A Prayer for the Dying (v5) (8 page)

'But not now,' she said. 'Not after such playing. You were brilliant.'

He chuckled softly. 'That might have been true once, as I'll admit with becoming modesty, but not any more. My hands aren't what they were, for one thing.'

'Brilliant,' she said. 'There's no other word for it.'

She was genuinely moved and for the moment it was as if she had forgotten that other darker side. She groped for his hands, a smile on her face.

'As for your hands - what nonsense.' She took them in hers, still smiling, and then that smile was wiped clean. 'Your fingers?' she whispered, feeling at them. 'What happened?'

'Oh, those.' He pulled his hands free and examined the ugly, misshapen finger-ends. 'Some unfriends of mine pulled out my nails. A small matter on which we didn't quite see eye to eye.'

He stood up and pulled on his coat. She sat there, horror on her face and reached out a hand as if to touch him, pawing at space. He helped her to her feet and placed her coat about her shoulders.

'I don't understand,' she said.

'And please God, you never should,' he told her softly. 'Come on now and I'll take you home.'

They went down the altar steps and out through the sacristy. The door closed behind them. There was a moment of silence and then Billy Meehan stood up.

'Thank God for that. Can we kindly get the hell out of here now?'

'You can, not me,' Meehan told him. 'Find Fallon and stick to him like glue.'

'But I thought that was Varley's job?'

'So now I'm putting you on to it. Tell Varley to wait outside.'

'And what about you,' Billy said sullenly.

'Oh, I'll wait here for the priest to get back. Time we had a word.' He sighed and stretched his arms. 'I like it here. Nice and peaceful in the dark with all those candles flickering away there. Gives a fella time to think.' Billy hesitated as if trying to find some suitable reply and Meehan said irritably, 'Go on, piss off out of it for Christ's sake. I'll see you later.'

He leaned back, arms folded, and closed his eyes and Billy left by the front entrance to do as he was told.

* * *

It was raining hard in the cemetery. As they moved along the path to the presbytery, Fallon slipped her arm in his.

'Sometimes I think it's never going to stop,' she said. 'It's been like this for days.'

'I know,' he said.

They reached the front door, she opened it and paused in the porch while Fallon stood at the bottom of the steps looking up at her.

'Nothing seems to make sense to me any longer,' she said. 'I don't understand you or what's happened today or any part of it - not after hearing you play. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit.'

He smiled up at her gently. 'Go in now, girl dear, out of the cold. Stay safe in your own small world.'

'Not now,' she said. 'How can I? You've made me an accessory now, isn't that what they call it? I could have spoken up, but I didn't.'

It was the most terrible thing she could have said to him. He said hoarsely. 'Then why didn't you?'

'I gave my uncle my word, had you forgotten? And I would not hurt him for worlds.'

Fallon moved back into the rain very softly, She called from the porch, 'Mr Fallon, are you there?'

He didn't reply. She stood there for a moment longer, uncertainty on her face, then went in and closed the door. Fallon turned and moved back along the path.

Billy had been watching them from the shelter of a large Victorian mausoleum, or rather, he had been watching Anna. She was different from the girls he was used to. Quiet, lady-like and yet she had an excellent figure. There was plenty of warmth beneath that cool exterior, he was certain of that, and the fact of her blindness made his stomach churn, exciting some perversity inside him and he got an almost instant erection.

Fallon paused, hands cupped to light a cigarette, and Billy drew back out of sight.

Fallon said, 'All right, Billy, I'm ready to go home now. Since you're here, you can drive me back to Jenny's place.'

Billy hesitated, then stepped reluctantly into the open. 'Think you're bleeding smart, don't you?'

'To be smarter than you doesn't take much, sonny,' Fallon told him. 'And another thing. If I catch you hanging around here again, I'll be very annoyed.'

'Why don't you go stuff yourself,' Billy told him furiously.

He turned and walked rapidly towards the gate. Fallon was smiling as he went after him.

The city mortuary was built like a fort and encircled by twenty-foot walls of red brick to keep out prying eyes. When Miller's car reached the main entrance the driver got out and spoke into a voice box on the wall. He climbed back behind the wheel. A moment later the great steel gate slid back automatically and they passed into an inner courtyard.

'Here we are, Father,' Miller said. 'The most modern mortuary in Europe, or so they say.'

He and Fitzgerald got out first and Father da Costa followed them. The inner building was all concrete and glass. Functional, but rather beautiful in its own way. They went up a concrete ramp to the rear entrance and a technician in white overalls opened the door for them.

'Good morning, Superintendent,' he said. 'Professor Lawlor said he'd meet you in the dressing-room. He's very anxious to get started.'

There was the constant low hum of the air-conditioning plant as they followed him along a maze of narrow corridors. Miller glanced over his shoulder at Father da Costa and said casually, 'They boast the purest air in the city up here. If you can breathe it at all, that is.'

It was the kind of remark that didn't seem to require an answer and Father da Costa made no attempt to make one. The technician opened a door, ushered them inside and left.

There were several washbasins, a shower in the corner, white hospital overalls and robes hanging on pegs on one wall. Underneath was a row of white rubber boots in various sizes. Miller and Fitzgerald removed their raincoats and the Superintendent took down a couple of white robes and passed one to Father da Costa.

'Here, put this on. You don't need to bother about boots.'

Father da Costa did as he was told and then the door opened and Professor Lawlor entered. 'Come on, Nick,' he said. 'You're holding me up.' And then he saw the priest and his eyes widened in surprise. 'Hello, Father.'

I'd like Father da Costa to observe, if you've no objection,' Miller said.

Professor Lawlor was wearing white overalls and boots and long pale-green rubber gloves, which he pulled at impatiently, 'As long as he doesn't get in the way. But do let's get on with it. I've got a lecture at the medical school at five.'

He led the way out and they followed along a short corridor and through a rubber swing door into the post mortem room. It was lit by fluorescent lighting so bright that it almost hurt the eyes and there was a row of half-a-dozen stainless steel operating tables.

Janos Krasko lay on his back on the one nearest the door, head raised on a wooden block. He was quite naked. Two technicians stood ready beside a trolley on which an assortment of surgical instruments was laid out neatly. The greatest surprise for Father da Costa were the closed circuit television cameras, one set close up to the operating table, the other waiting nearby on a movable trolley.

'As you can see, Father, science marches on,' Miller said. 'These days in a case like this everything's videotaped and in colour.'

'Is that necessary?' Father da Costa asked him.

'It certainly is. Especially when you get the kind of defence council who hasn't got much to go on and tries bringing in his own expert witness. In other words, some other eminent pathologist with his own particular theory about what happened.'

One of the technicians was fastening a throat mike around Lawlor's throat and Miller nodded. 'The medical profession are great on opinions, Father, I've learned that the hard way.'

Lawlor smiled frostily. 'Don't get bitter in your old age, Nick. Have you witnessed a post mortern before, Father?'

'Not in your terms, Professor.'

'I see. Well, if you feel sick, you know where the dressing-room is and please stand well back - all of you.' He turned and addressed the camera men and technicians. 'Right, gentlemen, let's get started.'

It should have been like something out of a nightmare. That it wasn't was probably due to Lawlor as much as anything else. That and the general atmosphere of clinical efficiency.

He was really quite brilliant. More than competent in every department. An artist with a knife who kept up a running commentary in that dry, precise voice of his during the entire proceedings.

'Everything he says is recorded,' Miller whispered. 'To go with the video.'

Father da Costa watched, fascinated, as Lawlor drew a scalpel around the skull. He grasped the hair firmly and pulled the entire face forward, eyeballs and all, like a crumpled rubber mask.

He nodded to the technicians who handed him a small electric saw and switched on. Lawlor began to cut round the top of the skull very carefully.

'They call it a de Soutter,' Miller whispered again. 'Works on a vibratory principle. A circular saw would cut too quickly.'

There was very little smell, everything being drawn up by extractor fans in the ceiling above the table. Lawlor switched off the saw and handed it to the technician. He lifted off the neat skullcap of bone and placed it on the table, then carefully removed the brain and put it in a rather commonplace red, plastic basin which one of the technicians held ready.

The technician carried it across to the sink and Lawlor weighed it carefully. He said to Miller, 'I'll leave my examination of this until I've finished going through the motions on the rest of him. All right?'

'Fine,' Miller said.

Lawlor returned to the corpse, picked up a large scalpel and opened the entire body from throat to belly. There was virtually no blood, only a deep layer of yellow fat, red meat underneath. He opened the body up like an old overcoat, working fast and efficiently, never stopping for a moment.

Father da Costa said, 'Is this necessary? The wound was in the head. We know that.'

'The Coroner will demand a report that is complete in every detail,' Miller told him. 'That's what the law says he's entitled to and that's what he expects. It's not as cruel as you think. We had a case the other year. An old man found dead at his home. Apparent heart failure. When Lawlor opened him up he was able to confirm that, and if he'd stopped at the heart that would have been the end of the matter.'

'There was more?'

'Fractured vertebrae somewhere in the neck area. I forget the details, but it meant that the old boy had been roughly handled by someone, which led us to a character who'd been making a nuisance of himself preying on old people. The sort who knocks on the door, insists he was told to clean the drains and demands ten quid.'

'What happened to him?'

'The court accepted a plea of manslaughter. Gave him five years so he's due out soon. A crazy world, Father.'

'And what would you have done with him?'

'I'd have hung him,' Miller said simply. 'You see, for me, it's a state of war now. A question of survival. Liberal principles are all very fine as long as they leave you with something to have principles about.'

Which made sense in its own way and it was hard to argue. Father da Costa moved to one side as the technicians carried the various organs across to the sink in more plastic basins. Each item was weighed, then passed to Lawlor who sliced it quickly into sections on a wooden block with a large knife. Heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, intestines - they all received the same treatment with astonishing speed and the camera on the trolley recorded everything at his side.

Finally he was finished and put down his knife. 'That's it,' he said to Miller. 'Nothing worth mentioning. I'll go to town on the brain after I've had a cigarette.' He smiled at da Costa,

'Well, what did you think?'

'An extraordinary experience,' Father da Costa said. 'Disquieting more than anything else.'

'To find that man is just so much raw meat?' Professor Lawlor said.

'Is that what you think?'

'See for yourself.'

Lawlor crossed to the operating table, and Father da Costa went with him. The body was open to the view and quite empty. Gutted. Nothing but space from inside the rib cage and down into the penis.

'Remember that poem of Eliot's The Hollow Men? Well, this is what he was getting at or so it's always seemed to me.'

'And you think that's all there is?'

'Don't you?' Lawlor demanded.

One of the technicians replaced the skullcap of bone and pulled the scalp back into place. Amazing how easily the face settled into position again. Quite remarkable.

Father da Costa said, 'A superb piece of engineering, the human body. Infinitely functional. There seems to be no task that a man cannot cope with if he so desires. Wouldn't you agree, Professor?'

'I suppose so.'

'Sometimes I find the mystery of it quite terrifying. I mean, is this all that's left in the end of an Einstein, let's say, or a Picasso? A gutted body, a few scraps of raw meat swilling about in the bottom of a plastic bucket?'