Chapter 124 Beyond Control:>>9

• January 2001
• Father John Tobias should never have been a Priest, at least if you considered religion and ethics as desirable traits for a man of the cloth. In truth he had little of either but had decided early in life that some professions provided greater opportunity to pursue his ambitions than others did - and wearing a dog collar was the best of them all. He was smart enough to know that you had to work hard if you wanted to reap what you deserved, and so he went about the business of the church with due diligence, undertaking his duties with humility and professionalism and plucking the ripe fruit of vulnerable and lonely people. In the two years of being the local Priest he had already amassed a considerable nest egg from several elderly widows who valued his companionship, and was intimate with three younger women who valued what was under his cassock.
• He had been summoned to the regional hospital to administer last rites at the request of a woman there and he hurried along the corridor of the hospital to get the job done. He was meeting one of his more uninhibited parishioners later that afternoon and did not want to be late for what promised to be some illicit and energetic sex.