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?'
