I Have Sinned Read online

  “Ye can’t touch me,” he shouted, “I’m too beautiful! I must be—”

  He was interrupted by a flurry of punches from Bianca, getting his hands up just in time to avoid a direct hit but still being sent backwards by the barrage.

  “BROTHER MCGARRY!”

  The room turned as one to see Father Gabriel standing in the doorway, his face a picture of rage. Bunny dropped his gloves like a guilty schoolboy caught cavorting around by the teacher. Everyone stopped what they were doing – everyone, that is, except the one person in the room who had the laser focus of a champion. External noises did not distract her. Which was how fifteen-year-old Bianca Jones knocked Bunny McGarry out cold.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “I am so sorry,” said Bianca, not for the first time.

  “Stop saying that, Bianca,” said Gabriel, “you have nothing to be sorry about.”

  Bunny nodded his head as much as he could while holding a wad of tissue to his nose. “He’s right, you’ve nothing to be sorry for. That was a ferocious right hook.”

  “Actually,” said Trey, “it was a left jab.”

  Bunny pulled the tissues away from his nose. “That was a jab?” he said, too loudly, looking up at Bianca with a look approaching awe. “Jesus, girl, I pity the lad who forgets to buy you flowers.”

  Bianca blushed.

  “Keep your voice down.” Gabriel glanced around. They were standing in the corner of the gym, Gabriel having ordered those who were supposed to be training to get back to it and those who had finished to clear out. Still, he knew that all around him, kids were going through the motions while keeping one eye on the melodrama unfolding in the corner.

  “What I would like to know is what exactly you two were doing in the ring sparring.” Gabriel was trying and failing to keep the anger from his voice. He had been very clear with Bunny about this kind of thing.

  “They weren’t really sparring,” said Trey.

  “No,” agreed Bianca, “it was just a demonstration.”

  “A demonstration of what?” Before Trey or Bianca could say anything, Gabriel raised his hand. “And if you don’t mind, I would like to hear from the supposed adult who was present.”

  Gabriel glowered at Bunny, who looked at the wad of tissue and then tossed it in the trash can beside him. “I was showing the lads about keeping their guard up, like you asked me to. And I thought a good demonstration would be using Queen B here to show them what’d happen if even a much bigger opponent, i.e. me, didn’t keep his hands up and defend properly. I wasn’t throwing any punches. I was basically a volunteer punchbag.”

  “And,” said Bianca, “I was holding back.”

  Bunny’s eyebrows shot up. “I got floored by a jab from a fifteen-year-old girl who was holding back? Well, that is certainly a moment to give a man pause for thought.”

  “Your wounded pride aside, Brother,” said Gabriel pointedly, “I don’t think this kind of thing is appropriate for a man in your position to be doing, is it?”

  Bunny nodded, receiving the message loud and clear. “Sorry, Father, it won’t happen again.”

  “I should hope not.”

  Bunny gave a sly smile and poked Bianca in the ribs. “At least not against this monster anyway!”

  Bianca giggled.

  “Right, well, you should get changed, Bianca, and Brother McGarry, you and I will discuss this later.”

  “Oh dear,” said Bunny, “that’s me to bed without me supper.”

  Annoyed as he was, it took Gabriel a couple of moments to spot Trey gesturing at him from his position behind Bianca. When he finally noticed, he looked over in the direction of the doorway, where Emilio was standing, looking very nervous. Oh yes! He had been so distracted with Bunny’s tomfoolery, it had completely slipped his mind. Today was to be the grand unveiling. Gabriel glanced at his watch. He should have just enough time before Mr Green from that Regency fund turned up.

  “Actually, could you all come outside with me for a minute?”

  “Oh God,” said Bunny, “I thought he was joking about starting a firing squad.” This comment earned him an admonishing look from Gabriel.

  As they headed towards the door, Bianca looked confused, but she was the only one. All pretence that anyone was doing any form of training stopped as everyone followed them. Trey looked excited while poor Emilio looked like he was about to throw up. Father Gabriel gave him a pat on the shoulder. The poor kid was sweating profusely and looked in serious danger of fainting.

  “What’s going on?” asked Bianca.

  “It’s a surprise,” said Trey.

  “I hate surprises.”

  “Yeah,” said Trey, “sucks to be you.”

  Gabriel turned the corner and noticed that Rosario and the other members of the committee had joined the gathering crowd. The scaffolding had been removed, but a white sheet still covered the wall. The great advantage of Bianca’s training schedule was that it had given Emilio and Trey a window each day to come and work on it. Then Emilio had spent the last few evenings out here in the bitter cold, putting the finishing touches to it, while Bunny held a torch for him.

  The crowd formed a semicircle. Danny Clarkson, the scaffolding king, nodded at Gabriel from his position at the side of the sheet, where he was holding a rope expectantly.

  Gabriel looked around. “Right, what should we do now?”

  “Speech!” barked Bunny, which resulted in Emilio’s legs all but going from under him. Bunny gave him an affectionate wallop on the back. “Don’t worry, Picasso, I didn’t mean you.”

  Bunny looked at Gabriel expectantly, and he self-consciously stepped forward and stood in front of the sheet. Last night, he had written some notes in preparation for this moment. Actually, while he’d hate to admit it, he had spent quite a lot of time on it. He had even come up with what he was fairly certain was a joke. Maybe he was a tiny bit jealous of Bunny.

  He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have a confession to make. I know I urge you to always tell the truth… Well, I am afraid I may have told some of you a little white lie.”

  This was met with mocking gasps and laughter. Gabriel smiled as he held up his hand. Mission accomplished. “But my intentions were good. You see, this wall does not actually have a problem with mould.”

  “It’s the only one we got that doesn’t,” said Rosario, who was taken aback that this entirely serious remark was met with laughter.

  “That is true,” said Gabriel. “Recently, as you all know, our humble gym produced its first champion.”

  This was met with several voices shouting encouragement and cheering Bianca’s name. The girl herself looked suddenly embarrassed.

  Gabriel smiled at her and continued. “And I – I mean we, the committee and I” – he pointed at the other three members, two of whom had no idea what this was about – “thought we should commemorate this achievement. And what better way to do so than by using the talents of another of our equally gifted Coopersville prodigies…”

  Emilio really did look like he was about to lose his lunch.

  Trey covered his mouth with his hand and shouted, “One-Armed Bandit in da house!” which was met with some more cheers and laughs. “So, like many popes before me, I commissioned a piece of art to grace the wall of our unassuming gym. I haven’t yet seen it and, like all of you, I’m curious – so without further ado…”

  He nodded at Danny Clarkson, who released the rope, causing the white sheet to flutter to the ground.

  Gabriel stepped back. There was total silence as the crowd stared up at the wall. Honestly, he hadn’t known what to expect, but what he saw took his breath away.

  Eventually it was Rosario, of all people – who had been horrified by the very idea – who started the applause. The rest of the crowd joined in enthusiastically. Up on the wall, Bianca stood in the middle of a boxing ring, looking almost angelic as her smile beamed for all the world to see, her hand held aloft in triumph. Emilio had
managed to capture something of her essence that Gabriel would have never believed possible with spray paint. There was something in the face – the mix of pride and fragility in the smile, the eyes didn’t follow you across the room so much as force you to look up to the sky as they did. At her feet, the skyline of Coopersville stretched out beneath her, and written in dark colours were the words POVERTY, DRUGS, CRIME and GANGS, formed into snakes. But Bianca’s head was tilted upwards, and above her head were the words that Trey and Emilio had spent hours obsessing over. In bright blues and yellows, colours of hope, rang out the message: WE ARE STRONGER THAN ANYONE IMAGINES.

  The applause built and built as the crowd began to whoop and holler. People were rushing forward to pat Emilio on the back. In the clamour, Gabriel looked at Emilio’s face – the terror now replaced by relief at the rapturous reception. Gabriel looked back at the wall and noticed the words TRAINING, DISCIPLINE and DETERMINATION on the band of Bianca’s shorts. He turned to smile at Emilio, touched by the detail, but despite being surrounded by well-wishers, the boy’s face had dropped. Gabriel followed his eyes, and he saw Bianca quietly slipping away, back into the gym.

  He was about to turn back to Emilio to offer some words of reassurance when Rosario grabbed his arm.

  “Father, Father – Mr Green from the fund is here.”

  “OK, I…” Father Gabriel turned and saw his past smiling back at him from the doorway.

  Abraham.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Gabriel was back in the meeting space on the balcony. It had taken a bit of doing, but he had politely made it clear to Rosario that she was not needed in this meeting. He would speak to Mr Green in private. “Mr Green”, for his part, had cheerfully chimed in that yes, he would prefer to speak to the father “mano-a-mano”. They had walked through the church in silence, Gabriel’s mind a writhing mass of emotions. Here it was, the day, the moment, when his old life came crashing down onto his new one. Part of him wanted to scream at the top of his lungs for everyone to get out, to get far, far away. Another part of him just wanted to run.

  Instead, he had plastered a smile on his face and led Abraham up to the balcony, where they now sat opposite each other across the wobbly table. For the first time since seeing him standing outside the church, Gabriel took a good look at his visitor. It had been, what? Almost fourteen years? What was remarkable was how little Abraham had changed. He still wore his hair long; he still had the same relaxed, athletic build; he still had that smile. Gabriel remembered the first time he had seen it, all those years ago. He hadn’t trusted it then, and he had been right not to. If only he had followed his instincts… Abraham’s accent was that same unplaceable but personable drawl it had always been. They had met twenty-three years ago, and Gabriel still didn’t have the first idea where the man came from.

  “Father Gabriel,” said Abraham with a broad smile, “thank you for taking the time to see me.”

  When it came right down to it, despite having had this conversation numerous times in his head, and having run it on a virtually constant loop for the last week, now that Abraham was sitting opposite him, Gabriel didn’t have the first idea what to say.

  Abraham spread his hands wide. “I love what you’ve done with the place. The people I represent are so excited at the opportunity to support your wonderful work.”

  The dread in Gabriel’s stomach turned to anger. “Can we cut the shit, please?”

  Abraham raised his eyebrows in mocking surprise. “Should you be using such language? What with you being a priest and all?”

  Gabriel held his hands in his lap, resisting the urge to fidget. “I am sure you are upset.”

  The jovial tone slipped from Abraham’s voice. “Upset? Why would I be upset? Oh, because I find out my son – who I thought died fourteen years ago, who I mourned – is alive and well and pretending to be a priest?”

  “I am not your son.”

  “I raised you. That makes you my son. You are all my sons.”

  “And how many sons have you lost now?”

  “It is a cruel world.”

  “Only because you make it so.”

  Abraham leaned forward. “Really? When I found you in that shithole favela in Rio, a scared little punk-ass eleven-year-old kid with nobody to look after him and nothing to look forward to but a life of pain and degradation, that was my fault, was it? I gave you a life.”

  “And what a life it was.”

  The older man gave Gabriel a searching look. “You liked it fine at the time. You got everything you wanted. Everything you needed. And let us not forget you were good at it, so very good at it. You were a warrior, Daniel.”

  “That is not my name.”

  Abraham gave a mocking laugh. “And Gabriel is?”

  Gabriel turned his head and looked up at the roof of the church. They still hadn’t found that accursed leak. The diocese had promised to get back to him about it but there had been nothing. Those damned spotlights still sat downstairs. A part of his mind entirely disconnected from his new reality made a note to ask Rosario to check on that.

  “Gabriel is who I am now.”

  “Pretending to be a priest? It is obscene.”

  Gabriel turned back and shook his head. “I actually am a priest. I went through seminary and I have been ordained.”

  Abraham gave a humourless laugh. “Like what you truly are can be erased? Like what you have done can be forgotten?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “The Catholic Church was founded by a man who spent his earlier life persecuting Christians.”

  “Oh, please, you are no saint.”

  “No,” said Gabriel, “that I am not.”

  “Which brings us rather neatly to your ‘Road to Damascus’ moment, doesn’t it?” Abraham fished a silver cigarette case out of the inside pocket of his suit. Gabriel recognised it. He had given it to him as a present.

  “You cannot smoke here.” He said it automatically.

  Abraham smirked across at him. “Is that so, Father?” He laced the last word with bitterness. “So tell me, how did he do it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Please, do not play dumb, Daniel – you can’t pull it off. How did Bishop Ramirez turn my son against me?”

  Gabriel ran his fingers through his hair and leaned back in his seat. “Can you really only see it in those terms? He did nothing except offer me the chance to not be what I was. What you made me.”

  A shiver of recognition passed through Gabriel’s body as Abraham squinted at him. It was a look that meant he was displeased. “You ungrateful bastard. What kind of man turns his back on his family?”

  Gabriel looked away. “You have a very damaged view of what a family is.”

  Abraham looked at him as he pulled a cigarette out of the case and, producing a gold lighter from another pocket, lit it. Gabriel said nothing, deciding not to rise to the bait.

  “He died begging for his life, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Your precious Bishop Ramirez.”

  Gabriel sighed. “No, no, he didn’t.”

  “How would you know?”

  “You forget – I have seen him face death before.”

  The scent of Abraham’s smoke wafted across the table, releasing a torrent of sense memories in Gabriel’s mind. He rolled them himself with tobacco you could only get from three shops in France. Abraham raised two of his fingers to his lips and pinched away a stray leaf of tobacco. “He gave you up. Told me where you’d be.”

  Gabriel shook his head again. “No, no, he didn’t. My face appeared in the damn paper. That’s how you knew where to find me. You killed him because, well…”

  “Because,” continued Abraham, “he stole from me.”

  Gabriel sighed. “You really have to see it in those terms, don’t you? What is it in you that cannot accept I don’t want to be what you want me to be? I was out. I was gone. Why couldn’t you let me stay dead?”

  Gabriel flinche
d as Abraham slammed his fist down onto the table. “Because you don’t get to just betray me and walk away.”

  “Nobody gets to walk away though, do they?” Gabriel looked at the stained glass in the window, through which the last cold light of the day threw patterns on the wall, and he asked a question he didn’t truly want an answer to. “How many sons have you lost now?”

  “How many brothers have you betrayed, do you mean? How many of those sons do you think might still be alive if you had been there?”

  “Don’t put your sins on me, Abraham. I have enough of my own to carry.”

  Abraham took another drag on his cigarette and the two men sat in silence as a world of history bore down on them.

  Then, as if hearing a silent bell, Abraham stood and dropped his cigarette, crushing it beneath his leather shoe. He picked his cigarette case off the table, snapped it shut and placed it back into his pocket. “Well, it has been such fun catching up, but I must be going.”

  “Could you…?” Gabriel stopped, as he had no idea what he wanted to ask.

  “What?”

  Gabriel lowered his eyes to the floor. “I could just stay dead. That is in your power. You could leave me here. I… I think I am doing good work.”

  Abraham’s voice was soft when he spoke. “It is a matter of principle.”

  Gabriel nodded. He had known it was a futile request even as he was making it. “Very well. All I ask is that you don’t do it here.”

  “Do what?”

  Gabriel raised his eyes at the honest tone of surprise in Abraham’s voice.

  “Kill me.”

  Abraham laughed. “I’m not going to kill you Daniel. No, no, no. I’ve decided that I am going to take you back.”

  Gabriel furrowed his brow. “What do you…? I will never go back.”

  “Oh, we’ll see about that. This” – he waved a hand in the air – “is all an affectation. A phase. I know the real you. You are a warrior and a killer. I saw it in your eyes that first day, in that shitty little police station in Rio, and I still see it now. You can deny it all you want, but I know who you really are.”