The Sacred Sword

Ben winced sympathetically. ‘Illness?’

‘Suicide.’ Michaela only mouthed the unmentionable word, drawing a straight finger like a knife across her throat for emphasis.

Now Ben understood why Simeon looked so uncharacteristically gaunt. Before he could muster a reply, the vicar was returning from the drinks cabinet holding two generously filled whisky glasses. He pressed one into Ben’s hand and clinked his own against it.

‘Here’s to old friends,’ said Simeon Arundel. ‘Welcome to our home, Ben.’

Chapter Five

The snow was spiralling down out of the night sky and lying thickly on the private road that led to Wesley Holland’s sprawling country residence, the Whitworth Mansion, two miles from the shores of Lake Ontario. Anyone who followed the sixty-seven-year-old billionaire philanthropist’s exploits in the media might have been surprised to see him driving alone in a seven-year-old Chrysler, but the fact was that despite his almost uncountable wealth, Wesley Holland was a man of relatively modest tastes. Even in his youth, when he’d inherited his gigantic fortune from his father, he’d had relatively little truck with the conventional trappings of wealth; just as he had little to do with the modern world, of which he disapproved more with each passing year.

Yet every man has his weaknesses, and Wesley Holland’s weakness for over five decades, despite his pacifist tendencies and abhorrence of cruelty, had been his all-consuming passion for antique instruments of war, weaponry and armour. If it hadn’t been for the vast, unique collection his riches had allowed him to accumulate, he’d have had no need whatsoever for such an enormous house. He sometimes thought he’d be perfectly content living in a one-bedroom apartment. It was just him, after all, apart from the live-in staff and Moses, his old tortoiseshell cat.

Wesley parked the car in front of the mansion and stepped out to be greeted by two of his staff. His longtime personal assistant, Coleman Nash, sheltered him from the falling snow with an umbrella while the other, Hubert Clemm, who had served as Wesley’s butler for over twenty-five years, began unloading the luggage from the back of the Chrysler. Moses had had the good sense to stay indoors.

‘Careful with that one, Hubert,’ Wesley said, watching closely as Clemm unloaded the custom-made black fibreglass case from the car. Theoretically, it was indestructible, but he worried nonetheless. Anyone would, considering what was inside. The oblong box, just under four feet long and secured with steel locks, looked for all the world like the kind of case a serious classical guitarist would use to protect a cherished instrument in transit.

Except that Wesley Holland had never picked up a guitar in his life.

‘Did you have a good trip, Mr Holland?’ Coleman asked, leading his employer towards the house.

‘Thank you, Coleman. Actually, it could have gone better.’ Wesley was still feeling quite downcast from this latest encounter with yet another bunch of so-called experts unable to get their cynical, closed little minds around the incredible truth that was right there in front of them. This time it had been the history eggheads at the University of Buffalo. Wesley sometimes feared he was beginning to run out of options – though nothing could completely extinguish the excitement of knowing what he’d found. It was the genuine article and he shouldn’t give a damn what the academics thought. They’d wake up one day. He really believed that.

‘How have things been here?’ he asked Coleman. The billionaire trusted his assistant completely. Coleman watched over the mansion and grounds like a pit bull and even kept a monstrous .700 Nitro Express double-barrelled rifle in his room, ‘just in case’. Wesley had often chided him about ‘that damned elephant gun’.

‘Uneventful,’ Coleman told him as they walked into the hallway. Suits of medieval armour flanked the stairs. Originals, not reproductions – the same went for the displays of ancient weaponry that glittered against the panelling. ‘I’ve left the mail on your desk as usual,’ Coleman went on. ‘The curator of the Wallace Collection in London called three times while you were away.’

‘Was it about the Cromwell pieces?’

‘He didn’t say. I told him you’d contact him when you got back.’

‘I’ll do that. Oh, Hubert, you can take all the bags upstairs except the black case. Leave that one in the salon. I’ll put it away myself.’

‘Yes, Mr Holland.’

‘By the way,’ Coleman said, ‘Abigail prepared your favourite veal escalopes for dinner tonight.’

‘With cream?’ Wesley felt his mouth water. He’d been through innumerable cooks before he’d found Abigail. The woman was a gem. Nothing would cheer him up like a fine meal. He needed it. Quite aside from the disappointment in Buffalo, the revelations about Fabrice Lalique were still hanging over him like a pall. Wesley had been as shocked as anyone to learn of the priest’s paedophilia.

He left the black case with its precious cargo on the rug in the salon where Hubert had laid it carefully down, and trotted upstairs to his study, nimble and light on his feet for a man of his vintage. The study walls were lined with rich green velvet and displayed just a fractional part of his gleaming collection of ancient weaponry. He pointed a remote control at the sound system and the room filled with his favourite Soler sonata for harpsichord. The desk on which Coleman had neatly piled the mail had once belonged to General Robert E. Lee. There was no trace of a computer in the study, or, for that matter, anywhere in the house. The telephone was the only concession Wesley Holland allowed to be made to modern telecommunications technology under his roof, despite Coleman’s constant bitching about the disadvantages of having no internet connection or email access. As far as Wesley was concerned, if you wanted to write to someone, it ought to be the proper way: by hand, on paper, mailed in an envelope. He sealed his own handwritten letters with red wax. Okay, so he was a dinosaur. The dinosaurs had ruled the earth far longer than mankind ever would.

He spent a few minutes browsing through his mail – nothing especially interesting or pressing there – then looked at his watch. London would still be fast asleep at this time. Brian Cameron at the Wallace Collection had almost certainly been calling about the English Civil War-period armour pieces that the museum had been begging for months to have on loan. Holland wasn’t sure he could bring himself to part with them. His collections were his passion. He might phone the Englishman back in the morning, or he might let him stew a while before he made his decision.

One thing that wouldn’t wait was veal escalopes in cream sauce.

Wesley shut the study and made his way back downstairs. His stomach rumbled in anticipation of his late dinner as he crossed the marble-floored hallway towards the kitchen. He liked to eat his meals at the simple table there, rather than have Hubert go to the trouble of preparing the vaulted dining hall. As Wesley polished off the delicious meal, feeding tiny titbits to Moses under the table, Abigail would be pottering about the kitchen making his dessert. He enjoyed her company: more than he could have said for any of his four wives, each one more grasping and mercenary than her predecessor. Wesley had been fifty-seven when he’d divorced the last of them and sworn that was an end to it.

The kitchen door seemed to be jammed by some obstruction. ‘Abi?’ No reply. Wesley pushed harder and it opened a few inches. He could smell burning from inside. ‘Abi?’ he repeated.

At Wesley’s last medical check-up, his doctor had told him he had the heart of a forty-five-year-old. But it gave a terrifying leap and almost stopped beating permanently at the sight in the kitchen. He cried out in horror.

Moses the cat was lapping nonchalantly at a thick blood trail that gleamed under the lights. It led from near the cooking range to the door, where Abigail had managed to drag herself before she died. She’d been shot twice in the chest with a large-calibre weapon. She was still clutching the spatula that she’d been using to stir the cream sauce, now simmered to a black mess on the stove, the extractor fans sucking away the smoke.

‘Coleman!’ Wesley shouted in panic. ‘Coleman!’ He darted back across the hallway and into the main salon.

Hubert Clemm’s body lay twisted in the middle of the vast Persian rug with his arms outflung and his face turned towards the door. There was a large bullet hole in his forehead, a spray of blood up the upholstery of the couch behind him.

‘Coleman!’ Wesley screamed.

He heard a sound behind him and whipped round. Before he could react, he was being propelled backwards into the salon and the muzzles of two silenced pistols were looming large in his face. He fell heavily into an armchair and stared helplessly up at the pair of gunmen standing over him. One of them was tall, well over six feet. The long brown coat he wore was made of heavy, full-grained tan leather, like horsehide. The other was wearing a quilted jacket. Both had on black ski masks that hid their faces.

Robbers. Wesley’s heart pounded horribly. He could see Hubert’s corpse out of the corner of his eye, and it was more than he could bear. ‘I keep over a million dollars in cash in a safe upstairs,’ he gasped. ‘And jewels. I’ll open it for you myself. Take what you want and go. Please, just go.’

The masked men exchanged glances. The prospect of making off with a million-plus in cash was appealing, but their orders had been strict and precise. ‘The sword,’ the big one in the leather coat said tersely. ‘Let’s have it.’ He talked with an English accent. A Londoner, maybe.

Wesley balked. His brain churned faster than it had ever churned before. ‘I don’t know what sword you mean!’ he protested. But he did know, very well. If he and his associates were right about it – and almost three years of tireless efforts had persuaded him beyond a doubt that they were – it was a treasure of incalculable value. What he couldn’t understand was how these men could possibly be aware of its very existence. Virtually nobody was, outside of the group. Who could have given away the sworn secret? Hillel Zada? Surely not him. He didn’t know enough.

The worst thing for Wesley was that the sword was so nearby. He tried desperately hard not to let his eyes flick across to the black fibreglass container, just a few yards away across the room. ‘That’s it there,’ he said, instead pointing through the open door at the giant two-handed Landsknecht weapon that dominated the display in the hallway. From tip to pommel it stood taller than a tall man, and it was almost four centuries old.

Much too big. Much too new. Totally wrong. A wild bluff, based on the fact that these thugs could hardly be expert enough to know one sword from another. ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘It’s worth a fortune.’ That part was quite true.

The gunmen gave the monster blade a cursory over-the-shoulder glance. The one in the brown leather coat shook his head. ‘Don’t fuck with us.’ The one in the quilted jacket pressed his gun muzzle hard into Wesley’s cheekbone. ‘You’d better start talking, old man.’ Another Brit. Who were these men?

‘Drop your weapons and turn around slowly,’ said a calm, steady voice from the doorway, and Wesley’s heart soared.

Coleman Nash had the massive twin bores of the elephant gun trained steadily on the robbers.

The two men froze. The pressure of the pistol muzzle against Wesley’s cheekbone slackened. Coleman had them cold.

Except for one problem. Coleman had never pointed a gun at a living being before, still less pulled the trigger. These men did it for a living. Amateurs hesitated. Professionals never did.

It all happened too fast for Wesley to follow. The report of the first pistol was a muffled ‘dooophh’, followed almost instantly by another, simultaneously with the brain-numbing explosion of the elephant gun as it blasted a moon crater out of the far wall.

Coleman’s legs wobbled and then buckled and he went down on his knees. Blood on his lips.

Wesley yelled. Another pistol shot. Then another.

Wesley saw the bullets strike and knew there was nothing he could do to help poor Coleman. He jumped up from the armchair, grabbed the black fibreglass case and bolted like a rabbit for the side exit. The big man in the leather coat turned to stop him, but dived for cover behind the couch as the stricken Coleman let loose with the second barrel. The .700 Nitro Express blew a great ragged hole through the backrest of a hundred-thousand-dollar antique couch.

In the next moment, Coleman was cut down by a volley of bullets. He died before the rifle had dropped from his hands.

By then, Wesley had made it out of the exit and was sprinting in a grief-stricken panic down the passage, carrying his precious case. He heard the door burst open behind him and the footsteps pounding as the gunmen gave chase. The terror pressed him on faster. He hammered up a flight of steps, down another passage, and reached the door.

The panic room had been built several years earlier, in case of just such a contingency. Wesley had let Coleman take care of the arrangements, then signed the cheque and promptly forgotten all about it. Which made it all the more miraculous that the password for the voice-recognition vault door should come back to him now.

‘Barbarossa!’

The six forged steel deadlocks opened with a clunk. Wesley rushed inside and the armoured door shut behind him, locking itself automatically.

Safe. More importantly, the sword was too. Wesley leaned against the wall and breathed hard, able to hear the muffled voices of his pursuers cursing on the other side. For the first time in his life, he thanked God for modern technology. If he’d had to fumble for a key, they’d have got him. Would they have killed him outright, or tortured him until they’d found the sword in its case?

Wesley staggered numbly over to the control console and peered at the bank of monitors showing digital hi-definition images of every part of the house. He could see the two bodies on the main living room floor: Coleman’s near the entrance, Hubert’s on the rug. Abigail’s in the kitchen. The blood looked garishly bright.

Wesley tasted bile in his mouth at the sight and turned away, following the gunmen’s progress from screen to screen as they dashed furiously from one room to the next. They must have known that the clock was ticking now, but clearly believed they still had a chance of locating their quarry somewhere within the Whitworth Mansion.

They wouldn’t hang around too long, if they had any sense. Wesley picked up the phone and dialled 911. He spoke urgently but clearly to the police operator, and was assured that officers were on their way. Then, swallowing back his grief, he moved on to the even more important call he had to make.

*

Halfway across the world, Simeon Arundel picked up on the second ring that dragged him up out of a deep sleep.

‘Simeon?’ said the familiar voice.

‘Wesley, it’s three o’clock in the morning here,’ Simeon muttered, rubbing his face. It had been a late night, and his head was a little fuzzy from all the whisky they’d drunk. Their visitor’s capacity for alcohol seemed to be undiminished with the years. Michaela was fast asleep, the curve under the blanket rising and falling gently in the bed next to him.

‘Listen to me,’ the American’s voice hissed in his ear. ‘Something’s happened.’

Struggling to clear his head and afraid of waking Michaela, Simeon sat up and swung his legs out of the bed. ‘Hold on, Wesley.’ In the darkness of the bedroom he padded over to the ensuite bathroom, closed himself quietly inside and turned on the light. ‘All right. What’s happened?’

‘They’re after the sword.’

‘What? Who?’

‘The armed men who broke into my house tonight. Or whoever paid them to come here to steal it.’

Simeon sat down heavily on the edge of the bath, his mind swimming with horror. ‘Oh, Lord. Are you all right?’

‘I’m safe. The cops are on their way as we speak.’ Wesley’s voice quavered with emotion. ‘They shot Coleman, Simeon.’ A sorrowful pause. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Dead!?’

‘So are Hubert and Abigail.’

Simeon’s heart began to beat even faster. He could feel it thudding violently at the base of his throat. He suddenly felt as if he might need to lurch the two steps across to the toilet and throw up.

Then the suspicions Fabrice had expressed to him just before his death had been true. Someone really was taking an unhealthy interest in the research they’d all tried so hard to keep secret. Someone really was after them.

Someone who was prepared to murder to get what they wanted.

Simeon swallowed back the urge to gag. ‘Is it safe?’

‘It’s right here next to me,’ Wesley said, patting the case.

‘Didn’t I tell you, Wesley? Didn’t I tell you something strange was happening – that I was sure I’d been followed – about the man I saw in the church a couple of weeks ago?’ Simeon visualised the scene clearly in his mind as he spoke. The stranger had materialised as if out of the blue while he’d been helping put up the Christmas decorations at one of his churches in a rural part of Oxfordshire. When Simeon had gone to welcome him, the man had slipped away as suddenly as he’d appeared. ‘And didn’t I tell you that Fabrice would never have killed himself like that? Or done those appalling things?’

They’d been through this over and over, ever since receiving the news of their colleague’s death and his shocking circular email. ‘I don’t know whether Fabrice did those things or not,’ Wesley said impatiently. ‘Or why he’d have confessed to them if he hadn’t. And I don’t know if he threw himself off that damn bridge or not. Neither do you. All we can be sure of is that you and I are both in danger and it has to do with this sword. That’s the reality we’re facing right now.’

‘Who are these people? How do they know about us?’

‘Did you talk to anybody? Anybody at all? They even seem to know what it looks like.’

‘Nobody,’ Simeon blurted. ‘I swear.’

‘You’re absolutely positive about that?’

‘Wesley, I would never …’

‘Good. Keep it that way. Listen, I can’t stay on this line. The cops will be here any minute. When I’ve dealt with them I’m going to call my lawyer and arrange some private security for you and your family over there, okay?’

‘There’s no need for that. I’ll be making my own arrangements.’

‘Can you get armed bodyguards in England?’

‘I don’t think so, not unless you’re the Prime Minister or something. But I have an old friend with a lot of experience of that kind of thing.’

‘He’d better know his business,’ Wesley said. ‘This is serious.’

‘What about you?’

‘Me? I’m going to Martha’s. Got to get the sword somewhere safe. It’s more important than any of us. You said that yourself, remember?’

Simeon nodded. He was still reeling. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

‘I’ll call you from the road. You watch your back, hear me?’

Chapter Six

Sometime before sunrise, Ben flipped himself out of the comfortable bed in the Arundels’ guest annexe, stretched and warmed his muscles and dropped down to the floor to knock out fifty press-ups without a break. He followed those up with fifty sit-ups, and was about to go straight into another set of press-ups when he heard the unmistakable throaty engine note of the Lotus from outside. He rubbed condensation off the window pane and peered out to see Simeon’s taillights exiting the vicarage gates. It seemed the vicar was off to an early start this morning.

The thoughts that had been swirling around Ben’s mind before he’d finally drifted off to sleep the night before were still lingering. The life that Simeon and Michaela had created for themselves here in this serene heart of rural England had made a strong impression on him, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how a life like that might have been possible for him, once, too. There’d been a time, many years ago, when he couldn’t have imagined his future any other way.

As he’d done so often in the past, Ben tried to imagine himself in the role of a clergyman. The ivy-clad vicarage, the dog collar, the whole works. Ben Hope, pastor and shepherd of the weak, beacon of virtue and temperance.

The fantasy had always been there, but it was a self-image he’d never found it easy to believe in with all his heart. If he was a Christian himself, he was an extremely lapsed one – and it had been that way for much too long. Compared to the blazing supernova of Simeon’s faith, Ben’s was a guttering candle. He seldom prayed with anything approaching conviction, even more seldom picked up a Bible. The old leather-bound King James Version he’d hung onto for years had ended up being tossed out of the window of a moving car on a road in rural Montana; it had been a long time before Ben had come round to regretting his rash action.

And yet faith, of some kind, was something that had never quite left Ben – although whenever he tried to ponder on its nature, as he did now, he was left with only the vaguest, cloudiest impression of the strange yearning he felt somewhere deep inside, at the core of his being. Some indefinable sense that one day, maybe, he could find peace within himself. That one day, a guiding hand would appear out of the darkness to steer him on the right path.

Ben closed his eyes, and for a brief moment he had a vision of himself, a different Ben Hope altogether, living this serene, idyllic life, with Brooke by his side.

The vision made him flinch and open his eyes again. He cursed himself for allowing such a hopelessly absurd and romantic notion to enter his head. Brooke as a vicar’s wife – it was nuts. She was as different from Michaela as Ben was from Simeon. She’d have laughed in his face at the very idea of it.

Brooke would probably never want to see him again anyway.

‘You’re a fool, Ben Hope,’ he said out loud. He chased away the darkness in his mind with more rapid-fire press-ups, eighty of them without a rest, so that his muscles screamed and his T-shirt clung damply to his skin.

After a cool shower, he dressed and stepped outside into the frosty dawn and crossed the yard to where the Land Rover was parked. ‘Let’s see if we can’t figure you out,’ he muttered, raising the battered matt-green bonnet lid and preparing to get his hands dirty.

He’d been there quite some time before he heard the footsteps on the gravel and looked up to see Michaela approaching, a mug of something hot and steaming in her hand.

‘Brought you coffee,’ she said, setting the mug down on the Landy’s wing. ‘You’re covered in grime.’ She reached over to Ben’s face, touched his cheek, looked at her blackened fingertips and grimaced. ‘Yuck. Any joy?’

‘Jeff was right,’ Ben said. ‘I shouldn’t have come in Le Crock.’

Michaela had the decency not to rub salt into Ben’s wounds by mentioning old bangers again. ‘Can you fix it?’ she asked, peering over his shoulder into the rusty engine compartment.

‘Not without a spare part or two,’ Ben said.

‘Worry about it later. Come inside and I’ll make you the best scrambled eggs you’ve ever had in your life.’

‘Coffee’s fine for me,’ he protested.

‘I insist. You’re officially on holiday, after all. And it’s all beautiful fresh local produce. The eggs are just a day old, courtesy of our neighbours, the Dorans. You can’t possibly refuse.’

Ben relented. Scrubbed clean and tucking into a plate of what were indeed the most delicious scrambled eggs he’d ever tasted – just a smidgen of organic butter, just a pinch of sea salt, a little fresh-ground pepper – he said, ‘Simeon was off early this morning.’

‘He had to drive into Oxford for a radio interview,’ Michaela said, sipping her tea. The eggs were all for Ben. Trying to diet, she’d said.

‘You weren’t kidding about him being a celebrity.’

‘Man on a mission. Fighting a one-man war against the decline of the Church.’

‘Is it declining that much?’ Ben asked.

‘You’re a little out of the loop, aren’t you?’

‘Just a little,’ Ben admitted. But he’d seen the signs, in France as well as in England. The chains and padlocks on the church gates. The silent bell towers. Buildings falling into decay, with grids over the windows to stop the vandals smashing the stained glass, whose beauty few people seemed to appreciate any more.

‘Simeon’s determined to bring youth and vigour back to the Christian faith. That’s how he puts it. Heaven knows, it needs someone with his dynamism to give it a shot in the arm, or else it’s just going to crumble away to nothing before too long, the whole institution and its churches to boot. When Simeon’s father passed away three years ago he left him almost four hundred thousand pounds. Simeon donated every penny of it towards church restoration projects. But as he says, churches are worth nothing without the people inside them. So he fights, and he fights, and he never stops. Twelve hours is a relaxing day for him. When he isn’t in church, it’s one radio interview after another, as well as the odd television appearance. His blog. His podcasts. Anything he can do to raise the profile of Christianity for a modern audience, he throws himself into it with a passion you wouldn’t believe.’

‘He’s a hard-working guy,’ Ben said through a mouthful of egg.

‘You have no idea, Ben. Gone are the days when a vicar only had his own cosy little corner to tend to. The C of E is so strapped for cash, old vicars being pensioned off all over the place and a shortage of new recruits, that Simeon now has three churches to look after, and he’s constantly zapping about from one to the other. Some of his colleagues have even more, but none of them has managed to boost attendance the way he has. He’s amazing. How he still finds the time to research his book is beyond me.’

‘What’s he writing about?’ Ben asked as he helped to clear up the breakfast dishes.

‘I only know the title,’ Michaela said, piling plates in the cupboard. ‘And then only because Simeon accidentally left the draft title page lying on his desk one day. He’s calling it The Sacred Sword.’

‘Interesting,’ Ben said.

‘And more than a little mysterious,’ Michaela added wryly. ‘He never stopped prattling on about his first two books while he was working on them. I could almost have written them myself, he told me so much. But this one … let’s just say he’s being extremely secretive. He’s taken to locking his study door when he’s not around. Even bought a safe to keep his notes in. And that time he accidentally left the printout lying around, he burned it afterwards. I don’t think he’s printed off a page of it since.’

‘Maybe he thinks he’s onto a hot bestseller,’ Ben said.

‘It’s not just the book. He spends hours on the phone to people all over the world, then refuses to tell me what it was about. Even when he went to America to meet some “expert” he wouldn’t tell me why, or who the man was, not even his name. I think it was him who phoned last night, in the wee small hours. I didn’t bother asking Simeon about it this morning, although he seemed very preoccupied and I can only assume it was to do with the phone call. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he’ll tell me one day, when he’s ready to.’

Michaela went quiet and looked pensive for a while as they finished clearing up. She glanced out of the window and forced a smile. ‘Shame to be stuck indoors when it’s a lovely day outside. Would you like to go for a walk?’

Ben said he would love to. They stepped out into the crisp sunny winter’s morning and walked down the long, sloping garden with Scruffy running rings around them, a stick in his mouth. Ben was wearing a pair of Simeon’s wellingtons that crunched on the frosty grass.

‘Isn’t the air wonderful?’ Michaela said. ‘Maybe we’re in for a nice, cold, dry spell, after all the rain we’ve had. I’m praying for a white Christmas.’

‘That would be nice,’ Ben said, a little insincerely. Snow mainly just meant a big clearing headache for him.

A gate at the bottom of the garden led to a little patch of woods. Crows cawed in the cold air. The sunlight sparkled on the fast-flowing river through the gaps in the trees.

Ben pointed at the dog, who was running on ahead of them with a world of rabbits to flush out and chase. ‘I like him.’

Michaela seemed pleased. ‘He’s a real character, isn’t he? Turned up here out of the blue, about a year ago. No telling where he came from or who his former owners were. We took him in. I think he’s about three or four. I love him to bits.’

Michaela threw the stick for the dog a few times, and Ben watched her, noticing the way that her look of contentment had faded to a frown as they walked on.

‘You know, I’m really worried about Simeon,’ she said suddenly. ‘He’s got so much on his mind, and sometimes I’m afraid he’s going to burn himself out or make himself ill. He works far too hard, and what with all the quarrelling between him and Jude, not to mention this awful business with Fabrice Lalique …’

‘The man who committed suicide?’

She nodded. ‘He was a Catholic priest. Simeon met him a couple of years ago in France while visiting a church restoration project, and they became friends.’ She shook her head. ‘I still can’t believe it. What a shock. And the worst of it are the revelations that came afterwards.’

‘Revelations?’

‘A day or two after his death, his home was raided by police, acting on a tip-off. They seized his computer and found … how can I put it?’ Michaela paused uncomfortably. ‘Certain material. Very unpleasant and explicit material. Pictures of children. You can guess what kind of pictures I’m talking about.’