The Death List by Paul Johnston

either too much time or money. Shit. I was in this alone, after all. I couldn’t risk anything happening to Lucy.
    When Sara came out, I’d turned my computer off. I had my head in my hands.
    “What’s the matter?” she asked, clutching me to her warm body. “Who was that on the phone?”
    “Just some tosser,” I mumbled. Understatement of the millennium. Suddenly I remembered how close Sara and I had become over the past nine months. I was at the stage where I trusted her with everything. She was my savior; she could make anything better.
    “Come to bed,” she said, tugging at me gently, her cheeks red—they were always like that when she was aroused.
    I followed her into the bedroom, the blood hot in my veins. But my head was filled with confused thoughts. Something was trying to make itself known.
    “Come on,” Sara said, tugging back the duvet. “I’ll make you feel—”
    The thought that had been nagging me burst to the surface.
    “No!” I said, lunging forward.
    “Well, well, Mr. Wells,” Sara said, her smile slowly disappearing. “What have you been up to?”
    She picked up the bundles of twenty-pound notes that I’d stuck under the covers when I brought Lucy round, and gave me a questioning stare.

5
    After what seemed like an eternity, Mrs. O’Grady, seventy-three and deeply wrinkled, finished arranging her bucket and mop in the cupboard off the sacristy. “Will that be all for tonight, Father Prendegast?” she asked.
    “Yes, yes,” the priest replied impatiently, his head with its large bald patch bowed over the papers on the table.
    “Are you sure now?” Mrs. O’Grady had been doing the Wednesday night cleaning at St. Bartholomew’s, West Kilburn, for more than thirty years and she prided herself on the solicitude that she afforded the men of God. The previous fathers had appreciated her, but this one was different. Although he’d been there for nearly ten years, she hardly felt that she knew him at all. He paid her little attention. She didn’t like gossip, but she’d begun to believe what some of the other ladies said—that he’d come to their church under a cloud. There had been a scandal somewhere in the East End that was hushed up. She raised her head to the stained ceiling. Dear God, she thought, why can’t your representatives on earth keep their hands to themselves?
    Mrs. O’Grady took a step back when she realized Father Prendegast was glaring at her, as if he knew what was in her mind. She took her coat and hurried away, mumbling, “Good night to you, then.” She stopped when she got outside and shivered. It wasn’t cold—the last of the sun had spread in a red carpet over the western sky and its warmth was still in the air—but she felt a chill. There was something about that man, something she could almost smell. He was…he was dirty, a wrong ’un. She walked quickly down the gravel path, anxious to get back to her council flat and her little dog. She didn’t notice the figure that rose up from behind one of the larger gravestones and moved silently toward the door of the church.
    Norman Prendegast pushed his chair back and got up. At last the old cow had left him in peace. He selected a key from the ring on his belt and slotted it into the bottom drawer of an antique rolltop desk. He took the bottle of Jameson that one of the faithful had given him at Easter and broke the seal. The first few gulps did nothing, and then he began to feel the warmth rising from his belly. That was the stuff. He went back to the table and sat down again, setting the bottle on the accounts book he’d been trying to complete. He’d leave that chore to another night.
    After he’d taken another long pull from the bottle, the priest fell into a reverie. Fifteen years he’d been in exile from his flock in Bethnal Green; fifteen years he’d been banned from even visiting them in his time off. It wasn’t fair. He’d been everything a priest should be—unstinting in his efforts,