A PRAYER FOR THE DYING
Jack Higgins
Open Road Integrated Media
New York
For Philip Williams, the Expert
CONTENTS
1. Fallon
2. Father da Costa
3. Miller
4. Confessional
5. Dandy Jack
6. Face to Face
7. Prelude and Fugue
8. The Devil and all his Works
9. The Executioner
10. Exhumation
11. The Gospel according to Fallon
12. More Work for the Undertaker
13. The Church Militant
14. Grimsdyke
15. The Wrath of God
A Biography of Jack Higgins
1
Fallon
When the police car turned the corner at the end of the street Fallon stepped into the nearest doorway instinctively and waited for it to pass. He gave it a couple of minutes and then continued on his way, turning up his collar as it started to rain.
He walked on towards the docks keeping to the shadows, his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his dark-blue trenchcoat, a small dark man of five feet four or five who seemed to drift rather than walk.
A ship eased down from the Pool of London sounding its foghorn, strange, haunting - the last of the dinosaurs moving aimlessly through some primeval swamp, alone in a world already alien. It suited his mood perfectly.
There was a warehouse at the end of the street facing out across the river. The sign said Janos Kristou - Importer. Fallon opened the little judas gate in the main entrance and stepped inside.
The place was crammed with bales and packing cases of every description. It was very dark, but there was a light at the far end and he moved towards it. A man sat at a trestle table beneath a naked light bulb and wrote laboriously in a large, old-fashioned ledger. He had lost most of his hair and what was left stuck out in a dirty white fringe. He wore an old sheepskin jacket and woollen mittens.
Fallon took a cautious step forward and the old man said without turning round, 'Martin, is that you?'
Fallon moved into the pool of light and paused beside the table. 'Hello, Kristou.'
There was a wooden case on the floor beside him and the top was loose. Fallon raised it and took out a Sterling submachine-gun thick with protective grease.
'Still at it, I see. Who's this for? The Israelis or the Arabs or have you actually started taking sides?'
Kristou leaned across, took the Sterling from him and dropped it back into the box. 'I didn't make the world the way it is,' he said.
'Maybe not, but you certainly helped it along the way.' Fallon lit a cigarette. 'I heard you wanted to see me.'
Kristou put down his pen and looked up at him speculatively. His face was very old, the parchment-coloured skin seamed with wrinkles, but the blue eyes were alert and intelligent.
He said, 'You don't look too good, Martin.'
'I've never felt better,' Fallon told him. 'Now what about my passport?'
Kristou smiled amiably. 'You look as if you could do with a drink.' He took a bottle and two paper cups from a drawer. 'Irish whiskey - the best. Just to make you feel at home.'
Fallon hesitated and then took one of the cups. Kristou raised the other. 'May you die in Ireland. Isn't that what they say?'
Fallon swallowed the whiskey down and crushed the paper cup in his right hand. 'My passport,' he said softly.
Kristou said, 'In a sense it's out of my hands, Martin. I mean to say, you turning out to be so much in demand in certain quarters - that alters things.'
Fallon went round to the other side of the table and stood there for a moment, head bowed, hands thrust deep into the pockets of the blue trenchcoat. And then he looked up very slowly, dark empty eyes burning in the white face.
'If you're trying to put the screw on me, old man, forget it. I gave you everything I had.'
Kristou's heart missed a beat. There was a cold stirring in his bowels. 'God help me, Martin,' he said, 'but with a hood on you'd look like Death himself.'
Fallon stood there, eyes like black glass staring through and beyond and then suddenly, something seemed to go out of him. He turned as if to leave.
Kristou said quickly, 'There is a way.'
Fallon hesitated. 'And what would that be?'
'Your passport, a berth on a cargo boat leaving Hull for Australia, Sunday night.' He paused. 'And two thousand pounds in your pocket to give you a fresh start.'
Fallon said incredulously, 'What do I have to do? Kill somebody?'
'Exactly,' the old man answered.
Fallon laughed softly. 'You get better all the time, Kristou. You really do.'
He reached for the whiskey bottle, emptied Kristou's cup on the floor and filled it again. The old man watched him, waiting. Rain tapped against a window as if somebody was trying to get in. Fallon walked across and peered down into the empty street.
A car was parked in the entrance to an alley on his left. No lights - which was interesting. The foghorn sounded again, farther downriver this time.
'A dirty night for it.' He turned. 'But that's appropriate.'
'For what, Martin?' Kristou asked.
'Oh, for people like you and me.'
He emptied the cup at a swallow, walked back to the table and put it down in front of Kristou very carefully.
'All right,' he said, 'I'm listening.'
Kristou smiled. 'Now you're being sensible.' He opened a manilla folder, took out a photo and pushed it across the table. 'Take a look at that.'
Fallon picked it up and held it under the light. It had obviously been taken in a cemetery and in the foreground there was a rather curious monument. A bronze figure of a woman in the act of rising from a chair as if to go through the door which stood partly open between marble pillars behind her. A man in a dark overcoat, head bare, knelt before her on one knee.
'Now this.' Kristou pushed another photo across.
The scene was the same except for one important fact. The man in the dark overcoat was now standing, facing the camera, hat in hand. He was massively built, at least six foot two or three, with chest and shoulders to match. He had a strong Slav face with high flat cheekbones and narrow eyes.
'He looks like a good man to keep away from,' Fallon said.
'A lot of people would agree with you.'
'Who is he?'
'His name's Krasko - Jan Krasko.'
'Polish?'
'Originally - but that was a long time ago. He's been here since before the war.'
'And where's here?'
'Up North. You'll be told where at the right time.'
'And the woman in the chair?'
'His mother.' Kristou reached for the photo and looked at it himself. 'Every Thursday morning without fail, wet or fine, there he is with his bunch of flowers. They were very close.'
He put the photos back in the manilla folder and looked up at Fallon again. 'Well?'