Cemetery Lake (35 page)

background I go back to the office and sit down with the bank

statements.

I reckon the original statements would have changed colour

and style as the bank updated its logo and even its name from

time to time but the printouts all look identical. I start adding up the amounts, comparing them against the logs Father Julian

kept. Over the years he has taken in almost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in deposits. He has made the exact same amount in withdrawals. The deposits are from the people on the tapes

who didn’t know their Bless me, Father, because I have sinneds weren’t the first steps up to salvation but steps down into Father Julian’s world. The logs go back twenty-four years. So do the

bank statements.

The logs and statements and tapes all add up to blackmail.

There really isn’t any other way to see it. Over the course of twenty-four years Father Julian blackmailed more than a hundred people. The amounts are different, and this probably reflects two things — the amount the victim was earning, and the amount the victim had to lose if his or her secret was found out. Maybe those being blackmailed never knew who had their secret. Could be they suspected, but people with secrets might be paranoid enough to believe someone more than just their priest knows. For almost a quarter of a century Father Julian played with fire. He must have known it would eventually burn him. Or perhaps it burned him

the entire time. He was taking the money and using it to put out smaller fires.

In the end the fire got him. He recorded somebody who

wasn’t willing to pay, and that somebody knew I was following

the priest and would be an easy target to frame. It wouldn’t have been hard. Just flick on the TV and there I was, covered in blood one night and accused of murdering the caretaker, and a month

later accused of stalking the priest.

But that’s only a theory. And if that’s the way it went down,

then Father Julian’s death wasn’t related to the girls dying. Still, it would be a hell of a coincidence, although one that is entirely possible. Does that coincidence allow for the fact Henry Martins was the manager of the bank where Father Julian kept his tapes?

Julian must have selected his victims carefully, blackmailing

only those he knew were non-threatening, those who for a price could have it all go away. He never tried to blackmail me, but I’m sure he recorded the session. Maybe he was scared of what I would do to him if he tried. I’d already confessed to one murder.

He knew I was capable of another.

The anger kicks in and suddenly I wish Father Julian was still alive just so I could do something to him — I don’t know what exactly, surely not the kind of ‘Quentin James’ something, and I try not to let my mind drift there. I’d hurt him. Hurt him a lot.

The bastard refused to tell me about the confessions he had heard from the man who killed those girls — and, what’s worse, he

must have known who those girls were. He found within himself

the ability to blackmail people, to break the confessional vow he had with God in order to make money, but he couldn’t bring

himself to save those girls. How could a man with such mixed-up priorities live with himself?

Maybe blackmailing was still a step away from actually

revealing the sins he’d heard in secret. Could be he never shared any of the confessions, and never planned to. Does that mean

he wasn’t breaking the confessional seal? I figureit’s a technical question that could only be answered by a man caught up in the dilemma it poses.

I wonder if he knew the fire was coming for him. Part of me

thinks he did, part of me is sure he accepted it.

I go through the logs and bank statements, looking at the

payments Father Julian was making. He doesn’t pay anybody for

longer than sixteen years but he pays some of them for less. Some considerably less. Most of the names are here, but not all of the people in the photographs are, and the number of names suggests there are more children out there than Father Julian had photos for, and there could be more children out there who aren’t on

these lists — children Father Julian fathered and was unable to take responsibility for. I wonder which names line up with the Simon and Jeremy I found on the backs of the photographs, and

suspect I’m only a few phone calls from finding out.

These are Father Julian’s child payments for the children he

had in secret. The question is how many people could have

known? I don’t know, but I’m pretty certain Henry Martins did.

The logs are chronological and well detailed, and there are far more confessors here than there are victims of Father Julian’s blackmailing. Before I look for them I head back two years into the dates and I find my name. Then I find the correct tape. I put it into the machine, not sure that I’m prepared to hear myself from so long ago, not prepared to hear the man I used to be. I cue it up to the time stamp Julian listed. I’m not sure, either, where I stand in my belief of God, or where I stood on the matter two years

ago. Part of me didn’t believe in God, another part hated Him, and a third made me sit inside that confessional booth with the need to tell somebody what I’d done. Since then I have learned to live with my own secrets.

I catch the last few seconds of somebody else’s confession,

there are a few moments of silence, and then my voice. It sounds different. It sounds emotional, which comes as a surprise. At the time I thought I was completely detached.

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

I close my eyes, and for a moment I’m back there, back in the

confessional, dirt beneath my fingernails and a shovel in the boot of my car. Father Julian’s voice plays from the tape and at the same time I remember his words, voicing them in my mind a moment

before I hear them. He sounds calm. We could have been talking about anything, and at the time I remember being curious about what might have been the worst confession he’d ever heard. Was mine going to be it? Or would mine be tame? And if Father

Julian was listening to the confessions of cold-blooded killers, why in the hell wasn’t he doing something about it?

‘What does it make you, Father, when you commit a sin and

feel nothing?’

‘I think that…’

‘Does it make me human? Am I still a man, Father Julian, or

am I a monster?’

‘The fact you are here answers your question. However, what

you do next also counts.’

‘I’m not going to the police.’

‘You need …’

‘He killed her, Father. He killed her and he probably would

have killed others.’

‘That doesn’t make it right.’

‘But it doesn’t make it wrong either.’

I press stop and the voices shut off. If I could go back in time, would I do the same thing again? I don’t know. I think of Patricia Tyler and her request of a promise — Make him pay, she told me. Make sure he can never hurt another girl ever again.

I eject the tape and start unspooling the thread, not needing

— or more accurately not wanting — to hear the rest of what I had to say. I can learn nothing from it. All it can do is make me hurt.

I carry the tape outside and touch a match to it. It shrinks and melts and the recorded memory burns away. Father Julian never

blackmailed me and I figure he never blackmailed anybody else

who was confessing to murder. It would have been too dangerous for him.

I sit back down inside. I start drumming my fingers, and then

I go back into the list of names. I scroll through them, looking for something else, and soon I find Sidney Alderman’s name. I

check the date. It’s a week after his wife died. I hunt out the tape and cue it up.

‘I guess you would call it a sin,’ Alderman says. His words are slurred. ‘Does that make us even?’

‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Drinking? Yeah, and why the hell not? She’s gone. I need

something to keep me company.’

‘You still have your son.’

‘My son? You mean your son, don’t you?’

There is a pause that stretches out long enough for me to

think the rest of the tape is going to be blank, but then Father Julian’s voice cuts back across the speaker and the conversation continues.

‘She told you.’

‘Part of me always knew. Or at least suspected.’

‘I’m sorry, Sidney.’

‘That’s it? You don’t want to give me an excuse? You don’t

want to tell me you accidentally fucked my wife and got her

pregnant?’

‘Please, Sidney, I didn’t mean anything to happen.’

I press stop. Jesus, just what kind of man was Father Julian?

How many marriages did he end? I press play. Both men are

dead, one because of me, and perhaps the other because of me

too. The two ghosts from Recent Past carry on talking. Neither could know they would end up sharing more than just Lucy

Alderman and would share a similar fate.

‘Yeah, well I didn’t mean anything to happen either.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Bruce … he’s, well, he’s different now. I see him differently.

He’s not my son and I don’t know what to do about it. One thing I do know is, I don’t want you anywhere near him.’

‘Are you going to leave?’

‘Leave? No. I’m not going to leave. See the thing, Father,’ he says, almost spitting out the word Father, ‘is this. She’s dead because of you. And I want you to know that. I’m going to be here every day for the rest of my life and you’re going to see me around, and you’re going to remember.’

‘What do you mean she’s dead because of me?’

‘Come on, Father. You can figure it out. You read the papers,

right? That guy who killed her, he said she stepped out from nowhere.

Well that ain’t quite true. She was pushed out from nowhere.’

‘You pushed her?’

‘I hated her. She lied to me. She cheated on me. She kept the same fucking lie all those years. Were you still screwing her, Father?’

‘You killed her?’

‘You can’t do anything about it except see my face every day.

I want that guilt to kill you. It’s killing me. Does that make us even?’

‘I… I don’t…’

‘I thought it would make me happy. But the funny thing is, it

doesn’t. In fact I feel worse. I love her so much. I blame you, and I want to kill you, but I don’t have the courage.’

‘Sidney, you need to …’

‘Don’t tell me what I need to do. You know, I even bought a

gun. I was going to use it on her and then on you. But I can’t.

What happened to Lucy, well, that will hurt you more than what I could ever do.’

‘What about Bruce ?’

‘Don’t you dare tell him any of this. Any of it.’

I press the stop button. The caretaker’s grief is ten years old but it still sounds fresh. A month ago he told me he always thought about what I’d done after my daughter was killed and wished he’d had the courage to do the same thing to the person who killed

his wife.

I think about what he did and I wonder if it justifies what I

did to him. I wonder if there is some symmetry there, him lying on top of the coffin of the woman he loved, the woman who

betrayed him, the woman he killed.

I eject the tape, put it back into the plastic cover and set it aside. I go through the rest of the log, looking for names that will stick out, knowing there has to be something here though I can’t think what. That’s part of the problem: all I’ve been doing is thinking, and suddenly I’m hitting a wall. There’s an answer somewhere in this list of names,it’s in these tapes, but I’m so involved in it all that I can’t see anything for what it is.

What am I missing?

I get up and walk out of the room. I leave it all behind me, the names, the numbers, the tapes and the dates, knowing that I need to clear my head so I can at least…

The dates!

Of course!

I head back into the room and I look at the timeline I’ve created.

If the killer confessed, then presumably he did so on the same day or in the days immediately following the girls’ disappearances.

The first date I look at is the day Henry Martins was buried.

The log says there was a confession that night. The log says the confession was made by Paul Peters. I find the corresponding tape and jam it into the machine. I wind it forward. Suddenly I feel more apprehensive about what I’m about to hear than I did of the other two confessions. This could be the recording of a man who did nothing more than steal his neighbour’s apples, or it could be the confession of a monster. I press play.

‘I know who you are.’The voice sounds a little familiar but I can’t place it.

‘Do you have something to confess?’

‘You killed her, you know.’

‘What are you talking about?’Father Julian’s voice has a rushed quality, as if he has just entered the confessional after running from the rectory.

‘As if you strangled her yourself. What you do in life has

consequences, wouldn’t you say, Father?’

‘Yes, of course, but what you’re talking about doesn’t make

sense.’

‘All our actions have consequences, don’t they, Father. For all of us.’

‘We need to be aware and responsible for our actions, yes, that’s true.’

‘Even you, Father?’

‘Do you have something to say?’

‘Are there others?’

‘Others? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Other children. Like me. Are there others like me.’

We’re all children of God, no matter what our actions.’

‘I’m not talking about God.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’m talking about you, Father Julian. I’m talking about your

children. Are there more of us?’

‘Oh my God.’

‘See, you do understand. Your actions have consequences, Father.

Or should I say Dad?’

‘I… I don’t know who you are.’

‘Would you like to know?’

‘Of course.’