“Everything all right?” asked Sister Roche.
“Yes thank you, Sister.”
Six
Lafferty took a chance on finding John Main at home and went round to his flat. He had decided that a personal meeting would be better than a telephone call, and he didn’t want to wait another day for Main to come back down to St Xavier’s. At first he thought Main was out, but after the second ring of the bell he heard sounds from inside. The door opened and a groggy looking John Main stood there. He was wearing a sweat shirt with ‘Merchiston School’ emblazoned on the front and a pair of denim jeans. His feet were bare and his hair unkempt. The heaviness of his eyelids said that he had been asleep.
“Father Lafferty? This is a surprise. .”
“I was passing. I thought I’d pop in and tell you how I was getting on?”
Lafferty thought the white lie justified in the cause of defusing the look of expectation that had quickly appeared in Main’s eyes.
“Come in,” said Main, stepping back and opening the door wider. “You’ll have to excuse the mess, I’m afraid.”
“If only I had a pound for every time I’ve heard that,” Lafferty replied lightly.. He walked into the living room then realised that Main had not been joking.
Main started to tidy things away or, rather, to concentrate the mess so that it was all in one place. Unwashed plates, cups, glasses and cutlery were collected and piled up on a coffee table and Lafferty was invited to sit down. He did so, regretting that he had come without any good news to report. The empty gin bottle in the hearth and the glass standing beside it with a dried-up piece of lemon in the bottom explained why Main was looking so dishevelled.
“Can I get you something?” asked Main. “Tea? Coffee?”
“Coffee would be nice but I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” said Lafferty.
“No trouble, I could use some.”
The comment made Lafferty’s eyes stray back to the bottle in the hearth. Main noticed.
He said, “I hope you are not about to give me a lecture on the evils of drink.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” replied Lafferty. “Drink can be an absolute blessing.”
The comment surprised Main: it had been made so matter-of-factly. He felt his liking for Lafferty, born at their first meeting, grow a little more and he went to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
Lafferty looked around the room, noting all the signs of an unhappy man living on his own. And then his gaze was caught by what he saw on the dining table. A circle of white cards, each bearing a letter of the alphabet, and an upturned glass sitting in the middle. He got up slowly and walked over to the table. He was still there when Main came back. “OUIJA?” he asked, turning to face Main.
Main seemed discomfited. He had obviously forgotten about it. “Yes,” he said, trying to recover his composure. “I thought I’d give it a try.”
“A try?” asked Lafferty gently.
Main’s composure started to show cracks. He supported himself by putting both hands on the back of a chair and looked down at the table. He was obviously having difficulty in getting the words out. “I wanted to... I needed to... I had to try getting in touch with Mary and Simon. I need to know what happened. I need to know that Simon is all right.”
Lafferty could read the pain in Main’s eyes. It brought a lump to his own throat. “You need more than one person for this business, I understand.”
Main nodded. “I met this woman in a pub who told me that she’d been in touch with her mother through a OUIJA board. I asked her if she would show me how it worked, and she did.”
“What happened?” asked Lafferty.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Oh, there was some nonsense about Simon ‘being at peace’ but I knew she was moving the glass.”
“It can be a dangerous game they tell me,” said Lafferty.
“When you’ve nothing to lose the stakes don’t matter,” said Main.
Lafferty noticed that there was an extra card lying in the centre of the table. He could read, SIMON MAIN, HTU, BETA 2. There were some reference numbers and a Greek letter in the bottom left-hand corner.
“It was the card from the end of Simon’s bed,” whispered Main. “I took it the day they decided to switch of the machine. I thought it might help to have something connected with Simon on the table.”
Lafferty nodded and then asked, “You said something about coffee?”
“I’ll get it.”
“Did you manage to get in touch with the wino?” asked Main a few minutes later as they sipped their coffee.
“That’s really why I came,” admitted Lafferty. He told Main about the previous evening. When he’d finished Main threw back his head and laughed bitterly. “There’s irony for you,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” said Lafferty.
“McKirrop, ending up in HTU with brain damage. That’s where Simon was before he died.”
“Oh, I see, I’m sorry.”
“Life’s rich pattern. What are the chances of McKirrop pulling through?”
“Not good, I’m afraid. His injuries are pretty serious. They don’t think he’ll make it.”
Main shook his head resignedly and said, “Well, it was a long shot anyway that he might be able to tell us anything more, wasn’t it?”
Lafferty nodded. “But it was all we had.”
The look of emptiness that appeared in Main’s eyes made him wish that he hadn’t added the last bit.
The two men drank their coffee in silence until Lafferty broke it by asking, “Have you thought about a return to work? You might start to feel better if you had more to occupy your mind.”
Main smiled but there was little humour in it. He said, “I know you mean well but I have to find out what these bastards did to my son. Going back to work isn’t going to help with that.”
“So, what are you going to do? Do you know?”
“I’m going to try the newspapers,” replied Main.
Lafferty looked puzzled.
“I’m going to try to persuade the newspapers to take up the story again so that our glorious police force will feel the pressure and start to get their bloody finger out.”
Lafferty opened his mouth to say something but Main interrupted. “And if you are about to say that they are doing their best, don’t bother! It isn’t good enough!”
“Fair enough,” said Lafferty.
He put down his empty cup and got up to leave adding, “If McKirrop should come round and I get a chance to speak to him I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, I’ll pay another visit to the library and see what I can come up with.”
Main relaxed a bit as he followed Lafferty to the door. He said, “Don’t think I’m not grateful. I am, I really am.” He held out his hand and Lafferty shook it.
“If you need me, you know where I am.”
When Lafferty got back to St Xavier’s, his cleaner, Mrs Grogan had made him lunch. This wasn’t part of her duties, but she had a strong mothering instinct and often added to her cleaning and shopping with the provision of an occasional cooked meal. Lafferty was grateful He disliked cooking and his diet suffered accordingly. The downside to this kindness was that Mrs Grogan, being a woman of strong opinions, insisted on giving him her views on world affairs while he ate. Today she chose to expound her views on the common market. She was not in favour.
After lunch, Lafferty checked his diary. He had remembered the two home visits he had to make, but had forgotten about the meeting with the engaged couple, Anne Partland and her young man. It was pencilled in for three thirty. He liked Anne; she was a bright girl who had never caused her parents a moment’s anxiety all through her teenage years and on through her course at teacher training college. One of the few, he thought. He had not met her fiancée but Anne and her parents wanted the marriage to take place in St Xavier’s, so he had suggested a meeting. The boy was a Catholic so there would be no need for the usual “mixed marriage” talk about the future upbringing of the children.