Confessional. Part 59

Beyond them, the guests talked animatedly, waiters moving amongst them.

'That's right,' Sister Agatha said.

'Wasn't there a priest with you?'

'Oh, yes, the good father from Dublin.'

Devlin's stomach went hollow. 'Where is he?'

'He had a message for His Holiness, a message from Canterbury, but I told him the Holy Father was in the chapel so he went to speak to the Monsignor on the door.' Sister Agatha led the way across the hall and paused. 'Oh, the Monsignor doesn't seem to be there.'

Devlin was running and the Walther was in his hand as he flung open the door and tumbled over the Monsignor on the floor. He was aware of Susan Calder behind him, was even more aware of the priest in the black ca.s.sock mounting the steps at the end of the tunnel and reaching for the handle of the oak door.

'Harry!' Devlin called.

Cussane turned and fired without the slightest hesitation, the bullet slamming into Devlin's right forearm, punching him back against the wall. Devlin dropped the Walther as he fell and Susan cried out and flattened herself against the wall.

Cussane stood there, the Stechkin extended in his right hand, but he did not fire. Instead, he smiled a ghastly smile.

'Stay out of it, Liam,' he called. 'Last act!' and he turned and opened the chapel door.

Devlin was sick, dizzy from shock. He reached for the Walther with his left hand, fumbled and dropped it as he tried to stand. He glared up at the girl.

'Take it! Stop him! It's up to you now!'

Susan Calder knew nothing of guns beyond a couple of hours of basic handling experience on her training course. She had fired a few rounds from a revolver on the range, that was all. Now, she picked up the Walther without hesitation and ran along the tunnel. Devlin got to his feet and went after her.

The chapel was a place of shadows hallowed by the centuries, the sanctuary lamp the only light. His Holiness Pope John Paul II knelt in his white robes before the simple altar. The sound of the silenced Stechkin, m.u.f.fled by the door, had not alerted him, but the raised voices had. He was on his feet and turning as the door crashed open and Cussane entered.

He stood there, face damp with sweat, strangely medieval in the black ca.s.sock, the Stechkin against his thigh.

John Paul said calmly, 'You are Father Harry Cussane.'

'You are mistaken. I am Mikhail Kelly.' Cussane laughed wildly. 'Strolling player of sorts.'

'You are Father Harry Cussane,'John Paul said relentlessly. 'Priest then, priest now, priest eternally. G.o.d will not let go.'

'No!' Cussane cried in a kind of agony. 'I refuse it!'

The Stechkin swung up and Susan Calder stumbled in through the door, falling to her knees, skirt riding up, the Walther levelled in both hands. She shot him twice in the back, shattering his spine and Cussane cried out in agony and fell on his knees in front of the Pope. He stayed there for a moment then rolled on his back, still clutching the Stechkin.

Susan stayed on her knees, lowering the Walther to the floor, watching as the Pontiff gently took the Stechkin from Cussane's hand.

She heard the Pope say in English, 'I want you to make an act of contrition. Say after me: O my G.o.d who art infinitely good in thyself...'

'Oh my G.o.d,' Harry Cussane said and died.

The Pope, on his knees, started to pray, hands clasped.

Behind Susan, Devlin crawled in and sat with his back against the wall, holding his wound, blood on his fingers. She dropped the gun and eased against him as if for warmth.

'Does it always feel like this?' she asked him harshly. 'Dirty and ashamed?'

'Join the club, girl dear,' Liam Devlin said, and he put his good arm around her.

EPILOGUE.

IT WAS six O'CLOCK on a grey morning, the sky swollen with rain, when Susan Calder turned her mini car in through the gate of St Joseph's Catholic Cemetery, Highgate. It was a poor sort of place with lots of Gothic monuments from an obviously more prosperous past, but now, everything overgrown, nothing but decay.

She was not in uniform and wore a dark headscarf, blue-belted coat and leather boots. She pulled in at the superintendent's lodge and found Devlin standing beside a taxi. He was wearing his usual dark Burberry and black felt hat and his right arm was in a black sling. She got out of the car and he came to meet her.

'Sorry I'm late. The traffic,' she said. 'Have they started?'

'Yes.' He smiled ironically. 'I think Harry would have appreciated this. Like a bad set for a second rate movie. Even the rain makes it another cliche,' he said, as it started to fall in heavy drops.

He told the taxi driver to wait and he and the girl went along the path between gravestones. 'Not much of a place,' she said.

'They had to tuck him away somewhere.' He took out a cigarette with his good hand and lit it. 'Ferguson and the Home Office people felt you should have had some sort of gallantry award.'

'A medal?' There was genuine distaste on her face. 'They can keep it. He had to be stopped, but that doesn't mean I liked doing it.'

'They've decided against it anyway. It would be too public; require an explanation and they can't have that. So much for Harry wanting to leave the KGB with the blame.'

They came to the grave and paused some distance away under a tree. There were two gravediggers, a priest, a woman in a black coat and a girl.

'Tanya Voroninova?' Susan asked.

'Yes, and the girl is Morag Finlay,' Devlin said. 'The three women in Harry Cussane's life, together now to see him planted. First, the one he so greatly wronged as a child, then the child he saved at great inconvenience to himself. I find that ironic. Harry the redemptionist.'

'And then there's me,' she said. 'His executioner and I never even met him.'

'Only the once,' Devlin said. 'And that was enough. Strange - the most important people in his life were women and in the end they were the death of him.'

The priest sprinkled the grave and the coffin with Holy Water and incensed them. Morag started to cry and Tanya Voroninova put an arm around her as the priest's voice rose in prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ, Saviour of the world, we commend your servant to you and pray for him.

'Poor Harry,' Devlin said. 'Final curtain and he still didn't get a full house.'

He took her arm and they turned and walked away through the rain.

The End