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My fingers were still redolent of Abby's vagina as I removed the string Fr Sean had untidily secured around the wrapping paper. I carefully uncovered the painting, stood it up, and examined it. It was hideous, not least because the proportions were all wrong.
As I'd noted before, the gilded frame was old and solid, but on closer inspection there was an inner frame, secured by small wooden wedges, over which the canvas was stretched. The canvas was at most 20 years old and I saw why the proportions were out: it had originally been larger but had been cut down to fit. Curioser and curioser.
Tucked behind the canvas was a small packet of carrot seeds. Yes you did read that correctly: carrot seeds. On the outside of the packet someone had highlighted the phrase "show stoppers at your table!". I thought of taking a photograph, before I remembered that my phone was up at the Manor.
I took a closer look at the two frames themselves. The small wooden wedges securing the inner frame to the outer were clean white wood - brand new. One of them was at an odd angle and I tried to straighten it. I fumbled the movement: it pinged out of the frame and dropped to the floor, where it neatly fell into two pieces.
I stared down at it in shock. There was a rectangular inner recess, skilfully and purposefully made, in one half. Nestling in it was a tiny memory card. Carrots, and a memory card. What. The. Fuck.
"Careful, Jamie boy," I thought. What to do? The painting, along with its secret contents, had to go up to the Manor, that was clear. But equally, I needed to know what was on that card.
I found some nitrile gloves - I didn't want to leave any fingerprints. First I carefully removed the carrot seed packet and inspected it. It seemed completely genuine; unopened, and I could hear the little seeds rattling inside it. I replaced it carefully. Then I picked up the memory card.
I had an special PC in the study and I turned it on. It began slowly booting into Linux - slow, as it was booting from a CD. No hard drive. I pulled out the Ethernet cable as it finished booting and slotted in the memory card is found. I then picked out a spare usb stick to copy to, and plugged it in. I flashed up a disk cloning app and set it running: the memory card seemed almost empty - a single folder; half a dozen files - but this would copy everything on it, byte for byte. Leaving it running I went over to the church for evening mass.
I got back through the front door to the sound of the landline ringing. It was Fr Sean, in full inquisition mode. Why was my mobile turned off (he knew); where was I (which, since I was answering my landline, did not count as the most intelligent question he could have asked); where had I been (in church after deflowering Abby; I only mentioned the church); what had I been doing (ditto); and by the way the Bishop was about to tear me a brand new arsehole and I'd best brace myself. I did.
"One job! One job I gave you!" Bishop Patrick sounded more than a little angry. "Get that painting up to the Manor, James my boy, and do it right now! You do still have it?"
I apologised: I'd been unwell when I got home; perhaps it was the nuns' tuna sandwiches (I felt a twinge of guilt about this lie: they'd been excellent). I'd been in bed all afternoon (not untrue: id been enjoying the carnal delights of the said teen's tight virgin pussy). I was feeling better now. I'd just celebrated evening Mass and I was about to go up to the Manor with the painting. Straight away Bishop. Immediately Bishop. Yes Bishop."
I assume that he attempted to slam the phone down: I heard the handset clatter across the desk and a cry (which quite cheered me up) of "Fr Sean you useless fecking idiot ..."
The cloning program had completed. I closed the PC down, thus erasing any trace of my activities (no hard drive); grabbed the memory card, dropped the USB copy into my pocket, and went back to the painting. Eight minutes. Two more minutes to put the original card back in place, reassemble the wooden wedge, push it back in between the two frames and re-wrap the painting. I tried to mirror the original badly tied knots. Then I drove it up to the Manor.
I wasn't the only visitor. I parked next to a non-descript plain white Transit van with, in the passenger seat, a non-descript passenger, whose face I could not see. Mandy and Nusrah answered the door to me. They looked worried: Mandy, wearing a plain tee shirt through which her nipples were punching little thimbles, was twirling her brunette locks in her fingers. She looked as if she'd just come out of the shower. Nusrah, in plain flannelette pyjamas, had been crying, though she was trying to hide the fact.
Nusrah turned her big eyes on me in mute appeal as Rupert's voice rose from a room nearby. "So it will be sorted. Tonight! Yes - it's just arrived ... yes yes ... all of them." Then, more quietly, so that I could hardly hear him, "Tell him I'll do the transfer tonight!"
A voice I didn't recognise murmured a few words. After a brief silence I heard one of the inner doors closing, and footsteps elsewhere in the house. An outer door closed before I heard the unmistakable sound of the Transit being driven away fast.
I thought it prudent to knock on the door before I walked in with the painting under my arm. Rupert and George were waiting for me. Rupert looking agitated; George surprisingly neutral for a man I'd knocked out less than 24 hours before.
Rupert made a visible effort to control himself. "Oh James, is this the painting Bishop Patrick promised us? Good, good! He took scissors from a drawer and cut the string - Philistine! - and because I knew what to look for I saw his relief as he observed the securing wedges.
He looked up at me. "Really there was no rush." Yes, and the moon's made of green cheese.
"Now George has something to say," he added, "don't you George? And something for you?" George looked up, then reached into a pocket and pulled out my phone. "Battery's flat. And ... well, sorry Boss." To my surprise he looked and sounded as if he meant it. But, 'Boss'?!
"Anyway, we mustn't keep you," said Rupert, manoevering me to the door. "The girls will see you out. Off you go." I thanked him, and, as the girls were nowhere to be seen, let myself out. I got back in the car, plugged the phone in, and left for the presbytery.
I didn't get there. There had been a pleasant smell of freshly washed teenage girl in the car when I got back in, so I'd guessed there was at least one young woman hiding in the back. I wasn't sure I had the energy to fuck whoever it was, as I'd had such a good workout with Abby earlier, but it had seemed churlish to let on I knew she it they were there.
Ten minutes down the road, however, I heard a sneeze from the back of the car, followed by a whispered "Shush,Nussie - he'll hear!" Two teenage girls! This could be a challenge. I stopped the car. "Good evening girls. It can't be very comfortable back there on the floor. Wouldn't you like to sit up? Who's going to join me in the front? Mandy?"
More whispered conversation, then Nusrah - surpringly because she was so quiet - spoke up, "Please don't send us back. Not tonight. All hell's broken loose!"
"Please Father," added Mandy, "we're frightened!"
This was crazy. I'd fucked Beth and Abby, and I was being blackmailed to deflower and train these two delectable eighteen year olds as well - but on Rupert and Jeremy's terms. This felt like some private scheme of the girls, maybe even a bid to escape. Or it could be a trap set by the old queens, though that seemed unlikely.
As the girls untangled themselves from the floor of the car, and Mandy got into the front with me (I noticed she was wearing only pyjama bottoms with her tee shirt, but with a quilted jacket over her top for warmth), I reached for my phone, which had reluctantly come back to life, albeit with a mere 2% battery, to call the Manor.
But I didn't make the call. Not then at any rate. The phone rang just as I picked it up: St Mary's Catholic hospital, some seventy miles away. It was Sister Benedicta: I knew her slightly; elderly, intelligent, caring. "Fr James? We've a Mr Jean D'Estain here. He says you knew him a few years back?"
That rocked me back in my seat. "Yes," I said, "he's a former colleague. We're good friends." He'd been Sergeamt D'Estain when I knew him. "Um ... how is he?"
I was intrigued. Jean D'Estain was his real name, and other than me only a handful of fellow Foreign Legionnaires had known it. It might been written on a couple of French police files somewhere in a dusty basement, but it certainly wasn't written on his grave in the dusty African cemetery: that simply read "Un Soldat de France". I shivered with the memory: I had been no more than a few feet from him when the RPG-7 took him out.
So whoever was waiting for me in the hospital was not Jean D'Estain; not unless he had had an unlikely resurrection. Henri for a thousand pounds, and either my car was bugged or my phone was compromised. This was his ruse to get me to an emergency meet.
The Sister's voice dropped to a confidential whisper, "He won't last the night, Father. Will you not come and read the last rites with him?" I agreed immediately, started the car, and set off for the hospital.
"You're not taking us back are you?" asked Mandy.
"I should," I replied, for the benefit of the hidden microphones. "But you heard the Sister. I have to get to the hospital now. A dying man can't wait, and the Manor's back there." I gestured vaguely behind us. "So I'll have to take care of you -- or rather, Sister Benedicta will."
Mandy giggled and put her hand on my crotch, causing a dangerous swerve across the carriageway: "We'd rather you did, Father James." Good grief; what were they putting in the tea at the Manor? I shushed her. "Now be quiet. I'm not taking you back, but I do have to ring Rupert and Jeremy."
I rang: it was engaged. I rang back and got through. Jeremy."Get off the line, James. Wait: we've lost two of the girls: have you got them, the silly bitches? Get them back here right now." A whispered conversation in the background, then, "No, not now: in the morning. We've get enough ..." More whispered conversation, then, "Fuck! Fuck them both; just ..." He paused, and I could hear Rupert's urgent tones in the background, and Jeremy's reply "I'm doing it!"