Confessional - Jack Higgins [26]
'Where he promptly got burned out by an Orange mob the following year.'
'I tried to keep the parish together using a school hall,' Cussane said.
Fox glanced at Devlin, 'While you ran around Belfast adding fuel to the flames?'
'God might forgive you for that,' Devlin said piously, 'for I cannot.'
Cussane emptied his glass. 'I'll be off then. Nice to meet you, Harry Fox.'
He held out his hand. Fox shook it and Cussane moved to the French windows and opened them. Fox saw the convent looming up into the night on the other side of the garden wall. Cussane walked across the lawn, opened a gate and passed through.
'Quite a man,' he said, as Devlin closed the windows.
'And then some.' Devlin turned, no longer smiling. 'All right, Harry. Ferguson being his usual mysterious self, it looks as if it's up to you to tell me what this is about.'
In the hospice, all was quiet. It was as unlike the conventional idea of a hospital as it was possible to be and the architect had designed the ward area in a way that gave each occupant of a bed a choice of privacy or intimacy with other patients. The night sister sat at her desk, the only light a shaded lamp. She didn't hear Cussane approach, yet suddenly he was there, looming out of the darkness.
'How's Malone?'
'The same, Father. Very little pain. We have the drug in-put just about in balance.'
'Is he lucid?'
'Some of the time.'
'I'll go and see him.'
Danny Malone's bed, divided from the others by bookshelves and cupboards, was angled towards a glass window that gave a view of grounds and the night sky. The night light beside the bed brought his face into relief. He was not old, no more than forty, his hair prematurely white, the face like a skull under taut skin, etched in pain caused by the cancer that was slowly and relentlessly taking him from this life to the next.
As Cussane sat down, Malone opened his eyes. He gazed blankly at Cussane, then recognition dawned. 'Father, I thought you weren't coming.'
'I promised, didn't I? I was having a nightcap with Liam Devlin, is all.'
'Jesus, Father, you're lucky you got away with just the one with him, but big for the cause, Liam, I'll give him that. There's no man living done more for Ireland.'
'What about yourself?' Cussane sat down beside the bed. 'No stronger fighter for the movement than you, Danny.'
'But how many did I kill, Father, there's the rub, and for what?' Malone asked him. 'Daniel O'Connel once said in a speech that, although the ideal of Irish freedom was just, it was not worth a single human life. When I was young, I disputed that. Now I'm dying, I think I know what he meant.' He winced in pain and turned to look at Cussane. 'Can we talk some more, Father? It helps get it straight in my own mind.'
'Just for a while, then you must get some sleep,' Cussane smiled. 'One thing a priest is good at is listening, Danny.'
Malone smiled contentedly. 'Right, where were we? I was telling you about the preparation for the bombing campaign on the English Midlands and London in seventy-two.'
'You were saying the papers nicknamed you the Fox,' Cussane said, 'because you seemed to go backwards and forwards between England and Ireland at will. All your friends were caught, Danny, but not you. How was that?'
'Simple, Father. The greatest curse on this country of ours is the informer and the second greatest curse is the inefficiency of the IRA. People full of ideology and revolution blow a lot of wind and are often singularly lacking in good sense. That's why I preferred to go to the professionals.'
'Professionals?'
'What you would call the criminal element. For example, there wasn't an IRA safe house in England during the seventies that wasn't on the Special Branch's list at Scotland Yard sooner or later. That's how so many got caught.'
'And you?'
'Criminals on the run or needing a rest when things get too hot have places they can go, Father. Expensive places, I admit, but safe and that's what I used. There was one