Текст книги "A Prayer for the Dying"

Автор книги: Jack Higgins

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2

Father da Costa

... the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. Father Michael da Costa spoke out bravely as he led the way up through the cemetery, his words almost drowned in the rush of heavy rain.

Inside, he was sick at heart. It had rained heavily all night, was raining even harder now. The procession from chapel to graveside was a wretched affair at the best of times, but this occasion was particularly distressing.

For one thing, there were so few of them. The two men from the funeral directors carrying the pitifully small coffin between them and the mother, already on the point of collapse, staggering along behind supported by her husband on one side and her brother on the other. They were poor people. They had no one. They turned inward in their grief.

Mr O'Brien, the cemetery superintendent, was waiting at the graveside, an umbrella over his head against the rain. There was a gravedigger with him who pulled off the canvas cover as they arrived. Not that it had done any good for there was at least two feet of water in the bottom.

O'Brien tried to hold the umbrella over the priest, but Father da Costa waved it away. Instead, he took off his coat and handed it to the superintendent and stood there in the rain at the graveside, the old red and gold cope making a brave show in the grey morning.

O'Brien had to act as server and Father da Costa sprinkled the coffin with holy water and incense and as he prayed, he noticed that the father was glaring across at him wildly like some trapped animal behind bars, the fingers of his right hand clenching and unclenching convulsively. He was a big man – almost as big as da Costa. Foreman on a building site.

Da Costa looked away hurriedly and prayed for the child, face upturned, rain beading his tangled grey beard.

Into your hands, O Lord,

We humbly commend our sister,

Lead her for whom you have

Shown so great a love,

Into the joy of the heavenly

paradise.

Not for the first time, the banality of what he was saying struck him. How could he explain to any mother on this earth that God needed her eight-year-old daughter so badly that it had been necessary for her to choke to death in the stinking waters of an industrial canal to drift for ten days before being found.

The coffin descended with a splash and the gravedigger quickly pulled the canvas sheet back in place. Father da Costa said a final prayer, then moved round to the woman who was now crying bitterly.

He put a hand on her shoulder. 'Mrs Dalton – if there's anything I can do.'

The father struck his arm away wildly. 'You leave her alone!' he cried. 'She's suffered enough. You and your bloody prayers. What good's that? I had to identify her, did you know that? A piece of rotting flesh that was my daughter after ten days in the canal. What kind of a God is it that could do that to a child?'

O'Brien moved forward quickly, but Father da Costa put up an arm to hold him back. 'Leave it,' he said calmly.

A strange, hunted look appeared on Dalton's face as if he suddenly realised the enormity of his offence. He put an arm about his wife's shoulders and he and her brother hurried her away. The two funeral men went after them.

O'Brien helped da Costa on with his coat. 'I'm sorry about that, Father. A bad business.'

'He has a point, poor devil,' da Costa said, 'After all, what am I supposed to say to someone in his position?'

The gravedigger looked shocked, but O'Brien simply nodded slowly. 'It's a funny old life sometimes.' He opened his umbrella. 'I'll walk you back to the chapel, Father.'

Da Costa shook his head. 'I'll take the long way round if you don't mind. I could do with the exercise. I'll borrow the umbrella if I may.'

'Certainly, Father.'

O'Brien gave it to him and da Costa walked away through the wilderness of marble monuments and tombstones.

The gravedigger said, 'That was a hell of an admission for a priest to make.'

O'Brien lit a cigarette. 'Ah, but then da Costa is no ordinary priest. Joe Devlin, the sacristan at St Anne's, told me all about him. He was some sort of commando or other during the war. Fought with Tito and the Jugoslav partisans. Afterwards, he went to the English College in Rome. Had a brilliant career there – could have been anything. Instead, he decided to go into mission work after he was ordained.'

'Where did they send him?'

'Korea. The Chinese had him for nearly five years. Afterwards they gave him some administrative job in Rome to recuperate, but he didn't like that. Got them to send him to Mozambique. I think it was his grandfather who was Portuguese. Anyway, he speaks the language.'

'What happened there?'

'Oh, he was deported. The Portuguese authorities accused him of having too much sympathy with rebels.'

'So what's he doing here?'

'Parish priest at Holy Name.'

'That pile of rubble?' the gravedigger said incredulously. 'Why, it's only standing up because of the scaffolding. If he gets a dozen for Mass on a Sunday he'll be lucky.'

'Exactly,' O'Brien said.

'Oh, I get it.' The gravedigger nodded sagely. 'It's their way of slapping his wrist.'

'He's a good man,' O'Brien said. 'Too good to be wasted.'

He was suddenly tired of the conversation and, for some strange reason, unutterably depressed. 'Better get that grave filled in.'

'What, now, in this rain?' The gravedigger looked at him bewildered. 'It can wait till later, can't it?'

'No, it damn well can't.'

O'Brien turned on heel and walked away and the grave-digger, swearing softly, pulled back the canvas sheet and got to work.

Father da Costa usually enjoyed a walk in the rain. It gave him a safe, enclosed feeling. Some psychological thing harking back to childhood, he supposed. But not now. Now, he felt restless and ill at case. Still disturbed by what had happened at the graveside.

He paused to break a personal vow by lighting a cigarette, awkwardly because of the umbrella in his left hand. He had recently reduced his consumption to five a day, and those he smoked only during the evening, a pleasure to be savoured by anticipation, but under the circumstances ...

He moved on into the oldest part of the cemetery, a section he had discovered with delight only a month or two previously. Here amongst the pines and the cypresses were superb Victorian-Gothic tombs, winged angels in marble, bronzed effigies of Death. Something different on every hand and on each slab a pious, sentimental, implacable belief in the hereafter was recorded.

He didn't see a living soul until he went round a corner between rhododendron bushes and paused abruptly. The path divided some ten yards in front of him and at the intersection stood a rather interesting grave. A door between marble pillars, partially open. In front of it the bronze figure of a woman in the act of rising from a chair.

A man in a dark overcoat, head bare, knelt before her on one knee. It was very quiet – only the rushing of the rain into wet earth and Father da Costa hesitated for a moment, unwilling to intrude on such a moment of personal grief.

And then an extraordinary thing happened. A priest stepped in through the eternity door at the back of the grave. A youngish man who wore a dark clerical raincoat over his cassock and a black hat.

What took place then was like something out of a nightmare, frozen in time, no reality to it at all. As the man in the dark overcoat glanced up, the priest produced an automatic with a long black silencer on the end. There was a dull thud as he fired. Fragments of bone and brain sprayed out from the rear of his victim's skull as he was slammed back against the gravel.

Father da Costa gave a hoarse cry, already seconds too late, 'For God's sake no!'

The young priest, in the act of stepping towards his victim, looked up, aware of da Costa for the first time. The arm swung instantly as he took deliberate aim and da Costa looked at Death, at the white devil's face on him, the dark, dark eyes.

And then, unaccountably, as his lips moved in prayer, the gun was lowered. The priest bent down to pick something up. The dark eyes stared into his for a second longer and then he slipped back through the door and was gone.

Father da Costa threw the umbrella to one side and dropped to his knees beside the man who had been shot. Blood trickled from the nostrils, the eyes were half-closed and yet, incredibly, there was still the sound of laboured breathing.

He began to recite in a firm voice, the prayers for the dying. Go, Christian Soul, from this world, in the Name of God the Father Almighty who created thee and then, with a hoarse rattle, the breathing stopped abruptly.

Fallon followed the path at the north end of the cemetery, walking fast, but not too fast. Not that it mattered. He was well screened by rhododendron bushes and it was unlikely that there would be anyone about in such weather.

The priest had been unfortunate. One of those time and chance things. It occurred to him, with something like amusement and not for the first time in his life, that no matter how well you planned, something unexpected always seemed to turn up.

He moved into a small wood and found the van parked in the track out of sight as he had left it. There was no one in the driver's seat and he frowned.

'Varley, where are you?' he called softly.

A small man in a raincoat and cloth cap came blundering through the trees, mouth gaping, clutching a pair of binoculars in one hand. He learned against the side of the van, fighting for breath.

Fallon shook him roughly by the shoulder. 'Where in the hell have you been?'

'I was watching,' Varley gasped. He raised the binoculars. 'Mr Meehan's orders. That priest. He saw you. Why didn't you give it to him?'

Fallon opened the van door and shoved him in behind the wheel. 'Shut up and get driving!'

He went round to the rear, opened the doors, got in and closed them again as the engine roared into life and they lurched away along the rough track.

He opened the small window at the rear of the driver's compartment. 'Steady,' he said. 'Easy does it. The slower the better. A friend of mine once robbed a bank and made his escape in an ice-cream van that couldn't do more than twenty miles an hour. They expect you to move like hell after a killing so do the other thing.'

He started to divest himself of the raincoat and cassock. Underneath he wore a dark sweater and grey slacks. His navy blue trench-coat was ready on the seat and he pulled it on. Then he took off the rubber galoshes he was wearing.

Varley was sweating as they turned into the dual carriageway. 'Oh, God,' he moaned. 'Mr Meehan will have our balls for this.'

'Let me worry about Meehan.' Fallon bundled the priest's clothing into a canvas holdall and zipped it shut.

'You don't know him, Mr Fallon,' Varley said. 'He's the devil himself when he's mad. There was a fella called Gregson a month or two back. Professional gambler. Bent as a corkscrew. He took one of Mr Meehan's clubs for five grand. When the boys brought him in, Mr Meehan nailed his hands to a table top. Did it himself, too. Six-inch nails and a five-pound hammer. Left him like that for five hours. To consider the error of his ways, that's what he said.'

'What did he do to him after that?' Fallon asked.

'I was there when they took the nails out. It was horrible. Gregson was in a terrible state. And Mr Meehan, he pats him on the cheek and tells him to be a good boy in future. Then he gives him a tenner and sends him to see this Paki doctor he uses.' Varley shuddered. 'I tell you, Mr Fallon, he's no man to cross.'

'He certainly seems to have his own special way of winning friends and influencing people,' Fallon said. 'The priest back there? Do you know him?'

'Father da Costa?' Varley nodded. 'Has a broken-down old church near the centre of the city. Holy Name, it's called. He runs the crypt as a kind of doss house for down-and-outs. About the only congregation he gets these days. One of these areas where they've pulled down all the houses.'

'Sounds interesting. Take me there.'

The car swerved violently, so great was Varley's suprise and he had to fight to regain control of the wheel. 'Don't be crazy. My orders were to take you straight back to the farm.'

'I'm changing them,' Fallon said simply and he sat back and lit a cigarette.

The Church of the Holy Name was in Rockingham Street, sandwiched between gleaming new cement and glass office blocks on the one hand and shabby, decaying warehouses on the other. Higher up the street there was a vast brickfield where old Victorian slum houses had been cleared. The bulldozers were already at work digging the foundation for more tower blocks.

Varley parked the van opposite the church and Fallon got out. It was a Victorian-Gothic monstrosity with a squat, ugly tower at its centre, the whole networked with scaffolding although there didn't seem to be any work in progress.

'It isn't exactly a hive of industry,' Fallon said.

'They ran out of money. The way I hear it the bloody place is falling down.' Varley wiped sweat from his brow nervously. 'Let's get out of it, Mr Fallon – please.'

'In a minute.'

Fallon crossed the road to the main entrance. There was the usual board outside with da Costa's name there and the times of Mass. Confession was at one o'clock and five on weekdays. He stood there, staring at the board for a moment and then he smiled slowly, turned and went back to the van.

He leaned in the window. 'This funeral place of Meehan's – where is it?'

'Paul's Square,' Varley said. 'It's only ten minutes from here on the side of the town hall.'

'I've got things to do,' Fallon said. 'Tell Meehan I'll meet him there at two o'clock.'

'For Christ's sake, Mr Fallon,' Varley said frantically. 'You can't do that,' but Fallon was already halfway across the road going back towards the church.

Varley moaned, 'You bastard!' and he moved into gear and drove away.

Fallon didn't go into the church. Instead, he walked up the side street beside a high, greystone wall. There was an old cemetery inside, flat tombstones mainly and a house in one corner, presumably the presbytery. It looked to be in about the same state as the church.

It was a sad, grey sort of place, the leafless trees black with a century of city soot that even the rain could not wash away and he was filled with a curious melancholy. This was what it all came to in the end whichever way you looked at it. Words on cracked stones. A gate clicked behind him and he turned sharply.

A young woman was coming down the path from the presbytery, an old trenchcoat over her shoulders against the rain. She carried an ebony walking stick in one hand and there was a bundle of sheet music under the other arm.

Fallon judged her to be in her late twenties with black shoulder-length hair and a grave, steady face. One of those plain faces that for some strange reason you found yourself looking at twice.

He got ready to explain himself as she approached, but she stared straight through him as if he wasn't there. And then, as she went by, he noticed the occasional tap with the stick against the end of a tomb – familiar friends.

She paused and turned, a slight, uncertain frown on her face. 'Is anyone there?' she called in a calm, pleasant voice.

Fallon didn't move a muscle. She stayed there for a moment longer, then turned and continued along the path. When she reached a small door at the end of the church, she took out a yale key, opened it and went inside.

Fallon went out through the side gate and round to the main entrance. When he pushed open the door and went inside he was conscious of the familiar odour and smiled wryly.

'Incense, candles and the holy water,' he said softly and his fingers dipped in the bowl as he went past in a kind of reflex action.

It had a sort of charm and somewhere in the dim past, some-body had obviously spent a lot of money on it. There was Victorian stained glass and imitation medieval carvings everywhere. Gargoyles, skulls, imagination running riot.

Scaffolding lifted in a spider's web to support the nave at the altar end and it was very dark except for the sanctuary lamp and candles flickering before the Virgin.

The girl was seated at the organ behind the choir stalls. She started to play softly. Just a few tentative chords at first and then, as Fallon started to walk down the centre aisle, she moved into the opening of the Bach Prelude and Fugue in D Major.

And she was good. He stood at the bottom of the steps, listening, then started up. She stopped at once and swung round.

'Is anyone there?'

'I'm sorry if I disturbed you,' he told her. 'I was enjoying listening.'

There was that slight, uncertain smile on her face again. She seemed to be waiting, so he carried on. 'If I might make a suggestion?'

'You play the organ?'

'Used to. Look, that trumpet stop is a reed. Unreliable at the best of times, but in a damp atmosphere like this -' he shrugged. 'It's so badly out of tune it's putting everything else out. I'd leave it in if I were you.'

'Why, thank you,' she said. 'I'll try that.'

She turned back to the organ and Fallon went down the steps to the rear of the church and sat in a pew in the darkest corner he could find.

She played the Prelude and Fugue right through and he sat there, eyes closed, arms folded. And his original judgement still stood. She was good – certainly worth listening to.

When she finished after half an hour or so, she gathered up her things and came down the steps. She paused at the bottom and waited, perhaps sensing that he was still there, but he made no sign and after a moment, she went into the sacristy.

And in the darkness at the back of the church, Fallon sat waiting.

3

Miller

Father da Costa was just finishing his second cup of tea in the cemetery superintendent's office when there was a knock at the door and a young police constable came in.

'Sorry to bother you again, Father, but Mr Miller would like a word with you.'

Father da Costa stood up. 'Mr Miller?' he said.

'Detective-Superintendent Miller, sir. He's head of the CID.'

It was still raining heavily when they went outside. The forecourt was crammed with police vehicles and as they walked along the narrow path, there seemed to be police everywhere, moving through the rhododendron bushes.

The body was exactly where he had left it although it was now partially covered with a groundsheet. A man in an overcoat knelt on one knee beside it making some sort of preliminary examination. He was speaking in a low voice into a portable dictaphone and what looked like a doctor's bag was open on the ground beside him.

There were police here everywhere, too, in uniform and out. Several of them were taking careful measurements with tapes. The others were searching the ground area.

The young detective-inspector who had his statement, was called Fitzgerald. He was standing to one side, talking to a tall, thin, rather scholarly-looking man in a belted raincoat. When he saw da Costa, he came across at once.

'There you are, Father. This is Detective-Superintendent Miller.'

Miller shook hands. He had a thin face and patient brown eyes. Just now he looked very tired.

He said, 'A bad business, Father.'

'It is indeed,' da Costa said.

'As you can see, we're going through the usual motions and Professor Lawlor here is making a preliminary report. He'll do an autopsy this afternoon. On the other hand, because of the way it happened you're obviously the key to the whole affair. If I might ask you a few more questions?'

'Anything I can do, of course, but I can assure you that Inspector Fitzgerald was most efficient. I don't think there can be anything he overlooked.'

Fitzgerald looked suitably modest and Miller smiled. 'Father, I've been a policeman for nearly twenty-five years and if I've learned one thing, it's that there's always something and it's usually that something which wins cases.'

Professor Lawlor stood up. 'I've finished here, Nick,' he said. 'You can move him.' He turned to da Costa. 'You said, if I got it right from Fitzgerald, that he was down on his right knee at the edge of the grave.' He walked across. 'About here?'

'That's correct.'

Lawlor turned to Miller. 'It fits, he must have glanced up at the crucial moment and his head would naturally be turned to the right. The entry wound is about an inch above the outer corner of the left eye.'

'Anything else interesting?' Miller asked.

'Not really. Entry wound a quarter of an inch in diameter. Very little bleeding. No powder marking. No staining. Exterior wound two inches in diameter. Explosive type with disruptions of the table of the skull and lacerations of the right occipital lobe of the brain. The wound is two inches to the right of the exterior occipital protuberance.'

'Thank you, Doctor Kildare,' Miller said.

Professor Lawlor turned to Father da Costa and smiled. 'You see, Father, medicine has its jargon, too, just like the Church. What I'm really trying to say is that he was shot through the skull at close quarters – but not too close.'

He picked up his bag. 'The bullet shouldn't be too far away, or what's left of it,' he said as he walked off.

'Thank you for reminding me,' Miller called ironically.

Fitzgerald had crossed to the doorway and now he came back, shaking his head. 'They're making a plaster cast of those footprints, but we're wasting our time. He was wearing galoshes. Another thing, we've been over the appropriate area with a tooth comb and there isn't a sign of a cartridge case.'

Miller frowned and turned to da Costa. 'You're certain he was using a silencer?'

'Absolutely.'

'You seem very sure.'

'As a young man I was lieutenant in the Special Air Service, Superintendent,' da Costa told him calmly. 'The Aegean Islands – Jugoslavia. That sort of thing. I'm afraid I had to use a silenced pistol myself on more than one occasion.'

Miller and Fitzgerald glanced at each other in surprise and then Father da Costa saw it all in a flash of blinding light. 'But of course,' he said. 'It's impossible to use a silencer with a revolver. It has to be an automatic pistol which means the cartridge case would have been ejected.' He crossed to the doorway. 'Let me see, the pistol was in his right hand so the cartridge case should be somewhere about here.'

'Exactly,' Miller said. 'Only we can't find it.'

And then da Costa remembered. 'He dropped to one knee and picked something up, just before he left.'

Miller turned to Fitzgerald who looked chagrined. 'Which wasn't in your report.'

'My fault, Superintendent,' da Costa said. 'I didn't tell him. It slipped my mind.'

'As I said, Father, there's always something.' Miller took out a pipe and started to fill it from a worn leather pouch. 'I know one thing. This man's no run-of-the-mill tear-away. He's a professional right down to his fingertips, and that's good.'

'I don't understand,' Father da Costa said.

'Because there aren't many of that calibre about, Father. It's as simple as that. Let me explain. About six months ago somebody got away with nearly a quarter of a million from a local bank. Took all weekend to get into the vault. A beautiful job – too beautiful. You see we knew straight away that there were no more than five or six men in the country capable of that level of craftsmanship and three of them were in jail. The rest was purely a matter of mathematics.'

'I see,' da Costa said.

'Now take my unknown friend. I know a hell of a lot about him already. He's an exceptionally clever man because that priest's disguise was a touch of genius. Most people think in stereotypes. If I ask them if they saw anyone they'll say no. If I press them, they'll remember they saw a postman or – as in this case – a priest. If I ask them what he looked like, we're in trouble because all they can remember is that he looked like a priest – any priest.'

'I saw his face,' da Costa said. 'Quite clearly.'

'I only hope you'll be as certain if you see a photo of him dressed differently.' Miller frowned. 'Yes, he knew what he was doing all right. Galoshes to hide his normal footprints, probably a couple of sizes too large, and a crack shot. Most people couldn't hit a barn door with a handgun at twelve feet. He only needed one shot and that's going some, believe me.'

'And considerable nerve,' Father da Costa said. 'He didn't forget to pick up that cartridge case, remember, in spite of the fact that I had appeared on the scene.'

'We ought to have you in the Department, Father.' Miller turned to Fitzgerald. 'You carry on here. I'll take Father da Costa down town.'

Da Costa glanced at his watch. It was twelve-fifteen and he said quickly, 'I'm sorry, Superintendent, but that isn't possible. I hear confessions at one o'clock. And my niece was expecting me for lunch at twelve. She'll be worried.'

Miller took it quite well. 'I see. And when will you be free?'

'Officially at one-thirty. It depends, of course.'

'On the number of customers?'

'Exactly.'

Miller nodded good-humouredly. 'All right Father, I'll pick you up at two o'clock. Will that be all right?'

'I should imagine so,' da Costa said.

'I'll walk you to your car.'

The rain had slackened just a little as they went along the path through the rhododendron bushes. Miller yawned several times and rubbed his eyes.

Father da Costa said, 'You look tired, Superintendent.'

'I didn't get much sleep last night. A car salesman on one of the new housing estates cut his wife's throat with a bread knife, then picked up the phone and dialled nine-nine-nine. A nice, straightforward job, but I still had to turn out personally. Murder's important. I was in bed again by nine o'clock and then they rang through about this little lot.'

'You must lead a strange life,' da Costa said. 'What does your wife think about it?'

'She doesn't. She died last year.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I'm not. She had cancer of the bowel,' Miller told him calmly, then frowned slightly. 'Sorry, I know you don't look at things that way in your Church.'

Father da Costa didn't reply to that one because it struck him with startling suddenness that in Miller's position, he would have very probably felt the same way.

They reached his car, an old grey Mini van in front of the chapel, and Miller held the door open for him as he got in.

Da Costa leaned out of the window. 'You think you'll get him, Superintendent? You're confident?'

'I'll get him all right, Father,' Miller said grimly. 'I've got to if I'm to get the man I really want – the man behind him. The man who set this job up.'

'I see. And you already know who that is?'

'I'd put my pension on it.'

Father da Costa switched on the ignition and the engine rattled noisily into life. 'One thing still bothers me,' he said.

'What's that, Father?'

'This man you're looking for – the killer. If he's as much a professional as you say, then why didn't he kill me when he had the chance?'

'Exactly,' Miller said. 'Which is why it bothers me too. See you later, Father.'

He stood back as the priest drove away and Fitzgerald appeared round the corner of the chapel.

'Quite a man,' he said.

Miller nodded. 'Find out everything you can about him and I mean everything. I'll expect to hear from you by a quarter to two.' He turned on the astonished Fitzgerald. 'It should be easy enough for you. You're a practising Catholic, aren't you, and a Knight of St Columbia or whatever you call it, or is that just a front for the IRA?'

'It damn well isn't,' Fitzgerald told him indignantly.

'Good. Try the cemetery superintendent first and then there's the Cathedral. They should be able to help. They'll talk to you.'

He put a match to his pipe and Fitzgerald said despairingly, 'But why, for God's sake?'

'Because another thing I've learned after twenty-five years of being a copper is never to take anything or anyone at face value,' Miller told him.

He walked across to his car, climbed in, nodded to the driver and leaned back. By the time they reached the main road, he was already asleep.