The Sixth Soul by Mark Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

opened wider.
    His back turned to the opening door, Father Sebastian was lighting an incense stick. A sliver of smoke rose from its tip. He killed the match with dampened finger and thumb.
    It was a small room, with a single bed, one closed window, a small row of books, and a porcelain sink with a mirror above in which Rosen glimpsed Father Sebastian’s face. His eyes were
blue, his face ageing but model handsome, his hair black and slick with sweat or water. Their eyes connected in the glass.
    ‘It’s an upside-down and back-to-front world,’ said the priest, smiling and turning. ‘Chief Inspector David Rosen?’
    ‘Father Sebastian.’
    ‘Thank you for coming to see me. Would you like to – please, come in.’
    Sebastian turned back to the sink, ran hot water over a white flannel and placed the plug in the plughole. His white T-shirt was grey with age and clung to his back with a circle of sweat. There
was a hole in the side, the size of a fifty-pence piece, just above the hip where the elasticized band of his shapeless jogging bottoms hugged his narrow waist.
Lean and poor
, thought
Rosen,
poor and lean
.
    Rosen moved into the room, the smell of incense rising above the salt of the priest’s body and the fading sulphur of the match.
    ‘Aidan, thank you so much for calling Detective Rosen.’
    ‘You spoke with him yourself, last night.’
    ‘A ringing phone in an empty room. In the silence of the evening, the sound could have pierced the walls and disturbed your prayers. I picked up and spoke to Detective Rosen.
Serendipity.’
    He dipped his head and wiped his face with the flannel.
    So why weren’t you praying with them?
, thought Rosen, but asked, ‘You a keen runner, Father?’
    ‘Just a couple of hours each morning.’
    ‘Would you like some tea, Detective Rosen?’ asked Aidan. ‘Coffee, perhaps?’
    ‘Aidan, we’ll join you in the kitchen, in a few minutes,’ said the priest, and Rosen wondered who the most senior member of the community was.
    ‘No problem, Sebastian.’
    Aidan closed the door and walked away with brisk footsteps; the sounds of someone keen to be elsewhere.
    There were deep white marks, fierce lines on the priest’s skin, scar tissue, showing through the wet patch on his T-shirt. Rosen ran his eyes up and down his muscular arms. Nothing. Only
unmatching sweatbands, oddly old-fashioned, around each wrist, and on his feet trainers that didn’t belong to the same pair.
    ‘I hope you don’t mind the holy smoke. It’s a small room and it becomes unpleasant if I don’t. Someone, some clever soul, painted over the woodwork on the window and
it’s stuck, it won’t open.’
    Sebastian dried his face on a hand towel and sat down on the bed.
    ‘I haven’t got a chair.’
    The bed was the only alternative then, to standing awkwardly and trying not to stare down at the priest’s face.
    Rosen sat on the bed. On the floor, at his feet, face down, lay a sheet of glossy paper, A4, with blu-tak in each corner. A picture for the bare walls? There were blu-tak marks on the wall
between the bed and the sink, and the discolorations made Rosen think of the remains of the old lady at 24 Brantwood Road; chemical stains left behind by a neglected life.
    ‘You look pensive, Detective.’ Rosen felt pensive. ‘Mind if I call you David?’
    ‘Not at all.’
    ‘Did your mother name you after the great Hebrew king?’
    ‘I come from a long line of secular Jews, Father. But I am married to a Catholic.’
    He appeared not to hear.
    ‘You didn’t do Hebrew at your school?’
    ‘We didn’t do a great deal of English at my school, Father.’
    ‘I’m younger than you, David. Drop the “Father”, and call me Sebastian, if you like.’
    ‘You said you had some information.’
    ‘What a world we live in.’
    Rosen gave him time, but he said nothing further for what soon felt like too long. Monastic time and real time collided in Rosen’s head and his patience frayed. He pulled a