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Anna said, 'I'd like to thank you for what you did last night.'

'It was nothing.'

'One of the men involved was an old friend of yours. O'Hara, wasn't that his name?'

Fallon said quickly, 'No, you've got it wrong.'

'I don't think so,' she insisted. 'Uncle Michael spoke to him after you'd left, in the pub across the road. He told him a great deal about you. Belfast, Londonderry - the IRA.'

'The bastard,' Fallon said bitterly. 'He always had a big mouth, that one. Somebody will be closing his eyes with pennies one of these fine days if he isn't careful.'

'I don't think he meant any harm. Uncle Michael's impression was that he thought a great deal about you.' She hesitated and said carefully, 'Things happen in war sometimes that nobody intends.'

Fallon cut in on her sharply. 'I never go back to anything in thought or deed. It doesn't pay.' They turned into another path and he looked up at the rain. 'God, is it never going to stop? What a world. Even the bloody sky won't stop weeping.'

'You have a bitter view of life, Mr Fallon.'

'I speak as I find and as far as I am concerned, life is one hell of a name for the world as it is.'

'And is there nothing, then?' she demanded. 'Not one single solitary thing worth having in this world of yours?'

'Only you,' he said.

They were close to the presbytery now and Billy Meehan observed them closely with the aid of a pair of binoculars from behind a mausoleum.

Anna stopped walking and turned to face Fallon. 'What did you say?'

'You've no business here.' He made a sweeping gesture with one arm encompassing the whole cemetery. 'This place belongs to the dead and you're still alive.'

'And you?'

There was a long pause and then he said calmly, 'No, it's different for me. I'm a dead man walking. Have been for a long time now.'

She was to remember that remark always as one of the most terrible things she had ever heard in her life.

She stared up at him, those calm, blind eyes fixed on some point in space, and then she reached up and pulled down his head and kissed him hard, her mouth opening in a deliberately provocative gesture.

She pulled way. 'Did you feel that?' she demanded fiercely. 'Did I break through?'

'I think you could say that,' he said in some amazement.

'Good,' she said. 'I'm going in now. I want to change and then I have lunch to get ready. You'd better play the organ or something until my uncle gets back.'

'All right,' Fallon said and turned away.

He had only taken a few steps when she called, 'Oh, and Fallon?' When he turned she was standing in the porch, the door half-open. 'Think of me. Remember me. Concentrate on that. I exist. I'm real.'

She went in and closed the door and Fallon turned and walked away quickly.

It was only when he was out of sight that Billy moved from the shelter of the mausoleum holding his binoculars in one hand. Fallon and the priest's nice. Now that was interesting.

He was about to turn away when a movement at one of the presbytery windows caught his eye. He moved back into cover and raised the binoculars.

Anna was standing at the window and as he watched, she started to unbutton her blouse. His mouth went dry, a hand seemed to squeeze his insides and when she unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it, his hands, clutching the binoculars, started to shake.

The bitch, he thought, and she's Fallon's woman. Fallon's. The ache between his thighs was almost unbearable and he turned and hurried away.

Fallon had been playing the organ for just over an hour when he paused for breath. It had been a long time and his hands were aching, but it was good to get down to it again.

He turned and found Father da Costa sitting in the front pew watching him, arms folded. 'How long have you been there?' Fallon got up and started down the steps between the choir stalls.

'Half and hour, maybe more,' Father da Costa said. 'You're brilliant, you know that, don't you?'

'Used to be.'

'Before you took up the gun for dear old mother Ireland