record your answers. Will that be OK?”
“Perfectly.”
“So, once again, you do not know the person in the photograph.”
“Just for the record, Inspector, it is not ‘once again.’ You did not ask me if I knew this person, you asked if I recognized him. But the answer is the same in both cases. No.”
“Does the name John Collins mean anything to you?”
“Of course it does. If I recall the news correctly, Collins is the suspect in these recent deaths. But just in case you fell that I am not being entirely forthright, there is another reason for me to recognize the name John Collins. It’s a little delicate, but I can tell you. There is nothing to hide. Many years ago, a certain Yvette Collins, Sister Agnes as she was then, accused me of fathering her son. Absolutely preposterous of course, but she maintained that I had seduced her and caused her to become pregnant. She had a son, and I believe he was called John. She carried on a campaign against me and against the church for several years. I’m sure you understand Inspector, women can be, how shall we say, irrational at times, and the sisterhood seems to attract more than its fair share. It’s likely that her sin pushed her over the top, so to speak, and she became convinced that I was the child’s father.”
“Have you had any contact with John Collins in the last few years?”
“None at all. I wouldn’t know him if he were to walk in here.”
“So, just for the record, you deny ever having contact with this man, John Collins.”
“Correct, Inspector. Now, was there something else?”
“I don’t think so. Sergeant Janvier, did you get everything.”
“Yes, Chief.”
Vanier stood up, “Well, I think that will be all for the moment.”
The Monsignor came around the desk, hand out for a shake.
“Well, I don’t think that I have been of much help, but anytime you want to talk, feel free to set something up with my secretary. I’ll have him show you gentlemen out.”
As they walked to the car Vanier looked up at the clear blue sky and nodded at Janvier, “It’s a change from the darkness in there.”
“Yeah,” replied Janvier. “Did you notice the smell?”
“I think it was the absence of women,” said Vanier.
4.30 PM
The investigation had been shut down prematurely, and it was proving difficult to get the extra people back. Everyone was involved somewhere else. Vanier and St. Jacques were the only ones in the Squad Room. Roberge, Janvier, and Laurent were out interviewing workers from Xeon Pesticides and from the homeless shelters, trying to find anyone who might have been close to John Collins.
Vanier turned to St. Jacques. “Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir? Just a second.” She was typing at a screen.
“Where did Audet do his time?”
“He got eight years, so he must have been at a Federal facility. I’ll check.” She started typing searches and pulled up what they had on Audet. It didn’t take long. “Donnacona, sir.”
“That will do. Give them a call and get his medical records as quickly as you can. Then get them over to Dr. Segal.”
“You think Audet might be the guy in the van?”
“Not really. It’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s worth a try. Nobody’s seen him since the day of the fire, and we have an unidentified corpse. Who knows? It’s worth a shot.”
St. Jacques was on the phone immediately, sweet-talking her way through the bureaucracy of Donnacona penitentiary. Fifteen minutes later she walked over to Vanier’s desk. “Denis said that if he could put his hands on it he would fax it to me, otherwise it would have to wait until tomorrow.”
“Denis?”
“Yes, Denis. He sounded like a nice guy, not at all like a prison guard.”
Sergeant St. Jacques must have made an impression on Donnacona Denis, because a bundle of pages came through the fax 90 minutes later. St. Jacques faxed them on to Dr. Segal and then called Denis to thank him. Vanier heard them on the phone for twenty minutes, and St. Jacques was laughing. He hadn’t heard that in a long while.
8 PM
Knowledge is power. And in the Church the humble confessional box has always been fertile black soil for harvesting knowledge. Monsignor Michael Forlini knew that, and he loved the sacrament of confession, as long as he was doing the listening. The anonymity of the confessional box was a farce. Its dark boxes separated only by a grille, covered and uncovered for each new penitent, served only to lull the unsuspecting into believing in a protected spiritual conversation with the Almighty. But a priest could identify the most of the penitents by their voices, and was familiar with their weaknesses and unimaginative appetites for the forbidden. But you can build dependence by instilling guilt and then releasing it with divine forgiveness. Priests carry the secrets of the confessional with them, and when they look into the eyes of a sinner leaving Sunday mass with his wife and children, when they greet the wife with a beaming smile and tousle the heads of the children, the sinner knows how much is owed. It isn’t blackmail, it’s a sacrament. A tool that Jesus gave his priests to help them build and protect the Mother Church, the first and most important goal of every member of the clergy, all the way up to the Papacy.
To influence secular life for good, you need power, and the confessional was the place where power shifted. That’s why the decline of the sacrament is seen as such a threat to the Church. While the Protestants might accept that people can confess their sins in a vaguely worded public acknowledgement of weakness, that idea is vigorously resisted by the hard core Catholic clerics. The Church wants to know the sinners and it wants to know the details of their transgressions.
Monsignor Forlini had a sermon that he liked to give to stiffen the spines of believers. Jesus had told His apostles that those whose sins they forgave were forgiven and those whose sins were retained, were retained. This meant that God had given the apostles — and only the apostles — and through them the priests — and only the priests — the divine authority to forgive sin or to refuse to do so. So Jesus Himself had decreed that sin could not be forgiven directly. He put the apostles between the people and Himself, and the priests were the heirs of the apostles. The only way to have your sins forgiven was by confessing them to a priest in the sacrament of confession. And you had to gain forgiveness in this lifetime, because it would be too late after. So the faithful kept confessing their sins.
That was how Monsignor Forlini knew exactly where to go to solve his problem.
He was sitting in Moishe’s Steak House, a legend on boulevard St. Laurent, the historic fault line between Montreal’s English and French communities that had served Montreal’s powerful for over 50 years. Antonio DiPadova, one of Montreal’s better known criminal defence lawyers, sat opposite Forlini, nervously scanning the room for clients and potential clients. Being seen dining with a senior member of the Church could be bad for business.
They talked easily of politics and sport, of DiPadova’s charitable work, and his substantial donations to the Church. DiPadova was going to Rome in the summer, and an audience had to be arranged and, Monsignor Forlini hinted, a possible Papal acknowledgment of his contribution to the works of Mother Church. Forlini opened at dessert.
“Antonio, I have a problem.”
Well fed, and relaxed under the effects of a pound of marbled sirloin and a bottle of a 1998 Barolo that cost as much as the two steaks, DiPadova answered: “And I hope it’s something that I can help you with, Monsignor.”
“Perhaps you can. But it’s somewhat delicate.”
“In my experience, between friends it’s always better to put everything on the table.”
“Perhaps you are right, Antonio. You have been such a good friend. I should put my trust in you.” The Monsignor hated being humble but thought it might be effective.
