“Smith, young fellow!  Just the person I was looking for.”

Wilkins, the head of theology, beamed at me across the common room.  I liked Wilkins, which always surprised people.  We were chalk and cheese, which made our interactions so fun.  I would tease him about his beliefs, he would tease me about my nerdiness, and we both took it in good humour.  Many an evening had rushed by, sped on by alcohol, as we thrust and parried witticisms with each other.  No-one kept score, and we laughed as heavily when we lost a battle as when we won.

“Wilkins, old man.  What a delight!”  He was two years my senior, a fact we both employed in our repartee.

“I find myself in an unusual, not to say unique, position.  I want to ask a favour.”

“You’re always asking me favours, Wilkins.  Nothing unique in that.  You’ve not been kicked out of your house again, have you?”

He affected offence.  “How dare you, sir!  On the odd occasion I have craved a bed from you, it was merely because I did not wish to disturb my dear wife after you deliberately, and with malice of forethought, forced me to become inebriated at two in the morning.”

“Yes, she’s a scary woman, right enough.”

“I would argue with you, but unfortunately, you are one this one occasion absolutely right.  No, it is the nature of the favour that is unique, and a tad embarrassing.”

I rubbed my hands together in enthusiastic anticipation.  “Pull up a pew, then.  I want you to be comfortable while you squirm in embarrassment.”

He sat down opposite me, leant back and stuffed his hands deep into his jacket pockets.

“Some of my young Turks are trying to push the barriers of theology beyond the boundaries of what stodgy old codgers like us have achieved.  The team is headed up by a young postgraduate name of McKenna, a shifty little oik who’s far too clever for his own good.  He is very keen on an holistic approach to the thesis with which they are going to rock the theological world.”

“He’s going to quote the Old Testament as well as the New?”

“Oh dear boy, that is so last year, as I believe they say now.  No, it goes far beyond that.  The restrictions established by organised religion are …” he screwed up his face and stared up at the ceiling, “… ‘an artificial straightjacket that acts as a boundary to separate us from God rather than a conduit to the Godhead,’ if I remember the mixed metaphor he employed in his final paper.  No, their approach is so radical as to border on blasphemy.  They want to use mathematics.”

I burst out laughing with surprise.  “Excuse me?  They want to include mathematics in a theology paper?”

“Exactly.  Can you believe it?  I’ve told him to look up the word ‘faith’ in a dictionary, but he is adamant.  The paper, apparently, wants to prove certain universal tenets of faith.  Prove, you understand, in a scientific sense. They want to … what’s the poetic phrase you chaps employ? … run the numbers?  They seem convinced that they can prove the existence of an afterlife.  Quite frankly, an afterlife that consists of mathematics sounds like a definition of hell to me.  Can you imagine spending an eternity with mathematicians, no offence intended?”

“Could be worse.  A heaven full of theologians, bickering about whether Earth exists.”  I gave a theatrical shudder.  “So they want to run the numbers by me and make sure their maths is okay?”

“If only.  I’m afraid it is a little more than that.  They are woefully lacking in mathematical skills, I am happy to say.  Would you have a bright postgraduate or research assistant that has time on his hands, not too busy playing dungeons and dragons or anything?  They need a mathematician to produce the numbers in the first place.  Preferably, and he was quite clear on this point, one who has no strong religious bias.  I told him your department was a den of atheists and pagans, so I shouldn’t think it would be too onerous to find a heathen.”

“If it was anyone else, Wilkins, old man, I would laugh in their face.  But as it’s you ….  Actually, I’m quite intrigued.  A mathematical proof of heaven.  If nothing else, it’ll probably be a first.  I look forward to seeing the results.  I’ll put the word out.”

And that was that.  June Waters, an undergraduate keen to make her name, volunteered, and I thought nothing more of it for six weeks.

One afternoon I was in my study, marking papers, the bane of a lecturer’s life.  I answered the phone, and Wilkins voice screamed down the line.

“Peter!  Oh my God, Peter!  You have to come, come here straight away.  Oh God, Oh Jesus, Oh Christ, what have they done?”

He never called me by my first name, unless we were drunk.  And he never, ever blasphemed.  It was eleven o’clock in the morning.  What could have happened?

“Wilkins.  Wilkins, old man.  Calm down.  What is it?”

“Room three, theology wing.  Jesus Christ, Peter.  They’ve killed themselves.  Every single one of them.  They’ve killed themselves, Peter.”

He was sobbing the words down the phone.

“Who’s killed themselves?”

“McKenna, that young girl you sent to them, the whole team.  Jesus, Peter, just get here.”

There was already a crowd of people around the door when I arrived.  I pushed my way through and hammered on the door.  Wilkins opened it, looking worse than I had ever seen him.  He pulled me through and locked the door shut again.

“The police, ambulance, they’re on their way.  Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ, look at the mess!”

I looked.  It was a mess, and it turned my stomach.  They sat around a table, six of them.  McKenna’s team, I assumed.  Everyone of them sat, head slumped forward, chests soaked in blood.  There was a kitchen knife on the table, and a sheet of paper.  I looked over the shoulder of poor, young June Waters and read the suicide note.  It was short.

‘Conclusion:  Heaven exists.  Hell does not.’

I turned back to Wilkins.

“They proved it,” he said, waving a bound manuscript.  “That’s what this means.  They proved heaven exists, and that there are no entry requirements.  We all go there.  It’s all in here, with the mathematics.  I don’t understand the maths, I’m no mathematician, but they say the maths proves it.  What are we going to do?”

Over his shoulder, a whiteboard ran the length of the wall.  It was covered in mathematical equations.  I recognised the script: June’s.

“No!” screamed Wilkins, leaping in front of the whiteboard.  “Are you mad?”  He attacked the board with a board rubber, erasing the symbols.  “We can’t let anyone read this.  If it’s so conclusive, if it did this, we can’t let other people read it.”

“Wilkins, we shouldn’t … it’s evidence,” I started, but I could see his point.  Mathematics that could be understood by theology students: if it got into the public domain, the Jonestown massacre would be peanuts in comparison.

He turned from the now-blank board and thrust the manuscript at me.  “Here, take this.  The police will be here any moment.  Take this, burn it, destroy it.  I’ll deal with the authorities.”

That was two days ago.  I should have taken the manuscript straight to the incinerator.  But I didn’t.  It lay in my desk drawer, screaming at me to be read, for two days.  I’ve read it now.  June was an undergraduate.  Her mathematics was bound to be flawed, especially in a subject like this.  Finally I ran the numbers.  There is no flaw.

I can’t cut my throat, not like them.  Besides, the mess it would leave for the cleaners.  I had a bottle of twenty-five-year-old single malt.  Had, past tense.  It washed the pills down a treat.  It shouldn’t be long now. 

See you later.