The Sin Eater

by Sarah Rayne

  Michael said, ‘Benedict, what on earth . . . No, never mind for the moment. Except – did I hear you following me earlier on?’

  Benedict said, ‘You might have done. I was following someone, but I’m not sure who it was. I don’t think it was you, Michael. Whoever it was, he was carrying someone. I thought it looked pretty sinister, so I came after him.’

  ‘I thought I was following someone as well. But there’s no one here now.’

  Benedict looked at Nell. ‘Are you all right? What are you doing out here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nell. ‘I fell down the stairs at Holly Lodge, and sprained my ankle . . . Michael, stop fussing, it’s only a sprain and I can probably manage to hop as far as the road and a taxi. But I think – no, I’m sure – that someone brought me out here. And if you were both following someone—’

  Benedict said, half to himself, ‘I was following Declan.’

  ‘No,’ said Nell at once. ‘It wasn’t Declan. It was Colm.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  They pieced it together sitting in Michael’s rooms the next evening, pooling all their information – Benedict’s images, Michael’s discoveries about Fergal and Kilderry Castle, and Nell’s eerie experience inside the old sewer tunnel.

  ‘So it wasn’t Declan I was seeing and hearing all these years,’ said Benedict, finally. ‘And Declan wasn’t the Mesmer Murderer.’ He looked tired, but his eyes were clear and happy.

  ‘It doesn’t sound like it,’ said Michael. ‘It sounds as if Declan was trying to protect Colm quite a lot of the time.’

  ‘And Colm was under the—’

  ‘Baleful influence of the devil’s chess piece?’

  ‘Don’t mock, you heartless wench,’ said Michael, smiling at Nell. ‘Damn it, I will say it. Colm was under the baleful influence of the chess piece.’ He refilled the wine glasses.

  ‘Also,’ said Benedict, accepting the wine, ‘I think Colm was pretty much besotted with Romilly. So that was driving him as well. He hated those people who contributed to her death.’ He drank his wine thoughtfully, then said, ‘You can’t imagine how relieved I am to know my great-grandfather wasn’t a serial killer.’

  ‘And,’ said Michael, ‘to know that you probably aren’t suffering from that thing – dissociative personality disorder.’

  ‘Yes, that too, although I can’t begin to think how I’m going to tell the medics about all this.’

  ‘I’d help with that if you wanted.’

  ‘Thanks. I think I would like that. But,’ said Benedict, ‘I’m still not entirely clear why my parents – and my grandfather – died all those years ago. That later newspaper report I found – there was a witness who was very clear about seeing a figure in the road. It can’t have been coincidence, can it? It must have been Colm.’

  Nell said, ‘If we’re accepting the premise of all this, it seems reasonable to think Colm was trying to . . . to offload the sins he took on. It was your great-grandfather who recited the sin-eating ritual, but seemingly it was Colm who actually got the sins.’ She frowned. ‘I can’t believe I’m saying all this.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Benedict.

  ‘Somehow I don’t think he meant Benedict’s parents and grandfather to die,’ said Nell. ‘I think they just got in the firing line. Colm had committed those Mesmer Murders and perhaps he was ready to face the consequences of that, but—’

  ‘But there was the added weight of those other sins,’ said Benedict. ‘Nicholas Sheehan and Romilly. And even though it doesn’t sound as if either of them would have particularly serious sins on their consciences—’

  ‘Sheehan had apparently turned his back on his priest’s vows, and Romilly had aborted her unborn child,’ said Michael. ‘Colm and Declan would both see those as massive mortal sins.’

  ‘Yes. And Colm could only offload them on to the person who recited the original ritual.’

  ‘On Declan,’ said Nell. ‘Or on Declan’s descendants after his death. That’s fairly classic ghost behaviour.’

  ‘And for that he needed the chessman’s power,’ said Michael, thoughtfully. ‘So he may have been trying to keep the chess figure in Holly Lodge so he could harness its power. Benedict, did your parents know about the chess set?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I know my father believed there was something wrong inside Holly Lodge,’ said Benedict. ‘I remember him saying I should never go inside because “it” was still there. And my mother said, “Even after all these years?” and he said, “Yes,” very positively.’

  ‘They probably wouldn’t know all we do,’ said Michael. ‘But a few memories could have come down through Declan. Let’s not forget that Benedict’s grandfather was Declan’s son.’

  ‘But look here,’ said Nell, ‘are we really believing a nineteenth-century ghost carried me into that tunnel? Because there was no one in there when you both turned up.’

  ‘There wasn’t, was there? And yet I’m sure I saw someone going in there,’ said Benedict. ‘I’d followed him for quite a long way – even on the tube. That was all a bit peculiar,’ he said, sounding uncertain. ‘As if I might not have been quite in the present at all.’ He gave a half-grin. ‘Just imagination going into overdrive, I should think. But whoever I followed had a female with him. He wasn’t quite carrying her, but he nearly was.’

  ‘I saw that as well,’ said Michael. ‘And someone must have taken you there, Nell.’

  ‘Mightn’t it have been a twenty-first-century villain?’ said Nell. ‘A burglar – someone high on drugs?’

  ‘What would his reason be?’

  ‘If he was high on drugs he wouldn’t need a reason. Not a logical one.’

  ‘But you listened to all that stuff about sin-eating and the chess set.’

  ‘I’d fallen downstairs,’ said Nell, defensively. ‘I could have been unconscious or concussed and hallucinating.’

  ‘But what about Benedict’s story and all the confirmations we’ve found? All the people who existed? Fergal McMahon’s memoirs for instance. They’re clear enough, real enough.’

  ‘Fergal could have been fantasizing.’

  ‘Then how about the formidable brothel keeper? Flossie Totteridge existed. She’s on the Title Deeds to Holly Lodge.’

  ‘All right, I’ll give you Flossie Totteridge. But how did the house come to belong to Declan?’ demanded Nell. ‘He and Colm were penniless Irish boys, seemingly.’

  ‘That’s a missing piece so far,’ admitted Benedict. ‘But I’m trying to track it down – Land Registry and Land Searches and whatnot. I’ll find the evidence eventually.’

  ‘How about the evidence of the chess piece?’ said Michael to Nell.

  ‘Now you’re sounding like a Sherlock Holmes story. The Evidence of the Last Chess Piece.’

  ‘But even without Fergal’s memoirs, there’s that story in Owen’s book,’ said Michael. ‘Eithne who was a servant in Kilderry Castle.’

  ‘You don’t like that chess piece, do you?’ said Benedict suddenly, to Nell.

  ‘No. That’s why I’ve brought it here tonight. I think it should be burned or smashed into fragments.’

  ‘And the fragments cast to the four winds?’ said Michael, and although he spoke lightly he glanced uneasily at the small wrapped package on the table.

  ‘I’m being serious.’

  ‘Actually, so am I.’

  Benedict looked at Nell. ‘You saw him,’ he said. ‘Colm, I mean. He didn’t stay in the shadows while he was with you, did he? You saw what he looked like.’

  ‘I’m not sure what I saw,’ said Nell, in a low voice, not looking at either of them. ‘Whatever it was, I’m still going to believe there’s a logical explanation – it’s just that we haven’t hit on it yet.’

  Benedict said, ‘I’m going to return the chess figure to where all this began.’ He looked at them, and said, ‘I think it’s what Colm wants. It think it’s what he’s always wanted. So I’m going to take it back to Kilglenn.’

  After Benedict
had gone, Michael said to Nell, ‘You still don’t entirely believe, do you?’

  ‘Not entirely.’

  ‘Will I ever convince you that ghosts exist?’

  ‘I don’t know. But,’ said Nell, smiling at him, ‘I’d like you to keep trying.’

  ‘Would you? So would I.’

  Kilglenn, the present

  And so, thought Benedict, finally and at last, I’m going to see the place where Declan and Colm grew up – where all those strange and tragic things happened.

  Driving the small hire car towards Kilglenn, he thought this part of Ireland could not have changed very much since the last years of the nineteenth century. Here, surely, was the steep road that Fergal McMahon, together with Nicholas Sheehan and Fintan, must have taken to Kilderry Castle that night. He pulled into the side of the road for a moment and consulted the map. Yes, this was where the castle had stood; there was a tumble of ruins at the top of the small hill. Had the chess set somehow poisoned the fabric of the castle, so that over the years it had rotted from within? It was more likely that the various Earls of Kilderry had simply gambled and womanized and quarrelled their substance into nothing, until the castle had to be abandoned.

  He had not been able to identify St Patrick’s Monastery on any map – or, at least, he had identified so many monasteries under St Patrick’s banner that it was impossible to know which would have been Fergal’s.

  He had not expected Kilglenn to be large enough to warrant a road sign, but when he rounded a curve in the road, there it was. ‘KILGLENN, 10 KILOMETRES.’

  I’m nearly there, thought Benedict, and with the thought he felt the familiar stirring within his mind.

  Nearly home, Benedict . . .

  Benedict said, ‘I thought you’d be here.’

  Would I let you do this on your own . . . ?

  Benedict gave a mental shrug and drove on. Kilglenn, when he reached it, had succumbed to a degree of modernization, although essentially it was still the small backwater which two hopeful Irish boys had left all those years ago – and which a red-haired Irish girl had schemed to escape from. But there was a small supermarket and a bookstore with DVDS and CDs, and people in the little main street had mobile phones and younger ones had iPods.

  At the far end was a low-roofed building with the legend Reilly’s and a small board with the chalked information that bar food was available. Fintan, thought Benedict, slowing down. I’m glad the name’s still used. He remembered Eithne’s story which Michael had passed to him, and the reference to a son and daughter. He would like to think it was Fintan’s great-grandson – maybe more ‘greats’ – who ran this bar.

  Beyond Reilly’s the buildings thinned out, and there was only the wild countryside and the rise of the land towards the Moher Cliffs. But as he went on again, he saw a winding little track leading off to his right and he pulled the car to the side of the road and got out. Most likely there was nothing to be seen at the end of the track.

  And yet, and yet . . .

  You know what’s there, Benedict, said Colm inside his mind. Of course you do.

  ‘Of course I do,’ whispered Benedict, and walked up the track, with the springy grass on each side, and the wind with its faint taste of the ocean all around him.

  The shack. The small structure might have been any half-ruined shanty cottage, of course, but Benedict knew it was the place where Colm had lived; where he and Declan had talked and planned and dreamed. He had seen it through Colm’s eyes and he recognized it now.

  He picked his way through the rubble. There was nothing left of Colm’s short time in this cottage; there were only broken-up stones, ravaged by wind and rain, and shreds of fabric that might have been rugs or curtains or clothes, or that might simply be the debris of picnickers.

  But there are memories, Benedict . . . There are so many memories here . . .

  Benedict sat on the edge of what must have been a hearthstone. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Finish the story for me.’

  Ah, but have we seen the ending yet, Benedict . . . ?

  For a moment something shivered on the far wall – the outline of a man wearing a long coat with the deep collar turned up. Benedict remained very still, and then the tumbledown room blurred, and he had the sensation that he was looking through a very small window, thick with the dust of decades . . . Beyond that window was a small room, lit by flickering candlelight . . .

  London, 1890s

  When Declan looked back over the last ten days he could not imagine how he had been able to do what he did. He certainly could not imagine how he had had the courage for any of it.

  Finding Cerise’s body in the old sewer tunnel was still a confused series of images for him. He had been so sure he had saved Cerise – he could still see how she had scrambled out of Colm’s clutches, and made that painful, limping run to the tunnel mouth, and the man who stood there. But when he looked back, Cerise had been lying on the ground, her throat gashed almost to the bone, and Colm had been standing over her, the dripping knife in his hands, a look of such agony and bewilderment in his eyes that Declan had known Colm had not meant this. He had known it in his heart and his bones and his marrow. That had been when he had made the plan to get Colm away from London, no matter the cost.

  He had confronted him that night in the Holly Lodge bedroom, to which they had returned because they had nowhere else to go.

  ‘Cerise won’t be missed for a while,’ he said to Colm. ‘There’s time for us to get away. There’s time for you to tell me the truth about all this.’

  ‘I killed them,’ said Colm. ‘But I couldn’t help it. It was as if another person came sliding under my skin, clawing its way along my hands and fingers and deep into my brain . . . God, would that be what the monks called possession?’

  ‘I don’t know. But if you are possessed,’ said Declan, ‘we can make a good guess where it came from.’

  ‘The chess piece,’ said Colm, light showing in his eyes for the first time for several hours. ‘Jesus God, it’s the bloody chess piece Sheehan gave us, isn’t it?’

  ‘Let’s keep an open mind. You hated them all because of Romilly. The police might see that as good reason for you to kill them.’

  ‘I see that. What do we do?’ He sounded so frightened and so vulnerable and he looked at Declan with such trust, Declan knew he could not abandon him. He began to outline his plan, which was quite simply for them to leave Holly Lodge now, at once, and head for Liverpool and a boat for America. If they could disappear anywhere, surely they could do so in America. He had got as far as saying they should see how much money they had, when there was a loud hammering on the street door.

  ‘Police,’ said Colm, and turned white.

  ‘Even if it is, they can’t possibly have any proof,’ began Declan.

  ‘They can if they’ve found Flossie’s will,’ said Colm.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Last time I was with her we got a bit drunk,’ said Colm. ‘And she was – uh – very grateful to me. So I said – as a half joke – that it’d be nice to have a material form of her gratitude.’

  ‘Such as?’ But Declan already knew.

  ‘She wrote it out there and then, and that girl who scrubs the kitchen came in to add her mark as a witness,’ said Colm. ‘All proper legal phrasing – Floss’s husband was an accountant or something, and she knew how it should be worded. Declan, she’s left me this house. And in the police’s eyes, that’d give me a whopping great motive for killing her.’

  ‘She left you this whole house?’ said Declan, incredulously.

  ‘She was drunk,’ said Colm, impatiently. ‘I was drunk, as well. Jesus Christ, wouldn’t any man have to be drunk to get into bed with that one! But it was a joke – I never thought she’d take it seriously.’ Downstairs they could hear the door being flung open, and several pairs of heavy feet trampling through the house. Colm flinched. ‘Get me out of this,’ he said. ‘Declan, please . . .’

  Declan dived for the windo
w, wrenching it open. They were on the top floor and it was a sheer drop from the window to the ground. But there was a drainpipe, and if Colm would risk trying to get down it, there might be a chance . . .

  But there was no time for any chances to be taken or any risks to be made. The bedroom door was flung open and three police officers came into the room, including the large and stolid Constable Oliphant who had questioned them earlier. He looked at them with bovine recognition, and it was the inspector who spoke the feared words. ‘Colm Rourke, I’m arresting you for the murder of Mrs Florence Totteridge and on suspicion of four other counts of murder . . .’

  As they took Colm from the room, he turned a white, desperate face to Declan, and although he did not speak, Declan knew the same thought was in their minds. Somehow, no matter the cost, Colm had to be extricated from this. Because if not, they would hang him.

  At first though, he could not see how it could be done. Colm was being held in a police cell; the newspapers were having a fine old time, telling the citizens of London – and, for all Declan knew, the rest of the country as well – how the terrible Mesmer Murderer had been caught. The five murders were described in considerable detail. Declan forced himself to read everything in case he could find something that would lead to Colm being released. Perhaps he would find mention of Colm having done something when he had been indisputably somewhere else. Remembering those eagerly devoured episodes of Sherlock Holmes’ exploits, Declan scoured the newspaper reports, trying to find a chink in the police’s evidence.

  The killings were set out in distressing and chronological detail, although none of them mentioned Colm by name – Declan supposed there would be some legal reason for this; perhaps they were not allowed to name the killer prior to the trial. But the victims seemed to be fair game.

  Harold Bullfinch had been the first. He had told his landlady he had a business appointment, but his body had later been found knifed to death on river steps near the old Bidder Lane sewer outlet. Declan was wretchedly aware, as the police must be, that Bullfinch was the abortionist responsible for Romilly’s death.