“Do you think that’s what they did to Simon?”
Lafferty didn’t know what to say. He could see the pain in Main’s eyes but he could think of nothing comforting to say apart from, “All this was a very long time ago and even if it was, it wouldn’t change the fact that your son’s soul is safe. These people couldn’t touch it.”
Main shook his head and said, “I still can’t believe this is happening. I mean, God! This isn’t the middle ages and we’re sitting here talking about witches and warlocks. It’s crazy! This was all centuries ago!”
“Jesus Christ lived nearly two thousand years ago yet his followers persist. I’m afraid we have to consider that the followers of darkness persist likewise,” Lafferty replied.
“What should I do, Ryan?”
Lafferty saw that that Main was looking hopelessly vulnerable but, at a loss, he shrugged his shoulders. “Frankly, I don’t know.”
Main broke into a smile which took Lafferty by surprise. “Good old Ryan,” he said. “No bullshit. I think that’s what I like best about you.”
Lafferty smiled back. “I’ve always thought of it as a curse. The truth can be such a hard taskmaster.”
“Well, I appreciate it,” said Main. “Neither of us knows what to do.”
“I can’t quite see why they’re trying to warn you off with powerful signs of witchcraft,” said Lafferty. “It doesn’t seem to make sense.”
“Maybe they’re trying to impress me,” said Main. “They’re demonstrating how powerful they are, earning my fear and respect? After all, my front door is undamaged, but they walked in.”
“But why?” asked Lafferty. “The matter is really out of your hands. You’ve told the papers all you know and the police are handling the inquiry, so why warn you off?”
Main thought for a moment. “Maybe they see me as the prime mover, the instigator of the investigation, the one who won’t let go.”
“Maybe,” said Lafferty but he didn’t sound convinced.
“I can’t think of any other reason.”
“Me neither,” said Lafferty. “Do you want to come back with me to St Xavier’s?”
Main smiled. “Sanctuary?”
“Something like that,” agreed Lafferty.
“No, but thanks all the same. I’m going to stay and take my chances. And when you think about it, I don’t have a lot left to lose. Do I?”
Lafferty smiled wryly and said, “I suppose from your point of view you haven’t.”
“What are we going to do about that?” asked Main, pointing to the hand. “I don’t see any point in calling in the police. Do you?”
“There’s the question of whose hand it is,” said Lafferty.
“But the chances are, from what you’ve said, that it was taken from a corpse.”
“Almost certainly,” said Lafferty thoughtfully. “Although they would have been hard pushed to come up with the hand of a convicted murderer. It was usual to cut the hands off a corpse while it was still hanging on the gibbet.”
“If we bring in the police and the papers get a hold of this they’re going to have a field day,” said Main.
Lafferty nodded. “I wonder if that’s what they intended?”
“But that doesn’t go too well with trying to warn me off.”
“No,” Lafferty agreed. “No it doesn’t. Have you got a plastic bag?”
“I suppose so,” said Main. “You’re going to take it away?”
“I’ll put it in the furnace at St Xavier’s,” said Lafferty.
Main went to the kitchen and emptied a plastic Tesco bag which still had groceries in it. He gave the empty bag to Lafferty who picked up the hand gingerly and dropped it into the bag. It hit the bottom with a slap and Main screwed up his face.
“I know,” said Lafferty. “You and me both.”
It was a little after one in the morning when Lafferty got back to St Xavier’s. The house was cold; the heating had gone off at ten. He lit the gas fire in his room and paused in front of it for a few moments to warm his hands. He didn’t look at the plastic bag sitting on the floor beside him, but was terribly aware of its presence. He decided that the sooner he got it over with the better. He would take it outside to the old hut that stood between the church and the house: it housed the central heating boiler — although calling it that bestowed an air of modernity on it which was entirely unjustified. The heating system was ancient, so old in fact that no heating firm in the city would take up the challenge of servicing it. The same applied when the system broke down. When repairs became absolutely essential they were carried out by an old, ex-marine engineer in the congregation who did what he could.
Feeling as if the night were alive with hidden eyes watching him, Lafferty left the house and took the plastic bag to the hut. He opened the door and was assailed by he twin smells of oil and mustiness. Closing the hut-door behind him, he turned on the light — a bare, forty watt bulb that hung from an old flex draped over a roof support strut. He felt his pulse rate quicken as he grew closer to the moment when he would have to touch the thing. He was unsure if some form of ‘service’ would be in order, so he hastily improvised a few words of prayer, asking that the owner of the hand be granted peace.
As he removed the hand from the bag, his reluctance to touch it made him fumble and it fell to the floor. The candle-wax covering split open and he saw there was a scar on the side of it. What was more, it was a scar he recognised! The last time he’d seen this hand its fingers had been clutching at the moon on the banks of the canal. It was John McKirrop’s!
Lafferty fought his revulsion to consider the significance of his discovery and found some horrific logic in it. If McKirrop had survived his injuries, the odds were that he would have been charged with the murder of the woman, Bella. This object at his feet was as near to the hand of a murderer as the constructors of the hand of glory could get. Such dedication to detail frightened Lafferty. It also forged another link between this nightmare and HTU.
He steeled himself to pick up McKirrop’s hand between his thumb and forefinger, opened the small iron door at the front of the furnace and threw it in before closing it again quickly and resting for a moment to recover his composure. God! he needed a drink. He closed up the hut and returned to the house where he poured himself a large brandy and took it into the bedroom; the gas fire had warmed it up a bit.
Lafferty sipped the brandy slowly while he thought over the events of the evening, one he feared that he would never forget. But why? The question nagged at him. Why go to such lengths to advertise the involvement of witchcraft in the Simon Main affair? If the police could find out nothing about the practice of the black arts in the area and no one else could either it was obvious that these people managed to conduct their affairs in complete secrecy. Yet suddenly, here they were, doing something totally out of character. They must have realised that the newspapers would have a field day if Main had called the police, just as they had when McKirrop had given them his tale of ritual disinterment. Why would they want that?
The truth dawned on Lafferty with a suddenness that took his breath away. What had, only a moment before, been so Byzantinely complicated and puzzling was now quite simple and terrifyingly obvious. He rubbed his cheek nervously as he sought to come to terms with an entirely new hypothesis. Taking a sip at his brandy, he noticed that his hand had developed a slight tremor. He had to think everything through logically, but his mind insisted on taking giant leaps. The new theory might be simple but, in its own way, it was also very frightening.
There was a notebook lying on the table beside the old hymn books. He had been using it earlier to make notes about what he should say at Mary O’Donnell’s funeral in the morning. He brought it over to the fire and sat down with it on his knee to make notes. McKirrop had been in the cemetery that night and had seen all that had gone on; there was no doubt about that. The four men, the ‘yobs’ as both McKirrop and Main had called them, had been there too; they had admitted it. It seemed likely that they had all been murdered to keep them from telling what they really saw that night. McKirrop had been hiding something despite apparently telling all to the newspapers, and the yobs insisted that Main had got it all wrong. So what had they really seen in the graveyard? Main had concluded that there must have been more people present that night, important, powerful people who wouldn’t want their identity revealed. People who were prepared to kill to keep their association with the black arts secret. This was still possible, and might even explain the Hand of Glory as a grim warning, but Lafferty preferred another explanation. The Hand of Glory had been a stunt designed by someone with a knowledge of the history of local witchcraft. The gruesome object had been used to keep himself and Main — and the police, for that matter — on the trail of devil worshippers. But there had not been other people in the cemetery that night. There had been no black mass or satanic ritual. Simon Main’s body was missing from its grave because... it had never been there in the first place!