"Turn right now," Dillon told him. "And what would you be knowing about it?"
"I've never talked much about my childhood, Dillon. My old man was a very violent man, killed in gang warfare when I was three. My mum was married to Harry's brother, and she was an exceptional lady who died of breast cancer when I was nineteen. I really went off the rails after that."
"Which is understandable."
"It was Harry who pulled me round, and you, you bastard, when you entered our lives. You introduced me to philosophy, remember, gave me a sense of myself."
"So where is this leading?" Dillon asked.
The Cooper turned another corner and pulled up outside their destination. "Church of the Holy Name," it said on the painted signboard beside the open gate, along with the times of Confession and Mass. The building had a Victorian-Gothic look to it, which made sense because it was only in the Victorian era that Roman Catholics by law were allowed to build churches again. Dillon saw a tower, a porch, a vast wooden door bound in iron in a failed attempt to achieve a medieval look.
They stayed in the car for a few moments. Billy said, "The thing is, my mother was a strict Roman Catholic. Not our Harry. He doesn't believe in anything he can't put his hand on, but she really put me onstage. When I was a kid, I was an acolyte. I tell you, Dillon, it meant everything to her when it was my turn to serve at Mass."
"I know," Dillon said. "Scarlet cassock, white cotta."
"Don't tell me you did that?"
"I'm afraid so, and, Billy, I've really got news for you. I did it in this very church we're about to enter. I was twelve when my father brought me from Northern Ireland to live with him in Kilburn. That means it was thirty-seven years ago when I first entered this church, and the priest in charge is the same man, James Murphy. As I recall, he was born in 1929, which would make him eighty."
"But why didn't you mention that to Ferguson and the others? What's going on? I knew something was, Dillon. Talk to me."
Dillon sat there for a moment longer, then took out his wallet and from one of the pockets produced a prayer card. It was old, creased, slightly curling at the golden edges. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, we who are ourselves alone.
"Jesus, Dillon." Billy took it from him. "Where the hell did this come from?"
"It was Father James Murphy, as he was then, who first received the news of my father's death in that firefight in Belfast, an incident that turned me into what I am, shaped my whole life. 'A casualty of war,' he told me, gave me the card, and begged me to pray." He smiled bleakly, took the card, and replaced it in the wallet. "So here we are. Let's go in, shall we? I see from the board someone's hearing confessions in there, although it may not be the great man himself."
He got out, and Billy joined him, his face pale. "I don't know what to say."
They entered and walked through the cemetery, which was also Victorian-Gothic and rather pleasant, marble effigies, winged angels, engraved headstones, and cypress trees to one side. "I used to like this when I was a boy, liked it more than I liked it inside the church in a way. It's what we all come to, when you think of it," Dillon said.
"For Christ's sake, cut it out," Billy said. "You're beginning to worry me."
He turned the ring on the great door, and Dillon followed him through. There was faint music playing, something subdued and soothing. The whole place was in a kind of half darkness, but was unexpectedly warm, no doubt because of central heating. The usual church smell, so familiar from childhood, filled his nostrils. Dillon dipped his fingers in the holy water font as he went past and crossed himself, and Billy, after hesitating, did the same.
The sanctuary lamp glowed through the gloom, and to the left there was a Mary Chapel, the Virgin and Child floating in a sea of candlelight. The place had obviously had money spent on it in the past. Victorian stained glass abounded, carvings that looked like medieval copies, and a Christ on the Cross which was extremely striking. The altar and choir stalls, too, were ornate and, it had to be admitted, beautifully carved.
A woman was down there wearing a green smock, arranging flowers by the altar. Fifty or so, Dillon told himself, a strong face with a good mouth, handsome in a Jane Austen kind of way, the hair fair and well kept with no gray showing, although that was probably due more to the attentions of a good hairdresser than nature. She wore a white blouse and gray skirt under the smock, and half-heeled shoes. She held pruning scissors in one gloved hand, and she turned and glanced at them coolly for a moment, then returned to her flowers.
Dillon moved towards the confessional boxes on the far side. There were three of them, but the light was on in only one. Two middle-aged women were waiting, and Billy, sitting two pews behind them beside Dillon, leaned forward to decipher the name card in the slot on the priest's confessional door.
"You're all right, it says 'Monsignor James Murphy.' "
A man in a raincoat emerged from the box and walked away along the aisle, and one of the women went in. They sat there in silence, and she was out in not much more than five minutes. She sat down, and her friend went in. She was longer, more like fifteen minutes, then finally emerged, murmured to her friend, and they departed.
"Here I go," Dillon whispered to Billy, got up, opened the door of the confessional box, entered, and sat down.
"Please bless me, Father," he said to the man on the other side of the grille, conscious of the strong, aquiline face in profile, the hair still long and silvery rather than gray.
Murphy said, "May our Lord Jesus bless you and help you to tell your sins."
"Oh, that would be impossible, for they are so many."
The head turned slightly towards him. "When did you last make a confession, my son?"
"So long ago, I can't remember."
"Are your sins so bad that you shrink from revealing them?"
"Not at all. I know the secrets of the confessional are inviolate, but acknowledging the deaths of so many at my hands in no way releases me from the burden of them."
Murphy seemed to straighten. "Ah, I think I see your problem. You are a soldier, or have been a soldier, as with so many men these days."
"That's true enough."
"Then you may certainly be absolved, but you must help by seeking comfort in prayer."
"Oh, I've tried that, Father, saying, 'Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, we who are ourselves alone.' "
There was a moment of silence, then Murphy turned full face, trying to peer through the grille. "Who are you?"
"God bless you, Father, but isn't that breaking the rules? Still, I'll let it go for once and put you out of your misery. Sean Dillon, as ever was. Thirty years since you last saw me. I was nineteen, and you were the man the police asked to break the news that my father was dead, killed accidently while on a trip to Belfast. You told me he was a casualty of war."
"Sean," Murphy's voice quavered. "I can't believe it. What can I say?"
"I think you said it all thirty years ago when you urged me to pray, particularly the special one on a prayer card you gave me, the prayer I've just quoted to you."
"Yes, I recollect now." The voice was unsteady. "A wonderful prayer to the Virgin Mary."
"I remember you saying it would be a comfort for all victims of a great cause. Which made sense, as the prayer is directed at we who are ourselves alone, and 'ourselves alone' in Irish is Sinn Fein. So it had a definite political twist to it, urging a nineteen-year-old boy whose father had ended up dead on a pavement in the Falls Road to get angry, clear off to Belfast, and join the Provos to fight for the Glorious Cause. Now, aren't you proud of me?"