Trauma (13 page)

When Tyndall left the unit the entire team seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. This brought smiles from everyone except Logan. His eyes flashed with anger and Sarah did not need to guess at whom it was directed. 'A word if you please doctor,' he snapped. He walked out of the room. Sarah shrugged and accepted her cue to follow. She saw Sister Roche raise her eyes heavenwards and acknowledged the friendly gesture with a slight smile. Logan opened the door to the X-ray room and ushered Sarah inside before closing it again. 'What the hell do you mean by making a fool of me?' he demanded.

'I don't know what you mean, Dr Logan,' replied Sarah evenly.

'You set me up over McKirrop. You know you did!'

'What nonsense, there was simply no time to brief you beforehand. You were late.'

'It was deliberate!' stormed Logan. 'You wanted me to look stupid in front of Tyndall.'

'That's ridiculous,' answered Sarah. 'There simply wasn't time to tell you about Mr McKirrop's admission.'

'You did it to make an impression on Tyndall! Do you think I'm stupid or something?'

'What I think of you is neither here nor there and better left unsaid,' replied Sarah coldly. It was the first time she had done anything other than appease Logan and it felt good. She noticed surprise appear on Logan's face followed by uncertainty which made her feel even better. She continued, 'You'll be saying next that I flattened your car battery so that you'd be late. What is it with you Logan? What's your problem? You've been on my back ever since I joined the unit. Why?'

'Don't change the subject,' said Logan weakly but he had lost the initiative. Sarah was no longer the punch bag he’d been taking her for. She said curtly, 'If you'll excuse me, I have work to do. She turned on her heel and left Logan standing there.

Inside, Sarah's stomach was churning and she could feel the pulse beating in her neck but she steeled herself to keep her head up and walk off with authority in her step. She went back to the duty room and relaxed like a deflating air cushion once she had closed the door behind her.

'Everything all right?' asked Sister Roche.

'Let's say we had a frank and meaningful exchange of views,' said Sarah.

'Usually means a fight,' said the nurse.

'About right,' agreed Sarah.

Lafferty took a chance on finding John Main at home and went round to his flat. He had decided that a personal meeting would be better than a telephone call and he didn't want to wait another day for Main to come back down to St Xavier's. He thought at first Main was out but after the second ring of the bell he heard sounds from inside. The door opened and a groggy looking John Main stood there. He was wearing a sweat shirt with 'Merchiston School' emblazoned on the front and a pair of denim jeans. His feet were bare and his hair unkempt. The heaviness of his eyelids said that he had been asleep.

'Father Lafferty? This is a surprise. . .'

'I was passing. I thought I'd pop in and tell you how I was getting on?' Lafferty thought the white lie justified in the cause of defusing the look of expectation that had appeared in Main's eyes.

'Come in,' said Main, stepping back and opening the door wider. 'You'll have to excuse the mess.'

'If only I had a pound for every time I've heard that,' said Lafferty. He walked into the living room and realised that Main had not been joking.

Main started to tidy things away or rather to concentrate the mess so that it was all in one place. Unwashed plates, cups, glasses and cutlery were collected and piled up on one coffee table and Lafferty was invited to sit down. He did so and began regretting that he had come without any good news to report. The empty gin bottle on the hearth and the glass standing beside it with a dried-up piece of lemon in the bottom explained why Main was looking so dishevelled.

'Can I get you something?' asked Main. 'Tea? Coffee?'

'Coffee would be nice but I don't want to put you to any trouble,' said Lafferty.

'No trouble,' said Main. 'I could use some.'

The comment made Lafferty's eyes stray back to the bottle in the hearth. Main noticed. 'I hope you are not about to give me a lecture on the evils of drink.'

'Wouldn't dream of it,' replied Lafferty. 'Drink can be an absolute blessing.'

The comment surprised Main. It had been made so matter of factly. He felt his liking for Lafferty, born at their first meeting, grow a little more. He went to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

Lafferty looked around the room seeing all the signs of an unhappy man living on his own but his heart sank when he saw what was on the dining table. A circle of white cards, each bearing a letter of the alphabet, and an upturned glass sitting in the middle. He got up slowly and walked over to the table. He was still there when Main came back. 'OUIJA?' he asked.

Main seemed discomfited. He had obviously forgotten about it. 'I thought I'd give it a try.'

'A try,’ Lafferty repeated.

Main's composure started to show cracks. He supported himself by putting both hands on the back of a chair and looked down at the table. He was having obvious difficulty in getting the words out. 'I wanted to . . . I needed to . . . I had to try getting in touch with Mary ... and Simon . . . I need to know what happened. I need to know that Simon is all right.'

Lafferty could see the pain in Main's eyes. It brought a lump to his throat. 'You need more than one person for this business I understand,' he said.

Main nodded. 'I met this woman in a pub who told me that she’d been in touch with her mother through a OUIJA board. I asked her if she would show me how it worked, and she did.'

'What happened?' asked Lafferty.

'Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'Oh, there was some shit about Simon "being at peace" but I knew she was moving the glass.'

'It can be a dangerous game they tell me,' said Lafferty.

'When you've nothing to lose the stakes don't matter.’

Lafferty noticed that there was an extra card lying in the centre of the table. He could read, SIMON MAIN, HTU, BETA 2. There were some reference numbers and a Greek letter in the bottom left hand corner.

'It was the card from the end of Simon's bed,' whispered Main. 'I took it on the day they decided to switch of the machine. She said it might help to have something connected with Simon on the table.'

Lafferty nodded and said, 'You mentioned coffee?'

'I'll get it,' said Main.

'Did you speak to the wino?' asked Main as they sipped their coffee.

Lafferty told Main about the previous evening. When he’d finished Main threw back his head and laughed bitterly. 'There's irony for you,' he said.

'I don't understand,' said Lafferty.

'McKirrop ending up in HTU with brain damage, that's where Simon died. Life's rich pattern, eh? What are the chances of him pulling through?'

'Not good. His injuries are pretty bad.’

Main shook his head resignedly and said, 'Well, it was a long shot anyway that he might be able to tell us anything more wasn't it?'

Lafferty nodded. ‘It was all we had.'

The look of emptiness that appeared in Main's eyes made him wish that he hadn't said it.

The two men sipped their coffee in silence until Lafferty broke it by asking, 'Have you thought about a return to work? You might start to feel better if you had more to occupy your mind.'

Main smiled but there was little humour in it. He said, 'I know you mean well but I have to find out what these bastards did to my son. Going back to work isn't going to help with that.'

So, what are you going to do?’

'I'm going to try talking to the newspapers,' replied Main.

Lafferty looked puzzled.

'I'm going to try to persuade the newspapers to take up the story again so that our glorious police force will feel the pressure and start to get their bloody finger out.'

Lafferty opened his mouth to say something but Main interrupted. 'And if you are about to say that they are doing their best. Don't bother! Their best isn't good enough!'

'Fair enough,' said Lafferty. 'I wish you luck.' He put down his empty cup and got up to leave adding, 'If McKirrop should come round and I get a chance to speak to him I'll get back to you. In the meantime I'll pay another visit to the library and see what I can come up with.'

Main relaxed a bit as he followed Lafferty to the door. He said, 'Don't think I'm not grateful. I am, I really am.' He held out his hand and Lafferty shook it.

'If you need me, you know where I am.'

When Lafferty got back to St Xavier's, his housekeeper had made him lunch. As usual these days, it was practically inedible but he ploughed his way dutifully through most of it before declaring that he was 'too full' to manage any more. In the three months Mrs Grogan had been with him since Mrs Elm's retiral, Lafferty hadn't had the courage to criticise her cooking. She was a woman of strong opinions and he didn’t relish confrontation. She did keep the place very clean and tidy so he preferred to overlook this short-coming resorting instead to avoiding her culinary skills wherever possible. He would often be having 'lunch with a friend' when in fact he would be having a sandwich at the pub down the road.

This morning he had forgotten to leave a note declining lunch and had paid for the oversight - veal cutlets that defied all attempts at attacking their integrity with knife and fork. He was considering adding a blow torch to the cutlery drawer when he found that picking the meat up when Mrs Grogan was out the room and ripping it asunder with his bare teeth was the answer. He disposed of one cutlet in this manner, the other he wrapped in a paper napkin and put in his pocket for disposal later. His jaw was sore with the effort of having eaten the first.

'What would you like for tea Father?' asked Mrs Grogan when she came to clear away the dishes.

'Boiled eggs would be nice,' he replied.

'Again?' exclaimed the woman with a laugh.

It was true that Lafferty did request a lot of boiled eggs. It was the one meal that Mrs Grogan seemed competent to make without altering the consistency of the ingredients to that of titanium steel or parachute quality nylon.

'You're just like my Jim; he likes boiled eggs a lot.'

Lafferty felt a bond to a kindred spirit.

'We've been married thirty-four years, me and Jim.'

Lafferty had a vision of an emaciated figure eating a boiled egg.

After lunch he checked his diary. He had remembered about the two home visits he had to make but had forgotten about the meeting with the engaged couple, Anne Partland and her young man. It was marked down for three thirty. He liked Anne; she was a bright girl who had never caused her parents a moment's anxiety all through her teenage years and through her course at teacher training college. One of the few, he thought. He had not met her fiancée but Anne and her parents wanted the marriage to take place in St Xavier's so he had suggested a meeting. The boy was a Catholic so there would be no need for the usual 'mixed marriage' talk about the future upbringing of the children. For the moment Lafferty could not remember what the boy was training to be. Anne's parents had told him two Sundays ago but it had slipped his mind.

'Stanley is studying to be a chartered accountant,' added Anne, Partland after she had introduced him to Lafferty and they had all sat down. Lafferty had to fight against the instant dislike he had taken to Anne Partland's fiancée. It was true that he seemed to be all spots and spectacles and self importance but that was neither here nor there. Anne loved him and he would be the father of her children.

Must be a bright fellow,' he said affably.

Stanley could not find it in his heart to deny this and adopted a smug expression while Anne gazed at him adoringly.

'I just wanted to have a little chat with you about your marriage and what it means in the sight of God,' said Lafferty.

'If it was up to me we would get married in a registry office like any intelligent couple,' announced Stanley.

'Oh Stanley, you promised,' complained Anne.

'This is all Anne's idea,' said Stanley. 'The full mumbo jumbo bit. It's all stuff and nonsense to me.'

'There's more to a marriage in the sight of God than mumbo jumbo Stanley,' said Lafferty kindly but maybe you and Anne would like to discuss it a bit more before we make any firm arrangements for a church wedding?'

'No Father,' interrupted Anne. 'We'd like to get married in church. We really would.'

Anne stared at Stanley until he nodded in reluctant agreement. He then affected a bored expression as the conversation proceeded. It became so noticeable that at one point Lafferty stopped and asked, 'Is something wrong Stanley?'