Sanctus

Chapter 33

The church that filled one side of the great square in the old town was always busiest in the afternoon. It seemed to scoop up the crowds who had spent the morning wandering around the narrow cobbled streets, staring up at the Citadel. The weary visitor would enter the cool, monolithic interior and be immediately confronted with the answer to their unspoken prayers: row upon row of polished oak pews offering, for no charge, a welcome place to sit and contemplate life, the universe and how unwise their choice of footwear may have been. It was a fully working church, holding services once a day and twice on Sunday, offering communion for those who wanted it and confession for those who needed it.

It was into this throng that a man now entered, slowing momentarily to remove his baseball cap in a half-remembered gesture of deference and let his eyes adjust to the gloom after the sun-bleached brightness of the streets. He hated churches — they gave him the creeps — but business was business.

He threaded his way through the knots of tourists staring up at the soaring columns, stained-glass windows and arching stone-work of the clerestory — all eyes to heaven, as the architects had intended. Nobody gave him so much as a glance.

He reached the far corner of the church and his mood immediately soured. A line of people sat on a bench by a row of drawn curtains. He briefly considered jumping the queue, but didn’t want to risk drawing attention to himself, so sat down next to the last sinner in line until an apologetic-looking foreigner tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to a vacant booth.

‘It’s all right,’ he stammered, avoiding eye contact and gesturing towards the corner. ‘I want the one on the end.’

The tourist looked perplexed.

‘Go ahead. I’m funny about where I do my confessing.’

The man hunkered down on the bench. Normally his freelance business took him to the shadowy recesses of a bar or a car park. It felt weird, doing it in a church. He watched two more sinners emerge before the stall he needed finally became available. He was out of his seat and into the booth almost before the previous incumbent had emerged. He yanked the curtain shut behind him and sat down.

It was cramped and dark, and smelt of incense, sweat and fear. To his right a small, square grille was set into a wooden panel slightly lower than head height.

‘Do you have something to confess?’ prompted a muffled voice.

‘I might,’ he replied. ‘Are you Brother Peacock?’

‘No,’ the voice replied. ‘Please wait.’

Whoever was on the other side of the grille got up and left.

The man waited, listening to the whispers of tourists and the clicking of cameras. They sounded to him like the rasping legs of scuttling insects. He heard movement on the other side of the grille.

‘I am the emissary of Brother Peacock,’ a low voice announced.

The man leaned forward. ‘Please forgive me, for I have sinned.’

‘And what have you to confess?’

‘I have taken something from my place of work, something which does not belong to me, something I believe concerns a fellow Brother of your church.’

‘Do you have this thing with you?’

A pale hand dusted with freckles took a small white envelope from an inner pocket.

‘I do,’ he said.

‘Good. You understand that the purpose of confession is to enable sinners who enter the house of God burdened with their sins to leave again free of those burdens?’

The man smiled. ‘I understand,’ he said.

‘Your sin is not grave. If you bow your head before God I believe you will find the forgiveness you seek.’

A hatch slid open beneath the grille. He passed through the envelope, feeling a slight tug as it was taken from him. There was a brief pause. He heard it being opened and inspected.

‘This is everything you took?’

‘It’s everything there was to take as of about an hour ago.’

‘Good. As I said, your sin is not grave. I bless you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You may now consider your sins absolved — provided you remain a friend to the Church. Bow your head before God once more and he will reward his faithful servant.’

The man saw another envelope poking through the hatch. He reached down and took it. The door slid shut and whoever had been on the other side departed as quickly as he had arrived. Inside the envelope was a thick wad of unsigned hundred-dollar traveller’s cheques. They always paid him this way, and he smiled at the neatness of it. If he had been followed, which he knew he hadn’t, he could plausibly claim they’d been mislaid by a tourist. They were also untraceable, probably purchased by someone using a fake ID at any one of the Bureaux de Change that lined the old streets.

He pocketed the envelope and slipped out of the booth, past the patient queue, his eyes making contact with nobody until he’d left the church well behind him.