Lafferty shivered as he came up with a possible reason. The killer or killers had been biding their time; they had coolly been waiting until the murder of all four could be achieved at the same time and even conceivably be made to look like an accident! Lafferty found the audacity of this quite breath-taking, but it also suggested something else. If the killers had been prepared to wait, they must have felt safe in the interim. They must have been confident the men would not say anything of their own volition. But they must have been watching them all the same. And then, when Main found them and reported the matter to the police, they acted...
It all made some kind of hellish sense to Lafferty. The only thing he couldn’t see at the moment was any kind of connection between the four dead men and HTU.
A particularly vicious gust of wind hit the bedroom windows and rattled them in their frames. Lafferty shivered and went through to the kitchen to switch on the kettle.
John Main woke up with a splitting headache to add to the feeling of depression he had gone to bed with. He remembered calling up Lafferty but not too much of what had been said. Had he arranged to meet him, he wondered. He had a vague recollection of something having been said about talking later. Maybe the best thing would be to call him when he felt a little better.
The first step towards rehabilitation would be coffee, he decided but almost changed his mind when he sat up to get out of bed. His headache soared to new heights, paralysing him into immobility for a moment. Should he attempt to get up or just sink back down on the bed again?
Against his better judgement, Main continued with his slow rehabilitation and made it to the bathroom before having to rest for a moment with his hands on the sides of the wash-basin. He looked at himself in the mirror and then closed his eyes. What a mess, he concluded. What would Mary have said about him looking like this? It wasn’t hard to guess. He could almost hear her voice in his ear telling him to pull himself together. He sluiced cold water up into his face. It reminded him of the incident with the men in the pub. He still found it hard to believe they were all dead. Fate was seldom kind, but to be this cruel was just too much to bear.
Thinking about the fickleness of fate triggered off a hint of a memory of something Lafferty had said on the phone last night. Something about it not being fate? He vaguely recalled the priest hanging up afterwards. He couldn’t blame the man. The thought of having phoned him while being stoned out of his skull made Main cringe inwardly as he filled the basin with hot water to shave.
Even his skin felt sore as he pulled the razor around the contours of his face. If the men’s deaths hadn’t been down to fate or bad luck what was Lafferty suggesting? That it had not been an accident? That they had been murdered? Main paused with the razor an inch from his face. He found the idea both alarming and exciting. The theory was much more attractive than bad luck or a quirk of fate. Main finished shaving and turned on the shower. His head still hurt but the air of hopelessness had left him. If the four had been murdered it wasn’t the end of the affair at all. It was scarcely the beginning. It meant of course, that there were other people involved in the removal of his son’s body. The thing he had to work out now was how to get at them.
Main stepped into the shower and let the water cascade on to his upturned face while he thought it through. There was no obvious way he could reach these anonymous people but that had been the case with the four who had just died. He adjusted the shower regulator to make the water a bit hotter. Maybe he could start with a little publicity. That should unsettle them at least.
They, whoever they were, must be feeling pretty secure now that everyone who had been known to be in the cemetery that night was dead. Perhaps he might start people thinking and asking questions by letting the newspapers know that the four men who died in the car fire were the same four who dug up his son. The police already knew of course, but having the glare of publicity upon them wouldn’t do his case any harm at all. The suggestion of murder might get some positive action out of them.
Main towelled himself down lightly so as not to exacerbate the headache. It was only when he bent over to dry his toes that the pain soared again. He steadied himself on the side of the bath for a moment before returning to the bedroom to get dressed.
Lafferty was in the side chapel when he heard the phone ringing across in the house. The little chapel was his favourite place at St Xavier’s. It wasn’t really a chapel at all in the strict sense of the word, in that it wasn’t separate from the church — just a small alcove off the left hand aisle — but it was somewhere he felt comfortable. It had a small altar covered with a fading purple cloth edged in gold, six chairs with wooden backs and raffia seating and, above them, a single stained-glass window depicting scenes from the Crimea.
The chapel had been added to the church at the behest and expense of a wealthy local family at a time when wealthy families in the community held much more sway in church affairs than they did now. The family had all but died out in the area and only one elderly lady in the congregation, Miss Catherine Bell, represented the original benefactors for whom it had been named. The Bell Chapel had not, as was often supposed, something to do with the church bells.
The chapel had never proved popular with the congregation either as a place for silent worship or simply for contemplation but Lafferty used it a lot for both. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, he felt closer to God here. It afforded him perfect solitude. It wasn’t hard to see why the others didn’t like it. It faced north so it was cold and dark; sunlight never backlit its window. Even if it had, the Crimean scene on the glass was one of despair rather than hope, depicting wounded soldiers with bandaged headsleaning heavily on crutches fashioned from tree branches as they were led in single file from the battle field by a nurse with a large red cross on her apron.
Lafferty hurried the short distance to the house to answer the phone, suspecting that it would be John Main. It was.
“I’m ringing to apologise,” said Main.
“No need,” said Lafferty.
“I just felt so awful last night, I climbed into the bottle.”
“Really, no explanations are necessary,” said Lafferty.
“Thanks. Something you said last night started me thinking,” said Main, abruptly changing the subject.
“What was that?”
“Something about luck or fate having nothing to do with the deaths. What did you mean by that?”
Lafferty paused for a moment, wondering just how far he should go in voicing his suspicions. “I’m not sure myself,” he said.
Main seemed to understand his difficulty, “I know it’s hard to suggest anything without proof, but the coincidence factor in this case is just too high to accept without question.”
“I agree,” said Lafferty, relieved that Main had taken the initiative.
“The question is what do we do about it?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve decided to give matters a little nudge,” said Main.
“By doing what?”
“By telling the papers about the connection. What do you think?”
“Good idea,” said Lafferty after a moment’s thought. “That should get other people asking questions, not just us.”
“That’s the idea.”
“You’ll have to be careful,” said Lafferty, a bit hesitantly.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that... if the four deaths weren’t accidental we are dealing with some pretty nasty and powerful people. You might be putting yourself in the firing line, so to speak.”