Confessional. Part 14

'Which means he's not quite certain who he is,' Devlin put in.

'Only some of the time.' Cussane smiled. 'My mother

returned to America in 1946 after the war. She died of influenza a year later and I was taken in by her only relative, an old great-uncle who ran a farm in the Ontario wheat belt. He was a fine man and a good Catholic. It was under his influence that I decided to enter the Church.'

'Enter the Devil, stage left.' Devlin raised his gla.s.s.

Fox looked puzzled and Cussane explained. 'The seminary that accepted me was All Souls at Vine Landing outside Boston. Liam was English professor there.'

'He was a great trial to me,' Devlin said. 'Mind like a steel trap. Constantly catching me out misquoting Eliot in cla.s.s.'

'I served in a couple of Boston parishes and another in New York,' Cussane said, 'but I always hoped to get back to Ireland. Finally, I got a move to Belfast in 1968. A church on the Falls Road.'

'Where he promptly got burned out by an Orange mob the following year.'

'I tried to keep the parish together using a school hall,' Cussane said.

Fox glanced at Devlin, 'While you ran around Belfast adding fuel to the flames?'

'G.o.d might forgive you for that,' Devlin said piously, 'for I cannot.'

Cussane emptied his gla.s.s. 'I'll be off then. Nice to meet you, Harry Fox.'

He held out his hand. Fox shook it and Cussane moved to the French windows and opened them. Fox saw the convent looming up into the night on the other side of the garden wall. Cussane walked across the lawn, opened a gate and pa.s.sed through.

'Quite a man,' he said, as Devlin closed the windows.

'And then some.' Devlin turned, no longer smiling. 'All right, Harry. Ferguson being his usual mysterious self, it looks as if it's up to you to tell me what this is about.'

In the hospice, all was quiet. It was as unlike the conventional idea of a hospital as it was possible to be and the architect

had designed the ward area in a way that gave each occupant of a bed a choice of privacy or intimacy with other patients. The night sister sat at her desk, the only light a shaded lamp. She didn't hear Cussane approach, yet suddenly he was there, looming out of the darkness.

'How's Malone?'

'The same, Father. Very little pain. We have the drug in-put just about in balance.'

'Is he lucid?'

'Some of the time.'

Til go and see him.'

Danny Malone's bed, divided from the others by bookshelves and cupboards, was angled towards a gla.s.s window that gave a view of grounds and the night sky. The night light beside the bed brought his face into relief. He was not old, no more than forty, his hair prematurely white, the face like a skull under taut skin, etched in pain caused by the cancer that was slowly and relentlessly taking him from this life to the next.

As Cussane sat down, Malone opened his eyes. He gazed blankly at Cussane, then recognition dawned. 'Father, I thought you weren't coming.'

'I promised, didn't I? I was having a nightcap-with Liam Devlin, is all.'

'Jesus, Father, you're lucky you got away with just the one with him, but big for the cause, Liam, I'll give him that. There's no man living done more for Ireland.'

'What about yourself?' Cussane sat down beside the bed. 'No stronger fighter for the movement than you, Danny.'

'But how many did I kill, Father, there's the rub, and for what?' Malone asked him. 'Daniel O'Connel once said in a speech that, although the ideal of Irish freedom was just, it was not worth a single human life. When I was young, I disputed that. Now I'm dying, I think I know what he meant.' He winced in pain and turned to look at Cussane. 'Can we talk some more, Father? It helps get it straight in my own mind.'

'Just for a while, then you must get some sleep,' Cussane

smiled. 'One thing a priest is good at is listening, Danny.'

Malone smiled contentedly. 'Right, where were we? I was telling you about the preparation for the bombing campaign on the English Midlands and London in seventy-two.'

'You were saying the papers nicknamed you the Fox,' Cussane said, 'because you seemed to go backwards and forwards between England and Ireland at will. All your friends were caught, Danny, but not you. How was that?'

'Simple, Father. The greatest curse on this country of ours is the informer and the second greatest curse is the inefficiency of the IRA. People full of ideology and revolution blow a lot of wind and are often singularly lacking in good sense. That's why I preferred to go to the professionals.'

'Professionals?'

'What you would call the criminal element. For example, there wasn't an IRA safe house in England during the seventies that wasn't on the Special Branch's list at Scotland Yard sooner or later. That's how so many got caught.'

'And you?'

'Criminals on the run or needing a rest when things get too hot have places they can go, Father. Expensive places, I admit, but safe and that's what I used. There was one in Scotland south from Glasgow in Galloway run by a couple of brothers called Mungo. What you might call a country retreat. Absolute b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, mind you.'

The pain was suddenly so bad that he had to fight for breath. 'I'll get sister,' Cussane told him in alarm.

Malone grabbed him by the front of his ca.s.sock. 'No, you d.a.m.n well won't. No more painkillers, Father. They mean well, the sisters, but enough is enough. Let's just keep talking.'

'All right,' Harry Cussane said. Malone lay back, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. 'Anyway, as I was saying, these Mungo brothers, Hector and Angus, were the great original b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.'

Devlin paced up and down the room restlessly. 'Do you believe it?' Fox asked.

'It makes sense and it would explain a great deal,' Devlin said. 'So let's just say I accept it in principle.'

'So, what do we do about it?'

'What dowe do about it?' Devlin glared at him. 'The effrontery of the man. Let me remind you, Harry, that the last time I did a job for Ferguson, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d conned me. Lied in his teeth. Used me.'

That was then, this is now, Liam.'

'And what is that pearl of wisdom supposed to mean?'

There was a soft tapping at the French window. Devlin opened the desk drawer, took out an old-fas.h.i.+oned Mauser pistol, with an SS bulbous silencer on the end and c.o.c.ked it. He nodded to Fox, then Devlin pulled the curtain. Martin McGuiness peered in at them, Murphy at his shoulder.

'Dear G.o.d!' Devlin groaned.

He opened the French window and McGuiness smiled as he stepped in. 'G.o.d bless all here!' he said mockingly and added to Murphy, 'Watch the window, Michael.' He closed it and walked over to the fire, holding his hands to the warmth. 'Colder as the nights draw in.'

'What do you want?' Devlin demanded.