The Family Firm

Chapter 48

'In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.'

Freddie made the sign of the cross while the priest spoke, sniffing and rubbing at his nose afterwards. Through the small patterned screen in the cramped confessional booth, he could see the old man's deeply-grooved face cast in shadow, and felt a deep pang of something he didn't recognise in his chest.

'Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been . . . a long bloody time since I last confessed.'

Father Kearney's lips could be seen barely moving through the other side of the small screen. 'What's brought you here tonight?'

Freddie sighed deeply and pinched his nose a few times, blinking his bleary eyes. He must have been coming down with something. 'It's about me nephew. No one's heard a dicky bird about who nearly done him in, and it's nearly doing me in thinking about it.'

He was met with the priest's patient silence, and so Fred went on, 'I'm confessing about the sins I'm gonna commit when I find those bastards what done it. I'm not sorry for it, though.'

'Well,' began the old man, and Fred heard him shift on the seat, the wood creaking quietly in response. 'That isn't exactly how this works. One must be sincere in his contrition, should he receive God's true forgiveness for his mortal sin.'

'Oh, cut the holier-than-thou shite, Father,' spat Fred, turning sharply, his intense gaze boring through the cross-shaped slits towards the priest's jawline, which had lost its defined shape over the years. 'Last time I heard, sodomy were a sin. And sodomy with an eleven-year-old will get you a nice long stay at Her Majesty's Pleasure, probably with a big, black cock up your arse, which personally I think would be rather poetic.'

Silence struck the air like knives before Freddie slowly relaxed and faced forward again, hands folded ahead of him in the space between his parted legs. 'Look, I ain't here to confess. There ain't enough Hail Marys to save my soul after what I'm gonna do to the bastards what tried to top me nephew. Me first assumption was that it were the Greeks, but someone would have talked by now. I've got all of London by the balls right now and no one's said a dicky. So, I'm thinking it's personal-like. A vendetta o' sorts.

'I've got more than my share of enemies. Whoever it was got into the boy's wedding and didn't raise no suspicion. That means, he knows us personally. What I need you to do, Father, is keep your ears to the ground, see if you hear anything. And I do mean anything. If that bastard decides to—" And here's where Fred put on a heavy Irish accent in mockery of the old priest: "—bear his soul to God and ask for forgiveness, then I wanna hear about it the second he leaves the confessional. Because if I find out you know summink and you didn't tell me, well . . . We both know what they do to nonces in nick. And summink tells me that a nonce of the highest order like you might just get the royal treatment.'

Freddie didn't wait for a response. He simply stood, drew the red curtain, and smoothed the front of his shirt before heading towards the front doors. Stella was waiting for him in a beige mackintosh and a pair of white kid-skin gloves, watching him steadily as he approached.

'Ready?'

He nodded wordlessly and pushed past her out the front doors to the tiny parish church, slipping on his sunglasses. It was a cold day in May, lightly raining with a rather brisk wind, but the sun was shining down through the clouds in various places, giving the grassy countryside an almost eerie, fairytale sort of look.

As soon as the heinous act had been committed, Fred had put out a red alert all throughout London. He practically went door-to-door, asking those he trusted for their cooperation, and blackmailing those he didn't. Normally, with a crime like attempted murder, there was always a peep from somewhere—a man who sold a suspicious figure a gun, or the bloke who hired him, or even the man who did the deed himself would boast about it while well into his cups down at the pub. Someone, somewhere would talk. The fact that no one had now made it all the more suspicious.