you're still there, Mrs Cooper,' Alison said with mock surprise. 'I only tried you at home to make sure. I thought you'd be over the bridge by now.'
'I've been catching up here where it's quiet,' Jenny said, in a voice still thick with sleep.
'If it's quiet you want, I should stay at home. Father Starr's on the warpath. He's insisting on speaking to you. I've got his number.'
'What about?'
'Do you think I didn't ask him?'
Jenny's call was answered by an elderly, austere-sounding priest. She could hear several male voices in the background and footsteps on wooden floors. Father Starr took a long time to come to the phone and spoke to her curtly. Could she please meet him at Clifton Cathedral, he asked.
'Can you tell me what this is about?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'I see. Don't you think some indication would be courteous?'
'Please grant me this one interview, Mrs Cooper. I would be most grateful.'
Each year, as summer reached its zenith, there were a handful of days during which the Wye valley radiated such transcendent beauty that it was impossible not to be inspired to a vision of a clear and uncomplicated future. Meandering through the graceful corridors of beeches that reached out and touched each other over the five miles of road between the villages of Tintern and St Arvans, Jenny felt her spirits lift. The sun spiking through the branches brought a simple, brilliant thought: she could rise above the tribulations of her past, and set her own parameters. It didn't need prayer or divine intervention; she could choose, right here and now, to take control.
She could begin with Starr. He was an obsessive who couldn't believe one of his converts capable of murder. He was manipulative, too, taunting her with mention of Alec McAvoy. It wasn't hard to understand his motive. And who but an egotist with fragile self-esteem could spend his life ministering to a captive audience of prisoners for whom the Church offered the only viable prospect of hope? A multitude of inadequacies could hide behind the priestly mask. She resolved to leave him in no doubt about what she thought - that he was wrong about Craven.
Father Starr was waiting impatiently on the steps of the brutally arresting modern cathedral. Built in the early 1970s largely of concrete, its three-pronged spire seemed to jab accusingly at the sky: a monument to the hubristic century that had created it, demanding rather than inspiring awe. Jacketless, a short-sleeved clerical shirt hugged his lean frame.
'Good morning, Mrs Cooper.' He didn't offer his hand. 'It's a little too hot to talk out here, don't you think?'
Without waiting for her answer, he turned and led the way through the cathedral's glass doors into an interior which, if it hadn't been for the abstract mosaics of stained glass, struck Jenny as having all the magic of an airport terminal. Vast concrete beams welded the building's precast sections together. The altar stood beneath a hexagonal concrete dome of which even Calvin might have approved.
'You don't appreciate the modernist architecture?' Starr said, reading her thoughts.
'No,' Jenny said, determined to follow through on her resolve.
'I try,' Starr said, with a suggestion of a smile. 'And invariably fail.'
He nodded to the altar, crossed himself, and directed her to the end of one of the many rows of chairs that substituted for pews.
'I think the architect's idea was to allow for purity of thought,' he said. 'In that, at least, I feel he succeeded.'
Jenny was about to ask him what was so urgent that couldn't wait, when she realized his small talk was veiling a silent prayer. His eyes were focused inwards, his folded hands perfectly still.
After a moment's meditation he said, 'I would usually be performing my duties at the prison on a weekday, but apparently I have been the cause of complaints. I have been asked to hand over my responsibilities to another priest.'
'Complaints from whom?'
'Two prisoners is all I have been told. Their identities have not been disclosed to me, of course. That would allow me to defend myself, which would never do.'
His sudden bitter tone surprised her. It was that of a man unused to rejection.
'Have you been told the substance of the complaints?'
'The governor informs me that I have exerted "indecent ideological pressure" on certain prisoners, thereby offending their freedom of conscience.'
'Have you?'
Starr shook his head. 'Never. I offer myself to prisoners to talk, that's all. To force myself on them would be anathema. My order's way is always to lead by