Free Confessional by Jack Higgins Page A

Bushmills. Fox said, 'Forgive me for asking, Father, but are you American or Irish? I can't quite tell.'

'Most days, neither can he,' Devlin laughed.

'My mother was an Irish-American who came back to Connacht in 1938 after her parents died, to seek her roots. All she found was me.'

'And your father?'

'I never knew him. Cussane was her name. She was a Protestant, by the way. There are still a few in Connacht, descendants of Cromwell's butchers. Cussane is often called Patterson in that part of the country by pseudo-translation from Casan, which in Irish means path.'

'Which means he's not quite certain who he is,' Devlin put in.

'Only some of the time.' Cussane smiled. 'My mother

returned to America in 1946 after the war. She died of influenza a year later and I was taken in by her only relative, an old great-uncle who ran a farm in the Ontario wheat belt. He was a fine man and a good Catholic. It was under his influence that I decided to enter the Church.'

'Enter the Devil, stage left.' Devlin raised his glass.

Fox looked puzzled and Cussane explained. 'The seminary that accepted me was All Souls at Vine Landing outside Boston. Liam was English professor there.'

'He was a great trial to me,' Devlin said. 'Mind like a steel trap. Constantly catching me out misquoting Eliot in class.'

'I served in a couple of Boston parishes and another in New York,' Cussane said, 'but I always hoped to get back to Ireland. Finally, I got a move to Belfast in 1968. A church on the Falls Road.'

'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.'

Til 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