Turbulent Priests (Dan Starkey 3)
Read Turbulent Priests (Dan Starkey 3) Online
Authors: Bateman
Copyright © 1999 Colin Bateman
The right of Bateman to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2012
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 0 7553 7879 1
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
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Table of Contents
Is she the new Messiah, or just a very naughty girl?
Journalist Dan Starkey arrives on Wrathlin Island – meteorogically wet but alcoholically dry – to investigate the residents’ belief that the Messiah is alive, female, and about to start school there. It’s not a commission that turns up every day. With wife Patricia and her baby Little Stevie in tow, he soon finds that Wrathlin is big on religious fervour but small on hospitality. With vigilantes on the prowl and illicit drinking the order of the day, Dan is in danger of falling into the most treacherous refuge of all – the arms of the Messiah’s mother.
Bateman was a journalist in Ireland before becoming a full-time writer. His first novel,
Divorcing Jack
won the Betty Trask Prize, and all his novels have been critically acclaimed. He wrote the screenplays for the feature films
Divorcing Jack
and
Wild About Harry
and the popular BBC TV series
Murphy’s Law
starring James Nesbitt. Bateman lives in Ireland with his family.
Praise for Bateman’s novels:
‘The funniest crime series around’
Daily Telegraph
‘As sharp as a pint of snakebite’
The Sunday Times
‘Sometimes brutal, often blackly humorous and always terrific’
Observer
‘A delightfully subversive take on crime fiction done with love and affection. Read it and weep tears of laughter’
Sunday Express
‘An extraordinary mix of plots and characters begging to be described as colourful, zany, absurd and surreal’
The Times
‘A joy from start to finish . . . witty, fast-paced and throbbing with menace’
Time Out
‘Twisty plots, outrageous deeds and outlandish characters, driven by a fantastic energy, imagination and sense of fun’
Irish Independent
‘Bateman has barged fearlessly into the previously unsuspected middle ground between Carl Hiaasen and Irvine Welsh and claimed it for his own’
GQ
‘Extremely funny, brilliantly dark, addictively readable’
Loaded
Cycle of Violence
Empire State
Maid of the Mist
Wild About Harry
Mohammed Maguire
Chapter and Verse
I Predict A Riot
Orpheus Rising
Mystery Man novels
Mystery Man
The Day of the Jack Russell
Dr Yes
Martin Murphy novels
Murphy’s Law
Murphy’s Revenge
Dan Starkey novels
Divorcing Jack
Of Wee Sweetie Mice and Men
Turbulent Priests
Shooting Sean
The Horse with My Name
Driving Big Davie
Belfast Confidential
Nine Inches
For children
Reservoir Pups
Bring Me the Head of Oliver Plunkett
The Seagulls Have Landed
Titanic 2020
Titanic 2020: Cannibal City
SOS: Icequake
SOS: Firestorm
SOS: Tusk
For Andrea and Matthew
It started with Cliff Richard, as things often do.
Moira had always been a fan. She was only in her early thirties, so she hardly remembered him as the teen idol rockin’ with The Shadows, but she used to watch the movies on a Saturday afternoon when she was a kid –
Summer Holiday
in particular – and then he was on
Top of the Pops
doing ‘Power to All Our Friends’ with his silly little dance and she loved it. All her friends were into trendier, younger groups, but Cliff was for her. He’d always been a Christian, and she became one too, and that set her at odds with the rest of the island – they were all resolutely Roman Catholic – Christians as well, she supposed, but the God Cliff worshipped seemed so different, warmer.
Then, one Christmas, Cliff came to play in Belfast, at the King’s Hall. The tickets had gone on sale nearly a year in
advance and she’d managed to get one. There was nobody else she wanted to take, it was between her and Cliff. The ticket sat on her mantelpiece all through those traumatic months when she found she was pregnant, tearing herself apart trying to decide what to do, refusing to name the father, fighting with her family, then nearly losing it, but hanging on in there, always with Cliff as that light at the end of the tunnel.
Come the day of the gig, Moira was eight months pregnant, and heavy with it. She took her ticket, packed a small holdall, and caught the ferry across from Wrathlin to Ballycastle, then took the bus to Coleraine and finally boarded the train to Belfast. She arrived in late afternoon, it was snowing, lovely and Christmassy, but cold too and not really the time for walking the streets looking for a hotel. She hadn’t booked one in advance – silly, in retrospect, as she tramped from lobby to lobby – but she’d made the trip on spec many times before, shopping, and never had a problem getting a bed for the night. But this time everywhere was booked up – between those die-hard fans travelling to see Cliff, the hordes of Christmas shoppers up from the South taking advantage of the weak pound, and the thousands attending the World Toy Convention at the Waterfront Hall, there wasn’t a bed to be had.
Still, she was sure it would all work out. She got herself a nice tea, then took a taxi to the King’s Hall. She would see Cliff. Everything would be okay. Her seat was in the second row.
He was
magnificent
. They all held lighters aloft and sang ‘Christmas time, mistletoe and wine . . .’ except Moira dropped hers and her shape didn’t allow her to bend quickly to retrieve it. Then somebody kicked it away. No matter. It was only a lighter. When he sang excerpts from his musical,
Heathcliff
, he reached down from the stage to shake hands and even though it hurt like hell, stretching her stomach across, she managed to grasp his hand and was astonished to feel the warmth of the man course through her.
She was so happy.
She skipped through the streets later, or skipped as much as an eight-months-pregnant woman can, back down into the centre and started looking for a hotel again. It was late, the trains were long stopped, but there were lots of new hotels in Belfast now, since the ceasefire, and there were always cancellations, she knew that.
But everywhere she went, no room. They did their best to help, they phoned other hotels, but everywhere, no room.
She was getting very tired then; the elation hadn’t gone, but it was well hidden. It was snowing harder. It was freezing. She needed to put her feet up, her ankles were up like baps. She came, eventually, to a restaurant-disco-hotel called
The Stables
. There was a Christmas party throbbing away, there were three big bouncers on the door who made cracks about her going for a boogie in her condition, but in reception the story was the same. No room.
Sorry, love, no room
.
At that point she broke down. She couldn’t go any further.
She rested her head on the counter and cried. The manager looked at the assistant manager. The manager said, ‘There, there.’ The three bouncers looked in and said, ‘Are you okay, love? Will we get you a taxi?’
‘To Wrathlin?’ she wailed.
They all looked at each other.
One of the bouncers whispered to the assistant manager. The assistant manager whispered to the manager. The manager shook his head. The bouncer said, ‘It’s
Christmas
.’ The manager shook his head. The bouncer said, ‘I think you should reconsider,’ with enough menace for the manager, who paid a lot in protection money every month, to reconsider.
After several moments, just long enough for it to look like it might actually be
his
decision, he put his hand on Moira’s shoulder and said, ‘If you’re really stuck, we do have a storeroom. It’s full of crap at the minute, but we could clear a bit of a space, haul a spare mattress down . . . if you’re stuck?’
Moira looked up, smiled through her tears, then kissed all of them.
An hour later, with the last of the stragglers going home from the disco, with the road outside under three inches of snow, Moira snuggled down on her crisp white mattress, her fluffy pillow, looked up at the great piles of cereal boxes and catering-size tins of baked beans which filled the storeroom, and thought about how lucky she was and how wonderful people were.