A Prayer for the Dying (v5) (16 page)

Fallon picked him up and fondled his ears, talking softly to his as he walked back. When he got behind the wheel this time, he held on to the animal until he had closed the door. He put it in the rear seat and drove away quickly.

It was only after he had closed the five-barred gate behind him and turned into the main road again that he allowed that iron composure of his to give a little. He gave a long shuddering sigh, a partial release of tension, and when he lit a cigarette his hands were trembling.

It had worked and there was a kind of elation in that. For a while it had seemed that Billy Meehan might prove to be just as malignant an influence in death as he had been in life, but not now. He had ceased to exist, had been wiped clean off the face of the earth, and Fallon felt not even a twinge of compunction.

As far as he was concerned, Billy Meehan had been from under a stone, not fit to wipe Anna da Costa's shoes. Let be.

When he reached Paul's Square, he turned into the mews entrance cautiously, but luck was with him to the very end. The yard was deserted. He ran the Scimitar into the garage, left both the keys and the whippet inside and walked rapidly away.

When he got back to the presbytery, there was no sign of Father da Costa. Fallon went upstairs on tiptoe and peered into Anna's bedroom. She was sleeping soundly so he closed her door and went back downstairs.

He went into the sitting-room and checked the carpet carefully, but there was no sign of blood. So that was very much that. He went to the sideboard and poured himself a large whisky. As he was adding a dash of soda, the front door opened.

Fallon turned round as Father da Costa entered the room. The priest stopped short in amazement. 'Fallon, what are you doing here?' And then he turned very pale and said, 'Oh, dear God! Anna!'

He turned and moved to the stairs and Fallon went after him. 'She's all right. She's sleeping.'

Father da Costa turned slowly. 'What happened?'

'There was an intruder,' Fallon said. 'I arrived in time to chase him away.'

'One of Meehan's men?'

Fallon shrugged. 'Maybe - I didn't get a good look at him.'

Father da Costa paced up and down the hall, fingers intertwined so tightly that the knuckles turned white. 'Oh, my God! he said. When will it all end?'

'I'm leaving on Sunday night,' Fallon told him. 'They've arranged passage for me on a ship out of Hull.'

'And you think that will finish it?' Father da Costa shook his head. 'You're a fool, Fallon. Jack Meehan will never feel safe while I am still in the land of the living. Trust, honour, truth, the sanctity of the given word. None of these exist for him personally so why should he believe that they have a meaning for someone else?'

'All right,' Fallon said. 'It's all my fault. What do you want me to do?'

'There's only one thing you can do,' Father da Costa said. 'Set me free in the only way possible.'

'And spend my life in a maximum security cell?' Fallon shook his head. 'I'm not that kind of hero.'

He walked to the front door and Father da Costa said, 'She
is
all right?'

Fallon nodded soberly. 'A good night's rest is all she needs. She's a much stronger person than you realise. In every way.'

He turned to go out and Father da Costa said, 'That you arrived when you did was most fortuitous.'

'All right,' Fallon said. 'So I was watching the house.'

Father da Costa shook his head sadly. 'You see, my friend, good deeds in spite of yourself. You are a lost man.'

'Go to hell!' Fallon said and he plunged out into the rain and walked rapidly away.

13

The Church Militant

Father da Costa was packing his vestment into a small suitcase when Anna went into the study. It was a grey morning, that eternal rain still tapping at the window. She was a little paler than usual, but otherwise seemed quite composed. Her hair was tied back with a black ribbon and she wore a neat grey skirt and sweater.

Father da Costa took both her hands and led her to the fire. 'Are you all right?'

'I'm fine,' she said. 'Truly I am. Are you going out?'

'I'm afraid I have to. One of the nuns at the convent school of Our Lady of Pity died yesterday. Sister Marie Gabrielle. They've asked me to officiate.' He hesitated. 'I don't like leaving you.'

'Nonsense,' she said. 'I'll be all right. Sister Claire will be bringing up the children from the junior school for choir practice at ten-thirty. I have a private lesson after that until twelve.'

'Fine,' he said. 'I'll be back by then.'

He picked up his case and she took his arm and they went through to the hall together. 'You'll need your raincoat.'

He shook his head. 'The umbrella will be enough.' He opened the door and hesitated, 'I've been thinking, Anna. Perhaps you should go away for a while. Just until this thing is settled one way or the other.'

'No!' she said firmly.

He put down his case and took her by the shoulders standing there in the half-open doorway. 'I've never felt so helpless. So confused. After what happened last night, I thought of speaking to Miller.'

'But you can't do that,' she said quickly - too quickly. 'Not without involving Fallon.'

He gazed at her searchingly, 'You like him, don't you?'

'It's not the word I would choose,' she said calmly. 'I feel for him. He has been marked by life. No, used by life in an unfair way. Spoiled utterly.' There was a sudden passion in her voice. 'No one could have the music in him that man has and have no soul. God could not be so inhuman.'

The greatest gift God gave to man was free will, my dear. Good and evil. Each man has a free choice in the matter.'

'All right,' she said fiercely. 'I only know one thing with any certainty. When I needed help last night, more than I have ever needed it in my life before, it was Fallon who saved me.'

'I know,' Father da Costa told her. 'He was watching the house.'

Her entire expression changed, colour touched those pale cheeks. 'And you don't care what happens to him?'

'Oh, I care,' Father da Costa said gravely. 'More than you perhaps understand. I see a man of genius brought down to the level of the gutter. I see a human being - a fine human being - committing, for his own dark reasons, a kind of personal suicide.'

'Then help him.' she said.

'To help himself?' Father da Costa shook his head sadly. 'That only works in books. Seldom in life. Whoever he is, this man who calls himself Martin Fallon, one thing is certain. He hates himself for what he has done, for what he has become. He is devoured by self-loathing.'

But by now she looked completely bewildered. 'I don't understand this - not any of it.'

'He is a man who seeks Death at every turn, Anna. Who would welcome him with open arms.' He shook his head. 'Oh yes, I care what happens to Martin Fallon - care passionately. The tragedy is that he does not.'

He turned and left her there in the porch and hurried away through the churchyard, head down against the rain, not bothering to raise his umbrella. When he moved into the side porch to unlock the sacristy door, Fallon was sitting on the small bench leaning against the corner, head on his chest, hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat.

Father da Costa shook him by the shoulder and Fallon raised his head and opened his eyes instantly. He badly needed a shave and the skin of his face seemed to have tightened over the cheekbones and the eyes were vacant.

'A long night,' Father da Costa said gently.

'Time to think,' Fallon said in a strange, dead voice. 'About a lot of things.'

'Any conclusions?'

'Oh yes.' Fallon stood up and moved out into the rain. 'The right place for me, a cemetery.' He turned to face da Costa, a slight smile on his lips. 'You see, Father, I've finally realised one very important thing.'

'And what's that?' Father da Costa asked him.

'That I can't live with myself any more.'

He turned and walked away very quickly and Father da Costa moved out into the rain, one hand extended as if he would pull him back.

'Fallon,' he called hoarsely.

A few rooks lifted out of the tree on the other side of the churchyard, fluttering in the wind like a handful of dirty black rags, calling angrily. As they settled again, Fallon turned the corner of the church and was gone.

When Anna closed the front door of the presbytery and went down the steps, she was instantly aware of the organ. She stood quite still, looking across the cemetery towards the church, head slightly turned as she listened. The playing, of course, was quite unmistakable. The heart quickened inside her, she hurried along the path as fast as she dared, tip-tapping with her stick.

When she opened the sacristy door, the music seemed to fill the church. He was playing Pavane for a Dead Infanta, infinitely moving, touching the very heart of things, the deep places of life, brilliant technique and emotion combining in a way she would never have thought possible.

He finished on a dying fall and sat, shoulders hunched for a long moment as the last echoes died away. When he swung round on the stool, she was standing at the altar rail.

'I've never heard such playing,' she told him.

He went down through the choir stalls and stood on the other side of the rail from her. 'Good funeral music.'

His words touched the heart of her like a cold finger. 'You mustn't speak like that.' She forced a smile. 'Did you want to see me?'

'Let's say I hoped you'd come.'

'Here I am, then.'

'I want you to give your uncle a message. Tell him I'm sorry, more sorry than I can say, but I intend to put things right. You'll have nothing more to worry about, either of you. He has my word on that.'

'But how?' she said. 'I don't understand.'

'My affair,' Fallon told her calmly. 'I started it, I'll finish it. Goodbye, Anna da Costa. You won't see me again.'

'I never have,' she said sadly, and put a hand on his arm as he went by. 'Isn't that a terrible thing?'

He backed away slowly and delicately, making not the slightest sound. Her face changed. She put out a hand uncertainly. 'Mr Fallon?' she said softly. 'Are you there?'

Fallon moved quickly towards the door. It creaked when he opened it and as he turned to look at her for the last time, she called, 'Martin, come back!' and there was a terrible desperation in her voice.

Fallon went out, the door closed with a sigh and Anna da Costa, tears streaming down her face, fell on her knees at the altar rail.

The Little Sisters of Pity were not only teachers. They also had an excellent record in medical missionary work overseas, which was where Father da Costa had first met Sister Marie Gabrielle in Korea in nineteen fifty-one. A fierce little French-woman who was probably the kindest, most loving person he had met in his entire life. Four years in a communist prison camp had ruined her health, but that indomitable spirit, that all-embracing love, had not been touched in the slightest.

Some of the nuns, being human, were crying as they sang the offertory;
'Domine Jesu Christ, Rex Glorias, libera animas omnium fidelium
...'

Their voices rose sweetly to the rafters of the tiny convent chapel as Father da Costa prayed for the repose of Sister Marie Gabrielle's soul, for all sinners everywhere whose actions only cut them off from the infinite blessing of God's love. For Anna, that she might come to no harm. For Martin Fallon that he might face what must be done and for Dandy Jack Meehan ...

But here, a terrible thing happened, for his throat went dry and he seemed to choke on the very name.

Once the Mass was over and the absolutions given, the nuns carried the coffin out through the rain to the small private cemetery in a corner between the inner and outer walls of the convent.

At the graveside Father da Costa sprinkled the grave and the coffin with holy water and incensed them and after he had prayed, some of the nuns lit candles, with some difficulty because of the rain, to symbolise Sister Marie Gabrielle's soul, with God now and shining still, and they sang together, very sweetly, the twenty-third psalm which had been her favourite.

Father da Costa remembered her, for a moment, during those last days, the broken body racked with pain. Oh God, he thought, why is it the good who suffer? People like Sister Marie Gabrielle?

And then there was Anna. So gentle, so loving, and at the thought of what had taken place the night before, black rage filled his heart.

Try as he might, the only thought that would come to mind as he looked down into the open grave was that Meehan's firm had probably made the coffin.

Jenny Fox had taken two sleeping pills the previous night and overslept. It was after eleven when she awakened and she put on her dressing-gown and went downstairs. She went into the kitchen and found Fallon sitting at the table, the bottle of Irish whiskey in front of him, a half-filled tumbler at his elbow. He had taken the Ceska to pieces and was putting it carefully together again. The silencer was also on the table next to the whiskey bottle.

'You're starting early,' she commented.

'A long time since I had a drink,' he said. 'A real drink, Now I've had four. I had some thinking to do.'

He emptied his glass in a single swallow, rammed the magazine into the butt of the Ceska and screwed the silencer on the end of the barrel.

Jenny said wearily, 'Did you come to any conclusions?'

'Oh yes, I think you could say that.' He poured himself another whiskey and tossed it down. 'I've decided to start a Jack Meehan-must-go campaign. A sort of one man crusade, if you like.'

'You must be crazy,' she said. 'You wouldn't stand a chance.'

'He'll be sending for me some time today, Jenny. He has to because he's shipping me out from Hull tomorrow night so we've got things to discuss.'

He squinted along the barrel of the gun and Jenny whispered, 'What are you going to do?'

'I'm going to kill the bastard,' he said simply. 'You know what Shakespeare said. A good deed in a naughty world.'

He was drunk, she realised that, but in his own peculiar way. She said desperately. 'Don't be a fool. Kill him and there'll be no passage out of Hull for you. What happens then?'

'I couldn't really care less.'

He flung up his arm and fired. There was a dull thud and a small china dog on the top shelf above the refrigerator shattered into fragments.

'Well now,' he said. 'If I can hit that at this range after half-a bottle of whiskey, I don't see how I can very well miss Dandy Jack.'

He stood up and picked up the bottle of whiskey. Jenny said, 'Martin, listen to me for God's sake.'

He walked past her to the door. 'I didn't go to bed last night so I will now. Wake me if Meehan calls, but whatever happens, don't let me sleep past five o'clock. I've got things to do.'

He went out and she stood there listening as he mounted the stairs. She heard the door of his bedroom open and close and only then did she move, going down on her hands and knees wearily to pick up the shattered fragments of the china dog.

The Bull and Bell yard was not far from Paul's Square, a dirty and sunless cobbled alley named after the public house which had stood there for two hundred years or more. Beside the entrance to the snug stood several overflowing dustbins and cardboard boxes and packing cases were thrown together in an untidy heap.

The Bull and Bell itself did most of its trade in the evening, which was why Jack Meehan preferred to patronise it in the afternoon. For one thing it meant that he could have the snug to himself, which was handy for business of a certain kind.

He sat on a stool, a tankard of beer at his elbow, finishing a roast beef sandwich and reading the
Financial Times.
Donner was sitting in the window seat playing solitaire.

Meehan emptied his tankard and pushed it across the bar. 'Same again, Harry.'

Harry was a large, hefty young man who, in spite of his white apron, had the physique of a professional Rugby player. He had long dark sideburns and a cold, rather dangerous-looking face.

As he filled the tankard and pushed it across, the door opened and Rupert and Bonati came in. Rupert was wearing a sort of caped, ankle-length highwayman's coat in large checks.

He shook himself vigorously and unbuttoned his coat. 'When's it going to stop, that's what I'd like to know.'

Meehan drank some more beer and belched. He said, 'What in the hell do you want? Who's minding the shop?'

Rupert slid gracefully on to the stool next to him and put a hand on his thigh. 'I do have to eat some time, ducky. I mean, I need to keep my strength up, don't I?'