a Prayer for the Dying (1974)[1]

by Jack Higgins

  '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 everyt
hing 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.

  4

  Confessional

  Anna da Costa was playing the piano in the living-room of the old presbytery when Father da Costa entered. She swung round on the piano stool at once and stood up.

  'Uncle Michael, you're late. What happened?' He kissed her cheek and led her to a chair by the window. 'You'll hear soon enough so I might as well tell you now. A man was murdered this morning at the cemetery.'

  She gazed up at him blankly, those beautiful, useless, dark eyes fixed on some point beyond, and there was a complete lack of comprehension on her face.

  'Murdered? I don't understand.'

  He sat down beside her and took both her hands in his. 'I saw it. Anna. I was the only witness.'

  He got up and started to pace up and down the room. 'I was walking through the old part of the cemetery. Remember, I took you there last month?'

  He described what had happened in detail, as much for himself as for her, because for some reason it seemed suddenly necessary.

  'And he didn't shoot me, Anna!' he said. 'That's the strangest thing of all. I just don't understand it. It doesn't make any kind of sense.'