‘I want to talk to him.’

‘Ah,’ he says, and slowly shakes his head. Suddenly he doesn’t look as tired as he does sad. ‘You think he’s responsible. Well, I can’t tell you anything more than I’ve already told the police.’

‘And what did you tell them?’

‘That Bruce is a good man, and this sort of depravity, well…

it’s simply beyond him.’

It’s been my experience that depravity isn’t beyond as many

people as we’d like to think, and I’m pretty sure Father Julian knows that.

I adjust my position on the pew. Well made doesn’t mean

comfortable. ‘Did you tell them where they could find Bruce?’

‘I didn’t know’

‘Guilt makes men run, Father.’

‘So does fear. Nobody would like to see what he saw.’ ‘But fear doesn’t make them steal a truck and go into hiding.’

“I wish I could simply ask for your trust in this, Theo. I can guarantee you, Bruce isn’t a bad kid. And he couldn’t have known those poor people were going to rise up from the lake.’

“He knew what we were digging up.’

‘Of course he did. You had an exhumation order.’

“Have you ever heard of a girl by the name of Rachel Tyler?’

He thinks about it for a few seconds. ‘She went missing two

years ago,’ he says.

Her body was found in Henry Martins’ coffin.’

The look of horror on his face settles in his features, and he doesn’t look comfortable with it. In fact he looks downright sick.

He reaches out and grabs the back of the pew, as if to stop himself from tipping off and falling into an abyss that is opening beneath him.

‘She was murdered,’ I add. ‘And whether your caretaker did it

or not, he certainly knows something. Please, Father, you have to help me.’

He lets go of the pew, rubs his palm across the side of his face, then lifts both hands into the air as if the gesture can ward me off.

“I … I wish I could help, but there’s nothing I can say’

‘Would you like me to bring you a photograph of Rachel?

Show you what was done to her?’

The church seems to get colder as his horror turns to disgust, almost anger, and my stomach starts to knot. ‘That sort of parlour trick is beyond you, Theo. If I could help you, I would, just as I helped you two years ago when you were lost.’

‘Rachel has nobody to speak for her. I need to do what I can.’

‘She has God.’

‘God let her down.’

‘You must have faith, Theo.’

‘Faith lets everybody down.’

‘People let themselves down.’

I want to argue, but there is no argument a priest hasn’t heard and isn’t ready for. Their answers may not make sense, but they are a doctrine, there to be repeated over and over, as if the very repetition makes their case. I could take a photograph out of my wallet and show him my wife and my daughter, but of course

Father Julian remembers them. I could ask him where God

was during their accident, but Father Julian would have some

dogmatic answer that God-loving and God-fearing people love

to use — most likely the generic ‘God works in mysterious ways’

one that I want to scream at every time I hear it.

‘You’re right,’ I concede, ‘but none of this goes towards helping me find your caretaker. He saw us digging up something that

made him run.’

‘I still find that hard to believe,’ Father Julian says, but I’m starting to convince myself that the look on his face suggests it isn’t that hard for him at all. ‘Unfortunately, Theo, as I keep saying, I don’t know where he is.’

‘Start by telling me where he lives.’

‘The police have already been there and, to be honest, I’m not comfortable giving you information. You’re not a cop any more.

This isn’t your investigation.’

‘No, this has become my investigation. Two years ago I had

an excuse to raise Henry Martins’ coffin and I never did. That means…’

“I know what that means. You think that if there are other

people out there, you could have prevented it. Maybe this is

true.’

‘It is true,’ I say, a little shocked at how quickly he has come to this conclusion.

‘Two years ago,’ he repeats. ‘Exactly two years ago?’

“Pretty much.’

‘You can’t blame yourself,’ he says, but his eyes seem to betray his real feelings. ‘The accident — that was two years ago, correct?

Was it the same time?’

‘I still should have done more,’ I say. ‘But I lost my focus.’

‘You lost your family,’ he says. ‘And you lost control. This isn’t your fault, Theo.’

‘There are going to be more girls out there in those coffins,

Father. Three of them. I feel it. I can’t make it right, but I also can’t let it go.’

He looks down at the floor as if there is some internal debate warring inside his head. When he looks up he seems to have aged a few years. He thinks this day is hard on him, but if I drove him to Rachel Tyler’s house tomorrow to meet her parents he’d realise his was easy in comparison.

“I suppose you could talk to his father. He may be able to offer you something.’

I recall the article that I read about Sidney Alderman before I left my office for the morgue. The old man’s retirement last year It made the newspaper, but it wasn’t really news, it was just

one of those human interest stories that are interesting to the people who knew Alderman and not to anyone else.

‘Does he live nearby?’

‘Closer than you can imagine,’ he says. “Promise me you’ll be

careful. Promise me you’re looking for Bruce to question him,

not punish him.’

I shrug. ‘Punish him? I don’t follow you.’

Again Father Julian sighs, then slowly shakes his head. ‘Don’t take the law into your own hands, Theo. Vengeance is God’s, not yours, you know that.’

He follows me to the church doors and gives me directions to

where I can find Sidney Alderman. I thank him and he wishes me a good night, and again he tells me to be careful. I tell him I’m always careful.

He shakes my hand before he leaves, and when he takes his

away I see that he is shaking. Then he disappears back through the doors. God’s working day is still not over.

chapter ten

The rain has disappeared. For now. And the night has set in. I sit in the car with the heater going, trying to collect my thoughts, wondering why I’m chasing down Bruce the caretaker when

I ought to be home chasing down some pizza with Jim the

bourbon. I don’t know, maybe it’s just that my life isn’t interesting enough to be at home getting drunk in front of reruns of bad

comedies and reruns of bad news that happens every day. That’s the problem with the news. The victims have different names,

the presenters wear different outfits, but the stories are the same.

Some of us put our hands up and say that’s enough; we try

to make a difference. When I was on the job we would arrest

one killer and another would appear. It was like the sorcerer’s apprentice Mickey Mouse cutting evil broomsticks in half, only to have each half grow whole and carry on doing whatever it was evil broomsticks did.

The inside of the windscreen is fogging up, so I redirect the

heater to take care of it. My reflection, slowly appearing on

the warming glass, looks pale green from the dashboard lights. I take a small detour on the way out, heading back past the crime Scene that was once a tranquil lake in the middle of a tranquil cemetery. The machinery is moving around — I can hear and

see it — and I wonder what unlucky girl is being dug from the ground by a giant metal claw.

The cemetery road veers away from the machinery, from the

lake, from my daughter, and towards more darkness and more

trees and fewer gravestones, before taking me out onto the street.

From there it’s a thirty-second drive to Alderman’s house, and most of that is taken up with hedgeline views of the edge of the cemetery. There are only a few houses nearby. One is old and