Dead Man’s Prayer: A gripping detective thriller with a killer twist

Farrell leaned forward in his chair. ‘What is it, Joe? What aren’t you telling me? There’s something else, isn’t there?’

‘He talked about you, that last Friday.’

‘Me? What about me?’ asked Farrell.

‘The way he had behaved towards you in the past. I got the impression that it was weighing heavily upon him and that he wished to make amends. He also seemed to think he had wronged your mother.’

‘My mother? What’s she got to do with anything?’

‘It’s probably nothing. He’d had a couple of brandies after dinner, said it helped with the pain. I didn’t like to press him.’

Farrell suddenly became aware that Father Joe was looking exhausted and felt a prickle of guilt. He poured two coffees and led the elderly priest upstairs to a comfortable seat in the lounge with panoramic views over the River Nith to the rolling hills beyond. In companionable silence they sat together enjoying the view to the uplifting strains of Bach.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#ulink_aa242be4-45ac-564c-8d85-9d2ddcb01686)

The next morning, Farrell arrived at the Crichton Hospital and ducked into the men’s room before announcing himself at reception. He splashed his face with cold water. The face that looked back at him out of the mirror gave nothing away. Good, that was how he wanted it.

Sitting in the waiting room, he remembered the last time he had been waiting here to see Dr Clare Yates. Mental illness was something he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. It stripped you bare, turned you inside out for others to gawp at. A lot of what had happened to him was mercifully blank. He could still, however, remember the gut-wrenching terror afforded by the paranoid delusions. The episode of psychosis had never reoccurred although the fear that it might was like a persistent needle in the psyche that never let him alone.

He had had to submit to a stringent psychiatric evaluation when he joined the police and had to submit an annual report from his psychiatrist in Edinburgh to confirm that he was still of sound mind and cooperating with his treatment plan. He seriously doubted that there was any point in taking the tiny maintenance dose prescribed but he didn’t feel inclined to make a fuss. He had been lucky to be taken on back then and he knew it.

Clare Yates had been like a cool drink of water to a man dying of thirst. Back then, still in her twenties, she had the effortless poise and confidence enjoyed by the alpha female at the top of her game. After years of depriving himself of female company he had fallen for her like a ton of bricks, mistaking clinical passion and concerned glances for something else. Recalling the moment when he had leaned across and kissed her on the mouth he remembered with shame the revulsion he had seen on her face. After that, he’d been referred to someone else, a senior male psychiatrist, who’d eventually stitched his shattered self back into something capable of masquerading as normality. Over time, the pretence became real.

Farrell gave himself a mental shake. He hadn’t thought about Clare Yates for years. What was the matter with him? It must be being here in this room that had triggered all these unwanted memories. He was a police inspector now, a grown man in a position of authority not some broken-down washed-up priest. She’d better not try and stonewall him or she’d soon see he meant business.