A Prayer for the Dying. Jack Higgins

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ