A Prayer for the Dying. Jack Higgins

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ