired woman looked up at me. ‘Yer wasting yer time, so ye are. It’s no’ open.’
‘What do you mean it’s not open?’ I asked, knowing as I said it that I’d just given the perfect opening for a Glasgow response.
‘Because it’s shut,’ said the wee monster.
‘How often does this happen?’
‘Never been known, so it hasnae,’ she said triumphantly.
‘Is there a back door?’
She looked at me as though she’d only just realised she was talking to a heretic condemned to eternal damnation.
‘That’s the priest’s private door. That’s his robing room. Ye cannae just walk up there and chap on his door.’ Her head was indicating the way, so Sam and I took it, despite the evil eye that followed us round the back of the chapel.
Here the regular sandstone lines were broken up by a small brick building leaning against the rectangle of the church itself. A door was set into the side. It was locked. I really needed to get a proper set of burgling tools made.
‘Do you have any kirby grips or a nail file in that bag of yours?’ I asked Sam.
‘You’re not… Surely you’re not going to…’
‘He tried to have me killed.’
Without another word she delved in her bag and laid a neatly rolled wax-cloth tube in my hand. I undid it and found three screwdrivers, an adjustable spanner, a small pair of pliers and two sparkplugs in my hand.
‘My father insisted I learn the basics,’ she defiantly.
I inspected the locks and set to work with the screwdrivers. It took me less than a minute till the door clicked open. I pushed it ajar and stepped in. It was dark inside and I waited till my eyes had adjusted before finding the curtains and letting light flood in. There was a sink and two gas rings by one wall. A carpet and an old armchair and bookcase were the only furnishings. I crossed the small room and opened the door in the far wall.
It led to a short hallway in the body of the chapel itself. At the end was a curtain framed by light. I pulled it open and stepped into the chapel proper, just under the pulpit and facing the empty rows. We edged forward till we were standing in front of the altar and could take in the whole view. Sam was right behind me, so that she was only a second later than me to meet Father Patrick Cassidy. We stood staring at the latest, real-life addition to the body of tragic art that surrounded us.
Directly behind the altar and about twenty feet up, stood the gleaming tubes of organ pipes. The rope was secured at one end to the heavy leg of the altar. It rose up, taut as iron, and looped round the back of four of the pipes. It then dropped a few feet and ended in a noose about ten feet off the floor.
Suspended from the noose was Father Patrick Cassidy, his purple face contorted in the terror-filled realisation that the Hail Marys hadn’t been enough. He had met his Maker and been found wanting. His long scrawny body dangled naked and unadorned save for the crucifix of his office round his stretched neck. The hair on his chest and groin were white as snow. His fingers were wrapped tightly round the noose suggesting he’d had second thoughts after kicking away the ladder that lay at his feet. A stink rose from beneath him where his bowels had emptied.
I heard a soft sigh, turned and caught Samantha Campbell as she began to crumble. I half carried, half steered her to a front-row pew and made her put her head between her knees. She was breathing like a fat lad on an assault course. When I was sure she was past the point of fainting, I walked back over to examine the scene.
Tragic, and bloody inconvenient. It wasn’t conclusive, but the case against Hugh was looking more like a colander by the day. But Cassidy’s demise fairly messed up our case unless we could convince the courts that he’d taken his life in remorse for his guilt. Hard to prove unless we could get a phone down into the flames of hell. Or he’d left a suicide note explaining everything.
I stood by the altar scanning the area carefully. His cassock lay folded across the altar. His vest, pants, shoes and socks were scattered underneath. A rosary lay piled on top of the robes. The ladder was a big one, two equal sides of steps. It lay twisted and useless where it had fallen.
I got up close to the dangling body. The stink was overwhelming. Watching where I stepped I walked round the rigid corpse. His lower limbs were darkened by pooling blood. His upper body was blanched. Only his face and his trapped fingers showed colour. Soon they would turn black. His feet were level with my head. Big yellow toenails and hard heels, and something more interesting: darkening rings round his ankles, not complete, just on the outside, as though they’d been held together. I looked up at his hands; there seemed to be a similar pattern emerging round his wrists.
I began to widen my search. I walked back to his little room at the back. In a cupboard hung his best raiments; the white surplice and heavy chasuble. In a drawer by the sink were a few bits of cutlery including a sharp knife. I examined the sink. The plughole had fibres clogging it, the sort of fibres you might get if you’d cut up a rope. I kept searching and soon found what I was looking for by the side of the old armchair: a short piece of the simple cord he used to cinch his surplice. It was cut roughly at one end. I didn’t touch it.
When I got back to the hall Sam was sitting upright and breathing easier. Her face was starched and sweaty, but she gave me a weak smile, all the time averting her eyes from the dangling priest.
‘Sorry, Brodie. I just…’
‘I nearly passed out myself. Shall we summon the boys in blue?’
Just then I heard voices coming down the passage from the back room. Then the wee woman who’d been so helpful outside burst through the curtain closely followed by two of her pals. They were all in black coats and clutching black handbags in front of them.
‘Stop!’ I shouted, but they had too much momentum. They piled up a few feet from us and demanded:
‘Whit’s going on here? Whit right have you to come into oor church?’
And then her pals saw it. Saw him.
‘Oh dear God, Mary mother of Jesus…’
‘Oh my God, Lizzie!’
Then their words just turned into shrieks and I shepherded them back to the corridor in a melee of accusations and calls to their Maker. I kept ushering them through the back room and outside. Then I stopped and tried to get their ashen attention.
‘Don’t go back in there. And don’t let anyone else get in. Can one of you go to the nearest phone box and call the police?’ The three wee dears were gibbering still. ‘Ladies! We need you to help. Can you go and get the polis, please.’
They broke away from me as though I’d had time to nip in, capture their priest, strip him naked, throw a rope round the organ pipes and string him up myself. In a stumbling, clutching group they vanished round the corner sounding like a seal colony under attack from skuas.
I went back in. Sam was in the anteroom now. She looked up; colour was returning to her face in livid splashes.
‘What now?’
‘We wait and we don’t touch anything.’
She looked puzzled. ‘He hanged himself. Is there anything more to look for?’
‘In the nude? He was murdered, Sam. His ankles and wrists were tied before they strung him up. There might be marks round his mouth. I imagine they gagged him before taking the ropes and the gag away after he was dead.’
The colour seemed to be leaving her face again, but she was made of tough stuff. She straightened. ‘Will the police see that?’
‘That’s why I’m staying here. It’s going to be a long day.’