Rough Justice

by Higgins, Jack

  THE SIGN READ: St. Mary’s Priory, Little Sisters of Pity. Mother Superior: Sister Maria Brosnan.

  Miller pushed open the great oaken door and went in. A young nun was at a reception desk writing in some sort of register. A large notice promised soup and bread in the kitchen at noon. There was also a supper in the canteen at six. There were times for mass in the chapel noted, and also for confession. These matters were in the hands of a Father Martin Sharkey.

  “Can I help you?” the young nun asked.

  “My name is Blunt, Mark Blunt. I’m from London. I believe the mother superior is expecting me.”

  The girl sparkled. “You’re from Wapping? I’m Sister Bridget. I did my novitiate there last year. How is the mother superior?”

  Miller’s hard work reading the files paid off. “Oh, you mean Sister Mary Michael? She’s well, I believe, but I’m working out of Monsignor Baxter’s office at the Bishop’s Palace.”

  A door to the paneled wall at one side of her, labeled Sacristy, had been standing ajar, and now it opened and a priest in a black cassock stepped through.

  “Do you have to bother the boy with idle chatter, Bridget, my love, when it’s the mother superior he’s needing?”

  She was slightly confused. “I’m sorry, Father.”

  He was a small man, fair haired, with an intelligent face alive with good humor. “You’ll be the young man with the plans for the improvements we’ve been waiting for, Mr. Blunt, isn’t it?”

  “Mark Blunt.” He held out his hand, and the priest took it.

  “Martin Sharkey. You know what women are like, all agog at the thought that the old place is going to be finally put to rights.” There was only a hint of an Ulster accent in his voice, which was fluent and quite vibrant in a way. “I’m in and out of the place at the moment, but if there’s anything I can do, let me know. You’ll find the lady you seek through the end door there, which leads to the chapel.” He turned and went back into the sacristy.

  THE CHAPEL WAS everything Miller expected. Incense, candles, and holy water, the Virgin and child floating in semidarkness, the confessional boxes to one side, the altar with the sanctuary lamp. Sister Maria Brosnan was on her knees scrubbing the floor with a brush. To perform such a basic task was to remind her to show proper humility. She stopped and glanced up.

  “Mark Blunt, Sister.”

  “Of course.” She smiled, a small woman with a contented face. “You must excuse me. I have a weakness for pride. I need to remind myself on a daily basis.”

  She put the brush and a cloth in her bucket, and he gave her his hand and pulled her up. “I was talking to Mr. Frobisher the other day. He asked to be remembered to you.”

  “A good and kind man. He saw what was needed here a year ago and doubted the order could find the money.” She led the way into the darkness, opened a door to reveal a very ordered office, a desk, but also a bed in the corner. “But all that has changed, thanks to Monsignor Baxter in London. It’s wonderful for all of us that the money has been made available.”

  “As always, it oils the wheels.”

  She went behind her desk. “Take a seat for a moment,” she said, which he did. “As I understand it, you will examine everything referring to Mr. Frobisher’s original findings and report back to Monsignor Baxter?”

  “That’s it exactly, but let me stress that I don’t think you have the slightest need to worry. There is a very firm intention to proceed. I just need a few days to check things out. I understand I can stay here?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll show you around now.”

  “I met Father Sharkey on my way in,” Miller told her.

  “A great man—a Jesuit, no less.”

  “Soldier of Christ.”

  “Of course. We are fortunate to have him. Father Murphy, our regular priest, was struck down the other week with pneumonia. The diocese managed to find Father Sharkey for us. He was due at the English College at the Vatican, a great scholar, I understand, but he’s helping out until Father Murphy is fit again. Now let’s do the grand tour.”

  SHE SHOWED HIM everything, starting with the top floor, where there was dormitory space for twenty nuns, then the second floor, with special accommodations for nursing cases of one kind or another, a theater for medical attention. There were half a dozen patients, nuns in attendance.

  “Do you get people in and out on a regular basis?”

  “Of course—we are, after all, a nursing order. Five of the people on this floor have cancer of one kind or another. I’m a doctor, didn’t you know that?”

  All Miller could do was say, “Actually, I didn’t. Sorry.”

  The doors stood open for easy access, and a couple of the nuns moved serenely in and out, offering help as it was needed. Some patients were draped in a festoon of needles and tubes, drips of one kind or another. Sister Maria Brosnan murmured a few words of comfort as she passed. The end room had a man in a wheelchair, what appeared to be plaster of Paris supporting his head, a strip of bandage covering his left eye. He was drinking through a straw from a plastic container of orange juice.

  “Now then, Mr. Fallon, you’re doing well, but try a little walk. It will strengthen you.”

  His reply was garbled and they moved to the next room, where a woman, looking pale as death, lay propped up against a pillow, eyes closed. Sister Maria Brosnan stroked her forehead, and the woman’s tired eyes opened.

  “You’re very good to me,” she whispered.

  “Go to sleep, dear, don’t resist it.”

  They walked out. Miller said, “She’s dying, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, yes, and very soon now. Each is different. A time comes when radiotherapy and drugs have done their best and failed. To ease the patient’s journey into the next world then becomes one of our most important duties.”

  “And Fallon?”

  “He’s different. According to his notes, he has a cancer biting deep into the left eye and it also affects his speech. He’s only been with us for two days, waiting for a bed at the Ardmore Institute. You see, radiotherapy is beyond our powers here. Up at Ardmore, they do wonderful things.”

  “So there could still be hope for him?”

  “Young man, there is hope for all of us. God willing. With cancer, I’ve seen total remission in some cases.”

  “A miracle?” Miller said.

  “Perhaps, Mr. Blunt.” Her simple faith shone out of her. “Our Lord performed them.”

  They were on the ground floor: kitchens, canteen, a dormitory for twenty-five with a divider, women one side, men the other.

  “Street people. They queue to get a bed for the night.”

  “Amazing,” Miller said. “You really do good work.”

  “I like to think so.” They were back in the entrance hall, Bridget at her desk.

  She produced a parcel. There was a bright label that read Glover Hi-Speed Deliveries.

  “For you, Mr. Blunt,” she said. “A young man on a motorcycle—I had to sign for it.”

  Miller took it and managed to smile. “Something I needed to help me in my work,” he said to the mother superior.

  She accepted that. “Just come this way.” He followed her toward the chapel entrance, and she turned into a short corridor with a door that said Washroom and two doors opposite.

  “Father Sharkey has one room, now you, the other.” She turned the key in the door and opened it. There was a locker, a desk, and a small bed in the corner.

  “This will be fine,” Miller told her.

  “Good. Obviously, you’re free to go anywhere you want. If you need me, just call. One thing—do keep your room locked. Some of our guests can be light-fingered.”

  She went out. Miller locked the door, sat on the bed, and tore open the package. Inside in a cardboard box was a soft leather ankle holder, a Colt .25 with a silencer and a box containing twenty hollow-point cartridges, a lethal package if ever there was one. There was no message; the name Glover Hi-Speed Deliveries said it all, the deliveryman o
n the motorcycle probably SAS.

  “So it begins,” he said softly, and unpacked his holdall.

  THERE WAS A CRYPT beneath the chapel, he knew that from Frobisher’s plans. He found the entrance in the dark shadows and noticed a couple of nuns sitting on one of the benches by the confessional boxes. The door opened behind him, he turned, and Father Sharkey entered the chapel, a violet stole around his neck.

  “Confession about to start. Are you interested?”

  “Actually, I’m about to examine the crypt.”

  “There is electric light in the crypt itself, but once you move on from there, it’s a creepy old place.”

  “I’ve had a look at Frobisher’s plans.”

  Sharkey was speaking softly because there was a murmur of prayer from the nuns. “It’s an underworld down there, extending not only under the Sailor but along the quay itself. Go poking your nose in there and it’s tricky. No lights. There’s a battery lantern on the shelf at the top of the crypt steps for emergencies.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take care.”

  Starkey crossed to the confessional boxes and entered one of them, and Miller opened the crypt door and entered. It was cold and damp, and he switched on the light, found the lantern, and took it with him when he ventured down the steps. There was an arched entrance into a cellar, a sound of dripping water, and he moved on. A single bulb, and through another entrance, only darkness.

  He switched on the lantern and kept going, aware of noise somewhere near at hand. Some of it was overhead, voices, laughter, and then he came to a wooden door secured by massive bolts. When he opened it, the light from his lantern disclosed a large cellar, barrels, crates of beer bottles, wine racks. There was a table, chairs, a door on the far side with a wooden cupboard beside it.

  He opened the door to a stairway and the voices seemed clearer from up above. He closed it again, opened the cupboard door, and found six AK47 assault rifles above a khaki-painted ammunition box. So Kelly was still in business? He turned to go back to the other door and noticed a grille in the wall, originally a Victorian innovation to allow air to circulate, and then he heard somebody calling through the other door, hurried back, bolted the door, and turned off his lantern.

  He waited. The other door opened and the light was switched on, shining fingers stabbing through the grille. He could hear perfectly, managed to peer through, and recognized Kelly at once. The other man was one of the two he’d seen coming out of the bar that morning.

  Kelly was speaking. “Well, God’s been good to us and the weather’s not held the Lost Hope up too much, Flannery.”

  “Tomorrow evening, is it?” Flannery asked.

  “If we’re lucky. Reach over and get a couple of bottles of the Beaujolais. They’ll see to lunch for us.”

  There was the clink of bottles. “So, we’ll get a chance to meet the man himself, the great Liam Ryan, and me never having even clapped eyes on him,” Flannery said.

  “And neither have I. A man to avoid, and that’s a fact. He’s been known to remove fingers with bolt cutters and make his victims swallow them.”

  “Mother Mary, what kind of a man would do that?”

  “A monster, if all they say about him is true. So the boat comes in, but he won’t be on it. He always covers his back, you see. When he’s satisfied it’s safe, he’ll be in touch and check that I’ve paid up in Geneva. Only then do we unload the Stingers. We’ll hide them down here for the time being.”

  “And he’s away out of it when the boat leaves?”

  “I’ve no idea, and I don’t care as long as he goes. . . . That’s enough of the talking now. I’m parched. Let’s get back upstairs and sample the wine.”

  The light went out, and the door shut with a hollow boom. Miller switched on the lantern, turned, and made his way back to the crypt. A stroke of luck, hearing all that. It certainly clarified a few things, and the fact that Ryan wouldn’t be on the boat when it came was important. So where would he be? He thought about that as he went back up to the chapel.

  SISTER BRIDGET at her reception desk smiled at him. “Can I help in any way?”

  “I could do with a bite. Can I eat here?”

  “Certainly, but for lunch we only do bread and vegetable soup. It’s very nourishing, but the Sailor does burgers and pies and Irish stew.” She hesitated. “They’re a rough lot in there.”

  “So Mr. Frobisher told me in London.”

  “Father Sharkey goes there sometimes. He’s just left, so I expect he’s gone.”

  Miller thought about it. In a way, it was necessary for him to step into the circle of danger that was the Sailor. Given that, it seemed to him that he had a better hope of survival if the priest was present.

  “I’ll take my chances,” he told Bridget, who was looking worried. “Don’t fret.”

  HE OPENED the front door of the pub, stepped inside, and found himself in a bar typical of the kind to be found on the Belfast waterfront and dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century. There were mahogany cubicles for privacy, iron tables with tiled tops, a long bar with a brass rail to put a foot on, ornate mirrors of the Victorian period. Behind the bar, bottles of every kind of drink ranged before the pub’s patrons.

  There were perhaps a couple of dozen men propping up the bar, talking, laughing, sailors and dockworkers. Kelly stood at the end with Flannery, enjoying the wine.

  Father Starkey sat in a window seat, reading the Belfast Telegraph and smoking a cigarette. He had no drink in front of him.

  “Hello, Father,” Miller said. “Can I get you something?”

  Sharkey looked up and smiled. “That’s kind of you. A Guinness wouldn’t be a burden.”

  There was something of a silence, and men turned to stare with unfriendly looks as Miller approached the bar. The barman had cropped hair and a hard face. He wore a black waistcoat, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up above muscular arms.

  Miller said cheerfully, “Guinness twice, please.”

  The barman said, “English, is it?”

  “That’s right. I’m working at the priory.”

  “The wrong part of the waterfront for you, Sunshine,” the barman told him. “The English aren’t exactly popular here.”

  Kelly intervened. “Now then, Dolan, don’t let’s be hard on the young man. It’s not his fault his mother spawned a Brit. Give him his Guinness now and serve it properly in a bottle. How many times do I have to tell you? Manners, boy, manners.”

  “I see what you mean, Mr. Kelly, I do indeed.” Dolan produced a bottle, flicked off the cap, walked all the way around the bar, and approached Miller. “Your drink, sir.”

  He started pouring it on Miller’s left shoulder, then down the front of his raincoat. He was smiling as he said, “Would that be satisfactory?”

  Somebody cheered, and there was genuine laughter. Miller was trapped. The character he was playing was not supposed to be able to handle a brute like Dolan. As it happened, he didn’t need to. Father Sharkey was on his feet and approaching.

  “You’ll excuse me, Mr. Kelly, if I have words with your man here.” He smiled at Dolan. “Did I ever tell you my uncle was a bare-knuckle boxer? I was up to Belfast from County Down for my schooling, and I came home the worse for wear after what they did to me in the yard. Timing and hitting, that’s what you must learn, he said, like this.”

  He drove his left into Dolan’s stomach, his right into the side of the barman’s face as the man keeled over, turned him around to fall across the bar, delivered a double blow to the kidneys, then bent and grabbed an ankle and heaved him over headfirst.

  It was like an execution, the sheer brutal savagery almost beyond belief. The bar was reduced to total silence. Sharkey turned to Kelly and Flannery.

  “My God, you see, is a God of wrath. Think about that, Mr. Kelly, I’d strongly advise it. As for Mr. Blunt, remember he works for the Church. I’d see to your man if I was you, he doesn’t look too well. We’ll dine at Molly Malone’s place today. Her Irish stew i
s better than yours anyway.”

  LATER, sitting at a window table in the café along the front after the meal, sharing a pot of tea, Miller said, “A hard lot, Kelly’s people.”

  “A hard life for them here, the Troubles year after year and things never getting any better. Where do you live in London?”

  The lies again, the deceit. “Highbury,” Miller told him. “It’s near Islington.”

  “I know where it is. I lived in London for years when I was at college. Kilburn.”

  “Why was that?”

  “There was no work here when I was a boy, and my mother died when I was born, so we crossed the water, lived there for years, and then my father died in an accident. So I came home, back to my uncle, and the religious life beckoned.” He took out a packet of Gallaghers and lit one. “The only trouble is I have a terrible temper.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t mess about,” Miller said.

  “I have a personal philosophy, a kind of existential thing. Life should be lived to the full. If you feel it, then do it, it’s quite simple. You create your own values.”

  “It sounds great, but I think there are times when that wouldn’t be very practical.”

  “O ye, of little faith. We’d better get back. I have another session in the confessional box and then a mass.”

  FOR THE REST of the day, he tried to look busy, starting on the top floor, always with one of Frobisher’s plans under his arm and a note board at the ready. Life carried on around him, the nuns busying themselves with their nursing duties on the second floor. There was a brooding atmosphere there, the thought of death waiting in the wings, the occasional moan of pain. And one macabre sight: Fallon with the cancer-ravaged face, out of his room in a cardigan and trousers, taking a turn along the long corridor in slow motion, leaning on a walking stick. It was like something out of a horror movie, the decay of flesh under the plaster of Paris, and the smell as Miller eased past, sickly sweet like rotting flowers.