The Good Priest by Gillian Galbraith

island surrounded by pale sands and an aquamarine sea. Across a cloudless blue sky flew a single, fork-tailed white bird. It looked like the sort of place where white rum would be served in a half-coconut, he mused.
    â€˜No, no, not him. You know, Raymond Meehan. The police have caught him.’
    â€˜I didn’t know they were looking. What has he done?’ Father Vincent asked, now giving her his full attention.
    â€˜The Bishop … he’s the one who attacked the Bishop. Did you not see the article in the Courier ? It was on the front page.’
    â€˜No. I must have missed it. Raymond? Are you sure? They’ve got him in custody, have they?’
    Father Vincent was familiar with the man. Five years earlier he had lived in the Montgomery Road council estate and was well known within the town. He was theyoungest of a family of ten and would once have been described as ‘soft’. An albino, he lived for country and western music, had been teased at school for not being able to remember his brothers and sisters’ names and was rumoured to live on a diet consisting solely of fish fingers. Like the rest of his clan he had a strong Glasgow accent, but unlike the rest of them, when talking, he honked adenoidally through his nose, sounding permanently surprised. Father Vincent had been instrumental in finding him a job as a cleaner in the Bishop’s office, and over time he had acquired two further cleaning posts in Dundee, both early morning shifts, one in a shop and one in an old folks’ home.
    â€˜No,’ Patricia said, stacking a column of ten-pence pieces ‘that’s what I’m saying. He’s dead. He hung himself, but he left a note. That’s how the police know he did it. He confessed.’
    â€˜Raymond!’ Father Vincent exclaimed, distraught, staring at the woman in disbelief.
    Startled at his reaction, she said, ‘It was in the papers. That’s all I’m saying – it was in the papers.’
    â€˜It wasn’t him,’ the priest said firmly, as if speaking to himself, ‘not him.’
    Holding out a receipt, she said, ‘You’ve two hundred and seventy-nine pounds and forty-five pence, Father. Look in the Courier . It was on the front page. I’m sorry, I thought you knew.’
    As he crossed the bank’s car park, his mind buzzing with the news that he’d just received, he failed to notice a carreversing and walked right behind it. He did not hear the driver’s angry hooting, or feel the light drizzle that had begun to fall. One thought dominated his mind. It had not been Raymond Meehan’s voice that he had heard in the confessional. The accent had sounded English, Geordie if he had to guess, and there had been no speech impediment of any kind, no honking sounds. In his head he replayed Raymond’s strange, goose-like voice with its odd emphases and breathless endings. It was as unique to him as his own fingerprints, a sound characteristic of him and him alone. And one that would be heard no more, with the poor boy dead.
    Still deep in thought he moved on, walking downhill past Sands, the grocers, and John & J.H. Sands, the ironmongers, oblivious to a lady in a headscarf hovering between the two, who held out a copy of The Big Issue to him, beseeching him with her coal-black eyes to buy it. Only her startling gold incisors registered, and then for no more than a second. Dodging a pedestrian, he strode onwards, head down, apparently hurrying to get somewhere.
    Things were spinning out of control, moving too fast. He needed help, needed advice. The Bishop’s office was, obviously, the place to get it. Where better to find out the part, if any, that Raymond Meehan was supposed to have played in the assault on the Bishop? But why would Raymond confess, in a note or anywhere else? It had not been Raymond’s confession that he had listened to, Raymond’s triumphant boast that he had killed a man.