The priest was torn between listening to the Collector, and trying to believe what his eyes were seeing.
‘Who? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Barbara Kelly. They put you here to keep watch over her. You befriended her, and as she began to have doubts she shared with you what she planned to do.’
Becky Phipps had told him as much. The Collector liked to think that he had encouraged her to make a full and frank confession.
‘No, you don’t understand—’
‘Oh, but I do,’ said the Collector. ‘I understand perfectly. And you did it for money: you didn’t even have an interesting motive. You just wanted a nicer car, better vacations, more cash in your wallet. What a dull way in which to damn yourself.’
The priest was barely listening. He was terrified by the figures that surrounded him, drifting along the paths of his garden, circling him but drawing no closer.
‘What are those . . . things?’
‘They were once men like you. Now they are hollow. Their souls are lost, as yours will soon be, but you will not join their ranks. The faithless priest has no flock.’
The priest raised his hands imploringly.
‘Please, let me explain. I’ve been a good man, a good shepherd. I can still make recompense for what I’ve done.’
The priest’s hands moved fast, but not fast enough. His nails reached for the the Collector’s eyes, raking at them, but the Collector pushed the priest away, and in the same movement flicked the blade at his throat. A small wound opened, and blood began to pour like wine from a tipped goblet. The priest fell to his knees before his judge, who reached down and removed the stole from the priest’s shoulders, then folded it into one of his own pockets. He lit a cigarette, and removed a metal canister from inside his coat.
‘You have been found wanting, priest,’ said the Collector. ‘Your soul is forfeit.’
He sprayed the lighter fluid over the head and upper body of the kneeling man, and took one long drag on his cigarette.
‘Time to burn,’ he said.
He flicked the cigarette at the priest, and turned his back as the man ignited.
IV
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed . . .
‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’,
Lord Byron (1788–1824)