example. If others see you have something they wish to possess, they will make the approach. In truth, Mrs Cooper, I am bewildered. Five years in La Modela, every day in the presence of evil, and not a single word of complaint.'
'You must have some clue what prompted this.'
'I have a suspicion, but I'm afraid you'll accuse me of being paranoid.' He turned to look at her, the first time she had seen genuine humility in him. 'Believe me, I'm not prone to conspiracy theories, but these complaints mean I can no longer contact Paul Craven. I fear for him. His behaviour has become erratic, his thoughts disjointed. I had become the one person whom he could trust.'
'You think the complaints against you were manufactured?'
'I hesitate to believe that—' He checked himself and gazed at the altar.
'But you do?' Jenny said. 'Who does this benefit? I thought priests were welcomed by prisons.'
'It may be a perfectly valid grievance,' Starr said, in an effort to convince himself, 'but I suppose there may be some who would like to see me discredited. A priest suspended from his post for browbeating doesn't make the most compelling witness at an inquest, for example.'
'I wouldn't pay it much attention,' Jenny said. 'Besides, any evidence you gave would hardly be critical.'
'But the allegations can be put, and repeated in the press. I will be called a zealot and my belief in Craven dismissed as delusional.'
Jenny thought of Ed Prince's parting words at the Mission Church the previous afternoon: his sly allusion to those Christians who didn't like the way his clients conducted themselves. She'd guessed he was referring to Starr, but in the turmoil of the evening she had left her thoughts half- formed. Was Prince implying that the priest had an agenda beyond exonerating Craven? She had come intending to tell Starr she couldn't help him, but he had headed her off and was dragging her into the mire.
Be direct, that was the only way. Hit him with the hard questions now and gauge his response. A would-be Jesuit couldn't deny the power of logic. If all he had to offer was blind faith in Craven with no facts to back it up, she could let him down with a clear conscience.
'Let me ask you something, Father,' Jenny said. 'What do you make of Eva Donaldson?'
'In what sense?'
'Her life story. Her conversion. What she represented in a spiritual sense.'
He gave her a sideways glance, reading her with eyes from which there was no hiding place. 'Are you asking me if I believe God was working through her?'
'If you like.'
'And whether I approve of her church?'
'You couldn't be much further apart,' Jenny said.
'Protestants forget we have "phenomena", too. But we subject them to scrutiny. The Catholic Church treats the experience of a solitary individual with caution. Doctrine, scripture and the accumulated wisdom of two thousand years must all play their part in discerning truth.'
'You're sceptical about her.'
'What would you expect?' He smiled. 'But just as for you there is only truth and untruth, for me there is only that which is from God, and that which is not. I am touched by Miss Donaldson's story, but I am also aware that human beings can generate a level of collective emotion that apes the action of the Holy Spirit. You can experience it in a football crowd - the collective surge of passion that physically lifts the exhausted player.'
'Football crowds don't reform young criminals or eradicate pornography.'
'I don't believe anyone has ever asked them to.'
'Have you been to the Mission Church? What they're achieving with children is very moving.'
'God isn't sentimental, Mrs Cooper: consider what happened to his son. We all enjoy interludes of happiness, but it's through our suffering that we progress.'
'All I have to offer is unrelenting pain and hardship — '
'I beg your pardon.'
'Captain Bligh. You must have seen The Bounty?'
'I don't believe I have.'
'It's the line he uses to entice loyal men to join him when the mutineers cast him adrift.'
'And does he prevail?'
'Yes. He survives and the mutineers become marooned in a paradise that turns into a hell.'
Starr nodded in amused approval. 'I must watch it. But I can assure you, no matter what you may have heard, I've no desire to persecute a crew of mutineers. My concern is purely for Paul Craven, and of course the truth.'
'What makes you so certain he's innocent? It must be something more than what he tells you.'
Starr said, 'You're impatient with me, Mrs Cooper.'
'Do