A Prayer for the Dying (v5)

by Jack Higgins

  They paused beside an old marble mausoleum for Fallon to light a cigarette and it was that precise moment that Billy Meehan and Varley appeared at the side gate. They saw Fallon and the girl at once and ducked back out of sight.

  'See, he's still here, 'Varley said. 'Thank God fot that.'

  'You go back to Paul's Square and wait for Jack,' Billy said. 'Tell him where I am. I'll keep watch here.'

  Varley moved away and Billy slipped in through the gate and worked his way towards Fallon and Anna, using the monuments for cover.

  Anna said, 'I'd like to thank you for what you did last night.'

  'It was nothing.'

  'One of the men involved was an old friend of yours. O'Hara, wasn't that his name?'

  Fallon said quickly, 'No, you've got it wrong.'

  'I don't think so,' she insisted. 'Uncle Michael spoke to him after you'd left, in the pub across the road. He told him a great deal about you. Belfast, Londonderry - the IRA.'

  'The bastard,' Fallon said bitterly. 'He always had a big mouth, that one. Somebody will be closing his eyes with pennies one of these fine days if he isn't careful.'

  'I don't think he meant any harm. Uncle Michael's impression was that he thought a great deal about you.' She hesitated and said carefully, 'Things happen in war sometimes that nobody intends.'

  Fallon cut in on her sharply. 'I never go back to anything in thought or deed. It doesn't pay.' They turned into another path and he looked up at the rain. 'God, is it never going to stop? What a world. Even the bloody sky won't stop weeping.'

  'You have a bitter view of life, Mr Fallon.'

  'I speak as I find and as far as I am concerned, life is one hell of a name for the world as it is.'

  'And is there nothing, then?' she demanded. 'Not one single solitary thing worth having in this world of yours?'

  'Only you,' he said.

  They were close to the presbytery now and Billy Meehan observed them closely with the aid of a pair of binoculars from behind a mausoleum.

  Anna stopped walking and turned to face Fallon. 'What did you say?'

  'You've no business here.' He made a sweeping gesture with one arm encompassing the whole cemetery. 'This place belongs to the dead and you're still alive.'

  'And you?'

  There was a long pause and then he said calmly, 'No, it's different for me. I'm a dead man walking. Have been for a long time now.'

  She was to remember that remark always as one of the most terrible things she had ever heard in her life.

  She stared up at him, those calm, blind eyes fixed on some point in space, and then she reached up and pulled down his head and kissed him hard, her mouth opening in a deliberately provocative gesture.

  She pulled way. 'Did you feel that?' she demanded fiercely. 'Did I break through?'

  'I think you could say that,' he said in some amazement.

  'Good,' she said. 'I'm going in now. I want to change and then I have lunch to get ready. You'd better play the organ or something until my uncle gets back.'

  'All right,' Fallon said and turned away.

  He had only taken a few steps when she called, 'Oh, and Fallon?' When he turned she was standing in the porch, the door half-open. 'Think of me. Remember me. Concentrate on that. I exist. I'm real.'

  She went in and closed the door and Fallon turned and walked away quickly.

  It was only when he was out of sight that Billy moved from the shelter of the mausoleum holding his binoculars in one hand. Fallon and the priest's nice. Now that was interesting.

  He was about to turn away when a movement at one of the presbytery windows caught his eye. He moved back into cover and raised the binoculars.

  Anna was standing at the window and as he watched, she started to unbutton her blouse. His mouth went dry, a hand seemed to squeeze his insides and when she unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it, his hands, clutching the binoculars, started to shake.

  The bitch, he thought, and she's Fallon's woman. Fallon's. The ache between his thighs was almost unbearable and he turned and hurried away.

  Fallon had been playing the organ for just over an hour when he paused for breath. It had been a long time and his hands were aching, but it was good to get down to it again.

  He turned and found Father da Costa sitting in the front pew watching him, arms folded. 'How long have you been there?' Fallon got up and started down the steps between the choir stalls.

  'Half and hour, maybe more,' Father da Costa said. 'You're brilliant, you know that, don't you?'

  'Used to be.'

  'Before you took up the gun for dear old mother Ireland and that glorious cause?'

  Fallon went very still. When he spoke, it was almost in a whisper. 'That's of no interest to you.'

  'It's of every interest,' Father da Costa told him. 'To me in particular, for obvious reasons. Good God, man, how could you do what you've done and you with so much music in you?'

  'Sir Philip Sidney was reputed to be the most perfect of all knights of the court of Elizabeth Tudor,' Fallon said. 'He composed music and wrote poetry like an angel. In his lighter moments, he and Sir Walter Raleigh herded Irishmen together into convenient spots and butchered them like cattle.'

  'All right,' Father da Costa said. 'Point taken. But is that how you see yourself? As a soldier?'

  'My father was.' Fallon sat back on the altar rail. 'He was a sergeant in the Parachute Regiment. Killed at Arnhem fighting for the English. There's irony for you.'

  'And what happened to you?'

  'My grandfather raised me. He had a hill farm in the Sperrins. Sheep mostly - a few horses. I ran happily enough, wild and barefooted, till the age of seven when the new schoolmaster, who was also organist of the church, discovered I had perfect pitch. Life was never the same after that.'

  'And you went to Trinity College?'

  Fallon frowned slightly. 'Who told you that?'

  'Your friend O'Hara. Did you take a degree?'

  There was sudden real humour in Fallon's eyes. 'Would you believe me, now, Father, if I told you the farm boy became a doctor of music, no less?'

  'Why not?' da Costa replied calmly. 'Beethoven's mother was a cook, but never mind that. The other? How did that start?'

  'Time and chance. I went to stay with a cousin of mine in Belfast one weekend in August 1969. He lived in the Falls Road. You may remember what happened.'

  Father da Costa nodded gravely. 'I think so.'

  'An Orange mob led by B specials swarmed in bent on burning every Catholic house in the area to the ground. They were stopped by a handful of IRA men who took to the streets to defend the area.'

  'And you became involved.'

  'Somebody gave me a rifle, let's put it that way, and I discovered a strange thing. What I aimed at, I hit.'

  'You were a natural shot.'

  'Exactly.' Fallon's face was dark and suddenly, he took the Ceska out of his pocket. 'When I hold this, when my finger's on the trigger, a strange thing happens. It becomes an extension, and extension of me personally. Does that make sense?'

  'Oh, yes,' Father da Costa said. 'But of the most horrible kind. So you continued to kill.'

  'To fight,' Fallon said, his face stony, and he slipped the Ceska back inside his pocket. 'As a soldier of the Irish Republican Army.'

  'And it became easier? Each time it became easier.'

  Fallon straightened slowly. His eyes were very dark. He made no reply.

  Father da Costa said, 'I've just come from a final showdown with Superintendent Miller. Would you be interested to know what he intends?'

  'All right, tell me.'

  'He's laying the facts before the Director of Public Prosecutions and asking him for a warrant charging me with being an accessory after the fact to murder.'

  'He'll never make it stick.'

  'And what if he succeeds? Would it cause you the slightest concern?'

  'Probably not.'

  'Good, honesty at last. There's hope for you yet. And your cause, Fall
on. Irish unity or freedom or hatred of the bloody English or whatever it was. Was it worth it? The shooting and bombings. People dead, people crippled?'

  Fallon's face was very white now, the eyes jet black, expressionless. 'I enjoyed every golden moment,' he said calmly.

  'And the children?' Father da Costa demanded. 'Was it worth that?'

  'That was an accident,' Fallon said hoarsely.

  'It always is, but at least there was some semblance of reason to it, however mistaken. But Krasko was plain, cold-blooded murder.'

  Fallon laughed softly, 'All right, Father, you want answers. I'll try and give you some.' He walked to the altar rail and put a foot on it, leaning an elbow on his knee, chin in hand. 'There's a poem by Ezra Pound I used to like. "Some quick to arm," it says, and then later, "walked eye-deep in hell, believing in old men's lies." Well, that was my cause at the final end of things. Old men's lies. And for that, I personally killed over thirty people assisted at the end of God knows how many more.'

  'All right, so you were mistaken. In the end, violence in that sort of situation gains you nothing. I could have told you that before you started. But Krasko.' Father da Costa shook his head. 'That, I don't understand.'

  'Look, we live in different worlds,' Fallon told him. 'People like Meehan - they're renegades. So am L I engage in a combat that's nothing to do with you and the rest of the bloody civilians. We inhabit our own world. Krasko was a whoremaster, a pimp, a drug-pusher.'

  'Whom you murdered,' Father da Costa repeated inexorably.

  'I fought for my cause, Father,' Fallon said. 'Killed for it, even when I ceased to believe it worth a single-human life. That was murder. But now? Now, I only kill pigs.'

  The disgust, the self-loathing were clear in every word he spoke. Father da Costa said with genuine compassion, 'The world can't be innocent with Man in it.'

  'And what in the hell is that pearl of wisdom supposed to mean?' Fallon demanded.

  'Perhaps I can explain best by telling you a story,' Father da Costa said. 'I spent several years in a Chinese Communist prison camp after being captured in Korea. What they called a special indoctrination centre.'

  Fallon could not help but be interested. 'Brainwashing?' he said.

  'That's right. From their point of view, I was a special target, the Catholic Church's attitude to Communism being what it is. They have an extraordinarily simple technique and yet it works so often. The original concept is Pavlovian. A question of inducing guilt or rather of magnifying the guilt that is in all of us. Shall I tell you the first thing my instructor asked me? Whether I had a servant at the mission to clean my room and make my bed. When I admitted that I had, he expressed surprise, produced a Bible and read to me that passage in which Our Lord speaks of serving others. Yet here was I allowing one of those I had come to help to serve me. Amazing how guilty that one small point made me feel.'

  'And you fell for that?'

  'A man can fall for almost anything when he's half-starved and kept in solitary confinement. And they were clever, make no mistake about that. To use the appropriate Marrian terminology, each man has his thesis and his antithesis. For a priest, his thesis is everything he believes in. Everything he and his vocation stand for.'

  'And his antithesis?'

  'His darker side. The side which is present in all of us. Fear, hate, violence, aggression, the desires of the flesh. This is the side they work on, inducing guilt feelings to such a degree in an attempt to force a complete breakdown. Only after that can they start their own particular brand of re-education.'

  'What did they try on you?'

  'With me it was sex.' Father da Costa smiled. 'A path they frequently follow where Catholic priests are concerned, celibacy being a state they find quite unintelligible.'

  'What did they do?'

  'Half-starved me, left me on my own in a damp cell for three months, then put me to bed between two young women who were presumably willing to give their all for the cause, just like you.' He laughed. 'It was rather childish really. The idea was, I suppose, that I should be racked with guilt because I experienced an erection, whereas I took it to be a chemical reaction perfectly understandable in the circumstances. It seemed to me that would be God's view also.'

  'So, no sin in you then. Driven snow. Is that it?'

  'Not at all. I am a very violent man, Mr Fallon. There was a time in my life when I enjoyed killing. Perhaps if they'd worked on that they would have got somewhere. It was to escape that side of myself that I entered the Church. It was, still is, my greatest weakness, but at least I acknowledged its existence.' He paused and then said deliberately, 'Do you?'

  'Any man can know about things,' Fallon said. 'It's knowing the significance of things that's important.'

  He paused and Father da Costa said, 'Go on.'

  'What do you want me to do, drain the cup?' Fallon demanded. 'The gospel according to Fallon? All right, if that's what you want.'

  He mounted the steps leading up to the pulpit and stood at the lectern. 'I never realised you had such a good view. What do you want me to say?'

  'Anything you like.'

  'All right. We are fundamentally alone. Nothing lasts. There is no purpose to any of it.'

  'You are wrong,' Father da Costa said. 'You leave out God.'

  'God?' Fallon cried. 'What kind of a God allows a world where children can be happily singing one minute -' here, his voice faltered for a moment - 'and blown into strips of bloody flesh the next. Can you honestly tell me you still believe in a God after what they did to you in Korea? Are you telling me you never faltered, not once?'

  'Strength comes from adversity always,' Father da Costa told him. 'I crouched in the darkness in my own filth for six months once, on the end of a chain. There was one day, one moment, when I might have done anything. And then the stone rolled aside and I smelled the grave, saw him walk out on his own two feet and I knew, Fallon I knew!'

  'Well, all I can say is, that if he exists, your God, I wish to hell you could get him to make up his mind. He's big on how and when. Not so hot on why.'

  'Have you learned nothing, then?' Father da Costa demanded.

  'Oh yes,' Fallon said. 'I've learned to kill with a smile, Father, that's very important. But the biggest lesson of all, I learned too late.'

  'And what might that be?'

  'That nothing is worth dying for.'

  It was suddenly very quiet, only the endless rain drifting against the windows. Fallon came down the steps of the pulpit buckling the belt of his trenchcoat. He paused beside Father da Costa.

  'And the real trouble is, Father, that nothing's worth living for either.'

  He walked away down the aisle, his footsteps echoing. The door banged, the candles flickered. Father da Costa knelt down at the altar rail, folded his hands and prayed as he had seldom prayed before.

  After a while, a door clicked open and a familiar voice said, 'Uncle Michael? Are you there?'

  He turned to find Anna standing outside the sacristy door. 'Over here,' he called.

  She moved towards him and he went to meet her, reaching for her outstretched hands. He took her across to the front pew and they sat down. And as usual she sensed his mood.

  'What is it? she said, her face full of concern, 'Where's Mr Fallon?'

  'Gone,' he said. 'We had quite a chat. I think I understand him more now.'

  'He's dead inside,' she said. 'Everything frozen.'

  'And tacked by self-hate. He hates himself, so he hates all of life. He has no feelings left, not in any normal sense. In fact it is my judgement that the man is probably seeking death. One possible reason for him to continue to lead the life he does.'

  'But I don't understand,' she said.

  'He puts his whole life on the scales, gave himself for a cause he believed was an honourable one - gave everything he had. A dangerous thing to do, because if anything goes wrong, if you find that in the final analysis your cause is as worthless as a bent farthing, you're left with nothing.'


  'He told me he was a dead man walking,' she said.

  'I think that's how he sees himself.'

  She put a hand on his arm. 'But what can you do?' she said. 'What can anyone do?'

  'Help him find himself. Save his soul, perhaps. I don't really know. But I must do something. I must!'

  He got up, walked across to the altar rail, knelt down and started to pray.

  12

  More Work for the Undertaker

  Fallon was in the kitchen having tea with Jenny when the doorbell rang. She went to answer it. When she came back, Jack Meehan and Billy followed her into the room.

  'All right, sweetheart,' Meehan told her. 'Make yourself scarce. This is business.'

  She gave Fallon a brief troubled look, hesitated, then went out. 'She's taken a shine to you, I can see that,' Meehan commented.

  He sat on the edge of the table and poured himself a cup of tea. Billy leaned against the wall by the door, hands in his pockets, watching Fallon sullenly.

  'She's a nice kid,' Fallon said, 'but you haven't come here to discuss Jenny.'

  Meehan sighed. 'You've been a naughty boy again, Fallon. I told you when I left you this morning to come back here and keep under cover and what did you do at the first opportunity? Gave poor old Varley the slip again and that isn't nice because he knows how annoyed I get and he has a weak heart.'

  'Make your point.'

  'All right. You went to see that bloody priest again.'

  'Like hell he did,' Billy put in from the doorway. 'He was with that da Costa bird in the churchyard.'

  'The blind girl?' Meehan said.

  'That's right. She kissed him.'

  Meehan shook his head sorrowfully. 'Leading the poor girl on like that and you leaving the country after tomorrow.'

  'She's a right whore,' Billy said viciously. 'Undressing at the bloody window, she was. Anybody could have seen her.'

  'That's hardly likely,' Fallon said. 'Not with a twenty-foot wall round the churchyard. I thought I told you to stay away from there.'

  'What's wrong?' Billy jeered. 'Frightened I'll queer your pitch? Want to keep it all for yourself?'