A Prayer for the Dying

JACK HIGGINS

1

Fallon

When the police car turned the corner at the end of the street Fallon stepped into the nearest doorway instinctively and waited for it to pass. He gave it a couple of minutes and then continued on his way, turning up his collar as it started to rain.

He walked on towards the docks keeping to the shadows, his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his dark-blue trenchcoat, a small dark man of five feet four or five who seemed to drift rather than walk.

A ship eased down from the Pool of London sounding its foghorn, strange, haunting – the last of the dinosaurs moving aimlessly through some primeval swamp, alone in a world already alien. It suited his mood perfectly.

There was a warehouse at the end of the street facing out across the river. The sign said Janos Kristou – Importer. Fallon opened the little judas gate in the main entrance and stepped inside.

The place was crammed with bales and packing cases of every description. It was very dark, but there was a light at the far end and he moved towards it. A man sat at a trestle table beneath a naked light bulb and wrote laboriously in a large, old-fashioned ledger. He had lost most of his hair and what was left stuck out in a dirty white fringe. He wore an old sheepskin jacket and woollen mittens.

Fallon took a cautious step forward and the old man said without turning round, ‘Martin, is that you?’

Fallon moved into the pool of light and paused beside the table. ‘Hello, Kristou.’

There was a wooden case on the floor beside him and the top was loose. Fallon raised it and took out a Sterling submachine-gun thick with protective grease.

‘Still at it, I see. Who’s this for? The Israelis or the Arabs or have you actually started taking sides?’

Kristou leaned across, took the Sterling from him and dropped it back into the box. ‘I didn’t make the world the way it is,’ he said.

‘Maybe not, but you certainly helped it along the way.’ Fallon lit a cigarette. ‘I heard you wanted to see me.’

Kristou put down his pen and looked up at him speculatively. His face was very old, the parchment-coloured skin seamed with wrinkles, but the blue eyes were alert and intelligent.

He said, ‘You don’t look too good, Martin.’

‘I’ve never felt better,’ Fallon told him. ‘Now what about my passport?’

Kristou smiled amiably. ‘You look as if you could do with a drink.’ He took a bottle and two paper cups from a drawer. ‘Irish whiskey – the best. Just to make you feel at home.’

Fallon hesitated and then took one of the cups. Kristou raised the other. ‘May you die in Ireland. Isn’t that what they say?’

Fallon swallowed the whiskey down and crushed the paper cup in his right hand. ‘My passport,’ he said softly.

Kristou said, ‘In a sense it’s out of my hands, Martin. I mean to say, you turning out to be so much in demand in certain quarters – that alters things.’

Fallon went round to the other side of the table and stood there for a moment, head bowed, hands thrust deep into the pockets of the blue trenchcoat. And then he looked up very slowly, dark empty eyes burning in the white face.

‘If you’re trying to put the screw on me, old man, forget it. I gave you everything I had.’

Kristou’s heart missed a beat. There was a cold stirring in his bowels. ‘God help me, Martin,’ he said, ‘but with a hood on you’d look like Death himself.’

Fallon stood there, eyes like black glass staring through and beyond and then suddenly, something seemed to go out of him. He turned as if to leave.

Kristou said quickly, ‘There is a way.’

Fallon hesitated. ‘And what would that be?’

‘Your passport, a berth on a cargo boat leaving Hull for Australia, Sunday night.’ He paused. ‘And two thousand pounds in your pocket to give you a fresh start.’

Fallon said incredulously, ‘What do I have to do? Kill somebody?’

‘Exactly,’ the old man answered.

Fallon laughed softly. ‘You get better all the time, Kristou. You really do.’

He reached for the whiskey bottle, emptied Kristou’s cup on the floor and filled it again. The old man watched him, waiting. Rain tapped against a window as if somebody was trying to get in. Fallon walked across and peered down into the empty street.

A car was parked in the entrance to an alley on his left. No lights – which was interesting. The foghorn sounded again, farther downriver this time.

‘A dirty night for it.’ He turned. ‘But that’s appropriate.’

‘For what, Martin?’ Kristou asked.

‘Oh, for people like you and me.’

He emptied the cup at a swallow, walked back to the table and put it down in front of Kristou very carefully.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’m listening.’

Kristou smiled. ‘Now you’re being sensible.’ He opened a manilla folder, took out a photo and pushed it across the table. ‘Take a look at that.’

Fallon picked it up and held it under the light. It had obviously been taken in a cemetery and in the foreground there was a rather curious monument. A bronze figure of a woman in the act of rising from a chair as if to go through the door which stood partly open between marble pillars behind her. A man in a dark overcoat, head bare, knelt before her on one knee.

‘Now this.’ Kristou pushed another photo across.

The scene was the same except for one important fact. The man in the dark overcoat was now standing, facing the camera, hat in hand. He was massively built, at least six foot two or three, with chest and shoulders to match. He had a strong Slav face with high flat cheekbones and narrow eyes.

‘He looks like a good man to keep away from,’ Fallon said.

‘A lot of people would agree with you.’

‘Who is he?’

‘His name’s Krasko – Jan Krasko.’

‘Polish?’

‘Originally – but that was a long time ago. He’s been here since before the war.’

‘And where’s here?’

‘Up North. You’ll be told where at the right time.’

‘And the woman in the chair?’

‘His mother.’ Kristou reached for the photo and looked at it himself. ‘Every Thursday morning without fail, wet or fine, there he is with his bunch of flowers. They were very close.’

He put the photos back in the manilla folder and looked up at Fallon again. ‘Well?’

‘What’s he done to deserve me?’

‘A matter of business, that’s all. What you might call a conflict of interests. My client’s tried being reasonable, only Krasko won’t play. So he’ll have to go; and as publicly as possible.’

‘To encourage the others?’

‘Something like that.’

Fallon moved back to the window and looked down into the street. The car was still there in the alley. He spoke without turning round.

‘And just what exactly is Krasko’s line of business?’

‘You name it,’ Kristou said. ‘Clubs, gambling, betting shops …’

‘Whores and drugs?’ Fallon turned round. ‘And your client?’

Kristou raised a hand defensively. ‘Now you’re going too far, Martin. Now you’re being unreasonable.’

‘Good night, Kristou.’ Fallon turned and started to walk away.

‘All right, all right,’ Kristou called, something close to panic in his voice. ‘You win.’

As Fallon moved back to the table, Kristou opened a drawer and rummaged inside. He took out another folder, opened it and produced a bundle of newspaper clippings. He sorted through them, finally found what he was looking for and passed it to Fallon.

The clipping was already yellowing at the edges and was dated eighteen months previously. The article was headed The English Al Capone.

There was a photo of a large, heavily-built man coming down a flight of steps. He had a fleshy, arrogant face under a Homburg hat and wore a dark-blue, double-breasted melton overcoat, a handkerchief in the breast pocket. The youth at his shoulder was perhaps seventeen or eighteen and wore a similar coat, but he was bare-headed, an albino, with white shoulder-length hair that gave him the look of some decadent angel.

Underneath the photo it said; Jack Meehan and his brother Billy leaving Manchester Central Police Headquarters after questioning in connection with the death of Agnes Drew.

‘And who was this Agnes Drew?’ Fallon demanded.

‘Some whore who got kicked to death in an alley. An occupational hazard. You know how it is?’

‘I can imagine.’ Fallon glanced at the photo again. ‘They look like a couple of bloody undertakers.’

Kristou laughed until the tears came to his eyes. ‘That’s really very funny, you know that? That’s exactly what Mr Meehan is. He runs one of the biggest funeral concerns in the north of England.’

‘What, no clubs, no gambling? No whores, no drugs?’ Fallon put the clipping down on the table. ‘That’s not what it says here.’

‘All right,’ Kristou leaned back, took off his spectacles and cleaned them with a soiled handkerchief. ‘What if I told you Mr Meehan is strictly legitimate these days? That people like Krasko are leaning on him. Leaning hard – and the law won’t help.’

‘Oh, I see it all now,’ Fallon said. ‘You mean give a dog a bad name?’

‘That’s it.’ Kristou slammed a fist against the table. ‘That’s it exactly.’ He adjusted his spectacles again and peered up at Fallon eagerly. ‘It’s a deal then?’

‘Like hell it is,’ Fallon said coldly. ‘I wouldn’t touch either Krasko or your friend Meehan with a bargepole. I might catch something.’

‘For God’s sake, Martin, what’s one more on the list to you?’ Kristou cried as he turned to go. ‘How many did you kill over there? Thirty-two? Thirty-four? Four soldiers in Londonderry alone.’

He got up quickly, his chair going backwards, darted round the table and grabbed Fallon by the arm.

Fallon pushed him away. ‘Anything I did, I did for the cause. Because I believed it was necessary.’

‘Very noble,’ Kristou said. ‘And the kids in that school bus you blew to a bloody pulp. Was that for your cause?’

He was back across the table, a hand of iron at his throat, staring up into the muzzle of a Browning automatic and behind it Fallon and the white devil’s face on him. There was the click of the hammer being cocked.

Kristou almost fainted. He had a partial bowel movement, the stench foul in the cold, sharp air of the warehouse and Fallon pushed him away in disgust.

‘Never again, Kristou,’ he whispered and the Browning in his left hand was rock-steady. ‘Never again.’ The Browning disappeared into the right-hand pocket of his trenchcoat. He turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing on the concrete floor. The Judas gate banged.

Kristou got up gingerly, tears of rage and shame in his eyes. Someone laughed and a harsh, aggressive Yorkshire voice said from the shadows, ‘Now that’s what I call really being in the shit, Kristou.’

Jack Meehan walked into the light, his brother Billy at his heels. They were both dressed exactly as they had been in the newspaper photo. It really was quite remarkable.

Meehan picked up the clipping. ‘What in the hell did you want to show him that for? I sued the bastard who wrote that article and won.’

‘That’s right.’ Billy Meehan giggled. ‘The judge would have made it a farthing damages only there’s no such coin any more.’ His voice was high-pitched, repellent – nothing masculine about it at all.

Meehan slapped him casually, back-handed across the mouth, and said to Kristou, his nose wrinkling in disgust, ‘Go and wipe your backside, for Christ’s sake. Then we talk.’

When Kristou returned, Meehan was sitting at the table pouring whiskey into a clean paper cup, his brother standing behind him. He sampled a little, spat it out and made a face. ‘All right, I know the Irish still have one foot in the bog, but how can they drink this muck?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Meehan,’ Kristou said.

‘You’ll be a bloody sight sorrier before I’m through with you. You cocked it up proper, didn’t you?’

Kristou moistened dry lips and fingered his spectacles. ‘I didn’t think he’d react that way.’

‘What in the hell did you expect? He’s a nutcase, isn’t he? I mean, they all are over there, going round shooting women and blowing up kids. That’s civilised?’

Kristou couldn’t think of a thing to say, but was saved by Billy who said carelessly, ‘He didn’t look much to me. Little half-pint runt. Without that shooter in his fist he’d be nothing.’

Meehan sighed heavily. ‘You know there are days when I really despair of you, Billy. You’ve just seen hell on wheels and didn’t recognise it.’ He laughed harshly again. ‘You’ll never come closer, Kristou. He was mad at you, you old bastard. Mad enough to kill and yet that shooter didn’t even waver.’

Kristou winced. ‘I know, Mr Meehan. I miscalculated. I shouldn’t have mentioned those kids.’

‘Then what are you going to do about it?’

Kristou glanced at Billy, then back to his brother, frowning slightly. ‘You mean you still want him, Mr Meehan?’

‘Doesn’t everybody?’

‘That’s true enough.’

He laughed nervously and Meehan stood up and patted him on the face. ‘You fix it, Kristou, like a good lad. You know where I’m staying. If I haven’t heard by midnight, I’ll send Fat Albert to see you and you wouldn’t like that, would you?’

He walked into the darkness followed by his brother and Kristou stood there, terrified, listening to them go. The judas gate opened and Meehan’s voice called, ‘Kristou?’

‘Yes, Mr Meehan.’

‘Don’t forget to have a bath when you get home. You stink like my Aunt Mary’s midden.’

The judas banged shut and Kristou sank down into the chair, fingers tapping nervously. God damn Fallon. It would serve him right if he turned him in.

And then it hit him like a bolt from the blue. The perfect solution and so beautifully simple.

He picked up the telephone, dialled Scotland Yard and asked to be put through to the Special Branch.

It was raining quite heavily now and Jack Meehan paused to turn up his collar before crossing the street.

Billy said, ‘I still don’t get it. Why is it so important you get Fallon?’

‘Number one, with a shooter in his hand he’s the best there is,’ Meehan said. ‘Number two, everybody wants him. The Special Branch, Military Intelligence – even his old mates in the IRA which means – number three – that he’s eminently disposable afterwards.’

‘What’s that mean?’ Billy said as they turned the corner of the alley and moved towards the car.

‘Why don’t you try reading a few books, for Christ’s sake?’ Meehan demanded. ‘All you ever seem to think of is birds.’

They were at the front of the car by now, a Bentley Continental, and Meehan grabbed Billy by the arm and pulled him up quickly.

‘Here, what the hell’s going on? Where’s Fred?’

‘A slight concussion, Mr Meehan. Nothing much. He’s sleeping it off in the rear seat.’

A match flared in a nearby doorway pulling Fallon’s face out of the darkness. There was a cigarette between his lips. He lit it, then flicked the match into the gutter.

Meehan opened the door of the Bentley and switched on the lights. ‘What are you after?’ he said calmly.

‘I just wanted to see you in the flesh, so to speak, that’s all,’ Fallon said. ‘Good night to you.’

He started to move away and Meehan grabbed his arm. ‘You know, I like you, Fallon. I think we’ve got a lot in common.’

‘I doubt that.’

Meehan ignored him. ‘I’ve been reading this German philosopher lately. You wouldn’t know him. He says that for authentic living what is necessary is the resolute confrontation of death. Would you agree with that?’

‘Heidegger,’ Fallon said. ‘Interesting you should go for him. He was Himmler’s bible.’

He turned away again and Meehan moved quickly in front of him. ‘Heidegger?’ he said. ‘You’ve read Heidegger?’ There was genuine astonishment in his voice. ‘I’ll double up on the original offer and find you regular work. Now I can’t say fairer than that, can I?’

‘Good night, Mr Meehan,’ Fallon said and melted into the darkness.

‘What a man,’ Meehan said. ‘What a hard-nosed bastard. Why, he’s beautiful, Billy, even if he is a fucking Mick.’ He turned. ‘Come on, let’s get back to the Savoy. You drive and if you put as much as a scratch on this motor I’ll have your balls.’

Fallon had a room in a lodging-house in Hanger Street in Stepney just off the Commercial Road. A couple of miles, no more, so he walked, in spite of the rain. He hadn’t the slightest idea what would happen now. Kristou had been his one, his only hope. He was finished, it was as simple as that. He could run, but how far?

As he neared his destination, he took out his wallet and checked the contents. Four pounds and a little silver and he was already two weeks behind with his rent. He went into a cheap wine shop for some cigarettes then crossed the road to Hanger Street.

The newspaper man on the corner had deserted his usual pitch to shelter in a doorway from the driving rain. He was little more than a bundle of rags, an old London-Irishman, totally blind in one eye and only partially sighted in the other.

Fallon dropped a coin in his hand and took a paper. ‘Good night to you, Michael,’ he said.

The old man rolled one milky white eye towards him, his hand fumbling for change in the bag which hung about his neck.

‘Is it yourself, Mr Fallon?’

‘And who else? You can forget the change.’

The old man grabbed his hand and counted out his change laboriously. ‘You had visitors at number thirteen about twenty minutes ago.’

‘The law?’ Fallon asked softly.

‘Nothing in uniform. They went in and didn’t come out again. Two cars waiting at the other end of the street – another across the road.’

He counted a final penny into Fallon’s hand. Fallon turned and crossed to the telephone-box on the other corner. He dialled the number of the lodging-house and was answered instantly by the old woman who ran the place. He pushed in the coin and spoke.

‘Mrs Keegan? It’s Daly here. I wonder if you’d mind doing me a favour?’

He knew at once by the second’s hesitation, by the strain in her voice, that old Michael’s supposition had been correct.

‘Oh, yes, Mr Daly.’

‘The thing is, I’m expecting a phone call at nine o’clock. Take the number and tell them I’ll ring back when I get in. I haven’t a hope in hell of getting there now. I ran into a couple of old friends and we’re having a few drinks. You know how it is?’

There was another slight pause before she said as if in response to some invisible prompt, ‘Sounds nice. Where are you?’

‘A pub called The Grenadier Guard in Kensington High Street. I’ll have to go now. See you later.’

He replaced the receiver, left the phone-box and moved into a doorway from which he had a good view of No. 13 halfway down the short street.

A moment later, the front door was flung open. There were eight of them. Special Branch from the look of it. The first one on to the pavement waved frantically and two cars moved out of the shadows at the end of the street. The whole crew climbed inside, the cars moved away at speed. A car which was parked at the kerb on the other side of the main road went after them.

Fallon crossed to the corner and paused beside the old newspaper seller. He took out his wallet, extracting the four remaining pound notes and pressed them into his hand.

‘God bless you, Mr Fallon,’ Michael said, but Fallon was already on the other side of the road, walking rapidly back towards the river.

This time Kristou didn’t hear a thing although he had been waiting for something like an hour, nerves taut. He sat there at the table, ledger open, the pen gripped tightly in his mittened hand. There was the softest of footfalls, wind over grass only, then the harsh, deliberate click as the hammer of the Browning was cocked.

Kristou breathed deeply to steady himself. ‘What’s the point, Martin?’ he said. ‘What would it get you?’

Fallon moved round to the other side of the table, the Browning in his hand. Kristou stood up, leaning on the table to stop from shaking.

‘I’m the only friend you’ve got left now, Martin.’

‘You bastard,’ Fallon said. ‘You sicked the Special Branch on to me.’