A Prayer for the Dying (v5) (14 page)

Fallon had been playing the organ for just over an hour when he paused for breath. It had been a long time and his hands were aching, but it was good to get down to it again.

He turned and found Father da Costa sitting in the front pew watching him, arms folded. 'How long have you been there?' Fallon got up and started down the steps between the choir stalls.

'Half and hour, maybe more,' Father da Costa said. 'You're brilliant, you know that, don't you?'

'Used to be.'

'Before you took up the gun for dear old mother Ireland and that glorious cause?'

Fallon went very still. When he spoke, it was almost in a whisper. 'That's of no interest to you.'

'It's of every interest,' Father da Costa told him. 'To me in particular, for obvious reasons. Good God, man, how could you do what you've done and you with so much music in you?'

'Sir Philip Sidney was reputed to be the most perfect of all knights of the court of Elizabeth Tudor,' Fallon said. 'He composed music and wrote poetry like an angel. In his lighter moments, he and Sir Walter Raleigh herded Irishmen together into convenient spots and butchered them like cattle.'

'All right,' Father da Costa said. 'Point taken. But is that how you see yourself? As a soldier?'

'My father was.' Fallon sat back on the altar rail. 'He was a sergeant in the Parachute Regiment. Killed at Arnhem fighting for the English. There's irony for you.'

'And what happened to you?'

'My grandfather raised me. He had a hill farm in the Sperrins. Sheep mostly - a few horses. I ran happily enough, wild and barefooted, till the age of seven when the new schoolmaster, who was also organist of the church, discovered I had perfect pitch. Life was never the same after that.'

'And you went to Trinity College?'

Fallon frowned slightly. 'Who told you that?'

'Your friend O'Hara. Did you take a degree?'

There was sudden real humour in Fallon's eyes. 'Would you believe me, now, Father, if I told you the farm boy became a doctor of music, no less?'

'Why not?' da Costa replied calmly. 'Beethoven's mother was a cook, but never mind that. The other? How did that start?'

'Time and chance. I went to stay with a cousin of mine in Belfast one weekend in August 1969. He lived in the Falls Road. You may remember what happened.'

Father da Costa nodded gravely. 'I think so.'

'An Orange mob led by B specials swarmed in bent on burning every Catholic house in the area to the ground. They were stopped by a handful of IRA men who took to the streets to defend the area.'

'And you became involved.'

'Somebody gave me a rifle, let's put it that way, and I discovered a strange thing. What I aimed at, I hit.'

'You were a natural shot.'

'Exactly.' Fallon's face was dark and suddenly, he took the Ceska out of his pocket. 'When I hold this, when my finger's on the trigger, a strange thing happens. It becomes an extension, and extension of me personally. Does that make sense?'

'Oh, yes,' Father da Costa said. 'But of the most horrible kind. So you continued to kill.'

'To fight,' Fallon said, his face stony, and he slipped the Ceska back inside his pocket. 'As a soldier of the Irish Republican Army.'

'And it became easier? Each time it became easier.'

Fallon straightened slowly. His eyes were very dark. He made no reply.

Father da Costa said, 'I've just come from a final showdown with Superintendent Miller. Would you be interested to know what he intends?'

'All right, tell me.'

'He's laying the facts before the Director of Public Prosecutions and asking him for a warrant charging me with being an accessory after the fact to murder.'

'He'll never make it stick.'

'And what if he succeeds? Would it cause you the slightest concern?'

'Probably not.'

'Good, honesty at last. There's hope for you yet. And your cause, Fallon. Irish unity or freedom or hatred of the bloody English or whatever it was. Was it worth it? The shooting and bombings. People dead, people crippled?'

Fallon's face was very white now, the eyes jet black, expressionless. 'I enjoyed every golden moment,' he said calmly.

'And the children?' Father da Costa demanded. 'Was it worth that?'

'That was an accident,' Fallon said hoarsely.

'It always is, but at least there was some semblance of reason to it, however mistaken. But Krasko was plain, cold-blooded murder.'

Fallon laughed softly, 'All right, Father, you want answers. I'll try and give you some.' He walked to the altar rail and put a foot on it, leaning an elbow on his knee, chin in hand. 'There's a poem by Ezra Pound I used to like. "Some quick to arm," it says, and then later, "walked eye-deep in hell, believing in old men's lies." Well, that was my cause at the final end of things. Old men's lies. And for that, I personally killed over thirty people assisted at the end of God knows how many more.'

'All right, so you were mistaken. In the end, violence in that sort of situation gains you nothing. I could have told you that before you started. But Krasko.' Father da Costa shook his head. 'That, I don't understand.'

'Look, we live in different worlds,' Fallon told him. 'People like Meehan - they're renegades. So am L I engage in a combat that's nothing to do with you and the rest of the bloody civilians. We inhabit our own world. Krasko was a whoremaster, a pimp, a drug-pusher.'

'Whom you murdered,' Father da Costa repeated inexorably.

'I fought for my cause, Father,' Fallon said. 'Killed for it, even when I ceased to believe it worth a single-human life. That was murder. But now? Now, I only kill pigs.'

The disgust, the self-loathing were clear in every word he spoke. Father da Costa said with genuine compassion, 'The world can't be innocent with Man in it.'

'And what in the hell is that pearl of wisdom supposed to mean?' Fallon demanded.

'Perhaps I can explain best by telling you a story,' Father da Costa said. 'I spent several years in a Chinese Communist prison camp after being captured in Korea. What they called a special indoctrination centre.'

Fallon could not help but be interested. 'Brainwashing?' he said.

'That's right. From their point of view, I was a special target, the Catholic Church's attitude to Communism being what it is. They have an extraordinarily simple technique and yet it works so often. The original concept is Pavlovian. A question of inducing guilt or rather of magnifying the guilt that is in all of us. Shall I tell you the first thing my instructor asked me? Whether I had a servant at the mission to clean my room and make my bed. When I admitted that I had, he expressed surprise, produced a Bible and read to me that passage in which Our Lord speaks of serving others. Yet here was I allowing one of those I had come to help to serve me. Amazing how guilty that one small point made me feel.'

'And you fell for that?'

'A man can fall for almost anything when he's half-starved and kept in solitary confinement. And they were clever, make no mistake about that. To use the appropriate Marrian terminology, each man has his thesis and his antithesis. For a priest, his thesis is everything he believes in. Everything he and his vocation stand for.'

'And his antithesis?'

'His darker side. The side which is present in all of us. Fear, hate, violence, aggression, the desires of the flesh. This is the side they work on, inducing guilt feelings to such a degree in an attempt to force a complete breakdown. Only after that can they start their own particular brand of re-education.'

'What did they try on you?'

'With me it was sex.' Father da Costa smiled. 'A path they frequently follow where Catholic priests are concerned, celibacy being a state they find quite unintelligible.'

'What did they do?'

'Half-starved me, left me on my own in a damp cell for three months, then put me to bed between two young women who were presumably willing to give their all for the cause, just like you.' He laughed. 'It was rather childish really. The idea was, I suppose, that I should be racked with guilt because I experienced an erection, whereas I took it to be a chemical reaction perfectly understandable in the circumstances. It seemed to me that would be God's view also.'

'So, no sin in you then. Driven snow. Is that it?'

'Not at all. I am a very violent man, Mr Fallon. There was a time in my life when I enjoyed killing. Perhaps if they'd worked on that they would have got somewhere. It was to escape that side of myself that I entered the Church. It was, still is, my greatest weakness, but at least I acknowledged its existence.' He paused and then said deliberately, 'Do you?'

'Any man can know about things,' Fallon said. 'It's knowing the significance of things that's important.'

He paused and Father da Costa said, 'Go on.'

'What do you want me to do, drain the cup?' Fallon demanded. 'The gospel according to Fallon? All right, if that's what you want.'

He mounted the steps leading up to the pulpit and stood at the lectern. 'I never realised you had such a good view. What do you want me to say?'

'Anything you like.'

'All right. We are fundamentally alone. Nothing lasts. There is no purpose to any of it.'

'You are wrong,' Father da Costa said. 'You leave out God.'

'God?' Fallon cried. 'What kind of a God allows a world where children can be happily singing one minute -' here, his voice faltered for a moment - 'and blown into strips of bloody flesh the next. Can you honestly tell me you still believe in a God after what they did to you in Korea? Are you telling me you never faltered, not once?'

'Strength comes from adversity always,' Father da Costa told him. 'I crouched in the darkness in my own filth for six months once, on the end of a chain. There was one day, one moment, when I might have done anything. And then the stone rolled aside and I smelled the grave, saw him walk out on his own two feet and I knew, Fallon I knew!'

'Well, all I can say is, that if he exists, your God, I wish to hell you could get him to make up his mind. He's big on how and when. Not so hot on why.'

'Have you learned nothing, then?' Father da Costa demanded.

'Oh yes,' Fallon said. 'I've learned to kill with a smile, Father, that's very important. But the biggest lesson of all, I learned too late.'

'And what might that be?'

'That nothing is worth dying for.'

It was suddenly very quiet, only the endless rain drifting against the windows. Fallon came down the steps of the pulpit buckling the belt of his trenchcoat. He paused beside Father da Costa.

'And the real trouble is, Father, that nothing's worth living for either.'

He walked away down the aisle, his footsteps echoing. The door banged, the candles flickered. Father da Costa knelt down at the altar rail, folded his hands and prayed as he had seldom prayed before.

After a while, a door clicked open and a familiar voice said, 'Uncle Michael? Are you there?'

He turned to find Anna standing outside the sacristy door. 'Over here,' he called.

She moved towards him and he went to meet her, reaching for her outstretched hands. He took her across to the front pew and they sat down. And as usual she sensed his mood.

'What is it? she said, her face full of concern, 'Where's Mr Fallon?'

'Gone,' he said. 'We had quite a chat. I think I understand him more now.'

'He's dead inside,' she said. 'Everything frozen.'

'And tacked by self-hate. He hates himself, so he hates all of life. He has no feelings left, not in any normal sense. In fact it is my judgement that the man is probably seeking death. One possible reason for him to continue to lead the life he does.'

'But I don't understand,' she said.

'He puts his whole life on the scales, gave himself for a cause he believed was an honourable one - gave everything he had. A dangerous thing to do, because if anything goes wrong, if you find that in the final analysis your cause is as worthless as a bent farthing, you're left with nothing.'

'He told me he was a dead man walking,' she said.

'I think that's how he sees himself.'

She put a hand on his arm. 'But what can you do?' she said. 'What can anyone do?'

'Help him find himself. Save his soul, perhaps. I don't really know. But I must do something. I must!'

He got up, walked across to the altar rail, knelt down and started to pray.

12

More Work for the Undertaker

Fallon was in the kitchen having tea with Jenny when the doorbell rang. She went to answer it. When she came back, Jack Meehan and Billy followed her into the room.

'All right, sweetheart,' Meehan told her. 'Make yourself scarce. This is business.'

She gave Fallon a brief troubled look, hesitated, then went out. 'She's taken a shine to you, I can see that,' Meehan commented.

He sat on the edge of the table and poured himself a cup of tea. Billy leaned against the wall by the door, hands in his pockets, watching Fallon sullenly.

'She's a nice kid,' Fallon said, 'but you haven't come here to discuss Jenny.'

Meehan sighed. 'You've been a naughty boy again, Fallon. I told you when I left you this morning to come back here and keep under cover and what did you do at the first opportunity? Gave poor old Varley the slip again and that isn't nice because he knows how annoyed I get and he has a weak heart.'

'Make your point.'

'All right. You went to see that bloody priest again.'

'Like hell he did,' Billy put in from the doorway. 'He was with that da Costa bird in the churchyard.'

'The blind girl?' Meehan said.

'That's right. She kissed him.'

Meehan shook his head sorrowfully. 'Leading the poor girl on like that and you leaving the country after tomorrow.'

'She's a right whore,' Billy said viciously. 'Undressing at the bloody window, she was. Anybody could have seen her.'

'That's hardly likely,' Fallon said. 'Not with a twenty-foot wall round the churchyard. I thought I told you to stay away from there.'

'What's wrong?' Billy jeered. 'Frightened I'll queer your pitch? Want to keep it all for yourself?'

Fallon stood up slowly and the look on his face would have frightened the Devil himself. 'Go near that girl again, harm her in any way, and I'll kill you,' he said simply and his voice was the merest whisper.

Jack Meehan turned and slapped his brother across the face backhanded. 'You randy little pig,' he said. 'Sex, that's all you can think about. As if I don't have enough troubles. Go on, get out of it!'

Billy got the door open and glared at Fallon, his face white with passion. 'You wait, you bastard. I'll fix you, you see if I don't. You and your posh bird.'

'I said get out of it!' Meehan roared and Billy did just that, slamming the door behind him.

Meehan turned to Fallon, 'I'll see he doesn't step out of line, don't you worry.'

Fallon put a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a taper from the kitchen fire. 'And you?' he said. 'Who keeps you in line?'

Meehan laughed delightedly. 'Nothing ever throws you, does it? I mean, when Miller walked into church yesterday and found you talking to the priest, I was worried, I can tell you. But when you sat down at that organ.' He shook his head and chuckled. 'That was truly beautiful.'

There was a slight frown on Fallon's face. 'You were there?'

'Oh yes, I was there all right.' Meehan lit a cigarette. 'There's one thing I don't understand.'

'And what would that be?'

'You could have put a bullet in my head last night instead of into that mirror. Why didn't you? I mean, if da Costa is so important to you and you think I'm some sort of threat to him, it would have been the logical thing to do.'

'And what would have happened to my passport and passage on that boat out of Hull Sunday night?'

Meehan chuckled. 'You don't miss a trick, do you? We're a lot alike, Fallon, you and me.'

'I'd rather be the Devil himself,' Fallon told him with deep conviction.

Meehan's face darkened. 'Coming the superior bit again, are we? My life for Ireland. The gallant rebel, gun in hand?' There was anger in his voice now. 'Don't give me that crap, Fallon. You enjoyed it for its own sake, running around in a trenchcoat with a gun in your pocket like something out of an old movie. You enjoyed the killing. Shall I tell you how I know? Because you're too bloody good at it not to have done.'

Fallon sat there staring at him, his face very white, and then, by some mysterious alchemy, the Ceska was in his hand.

Meehan laughed harshly. 'You need me, Fallon, remember? Without me there's no passport and no passage out of Hull Sunday so put it away like a good boy.'

He walked to the door and opened it. Fallon shifted his aim slightly, following him, and Meehan turned to face him. 'All right then, let's see you pull that trigger.'

Fallon held the gun steady. Meehan stood there waiting, hands in the pockets of his overcoat. After a while he turned slowly and went out, closing the door behind him.

For a moment or so longer Fallon held the Ceska out in front of him, staring into space, and then, very slowly, he lowered it, resting his hand on the table, his finger still on the trigger.

He was still sitting there when Jenny came in. 'They've gone,' she said.

Fallon made no reply and she looked down at the gun with distaste. 'What did you need that thing for? What happened?'

'Nothing much,' he said. 'He held up a mirror, that's all, but there was nothing there that I hadn't seen before.' He pushed back his hair and stood up. 'I think I'll get a couple of hours' sleep.'

He moved to the door and she said diffidently. 'Would you like me to come up?'

It was as if he hadn't heard her and went out quietly, trapped in some dark world of his own. She sat down at the table and buried her face in her hands.

* * *

When Fitzgerald went into Miller's office, the Superintendent was standing by the window reading a carbon copy of a letter.

He offered it to Fitzgerald. 'That's what we sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.'

Fitzgerald read it quickly. 'That seems to sum up the situation pretty adequately to me, sir,' he said as he handed the letter back. 'When can we expect a decision?'

'That's the trouble, they'll probably take a couple of days. Unofficially, I've already spoken to the man who'll be handling it by telephone.'

'And what did he think, sir?'

'If you really want to know, he wasn't too bloody hopeful.' Miller's frustration was a tanglible thing. 'Anything to do with religion, you know what people are like. That's the English for you.'

'I see, sir,' Fitzgerald said slowly.

It was only then that Miller noticed that the Inspector was holding a flimsy in his right hand. 'What have you got there?'

Fitzgerald steeled himself, 'Bad news, I'm afraid, sir. From CRO about that Ceska.'

Miller sat down wearily. 'All right, tell me the worst.'

'According to the computer, the last time a Ceska was used to kill someone in this country was in June, nineteen fifty-two, sir. A Polish ex-serviceman shot his wife and her lover to death. They hanged him three months later.'

'Marvellous,' Miller said bitterly. 'That's all I needed.'

'Of course they're circulating arms dealers in the London area for us,' Fitzgerald said, 'It will take time, but something could come out of that line of enquiry.'

'I know,' Miller said bitterly. 'Pigs might also fly.' He pulled on his raincoat. 'Do you know what the unique feature of this case is?'

'I don't think so, sir.'

'Then I'll tell you. There's nothing to solve. We already know who's behind the killing. Jack Meehan, and if that damned priest would only open his mouth I could have his head on a platter.'

Miller turned angrily and walked out, banging the door so hard that the glass panel cracked.

Fallon had only taken off his shoes and jacket and had lain on top of the bed. He awakened to find the room in darkness. He had been covered with an eiderdown which meant that Jenny must have been in. It was just after eight when he checked his watch and he pulled on his shoes hurriedly, grabbed his jacket and went downstairs.

Jenny was doing some ironing when he went into the kitchen. She glanced up. 'I looked in about three hours ago, but you were asleep.'

'You should have wakened me,' he said and took down his raincoat from behind the door.

'Jack Meehan said you weren't to go out.'

'I know.' He transferred the Ceska to the pocket of his raincoat and fastened the belt.

'It's that girl, isn't it?' she said. 'You're worried about her.' He frowned slightly and she rested the iron. 'Oh, I was listening outside the door. I heard most of what went on. What's she like?'

'She's blind,' Fallon said. 'That means she's vulnerable.'

'And you're worried about Billy? You think he might try to pay you off for what happened last night by getting at her?'

'Something like that.'

'I don't blame you.' She started to iron a crisp white blouse. 'Let me tell you about him so you know what you're up against. At twelve, most boys are lucky if they've learnt how to make love to their hand, but not our Billy. At that age, he was having it off with grown women. Whores mostly, working for Jack Meehan, and Billy was Jack's brother, so they didn't like to say no.' She shook her head. 'He never looked back. By the time he was fifteen he was a dirty, sadistic little pervert. It was downhill all the way after that.' She rested the iron again. 'So if I were you, I'd worry all right where he's concerned.'

'Thanks,' he said. 'Don't wait up for me.'

The door banged and he was gone. She stood there for a moment, staring into space sadly and then she returned to her ironing.

Anna da Costa was about to get into the bath when she heard the phone ringing. She put on a robe and went downstairs, arriving in the hall as her uncle replaced the receiver.

'What is it?' she asked.

'The Infirmary. The old Italian lady I visited the other day. She's had a relapse. They expect her to die some time tonight. I'll have to go.'

She took down his coat from the hallstand and held it out for him. He opened the front door and they moved out into the porch. The rain was pouring down.

'I'll walk,' he said. 'It's not worth taking the van. Will you be all right?'

'Don't worry about me,' she said. 'How long will you be?'

'God knows, probably several hours. Don't wait up for me.'

He plunged into the rain and hurried down the path passing a magnificent Victorian mausoleum, the pride of the cemetery with its bronze doors and marble porch. Billy Meehan dropped back into the shadows of the porch quickly, but when the priest had gone past, he moved forward again.

He had heard the exchange at the door and a cold finger of excitement moved in his belly. He had already had intercourse twice that night with a prostitute, not that it had been any good. He didn't seem to be able to get any satisfaction any more. He'd intended going home and then he'd remembered Anna - Anna at the window undressing.

He'd only been lurking in the shadows of that porch for ten minutes, but he was already bitterly cold and rain drifted in on the wind. He thought of Fallon, the humiliation of the previous night, and his face contorted.

'The bastard,' he said softly. 'The little Mick bastard. I'll show him.'

He produced a half-bottle of Scotch from his pocket and took a long pull.

Father da Costa hurried into the church. He took a Host out of the ciborium and hung it in a silver pyx around his neck. He also took holy oils with him to anoint the dying woman's ears, nose, mouth, hands and feet and went out quietly.

The church was still and quiet, only the images floating in candlelight, the drift of rain against the window. It was perhaps five minutes after Father da Costa's departure that the door creaked open eerily and Fallon entered.

He looked about him to make sure that no one was there, then hurried down the aisle, went inside the cage and pressed the button to ascend. He didn't go right up to the tower, stopping the cage on the other side of the canvas sheet covering the hole in the roof of the nave.

It only sloped slightly and he walked across the sheeting lead and paused at the low retaining wall, sheltering in the angle of a buttress with the tower.

From here, his view of the presbytery was excellent and two tall concrete lamp-posts in the street to the left towered above the cemetery walls, throwing a band of light across the front of the house.

There was a light in one of the bedroom windows and he could see right inside the room. A wardrobe, a painting on the wall, the end of a bed and then Anna suddenly appeared wrapped in a large white towel.

From the look of things she had obviously just got out of the bath. She didn't bother to draw the curtains, probably secure in the knowledge that she was cut off from the street by twenty-foot high walls or perhaps it was something to do with her blindness.

As Fallon watched she started to dry herself off. Strange how few women looked at their best in the altogether, he told himself, but she was more than passable. The black hair almost reached the pointed breasts and a narrow waist swelled to hips that were perhaps a trifle too large for some tastes.

She pulled on a pair of hold-up stockings, black bra and pants and a green, silk dress with a pleated skirt and started to brush her hair, perhaps the most womanly of all actions. Fallon felt strangely sad, no desire in him at all, certainly not for anything physical. Just the sudden terrible knowledge that he was looking at something he could never have on top of this earth and there was no one to blame but himself. She tied her hair back with a black ribbon and moved out of sight. A second later, the light went off.