Deception

TEN

In his own eyes, the Rev Robert Lindsay McNish was a failure. Worse than that, he was a fraud and a charlatan. He had lost his faith in his mid forties when his wife had run off with a car salesman, calling him in the process, ‘the most boring man who’d ever walked the Earth’ and he’d never quite recovered. Rather than own up to an ensuing and ever-growing cynicism regarding his fellow man and especially woman, he had soldiered on, motivated solely out of personal concern about his own livelihood. He didn’t feel that he could do anything else and the dog collar was a very necessary barrier between him and the rest of humanity.

For the past seven years, he had purveyed the promise of everlasting life to the rapidly dwindling band of pensioners that comprised his congregation at Blackbridge Parish Church, while no longer believing a word of it himself. He wasn’t at ease with the knowledge but felt trapped by circumstance. He was rolling slowly downhill in a steep-sided rut from which there was no escape. One day in the not too distant future, he would hit the buffers; the lights would go out and that would be that. Thank you and good night, Robert McNish.

The days when Blackbridge could sustain a church from its own population had long since gone. The building was still there but the congregation, such as it was, was now garnered from four neighbouring villages, all of which had a church building of their own. The Sunday service was therefore held in each one in rotation. It had been three weeks since the last service at Blackbridge so McNish had arranged for the local cleaner to come in a few days early to make sure it would be right for the Ferguson boy’s funeral. Happily there would be no extra cleaning bill as the service was due there on Sunday anyway.

A full house in Blackbridge Parish Church was something that McNish had not experienced at any time during his fifteen-year tenure and a full house it was going to be. This was mainly due to a large contingent of the boy’s friends and classmates coming from the High School over in Livingston where he had been a pupil. Although it was still the school holidays, the boy’s death and the circumstances of it had been reported widely in the local papers and on local radio and television. This had added a show business element to the death. People wanted to say that they had known Ian Ferguson, the boy on the television. Even a tenuous connection with fame was better than none.

McNish considered the prospect of a sea of faces before him with mixed emotions. He felt nervous but he also felt that he shouldn’t be after so long in the job. After all, all he really had to do was convince everyone there that the boy’s life had been worthwhile and that the Almighty had had a damned good reason for allowing a rat to half bite his foot off and give him a fatal disease into the bargain.

The thought sent him scurrying to the sideboard in the dining room where he took out a half-full bottle of vodka — it didn’t taint your breath — and took a large swig from it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and held it there for a moment, unconsciously seeking solace from the touch of his lips on skin, even if it was his own. He looked out of the manse window at the church across the street. It was a grimy, ugly, brick-built building in need of urgent attention from a competent builder, attention that it wasn’t going to get, at least not until it had changed hands and become a carpet warehouse or disco or whatever churches like his became these days. McNish took another swig and put the bottle back in the sideboard. Breakfast was over.

He waddled through to the bathroom, his bare feet at ‘ten to two’ and turned on the hot tap in the basin, keeping his hand under it while it gurgled and splashed away the airlocks of the night and eventually started to run hot. He washed, shaved and attempted to persuade his spiky grey hair into some kind of order but, as usual, it defied his best efforts and continued to stick out at odd angles making him look as if he’d just had a bad fright. He struggled into his vestments, reflecting from the tightness across his belly that he was still gaining weight thanks to a diet dominated by take-away food. Finally he put on his glasses and bent over to tie his shoes — large, sturdy Doc Martin affairs — the incongruity of which, he relied on his vestments to hide — and felt his diaphragm push up into his throat, bringing on an episode of heartburn. He went back to the bathroom to find the indigestion tablets.

With the taste of peppermint doing battle with regurgitated vodka, McNish left the manse and crossed to the church where he checked his watch and saw that there was still an hour to go. He acknowledged the cleaner who was polishing the edge of his pulpit and went through to the vestry to sit down and read through his crib notes. These he had made after an awkward visit to the Fergusons’ house to convey his sympathy and make arrangements for the funeral. He didn’t know the family at all and making conversation had been difficult, although it had emerged that he had baptised Ian some thirteen years before.

As far as he could gather, that was the last time any of them had been in church and now, today, as if by some stroke of bloody magic, they would expect him to speak knowingly about their son as if he’d been popping in and out of the manse all his life.

McNish concluded that there was very little to work with in the notes he’d made. The boy had been thirteen, not particularly bright in class, not particularly good at sports; not particularly good at anything was the real bottom line, but a joker — that at least would be useful. He had no hobbies but he liked pop music… his favourite band was… damn, where was the bit of paper with the band’s name on it?

McNish was foraging around for it when he was joined by the church organist for the service. She was Miss Pamela Sutton, a retired music teacher from the neighbouring village. ‘Lost something, minister?’ she asked cheerfully.

Miss Sutton was always cheerful and it annoyed McNish intensely. He bit back the reply that sprang to his lips and edited it until it became, ‘Yes, Miss Sutton. I’ve lost the name of a pop group.’

‘Didn’t know you were into pop music, minister.’

McNish sucked in breath through his teeth breath for he had known that she would say that. He wanted to shake the woman until the rose tinted spectacles fell from her eyes and she saw life as it really was.

‘No, it was the name of the Ferguson boy’s favourite group, Miss Sutton. Ah, here it is.’ McNish removed the small piece of paper from between the pages of a prayer book and squinted at it from several angles before asking, ‘Can you make out what that says?’

‘T… Travel, I think.’

‘Is there a band named, Travel?’

‘No idea, minister. Not my scene, as they say.’

The church officer arrived and then the elders who were going to act as ushers today. McNish went through the seating arrangements with them and helped increase the stack of hymnbooks on the table by the door by putting back the ones he’d removed some weeks before because they were too worn and tatty. ‘Needs must, Miss Sutton,’ he said when he saw the organist grimace at the state of them. She held one up like it was something her cat had brought home.

The mourners started to arrive, in dribs and drabs at first but then in ever increasing numbers until downstairs was full and the upstairs galleries were opened up. McNish watched what he felt were a motley crew arrive. Very few appeared to have bothered with traditional dark clothes and black ties. Many of them looked as if they were visiting a supermarket. There was even one woman in an orange shell suit. He was acutely aware of the change to the church’s acoustics that such a large number of people were making. The normal echo that gave his voice an edge of gravitas had been dampened down to nothing. He would have to speak up to make himself heard.

The hearse arrived and the coffin was brought slowly into the church on the shoulders of pallbearers to be followed by the boy’s family, huddling together for comfort. McNish waited until they had settled in the front pew and nodded to them self consciously before looking up at the congregation. For the first time, he saw that they were all looking intently at him and he felt intimidated. What were they thinking? Nothing friendly, he feared. He was looking at a sea of blank, expressionless faces.

‘We are gathered here today to give thanks for the life of Ian Ferguson,’ he began. ‘Let us begin by singing the 23^rd Psalm, The Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not want.’

McNish felt a sense of relief when the organ music swelled and the sound of shuffling feet and throats being cleared directed attention away from him. He found it increasingly difficult to look at the congregation and recognised that he was having a panic attack. He started to suspect they all knew that he was a phoney.

In an effort to get a grip on his emotions, he concentrated his gaze on a window at the back of the church, the one that had been boarded up with chipboard after a yob had thrown a beer bottle through it a few months earlier. The music died, the congregation sat and he began again. ‘Today our hearts go out to Ian’s family as they struggle to come to terms with their tremendous loss. It would not be natural if they did not find themselves full of questions as they start to face up to life without him because there will be a great gap in their lives and they will miss him and his laughter and great love of joking. I would say to them that, because answers are not immediately obvious, does not mean to say that there are none. It may well be that we as yet are ill equipped to understand them. That makes them none the less valid and we must put our trust in the Lord and his decisions.’

McNish paused when he felt sure he’d heard the word, ‘bollocks’, being murmured, followed by muted shushing. He swallowed and managed to convince himself that it had been his imagination. He continued, ‘Ian, like many of his contemporaries, had a great love of pop music and was a big fan of Travel.’ He glanced up from his notes when he heard a murmur of unrest and saw the family looking at each other in puzzlement. Something was dreadfully wrong and he had to pause again, feeling all at sea and embarrassed because he knew not what.

He became aware of loud whispers coming from the front pews on the other side of the aisle from the family and realised that they were being aimed at him. He concentrated on the lips of one girl who was wearing bright red lipstick and leaning forward in her seat, mouthing the word… T.R.A.V.I.S.

‘I’m sorry, the pop group Travis,’ he continued. ‘My knowledge of pop is more than a little suspect at the best of times.’

The reaction to his joke would not have been out of place at the Cenotaph at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The silence brought a cold sweat to his brow. The congregation were clearly against him but he steeled himself to struggle on, feeling that the next item might win them round. ‘As Ian was taken from us at such an early age we are going to break with the traditional service at this time to listen to Ian's’ favourite recording of… Travis. Some of his classmates have brought along a CD player and will play the song for us.’

Two High School pupils, a boy and a girl, wearing school blazers and exuding the air of being responsible young people, moved out from the end of a pew and were escorted by an elder to a position to the right of McNish where they set up the player. They got up, folded their hands behind their backs and stood there with bowed heads as the music started.

McNish kept his eyes firmly fixed on the boarded — up window as the sound of Travis singing, ‘You’re driftwood, floating on the water,’ filled the church. He felt his buttocks clench and his toes curl under his feet in total embarrassment as the awful irony came to him.

McNish fudged his way through to the end of the service and joined the family in the first car behind the hearse for the short trip up to Canal Field Cemetery. He could feel their disappointment at his dismal performance although they said nothing — maybe because they said nothing. He desperately wanted everything to be over but he knew there was a bit to go yet. There were so many following along behind on foot that there would be a considerable wait by the graveside before the actual burial could commence.

McNish found himself a clod of earth to concentrate his gaze on while people gathered round the site of the excavated grave. The coffin sat on two rough wooden supports over the hole until such times as they would be removed and it would be lowered down into the opening by the council gravediggers with relatives holding symbolic cords.

The fading of murmured conversation told him that everyone had now arrived and were now waiting for him to begin. He took up stance beside the coffin and began reading the burial service. ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to…’ He froze in abject horror when he saw a rat jump up on to the lid of the coffin and sit there staring at him. Several mourners screamed and two women turned to flee in blind panic.

For McNish, it was the final straw. He lost the place completely and a red mist swam before his eyes and he swung out at the creature with his prayer book, shouting — almost screaming at the top of his voice, ‘Fil-thy — fuck-ing thing! Get to fuck out of it, you verminous little bastard!’

The frightened animal leapt from the coffin and ran off through a gap that opened up in front of it as if by magic as people leapt out of its way.

McNish, totally out of control, threw his prayer book after it along with another volley of abuse. Worse still, he lost his footing on the wet grass and tumbled backwards to fall down beside the maw of the waiting grave. His vestments rode up exposing his Doc Martins to public view as he clutched desperately at one of the wooden coffin supports to prevent himself sliding into the hole. Council workers rushed to his aid and hoisted him back on to his feet where he stood, breathing deeply and staring down at the earth, his ears burning.

‘Can you go on, minister?’ asked a voice at his elbow.

After a few more deep breaths, McNish nodded. Someone tentatively handed him his prayer book, as if not wanting to come too close. The book itself was badly torn and covered in mud. ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live…’ he continued.

McNish was acutely aware of being given lots of space as the burial came to an end and people turned to leave. The family in particular were avoiding him so he chose to walk back to the manse on his own, rather than ride in the car in deafening silence. He recognised that he was now going to be the main topic of conversation at the family gathering, which he had pointedly not been invited back to. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. The only thing he wanted right now was a drink, several drinks, as many as it took to stop the pain inside his head.

The remains of the vodka bottle in the sideboard lasted less than a minute and was followed by a frantic search for another which he felt sure was somewhere in the house but just for the moment, he couldn’t think where. He knew that he’d put it somewhere where that damned nosy cleaner wouldn’t come across it, but just where exactly that was…

He remembered now. He’d put it under the artificial straw in the Christmas crib, which was stored in the small back bedroom. He staggered through and retrieved it from under the baby Jesus to greedily slug from it before returning to sit down in the dining room at the table and going over in his mind all that had happened that morning. Christ! There had even been photographers there, he remembered. They had been hanging back, keeping in the background but he distinctly remembered seeing the long lenses of their cameras when the car had turned in through the cemetery gates. His nightmare was going to be all over the papers. ‘A fucking rat,’ he murmured. ‘A dirty little fucking rat.’

McNish rose from the table unsteadily and staggered over to the fireplace where he picked up a heavy brass poker. ‘Destroy me, would you? You verminous little fuckers! We’ll see about that.’

Amazingly, no one noticed McNish weave his way back up the road to Canal Field Cemetery and climb up on to the canal towpath behind. Perhaps they were all staying indoors out of respect for the Ferguson family or maybe some did see him but chose not to say anything about it. The Scots were as good as anyone at not seeing what they found embarrassing.

McNish staggered along the towpath at the back of Peat Ridge Farm, waving the poker above his head and challenging rats in a loud voice to come out and get what was coming to them. He stopped when he saw one run out from the rape field and pause in the middle of the towpath. He became convinced in his own booze-addled mind that this was the one that had jumped up on the boy's coffin and brought about his nemesis. He became hell bent on revenge.

‘Here, ratty watty… here, ratty watty. Come to daddy… there’s a good ratty watty.’ McNish inched closer while the rat watched him.

‘There’s a good little… Bastard!’ McNish launched himself at the rat and went all his length as he brought the poker down with all his might but only to make contact with a large flat stone. The pain shot up his arm and brought tears to his eyes as he lay there, close to despair. When his vision had cleared of tears he saw that the rat had not run off. It was sitting there looking at him.

‘Why you filthy, fucking…’ He paused when he saw that there were now two of them and blinked to make sure it wasn’t just his eyesight. He scrabbled in the dirt with his right hand, searching for his glasses, which had come off in the fall. He made contact with them and put them back on, clumsily forcing them up his nose with the heel of his hand. There were two. Fear entered the equation. This just wasn’t how it should be.

McNish backed away a little and tried to get up into a kneeling position. He needed to find the poker. He would feel better with the poker in his hand but it had flown off somewhere when he’d hit the stone and he couldn’t see it. ‘Shoo, you bastards,’ he said, waving his hands at them but the rats didn’t move.

Fear was having a sobering effect on him. Rats were supposed to run off when you challenged them.

These two were sitting in the middle of the path, ignoring his best efforts to scare them off. His breathing became shallow as he remained kneeling, watching the rats watching him. He backed off a little more but this time his progress came to a sudden dramatic halt when an agonising pain shot through his leg and he tried to scramble to his feet. A rat had come up behind him and sunk its teeth into the calf muscle of his right leg.

McNish clutched at the revolting creature on his leg and pushed his flabby fingers as hard as he could into its body, trying to make it release its grip. He was diverted from the task when another of the creatures started to climb up his trouser leg under his cassock. McNish cried out in terror, letting go of the first rat to try and stop the progress of the second but his vestments were making it difficult. He tried tearing at the material to get at the creature but the garment was well made — there was no great demand for cheap cassocks — and wouldn’t part. Trying to protect his genitals by forcing his thighs together while jerking round in circles in an attempt to shake off the rat on his leg made McNish trip and crash to the ground. He hit his head on the path but the pain was eclipsed by that imposed by the rat bites. He started to roll over and over on the path, hoping that he might escape his tormentors by reaching the water, like a man trying fleeing from a swarm of bees. This however, did not work for water rats. Once in the water, he was theirs.

‘Careful, Mac. It could be some kind of diversion,’ said the yellow jacketed security man to his colleague. They had come to the north end of the field after hearing what they thought were cries for help.

‘You stay here then and I’ll take Caesar up to deal with the diversion,’ replied the man, reining back an eager Alsatian dog on a short lead.

‘Watch yourself then. Some of these save-the-planet loonies are mad bastards.’

The guard left the edge of the field and crossed the margins to reach the fence separating it from the canal towpath. He looked left and right but saw no one. Only the dog stopped him from going back to report a false alarm. It started to bark loudly and strain at the leash.

‘What do you see, boy, eh?’ asked the man, cautiously peering into the bushes between him and the canal. ‘Some bugger hiding there, you think? Maybe I’ll just let you flush ‘im out, eh?’

The guard unclipped the dog’s lead and the animal shot under the bottom wire of the fence. He went straight past the bushes and up on to the towpath where he stood, looking at the water and barking loudly. His master followed, although it took him a deal longer to get through the fence and struggle up through the undergrowth. He could now see what the dog was excited about and went slightly pale as he brought out his mobile phone to call his colleague. ‘Charlie? It’s Mac. You’d better get up here.’

A few minutes later the two men stood side by side looking at the body in the water.

‘It’s a bloke in a dress.’

‘He’s a minister, you arse.’

‘D’you think he’s dead?’

‘Unless he’s wearing an aqualung. He’s face down.’

‘Shouldn’t we pull him out?’

‘We’ll let the police do that. They get paid for that kind of shit.’

Detective Inspector Brewer watched his men pull the body of James McNish to the side and hoist him on to the bank to turn him over on to his back.

‘Christ, what a mess,’ murmured one.

‘The rats weren’t slow getting to him,’ said another. ‘Look at his neck.’

‘What is it the residents of Blackbridge have about swimming in the canal?’ said the detective sergeant with Brewer. ‘You just can’t keep them out of it these days.’

Brewer gave a half smile and shrugged. ‘Well what d’you reckon? Did he jump or was he pushed?’

‘Hard to say anything right now,’ replied the sergeant. ‘You don’t often find a Church of Scotland Minister floating up the canal in full gear, so to speak. Could have been a baptism that went horribly wrong… or a suicide… he could have fallen and hit his head on the path before tumbling in or someone might have pushed him.’

‘Or he could have fallen from a passing Boeing 747,’ said Brewer. ‘Get full statements from the guards, will you? And then we’ll see what the doctor has to say.’

‘Right, sir.’

Do you know if he had any relatives?’

The sergeant shrugged. ‘Wife ran off a while back. Don’t know of anyone else. Seemed to be a bit of a loner by all accounts. Rumour said he drank.’

‘So do I,’ said Brewer.

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed the sergeant. ‘I’ve just remembered.’

‘Share it with us.’

‘It was the Ferguson boy’s funeral today in Blackbridge. McNish here must have been officiating: that’ll be why he’s all dolled up. Wonder if that had anything to do with it.’