Ken McClure - Trauma

Main said he was phoning from a booth outside the medical school so he had obviously been followed. Why hadn’t they just kept him in the Institute when they had him, Lafferty wondered and then attempted to answer his own question. Because... either Sotillo wasn’t involved in Logan’s scam or... because he wanted other people in the Institute to think that he had let Main go. The odds seemed to be on Mace and Pallister being the ones who had followed Main and taken him prisoner. Whether Sotillo was involved was a moot point. It was conceivable that the two technicians had followed Main off their own bat. Lafferty pencilled in a question mark by Sotillo’s name.

The big question facing Lafferty was what to do now. Should he call the police and tell them everything, or would the opposition have anticipated that and hidden Main well out of the way by now. The police would turn up at the Institute simply to be told that Main had certainly been there but had left. Lots of people saw him go. The truth was that Main could be held anywhere. What he really had to do was assess the danger that Main might be in. Was he right in assuming that they had taken him prisoner? Could something even worse have happened to him? Lafferty scribbled absent-mindedly in the bottom corner of his writing pad while he thought the whole thing through.

It seemed likely that the technicians would have figured out why Main had gone to the Institute. The chances were that he had probably been carrying his wallet with him, so even if he had given a false name, the opposition would have discovered who he really was. In fact, he recalled Main saying that he had been searched before Sotillo had let him go.

If they realised that Main was on to them, and had been looking for Martin Keegan’s body, they would have to keep him out of the way until the evidence of the body-snatch had been disposed of. Main had said that the coffin wasn’t in the mortuary, so the technicians had still to take it there for collection by the undertakers. Once the funeral was over there would be no evidence against them but could they possibly afford to let Main go? Lafferty was afraid of the answer, but there was little he could do.

He decided that the main priority was to get to Martin Keegan’s coffin before the funeral took place. It was now Tuesday afternoon. They had until Thursday morning. He called Sarah at HTU.

“Is it safe to talk?” he asked when Sarah answered.

“Yes,” replied Sarah. “I’m here alone. Logan has gone off on compassionate leave. Dr Tyndall told me this morning.”

“Has he now?” said Lafferty softly, wondering where this fitted in with the rest. “You don’t think he’s just made a run for it?”

“That was my first thought too,” said Sarah, “but Sister Roche told me that he has a sick son. The boy lives with his mother and has been waiting for a kidney transplant for two years.”

“Good Lord,” said Rafferty, taken aback by the news.

“I know,” said Sarah. “I just don’t know what to think. This would explain Logan’s exasperation over the lack of transplant permission in the unit, but would it explain anything else?”

“I honestly don’t know. I’m afraid they’ve got John,” he said.

“Oh my God.”

Lafferty noted that she was whispering despite having said that it was safe to talk. “Are you sure you can talk?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s just that Dr Tyndall may come back at any moment.”

Lafferty told her about Main’s call and how he was suddenly cut off.

“What do you think they’ve done to him?” asked Sarah in a hoarse whisper.

“I’m hoping they are just keeping him out of the way until the Keegan funeral is over. After that there will be no evidence.”

“I hope to God you’re right,” said Sarah. She sounded doubtful.

“But they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this, Sarah,” said Lafferty.

“But what can we do?”

“Are you still going to call Cyril Tyndall today?”

“No,” said Sarah. “Logan running off like this has left us short-staffed. Dr Tyndall told me this morning that I couldn’t be spared.”

“I hadn’t considered that,” said Lafferty. “You were our last chance of getting into that damned lab.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That just leaves the medical school mortuary on Thursday morning,” said Lafferty.

“Do you think that’s possible?”

“It will be difficult,” said Lafferty. “The technicians will obviously leave taking the coffin down there until the very last minute and even then they will be very much on their guard. We’d probably need an SAS squad to help us get near it.”

“So Logan and his friends are going to get away with it?” said Sarah.

“I hate to say it, but it looks very much like it.”

“Dr Tyndall will probably relieve me around four. Can I come over?”

“Please do,” said Lafferty.

Sarah arrived at St Xavier’s at a quarter to five and got no answer to her first knock at Lafferty’s door. After a second went unanswered she started to feel uneasy. Was it conceivable that they had got to Ryan as well as Main? She decided to look in the church.

The door closed behind her with a solid clunk that reverberated around the empty church. It was dark inside apart from the candles on the altar and on a long side table to her left near the front. There were some dim electric lights switched on above the side aisles but they seemed to serve only to create shadows. Sarah moved slowly down the centre aisle towards the altar.

“Ryan?” she called when she thought she heard movement but there was no answer. She looked at the confessional, off the right-hand aisle. It was dark and closed. Could Ryan be inside, she wondered but her feet refused to approach it. Her imagination was moving into overdrive. “Ryan?” she repeated, a little louder this time.

She heard a movement behind her and spun round to see Lafferty emerge from the shadows. “Sarah? I’m so sorry. I seem to have lost all track of time. I was in the chapel.”

Sarah let out her breath and shook her head with relief. “I thought...” she began. “I thought you...”

“What?”

“Nothing,” said Sarah.

“Come on, let’s go next door.”

“Just a minute,” said Sarah. “I want to light a candle for John. Is that all right?”

“Of course,” said Lafferty softly. He walked with her to the side-table and handed her a candle. Sarah lit it from one of the others already burning there and put it in its holder. She bowed her head for a moment and Lafferty put his hand on her shoulder. “It’ll soon be over,” he said gently. They went next door to the house.

“Have you eaten?” asked Sarah.

“No,” said Lafferty.

“Neither have I. What have you got in the house?”

“I’m not at all sure,” replied Lafferty cautiously.

“May I look?”

“Please.”

After a fruitless search through kitchen cupboards Sarah said, “All you seem to have in the house is half a packet of cornflakes, a loaf of stale bread and seven eggs.”

“Mrs Grogan’s still off and I haven’t had time to go shopping,” explained Lafferty.

Sarah smiled at his guilty expression and said, “I’m going out to get us some food.”

Lafferty opened his mouth to argue but Sarah put her finger to her lips. “No arguments,” she said. “Heat up a couple of plates.”

Sarah was back within ten minutes with a plastic bag full of Chinese take-away food. She extracted the two plates Lafferty had put under the grill and piled up the food on them. Using a tea cloth to protect her hands from the hot plates, she brought them through from the kitchen to plank them down on the table. “Eat!” she said. “We’ll talk afterwards.”