“Why should I tell you anything?”
“Because I’ll ring for the police and put you in charge for assault if you don’t. Detective-Superintendent Miller is a personal friend He’ll be happy to oblige, I’m sure.”
“All right, Father, you can call off the dogs.” O’Hara, mellowed by two large whiskies, went to the bar for a third and returned. “What do you want to know for?”
“Does that matter?”
It does to me. Martin Fallon, as you call him, is probably the best man I ever knew in my life. A hero.”
“To whom?”
“To the Irish people.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I don’t mean him any harm, I can assure you of that.”
“You give me your word on it?”
“Of course.”
“All right, I won’t tell you his name, his real name. It doesn’t matter anyway. He was a lieutenant in the Provisional IRA. They used to call Vim the Executioner in Derry. I’ve never known the likes of him with a gun in his hand. He’d have killed the Pope if he’d thought it would advance the cause. And brains.” He shook his head. “A university man, Father, would you believe it? Trinity College, no less. There were days when it all poured out of him. Poetry – books. That sort of thing – and he played the piano Eke an angel.” O’Hara hesitated, fingering a cigarette, frowning into the past. “And then there were other times.”
“What do you mean?” Father da Costa asked him.
“Oh, he used to change completely. Go right inside himself. No emotion, no response. Nothing. Cold and dark.” O’Hara shivered and stuck the cigarette into the corner of his mouth. “When he was like that, he scared the hell out of everybody, including me, I can tell you.”
“You were with him long?”
“Only for a time. They never really trusted me. I’m a Prod, you see, so I got out.”
“And Fallon?”
“He laid this ambush for a Saracen armoured car, somewhere in Armagh. Mined the road. Someone had got the time wrong. They got a school bus instead with a dozen kids on board. Five killed, the rest crippled. You know how it is. It finished Martin. I think he’d been worrying about the way things were going for a while. All the killing and so on. The business with the bus was the final straw, you might say.”
“I can see that it would be,” Father da Costa said without irony.
“I thought he was dead,” O’Hara said. “Last I heard, the IRA had an execution squad out after him. Me, I’m no account. Nobody worries about me, but for someone like Martin, it’s different. He knows too much. For a man like him, there’s only one way out of the movement and that’s in a coffin.”
He got to his feet, face flushed. “Well, Father, I’ll be leaving you now. This town and I are parting company.”
He walked to the door and Father da Costa went with him. As rain drifted across the street, O’Hara buttoned up his coat and said cheerfully, “Have you ever wondered what it’s all about, Father? Life, I mean?”
“Constantly,” Father da Costa told him.
“That’s honest, anyway. See you in hell, Father.”
He moved off along the pavement, whistling, and Father da Costa went back across the road to the Holy Name. When he went back into the crypt, everything was in good order again. The men had gone and Anna waited patiently on one of the bench seats.
I’m sorry I had to leave you,” he said, “but I wanted to speak to the man who knew Fallon. The one who started all the trouble. He went into the pub on the corner.”
“What did you find out?”
He hesitated, then told her. When he was finished, there was pain on her face. She said slowly, “Then he isn’t what he seemed at first.”
no
“He killed Krasko,” Father da Costa reminded her. “Mur-dered him in cold blood. There was nothing romantic about that.”
“You’re right, of course.” She groped for her coat and stood up. “What are you going to do now?”
“What on earth do you expect me to do?” he said half-angrily. “Save his soul?”