The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley by Jeremy Massey

Author:Jeremy Massey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-04-02T16:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

10:30 a.m.

There weren’t many things that annoyed Frank Gallagher, but hearses arriving late for funerals was at the top of the list. At twenty past ten, when Paddy hadn’t answered his phone, he’d begun to suspect things weren’t running as smoothly as he’d like, but now, standing outside the church at half past ten with no sign of a hearse, he was becoming furious.

He tried phoning the church to see if he could get anyone to go out to the altar and alert the priest to the problem so he could help by stretching the Mass a little, but nobody answered the phone. He’d have organized another hearse to come up in its place if there was one available, but it was a busy morning and they were flat out. They were just going to have to wait for Paddy.

Christy and Jack, who were with him, were no happier than Frank was. Nobody wanted to be left explaining to a grieving family surrounded by hundreds of mourners why the hearse hadn’t arrived.

The priest had just finished the Mass and was stepping down past the altar to stand by the coffin to say the closing prayers. The sacristan stood beside him, tending to the incense and holy water. These prayers seldom took more than five minutes, ten at the most. Frank prayed with every bit of faith he possessed that the priest would take it past the ten-minute mark, long enough for Paddy to pull up outside.

The generally accepted cue for the undertakers to walk to the top of the side aisles and stand in waiting was the priest’s starting of the closing prayers. Frank turned to his men, grim-faced.

“Right, we’re going to have to go up. We’ll take this as slowly as possible.”

Christy and Jack followed Frank up the left side of the church so slowly that hardly any of the mourners even noticed them moving. Christy, for his part, was extremely apprehensive about dealing with the Hayeses under such circumstances, but was more worried that Paddy had come unstuck with Cullen in some way, and played out all sorts of unwelcome scenarios in his head, his sunken cheeks the only outward sign of anxiety.

Once at the top of the aisle, the three men stood still with their hands clasped behind them and their faces drawn.

They’d hoped that one of the family would take to the podium to say a few words about the deceased’s short life, which would have added another five minutes and possibly saved them, but nothing of the sort happened.

The priest took the holy water from the sacristan and walked slowly around the coffin with the sprinkler, shaking the water onto it. He followed that by doing a similar ritual with the thurible, which he used to shake incense at the coffin with a practiced hand before passing it back to the sacristan and getting back to his prayer book.

“May the martyrs come to welcome you and may the angels lead you into Paradise and may you have eternal rest,” he said, before making the Sign of the Cross and turning off his mike.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.