Father Mahon looked up, trapped, and then, as by a miracle, was saved by the blare of a horn down in the village. “The bus,” he said, starting forward.

“Oh, to hell with the bus. I’ll run you home.”

“Not at all.” Father Mahon had a head start toward the door. “There’s no need.”

“I’ll run you...” Father O’Leary called, in something like desperation, but Father Mahon was safely in the hall and heading for the front door. “Good luck, Father,” he called as he got the door open. “I’ll be in touch.”

*

Looking back, as the bus pulled away, he saw that one of the upstairs windows was lit up and the blind drawn. The bedroom, was it? Conroy’s room! The blank, yellow space seemed to be waiting for some shape to fill it. Yes, it had that waiting look, and as he watched it grow small and dim, he thought, I didn’t know him, thank God. I knew nothing about him and never will. My job now is to dispose of this money. As soon as I have that done, I can forget all about him. He’s got no claim on me.

*

The money was disposed of, and Conroy proved quite easy to forget. Father Mahon was helped by the routine of seminary life, by his daily chores – seven-o’clock Mass for the nuns, his lectures which he knew by heart, his walk around the track, and his evening games of patience. Once, however, in the refectory, he heard a reading from the life of Saint Theresa of Ávila; it was the saint’s description of how she dreamed of hell in the shape of a muddy path leading to a cupboard in a wall. For a moment Conroy seemed somewhere there, just a brief, indistinct glimpse of him, with head lowered, as if he were searching for something.

Apart from that unpleasant moment, Father Mahon was not bothered by Conroy again.

Chapter 1

On one of the ember days of Lent in the year of his death, Father Conroy had a strange encounter – at least, looking back on it in the light of the weeks that followed, it seemed to gather a strange significance. He was walking at evening among his beasts. It was cold. He wore a bulky black Aran sweater that rolled up under his chin and a pair of old corduroy trousers tucked into his Wellington boots. A short pipe was stuck in his mouth; it was hardly ever lit, for it was always in need of either tobacco or the light of a match – not because he begrudged the cost of tobacco or matches (as some people said), but because he found in the lack of them an excuse for stopping people he wanted to talk with or indeed any people going the road. In his job, it was important to keep tabs on everyone.