Hard Evidence

He looked across as the lounge door flew open in an explosion of anarchic energy. Siobhan, dressed for her First Holy Communion, came bursting into the room like a human cannonball, the happiness and innocence shining from her eyes like a beacon.

'What do you think of the dress?'

Wendy followed her in. 'Siobhan. Be careful. Watch your hair.'

'You look a picture, darling. Daddy's sweetheart.' Siobhan clambered into his arms and he hugged her.

'Everything all right, Jack?'

Delaney found a smile and nodded at Wendy. She held her hand out to Siobhan. 'Come on then. We'd best be getting on. Can't be late for the big day, can we?'

'They'll make a convert of you yet, Wendy.'

Wendy shook her head. 'I may be a hypocrite, Jack. But not that big a one.'

Delaney stood up and took his daughter's other hand.

'Come on, darling. Let's get your membership card to the biggest club in the world.'

The Church of St Joseph was old. Dating back to the Norman Conquest, it had history in its very bones. High vaulted arches crossing above the nave. Stained glass filling every window. Dark wooden pews worn smooth over the years by countless people sitting and praying. Around the church were the fourteen pictures of the Stations of the Cross. Behind the altar a tall crucifix. The agonies of Christ captured in brutal realism. Blood trickling from the crown of thorns, a gash in His side where a Roman soldier had been ordered to put Him to early death so as not to spoil the Sabbath rituals. His hands and feet stained with dried blood as it pooled around the hard iron of the nails that had been hammered through His tender flesh and bone.

Delaney sat in one of the forward pews. He ran a finger under the collar of his shirt again and tried to get comfortable on the hard wooden bench. He stretched his legs out and crossed them. Wendy sat beside him and dug him in the ribs. He nodded apologetically and sat up straighter.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. He didn't say the words aloud but they echoed in his head as if he had shouted them to ring in the rafters of the ancient church.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

At the back of the church, in an upstairs gallery, Mrs Henderson, a kind-faced, mild-mannered lady of fifty-two, sat at the organ and positioned her feet on the pedals. She turned the sheet music, placed her hands on the keyboard and began to play. Sweet music filled the air. The music of celebration and worship. The music of ritual, thought Delaney, as the sound carried him back to his own childhood. To another church in another country and another time.

Jack could feel the blood pumping in his veins as he knelt in front of the altar, waiting for Father O'Connell to return. He shifted uncomfortably, the cold stone painful on his sore bare knees.

Jack Delaney was an altar boy, the youngest of a group of five or six boys from the village who came to church every Saturday morning to practise. The other boys had been sent home half an hour or so ago and Jack had been ordered to wait on his knees and think about his sins. Jack did think about his sins. He thought about them a lot. Especially the one thing he had done and could never take back, no matter how hard he prayed to go back in time and undo it. That was why he hardened his heart to what was going to come. Whatever it was, he deserved it.

Jack could hear movement in the vestry and clenched his hand into a fist to stop it from trembling. He had sinned and now he had to face the consequences.

Father O'Connell was a man capable of great anger. You only had to listen to his old-fashioned sermons on a Sunday morning to know that. He was very clear on what he despised, and what he thought of sin and sinners and what should become of them. And Jack was a sinner right enough. His father swore that he was born to sin as a duck was born to water. And his father should know.

He looked up as a shadow fell on the polished floor in front of him and he heard the soft swish of a black cassock. Father O'Connell was not particularly tall, but to a kneeling ten-year-old his five foot ten gave him Olympian proportions, while his rough white beard and sore red eyes lent him the look of an Old Testament prophet of doom. Jack shivered despite himself. He was usually afraid of no one, would front up to much bigger kids in the school playground if they messed with him, but Father O'Connell had a reputation. He liked to hurt boys. He kept a strap in his vestry and none of the parents in the area objected if he used it to keep their unruly children in line. And there were rumours.

'Jack. What are we to do with you?' The priest's booming voice echoed around the stone walls of the church, rich with disappointment.

'I didn't mean to do it, Father.'

'You didn't mean to drink the bottle of communion wine?'

'No, Father.'

'Was it the Devil that made you do it then?'

'I'm thinking it must be, Father. For sure as you're standing there I have no inkling of why I'd do such a thing.'

'No inkling?'

'None whatsoever. As God is my witness.'

'But God is your witness, isn't he, Jack?'

'Yes, Father.'

'So it was the Devil in you that had the inkling, is that what you are thinking?'

'Now you come to mention it, Father, that must be the right of the matter. For I have no inclination in myself whatsoever to be drinking wine. It tastes disgusting.'

'And yet you drank a whole bottle of it.'

'And was heartily sick.'

'Then maybe you have learned a valuable lesson, Jack.'

'I certainly have learned my lesson, Father,' he said hopefully.

'It was the Devil in you. You're sure of it now?'

'Certain sure, Father.'

'It is a bad business when you let the Devil into your body, boy.'

'He must have snuck up on me, Father. I'll be vigilant from now on. I promise it to you.'

'But if the Devil is in you, boy, we have to get him out, don't we?'

'Do we?'

'The Devil is like a cancer, boy. Like a sickness. We must purge him, son. It is our Christian duty.'

'Purge?'

Father O'Connell laid a heavy hand on Jack's head, and Jack flinched.

'Our Christian duty, son. Come with me to the vestry.'

And as Jack looked up into the middle-aged man's eyes, he saw not anger but some kind of feral hunger, and he trembled even more as he was led to the vestry door.

The hymn came to a close and Delaney wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, damp now with sweat. Wendy handed him a tissue, which he took gratefully as the twin doors to the church opened and a procession of young children, boys and girls, came in. The girls in white dresses, the boys wearing red ties. They walked slowly up the aisle in a line to the altar. Delaney smiled at Siobhan as she passed, but Siobhan kept her eyes ahead, looking at the cruciform figure of Christ hanging behind the altar. Wendy put a hand on Delaney's knee and he squeezed it, holding on just a little too tight.

Wendy smiled reassuringly at him. 'She looks a million dollars, Jack. A million dollars.'

Siobhan came to the altar and knelt at the little rail. The priest made the sign of the cross in front of her with his hand, and Siobhan shut her eyes and opened her mouth, putting out her tongue so he could place the communion wafer on it.

Kate looked around the empty CID office. She paused at Delaney's desk. It was neat and ordered. Files stacked tidily, pens in a pot, loose papers collected, everything aligned. The desk of a man who liked to keep control of things, Kate surmised. Not least his emotions. A photograph stood centrally on the desk. Silver-framed. A smiling woman holding a young baby. Delaney's wife and daughter, Kate guessed. She picked up the photograph; his wife was very beautiful. Kate couldn't begin to imagine what he must have gone through when she died.