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up this job when I was told we were to have a woman. In the Church of England! I didn’t believe it at first.’
    ‘Women have been priests for quite a long time now. There are a good many of them and they’ve been around since you were young. Like the Alternative Service Book, come to that. You can’t have been much more than a child.’
    ‘I’m sixty-three. I know I don’t look it.’ The shaking was no longer confined to one hand. His whole body was trembling. ‘Age makes no difference. There are some things you never accept. You never get used to them. I’ve no objection to women doctors or lawyers or bankers, don’t mind any of that. Women priests are a blasphemy.’
    He was on his third cigarette since Wexford’s arrival. ‘She had no morals, had a boyfriend who used to wait outside in a car. She used bad language and in the daughter’s hearing. One of her sermons – if you could call them sermons – was about what a good idea it was to give unmarried mothers a flat to live in with their babies. And she contrasted it with the old ways when such a woman would have been ostracised. The congregation didn’t like that, I can tell you, especially the ones that are on the council’s housing list.’
    ‘Are you pleased the Reverend Ms Hussain is gone now and can’t come back, Mr Cuthbert?’
    ‘I’m not answering that,’ said Cuthbert. ‘I’ll tell you something, though. I went into the Vicarage one day to talk to her, I wanted to ask if the rumour I’d heard was true, that she was going to get a rock band playing at matins instead of the organist. D’you know what she said, what she did? “Don’t worry, Dennis,” she said. “It’ll be fine. They’re very good musicians and they worship Our Lord with every note.” I hadn’t told her she could address me by my Christian name and I didn’t much care for it. Then, just as I was leaving, she came up to me and
kissed
me.’
    He got up and blew storm clouds of smoke almost into Wexford’s face. Wexford retreated a little. ‘Did the rock band come?’
    ‘It would have,’ said Cuthbert. ‘She died.’ He inhaled on his cigarette, strangely seeming to Wexford not so much like a smoker as a heavy drinker who may need a strong draught of whatever his poison may be. ‘She’d already got rid of a lot of the old hymns. “O God, our help in ages past” was the latest to go. She brought in a hymn written by a schoolgirl. A schoolgirl, I ask you! “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” was going to be next. D’you know why? D’you know what she said? That everyone has known for hundreds of years that the earth goes round the sun, so the words are nonsense. What do you think of that?’
    Instead of replying Wexford commented on the one framed photograph in the bleak room. It was of a teenage boy in school uniform.
    ‘Your son?’ Wexford guessed.
    The boy didn’t look in the least like Cuthbert apart from being large and dark. Having controlled his shaking by what was perhaps a gargantuan effort, Cuthbert nodded, said strangely, ‘Are you acquainted with the parable of the Prodigal Son?’
    ‘I am, yes.’
    ‘I haven’t yet killed the fatted calf for him but I hope to one day.’
    And what was the point of that? Wexford wondered as he walked home.
    In describing Maxine to people who didn’t know her, describing that is her voice, her speech and her malapropisms, as he was doing now to Burden’s wife Jenny, he had noticed they always assumed she was a fat, blowsy lumbering woman with brassy, home-dyed blonde hair who wore low-cut tops and high-heeled boots. The truth was that Maxine was tall and slender, her hair its natural light brown and worn in a chignon, and her clothes invariably jeans that were well fitting but not tight with a black or blue sweater in the winter and in summer a plain T-shirt.
    ‘I never assumed that,’ Jenny said. ‘Her Jason was in primary school with Mark and I used to see her picking him up at the school