The meeting with the newspaper people that day had not gone well; he had failed to persuade them to run the story again in any form other than a brief report saying that the police had as yet failed to make an arrest. The journalist he’d spoken to had been polite and kind, but the affair was yesterday’s story as far as the paper was concerned. His daily call to the police had only attracted the now routine reply about enquiries continuing. The priest, Lafferty, had done his best but had failed to come up with anything, so where did that leave him? What was he to do?
Main got out of bed and padded through to the kitchen to switch the kettle on. The coldness of the kitchen floor on his bare feet was a welcome distraction to what was going on inside his head. He lingered there in the darkness — he had not switched on the light — gazing out of the window at the silhouetted roof tops, periodically testing the metal of the kettle with his fingertips until it became hot and the pain of doing so provided even more distraction. The kettle boiled and switched itself off: the spell was broken. Main took his coffee into the living room and turned on the television.
The film was in black and white. After a few minutes, he recognised it as being a Denis Wheatley story though he couldn’t remember the title, something to do with the devil, he thought. He clicked the channel changer. Although the screen changed to colour and noisy pop music, the black and white images from the film stayed in Main’s head. He remembered reading Wheatley’s books some years before and enjoying them at the time. There was something morbidly fascinating about the world of the occult, even to the disbeliever.
Perhaps that was what he should do next, take a personal interest in the occult, read up on it, find out about it? On the other hand, that’s what Lafferty was doing. He had even consulted a colleague about witchcraft and devil worship. But there again, the man was a priest and his knowledge would probably be academic. He might be the last person to actually know about its practice in the community.
But what sort of people would he be looking for? There was no immediate answer to that one, and no obvious line of approach. The best he could hope for was to find someone who might know these things. This thought took him into the world of the spiritualist. If the police didn’t know of any organised practice of the occult and the Catholic Church didn’t either, maybe he should concentrate on a more indirect approach and try to pick up some gossip or rumour on his own.
His experience with the woman and the ouija board hadn’t given him much to be confident about, but as long as he realised that he might be treading on the stamping ground of the charlatan he might be able to pick up a useful lead in the spiritualist community. It was worth considering.
Something made Main click the channel back to the Wheatley film. The villain was about to get his come-uppance. A demon summoned up from the pit of hell was chasing him along a railway track and there would be no escape. He shivered and realised that he had not turned the fire on in the room. It was icy cold.
Ryan Lafferty was deeply troubled, so much so that he rose in the middle of the night and went into the church to pray for guidance. An hour on his knees in the damp and cold had done little to help him physically, and he was very stiff but he felt a little better inside his head from having spoken his doubts and fears aloud. So far he had failed in his intention to help or bring comfort to John Main over the exhumation of his son’s body, and his efforts at helping the O’Donnell family had been similarly ineffectual. What was more, he had been unable to get what Mary O’Donnell had said to him about the Church out of his head. Try as he might, he could not dismiss her angry outburst as being completely groundless — and this worried him.
Could it be a test of faith, he wondered. Was God testing him? If he was, he was about to be found sadly lacking. What had started out as a concern about his efficacy as a priest had escalated into a full-blown consideration of whether or not he should be a priest at all!
Lafferty had gone through crises before, of course, and suspected he was not alone in that, but this time... Looking back, his own first crisis had been during his third year at the training seminary but it had proved to be youthful panic and he had come through it with the aid of some kind words from the head of the college who had seen it all before and knew just how to handle the situation. “No one ever said being a priest was easy, Ryan. It isn’t: it’s bloody hard and it’s meant to be.”
The second waver had been more serious. He had fallen in love with Jane. Jane Lowry had been widowed after only three years of marriage when her husband, an RAF pilot, had crashed into a remote hillside on a training exercise. She had sought solace from the Church and Lafferty had been the priest she had come to. She had newly moved out of her service home and had returned to the town where her parents lived. St Peter’s, their local church had been Lafferty’s first charge.
Despite the fact that he and Jane were practically the same age and he was painfully inexperienced at the job, Lafferty had been able to guide her through the anger and despair she felt at her loss. Looking back on it now, it had been more like a brother looking after his sister than a priest-parishioner relationship but it had worked for them and Jane had come to accept her loss and to keep her faith. Unfortunately for him the pity and compassion he felt for Jane turned into something deeper as time went on and he had seriously questioned his vocation. He suspected that Jane felt the same way but his love for her had remained undeclared and she, thankfully, had not made the first move. After a desperate struggle, he had gone to his bishop and confessed all.
For the second time in his fledgling career, Mother Church had lent a sympathetic ear, this time in the form of Bishop Patrick Morrison, who had noted Lafferty’s anguish and told him that he, too, had gone through a similar crisis at one time in his priesthood. “You may be a priest, Ryan, but you’re also a man. God knows that. He intended it that way.”
Morrison had persuaded Lafferty that his vocation would prevail, but it would be helped by a move to another town. As a consequence, he had come to St Xavier’s and Morrison had been right. The love he felt for Jane mellowed to affection and he had been pleased some time later to hear from an old parishioner, who still sent him Christmas cards, that she had remarried and now had two children named Carol and Ryan. Just why the parishioner should have chosen to relay this information, Lafferty had been unable to work out. Perhaps his face had betrayed more than he had imagined at the time.
Feeling that sleep would still be impossible, Lafferty returned to the church to pray. This time he prayed for Mary O’Donnell and also that John McKirrop might be allowed to recover, not least so he might shed some light on the disappearance of Simon Main’s body.
Seven
Sarah had fallen asleep in the doctors’ room; she was sitting at the table with her head on her folded arms in front of her where she had cleared away a little hollow among the paper. Just before half past three she was wakened by the night staff nurse who gently shook her right shoulder.
“Dr Lasseter?”
“Mmm?” said Sarah sleepily.
“I think Mr McKirrop is coming round.”
The name brought Sarah to full awareness. She got up, rubbed her arms and said, “Right, lead on.”
The nurse had already turned on the lamp above McKirrop’s head so he was caught in a stage spotlight in the otherwise green auditorium. Sarah saw him move his head before she reached the Alpha 4 bay. He seemed to be in some distress, as if in the throes of some bad dream.