At the Cosgrove house, as a prelude to the meeting Paul administered beer and wine to the company. Sarah Fagan and Liz Cosgrove had each a glass of silvery sauvignon blanc before them and it gave the small gathering a marginally convivial air. ‘There’s coffee, Frank,’ Paul told him. ‘If you don’t want a drink.’
Docherty asked for some water, as Sarah Fagan presumed to speak brightly to Mrs Cosgrove, telling her about the school she’d been enquiring into − a real school, Liz replied, not some old fortress of prejudice and hypocrisy. Undeniably, there seemed to be a new vigour in the cab driver. She turned at last to Docherty, the natural convener. ‘All right, Frank, fill everyone in on what you have been doing.’
He did it – everything he’d reported to Wood and what he meant to report to the cardinal the next day.
‘I was exceptionally disturbed by losing the copy of the letter that I was bringing to show you, Sarah. But I think you might be able to put my mind to rest on that matter.’
‘How can I manage that?’ she asked, looking at him with absolute directness.
‘I can understand why you needed the letter: it was proof in written form of an injury parallel to the one done to you. I know that sometimes what happens in these cases can seem so preposterous that even the victim needs proof. You didn’t intend me any harm. Look, I’m not trying to embarrass you, but I have a certain responsibility to the Cosgroves. Do you have the letter, Sarah?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She exhaled. ‘Sorry, Liz.’
Liz Cosgrove looked aghast but Sarah said, ‘I’ll keep it safe.’
Docherty nearly said, ‘I was the one flattened by your friend.’ It was nothing, however, compared to the pain of Liz Cosgrove.
‘I suppose it was a pretty transparent strategy I used, eh?’ Sarah said.
‘If it only took me a day to work it out, it must have been transparent,’ Docherty said.
Sarah turned to the Cosgroves. ‘I wanted to keep the letter and digest it, so I had a young man take it from Frank.’
Then, from the complacency and ease of her confession, her face collapsed. It seemed to Docherty more than a collapse of shame, of being caught. She let out a howl of pain and said, ‘I don’t even know what to do with it. But I wanted to have it.’
Liz reached out to her. ‘Maybe,’ Sarah said, gurgling with tears, ‘maybe Paul and I could go to some underworld pub and give someone five thousand dollars to execute the mongrel! That’s my contribution to tonight. That’s the only damn thing that will really work.’
Liz was looking at her new friend with astonishment. She kept her hand on Sarah’s wrist. The inconsolable mother had become a comforter, at least for now.
‘Only if he’ll guarantee not to let Shannon die easily,’ said Liz with a hack of laughter – to Docherty it sounded salutary, a renouncing of the proposed murder. It came just as he was proposing that they should not say such things in his hearing, for if the monsignor had a freak accident, a tumble downstairs, or a brake failure … Well, he had heard them whistle up the man’s death.
Through all this Paul kept his restrained demeanour, a man who did not indulge in the absolutes of the women’s hate for the unjust man, for the killer of children.
‘There are bad things, let me tell you,’ Docherty assured them, ‘awaiting the monsignor. He’s the sort of man who would love to be a bishop, and now, on the basis of the letter Stephen wrote, he never will be. Despite everything, he’s at least become a figure of suspicion. That has been brought to pass, and it’s no small thing.’
Sarah’s temper returned and she protested, ‘The death of Stephen wasn’t a small thing either. It was a bigger thing than Monsignor Shannon not becoming a bishop, for Christ’s sake!’
Unrealistically, given the small and secret conclave of the wronged that had gathered here, there was a ringing of the doorbell. Who would want to belong to such a company? It was as if someone authoritative had been brought to the door by their criminal surmises. Docherty hoped it was not Maureen. It was a purely selfish hope – to face her in this company would be an ordeal. It couldn’t be Wood, he knew.
But Paul led Wood into the room. The young tycoon wore a sheeny suit but his tie was off and his shirt collar opened.
‘Good evening, Mrs Cosgrove,’ he said to the bereaved mother. He sounded composed. ‘And my friend Frank over there, who doesn’t give me any rest.’
Paul wrung his hand and the two of them embraced. Then Paul said, ‘And this is Sarah Fagan. She has an interest in this entire thing.’
‘This entire thing. Are we considering legal action? I’ll foot the bill,’ announced Wood.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have any malt whisky, Brian,’ Paul went on. ‘I have red wine.’
‘Did you know, Paul, that the month of July is devoted liturgically to Christ’s blood? Blood and red wine cheek by jowl in the Mass.’
This emerged from Wood like a statement of mild hysteria.
Paul said, ‘I did know something along those lines.’ He went to the cupboard and poured a glass of red wine and brought it to Wood, who raised it and said, ‘Mrs Cosgrove, here’s to Stephen.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. Wood drank a sip and the others joined in, Sarah’s eye on him with intense curiosity, as if he had brought to the meeting the possibility of an option she had not yet thought of. Maybe it was that he seemed to wear his victimhood lightly.
Paul pulled out a chair for Wood and he sat. ‘So, what is it to be? This man has to be punished.’
‘We’ve been discussing assassination,’ Sarah said with a puckish lilt. ‘Haven’t we, Father Frank?’
Docherty said, ‘Sarah is well-connected in the tough-guy market. I can attest to that.’ He was still in part breathless from the Wood apparition.
Sarah declared, ‘If the Church’s lawyers are able to prove this nonsense − that the Church as a trust can’t be sued − we can’t succeed legally anyhow. Isn’t that the case, Paul?’
‘That, I’m appalled to say, seems to be the case. If Devitt’s plea is denied. But what if we agitate for criminal proceedings? Make a noise they can’t ignore.’
‘No,’ said Liz. ‘I couldn’t live through that. The lawyers being snide …’
Now it was Sarah’s turn to stroke Liz’s forearm.
‘Perhaps not now, then,’ said Wood.
Paul said, ‘My mother and I have agreed to disagree on this.’
‘Please,’ said Liz plaintively. ‘If Stephen were depicted as a liar, or was blamed in any way – and he would be, as an addict – I don’t think I could bear it. And the monsignor could walk away in the end. With the court’s apology. Now that is something I really could not bear.’
Wood said, ‘It would be harder for them to dismiss him with the court’s blessing if I gave evidence.’ There was dead silence in the room. ‘I’m not boasting. It’s just a matter of fact.’
‘All your instincts seemed to be against that,’ Docherty observed.
‘My instincts were. But I was wrong. I fed you a line of bloody nonsense, Frank, and I haven’t been able to concentrate since this morning. I said I could be the great corporate facilitator or a victim. But of course I am both. I wish you hadn’t come near me, but you did. And you challenged my equilibrium.’
‘I feel the same way,’ Sarah Fagan told him. ‘I picked him up at the airport in my cab. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t be in the place we all are now. Caught between stools.’
Wood spread his hands in a what-can-a-person-do? way. ‘The thing about you is that you set off quite a chain today. A sequence. I’d just seen you off when two very polite coppers, extremely polite and sensitive, arrived in the office. I think the receptionist thought they were tracking you, Frank. I took them into the same conference room. They told me I had been named in a suicide document as a victim. They wanted to know if I would press civil charges. And you know what I told them. I told them I thought not. Of course, they said, think about it. But I said no.’
The others were awed and Sarah frowned.
‘I said no because that way’s not adequate. That way’s absurd, as this Devitt man is finding. But I have to get the monsignor. I have to see him on his knees. I want to see him grieve as we’ve grieved.’
Sarah said, ‘That’s been our fantasy. The monsignor on his knees before the world. All of us who could have sued him in a civil court are being choked off by the trust defence the Church is running. We shouldn’t be in a position where we have to hope a wise judgment will emerge from the court. We shouldn’t have to wait for that. Even then, suing Shannon isn’t enough. And we’ve rejected killing him.’
‘Stop saying that, Sarah,’ Docherty told her, but she ignored him.
‘So there must be a third way.’
There was silence.
‘I was ashamed to declare myself a victim,’ murmured Wood then, a low voice but with its own authority. ‘I was uncertain about the woman I love and intend to marry. I was uncertain about my clients. I thought of the Filipino corporations, and the Hong Kong ones, many of them riddled with orthodox Catholics. I think the Indians would just be confused. And the Japanese …
‘But too bad! I must discuss this with my associates. Subsequent to that, without any apology to anyone, I’ll get Shannon. I will make a police investigation inevitable. Stephen’s last letter will appear before the court, backed by me.’
Wood looked at Liz. ‘Why should we hide it, Mrs Cosgrove? It was Stephen’s word. It is a weapon for the rest of us. Let’s wield it. Please.’
She frowned, yet to Docherty, and perhaps to the others, she did seem to have become reconciled, having never seen the letter as Wood saw it.
Wood said, ‘You, Frank, Father Frank, you are not to tell the cardinal of any of this. As far as you know it’s simply talk on my part.’
‘What will you do, though?’ asked Sarah Fagan.
‘So you were used by him, too?’
‘Yes.’ She laughed darkly. ‘They can’t accuse the mongrel of not being bisexual.’
At this outburst, Liz made a sound that was part lament and part yelp.
‘I was his schoolgirl,’ said Sarah. ‘From a buggered-up family. Was your family buggered up in some way?’
‘I have to say, not exceptionally,’ said Wood. ‘But the monsignor knew my father, through business, and my father had him at his dinner table as an entertaining cleric. It is a vanity of Catholics in business to be able to exhibit what passes for an urbane cleric at their dinners. Enter the monsignor.’
‘Yes,’ said Sarah, absorbing this history. ‘Yes.’
‘We should meet here tomorrow night,’ said Wood.
‘I’ll be on the way to Canada,’ Docherty reminded them.
‘I can keep you up to date by email, Frank. As a courtesy. Beyond that, it isn’t your business.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Docherty. ‘But I have to see the cardinal tomorrow morning. My mother wants me to come back to Sydney, and the cardinal is looking for reasons to deny me re-entry as a priest of this archdiocese. Am I to behave as if this meeting didn’t happen? Can’t I tell him, as encouragement to him to take a different tack, that the victims intend to take any action they can?’
Paul said, ‘Our discussions tonight have been confidential, and you have an understanding of confidentiality, I know.’
Docherty rose. ‘I don’t have the legitimacy to be here. And I do think you have the right to discuss things confidentially.’
They all looked sombrely back at him.
‘I wish you well, and I feel for you, and for Stephen,’ Docherty continued. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Brian, because it will make for many more possibilities than otherwise. I hope to come back and see you all. May you have the blessings of what we used to call an omnipotent God. That’s still a defensible description in some terms. But you may ask, “Why didn’t that omnipotent God intervene when we were at the mercy of the abuser?” I ask it myself. All I can say is, Christ be with you. He also is a sort of victim of the Church.’
There was silence, then Liz Cosgrove said, ‘Thank you, Frank, for your good intentions.’
‘That’s all I’m capable of,’ said Docherty. ‘The final and appropriate humiliation is to find out one’s intentions don’t add up to much. Goodnight. I know the way, Paul. Don’t break up the meeting.’
He was on the pavement outside the garden gate when there was a noise at the front door and Wood came running out. Docherty prepared himself to be damaged. Wood had been angelically wise and temperamentally calm, but of course he had to snap.
‘I just wanted to say, Frank,’ Wood said, ‘leave it to me. I’ll get the bastard. You’ll find out how!’