It was a pity, Redmond Delaney thought, that he’d been ousted as a priest. A real shame, because the priesthood had suited him nicely, given him a standing in the community that he’d missed after being forced to abandon his previous existence as an East End gang leader.
The Delaney mob had ruled Limehouse and Battersea, back in the day, and people had treated him with respect, treading very carefully around him. Cold and controlling, he had relished his position and his fearsome reputation. It had amused him to see terror in people’s eyes when they came face to face with him. How ironic, that the roles of gang boss and priest should turn out to have so much in common: extracting confessions from sinners, doling out hellfire and damnation to wrongdoers . . .
Both jobs had similar perks, too. Gang groupies had flocked to him when he’d run the Delaney mob. Church groupies had twittered around him when he ran his parish. Ah, so tempting they were, all those shy, bored housewives who were dazzled by this stunning red-haired Adonis in his black soutane and pristine white collar. Too tempting, that was the trouble. Easy meat, really. One after another he used them, and every time he’d prostrate himself before the altar afterwards and say, ‘Sorry, Lord, but I am only flesh and the flesh is weak. Forgive me.’ And every time he’d be forgiven, his sins wiped clean . . . until the next time he weakened.
He’d been busy indulging the flesh again the morning his career as a priest came to an abrupt end.
The woman had come to him with a personal problem – something about a bored husband who she believed was straying. Redmond had listened, or appeared to, while thinking: Tasty. Blonde. Curvy. Quite delicious. A little morsel for him to gobble down at the first opportunity.
‘Drop by the presbytery, we’ll discuss it,’ he said, thinking that she was very angry, very hurt, about her husband’s extramarital activities, and that anger and hurt would make her vulnerable. He couldn’t wait.
The minute she set foot inside the hall and the door closed behind her, Redmond put his tongue in her mouth and slipped a hand under her dress to touch a silken cool thigh. As he kissed her, his hand went higher, delving deeper.
‘Oh God . . . oh, Father!’ she gasped in shock and delight against his lips.
‘You’ve been driving me insane,’ he said, and kissed her again.
He said this to all of them, of course, all the little titbits he enjoyed, because it fed their female vanity, made them proud. They’d turned a priest, sworn to celibacy, their charms so overwhelming that even fear of God left him unable to resist.
She was Sally Westover, who was married to Bill Westover, who almost certainly hadn’t strayed because he was such a dull bugger, but Father Delaney wasn’t going to tell her that. Instead he took her upstairs to his single priest’s bed and gave her the hammering of her life.
Then . . .
‘Oh God, the phone. . .’ she moaned.
Damned thing was ringing, right by the bed.
‘Don’t stop,’ he ordered her, snatching it up. ‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Is that Redmond Delaney?’ asked a male voice.
‘Who wants him?’ asked Redmond, watching Sally’s large pendulous nude breasts bouncing around above him while she straddled him, impaling herself repeatedly on his manhood and wheezing like an asthmatic chimpanzee.
Oh, she’s a good one, he thought.
Later he was going to indoctrinate her properly into the ways of the flesh. She’d barely touched the surface, he could see that. She was a keen amateur, that was all. After this afternoon she would be full of remorse. She was a wife, a mother (he could tell that because she was quite loose), and she would be so guilty. He would tweak that guilt, hang his head in shame, say she had made him commit this sin, betray his vows.
Oh yes. Such fun and games he would have with Sally Westover. He would introduce her to the delights of pain and ice and fire, to bondage and choking, all those darker aspects of sexuality that were his preferred territory.
‘This is Gary Tooley,’ said the voice on the phone. ‘You don’t know me, but—’
‘The one who runs the Blue Parrot?’ asked Redmond, thinking that Sally was banging away so hard now that it was getting difficult to maintain his control. He remembered Tooley. Redmond had a good memory, a very fine brain in fact, and he knew that Gary Tooley worked for the Carters.
He wondered – briefly – how Tooley had got hold of this number. He didn’t like people tracking him down; as a rule, Redmond liked to do the stalking if there was stalking to be done. In fact, he enjoyed it.
‘Yeah, that’s me.’ Gary sounded surprised. ‘I’ve got some information for you.’
‘What information?’
‘You won’t believe it,’ said Gary.
‘Tell me.’
‘Nah. Not over the phone. We need to meet up.’
‘That’s not convenient.’ Sally gasped and Redmond raised a finger: shush.
‘It will be when you hear what it is.’
‘All right.’ Redmond was mildly intrigued. ‘When and where?’
Gary named a place, a time. Redmond said: ‘This had better be worth my while.’
‘It is,’ said Gary, and put the phone down.
‘This is so good,’ groaned Sally, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing . . . and then all at once it was too much, and Redmond grabbed her hips and came.
At the same moment, as he gasped and writhed and thrust at Sally with abandon, there was a knock and the bedroom door opened.
‘Sorry, Father, I forgot the shopping list and I thought I’d better ask—’
Redmond’s housekeeper, Mrs Janner, stopped dead in the doorway and stared at the naked couple on the bed, her face a mask of shock. Sally daintily put her hands up to cover her breasts. Redmond just lay there, thinking, Well, that’s that then.
That was the day Gary Tooley first got in touch with him, the same day that Mrs Janner phoned the bishop, the same day that Redmond Delaney was summarily dismissed from the priesthood.
Pity, really, because he had liked it.
While it lasted.