Mark Pearson - Hard Evidence

'Okay, Caroline, that's fine. Cue up the bishop for me.'

Caroline, a perky media school graduate in her twenties, with short bleached hair teased into spikes, combat boots, a tartan skirt and a T-shirt with 'The Dog's Bollocks' hand-written across her front, shuffled a box of tapes and shrugged apologetically. She flicked through the box again and shook her head.

'The bishop's back in the office. The runner should have brought it up by now.'

Moffett glared at her.

'What is it I always say?'

Caroline looked at her boss's angry face. A little amused, a little scared if truth be known, although Moffett wasn't a scary-looking man.

'Never work with bloody amateurs.'

'Never work with bloody amateurs, that's exactly bloody right. Christ, I need a drink.'

Caroline looked a little taken aback as Moffett stood up and slipped into his jacket.

'Alex, we record in one hour!'

'I have been producing this show for five bloody years, sweetheart. I know what our sodding schedule is.'

'Of course.'

Caroline smiled, placating, and turned back to her monitor. Moffett muttered under his breath and headed for reception. He didn't even acknowledge the nod from the security guard who sat behind the desk, just pushed the big green button to the side of the doors and headed out to the car park.

He scowled dismissively at a huddle of studio employees who stood at the kerb of the road that ran parallel to the studios, blowing smoke and gossiping. If gossip was currency in the TV industry, then everyone was a millionaire. If you weren't sticking a knife in someone else's back, then you had no business being there. Moffett headed past them further down the road and pulled out his mobile phone, punching in a number with frustrated urgency.

'It's Alexander. What's happening?'

He listened, teasing a hanging nail on the corner of this thumb between his teeth, then shook his head, unhappy.

'I don't like it.' He sighed, his temper rising like a needle on a thermostat. 'Sod your bloody golf game. I'm shooting Jesus' bloody sunbeams in forty-five sodding minutes! I tell you, I'm beginning to get very nervous here, so do something about it or I will.'

He listened for a moment or two longer and his shoulders sagged.

'I'll see you later.'

He clicked his phone off but didn't head back to the studio. He stood a while longer, worrying at his hangnail. Finally he tore it loose, gasping with pain as it ripped into the quick and a bright spot of blood appeared. He sucked it, tasting the iron and copper, and grimaced. He didn't like omens.

Delaney was also uncomfortable that Saturday morning. Five days since the anniversary of his wife's death, and he was at his sister-in-law's again, perched on the edge of her sofa like a distressed seagull on a wall. He fitted a finger under his collar and pulled it out to cool his neck. He would have loosened his tie but he knew that if he did, busy female hands would seize it and tighten it even more uncomfortably. The truth was that Delaney had never been a suit-and-tie man.

He looked across as the lounge door flew open in an explosion of anarchic energy. Siobhan, dressed for her First Holy Communion, came bursting into the room like a human cannonball, the happiness and innocence shining from her eyes like a beacon.

'What do you think of the dress?'

Wendy followed her in. 'Siobhan. Be careful. Watch your hair.'

'You look a picture, darling. Daddy's sweetheart.' Siobhan clambered into his arms and he hugged her.

'Everything all right, Jack?'

Delaney found a smile and nodded at Wendy. She held her hand out to Siobhan. 'Come on then. We'd best be getting on. Can't be late for the big day, can we?'

'They'll make a convert of you yet, Wendy.'

Wendy shook her head. 'I may be a hypocrite, Jack. But not that big a one.'

Delaney stood up and took his daughter's other hand.

'Come on, darling. Let's get your membership card to the biggest club in the world.'

The Church of St Joseph was old. Dating back to the Norman Conquest, it had history in its very bones. High vaulted arches crossing above the nave. Stained glass filling every window. Dark wooden pews worn smooth over the years by countless people sitting and praying. Around the church were the fourteen pictures of the Stations of the Cross. Behind the altar a tall crucifix. The agonies of Christ captured in brutal realism. Blood trickling from the crown of thorns, a gash in His side where a Roman soldier had been ordered to put Him to early death so as not to spoil the Sabbath rituals. His hands and feet stained with dried blood as it pooled around the hard iron of the nails that had been hammered through His tender flesh and bone.

Delaney sat in one of the forward pews. He ran a finger under the collar of his shirt again and tried to get comfortable on the hard wooden bench. He stretched his legs out and crossed them. Wendy sat beside him and dug him in the ribs. He nodded apologetically and sat up straighter.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned . He didn't say the words aloud but they echoed in his head as if he had shouted them to ring in the rafters of the ancient church.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned .

At the back of the church, in an upstairs gallery, Mrs Henderson, a kind-faced, mild-mannered lady of fifty-two, sat at the organ and positioned her feet on the pedals. She turned the sheet music, placed her hands on the keyboard and began to play. Sweet music filled the air. The music of celebration and worship. The music of ritual, thought Delaney, as the sound carried him back to his own childhood. To another church in another country and another time.

Jack could feel the blood pumping in his veins as he knelt in front of the altar, waiting for Father O'Connell to return. He shifted uncomfortably, the cold stone painful on his sore bare knees.

Jack Delaney was an altar boy, the youngest of a group of five or six boys from the village who came to church every Saturday morning to practise. The other boys had been sent home half an hour or so ago and Jack had been ordered to wait on his knees and think about his sins. Jack did think about his sins. He thought about them a lot. Especially the one thing he had done and could never take back, no matter how hard he prayed to go back in time and undo it. That was why he hardened his heart to what was going to come. Whatever it was, he deserved it.

Jack could hear movement in the vestry and clenched his hand into a fist to stop it from trembling. He had sinned and now he had to face the consequences.

Father O'Connell was a man capable of great anger. You only had to listen to his old-fashioned sermons on a Sunday morning to know that. He was very clear on what he despised, and what he thought of sin and sinners and what should become of them. And Jack was a sinner right enough. His father swore that he was born to sin as a duck was born to water. And his father should know.

He looked up as a shadow fell on the polished floor in front of him and he heard the soft swish of a black cassock. Father O'Connell was not particularly tall, but to a kneeling ten-year-old his five foot ten gave him Olympian proportions, while his rough white beard and sore red eyes lent him the look of an Old Testament prophet of doom. Jack shivered despite himself. He was usually afraid of no one, would front up to much bigger kids in the school playground if they messed with him, but Father O'Connell had a reputation. He liked to hurt boys. He kept a strap in his vestry and none of the parents in the area objected if he used it to keep their unruly children in line. And there were rumours.

'Jack. What are we to do with you?' The priest's booming voice echoed around the stone walls of the church, rich with disappointment.