'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. Remember the Kray brothers and the Richardson torture gang? Meehan's worse than the whole damn lot of them put together. He has an undertaking business here in the city, but behind that facade of respectability he heads an organisation that controls drug-pushing, prostitution, gambling and protection in most of the big cities in the north of England.'

'And you can't stop him? I find that surprising.'

'Rule by terror, Father. The Krays got away with it for years. Meehan makes them look like beginners. He's had men shot on many occasions - usually the kind of shotgun blast in the legs that doesn't kill, simply cripples. He likes them around as an advertisement.'

'You know this for a fact?'

'And couldn't prove it. Just as I couldn't prove he was behind the worst case of organised child prostitution we ever had or that he disciplined one man by crucifying him with six-inch nails and another by making him eat his own excreta.'

For the briefest of moments, Father da Costa found himself back in that camp in North Korea - the first one where the softening up was mainly physical - lying half-dead in the latrine while a Chinese boot ground his face into a pile of human ordure. The guard had tried to make him eat, too, and he had refused, mainly because he thought he was dying anyway.

He pulled himself back to the present with an effort. 'And you think Meehan is behind the killing of Krasko this morning?'

'He has to be,' Miller told him. 'Krasko was, to put it politely, a business rival in every sense of the word. Meehan tried to take him under his wing and he refused. In Meehan's terms, he wouldn't see reason.'

'And a killer was brought in to execute him publicly?'

'To encourage the others,' Miller said. 'In a sense, the very fact that Meehan dares to do such a thing is a measure of just how sick he is. He knows that I know he's behind the whole thing. But he wants me to know - wants everyone to know. He thinks nothing can touch him.'

Father da Costa looked down at the photo, frowning, and Fitzgerald said, 'We could get him this time, Father, with your help.'

Father da Costa shook his head, his face grave. 'I'm sorry, Inspector. I really am.'

Miller said in a harsh voice, 'Father da Costa, the only inference we can draw from your strange conduct is that you are aware of the identity of the man we are seeking. That you are in fact protecting him. Inspector Fitzgerald here, himself a Catholic, has suggested a possible explanation to me. That your knowledge is somehow bound up with the secrets of the confessional, if that is the term. Is there any truth in that supposition?'

'Believe me, Superintendent, if I could help you I would,' Father da Costa told him.

'You still refuse?'

'I'm afraid so.'

Miller glanced at his watch. 'All right, Father, I have an appointment in twenty minutes and I'd like you to come with me. No threats - no coercion. Just a simple request.'

'I see,' Father da Costa said. 'May I be permitted to ask where we are going?'

'To attend the post mortem of Janos Krasko at the city mortuary.'

'I see,' Father da Costa said. 'Tell me, Superintendent, is this supposed to be a challenge?'

'That's up to you, Father.'

Father da Costa stood up, suddenly weary. His will to resist was at a new low. He was sick of the whole wretched business. Strangely enough the only thing of which he was aware with any clarity was the sound of the organ, muted and far away.

'I have evening Mass, Superintendent, and supper at the refuge afterwards. I can't be long.'

'An hour at the most, sir, I'll have you brought back by car, but we really will have to leave now.'

Father da Costa opened the sacristy door and led the way back into the church. He paused at the altar, 'Anna?' he called.

Fallon stopped playing and the girl turned to face him. 'I'm just going out, my dear, with Superintendent Miller.'

'What about Mass?' she said.

'I won't be long. As for the organ,' he added, 'perhaps Mr Fallon would come back after Mass? We could discuss it then.'

'Glad to, Father,' Fallon called cheerfully.

Father da Costa, Miller and Inspector Fitzgerald walked down the aisle, past the chapel of St Martin de Porres, where Jack Meehan and his brother still sat in the shadows, and out of the front door.

It banged in the wind. There was silence. Fallon said softly, 'Well now, at a rough estimate, I'd say you've just saved my neck. I think he suspected something, the good Superintendent Miller.'

'But not now,' she said. 'Not after such playing. You were brilliant.'

He chuckled softly. 'That might have been true once, as I'll admit with becoming modesty, but not any more. My hands aren't what they were, for one thing.'

'Brilliant,' she said. 'There's no other word for it.'

She was genuinely moved and for the moment it was as if she had forgotten that other darker side. She groped for his hands, a smile on her face.

'As for your hands - what nonsense.' She took them in hers, still smiling, and then that smile was wiped clean. 'Your fingers?' she whispered, feeling at them. 'What happened?'

'Oh, those.' He pulled his hands free and examined the ugly, misshapen finger-ends. 'Some unfriends of mine pulled out my nails. A small matter on which we didn't quite see eye to eye.'

He stood up and pulled on his coat. She sat there, horror on her face and reached out a hand as if to touch him, pawing at space. He helped her to her feet and placed her coat about her shoulders.

'I don't understand,' she said.

'And please God, you never should,' he told her softly. 'Come on now and I'll take you home.'

They went down the altar steps and out through the sacristy. The door closed behind them. There was a moment of silence and then Billy Meehan stood up.

'Thank God for that. Can we kindly get the hell out of here now?'