The Trinity (47 page)

He walks past the storefront office of Constable Robertson, who is working this morning in his civilian clothes. There are reports to write, as one of the pubs in the village enjoyed a raucous Friday evening, and he had to drive three individuals to Brechin for a night in jail.

He spies the disheveled Chris walking in front of his window and studies him over the top of his typewriter, above the rim of his steaming mug of tea.

Another sick American
, he thinks while shaking his head.

What is normally a five-minute cab ride turns into nearly an hour-long walk. Chris wearily approaches the gate of the base, flashing his ID card as he is carefully scrutinized by the MoDP sentry on duty, who reluctantly lets him pass.

The barracks are quiet. Chris knows that he can’t linger here. He doesn’t want to confront Brad, at least not know, not until he has a plan of action. Courageous under fire, he will not let the priest go unpunished. He is going to strike back. He is full of vengeance, an emotion he has never felt before.

He showers and changes clothes quickly and grabs a few items and shoves them into his gym bag.

He calls for a cab from the payphone in the barracks lounge and again makes the trek to the main gate, where the same MoDP sentry studies him seriously as he exits the base. Chris stands along the side of the road, waiting for his taxi.

There is only one place he can go that will provide him a haven, and he isn’t exactly sure where she lives, but he needs to find her.

“Brechin,” he tells the cab driver as he seats himself tenderly in the back of the small Fiat.

The ride is brief, too brief for him to try to figure out how he is going to find Karen. The cab driver deposits him in the middle of town, and he enters a pub that is just opening. The dryness of his mouth has not disappeared, and he knows he can get something besides beer in a pub. He tries Irn-Bru, thinking that the iron may give him some sort of vitality. He guzzles the first can, makes a face, and orders another. He drinks the second more slowly as he gets his bearings. He spies a thin phonebook next to the register behind the bar and asks the proprietor if he can use it.

He finds her name quickly, Freeman, Karen, and he fishes 10p out of his pocket and finds the yellow payphone in the doorway of the pub. He dials the number with a bit of fear. Although she has been nothing but kind to him, she may not want to help him anymore because he spent the evening with the priest without telling her. The fear she may turn him away causes his hands to tremble just slightly.

She answers after several rings. He can tell from her throaty hello that the ringing of the telephone has ended her sleep. He identifies himself and asks if he can come over.

“Sure, but it’s kind of early.”

“He raped me.” The sound of his own voice mentioning the unspeakable act brings forth a torrent of tears and emotion. He feels shame, sadness and a strong sense of rage.

“Come over.”

She directs him to her flat. He is only two blocks away. He walks up the gentle slope of Brechin’s High Street. He enters a narrow alley and walks up a flight of wooden stairs to Karen’s flat above a chemist’s shop.

She opens the door. She immediately puts her arms around him, and he is touched by the emotion of tenderness. Again, more tears. She leads him to her sofa, and he tells her about it, how he was lured to the priest’s house, how he was drugged, and how he woke up to the sight of blood.

She leaves him alone on the couch and enters her tiny kitchen, which isn’t separated from her sitting room at all. She makes coffee. He studies her. He is attracted to the way she looks in the morning, and he feels a certain sense of intimacy in seeing her in such a private light. He admires her disheveled hair, her unmade face, and the casualness of her attire: exercise shorts and a long-sleeved t-shirt that she wears for sleeping.

She returns to the couch with two mugs of coffee and places them on the coffee table. She sits somewhat close to him, with her legs curled behind her. He places his face in his hands and rests his elbows upon his knees. He feels safe.

“We’re going to have to go to the Scottish police,” she says with a certain amount of gravity.

“And tell them, I know. I have to tell them everything.” He shudders at the thought that his blood adorned the synagogue door in Aberdeen, that his footprints and fingerprints can be found in the cemetery in Glasgow, and that the priest had…

His immaturity causes him to ask Karen a question, out of context, and somewhat startling. “This doesn’t mean I’m gay, does it?”

In spite of herself and the situation, she smiles. “No.”

“Good,” he says, and abruptly he confesses his lack of carnal experience. Though she is not surprised, the intensity of the confession makes her realize it is a burning issue in his life.

“There will be time for girls later. I suggest you eat something and then we go to the police.”

Chris forsakes food and drinks coffee and smokes cigarettes while Karen showers. He walks around her one-room flat, a full-sized bed and dresser in one half of the room, a couch and two chairs and an old-fashioned black and white television in one half, and a sort of nook for a kitchen. There is little in the way of a feminine touch, a few nondescript paintings on the wall, and books—books are on every flat surface and along a row of shelves above the bed. He likes the effect the books have on the room, as if the occupant of the flat has spent a lot of time in solitary thought. He can relate.

They drive to Lutherkirk and find that the police station is closed. On the door is an emergency telephone number, the home number of Constable Robertson. Chris looks at Karen, wondering if his situation constitutes an emergency.

“We’re calling,” she says, and he likes her constant choice of the word “we”. She is grouping herself with him as if they are a team, or even a couple. He finds another 10p in his pocket and makes his way to the payphone in front of a café two doors down. He calls the number. He almost freezes when a woman, the constable’s wife, answers the phone.

He blurts out everything almost at once, and the wife is sure there is a lunatic, a Yankee lunatic, at the other end of the line. She gets her husband. Chris starts again, but to the constable, none of this sounds like lunacy. It sounds like the call he’s been waiting for.

“I’ll be right there.” He hangs up while Chris is still speaking.

And he is right there. Chris and Karen stand in front of the door of the station and just as they light their cigarettes, the constable comes from around the corner, walking briskly. He may have been running before he came into Chris’s and Karen’s sight. He acknowledges them with a nod and unlocks the door with a key from a big ring of keys he keeps clipped to his waist. He is wearing his civilian clothes, the same clothes he was wearing when Chris happened by in the morning: blue cotton pants, a blue sweater over a plaid shirt, and black shoes in need of polishing.

There are brief introductions and a shaking of hands. Before he takes any sort of statement from Chris, he telephones Dundee and tracks down Inspector Holliday.

“How soon can you get here?” he asks. “Well, we may nail this priest just yet. I have a member of that wee little group called the Trinity sitting in front of me.” He pauses. Chris and Karen can hear Holliday from the other end of the phone.

Holliday tells Robertson not to let Chris leave. He’ll be there in half an hour.

The constable hangs up the phone and explains why he phoned Dundee, and why he is waiting for another officer.

“You mean you’ve known about this priest?” Karen asks in disbelief.

“Indeed, we have. We just haven’t been able to nail him down. We’ve even been to his place on a few occasions. He’s a crafty one, that priest is.” He tells an angry Karen and a still bewildered Chris of his first visit to the priest and the sight of a swastika on top of his mantel.

“Did you contact the base and tell them about your suspicions?”

“Yes and no. The Americans have always been fond of whisking their own kind out of the country when something isn’t going right. You know, they have to keep their squeaky-clean, apple-pie, Ronald Reagan image intact. We didn’t want to tip their hand too much—and we didn’t want to alarm the priest. We wanted him sort of relaxed, and, unfortunately, he’s never been an official suspect in anything. The inspector and I have always had a hunch. I even spent time outside his house in surveillance, but he gave us nothing.” He explains how letters were delivered to different synagogues in Aberdeen and Edinburgh while the priest remained at home.

“I delivered those,” Chris says. “Hinckley and I did. Father Crowley sent us.”

“Well, then,” says the constable, dropping his pen in resignation on the top of his faded wooden desk, badly in need of refinishing, “I guess he buggered us.” He shrugs. “My not-so-discreet cover was blown, anyway,” he admits, exposing his provincial incompetence to a pair of strangers. “He picked me out straight away. We had to shift gears, the inspector and I.”

Their gears ground, and they knew there would be a certain amount of vigilance required around the synagogues when the deadline promised in the notes expired. They would have to catch the priest and his troupe red-handed. Unless of course someone could deliver them a golden egg. Chris at first promises deliverance, but as Inspector Holliday comes puffing into Lutherkirk, it is apparent that Chris’s words fall short of being golden.

“We need proof,” says Holliday after pondering Chris’s tale in wordless attention as Robertson shuffles through his little office dispensing tea.

“Proof?” asks Karen with a certain amount of tense incredulity. “What more can he say? He’s laid it all out for you—blood and swastikas and Norse gods and everything. What else can you possibly need?”

“Ms. Freeman, though I don’t doubt your young friend’s story—in fact, it is too far-fetched to be anything but true—how does any of it link the priest to anything? Whose blood is on the doors of the synagogues? In whose hand were the letters written? He has given us nothing, unfortunately, except a most useful witness when this does go to trial.”

“Can’t you just arrest him or something?” Karen asks. “Tell him he’s under suspicion, or arrest him for not stopping all the way at a stop sign. Can’t you arrest him for anything, or do we have to wait for more corpses to arrive at synagogue steps?”

“We need proof, something solid.” Holliday looks at Chris, waiting to hear words out of his mouth that can alleviate the futility of their current situation. “Having a swastika on his mantel is no crime, and he was cleared in that apparent suicide, and that’s all we have.”

They sit in silence until Holliday looks at Chris. “Do you think it would be possible to return to the priest’s fold and feign an interest in taking part in the activities of the Trinity?”

Chris says nothing, and recalls only his last encounter with the priest, the thrust of evil inside him, the words of evil spoken just before Chris departed.

He shakes his head. “No.”

Karen places her hand on his arm, and says to Holliday and Robertson, “Let me talk to him, but first, you would have to assure his safety.”

“We can’t do that, Ms. Freeman, as much as we’d like to. Ours is a sticky business and your young friend here has put himself in the stickiest of situations. We will do our best, but we can’t guarantee anything. The only guarantee is that the priest will be arrested upon the receipt of something solid, something that can be proven in court.”

Holliday lights a cigarette and offers one to each member of his present company. All accept, save the constable, whose face shows a sign of irritation as his little office quickly fills with the bluish smoke of exhaled tobacco.

“Inspector, give me your card. Chris and I will talk, and we’ll see if we can figure something out. He has had a night from hell, and he’s still just a teenager. It’s a lot for him to think about right now, and I’m sure he’s scared. I know I would be and so would you. Can we call you tomorrow?”

“You can call me anytime, and I’m sure the same is true for the constable.” The inspector doesn’t possess any cards, so he scribbles his phone number on a piece of paper from the tiny notepad he keeps inside his jacket.