Bad Catholics (8 page)

‘No, I need no demonstration.'

In the pause that followed, she became aware of a confused noise beyond the office door, bangs and crashes and, further off, screams.

‘What is happening, Captain?'

She had stayed voluntarily. Now she must do her duty. If she had nothing else, she still had her duty. She was a professed Sister and knew and respected the discipline of her order. Her voice now carried some authority, without confrontation but also without fear. She had a right and a duty to ask. She asked again. Captain Nduma fingered his pistol and kept his eyes on her. He was thinking, making a decision. Then he made up his mind.

‘My men are taking what we need, everything else will be rendered useless. Nothing,' he continued pointedly, ‘will be left which might give aid or comfort to the enemy, nothing at all.'

She understood perfectly.

Suddenly the door burst open. It was the young Sister. She was breathless.

‘They're breaking everything, everything, and taking everything they don't break. They say they'll take the girls when they go.'

Sister Philomena stood up. The sergeant appeared in the doorway, casually pointing his automatic rifle in their general direction.

The young Sister came to the desk and faced the captain.

‘Make them stop. You can't do this.'

Captain Nduma picked up his pistol and shot her once through the face. The noise of the shot exploded off the concrete walls and filled the room. Philomena was only vaguely aware of the way the young nun's head was thrown back, pulling her whole body into the air before she fell dead on the floor. As she recovered from the noise, Captain Nduma rose and, still holding his pistol, came around the desk. She tried to think of a prayer but nothing came, only the echoes of the terrible bang. He strode past Philomena and shouted at the sergeant, who left sullenly, then returned to the desk and sat down, putting his pistol back in its holster.

Sister Philomena looked at the body on the floor. A dark red pool was forming under the young nun's headwear, which was already blood-soaked. There was a hole between the bridge of her nose and her left eye, out of which a small amount of blood oozed.

From the desk, Captain Nduma spoke calmly.

‘Please, Sister, be seated again, everything is in order.'

Philomena obeyed. Captain Nduma smiled and pulled his chair closer to the desk.

‘I'm afraid my sergeant will now be more brutal than is essentially necessary. I had to tell him that if he ever points his weapon in my direction again it will be him I kill and not anyone standing between us. He does not take reprimands well.'

As he spoke, the screams, closer now, began again. Philomena, lonely and afraid, sat staring at her hands in her lap.

‘What will happen to me?'

‘You will be killed, Sister. But don't worry, that is all that will happen to you. You have my word. In fact,' his voice became softer, ‘I will do it myself. You will feel nothing. I don't make a mess of such things.'

It was as if thanks were expected. ‘Are you taking the girls?'

‘The men need them.'

‘And what will happen to them?'

‘What do you think?'

‘But after, what will happen to them … after?'

‘If we are in a position to sell them, we shall. If not, we will leave them at some village or other. If we are in the bush,' and he shrugged, ‘we will kill them. It would not be an act of kindness to leave them in the bush alone, without resources.'

‘Just like …' she inclined her head towards the body.

‘That was quite different. She was young and pretty and certainly a virgin. There might have been trouble sharing her out. Sometimes it is necessary for me to assert my authority by depriving my men of something they want. I knew I would have to kill her as soon as I saw her. She was kind enough to co-operate, however unknowingly. She was what the Sisters used to call “One of God's good little acts”.'

‘Sisters? What Sisters?'

‘I was educated by Sisters like yourself until I was eleven, I have fond memories of them. They were among the few really kind people I have ever known. They gave me a good education, love, they even gave me their faith.'

Philomena sat still and listened. Captain Nduma was disposed to talk. He seemed oblivious of the noises coming from outside the office. It was as if they were friends chatting together.

‘Are you a Catholic?' she asked him.

‘Oh yes. Does that surprise you?' He didn't wait for an answer. ‘I became a member of the Catholic Church when I was a small child and it played a very important part in my early life. Perhaps it will again, one day. The Sisters taught me about God's love, His unconditional love. After I was eleven, I was taught by priests. But they taught me all about sin and another Christian God, an angry, vengeful God. The priests were very frightened of Him and they tried hard to pass on that fear. Their fear and guilt were their faith.'

‘Did they succeed?'

‘I might have become a priest or brother myself, but two things combined against that. The memory of the nuns' God, and then there was the foolishness of it. I saw and have seen many cruel, even very wicked acts, but I never saw God's hand perform them, always men's hands, Sister, always the hands of men.'

‘Your hands?'

‘Yes, nowadays sometimes even my hands.'

‘Are you still a Catholic?'

‘Oh yes. If I survive all this I shall go to Confession to a suitable priest, say my penance and then begin again to be a good Catholic.'

‘Could you not have continued to be a good Catholic despite everything?'

‘And go to heaven as a martyr? No, Sister, neither I nor my soul are ready to face our Maker yet. I would have liked to have stayed a good Catholic but, very quickly, I would have been a dead Catholic. So, for a time, I must be a good soldier and a bad Catholic and do what I have to do.'

‘Including killing me?'

‘Yes, Sister, that as well.'

‘How can I be of use to the insurgents, even supposing there are any?'

‘Oh, there will be insurgents, Sister. If there are none now, there soon will be after we have begun our work. And, yes, you could be of great help to them.'

‘How? I couldn't even help my school, my girls, or even, God forgive me, that poor dead Sister.'

‘But you know things.'

‘What things?'

‘You know how many of us there are. How well armed we are. What vehicles we have. And you can identify me personally, even by name. Now, or perhaps in the future, when accounts come to be settled, what you know may be very important. You have seen so much. I'm sure you understand.'

She understood.

‘Do you still believe in God?'

‘Yes, Sister.'

‘And do you feel you will have to answer to Him for all of this?'

‘Let me put it this way. I believe in God, in His justice and His mercy. I would have liked to have walked in the paths of righteousness all the days of my life. But now there are no paths of righteousness. The times require that in order to survive it is necessary to be, how shall I put it, company for the Devil. Mine was not a completely free choice, therefore it does not count as a mortal sin. Even if I die, God, in His infinite love, will give me mercy.'

‘Even though you give no mercy yourself?'

‘I am not God, mercy is too expensive for me. Only the most powerful can afford it.'

‘So you will go on like this?'

Captain Nduma picked up his holster and cap. He got up. ‘God's good little acts, Sister,' he gestured to the body. ‘Would you rather I had let my men have her? The Sisters were good people even though they knew how wicked the world was. They told me how educated Western people often called floods, earthquakes and the like Acts of God, and saw God as indifferent to the suffering He caused. But the Sisters said that for every flood or earthquake there will be millions of unnoticed little acts of God which will have brought comfort and help. That may very well be true, but for all God's little acts of kindness the world is wicked. The educated people are right and the Sisters were wrong. God's good little acts have to take place in a wicked world and, unfortunately, they are powerless to change it.'

He moved to the door. ‘I will make sure that you will be safe if you stay here in this room tonight. Think of it as one small act of kindness from one Catholic to another.'

And the door closed.

Sister Philomena sat listening to her school being destroyed and her girls becoming the property of the soldiers. Suddenly the door opened and the sergeant was striding in, his automatic in his hands. He walked past her, reached up and, with the muzzle of his gun, smashed the single bulb that hung from the ceiling. She froze. In the darkness she heard the sergeant's boots on the concrete floor. Then the door closed.

After what seemed a very long time she realised she was again alone in the room. She began to cry quietly. A quick death, a bullet in the head and nothing else, one of God's good little acts. Then, still crying, she got up and felt her way to the young Sister's body, knelt down and began to pray.

‘May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.' Then, ‘The first Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, the Agony in the Garden, Our Father who art in heaven …'

The buzzing of the flies swarming on the corpse woke her. At that moment, the door opened and Captain Nduma came in and stood over her.

‘Good morning, Sister. We will soon be leaving. The lorries are being loaded.'

‘Is it time?' She got up awkwardly.

‘Time, Sister?'

‘For me.'

‘I have been thinking about that. One dead Sister, more or less, matters very little. If I am ever called to answer for my actions, to someone other than God I mean, then a Sister alive here when I leave may turn out to be more useful than a dead one.'

‘You are not going to kill me?'

‘On balance I think not. But don't be here when I return. I will be back in a week, two at the most. Don't be here then.'

‘Isn't that information of value to the insurgents, Captain?'

He grinned. ‘What insurgents? There are no insurgents in this area, everyone knows that. You reassured me of that yourself.'

‘Why are you letting me live?'

Captain Nduma paused.

‘The Sisters who taught me all spoke like you. They were Irish, I think. Let us just say you have reaped where others have sown.' He snapped to attention and gave a smart salute. ‘Thank you for your co-operation and hospitality. You have the government's thanks, you have done your duty. Stay in this office for at least one hour after you hear the last truck leave. At least one hour. Do you have a watch?'

‘Yes.'

‘You shouldn't have. The sergeant should have taken it. Give it to me please.'

Philomena took off her watch and handed it over. Captain Nduma took it, smiled, gave a casual friendly salute and left.

A few minutes later the noise of the flies was drowned as the engines roared into life. There was some shouting and clattering of boots and then the convoy moved off. Then there was only the noise of the flies and silence everywhere else. Philomena put the chair back in the corner and went and sat behind the desk. She opened the top right-hand drawer and took out a worn, black-covered book, opened it at a page marked with a thin blue ribbon, and began to say the morning prayers of the Divine Office of the Church.

Four days later, Brother Thad returned in his Land Rover and found her unconscious on the floor of her office. She was lying next to a large dark stain. Over the next two days he nursed her back to sufficient health to travel. Little water and no food had weakened her but had done no permanent damage. They left what remained of the convent school in the early morning. Nothing in it was unbroken, every door, pane of glass, partition, and piece of furniture was smashed, the corrugated roofing had been removed from every room except the office. What couldn't easily be broken, like blankets, had been burnt. When the rains came the building would begin an irreversible process of decay and quite soon it would be cheaper and easier to build a new school than repair this one. Brother Thad and Philomena said prayers together where she had buried the young nun on the day the soldiers had left.

As the Land Rover rocked and bumped along the road she reflected on the fact that he would have had to bury her as well as the young Sister, had Captain Nduma been as good as his word. Then perhaps she would have been still and at peace, in a blessed and blank oblivion, with no more duty to do, no sickly half-belief to protect and no empty faith to follow into an uncertain future. She would be at peace and, if it was true after all that there was a God, perhaps at home.

FIVE

Paddington, February 1995

After his visit to Bart's Inspector Deal sat with his sergeant in the car thinking about the interviews he had concluded.

‘What do you think, boss?'

Deal stared in front of him for a moment before replying.

‘There's nothing, no witnesses except those three in there and they know bugger all. If there's no forensic, there's nothing. Some thief or addict knifed her for her bag. No story, no mileage. Nothing in it for anybody.'

‘What about Costello? What was all that needle about taking him down the nick? Do you think he's involved?'

‘No, I just didn't like him. I didn't like the nun either and all the girl did was cry. But Costello, there's something about him.' He thought for a moment. ‘But why would he kill the old lady? Why would any of them? No, it's all straightforward stuff this. But I didn't like him, and my gut tells me he's wrong. The way he acted, he's got to have form. You can't tell me he's not seen the inside of an interview room, and more than once. I don't like him and I don't want him anywhere on this patch. I want him gone.'