‘Yes,’ I reply.
‘Would you like me to remind you of the purpose of confession?’
‘Yes.’
‘You must confess your sins in order to restore your connection to God’s grace and to escape hell, particularly if you have committed a mortal sin.’
‘What’s a mortal sin?’
‘A mortal sin must be about a serious matter, have been committed with full consent, and be known to be wrong.’
‘What kind of sins are mortal sins?’
‘Murder, for sure. Blasphemy. Adultery.’
He can’t see me, but I smile.
‘And what happens if these sins aren’t confessed?’ I ask.
‘It’s a dogmatic belief of the faith that if a person guilty of mortal sin dies without either receiving the sacrament or experiencing perfect contrition with the intention of confessing to a priest, that person will receive eternal damnation.’ He pauses. ‘These things are known to all Catholics,’ he adds.
‘I’m sorry, Father.’
‘It must have been a very long time since you last confessed, no?’ Another pause. ‘In order for the sacrament to be valid, the penitent must do more than simply confess their known mortal sins to a priest. They must be truly sorry for each of the mortal sins committed, have a firm intention never to commit them again, and perform the penance imposed by the priest. As well as confessing the types of mortal sins committed, the penitent must disclose how many times each sin was committed.’
I know that whatever’s said in the confessional stays there; this is an absolute, inviolable rule, even if to do otherwise might save lives. Doctors and attorneys can break their pledges of confidentiality in extremis; a priest, never.
So I can tell him, even if everything else goes wrong.
‘I have killed,’ I say.
Kohler gasps; in horror, surprise, perhaps both. He must think it unlikely, but perhaps the tone of my voice lets him know that I’m not joking.
‘How many times?’ he asks, more in a croak than a whisper.
‘More than once.’
‘When did you last kill?’
‘Now.’
I’m up off the prie-dieu and out of the door in a flash, pulling the gasoline can from my bag. I throw open the confessional’s other door and see Kohler there, his mouth a perfect circle of outrage at this violation of religious etiquette if nothing else.
I splash the gasoline on him. For an old man, he still looks strong, but gentle too. Years of turning the other cheek have left him useless in a situation like this.
In another two seconds, maybe three, he might have reacted to the danger; but those are seconds he doesn’t have, seconds I won’t give him.
I light the juggling torch and touch it to his face.
His screams echo loud and bounce round the cathedral, and the flames rush from his skin and clothes to the walls of the confessional, leaping orange through crackling wood as I step back and close the door on him, holding it shut for as long as I can stand before the heat drives me back.
It’s not long, but it’s enough.
‘Isaiah chapter fifty-nine, verse seventeen,’ I shout, so he can hear me above his screaming and through his agonies. ‘“For I put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon my head; and I put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and am clad with zeal as a cloak.”’
The screaming stops, and in its place comes a rasped muttering, the words of a dying man, indistinct but their meaning clear if I strain to hear:
‘God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.’
The death of a surgeon in an upscale condo block had merited one mildly disgruntled local TV crew. The death of the bishop brought the national networks out in force. They crammed up against bumblebee-striped crime tape and turned glaring camera lights on anyone who stepped inside the police cordon.
At the edge of that cordon, a uniformed officer met Patrese and Beradino and checked their credentials. When he saw Beradino’s name, he touched the checkered band on his hat in respect.
‘Have you adapted?’ Beradino asked.
Adapt, in this case, was a police mnemonic rather than a Darwinian evolutionary imperative. ADAPT: arrest the perpetrator, if possible; detain and identify witnesses and suspects; assess the crime scene; protect the crime scene; and take notes.
‘All but the first, sir.’
‘Who found the body?’
‘Passer-by spotted the flames. Kelly Grubb. He’s over there.’ He indicated a middle-aged man sitting on the trunk of a police cruiser.
Grubb’s expression was typical of people who have stumbled across murder scenes; a mixture, in almost exactly equal parts, of revulsion at the sight and excitement at being part of a police investigation.
‘We’ll talk to him later. Did he alter the scene in any way?’
‘Says he called the fire brigade straight off. Didn’t go in, and they sure as hell wouldn’t have let him in once they got there.’
‘OK.’ More degradation of evidence, that was a given once the fire department had done their thing, but there was no point moaning about it. That was their job, to put out blazes, and damn the consequences, forensic or otherwise.
Beradino thought for a moment, looking towards the spot where the fire department had set up an improvised command post. It was right next to where the TV crews had gathered, and a few uniformed policemen were already shooting the breeze there with the firefighters. Beradino turned back to the officer.
‘Throw up another cordon, a hundred feet further out than this one,’ he said. ‘Keep every civilian – TV crews, general public – behind the new one, the outer one. They start moanin’, threaten to arrest them. They keep moanin’, make good on that threat.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good man.’
Patrese understood Beradino’s logic. At big crime scenes like this, cops meet up. They haven’t seen each other for a while and, since they’re used to such situations, they get to chatting, laughing, ribbing each other. They forget there’s a corpse nearby. They forget people get offended when they think police officers are being insensitive round the dead. Most of all, they forget there are TV mics around that pick up every word they say.
Patrese and Beradino left the uniform shouting at a colleague to bring more yellow-and-black, and headed towards