Читать книгу Forgive Me Father - Paul Gitsham - Страница 19

Judging from the time displayed by the flashing clock on the oven, the electricity had been restored some hours previously, at about 1 a.m. A statement from the electricity company had been read out on the local radio as Warren drove into the office at 6 a.m., apologising to the thousand or so customers affected by a fault at the local substation.

Warren was half contemplating writing a letter of thanks.

‘Sorry I didn’t spot it sooner,’ said Warren.

Grayson waved a hand. ‘Nobody else did. So either somebody was with him when he set himself on fire, holding a light, or he was set alight by persons unknown? There’s no way he could have done it himself?’

Warren shook his head firmly.

‘The last reliable sighting of Father Nolan was after dark and there was hardly any moonlight. I can just about accept that he could find his way to the chapel, then let himself into the undercroft, but it would have been pitch black down there. There are electric lights, but they were turned off at the switch at the top of the stairs. I can’t believe that he would have gone down there, set up the chair, then gone back up the stairs, locked himself in, switched off the lights, come back downstairs, doused himself in petrol and then set himself alight in the pitch black.’

‘And there were no other sources of light at the scene?’

‘Nothing. No torch, his mobile phone was back in his room and there were no candles.’

‘He had a box of matches, could he have used those?’

‘Doubtful, the box was almost full and Forensics only found a single spent match in the whole area. Besides which, you know how volatile petrol is. It’s doubtful he could have slopped petrol over himself with an open source of ignition in the room, the vapour would have ignited immediately. Forensics didn’t find any burnt paper or rags at the scene to indicate that he made a fire to see by.’

Grayson pulled at his bottom lip. ‘You’re right. I’m not quite ready to publicly declare it a murder, but it should remain an unexplained death for now.’

‘There’s more,’ interjected Sutton. ‘I was thinking about this after last night’s call. There was no sign of any restraint, and I believe that the working hypothesis was that Father Nolan drank enough whiskey and took enough sleeping pills to numb the pain sufficiently not to run around like a mad thing when he set himself alight.’

Warren agreed; he could see where Sutton was headed.

‘Well, is it likely that somebody that far out of it would have the manual dexterity to light a match, apparently first time?’

The three men were silent as they thought through the implications.

‘We need the results of the toxicology,’ said Warren finally.

‘Call the lab and get it fast-tracked, I’ll authorise the cost,’ ordered Grayson.

‘If the bloods come back and show that he was so insensate that he could be covered in petrol and ignited without any signs of restraint or a struggle, then that raises questions about how he got in that state in the first place,’ said Sutton.

‘Go on,’ said Warren.

‘The way I see it, there are two possibilities. First, that he drank the whiskey and potentially took his sleeping pills in situ. That is more believable if it was a suicide, otherwise how would you convince him to do it otherwise? There was no sign of a restraint or struggle. And why on earth would he go down to the undercroft with somebody?’

‘He could have been threatened or coerced in some way?’ suggested Grayson.

‘In which case it’s likely a murder,’ continued Sutton, ‘or he took the whiskey and pills elsewhere, probably his room, as it is private, and was then led down to the undercroft by his killer, who left the bottle and pills there to mislead us.’

‘Or a combination of the two scenarios,’ interjected Grayson.

‘Either way, it implies that he must have known his killer, at least to some degree,’ said Sutton. ‘Not only would they need him to have been comfortable enough to drink with him in his room or to go down to the chapel with him, they would also need to know about his medication.’

‘Which means we need the results back from the forensics in his room, and the likely route he took down to the chapel,’ said Warren. ‘We also need to know the whereabouts of all of the other residents, staff and carers that night.’

‘Then let’s see what Rachel Pymm has for us,’ said Grayson, getting to his feet.