‘You are Father Harry Cussane,’John Paul said relentlessly. ‘Priest then, priest now, priest eternally. God 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 God who art infinitely good in thyself…’
‘Oh my God,’ 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.