Death Day (17 page)

    'Father Ridley,' he called again.

    Silence.

    It was then that he noticed the pieces of earth scattered around the base of the altar. The Inspector crossed quickly to them and prodded a large lump with his index finger. He exhaled deeply. Where the hell was Ridley? There was one place left in the church he hadn't looked. The bell tower. A flight of stone steps ran up to the belfry from just behind the altar. Lambert looked up. A wooden floor hid the belfry itself from view below. He would have been able to see from where he stood whether or not the priest was up there, but the wooden slats obscured his view. He would have to go up and take a look for himself. He was suddenly filled with a feeling which he took to be fear, but why such a feeling should take hold of him, he didn't know.

    'Wait here,' he told Debbie, and set off up the stone steps which would take him into the belfry.

    Debbie nodded and watched him go, edging back so that she leant against the altar, looking out into the church. Hundreds of invisible eyes seemed to be fixed on her and she shuddered involuntarily.

    Lambert, meantime, found that the staircase spiralled as it rose. The walls on either side hemmed him in so that he could not even extend his arms without touching them.

    He slipped and nearly fell, but regained his footing cursing, and looked to see what had made him stumble.

    There was a slippery streak of blood on the step on which he stood. And the one above it. Lambert gritted his teeth. The cold seemed to have intensified and he was also beginning to notice a strange smell which grew stronger as he neared the top of the stairs. Mixed with the cloying odour of damp wood was something more pungent. A coppery, choking smell which stung his nostrils and made him cough.

    He reached the top of the stairs and peered round into the belfry.

    It was small. No more than ten feet square and Lambert felt as if the walls were closing in around him. The bell, a large brass object, lay discarded in one corner, torn from the thick hemp which secured it.

    Lambert gasped and backed against the wall, his heart thumping.

    Dangling from the bell rope, the hemp knotted tightly around his neck, was Father Ridley.

    His face was bloated, the blackened tongue protruding from his mouth. Blood had splashed down his chest, turning his coat red and the rope which supported him had cut deeply into the thick flesh of his neck, drawing blood in places. He hung like some obscene puppet, his own blood puddled beneath him, soaking into the ancient timbers of the belfry floor.

    But, the thing which finally made Lambert turn away in horrified disgust was the face. Splattered with gore, it seemed to glare mockingly at the policeman who noticed with mounting terror that there was something horribly familiar about it.

    Both the eyes had been torn out.

    Lambert turned and raced down the stairs, almost running past Debbie who caught his arm. Her eyes searched his, looking for an answer which she already suspected.

    'He's dead,' said Lambert flatly. 'Come on.' They ran from the church, chased by a fear beyond their understanding.

    They ran to the car and climbed in. Lambert burned rubber as he spun the Capri round. The needle on the speedometer touched sixty as he drove for Medworth, his face set in an expression of fearful resignation. Debbie studied his profile. 'Tom.'

    'What?' His voice was tense, sharp.

    'What's happening?' There was a note of something near to pleading in her voice.

    'The graves,' he snapped, 'the graves of Mackenzie and Brooks were disturbed. It looked as if somone dug them up.' The words trailed off. 'Oh Jesus,' he said, his voice catching.

    She reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder.

    'What are you going to do, Tom?'

    'Open the graves.'

    'What?' She swallowed hard, not quite believing what she had heard. 'But you can't. I mean, why?'

    'Someone tampered with those graves, Debbie. There must be a reason for that. I want to know what it is.'

    'But don't you need an exhumation order?'

    'Why?'

    'It's the law.'

    He looked at her. 'I am the law.'

    

    

    Lambert stood beside Sergeant Hayes, watching as Davies and Briggs threw shovelfuls of earth into the air in an effort to reach the coffin of Ray Mackenzie.

    Lambert was smoking. His third that morning. He'd been trying to give up just lately, but the events of the day so far had suddenly persuaded him that he needed something to calm him down. He sucked hard on the cigarette, holding the smoke in his mouth for a second before expelling it in a long grey stream which mingled with his own frosted breath in the crispness of the morning air.

    He had driven home after finding Ridley's body, left Debbie there and told her he would be in touch. At first he had been reluctant to leave her alone, a fear which he couldn't understand nagging at the back of his mind. She had assured him that she would be all right and he had driven to the station. Taking a Panda, he, Hayes and the two constables had driven back to the cemetery armed with shovels. As Davies drove, Lambert recounted what he and Debbie had found that morning and when he got to the part about the eyeless corpse of Ridley, Briggs had found himself struggling to keep his poached eggs down. Hayes had said nothing, only looked questioningly at the inspector as if the description of the injuries inflicted had stirred some horrific memory within himself.

    The ambulance which removed the vicar's body had been pulling out as the Panda swung into the driveway. Kirby was to do an immediate autopsy on it and ring Lambert with the results as quickly as possible.

    Now the Inspector leant on a stone cross and dropped his third butt to the ground, crushing it into the earth with the toe of his shoe.

    There was a scraping sound as the shovel Davies was using ran along a wooden surface.

    They had reached the coffin.

    Lambert stepped forward and watched as the two men scraped away the remaining earth with their fingers. As the last sticky clods were removed, all four policeman noticed the large hole about two feet from the head of the coffin. Splinters of wood were bent outward from it, some mingled with the dark earth.

    The Inspector sighed and rubbed his chin.

    It was scarcely necessary, because all of them could see through the holes that the coffin was empty, but Lambert gave the order nonetheless.

    'Open it up,' he said, jabbing a finger towards the splintered box.

    Davies wedged the corner of the shovel underneath one edge of the lid and pushed down. It came free with a shriek of cracking wood.

    White satin greeted the men. A few specks of earth had fallen onto it but, apart from that, it was untouched.

    No corpse. Nothing.

    'Jesus,' said Briggs under his breath.

    Lambert noticed some tiny dark specks of colour on the satin of the lid and jumped down into the hole alongside the two astounded constables. Leaning close he saw that the stains were dried blood. There was more smeared on the inside of the coffin. He straightened up and looked up at Hayes. The sergeant was expressionless, his lips and face white, bloodless.

    'And the other one,' said Lambert, pointing to the grave of Peter Brooks. 'We've got to be sure.'

    Davies groaned and wiped the perspiration from his brow. He gave Briggs a helping hand up from the hole and the two of them set to work on the second grave.

    That too was empty.

    Lambert bowed his head and, for long moments, no one spoke. Then Briggs said, nervously, 'What's going on, sir?'

    'You tell me,' said Lambert, reaching for another cigarette.

    Lambert drove home with his mind in turmoil. He told the men to keep quiet about the empty graves until they all had a better idea of what was happening. Probably someone having a sick joke, thought the Inspector. He hoped to Christ he was right. The men were edgy, Hayes too. Lambert had never seen the old sergeant like that. Usually nothing could get him rattled, but this time he strutted around the station trying to find jobs that didn't exist and snapping at the younger constables and making everyone feel all the more uneasy.

    Lambert had left them sitting around in the duty room drinking cups of coffee. He had given them no orders. After all, he would have felt slightly foolish asking his men to keep their eyes open for two missing corpses. If the situation had been different he might have laughed about it. 'Just keep on the look out for the missing bodies. They'll turn up somewhere. Probably just been misplaced.' He could hear himself saying it.

    He had no answers as yet. No theories floating about in that supposedly logical mind of his. On the other hand, what he had seen that morning defied logic. A priest murdered and hung from the bell rope of his own church. Two empty graves, one of them formerly belonging to a mass murderer, and the last and most disturbing thing, holes in the tops of both coffin lids.

    Lambert had no theories but what did make him shudder was the fact that the wood was bent outward in both cases. As if some powerful force had stove it out… FROM THE INSIDE.

    

    

    He was shivering as he swung the Capri into the driveway of the house. He left it in front of the garage and went in the front door.

    He found Debbie sitting in the lounge, a steaming mug of tea cradled in her hands. She got up and crossed to him, setting the mug down on the small table beside her chair.

    'I could do with one of those,' he said, embracing her and nodding towards the mug of tea.

    She hurried into the kitchen to fetch him one and returned to find him slumped on the sofa, head bowed in thought. He smiled up at her as she handed him his tea.

    'You all right?' he asked.

    She nodded. 'What happened?'

    He sighed, staring down into the steaming brown liquid as if an answer lay there. 'Both the graves were empty.'

    'Both?' She seemed puzzled.

    'Mackenzie and Brooks.' He took a sip of his tea. 'I'm waiting for the autopsy results on Ridley.'

    She sat beside him and reached for his hand, squeezing it. 'How about dinner?' she said.

    'Not for me, love,' he said, smiling. 'I seem to have lost my appetite.' He took another sip of his tea, watching a tiny brown tea leaf floating on the surface.

    Debbie went to the record player and turned it down. Elton John faded into the background.

    Lambert hardly noticed and, when the record finally came to an end, neither of them got up to take it off the turntable. It stuck in the runoff grooves, the steady click-click the only sound in the room.

    When the phone rang it seemed to galvanize them both into action. Debbie snatched the record up while Lambert grabbed the receiver.

    'Hello,' he said.

    'Tom.'

    He recognized the voice as Kirby.

    'John, what have you got?'

    'Well,' Kirby sounded tired. 'Not much really. Ridley died of a heart attack.'

    'What caused it?'

    There was silence on the other end and Lambert repeated his question before Kirby finally, and falteringly, said:

    'It's hard to say. He was overweight, anything might have triggered it. I can't be sure, Tom.' A long pause. 'But, from the condition of the arteries around the heart and the condition of the heart itself there would appear to have been massive cardiac failure. His heart burst, to put it simply.'

    'You're hedging, John.'

    'He died of fright.'

    The words came out flatly. No inflection to soften the statement. Cold hard fact. Simplicity itself.

    Lambert swallowed hard. 'The other injuries?'

    'I compared the scratch marks on the cheeks with those on the faces of Emma Reece and the Mackenzies.'

    'And?'

    'They match up.'

    Lambert inhaled quickly. 'So what does that mean?' His own mind was telling him an answer which he could not, dare not, accept.

    'Ridley was killed by the same man who killed the other three. Or so it would appear. That, of course, is impossible.'

    There was a long silence. Lambert held the phone down, Kirby's voice seeming far away, as if it were in a vacuum.

    'Tom? Tom!'

    Finally, the Inspector raised the receiver to his ear.

    'Sorry, John.' His tone changed. 'Look, can you come over here tonight?'

    'To your house?'

    'Yes. About seven?'

    'Yes. Tom, what is it?'

    'Bring all the papers relating to the previous victims, and those on Ridley. And the autopsy reports on Mackenzie and Brooks.'

    'Sure, but…'

    Lambert cut him short, his voice edged slightly with worried impatience. 'Just do it, John.'

    They said their goodbyes and Lambert dropped the phone back onto its cradle. Debbie looked at him and he returned her gaze, their eyes locked together. He sat down beside her and reached for his tea. He took a mouthful and winced. It was stone cold. He put the cup down and crossed to the drink cabinet.

    Right now he needed something stronger.

    

    

    It was a minute before seven that evening when there was a sharp rapping on the front door of the Lambert household. The Inspector checked his watch as he crossed to the door. Punctual as usual, he thought smiling. He opened the door to find Kirby standing there, a briefcase in his hand. The policeman ushered him in, his eyes gazing out into the night. The darkness was broken only here and there by the glow of street lamps. He closed the door and led Kirby through into the living room.