Comes the Dark Stranger

The rain suddenly increased in volume, bouncing from the pavement in silver rods. He pulled up his jacket collar and stared about him in desperation, and then, rearing out of the darkness across the road, he saw the dim bulk of a church.

He staggered across the empty street and pushed at an iron gate. It creaked open and he passed inside. A dim light shone from an immense stained-glass window, casting diamond shadows across the tombstones in the churchyard. When he mounted the steps to the door it opened smoothly and quietly as if welcoming him, and he stepped inside.

It was quiet – very quiet. He stood at the end of the aisle and looked down towards the altar and the lamp. For some reason he walked forward, his gaze fixed on the lamp. It seemed to increase in size and to grow small again, and he closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a moment.

A soft Irish voice said, ‘Excuse me, but are you all right?’

Shane turned quickly. There was a small chapel on his left, its walls decorated with a half-completed fresco. Standing looking at him was a tall, grey-haired man in overalls with a paint brush in one hand. The overalls were topped by a clerical collar.

Shane moistened his lips and tried to speak, but somehow the words got stuck in his throat and only a dry croak came out. The dizziness hit him again and he swayed forward and grasped at the pew to steady himself. An arm of surprising strength slipped round his shoulders, and he opened his eyes and tried to smile. ‘I don’t feel so good at the moment. Just let me shelter from the rain for a little while and then I’ll move on.’

The priest gave a stifled exclamation as he looked into his face. ‘God have mercy on us!’

Shane tried to pull himself free of the encircling arm. ‘I’ll be all right in a few minutes. Just let me sit down.’

The priest shook his head. ‘You need medical attention. You’re badly hurt.’

A flicker of panic moved inside Shane and he grabbed at him with shaking hands. ‘Don’t get the police! Whatever you do, don’t get the police!’

The priest looked searchingly at him and smiled gently, so that a peculiarly crooked scar on his right cheek merged with the smile, somehow lighting up the whole face. And then Shane recognized him.

‘You’re Father Costello,’ he said. ‘You were a padre with the 52nd Infantry Division in Korea.’

The priest nodded and guided him firmly along the aisle towards a small door in the far corner of the church. ‘Yes, I was in Korea. Did we ever meet?’

Shane shook his head. ‘No, but I saw you on several occasions.’ As the priest opened the door and ushered him through he went on, ‘I remember how you got that scar. You went over the top to help a wounded Chinese and he tried to carve you up.’

Father Costello’s face clouded and he sighed. ‘That’s something I prefer to forget.’

He pushed Shane into a chair. They were in the vestry. His cassock hung behind the door and a gas fire spluttered fitfully in one corner. He sat down at a battered walnut desk, unlocked one of its drawers, and took out a bottle of brandy. He poured a generous measure into a glass and smiled. ‘That should help things for the moment.’

Shane choked as liquid fire coursed through his veins, and Father Costello pushed a packet of cigarettes towards him and took a first-aid kit from another drawer.

Shane lit a cigarette gratefully, and the priest pulled his chair closer and examined his face. After a slight pause he said, ‘You really do need a doctor to attend to this.’

Shane shook his head. ‘Not tonight, Father. I’ve got more important things on my mind.’

Father Costello sighed, and started to work quickly with swabs of cotton wool dipped in aquaflavine. As he fixed surgical tape in position over some of the worst cuts, he said calmly, ‘They made rather a mess of you, didn’t they? Whoever did it certainly made a thorough job.’

Shane pulled up his sleeves and showed him the steel bracelet encircling each wrist. ‘It was a policeman, Father,’ he said. ‘And they’re the toughest of the lot when they really get down to business.’

He stood up and flexed his muscles gingerly. His body felt sore all over, and his kidneys were badly swollen, but as far as he could tell there were no bones broken. He looked at himself in the mirror that hung above the gas fire and turned with a wry grin. ‘I’m not sure that I don’t look worse now that you’ve cleaned me up.’

Father Costello smiled faintly and picked up the bottle. ‘Another brandy?’

Shane shook his head and moved towards the door. ‘No, thanks, Father. I haven’t got much time.’

He stretched out his hand to the door-handle, and Father Costello said calmly, ‘Don’t you think you ought to tell me about it, Martin Shane?’

For a moment Shane was frozen into position, and then he turned warily. ‘You know me?’

Father Costello nodded. ‘Your picture was in the paper today, and there was an announcement about your escape on the radio.’ He took a cigarette from the packet and lit it carefully. ‘You know, it sometimes helps to talk with a stranger. We can often see things in a different light.’

Shane moved forward and said tightly, ‘This city is crawling with coppers, and they’re all looking for me. You know what I’m supposed to have done?’

Father Costello nodded gravely. ‘A particularly revolting murder.’

Shane sagged into the chair and fumbled for another cigarette. ‘They say I’m insane and I’m not even sure they’re wrong any more. Doesn’t that frighten you?’

The priest held out a match in a steady hand and shook his head. ‘I can’t say it does. Perhaps the only person you really frighten is yourself.’

Shane stared into the kindly grey eyes, trying to understand what he was getting at, and then all the fears, all the uncertainties of the past few days welled up inside him and he knew that more than anything else he wanted to pour them out to this man.

He said slowly, ‘Maybe if I told you everything right from the beginning it would help. Perhaps I’ll get some glimmering of light or see some reason for what happened.’

Father Costello leaned back in his chair and smiled gently. ‘I know something of your story from the newspaper accounts, but I think you’d better start by telling me why you came to Burnham in the first place.’

Shane eased his bruised body into a relatively comfortable position. ‘That’s easy, Father,’ he said calmly. ‘I came to Burnham to kill a man.’

2 (#ulink_438ea73f-3ffe-56f4-9a42-08677693cdf6)

It was raining heavily on the afternoon Shane arrived in Burnham, and there was a touch of fog in the air. As he emerged from the station a gust of wind kicked rain into his face in an oddly menacing manner, as if warning him to turn back before it was too late. He shrugged the feeling off and started to walk along the wet pavement towards the centre of the town.

He found what he was looking for within a matter of minutes, a sleasy, third-rate hotel in a quiet back, street. When he went in a young girl was sitting behind the reception desk reading a magazine. She looked up, a sudden sparkle in her eyes, and smiled brightly.

‘I’d like a room for a week,’ Shane said.

‘With or without a bath?’ she asked, twisting the register round and handing him a pen.

He told her he’d have the bath, and she took down a key, lifted the flap of the reception desk, and led the way up the stairs.

She was wearing a tight skirt and high-heel shoes, and from the rear she presented a not unpleasing picture. The general effect was spoilt by the fact that she had no breasts worth speaking of and a generous sprinkling of acne in the region of her mouth that no amount of make-up could hide.

The carpet was badly worn on the top corridor, and she caught her heel and stumbled so that he had to reach out to prevent her falling. She leaned heavily against him and smiled. ‘This is your room, Mr Shane.’ She pushed the key into the lock, then stood to one side and he went in.

It was no better and no worse than he had expected. There was a dressing-table and a wardrobe in Victorian mahogany that the management must have picked up cheaply at a sale, but the bed was clean and the bathroom adequate. The room had that unpleasant, musty odour, peculiar to such places and redolent of old sins, and he went to the window and threw it open.

When he turned, the girl was standing just inside the room regarding him with what was supposed to be a mysterious smile. ‘Will that be all?’ she said.

He moved across the floor, took the key from her hand, and gently pushed her out of the door. ‘I’ll let you know if I want anything, kid.’

As he closed the door she smiled eagerly. ‘If there’s anything – anything at all, Mr Shane, just ring.’

It was very quiet in the room when she had gone, and suddenly the pain was with him again, moving inside his skull like a living thing, taking his breath away and sending him reeling into the bathroom.

He quickly turned on the cold tap and filled a glass with water; and then he took a small glass bottle from his pocket and unscrewed the cap with trembling fingers. He poured two red pills into the palm of his hand, hesitated for a moment, and then shook out two more. He crammed them into his mouth and swallowed the water. For a moment longer he stayed there, eyes closed, leaning heavily on the wash-basin, and then he lurched into the other room and fell across the bed.

It was the worst attack he had ever known. He lay with his face turned into the pillow, sweating with fear, and then, abruptly as it had always done before, the pain left him and he could breathe again.