‘Which you are not?’
‘God save us, my ould mother would turn in her grave to hear you even suggest it,’ he said as he drove away. ‘So, you decided to give things some more thought after I left Paris? What happened?’
She told him everything. Belov, the phone conversation with Maslovsky, Shepilov and Turkin, and finally, Alex Martin in Jersey.
Devlin was frowning thoughtfully as she finished. ‘So they were on to you? Actually waiting in Jersey? How in the hell would they know that?’
‘I asked about the train times at hotel reception,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t give my name or room number. I thought that covered it. Perhaps Belov and his people were able to make the right sort of enquiries.’
‘Maybe. Still, you’re here now. You’ll be staying with me at my cottage in Kilrea. It isn’t far. I’ve got a call to make
when we get in. With luck, we’ll be able to set up the right kind of meeting for you tomorrow. Lots of photos for you to plough through.’
‘I hope something comes of it,’ she said.
‘Don’t we all? Anyway, a quiet night. I’ll make the supper and a good friend of mine is joining us.’
‘Anyone interesting?’
‘The kind of man you’d find rather thin on the ground where you come from. A Catholic priest. Father Harry Cus-sane. I think you’ll like him.’
He phoned McGuiness from his study. ‘The girl is here. Staying with me at my place. How soon can you set up the right meeting?’
‘Never mind that,’ McGuiness told him. ‘Have you heard about Cherny?’
Devlin was immediately alert. ‘No.’
‘Took a very long fall from a very high window at Trinity College this afternoon. The thing is, did he fall or was he pushed?’
‘I suppose one could say his end was fortuitous,’ Devlin said.
‘For one person only,’ McGuiness told him. ‘Jesus, I’d like to get my hands on that sod.’
‘Set up the meeting with the girl then,’ Devlin said. ‘Maybe she’ll recognize him.’
‘I’d go to confession again if I thought that could be guaranteed. Okay, leave it with me. I’ll get back to you.’
Cussane robed for Mass in the sacristy, very calm, very cold. It wasn’t like a play any longer. More like an improvisation in which the actors created a story for themselves. He had no idea what was going to happen.
The four acolytes who waited for him were village boys, clean and neat and angelic in their scarlet cassocks and white
cottas. He settled the stole around his neck, picked up his prayer book and turned to them.
‘Let’s make it special tonight, shall we?’
He pressed the bellpush at the door. A moment later, the organ started to play. One of the boys opened the door and they moved through into the small church in procession.
Devlin was working in the kitchen preparing steaks. Tanya opened the French windows and was immediately aware of the organ music drifting across the garden from the other side of the wall. She went in to Devlin. ‘What’s that?’
‘There’s a convent over there and a hospice.- Their chapel is the village church. That’ll be Harry Cussane celebrating Mass. He won’t be long.’
She went back into the living room and stood listening at the French windows. It was nice and not only peaceful. The organ playing was really rather good. She crossed the lawn and opened the door in the wall. The chapel, on the end of the convent, looked picturesque and inviting, soft light flooding from the windows. She went up the path and opened the oaken door.
There were only a handful of villagers, two people in wheelchairs who were obviously patients from the hospice and several nuns. Sister Anne-Marie played the organ. It was not much of an instrument and the damp atmosphere had a bad effect on the reeds, but she was good, had spent a year at the Conservatoire in Paris as a young girl before heeding God’s call and turning to the religious life.
The lights were very dim, mainly candles, and the church was a place of shadows and calm peace, the nuns’ voices sweet as they sang the offertory:’Domine Jesu Christ, Rex Floriae.. /At the altar, Harry Cussane prayed for all sinners everywhere whose actions only cut them off from the fact of God’s infinite mercy and love. Tanya took a seat to one side on her own, moved by the atmosphere. The truth was that