CHAPTER SEVEN
The main door opened with an ugly, squeaking shudder, interrupting the Mass, causing candles to flicker and prompting a few unwelcoming looks from the congregation.
They were few in number for this lunchtime service: mostly Latina grandmothers, plus a handful of people who might have been sheltering from the cold, or seeking a sip of wine.
Despite the non-churchy look of the building, Kate was pleased to find that the air smelt of candlewax, incense, and mothballs, a cocktail that took her right back to her Chicago childhood.
At the altar, Father Benedict Torres cut an impressive figure: there was something lean and ascetic about him, his tan complexion offset by robes of deep forest green and brilliant white, his dark wavy hair bent low over the Host in his fingers.
Kate and Marcus shuffled as discreetly as they could onto a back row, far from all the bona fide worshippers.
‘For this is my body, which will be given up for you,’ the priest intoned gravely, as he held the white wafer high above his head, to the ringing of bells by what must have been the world’s oldest altar boy.
Kate had attended hundreds of masses in her life, but never seen a priest holding the host so high like that, almost as if he was performing a sacrifice.
Nor had she ever seen a priest keep his eyes so tightly shut, or pray silently with quite such fervour.
Torres trembled slightly, she noticed, as he put the wafer down and took up the chalice.
A large book was open on a stand in front of him, but he didn’t glance at it once.
He was either gazing intensely at a point on the horizon, or he had his eyes shut.
Even from her seat several rows back, Kate could see the beads of sweat on the man’s brow, catching the light from the candles at either side of the altar.
‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…’
Now the congregation joined him in reciting the Pater Noster, better known as the Lord’s Prayer.
Torres swayed back and forth, emulating the rhythm of the prayer.
Kate was reminded of worshippers at the Wailing Wall, in Jerusalem; it was a style of ritual so far removed from the polite, sanitised Catholicism of her parents’ church and her convent high school that it might as well have belonged to a different religion altogether.
Or just to Torres. The grandmas curtseyed and made the sign of the cross, but their movements were muted, routine.
Only the priest was involved so deeply; transforming himself, almost, as he transformed the bread and the wine, oblivious to the congregation facing him.
The Mass continued in the same vein, from the Agnus Dei prayer, to the Communion, where the ageing congregation shuffled up to the altar and knelt, with varying degrees of discomfort, to receive the consecrated wafer and the wine from the priest. Kate had attended masses where the priest had seemed bored by the proceedings, others where he’d appeared out of his depth, stumbling and stuttering through the time-honored assembly of words and gestures.
But she’d never witnessed one where the celebrant – the priest – had seemed quite so caught up in their own performance.
Torres was either very devout, or trying to seem it.
That wasn’t exactly a red flag, but it was, nonetheless, noticeable.
After the Mass was over, Torres exchanged a quick word with one of the few men in the congregation, a frail-looking older gentleman in a suit that belonged to another century.
His business concluded, the priest shot a brief, curious look in their direction before slipping through a door at the back of the hall.
Kate and Marcus waited a couple of minutes, looking at the one, church-like element of the building: a small, rectangular, modern stained-glass window in the eastern wall, featuring a scene from the Book of Genesis, where the dove returns to Noah with an olive twig in its beak.
They were about to knock on the door when Torres reappeared through it, a black shirt and priestly collar now replacing the colourful robes. His build was muscular, Kate noted, his hands cut and bruised.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked, in a neutral tone.
They introduced themselves. ‘We’d like to talk to you about Brandon Ashworth,’ Kate said.
‘The artist who was murdered,’ Torres said. ‘What about him?’
A couple of the grandmothers had stayed behind after the service and were arranging the flowers around the altar and in various alcoves around the hall, whilst conducting an animated conversation in Spanish.
They could have been a distraction. Kate saw them as a godsend.
Because they gave her the excuse to ask: 'Could we go somewhere more private, Father? '
Torres nodded. ‘Come with me.’
Interviews weren't just about asking questions.
They were a chance to see the suspect or the witness on their home turf, to see how he lived, how he behaved when he was at ease, or ought to be.
Torres led them through the door and into a small office with a desk, a laptop, and a shelf of weighty, ecclesiastical-looking books.
An assortment of robes hung on a rail beneath the frosted window.
The walls were covered in calendars, religious quotes in English and Spanish, and various flyers advertising events and gatherings.
Torres dusted off a couple of chairs for them, before sitting at his desk.
He looked tense, Kate thought. Gone was the spiritual drama she'd just witnessed during the Mass.
The priest now seemed awkward and guarded.
Then again, few people looked relaxed when the FBI arrived with questions.
‘You argued with Mr Ashworth during the June exhibition,’ Kate said.
‘His idea of art disgusts me,’ Torres said, sternly. ‘Art should glorify creation. I believe that it should shine a light on the beauty of the created world and the talents of those whom God singles out to depict it.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’ Kate asked. ‘If someone puts that talent to a different use…’
‘You mentioned him drowning in a lake of fire,’ Marcus interjected. ‘And being crushed by rocks.’
Torres raised an eyebrow, unnerved at least a little, she thought.
‘Number one,’ Torres said. ‘I didn’t refer specifically to Ashworth or any other artist. Number two, I was quoting Cyprian of Caesarea, one of the early Church fathers.
And he was clearly speaking allegorically.
Nobody can drown in a lake of fire. And what is a “lake of fire” anyway? Lakes are made of water.’
‘Number three,’ Kate said. ‘Someone bashed Ashworth’s brains to bits with a rock. That’s not an allegory. That’s what they did.’
Torres opened his mouth to say something, but then changed his mind. It was an inscrutable gesture, Kate thought. Impossible to tell what it meant.
'That's appalling,' he said, at length. 'Why hasn't that been mentioned on the news? On the TV, they only said he was dead and that it's being treated as murder.'
‘We don’t want copycats,’ Kate said. ‘And if we interview someone who knows more than we’ve released into the public domain… ‘
‘It could help you catch them,’ Torres completed the sentence. ‘Well, I hope sincerely that you do.’
‘You don’t think Ashworth deserved it?’ Marcus said. Torres stared at him.
‘Of course I don’t. I was… I am vigorously opposed to his art. But I’m equally opposed to killing. Opposed to violence of all kinds. And I’m shocked that you’d think I had anything to do with it.’
‘I just watched a video clip in which your body language is quite aggressive,’ Marcus countered. You and Ashworth were eyeballing each other. You look like you’re on the verge of hitting him. And I understand blows were traded.’
Torres looked awkward. ‘I’m not proud of that,’ he said. ‘I lost my temper. I have prayed for forgiveness and understanding since then, many times.’
‘What happened to your hands?’ Kate asked.
Torres glanced down. ‘Nothing to do with the scuffle. I was changing a tire yesterday.’
‘I’ve changed quite a few tires,’ Kate said. ‘I never ended up with injuries like that.’
‘Then perhaps you are better at changing tires than I am,’ he said, with a dazzling smile. Kate could imagine that smile working miracles. But not here. And not now.
‘Where were you between one and five on Tuesday morning?’ Kate went on, keeping up the pressure.
‘I’m sure I would have been in the presbytery next door. The priest’s house.’
‘I’m always intrigued when people use that phrase, Father. Because it kind of implies they’re not sure.’
Torres blinked, looking irritated. ‘It’s just a phrase. A turn of phrase. As you rightly point out. I was here.’
‘Can anyone prove that?’
‘I’m a Roman Catholic priest,’ he growled.
‘Forgive me, Father, but that doesn’t make you incapable of lying.’
Torres gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I’m sure it doesn’t. What I’m saying is – nobody shares my bed.’
‘Did you speak to anyone in that time?’
‘Between one and five in the morning? Yes, I had a whole crowd of people round, we ate empanadas and we listened to Ivy Queen.’
Kate didn’t smile. ‘This is a murder investigation, Father.’
‘Then ask me sensible questions,’ Torres rumbled.
He took a deep breath, clearly mastering his anger.
‘Agents, look -’ He leant forward, his hands open, a gesture of respect and, to some degree, conciliation.
‘There are pockets of deprivation in this parish that are comparable to the slums of San Juan. People come to see me because they are facing eviction. Because their sons have gotten mixed up with Las ?etas, and other gangs. Because they need medical care, which they can’t afford.
And in the midst of trying to help in a system that is rigged against them from the second they’re born, I try to sustain them with faith in a God who loves and who cares and listens.
So yes; yes, I’m angry at anyone who seeks to ridicule that faith, who mocks them for clinging to the one thing that gives them hope.
But above all else, I just try to help. That’s what I do, all day, every day, from the moment I open my eyes.
I don’t have time or energy to obsess over this one, talentless jerk.
I am too busy, trying to help my people. ’
My people, Kate thought. Who did the guy think he was? Moses?
There was a gentle knock on the door.
‘Hola?’ Torres called.
There was no reply. After a few moments, the knock came again. Torres sighed and went to the door. One of the old ladies was there. Torres and the woman had a short exchange in Spanish.
‘Excuse me one moment,’ the priest said to the agents. ‘I have to sign for a parcel.’
He went out. Holding a finger to his lips, Marcus went quickly over to the door and shut it.
‘His alibi’s non-existent,’ he said, quietly. ‘But… I don’t know. I don’t think he knew what happened to Ashworth. I don’t think anyone could fake that, do you?’
Kate didn’t reply.
‘Vee?’
He followed the direction of her gaze to the wall. Next to the calendar, the assorted flyers and memos, there was another collection of material tacked to the wall. Loose corners flapped gently in the warm rising air from the radiator.
Fresh Scandal Over “Blasphemous” Artist
Exhibition is Hate Speech, Says Priest
Shut It Down And Shut Him Up: Torres
Artist “Doing Satan’s Work”
There was page upon page of news articles, picture upon picture of Brandon Ashworth. Dating back years. Words underlined. Phrases highlighted in every colour of the spectrum. It was like a 3-D demonstration of the word ‘obsession’.
The very thing Torres claimed he didn’t have time for.