Fallen Gods

Twenty-two

Pops said he was old, Alex thought, as she looked across the coffee table in the sparsely furnished room, but that was an understatement. Brother Aidan, the superintendent of Oak Lodge, was an ancient, twinkling, nutmeg of a man, a tiny figure with skin like well worn leather, sharp features and sparse, wispy, flyaway hair. Looking at him Skinner's daughter was struck by his resemblance to a character in the Star Wars series… a character depicted by a puppet.

"Did it strike you as odd that I offered you a drink," he asked her father, in vibrant Irish tones, 'here of all places, where it's a problem to so many?"

The big detective grinned. "Now that you mention it, I suppose it did."

"Nothing odd about it at all. My friends who live here don't do so on the basis that they keep off the drink. Some of them just can't, poor souls, or they wouldn't be here in the first place."

"How many people do you have here?" Alex asked him.

"Up to twenty-five, my dear. God knows there's a need for more places, but we have to strike a balance with the feelings of our neighbours."

The hostel was situated in a residential suburb on the western side of the Clyde coast town, on a hillside looking across the Firth to Dunoon.

"They're good folks in the main," Brother Aidan went on, 'but if we tried to expand this place, one or two of them might object. And I'd understand why, too. My friends here are all good people too, at heart, but some of them can get a bit obstreperous from time to time."

"What's the mix among the, um, residents?" asked Skinner.

The little priest scratched his chin. "The mix? They're just men, all of them, people who would like to live in normal society, in a normal home, but with problems that make it difficult, nay, impossible, for them to do that. With some it's mental illness. With a few, it's personality disorders.

With others, it's just the drink. With one or two, like your poor brother Michael, it's both."

He rocked back in his chair, and took a long look at his visitors, his sharp gaze finally coming to rest on Bob. "So he's dead, then, my old friend."

"I'm afraid so."

"He was here the longest, you know. I came myself thirty-two years ago, and Michael joined us a couple of years after that."

"How was he, all that time?"

"Sure, and how do I answer that? Sad, I suppose; yes, whatever else he was, he was always sad. At first, when he came here from the hospital, he was very disturbed. He was medicated, but there was still a great anger in him."

"What did he have to be angry about?" Skinner blurted out, before he could stop himself.

"A great deal," Brother Aidan replied, 'but it was all directed at himself. In those early years, I had a fear that it might drive him to take his life. But gradually, that anger faded, until only the sadness remained. He became, I'd have to say, a nice man, quiet, but popular within our community here. Eventually, if my friends here can be said to have a leader among them, that's what he became. He had been thrust out of his own family, but he had the good fortune to find another here. He was a great asset to us as well. He had all sorts of skills with his hands, from his army days; just about all of the maintenance around here, he did."

The priest held up a hand. "You mustn't take that as criticism, my son. I understand why your father did what he did. It hurt him very deeply, but as he saw it, he had no choice. Truth be told, that's how I saw it too."

"You met my father?"

"Of course. He came to inspect Oak Lodge while Michael was still in the hospital. He was a substantial man, right enough, with an air about him that I saw in you the moment you walked through the door." He smiled at Alex. "And in you too, my dear, if I may say so. Michael would have been very proud of his niece, had he known of you." Brother

Aidan sighed. "But he never did, of course; he never once asked me about his family. I think he knew that he wouldn't have been able to bear having a running commentary on their lives."

"You told him when my parents died, though?"

"Of course. When he learned about your poor mother, I thought he really would end himself. He locked himself away and cried for a whole day. Eventually I had to have his door broken in. When I told him about your father, though, I have to say that his reaction was very strange. He was every bit as broken-hearted, but there was something else too. He was afraid for the security of his life here. He was convinced that you would wind up his trust and cut off his money."

"God, I'd never have done that."

"I knew you wouldn't, and eventually I was able to persuade Michael of that. Still and all, though, his view of life did change after your father's death. There was always that edge of fear in him."

"Fear?"

"Yes, my son; he always had a fear of you. Michael told me about the terrible things he did to you, when you were a child. He told me what he did to your mother, and about what happened after that. I am not condemning you here, because I know what you saw. You were no more than a boy defending his mother; the most natural thing in the world.

But your brother's last memory of you was of you beating him unconscious, telling him all the time in a quiet voice that you were going to kill him. He came to realise that among his many sins, possibly the greatest was to have put such hatred in the heart of one so young. He couldn't believe that it could ever leave you, and when the years went by without a visit from you, or cards on his birthday or at Christmas, his sadness and his guilt went all the deeper."

Bob Skinner stared out of the window of the old priest's office. "I'm carrying my own guilt now, Brother. Michael's dead, and I wish that at the very least I'd written to him, or called him, if only to wipe away his memory of that hatred, and to cleanse him of his guilt. It came to me, when I looked at him in the mortuary, that in my life as a police officer I've dealt with many people who were a hell of a lot worse human beings than my brother ever was, and yet I've shown most of them more mercy than I ever showed him." He winced, as if his pain was physical.

"I can make the age-old excuse, of course; in not contacting him I was obeying my father's order. I worshipped my dad… as did Michael in his own very different way. It would have been a betrayal for me to have gone against him; for me, the ultimate disloyalty. But now, I'll go through my life believing that if I had reached out to him, maybe he wouldn't have wound up in that fucking river."

Brother Aidan nodded. "You may do so," he conceded. "But even if you had reached out, as you put it, I doubt very much whether Michael would have given up his life here. Your father put him here because he had a personality disorder and he was alcoholic. A Christmas card from you might have been nice, but it wouldn't have changed that. Be hard on yourself if you like… wearing a hair shirt on occasion is good for any man… but don't be too hard. Bury him where he belongs, beside his parents, then try to move on."

Alex reached across and took his hand. "Yes, Dad, please."

Skinner let out a low growling sound. "Mmmm. Time will tell if I can; my life seems to be full of guilt and anger just now. Maybe the best thing I could do is take over Michael's bed here."

"You don't qualify," said Brother Aidan, brusquely. "There's a queue from here to Glasgow of people who need help, before we get round to those who just feel sorry for themselves."

Reproved, the policeman smiled. "True."

"You mentioned a river," the little priest continued. "You've never told me how Michael died. Was that it?"

"Part of it, at least. Tell me, Brother, did Michael leave here often?"

"He'd go down the shops like everyone else, but if you mean did he take a trip somewhere, that happened only rarely. In fact, two weeks ago was the first time he ever went away for any length of time without me.

Michael and I used to go on holiday together," he explained. "I have a nephew in a village near Cork, and we would visit him every year or two."

"So what happened two weeks ago? Where did he go?"

"Glasgow, I was told."

"On his own?"

"Oh no. He couldn't have done that. Not that there'd have been anything to stop him, mind, other than himself. My friends here are all free men; they can come and go any time they please. But many,

Michael among them, choose to remain.

"What happened was this. A few months ago, your brother had a letter, out of the blue. He said it was from a man called Skipper, someone he'd known a long time ago, when he was young. Skipper said that he'd been abroad for many years, and that he'd only just come back to

Scotland. He'd asked around about Michael and had been told by a friend of a friend back in Mother well that he'd gone to live in Oak Lodge."

"Did my uncle write back to him?" asked Alex.

"There was no return address, my dear. However a couple of weeks later, there was a telephone call for Michael, from the man. I didn't think he was going to take it at first. Apart from once when my nephew called from Ireland and he said a quick hello, he hadn't spoken on the telephone for thirty years. But he plucked up his courage and he did.

The outcome was that Skipper came to visit him, shortly afterwards.

They had a chat, then they went out for a drink together."

"Did this guy have another name?" Skinner asked.

"That's the only one I know. I don't know whether it's a surname, nickname or whatever. In any event, he came another couple of times, and eventually, it was arranged between them that Michael would go to stay with him for a couple of weeks."

The old man sighed. "The truth be told, when you called to say you wanted to see me, I thought you were going to tell me that Michael wasn't going to be coming back. That's just what you did tell me, but not in the way I expected."

"Sadly not. Brother Aidan, can you tell me what this man Skipper looked like?"

The Jesuit ran his fingers through his sparse hair. "He'd have been about Michael's age, I suppose. In height, he'd have been around the same, but he was fairly thin; much more lightly built. He wore spectacles with blue lenses; sunglasses I suppose they were."

"Hair?"

"Grey, like yours. A bit greyer, maybe. Does that ring any bells?"

"None. I'll maybe talk to a couple of people in Mother well, who might have known my brother back in the old days. They'll probably be rogues or policemen, but some of them will still be around."

"Why do you need to trace this man, Robert?" Brother Aidan asked.

"Because Michael's death may have been either suicide, or an accident, or something else. There's considerable doubt about it." He told the priest the rest of the story, explaining where and how he had been found. As he spoke, the old man's mouth formed into a perfect O of horror.

He crossed himself. "How terrible," he whispered. "My poor old friend, that he should die like that. But tell me, how did the police make the connection to you?"

"The only thing they found on his body was a photograph of my father.

Someone who knew me saw it, spotted the likeness between us, and came to me."

"Ahh," Brother Aidan exclaimed. "That would be it. It was all he had with him when they brought him here. And it was all he took with him just over two weeks ago, when he went away with Skipper, for the last time."