A Prayer for the Dying - Jack Higgins [18]
'Superintendent Miller,' Father da Costa said softly, 'men of a harsher disposition than you have tried to make me speak in circumstances where it was not appropriate. They did not succeed and neither will you, I can assure you. No power on earth can make me speak on this matter if I do not wish to.'
'We'll see about that, sir. I'll give you some time to think this matter over, then I'll be back.' He was about to walk out when a sudden wild thought struck him and he turned, slowly, 'Have you seen him again, sir, since this morning? Have you been threatened? Is your life in any kind of danger?'
'Goodbye, Superintendent,' Father da Costa said.
The front door banged. Father da Costa turned to finish his whisky and Anna moved silently into the room. She put a hand on his arm.
'He'll go to Monsignor O'Halloran.'
'The bishop being at present in Rome, that would seem the obvious thing to do.' he said.
'Hadn't you better get there first?'
'I suppose so.' He emptied his glass and put it on the mantel-piece. 'What about you?'
'I want to do some more organ practice. I'll be all right.'
She pushed him out into the hall and reached for his coat from the stand with unerring aim. 'What would I do without you?' he said.
She smiled cheerfully. 'Goodness knows. Hurry back.'
He went out, she closed the door after him. When she turned, the smile had completely disappeared. She went back into his study, sat down by the fire and buried her face in her hands.
Nick Miller had been a policeman for almost a quarter of a century. Twenty-five years of working a three-shift system. Of being disliked by his neighbours, of being able to spend only one weekend in seven at home with his family and the consequent effect upon his relationship with his son and daughter.
He had little formal education but he was a shrewd, clever man with the ability to cut through to the heart of things, and this, coupled with an extensive knowledge of human nature gained from a thousand long, hard Saturday nights on the town, had made him a good policeman.
He had no conscious thought or even desire to help society. His job was in the main to catch thieves, and society consisted of the civilians who sometimes got mixed up in the constant state of guerrilla warfare which existed between the police and the criminal. If anything, he preferred the criminal. At least you knew where you were with him.
But Dandy Jack Meehan was different. One corruption was all corruption, he'd read that somewhere and if it applied to any human being, it applied to Meehan.
Miller loathed him with the kind of obsessive hate that was in the end self-destructive. To be precise, ten years of his life had gone to Dandy Jack without the slightest hint of success. Meehan had to be behind the Krasko killing, that was a fact of life. The rivalry between the two men had been common knowledge for at least two years.
For the first time in God knows how long he'd had a chance and now, the priest . . .
When he got into the rear of the car he was shaking with anger, and on a sudden impulse he leaned across and told his driver to take him to the headquarters of Meehan's funeral business. Then he sat back and tried to light his pipe with trembling fingers.
5
Dandy Jack
Paul's Square was a green lung in the heart of the city, an acre of grass and flower-beds and willow trees with a fountain in the centre surrounded on all four sides by Georgian terrace houses, most of which were used as offices by barristers, solicitors or doctors and beautifully preserved.
There was a general atmosphere of quiet dignity and Meehan's funeral business fitted in perfectly. Three houses on the north side had been converted to provide every possible facility from a flower shop to a Chapel of Rest. A mews entrance to one side gave access to a car park and garage area at the rear surrounded by high walls so that business could be handled as quietly and as unobtrusively as possible, a facility which had other