Peter Lovesey - The Reaper

A voice from the outer reaches called out, "Well said, Joe."

"Did I hear you say drinks on the house, dear boy?" said Owen.

"No, you didn't. I've got a living to make like everyone else. You'll get your glass of punch on the carol-singing evening, if you go round the village with the choir, that is."

"When's that?"

Sometimes people forgot how recent an arrival Owen was. He seemed to have been telling his stories for ever.

"About ten days before Christmas. They go round the houses collecting money for the Church."

"And mince pies," added PC George Mitchell from his seat by the fire, "and the odd glass of something warm. It's a good evening."

"You can count on me, then," said Owen. "I've sung with the best."

"The Three Tenors?"

Owen disregarded that. "My good friend Sir Geraint Evans wanted me to go professional, but I had other plans at the time. I can still hit top C when I want to."

"We don't want any of that. You'll frighten the livestock," said Joe Jackson. "You'll be better off carrying one of the lanterns."

The friend of the famous found it difficult to comprehend why people failed to warm to him in this village. He shifted the focus of the discussion. "I expect OJ joins the carol-singers?"

"OJ?"

"The rector."

At one of the three tables grandiosely called the dining area, Burton Sands paused over the microwaved steak pie he was quietly consuming. Burton's week had been thrown into disarray by his visit to Old Mordern. He'd come to the pub because he hadn't been shopping for food. At the mention of the rector he put down his knife and fork and leaned back in his chair so as not to miss a word.

"Wouldn't surprise me if he turns it into another jam session," Owen went on.

"Get away!" said someone.

"He's not one to be troubled by tradition. You've seen it for yourself. Anyone who can turn a funeral into the Twelfth Street Rag isn't going to think twice about trampling on people's feelings."

"That wasn't his doing," said George Mitchell. "That was the widow wanted that."

"Bollocks, dear boy. She'd never have thought of that in her state of grief. Typical Otis Joy, that was."

"What do you know about it?"

The buzz of conversation around the bar stopped suddenly, enabling Burton Sands to overhear every scrap of gossip about the rector.

Owen Cumberbatch claimed smugly, "I happen to know the way the man works, his modus operandi. He's a master of deception. If you or I had something dodgy to cover up, we'd do it quietly when no one was around. Not that fellow. He does it with a bloody fanfare. Everyone cheers and says what a great bloke he is. Showmanship, dear boy."

"What's he got to hide?" said Joe Jackson.

"There you go," said Owen, snapping his fingers. "You're blind, you lot. I knew a fellow once-a very good friend of mine-called Borra. He was the world's greatest pickpocket. This was in my circus days."

"Here we go," some voice said from the dark.

"When I was no more than a lad," Owen went on, unfazed. "Borra was doing it legitimately, as an act. He'd invite several of the audience into the ring and sit them on chairs in full view, under the spotlights, and riot only empty their pockets, but remove ties, wristwatches, braces, even, arid the poor suckers wouldn't feel a thing, wouldn't know it had been done. That's what OJ is doing to you lot, and you're the mugs who can't see it, because he distracts you with all the razzmatazz."

"What's he up to?"

Owen spread his hands and smiled.

"Come on," said Jackson. "We're waiting to hear."

Over in the dining area, Burton Sands was so eager to hear that he'd abandoned his pie and turned right round in his chair.

Owen shook his head and picked up his drink. "There's none so blind as those that will not see."

It was out of character, but he refused to say any more. Normal conversation was restored.

Presently, Burton Sands materialised at Owen's elbow and offered him a drink, a fateful moment, this coming together of bombast and calculation, for Owen was happy to say in private what he'd been unwilling to tell the whole pub. Mostly, Burton listened, trying not to betray his amazement at the litany of wickedness Owen was only too happy to repeat for him. Not merely fiddling the funds, not just philandering with the ladies of the parish, but murder, serial murder. Burton's festering suspicions of Otis Joy were justified, according to this man. His head reeled. A clergyman who killed his own wife, a sexton, a PCC treasurer, and maybe others?

"And you seriously think he kills people when they find out about his embezzlement?"

"Without a doubt, dear boy."

Burton hesitated on the brink of the chasm of evil that had just opened up. "I heard a rumour that prior to Bishop Marcus's death, he was investigating Joy."

Up to this moment Owen hadn't made any connection between Otis Joy and the death of the bishop. However, no one was his equal at claiming other people's gossip as his own. "Spot on. I heard it, too. And you wonder if he had anything to do with the bishop's death? You bet your life he did."

"It isn't far from here, that quarry," Burton said, more to himself than Owen.

Owen was thinking fast. "Easy enough to dress it up as a suicide."

Burton was appalled. In a wicked, wicked world, surely this was beyond all.

He left the pub soon after with eyes as wide as a bushbaby's.

Twenty minutes later, Owen got off the stool and collected his coat and Russian fur hat-the last relic, he liked to tell people, of his days as an undercover servant of the Queen-without noticing PC George Mitchell leave his place by the fire and fol- low him out. The first he was aware of it was a firm grip on his upper arm outside the pub door.

"A quiet word, Owen."

"Here?" Owen's face was turning strange colours in the lights of the Christmas tree.

"I'll walk with you."

They started along the road.

"Normally I don't take much notice of things said in pubs," Mitchell told him, "but you went overboard in there tonight. It was close to slander."

"Slander?" said Owen. "Not me? I'm a truth-teller, through and through."

"You know who I am?"

"I do, indeed."

"With me, you'd better stick to facts."

"I intend to."

"What is it about the rector, then? What were you getting at?"

Owen was less fluent at this point of the evening. "The rector? You mean…? What do you mean?"

"You were saying the jazz at Gary Jansen's funeral was his doing."

"In a way, in a way," Owen hedged.

"As if he had some ulterior motive."

"Did I?"

"You talked about a modus operandi."

"Well, yes."

"As if he was up to something criminal."

"I can't prove anything."

"You made it up, because you don't like the man."

"No, no. I wouldn't do that."

"So you do know something."

"Things I pick up here and there, that's all."

"Such as?"

Owen sighed heavily. There was no pleasure in giving up his scant information this way. "Well, I knew him before, in his former parish. No one can deny that wherever Otis Joy goes, sudden deaths take place. His young wife. The sexton. He comes here and what happens? The church treasurer drops dead."

"People die unexpectedly every day," said George.

"Yes, but they aren't all closely connected with one man. Then Gary Jansen goes."

"You can't link Gary Jansen with these others. He didn't even go to church."

"His widow does. She's the new treasurer."

George hesitated, weighing what had just been said. "What are you saying? That it has to do with money?"

"I don't honestly know. All I can tell you is that I saw Gary Jansen on the day he died talking to the rector outside the village shop and it didn't look to me as if they were on about the weather, or the state of the world. Serious things were being said."