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  Oral Roberts has just told the world God will kill him if the congregation doesn't stump up eight million and Peter Popoff's just been outed on The Johnny Carson Show. We spend about a week on the breakaway-church circuit, trailing all these characters around the south-west, getting to know how it works: we meet rapture partisans, pretri-bulationists, preterists, post-wrathers and the midtribbers. We go to deliverance ministries and take part in prayer chains. Slowly we're narrowing it down to our target. And in July it happens. We meet Pastor Malachi Dove. Chief minister and founder of the Psychogenic Healing Ministries Foundation.

  It's in a convention centre in Albuquerque. Air-con because it's hot as hell outside. Finn and me, we're about as out of place as you can get: there's me in my beanie and striker's donkey jacket, Finn in his Big Kahuna T-shirt and a mincy little Italian-style zip-up bag that would get him a good twatting in Seaforth; here it contains a loaded tape recorder and mic. We sit in row T, thinking everyone's staring at us. Thinking everyone knows for sure why we're there.

  The first surprise is the stage. It's kind of empty and clinical. Feels like a hospital theatre, not a church. The helpers, all women, are a cross between angels and theatre technicians: eighth Dan judo pants and gleaming white plimsolls on bare feet. On stage a stretcher is wheeled up to a screen with a blue sky projected on it. Me and Finn sit there muttering between us, all ready to start snickering. Then Malachi Dove comes on stage and we get surprise number two.

  First off, he's not American, he's English. (From Croydon, we find out later, son of a paperclip salesman.) And he's dead normal, not dressed in some huckster's suit: he's wearing a corduroy jacket and he looks more like a young teacher at a public school, with his soft, boyish good looks and thatch of blond hair flopping down over his forehead. Rimless specs on a tip-tilted nose and you can see his tendency is to get fat, not mean. Years later, when Leo DiCaprio is famous, me and Finn turn to each other and go, 'Malachi Dove. Malachi Dove and Leo. Separated at birth.''

  Malachi Dove doesn't bound on stage. He comes on quietly, sort of shuffling, clearing his throat and tucking the specs in his jacket pocket, like he's going to deliver a theology lecture. He sits on a little stool and looks seriously and thoughtfully into the dark auditorium while the place erupts: cheers, hoots, promises of undying love echoing off the walls. He waits till the noise dies down. Then he moves the microphone to his mouth, clumsily, banging it on his nose. He grins at the mistake. 'Uh – sorry,' he goes. 'Technology's not my strong point.'

  The audience erupts again, applauds like crazy.

  He holds up his hands modestly. 'Look ... let me explain who I am.' The congregation goes quiet. The assistants take their seats at the edge of the stage. Malachi Dove waits. Then he fixes the audience with his pale eyes. There's silence in the place now. 'Whatever you think,' he says, 'we are all religious. We may believe in different prophets. My prophet is Jesus. Yours may be ... I don't know, Muhammad perhaps? Or Krishna? Some of you may think you have no prophet at all, and that, too, is fine. We don't check your faith at the door.'

  A murmur of laughter goes round the hall. They know that twinkle in his eye, that ironic twitch of a smile.

  'But one thing is sure. We all believe in the same God. I know your God. And you know my God. Maybe by a different name, but you know him.' He breaks off and grins again, throwing a hand at the audience, like they just told him a risqué joke. 'OK, don't panic. I'm not going to quote the Bible at you.'

  More laughter. Finn nudges me. He's got the mic poking out of the little zip-up bag now, like the nose of an animal, pointed in the direction of the stage. We're waiting for the wackiness to start so we can get outraged. On stage Malachi holds up his empty hands. He makes a great pantomime of studying first one bare palm, then the other.

  'Nothing special about these hands. Is there? Just your average pair of hands. I don't pretend to have power in them. I can't send a lightning bolt from them. I know all about my hands because I, like you, have not been content to believe what the tent-show evangelists tell me. I have made it my business to study the subject. Did you know, for example, that a soldier in the victorious army will survive wounds that can kill a soldier in the defeated army? Did you know that? Do you understand the dance of chemicals in your body? Your body ...'

  He points a finger into the audience. He's smiling, and maybe he's already got to me on some level, because I ignore this sudden image I get in my head that he's not a human but a husky dog, staring into my eyes from the stage.

  'Your body can heal itself. It has the knowledge. It only needs the right chemicals. Since the day I left my parents' home I have never crossed the threshold of a medical professional. And I never will!' He looks at his hands again, one at a time, like they're a mystery to him. 'My faith allows me to channel my endorphins. And with a faith this strong I can channel it to you, too.'

  'What crap,'' Finn mutters.

  'What bukkakes,' I say. We both shake our heads. But we're subdued, and we're not meeting each other's eyes. We've both got a glimpse of what Finn's ma saw in Pastor Malachi Dove. Straight off when the lights come on, a healing line forms in the aisle going to the stage. The disabled are wheeled out and helped on to the stage by relatives. One of Malachi's helpers takes them by the arm: Asunción (we find out her name from the crowd), a total vision of horniness with her hair in a long squaw plait snaking down the back of her white judo jacket, keeps production-lining these invalids up on to the stage, keeping a hand on their arms, holding them back until Malachi is ready. Then she nudges them forward, half lifting them, half talking them up on to the stretcher where they lie on their backs staring up at Malachi, who stands above them, back to the audience, both hands on the stretcher, resting his weight there, his head bowed and eyes closed, like he's waiting for a migraine to go. He doesn't pray. He just waits. No hellfire. After a few moments he places his hand on the body part and closes his eyes again. Then he lifts his hands and whispers something to the patient, who gets up and leaves. Or is helped away by relatives.

  'Go on,' whispers Finn, nudging me. 'Go on. Get up there.'

  I get up and join the queue. I feel like a twat because I'm the tallest. All I can see in front and behind and to the side of me are Sunday hats, little blue and pink feathers quivering in the netting. After about half an hour waiting I'm up on the stage under the heat of the spotlights. Malachi glances at me, and for a moment, seeing my height and my strength, he hesitates. But if he thinks it's a trick he hides it.

  'What's your name?'

  'Joe.'

  'What part of you has brought you here tonight, Joe? What part of your body?'

  'Bowels,' I say, because that's how Finn's ma went and it's the first thing that comes into my head. 'It's a cancer. Sir.'

  I get on the stretcher, thinking about Finn sniggering in the audience. Malachi stands above me, head bent, eyes closed, sweat coming out from under his blond thatch. I register the pores in his cheeks. I see he's wearing face powder or foundation. Suddenly I'm totally interested in what he's going to say.

  After what seems like for ever, he raises his head and frowns at me. 'How did they know?' he goes, in a hushed voice. 'How could they tell? When it's so small, how could they tell?'

  I swallow. Suddenly I don't want to laugh any more. 'When what's so small?' I say. There's a lump in my throat. 'When what's so small?'

  'The tumour. It's less than a centimetre across. How did they even know it was there?'

  'What happened?' Finn says.

  I've come off stage. I'm covered with sweat and my head's throbbing. 'Two weeks,' I mutter. I sit there sweating, rubbing my stomach under my jeans waistband. 'Two weeks. Then I come back to a prayer meeting, and I'm going to pass the tumour.'

  'Pass the tumour? What the fuck does that mean, "pass the tumour"?' Then he stops. He's seen my face. 'Oakesy?' he goes, suddenly concerned. 'Oakesy, what is it?'

  'I dunno,' I mutter, getting unsteadily to my feet. 'I dunno. But I want to get out of here. I
think I want to speak to a doctor.'

  The next ten days are a blur. I go from health professional to health professional. Finn trails along behind me, bemused and worried. I eat up half my aunt's inheritance trying to get a primary-care practitioner to refer me for a cancer test on the grounds a faith-healer has told me I'm dying. I end up stumping up for a faecal occult blood test in the Presbyterian hospital. The doctor, I remember, is called Leoni. It's in grey pastel letters on her badge. I remember staring at her name while she reads me the results, my heart banging in my ribcage.

  Negative. No tumour. No cancer. Did I really believe what an evangelical preacher told me? She's got pity in her voice.

  Well, that does it for me. If I hated him for what he did to Finn's ma, now I've got big fucking rocks in my head for Pastor Malachi Dove. By the time we go back to the Psychogenic Healing Ministries prayer meeting I want to do one thing: kill him.

  This time we're in Santa Fe. The stage looks the same. Asunción's in an embroidered baptism shift, and when she spots me in the queue again – almost shaking, I'm so fucking pissed off – she takes my hand and leads me back through the crowd. 'Where are we going?' I can see the exit door approaching. 'What's happening?'

  She doesn't answer. She just leads me, with this totally surreal calm, through the back door of the chapel and left through a door into the toilet block.

  'Move your bowels, please,' she goes, pointing to one of the toilets.

  'What?'

  'Move your bowels to complete the treatment.'

  I stand there stunned, looking from the bog seat to her then back again. 'I can't just—'

  'I think you'll find it easier than you expect.'

  I stare at her for a long time. I'd like to slap someone right now, but even at eighteen I'm clear enough to see a story when it comes my way. My hands hover on my belt. 'What about you? Where are you going to be?'

  'I've seen it several times before.'

  'You're going to watch? You have to be—' I break off. She's looking at me with one of those faces that doesn't need any words – eyebrows slightly raised, chin tilted down, arms crossed. An SS guard, may as well be. Her mouth is closed in a firm line: Argue all you want, it says. I'm not budging. I sigh. 'OK, OK. Just stand back a bit, for Christ's sake.' I unbutton my trousers, pull down my shorts and sit on the toilet, elbows on my bare knees, hands dangling, looking up at her. 'Well,' I say, after a while. 'I told you, nothing's going to happen—'

  Before I know it, Asunción's conjured a wad of toilet paper out of thin air and is thrusting it down under my arse, forcing it up against me. There's a moment of uncomfortable slithering as I struggle, 'What the fuck do you think you're – get your hand out of—' and an unfamiliar wet, cold sensation around my arsehole. Then she steps away, pushing her hair triumphantly out of her eyes, the tissue bunched in her fingers.

  'You fucking lunatic!' I go. 'What was that about?'

  'The tumour,' she says, holding the paper under my nose, making me recoil at the fucking awful smell. A wad of something black and slimy sits in the petal-white tissue, something that smells of putrefaction and death. 'You passed it.'

  'Here,' I say, making a grab for it. But Asunción is too quick. She whips it out of reach and spins on her heel, throws open the cubicle door and stalks out. 'Hey – stop.' I follow, hopping, skipping and almost tripping over my unbuttoned trousers, trying to do up my belt and flies at the same time as push open the doors she's slamming her way through. In the hall as I catch up with her she's making a triumphant entrance, hand held high, titanic smile like a boxing-match ring girl, me stumbling after her as she marches up the aisle. Up ahead the pastor's staging a shocked pause in the proceedings, his eyes widening dramatically at the procession approaching him. 'Asunción,' he calls. 'Why the interruption?'

  She mounts the stage. Dove uses his hand dramatically to cover his lapel mic and leans over so she can whisper in his ear – his eyebrows lifting almost to his blond hairline as he pretends to be amazed, delighted by what she's saying. He lifts his eyes to mine with a smile and he's half got his hand out ready to pull me victoriously on to the stage when he sees the expression in my eyes. His face falls.

  'What're you fuckers up to?' I mount the steps two at a time. Under my feet the stage shakes a little. 'Give me that fucking thing.'

  'Joe?' he says. 'What's the problem? What's the—'

  'Give me that.' I make a grab for the tissue. 'Show me what you wankers are doing.' Asunción gasps and tries to wrench her hand away. A feedback scream shoots through the microphones, but I hold on tight to her wrist. The congregation jump to their feet, faces frozen and shocked. I dig my fingernails hard into Asunción's skin – don't stop just because she's a woman – and get her to release the tissue.

  'Joe!' Malachi rips his microphone off his lapel. 'Joe!' He puts a hand on my arm, so close I can smell his face powder. He tries to turn us away so our backs are to the audience and he can talk confidentially. He's sweating now. Looking at what's in my fist and sweating. 'Leave the stage now, Joe,' he goes, licking his lips and putting his fingers out, itching to grab the tissue off me. 'Give me the tumour and leave the stage. Whatever your problem I'll speak to you off stage. Just give me the—'

  He makes a move for my hand but I shake him off. 'Listen, you little shit,' I hiss. I turn and put my face close to his. 'I'd like to kill you. If I could get away with it, I'd kill you. Remember that.'

  And that's it. I'm off, striding out of the hall with my prize, joined by Finn in the aisle. Outraged little black women hit us with their navy blue handbags as we go.

  The tumour turns out to be a putrefying chicken liver. 'Probably been left to rot for a coupla days,' says the Environment Department in Santa Fe. 'Where the hell did you boys get this little beauty?' It's such a great story I'm over the fucking moon. We've got him. Pastor Dove is ours.

  But funny how life goes, isn't it? because Finn, the one who started the Albuquerque crusade, the one who was going to be a journalist, suddenly goes cold on it. He loses his heart to some girl he's met in a tequila bar, follows her home to Sausalito, California, and spends the next couple of years as a surfer dude. He gets himself sun damage and a phoney West Coast accent. When he comes back to the UK he publishes a surf mag for a while and ends up a literary agent in London. Turns out I'm the only one with a hard-on for getting Pastor Malachi Dove knobbed.

  I take up my university place in London, and start casting around for a mag to take the chicken-liver article. But before I can place it, a rumble comes out of the New Mexico desert. The Psychogenic Healing Ministry is in crisis. The IRS are reviewing its tax-exemption status; Malachi Dove is admitted to hospital, suffering from manic depression. And then the proverbial shit hits the fan. The dominoes really start to fall: he's under suspicion of torching the house of a state trooper who's given him a speeding ticket; some of his female disciples go to the press – he banned them, they say, from bringing sanitary towels into ministry headquarters. He says feminine hygiene products are medical intervention; they say he does it to humiliate them, that he's a misogynist.

  'I asked myself difficult questions when I was at my lowest,' Dove tells a journalist on the Albuquerque Tribune, when he gets out of hospital. 'I asked the Lord if He would, in His grace, take me to be by His side. The answer was no, but what was revealed to me was that I will control my death. My death will be significant to the human race.'

  'We're talking about suicide,' goes the journalist. 'The Bible says it's a sin.'

  'No. It says, "Thou shalt not kill." The translation is faulty. The Hebrew says, "Thou shalt not murder."'

  'I didn't know that.'

  'Well, now you do. Every Sunday I will pray. I will ask if my time is here.'

  'And when the time comes, how will you do it? Hanging?'

  'Not hanging, and not jumping. As a Christian those methods have connotations of guilt for me. Relating to the death of Judas Iscariot.'

  'Pills?'

  'I don't take m
edication of any sort.'

  Probably at this point he's sussed that whatever method of suicide he comes up with, it's going to put his manifesto under the glass, because after that he changes the subject. Ends the interview. There's a photo of him attached to the article and he looks fucking appalling. He's piled on weight and it's gone round his shoulders, neck and chest. His thatch of hair is yellow against his skin, which is red from either blood pressure or the New Mexico sun, and the only thing I can think when I see the photo is: Christ – looks like someone's peeled the bastard's face.

  In London I work all the depression-suicide stuff into the article and sell it, at last, to Fortean Times. Maybe I have a premonition, who knows? because I publish under a pseudonym: Joe Finn. Two weeks after it comes out the Fortean Times gets a solicitor's letter. We're all in the shit. Pastor Malachi Dove is going to sue us all: the Fortean Times and, most of all, the heretic who dares to call himself a journalist, Joe Finn.

  5

  I was meeting my contact from the Psychogenic Healing Ministries at the convenience store in Croabh Haven where he came weekly to collect supplies for the community. As I walked I tried to imagine what sort of ritual would have a community discarding pig offal into the sea. No wonder they've got you down as Satanists, I thought, turning my eyes to the island. What are you getting up to out there then, you bunch of nutsos? What're you messing with?

  Suddenly and brilliantly, the trees opened on to the vista of Croabh Haven. I stood for a moment, blinking in the brightness, thinking how different it all looked from last night, how difficult it was to square this picture-pretty marina, its glittering yachts and SUVs, with the swill of rotten meat next to the sewage pipe only half a mile up the shore.

  The heart of the marina was the convenience store on the green, surrounded by vehicles gleaming in the sun, a dairy truck and tourists to-ing and fro-ing, lazy in their flip-flops, clutching carrier-bags full of fresh tomatoes and lettuce and Hello! magazine, seabirds pecking at ice-lolly wrappers on the grass. A guy in a striped butcher's apron was stacking boxes at the rear of the shop and inside, in the cool, a dimpled, smiling girl in a yellow halterneck served holidaymakers at the cash desk, loading their purchases into bags.