A Prayer for the Dying (v5) (17 page)

'All right, Harry.' Meehan said, 'Give him his Bloody Mary.'

Rupert said, 'By the way, does anyone know where Billy is?'

'I haven't seen him since last night,' Meehan told him. 'Who wants him, anyway?'

'The superintendent of Pine Trees phoned into the office just before I left.'

'And what did he want?'

'It seems they found Billy's whippet wandering about up there. Soaked to the skin and trembling life a leaf apparently. Wanted to know what to do with him.'

Meehan frowned. 'What in the hell would it be doing up there?'

Donner said, 'Last I saw of it, was about half eight this morning when I went into the garage. It was inside the Scimitar. I figured Billy had forgotten about it when he came in last night so I let it out. I mean, he's done that before when he's been pissed or something. Left Tommy in the car, I mean.'

'He still hadn't come in when I came out this morning,' Meehan said, 'and if he left his car in the garage, that means he went to one of the city centre clubs. Probably still in bed with some whore, the dirty little bastard.' He turned to Bonati. 'You'd better go up to Pine Trees and get it. Take it back home and give it something to eat.'

'All right, Mr Meehan,' Bonati said and went out.

Meehan swallowed some more beer. 'Inconsiderate little swine. I'll kick his arse for him when I see him.'

'He's young, Mr Meehan,' Harry said. 'He'll learn.'

He picked up a bucket of slops, moved from behind the bar, and opened the door and went out into the yard. As he emptied the bucket across the cobbles, Father da Costa entered the yard. He was wearing his cassock and held the umbrella over his head against the rain.

Harry looked him over in some amazement and Father da Costa said politely, 'I'm looking for Mr Meehan - Mr Jack Meehan. They told me at his office that I might find him here.'

'Inside,' Harry said.

He moved into the snug and Father da Costa followed, pausing just inside the door to put down his umbrella.

It was Rupert who saw him first in the mirror behind the bar. 'Good God Almighty!' he said.

There was a long silence and Meehan turned on his stool very slowly. 'And what in the hell are you doing there? Rattling the box for Christmas or something? Will a quid get rid of you?'

He took out his wallet ostentatiously and Father da Costa said quietly, 'I was hoping we might have a few words in private.'

He stood there with the umbrella in his hand, the skirts of his cassock soaking wet from the long grass of the convent cemetery, mud on his shoes, grey beard tangled, waiting for some sort of response.

Meehan laughed out loud. 'God, but I wish you could see yourself. You look bloody ridiculous. Men in skirts.' He shook his head. 'It'll never catch on.'

Father da Costa said patiently, 'I don't expect it will. Now can we talk?'

Meehan indicated Donner and Rupert with a wave of the hand. 'There's nothing you can say to me that these two can't hear.'

'Very well,' Father da Costa said. 'It's simple enough. I want you to stay away from Holy Name and I don't want any repetition of what happened at the presbytery last night.'

Meehan frowned, 'What in the hell are you talking about?'

'All right, Mr Meehan,' Father da Costa said wearily. 'Last night, someone broke into the presbytery when I was out and attacked my niece. If Fallon hadn't arrived at the right moment and chased the man away anything might have happened to her. On the other hand, I suppose you'll now tell me that you know nothing about it.'

'No, I bloody well don't.' Meehan shouted.

Father da Costa struggled to contain his anger. 'You're lying,' he said simply.

Meehan's face was suffused with blood, the eyes bulging. 'Who in the hell do you think you are?' he demanded hoarsely.

'It's my final warning,' Father da Costa said. 'When we last spoke I told you my God was a God of Wrath as well as of Love. You'd do well to remember that.'

Meehan's face was purple with rage and he turned to the barman in fury. 'Get him out of here!'

Harry lifted the bar flap and moved out. 'Right, on your way, mate.'

'I'll go when I'm ready,' Father da Costa told him.

Harry's right hand fastened on his collar, the other on his belt and they went through the door on the run to a chorus of laughter from Donner and Rupert. They crowded to the door to see the fun and Meehan joined them.

Father da Costa was on his hands and knees in the rain in a puddle of water. 'What's up, ducky?' Rupert called. 'Have you pissed yourself or something?'

It was a stupid remark, childish in its vulgarity, and yet it was some sort of final straw that set black rage boiling inside Father da Costa so that when Harry dragged him to his feet, an arm about his throat, he reacted as he had been taught to react thirty years earlier in that hard, brutal school of guerrilla warfare and action by night.

Harry was grinning widely. 'We don't like fancy sods like you coming round here annoying the customers.'

He didn't get a chance to say anything else. Father da Costa's right elbow swung back into his ribs and he pivoted on one foot as Harry reeled back, gasping.

'You should never let anyone get that close. They haven't been teaching you properly.'

Harry sprang forward, his right first swinging in a tremendous punch. Father da Costa swayed to one side, grabbed for the wrist with both hands, twisted it round and up, locking the arm and ran him headfirst into the stack of packing cases.

As Father da Costa turned, Donner came in fast and received a kick under the right kneecap, perfectly delivered, that doubled him over in pain and Father da Costa followed with a knee in the face that lifted him back against the wall.

Rupert gave a cry of dismay and in his haste to regain the safety of the snug, slipped on the top step, bringing Meehan down with him. As Meehan started to get up, Father da Costa punched him in the face, a good, solid right hand that carried all his rage, all his frustration with it. Bone crunched, Meehan's nose flattened beneath Father da Costa's knuckles and he fell back into the snug with a groan, blood gushing from his nostrils.

Rupert scrambled behind the bar on his hands and knees and Father da Costa stood over Meehan, the killing rage still on him, his fists clenched. And then he looked down at his hands, saw the blood on them and an expression of horror appeared on his face.

He backed slowly out into the yard, Harry lay on his face amongst the packing cases, Donner was being sick against the wall. Father da Costa looked in horror once again at the blood on his hands, turned and fled.

When he went into his study at the presbytery, Anna was sitting by the fire knitting. She turned her face towards him. 'You're late. I was worried.'

He was still extremely agitated and had to force himself to sound calm. 'I'm sorry. Something came up.'

She put down her knitting and stood up. 'After you'd gone, when I went down to the church to get ready for choir practice, Fallon was playing the organ.'

He frowned. 'Did he say anything? Did you speak with him?'

'He gave me a message for you,' she told him. 'He said to tell you that it had all been his fault and he was sorry.'

'Was there anything else?'

'Yes, he said that there was no need to worry from now on. That he'd started it, so he'd finish it. And he told me we wouldn't be seeing him again. What did he mean? Do you think he intends to give himself up?'

'God knows,' Father da Costa forced a smile and put a hand on her shoulder, a gesture of reassurance. 'I'm just going down to the church. Something I have to do. I won't be long.'

He left her there and hurried down through the cemetery, entering the church by way of the sacristy. He dropped on his knees at the altar rail, hands clenched together and looked up at Christ on the cross.

'Forgive me,' he pleaded. 'Heavenly Father, forgive me.'

He bowed his head and wept, for in his heart, he knew there was not one single particle of regret for what he had done to Jack Meehan. Worse than that, much worse, was the still, small voice that kept telling him that by wiping Meehan off the face of the earth he would be doing mankind a favour.

Meehan came out of the bathroom at the penthouse wearing a silk kimono and holding an ice-bag to his face. The doctor had been and gone, the bleeding had stopped, but his nose was an ugly, swollen, bruised hump of flesh that would never look the same again. Donner, Bonati and Rupert waited dutifully by the door. Donner's mouth was badly bruised and his lower lip was twice its usual size.

Meehan tossed the ice-bag across the room. 'No bloody good at all, that thing. Somebody get me a drink.'

Rupert hurried to the drinks trolley and poured a large brandy. He carried it across to Meehan who was standing at the window, staring out in the square, frowning slightly.

He turned, suddenly and mysteriously his old self again.

He said to Donner, 'Frank, what was the name of that old kid who was so good with explosives?'

'Ellerman, Mr Meehan, is he the one you're thinking of?'

'That's him. He isn't inside, is he?'

'Not that I know of.'

'Good, then I want him here within the next hour. You go get him and you can tell him there's a couple of centuries in it for him.'

He swallowed some more of his brandy and turned to Rupert. 'And you, sweetheart - I've got just the job for you. You can go and see Jenny for me. We're going to need her, too, for what I have in mind.'

Rupert said, 'Do you think she'll play? She can be an awkward bitch, when she feels like it.'

'Not this time.' Meehan chuckled. 'I'll give you a proposition to put to her that she can't refuse.'

He laughed again as if it was a particularly good joke and Rupert glanced uncertainly at Donner. Donner said carefully, 'What's it all about, Mr Meehan?'

'I've had enough,' Meehan said. 'That's what it's all about. The priest, Fallon, the whole bit. I'm going to clean the slate once and for all. Take them both out this very night and here's how we're going to do it.'

Harvey Ellerman was fifty years of age and looked ten years older, which came of having spent twenty-two years of his life behind bars if he added his various sentences together.

He was a small diffident individual who habitually wore a tweed cap and brown raincoat and seemed crushed by life, yet this small, anxious-looking man was reputed to know more about explosives than any man in the north of England. In the end, his own genius had proved his undoing, for such was the uniqueness of his approach to the task in hand that it was as if he had signed his own name each time he did a job, and for some years the police had arrested him with monotonous regularity the moment he put a foot wrong.

He came out of the lift into the penthouse, followed by Donner, holding a cheap fibre suitcase in one hand that was bound together by a cheap leather strap. Meehan went to meet him, hand extended, and Ellerman put the suitcase down.

'Great to see you, Harvey,' Meehan said. 'Hope you'll be able to help. Did Frank explain what I'm after?'

'He did, Mr Meehan, in a manner of speaking.' Ellerman hesitated. 'You won't want me personally on this thing, Mr Meehan? There's no question of that?'

'Of course not,' Meehan told him.

Ellerman looked relieved. 'It's just that I've retired from active participation in anything, Mr Meehan,' he said. 'You know how it is?'

'Too true, I do, Harvey. You were too bloody good for them.' He picked up Ellerman's suitcase and put it down on the table. 'Okay, let's see what you've got.'

Ellerman unfastened the strap and opened the suitcase. It contained a varied assortment of explosives carefully packed in tins, a selection of fuses and detonators, neat coils of wire and a rack of tools.

'Frank told me you wanted something similar to the sort of thing the IRA have been using in Ireland.'

'Not just similar, Harvey. I want it to be exactly the same. When the forensic boys get to examine what's left of this bomb I don't want there to be the slightest doubt in their minds where it's come from.'

'All right, Mr Meehan,' Ellerman said in his flat, colourless voice. 'Just as you say.' He produced a tin from the case. 'We'll use this, then. A Waverley biscuit tin. Made in Belfast. Packed with plastic gelignite. Say twenty pounds. That should do the trick.'

'What about a fuse?'

Ellerman held up a long, slim, dark pencil. 'They've been using a lot of these things lately. Chemical fuse of Russian manufacture. Virtually foolproof. Once you break the cap seal you've got twenty minutes.'

'Just the job,' Meehan rubbed his hands together. You'd better get started, then.'

He turned and walked across to the window, whistling happily.

14

Grimsdyke

Fallon came awake to find Jenny shaking him by the shoulder. 'Wake up!' she kept saying insistently. 'Wake up!'

There was a slight persistent throbbing ache behind his right eye, but otherwise he felt strangely light-headed. He sat up, swinging his legs to the floor, and ran his hands over his stubbled chin.

'What time is it?' he asked her.

'About four. Your friend, Father da Costa, was on the phone. He wants to see you.'

Fallon straightened slowly and looked at her, a slight, puzzled frown on his face. 'When was this?'

'About ten minutes ago. I wanted to come and get you, but he said there wasn't time.'

'And where does he want to see me? At Holy Name?'

She shook her head. 'No, he said he was taking his niece into the country. He thought it would be safer for her. A little place called Grimsdyke. It's about twenty miles from here in the marshes. He wants you to meet him there as soon as possible.'

'I see,' Fallon said. 'Do you know where this place is?'

She nodded. 'I used to go there for picnics when I was a kid. I've never been to this place he's going to, Mill House, he called it, but he told me how to get there.'

Fallon nodded slowly. 'And you'd take me?'

'If you like. We could go in my car. It wouldn't take much more than half an hour.'

He stared at her, the eyes very dark, no expression there at all. She glanced away nervously, unable to meet his gaze, and flushed angrily. 'Look, it's no skin of my nose. Do you want to go or don't you?'

He knew she was lying, yet it didn't seem to matter because for some strange reason he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that she was leading him in the right direction.

'All right,' he said. 'Fine. Just give me a couple of minutes to get cleaned up. I'll meet you downstairs.'

As soon as she had gone he took the Ceska from his jacket pocket, ejected the magazine, reloaded carefully with eight rounds and slipped it into the right-hand pocket of his trench-coat.

He moved across to the window, dropped to one knee and raised the carpet to disclose a Browning automatic he had used at his first meeting with Kristou in London. Underneath it was a large buff envelope containing the best part of two thousand pounds in ten-pound notes, the bulk of the money he had received from Meehan. He slipped the envelope into his breast pocket and checked the Browning quickly.

He found a roll of surgical tape in the cabinet over the washbasin and cut off a couple of lengths, using the razor jenny had loaned him, then taped the Browning to the inside of his left leg just above the anklebone, covering it with his sock.

He buttoned his trenchcoat as he went downstairs. Jenny was waiting in the hall dressed in a red plastic mac. She gave him a tight smile as she pulled on her gloves. 'Ready to go, then?'

He opened the front door, but stopped her with a hand on her shoulder as she was about to step outside. 'There isn't anything else, is there? Anything you've forgotten to tell me?'

She flushed and the anger was there in her voice again. 'Would I be likely to do a thing like that?'

'That's all right, then,' He smiled calmly. 'We'd better get going.'

He closed the door and followed her down the steps to the Mini-Cooper parked at the bottom. The marsh at Grimsdyke on the river estuary was a wild, lonely place of sea-creeks and mud flats and great, pale barriers of reeds higher than a man's head. Since the beginning of history men had come here for one purpose or another, Roman, Saxon, Dane, Norman, but now it was a place of ghosts. An alien world inhabited mainly by the birds, curlew and redshank and brent geese coming south from Siberia for the winter on the mud flats.

They passed through the village, a pleasant enough little place. Thirty or forty houses, a garage and pub, and then they were out on the other side. It was raining quite hard, the wind driving it in off the sea and across the marshes in great clouds.

'Half a mile beyond the village on the right.' Jenny glanced at Fallon briefly. 'That's what the man said.'

'This looks like it,' Fallon told her.

She turned the Cooper off the main road and followed a track no wider than a farm cart that was little more than a raised causeway of grass. On either side miles of rough marsh grass and reeds marched into the heavy rain and a thin sea mist was drifting before the wind.

Fallon lowered the window on his side and took a deep breath of the pungent salt air. 'Quite a place.'

'I used to love coming here when I was a kid,' she said. 'It was like nowhere else on earth. A different world after the city.'

The closer they got to the estuary, the more the mist seemed to close in on them and then they topped a rise and saw what was very obviously the mill sticking up above a clump of trees about a hundred yards to the south of them.

Fallon put a hand on her arm and she braked to a halt. 'Now what?'

'We'll walk from here.'

'Is that necessary?'

'If I've learned anything in life it's never to take anything for granted.'

She shrugged, but got out of the car without further argument and Fallon left the track and forced his way through a fir plantation towards the mill, dimly seen through the trees.

He crouched under a bush, pulling Jenny down beside him and examined the place carefully. There was a three-storeyed stone tower, roof open to the sky. At one end there was an extension made of wood which looked like a barn and seemed to be in a better state of repair than the rest of the building. A thin trickle of smoke drifted up from an iron chimney.

At the other side there was an immense water-wheel and it was moving round now with an unearthly creaking and groaning, forced by the rushing waters of the flooded stream.

'No sign of his mini-van,' Fallon said softly.

'He'll have it inside that barn, won't he?' Jenny replied, and then added impatiently, 'For goodness sake, make your mind up. Are we going on or aren't we? I'm getting wet.'

She seemed angry and yet the fingers of her left hand trembled slightly. He said, 'You go. Give me a call if everything is all right.'

She glanced at him with a certain surprise in her eyes, then shrugged, stood up and walked out into the open. He watched her go, all the way to the barn. She turned to look at him once, then opened the big double door and went in.

She reappeared a moment later and called, 'It's all right. Everything's fine. Come on.'

Fallon hesitated for a moment and then shrugged and walked out into the clearing, a slight, fixed smile on his face. When he was four or five yards from the door, Jenny said, 'They're here,' and she went back inside.

He followed her in without hesitation. The place smelled of old hay and mice. There was a decrepit cart in one corner and a large loft ran round three sides of the building with round glassless windows letting in light. A fire was burning in an old iron stove in the corner.

There was no sign of Father da Costa or Anna, not that Fallon had really expected there to be. Only Jenny, standing alone beside a small iron cot bed against the far wall on which a little fair-haired girl was apparently sleeping, covered by a blanket.

'I'm sorry, Martin,' she said, and there was genuine distress in her face now. 'I didn't have any choice.'

'Up here Fallon,' a voice called.

Fallon looked up and saw Donner on the edge of the loft holding an Armalite rifle. Rupert was standing beside him clutching a sawn-off shotgun and Harry, the barman from the Bull and Bell, appeared in the loft at the other side of the building, some sort of revolver in his hand.

Donner raised the Armalite a little. 'They tell me that a bullet from one of these things goes in at the front and out at the back and takes a sizeable piece of you with it on the way, so I'd advise you to stay very still.'

'Oh, I will,' Fallon assured him without irony. And he raised his hands.

Harry came down the ladder from the loft first. He looked terrible. His left eye was completely closed and one side of his face was very badly bruised. He stood a yard or two away, covering Fallon with his revolver while Rupert followed him down the ladder. When they were both in position, Donner lowered the Armalite and joined them.

'Never trust a woman, ducky,' Rupert said with a mocking smile. 'I'd have thought you'd have learnt that. Unreliable bitches, the lot of them. Ruled by the moon. Now me, for instance ...'

Donner kicked him in the leg. 'Shut up and search him. He'll probably have the shooter in his right-hand pocket.'

Rupert found the Ceska at once and the buff envelope containing the money. Donner looked inside and whistled softly. 'How much?' he demanded.

'Two thousand,' Fallon said.

Donner grinned. 'That must be what they meant by an unexpected bonus.'

He put the envelope in his inside pocket and Rupert started to run his hands over Fallon's body. 'Lovely,' he breathed. 'I could really go for you, ducky,' and he patted Fallon's cheek.

Fallon sent him staggering back with a stiff right arm. 'Put a hand on me again, and I'll break your neck.'

Rupert's eyes glittered and he picked up the sawn-off shotgun and thumbed back the hammer. 'My, my, aren't we butch?' he said softly. 'But I can soon fix that.'

Donner kicked him in the backside. 'You bloody stupid little bitch,' he cried. 'What are you trying to do? Ruin everything at this stage?' He shoved him violently away. 'Go on and make some tea. It's all you're fit for.'

Rupert moved over to the stove sullenly, still clutching his shotgun, and Donner took a pair of regulation police hand-cuffs from his pocket. He snapped them around Fallon's wrists, locked them and slipped the key into his breast pocket.

'You can have it the hard way or you can have it easy,' he said. 'It's all one to me. Understand?'

'I always try to,' Fallon said.

'Right, go and sit down by the bird where I can keep an eye on both of you.'

Fallon moved across to the cot and sat down beside it, his back against the wall. He looked at the child. Her eyes were closed, the breathing easy.

'The daughter you told me about?' he said. 'Is she all right?'

She nodded. 'They gave her a sedative, that's all.' Her eyes were bright with tears. 'I'm sorry, Martin, I didn't have any choice. I collected her after lunch like I do every Saturday and took her to the playground in the local park. That's where Rupert and that creep Harry picked us up.'

'And they threatened you?'

'They said they'd hang on to Sally. That I could have her back if I managed to get you out here.' She put a hand on his arm. 'What else could I do? I was terrified. You don't know Jack Meehan like I do. He's capable of anything - just like Billy.'

'Billy will never bother you again,' Fallon said. 'I killed him last night.'

She stared at him, eyes wide. 'You what?'

'Just as I intend to kill Dandy Jack,' Fallon said calmly. 'There's a packet of cigarettes in my left-hand jacket pocket, by the way. Light me one, will you, like a good girl?'

She seemed stunned by the enormity of what he had said but did as she was told. She put a cigarette in his mouth and as she struck a match, Donner joined them. He was carrying a tartan bag in one hand and squatted down in front of Fallon and unzipped it. One by one he produced three bottles of Irish Whiskey and placed them on the ground.

'Jameson,' Fallon said. 'My favourite. How did you guess?'

'And all for you,' Donner told him. 'All three bottles.'

'I must say it sounds like an interesting idea,' Fallon said. 'Tell me more.'

'Why not?' Donner said. 'Actually, it's very good. I think you'll like it. You see, we have three problems, Fallon. The priest and his niece, because they know more than what's good for them.'

'And me?' Fallon said.

'Exactly.' Donner helped himself to a cigarette. 'Anyway, Mr Meehan had this rather nice idea. It's beautifully simple. We get rid of da Costa and his niece and put the blame on you.'

'I see,' said Fallon. 'And just how do you propose to do that?'

'You were a big man with a bomb in your hand over there in Ulster, weren't you? So it would make sense if you used the same method when you wanted to knock someone off over here.'

'My God,' Jenny said.

Donner ignored her and he was obviously enjoying himself. He said, 'Evening Mass at Holy Name is at six o'clock. When it's over, Mr Meehan and Bonati will pick up Father da Costa and his niece and take 'em up that tower, together with about twenty pounds of plastic gelignite and a chemical fuse packed in a Waverley biscuit tin. When that little lot goes up, they go with it and the church comes down.'

'I see,' Fallon said. 'And me - what about me?'

'That's easy. Bonati drives out here in da Costa's mini-van. You get three bottles of Irish Whiskey poured down your throat, we put you behind the wheel and send you for a drive. There's a hill called Cullen's Bend about three miles from here. A terrible place for accidents.'

'And you think that will wrap things up?' Fallon asked him.