"Up there, sir," the young policeman said, pointing to the hollow arched entrance of the belltower.
They were standing in the nave of the ornate church building which had been built at the turn of the century by a fiery monsignor from old Donegal for the greater glory of God. The Irish-Catholic families of the parish had been cajoled and coerced, with threats of damnation, excommunication or years in purgatory, into donating money they could ill-afford because of the lack of work and their burgeoning families to pay for the Italian marble altar, whinstone buttresses and beautifully masoned arches.
A monstrous crucifix with an appallingly bloody Christ nailed to a rococco cross hung suspended forty feet over the devout and worshipful congregation. The tough old monsignor, who saw himself cut from archbishop's cloth, and who wheeled and dealed without shame to have the parish promoted to diocesan status, had dreamed of building the most magnificent cathedral money could dictate. Certainly he succeeded in building a church worthy of the name, but all his vanity and ambition were in vain. The good lord called him to a greater and everlasting position of worship within a year of the consecration of the building. The bells of St Rowan's church tolled for the solemn high mass of the monsignor's funeral and he was given pride of place in the new graveyard in the spreading grounds, after which everybody forgot about cathedrals and went back to church.
Father Liam Boyle, the incumbent parish priest was a thin, grey- haired man with turned down lips who looked as if the milk of human kindness would go sour in his mouth.
He wore a long black soutane, faded at the cuffs and shiny with wear everywhere else, stained with grey blobs of candlewax down the length of the innumerable cloth buttons. He rubbed his hands together in a worried, nervous way, making them rasp against each other in a constant dry whisper.
"Must have been up there for days," he said to Jack. "There was a fault in the tintinnabula, or so we thought, but he must have done something to the mechanism up in the tower. The clock hasn't struck the half-hour for days. Our parish horologist couldn't get up there to check it out. He opened the trap and somebody stamped it down on his head. He's lucky he didn't fall down the steps and break his neck."
"So what's the position?" Jack asked the uniformed policeman.
"There's a man up in the belfry. He says his name is O'Day and he's claiming the ancient right of sanctuary."
"Sanctuary, is it?" the priest snapped. "After the vandalism that's taken place in this church, he'll have no sanctuary here. Sacrilege is what I call it. Only last week we had the altar broken into and a chalice stolen, full of consecrated hosts, and a rosary blessed by the pope himself. No doubt our visitor can explain that to us all."
"Yes, I heard about that," Jack said. "I'm sure the officers are doing all they can."
"So what are you going to do now about this...this invasion?"
"Just leave it to me sir," Jack started to say.
"Father," the priest corrected irritably. Jack acknowledged the correction with a dry nod.
He went across to the base of the tower which was built, quite spectacularly, over the altar, resting on four arched buttresses which merged into the flanks of the walls. A narrow entrance cut into the fine-grained sandstone blocks, led to an equally cramped staircase which spiralled upwards for three turns before arriving at a wide wooden floor. Here, another uniformed policeman was leaning on a bannister. He straightened up when Jack appeared.
"Where is he?" Jack asked. The constable jerked his thumb upwards. Jack tilted his head. The narrow stairway, this made of old wood, continued upwards. There was a smell of dust and bird-droppings.
"He refuses to come down." the officer volunteered. "We tried a bit of persuasion, but he's jammed something over the trap. He insists he'll only speak to you."
Jack gave a weary sigh and started up the stairs after telling the constable to wait there until he came down. He wanted to take this one on his own. The treads had no risers and sank a fraction with every step. Almost every one of them creaked and the whole stairway looked too old and flimsy to take a man's weight. It turned, rose, turned again and continued upwards. The narrow lead-hatched slit windows gave little light. Jack kept a tight grip of the dusty bannister and wished he knew some prayers. He did not look down.
Finally the stairs stopped abruptly at a wooden ceiling festooned with the grey triangles of ancient cobwebs. Here, the smell of pigeons was much stronger and immediately Jack recalled the days out raiding the nests in the old warehouse where young Neil Kennedy had been snatched in the dark. It gave him a shiver. Something fluttered noisily off to the left where the spars supported the wooden floor above, hiding shadows in the corner. Jack took the last few steps slowly, paused for breath, then rapped on the wood above his head.
A muffled thumping sound came in instant reply. Jack banged again with his fist.
"Mr O'Day?"
"Who is it," a voice replied, also damped by the wooden boards, but sounding only a foot or so away from Jack's head.
"Jack Fallon. You wanted to speak to me."
"How do I know it's you?"
"What do you want me to do?" Jack asked impatiently. "I've climbed up so far my nose is starting to bleed."
"Get back from the door," the man's voice ordered him. "And no funny business, or I'll brain you, I swear to God."
Jack took several steps backward, making sure his feet stamped hard on the stairs, though that caused a vibration that made him think they could give way any second. Above him, footsteps pounded the floorboards. The trapdoor at the head of the stairs opened a fraction, showing a thin line of wan light before a shadow blocked it off. Jack screwed his eyes up, trying to make it out, but could see nothing.
"Is that you, Mr O'Day?"
"Aye, it's me alright."
"I've been looking for you."
"That's no surprise. I've been waiting for you. You took your time."
"Do you want to come down and talk about it?"
"Not on your mother's life," the voice said. There was more than a hint of a southern Irish accent there. "If I move out of here, I'm a dead man, sure as you're born."
"Oh, and why's that?"
"It's a long story, Mr Fallon, and I don't think you're about to believe it. I have to tell you it though, but I'm not moving from here. It's the only safe place left."
"Well, I want to hear what you have to say, but I don't fancy standing down here all day getting a crick in my neck. Can I come up?"
"No, stay there," the man barked nervously.
"Oh, come on man," Jack said. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to find out what's going on."
There was a silence while the man considered it. Jack waited it out.
"Would you have a set of those handcuff things?"
Jack agreed that he did. He fumbled in his jacket pocket, drew them out and held them up for display. They jingled in his hand. The trapdoor opened wider. A pale face peered down.
"Right, you can come up. There's a post just inside the door. Put those things on your wrist and when you get to the top, put the other end round the post."
Jack sighed again, but nodded in agreement.
"And I'm telling you. If you don't do what I say, I'll cave your head in."
The door opened to its full extent, then slammed back to the floor with a gunshot boom which reverberated down the hollow length of the Gothic tower. Jack walked slowly up the stairs, snapping the cuff on his wrist as he did so. Warily, he clambered through the space until he could reach the bannister on the top side. He could see nothing, but sensed the man behind him. He reached forward and clicked the other ring around the upright and stopped.
"Right, I'm your prisoner. Now what?"
"You can sit down now," the voice said from behind him. Jack turned and saw a scrawny man with a scraggy grizzle-grey beard that looked ten days from its last shave. He was emaciated and haggard. Jack recalled the dead man they'd found on the railway line. He too had been just a rickle of bones like the man who said he was O'Day. Without a word he turned and sat himself on the bannister. It felt solid enough.
The man came towards him, blue eyes rimmed with red. In both hands he hefted a metal bar. On the other side of the dusty room there was a set of levers and pulleys. The spar looked as if it had come from there. That probably solved the mystery of why St Rowan's bells had stopped clanging the half-hour. He wasn't concerned about the weapon. The man looked as if he would blow away on a breezy day, and though there was a frantic, wildly haunted look in his eyes, Jack knew he could get the weapon off him even with one hand tied behind his back.
"Nice to see you at last, Mr O'Day. I've been concerned about you," Jack started.
"Not near as concerned as I've been," O'Day said. He stole a quick glance to check Jack's handcuffs, then seemed to relax a little, although his whole body looked tight as a banjo string.
"You're on the murder hunt, aren't you? The boss?"
Jack nodded.
"That's what I have to talk to you about. I don't want to kill anybody, and I don't want it to get me."
Far downstairs, something dropped with a clatter and the noise boomed up the hollow. O'Day jerked round like a cat, raising his lever like a club.
"Don't worry. They won't come up unless I tell them, and I'm not going to tell them. You've got a promise on that."
Michael O'Day's shoulders slumped. He was wearing what had been, until now, a smart and probably well-cut suit with a light blue shirt. Now, suit and shirt looked filthy and creased, as if they'd been slept in for a week, and they hung on him like drapes. His neck was thin and scrawny and his face was so wasted his cheek bones stuck out like knuckles and the skin was drawn in as if he was sucking on something bitter. Very slowly, he lowered himself down to the floor where he'd spread a dark blue winter coat that had also seen better days, some of them recent. On the coat, a silver chalice with an ornate lid topped by a small cross stood gleaming in a stray shaft of light. At its base was a set of prayer-beads with a crucifix that seemed to be worked in gold.
"Can't eat, can't sleep," he said in a voice that sounded close to exhaustion. The dark rings under his eyes deepened as he lowered his head.
"It comes for you in your dreams."
"What does?"
"Whatever it is the old woman called up. Honest to God, I never meant anything like that to happen. She only said it was a special night. I don't know about the others, but I just wanted my fortune told. I needed the luck, for it's been out this past couple of months. Big Eddie Carrick's boys have been hunting me for weeks. Ha! That's a big worry. He's Mother Theresa compared to what's been after me."
"You know about the killings," Jack said levelly.
"I know about them alright. I was there when the old woman died. I was the last one in the room and I thought I was going to die as well. After that I locked myself up for a while. I heard about the kiddies, on the news, but I didn't connect it, even when that bigoted bastard Simpson topped himself. He deserved all he got. There was something slimy about that one, I can tell you."
O'Day's voice was beginning to rise. Jack held out his free hand and made a calming gesture. The man stopped and took a breath.
"When the other baby went missing, and you found the woman, I started to suspect, because by then I was getting the dreams. Terrible nightmares. By the third one, when you got that woman in the river - did you know she worked at the police station?"
Jack said he did. "I thought you would," the man went on with hardly a pause. "Quiet girl, wouldn't have harmed a fly, but I'll bet you all that's changed. I don't know what she was doing at old Marta's place. It was after she topped herself that it came to me, clear as day. I never read anything about the Tomlin fella, or Mrs Eastwood, but I've got a feeling they've gone too."
"And Derek Elliot," Jack interjected. O'Day gave a start.
"Him an'all? That makes me the last. And that's why I'm staying here." He reached and grabbed the chalice.
"This is all I've got. It can't get me as long as I've the sacrament with me. Are you of the faith?"
Jack shook his head. "Not any," he said.
"Well you should be, because it'll protect you from what you're after."
"And what is that?"
"I'll tell you in a minute. But first of all I have to tell you about the night in Cairn House. Did you know they found a boy there way back in the sixties? Dead for months and murdered?"
"Yes. I was just a kid at the time, but we all heard about it."
"Before my time an' all. But she told me, the old woman did. It gave the house a special power, she said. I thought that was a whole heap of shite myself, but she believed it, and she knew her stuff I suppose. She said the forces gathered where something terrible had happened, like it was a crack between here and wherever, and she was right about that. You have to know what you're up against, and then god help you. Look at me. How old would you say I was?"
From the look of the man, Jack would have guessed fifty, but he said nothing.
"I'm thirty six years old, for Christ sake. Last week my hair was as black as yours. And now look at what's happened to me all because of that old Hungarian witch."
"So what happened?" Jack asked softly.
Michael O'Day's shoulders slumped. He sat there on the dirty coat, one hand on top of the chalice. He looked dazed and ill. Finally, after a few minutes, he began to speak and Jack Fallon listened to the most bizarre story he had ever heard.
When Michael O'Day stopped talking and the silence that followed was almost deafening. He sat and stared at the floor for a while, then he reached out and lifted the lid of the chalice. From where he sat, Jack could see it was half-filled with white discs. O'Day dipped his hand in and lifted one out, very carefully, despite the tremor of his fingers. He lifted the wafer and placed it on his tongue. His mouth worked drily and then he made an exaggerated swallowing motion.
"The difference," he said, "between heaven and hell is that nobody believes in hell. Look at me. I'm between both of them and headed for one. It's all mumbo jumbo, isn't it? Except that it works. It can't get me in here, you know. This is the only place I can be and not hear that voice in my head. Now I know what it meant."
He looked up at Jack, a wasted, unkempt figure sitting on a dirty coat.
"The whispering started a few nights later. I thought I'd left the television on, or maybe the radio, but it wasn't that. It was as if somebody was talking in another room, just out of hearing. But it got louder and I could make out the words. I kept having these dreams. You know what happened at the race? It came in, that horse. A big grey out of trap six. I was still dead scared, but I put my money on and I cleaned up. I took six grand from bookies all over Glasgow, and I tell you, I should have stayed there. Maybe if I hadn't come back, everything would have been all right, but I was pretty much mixed up at the time.
"Then I started having the dreams. Terrible dreams, and I was cold all the time, as if that wind was still blowing through me. I couldn't eat and I couldn't sleep. I felt as if I'd stepped right out of the world. The voice would whisper at me at night, but it was coming from inside me. It got that I was scared to lie down at night, just in case it came when my eyes were closed, but I knew it was coming when I read about the others. It said it would use us. I don't know how it does it, but it used them, and they're dead, all of them."
"And what is it?"
"It's nothing on earth. Nothing from this earth. It was blacker than pitch and it was moving. That's all I saw in that room, but I could feel it." O'Day tapped the side of his head. "And I can hear it, in here. It wants me, you know, it wants me to do things, to come out in the night. I think it needs us during the day, maybe somewhere warm to live, I don't know. It whispers at me and tells me things. It shows me things. It sits up in high places, where it's dark and I can see what it sees. It eats at night. I see it, but it's like it's showing me what it sees. It goes back up there at night to feed. But it won't have me. It can't come in here."
"Why not?"
"Because it's a church, consecrated ground. The old woman, I don't know how she did it, but she raised a ghost, or a devil or something. It's used the others to take those wee babies. Now it wants me to do the same, and when it's finished with me, I'll go the same way. That's why I have to stay here."
He sat up straight. "I'm claiming sanctuary."
"You can't stay here forever," Jack said quietly.
"I'm telling you," the man said with surprising strength. "If you take me out of here, then it'll get me. You can't stop this thing. If it gets me, then it'll make me do the things it wants. It just wants to kill."
Jack spent two hours up in the belltower with Michael O'Day, going over the story again and again. O'Day was consistent, telling it the way he remembered it. Finally, feeling drained and a little numb, he told the man that he could stay in the belltower, though he told him he'd probably be back to ask some more questions. O'Day agreed with that. He got to his feet, moving like an old man. With a quick motion he snatched up the prayer beads and held them up. The carved gold cross gleamed in the dim light. "Here," he said. "you should take this. If you're looking for that thing, then you'll need it. I don't think there's anything else can stop it."
He slung it across and Jack caught it with his free hand and stuffed it into his pocket. O'Day watched warily, holding the rusty lever up in front of him while Jack unlocked the cuffs and put them in his pocket, but Jack merely turned and backed down the stairs.
At the bottom, the two policemen were standing with the priest.
"Is he coming down then?"
"Not for the moment," Jack told him. He wanted out of the church, into the fresh air, somewhere he could think. "He's got the chalice. It's not damaged."
"Well, aren't you going to bring him down?"
"I'm afraid I can't do that," Jack said. "He's claiming sanctuary."
"Sanctuary?" the priest asked angrily. "I want him out of my church."
"Unfortunately, the law still stands," Jack told him, making it up as he went along. He hadn't a clue whether there was still a law, or if there had ever been one outside of films.
"A citizen claiming sanctuary cannot be forced out of a church against his will."
He turned and left the priest standing open-mouthed in the aisle.
There was little time to do any thinking. Jack went back to the station and straight into Superintendent Cowie's room, unannounced. Ron Cowie was dunking small biscuits in a cup of coffee, though he sniffily made no move to offer one to Jack.
"You must have plenty of time to spare," he said with heavy sarcasm, "if you can afford to waste it on trespassers."
"Just the one trespasser, and, co-incidentally, the very man I've been looking for."
There was nothing for it but to tell Cowie exactly what O'Day had told him. The response was entirely predictable. The superintendent told him it was both claptrap and balderdash and that he was derelict in his duties by wasting so much valuable time.
"So where is this idiot?"
"He's still up there. He's claiming sanctuary. I told him he could stay there for the time being. He's going nowhere."
"Nonsense, you can't have people stealing religious relics and then disturbing the peace, even if it's only the Catholics they're disturbing. Just send somebody over there and get him out."
"I think that would be a mistake. I promised him he could stay. It's the best way to get co-operation. Whether anybody believes what he says, it's obvious that O'Day believes it. He's as secure up there as anywhere."
Cowie opened his mouth to say something, but just at that moment there was a knock on the door. A young policewoman popped he head through.
"It's a call for you Mr Fallon. Sergeant Thomson say's it's urgent."
Jack left Cowie spluttering over his coffee.