Chapter 3 — Paddy

While Red and Buddha drive to Glen Argyle, a film crew sets up in the car park of St Columba’s Monastery, Sydney. Crates are unloaded, orders shouted and equipment assembled as they scurry about the business of lights, cameras and sound.

Above the car park, soft light shines through a window in the mountain of granite that is the monastery. On the other side of the window, a silver-haired old lady in an apricot-coloured dress prepares the abbot’s office for an appointment. Opening a cupboard, she takes out a ‘special occasion’ white lace tablecloth and spreads it on a coffee table. Satisfied with the cloth, she picks up a blue porcelain vase full of red carnations and places it in the centre. The vase wobbles, slopping water onto the cloth.

‘Madeleine Juliet!’ she whispers, mimicking her mother’s way of saying her name whenever she was annoyed with her.

She can’t believe she just did that. It was definitely worthy of a Madeleine Juliet! She’s put flowers here a thousand times before—although, she has to admit, she’s made a few mistakes like this lately. It could be the very thing that she and the abbot joke about: dementia.

She dabs the water stain with a tissue and discovers that a knot in the cloth caused the wobble. It wasn’t dementia after all! Relieved, she picks up the vase, wipes it down and puts it back.

But she’s not satisfied. An almost-dry tablecloth with a knot is not good enough when you have a VIP coming. And this isn’t just any VIP, this is Michelle Colton, queen of Sydney’s number-one current affairs show National.

Replacing the cloth with another of the same kind, Madeleine stands there holding the vase and surveying the white lace. A central position might be pretty, but it’s not creative enough for someone like Michelle. Off-centre is a better idea. She bends over and is about to put it down when an angry shout comes from Patrick’s office, the noise almost precipitating another spill. Madeleine places it without losing a drop. Perfect.

Sighing, she gathers up a rope of rosary beads, stands at the window and prays for Patrick. Down the corridor behind her is the one thing that could put a dark smear on this night. Just when she and Patrick thought they had everything in order, the parish priest, Father Kelvin Adams, barged in unannounced. Since then, the sound of raised voices has been filtering through the abbot’s door.

Her prayers turn to the crew in the car park. They’re all so busy down there, like troops laying siege to a city. If only this visit could change all that, could rekindle an old friendship.

A red sports car drives through the main gates and stops near a white statue of the Madonna and Child. Lights are wheeled into position, the glare throwing gigantic shadows over the Madonna. A rear passenger door opens and a tall, dark-haired woman in a peacock-blue jacket and skirt steps out, her hair catching the light as if she has a prickle bush on her head. A man points towards the monastery and the woman and film crew move uphill like a school of fish.

Madeleine walks to her desk and pushes a button. ‘Excuse me, Patrick,’ she says, smiling and putting the smile in her voice, ‘Michelle has arrived.’

Inside the office, Madeleine’s intercom voice literally stops Father Adams in mid-stride. Sweeping a black robe around himself, the priest sits in a chair by the door and wipes sweat from his brow, his abrupt cessation of theatrics leaving the abbot shaking his head.

‘Thank you Madeleine,’ Paddy says, leaning over the intercom. ‘We’re about done.’

Catching the priest’s milky blue eye, Paddy takes his glasses off and looks at the floor, trying to think of something to say. There’s nothing to say. Adams says something more anyway.

‘It’s almost 10 pm,’ he says. ‘Who has media interviews this late at night?’

Ignoring him, Paddy speaks into the intercom. ‘We’ve finished our business,’ he says. ‘Michelle can come in as soon as she’s ready.’

Paddy waits for Adams to leave but he stays put, a pained grimace on his scrubbed, dog-collared face, as if Paddy’s the problem and Paddy just needs to see sense.

After Mia came to see Paddy a fortnight ago, he had messaged Michelle several times, asking for a private interview. By the time Michelle got back to him, Adams had somehow found out about it and notified the archbishop. All media contact must go through the church’s official spokesperson, the archbishop’s email had said. Paddy was ropeable. It was exactly what Mia had warned him about: Adams and Tate were working together. She and Paddy would already be under surveillance. The trouble is, Paddy’s not even sure if he can trust Michelle. Assuming his interview would be about more church politics, she had said, Let’s make it a circus. So a circus it is: Paddy the supposed traitor, Michelle the heathen and Adams the defender of the faith.

‘I can see now,’ Adams says, ‘that you have no intention of heeding the archbishop’s directive.’

‘Michelle wants to talk to me,’ Paddy says, smiling. ‘And I want to talk to her. What’s wrong with that?’

The priest gets out of his chair, draws himself up and runs his fingers through thick sandy hair. There was a time when Paddy would’ve laughed affectionately at this piece of theatre, but now it sends a cold shiver up his spine. Gone is the soft ambience that blurred and overlooked. He no longer sees a hard-working brother—Father Kelvin Adams—he sees a stranger glaring at him, guilty as hell.

‘Wipe that crooked grin off your face,’ the stranger bellows, shaking a finger. ‘When she walks in here,’ he pauses and points at the door, ‘you are finished!’ With that, he yanks the door open and storms out, slamming it behind him.

‘Thank you Brother Brickbat,’ Paddy says, thinking about the ‘crooked grin’ comment. Having worked with Paddy for years, Adams knew that his mouth had been damaged in a car accident, which had left him with what one surgeon had described as a ‘mouth like a torn pocket’ and the subsequent nickname of ‘Smiley’ from those who were close to him. The priest is not in the Smiley club.

Standing up, Paddy takes off his robe, places it on a shelf next to his desk and smooths down a khaki shirt and pants. Despite Madeleine’s efforts at making him look pretty and pious, he’s always been self-conscious about his religious uniform: King Gees and T-Boots are him, he tells her. But she likes to remind him of the little wooden cross—which EJ made for him—that he wears around his neck every day, and which he’s playing with even as he prepares to meet his visitor.

With the preening done, he eases himself back into his chair, opens a drawer, takes two Aspirin Max from a sheet of foil and drops them into a glass of water.

How does Mister Adams do it? he muses, as he watches the tablets foaming at the bottom of the glass. No will or feeling of his own, faithful and available to the hierarchy—like a bloody tap in a gas chamber!

His stomach grumbles. He started fasting at 6 pm today, which meant no evening meal—something his tummy doesn’t like when it has to deal with Aspirin. The trouble is, he never knows whether it’s going to be a fasting day or not. All he knows is that every morning the question emerges out of his consciousness. If there’s an immediate sense of sorrow and heaviness, he knows it’s going to be a ‘hunger strike against evil’ day.

Enough of this.

Paddy drains the glass, puts it back on his desk and takes a card out of an opened envelope. On the front of the card is an old photo of himself in a dark suit and tie, no glasses and a lot more hair than the wisps of grey he now has. His wife Janie stands next to him in a floral dress holding their newborn daughter, Ella Janie, who’s in a long white christening gown. Although he remembers the moment, the photo is one he’d never seen until the card arrived a fortnight ago on the anniversary of Janie’s death. Below it is a handwritten note.

November 15th is always Mum’s day. I miss her so much. Your daughter EJ xox.

Intense happiness radiates out of Janie’s black eyes. It was always a Beauty and the Beast combination. How a five-foot ten frog-face like him ever managed to marry her is beyond him.

The intercom buzzes. ‘Michelle is waiting,’ Madeleine says.

Taking a firm grip of one corner of the desk, he pulls himself up and limps over to the door to welcome Michelle. Halfway there he stops and sniffs. The room reeks of the sour odour of his visitor’s sweat. With a shake of his head, he goes back behind his desk, opens a double-arched window and breathes deeply.

The air is sweet and clean, coming straight off a hillside of shadowy parkland beyond the walls. To his right, vivid colours of stained glass, nested in black, run skyward. He loves the fact that from this one window he can appreciate two of St Columba’s favourite things: a druidic devotion to the sensuality of nature and the joy of rigorous worship routines.

He smiles at the silhouette of a gargoyle on a downpipe. On days when there’s nothing to smile about, that gargoyle—like an old dog—can normally get one out of him. He even has a name for it: ‘Sinbad’.

‘You may laugh Mister Sinbad,’ Paddy says, addressing the gargoyle, ‘but you and I might not be able to talk to each other any more if this gets out of hand.’

Laughter from the corridor interrupts his reverie. He opens the door and Michelle’s there in tight-fitting iridescent green, towering over him by a head of black pixie hair—a long fringe allowing him to see just one of her excited, chocolate-coloured eyes.

‘It’s me!’ she says, in a loud singsong, shaking his hand. ‘And on a Saturday evening too.’ A strange perfume envelops him. Turning back to the corridor, she calls out, ‘Thank you for those fabulous flowers Aunty Maddy!’

‘Thank you, Michelle!’ Madeleine says.

‘And don’t worry about the film crew,’ she says. ‘They were only here for the arrival bit.’

‘Oh! I have lots of goodies for them if they want some.’

‘My driver will love that—won’t you, Shane?’

There’s laughter from down the hall, and Michelle walks into Paddy’s office.

‘Madeleine’s really been looking forward to this,’ Paddy says.

‘So have I, Patrick. It feels like an entire geological era has passed since I was here last.’

‘The Green Avenue era.’

‘Six years old now. Your first year as an abbot, wasn’t it?’

‘It was.’

‘And surprise, surprise, it actually came together: philanthropy, church and government—the mother of all collaborations. Now we have Mia getting blotto on Tate’s yacht. What was she thinking?’

‘We’ll get to that in a minute.’

Michelle looks at him like she’s about to say something. Madeleine comes in and takes drink orders: A short black for Michelle and English breakfast for him. Complimenting Michelle on her outfit, Madeleine walks off with her orders as if she’s floating on air.

‘She’s amazing!’ Michelle says. ‘And you should—’

‘Marry her,’ he says, laughing.

‘Seriously. Why not Patrick? How old are you now?’

‘Sixty-eight.’

‘There you go—past retirement age—if you’re going to get the boot, you may as well go out in style.’

‘No one’s sacking me.’

‘But what about all these married chaplains?’ she says, putting her bag down.

‘What about them?’

‘Word is that it’s quite a popular career in the Catholic Church, that they’re the ones doing most of the work anyway. Just a matter of a job transfer.’

‘I’m not going anywhere and neither is she.’

‘Uh huh! That’s a scandalous hint if ever I heard one,’ she says, flicking her fringe.

‘We’re a good team,’ he says, adjusting his glasses.

‘A team with a liking for Emmanuel’s Café down the hill.’

‘Team-building.’

The fact is he does like Madeleine, but he can’t let it go where Michelle wants to take it. The thought of going the distance in another marriage, at this time in his life, makes him tired even thinking about it.

A stab of pain shoots through his hip. He sits on the edge of his desk and points her to the chair Adams had been sitting on. But she sticks to her guns.

‘You made her blush out there, you know.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I asked her if Patrick of the sweet grey eyes was at home—and she went crimson.’

Paddy’s lost for words. If he’s not careful he’ll be blushing too. Michelle laughs.

‘What about you, Michelle?’ he says. ‘You must have a hundred suitors out there.’

‘And all unsuitable,’ she says, taking the seat near the door.

‘Why? What’s wrong with them?’

‘You tell me.’

Paddy smiles at her; those dark eyes are laughing. They’ve been over this before. He’s even had her speak to his noviciates about the ‘man problem’ from the point of view of a feminist researcher.

‘Come on!’ she says, opening her eyes wide. ‘I’m a desperate woman.’

‘Alright,’ he says. ‘They are simply unable to—’

‘Unable, that’s all you need to say sir. Un-bloody-able: unable to say “no”, to say “yes”, unable to fight, to think, to have a loud opinion, to look a woman in the eye and say “I disagree”, for Christ’s sake!’

‘And whose fault is that?’

‘Here we go. You’ll say it’s the feminists and I’ll say it’s the church. A thousand years of wimpy priests telling little boys to stop: stop talking, stop running—stop being boys.’

‘Yes,’ Paddy says, ‘I would have argued with you once, but not anymore.’

Michelle keeps going, listing off what she’s calling the ‘crimes of Christendom against men’. Paddy hobbles to a chair across from her and eases himself down into it. It’s time he brought up another piece in the puzzle, something from the writings of Carl Jung.

‘What about the crimes of secularism?’ he asks. ‘Control at any price: eradicate the “Wild Man.”’

‘You’re talking political correctness?’

‘I am, but that’s beside the point. PC is a red herring here. We need to go to the root of the problem: abuse of the anima, the female part of the male personality.’

‘Jungian bullshit!’

‘According to whom: your uni lecturers?’

‘And the most recent research.’

‘Biological, of course.’

‘Your point?’

‘Jung argues that neglect of the soul can lead to anima possession.’

‘Possession?’

Paddy takes a book off a shelf and holds it up.

‘It’s all in here,’ he says. ‘The total invasion of the conscious male by the unconscious female: one symptom being the unconscious female surrounding herself with inferior people.’

‘The priest with his church full of losers: yeah, I get that.’

‘But it’s not all bad. Managed well, the anima can bring growth and creativity to the male personality. Unchecked and glorified, it causes petrification, even death. Our world would rather anima possession—a crippled male—than a real man.’

‘Exhibit A,’ she says with a grin. ‘The wimpy old abbot.’

‘I rest my case, your honour,’ he says, putting the book back.

‘No wonder your enrolments are down Patrick. Fourteen—what do you call them?’

‘Noviciates.’

‘Just fourteen in a place that can take fifty—sounds terminal to me.’

‘It does. And good ammunition for Adams.’

‘I gather Adams has it in for you?’ she says, raising an eyebrow.

‘You gathered right.’

‘This room is different,’ she says, looking around. ‘What’s that all about?’ She points at the far end of the room, which is half hidden behind a tall bookcase.

‘It’s my cubbyhole, madam. A few years ago I decided to re-create a little piece of what I had when I worked in the world of finance.’

‘So you have,’ she says, walking across the room for a better look. ‘Cosy little man cave: leather-bound armchairs, bar fridge, drinks cabinet, cigarette tray. This is positively disgusting Patrick.’

‘It’s called the comforts of old age.’

Paddy hauls himself out of his chair and joins her in the cave.

‘I remember Janie teaching me that,’ she says, pointing at a motto on the wall. ‘Amor non tenet ordinem. Can’t remember what it means though.’

‘St Columba’s life proverb madam: love knows nothing of order.’

‘That’s new,’ she says, pointing at a large oil painting. ‘Seductive lady in robes, screaming at a storm—she’s angry! Let me guess … Gabrielle Rosetti?’

‘No, actually, it’s an old family treasure, one of EJ’s Year 12 projects.’

‘EJ and Mia were embarrassingly good. I couldn’t keep up with them.’

‘EJ has a gallery now.’

Paddy wants to tell Michelle more about that gallery and about the fact that he holds no grudge from his five-year-old quarrel with her and how glad he is that she’s come. Meanwhile, she keeps talking about the painting.

‘This lady,’ she says, ‘with the strong face and golden eyes, reminds me of Mia when she’s angry. This has to be some kind of “Venus of the something or other.” Was Mia the model?’

‘She was for most of it.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘Lilith’s Embarrassment.’

‘Ah, Lilith! You lot were all into that one.’

‘All of us except for me.’

‘Why was that?’

‘All too mythological, too Gothic,’ Paddy says, taking a copy of Lilith from a shelf and passing it to Michelle.

‘So EJ got you interested?’ Michelle says, turning the book over and reading the blurb.

‘That would be my wife, actually. She found something real.’

‘In this?’ she asks, holding the book up.

‘Sort of. It was all part of a brew composed of Lilith, Africa and Russia.’

‘Sounds like a witch’s brew,’ she says, looking at the painting. ‘So what’s Lilith so embarrassed about?’

‘That,’ Paddy says, pointing to a dark red mark on the skin below her breast, which is almost hidden by the folds of her robe.

‘And she’s embarrassed about how it happened or what?’

‘Humiliated, actually, by the fact that it won’t heal. That she can’t heal it herself.’

‘Holy hell—I get that.’

‘We all get it, Michelle. Look at the way her hand is closed into a fist.’

‘Rage.’

‘Yes. Rage at God.’

‘And, this could just be my imagination,’ Michelle says, pointing at the woman’s arm. ‘That bracelet looks like the one Janie used to wear: the opals, the gold.’

‘It is.’

‘Seems a bit unlike you Patrick, this romanticisation of despair.’

‘Yes, if the story ended there, but that picture is only the beginning.’

They stop talking. Michelle takes a closer look at the painting. Paddy finds his favourite seat: a big leather upholstered chair next to a curtained window. Just having a conversation like this with Michelle again feels like a small miracle has happened. What he’s about to do next might un-miracle it for good.

‘And what’s that?’ she says, taking a seat below the painting of Lilith and looking at a painting on the opposite wall.

‘It’s The Walk to Work by a French painter, Millet, from the nineteenth century.’

‘Lovely.’

‘His paintings were actually revolutionary.’

‘As in communist?’

‘Not at all; it was the story of Christ that broke the classical rules of style.’

‘How so?’

‘It took centuries for someone to do it. When Millet started painting, ordinary people were astonished to see themselves depicted as icons of the living God. Normally it would be high-society figures. Millet was inspired by the doctrine of Christ’s incarnation.’

There’s a knock at the door and Madeleine enters with a tray of drinks and biscuits. Placing it on a coffee table, she walks away without a word. Paddy turns off a neon light and flicks on a lampshade. Dull yellow light fills the room.

Packing his pipe, he watches and waits for Michelle while she fumbles around for a cigarette, emptying her bag in seconds. Finding a new packet, she tears it open, lights up, leans across the table and lights his pipe with the glowing tip of her cigarette.

Paddy slides the pipe across his mouth so it sits firmly in the right hand corner where there’s more lip and less scarring. Michelle draws back on her cigarette, exhales and places a recording device on the table. The room fills with smoke.

‘Do you mind if we put that away, Miss Journalist?’ he says, pointing at the recorder.

‘No problem,’ she says, putting it back into her bag.

‘Thank you.’

‘So!’ she says, clapping her hands together. ‘I did my level best to make a spectacle tonight.’

‘Thank you, my dear.’

‘But where’s my angle, Patrick? National needs something more original than church politics.’

‘The political problem has been fixed,’ Paddy says, sucking in a mouthful of smoke.

‘Huh?’

‘Bishop Steven went in to bat for me. Your pending visit must have scared him.’

Paddy lets the smoke curl out.

‘That bishop scares me.’

‘He’s harmless, just a bit Asperger’s—my love nemesis.’

‘Love nemesis?’

‘I see him coming and I’m lost. I cry out to God for all the help I can get.’

‘I can’t stand the man. He once told me I was maturing. You’d think I was a child in his bloody Sunday School!’

Paddy puts his pipe down and smiles. At the time, he had taken the bishop aside and passed on a piece of advice his mother had given him the day he had graduated from university: People won’t remember what you said but they will remember how you made them feel. Michelle wants to know what’s funny.

‘It’s the incongruence of it,’ he says. ‘The bishop—Asperger’s as you can get—out of touch, trying to compliment you, the woman who’s in touch with everything.

‘He’s not a good person to have on your God team, Patrick.

‘There’s not a bone of malice in him—just got this “crack in the wall personality.”’

‘A what?’

‘I call it a “crack in the wall personality.” He’s the guy that’s walled in somehow, only able to look at the world through a narrow crack—thanks to his DNA, trauma or whatever.’

‘Or the bum crack at the other end!’ Michelle says with a chuckle.

‘I think you’re being unfair, madam.’

‘I don’t think so. He’s a misogynist in my opinion.’

‘A woman-hater? I doubt it. Prejudiced? Yes. Chauvinistic? Yes.’

‘Okay, we could argue about words, but the fact is he’s just plain rude.’

‘He is, but it’s how he works, Michelle. He expects people—he even expects God—to say exactly what they mean and mean exactly what they say.’

‘Is that so?’ she asks, ashing her cigarette.

‘It is, believe me,’ Paddy says, taking his pipe out and looking directly at her. ‘I’ve worked with this man for years and unlike him, you understand—you revel in—the unspoken rituals of politics and body language. You are more like God in this way than the bishop.’

‘Me? Like God?’ She looks at him with her eyebrows raised.

‘It’s a fact. Many—like the bishop—argue that faith and our understanding of life must be sorted through intellectual argument alone. But God knows us better than we do. While we’re busy with our words, he draws us into a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle: a sweet longing might happen, we might be caught up in a tragedy and have an argument, or watch a play. Somewhere in there—provided we stay curious—it dawns upon us that things have been falling into place while our back has been turned.’

‘I’ve seen things falling out of place.’

‘Some of them have to fall out if the others are ever to fall in. And they will if you allow them to, if you stay out of the way.’

‘Allow?’

‘I should have said, “trust.”’

No one speaks. Michelle narrows her eyes and stares at him. He wonders if he’s just ruined things. That word ‘trust’ is such a Molotov cocktail to her. It seems to echo around the room.

‘Please, Patrick,’ she says, ‘can we get down to whatever it was you summoned me here for?’

‘Yes, but just give me two minutes more about you and the bishop. One of the reasons you’re such a good journalist is you understand what God understands: that always trying to speak the truth directly through words can cause us to misrepresent the truth. Imagine—even for just twenty-four hours—having to leave out gestures, meaningful silences, symbolic acts, and being forced to express it all through words. I mean, who ever communicated joy simply through words?’

Michelle leans back in her chair and laughs. Paddy joins her laughter.

‘Okay,’ she says, ‘you got me. I would be taken out and shot by all my friends.’

‘And so would I.’

Paddy goes to take a long draw on his pipe and stops: a question has come to mind. If Bishop Steven was in the room right now, what would he be feeling? But the bishop’s not in the room. Michelle asks if Paddy’s alright. He nods, takes that long draw and lets out a coil of smoke. Pride lurks. Love seems far away and so does humility. The very word ‘humility’ is one he dreads even thinking about. A spiritual director had once described the problem of assessing humility as being like trying to examine a sub-atomic particle. You can either know where it is or what it’s doing but not both, because the very act of looking causes interference. So with humility, the very act of looking arouses spiritual pride. Paddy offers up a silent prayer of confession.

‘By the way, Patrick,’ Michelle says softly. ‘I was chatting with EJ online and she reminded me about Janie’s day.’

‘Yes, it was on the 15th. But I prefer to remember her birthday; she would have been fifty-five last week.’

‘Do you talk to EJ much?’

‘We chat most nights. That card’s from her,’ he says, pointing to it. ‘She loves England and her kids love soccer. I come last, deservedly so.’

‘Enough of that sir. She doesn’t talk about you that way anymore.’

Michelle keeps talking about EJ and the fact that she often speaks about Paddy. Paddy puts his pipe down on the table and lets it go out. He should never have blurted out such a sympathy-getting statement. Here he is, the preacher, talking up forgiveness, but he can’t forgive himself for all those years as an absent executive father. He shouldn’t be surprised that his daughter hasn’t visited for seven years.

Michelle lowers her mouth to her mug and sips. He does the same. He should be grateful. The fact is, in those seven years EJ’s married and had four children—she’s living her life. We’re all frail little flowers, Janie would be telling him and quoting Lady Julian of Norwich, ‘We must be meek towards ourselves.’

He looks up from his cup at the same time as Michelle. There’s a melancholy expression on her face.

‘Mia’s probably already heard this,’ she says, putting her coffee down. ‘According to journalist street, Dog is being processed for early release.’

‘How early?’

‘Sometime this week—this month? Not that being outside will be much different to inside when you’ve been living like a king. They say he has his own private office in there and his own women. A big fish is looking after him.’

‘Mia and Oksana need a place to hide,’ Paddy says.

‘Leave the country,’ Michelle says. ‘Go offshore for a while,’

He sighs. Mia hadn’t said anything about Dog. Where on earth is that man of hers? Re-lighting his pipe, he tells Michelle that his main reason for getting her over is that he has some more ‘slanderous nonsense’ that he wants to talk about. She straightens in her seat and asks him to explain exactly what kind of nonsense he’s talking about.

‘It’s about what happened on the boat,’ he says, puffing an explosion of smoke at the ceiling.

‘The party everyone’s talking about?’

‘It was no party.’

‘I’m happy to be enlightened,’ she says, leaning forward.

‘It was Tate’s big mistake.’

‘You wish.’

‘Look Michelle, this is not something you’ll be able to talk about on your show.’

‘I’ll talk about whatever I like.’

‘What if it’s something you don’t like? Something that Tate Wolsey—the majority shareholder in your network—doesn’t like?’

Paddy leans back in his chair and re-lights his pipe.

‘I’m up for it,’ she says, taking off her jacket and baring athletic shoulders.

He knocks out his pipe, walks to the door and locks it. Pausing, with his back to her, he prays silently. In all his prayers so far, he’s had no clear sense that God is in favour of what he’s about to do, nor does God seem to be against it. It could be one of the stupidest things he’s ever done or it might be one of the best: it’s a gamble.

Returning to the table, he opens a laptop, takes a deep breath, turns the screen in her direction and types a message into a text-window. This is extremely dangerous information Michelle, courtesy of a video supplied by Tate’s wife, Claudia.

Moving his chair around to her side of the table, he takes a black USB drive from his pocket, inserts it, clicks on a file and mutes the sound. The screen takes them to a red-lit lounge room. The camera zooms in on a man’s hand resting on the corner of an armchair, a diamond ring on the pinkie. Paddy pauses the video to give Michelle a closer look at the ring, which is in the wide-banded style of a signet, engraved with eagle’s feathers. The clasp itself is shaped as an eagle’s claw holding a diamond.

He presses play. The camera pans the room, showing a naked man lying on the carpet engaged in sexual foreplay. His partner is a blonde woman with a red tattoo of a tiger on her back. A door opens and a fully dressed man leads a naked boy in: the boy blindfolded and handcuffed.

‘That’s enough!’ she says, her eyes blazing.

Paddy turns it off.

‘That looked like Tate on the floor!’ she whispers, her voice hoarse. ‘And Father Adams with the boy.’

‘It was,’ Paddy says, walking back to his seat. ‘Both much younger, probably twenty-five years ago, but it was them.’

‘Who was the boy?’

‘Claudia identifies him in the next scene as her son Kerrod, the one she had when she was with Michael Spiers. He would have been about six.’

‘O my God! He was in our class—he hanged himself.’

‘And we all thought it was over Janie’s murder.’

‘We did, but then Janie was virtually his mother. She was like a mother to all of us, actually—near the end.’

‘It was especially hard for EJ,’ Paddy adds, ‘losing her mother and Kerrod.’

Pushing the tray of cups and biscuits to one side, Paddy walks to a drink cabinet, brings out a whisky decanter and two glasses, pours one for himself and offers one to Michelle, which she accepts, along with a cube of ice from the fridge. Paddy sips from his glass and lets the alcohol sit in his mouth, soaking and burning.

‘So—’ Michelle says, looking away. ‘Where did this come from?’

‘Claudia. She gave it to Mia after the assault,’ Paddy says. ‘A sexual assault that did actually happen, by the way.’

Michelle looks at Paddy and then at the floor. A disappointment plays behind Michelle’s eyes. Their last collaboration had been a story on domestic violence, politicians had waded in, Paddy had gotten some facts wrong and Michelle had been left with egg on her face.

‘Sorry about my amateurish fumbling last time,’ he says.

‘You were overconfident,’ she says. ‘We all were.’

Michelle stares at the Lilith painting as if deep in thought.

‘So—we’re all good with the past then,’ Paddy says. ‘Ready to start de novo?’

‘De novo?’

‘Sorry, it’s Latin for “afresh”.’

‘I am. But I won’t be working for Tate this time—not if this shit is for real.’

‘No, Michelle. We need you in front of the cameras. Mia wants a trial by media.’

‘Seriously,’ Michelle says, shaking her head. ‘You do this, and you shoot yourself in the foot and the head. This is about Claudia getting revenge on Tate and Mia.’

‘It’s not like that.’

‘So what is it then?’

‘Mia’s rape was the last straw. Claudia just wants to burn Tate’s house down. She’s actually suicidal.’

Michelle picks up her glass and swirls the ice cube around.

‘How on earth did Claudia get hold of this?’ she asks, pointing at the USB. ‘Or was she in on it too?’

‘She says she knew nothing of it. Some guy called Slav—Tate’s number-one nerd and bodyguard—gave it to her the day after Mia’s assault. Says he stumbled on it years ago and kept it as a kind of insurance policy.’

‘Claudia doesn’t want us to use his name, by the way. She’s given him the code of “she.”’

‘Tate will know.’

‘Or not.’

Paddy picks up his pipe and re-lights it. This is going a little better than he thought it would: Michelle is still here and she’s asking questions.

‘I’d love to know who the diamond-wearer was,’ Michelle says, looking at the computer.

‘Claudia says it’s her ex: Spiers.’

‘How does she know that?’

‘She says she’d know that hand anywhere. The ring was a gift from her.’

‘No way it’ll stand up in court.’

‘Slav also said not to take this to the police, he says they’re in on it.’

Paddy cringes at his own words, not to take this to the police. While Paddy thinks about that, she keeps talking, challenging him to re-think the police option. Slav might just be covering his own backside, she reasons.

‘Forensics would love it,’ she adds. ‘They might even find a Gemprint.’

‘A what?’

‘A Gemprint. Each diamond has a unique optical fingerprint. Owners often have their rock’s recorded on a database.’

‘I’d rather not alienate Slav right now,’ Paddy says, lifting his glass and draining it.

‘How much more of this is there?’ she asks, waving her cigarette-hand.

‘That’s all there is from “she”—so far.’

‘Where did “she” get it?’

‘Stumbled on it years ago, according to Claudia, when he first started working for Tate.’

‘Your Father Adams must still be up to his neck in it.’

Michelle takes a long draw on her cigarette.

‘Adams covered for Tate on the day Mia was assaulted,’ Paddy says, closing the laptop. ‘He even had the hide to scold her—in front of Oksy—for not telling them she would be away at a party.’

‘Fuck him!’ Michelle says.

‘Indeed, but there’s more: Tate runs a blackmailing racket.’

‘As in?’

‘He collects film of his victims and puts them on an internet archive.’

‘Huh! Like a “pool room?”’

‘Yes—a trophy room to be precise. He calls it his “Magic Wand.” Occasionally Tate does the filming himself—as with Mia—but mostly its done by a team of specialists.’

‘And Spiers is one of his trophies?’ she asks, standing up and pacing the room.

‘Absolutely. Slav personally arranged the collection of some of those.’

‘There must be a way of hacking it.’

‘Even Slav can’t do that. Tate has paid big money for deep web security. Claudia says he uses a PIN and a token to log on—the numbers on the token change every sixty seconds.’

‘Steal the token.’

‘How? Kill him?’

‘You’d think someone would have by now.’

‘Slav says it’ll never happen. He implanted a logic bomb in it when he first designed it. If Tate’s ID doesn’t register in any twelve-hour period, the Wand will automatically spill its guts to the public.’

Paddy leans to one side, taking pressure off his sore hip. Michelle rests her cigarette on the ashtray, walks to the window behind Paddy’s desk and looks out at the night. ‘Lots of people must be hoping Tate stays alive,’ she says, ‘or working on their hacking skills.’

‘Even it is hacked, there are remote backups: terabyte memory sticks.’

‘Checkmate.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And all in bank safes, I imagine,’ Michelle muses, returning to her seat.

‘Claudia thinks Father Adams has one. But there are fakes too.’

‘As in dummies?’

‘I believe so. Claudia says the counterfeits even have ID chips implanted, which fool scanners. Tate’s the only one with a scanner capable of identifying the genuine ones.’

Madeleine’s voice announces another visitor through Paddy’s intercom: the bishop. Paddy smiles at Michelle and tells Madeleine he will be another ten minutes. Michelle finishes her drink and stubs out her cigarette.

‘I can stay longer just for the fun of it,’ she says.

‘No thank you, madam, I’ll be the one spanked while you walk away laughing.’

‘These trophy MPs, do they know what he has on them?’

‘Not always; he tends to wait until one of them is elected—or even until an important piece of legislation is being voted on—before he calls them on it.’

‘The frenemy factor,’ Michelle says.

‘“Frenemy?”’

‘People who are friends and enemies at the same time: they need each other, especially in government and crime.’

‘I hope that won’t be us, Michelle.’

‘It won’t be,’ she says, the pupils of her eyes widening. ‘But there are a lot of stakeholders here: the opposition, police, criminals.’

Paddy asks if she wants to see Claudia’s message. She nods. He opens the machine and clicks on another icon. The screen fills with the present-day face of Claudia, heavily made up and speaking directly into the camera. ‘Hello Mia,’ she says, ‘welcome to my shitty world. Tate made a big mistake when he did that to you. Thanks to this little film, he’s dead meat. And once we have the Magic Wand we’ll have Spiers too and we can burn their whole fucking house down. We’ll just have to find a good hacker to open the bloody thing. After that, darling, we can have a drink together with our cyanide pills.’

The video stops, tears are running down Claudia’s face. Paddy closes the screen.

‘Is Claudia still talking to Tate?’ Michelle asks.

‘Yes. She thinks he has no idea.’

‘And Adams?’

‘Same.’

‘When can I see Claudia?’

‘You won’t be able to. She’s happy to keep seeing Mia, but she’s terrified of being seen with a journalist. Tate’s been watching her like a hawk ever since the assault.’

‘Can I talk to Mia?’

‘Not till we’ve talked to Mia’s barrister.’

‘Why not talk to mine?’

‘We need a more independent voice,’ Paddy says, looking at her through a cloud of smoke. It was here in this same corner that he had the conversation with Mia last night. Mia’s great fear is that Michelle might just go straight to Tate. But there’s another fear: Mia’s husband, Red, arrives in twenty-four hours.

‘That’s harsh, Patrick,’ she says. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

‘I trust you,’ he says, looking out the window. ‘And I don’t.’

‘It’s all so—horrible!’

‘It is. And I want to apologise for showing you this filth.’

‘Don’t apologise.’

Michelle picks up her bag and puts on her coat. Paddy opens the door for her. They shake hands; she thanks him and walks out. The look in her eyes tells Paddy that the fuse on the media-bomb is smouldering nicely.