‘Hello, can I help?’ she was asked from behind.

She turned, to see that a priest had emerged from a side chapel.

‘Father O’Donnell?’ she enquired.

‘That’s me, yes,’ he replied, unsmiling.

He was short but stocky, and quite elderly, somewhere in his late seventies, she’d have said, and leaning on a cane. He had chalk-white hair and a white beard and moustache, all of it neatly trimmed. His accent was local, but his voice rather gruff. He showed no consternation at her presence, but he wasn’t warm either. As she walked around the block of pews and up the north aisle towards him, his face remained blank, his eyes small and hard, like two blue pellets.

‘Good afternoon.’ Lucy showed her warrant card. ‘I’m DC Clayburn from Crowley CID. Please don’t be alarmed, Father. I’m not here to bring bad news or anything like that. It’s … well, it’s a strange one really.’

‘I see.’ Though, from the priest’s unchanging expression, it was difficult to tell whether he actually did or didn’t see.

‘It’s come to my attention that St Clement’s has recently been the beneficiary of some …’ She couldn’t help but pose the last part of her statement as a question ‘… some rather generous donations?’

Father O’Donnell didn’t so much as blink. ‘It happens from time to time.’

‘Do you keep a record of these donations?’ she asked.

‘Yes, we are legally obliged to. But when they’re anonymous that’s all we can really do.’

‘They were anonymous? The recent ones, I mean. Also … how much are we actually talking about?’

The priest held her gaze for several seconds without responding, and then, rather unexpectedly, his frosty carapace cracked. He sighed and lowered his head, touching a thumb to his brow as though it was aching.

‘I must admit,’ he said. ‘I’ve been increasingly worried that something like this might happen.’

‘Something like what, Father?’

‘Oh … I don’t know.’ He sagged wearily onto one of the pews, and gestured with a loose hand at the one in front, indicating that Lucy should sit too, which she did, rotating sideways to face him. ‘I really don’t know,’ he said again. ‘The first time it happened, it seemed like manna from Heaven.’ He arched an eyebrow at her. ‘You’ve seen the state of the place?’

‘It doesn’t look as if things are all they could be.’

‘Far from it, I’m afraid. If it isn’t too melodramatic a thing to say … in former years, the Catholic Church was a beacon of light in hard times, particularly in deprived neighbourhoods.’

‘But not so much now?’