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To her horror he said very softly, 'Why did you interfere?'

'Isn't that obvious?' she answered in a low voice. 'For Superintendent Miller and his inspector's sake. Now play.'

'God forgive you, but you're a terrible liar,' Fallon told her, and started.

He opened with a rising scale, not too fast, allowing each note to be heard, heeling and toeing with his left foot in a clear, bold, loud statement, playing with such astonishing power that Miller's wild surmise died on the instant for it was a masterly performance by any standard.

Father da Costa stood at the altar rail as if turned to stone, caught by the brilliance of Fallon's playing as he answered the opening statement with the chords of both hands on the sparkling Great Organ. He repeated, feet, then hands again, manual answering pedals until his left toe sounded the long four bar bottom A and his hands traced the brilliant passages announced by the pedals.

Miller tapped Father da Costa on the shoulder and whispered in his ear, 'Brilliant, but I'm running out of time, Father. Can we have our chat now?'

Father da Costa nodded reluctantly and led the way across to the sacristy. Fitzgerald was the last in and the door banged behind him in a sudden gust of wind.

Fallon stopped playing. 'Have they gone?' he asked softly.

Anna da Costa stared blindly down at him, a kind of awe on her face, reached out to touch his cheek. 'Who are you? she whispered. 'What are you?'

'A hell of a question to ask any man,' he said and, turning back to the organ, he moved into the opening passage again.

The music could be heard in the sacristy, muted yet throbbing through the old walls with a strange power. Father da Costa sat on the edge of the table.

'Cigarette, sir?' Fitzgerald produced an old, silver case. Father da Costa took one and the light that followed.

Miller observed him closely. The massive shoulders, that weathered, used-up face, the tangled grey beard, and suddenly realised with something close to annoyance that he actually liked the man. It was precisely for this reason that he decided to be as formal as possible.

'Well, Superintendent?' Father da Costa said.

'Have you changed your mind, sir, since we last spoke?'

'Not in the slightest.'

Miller fought hard to control his anger and Fitzgerald moved in smoothly. 'Have you been coerced in any way since this morning sir, or threatened?'

'Not at all, Inspector,' Father da Costa assured him with complete honesty.

'Does the name Meehan mean anything to you, sir?'

Father da Costa shook his head, frowning slightly, 'No, I don't think so. Should it?'

Miller nodded to Fitzgerald, who opened the briefcase he was carrying and produced a photo which he passed to the priest. 'Jack Meehan,' he said. 'Dandy Jack to his friends. That one was taken in London on the steps of West End Central police station after he was released for lack of evidence in an East End shooting last year.'

Meehan, wearing his usual double-breasted overcoat, smiled out at the world hugely, waving his hat in his right hand, his left arm encircling the shoulders of a well-known model girl.

'The girl is strictly for publicity purposes,' Fitzgerald said. 'In sexual matters his tastes run elsewhere. What you read on the sheet pinned to the back is all we have on him officially.'

Father da Costa read it with interest. Jack meehan was forty-eight and had joined the Royal Navy in 1943 at eighteen, serving on minesweepers until 1945 when he had been sentenced to a year's imprisonment and discharged with ignominy for breaking a Petty Officer's jaw in a brawl. In 1948 he had served six months on a minor smuggling charge and in 1954 a charge of conspiracy to rob the mails had been dropped for lack of evidence. Since then, he had been questioned by the police on over forty occasions in connection with indictable offences.

'You don't seem to be having much success,' Father da Costa said with a slight smile.

'There's nothing funny about Jack Meehan,' Miller said. 'In twenty-five years in the police force he's the nastiest thing I've ever come across.