Eye of the Raven by Ken McClure Page A

superiority.’
    ‘ So why ask for absolution for something he hadn’t done? Why make up something like that?’ asked Lawson.
    ‘ I don’t know,’ admitted Steven.
    ‘ It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Lawson, gazing out of the window and shaking his head.
    ‘ The police think he was trying to get at them by attracting press attention to the case all over again. I understand they had a lot of bad publicity over their handling of it the first time around.’
    Lawson considered this in silence.
    ‘ I’m sorry to have to put you through this,’ said Steven, ‘but I need to ask you about the girl’s fingers.’
    ‘ Julie!’ Lawson suddenly insisted, as if he’d just come out of his valium haze. ‘We must stop referring to her as “the girl”. Her name was Julie, not “the girl”.’
    ‘ I’m sorry; Julie; can you remember exactly what Combe said about Julie’s fingers?’
    ‘ He told me he broke them,’ said Lawson, his gaze drifting off into the middle distance.
    There was nothing more forthcoming so Steven prompted him. ‘Did he say why?’
    ‘ She scratched him. She scratched his face so he broke three of her fingers, one for each scratch, he said, one at a time, simple as that. This little piggy went to market . . . Snap! This little . . . .’ Lawson buried his face in his hands, unable to go on, the shake of his shoulders betraying a silent sob.
    ‘ Would you like some water?’ Steven asked, seeing there was a carafe sitting on the table by the bed.
    Lawson shook his head. When he’d recovered his composure he looked at Steven and said, ‘If he made the whole lot up, how come he still had the scars on his face? He pointed them out to me; three parallel lines on his cheek.’
    Steven was taken aback. Eventually, he said, ‘I’m sure a man like Combe was no stranger to scars: he’s probably been collecting them since he was old enough to start beating up the other kids. He probably thought that showing you them would make his story sound more real, keep you on the hook.’
    Lawson ignored what Steven had said and continued. ‘He invited me to touch them . . . He seemed to know instinctively that it would have been like touching the dead girl for me . . . It was as if he could read my mind . . . see my weakness – sense my fears. He was an animal, a clever, cunning, evil animal.’
    ‘ Combe is dead, Mr Lawson,’ said Steven. ‘He’s filling an unmarked council grave in a muddy field. The only visitor he’ll ever have now will be the rain.’
    ‘ His body is in a grave,’ said Lawson flatly.
    Steven’s impulse was to say, ‘that’s good enough for me,’ but, out of compassion, he didn’t. Instead he said, ‘I’ll let you chaps worry about other matters.’
    ‘ I don’t think I know how to any more,’ said Lawson. ‘I told him that I hoped he would burn in hell.’
    ‘ A sentiment shared by the rest of the population of this country, I should think,’ said Steven. ‘There’s only so much emotional baggage that one person can carry around in one life, Rev Lawson, even a man of the cloth like yourself. The world is better off without Hector Combe. Period. End of story. Forget him. Concentrate on the living and the people who need you.’
    ‘ Need me?’ exclaimed Lawson quietly. ‘Sometimes I feel like Canute trying to turn the tide.’
    ‘ We all feel like that from time to time,’ said Steven. ‘The number of people who actually make a difference in our world is painfully small. The rest of us just have to do our bit and hope that our contribution will fit in somewhere.’
    Lawson smiled wanly for the first time and said, ‘You sound as if you’ve given the subject some thought?’
    ‘ I lost my wife Lisa to cancer,’ said Steven. ‘When it happened, I saw pointlessness everywhere. Believe me, I’m an expert on it.’
    ‘ I suppose it would be too much to hope that it was religion that got you through it?’
    ‘ It would,’ agreed Steven flatly.
    ‘ So