Comes the Dark Stranger - Jack Higgins [3]
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
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,