like a mile of white water

Frazer Williamson. Like a Mile of White Water.

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LIKE A MILE OF WHITE WATER.

By

Frazer Williamson.

This time in Finn’s life was rough.

Rough like a mile of white water.

Maybe it could all have been different?

Start with Sean Logan.

The child who never made it.

Almost, but never.

In the beginning it was told to Finn like this:

****


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A spectre found Sean Logan three weeks after his mum and dad

had been killed in a car crash, and he had been skelped by his uncle

in the household where he had been taken to live.

His uncle was not really his uncle but his mother’s sister’s

husband, a man called Patrick Brady who worked as a labourer, and

who, as his aunt said at the time of the skelping, didn’t know his

own strength.

His aunt had hauled him, painfully, up the stairs to bed in a

pokey little attic which had been so hastily prepared for him that

most of the lumber had been piled around the walls, which didn’t

give him much room for his bed.

His personal belongings had been culled and it was a far cry

from the bungalow on the outskirts of the city and his own spacious

room from where he could look out of the window at the beautiful

garden filled with the roses that were his mother’s pride.

“Get you to sleep now,” his aunt said, “and for goodness sake,

tomorrow, don’t you anger him the way you did today.”

She left him to get into bed by the meagre light from the landing,

because she turned the attic light off as she left. He heard her all the


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way downstairs and when she reached the bottom the light went off

and he knew that if he put his own light on she’d shout at him from

the bottom of the stairs, for there was no door on his room.

He got into bed in the dark knowing that tomorrow he would

have to go to a new school where he knew no-one, because they had

taken him from his own school, saying they weren’t going to waste

that amount of money on fees.

It wasn’t fair. That’s what he’d told them after he’d overheard

them talking. It wasn’t fair, and by right it shouldn’t happen, just

as, by right, the bungalow they were thinking of selling belonged

now to him. It didn’t belong to them and they shouldn’t be talking

about finding a way to sell it and to keep the money for themselves.

He’d come into the room where they were sitting, and because

he’d always been listened to in his own home he’d spoken believing

that, like his own parents, his aunt and Mr. Brady would do what

was right once it was pointed out to them.

“So,” shouted Mr. Brady, knocking over a beer can, “you’ve been

eary-wigging outside the door, have you?” Sean found himself

grabbed, lifted, and put across the man’s knees. It was all so sudden


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and shocking that he was struck dumb, and it wasn’t until the first

blows of the skelping that he found his voice and yelled in pain.

“Not too hard now, Pat,” he heard his aunt say. “Not too hard.

You don’t know your own strength. Don’t be leaving marks on him.”

“Let me tell you, young fella,” said Mr. Brady. “Listeners never

hear good of themselves.”

Sean couldn’t sleep. He turned and turned his pillow until it was

all wet with sobbing his heart out and smothering the sound. The

physical pain wasn’t as bad now, but he was racked with

humiliation. He wished he was dead and with his mum and dad. At

the funeral the minister had said they were in heaven. He’d never

felt so alone as he did now. He knew his aunt and Mr. Brady did not

really want him. He did not belong anywhere any more. He felt a

chill as fear gnawed its way into his mind like a rat. He scringed his

eyes tighter.

“I’ve found you, a voice said. A gentle voice. A voice filled with

concern.

He opened his eyes and thought at first the light had been put

on, but it was a different kind of light. Not the dull, dirty glare of a


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low watt bulb without a shade, but instead, a light, clear and amber,

which showed everything in its most minute detail.

He turned on his side and there in the midst of the amber, was a

woman with the most beautiful face he had ever seen. She smiled at

him, her eyes filled with compassion. He did not feel fear any more,

even though his heart beat faster for he knew that this was

something supernatural.

“Were you looking for me?” he asked.

“I heard you crying and I looked for you,” she said.

“Are you an angel?” She had to be an angel, only an angel could look

like she did. His mother had once said that everyone had a guardian

angel. This must be his. “What’s your name?

“I am not an angel,” she said. She did not tell him her name.

“You’re not my angel?” Sean was disappointed. If it had been his

angel, he had wanted to ask her about his mum and dad and if they

had seen what had happened to him, and if they were sorry they

had died and left him alone with his bad aunt and Mr. Brady. “Do

you know my mum and dad?”

“No,” she said. “Do you want to tell me about them?”

“They died,” he said. His voice was flat and had an edge. “They left


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me alone, and everything I have those two’ve taken away.”

“Tell me what happened to you,” she said, sympathetically, and sat

on the edge of the bed and listened as Sean poured all his woes from

his heart. About how his and his dad’s computer had been sold, and

all their books to second hand book shops. His aunt had sold all his

mother’s clothes except the ones she kept for herself. She was

keeping his mother’s jewellery for a rainy day. About how they had

taken him away from his own school, and about his fears of having

to go to this new one.

“It’s a terrible place” he said. “They don’t do GCSE’s or A-Levels. I

wanted to go to University but now I’m going to have to leave school

when I’m sixteen and get some kind of trade job to pay them back

for keeping me until then.”

About how they were thinking of ways of selling his bungalow and

keeping the money for themselves, and about how Mr. Brady had

skelped him.

He shifted position, gingerly sitting up straight in bed. “You’re

supernatural, he said. “and if you’re supernatural then you have

powers. Don’t you?”

“I’m not natural,” she said.

“Then you’ll use your powers to help me?” His fists were clenched


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and shaking, his voice passionate because of visions of torture,

mutilation, and destruction.

Something in the way she looked at him made him plead. “Won’t

you?”

“It depends,” she said.

“On what?”

“On what you would like me to do.”

He found himself at a loss because it was as if she was telling

him she knew of the terrible things he wanted to happen to his aunt

and uncle and that she would not do them.

“You could but you won’t.” It was a statement.

“It would not be right,” she said.

He felt ashamed that he had even thought of their painful

obliteration. The anger which had flowed in his telling, ebbed as if

she had said “Peace, be still.” As he lay back on the pillow his

breathing slowed, became normal again. He unclenched his hands.

“What am I to do?”

“Sleep now,” she said. “Tomorrow look for me, and when you

find me, ask me to help you.”


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“But I ask you now?” he asked.

“I must be asked in the light of day, even though I can only come

to you in the dark of night. I am different in the day. So do not be

looking for me as you see me now for if you do you will not find me.

Remember this:

I live in many homes of stone

none upon the ground

Look upward for a gothic rone

That’s where I’ll be found.

She touched his eyes, and vanished as he slept.

The next day was a nightmare. He heard Mr. Brady get up early

and, after much coughing and spitting, go out to his work on some

building site. He then heard his aunt go into the bathroom, then

come out of it again to shout up at him, “Hey, Y’up?” then she went

into the bathroom again.

When she came out of it again, not much later, she shouted

again, “Y’up yet? If you’re not it’s time you were. Y’up?”

He knew she meant was he up. He threw aside the bedclothes

and called down, “Yes.”


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“What sort of an answer’s that? “Ye’re supposed to shout “ ‘’M

up’ like anybody sensible would do. What sort of an upbringing have

you had?”

He made his way down to the bathroom, which was a mess

when he got to it. His facecloth had black stains on it where it had

been used to wipe the floor, and there were splashes all round the

toilet. There was no shower, and the towels were soiled and cold. He

washed himself as best he could, and went back to his room to dress

in his white shirt, dark grey flannels and black blazer and the tie of

his former school.

He went downstairs. He was so nervous he was shivering.

“So there you are,” his aunt said, as he came into the kitchen. She

looked him up and down, then came over and, without warning,

ripped the top pocket from his blazer which had on it his school

badge.

“What…?” he began.

“You’ll be thanking me,” she interrupted. “If they see you with

that, you’ll get a thumpin’. Oh, and talking about thumpin’, mind


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you not to say anything about what Mr. Brady did to you, otherwise

it’ll be so much the worse for you next time. Do you get me?”

She waited until, after a moment or two, he nodded.

“Right then,” she went on, “you might as well take that tie off

you as well. Go on.”

He took the tie off, and was going to put it in his pocket.

“Throw it in the bin,” she said, “you’re better rid of it altogether.

Here, give it here.” She snatched it from him and threw it in the

trash bin. “You’re going to have to learn to look after yourself,” she

said. “You might as well start now, because I’ve got to go to work.

I’m not one of the idle rich like my sister and your da. Make yourself

something to eat, and get off to school. You know where it is for I

showed you the other day.”

“Money,” he said.

“Money? Believe me you don’t want to take money to that

school.” She picked up her handbag and a lunch she had made for

herself and went out in a flurry.


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The house reeked of stale beer and tobacco. The cooker hadn’t

been cleaned in ages, and the sink was full of cold scummy water

from sometime before and there was a plate, with the remnants of a

congealed egg spread over it, on the worktop.

Sean’s face expressed his utter disgust, and he left the house

without eating anything and made his way reluctantly to the school,

wondering where he should go and who he should report to. His

stomach churned. Then it came into his mind what the beautiful

woman had said to him.

I live in many homes of stone

none upon the ground.

Look upward for a gothic rone

That’s where I’ll be found.

The memory of her face and voice had a calming effect upon

him. The best thing to do would be to go and see the headmaster,

report in.

How could she live in many homes of stone? He was passing

many homes of stone. Houses. Were brick and concrete blocks

stone? Houses built entirely of stone were rarer these days. So she


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must live in old houses. But she was only one. How could she live in

many at the same time?

But none upon the ground. All houses were built upon the

ground, except tree-houses, or houses built upon stilts at the edge

of rivers, but they weren’t built of stone. No. She mustn’t live in a

house at all. “I have to find her,” he said aloud.

The footpath along which he was walking was becoming busier

with other children going to school. He felt cold and his hands were

clammy. The morning was misty and damp. Then, suddenly, he felt

much better. The sun was shining and he no longer felt ill and

nauseated. He felt warm and free. In fact he had never felt so alive in

his whole life. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

He was floating, and from where he was above the pavement, he

watched a lightly-built, red-haired boy carrying an Adidas bag turn

in through a pair of wrought-iron gates which led to a school. The

driveway was filled with children walking, running, talking,

shouting, yelling, and in the case of two in particular, fighting. The

fight was over quite quickly because one was older, bigger, and

heavier than the other, and obviously knew how to use his fists to

the best advantage. The younger boy, with a now bloody nose, took a


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coin from his pocket and handed it to the other who said, with

menace, “Tomorrow.” He turned away and saw the boy with the

Adidas bag, stopped and continued looking, then decided to

approach.

Hey, that’s me he’s coming towards, he thought, surprised at

recognizing himself. Come on, straighten yourself up, Sean.

The boy with the Adidas bag, looked as if he wanted to crawl into

a hole and hide himself. His face had lost all colour now, seeing the

big lad bear down on him with what he thought was evil intent.

Come on, Sean. You can handle this if you do as I say. Do you

hear me? “I hear you,” he heard the words of the red-haired boy who

hadn’t spoken at all. Right then, straighten up. That’s the first thing.

With an effort he saw Sean straighten up and square his shoulders.

Good, he told him, now, don’t take another step. Sean stood where he

was and the big lad, came to a halt in front of him, crowding him.

Sean quivered. Easy now, Sean, relax. Now, you’re a Mongoose and

he’s a snake. Look him straight in the eye and don’t blink. “I can’t do

it,” said Sean. Yes you can, he said, soothingly. Relax. He’s a snake

and you’re a Mongoose. Straight in the eye now. Straight in the eye.

He’ll do the blinking. A little friendly smile now. That’s right. You’re


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doing just fine. Sean’s body had relaxed, and he stood, unblinking

but easy and without threat, before the big lad, who thrust his chin

forward towards Sean’s face with a sudden movement.

Don’t draw back. What you do now is you tell him your name.

Pleasantly.

That was the way it came out of Sean’s mouth, “I’m Sean

Logan.” His eyes still held the other’s. The big lad blinked, once,

twice, and again. He shook his head as if to rid himself of some kind

of spell.

“What the…” he began.

Tell him you’re new here and you’d like him to show you the way

to the headmaster’s office. Take his arm and turn him round. He

watched Sean do that, and felt happy. He told Sean to ask what the

big lad’s name was. “Mick,” was the reply, and he chuckled because

he could see that the big lad did not understand what was

happening to him and why he was answering as meekly as he did.

Why he was walking along with this strange wee fellow and was

going to take him to the headmaster’s office. He could see something

missing in Mick, something Mick needed.

Sean said, “Michael. I’ll call you Michael. As a mark of respect.”


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“Uh?” said Mick. He made a great effort and pulled his arm away

and stopped walking. “Where the hell did you learn to speak like

that? Listen you….” He would have gone on but Sean said, “Believe

it, or believe it not, Michael, I am your guardian angel.” He walked

on, leaving Mick staring after him with his mouth hung open like a

pelican’s beak.

After a moment or two Mick ran after him, shouting, “I don’t

need no effing guardian angel.”

“Sure you do,” said Sean. “Come on, show me the way to the

headmaster.

“If you’re a effing angel, you should know where to find him your

self.”

“Come on, Sean said. “If you keep on talking like that and doing

what I saw you doing to that other poor lad you’re going to be

eternally damned to hell. I’m here to save you from damnation and

hell. I’ve been sent.” He could see Mick thinking: Sent? Who sent

him? This wee fella hasn’t all his marbles.

“All my marbles are there, Michael, and so are yours.” said

Sean. “The hobs of hell are very hot. Now listen to me carefully. He –


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raise your head and eyes to the sky, Sean – who sent me, does not

want you to do anything against your will, but if you take me to the

headmaster, I will know you are willing to allow me to be your friend

and to look after you.”

Sean waited, again looking Mick in the eyes, but with an expectant

expression on his face. It took Mick a while, then he said, almost to

himself, “He sent me an angel. Jesus Christ, he sent me an angel.

Me.”

“Yes,” said Sean. “He sent you an angel.”

“I’m that important?”

Smile Sean.

“Right then, I’ll take you to the headmaster.”

****

I must have remained silent for a long time, for my dinner

companion that evening, Helen Conrad, asked, “What have you just

thought of?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “Just checking to ensure that I’ve related

faithfully what Sean told me.”


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“You want me to comment at this point?”

“If you like.”

“I’m puzzled as to your ulterior motive in telling me. Maybe I

should hear more.”

“We’re both psychiatrists,” I said. “What do you think I thought

at first?”

“Having ruled out organic brain damage? Hebephrenic

Schizophrenia. A psychotic reaction to stress.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Everything I’ve told you so far can be

explained by Sean having a mental illness, brought on, as you say,

by stressful circumstances.”

“You wouldn’t be telling me about this case if you didn’t think

there was a paper in it,” she said.

“True,” I said, smiling ruefully at her knowing me so well.

“Then it must be more than commonplace.”

“It is,” I said.

“You think the boy is not psychotic?”


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“I don’t believe so,” I said, and began counting off on my fingers.

“He is too integrated. Articulate, with none of the woolly vagueness

common in schizophrenia. He is in touch with the same reality as we

ourselves. He has no ideation that he has been chosen for any

special mission on this earth. No delusions or ideas of reference..”

“And yet,” said Helen, “he has had auditory and visual

hallucinations, and an episode of dissociation. I would say that his

psychosis has been brought on sooner than later, through losing his

parents and the culture shock of having to live in a totally different

manner with his aunt and uncle who have standards, values, and a

lifestyle diametrically opposed to those of his parents. It is quite

possible that had his parents not died when they did, and he had

gone to university, there would have been a slower decline into

psychotic behaviour.”

“I thought so to,” I said. “The dissociation episode can be

explained if you accept the research regarding the left and right

brains. Due to the death of his parents and the culture shock his

left brain, the one which we all have developed to cope logically with

everyday life, and which relies on previous experience, ceased, on

occasions, to function, and the right brain, our intuitive brain,


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which sees rather than thinks, took control. In the majority of

people, this right brain is little used. Poets, artists, and composers

use it to a high degree, and the rest of us benefit vicariously.”

“That may, to some extent explain the auditory hallucinations,”

said Helen, “but I’m not sure it explains the beautiful woman in

amber.”

“It doesn’t,” I said, paused, then holding her gaze, took the bit

between my teeth and said. “I thought at first she was the outer

projection of an inner need of a highly imaginative boy, but I came to

change my mind. The woman in amber is real.” Helen looked at me

in disbelief. “I’ve seen her and I’ve spoken to her, and she has

spoken to me,” I went on. “You can imagine the clinical and

academic reaction if I was to write my paper on Sean Logan and say

I have seen, heard, and spoken to what they will regard as my

patient’s hallucination. I can wave goodbye to the Chair of Forensic

Psychiatry.”

Helen thought for a while, then said, “If the chair means so

much to you, then forget about writing a paper on Sean Logan. Write

a safe paper.”


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“I could do that,” I said, “but I don’t think I will. In the interests

of science, I need to convince my colleagues of the actuality of the

woman in amber.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“That’s where you come in,” I said. “I’m telling you all this

because I want you to meet her, to see her, to hear her, and to talk

with her.”

Helen slowly put her knife and fork down, side by side, on her

empty plate. She wiped her mouth delicately with the napkin, folded

it, placed it carefully on the table, then looked at me with a worried

expression.

“Scott,” she said. “No-one knows better than you that in our

profession pressure mounts, imperceptibly, until the lid blows off.

Please tell me, is taking me out to dinner, and telling me this

elaborate story about this boy, who may or may not exist, your way

of telling me that you have been experiencing psychotic symptoms?”

I smiled. “I have not flipped my lid,” I said. “Really. And before

you go on, I have not been taking drugs of any kind to get me

through the day or the night. I am not, for my personal mental


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health, asking for your professional help.” I could see her struggling

to believe. I went on, “Helen, all I am asking is that, in order to bring

psychiatric treatment and care into the present century, you, as

scientifically as you can, investigate with me, the woman in amber.

We can publish our findings jointly.”

“Even if,” she said, “I found all you have told me to be true, such

publication would mean that my credibility and career in Psychiatry

would be over.”

“I would then publish under my own name without mentioning

you at all. Your career would not be harmed.”

“But you would want, should it occur, a written declaration from

me, that I had seen, heard, and spoken with this… this…”

“Woman in amber,” I said. “I should want that of course, but if

you did not want me to use it, I wouldn’t.” Helen considered this for

a while. “Trust me,” I said. “At least let me tell you the rest of Sean’s

story.”

“All right,” she said. I knew I’d have my work cut out convincing

her that I had not had a psychotic episode, and that this was not the

onset of some form of dementia.


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We ordered dessert, and she said, “When did you first become aware

of Sean Logan.

As if he was a figment of my imagination.

***

“While you’re here would you have a look at someone for me,

Scott? It’s more your street than mine.”

I happened to be at the Accident and Emergency department,

assessing a patient who had attempted suicide when Sean was

brought in. I went with the consultant to one of the cubicles and I

saw Sean Logan for the first time.

A boy of fourteen, hunkered, balancing on his toes, his elbows

on his knees, a hand on each cheek, pulling his eyes and mouth into

a grotesque expression. A paramedic stood on each side of him.

I asked him his name and if he would stand up, but he made no

reply and seemed oblivious to all that was going on around him. I’d

seen something similar before and asked the paramedics to stand

him up, but when they tried, he retained the same posture as they

lifted him under each arm.


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The ambulance had brought him from home after a call from his

aunt and uncle who had found him in his room, dressed for school,

in that position, and didn’t know what to do because he would not

respond to their questions. He had remained in that position all the

time in the ambulance and had been carried to the cubicle still mute

unresisting. They could not understand how he was not

experiencing extreme discomfort.

I understood the boy to be in a state of catalepsy and stupor.

After the paramedics left we examined the boy in the presence of a

nurse and found bruising to his upper arms and thighs, buttocks,

and stomach. His limbs, as we straightened them out remained as

we had placed them in order to facilitate our examination. There was

no evidence of sexual abuse. When we had finished the boy resumed

his former, hunkered, position and grotesque expression.

The consultant surgeon and I interviewed the aunt and uncle in

the consultant’s office. Our questioning made Mr. and Mrs. Brady

uneasy, and the manner in which they enquired about the boy’s

health suggested some kind of guilt feelings. Mrs. Brady kept

shooting warning glances at her husband and answering for him as

though she expected him to give some game away.


24

Out of the goodness of their hearts they had taken the poor little

mite in because he had lost both his parents in a terrible car crash

and he had nobody else in the world. She went into much detail

about the size of the articulated lorry compared to the smallness of

the flattened Fiat.

I thought her pressure of speech was an attempted cover up. I

was not to be distracted and asked about the bruising.

“What bruising?” she demanded, defensively, “we know nothing

about that. We never raised a hand to him.” Then, a little more

reasonably, “He must have been beaten up at school. That’s a rough

place. They’d pick on him because he’s new and a stranger. That’s

why I didn’t give him any money. What he didn’t have, they couldn’t

take, now, could they?”

Yes, she thought he had been bullied and bruised at school,

either that on his way home. They couldn’t afford to keep him at his

own school because they weren’t made of money.

“Not made of money,” echoed Mr. Brady.

I got the name of the school and told them I’d like to transfer

Sean to my private clinic, and had to explain how it would be of no


25

cost to themselves, but they seemed doubtful. I explained that Sean

was in a critical condition and would need close observation and

care. I was determined to remove Sean to a place of safety, and in

the end they gave way to our arguments, although they were not

happy. They asked how long it would be before Sean could speak

again, and because of my suspicions, I said, “It may very well be

that Sean may never speak again,” and, as I thought, that seemed to

brighten their departure.

Once at my clinic, I thought I had bitten off more than I could

chew. Sean remained in that mute and frozen state, and no matter

how often we rearranged his limbs and tried to make him

comfortable in chair or bed, he returned to that hunkered down,

grimacing state, balancing on the balls of his feet.

I had never seen a patient stay so long in catatonic stupor

without changing to a state of uncontrolled motor activity and

excitement, and because of this I was loath to accept a diagnosis of

schizophrenia. I was also loath to inject him with anti-psychotic

drugs. I knew that non-psychotic people, injected with anti-

psychotic drugs, became psychotic, and experienced hallucinations,

ideas of reference, flatness of affect, and delusions, mainly of


26

persecution. If Sean was not psychotic, I did not want to take the

risk of making him so.

However, there was the problem of getting him to eat, and more

urgently to drink. I could actually see him becoming more and more

dehydrated. Although fully conscious, and with understanding of

what was being said to him, he ignored all proffered drinks and food,

including ice-cream.

“It’s as if he’s petrified,” one of my nurses said. “What could have

frightened him so?”

“I think, if we are to avoid having a dead boy on our hands,” said

my Registrar, “Haloperidol is called for. Works every time.”

We calculated that Sean could possibly have been without food

and fluid for at least thirty-six hours if not more, given the inexact

nature of our knowledge of when this reaction had occurred. I

ordered an IV infusion with 5% dextrose and special observation. My

registrar began to argue.

“Follow my instructions, Dr. Beattie.” I felt myself getting angry.

“Do nothing else until I get back.” This wasn’t the first time Beattie

had questioned my orders.


27

I drove to the school.

****

The headmaster was helpful, saying that, in his opinion, Logan

should never have been taken from his former school. No, as far as

he was aware Logan had not been in any fights, and had not been

beaten up. He had expected some trouble having put him into class

four but, in fact, it had surprised him that the bully of the class,

Michael Lonnigan, had appointed himself the boy’s protector. The

two had formed an alliance on the first day, and Lonnigan’s

behaviour had improved, noticeably. Although yesterday Logan had

misbehaved on a school outing and he had had to report the fact to

his aunt and uncle. When Sean did not turn up, today, for school,

Lonnigan seemed lost. He had even come to ask if the headmaster

would check to see if Logan was all right at home. He hadn’t, of

course. I asked if I could talk with Michael Lonnigan. The

headmaster had him brought and I was left alone with him.

Lonnigan was big and brawny and I took an instant dislike to

his fleshy features. Eventually he would have hands like Mr. Brady,

but for now they were beefy and soft. I did not let my dislike show.


28

“Michael, I’m Dr. Lawton,” I said, in the friendliest of tones. “I

want you to tell me about Sean Logan. I’m led to understand that

you were friends.”

“Aye,” he said, looking moronic. “He liked me.”

“Go on.”

He told me how they met, and how he had taken him to the

headmaster’s office.

“Tell me everything he said to you from the time you met him

until you left him at the headmaster’s office,” I said.

He didn’t seem to want to, but I bullied the bully. “An angel,” I

said. “He told you he was an angel?”

“And he’d been sent to look after me,” said Lonnigan.

“Don’t tell me you believed him.”

Of course he believed him. His face grew red with

embarrassment.

“Very well,” I said, enjoying his discomfort. “Go on.”


29

The next time he saw Sean Logan was when the headmaster

brought the boy to the classroom and introduced him to the teacher

and the boys. His angel was trembling.

“Where do you want to sit, Logan,” the teacher said when the

headmaster had gone.

“I waved at him and he came and sat beside me,” said Lonnigan.

The class were going next day to the Cathedral, and the teacher

was telling the boys what they were to observe when they went.

“Look out, in particular, for the sculptures. The beauty of the

angels, and the hideousness of the gargoyles.”

The teacher then asked Sean if he knew what a gargoyle was,

and he said yes, it was a stone waterspout to direct the rainwater

away from the building. Everybody laughed, but the teacher said

that he was right. A boy behind Sean thumped him on the back,

saying, “smart ass”, but Lonnigan turned round and told him to

quit, or he’d have him to deal with.


30

“And that goes for anybody else,” he said aloud to the whole

class. “You too,” he told the teacher. Apparently he was the only one

in the class the teacher didn’t cane.

“What was he like, next day, when he turned up for school?” I

asked.

“All right,” said the moron. “The first thing he did was go to the

library.”

No, he wasn’t limping. He wasn’t stiff. He didn’t say he’d been

attacked on the way home, or coming to school that morning. And

he wasn’t beaten up at school, Lonnigan had seen to that. And the

teacher hadn’t caned him. The only thing was, he hadn’t any money,

and Lonnigan had given him some, and had shared his lunch with

him, as they sat in the grounds of the Cathedral. Sean had kept

looking up at the walls, and saying some kind of rhyme. Told

Lonnigan it was a riddle. Of course Lonnigan couldn’t remember it.

“What’re you looking for?” Lonnigan asked.

“A gothic rone.”

“What’s a rone?”


31

“It’s Scottish for a drainpipe,” said Sean. “Do you know

something Michael, I think a gothic rone is a gargoyle. Look how

many there are all around the walls. There’s one big one right on the

top.

“I thought you’d be more interested in the angels.”

“Why?”

“Because you are one.”

“I wonder,” said Sean. “No, couldn’t be.”

“What?”

“The angels are good looking compared to the gargoyles.”

“Sean, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Gargoyles, he said.”

The class were taken up to the highest point, and the master

nearly had kittens when Sean climbed onto, and over the parapet

and scaled a giant gargoyle until he came to its grotesque face and

putting his arms around its neck began to whisper in its ear, paying

no heed to the master or the priest to come back from there. He was


32

smiling when he climbed back, but the priest grabbed him and gave

him a shaking.

That could account for the bruising on his arms. The rest of the

bruising, I thought, had probably been done by the uncle in

response to the headmaster’s report about his climbing out onto the

gargoyle.

****

I made my way back to the car and decided to go to the Bradys. I

sat in my car and got so angry that I had difficulty in remembering

their address. When I did, I drove, in such a passion of hate against

them, that I got lost twice and had to ask directions in a city I knew

like the back of my hand, but was hardly recognizing.

There was no doubt in my mind that they had beaten the poor

boy. Beaten him and bruised him.

When I pulled up outside their house, I had to sit and collect my

thoughts, for I was trembling with suppressed fury. “Vengeance is

mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. Return good for evil.” These

phrases ran through my mind, and then I felt calm again as if I had

just passed through a great storm.


33

Mr. Brady was at work. Mrs. Brady answered the door and did

not seem pleased to see me, and grudgingly allowed me entrance.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The headmaster brought Sean home yesterday,” I said.

“So what?”

“He told you what Sean did on the outing.”

“Aye, what about it?”

“You should have told me,” I said. “I need to know all the truth if

I am to help Sean.”

She didn’t say anything, and I could see her setting up defences.

I could feel ire rising in me again.

“What happened? Tell me the truth.”

“Don’t shout at me.”

“I’m not shouting. You should hear me when I’m shouting.” Then

I realized I was and said I was sorry. “I need to know what happened

after the headmaster brought Sean home and told you what

happened.”


34

“Nothing,” she said.

“Something must have happened,” I insisted.

“I sent him to his room,” she said.

“Was your husband here at that time?”

“No, he was at work.”

“So what happened when he came home from work?”

“Nothing.”

“You told him.”

“What do you think?” she said, sarcastically. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“And then he beat him. He went up to his room with those big,

hard, hands so his and beat him.”

“He never laid a hand on him,” she said. “What sort of a doctor

are you, anyway, coming in here and saying things like that. Go on,

get out. I don’t want you in my house any longer.”

I smiled. “So,” I said, “you realize you’ve just told me that your

husband beat him.”


35

“I told you no such thing. Get out. You’d better not be here when

Patrick comes home.”

“Why? Will he beat me up as well?”

“He’d make mince meat of the likes of you. Out.”

“You’ll be hearing more about this,” I said.

“So will you, my fine man.”

“You won’t get away with it,” I threatened.

“Neither will you. What right have you to come into my house

pretending you want to help little Sean? If you don’t get out I’ll say

you assaulted me.”

Her grin was pure evil and it frightened me to the core of my

being. To be falsely accused. I shuddered and staggered from the

house sick pursued by her voice shouting things after me which I’m

sure those passing heard. I kept my head down, got in my car, and

drove off as quickly as possible.

By the time I got back to my clinic, I knew the Bradys were an

evil couple who deserved prosecution. In order to make that

possible, I needed to hear the truth from Sean, and for that I needed


36

to bring him out of his stupor. I thought I could do that with using

Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious.

Beattie told me there was no change in his condition, and again

suggested haloperidol.

“Leave me,” I said to him. “You too nurse.”

“One of us should stay,” said Beattie.

“I have to speak with him alone,” I said.

“Use the video,” Beattie insisted. “One of us, or the video. Your

own rules.”

“The video will not be necessary,” I said. “Leave, if you please.”

They left, and I was alone with the little gargoyle. I made myself

comfortable in the room’s only armchair, and began to talk, not to

Sean, but to the collective unconscious, that which contains all the

spirit of past generations of emotions, and knowledge.

“Let me tell you what I know,” I began. “This boy, who so

tragically lost his parents, has been brutalized by his aunt and

uncle, and he is now imitating the inactions of a gargoyle. Gargoyles,

from their lofty pinnacles can overlook humanity with blind eyes and


37

without experiencing any of the suffering that comes from human

existence. Tell him he is safe here, that I will let no further harm

befall him, that he is in a place of safety, and that he can shed the

stone armour of the gargoyle. He can once again be a boy and

experience the happiness he had before his parents died.”

I paused, looking for some response, but there was none.

“Ask him,” I said. “If he will permit you to tell me exactly what

happened to him since he came to live with his aunt and uncle. I’m

sure that you, like me, do not wish him to live all his life as a

gargoyle. Convince him to tell me, and to live once again as a boy

who will grow into a man.”

I could do no more, but wait. It took a long while. The light grew

dim, and it became dark, and I was getting up to switch on the light

when two forms in amber light, emanated from Sean’s petrified form.

The smaller I recognized as Sean, the other was a young woman of

great beauty.

My rational mind told me that this was not possible, and I began

to fear for my sanity. This was something I did not want to be

happening to me, and my anxiety mounted and turned to fear and

sweat broke out on my forehead, and ran down into my eyes.


38

I struggled to my feet, and was stumbling out of the room not

daring to look back, when I heard. “Please don’t go. You have

nothing to fear. You want to know what happened. We are here to

tell you.”

I turned back and found her smile calming. She came, took me

by the hand – her touch was warm and solid – and led me back to

the chair where she seated me.

“I found Sean,” she said, “then he found me.”

“In many homes of stone

none upon the ground.

I looked for a gothic rone

That’s where she was found.” said Sean. “I asked for her help, she

gave it.”

In harmony they told me Sean’s story up to the time the teacher

took him to the headmaster, and gave an hysterical rendition of

what he had done.

When the teacher had gone, the headmaster slapped Sean

across the face, front, and then back-handed.


39

“I had to climb out to get to her,” Sean said. “I couldn’t

understand why he slapped me.”

He then drove Sean home, and waited until his uncle came from

work, refusing to tell his aunt anything until then. Mr. Brady wasn’t

pleased in having to wait for his dinner, and the way the headmaster

made them both look small didn’t improve his temper.

“I hope I shall not have to bring Master Sean Logan home like

this again,” he said before he departed.

“Don’t worry,” said Mr. Brady, through gritted teeth. “You won’t.”

He saw the headmaster to the door, and watched until he drove off,

then with a great exclamation of profanity, he slammed the door

causing the glass panes to rattle.

“Put my dinner on the table,” he said to his wife. “And give that

fella none. You hear me? None. And you,” he said to Sean, “I’m going

to give you a lacing you won’t forget in a long while. I’ll put such

stupid ideas out of your head. But not until I’ve had my dinner. Get

up to your room.”

Sean went, he couldn’t think what else to do. He went up to the

attic and waited… and waited…. and waited, until it was almost


40

unbearable, and he wished Mr. Brady would come up and he could

get it over with. Then at last when the hope that Mr. Brady had

changed his mind had taken root, he heard the man’s hob-nailed

footsteps on the stairs. His heart sank, and filled with terror.

“Please God, don’t let him hurt me,” he prayed. But Brady did,

just as I had envisioned, and more, for the bruises on his stomach

were made by Brady’s hob-nailed boots. After crying out piteously

for mercy, and receiving no pity and no mercy, he became the

gargoyle. He didn’t know when Brady left the attic.

“I found him,” said the gentle voice of the woman, “very deep

inside himself, and very wounded. I helped him out and gave him

the amber, and a light which heals, and when the night was

through, I took him to my house and we stayed there until he was

taken to the hospital, then I stayed within him. He wants to be like

this always and make his home in a house of stone.”

“His body will die. Do you want his body to die so young?” I

asked.

“No, you were right, even in sorrow and suffering, he should live

as a boy who will become a man.”


41

“I would rather be as I am now,” said Sean.

“Sean,” I said. “I have no doubt you heard Dr. Beattie. If you do

not eat and drink, I shall be forced to use drugs to bring you out of

your stupor and keep you alive. I really don’t want to do that.”

“Leave my body to die, I am happy here,” he said.

“If you decided to be you could be happy here also,” I said. “I can

help you have a better life away from your uncle and aunt. What do

you say?”

“I’d like to think about it,” he said.

“You said you wanted to go to University. To read what?”

“Medicine,” he said. “I wanted to become a doctor.”

“What kind of doctor?”

“A surgeon,” he replied.

“That’s what I wanted to become at first,” I said. “I too had an

unhappy childhood after my parents died. I was sent to an

orphanage. But someone gave me a chance to go to University. I


42

became a doctor, then a psychiatrist. I want you to have the same

chance.”

“I don’t want to be a psychiatrist,” he said.

“A doctor, first,” I said, gently, “then, physician, surgeon, or

psychiatrist. The choice will be yours.”

“I’d like to think about it,” he said, again.

I turned my attention to the woman, asking her who she was.

She replied with another riddle:

“I am the dust at the end of the road,

The place where each puts down his load.

The last friend or foe to take your hand,

A messenger sent from another land.”

“Have you a message for me?” I asked.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes,” I replied, “I know who you are.”

“Do you consider me friend or foe?”

“No enemy,” I said.


43

“I have no message for you at this time.”

“And what about the boy?”

“I have no message for him at this time, either.”

“He will live?”

“Like yourself. And then I will have a message for you both.

Ultimately, I come bearing a message for all humanity.”

“I do not understand why you sought the boy out, if you had not

the message for him.”

“I am not devoid of pity, and I have been endowed with

compassion, she said. “It is a most unfortunate thing that the

cruelty of humanity has been projected onto me, so that I am looked

upon with terror and abhorrence. Often I have to deliver the

message prematurely in the direst of circumstances and I hold my

hand out with tears in my eyes, for men, women, and children. That

is why I sought the boy when I heard his sobbing.” She smiled.

“While there is nothing in my job description which says I must

counsel, there is nothing which says I cannot counsel.”


44

“Is it because we fear you so much that we do not ask for your

counsel?” I asked.

“You are correct,” she said. “As you see, I am not to be feared.

Ah..” She looked towards the small amber light which was Sean. It

began to recede and to go back into his hunched up body. I wanted

to speak to him and began to form the words, but she said, “Wait,”

and then there was just the two of us, she and I. “Watch,” she said.

The hands of the gargoyle removed themselves from its face, and

the eyes and the nose and the mouth became normal again, and the

hunkered figure unfolded itself until it was a standing boy called

Sean Logan.

“I’m tired, Doctor Lawton. Can I speak to you in the morning. I

want to sleep now.”

“Of course you can, Sean,” I said. He lay down on the bed and

fell asleep.

I thought I should have used the video, or at least had a witness.

I had never felt as excited. This was something the human race

needed to know about. I turned to the young woman and said, “Do

you know what I’m thinking?”


45

“Yes,” she said.

“And do you agree that the human race needs to know what I

know about you?” She nodded. “If I write a paper on Sean and his

recovery, and about your part in that recovery, you know they won’t

believe me without corroboration.”

“You may bring one other,” she said, “and I will talk with both of

you. You know how to find me when you want me.”

****

After her shower Helen Conrad dressed slowly. She took her

time because, yet again, she wanted to go over everything in her

mind. This was her own Gethsemene where she wished this

particular cup would pass from her.

She was dressing to meet me. She had known me since we had

been in Medical School together. We had helped each other

throughout our careers, and I had been instrumental in her

becoming a Consultant Psychiatrist at a time when opposition to a

woman holding such a position was at its most powerful.

In fact, she owed me a great deal, and that was why she wished,


46

now, that someone else should have to deal with the problem of my

mental state.

We had almost married, but when I had asked her, she had said,

no, because she had reservations about what she called my almost

fanatical secretiveness about my own life, consciousness, and

awareness, which she felt would not auger well for a truly sharing

relationship. She remembered how I had espoused a mixture of

behaviourism and humanism to underpin my psychotherapeutic

techniques, thus avoiding psychoanalytical theory and the necessity

of being psychoanalyzed in order to practice as a psychoanalyst.

I wouldn’t talk about my childhood.

“Why not?” she had asked.

“It’s best left forgotten,” I said. “Anyway, I can’t remember now.”

“It’s there in you unconscious,” she said.

“Quote me no Freudian metaphors,” I said, quite sharply and

would not continue that line of conversation.

That was as far as she ever got with learning anything about my

childhood, although she knew about the orphanage. Something

must have happened there, she thought.


47

But maybe I was right. The key did not lie in the repressions of

childhood. I always said you had to go from where the patient was

now, with the problems of the present, and not those of the past.

She felt intuitively that, slowly, over the past five years, disastrous

organic changes had taken place in my brain. She shuddered at the

thought of plaques or prions, Alzheimers or Creutchfield-Jacob

Disease. She suspected that I was in the early stages of some form of

dementia.

The thought brought tears to her eyes, for though she had found

a loving and sharing relationship with her husband, James, she

nevertheless felt a love for myself who was godfather to her children.

What transpired tonight when we met might end my career, and be

the beginning of my long dying.

When she came downstairs James said, “All set to go?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she answered. “I’m going to have to

confront him at some stage.”

“You don’t think he’ll harm you?”

“No, I don’t think I’m in any danger from Scott.”


48

“But there’s no telling,” said James.

“I’ll handle it, gently,” she said.

“Of course you will,” James said. They kissed, and she left to

meet with me.

I lived alone in a bungalow high up in the hills overlooking the

city, and the bridges across the bay. It had been a day of constant

drizzle which, along with the mist, obscured the usually wonderful

view. As she drove the edge of darkness was creeping towards the

remains of this sunless day, and she switched on the car’s head-

lights. Her favourite radio station was playing Mahler, but the sweet

sadness of the music was too much, and she turned it off and drove

with only the sound of the engine. She turned into my driveway and

pulled up in front of my door, cut the engine, and sat there, her

hands clenched on the steering wheel, not wanting to get out.

She unclenched her hands, got out, and locked the car door

wondering how she would be able to convince me, a man of

considerable intellect and emotional strength to submit myself to the

battery of tests she wanted to carry out which would show whether

or not she was right in her hypothetical diagnosis. Of course it didn’t


49

have to be Type 2 Alzheimers. It could be Sub-Cortical Dementia,

where although there is slowing of cognition, difficulty with complex

intellectual tasks, and affective disturbance, there was little or no

impairment of language, calculation or learning. There was no clear

distinction between the two. Or again, more hopefully, my behaviour

might be due to a slow-growing cerebral tumour.

With only the sound of the gravel beneath her shoes, she moved

to the door and pressed the bell and listened with her ear close to

the pebbled glass of the door. There had been no lights on in the

house when she drove up, and none came on as she heard the

sound of shuffling feet coming along the polished oak floor. Helen

stepped back before the door opened and stood off the step.

I opened the door and Helen seemed shocked at my appearance

which, she perceived, had deteriorated since the last time we had

dined together, and I had told her about Sean Logan.

“Scott,” she said. “I hope I’m not late.”

“No, no,” I said, hurriedly. “Come in, She hasn’t arrived yet.”

Helen stepping into the darkening hall, felt she was crossing the

threshold of something more than a friend’s home.


50

“Can we have some light, please, Scott?” she said. “I can hardly

see.”

I shuffled ahead of her in a stooped manner, reminding her of

Boris Karloff in The Body Snatcher, and as I opened the door to the

sitting room, a last glimmer of light refracted through French Doors,

caught my face, as I turned it to her, making the resemblance all the

more striking. “No need,” I said. “She will bring the light with her

when she comes.” I ushered her into the room and told her to sit

down.

“Scott,” she said. “I really would like some light.”

“In due time,” I said.

“Until she comes,” Helen said. She had detected an edge to those

three words, one which could work up to an angry outburst.

“She’ll be here momentarily,” I said.

“It’s just that I have a problem, and I need to consult your

professional judgement. That is if you’re willing to talk about it

before she comes.” Helen seemed to be holding her breath. I had

never refused a plea to professional duty. She wondered if I would do


51

so now. My movement in the gloom showed an agitation which my

voice confirmed.

“Can’t we leave it to later?” I said. “She’ll be here any moment,

and I haven’t really told you who she is. You remember what I told

you last time… how… how.. What was the last thing I told you?”

“That she had told you she would meet you again with one other

person,” Helen said. “That was at the restaurant. Two days later,

you phoned and asked if I would come this evening. Do you

remember the reason for my meeting this woman in amber?”

“Of course I do,” said I, shortly.

“Could you just remind me of that, Scott,” Helen said. “For the

moment it seems to have escaped my memory.”

“For goodness sakes, woman, if you cannot remember from one

minute to the next anything I tell you, how in the name of all that’s

holy, can you expect to… to… to..”

“Scott,” Helen broke in, quickly, “I really do need your

professional help.”


52

I collected myself with a great effort, and then he sat down in the

chair opposite Helen, who now got up and switched on the lights,

and came back to where she had been sitting.

“Thank you, Scott,” she said, as if it had been he who had

turned on the lights. “That’s much better.” I made no objection to

the light being turned on, although I was at first dazzled by the

brightness.

Helen looked around the room. It wasn’t untidy, it was

disorderly. Photographs and ornaments were out of place, some

lying on cabinets, others on chairs. There was a thick layer of dust

over everything and threads and feathers from cushions could be

seen against the wood of the floor. The red dots she had noticed

when the lights were off, was the music centre which had been left

on.

“What if I make us something before we start?” she said. “Tea?

Coffee?” I didn’t answer “Coffee,” I think, she went on. “Come into

the kitchen with me.”

I got up, obediently, and followed her to the kitchen, making no

objection to her switching lights on as she went.


53

Throughout the bungalow there was a damp, musty coldness.

Helen had been warmer before coming in. There was a bad smell in

the kitchen of decomposing meat left on the worktop, and plates,

and pots, and pans lay around, burned in some cases, unwashed in

all.

“I thought Mrs. Braddley came in to keep the house tidy,” Helen

remarked, casually.

“Oh no,” I said with pursed lips, and serious emphasis. “I

discovered she was stealing me blind.”

“Surely not,” said Helen. “You used to say she was a paragon

among cleaning ladies.”

“That was before I found her out.”

Helen decided to let it go. She thought that pursuing that line of

enquiry might lead to paranoid excitement.

“I’m going to have to clear up here and wash all these dishes and

things before I make us coffee. What did you have for tea tonight?”

I thought and said, “I don’t know. I can’t seem to remember….

Now, isn’t that remarkable?”


54

Helen set about bringing some order to the chaos of the kitchen.

There was no hot water, and when she checked the level of the

heating fuel it was at zero. She used the immersion heater for water,

found plastic bags, put the rotten meat and scraps of food into

them, along with bread that had gone stale, and got me to take them

out to the bin in the back yard.

“Find it all right?” she said when he came back.

“Why shouldn’t I?” I said.

“Was it full?”

“The collectors haven’t been round for a while.”

“You’re out of heating oil?”

“I’ll order some in tomorrow,” I said, frowning. “What was it you

said about needing my professional advice?”

Helen’s heart lifted at this small ray of hope. My recent memory still

had function to some degree. She was washing the dishes and

utensils by this time. “You dry, I’ll wash,” she said. “You know where

the dish towels are.” But I couldn’t find them, and looked in all the

wrong places, rather than in the places where dish towels would


55

normally be. The ray faded. She found them for me, and I began to

dry as she washed, leaving cups and plates on the worktop.

“Why not put them away as you dry them,” she said. Again, I

didn’t know where to put anything. She got me to leave them on the

worktop.

“It’s about a patient I have been asked to see,” she said,

conversationally. “I’m worried about him.” She looked at her

reflection in the darkness outside the window, and it gave her some

satisfaction that her facial expression was not as worried looking or

anxious as she felt herself to be inside. Only for a moment did she

think this might be the wrong approach to take. When I said, “Tell

me about him,” she did not hesitate.

She told me her patient was a fifty-five year old man, prominent

in his profession, who, this year, had every chance of having the

University chair, even against stiff opposition from others.

I nodded, concentrating hard, taking it in, considering with my

habitual mannerism of stroking my chin with my right hand while

my left tapped out each point on my thigh.


56

“All had been going well,” she continued, “until about six

months ago when it became noticeable that there was marked

decrement in his work with clients.”

“How?” I asked.

“He began making mistakes,” she said. “At first these were

minor, and were attributed to overwork by his colleagues. Then they

became more serious, and glaring, and when these were pointed out

to him, he became hostile and even abusive on occasions.”

I did not say anything.

“Because of his immanent position colleagues found it extremely

difficult to talk with him. He went on treating clients and making

mistakes.”

“What profession are we talking about here?” I asked.

“Medical,” Helen said.

“Is the man a surgeon? Because if he is, he should not be

allowed to operate.”

“He is not a surgeon. Like ourselves he is a psychiatrist. He has

been endangering patients by prescribing drugs to lethal dosages."


57

“What did he say when you talked to him about this?”

“We know each other the way you and I know each other,” Helen

said. “We had dinner together, but when I broached the subject, he

always evaded answering.”

“How?”

“By telling me about a patient of his.”

Helen had made the coffee by this time, and she sat me down

with her at the table to drink it before going on.

“What do you think so far, Scott?” she asked me, gently.

I sat back, holding his coffee mug in my hand, and looked at her for

a long while, until she became slightly uncomfortable. I drank from

my mug, and then put it down very deliberately on the table, leaned

towards her and said, “What do I think? I’ll tell you what I think. I

think your patient is a victim of jealousy, envy, and spite. That’s

what I think.”

Helen caught her breath, wanted to move back from my face

straining towards her, but stood her ground.


58

“I was thinking, she said, as evenly as she could, along

somewhat different lines.”

“I bet you were,” I said. “I just bet you were.”

“What tests would you say he should have?”

“Tests for what?”

“What do you think?”

I gathered myself together again. “I take it,” I said. “You’ve

thought of a brain tumour?”

“Yes,” said Helen. “What else?”

“Pick’s, Alzheimer’s, CJD. Dementia, in other words,” I said. “Or

again,” I paused, “it may be none of those.”

“What then?”

I wagged a forefinger at her. “I know what you’re thinking,” he

said.

“What?” she asked.


59

“You’re thinking I’ve forgotten your name. You’re saying to

yourself, ‘Ever since I’ve come in, he hasn’t once called me by my

name.’ And you’re thinking that’s another symptom.”

“Well, what is my name?” challenged Helen.

“Ah, ha!” I exclaimed. “Now we’re really getting down to it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Helen. “You still haven’t told me my

name.”

“Your acting is not very convincing,” I said. “You understand

very well. My dear Helen, your name is Helen Conrad, you are a

Consultant Psychiatrist. I have it from a reliable source that you are

in contention, as I am myself, for the Chair of Forensic Psychiatry at

the University, and you have come here to-night to eliminate the

opposition.”

“How can you think such a thing?”

“Because it is true, Helen. You have always been ambitious, and

you really do want that chair. Deny it if you can.”

“It’s true that I am in contention for the chair. The rest is false. I

really am concerned about you.”


60

“You needn’t be,” I said. “You should be more concerned about

Beattie.”

Helen remarked the incisiveness of my speech and my tonal

inflections. Gone now were the hesitations, the vagueness, any hint

of memory loss. I was almost prescient.

“Shall I tell you now, Helen, what I had for breakfast, and lunch,

and who I spoke to today, and what decisions I made, regarding my

patients?

“You could tell me anything. I have no way of knowing,” she

said.

“I could,” I said. “but I have no need to.”

“Why is your house in such a mess?”

“I haven’t been living here,” I said. “I’ve been living in my flat.” I

began to laugh at the expression on her face.

Helen had the feeling that usually accompanies vertigo.

The sudden change in my demeanour left her feeling

disorientated so that she had trouble trying to organize her

fragmented thoughts and feelings.


61

Up until moments ago the report she had been composing on my

mental state, had been progressing page-by-page in her mind, and

now she had the vivid vision of the words disappearing from those

pages letter-by-letter.

“So, who’s been living here, then?” she had not meant the words

to come out so petulantly or with such crude construction.

“The house is rented,” I said. “Has been for more than a year

now. The tenant, as you can see is a disorderly man, who is no

doubt being disorderly whilst on a dig in the Holy Land trying to find

2000 year-old artefacts. You need not have tidied up. His lease

expires at the end of this month, and I’ll have cleaners come in then

and set everything to rights. He’s agreed by e-mail that I can have

his belongings put into storage for him.

Helen didn’t know what to believe. She was obviously in difficulties. I

got up, saying, “Let me show you something.” She followed me

without comment.

I took her to a letter rack sitting on the Welsh Dresser, and

motioned her to look through its contents. When she did, she saw

an assortment of bills, letters, and junk mail, all addressed to a Dr.


62

James Cooper, some of which styled him as a Professor of

Archaeology.

“Proverbially absent minded,” I said. “Or maybe, he’s the one

with dementia, although I doubt that.”

“Why did you tell me Mrs. Braddley was stealing you blind, and

that you had dismissed her?”

“I also told you I couldn’t remember what I had for tea tonight,”

he said. “I had my tea before I came here at my club with Joseph

Haley..”

“The neurosurgeon?”

“The most eminent, you must admit,” I said. “I can tell you what

was on the menu, and also what I had, and you can verify it

tomorrow. I told you those lies, because, coming after you had

talked with Beattie, that was what you wanted to hear. The sort of

stuff that would confirm his lies about my making all those

mistakes.”

“Why should he lie?” To Helen, it was like being in quicksands.


63

“Ha! You admit then that Beattie told you that story about me,

the one you just put to me in the guise of a colleague?”

“Why should he lie?” she repeated.

“Because his uncle is our esteemed colleague and co-competitor

for the chair of Forensic Psychiatry, Arthur Taylor.”

“Tell me what was on the menu and what you had,” she said

angrily. “I want to check that.”

“Of course you do,” I said softly, and told her what Joseph Haley

and I had had for tea. I then said, gently, “Helen, consider: Beattie

knows my involvement in the case of Sean Logan, of my refusing to

give him drugs, and of the fact that he had made a recovery after I

had talked with and seen the woman in amber. Let us for the sake of

argument say that he tells his uncle that I intend to write a paper

proving the existence of what he believes to be an hallucination.

They hatch a plot, not only against me, but also against you.”

“This all sounds highly fantastic,” Helen said. “It’s conspiracy

theory gone mad.”


64

“They want you to report on my mental state. To run a battery of

tests. As soon as I undergo the tests, my credibility as a candidate

for the chair becomes suspect, and my chances become nil.” I

paused. “Now when, the tests show that my brain is perfectly

normal, Taylor will accuse you of playing dirty by trying to discredit

me, and your chances also become nil. He kills two birds with the

one stone. Neat.”

“How can I believe this?” cried a distressed Helen.

“Why do you think I was dining with Haley earlier this evening?

To get the results of all the tests you want me to have done. I had to

know myself whether or not there was something organically wrong

with my brain.”

“And is there?”

“Why should you take my word for it? I’ll write you a letter to

Haley authorizing him to give you full access to all his findings

about the state of my physical brain.”

Helen, for a moment thought of saying that that would not be

necessary, but then said nothing. She considered what I had said,

and everything not only seemed probable, but also possible.


65

She had not known of the relationship between Beattie and

Taylor, but she did know that Taylor was someone who, ethically,

sailed extremely close to the wind. In fact she was waiting for the

time when he would capsize and sink. She knew, first hand, of two

situations that had been exploited for his own purposes, but from

the enquiry into each of the circumstances he had extricated himself

at the expense of an expendable scapegoat. Taylor would be capable,

not only of using Beattie for his own ends, but also of sacrificing him

afterwards if the need arose.

She could find no fault with the logic of Taylor’s removing two rivals

from contention; that was something she believed he would do.

Thinking of how she had accepted Beattie’s complaint against me, as

from a trusted and concerned colleague she felt chagrin. She should

have checked, and checked thoroughly the allegations made.

It would have been my openness which would have led him to the

strange disclosures regarding the Sean Logan case, although Beattie

hadn’t mentioned Sean Logan or anything relating to his case. Had I

really mentioned to Beattie anything about the woman in amber?

Because if I hadn’t… But, how could she check on that. If she asked

Beattie, and he said no, then he could either be telling the truth or

telling lies. If he was telling the truth and he knew nothing of my


66

seeing and hearing this hallucination, then she must do it in such a

way as not to arouse Beattie’s suspicions. If he was telling lies, it

would alert him and his uncle, that she suspected their plot.

I broke into her thoughts, saying, “After tonight, it will be

necessary for us both, to undergo a full psychiatric examination,

and for you to have the same tests as I had with Haley for organic

brain dysfunction.”

“I don’t see why that should be necessary,” she said.

“After we talk with the woman in amber,” I said, “and we write our

paper we will need the evidence of the most eminent neurosurgeon

and the most eminent psychiatrist to witness to our physical and

psychological sanity.”

Helen looked around her. Everything looked disorderly but

ordinary. I was still holding to this notion that a young boy’s

hallucination was going to make an appearance and talk with them.

About what? she thought. Had the woman ever been the boy’s

hallucination? That was another thing she should have checked up

on. Did Sean Logan actually exist?


67

“What makes you think she will come now?” she asked.

I smiled. “She’s here now,” I said. “She arrived at the same time as

yourself.”

****

I could see Helen’s consternation at all I had told her, but when I

disclosed the fact that the woman in amber had been with us since

she had arrived, she said that was preposterous, and if so, then why

could she neither see nor hear any materialization? There was only

the two of us there.

I turned to the woman in amber whom I knew to be Death.

“Why is it she cannot see you?”

“Very few people want to look Death in the face until they have

to,” Death said.

“But you are beautiful,” I said.

“To you, perhaps.”

“Can’t you make yourself seen and heard to her?”

You can imagine how aware I was of what Helen was making of this

conversation.


68

“Not unless she wants me to,” Death said.

“But you came to Sean and made your self known. And also to

me,” I said.

“That was what you wanted,” she said.

The two amber figures, were there.

“If she wants to see me, she will,” said Death.

“Helen,” I said, “She is there to be seen if you want to see her.

Sean is here with her. He is the smaller light.”

“Scott, dear, there is nothing to see,” she said placatingly.

I listened to Death and then said, “You have never had any

cause for awareness of Death. You have had only, as every doctor

has, the experience of witnessing the death of some patients. Your

love of life is so great, that you have never wished for Death.”

Helen went to one of the comfortable chairs and seated herself,

crossed her legs, and with her fingers interlaced, and her elbows on

the arms of the chair, said, “And is your love of life so diminished,

that you wish to see death?”


69

I recognized the posture we all adopt when assessing a patient;

soon the interlaced fingers would form a steeple of the two index

fingers and the thumbs would rest on a contemplative chin.

Can you understand the difficulty I was having? She thought I

was speaking metaphorically when I was speaking of the actual.

Oh yes, it did frustrate me. It frustrated me a great deal indeed.

Helen, please,” I said. “Make the effort. “Recognize Death as an

actuality.”

“I do recognize death as an actuality. Everyone goes through the

dying process and is afterwards dead. Saying death comes to us, is a

metaphor; a way of giving us recognition that we enter a state of

non-being.”

I needed to interrupt her before she got into her didactic stride.

“I brought you here as a witness,” I said, “not to give me a

psychiatric examination.”

“Bear with me,” she said, interrupting me, firmly. “Let’s meet

each other half way.”

“You have another hypothesis,” I said.


70

“Yes,” she said. “Are you going to give me a chance to prove it?”

“What’s your differential diagnosis, this time? And how do you

intend to meet me half way?” I was irritable and I tried not to let it

show.

“I will try my best,” she said, “to see what you see and hear what

you hear, if you will answer my questions as honestly as you can.”

That surprised me, and I asked her when she had ever known

me to be dishonest. She reminded me of our long acquaintance as if

I was meant to remember occasions when I had not told the truth.

Of course there had to be such times but I did not believe I had ever

been dishonest about important issues. Had I not often told her,

that we all have the tendency not to acknowledge the truth about

ourselves?

“And what truth am I not acknowledging about myself?”

“You say Sean Logan is here along with Death and you can see

them both?”

I looked again and there they were. Death, beautiful and placid,

Sean, perhaps, looking a little anxious. I told Helen I could see them.


71

Helen then said that she knew I’d asked Death to make herself

known to her, but that she would not do so unless she, Helen, was

willing. As part of her meeting me half way, would I now ask Sean to

make himself visible and audible to her.

I wondered why I had not thought of that myself. I could

understand why Death would not become a reality to those who did

not want her to before their time had come to die, but I could see no

reason why Sean should not disclose himself to Helen. In fact, as I

thought of it now, I felt puzzled as to why Helen should not be able

to see Sean. I asked him the same question I had asked Death,

“Why can’t she see and hear you?”

His answer startled me somewhat. “Because you don’t want me

to.”

“But of course I do,” I said.

“What did he say?” Helen asked.

I motioned her to be quiet.


72

“If she sees you,” I said to Sean, “surely afterwards she will be

able to see death, and I shall, at least, have some validation for what

I am to write about Being and Consciousness.”

“If,” said Sean, “you really wanted her to see me, she would see

me.”

“What is he saying?” Helen asked, and this time I answered her.

“He says it is my fault you cannot see him. He says I do not really

want you to see him.”

“I can understand that,” Helen said.

It was more than I could understand.

“I do want you to see him,” I told her.

She uncrossed her legs and leaned towards me separating her

hands so that they spread outwards, palms upwards.

“Scott,” she said, You do really want me to see Sean Logan, I

believe that.”

“Then why does he keep saying that I do not? And if that is the

case, why can’t you see him.”


73

“Because he is not Sean Logan.”

“Of course he is. Who else could he be?”

“I think I know that, but I think before I tell you, you should ask

him.”

I turned back to Sean Logan. I asked him if he had heard what

Helen had said. He told me he had. I asked him if he was really Sean

Logan, and with a serious face he shook his head.

“Then who are you?”

“You don’t want to know,” he said.

This was getting too much. I massaged my forehead and

temples. I felt tension and anxiety building up in me the way

electricity builds up in thunderclouds before its release as

lightening.

I had a feeling he was right, but I didn’t know why he was right.

I asked him why I didn’t want to know.

“Because you wouldn’t like me anymore,” he said.


74

Death broke in as if she had looked at a watch. She was still

placid and beautiful. “I have to go,” she said. “I am needed

elsewhere.”

I pleaded with her to stay, but she went, saying that she would

know when to return. When I told Helen that Death had gone, she

seemed pleased. “You seem to have made some progress,” she said.

“What do you mean by that?”

She didn’t answer that question but asked me instead what the

boy had said when I asked who he was? I told her he wouldn’t tell

me because he said that if he did I wouldn’t like him any more. That

seemed to please her also.

For some reason I did not want to ask the boy to tell me who he

really was, and for the life of me I couldn’t think who he might be.

With a feeling of helplessness I said to Helen, “What is this

differential diagnosis?” I noted that I had not asked her to tell me

who the boy was, even though she said she thought she knew.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I didn’t want to know. If that was the

case, then why did I not want to know?

“Hysteria,” she said.


75

At that I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It seemed so ludicrous. I

could not imagine a less hysterical person than myself.

“Oh, Helen, come on,” I said. “Hysteria, really.” I could see that

she wanted me to consider it seriously, and after a time when each

of us said nothing, I broke the silence.

“You know as well as I do that hysteria is a motivated condition

in which the patient presents with mainly physical symptoms of well

known diseases, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, but never with the

symptoms of psychotic states.”

She made no comment after my pause, so I continued. “I have

no possible motive.”

“None that you are conscious of,” she said.

“And my so-called symptoms are of the wrong variety,” I finished

as if I had not heard her interjection.

“They might be,” she said, “if you were simply a member of the

public, but you are a doctor and a psychiatrist, and such a

presentation is not beyond the capabilities of your own personal

unconscious.”


76

I did not like what she said, because I did not want to admit that

it might be true. “So,” I said, “here we are again, back with the

metaphoric unconscious that cannot be proved.”

“All right,” she said. “Forget the unconscious, and lets take the

problem from where you are at this time. Can you still see the boy?”

“Yes,” I said. “He was there, although he, too, looked impatient

to be going.

“What is it that makes him so necessary to you?”

“Necessary for what?”

“Maintaining your motivation for the preservation of this

hysterical state.”

“I do not have an hysterical state, therefore I do not have a

motive for preserving one.”

“Try and remain calm,” she said.

“I am calm,” I said, but there was a wind on the sea trying to

whip white horses.


77

“Good,” she said. “Will you describe to me what I did before you

opened the door to me this evening.”

I was about to say, “How do I know what you did,” when I

realized that I not only knew everything she did before leaving her

house, but also everything she thought, and said, and to whom she

said it.”

Helen seemed to know this without my having to tell her, she

spoke, asking a question which was drowned out by two other voices

for which I could see no bodies.

“What did he use?” said the first voice. It was familiar but I

could not place it.

“Nothing subtle,” said the second voice, a rough voice with a

tough tone. “You’d think, being a shrink, he’d be more subtle,

insulin, or something that couldn’t be detected after 24 hours. How

long’s this stuff going to take to work?”

“Haloperidol?” said the first voice. “Always works. Shouldn’t be

too long now.”

“It’s been over an hour, already,” said the second voice.


78

“Works faster in films and T.V. shows,” said the first and it came

to me that the speaker was Beattie.

“Beats me how he can squat like that on his toes for so long

without moving,” said the second voice. “And that face. Looks just

like one of those gargoyles.”

Then Helen leaned forward and touched my arm. “Scott,” she

said, “you did not answer me.”

“What?” I said, trying to combat a rising panic, and collect my

wits. “What question?”

“Who was my husband?”

“James” I said.

“I never married James,” Helen said.

“Of course you did.”

“No,” she said. “I never married James. He wanted me to, but so

did someone else. I married that someone else.”

“Who?” I asked.

“You.”


79

The rough voice said, “When I found him sitting like that, in the

room with the bodies, I read him his rights. Do you think he heard

and understood?

“I doubt it,” said Beattie. “He had divorced himself from reality

then.”

“So, I’ll have to do it over again. You sure this stuff is working,

Doc?”

“It’s working,” said Beattie.

Death had returned. “You’ve got to help me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Envelop me. Make me like the boy.”

“I cannot do that.”

“You did it for him. You can do it for me.”

“No,” she said. “You did that for him.”

“What?”

“You want to be both alive and dead.”


80

“But the boy…”

“Which boy?” said Death.

“Sean Logan,” I said, desperately puzzled.

“Who is Sean Logan?” asked Helen.

“Damn it, Helen,” I said. “How should I know?”

“Look at him.”

I did, averting my head quickly.

“Take a good long look at him.” It was a command. There was a

force behind her words which turned me towards him again. The

boy looked back at me with my own eyes; eyes which were also

Helen’s.

“You’re sure he did it? said Beattie. “You never did say what he

used?”

“Shotgun, his own,” said the tough voice. “Both barrels. His

prints all over the weapon. A Purdy, 20 gauge, buckshot. We found

him sitting there like that covered in their blood. He did it all right.”


81

“You can see it now,” Helen said. “You can see that Sean Logan

is Scott Lawton.

“You understand now,” said Death. “The boy I’m taking with me

now is Sean Lawton, your son. He is dead.”

“Noooo! I cried out in agony. He lives.”

“His wife, Helen is still alive,” said Beattie.

“Only just,” said the rough voice. “She was alive when the

ambulance took her to hospital, and I’ve heard nothing from there to

say that she died.”

When I turned to Helen she was not as substantial as she had

been before.

“Forgive me,” I said to her. “Forgive me for not being able to

protect you and Sean. If you had married James, you and Sean

would have been happy.”

“Without you,” she said, “there would have been no Sean. There

might have been another child, but not Sean.”


82

“I loved him,” I said, “but I am weak. A coward who could not

protect him or you. I reached out for her, but did not seem to be able

to touch her. “I love you,” I said.

“I must go,” said Death, and when I looked at her she was no

longer beautiful. It was not that she was ugly or abhorrent, simply

undesirable.

I heard a phone ring; one of those mobile phones that plays a

tune: the William Tell Overture. The rough voice said, “Bendix,” and

then. “I expected as much. Right.” I could see him put the phone

away, and turn to Beattie. “His wife just died. That makes it a

double murder.”

There was no-one with me now. Just Beattie and Bendix the

policeman.

Death was right, I could not be dead and alive at the same time.

I stopped being the gargoyle, straightened myself, stood erect and

said, “Gentlemen, I did not murder my family.”

****


83

Finn had followed Scott Lawton’s tortuous narrative with some

difficulty, allowing him free association and expression. It had been

an hour since the psychiatrist had walked into Finn’s office,

introduced himself, sat down, and started talking.

Finn was one of those rare people for whom time was not money,

and even rarer, one of those people whose purpose in life changed

direction according to the circumstances he found himself in.

His office was situated in the highest building in the city, and

when he looked from his window, he had the eyes of Gulliver in

Lilliput. Each morning when he awoke he committed himself anew

to his family, and to those he would come in contact with. The

writing on his pebbled-glass door announced him as a Private

Investigator. He had the office free, from a former grateful client for

as long as he wanted to continue in the business.

Finn had not interrupted, but now, as Scott Lawton seemed to

have come to a natural break, he said, “Let’s go eat, and you can tell

me what you want me to do.”

“Good God,” said Scott, “Why didn’t you stop me. I’ve been wasting

your time.”


84

“I have the time,” said Finn. “Let’s eat.” He reckoned that if Scott

came with him, he really needed help, and now that he had related

in his own way what had happened to his family, it might, over a

meal, be easier for him to articulate the rest in a more rational

manner.

They went down in the lift, and out onto the street, and Finn

suggested they have some Pub Grub. As there was no objection from

Scott, he led the way, and were soon seated eating steak and kidney

pies with sauté potatoes and drinking Guinness.

Scott was looking much more relaxed. He ate the food, and told

Finn that this was the first food he had enjoyed since…, he had

hesitated, before going on, …since Helen and Sean were murdered.

“You were very considerate back there in your office. You just let me

talk on. I know it didn’t make much sense at times, and I’m sure

you’re not all that clear yet about some things. But I needed to talk,

and you let me do that, and I feel the better for it.”

Finn smiled, and went on eating. Scott cleared his plate, and

finished his pint. “I’m paying for this,” he said. “You want another

one?”

“A half,” said Finn.


85

Scott brought two half pints back to the table and sat down

again. “I haven’t been in a place like this for years,” he said.

“Which was true?” asked Finn. “Were you raised in an

orphanage or by an aunt and uncle?”

“There was no orphanage. Don’t ask me why I told myself all

those things. An orphanage might have been better.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” said Finn who had run away from one on a

few occasions, and then was finally successful in escaping from

orphanages altogether.

“I suppose I was trying to construct an environment in my mind

I could live with,” said Scott. “My aunt and uncle were worse than I

imagined them in my hysteria.”

“You’re sure it was hysteria?” said Finn.

“I’ve had time to consider it objectively. Yes, it was hysteria.”

“Unusual for men, hysteria?”

“Not so unusual as you might think.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Finn. “Are you out on bail?”


86

“I was arrested on the suspicion of having shot to death my wife

and son, but was not charged with their murder. I was questioned

for seventy-two hours, and then released. Not enough evidence that

would hold up in court.”

“I take it Bendix is still investigating?”

“Oh, he made it quite clear he was staying on my case. Said he

knew I did it, and he would dig until he found the proof.”

“So, where do I come in?” said Finn.

“I want you to find out who murdered Helen and Sean, and I

want you to make sure the police stay honest.”

“You think they’d frame you?”

“I’m not paranoid,” said Scott. “Just cautious. It has been known

for the police to plant evidence. By the way, do I detect that you

spent some time in America. California?”

“I went there in the Fifties,” said Finn, along with John Ford,

John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, and the crew of the Quiet Man. Spent

some time in Hollywood, and then joined the L.A. Police. As you see I

came back again.”


87

“You couldn’t have been very old,”

“Thirteen. I was an illegal immigrant. But that’s another story.”

“Maybe I’ll hear it sometime,”

“Maybe, but in the meanwhile you want me to keep the police

honest, and find out who killed your family.”

“Will you do it?”

Finn considered a new commitment. “Sure,” he said. “Just one

question: The mind is a strange thing. What if I find out you did it?”

“I’m told you’re an honest man,” said Scott. “I will not

compromise your honesty. I want you to give whatever you find to

the police, no matter what that is.”

“Deal,” said Finn, and they shook hands. “Now, I need to get

clear on a few things.”

Finn asked Scott for his National Insurance Number, and his

Medical Card Number.

“You’ll find I am who I say I am,” Scott said, giving him the

information. Finn wrote it down in his little red notebook.


88

“I’ll need to look at the scene,” Finn said. “Where you were found

with the shotgun.” Scott gave Finn the address.

“The police took everything they needed, and I’ve redecorated the

room.”

“Tell me what happened from the time you woke up that

morning.”

It was late afternoon when Finn and Scott Lawton parted, and

Finn went back to his office, and with his back to the window and

his feet up on his desk, he sat using the last of the day’s light to

read his notes.

When he had finished, he threw his notebook onto the desk put

his feet on the floor, stood up, and paced up and down the office in

the fast-gathering November gloom.

It was time to go home. He put on his hat, a fedora, a relic from

his American days, a university graduate scarf, bought for him by

Molly after he had finished a part time degree in philosophy and

literary studies, and a waxed coat which kept out the rain and

cheated the wind which seemed to have an ever greater purpose to

chill his bones, and leave him stiff and sore. He locked up the office


89

and went down in the elevator, said goodbye to Janice at reception,

and went out into the street which was damp and slick, rainbowed

with drizzle, gasoline, and oil. He turned up his collar and made his

way towards the bus station on the riverbank east of the City Hall.

Why had he taken this case when he had turned down so many

other? He tried to work out a satisfactory answer, for he knew Molly

would ask him that, and would expect him to come up with a good

reason.

“Because it’s my last one,” he’d tell her, and she’d be glad to

hear that, for they both knew that his going to the office each day

and his sitting there reading, and writing his memoirs, and going for

coffee and lunch with the other loners from the high sky scrapers of

commerce was only a winding down towards a retirement when he

and Molly would take to the road, and join once again with the

Travelling community he had left when he had gone to America.

Of course when he came back, he’d gone to claim Molly and to

take her from them, to live in the city, where they raised their two

sons, and gave them an education. The youngest, Seaneen, was now

a sports journalist, and the eldest, young Fingall, was an artist in

Paris, having a lean time, but nevertheless surviving.


90

He could understand why Molly, now their nest was empty,

wanted to go back to her roots, and sooner or later, she, knowing

the type of man he was, knew that he would buy the two horses for

the caravan he had had made for them – a real Romany caravan

with a modernized interior – and take to the road. They’d sold their

house, and had been living in it now for almost eight months.

But all was not well with Finn. He had become indifferent,

watchful, and negative; a worry to his friends, with whom he shared

the interests of storytelling and fishing. We had not seen much of

him lately, and when we did make contact, we found him expressing

the opinion that the joys of the world disturbed him even more than

its sorrows.

We kept a wary eye on him as he became less active in his

helping of others and in his growing interiority. This was not the

Finn we knew. We did not know it, of course, but the Guinness he’d

had with Scott Lawton, had been the first for a long time, for he had

given up drinking as well as most of the other creature comforts that

were there for our enjoyment.

Had I seen him going home in the bus that evening, and had I

known of his decision to take on this case, I would have shouted


91

hallelujah and offered up thanks to God for answered prayers. And

yet, had he known that his investigation into the deaths of Scott

Lawton’s wife and son would end in such horror and terror, would

he have taken the case, or would he have seen Scott from his office,

and then put his feet up on his desk, and resumed his

contemplation of the thought in his mind that nothing mattered at

all in the world.

The cost to Finn, and to Molly was great, but, in a way, I cannot

be anything else but grateful that Scott took the case. If anything it

allayed Finn’s dark anxieties about mankind, and restored some of

his faith in human rationality and goodness.

“Fingal Finn’s Last Case,” he said to Molly that night. “After this,

you and I will be on the road, heading for Sligo.”

“I’ll believe that when we’re sitting behind two horses, and I have

you beside me and the reins in my own hands,” Molly said.

“I’ll be doing the driving,” said Finn.

“Which ever way,” said Molly with a wry smile. “How long do you

think this case will take?”


92

“It’ll be over by Christmas,” said Finn.

“That’s what they said about the Great War,” said Molly.

“Look how long that took.”

“I won’t be sitting in the trenches,” said Finn.

“Who was it told me that detective work was ninety-nine percent

boredom? It could just be like sitting in the trenches.”

“It won’t be like that,” said Finn.

“Don’t tell me,” said Molly, “gut feeling.”

“Right on,”

“Nobody says, ‘right on’ these days.”

“I do,” said Finn.

“Well,” Molly said with genuine concern, “if you have to go over

the top, in this one, Finn, just keep your head down.” She hadn’t

seen him so animated for a long time, and while she knew how

dangerous his work could be sometimes, she didn’t want to

discourage him, but at the same time, she didn’t want any harm to


93

come to him. She took a different tack. “What was it about this man

that decided you to take his case?” she asked.

“I’m not sure he didn’t do it, himself,” he said. “I want to find

out.”

“That’s all,”

“That, and the way he started to tell me about it when he came

into my office. I told it to you the way he told it to me. Don’t you

think it was strange?”

“There’s something even stranger,” said Molly.

“And what’s that?”

“Why he chose you?”

“I never asked him.”

“If I were you I’d find out.”

“You think there’s something sinister in him coming to me for

help?”

“He picks you, a one man operation with diminishing contacts

with the police.”


94

“He’d probably know I was a lone operator, but how would he

know that my currency with the police was not as strong as it used

to be?”

“It was never very strong,” said Molly, “but now it’s weaker than

the Euro. Why didn’t he pick one of the big detective agencies?”

“Maybe he feels a single operative is more confidential.”

“There’s that,” conceded Molly. “But he might have other

reasons.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know, you’re the detective. Maybe he’s tight and thinks

he won’t have to pay you as much.”

“No, it’s not that, At first I tried to put him off and asked for five

thousand a month plus expenses.” Finn took a cheque from his

wallet and handed it to Molly. “Told him what I told you, that it

might take two months.

“Ten thousand,” she said, then, handing him back the cheque,

“all I’m saying is, be careful. From the convoluted way he told you


95

his story, and giving you all this money, I doubt if anything about

his story is what it seems to be. What’s he like anyway?”

“Caucasian, fifty-five, six one, or two, red hair, going grey at the

temples, clean-shaven and uses Old Spice after

-shave. Pink flesh on a face with a square jaw, slight twist to his

mouth, well educated, could well be arrogant, I would say, with

those under him. Dresses in the most expensive of suits and

probably makes a considerable impression on his female patients.

Nothing sinister.”

“You be careful though, Finn. You hear me?”

“Yeah,” said Finn, and slept on it.

****

At six next morning Finn got up, being careful not to awaken the

gently-snoring Molly. He made himself coffee and sat with his

notebook going over everything Scott Lawton had told him, trying to

separate it into two columns – fact and fiction.

He found that it was not easy to decide how much fiction there

was in the facts, and how many facts there were in the fiction. All


96

you had to do, he told himself, was ask the right questions of the

right people, analyze the answers, come up with hypotheses and

then test for the truth. Such was the theory of the scientific method

of detection, but then, where in this world was there the truth, the

whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

This was a case where everything would have to be checked out.

That meant leg work, and leg work meant wheels. Who ever heard of

a P.I. using public transport? “I really have let things go,” he told

himself.

He didn’t understand much of the psychiatric stuff in Scott’s

story. He’d need help with that, and made a note to talk with Dr.

Beattie.

He’d also have to see Bendix. Finn knew of him. Not a likeable

character, but a cop who had a good reputation and believed that

there was real justice in the world, not a justice that could be

bought, or bought off. If Bendix was in charge of the case, there

would be a thorough investigation. Bendix also had the reputation of

disliking all P.Is whether they worked by themselves or in a para-

police organization. There was nothing Bendix liked better than to

see a P.I. lose his licence.


97

Finn wanted to know what it was that made Bendix so sure that

Scott Lawton had murdered his wife and son in such a mutilating

manner.

Finn poured himself more coffee and went over again what Scott

had told him about finding the bodies starting from the time he

woke up that morning in his flat until his gruesome discovery in the

house in the hills.

“Why weren’t you at home that night?” Finn had asked.

“When I’m writing a paper,” Scott said, “I often stay at the flat. I

can concentrate better.”

“You have problems with concentration?”

“None whatsoever.”

“What am I to make of what you told me about brain scans and

your examination by Joseph Haley the neurosurgeon?”

“Nothing.”

“What sort of ‘nothing’ is that?” asked Finn. Nothing showed up

on your brain scan? Or, nothing because there was no brain scan?

Or, nothing because there was no neurosurgeon?”


98

“Oh, Joseph Haley exists,” said Scott, “but I never consulted

him. How could I? The police found me in my hysteria shortly after I

found my family dead.”

“Who called the police?”

“I have no idea. It’s an isolated spot. Not many neighbours close

enough to hear the shots.”

“Was it you?”

“I really don’t know. It could have been, but I think I would have

remembered by this time if it had been.”

“The police didn’t say.”

“Not to me.”

“This paper, had it something to do with your running for the

Chair in Forensic Psychiatry?

“I already hold that position.”

“Had your wife been a contender, along with Dr. Beattie’s uncle?

“No.”


99

Finn had moaned inwardly. It would need checking out, but if

that was true there was one motive less for Scott’s murdering his

wife.

“OK. Go on. You got up that morning…”

“I showered, shaved, made a light breakfast, listened to the

news, looked at my organizer, and went to the Health Care Park.”

“Used to be the Lunatic Asylum,” said Finn.

“Things change,” said Scott. “Since then it’s been the Mental

Hospital, the Psychiatric Unit, and now it’s the Health Care Park.”

“Names change more quickly than habits,” said Finn. “You have

patients there?”

“Most Psychiatrists do.”

“Your wife, too? Was she there that day?”

“Yes, and no, in that order. She had appointments at a Day

Hospital.”

“Dr. Beattie. Was he there that day.”


100

“Yes. He’s my registrar. Tuesday’s I hold my case conference in

that ward. My other ward I hold them Thursdays. Both are intensive

care units.”

“As a Forensic Psychiatrist you deal with the criminally insane?”

“I deal with those who have broken the law and may or may not

be suffering mental illness. I have to determine whether or not their

criminal behaviour is the result of their mental state.”

“I would have thought all criminal behaviour is the result of the

mental state.”

“You’re quite right, but some mental states have been awarded

disease status.”

“Your patients, then, are dangerous.”

“They’re not pussy cats,” said Scott with a smile.

“How many patients do you have in these two wards?”

“Thirty-six at the moment.”

“Have any of them ever threatened you or yours with bodily

harm?”


101

Scott Lawton laughed. “At one time or another they all have.

These wards are locked. None of them could have done it.”

“That might be so,” said Finn, “but I take it they are allowed

visitors, and that some of these visitors might not be too stable.”

“Point taken,” said Scott.

“Now think carefully Doctor,” said Finn. “Is there any patient

you have on the inside, who would want you harmed, and who

might be able to get someone on the outside to do it?”

“I’ll need to think about that.”

“Right. What time did you wind up your case conference?”

“Around noon.”

“And after that?”

“I spent the afternoon doing domicilaries, then I went home and

found them.

“What time?”

“Fiveish. I let myself in and when I closed the door behind me, I

knew there was something wrong. There was an eerie silence and I


102

was filled with a sense of dread. I called them each by name. There

wasn’t a sound in the house. The sense of oppression became

greater as I went along the hallway. I found them in the living room.

The blast from the shotgun – my own shotgun, which I keep in the

gun cupboard – had blown Sean’s face away. There was a blood-

filled crater where Helen’s breasts had been. There was blood

everywhere….. I’m sorry…”

This was where in the telling of it Scott had broken down and

had exited, hurriedly, from the pub, followed by Finn who caught up

with him in the street. They walked silently together until Scott

collected himself and Finn thought it time to ask more questions.

He was about to talk about Scott’s shotgun with which the

murders had been done – where it was usually kept, had it been

under lock and key, how had it been accessed, and where had it

been in relation to the bodies and the other furniture when Scott

had picked it up, and why Scott had picked it up – when Scott

stopped, suddenly, turned to him and said, “Trueman.”

Finn also came to a halt, and waited, watching Scott’s eyes.

They and the rest of his face showed a man who had discovered

something hitherto forgotten.


103

“Martin Trueman,” Scott said. “Of course. I don’t know why I

didn’t think of him before. It might have been him who killed my

family.” He began to walk on. Finn came up beside him.

“A patient?” he said.

“Not exactly. I was asked to make an assessment of his mental

state.”

“And?” It seemed to Finn that Scott was dictating his, Finn’s

responses.

“He was trying to plead insanity. I found him sane, in touch with

the same reality as you and I, and knowing right from wrong, good

from evil.”

“What did he do?”

“Killed the owner of a supermarket with a sawn-off shotgun.

Said he had a contract to do it. He got life but served fifteen years.”

“What did the guy who hired him get?”

“He never said who that was. Said it would be bad for business if

he disclosed his clients names. He had a reputation to protect.

Police suspected the victim’s wife but were never able to prove it.”


104

“When did he get out? And how did you know he was out?”

“About two years ago. He paid me a visit. Wanted me to know

that he held me responsible for his having to serve fifteen years in

prison rather than a lesser time in easy custody in the Health Care

Park. He made no threats other than wanting me to know that.”

“You haven’t heard from him since?”

“No.”

“If he wanted to harm you, why should he have waited? And why

harm your wife and child, and not you?”

“Why indeed,” said Scott. “He’s the only one I can think of who

could have done such a terrible thing, and think nothing of it.

Maybe he didn’t do it on his own behalf. Maybe someone found him,

or he found someone to pay him to do it. What do you think, Finn?”

Finn grunted noncommittally. There was something about Scott

that irked him. The way he had jumped up and left the pub without

paying (Finn would have to go back and settle the bill himself), had

been theatrical, to say the least, and the way the tears had welled

and then subsided, and the lips and chin had trembled had been


105

equally histrionic. Finn did not like the way Scott had led him on

from the moment he, Scott, had decided to leave the pub.

“Let’s go over there and sit down,” Finn said. They’d come to a

small square in which was a bronze of two women originally

commemorating the fact that this part of the city had once been the

red-light district. An old whore and a younger one learning the

ropes. But the city fathers had objected to such a commemoration

and the artist had been recommissioned to redirect the symbolism to

a celebration of working women released from the servitude of the

kitchen to the world of business. She did this by sculpting a bronze

colander onto one buttock of the older woman, and other kitchen

utensils to the other. The younger woman had telephones and

typewriters hanging around her. Finn was sure that everyone in the

city knew that the bronze represented the whores who made the

fortunes of some of the city fathers’ fathers and serviced some of the

others. There were seats around the statue.

“Look,” said Finn when they were seated. Although he said that

he would take the case, now he didn’t want to. There was something

about it. “Before we go any further, I haven’t told you what my rates

are.”


106

“Doesn’t matter,” said Scott. “There’s plenty of insurance

coming.”

That was when he named what he thought was a ridiculously

high fee. Scott immediately accepted. He took out his cheque book

and pen and wrote the amount for two months, saying that if the

case was not solved by then, he’d write another, and another until

the case was solved.

Finn did not like the feeling that Scott was in control more than

he was.

Molly got up and asked him if he’d like bacon and eggs with

potato bread. He didn’t say no, and when the pan was sizzling and

the smell of smoked bacon was filling the caravan, he said to her,

“Know what I’m going to do?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Get your wheels back.”

“As well as that?”

“Be careful?”

“That too. Something else.”

“You tell me.”


107

“Put half this money into your account.”

“You think something might happen.”

“It’s the sensible thing to do.”

“I have enough,” she said. “From the sale of the house.”

“We split everything two ways.”

“I got all the money from the house. And why not four ways?”

“It was your house and they have to learn to make their own

ways in the world.”

“It was our house,” Molly said. “You always had trouble seeing

that.”

“I always thought of it as yours.”

“You never wanted to see it any other way. Saved you taking

responsibility.”

“I thought it was right. A place for you and the boys.”

“And for you as well.”

“I enjoyed it for the time we had it.”


108

“You never tried to make it permanent.”

“Nothing’s permanent.”

“Well, as permanent as you can make it. You could have tried to

make it more permanent than it was.”

“You didn’t much like that house, did you?”

“It wasn’t the home I thought it would be. “I had to deal with

three moody males mostly on my own.”

“In the end everybody’s alone.”

“This isn’t the end, and until then we should be together. Now

I’ve got a nest that’s almost empty.”

“Everybody gets disappointed.”

“What are you disappointed about?”

“Eggs are fine, bacon’s fine, tatie bread’s fine, everything’s fine.”

“Sure, everything’s fine.”

“I’ll put that money into your account.”

“Don’t bother.”


109

“No bother.”

“You’re glad the boys have gone, aren’t you?” Finn hesitated.

“You are. You are.”

“I’m not”

“You never really enjoyed them.”

“I did.”

“Want me to show you photographs of them and you? You only

have to look at your face. It’s the same in photo after photo.” Finn

said nothing. “Well,” said Molly, “you lost out on that.”

“No.”

“Yes, and so did they.”

Finn’s mind wandered away and he asked himself how he would

have felt if, one day, he had come home and found Molly and the

boys blown to bits and a shotgun in Molly’s hands as if it had been

her who had killed the boys, and then herself.

Would he have taken the shotgun from where it was the way

Scott Lawton had said he had done, or would he have left it for the


110

cops to get the true picture and decide for themselves whether Molly

had murdered his sons and then herself or if it had been someone

else?

“It was too neat,” Scott had told him yesterday. “It’s impossible

to shoot yourself with a twelve bore and still hold onto it. Helen

could not have done that to Sean, or to herself. She loved life too

much. There was no reason for her to do it.” Scott had taken the

gun away from Helen and then had gone into his hysterical freeze.

He’d told the cops that was why his prints were all over it.

Molly brought her own plate and sat beside him.

“You were always more interested in yourself and your work

than you were in us,” she said.

“No,” he realized his denial would take too long to substantiate, and

lapsed into silence.

“Eat,” said Molly. “enjoy.”

To Finn these conversations were becoming more and more

frequent, and he always felt that any defence he put up was

inadequate. He didn’t like facing the fact that most of what Molly

said to him was true. At such times he lost his appetite for living, as


111

he now lost his appetite for what was left of his breakfast, and

wished for a death in which there was only oblivion – an absolute

unawareness of anything that ever was, is, or ever would be.

He got up, stuffed his notes into his jacket pocket and said “I’m

sorry.”

“Just be careful,” Molly told him as he left. “We need you.”

He didn’t believe it. He thought they could all do very well

without him. In fact better. He’d lost faith in himself, in everything.

He believed he no longer had the ability to believe in what he knew

to be untrue.

****

The wheels he hired was a Nissan Almeira Saloon. Paul, who like

himself, was not a big operator, asked him to bring it back all in one

piece.

He put the money in the bank as he told Molly he would, and

drew a couple of hundred folding-money for himself. He then went to

his office, said ‘hallo’ to Janice on his way in and rode the elevator to

the fourteenth floor. He walked down the carpeted corridor, and


112

before coming to the door of his office saw that it was slightly ajar.

He’d left it locked yesterday.

No-one was in the long corridor, and he checked the door of the

stairway. There was no-one in the stairwell. He put his back to the

wall outside his office and listened intently.

He heard nothing.

His gun was at home. He hadn’t worn it for a long time.

He stepped across the doorway and pushed the door further

open with his foot, stepped back again and waited.

Nothing happened.

Then he smelled it before he saw it. The sickening smell of

human excrement.

He moved, warily, into the office. He was pretty sure no-one was

there and that proved to be true.

The whole place was plastered with a variety of brown excrement

as if it had been sprayed on. The walls, ceiling, the carpet, his desk,

telephone, the picture of himself and his family, the window behind


113

the desk, his filing cabinet. All the files had been taken from the four

drawers and smeared and scattered.

Everything. Nothing had been spared. It was the same in kitchen

and the small bathroom.

It was thorough. Finn knew it was meant to be thorough.

He got out into the corridor again before he gagged. The inside of

the door, except for the glass, had been likewise decorated.

He phoned the police from the foyer, and asked for Detective

Sergeant Bendix, saying who he was.

“What do you want, Finn?” There was no warmth in Bendix’s

voice.

“Take it easy, Bendix,” said Finn. “I’m asking no favours.”

“You’re getting none,”

“You’re a public servant, Bendix. I’m a member of the public.

You’re there to serve me.”

“You’re full of crap, Finn.”


114

“My office is full of crap, Bendix. I’m reporting a crime. Breaking

and entering. Malicious damage. I want you to see it.”

“Put it through the usual channels.”

“Come and see it, Bendix. My office. You know where it is.”

“Get lost, Finn.”

“Scott Lawton,” said Finn, and hung up. He knew all he’d have

to do was wait. He shot the breeze with Janice until Bendix turned

up looking like the wrath of God.

“This better be good, Finn.”

Finn took him and showed him his office. Bendix took out a

handkerchief and held it to his nose, hiding his expression of

repugnance.

“Hell,” he said. “Not even you deserve this, Finn.”

They went back out into the hall again, the smell in their noses.

Bendix used his mobile phone to call the station. Finn made a

mental note to get himself one.


115

They waited until the team arrived and then went to the coffee

bar across the street.

“So what about Scott Lawton?” Bendix asked when they were

seated with cappacino and doughnuts.

“Should you not have asked me first off who I thought did that

to my office?”

“Why? You’d only tell me you hadn’t a clue. Somebody doesn’t

think much of you.”

“Wasn’t you, was it?”

“You disappoint me Finn.”

“Yeah, it’s what I do best.”

“OK. Before you tell me about Scott Lawton, go over the

antecedent events leading up to you finding your office the way it is.”

“That’s priceless, Bendix. Where’d you get that about ‘antecedent

events’? They been sending you on courses again?”

“Answer the question.”


116

“Seems strange,” said Finn, more to himself than to Bendix. “I

sit there for weeks and nothing happens, then, yesterday, I take a

case, and when I come in today I find my office trashed.”

“Tell me the connection.”

“There shouldn’t be one. Only my client knows I’m on his case.”

“Don’t tell me. The good Doctor. Scott Lawton.

“You don’t like him.”

“He killed his wife and child. What’s he want you to do?”

“Keep you honest for one thing.”

“Hah!” barked Bendix. “Finn, let me tell you something. I

wouldn’t want to get that cold-blooded killer any other way. What’s

he think I’m going to do, plant evidence against him.” His fists

clenched.

“And two,” said Finn, “he wants me to find out who killed his

wife and son. What makes you so sure he did?”

“ That’s police business.”


117

“Come on, Bendix, there are things you can tell me and things

you can’t. I know that. Tell me the things you can.”

“As you Yanks say, ‘no dice’.”

“We only say that in late-night movies.”

“Whenever. It’s still ‘no dice’. I’m a professional, Finn, you’re an

amateur. I don’t work with amateurs.” He got up and wiped his

fingers on a paper napkin. “Just remember this Finn, whatever you

find out about that executioner, I want to know what it is. When I

ask, you tell. You don’t, I’ll have your badge for the obstruction of

justice. I’ll let you know when you can clean up. And when you see

your client, tell him I’m still on his case.”

Apart from breaking into the police station and stealing a look at

Scott Lawton’s file, Finn knew there was nothing he was going to get

from Bendix. Nevertheless he didn’t let it go at that.

“Before you go, Bendix,” he said. “Just tell me what he said

about moving the gun.”

“Be seeing you, Finn.”

“What about Martin Trueman?” Finn asked.


118

“What about him?”

A fat woman with a belligerent face waddled into the coffee shop.

“The vultures have arrived,” said Bendix who not only hated all

P.Is, but regarded all reporters with similar antipathy. “She can pick

on your bones,” he said. Remember, keep your nose clean or I’ll have

your licence.”

“Oh, sergeant,” said the woman, but Bendix pushed past her

with a sort of a snarl.

The woman wedged herself into the chair where Bendix had

been.

“Nice man,” she said, “I got a tip off, Finn, said you’ve got

troubles.”

“Trouble is my business, Celeste,” said Finn. “Marlowe used to

say that to me when I was in L.A.” She called herself Celeste Ray,

but her real name was Martha Magee.

“Philip Marlowe would buy me a doughnut, one with custard

and apple.”


119

“He wouldn’t have loved you like I do,” said Finn. “I don’t want to

be responsible for your coronary.”

Be nice Finn, she said. “ I get a tip off and when I get here

there’s a passel of police in your office. I smell a story.”

“Some nose.” said Finn.

“I’m told you had your office redecorated in neuveaux turd.”

“My,” said Finn. “What time did you get the call?”

“ About ten minutes ago. Is it true?”

“Yeah, it’s true. Now you tell me, what was his voice like?”

“Used a voice changer. Could have been male or female.

“Tell you anything else?”

“Like what?”

“Like something more than my office being stuccoed with crap,

and which was enough to get you off your patootie.”

“I’d like co-operation on this, Finn.”

“When have I not been co-operative with the press.”


120

“When it suits you. You hate my work,” she said. He felt she

could write better than she did, and was wasting her time on the rag

she wrote for. What irritated Finn most was the emotive language of

the headlines which were her editor’s and not her own. Thug Beats

Up Defenceless Woman. Pervert Freed Into Community. Of course

Finn knew that these headlines sold papers but as he pointed out to

her on more than one occasion such dehumanizing of the man or

woman usually led to violence against that human being, and this

was totally unhelpful when it came to trying to rehabilitate the

criminal. As far as Finn was concerned you had to recognize that

such people were human beings, and should be treated as human

beings. He reckoned that in order to punish criminals people had to

devalue them so that they felt justified in treating them like the

thugs and animals the headlines said they were. She felt Finn was a

bit too naïve.

“Will you confirm that you’ve been hired by Scott Lawton to find

who killed his wife and son?”

Finn sat back in his chair and whistled in wonder. “He told you

that?”

“Is it true?”


121

Finn saw no reason to deny it. He leaned forward.

“True again,” he said. “Celeste, listen. This voice, what was its

tone?”

“I didn’t like it. Menacing I’d say.”

“I’m only starting here, Celeste. I wouldn’t like you rushing

prematurely into print. I’ll need help on this one.”

“I won’t go on a diet, and for anything else I want exclusive

rights.”

“OK. No diet. Access your paper’s data base and get us all there

is on Martin Trueman.”

“Martin Trueman?” He could see her attention sharpen “You

think..?”

“I think nothing at the moment. It could lead somewhere or

nowhere.” He got up, “Bring me photocopies.” He left her.

****


122

Outside the morning was cold, grey, and damp. He turned up

the collar of his tweed jacket, and regretted leaving his hat and

warm topcoat in the car.

He found a street phone and put in a call to the mobile number

Scott Lawton had given him. Scott’s voice said, “What is it?” It was

slurred, but sharp, angry.

“Finn, Dr. Lawton. Is it OK for me to see the scene of the crime?”

“I’m there now. Come by all means. I’m not going anywhere for a

while. You know the address.”

“Sure,” said Finn.

Scott hung up.

Finn drove east out into the hills wondering who had given

Martha the tip-off. Somebody who knew he was working for Scott.

Nowadays there was no longer any great chain of being, so God, the

Devil and their angels and demons could be ruled out. That

narrowed it down to Molly, himself, and Scott Lawton. The only one

he was really sure it wasn’t was himself. Molly came a close second

and that left Scott Lawton, and he’d leave the jury out on him. There


123

was probably A.N.Other who might turn out to be Martin Trueman,

but how he would have known Finn couldn’t fathom. It would take

someone with a cast-iron stomach to stucco the walls with crap. And

where would he get that amount of human crap anyhow? For all

Finn knew maybe a little went a long way. When you take the ducks

in at night make sure you use a little hay, or in the morning when

you open the door, you’re liable to slip on the oystered floor.

Finn drove the car onto a parking shoulder, and stopped. Hell,

he thought I’m beginning to swing. I’ll have to watch that. He knew

that if he swung, the feeling would be great, washing away the

depressive thinking he’d been experiencing these last few years. He’d

been able to cope with the depression without medication, and still

function in the realm of reality, but if he swung, and he wasn’t

careful the elation could get out of control, and he would be

operating in the realms of phantasy.

He started the car and focused his mind. Was the guy who

crapped up his office the same guy as tipped off Martha? Probably,

but it didn’t have to be. Could have been a contract to a firm. How’d

they get in? Were they seen? The police would ask around about

that. What they’d tell him about it would be up to Bendix. Anyway,


124

Finn needn’t cover the same ground. He reckoned there’d be more to

follow or not depending upon what he did.

He turned off the highway into a long driveway lined with broad-

boled chestnut trees. It wound upwards in two turns and ended in a

broad pavement outside a green-shingled bungalow.

Finn braked, got out, central locked and went to the front door.

He pressed the bell, and stood looking around him as he waited for

Scott to come to the door.

There wasn’t much front garden, and what plants there were

stood around in a variety of pots. Winter plants should have

replaced them, and the roses should have been dead-headed and

pruned, but no-one had bothered. They had black spot and some

showed the aftermath of earlier attacks by leaf-cutter bees.

Two palms, one on either side of the door were pot-bound. They

had too many yellow leaves. A stunted paracantha had died in its

pot. The hope had been that it would have grown to cover the wall

area between the front door and the Georgian window from ground

to eaves. Some hope.


125

Scott opened the door, didn’t speak, went back the way he had

come from along the hall. Finn took off his hat and went in,

following the retreating back to the living room.

Scott, whiskey glass in hand offered Finn a drink. Finn refused,

knowing he’d have to be careful with the amount he drank from now

on if his mood was swinging. He stood by the fireplace where there

were photographs of a formidable looking woman with dark hair,

and a handsome child at divers ages. He lifted one showing the

woman and child together.

“Your family?”

“A photograph of them,” said Scott. “A likeness of what they

once were.”

“I know this is going to be difficult for you,” said Finn, “but I

need answers. Are you up to giving them?”

“Or will I go hysterical again? Is that what you mean?”

“I mean are you up to giving them here, or would you like to go

somewhere else?”


126

“You think I’m feeling sorry for myself,” said Scott. “Hence the

whiskey.”

“You have a right to feel sorry for yourself.”

“I have at that.” He put down his glass. “Go ahead ask your

questions?”

“This is where you found them?”

“Yes. I’ve had everything cleaned up. The chalk marks have gone

from the floor where Sean lay..”

“Where was that?”

Scott showed him, and Finn asked his questions about the

position and angles of the bodies in relation to each other and in

relation to the furniture, all of which had been replaced. Finn also

asked again about the position of the shotgun before Scott had

removed it. He looked at the gun cupboard with its glass front,

repaired now, with new glass, and empty. The police had taken away

the other weapons. A .441 Webley revolver dating back to World War

1, and a Lee-Enfield .303 rifle of the same era. Collectors pieces,

but, Scott said, still servicable.


127

It was an exercise in imagination more than anything else. The

scene was as cold now as the first ice age, and everything had the

smell of furniture and floor polish, and there wasn’t a speck of dust

to be seen. The walls had been stripped of the blood-stained paper,

and were now painted magnolia. The ceiling was a pristine white,

and the chandelier was a replacement of the one which had cast

light on the murderer.

“You can’t imagine what it was like, Finn,” Scott said.

“No, I don’t think I can.”

“Of course you can’t. You’d only know if it happened to you. How

would you have liked that to happen to you.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I’ve been wondering why me and not you Finn. Why me and not

anybody else. You know why I’m here today, and will be here

tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow?”

“I thought you’d be at work.”

“Ah, work,” said Scott. “Love and work. That’s what Freud said

each of us needed. You’ve got work, Finn.”


128

“I turn up for work even when I haven’t.”

“I can’t do that now, Finn. No. Dr. Lawton has been suspended

indefinitely until he can prove his innocence. So I have no work now,

Finn. It’s been taken away from me. And you have love, Finn, and I

have had my love taken away from me.” There was a wealth of

bitterness in his tone.

“Love is something you give, doctor,” said Finn. And work is

something you can still do, privately. Go to work until you can find it

in your heart to give love again. Don’t let it get to you.”

Scott gave a short laugh.

“Sit down Finn,” he said. “I suppose you’re right. It’s my hospital

work that’s been suspended. I can still work with my private

patients, although I’ve had one or two cancellations. Others have

written or phoned to show their support.”

Finn sat down.

“How’d you come to pick me?” he asked.

“Your friend, Stephen Boyd.”


129

Stephen was one of our fishing group. He was a G.P. who

worked in the deprived west of the city and wrestled with the

diseases of inequality. Stephen said to me later when it was all over,

“I felt sorry for the man, but if I’d known what would happen and

the terrible pain it would cause, I’d never have mentioned Finn’s

name to him. He was interested and wanted to know what sort of a

man Finn was. I think, now, I told him more than I should have

about Finn’s background.”

“He seemed to think you might help,” Scott added.

“Why didn’t you say so yesterday?” said Finn.

“You didn’t ask.”

“To tell you the truth,” Finn said. “I had a hard job making head

or tail of what you were saying.”

“Have you sorted it out yet?”

“Not entirely. Your through-other lodger. The archeologist.”

“Cooper. Didn’t exist. Was part of my hysterical thinking. Part of

my remembered state of mind at the time. I told you everything I

experienced. Think of it as a dream state. Reality and phantasy get


130

contorted. I suppose I was hoping for some kind of divine

intervention. I might also have been searching for some kind of

motive, although why I should have been arguing with Helen about a

Chair I already held is more than I comprehend myself.

“Who ran against you for the Chair?”

“Arthur Taylor,” said Scott. “That part of it was true enough, and

he is Beattie’s uncle. I got it into my head Beattie was his spy in my

camp, and in my hysteria, that’s the way it came out. I’m sure you

can sort the other pieces of reality from the phantasy.”

“The Brady’s are real people, but is that their name?”

“Yes,” said Scott.

“They gave you a hard time,”

“We have a lot in common, you and I, Finn,” said Scott. “Both

orphans. Both abused by those we were entrusted to. Me at my

aunt’s house, and you in that orphanage. I admit to you that I

mentioned the orphanage in my story in order to get you onto my

side. I needed a friend. One who could understand. One who, like

myself took the chances others gave him and became successful in


131

his own field. Even if I am tainted with all of this Finn, and even if

you are unable to clear me of these suspicions against me, my

papers will stand. People are already talking about Lawton’s

Behaviourism as they did about Watson’s and Skinner’s.”

“So you’ll have something even if I fail.”

“Exactly.”

“Did Michael Lonnigan exist?”

“Ah, Michael, yes, he was there at that school.”

“You really told him you were an angel?”

“Yes,” said Scott, smiling. “And he believed me. He was one of

those people.”

“What happened when he found out you weren’t?”

“He was going to beat me up.”

“But he didn’t.”

“ ‘Look, Michael,’ I said to him. ‘You don’t believe I’m an angel

anymore. That doesn’t matter. I’ll still be an angel. And because I’m

your angel, even if you beat me up I won’t harm you.’ ‘I’ve been


132

guarding you all this time,’ he said. ‘Of course’, I said, ‘That’s the

way we become angels.’”

“Clever,” said Finn, dryly, noting the satisfaction with which

Scott told the story. “Brains over brawn. I took from what you said

you didn’t like him.”

“I don’t suppose I did then.”

Scott changed the subject.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. Would you say you are a religious

man, Finn?”

Finn treated the question as rhetorical.

“What happened to me,” Scott went on, “reminds me of the book

of Job in Hebrew literature. “You know the story?” Finn nodded his

head. “In the story,” Scott said, Job lost everything, his livestock,

living, and family, for no good reason, as far as he could see.”

Finn didn’t think that Scott was going to tell him he believed

that God had made a Job-like agreement with Satan to test him, and

at the end of it Scott would, like Job, have even more than he had to

begin with. He said nothing.


133

“I am thinking about motiveless murder, Finn,” Scot went on.

“No such thing,” said Finn. “There’s always a motive.”

“What if it’s someone I don’t know, and who doesn’t know me? It

would seem motiveless to me.”

“Hardly likely.”

“I think I was picked out at random, Finn. It could just as easily

have been you or anybody else. It just happened to be me.”

“As I say,” said Finn, “it’s hardly likely. What sort of a man or

woman for that matter – although I think it was a man – would do

such a thing?”

“I’m thinking of someone with a God-complex. Someone who

believes themselves to be superior to all other human beings.

Someone who can look down on them, and see them as so many

ants. Someone who, if he – and I think you’re right it is a man –

wants to, can put his foot down and crush one or all of them.”

“You mentioned Martin Trueman,” said Finn. “Does he fit this

profile?” At the same time as asking this question Finn was thinking


134

of how the young Scott Lawton had looked down upon Michael

Lonnigan.

“I’ve thought about that too, and no, Trueman does not fit the

profile. Someone like this is proactive. Trueman is reactive.”

“He did threaten you.”

“He wanted me to know he felt aggrieved. He didn’t follow it up

right away. The person I’m talking about would have, and without

warning.”

He got up, poured himself another drink, offering one to Finn

which he refused, and said, “The terrible thing is he hit on the thing

I most dreaded. After he’d made his random choice, he found out

about me and the fear Helen and I both had that something would

happen to Sean. He only meant to kill Sean, you know. I think he

meant for both Helen and I to live, but she saw him and had to die

too. It was an experiment that went wrong. He meant to observe how

we would behave after we no longer had Sean. What’s the thing you

dread most, Finn?”

“It’s a common fear to dread losing the ones you love. I have that

too.”


135

“No, I mean specifically. Have you no specific fears, Finn?”

“I have a fear of heights if that’s what you mean.”

“Specifically, mine is a fear of being accused in the wrong, and of

being disgraced. Now you can understand why I went hysterical.”

“I still think this will turn out to be a crime perpetrated for the

most tawdry of reasons,” said Finn. “How were things between you

and your wife before they were killed?”

“We had our differences. We fought the piece out and made up.”

“You love each other?”

“Not according to your definition. We both, I think, were in love

with ourselves and took from each other what complimented our

narcissism. The way we behaved towards Sean would be called love.”

“There hasn’t been any gardening done here since the summer.

Did you and your wife fall out during the summer?”

Helen did most of the gardening. She had a man to help her, one

of her patients. She dismissed him during the summer.”

“What did he do?”


136

“Stopped taking his medication, and had a relapse.”

More checking, thought Finn, and asked for the man’s name and

address, and wrote down the information in his notebook. “Can you

be specific about why Helen dismissed him?”

“He became paranoid about Sean. Said he broke into his head

every night, and was killing his brain cells one-by-one. Helen

increased his medication and his delusions subsided, but we

thought it best not to have him back.”

“He knew you had guns in the house.”

“Probably, but it wasn’t him. The police checked.”

“You tell the police about Trueman?”

“Yes.”

“They check him out too?”

“They didn’t tell me. I take it they would do so.”

“Anything you’ve told them you haven’t told me?”

“Nothing I can think of.”


137

“You tell them your theory of this guy with the God complex?”

“No,” said Scott. “They haven’t been speaking to me since I

thought of it.”

“What do you think they will think when you do?”

“They already think it was me and that would make them

certain of it.”

“You going to tell them?”

“Oh I think so. The only way is to tell the truth.”

“What’s the truth?”

“Pontius Pilate said that.”

“Were you or Helen having an affair?”

“I’m sure you’ll find out we weren’t.”

Finn got up twirling the brim of his hat in his hands.

“One last thing,” he said. “I had a reporter come to me this

morning and tell me I was working for you.”


138

“That surprises me,” said Scott. “How could anyone know that

already?” He did actually sound surprised, but maybe it was good

acting. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

“A tip-off, by telephone using a voice changer.”

“How ingenious. Something else for you to find out, Finn. Keep

me informed of your progress every two days.”

****

Finn stopped in at a Burger King on his way back and had a

Whopper, then went back to his office block where there was word

that he could clean up the mess. He left that to the Sanitation

Department and was told that it would be a week before he could

repossess. The place was a health hazard.

The little man with the Adolph Hitler moustache, bowler hat,

and three-piece striped suit told him that it wouldn’t have taken

much crap to do what was done to his office. A small amount had

been liquidized and then sprayed over everything probably with one

of those back-packs gardeners use to spray weeds.


139

Finn went and bought a mobile phone, and put in a call to

Bendix, who seemed to be delighted to tell him that no progress had

been made, but not to worry, enquiries were going on in a

professional manner. No-one in the building after Finn left last

evening had heard or seen anything, and it was probably done

during the night when the security guard had been asleep. A door

leading to the basement car park had been forced, so whoever it was

had probably used either the stairs, or the elevator. Bendix guessed

the stairs, as the guy could not be sure the guard was asleep.

Anyway nobody saw or heard anything.

“You were going to tell me about Martin Trueman,” said Finn.

“Nice try,” said Bendix.

“Is he in the picture?” The signal was breaking up due to the fact

that the mobile’s battery needed charging. He lost the call.

He walked a couple of blocks round to where Martha Magee’s

newspaper was beside the library. Maybe he could work out of the

library for a week. It would be a clean, well-lighted, warm place, to

come back to and think things over.


140

He asked for Celeste Ray and she said she’d see him. He went

up to the first floor, and she was at her workstation in a room with

about seventy others. He sat in the interview chair to the side of her

worktop. She didn’t acknowledge him but went on pounding the

keys of her word processor.

“Anything on Martin Trueman?” Finn asked.

“In that file,” she said nodding to a blue envelope file.

It contained a photograph of Trueman taken when he was

leaving the courthouse after being given life. He was bald with an

egg-shaped head, small hard defiant eyes, and a mouth that was

snarling at the cameraman. A more recent photograph showed him

with a hair piece, suited, smiling, and standing in a pulpit.

Finn put the photographs down, and read the account of the

trial, then an account of his probationary release below the headline:

Do We Want This Animal Among Us? There was a quote from

Trueman’s lawyer who said that Martin was a totally reformed

character who had found Jesus in prison and who, now he was

released, had enrolled in the Baptist college to become a pastor.

Saint Paul who had also been a murderer had had his conversion,


141

so had Martin Trueman, and just as Saint Paul had done wonders

for Christ, so also would Martin. He asked the press to respect

Martin’s privacy.

This guy had threatened Scott Lawton, thought Finn. There

wasn’t much more in the line of articles except a note on his

graduation and a rehash of the murders he had committed, his trial

and his sentence. The guy had been doing good according to Baptist

Christianity and that was no good news for the media.

“This all there is?” said Finn. “No unsolved hits in the last two

and a half years?”

“Only mundane murders,” said Celeste. “Perps apprehended.

“He really does seem to be keeping his nose clean. His approach

from the pulpit is: I was a hit-man for Mammon, now I make hits for

the Lord.”

“That could be taken two ways.”

“I don’t think he would see that. I went along to hear him and he

recognized me. Shook my hand warmly on the way out, and told me

I needed Jesus Christ in my life. I’m sure he believed what he was


142

saying to me. Your mentioning his name this morning made me

wonder again if he had done the Lawton murders.”

“What do you think?”

“The police seem to have cleared him.

“If the police had him in, why wasn’t it reported?”

“It was.” She handed him a small cutting from her worktop

Pastor Quizzed in Lawton Murders. The headline more or less

said it all as most of it again reprised Trueman’s criminal past. If

Finn had read it at the time he’d forgotten.

“OK, Finn,” Celeste said when he’d finished reading.

“Reciprocation time.”

“Sounds exotic, if not positively erotic,” said Finn.

“You know what I mean.”

“The cops don’t know who redecorated my office. I won’t be able

to use it for a week. My archive of case notes have to be destroyed,

and the guy from the sanitation department says I should have been

computerized.”


143

“Painful,” said Celeste. “What are you going to do in the

meantime?”

“I thought I might use the library as a base.”

“You can’t interview clients in the library.”

“I’m not taking on any more clients. By the way, can I charge my

new mobile phone here?”

“You can if you agree to what I’m going to propose.”

“Now I might not be able to do that, Celeste. “You know how

madly in love I am with Molly.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Finn.”

“I might prefer to work from home, Finn said.”

“You’d be under Molly’s feet. And I don’t think you’d like that

yourself. All I had in mind was that for the next week you could be

my researcher.”

“I’m on a case, Martha,” said Finn. “I’ll be busy.”

“What I want you to do is connected with your case. You’ll be on

the payroll at the minimum basic wage.”


144

“In what way connected?”

“I’d want you to find out all you could about the death of

Lawton’s parents.”

“I’d have a conflict of interests.”

“What makes you so sure Lawton is innocent?”

“Let’s just say I’m open minded about it at the moment.”

“He refused me an interview.”

“He’s definitely guilty then,” said Finn. “No innocent would

refused to be interviewed by you. Why are you looking into the

deaths of his parents. Another tip-off?”

“Just a hunch. I started to think about Lawton’s background

when the police took him in for questioning. I started with the

Brady’s, his foster parents. I could save you a lot of leg-work Finn.

You can use that station next to mine. Charlie’s in America.”

“You know me, I work alone.”

“I won’t interfere with your precious autonomy, Finn. You’ll have

a place to work from and you’ll be working on the Lawton case.”


145

“I’ve been hired to prove his innocence, you think he’s guilty.”

“Let’s both try and find the truth.”

Finn thought about it. He’d taken Lawton’s money, quite a

considerable amount. But that didn’t mean that Lawton had bought

him if it turned out that Lawton was as guilty as sin. He’d taken the

money to find the murderer.

He looked about him. Could he stick the noise and bustle of this

kind of workplace. Phones were ringing. Answer phones were taking

messages which anybody could hear. People were coming and going,

and talking in loud voices. But then it would only be a base. He’d be

out most of the time, and he’d have the use of the paper’s database

for anything he might want to chase up, and he could also keep an

eye on the story Martha was going to write.

“I don’t know if I could survive working in a place like this,” he

protested mildly.

“You can start to-morrow,” she said.

“Tell me about the Bradys.”


146

“They died in the Health Care Park,” she said. “Lawton was very

attentive to them. He wasn’t their consultant but he made sure they

got the best of care. Couldn’t have been better to them. They both

had dementia – not Alzheimer’s – something they call multi-infarct

dementia. I talked to some of the nurses who looked after them.

They died three years ago just months apart.”

“What about when he lived with them as a child?”

“I spoke to a number of their old neighbours, and their children

who remember them, and the time when Lawton came to live with

them, after his parents were killed. From all reports he was very

happy living with them.

“I heard Patrick Brady was a thumper,” said Finn.

“Nobody I talked to seemed to be aware of that. According to

those who were children at the same time, they gave him anything

he asked for. The other children found him strange. He wouldn’t

play tag because he didn’t want anybody to touch him. That made

me suspicious that there was some sort of abuse, so I check the

hospitals for that time but there are no records of the boy Lawton


147

being brought in for cuts or bruises. In fact he seems to have been

very healthy.”

“How was he able to become a doctor?” Finn asked.

“He got good grades at school and went to Trinity College

Dublin.”

“On what? I understood the Brady’s were greedy and grasping.

They sold his parents’ house and kept the money for themselves,

they took him from his original school.”

“They did. They put him to a better one. They did sell the house,

but the money was invested for him along with his parents’ life

insurance. In fact he was quite well off.” Martha looked at Finn

thoughtfully. “He tell you something different?” Finn said nothing.

“You can check it out if you like. It’s all in this file.” She held up a

red one and put it down again. “And you can listen to the tapes of

the interviews I made.”

Finn wondered why Scott Lawton would tell him things that

would check out false.


148

“The hunch I have,” said Martha “is tied in with the fact that he

doesn’t like anybody to touch him. If the Bradys did not abuse him, I

want to find out if his parents did.”

“Well,” said Finn, looking at his watch. “I’ll start tomorrow after I

see Martin Trueman.”

It was not to work out like that.

****

Finn drove home at a leisurely speed after the evening rush had

cleared from the two bridges across the river. The depressed mood

he’d been experiencing for the past six months was lifting, and what

had happened to his office and all the contradictions he had to

puzzle with in the Lawton case did nothing to quench his feeling of

wellbeing. He felt good but he knew he’d have to keep a careful

watch on his mood. At a moderate level of elation he would be

creative in his thinking and action.

It was a terrible shock to his system to arrive home and find that

his caravan home had been reduced to ashes. The whole site was a

smouldering, charred, mess, with twisted iron and wire. There was

nothing left of anything he and Molly owned. A cold fear gripped


149

him, his stomach turned over, as his mind thought that Molly might

be injured or dead. Had she been in the caravan? Oh Christ, don’t

let it be so.

There was yellow police tapes staked all around the scorched

area. There was a red Mondeo parked to the right under the trees.

He saw Molly get out of it. He got out of the Almeira and ran towards

her.

“Molly, Molly.” He reached her threw his arms around her and

hugged her tight. He was crying with a mixture of fear and relief.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Finn,” she said. “Hush, now hush,” as she used to say

to the children. You’ll fracture me.” But he did not let her go, he held

on as if for his own comfort.

“Finn,” said Bendix. Finn hadn’t seen or heard Bendix come up

to them. “Come back to my car.”

Finn let them lead him to the Mondeo and usher him into the

back seat. He sat there holding on to Molly’s hand.


150

He did not seem to be able to say anything, so Molly told him

that just after noon she had gone out shopping, and when she had

come back about three, the caravan was blazing. By the time she got

to the nearest phone and the fire engine had arrived there wasn’t

anything that could be saved. She was sure she hadn’t been careless

and left anything that could start a fire. While she was phoning from

the neighbour’s she heard the gas cylinders explode.

“Seems too much of a coincidence, Finn,” said Bendix who said

he’d heard the call come in and knowing it was Finn’s caravan had

come out himself. The fire chief had told him that it looked like the

caravan had been sprayed with petrol. He called in for a scene of the

crime officer and a forensic unit. The forensic people had come and

gone with their little plastic bags. Nobody had been able to contact

Finn.

“Why couldn’t I get you at your office?” asked Molly, but as Finn

made no answer Bendix told her what had happened to Finn’s office

and why his phone was out of action.

“This was no accident?” said Molly. Bendix shook his head.


151

“Any idea of who might have done this, Finn?” he asked. “Finn?

Are you there?”

“Same guy who trashed my office.” said Finn.

“Seems a logical deduction, I think this whole thing centres

around Lawton,” said Bendix.

“He thinks there might be someone nobody knows,” said Finn

making a conscious effort not to think of what he had lost or what

he might have lost. He told Bendix about Scott Lawton’s theory of

the unknown man with the God complex.

“Sounds like himself,” said Bendix.

“He said you’d say that.”

“There you are then, omniscience. What time did you leave

him?”

“About the same time as Molly went shopping.”

“That would have given him time to do it.”

“He wouldn’t,” said Finn.

“I’ll check it out anyway.”


152

“There may be some other guy.”

“If there is Lawton has a hand in it.”

“Take it easy Bendix,” said Finn.

“You take it easy Finn,” said Bendix. “I know you have that

Glock 17. I don’t want any dead bodies on my patch. Where is it, by

the way?”

“I wasn’t carrying,” said Finn. “It was in the caravan.”

“It wasn’t found by forensic,” said Bendix, “and they went

through it with a fine-comb.”

Aw, hell, thought Finn. The bastard went through our home

before he torched it. He didn’t say anything.

“If a body turns up with a bullet from your gun in it Finn, I just

might give you the benefit of the doubt. Now, your both coming with

me for something to eat.

He turned round and started the car.

My doorbell has an old fashioned Victorian jangle, and when

Mrs. O’Casey, my housekeeper came to my study she said, “It’s Finn


153

and Mrs. Finn. They look like they’re in a bad way,” which, when I

saw them after going out into the hallway, was an understatement.

“Seamus,” said Finn, his face was white and peaked. “I’m sorry

to come like this, but we need a place to stay to-night. Molly’s

exhausted.” Molly didn’t look half as exhausted as he did. “We’ve

only the clothes were standing up in. Our home’s been torched.” He

was verging on tears. I don’t know whether of frustration or anger.

Possibly both.

“He needs to rest, Father Seamus,” said Molly.

“There’s always a room here for the both of you. I’ll have it

prepared.” Mrs. O’Casey was already on her way. I could see they

were both tired and shocked. While we waited, I poured them both

stiff brandies, thinking it would help them sleep.

Molly told be briefly about the caravan, emphasizing the loss not

of valuables, but of sentimental objects such as ornaments and

photographs of her family and children. Her only jewellery was her

wedding ring. Jewellery other than that was meaningless to her. She

had never had an engagement ring or even wanted one. Their love

did not need it.


154

Finn sat in one of my two big leather chairs, looking as if he did

not want to keep his eyes open. Molly saw me look at him. “He’ll feel

better in the morning,” she said. “He thought he’d lost me.”

“Would you believe it,” said Finn. “Bendix bought us a dinner

and a bottle of wine.”

“You’ll sleep tonight then,” I said and smiled.

When Mrs. O’Casey said the bedroom was ready I shepherded

them upstairs. Mrs. O’Casey had one of her own cotton nightdresses

for Molly, and a pair of my pyjamas for Finn.

I told them I’d see them in the morning and went downstairs and

phoned Stephen Boyd, and told him why Finn and Molly were

staying with me. He asked if they needed anything from his little

black bag, but I said no, and he said he’d be round in the morning

for breakfast.

When I told Mrs. O’Casey she said that it would do no harm for

them to see a doctor.

True to his word, Steve arrived shortly after I got back from

celebrating early mass. Molly was still asleep but Finn was up and


155

looking better than he did last night. I thought Finn was rather

distant with Steve as we went into the breakfast room.

When we were seated Steve said, “Seamus told me your home

was burned to the ground,” offering Finn an opening.

“You recommend me to a Dr. Scott Lawton?”

“Not exactly,” said Steve.

“Well, what exactly did you do?”

“Has this to do with him?”

“Probably,” said Finn. “He says you recommended me.”

“He may have interpreted what I said as a recommendation,”

Steve said. I could see he was getting uncomfortable.

“And not only did you recommend me,” said Finn. “You bloody

well told him about my personal history.”

Steve went red at the tone of Finn’s accusation, and spluttered

to protest. “Finn,” he began, but Finn was rumbling inside like a

volcano about to erupt. Mrs. O’Casey saved the day by pushing in a

hostess trolley, plugging it in, and serving breakfast to the three of


156

us. I asked her to take a tray up to Molly if she was awake. We sat in

uneasy silence until she left the room.

Finn was about to start again, but I said that it would be better

if Finn put us in the picture about what had happened until now.

Finn glared at Steve, still angry, but controlled himself and

began to tell us all that had happened. Gradually as he spoke, he

began to eat some breakfast, and when he was finished speaking he

had cleared his plate, and poured himself another cup of tea.

“Steve,” I said. “When and how did Lawton come to you?”

Eight days previously, Lawton had come to Steve, knowing of his

association with Finn. He had wanted to know if Finn was an honest

man, and would Steve describe him as a good man. Steve had

spoken as a friend, and at the same time had revealed details about

Finn’s background, including the reason why he ran away from the

orphanage. He had spoken about his success as a family man with

two good sons. Yes, Finn was a good man, a good detective, and

honest in his dealings.


157

“Finn,” said Steve. “Do you think my telling him those things

about you put you and Molly in danger? If so, that was not my

intention.”

“I don’t know, Steve,” said Finn, “I don’t seem to be thinking

right. I’m sure you had no intention of harming Molly or me. I just

felt if you hadn’t told him it wouldn’t have happened. I fear losing

my cool on this. To tell you the truth I don’t know who or what I’m

up against.” He paused. “You’re my friends and I’ll tell you, I’m

scared. I’ve got this idea in my head that even if I quit this case

whoever it is would still come after me. My greatest fear is that

things are going to get worse. He’s got my gun and if he shoots

someone with it, it will point to me.”

“Bendix knows it’s stolen,” I said.

“Let’s say he shoots Bendix,” said Finn. “How do I explain that? I

don’t have many friends on the Force. Bendix is o.k. but there are

others who’d be only too glad to put me in the frame.”

“In which case you’d have lost your house, your livelihood, and

possibly your freedom.” They looked at me expectantly. “I was just

thinking,” I said.


158

“What?

“You might be right, Finn,” I said. “Things might indeed get

worse. Steve, you say that Lawton came to you because he knew of

your association with Finn. Did he know Artie and myself were

friends of Finn?” Artie was the fourth member of our group, a school

teacher.

“Yes,” said Steve. “He knew. We’d talked together on many an

occasion about our fishing trips. He referred to us as the Four

Musketeers, and joked about which one of us was D’Artagnan.”

I turned to Finn. “He had you picked out before he asked Steve

what sort of a man you were. Steve just verified what he knew. It

was important to know that you were a good man.”

“What are you getting at?” asked Steve.

Finn shook his head. “I know what he’s getting at,” he said. “I

just find it hard to believe.”

“Perhaps you don’t want to believe it,” I said.

“Believe what?” said Steve.


159

“Naturally being a priest,” I said, “I’m thinking of the Job angle.

It seems to be the only one that fits the facts. Lawton chooses Finn

because he is a good man. There then follows the loss of his office,

and his home.”

“But Job lost everything,” said Steve, the horror of the situation

dawning on him. “It can’t be that.”

“I agree,” said Finn. “It just isn’t possible that anybody would be

mad enough to take the story of Job and act it out.”

“I’m talking evil here, Finn,” I said. “Not madness.”

“Lawton isn’t the kind to trash my office and torch my home,

said Finn.

“Would he be the kind to kill his wife and son?” I asked.

“I don’t think so, not in the way they were murdered,” he replied.

“He wouldn’t hire me if he was guilty.”

“You haven’t been able to do much about proving him innocent,”

I said. “Circumstances have prevented you. Circumstances devised

to keep you from finding out he did do it?”


160

“But why hire me in the first place?” said Finn. “The police have

no evidence for a case. He just needs to sit tight.”

“Let’s get back to Job,” I said. “Consider the characters in the

story. There is Job, his family, and his three friends. There is God

and Satan. Now, recast: There is Finn, his family, and his three

friends. There is Lawton and an unknown. God himself didn’t

destroy Job’s family and livelihood, he permitted Satan to do it.

Lawton as God might not be doing it himself, but is using an agent.

But who is Satan?”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Finn. “This is Father Darcy becomes

Father Brown, and enters the realms of imagination. It’s a story for

pity’s sake.” He turned to Steve. “You and he are in the same

profession, healing. What’s his reputation as a healer?”

Steve looked at me. “Maybe, Seamus, we are being a bit wild in

our speculations. Lawton is an eminent psychiatrist. He hold the

Chair of Forensic Psychiatry at the university. He is progressive in

his treatments and in some cases almost shamanic. While he is not

well liked, he is respected. I think you could say that he is very

conscious of the status he has achieved, and from what I know of

him he would not do anything to jeopardize his reputation.”


161

“There you are,” said Finn. “Would he lie under stress?”

“We could all do that,” said Steve. His hysteria was real enough,

I’m sure of that.”

“Were you there? Did you see it?” I asked Steve.

“No, but…”

I cut in with, “Did Bendix tell you about his hysteria, Finn?”

“No, I was going to check it out with Dr. Beattie. Bendix didn’t

tell me anything. After what Steve said, I’m sure he hired me to find

out who really killed his family. I think he cared for his family.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“If I ever get this investigation started, I’ll find that out and deal

with it then?”

“That might be too late,” I said. “What are you going to do to

protect Molly?”

“And why should Molly need to be protected?” said Molly coming

into the breakfast room with a tray of used dishes.


162

Finn got up and took the tray from her and put it on the table,

asked how she was in a voice filled with concern.

“I’m fine, Finn,” she said. “What is it you want to keep from me?”

Finn looked from Steve to myself.

“Tell her, Finn,” I said. “Even if Lawton is innocent, someone is

treating you like Job.”

He sat her down and told her what I had said. She listened

without interruption, and when he finished she turned to me.

“As far as I understand all this,” she said. “Dr. Lawton can either

be God with his own Satan, or be the victim of some other Satan,

the agent of an unknown God, who has now transferred his theatre

of operations to our family.”

I nodded glumly.

“And it’s not over yet?” she said.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “That’s why you need protection.”

“If I need protection,” she said, “so do the boys.”


163

“For pity’s sake, Molly,” said Finn. “One’s in Paris, and the

other’s covering the Cup matches in Germany.”

“We need them protected,” said Molly.

“There’s no need to panic,” said Finn.

“We can’t take chances with their lives. Father Seamus what will

we do?”

“We’ll work something out,” I said. “At the moment you are in

more danger than they are. We have to think of your safety.”

“I don’t know if what we’ve created here in our own minds is true

or false,” said Steve, “but acting on the Job theory it might be a good

idea to open the Enniskillen cottage and have Molly stay there in

the meantime.”

“I don’t think so, Steve,” I said. “She’d be too isolated there. It

would be better if she joined her own people in Sligo. They’d know

how to look after her.”

“That’s true,” said Finn. “Good idea.”

“I’m staying here with you, Finn,” Molly said.


164

“Finn’s in no physical danger,” I said.

“I’m staying here and I want to know the boys are all right,” she

said.

We’ll work something out, and while we were brainstorming, the

’phone rang. Mrs. O’Casey answered it and came in from the hall

and said it was for me. I went out and it was Seaneen, Finn’s

youngest, phoning from Munich. He said he had been trying to get

in touch with his Mom and Dad, and did I know where they were. He

said he’d had an anonymous call saying that they were both in

trouble. He’d been in touch with his brother Fingal, and he too had

had a similar call.

I told him Finn and Molly were with me right at his moment and

that they were as large as life. As I was talking Molly came out into

the hall and took the receiver from my hand. Finn had followed her

out.

“Are you all right, son?” she said. “…Yes I’m fine. We both are.

What about Fingal? Is he all right…. Good.”

She listened as Seaneen went over again what he’d told me, then

said, “Wait a minute, I’ll ask Finn.” She covered the mouthpiece and


165

said to him, “He wants to know should they come home. Someone

told them we were in trouble.”

Finn checked himself from taking the receiver, and shook his

head. “Tell them to stay where they are. It’s a trick to get them to

come home. If they’re home they can be got at.”

Molly told Seaneen not to come home. Listened again, then said,

“Because you’re both safer where you are…. Whatever you do stay

where you are, both you and Fingal.” She handed Finn the receiver.

“He want’s to speak to you.”

“Seaneen,” said Finn. “Good to hear from you… Yes. I’ll tell you

in a minute, but tell me first, when did this call come through to

you, and what exactly did he say?”

Seaneen told Finn that the call had come at 4:30pm our time,

and that the voice had been disguised so that it was hard to say if it

was male or female.

After verifying who it was speaking to and that he was the son of

Fingal Finn, the detective it said, “Your old man has bitten off more

than he can chew, and your ma is in serious trouble as well as your

da.”


166

“Who are you?” Seaneen asked.

“Let’s just say I’m a friend that knows the trouble they’re in.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The dangerous kind. It could be terminal.”

“What’s your name?” Seaneen tried again. “How’d you get this

mobile number?”

“If I was you, son,” said the metallic voice, “I’d get home as soon

as possible. They need your help.”

And with that he’d hung up. Seaneen phoned Fingal, and found

that he had just had a similar call. They’d both decided to come

home.

“No,” said Finn. “Both of you stay where you are. That’s the best

thing.”

Molly took the phone from him in a deft movement.

“Seaneen,” she said. “I want you to listen to me carefully.” There

was too much worry in her voice. “You’re in Munich. Go to Gunter


167

Schwartz, you and Fingal. Tell him I sent you and stay with his

band of gypsies. He’ll take care of you.”

Finn looked at me with an expression and a gesture of

exasperation. Like him, I felt Molly had made a mistake in saying

what she said.

Her voice rose. “Seaneen, just do this for me.”

I gently took the phone from Molly’s unsteady hand. “It’s

Seamus Darcy, Seaneen, I said.

“Father, what’s wrong?”

“Your mother’s a bit overwrought.”

“Will she be all right?”

“Surely, she will,” I said.

“Tell me what this is about, Father.”

“I think your Dad should do that,” I said.

“I held the receiver out to Finn, saying, “Tell him what’s

happened.”


168

Finn took it from me and stood for a moment or two, tight-

lipped, in a quandry about what to say. He glanced at Molly, shook

his head and uttered a single tsk. He then removed the receiver from

against his chest, and put it to his ear.

“Seaneen… yes… listen. There’s been an accident. Neither your

Mom or myself were hurt or injured in any way. It’s just that we

haven’t a place to live at the moment. Father Seamus is putting up

with us until we find somewhere for ourselves.”

“Was it an accident, Dad?”

“Yes, son, an accident.”

“Then what about this guy who ’phoned us?”

“There are always people like that son, who like to heap

misfortune on misfortune. Believe me, in my business you learn to

expect it. So there’s no need for either of you to come home. All we

have to do is get the insurance sorted out, and get ourselves another

caravan, and then we’ll be off to Sligo as planned.

“You are retiring then?” said Seaneen.

“I haven’t had a case in the last six months, so I might as well.


169

“You need any money in the meantime.”

“No,” said Finn, “Our money was in the bank. It’ll be and excuse

for your Mom to buy some new clothes. How are the matches going.”

Finn listened while Seaneen told him about his coverage of the

first two football matches of the European Cup tournament. When

he had finished, he said, “I enjoy reading your reports. You’re busy.

Stay there. There’s nothing we can’t handle here.”

And before Seaneen could ask anything more, Finn said goodbye

and hung up.

“I hope that holds him there,” he said. “Molly I understood your

concern, but you shouldn’t have aroused his suspicions, that there

was anything other than an accident.”

“Finn,” she said. “I think you should have told him the truth.

Without it they won’t know what hit them if he goes after them over

there.”

Finn asked if he could make a phone call to Fingal, and after a

couple of attempts, he was able to get through, and said what he’d

said to Seaneen to him.


170

Again Molly felt he had done wrong in not telling him about the

danger he was in. Finn worried about Molly and Molly worried about

the safety of her two sons.

“Meaning no disrespect Father Seamus,” she told me. “They

have yet to do what they’re supposed to do in this world, and I am

not yet a grandmother nor Finn a grandfather. Now is it

unreasonable of me to want to make sure that they live long enough

to do that?”

****

Throughout that day as he went from place to place, Finn took

Molly with him. He carefully, painstakingly, checked the rental car

each time they left it and came back to it for a bomb or a bug.

Depending upon the terrain Molly would be in front of him, behind

him, or to one or other side of him. It was a day, he said, of looking

over his shoulder, and of dead ends.

He bought a second mobile phone for Molly with enough charge

in it to last the day in case they got separated. Martha he brought

up to date when they collected his own mobile from the newsroom.

She said she’s try to pump Bendix about his enquiries.


171

Finn and Molly went to see Martin Trueman who was living in a

house the church had for its pastor. It was detached, sitting in

mature gardens, of rustic brick built back in the forties. It now had

new green shingles, and PVC windows and doors. It had a BENTLEY

sitting outside the garage in the driveway of boxwood topiary.

Trueman did not mind answering questions relating to Scott

Lawton and he told Finn what he had told the police, namely that he

did not kill Lawton’s family, and that he had never threatened

Lawton in any way. Lawton might have said that he did, but, being

obedient to Christ’s command to make right all things with all men

before coming to Him, he had gone to Lawton to show him he had

nothing to fear from him.

“I did threaten him before I went into prison,” he said. Shouted

things at him, but I just wanted him to know I was a changed man.”

Trueman wasn’t at all like Martha described him when she had

gone to see him at his church. Finn had expected someone who

expressed himself in the cliches of the “Born Again” preacher. He

was a slim man, with a hair piece. His own hair was grey at the

temples. Molly, like Finn, had expected his eyes to be cold and hard

and unsmiling, but this was not the case.


172

“Mr. Trueman,” Molly said. “I’m told you’ve killed people for

money.”

“Mrs. Finn,” he said. “I regret to say I have, but now I rejoice to

say I do not.”

“We only have your word for that,” said Finn.

“God knows I did not kill the Lawtons or anybody else since I

came from prison. I know I did not kill the Lawtons, and the police,

although they can’t be as sure as God or myself, don’t think I killed

them.”

“What’s the word on the street about who killed them?” Finn

asked. “I take it you’re still in touch.”

“Enough to know about the trouble you’ve had, and that you’ve

got a new client who is the favourite of the punters in the street for

the Lawton murders. In unprofessional killings like this the police

are usually right. I’m glad neither of you were harmed by the fire.”

“How do you know about that?”


173

“As you said, I keep in touch with the street. How’s your office?”

He held up his hands, palms out. “I know what you’re thinking Finn,

but my hands are clean.”

Molly asked him if he thought Lawton was capable of killing his

wife and child.

“He might have,” he answered. “When he interviewed me, he got

my number straight off. Knew what I was doing and told me he’d

make sure I didn’t get away with it.” There was no bitterness in his

voice. “I wanted an easy time in the psycho ward instead of a hard

time in prison. He called me a psychopath, but it takes one to know

one.”

“Or a psychiatrist,” said Finn.

“Sometimes they’re the same.” Trueman said.

“So, you’re still a psychopath,” said Finn.

Trueman wasn’t offended.

“I’ll always be a psychopath,” he said. “Just as an alcoholic is

always an alcoholic even when he’s not drinking. I no longer behave

psychopathically. I am dead to my old life. I have been torn apart


174

and reconstituted to my new vocation. I am a new person in Christ

Jesus, and I’ve never had it so good.”

“I’d like to believe it,” said Finn.

“Believe it,” said Trueman. “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven

and you’ll get everything else. That’s what the Lord said, and it’s

true.” He looked from the one to the other. “Where will you spend

eternity Mr. and Mrs. Finn?”

Finn got up from where he was sitting, Molly following.

“You need to give it some thought, Finn,” said Trueman.

“Are you threatening us?”

“Far from it,” said Trueman. “I have a genuine concern for your

souls.”

Finn wasn’t sure. The psychopaths he’d known were

consummate actors.

“Sounds like it to me,” he said.

“There’s no guarantee any of us will be alive this time tomorrow,”

said Trueman. “Don’t you want eternal life?”


175

“Come on, Molly,” Finn said. “Let’s go.” He felt Trueman was

playing games with him.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Finn,” said Trueman, seeing them

off at the door. “Take care now, and God bless you in Jesus’ name.”

They went back to the car, examined it, got in and drove around

the corner and parked where they could see the entrance to

Trueman’s house.

“Why are we waiting here?” Molly asked.

“If he goes somewhere, I want to know where it is.”

“He could just make a phone call.”

“I hope he’ll go somewhere.”

“You think he could be involved?”

“ Could be,” said Finn, “it’s possible word about me got to him

from the street, but it’s also possible that he’s still in business.”

“You think he did your office and our home?”

“It’s possible.”


176

Molly shivered.

About forty-five minutes later the BENTLEY came from the

driveway and Finn followed it. It was a short drive. The car pulled up

in front of a bungalow, and Trueman got out, and from the boot of

the BENTLEY he took a motor lawnmower. He took it through the

gate and in a few moments, Finn and Molly could hear the engine

start up, and then cut off again.

Trueman came through the gate and walked down the street to

where they were parked. Finn rolled down the window. Trueman

smiled in at them.

“Bungalow belongs to one of my flock. She’s old, in hospital with

a broken leg, and I’m cutting her lawn. It’s part of my practical

ministry. You can stay and watch me if you want. I’ll be here a

while. There are a few other jobs to do.” He went back and

disappeared through the gate. The engine started up again.

Finn drove off.

Later, after they’d eaten, Finn phoned the Health Care Park to

set up an interview with the gardener, John Dickson, who was living


177

in one of the wards there. The Charge Nurse said he could see him

at 11:30a.m. tomorrow.

He then phoned Scott Lawton, who right away wanted to know

what progress Finn had made.

“Not much,” said Finn. “I’ve no office and no home.” He told

Scott what had happened since he’d left him last evening.

“That explains Sergeant Bendix’s oblique questions about my

whereabouts during yesterday afternoon between the hours of noon

and three p.m.” He laughed. “Do you want to ask me the same

questions, Finn?”

“Be a waste of time.”

“You, at least. have some sense. Finn, I’m really sorry about

what happened to your home. Please be careful. Each incident

seems to increase in seriousness. Do you have a dog or cat?”

“No,” said Finn. “Is that what happened to you? Did it go from

things, to animals, to your family?”

“No, just my family.”

“I’ve seen Trueman. He says he didn’t threaten you.”


178

“What else did you expect? As I say I don’t think it was him.”

“He could be working for someone else.”

“I doubt it, for the reasons I told you.”

“He could be working for your mystery man with the God

complex. It’s not likely that he would do these things himself.” There

was silence on the other end of the line. “You still there?”

“Just thinking,” said Scott. “With a brain like that behind him,

Trueman could be dangerous. I see what you mean. No, he can’t be

ruled out. Finn, I want you to exhaust all resources to find

whoever’s doing this to us. More than likely it’s the same people.”

Finn asked Scott to remind him of the name of the school he

attended and the years he was there before going to university. He

then gave Scott the number of his mobile phone if he needed him,

then broke the connection. He sat back closed his eyes, filled his

mouth with air and expelled it explosively.

“What did he say?” asked Molly.

“I’m to exhaust all resources,” Finn said. “Where’d he get a line

like that? Hell, Molly, I’m no further on than I ever was in finding


179

this maniac. Let’s go shopping, then back to Seamus’. Oh, and

Molly, I don’t want you to give my mobile number to anybody,

nobody at all. Let’s keep it a secret between ourselves.”

“But you’ve just given it to Dr. Lawton.”

“Sure,” said Finn. “Now if I get a call from Satan, then I’ll know

who God is.”

“Just one thing,” Molly said. “It’s been charging overnight in

Martha’s. She could have taken the number of it, as could anybody

else there.”

“Thanks,” said Finn. “Let’s go shopping.”

That evening we all gathered together again, joined by Artie the

schoolteacher of our group. Finn told him the name of the school

Scott had attended and the years, and asked if it would be possible

to get photostats of the class registers Scott was in. Artie said he’d

do what he could.

Steve said he’d made it his business to see Dr. Beattie today,

and had enquired about hysteria in general and Scott Lawton’s in

particular.


180

The gargoyle pose was news to Beattie. Lawton had been in what

Beattie described as a trance state when the police found him. This

alternated with a fugue state, wherein Lawton claimed not to be able

to remember anything. He came out of this gradually over a period of

several days, and then told the story of finding the bodies of his wife

and son. He told it all to Beattie before he told it to the police.

“Rehearsing it,” said Finn.

“It’s hard to say,” said Steve. “Beattie said he told the same story

to the police word-for-word.”

“Was he found holding the gun?” asked Finn.

“He told Beattie he’d removed the gun from his wife’s hands,

after which he froze.”

“What do you think, Finn?” I asked.

“At the moment I’m too tired to think,” said Finn.

We broke up soon after that, and later I heard Finn and Molly

being passionate in the night.


181

Next day Molly said she’d prefer to stay where she was, and

promised on Finn’s insistence not to go out by herself. He went to

the Health Care Park.

It was different to what it was when it housed fifteen hundred

inmates up until the sixties. There were now only about three

hundred patients, two hundred of whom were on a permanent basis,

being either too senile, or too dangerous to be in the community.

The others were treated on a short-term basis during the acute

phase of their illnesses.

I was no stranger to the place myself and the ward Finn drove

up to was situated on a hill amid one hundred year old chestnut

trees. He went in through a stout front door and was shown into a

side room and left until John Dickson was brought in. The nurse

went out again after saying Finn had nothing to worry about.

The room wasn’t all that big and most of it was taken up with a

large table and four chairs. The room had that peculiar odour of wax

and human suffering. He shook hands with John Dickson and sat

down at the table beside him.


182

At the same time as that was happening I came home to find

Mrs. O’Casey in a state of agitation. When I got her calmed down she

told me that Mrs. Finn, who had been sorting out the things she and

Mr. Finn had bought yesterday, had had a phone call – about ten

o’clock. When she answered it she turned white, and went into her

room where Mrs. O’Casey couldn’t hear the conversation. After that,

she said she was going out and wouldn’t be long.

Did she ask her where she was going? Of course she did, and

told her she shouldn’t be going out alone, and if she was going out

she should leave word of where she was going. She just said, again,

she wouldn’t be long and then she went out, taking her new

handbag with her.

“I haven’t seen hide or hair of her since,”

“And you’ve no idea why she was going?”

“No.”

“You didn’t listen at the door?”

“Would I do a thing like that?”

“Maybe you should have done.”


183

“I’ll do it the next time.”

I was reasonably sure it wasn’t Finn who had called her. Mrs.

O’Casey would have known by the way she answered. Steve, Artie,

and myself had their numbers, and I wasted no further time in

speculation, but called Molly.

It rang, and rang, until the tone changed and I got the

answering service. She either wasn’t answering or had turned her

phone off. I couldn’t key in a message from my hall phone.

I called Finn, and let him know what had happened, and he said

he’d be with me as soon as he could. I phoned Molly again and still

got no answer. No doubt Finn was doing the same thing.

Finn arrived in half an hour, and she had called neither of us in

the meantime.

“What do we do?” I said, feeling there should be something we

should be doing an not knowing what. “She should have been back

or in touch by this time.”

“We wait,” said Finn. “I’ve been on to Bendix and put him in the

picture. He said he’d get a description of Molly into general


184

circulation. We wait because at the moment I can’t think of where

she might have gone.”

“If only we knew where she went,” I said. “And if only she’d let

Mrs. O’Casey know where she was going.”

“Cut it out,” said Finn, harshly. “What’s the use of talking like

that? If only this, if only that. She went out when she knew she

shouldn’t have gone out alone. She didn’t tell anybody where or why

she was going. And those are the facts.”

“She wouldn’t have gone without a good reason,” I said. We were

both walking up and down my library in opposite directions. As we

came abreast, Finn stopped.

I stopped.

He tried her number again.

No answer.

Exasperation.

He put the phone away.


185

“She hasn’t got the bloody thing switched on. Hell. I have this

terrible feeling, Seamus.”

I could see the apprehension in his eyes. I didn’t know what to

say to him. We knew each other too well, and I couldn’t mouth the

usual platitudes. Maybe I should have, maybe platitudes don’t do

any harm, even if they don’t do any good, but in all honesty

although I hoped and prayed that she would get in touch or walk

through the door right there and then, I couldn’t say with certainty

that she would do so. I don’t believe that God’s final purpose is

either salvation or justification, but glorification, and I knew I could

not explain that ineffable experience to Finn at this time.

He must have seen the agony in my eyes for he said, “We must

not despair too soon, Seamus. There are only three reasons I can

think of that would make Molly go off on her own like that. Young

Finn, Seaneen, and myself. Whoever phoned her said something

about one or other of us.

He took out his phone again and phoned Bendix. He asked him

to check all the incoming flights to both airports from Germany and

France to see if one or both of the boys had flown home.


186

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. If they have, why haven’t they turned

up before this? Get back to me on that. And Bendix – thanks.”

Mrs. O’Casey brought us coffee and sandwiches. Finn said he

didn’t feel like eating, but drank a good deal of the coffee.

“What about the gardener?” I asked.

“Nothing there,” said Finn. “He has alibis for all the relevant

times and events. I did learn that Lawton does have one of those

back packs for spraying weeds. The other thing was that he said

that Lawton didn’t treat the boy right.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“He was just about to tell me that when you phoned. After that

all he would say was that he was killing the boy’s brain cells off one-

by-one.”

“Maybe you should take a look at that back pack,” I said. “I wish

I’d never met Lawton,” he said.

His phone rang. It was Bendix to tell him that both boys had

booked to the International airport from Paris, arriving in the early

hours of the morning.


187

“Bendix, I don’t have any photographs of anybody any more.

They were all destroyed in the fire. Remember the bloody fire?”

He gave a description of his two sons, and said that if they got in

touch he would let him know. “Find them for me Bendix.” He hung

up.

He threw his arms up in the air. “Hell! Now he’s got the three of

them.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“I’m sure of it.”

He looked at his watch and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” I called after him.

“To the only place I can think of,” he said. “Scott Lawton’s.”

On the way he called Artie who told him he had someone

working on finding the registers he wanted.

“Artie, I need those registers yesterday.”

“What’s up?”


188

Finn told him and Artie asked him if there was anything he

could do.

“Just get the registers, Artie.”

He continued on to Scott Lawton’s in a rising state of excitement

brought on by some words of Lawton that jumped into his mind.

“Ah, Michael, yes, he was there at that school.”

Finn now had a working hypothesis. The brains and the brawn.

Lawton and Lonnigan. God and Satan. Why hadn’t he thought of it

before? All he had to do was prove it. Lonnigan would be there on

the registers, but probably under another name. If he could trace

Lonnigan….

“Finn,” said Scott Lawton, when he opened the door. “This is

unexpected.”

“You have visitors?”

“No, I’m here alone.”

“You won’t mind if I come in then.”

“By all means.” He stood aside as Finn entered.


189

“Why are you here, Finn?”

“I’ve spoken to your gardener.”

“John Dickson. And what did he have to say?”

“Amongst other things, that you have a back pack for spraying

weeds.”

“Probably.”

“Can I see it?”

“Should be in the garage.”

They went out to the garage, Scott opened the overhead door,

and went in with Finn at his side.

The garage was overcrowded due to the careless storage of

garden implements and ladders, steps and paint pots all standing

around among dead plants in pots which had been brought in for

the winter and never watered.

“You see it anywhere, Finn?”

Finn poked about a bit longer, but couldn’t see anything that

resembled a back pack for spraying weeds, or offices or caravans.


190

“I’m sure there was one,” said Scott.

“Anywhere else it might be.”

“Might have been left outside. Is it important?”

“I think it might have been used to spray my office with crap and

my home with petrol,” said Finn.

“Let’s look for it then,” said Lawton.

They searched the gardens and under the shrubs, and along the

sides of the bungalow and garage, but there was no sign of what

they were looking for.

“It’s gone, Finn,” said Lawton. “Stolen. It’s an attempt to

implicate me in the desecration of your office and the arson of your

home.”

“Yeah,” said Finn. “You might say that.”

“He seems to be succeeding. There’s a doubt in your mind about

me.”


191

“Some things you told me haven’t always tallied,” said Finn. His

phone rang. He answered it. It was Bendix asking him to meet him

at the hospital.

“Right away, Finn,” he said. The way he said it told Finn that

something serious had happened.

“What’s the matter, Finn?” asked Scott Lawton when he came off

the phone. “You look as if you’ve had bad news.”

“Could be,” said Finn. “I’ve got to go.”

“Maybe I should go with you.”

“What for?”

“I just thought that with your history of Bi-polar depression I

might be able to help. I am a psychiatrist.”

“No, no thanks.”

“Well, if you need me, I’ll be here.”

Finn left him, his mind awhirl with a multitude of unresolved

questions.

****


192

When Finn drove into the car park of the hospital, I was already

there with Bendix who had called me.

“How do you think he’ll take it?” he asked again for about the

sixth time. This alternated with, “How are you going to handle it.

You break the ice and I’ll tell him what happened.”

“Sergeant,” I said. “Shut up.”

“Huh? Oh, sure, Father.”

The sergeant had phoned me because I was a priest, and was

supposed to be able to handle bad-news situations, but it was as a

friend that I was going to have to tell Finn about Molly and their

sons.

“God help me,” I prayed. “Just give me the right words.”

We got out of the car to meet Finn, and when he saw me he

checked, then, after a moment’s hesitation he came on again.

“Something bad’s happened,” he said.

I took Finn’s arm and led him, with Bendix on the other side,

into the hospital, and on to the canteen. Bendix got three coffees

and brought them to the table.


193

“What’s happened, Seamus,” Finn said. “Give it to me straight.”

“Finn,” I said. “Molly’s in the burns unit.”

“Is it very bad?”

“She’s critical,” I said.

“How’d she get burned?”

“She was burned with acid,” I said.

“Not her face, Seamus. Not her face.”

I couldn’t tell him it was not her face.

He hit the table so hard with a clenched fist that the polystyrene

cups jumped and coffee spilled. He then sat back in his chair,

holding his chest with crossed arms, and rocked to and fro,

moaning.

“They’ve give her something for the pain,” said Bendix. Finn

didn’t seem to hear, he just went on rocking. Then he stopped,

collected himself with an effort, and asked Bendix, “Was she able to

talk?”


194

“I haven’t been able to question her yet,” said Bendix. “The

doctor has her sedated. I thought maybe you could question her for

me.”

“Isn’t that a bit much to ask, Sergeant?” I said.

“She might respond better to him,” said Bendix.

“What about Finn? At a time like this. He’s bound to be in

shock.”

“He’s tough,” said Bendix. He went on to tell Finn how he’d got a

call from Martha Magee, who had got another anonymous tip-off.

Martha said the caller had told her to tell Bendix he’d find work for

himself at a warehouse at Cutter’s Warf.

When Bendix with a couple of squad cars, found the warehouse

they discovered Molly tied to a chair, unconscious, her head and

face a mass of acid blisters. He’d called an ambulance and got Molly

to hospital.

I thought I should come in at that point.

“Finn,” I said. “He found young Finn and Seaneen there too, I’m

sorry.” I began to cry. Finn reached out his hand instinctively to


195

comfort me. I grasped his hand and held it, rubbing the back of it

soothingly. “They were both dead, Finn.” All movement in Finn’s

hand froze. The look on his face was one of acute agony. Bendix,

alarmed, thought he was going to howl, by the way he threw his

head back, opened his mouth, and closed his eyes.

“Finn,” he said. “Don’t go to pieces now. They were shot in the

back of the head with your gun which was left at the scene. I think

your wife saw who did it.”

“Bendix,” I said, “for pity’s sake.”

“No,” said Finn, “he’s right.” He got up. “I want to see Molly.

No-one spoke in the elevator taking us to the tenth floor. From

the nursing station we were shown into a side-room off the main

ward.

Molly lay in bed neatly bandaged from head to chest. Only her

left eye and her lips were visible. Her lips were peeling and smeared

with gel. Both hands were also bandaged, and an IV was running

into her left arm. Her eye was closed, her breathing was short and

rapid, and from time to time her body shivered and tensed.


196

Finn let the cot-side down, and got to his knees at the side of the

bed. I could see he wanted to enfold her in his arms, but knew that

if he did he’d cause her more pain. There was an area of forearm

above the wrist and below the butterfly of the drip. He touched her

lightly and gently there, but there was no response. The nurse who

had remained at the door said that she had of necessity been heavily

sedated, and needed to sleep. The most we could do was to sit with

her and wait. She told Bendix that would probably be sometime

during the following day.

“Molly,” Finn said, in what came out as a hoarse, throaty, moist,

whisper. “Molly.”

Bendix motioned me to come outside the room. He told me that

he needed Finn to come with him to make an official identification of

the body, even though the boys had their passports in their pockets.

“Surely it can wait,” I said. “They aren’t going to go anyplace.”

“I suppose you could do it,” he said. “You know them well

enough.”

I didn’t relish the task, but I thought it would save Finn the

journey to the morgue to see the bullet damage and that of the


197

coroner’s knife. It would be better if he saw them after the

undertaker’s ministrations.

“I’ll do that,” I said.

“You’ll do what?” said Finn appearing at the door. “Bendix, what

are you going to do to protect her?”

“Why should she need protection?” said Bendix.

“I’ll tell you why,” said Finn into his face. “Because he means to

kill her.”

“Then why didn’t he, when he had her in that warehouse?”

“He wants her to suffer before he kills her. And he wants me to

see her suffering. I’m to be left with nothing and no-one, except the

memory of her suffering. I told you this jackal is acting out the Job

story.”

“I don’t go for that, Finn,” said Bendix.

“You haven’t gone for anything yet, Bendix, and look what’s

happened so far. I want a police guard on this door, twenty-four

hours a day.”


198

“I can’t do that,” said Bendix. “I’m a sergeant and I’d be told

there aren’t the resources.”

“The hell with you then, Bendix. I’ll guard her myself.” Finn was

shouting.

“Finn,” I said. “The sergeant wants me to go with him to officially

identify Fingal and Seaneen. I’ll be back and we can work something

out about the arrangements.”

“Arrangements?”

“The arrangements,” I said.

“Oh, those arrangements. Jesus.” I didn’t think it was a prayer.

“No,” he said. “If you will stay here with Molly, I’ll go with Bendix.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“What has wisdom to do with all this? It’s what has to be done.

He wants me to see my sons, I’ll see my sons.”

When he had stormed off with Bendix in tow, I phoned Steve,

and Artie, and told them what had happened. I was sitting at Molly’s

bedside, when Steve who was the first to arrive, put his head round

the door and whispered me out.


199

He’d had a word with the Registrar and told me that Molly was

in a very critical condition. The acid had eaten away most of the

flesh to the bones, and Molly if she recovered would require many

painful operations over a number of years, but the chances of her

surviving the next forty-eight hours were slim because there was a

possibility that some of the acid had penetrated the brain through

the sinuses. If she survived there could be brain damage.

Artie came along then, and Steve told him the same thing.

“Whoever did this is sick,” Artie said.

I told them that Finn thought that whoever it was would be

coming back to kill Molly, and that she would need to be guarded. If

the Registrar was right, and Molly did not survive the next two days,

he wouldn’t have to. Maybe he knew he wouldn’t have to.

****

“You don’t have to do this, Finn,” Bendix said on the way to the

city morgue.

“How else will I know they’re dead?” said Finn, slumped in the

passenger seat. Anger had left him now.


200

Bendix glanced at him, then brought his eyes back to focus

through the front windscreen on the yellow-lit streets along which

they were driving.

“I’ve told you they’re dead,” said Bendix. “The Father could have

saved you the trouble of identifying them.”

“It just seems unreal,” said Finn. “I know you’re telling me the

truth, but I don’t want to believe your telling me the truth. I can

believe what’s happened to Molly, but until I see my boys for myself,

I don’t want to believe they’re really dead.”

“I was talking to the Father earlier,” said Bendix, “and he said

that pure unadulterated evil has no logic. And there is no logic in

what has happened to you. He buys into this Job theory because

that is the way he can make sense out of it. It’s even a way you can

make sense of it. But where did it come from? From Lawton. He tells

you about some character with a God complex. You tell the Father,

and you both start talking about God and the Devil because that’s

something you both can relate to. Keep on thinking like that and

you’ll want me to believe that I’m not fighting some depraved human

being, but that I’m up against powers and principalities. No. I don’t


201

buy into that supernatural stuff. What was done to your family was

done by men, and I still say the best bet in this case is still Lawton.”

Bendix pulled the car up in a parking space next one reserved

for the Coroner. He switched off the engine. There were no seat belts

in the police car. You can’t get at your gun in a hurry, if you have to,

wearing a seatbelt. “Right, Let’s get this done.” He waited until Finn

made a move, then opened his own door and got out.

Finn had been here before and they both knew the way. For a

moment Finn detached and saw himself from above, walking beside

Bendix, but he shook his head, and told himself to get with it, and

stay with it. He recognized what was happening to him, and he

might not have, had not Scott Lawton told him that part of his story

concerning Sean Logan.

The reality. That was what he had to stay with. He heard his

shoes echoing along the tiled corridor between grey-painted stuccoed

walls. He heard the counterpoint of Bendix’s footfalls to the rhythm

of his own.

From time to time their shoulders touched as they went through

plastic swing doors, turning from one corridor to another until they


202

went down a flight of stone stairs and through another set of plastic

batwings into a room with a bank of refrigerators.

The room itself was not all that cold, because there was a

bottled-gas fire, with its three panels lit, providing heat for a fat,

jovial man sitting at a table under one of the several low-watt bulbs

which hung from ceiling flexes to provide the light. The man was

reading a book called “Great Irish Tales of Horror” with the word

“Horror” in shattered italic print. His name was Charlie Braddock,

custodian of the morgues forensic section.

He greeted the sergeant in jocular tone, but became serious

when introduced to Finn, and was told what their business was.

Finn noticed the dark hair on the backs of the man’s hands as he

opened the fridges and slid the two white-sheeted bodies for display.

“You ready for this Finn?” Bendix said.

Finn put his hand to his mouth and coughed, after which he

nodded. Bendix told Charlie to unveil the bodies.

“Finn?” said Bendix.


203

Finn had had his eyes on the ceiling. He took a deep breath and

looked at one body and then the other. He fought down a feeling of

nausea, sucking in air between his teeth in long inhalations. He felt

light headed, and his vision blurred and blood pounded in his ears.

He waited for the feeling to pass.

Bendix signed to Charlie to cover the bodies again, but Finn

stopped him.

“No,” he said

Charlie stepped back. Finn touched the foreheads of his sons,

their eyes, their noses. He would have kissed their lips, but shot in

the back of the head at close range, their mouths had been blown

away by the exiting 9mm. bullets from Finn’s own Glock 17. He

kissed their foreheads instead.

He looked at Bendix, then in a frozen voice he said. “These are

my sons, Fingal and Sean Finn. He then shrouded them himself

with the sheets. Charlie pushed the trays back into the refrigerator.

Finn noticed that Charlie had picked up his book of horror

stories before they had left.


204

“We both need a drink,” said Bendix

“I want to get back to the hospital,” said Finn.

“Just one,” insisted Bendix.

“I don’t need it.”

“To warm your heart. Then we’ll go back to the hospital. Won’t

take long.”

There was a bar near by and they went in and took a booth at

the back. Bendix ordered two double whiskeys, and Finn sat rolling

his between the palms of his hands.

“He left my gun at the scene,” he said.

“Yes,” said Bendix. “I have it. Don’t even think of getting another

one.”

“Where’d he leave it?”

“In your wife’s lap.”

“That’s a hell of a thing,” said Finn. “Lawton’s wife and son was

shot with his shotgun and left in the hands of his wife.”


205

“So he says,” said Bendix. “It was found in his own. Would you

have picked up your gun if you’d found your wife?”

“No,” said Finn, but then I’ve had the training. He hasn’t.”

“Maybe,” said Bendix.

“Why don’t you believe what he says?”

“Because he more or less told me he did it. Oh, not in so many

words, but it was there all the same, in his eyes, and in that

diabolical smile. ‘You’ll never be able to prove it,’ he said. It was

practically a challenge.”

“Which you couldn’t resist.”

“One which I feel I can’t do anything else but follow up on.”

Bendix took a pull at his drink. “He’s a Behaviourist, Finn. You

know what a Behaviourist is?”

Finn knew, but he let Bendix go on.

“You should read his papers. He believes what he calls the

external environment makes us what we are, so whoever controls

the external environment can make of people what they want.


206

“Back in the twenties there was this guy Watson who decided he

would put fear into an eleven months old child. The child’s name

was Little Albert. Well, Watson and his girlfriend Rosalie Rayner set

out to condition Little Albert to make the emotional response of fear.

They did to Little Albert what Pavlov did to his dogs.”

Finn had learned about Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner at the

Police College in Los Angles. It was part of his training.

“I know about Little Albert,” he said. “What’s your point?”

“Watson made Little Albert fear the rabbit he so loved, and he

did this by manipulating the environment in which Little Albert

lived. Well it seems to me that somebody is doing that to you, Finn.

They’re taking away your familiar environment, and forcing you to

live in one of their making. Lawton, if you read his papers, believes

he can make not only children but adults into what he wants them

to be by controlling their environment.”

“Somebody could be trying to do the same thing to Lawton, and

because he hired me I’ve become part of what’s happening to him.”

“I doubt it,” said Bendix. “I think it’s Lawton, and I think he’s

thrown you in to muddy the waters for me. For him it’s an extra


207

bonus, seeing what you will do. He’ll probably write a paper about it.

He’s also trying to control my external environment. He want’s me

chasing about after some imaginary madman with a God complex.

“So from now on, Finn,” he said, “you’re out of this. You let me

handle this the way it should have been handled from the start. You

should have told him to go to hell when he came to you. All you got

now is sorrow.”

“The hell with you, Bendix,” said Finn.

“You’re going to have enough to do, burying your dead, and

looking after your wife.”

“Bendix, you’re a bastard. But let me ask you something. What

has your surveillance of Lawton shown up.”

“Nothing,” said Bendix. “ I wanted a phone tap, but I couldn’t get

the go ahead. I think he has an accomplice. You sure you have no

idea as to who that might be? Anybody else he might have

mentioned?”

Finn saw no reason not to mention Lonnigan.


208

“Fine,” said Bendix. “Now you go tell him you’re quitting his

case.”

A barmaid came to their table carrying a round tray and a cloth.

She had a white blouse, with the three top buttons undone. It was

tucked into a tight, short, black skirt. Finn had noticed her long,

black meshed, legs as she approached.

“Want another,” she offered, bending over the table and giving it

a wipe so that both men had a view into her ample cleavage.

“We’ll stick with these,” said Bendix, showing his almost finished

whiskey.

“When you’re finished, then,” she said, “Don’t take up the

space.”

The bar was filling up. Finn, with an erection, watched her

shimmy away into the crowd.

“Fancy a piece of that, Finn?” said Bendix with a leer. “Now

there’s an emotional-behavioural response. Lust. Lawton would be

interested, but who’s to tell him? You’ve just lost two sons, and your


209

wife’s looks will never be the same again, and you’ve got the hots for

a barmaid.”

Finn looked ashamed.

“Never fear,” said Bendix. “Your secret is safe with me. I’d say it

was a pretty natural reaction. You don’t want to die without leaving

something of yourself behind.”

“The hell with you, Bendix.”

Bendix drove Finn back to the hospital, and when he saw that

Molly was in no condition to answer questions, he left after once

again refusing to provide any police protection for Molly.

****

We did not know whether we were right or wrong to believe that

there was a man out there among thousands of others who would be

coming back to kill Molly and leave Finn as destitute of family as

Job.

We didn’t know, but we acted on the assumption that he would,

and so, for Steve, Artie, and myself, there began a period of re-


210

scheduling as we took turns to sit with Molly thus making sure that

Finn got some sleep and ate enough to keep his strength up.

Towards the afternoon of the second day of her hospitalization,

Molly’s visible eyelid fluttered and gradually opened. Finn was

sitting with her, and when her eye found him and focussed, it filled

with tears.

“Forgive me, Finn,” she said. He had to lean forward and turn an

ear to her lips, her voice was so weak.

Finn thought she was asking forgiveness for going out alone, but

it was not that.

“I phoned them,” she said. “To warn them of the danger they

were in. They came home because I phoned them.”

Finn tried to soothe her.

“You were trying to protect them,” he said.

“They’re dead, Finn.”

“I know, Molly, I know.” Brokenly.


211

“You only know the half of it,” she said, and closed her eye

again.

Then slowly, piece-by-piece, like creating a mosaic of very tiny

stones, Molly told of her ordeal in the warehouse.

She had gone alone as instructed to Cutter’s Wharf, and had

entered through a small gate in the large sliding doors.

Suddenly, a strong spotlight was turned on dazzling and

blinding her. She put a forearm across her forehead in an attempt to

see.

A metallic voice said, “Just walk forward, Mrs. Finn.”

She stopped.

“Who are you?”

“Just keep walking forward, and you will soon be with your two

sons.”

“Are they all right?”

“Walk forward!” The voice sounded like the electronic voice given

to people like Stephen Hawking.


212

“Show me my boys,” she demanded.

“This way. Walk forward.”

Molly walked into the light, screwing up her eyes and keeping a

hand on her brow. She counted one hundred paces. The light came

away from her eyes and showed her a chair with a wooden seat and

a high upright back.

“Sit on the chair!”

“Not until I see my boys.” She called out to them, but there was

no answer. She thought she heard a kind of grunting to her left. She

looked in that direction but the light came back to her eyes blinding

her.

She didn’t see him or hear him, and then the light seemed to go

out, as something struck the back of her head.

The next thing she knew she was sitting tied to the chair, and

now there were two spotlights one from behind her, illuminating her

two sons, also tied to chairs with their mouths taped, and the other,

behind them, shining on her.


213

A man walked into her line of vision, and stood about eight feet

from her, about half-way between herself and her sons.

Her mouth was dry, and she licked her lips. “Who are you?” she

said.

The man wore an army combat outfit, and had black trainers on

his feet, and a black crash helmet on his head with a smoky visor

that obscured his face. On his hands were heavy black gloves.

“Why are you doing this?”

The man didn’t answer. He went over to a table standing to

Molly’s right, and took from it a hand-sized spray gun which said on

it, Weedall. Also on the table, there was a hand gun which Molly

recognized as Finn’s Glock 17.

“You burned our home.”

The man said nothing.

“You sprayed Finn’s office with crud.”


“Damn you, Why don’t you answer?”


214


He picked up the spray gun, and walked over to Molly, and

sprayed one of her tied hands.

She screamed in agony.

She was aware of the boys shifting their chairs and of their

muffled cries. Seaneen’s chair toppled and he squirmed on the floor

trying to get loose.

The man walked over to where he was, and lifted the chair and

Seaneen into the upright position again.

Molly’s scream decreased to a hurt crying.

The man walked over to her again, and sprayed the other hand.

Molly screamed again. The boys struggled against their bonds.

Both chairs fell over. The man righted them.

Molly saw him coming towards her again, and this time

screamed before he reached her, shouting to him not to hurt her any

more.

“What is it you want?” she cried.


215


He raised the spray aiming it at the top of her head. He squeezed

the trigger.

“Holy Mother of God,” screamed Molly. “Save me, and save my

boys.”

The man stood back watching her writhe in pain. She wanted to

clutch her head in her hands, but they were bound to the chair. Her

screaming became moaning eventually.

Again the boys’ chairs had to be righted.

He walked back to Molly.

“No, no, no, no, no, noooo.”

The man lifted Molly’s hair. It came away in his hand. He threw

it on the floor in front of her.

He went to the table. He put the spray gun down, and took up

the Glock 17.


216

He walked over to the boys. With both chairs upright again, he

stood behind Fingal, young Finn. Molly’s attention was on him. She

heard him cock the gun.

“No,” she screamed, forgetting her own agony.

The man squeezed the trigger and Molly saw Fingal’s face

explode.

She lost consciousness.

She was all wet. He had thrown water over her. He made sure

she was conscious again, and had her attention. She was whining

like a helpless whipped dog.

She watched as he went and stood behind Seaneen. Again she

heard him cock the gun. This time she hadn’t the will to shout at

him not to. She knew it would be useless.

The man squeezed the trigger and Molly fainted again.

She had no idea how long she was out for, but when she came

round he was standing in front of her with the spray gun.

“Why?” she asked, weakly.


217


“Tell me. Who are you and why have you done this to me?”


“Kill me,” she pleaded.

The man shook his head but said nothing.

He spayed her face with the exception of one eye.

Molly gave a long shuddering scream and fainted again.

Altogether it took three pain-filled days for Molly to tell us what

had happened at that warehouse. She would start and stop, and

often would not go on from where she had left off, but go back over a

part already told, and always there would be that emotional

exhaustion of reliving the experience.

It was Bendix’s idea that we should record what she said, each

time she said anything. He provided a small hand-held tape recorder

with a built in microphone.

At the end she turned an exhausted and imploring eye to Finn

and said, “Tell me why. Tell me why our sons are dead.”


218

“I can’t, Molly,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“There has to be a reason.”

“I don’t know,” Finn said again. He was convinced by this time

that there did not have to be a reason.

“Finn,” she said. “I don’t want to live any longer.”

“For pity’s sake Molly, don’t say that.” Finn’s tone was utterly

miserable and despondent.

Not long after I was called to her bedside as priest. I heard her

confession of what she thought to be sins, and I administered the

Last Rights.

I hope my words were a comfort to her, and helped dispel the

agonizing memories of her horrific experience.

I watched Finn go from helplessness to anger, and then to

hatred. I performed the funeral service for all three, and at the

graveside I saw Finn become a brooding presence.

He stayed with me and kept his thoughts to himself. When

Steve, Artie, and myself offered him what comfort we could he told

us that he was not Job, and that he did not need comforting. He


219

also told us that he was not a helpless Little Albert, and that nobody

was going to manipulate his environment.

He came and he went and he never said where he had been,

what he was doing, or where he was going. He did this for about two

weeks, and then I found a note on my hall stand saying he was

going away for a few weeks and he would see me when he would get

back. I tried contacting him on his mobile phone, but he had it

switched off and all I got was a request to leave a message. I left one

asking him to let me know where he was, but I got no reply.

I didn’t see him again until shortly before Christmas. Christmas

is a busy time for me, and I was at the Chapel getting things

organized when I saw him come in. I came down the pair of steps I

was on and greeted him as if I was the father of the prodigal son.

“It’s great to see you again, Finn. Will you be needing a bed for a

while?”

He told me he had a place to stay, but he did not tell me where it

was. He’d come to thank me for what I’d done for him at the time of

the funeral and to apologize for the manner in which he had treated

his friends.


220

He sounded like someone who was about to go on a journey

from which he would not return. I said as much.

“It could be,” he said.

“Then it would be best if you told me what you had in mind, and

what you’ve been doing since I saw you last.”

I brought him home, and we ate together. He was thinner, and

looked fitter than he had been. There was no evidence in his

behaviour of depression or of elation, but there was that mental

alertness I had known in the younger Finn.

I told him I’d kept in touch with Bendix.

“And he told you he’s no further on with knowing who killed

Molly and our boys or who killed Lawton’s wife and son, I’ll bet.”

He was right about that.

“These things take time,” Bendix had told me. He’d been anxious

to know where Finn was all these weeks. Hoped Finn hadn’t got

himself another firearm. Hoped no more bodies would turn up dead,

Finn’s or anybody else’s.


221

Finn said he’d spent the last three weeks in Sligo with Molly’s

family, and during the time he had been living with me, he’d spent

tracking down Michael Lonnigan whose name had been on the class

registers Artie had given him at the hospital before Molly died.

Lonnigan lived in a street of terraced houses built for workers

around a linen factory. His wife brought Finn past the parlour and

into the kitchen.

“Somebody to see you,” she said, and went into the scullery,

from where she kept an ear on the conversation.

Michael Lonnigan was seated on a sofa next to the fire, which

was blazing brightly.

“Don’t get up,” Finn said, bending down to shake his hand. He

introduced himself as a private detective.

Lonnigan laughed. “So,” he said. “They’re hiring private

detectives nowadays are they?”

“Sorry?” said Finn.

“Social Security,” said Lonnigan. “The bastards don’t believe I

can’t get anywhere except in that thing?” He pointed to a wheelchair


222

which Finn hadn’t noticed, because it was mostly hidden by the

door.

“Close the door and sit down, Mr. Finn,” Lonnigan said.

Finn closed the door and sat down in the only other chair in the

room, a rocker.

“How long have you had the wheelchair,” he asked.

“You lot should know that,” said Lonnigan.

“I have nothing to do with Social Security,” Finn said.

“He calls them the SS,” said Mrs. Lonnigan from the scullery.

“Bloody Gestapo he calls them.”

“Two years,” said Lonnigan. “And I’m still waiting for

compensation.”

“Aye,” called out Mrs. Lonnigan, “and you may have to wait

another two years to get it. If you ever do get it,” she added.

I’m not from the Social Security,” said Finn. “I’m here about

something entirely different, which has to do with a case I’m on. I

think you can help me.”


223

“How?” said Lonnigan.

“First of all by telling me if you went to grammar school, and

which school that was,” Finn said.

“What do you want to know that for?” said Lonnigan.

“If it’s the school I’m thinking of, then I want to know if you

knew someone who went to that school at the same time as

yourself.”

“What’s his name?” said Lonnigan.

“What school did you attend?” Finn insisted on knowing.

“What’s it worth?”

“Depends on how helpful you are,” said Finn.

“Bird in the hand,” said Lonnigan, extending his arm and hand

palm upward.

“He should never have gone to that school,” said Mrs. Lonnigan.

“What school was that?” asked Finn.

“Don’t you tell him,” said Lonnigan.


224

“They shouldn’t send the likes of us to school’s like that. Above

our station, and gives the likes of him ideas that he’s better than the

rest of us,” said Mrs. Lonnigan. “He was bullied there, and had to

leave early when he turned sixteen. Later he got a job as a bus

driver, and then with his bus was hijacked, and he was beat up and

left so’s he couldn’t walk. Should never have gone to that school.”

“Aye, so you’re always saying. Why don’t you give it a rest?”

Finn could see that the Michael Lonnigan he was looking at bore

no relation to the one described to him by Scott Lawton. Imagining

him as a boy at school, he couldn’t see him as the feared bully who

had tried to intimidate Scott Lawton or any others.

“The name of the school has to come from you,” Finn said,

“before any bread comes from me.”

“Tell him the name of the school,” said Mrs. Lonnigan.

Lonnigan told him. It was the right school.

“There was a guy in your class called Lawton,” Finn said.

“What about him?”

“Were you and he friends?”


225

“You must be joking,” said Lonnigan. “I read about his wife and

child being murdered.” He turned to his wife. “What did I tell you at

the time?”

“How should I know?” she said.

“I told you it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t do it himself.

Remember?”

“Aye, something like that,” she said.

“Why did you say that?” Finn said.

“Because when I knew him at school, he was a wee bastard, and

he probably grew up to be a big bastard.”

“I was told you were his minder at school.”

Lonnigan laughed. “You heard wrong,”

“Was Lawton bullied at school?”

“I was bullied,” said Lawton.

“Was he?”

“What’s it worth?”


226

Finn took a twenty from his wallet and wadded it into his closed

fist, and asked the question again.

“No, he wasn’t bullied.”

“Why?”

“He had a way of looking after himself,” he said.

“You want to explain that?”

“He could have you believing anything he wanted you to.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Thing I never forgot. Got me thinking about it again whenever I

heard about the murders of his wife and son. That’s why I said to

her, that it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d done it himself.”

He looked at Finn’s fist, and Finn relaxed his fingers somewhat.

“Go on,” he said.

“Well, as I said to her at the time, he put it about in the school

that his ma and da died in a car crash that wasn’t an accident. He

didn’t say as much but by the time he’d finished telling it, we got the


227

idea he’d cut the brake cables to kill them himself. After he told that,

everybody kept away from him.”

“He must have had a special friend, if it wasn’t you,” said Finn.

“Not in our Grade,” said Lonnigan.

“So he was a loner?”

“More or less.”

“What does that mean?”

“There was a guy. A big guy in a higher Grade he knocked about

with.”

“What was his name?”

“Can’t remember,” said Lonnigan.

“Can’t, or are you just holding out for more money?” asked Finn,

tightening is fist again.

“No, honest. I can’t remember.”

“What Grade was he in?”

“Fifth, no, sixth. Yeah, sixth.”


228

“Describe him as he was then.”

“ About five foot six,” said Lonnigan.

“What colour of hair?”

“Black.”

“Colour of eyes?”

“Blue.”

“Shape of eyes: round, almond, what?”

“Aye, almond.”

“Skin?”

“He’d rough skin, and pimples all over his face. Used to squeeze

them.”

“Was his face oval, round, long, or square?”

“Long, like a Lurgan spade as we say here.”

“Hands: big? Small? Fingers: stubby? Long? Nails: bitten or

long?”


229

“Big hands, stubby fingers with the nails bitten.

“Body: thin? Fat? Long? Short? Broad?

“Broad. His legs were like fence posts.”

“What was his name?”

“Still can’t remember. I’d tell you if I could?”

“He would too,” said his wife.

“Was he a bully?”

“Yes,”

“He bully you?”

“I kept out of his way.”

“Ever hear of him after you or he left school.”

“If he ever made the headlines, I missed them,” said Lonnigan.

Finn gave him the twenty along with his mobile phone number

and said to ring him if he remembered the name.


230

Finn put in a call to Artie after he left Lonnigan, and by the time

he arrived at the school, Artie’s friend had the registers he had

asked for ready for him. He spent some time looking through the

fifth and sixth Grade registers for the year when Lawton was in the

Fourth Grade.

There were two other Lonnigans, a Daniel and a Desmond, and

he spent time tracing them and checking them out. One had

immigrated to New Zealand after leaving school, and was still there

farming sheep. The other was a dentist whose whereabouts on the

pertinent dates and times were accounted for. Neither had any

recollection of Scott Lawton at school.

“Seems like a dead end,” I said.

“Not so,” Finn said. “That’s why I’ve come to see you, Seamus.

I’ve also been to see Molly’s brother Saul in Sligo. You met him at

the funeral. There was another name on that register.”

“Whose?”

“At first I thought nothing of it, but after drawing blanks with

the last two Lonnigans, I looked into a bit more.” His way of

answering my question left me even more puzzled.


231

“Who was it?”

“If I am right, Seamus, and it is who I think it is, knowing his

name could put you in some danger.”

He took an envelope from his inside jacket pocket, and as he did

so I could see he was carrying another gun. The envelope was sealed

with my name on it.

“His name is inside this envelope,” Finn said, “but I only want

you to open it, if anything happens to me.”

I could see he was serious, and it did make me feel a little

nervous that my life could be in danger as he implied.

“I’ll do as you say,” I said. “Tell me, Finn, are you still working

for Scott Lawton?”

“He hired me to find out who killed his wife and son,” he said. “I

intend to do just that, and I’m nearer now than I ever have been.”

“And what about who killed Molly and your boys?” I said it

tentatively, and watched him closely as he considered his answer.

“It’s what I live for,” he said. “It’s all part of the Lawton case. If I

solve one or the other, I solve both.”


232

“And when you’ve done that?”

“That will be that,” he said.

“What will you live for then, Finn.”

He shrugged. “One way or another I just want to finish this off,”

he said.

“You’ll have nothing left,” I said. “No more hate. No more

vengeance. That what’s keeping you going.”

“We’ll see when the time comes.”

“You should let it go, Finn,” I said. “Vengeance is a waste of

valuable time.”

“Tell me that when you’ve lost what I’ve lost, and your wife has

suffered what mine has suffered.”

“I’m not able to do that Finn. All I can tell you is that for your

own sake you should let it go.”

“I won’t do that.”

“Well, at least you recognize that you can do that if you wanted

to. Let the police deal with it all from now on. In the meantime you


233

need to build a new life on a firm foundation. You go after this man

and you kill him, and if you drag Molly’s brother Saul into it, that

will be a rotten foundation for any kind of new life.”

He was glaring at me.

“Finn,” I said, swallowing hard under his baleful gaze. “What I’m

saying comes from my heart, and I ask you to listen to me as a

friend, and not as a priest of the church and a religion you despise.”

“I’ve always listened to you as a friend, Seamus,” he said.

“Then as a friend, I ask you to consider your soul.”

“I don’t believe in heaven or hell. I don’t believe in souls. I’ve

seen heaven and hell and souls used as a means to violate children.

There is life, and the human animal is part of that life, and every bit

as savage and cruel.”

I could see that Finn’s experience had opened up the wound he’d

received in the orphanage he’d run away from.

“I thought you had forgiven Father Malachy,” I said.

“So did I,” he said, “but when Molly and my boys were

slaughtered, it all came back again.”


234

“You don’t have to use it as a means to fan the flames of your

hatred.”

“Maybe I need it to do just that,” he said.

“Yes, but should you?”

“What do you want me to do. Forgive the man who killed Fingal,

and Seaneen, and Molly?”

“For the sake of your soul, yes.”

“I know you have a genuine concern for my soul, Seamus,” he

said, “but when we die, there is nothing, except blessed oblivion.

That is the most we can hope for. So where would be the justice in

my forgiving him?”

“Let the law take it’s course, and accept the justice that brings. I

would rather you would show mercy than take the law into your own

hands.”

“Seamus,” he said, “you’re the only priest I’ve any respect for,

but I think you’re fooling yourself and everybody else if you think

there’s a life after death. This is all there is. There is no use you


235

telling me that in the end God will take my revenge for me, and that

he will burn in hell.

“He will, Finn. God is just.”

“I see no evidence of that,” said Finn. “I see no evidence that God

intervenes in the affairs of men. I see only men who believe

themselves, and convince others that what they do is the will of God,

when it is only their own will, based either on their belief in God or

on their belief that religion is a good way to manipulate the gullible

for their own ends.”

He stopped, and smiled a bleak little smile.

“Anyway, according to your belief, God sent the Lamb of God to

take away the sin of the world, and that means the murderer’s sin

as much as mine or yours. You should be as interested in saving the

murderer’s soul as much as you are in saving mine.”

“That’s true,” I said. “That’s why I don’t want you taking the law

into your own hands.”

“You’d like the murderer and me to end up buddies in heaven.”

“It’s better than ending up in hell.”


236

“I thought it was purgatory,” Finn said. “Your system’s too

complicated and it doesn’t hold water. It doesn’t hold water because

your church has corrupted it. It’s really very simple. Either your

Christ died on the cross for everybody’s sins, past, present, or

future, unconditionally, so that all things can be made new, or

nothing will be made new, and the universe will eventually grow cold

and all life will cease when the sun doesn’t shine anymore, and all

will be oblivion.”

He got up, asked me to thank Mrs. O’Casey for the meal, and

said he had to go.

“Either way, it makes no difference,” he said at the door. “All will

be saved for a new and better life, or this is the only life we have and

we have to do what we think best in the circumstances.”

****

Finn was very much annoyed with himself when he left me. He

felt he had made an assault on my faith which he shouldn’t have,

and in doing so had harmed our friendship.

He respected my belief in God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, but,

at the same time, he could not understand why I chose to work


237

within an institutional system that conned people into having a

belief in things which he thought were patiently untrue.

Finn had decided that life was Deoxyriboneuclic Acid, and the

purpose of life was the replication of Deoxyriboneuclic Acid in all its

variety. He could understand religion as a means of bringing an

order which facilitated replication, and a control to society that

ensured that those replicated had some chance of survival.

He was critical of a Church that insisted that those who were

being fruitful and multiplying should feed and support the drone-

like priests who were denying the purpose of life. Priests of all the

Christian denominations, whether celibate or not, had perverted an

unconditional salvation into one with conditions, namely, a belief in

Jesus Christ, and the membership of a given church that had its

own manifesto that ensured the support of its priesthood.

As Finn saw it, if Christ was God’s Son, who took away the sins

of the world, then Adolph Hitler would sit at God’s table with Albert

Schweitzer when all things were made new, because God alone knew

there was no other way that none should perish and all should be

saved.


238

On the other hand, even if God did exist, Finn preferred a death

which was final, and in which there would be absolutely no

awareness of ever having been, or what was, or of any future being.

These thought were troubling his mind to such an extent that

while he was opening his car’s door, he did not hear whoever

stepped out from the shadows of an entry, and sapped him across

the back of his head with a black-jack.

There was no pain, just an explosion of Christmas lights that

joined with those of the Christmas trees in the windows of the

houses in the street.

The pain came later. He felt himself stirring and he had to strain

to open his eyes, and there were the Christmas lights again. Like a

lightening bolt a flash of pain stabbed across his forehead and down

the back of his neck.

He tried moving his right hand to hold his head, but it would not

move. Nor would his left.

He opened his eyes again, and the world came into focus, went

out again, and then focussed once more to remain stable.


239

Through squinting eyes he was staring across the city from what

seemed to be a considerable height up. He became aware of the cold

and the wind. It was blowing straight into his face. It was quite

strong, and if it became stronger it would catch his breath away. He

tried to breathe slowly through his nose, and not to open his mouth.

He had no jacket on and his gun and shoulder holster had been

taken away. He felt as if he was hanging in mid air, and when he

looked to see why he couldn’t move his arms, he found they had

been tied quite securely, straight out from his shoulders to a piece of

four-by-four which formed a cross with another on which his body

was tied. He was tied with bands of yellow nylon rope. His ankles

were crossed and tied and he had no shoes or socks. Frost nibbled

his fingers and toes.

The cross was not standing straight up. It was tilted and

suspended over what, as far as his bonds would allow him to see,

seemed to be a turret of a building. There was a gargoyle to his left,

and another to his right.

Look down. What do you see?


240

He did not know where the instruction came from. He did not

want to look down, because already panic was mounting, and he

knew that if he did he would suffer an attack of nausea and vertigo.

Look down.

The instruction came again.

You must conquer your fear.

He tried to control his mounting panic by looking at the far

distance across the city.

All right, what do you see?

He scanned for familiar landmarks, and found the giant cranes

of the shipyard and the Waterfront Dome almost directly opposite,

and from this he knew he was in the west sector of the city.

Imagine yourself on top of the Waterfront Dome. Look west for a

tall building set on a hill, about three miles distant. What do you see?

And it was as if he was over there, looking westward. He found a

tall building set on a hill. Holy Saviour Chapel.

So, where are you?


241

“Holy Saviour Chapel,” he spoke the words aloud.

Good. Can you see yourself?

It was as if he had a pair of strong binoculars. He could see

himself on the cross which was sticking out like a bow-sprit of a

ship from the top of the bell tower.

But knowing where he was didn’t help.

Now, look down?

“I can’t.”

Yes you can. You won’t fall. You are securely tied.

But Finn had his eyes closed tight now, and he was trying to

think logically. How had he been got up to the top of the bell tower?

It would not have been easy to carry someone his weight up all those

stairs which narrowed at the top. It would take a very strong man,

or at least the efforts of two strong men to carry an unconscious

body up here and attach him to a cross, and then to suspend the

cross securely over the parapet.


242

It had taken the two of them, he thought. Where were they now?

Were they above him? If he cried out would they know he had

regained consciousness.

Imagine for a moment the ropes holding you are cut.

It was frightening. Finn felt himself falling. He opened his eyes

and saw the ground about three hundred feet below rising up to

meet him. His stomach contracted, and his body tensed against the

expectation that at any moment he would hit the ground.

He cried out in terror, and felt great blobs of sweat come out,

like blisters, on his brow, and run down to sting his eyes.

It didn’t happen. Relax now.

All became still and quiet again. His breathing became less

laboured. No-one seemed to have heard him cry out. He hung there

trembling.

He called out, but there was no reply. He yelled, “Will somebody

get me down from up here,” and he could hear the panic in his

voice.


243

He could look down now. The grounds of the chapel were

darkening after the twilight. Startled birds flew up, with a flurry of

wings, and settled down again. There was no human response.

“Get me down from up here,” he yelled again. His breath was

like ectoplasm on the frosty evening.

Why do you think this is happening to you?

Whoever had left him dangling here had gone away. He was

meant to be discovered in the morning when it became light enough

for people going to mass to spot him up there on his cross. This was

being done, not to kill him, but to terrify him.

Who do you think is doing this to you?

He had an intuition that he should not even think of the answer

to that question.

“Get me down from up here,” his yell ended, this time, in a sob.

He knew he shouldn’t even be thinking of Saul, Molly’s brother,

who was supposed to have been watching his back. How had Saul

missed seeing what had happened to him when he must have been

sapped in the street?


244

It’s getting colder. What might happen by morning?

Maybe when they took him down in the morning he would be

frozen and petrified like a third gargoyle.

You might even be dead.

He didn’t want to die. He knew now that when he had wished for

death, when he experienced his depressions, he had not really

wanted to die. Being dead and being in that darkness of oblivion was

a different thing. It was the process of entering that he did not want.

He wanted to remain in the light for as long as possible.

He began to hear music. He recognized it as Pacheibel’s Canon

in D Major.

You’re getting colder and colder and you just want to sleep.

He knew this was what happened when the body began to get

hypothermic. He closed his eyes, thinking it didn’t matter now what

happened.

Poor Finn. You’ve lost everything now. No wife, no sons, no home.


245

When he next became aware he no longer felt cold, and there

was no bitter wind blowing in his face threatening to take away his

breath.

His eyelids fluttered and opened. There was no city in front of

him. He was in absolute darkness. No moon, no stars, no clouds.

Nothing. Not so much as a glimmer of light.

There wasn’t a sound. Absolute silence.

He became painfully aware of his body. His arms were no longer

outstretched and his hands no longer tied. His ankles no longer

crossed and tied. The cross was gone and he was lying on his back.

He had to move, but it was as if he was coming out of some kind

of anaesthetic. He tried to sit up, but molten lead had been poured

into his body and allowed to cool, and each movement was a mass

attack of pins and needles, and after what seemed an interminable

time of moving his head upwards, he fell back exhausted, drenched

in sweat.

He seemed to drift in and out of consciousness. He felt

nauseated and he could hear his blood thumping in his ears.


246

The first time he vomited his retching was so violent and painful

that he fell off whatever it was he was lying on, and yelled in fright

as he anticipated a long terrifying fall. He bumped his head and

drifted away again like a man on a raft in a rough sea. Later he

smelled his own vomit and was sick again.

He had no idea how long it was until the waves of nausea settled

and he lay there thankful that the sea was calm again.

He didn’t want to think, and yet knew he had to think if he was

to get himself out of this place he was in. He also wanted to break

the terrible silence, so he tried to shout but his voice was a weak

croak.

His throat was aflame. His mouth was dry and tasting of bitter-

sweet vomit, and his lips were caked with his stomach’s exudate.

“Water!” He could hardly recognize the word itself. He tried

again, but it sounded no stronger or clearer. “Water! For pity’s sake!”

How long was it before he tried to get up onto his knees, putting

his right hand out and clutching the thing he had fallen from which

seemed to be a cot about nine inches from the floor?


247

He had no idea how long it took his leaden body to get itself sat

on this and then to fall sideways as a dizziness overcame him.

Minutes? Hours? He didn’t know. He had no way of telling. At

last, after what seemed a lifetime of trying to sit up again, he

managed to do so, holding his head in his hands.

He rubbed his eyes as if trying to generate some light. The

darkness and the silence became palpable and he felt as if it was

closing in around him.

“Light,” he begged. “I need light.”

How would you like to spend an eternity in the dark?

Again he did not know where the question came from. He

couldn’t tell whether it was inside or outside his head.

Are you alone there, Finn?

“What am I supposed to do?” He didn’t know whether or not he

should be answering the voice he was hearing. He’d read somewhere

that in conditions where there was absolute sensory deprivation, the

brain provided its own stimulation, for it could not function without

any. If it kept his brain working, it was better than nothing.


248

Just think. If you search around you might find someone else

there.

“Is there anybody there?” Finn called out, brokenly.

The voice laughed.

They might be unconscious the way you were.

“Damn you!” snarled Finn. “You want me to crawl around this…

this… What is it anyway? A cell.”

I’m going to have to keep you in the dark for a while longer Finn.

The voice chuckled.

Tell me who I am Finn.

Finn cast around in his mind like a bee going from flower to

flower, but he could find no place from which to extract a name or a

face for the voice.

Feel around, Finn, you may not be alone.

The darkness and the silence closed in again.

****


249

“There’s a man at the door want’s to see you, Father Seamus,”

said Mrs. O’Casey.

“Did you bring him in?” I asked.

“No, he’s still at the door. He looks like one of those travellers.”

“Bring him in.”

I went out into the hall as Mrs. O’Casey was bringing the man in

and telling him to wipe his feet. He was dressed in a red and blue

checked lumber-jack shirt and had a pair of blue jeans and hob nail

boots. He had a yellow bandana around his neck, and a moleskin

waistcoat which had stood the test of time. His skin was swarthy

and he had a shiny white scar running down his right cheek from

just below the outside corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth.

“I’m Father Seamus Darcy. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Finn. Is he still here?”

“Who are you? It’s all right, Mrs. O’Casey, you can go now.”

Mrs. O’Casey went reluctantly.

“Saul O’Hara,” the man said. “I’m Molly’s brother. Is Finn here?”


250

“Saul, pleased to meet you.” I held out my hand which he took

and shook shortly but strongly. “No, he left about an hour ago.”

“How the hell did I miss him then? His car’s still in the street.

What time would that have been exactly?”

I told him as exactly as I could.

“Damnation!” he exploded after he made a calculation using his

watch which he took from a top pocket of his waistcoat. “That’s

about the time I went around the corner for some smokes.” He hit

his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I’ve mucked this up all

right. I was supposed to watch his back. Did he say where he was

going?”

“No,” I said. “But he wouldn’t have gone without his car. He

would have checked to see if you were still with him, wouldn’t he?”

“Yeah, he would. “They must have got him when I wasn’t

looking.” He became very agitated. “What am I going to do? How am

I going to find him?”


251

I tried to calm him down and took him into the library and

poured him a brandy which he threw down his throat without much

thought. He wouldn’t sit down.

“They?” I said. “Who are they?”

“The same ones that killed Molly and my nephews,” he said.

“You know who they are?”

“He told me.”

“What were you and he going to do about it?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I do.”

“Look, I have to be going. I’ve got to find him.”

“How can you do that if you don’t know where he is.”

“I know where he might be. If they have him I’ll find him.”

“I’ll say to you what I said to Finn,” I said. “Don’t take the law

into your own hands. I take it you have a wife and children.” He

nodded. “Then go home to them. They won’t want to lose you.”


252

“You saw what they did to Molly.”

“I did.

“And you’d let them get away with that?”

“I’d let the law take care of them,” I said.

“I’ve got to go now,” he said, and I could see there was no way of

stopping him. “I’ll let myself out.”

I let him do that, and watched him from my window stand for a

while in indecision looking up and down the street and then move

from my view to the right. I heard a car start up in the frosty night,

and I saw him drive past clutching the steering wheel and gazing

intently through the windscreen at the cars parked on either side of

the street. He turned the corner and was away.

I turned and my eye fell on the envelope Finn had given me. It

was white against the dark brown walnut of my desk. I sat down

and picked it up, and tapped it against the nails of my left hand.

Finn had said to open it if something happened to him. Saul

thought that something had happened to him. Finn had told Saul

who he suspected of murdering Molly and his sons.


253

If I opened the envelope I’d know, and then I would have to do

something. Something which Finn thought might put me in danger.

I found that prospect a little frightening but more exciting.

Finn and Saul had embarked upon a course of action which I

could neither condone nor comply with, but their freedom if not

their lives were in jeopardy.

I stopped tapping with the letter, and went out into the hall and

dialled Finn’s mobile number. I let it ring until the answering service

cut in and then hung up.

I was only putting off the moment when I knew I should open

the envelope. I went back into the library, picked up my cutlass-

shaped letter opener and slit open the envelope.

There were two sheets of paper inside. I fished them out,

unfolded them, and sat down to read.

When I finished reading I pushed my chair back and sat

thinking about what I should do. The name was there as Finn said it

would be, and there was also his explanation of the horrific events

that had happened to him. I found it difficult to believe.


254

I went out into the hall again and tried the number of the mobile

he’d got for Molly in case he was using that, and recognized Saul’s

voice.

“Finn?” he said. “Where the hell are you? I was..”

“It’s not Finn, Saul,” I said. “It’s me Father Seamus.”

“You heard from him, then?”

“No,” I said.

“How’d you get this number then?”

“I had it from before. I thought Finn might have been using it.

You haven’t heard from him either I take it?”

“No,” he said. “Not a word. I don’t know what to do. He didn’t go

back to where we’re staying.”

“Where are you now?”

He didn’t answer.

“Are you where Sergeant Bendix lives?” I asked.

“You opened the letter,” he said.


255

“Yes. Tell me where it is and I’ll come to you”

“You don’t want to come here, Father.”

I could sense that he was about to disconnect.

“Don’t hang up on me, Saul. Just tell me where you are.”

“Father…”

“Just tell me, Saul.”

He told me. I hoped he was telling me the right address.

“Don’t do anything until I get there, Saul. And Saul?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll work this out together. Now you stay put.”

I broke the connection and hoped he wouldn’t do anything

stupid.

Bendix lived along the north shore of the lough which was the

seaway to the city.


256

I got into my old Beetle and drove along the coast road, thinking

that what I should be doing was getting in touch with the police and

asking to talk with a Chief Superintendent.

If Bendix knew that Finn knew about his connection with

Lawton, it might take too long to convince the police that one of their

number was himself criminal, and by that time Finn could be dead.

I had only Saul’s reaction to go on that Bendix and Lawton had

got Finn. Finn might have left the car and gone off on foot. Finn

could be wrong about Bendix.

But there I was committed to this course of action.

Bendix lived in one of those large Victorian houses built by the

mill owners that fronted the shore road with long wide gardens

sloping down to the shore of the lough. On a clear day you could see

the southern shore, but now as day was making it’s journey into

night, I could see lights coming on across the bay.

I pulled in behind the car I’d seen Saul driving away in. It was

parked across the road from the wide entrance of Bendix’s house, all

three stories of which were in darkness.


257

I got out of my Beetle and got into the passenger seat beside

Saul. His car was a fug of cigarette smoke, and the ashtray was

filled with scrunched up buts.

“Hi, Father,” he greeted me with a cough.

“Do you know if Bendix lives alone, or has he a wife?”

“Finn says he’s divorced, and lives by himself.”

“Do you think Finn might be in there?”

“Don’t know. I was going to have a look, but you told me to stay

put.”

“Let’s have a look,” I said.

“Wait,” he said. He put a hand on my arm. “You sure you know

what you’re doing? We go in there it’s breaking and entering, and if

you’re caught you won’t be celebrating mass for a long time.”

“I’m only going to ring the doorbell.”

“Doesn’t have a doorbell. Only a knocker.”

“OK. I’ll ring the knocker then.”


258

We got out of the car and crossed the road, entered the driveway

and crunched over gravel to the front door. Before we got there a

halogen security light came on.

I rang the bell, then after a reasonable time, I rang it again. The

house remained dark inside.

“Let’s go round the back,” I said. “And keep a look out for one of

those back packs that gardeners use to spray weeds.”

It was darker to the side of the house as we moved under a

carport. There was no garage.

At the back there were French doors and as we approached

another halogen light up on the wall came on.

This gave us the opportunity to look around the yard. It was a

mess of rust and rotting chipboard, mostly of kitchen units which

had been taken out and dumped a long time ago according to their

decayed state. There was a rusted wheelbarrow with a flat tire, a

couple of old tin dustbins which had never been taken away when

the city council had progressed to plastic wheelie bins. One of these

stood to the side of the French doors.


259

Not too far down the garden there was an eight by four garden

shed with a felt roof.

Just as we were approaching it the light went out, and Saul

went back until it came on again, then rejoined me.

There was a bar but no lock on the door. We looked at each

other, and I slid the bolt back and pulled the door open.

It was dark inside but some light was coming through the dirt

encrusted window, and we could see the larger objects such as the

Flymo lawnmower, watering cans, and a variety of spades, rakes,

and shovels.

There was a bad smell in the place. We traced this to a couple of

old cooking pots with long handles that had been used as mixing

pots. They hadn’t been cleaned out afterwards, and when I held one

up to the light, I could see excremental sediment in the bottom, and

up one side where it had been poured out. The other one was like

this as well.

The light went off again leaving us in darkness.


260

Saul said, “If we keep putting that light on and off somebody’s

going to notice and phone the police.”

He had one of those cheap throw-away lighters, and with this we

continued to look around the hut.

The back pack with its hose and nozzle we found behind a panel

of garden fencing which was full of rot and which had probably

blown down in a storm. We also found an empty petrol can and a tin

funnel.

“Finn seems to have been right,” I said. “Do you think he might

be in the house?”

“I don’t want to think about what we might find in the house,”

Saul said, “but we’d better go look.”

We went towards the French doors and the light came on again.

“The place has a burglar alarm,” Saul said, pointing to the red

bell on the wall. “We break in everybody’s going to know.”

“We can’t help that,” I said. “I don’t know how to disable a

burglar alarm. Do you.”

“It’s not something I do everyday,” said Saul.


261

“We need to know,” I said.

“In and out then like a couple of whippets, then.”

“Right,” I said, looking round for a suitable object to break the

glass of one of the French doors. When I saw my elongated shadow

picking up a rust encrusted crowbar from under the wheelbarrow I

wondered if this was me.

Saul took it from me, saying he’d do it, as a priest would not

have the necessary experience for this sort of thing.

“It won’t make any difference who the accessory is,” I said.

“It does to me. I can’t let you do it,” he said, and thrust the bent

point of the crowbar through the glass in a swift strong movement.

The alarm went off immediately, and he raked the shaft of the

bar around the jagged edges of the glass shards, then reached in

and turned the knob which held the door locked.

We went through the door quickly and I knew the high-pitched

insistent ringing of the alarm must be heard for miles.


262

I found a light switch to the side of the doors, and flooded the

room with light from a neon strip. We were in the kitchen, and there

was nobody there.

We went through into the hall and again I turned on a light.

There was a door to the right to a cubby-hole under the stairs with

nothing but a vacuum cleaner in it. A door to the left led into a

dining room. A rectangular table and six chairs took up most of the

area. Again the room held no living beings, not under the table, and

not under the long sideboard which took up most of the wall against

which the door opened.

Further down the hall there was a door on the left leading to a

reception room. There was a three-piece suite in this and a television

set stood in the corner on a coffee table. The carpet was frayed. Finn

wasn’t there either.

We left the lights on in our wake, and went across the hall

between the front door and the stairs to another reception room

directly opposite.

I opened the door, switched on the light, and stopped dead.

Saul, bumped into my back.


263

“What is it?” he said.

There was a body lying on the floor. It lay with its head facing

the door. Its face was turned into its right arm and obscured. Its left

arm stretched beyond its head. Its right leg was drawn up to its

stomach, and its other leg was straight out. It was as if it had been

crawling towards the door, and then could crawl no more.

“It’s not Finn,” said Saul, from over my shoulder. There was

relief in his voice.

I moved then, telling him to stay out there in the hall where he

was. I hunkered down and watched carefully for some rise and fall of

the chest. There was none. What there was, was a broad congealed

bloodstain on the grey shirt.

I checked to see if I had stepped in any blood, but I hadn’t, then

I came out of the room?

“Bendix,” I said, “shot through the chest.”

“Finn?” said Saul.

“He had a gun,” I said. “I just pray it wasn’t him.”


264

“He might be upstairs,” said Saul. “I don’t want to say this but

he could be dead too.”

“We’d better look,” I said.

The alarm was getting on my nerves. I wished I could shut it off.

We went upstairs, there was no-one on the first floor, and there

was no-one on the second. It took us a more time than we wanted to

take, because we weren’t sure that the murderer of Bendix, if it

wasn’t Finn, was there or not.

We went downstairs to the hall.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

We went out the way we came in, and once outside we raced to

our cars. In the distance we could hear the sound of approaching

police cars, coming from the way we had come ourselves.

We got in and drove off in the direction we were parked. We took

it at a normal pace, and were well out of sight of Bendix’s house

before the sound of the police sirens came to a halt. We continued

along the coast road until we came to a parking area.

Saul came over to my car.


265

“You all right,” he asked.

“I think so.” I felt a bit light headed. I could still hear the alarm

and the police sirens ringing in my head.

“All we have to do is play it cool,” Saul said. “We have to get to

Finn. He may have gone to Lawton’s. What we do is wait for a while

and then we drive back past where the police are, and head for

Lawton’s. You know where it is.”

“Finn told me,” I said, “but I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

He got into the passenger seat beside me. He took a packet of

Embassy from his waistcoat pocket. “You mind if I smoke?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said.

“What’s not such a good idea?” he asked, putting away the

crumpled pack again.

“Going back past Bendix’s place where the police are.”

“ It’s the shortest way to Lawton’s, and we need to find Finn as

soon as possible,” he said.


266

“A detour might take longer,” I said, “but maybe in the long run

it might be better. Our fingerprints are all over the place back there.

Our footprints are there in the yard in the frost.”

“They won’t know they’re ours,” said Saul.

“I just don’t feel good about going back that way,” I said. I was

experiencing a strong feeling of apprehension. “It might take longer

to go another way, but it might be the least troublesome in the long

run.”

Saul sighed. “Maybe, Father,” he said, “you should go on home

and let me take care of this from now on.”

“No,” I said. “I’m in this now, and I’ll see it through.”

“Then let’s do it my way,” said Saul. He took his pocket watch

out and looked at it. “The traffic will be flowing past the place, both

ways, and we’ll be just a couple of cars in the main stream. Nothing

to worry about. OK?”

He was probably right, but I couldn’t help thinking we would be

better making a detour.

****


267

Finn struggled to overcome the voice’s suggestion that he

explore the dark silence he was in, in case there was another person

there with him.

He’d called out a number of times since the voice had stopped

talking to him, but had had no response to his calling.

If there was someone there he was either unconscious as the

voice had said, or dead. Had they got Saul before they’d got him? Is

that who they wanted him to find?

He didn’t feel as sick as he had before, and he his body did not

seem to be as heavy as it had been. He felt he was getting his

strength back.

From lying down, he sat up and did not experience dizziness.

His head hurt, but it was the residual pain from being sapped on the

back of his head.

He sat on the cot and tried to think things into some kind of

perspective. He knew that sensory deprivation caused hallucinations

and delusions.

Was the voice an auditory hallucination?


268

The source of the voice was a vexation to him. It was inside and

outside his head at the same time. It was familiar and unfamiliar.

He knew he should be able to put a name and a face to it, but it was

as though he had been forbidden to do so. Each time he came to the

point where he would be able to say, yes, that’s who it belongs to,

his mind retreated as if from something he should not know with

similar alacrity as that of the Star-Ship Enterprise reaching warp

factor eight. After which he would once again swim towards the

source of the voice again as if through molasses.

He reckoned that he had been drugged, and now the effects of

the drugs were wearing off. He stood up, and swayed, but corrected

his balance. With the side of his leg against the cot, he moved

forward his hands outstretched. He moved in this shuffling way

until he came to the end of the cot, then put one foot slowly in front

of the other until his fingers touched a wall.

OK, he thought. You want me to search this cell or whatever it

is. Then that’s what I’ll do.

As he moved now along the wall to his left, he found it easier to

visualize what he was feeling if he closed his eyes tight. The wall

seemed not to be stuccoed, it was warm and it seemed padded. He


269

slapped it with the heel of his hand and found that it gave. It was

padded. He stamped on the floor. It was rubberized.

He was in a padded cell.

He continued his search, making a full circuit of the walls until

he came back to the cot. He knew there should be a door but he

wasn’t able to detect it.

Some detective.

There was no-one lying against the walls. From the cot he made

his way to the wall, turned his back to it, and took a step to his

right, and began to shuffle forward in what he hoped was a straight

line. He did this until he came to the opposite wall. He turned his

back to that and took a step to his left, and shuffled forward again.

He reached the other wall without obstruction, turned, took a step

to his right and shuffled again. This time his foot came in contact

with something which it moved forward slightly.

Finn went down on his knees, and groped in front of him with

his hands until he found what it was his foot had hit.


270

He had no difficulty in identifying the object. It was an

automatic pistol. He stood up with it in his hand, calculated how far

he was from the cot and moved three paces to his left until his leg

came against it. He sat down, and in the dark examined the gun

with his hands.

He raised the barrel to his nose, and smelled the cordite. It had

been recently fired. He took the clip from the handle, and felt the

bullets there. So, the gun was loaded. He put the clip back in to the

handle and primed the gun.

What was he supposed to do with it?

He stood up again. He put the gun into his waistband at the

back of his trousers.

Maybe there was a body in this padded cell along with him. He

continued his search going over the same ground he had covered

before just to make sure.

Finn found nobody.

Darkness and silence.

Silence and darkness.


271

Not even the sound of his shuffling feet.

He consoled himself that he was not in conditions of absolute

sensory deprivation. His hands and feet had not been covered to

deprive him of the sensation of feeling his way about the cell.

These sensations he could input to his brain along with the

smell of his own body, or perhaps it was the smell of his own fear.

Also he could hear himself if he called out.

He was careful now not to call out or talk aloud because the

thought came to him that he wasn’t simply in a padded cell, he was

in a Skinner’s box.

A fragment of conversation came to him. “..People are already

talking about Lawton’s Behaviourism as they did about Watson’s and

Skinner’s.”

“Hah!” he uttered the exclamation aloud. He had put a name to

the voice, and now he could put a face to the name.

He felt pleased with himself, and he made his slow journey back

to the cot and sat down, still holding the automatic.


272

That was it. He was being conditioned. How had he not been

able to work it out sooner? Lawton was experimenting on him as if

he was one of Skinner’s pigeons or rats.

Where was this cell?

In Lawton’s house?

Maybe. Maybe not.

If not there, then where?

Somewhere in the Health Care Park?

Could be. But would it be likely?

Lawton had been laid off by his Health Board, so being seen to

be there when he should not be there would certainly arouse

curiosity if not suspicion.

Did Lawton have a private clinic?

Finn had neglected to find that out.

It was more than likely. So, if he was in Lawton’s private clinic,

he had no idea where he was.


273

Saul. Saul was supposed to have been watching his back. Where

the hell was he?

The last thing Finn remembered before his experience of being

suspended between the two gargoyles on the bell tower of Saint

Saviour’s Chapel was putting his key in the car’s door to open it.

After that?

Was his ordeal on the cross a true experience or was it

something else. If it was real, then why wasn’t he still there to be

found in the morning? He had been freezing, and now he was warm.

Hallucination?

Brought on by what?

Drugs?

More than likely.

It would take more than drugs.

Drugs and suggestion?

If so, then was this darkness and silence and this cell he was in

real?


274

Was what he was experiencing now, also the effects of drugs and

suggestion?

He could be in Lawton’s house, lying on the psychiatrist’s couch,

with Lawton himself sitting where he couldn’t be seen and taking

notes like Sigmund Freud.

If that was it, then there was the chance that Saul would be able

to find him and get him away from Lawton.

Finn’s hand tightened around the butt of the automatic, and he

shook it a couple of times and aimed it in the dark.

You’d really like to kill me, Finn?

The voice was back.

“I know you Lawton,” Finn said.

You know me not, Finn, but as our conversation develops you will

know me somewhat better.

“Damn you, Lawton.”

You’d like to find out Finn, would you not, everything you want to

know?


275

Finn stayed silent. He was wondering how to break out of the

unreality of this cell and darkness. How to get close enough to

Lawton.

He now doubted the reality of the automatic, but if he could get

his hands around Lawton’s throat he’d strangle him.

You want to know, Finn. The human condition cannot stand or

understand a true mystery, especially when it seems there is no

rational explanation.

“There’s always a rational explanation,” Finn said.

Is there? You have to believe that. It’s your only way of getting out

of the dark. Of getting enlightenment.

“How did you do it?” Finn asked.

How did I do what?

“Make me believe I was on a cross at the top of Saint Saviour’s

bell tower?”

What makes you think you were not?

“I know I was not.”


276

How?

“Never mind how, Lawton. Just tell me what you did to me to

make me believe that and to think I’m now in a padded cell.”

No need to become angry, Finn.

“Who the hell is angry?” said Finn, and knew that he was.

“Answer me, damn you.”

Gargoyle.

And there he was, freezing again, hanging from the cross, high

above and overlooking the city, knowing that before he could be

discovered in the morning he would be dead from hypothermia.

The anxiety was there again.

His not wanting to die was there again.

His breath was again like ectoplasm on the frosty night air.

His terror returned, but this time it was not because of the

vertigo. It was heightened by the knowledge that he was no longer in

control of his own mind and body.

Stand by.


277

With that he was back in the warmth and darkness and the

silence of the padded cell. He was no longer holding the gun.

Back with the knowledge of Lawton’s voice.

How do you think I did that Finn?

“Drugs, or hypnotism, or both,” said Finn.

The voice neither confirmed nor denied.

You keep calling me Lawton. What makes you think I am Lawton?

“I know you are Lawton,” Finn said.

I did to Lawton what I’m doing to you. But how can you be sure of

that, Finn?

“Stop playing games with my head,” pleaded Finn.

You can’t even be sure that your wife and son’s are dead.

Finn’s heart quickened.

What if they aren’t dead?

What if Lawton, who could make him believe himself to be on a

cross with such realism, could make him believe, with equal realism,


278

that he had lived through the most terrible scenario of all without it

actually being true?

Finn began to sob with a kind of relief, that was tempered with a

very small amount of caution that he did not want to acknowledge.

He wanted to believe it was not true that Molly, young Finn, and

Seaneen were dead. They were out there in the world going about

their lives.

What do you want to ask me, Finn?

“Are they alive or dead?”

What would you like them to be?

“Are you going to answer me?”

Eventually.

“Why not now.” Why put me through all this torture?”

You learn nothing from pleasure, Finn. When you are happy you

notice nothing. If you are to take notice your will has to be thwarted.

You have to experience a shock to your systerm.

“Why me?”


279

The perennial question. I give you the perennial answer, Why not?

“You’re mad, Lawton.”

I am not Lawton and I am not mad. Just as you are experiencing

an opposition now, Lawton had an opposition which opposed,

frustrated, and resisted his will.

“I know what you’re trying to do, Lawton,” Finn said, his mind

telling him he must oppose, frustrate, and resist Lawton’s will. He

wasn’t sure that he did know what Lawton was doing, but he knew

he must not give up his own will, which needed strengthening

against the words ‘Gargoyle’ and ‘Stand by’.

He had been drugged and hypnotized and had lost most of his

will, but it would seem, not all of it, unless there was more to it that

he didn’t know. He hoped there wasn’t but he wasn’t sure.

Can you not see, Finn, that if you only learn through what is

unpleasant and painful, then well-being and happiness must be

negative, and pain positive? You have spent all of your life, have you

not, thinking that pain is an evil which is negative? Evil is precisely

that which is positive, and Good, all that which is happiness and

gratification is negative.


280

“Your head’s on back to front,” said Finn.

No, Finn. If anything I am the only one with my head on the right

way round.

“Yeah,” said Finn. “You and Arthur.” He was pleased that his

memory had not failed him and that his degree was not so much

money thrown away.

Arthur?

“Oh, come on Lawton, you should know who Arthur is.

Shopenhauer.

You enjoyed that Finn. But it’s really against yourself. Let me put

this to you; you’re the only one there is in this dialogue.

“No!”

Yes. You know what that means, Finn.

Finn’s teeth clenched tight until his jaw hurt. As water in a glass

will shimmer imperceptibly before an earthquake, Finn’s mind

trembled on the brink of an even greater abyss and darkness and

silence than the one he was in.


281

“I am not hallucinating.”

You have no way of knowing that. In the darkness and the silence

of your natural state you have created me to answer your questions.

The reason you’re getting unsatisfactory answers is because I am

created out of your lack of knowledge.

Finn was sitting on the cot his head in his hands. From time to

time he pulled at the short hair above each ear hoping the pain

would give him some release from the confusion in his mind.

Then he said, “Nice try Doc. You nearly had me there. You’re

Lawton all right. You only have to say ‘Gargoyle’ and ‘Stand-by’ and

my mind is completely yours again.

No Finn. It is you. You made me say those words, and you believe

I control your mind.

“Then say ‘Gargoyle’. Why didn’t you say it in that sentence?

The sentence was yours, Finn. It was the sentence you gave me to

say. You created me Finn. Just as you created all the others.

“Others?”

Molly, Fingal, Seaneen,


282

“Bendix told you about them,” said Finn.

Bendix is also your creation.

“I’ve known Bendix for years,” said Finn.

Of course you have.

Finn felt panic and thought he was about to lose his reason.

In this world you have created, Finn, you seem to be killing

everyone off. Lawton’s wife and child. Your own family. Who will be

next? Lawton? Bendix? Your three friends, the priest, the

schoolteacher, the doctor?

Finn’s mind became alert.

He doesn’t know about Saul, he thought. He hasn’t mentioned

Saul. If it was me and only me, he would have mentioned Saul.

These thoughts gave him heart.

Yourself?

Oh, thought Finn. You are a crafty, crafty, man. I’ll call you

nothing less than a man, because you are nothing more than a man.

And every man can be matched one way or another.


283

Bendix would have told him about Seamus, Steve, and Artie. He

might even have told him about Martha who Lawton might mention

later. But Bendix didn’t know about Saul. The only one who knew

about Saul was Seamus.

What I have to do, thought Finn, is to find a way to counter the

effects of Lawton’s post-hypnotic suggestion, so that the next time

he said the words ‘Gargoyle’ or ‘Stand-by’ they will have no effect

upon my will.

Finn closed his eyes gently and relaxed. He eased the tension

out of his body starting from his head and neck and ending with his

feet and toes. It was like squeezing water from a sponge to leave it

soft and springy again.

The only reality is yourself in that darkness, Finn. You created a

whole universe because you did not want to be alone. What did you

say in the beginning, Finn? Was it, ‘Let there be light?’

In Finn’s mind Lawton’s words were receding into the distance.

He heard them as a diminishing Doppler effect.

Finn knew he needed to answer, Lawton, if only to avert his

suspicions that he was escaping from his grasp, and yet he knew he


284

could not answer for in answering he would subvert the defences he

was building up.

Finn needed more time.

****

“You ready?” said Saul.

I nodded, and he got out from beside me saying, “Open your

boot.”

I got out and opened the boot at the front of my Beetle. He

walked over to his own car and took from its boot something

wrapped in a burlap bag.

He walked over to where I was waiting. I had an uneasy feeling I

knew what that something was.

“What is it?” I asked, anyway.

“Shotgun,” said Saul. “You know how to use one?”

“I’ve used them before. What kind?”

“Ithaca.”


285

“Bore?”

“10 gauge. Semi-automatic. Self loading. It holds three rounds.”

“That’s heavy.”

“Twenty-two inch barrel with a rubber butt to cushion its recoil.

Stop anything in or out of a car.”

He put it in the boot of my car.

“I doubt if you’ll need more than three rounds, but there’s more

in the bag if you need them.”

“I won’t be needing any,” I said. “Take that out of there. In fact,

Saul, get rid of it altogether.”

He looked at me, and in the light from the road and from the full

moon, I could see a cold determination in his eyes.

“We’re going to need it,” he said.

“Why put it in my car?”

“You’re a Catholic priest,” he said. “If we’re stopped I doubt if

they’d search the car of a man of God.”


286

“Don’t count on it, in these times,” I said. “Saul, get rid of it. I

suppose you have a hand gun too.”

He didn’t have to answer.

“We’ll need them,” he said. “We’ve got to take them with us.”

I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.

“Let’s take another route then,” I said.

He slammed the boot closed.

“We’re wasting time,” he said.

He walked back to his car.

“It’s the shortest way,” he said, got in, started the engine and

drove off.

I had a look at the shotgun before I got into my own car. It was

everything he had said and I knew about it. A lethal weapon.

I felt like throwing it over the wall and into the sea, but I didn’t. I

put it inside the car, on the back seat, and covered it over with the

car rug I always kept there.


287

I don’t know why I did that. Something about it’s better to hide

things in full view. I don’t know why I followed Saul back the way we

had come instead of taking another route.

He had waited for me around a corner and when he saw me

coming he move on again in front at a moderate pace.

As we came nearer to Bendix’s place we had to join a queue of

cars at a road block.

There was a police red and yellow Crimestopper and a Land

Rover sitting more or less where we had been parked earlier. They

were stopping cars coming in both directions.

Saul’s brake lights went on and I applied my own, stopping

behind him.

I could feel my heart pounding as I looked to the left at the

house where Bendix was lying dead. All the lights were still on, but

there were two cars now in the driveway and a police guard at the

door. Across the gateway was a yellow police band of plastic forming

a barrier.

My fingerprints were all over the inside of that house.


288

I looked forward again and I could see the uniformed police

asking questions of the drivers before allowing them to proceed. On

each pavement on opposite sides of the road stood other policemen

with automatic weapons.

I had an urge to get out and speak with Saul, but his car moved

forward and I moved my own up behind his. It was only a short

distance before I stopped again.

I sat there my hands beating a slow tattoo on the steering wheel.

Lord, I prayed. What do I do if they find the gun?

I didn’t get an answer to that. I thought of a couple of things to

say divorced from the truth.

Saul moved his car forward again, and the policeman was at the

car now in front of his. He waved it through quickly. Inside was a

family with young children.

Saul pulled up beside the policeman, and wound down his

window. The policeman said something to him, and he handed out

his driving licence, which the policeman examined with the aid of

his flashlight.


289

He must not have liked the look of Saul, for he had him out of

the car with his hands on the roof and his legs splayed as he

searched him.

He got Saul to give him the car keys, and he opened the boot,

and shone his torch in. He didn’t seem to find anything, and I

wondered where Saul had the hand gun.

The policeman closed the boot.

I wound down my window.

“Go and stand on the pavement,” the policeman told Saul. Saul

went to the pavement side of the car and stood watched by the

policeman with the automatic weapon.

The first policeman searched the inside of Saul’s car. He was

bound to find Saul’s hand gun. The policeman got out of the car

again, and beckoned Saul.

“Get in and pull over onto the pavement and stay there, Tinker,”

he said. He gave Saul the keys.

He must have found the gun, I thought.

Saul got in and did what he had been told to do.


290

The policeman waved me forward.

I stalled the engine, started it again and inched up to the

policeman.

He shone his light on me.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Father,” he said.

“What’s been happening, Constable?” I asked. I was amazed my

voice was so steady. I hadn’t expected it to be.

“Nothing for you to worry about,” he said, and asked for my

driving licence.

He examined it.

“Where are you coming from, Father?”

I gave him the name of a town on the north-east coast.

“Where are you going to?”

I gave him my home address.

“Did you go to Ballycastle today?”

I told him I did.


291

“Did you pass this way earlier?”

“I did.”

“About what time would that have been?”

“About eleven o’clock this morning.”

The lie did not choke me.

He handed me back my driving licence.

“OK, Father. Go ahead.”

I was expecting more, and sat there without moving.

“On your way then,” the policeman said.

I fumbled with the starter, got the engine going and drove past

Saul whom I saw from the corner of my eye.

My hands trembled, and my knuckles turned white clutching

the steering wheel trying to steady them. It was only when I was

around the first bend that my heart started slowing down.

I thought of waiting for Saul, but if they’d found the hand gun

he was going to be detained.


292

I drove on until I found a filling station and pulled in. I needed to

use the toilet and washroom.

It wasn’t all that clean, and it smelled like it hadn’t been washed

out in days. Nevertheless, I used it, and splashed cold water onto my

face, slapping it with my hands. I dried my face and hands with my

own handkerchief.

The mirror with its blistering mercury made my face look like it

was covered in liver spots.

I didn’t look too long.

I went back to my car and put £15 worth of petrol in the tank.

The door of the shop was shut, but the sales assistant took my

money and passed me change through a grilled window.

I heard police sirens coming nearer with great speed and noise. I

turned to look and Saul’s car careered past to take a skidding turn

to the right on the frosting road. He narrowly missed an oncoming

lorry which swerved violently to its right across the road and into the

forecourt of the filling station.


293

This slide across the road cause the pursuing red and yellow

Crimestopper and the Land Rover to brake suddenly. The Land

Rover held the slippery road better than the Crimestopper which

fish-tailed and slithered into the retaining wall of the filling station.

It came to a halt facing the way it had come. Then with a screech of

brakes and much smoke, it reversed and went forward to execute a

tight U-turn and then went chasing after the Land Rover and Saul.

That road, I knew, led into the northern hills and glens.

I got into my car ever mindful of the Ithaca shotgun, and drove

off to join the by-pass to the east, branching off on the road to the

eastern hills where Lawton lived.

I tried to concentrate on what I should do when I got there.

If I found Bendix’s Mondeo there, that might mean that Finn had

driven it from Bendix’s. He have killed Bendix or he might not.

If he had he might kill Lawton, for he believed both to be

involved in the killing of his loved ones.

Finn’s letter told me that Bendix had been Lawton’s minder at

school.


294

Bendix had lied to Finn when he told him that he had Lawton

under constant surveillance since the death of his wife and child.

Finn had laid out a considerable amount of the money Lawton

had paid him to find their murderers on a firm of Investigators, and

according to them, the Detective Inspector on the case said that the

police had not kept Lawton under constant surveillance. They had

neither the men or the budget.

This left Lawton free to come and go as he pleased. Bendix

would have kept him informed of Finn’s actions and reactions, and

he would also be able to relay to Finn what Lawton wanted him to

know.

The man in the black motor cycle helmet in the warehouse was

almost certainly Bendix, because part of the time when Molly was

being tortured, Finn had been with Lawton.

So if Finn had gone to Bendix’s house – without his car? – and if

he had killed him, and taken his car, he now had every reason to kill

Lawton.


295

If the Mondeo was not there, that might mean that Finn had not

got there, or that he had been there and gone and Lawton like

Bendix was lying dead in his own house.

I didn’t fancy breaking in on my own to find out.

Coming nearer to where Lawton lived I thought of Saul. Would

he succeed in giving the police the slip? If he did would he make his

way back to Lawton’s or would he stay in the glens hidden among

the travelling people who lived there. I didn’t think that was very

likely. He’d probably make his way to Lawton’s.

I cut my headlights turning into Lawton’s driveway. I could see

there was a light in the hall, and one at the side rear of the

bungalow.

A Bentley I took to be Lawton’s stood outside the front door.

There was no sign of a Mondeo.

I parked behind the Bentley.

Got out of my Beetle.

Walked to the front door.

Rang the bell.


296

Waited.

Heard firm footsteps coming along the hall.

The door opened.

“Dr. Lawton?” I said.

“Yes?”

“We haven’t met. I’m Seamus Darcy. Finn’s friend.”

“What can I do for you Father Darcy?”

“I’m trying to locate Finn.”

“What makes you think he might be here at this time of night?”

“Sergeant Bendix is dead?”

I didn’t say more but I watched his face for a reaction. His eyes

never flickered. He stood to one side.

“It’s cold,” he said. “You’d better come in.”

I stepped inside, and waited while he closed the door quietly,

then followed him down the hall and into the kitchen.


297

“I’m making myself something,” he said. “You want some?”

“What is it?”

“Poached eggs on toast.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” I said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“People here say it not the trouble it’s the expense.”

We both smiled.

“So I’ve heard.”

“One or two eggs?”

“Two if you have them,” I said. I think it was my stomach

talking.

“Pull up a chair to the table,” he said.

He put four slices of bread back to back in a toaster. There was

a pan of water on the cooker that was beginning to bubble. When he

thought it had it had reached the right intensity he cracked the

shells of two eggs on the side of the pan and expertly spread them

over the water in two different places so they didn’t touch.


298

The toast popped up.

“One sided all right? Butter?”

“That’s fine. Please.”

He buttered the four slices, and laid them side by side, two by

two on two large plates. With a skillet he put the two eggs from the

pan on one plate, and cracked two more.

He brought one plate to the table on which there was milk, and

a salt mill and a pepper mill. Tea had already been made, and there

was a single cup.

“You make a start on that,” he said. “I’ll be with you in a couple

of minutes.”

He went back to the cooker to check on his eggs, and then came

back with his plate and another cup.

“Do you take sugar?”

“No sugar,” I said.

He sat down opposite me. I hadn’t as yet touched my food.

“Do you wish to say Grace?” he asked.


299

“Do you believe in God?”

“No,” he said.

“In that case I thank you for the food, and God for the

opportunity to partake of it together.”

“I am not likely to be converted,” he said. He offered me salt and

pepper, and then used the mills himself.

We ate, and I must say I enjoyed the food. The cooking and the

eating of the meal had given us both time to think, and I was

waiting, with anticipation, to see how he would approach my

declaration that Bendix was dead.

I had not been able to tell from his face or his manner whether

this was news to him or not.

He put down his knife and fork side by side in the finished

manner.

“You say you are looking for Finn,” he said. “Then you tell me

Sergeant Bendix is dead. Is there a connection between these two

pieces of information?”

I put my own knife and fork down likewise.


300

“Possibly,” I said.

“In what way?”

“As I understand it,” I said, “and I am not fully in the picture,

they were trying to find out who killed your family and Finn’s.”

He held his chin with his forefinger and thumb, resting his

elbow on the table.

“Finn has disappeared,” I said. “If it wasn’t for that I might not

have thought Bendix’s death was connected.”

“How do you know Sergeant Bendix is dead?”

“I went looking for Finn at his house, and found the police

there.”

“What did they tell you?”

“Not very much. They were more interested in why I was there.”

“What did you tell them?”

“The truth,” I said.


301

“That you were looking for Finn?” When I nodded, he said, “You

weren’t doing him any favours.”

“How do you mean?”

“What did Bendix die of?”

“They didn’t say, but I take it was not from natural causes.”

“Foul play,” he said. “That leaves Finn as a suspect.”

“It is in the nature of the police to think of everyone a suspect,

until they can be ruled out. Finn had no reason to kill Bendix. When

was the last time you saw Finn?”

“You will remember I was at the funeral service for his wife and

sons. That was the last time.”

“That must have been difficult for you, considering your own

loss.”

“It was,” he said. “I tried to speak with Finn to give him what

comfort a fellow sufferer could, but he wouldn’t speak to me.”

“Understandable,” I said. “Under the circumstances.”


302

“Yes, but I think it’s more. I think Finn sees me as being

responsible for what happened to his family.”

“Actually, or indirectly?”

“If I had not employed him to find the murderer of my family, his

family would not have perished, therefore I am the cause of his

distress. I hope for his own sake he seeks help from his own

psychiatrist.”

“How did you know he had a psychiatrist?”

He chose not to answer that, saying instead, “I haven’t seen Finn

since that funeral.”

“Are you still employing him?”

“The contract with him still stands,” he said.

“It’s possible he may have found out who murdered your family

and his.”

“It’s possible,” he said. “If he did he did not tell me.”

“He may have told Bendix,” I said. “And Bendix is dead and Finn

is missing.”


303

“That could be true,” he said. “Bendix and he might have been

working together, or Bendix alone may have discovered the identity

of the killer. Finn’s disappearance might not be related to that.”

I looked at my watch.

“I talked to Finn three hours ago,” I said. “His car is parked in

the street where I live, and there’s not trace of him. He’s not

answering his mobile phone.”

“He may have it switched off,” Lawton said. “He might have gone

off on foot or with somebody in another car.”

“He may have,” I said. “I don’t think he did.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I think he solved the case,” I said. “You see he left a sealed

envelope with me, which I am not to open unless something

happened to him. When I found his car sitting in the street, and no

sign of him, I wondered if something had happened to him.”

“Did you open the envelope?”

“No,” I lied. “I have it here.” I patted my breast pocket. “As

Sergeant Bendix was involved in the case I thought I’d check with


304

him first. That’s how I came to be at his house. After that the only

other person I thought Finn might go to was yourself.”

“He didn’t come here,” Lawton said. “If, as you say, he’s solved

the case, and if he told Bendix who the killer is, and the killer knew

of this, then he might have killed Bendix, and Finn.”

“I’d better get back home, and see if Finn has turned up there. If

not, I’ll open that letter. The sooner I get it to the police the better.”

I stood up.

He stood up.

“Give me your number,” he said. “I’ll give you a call if he shows.

“By the way, where exactly do you live?”

I told him, and saw him make a mental note of it.

****

Finn was not at all sure just when the voice of Lawton went

away. It went away without saying the dreaded word, ‘Gargoyle’, but

still Finn found himself in darkness and silence.


305

He was more relaxed now, and seemed to be going into a deeper

and deeper relaxation. He did not now believe he was in a padded

cell, and he became more and more convinced that the further he

went towards total relaxation, the more chance he would have of

overcoming the effects of the words ‘Stand by.’

I will not give up my mind to you, Lawton, he thought. I’ll be

damned if I do.

Somehow or other he’d been granted the time he needed to get

deep within himself, where no-one could penetrate, and where he

could restore himself to himself.

It was as if a greater self was enveloping the damaged self which

he had brought to that place, and that self was accepting and

prepared to heal.

There was no longer darkness where he was. He seemed to be in

a palace of light. A place in which there was a tranquil pool of azure

water which he felt he must enter.

There were steps leading down into the pool. He stood on the top

step before limping down the other three.


306

The water was delightfully tepid. As he moved into it, he began

to feel his pains ease. Not just his physical pain resulting from the

blow on his head, or the headache he had from the drugs Lawton

had used on him. He knew for certain that without the drugs

Lawton would never have been able to do on him what he had done.

No, as he moved deeper and deeper into the water even the pain

of losing Molly and his sons eased.

It was not like bathing in the river Lethe which gives

forgetfulness. This was entirely different. The sensation of his loss

was in fact heightened, and he experienced it as a raw wound, but

the water he was in bathed that wound, soothing the sting from his

aching flesh, and the tears he shed were of the kind which gave him

a great relief, a catharsis.

Of itself, this soothing became hypnotic and he found as he

walked towards the centre of the pool that the water came over his

head, and the light was now turquoise.

He experienced no feeling of drowning, in fact his breathing had

never been easier.


307

In the middle of the pool he stopped. Standing there, all that he

was came to him in procession.

His mother carries him cradled in her arms, gently, talking

kindly to his beaming face.

Walking with his father through summer grasses, clovers,

buttercups and dog daisies, chasing after the brown and white collie

sheepdog.

Standing sobbing, as though he would never stop, at the funeral

of his father, then three years later at that of his mother.

Ten years old, entering the home for boys, with great

apprehension.

Four years of abuse, sexual, physical, and psychological by bad

priests. Then, one good priest holds the door open, “Go,” says he,

“and always remember, the kingdom of God is within you. Seek and

you shall find.”

Living with the travelling people, hidden from the authorities.

Molly and her brothers and sisters. A time of learning, slowly, to love

and to trust.


308

Cong. Working with the film crew on the making of The Quiet

Man. Going with them to America. A time of exuberance.

Screen tests in Hollywood, but no studio offers. No real

disappointment. Working as messenger at the film studios.

Going to the Police Academy, and joining the LAPD.

Walking the beat in uniform.

Taking examinations.

Detective.

Letters to and from Molly, becoming more tender and loving. His

heart fonder because of the absence.

Resignation from LAPD because of a corrupt case.

Coming home to the south of this much fought over island.

A tinker’s wedding to Molly.

Moving north to settle in the capital city.

Private Investigator.

Pregnancy and birth. Another two times of joy.


309

His work helps feed, clothe, and educate the two boys.

“Thanks Da,” says Fingal.

“Thanks Da,” says Seaneen.

Throughout, times of clinical depression, times of mania, times

of therapy.

But always Molly’s arms around him, upholding his belief in

himself, stemming his over confidence.

And then, Lawton.

Not a tall man.

Not a small man.

Red hair, combed straight back from his forehead.

Large nose.

Cruel mouth.

Sardonic smile.

Stepping back from the couch on which Finn is secured with

straps. A syringe in his hand, emptied.


310

The drug in his veins.

Lawton’s hypnotic voice.

“You will hear only my voice. You will respond only to my voice.

You will do and believe what I tell you to do and believe.”

Unable to do anything else.

“All right, Finn. Lawton’s voice is triumphant. “Do you

understand?”

“I understand,” he says, automatically.

“You will answer my questions. Is that not so?”

“Yes, he says, I will answer your questions.”

“I hired you to find out who killed my wife and son. Did you do

that?”

“Yes.”

“Who killed them?”

“You know who killed them.”


311

“Just answer my questions, you’re going deeper into this trance.

Deeper. Deeper.

“Who killed them, Finn?”

“You killed them, Lawton.”

“How do you know I killed them?”

“It had to be you?”

“Why?”

“Because of you and Bendix. Because there was no-one else.

There was no guy with any God complex. And Martin Trueman was

a non-starter.”

“What do you know of Bendix and me?”

“You go all the way back to school. You’re some kind of item.

You told him to tell me you killed them. And that was the truth.”

“Alas,” says Lawton, “we are no longer an item. Not since you

killed him.”

“I killed him?”


312

“Yes, Finn, you killed him. You must learn to say it without

question. Say, ‘I killed Bendix’.”

“I killed Bendix,” Finn repeats.

“The police, when you go to give yourself up, are going to ask

you why you killed Sergeant Bendix. What are you going to tell

them, Finn?”

“I’m not going to the police,” says Finn.

“Deeper and deeper. It’s all over, Finn. You’ve solved the case.

Bendix murdered your family, just as he murdered mine. You will

believe that, Finn.

“I believe he murdered Molly and my two boys. I doubt if he

murdered your wife and son.”

“Deeper and deeper. Oh, but he did, Finn. You will believe he

did. You will tell the police he did. Won’t you, Finn?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll tell them why.”


313

“I don’t know why Bendix killed your wife and son,” Finn says in

that automatic voice.

“This is why, Finn. Listen carefully to what I tell you. This is

what you will tell the police.

“Ever since school, Bendix has hated me. I made a fool of him.

Belittled him and humiliated him in front of his peers. My brains

always got the better of his brawn. He hated that. He never forgot

that humiliation, and when the opportunity arose, he killed my wife,

and son, and tried to arrest me for their murder.

“Even so, he wasn’t clever enough, and when I hired you to find

the murderer, he diverted you from finding him by trashing your

office, burning your home, and killing your family. He was mad,

Finn, but he didn’t want to be caught. He tried to make it look like I

had done those things, but as you know, whenever your wife and

sons were being killed by him in that warehouse, you were with me.

“After the funerals he was worried about you and what you were

doing, because he didn’t know where you were.


314

“That wasn’t the only reason he was worried. He found out you

were having him investigated by a firm of Private Investigators, and

that you were closing in on him.

“He kept watch on your friend the priest’s house, and when you

turned up he kidnapped you and took you to his own house.

“He questioned you about how much you knew, but made the

mistake of not tying you up. He gloated over killing my family, and

your family. He said he was going to kill you, and he took out the

gun he had taken from you after he knocked you over the head

when you were getting into your car.

“You went mad with rage, and fought with him for the gun, and

when you had it, instead of arresting him, and using his own

handcuffs on him, you shot him in the chest as an act of revenge.

“You ran from the house, and drove off in his car. Eventually

you decided to give yourself up to the police.

“That is what you will say to the police. Do you understand?”

“Yes. That is what I will say to the police.”


315

“Good,” Lawton says. “That is what you will remember. This is

what you will not remember.

But Finn, in his free-floating amniotic state, smiled confidently

to himself as he watched Lawton settle himself more comfortably at

the head of the couch in the psychiatrist’s chair.

Usually in psychoanalysis the analyst sits behind the client and

listens to what is being said in free association. Finn could see that

this was the direct opposite. He was on the couch and would be

quiet and listen to what the psychiatrist had to say.

There was something else that Finn in his state of deep-mind

suspension knew. Lawton had told him what he had to remember to

tell the police. The fluid he was in gently washed that away and he

knew he would not remember it, or tell it to the police the way

Lawton wanted him to. He knew it wasn’t the truth, and he would

not tell it as the truth.

In fact he could, and would do the exact opposite of what

Lawton wanted him to do, for he would forget what Lawton wanted

him to remember and remember what Lawton wanted him to forget.


316

Lawton, in his analyst’s chair says, “Understand this, Finn. I am

good at what I do, and what I do is manipulate minds. This is

something I have been doing for a very long time.

“I can calm a troubled mind. I have so many grateful patients

who will bear witness and testimony to that. They enjoy a greater

quality of life because I have taken the time and the trouble and

expended the energy to enter into the environments their minds

have created for them, and to which they responded as if that was

reality.

“But all that bores me, Finn. It bores me. These people come to

me already spoiled. I needed someone unspoiled to work on.”

Finn listened to him relate how he had chosen Helen, one of his

colleagues, whom he thought shared a like-mindedness.

Their relationship was not one of love. Sex was procreational

and not recreational, and when the child he wanted to work on was

conceived, Lawton lost interest in her as a woman and treated her as

an incubator and a junior colleague to be instructed.


317

Tests showed that the child would be a boy, which was, of

course, what Lawton wanted. He wanted a male child that would

grow up to be a strong dominant man.

The resulting conflict between he and Helen stemmed partly

from the fact that Lawton kept his agenda for his son hidden. He

knew that if he told her everything, she being small-minded would

not agree.

Nevertheless, almost from the start Helen opposed his will.

“I want Sean to have a normal childhood,” she said.

“I thought you understood,” he said. “For him to have a normal

childhood means he will grow up with all the weaknesses of those

inadequates we treat everyday. He has to have an unusual

childhood.”

“Is that what we brought him into the world for? Just so you

could experiment on him?”

“The world,” he told her, “is falling to pieces. It will take strong

men to hold it together. I want him to grow and develop into a strong

man, and I think my way is the right way to do that.”


318

“I’ve seen some of your protocols,” Helen said. “I think they’re

inhuman.”

“They will make him strong,” he said.

“An Ubermensch?”

“Precisely.”

“Over my dead body,” she said.

More and more Lawton lost his capacity to engage and inspire

Helen with what he was trying to accomplish with Sean. And Sean,

instead of becoming strong in the ways Lawton wanted him to,

became a weakling.

Helen encouraged Sean to focus on being, whereas Lawton tried

in vain with all kinds of positive and negative reinforcers to

concentrate his mind on becoming.

Lawton began to feel like Sisyphus. Each time he reach the top

of the mountain of attainment with Sean, the boy, like the large

rock, would roll down, and Lawton would have to begin again.


319

He knew he was right. But this was his torture. Helen kept

saying things like, “You’re punishing my son,” or “What you’re doing

to Sean amounts to abuse.”

He says to Finn, “Can you believe it? She was going to report me

for cruelty.

“Of course I could not allow that. It wasn’t true, and I hate being

wrongly accused. That accusation would have ruined my career. I

worked hard for my reputation.”

Helen had corrupted his experiment and had threatened his

being. Because of her the boy was a failure. Because of her he had

not been able to control the external environment or the boy’s mind.

Everything had depended on that. Daily living with this failure

became unbearable. He came home each day to the reproaches of

his wife and to the sight of his weakling son. He found that instead

of controlling, he was being controlled.

The constant bickering with Helen left him impatient. He

realized that Sean was not going to grow up to be a leader, if not the

leader of men.


320

It was all due to the wilful interference of his laboratory

assistant who refused to take orders.

He tried to think of ways of ridding himself of these

encumbrances. They would have to go, but go in such a way that he

would remain the revered psychiatrist, who could begin again. He

would interest himself in child psychiatry and work with children

from the time they were born.

Then one evening he came home to be confronted by Helen.

“I’m leaving you,” she said, “and I’m taking Sean with me.”

“No you’re not,” he said. “You can’t leave me.”

“I am,” she said. “I am filing for divorce.”

“You won’t do that,” he said.

“I will,” she said.

“You know what will happen to my reputation if you do that?” he

said.

“Damn your reputation,” Helen said. “It’s my son I care about.

I’m taking him away to undo the harm you have done him.”


321

“I’ve done him no harm. And where are you going?”

“I won’t tell you that. Somewhere you won’t find us.”

“I won’t let you go.”

Sean had come in during their arguing. Lawton could see that

the boy was frightened.

“Now look what you’ve done to him,” he said to her, then to

Sean, “Go to your room.”

“I want to be with Mum,” the boy said, going to her. She put her

arm around his shoulders he his around her waist. “I don’t want to

stay here with you anymore.”

“You must understand, Finn,” Lawton says. “It wasn’t anger. It

was impatience. I did not do what I did in hot blood. Quite the

contrary. I was impatient for this failed experiment to end. The boy

was no more to me than a laboratory rat, a subject upon which my

endeavours had proved unsuccessful because Helen had flouted my

will.”

“All right,” I told them. “If you want to go then you must. When

do you intend to leave?”


322

“Tomorrow morning,” said Helen, “I’ve made all the

arrangements.”

With that Lawton had left the room. They were still talking

together when he came back carrying the Purdy.

“You aren’t going,” he said.

Helen looked at the shotgun.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Scott.” she said.

He moved the line of the shotgun from Helen to Sean, and let it

come to rest.

“Put the gun down, Scott,” Helen said. “We can talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

He heard Helen scream as he squeezed the trigger, and saw the

pellets, like so many demented hornets, lift Sean off his feet and

thump him against the wall, faceless.

The second blast cut off Helen’s screaming.

Lawton says to Finn, “I now needed to clean up my laboratory. It

was a very messy way to conclude an experiment. What I needed


323

was a flood to wash it all away, but in the absence of that, I called

Michael Bendix.

****

I left Lawton’s turning left out of his driveway towards the lights

of the city.

After fifty yards I cut my lights, shifted into reverse gear and

backed past Lawton’s gates, stopping on the grass verge after a

distance of about twenty-five yards.

I waited.

I was pretty sure Lawton would follow me.

He wanted the envelope Finn had left with me, and he certainly

did not want its contents falling into the hands of the police.

I didn’t know how far he would go to get it, but I did not

discount his running me off this hillside and taking what he wanted.

He’d taken the precaution of finding out where I lived in the event of

him not getting it before I reached home.

It made me shudder to think I was dicing with someone who

might take my life.


324

I didn’t have long to wait. I saw the lights of the Bentley turn left

onto the road and its tail lights diminish into the distance before

disappearing around a bend in the road.

I gave him three minutes on the road before I got out of my

Beetle, taking the Ithaca with me. It was fully loaded, and I did not

take the extra shells.

I walked up to Lawton’s bungalow.

****

By this time Finn had come up from out of his amniotic fluid

remembering all that Lawton had instructed him to forget, and

knowing that Bendix was dead and that he had not killed him. His

coming up out of his total immersion was a thing he later described

to me in terms of rebirth.

Finn opened his eyes to find himself in a strait jacket, strapped

to a psychiatrist’s couch. There was a night light in the room and he

tested his bonds for ways of escape.

He found none.

He was too securely bound.


325

He heard a key turning in a lock, and saw light stream in

through an opening door.

Lawton came over and look down upon him, his features seemed

distorted in close-up.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you again, Finn,” he said.

“Unfortunately you have a troublesome friend. You made the

mistake of giving him information in an envelope.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Finn. It has inconvenienced me.

So, while I’m away dealing with your friend, let’s put you back on

the cross you love so much. ‘Gargoyle’.”

Finn had been expecting something of the sort. He knew it

would either be the cross or the padded cell with its darkness and

silence. But this time his mind was his own and when Lawton went

out, locking the door, Finn was his own man except for the fact of

being physically bound.

He concentrated on testing for weaknesses. His arms were

crossed inside the strait jacket, and his legs tied together with

leather thongs, and he was strapped down with webbing across his

ankles and chest.


326

He could barely move.

He would just have to bide his time, and when Lawton came

back wait for an opportunity to jump him.

He thought of what he would do with Lawton.

Lawton had killed Bendix, and wanted him to take the blame.

He’d done it with Finn’s gun because Bendix would no longer be his

creature and was posing a threat to him in like manner to Helen. He

had to protect his reputation.

As Lawton had explained to Finn it had all gone wrong from the

moment he had called Bendix in to clean up the mess when he had

blown away his family.

When Bendix had come and viewed the scene, he pushed his hat

to the back of his head, and whistled.

“You’ve really done it this time Scotty boy.”

“Stop calling me Scotty boy,” Lawton said. “You know I don’t like

it.


327

“First time you’ve done your own dirty work,” Bendix said. “You

wanted them dead, you should have planned it. This is a mess.

What the hell happened?”

Lawton told him and Bendix called him a bloody fool.

“There’s no way I can get you out of this with your halo still

shining,” he said.

For both these men, in their different fields, power was a

contagious disease. It had deformed them into monsters.

No, thought Finn, not monsters, but men of monstrous thoughts

and actions.

“Were in this together, Michael,” said Lawton. “What one does

the other does.”

“Aye,” said Bendix dryly, “until it comes to the crunch, then I’ll

be on my own.”

“We have to trust each other,” Lawton said. But neither did.

They were held together by mutual fears of exposure. When one lost

those fears, the other would suffer.


328

It was Lawton’s idea that Bendix become a policeman, and that

he should become a psychiatrist. That way they would be able to

protect themselves whenever they violated the legal and moral codes

of what they thought to be a puny society.

“I’m going to have to take you in for questioning,” Bendix said. I

won’t be alone, so I’m going to have to put you through a tough

interrogation. You think you can stand up to that, and keep on

denying you killed them when we both know you did?”

“I’m sure you’ll enjoy doing this to me,” Lawton said.

“You bet your eye teeth, I will,” said Bendix. “You’re not going to

come out of this smelling of roses.”

“Just don’t get carried away, Michael,” Lawton said. “If you make

me crack, there are things you wouldn’t want me to tell them about

you.”

“Where would you start? With the day we killed your pervert of a

father? Sure, I drained off the brake fluid, but it was your idea. Too

bad your mother was with him that day. As you say, Scotty boy,

we’re in this together.”


329

When Bendix arrived officially on the scene for the second time

he found Lawton in a catatonic state, sitting immobile, unable to

answer questions with the Purdy in his hands.

They’d decided on this and not to wipe the gun clean of

fingerprints. It would be better if a distraught man sat in a stunned

state cradling his own gun that had been used by someone else to

kill his family.

Lawton was taken into custody and examined by a police

surgeon who call in Beattie to provide a psychiatric assessment.

Once it had been established that Lawton was suffering from

Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, he recovered enough to allow

himself to be interrogated by Bendix, and a Detective Constable.

Bendix pushed him right to the edge, and on a couple of

occasions he thought he was going to fall over it. There were times

when he felt like screaming and confessing but Bendix seemed to

know this and relaxed the pressure.

It seemed to him it was a pleasure for Bendix to have him over a

barrel and he did not spare the flail.


330

Lawton vowed in his own mind that Bendix would not get away

with what he was doing to him.

After seventy-two hours he was released, and Bendix put in his

report that he had no reason to believe that Lawton had murdered

his family, and that investigations should proceed by looking for

possible suspects among Lawton’s patients many of whom had

criminal records.

When the met later, Bendix said to Lawton.

“You’re a real ham. It’s lucky you were dealing with me. Anyone

else would have seen through your act straight off.”

“What do you mean?” Lawton was offended by his mocking tone.

“Nobody normal would have acted the way you did.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. A man has his family blown away so violently shows the

right emotions. You showed the wrong ones.”

“What were the right ones?”


331

“That’s for you to find out Mr. Scientist. If you ever have to do it

again and I’m not around, you’ll hang yourself.”

Bendix left it at that and walked away.

Later, Lawton rang him and said, “I intend to prove it.”

“What? Prove what?” Bendix asked.

“That the way I behaved was perfectly normal.”

“Forget it,” said Bendix. “Just be thankful you got off as lightly

as you did.”

“People are saying ‘there’s no smoke without fire’, Lawton said.

“People say such things. In this case they’re right.”

“They shouldn’t be saying things like that.”

“You can’t stop them.”

“Meet me. I’ve got it all worked out.”

When they met, Lawton said, “I want you to find me a good

private detective. And when I say good, I mean one that is not easily

corrupted.”


332

“They’re all corrupt in one way or another,” said Bendix.

“You find me one. One with a wife and at least one son.”

“What do you think you’re going to do?”

“I’ll hire him to find out who murdered my family. That will add

credibility to my protestations of innocence.”

“What if he finds out that you murdered them?”

“We won’t give him time. The real object of the exercise is to find

out how he behaves when his family is violently destroyed, as mine

were.”

“And who’s going to wipe out his family?”

“That’s where you come in.”

“I thought as much. Hell, why don’t you just do it yourself?”

“Come on, Michael,” said Lawton. “This should appeal to your

sense of danger. You’ll be a murderer investigating your own crime.

You’ll be close to whoever we choose, and you can report to me how

he reacts, and we can compare and contrast his actions and

reactions with my own. I bet they won’t be much different.


333

“Jesus,” swore Bendix. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve always enjoyed the killing. You know how you get off on

it.”

“Yeah, but this could be dangerous.”

“So much the better. Find me a good subject, Michael. “It’s not

as if you liked private detectives all that much.”

“I don’t.”

“Well then. There must be one so much the opposite to yourself

that you hate his guts.”

“Yeah. I can think of one.”

“Does he have a wife and family?”

“Yeah. His name’s Finn.”

****

I used the rubber butt of the Ithaca to smash one of the sixteen

panes in Lawton’s front door. I put my hand through carefully and

unlocked the door and withdrew my hand.


334

I went inside, closing the door after me, and stepping carefully

over the broken glass.

I turned the light on and moved down the hall to the kitchen.

The dishes from our meal still stood on the table.

I was looking for Finn, and I made a search of all the rooms. I

pulled the ladder down from the roof space with a hooked pole I

found in the hot press. Finn wasn’t in the roof space. He wasn’t in

the water tank. God knows why I looked there. I went down and

closed off the roof space again.

I went back to the kitchen, and had a look around there. I

opened every door I could see, and when I opened one which I

thought to be a connecting door, I found a flight of stairs going

down.

I hit the light switch and then went carefully down ten steps.

At the bottom I stood in a corridor which seemed to run the

length of the house. There were doors leading off to left and right.

I tried them in turn. They were all locked. I hammered on each

one and called Finn’s name, listening for a reply.


335

I thought I heard something from behind the third door on the

left. I shouted again and listened. There definitely was a muffled

response from behind the door, calling my name.

“Stand away from the door, Finn,” I shouted.

I raised the Ithaca and blew the lock away along with most of the

woodwork. I went into the room with the gun at the ready, like

someone I’d seen in a detective series on television.

There was no-one in the room but Finn, and he was strapped to

some kind of couch.

He was saying something to me but the percussion of the gun

had temporarily deafened me. I leaned the gun against a chair that

was sitting there and loosed Finn from his bonds.

I was excited and fumbled somewhat with the buckles of the

strait jacket.

He was stiff, and had trouble sitting up, and then standing.

My hearing was coming back.

“Finn,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”


336

I put his arm around my neck, and my other arm around his

waist and helped him hobble through the door.

“Bring the gun,” he said.

He steadied himself against the wall while I went back for the

gun. After that we got up the stairs and into the kitchen.

“Where’s Lawton?”

I told him about Lawton, and where I thought he was. I looked at

my watch. “As he wasn’t able to find me on the road he probably

went on to my house, I said. “He may wait for a while thinking he

got there before me, but eventually he’ll probably make his way back

here.”

“Water,” said Finn. “I need something to drink.”

I took a glass and got him water from the tap.

“Thanks.” He drained it quickly. He must have been parched.

“Another?”

“I could do with it.” He took this one more slowly. “Have you

seen Saul?”


337

I brought him up to date on Saul.

“He feels terrible about losing sight of you. That is his gun.” I

indicated the Ithaca.

“I know.”

“Were you and he going to use that on Lawton?”

“Let me tell you about Lawton,” Finn said, “while we search the

place.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Notes. Manuscripts. Audio and video tapes,” said Finn and told

me about Lawton as we searched.

He told it all so calmly, but the more I listened, the more and

more incensed I became. I thought of the Molly I had known and the

boys I had known as they had grown up. I saw them all as a family I

was part of. Lively in the fields, walking and climbing in valley

passes between mountains, or fishing a broad river with white water

runs.

I could hear their joyous voices calling to me, then taking me by

the hand to share with me their discoveries.


338

“Why do they call you Father, Father Seamus, when you are not

married and are nobody’s dad.” – Seaneen.

“I’m supposed to be everybody’s dad,” I said. “That’s what I do

for God.”

“Why?”

“Because he asked me to,” I said. “There are those who don’t

have dads or mums, and I look after them for God.”

“Why can’t God look after them himself?”

“He could do that, Seaneen, but he knows it’s good for me to do

it for him.”

“So if anything happened to mum and dad, you’d look after us,

Fingal and me?”

“Right.”

“I’d like that.”

Both boys had grown up into young men we were all proud of.

They held themselves upright in the world and were kind and

generous, and in their work they had a concern for others and for


339

the earth they walked on. They honoured their father and mother

and were loved and cherished by both.

When I thought of those lovely, valuable lives being snuffed out

at the whim of a madman, my whole stable learning and teaching

cracked and crumbled like rocks blasted in a quarry.

When Finn had finished telling me about Lawton and what he

had done a great blood lust came into my mind and I said in a voice

choked with emotion.

“I’ll shoot him myself if you don’t.”

“Take it easy, Seamus,” Finn said. “That’s not something you

mean.”

“I loved them, Finn. I loved them like my own family. They were

my own family.”

“I know that, Seamus.”

My hands were trembling.

We found the tapes and they trembled even more. The video

tapes were in boxes belonging to Citizen Kane, Mr Arkadin, and

Badge of Evil. The audio tapes were in boxes that had originally held


340

music by Richard Wagner, and Richard Strauss. We took time only

to identify them as relating to the murders of Lawton’s family, and

the series of events that had happened to Finn.

Finn went to the phone on the kitchen wall, and dialled a

number. He waited while the connection was made, then spoke, “Get

me DCI Warner. Tell him it’s Finn… Give me a contact number

then…. Yes you can… What’s your name?… Davis, well listen

Sergeant Davis give me a contact number because when he finds out

how obstructive you've been you’ll get the rough edge of his tongue.

You know what he’s like. And his job is on the line. That’s better.”

He hung up and dialled again immediately. “Warner? This is

Finn. I know who killed Bendix…. The same guy who killed Lawton’s

wife and son, and who indirectly killed my wife and sons…. I’m at

Lawton’s house. You know where it is. Get here.”

He hung up again.

By this time my emotions were at war with my reason, and

reason was taking a pounding from the big guns of anger and hate.

“How can you be so calm about this?” I asked Finn. My voice

showed me on the verge of rage.


341

“When Lawton comes, Seamus,” Finn said. “I think I’d better

have the shotgun.”

He went back to the kitchen and took possession of the Ithaca.

“I’ve been where you are, Seamus,” he said. “I wanted to kill him.

I don’t any more. You were right when you told me not to take the

law into my own hands. Now I can’t allow you to take it into yours.”

He was right, of course, but I didn’t feel he was right. If Lawton

had walked in through the door at that moment, I’d have snatched

the gun away from Finn and cut him in two.

“Relax, Seamus. Start thinking like a priest again.”

“You’re different, Finn. What changed your thinking?”

“I’ve been to the Kingdom of God and back,” he said.

I must have given him a strange look.

“Where’s your car?” he said. “Leave everything as it is, turn out

the lights and we’ll wait in your car for Lawton to come back.”

We went out to the car, and he carried the gun. I reversed to a

spot where oncoming headlights would not show us up.


342

“If Warner comes first, so much the better,” said Finn. “We put

him in the picture.”

“What did you mean?” I asked.

“About what?”

“About being to the Kingdom of God and back?”

Finn was silent. Then he spoke.

“There was one good priest in that place I was sent to after my

parents died. He was the only one who didn’t take anything from us.

The only one who tried to give something to us. But we were

poisoned against him because of the behaviour of the others.

“You remind me of him, Seamus. He wanted me to have a life

and he opened the gate for me and he gave me a note to the O’Hara,

Molly’s father, and when I went from that place, on a night like this,

he whispered to me ‘The Kingdom of God is within you, Finn, my

boy. Never, never, forget that.

“All these years, Seamus. It took me all these years to understand

what he meant. And if Lawton hadn’t put me up there on that cross,


343

and down there into that dark and silent padded cell, I might never

have known.

“I have been to the core of my own being, and I have brought

back from there a knowledge of the things you preach, palely, from

your pulpit. The difference between what you preach and what I

experienced is the difference between the sun and the moon. I no

longer want to kill him.”

“Why?”

“Because I feel for him only the most profound pity.”

“Pity?” I said. “How can you pity such a creature?”

“Because it is what God wants me to do.”

“Finn,” I said. “I have no such feeling for him. After what he did

to you and to Molly and the boys, I have only contempt and loathing

for him.”

“I’m sorry about that, Seamus,” he said.

“Why should you be sorry?” I snapped.

But I knew why.


344

“You’re thinking that all my faith amounts only to lip service.”

“Seamus…” he began, but I cut him off.

“You think my Christianity is only superficial. That I have

wasted my time seeking the Kingdom of God in the structure of my

church…” I paused. If he wanted to say something then let him say

something now. I was ready for him.

He said nothing.

“You’re wrong, Finn,” I said. “I’m not doubting that you believe

you’ve had some great revelation from within yourself, but might not

that be simply your way of dealing with those terrible things that

have happened to you?”

“And might it not be, Seamus, that you, not having had such a

revelation only relate as truth, without knowledge, what your, for

want of a better word, saints have experienced?”

I was angry with him, and I showed it.

“I did not want to make you angry,” he said.

The front windscreen had fogged up and I sat forward and rested

my hot brow against its welcome coldness.


345

Maybe he was right. It suddenly came to me that in all my

theological training I had never followed the injunction to seek first

the Kingdom of Heaven.

I felt like crying. Tears welled in my eyes. I felt Finn’s hand on

my shoulder, comforting.

“Jesus,” I whispered, “I wanted to kill him.”

“I know,” said Finn. “but now you won’t.”

“We can’t.”

“No,” said Finn, “we can’t.”

“I ache for you Finn. I ache for the loss, the senseless loss of

Molly and the boys.”

“And for Helen and Sean Lawton,” said Finn.

“And for Helen and Sean,” I said. “And for Bendix.”

“For Bendix and Lawton,” Finn said.

“And Lawton,” I said.

We sat a while without saying anything.


346

“Why did Lawton kill Bendix?”

“He just said they quarrelled,” said Finn. “Bendix brought me to

his own house. Lawton came there, and he shot Bendix with my

gun.”

The road had been quiet. No cars had passed us in either

direction, but now in front we could see the lights of an approaching

car.

We kept the windscreen fogged. The lights got brighter as they

crested a dip in the road.

The Bentley made a right turn.

“Come on,” said Finn, getting out of the car.

“Aren’t you going to take the gun?”

“Accidents can happen.”

“He has yours.”

“I know. We’ll just have to convince him not to use it, either on

himself or on us.”

I got out and followed Finn at a run along Lawton’s driveway.


347

Lawton heard us coming across the gravel and turned from his

examination of his broken door. When he saw Finn he started, and

drew an automatic pistol from his waistband. He looked beyond

Finn to me.

“Stop where you are,” he shouted.

I stopped. Finn, however, holding his arms out wide with his

hands open in the light from the front door, went on, but slowly.

“Scott,” he said. “Put the gun down, and let’s all go inside. It’s all

over. I’ve phoned for the police.”

Lawton brought the gun level with Finn’s chest. “That’s far

enough.”

“It’s true,” I said. “The police are on their way.”

“You,” he said to me. “Lie flat on your face with your hands

behind your neck.”

I looked at Finn.

“Do it, Seamus,” he said.


348

I got down on my knees and then straightened out, and put my

hands behind my neck. I found the position most uncomfortable.

“Against the wall, Finn,” Lawton said. “You know the position.”

“We’re not armed, Scott,” said Finn. He leant on the wall, arms

extended, feet apart.

Lawton searched Finn for a weapon, found none, and stepped

back. “Lie down like him,” he told Finn.

“We don’t mean to harm you,” Finn said. He lay down.

He got me to stand against the wall until he searched me. When

he stood back again, he said to Finn, "On your feet. No sudden

movements. Move inside.”

He pushed the door open for us to go in front of him.

Finn said. “We can wait inside for the police. Chief Inspector

Warner is coming.”

We walked down the hall. I wasn’t sure whether or not at any

minute we’d get a bullet in the back. I didn’t like the feeling. It was

fear.


349

In front of me, Finn turned into the living room putting on the

light.

We were both ordered to sit on the settee.

I could see Lawton was agitated.

“Finn,” he commanded. “Heel!”

Finn spread his hands upwards in a gesture of apology.

“Sorry Scott,” he said. “I’ve broken your influence. I will not

respond in the way you want me to. I’ve called the police, and when

they come I will tell them all the things you told me to have no

memory of.” He counted them off on his fingers. “That you killed

your wife and son. That you had Bendix kill my family. That you

killed Bendix.”

Lawton stared at him with an expression of disbelief.

“Heel!” he said again, louder, as if an increase in decibels would

enhance the effect.

“It won’t matter whether you say ‘heel!’, or ‘gargoyle’, or ‘stand

by’, Scott. You see, you are no longer in control of me.” Finn paused.

“In fact, Scott, you are no longer in control of anything.”


350

“I’m in control of this,” Lawton spoke through his teeth, and

flourished the gun, and brought it to bear on a point between us.

The bullet thudded into the back of the settee before I jumped at

the sound of the gun’s explosion. I broke out in a cold sweat. The

smell of cordite hung in the air as the barrel of the gun smoked.

“You’d be more in control if you’d put away the gun,” said Finn

in the silence that followed the shot.

“I’ll keep it where it is,” said Lawton.

“That’s up to you,” said Finn. “The police are on their way.”

“The more you say that, the less I believe it,” said Lawton.

“I’m not bluffing about that,” said Finn. “The game is up for

you.”

“Shut up,” Lawton’s voice was losing its well modulated tone. He

came towards Finn as if to strike him across the face. Finn leaned

back, hooked his left foot around Lawton’s right ankle, and shot his

right foot out hard against Lawton’s knee. He pulled forward with

his hooked left foot.


351

Lawton cursed and found himself losing balance. He wind-milled

his arms and went over backwards. He tried to bring the gun

towards Finn, but I was out of my seat, and had clamped my hands

over the hand that held the gun. I wrenched the gun from his grip,

and got up stepping back from him.

Lawton lay on the floor and did not heed Finn telling him to get

up, and sit in the chair. Finn reached down and twisted his coat

together and lifted him into sitting position. Then we both lifted him

into the chair.

He sat there glaring at us.

“Why don’t you get on with it, Finn,” he said.

Finn said nothing. I said nothing.

“Trash me. Then kill me,” said Lawton. Go on.”

“We don’t wish to harm you,” said Finn.

“Like hell you don’t. After what I did to you?”

“Believe us. We are not going to harm you.”


352

“You’re not the sort of man, Finn, to let what I did to you and

yours go unpunished or unavenged.”

“You have no idea what sort of a man I am, Scott,” said Finn.

“Perhaps before the police get here you might have found out."

“That sounds like a threat, Finn,” said Lawton.

“Don’t get too excited, Scott. I’m not threatening you in any way.

In fact, my purpose is to do you some good.”

I saw a puzzled look on Lawton’s face, and for a moment I was

sure I perceived a fleeting expression of fear.

Lawton seemed to stiffen into the chair bringing his feet up onto

the front of the seat, and putting his hands around his knees.

“Watch now, Seamus,” Finn said, “how Scott here will become

his own gargoyle. I think that he believes that traditionally gargoyles

warded off evil.”

Lawton’s face had become inscrutable.

“Scott,” Finn said. “I’d like you to stay with us. To speak with us.

To recognize that we mean you no harm. That we are not the evil

that you have to guard yourself against.”


353

Finn paused to give Lawton time to respond.

There was no response.

Finn sighed.

“Let us sit here until Warner arrives,” he said. “He will be

arrested because he sits here surrounded by the evidence of what he

has done.”

“You mean the tapes?” I said. By this time I had some idea of

what Finn was trying to do.

“The tapes,” he said. “But I’m sure there are also written

records. If not here, then at the Health Care Park. Warner will get a

warrant. His search will be thorough.”

“What will happen to him?” I asked.

“He’ll be arrested and charged with the murder of his wife and

son. With complicity in the murder of my wife and sons, and with

the murder of Bendix. How to you think he’ll plead, Seamus?”

“He did it,” I said. “He’ll plead guilty. He might even plead guilty

but insane.”


354

“No,” said Finn. “He’ll plead not guilty. You know why?

Because,” Finn went on rhetorically, “he doesn’t consider himself to

be either guilty or insane. He believes himself to be in the right. But,

he also knows that if he pleads guilty but insane, and is found

guilty, he can be held indefinitely in a mental institution. But if he is

found guilty after pleading not guilty a life sentence means that he

will be free again in ten years if not sooner.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” I said.

“It’s fair enough,” said Finn. “People change.”

“I doubt if he will,” I said.

“Everybody does,” said Finn.

“What makes you think he’ll change for the better. He might

change for the worse if that is possible.”

“If he lives he will change for the better, Seamus.”

Finn paused, looked at Lawton, then back to me.

“At the moment he would like us to kill him,” he said. “He’s lost

control and his life is in chaos.”


355

“It’s nothing to the chaos he’s created in the lives of his own

family and yours,” I said. I’d been toying with the gun and now I put

it in my side pocket.

“He’s a child, Seamus. A child who went into the institution of

medicine and psychiatry to try and bring order into his chaotic and

disorderly life.” Finn paused again. Then continued. “But, he never

subjected himself to that institution. Its rules and regulations, all

that gives purpose to the lives of medical people, only helped to hide

the depredations of this destructive child. He’s not a man, Seamus.”

I watched Lawton. He still sat with his hands around his drawn

up knees. His knuckles were white. I wondered how long he would

be able to resist challenging our assumptions.

“The tragedy of it all is,” Finn said, “that each time he struck out

he struck out at love.”

Lawton’s shoulders twitched, then stilled again.

“He’s like a walnut, Seamus,” Finn said. “He’s built a hard shell

around the little boy and wouldn’t allow him to grow up and develop

into a loving man.”


356

“It’s hard to believe there’s anything of a child in this man,” I

said.

“The child is still there all the same,” said Finn. “He told me so

himself when he came to my office asking me to take the case.”

I thought about what Finn had told me about that first interview

with Lawton.

“Sean Logan,” I said.

“Sean Logan is still there waiting to grow. He has all the

sensibilities for growth..”

“But?”

“He may not be allowed to. He may die inside that hard shell of

self-hatred Scott has built around him. The shell has closed off Sean

Logan in darkness and silence. Isn’t that right, Scott. Isn’t that while

you had me drugged and hypnotized you had me in that dark silent

padded cell? The pattern was there. You were doing to me what you

did to Sean Logan.

“Come on, Scott. You’re intelligent. Argue your case. Don’t lose

by default. Keep up this behaviour and the prosecution will have no


357

trouble at all proving you guilty and insane, for that will be the

verdict they will want, so that you can be held indefinitely.”

We sat waiting for a reply. Lawton’s eyes were no longer still and

unfocussed. They moved from side to side in their sockets like two

trapped animals seeking some way of escape.

We sat as still as he had been. The only sound was that of a

clock ticking on the mantle shelf above the fireplace. There came a

point when I thought Finn should say something, but he said

nothing, and in the building tension, I had to count the seconds

ticking away. If I had not the silence would have been unbearable.

I had counted off one hundred and forty seconds when Lawton

moved. He unlaced his fingers from around his knees. He

straightened his legs putting his feet on the floor, first the right and

then the left. He gripped the arms of the chair and fixed his eyes on

Finn.

“You’re clever, Finn,” he said. “But you need not expect me to

agree with all that nonsense you’ve been spewing out.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to, Scott,” Finn said. “You aren’t man

enough for that.”


358

“Trying to goad me into a confession in front of your friend won’t

work, Finn.”

“I don’t need a confession. The evidence is all around us.”

“You should kill me Finn,” he said. “If you don’t I’ll kill myself.”

“We shall try to prevent that, Scott. It wouldn’t be right. I want

you to live.”

“What for, Finn?”

“I want you to realize the full extent of what you have done. You

die now and you die still believing you were right to do what you

did.”

“I was right,”

“You were wrong,” said Finn. “You must live to realize the full

horror of taking Helen’s life and Sean’s life.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what your doing Finn,” Lawton

countered. “This is the only way you can deal with the life I have left

you. Your weakness prevents you from killing me so you have this

reaction formation and sublimation where you must do me a

goodness while unconsciously you’d really like to get your hands on


359

my throat and strangle me because I’ve taken everything away from

you.”

Finn shook his head. “It’s true you took Molly and Fingal and

Seaneen from me, but you did not take everything from me. You

couldn’t take their love from me. That love is deep within my being

where you cannot and could not reach. It embraces the love and

respect I have for myself, and deep down in that same place I have

love and respect for you as a human being.

“What I am trying to do, Scott is to bring forth the love I have

given and received from those I loved and who loved me, and extend

it to you. You may live or die, but I will do all that is within my

power to see that you experience what I am talking about.”

“And what are you talking about?” Lawton said.

“I’m talking about what Helen wanted you to do. I’m talking

about you growing up.”

Lawton did not say anything.

“Yes,” said Finn. “Helen gave you love. I don’t think you can

deny that.”


360

“She was going to leave me. What kind of love was that?”

“As a last resort, and to save her son from growing up hating

himself the way you hate yourself.”

“She thwarted me.”

“She only asked you to be loving towards your son and herself.

She wanted you to see that what you were doing was wrong.”

“That was only her opinion. Just as it’s only your opinion.”

Lawton turned suddenly to me. “And I suppose you are here to save

my soul?”

“What you did contravened the laws of God and humanity,” I

said.

“If she hadn’t spoiled my experiment, I would have been proved

right. The boy would have been strong. A leader of men.”

It did not seem to me that this obdurate man would change. He

was a man who would brook no contradiction to his own opinion. An

opinion that was always right.

I had gone along with Finn intellectually knowing it would be

wrong to kill Lawton, but the more I thought of what he had done,


361

and the way he was talking now without an iota of regret or

repentance…

“To tell you the truth,” I said. “Your soul is your own affair.”

“Hah!” exclaimed Lawton. “There you are, Finn. For all your

high-minded sentiments your friend, the good priest, doesn’t really

give a damn for my soul. In fact he would like my soul to be

damned. He wouldn’t like to spend an eternity with me. Would you,

Father?”

He stared at me, defying me to deny it. From the look on Finn’s

face I could see he thought I’d undermined his position.

Lawton said, “Go on, Father. Take the pistol from your pocket

and make your wish actual.”

My hand moved as if of its own accord to where I had the gun.

Then I caught myself on.

“You haven’t the guts,” Lawton said. There was contempt in his

voice. “Either of you.”


362

I couldn’t think of anything to say and in the hiatus that

followed we heard a car draw up, and its door slam closed, and then

the ringing of a doorbell.

“Answer it, Seamus,” Finn said.

I was relieved to get out of the room. I went down the hall and

opened the door to Inspector Warner. I told him who I was and

brought him back with me to the living room.

Lawton and Finn were on their feet when we came into the room.

"This is Inspector Warner," I said, unnecessarily as both of them

knew who he was. "Dr. Lawton and Finn you know."

"I know both of them," Warner said. "What's this all about?"

"Are you alone, Inspector?" Lawton asked. "Do you think you

can arrest both of these men on your own?"

"Why should that be necessary?" Warner said.

"They are holding me here against my will. And you've probably

noticed when you came in, they broke into my house. Allow me to

show you."


363

Lawton moved in front of Warner to where I was.

Finn called out, "Look out, Seamus."

Before I knew what was happening Lawton's hand was in my

pocket and out again with the automatic.

He stepped clear of us, and pointed the slim blue-black

automatic at Finn, telling him to sit down.

Finn sat, and Lawton told Warner and myself to sit beside him

on the settee.

"What going on?" Warner said.

Lawton ignored him.

"Now I have to go away from here and start again. I only need a

little time, and if I don't kill you, I won't have that. Bloody morons.

Can't you see the trouble you've caused me?"

"Is that why you killed Bendix?" Finn asked.

"Shut up, Finn," Lawton said. "You'd like to know why. But I'm

not going to tell you. You're going to die without knowing."

"Come on," Finn insisted. "You might as well tell us."


364

Lawton looked around and then back to us.

"It's going to be messy, but that can't be helped. I can't take the

chance of walking you to the cellar."

"You're mad," said Warner. "I left word where I would be, and my

driver is out in the car."

"Liar," said Lawton. "If anybody had come with you he'd have

come in with you as well. But even if there is, when he hears the

shots he'll come in and I'll kill him too."

"Scott," said Finn. "Listen to me, please."

I saw Lawton's eyes harden and his mouth become a thin

compressed line.

"Please, let me say what I have to say," said Finn.

"I don't want to hear what you have to say. So shut up."

"That's good, Scott," Finn said. "If you don't want to hear it, then

you know what it is I have to say."

"You're annoying me, Finn," Lawton said. "I can't take much

more of it." His gun hand developed a slight tremor.


365

"Sean Logan needs to live, Scott," Finn said. "There is no

justification for what you have done. None at all. But what you have

done is not irredeemable. You can make amends for it by allowing

Sean to live. Sean will be able to do that if you do not kill again. I

beg you for your own good, put down the gun, step back, and live.

Please."

Finn was almost crying. I hoped to see some expression on

Lawton's face to indicate that Finn's words had moved him.

That they were sincere I had no doubt, but I wasn't feeling the

same thing as Finn. I was sore afraid that I was going to be shot and

that I would die. Sweat had broken out on my brow, and I was going

hot and cold.

Lawton's face remained stony. Finn was speaking again.

"You've got to go down there into that darkness and bring young

Sean back to the light, Scott. It's not going to be easy, and it is going

to be painful.

"Shut up, Finn," said Lawton but his voice was not as strong as

before. I felt and hoped it was wavering. Maybe he'd listen to Finn

and put the gun down and not kill us.


366

I felt I should have been the one doing what Finn was doing, but

I realized that I could not have done it.

That knowledge saddened me for I knew if I died now I would die

without having fulfilled my full potential.

I thought of Christmas coming and of what I had been doing

ritualistically. I had been acting throughout all my service and really

serving no-one but myself.

I wanted to say to Lawton that there was justification for the evil

he had done. Justification through Jesus Christ, but I did not, for I

did not want to undo, for the second time, any good Finn might have

done.

"It won't be easy, Scott," Finn was saying. "It will take a great

deal of courage. Courage to live through a prison sentence, and

courage to remake your life again, and courage most of all to live

with the full knowledge of the terrible wrong you have done."

No-one said anything after that. No-one moved. Conflict spread

itself across Lawton's face.


367

"I must not give up my work," he said. "It is important that I do

not give up my work."

"Dr. Lawton," said Warner. "Please give me the gun and tell me

what you have done." Warner put his hand out for the gun.

"Keep it on your head," said Lawton.

Warner replaced his hand and we three sat like that.

Lawton paced up and down in front of us, but out of range of

our feet and legs.

He's thinking over what Finn has said, I thought, then prayed

that he would respond the way Finn wanted him to. The gun was

now held against his thigh.

Suddenly he stopped pacing, turned to us with a sudden

upward jerk of his gun hand.

"I've had enough of this," he said.

"Lawton!"

Lawton twisted round towards the sound of his name.


368

Saul had come into the room moving swiftly and silently. He was

no longer at the door from where he had spoken, but was level with

Lawton.

He carried the Ithaca, aimed at Lawton, waist high.

Lawton, bringing his eyes back to him form the door found him

standing now at the side of the settee, hate contorting his face and

anger distorting his voice.

"This is for my sister you sadistic bastard. Die."

"No," screamed Lawton, bringing the automatic up towards Saul.

"I'm too important to die."

He never got to pull the trigger. His importance was splattered

over the wall behind him in the form of blood, brain tissue, skin and

hair. The hail from the second shell opened his chest and abdominal

cavities even before he'd come to rest after the first shot had lifted

him off his feet.

I was stunned.

We all were.

We three still sat there with our hands on our heads.


369

I wanted to be sick.

I got as far as the door.

Afterwards, I staggered into the kitchen and got myself a glass of

water with shaking hands.

It had all been so sudden. I sat down at the table and tried to

think whether or not Lawton's terrible end could have been averted.

Whether I could have done something to prevent it.

Saul came into the kitchen, his hands cuffed behind his back,

followed by Warner and Finn. Warner carried the shotgun.

Warner used his cell phone to call the police.

"Sit down," he said to Saul, turning one of the kitchen chairs

back to front so that Saul could sit comfortably.

"He was going to murder you all," Saul said.

"He was going to give up the gun," Finn said.

"Save it until we get to the station," Warner said.

"Not the way I saw it," Saul said.


370

"Save it," Warner said again. "And don't forget you've been

cautioned.

****

That was more or less the end of it, Archbishop. We all made

statements at the police station. Saul is on remand awaiting trial.

Finn is living in another caravan, and is reconstructing his life.

"And you, Father Darcy want to leave the priesthood."

"I must," I said.

"Is that necessary?"

"Yes," I replied. "I got through Christmas, but even during that

time I was questioning what the Church wanted me to believe."

"You have become a sceptic."

"Yes," I said. I felt ashamed, somehow.

He surprised me by what he said next.

"That's progress."

"Progress?"


371

"Spiritual progress," he said. "Scepticism and doubt is part of

your spiritual development. Men live in chaos, then in order to bring

order into their lives they join an institution, in your case the

church. Later, they begin to doubt and to question the institution,

usually becoming highly critical. Then, because they find scepticism

and cynicism so destructive and isolating, they become mystics."

I thought of Finn who had gone deep within himself and had

come through all that had happened to him with a deeper knowledge

of life and love. That was what I wanted.

"When you become a mystic, Father Darcy," the archbishop said,

"you will either come back to the church or work for good outside it.

You are one of my better priests, and you have my blessing to leave.

And as you go on Seamus, you will find that for everything to remain

the same, everything must change."

I left the archbishop's house with those words in my mind, but it

took me years to understand what he meant.

END.

like a mile of white water

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