Each balloon must have been about the size of a Zorb ball. They floated in complete silence, dipping and swaying slightly in the wind. But one of the reasons they were dipping and swaying was because they were carrying a weight. A figure was hanging beneath them, and although they were sixty or seventy metres distant, Bradan could see that the figure was suspended by a rope around its neck.
It was dressed in a long black habit, like a nun, and when it spun around on the end of its rope to face him, Bradan realized that it was a nun. He could see her waxy-white face, staring at him.
‘Tommy!’ he screamed.
Tommy had found a pale-pink wriggling worm and he was tugging it out of the peaty soil between finger and thumb. ‘It’s all right, Brade,’ he laughed. ‘It’s only a fecking worm! It won’t bite you!’
‘No, Tommy! Look, Tommy! Up there! Look!’
Tommy turned around and looked and immediately dropped his spoon and stood up, cupping his hands over his eyes.
‘It’s only a fecking nun!’ said Bradan.
Tommy stared up at the balloons as they came nearer and nearer. They floated almost right over their heads, and they could see the nun’s black button-up shoes dangling from beneath her habit. As she passed over, they heard a light pattering sound in the grass, and then on the stony path, as if it were starting to rain. Bradan held out his hand and a bright-red drop splashed into his palm.
‘Holy Jesus!’ he screamed, showing his hand to Tommy. ‘It’s only blood! She’s only fecking bleeding!’
He wiped his hand furiously on the grass and then knelt down beside the river and washed it completely clean.
The balloons bobbed and jostled and turned in the wind and the dangling nun swayed from side to side. Then they began to float slowly upriver. About a half-mile further upstream, the Glashaboy narrowed into the Butlerstown River, which ran up beside the main road to the village of Glanmire. The trees were taller there and the balloons were floating so low that there was every chance they would get caught in the branches.
‘It’s a joke,’ said Tommy, at last, still staring at them.
‘What do you mean, it’s a joke?’ Bradan retorted. His voice was still shrill. ‘Some fecking joke!’
‘It’s a joke, Brade. You know, like them zombie walks where everybody dresses up like they’re dead.’
‘If that’s supposed to be a joke, I don’t see what’s so fecking funny about it! Scared the shite out of me.’
‘So what are you going to do about it? Call the shades? We’re on the hop from school, Brade. That’s nothing but a joke and the only people who will get themselves into any kind o’ bother is us. “Why weren’t you in class today?” “Oh, we heard there was a dead nun floating down the Glashaboy on some balloons, bleeding like a pig, and we thought we’d better check that she wasn’t real.”’
Bradan kept on watching as the balloons drifted out of sight behind the trees, with the figure still slowly rotating beneath them.
‘I think we ought to call the shades. We can do it anonymous, like. They won’t ask who we are.’
‘It’s a joke, Brade. Forget it, would you? Look, my worm’s gone and disappeared now. I’ll have to dig it out again.’
‘But what if it wasn’t a joke? What if it was real?’
‘It’s none of our beeswax, is it?’
‘No,’ said Bradan. ‘I’m going to ring them anyway.’
‘Well, ring them. But if we get into trouble for hopping off school, then you have to lend me a borrow of your Xbox for two weeks solid, and your Wolfenstein game, and two Mars bars. And a backer on your bike to school every day.’
Bradan stepped into the river, as far as he could go before the water started pouring into the top of his rushers. For a few moments he could still see the tops of the balloons above the treetops, but then they vanished. He waded back to the bank and took out his mobile phone.
‘I still say it’s a joke,’ said Tommy. ‘Oh no, shite, look, I’m only after spooning the fecking worm in half!’
8
When she came out of her office toilet the next morning, Katie found that a beige manila folder had been left on her desk.
A sheet of headed paper from the Cork City Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions was attached with a paper clip. On it, the state solicitor Finola McFerren had scrawled, With any luck, five years imprisonment!
She sat down and poured herself a glassful of sparkling Ballygowan mineral water. She hadn’t been able to stomach coffee lately, but she felt much better this morning and she had managed to keep her muesli down.
She opened the file. It contained the prosecution’s papers on the arrest of Michael Gerrety for sex with an underage girl and reckless endangerment of a minor. Gerrety had successfully avoided prosecution for years, even though the girls advertised on his Cork Fantasy website as ‘masseuses’ were nothing more than prostitutes, and he owned and ran more than seven brothels in the centre of Cork.
He had always been careful not to pimp girls under the age of seventeen, even though he regularly farmed them out to other, less-scrupulous pimps. But he had been caught out when Roisin Begley, the sixteen-year-old daughter of local property developer Jim Begley, had run away from home thinking that life as a ‘fantasy girl’ was going to be glamorous and earn her a pile of money.
Roisin had lied to Michael Gerrety that she was already seventeen and he had slept with her himself before setting her up in business as a prostitute. But she had rapidly become disillusioned with the squalor of the sex trade and the depraved demands of the men who paid for her services. She had been rescued from her brothel by Detective Dooley, who had eventually tracked her down by posing as a punter.
Now the Book of Evidence was ready for Michael Gerrety to be tried at the next session of the circuit criminal court. Finola McFerren had attached a note for Katie pointing out that his only feasible defence would be to claim that it had been reasonable for him to assume that Roisin was old enough. In the eyes of the law, it would be no excuse for him to say that she had consented to sex, or even initiated it.
Katie was still reading when Chief Superintendent Denis MacCostagáin knocked at her office door.
‘Katie, would you have a moment?’ he asked, lugubriously.
‘Of course, sir. Nothing wrong, is there?’
He came into the office and made a point of closing the door behind him. He sat down, unfolded a handkerchief and wiped his nose.
Then he said, ‘Would you believe that Bryan Molloy has made a reappearance?’
‘Molloy? Serious? I thought he’d maybe skipped abroad or hung himself from the nearest lamp post.’
‘No, not at all. He’s turned up at the Garda Ombudsman’s office in Dublin, complete with some heavyweight lawyers in tow. I haven’t been sent the full details yet, but it appears that he’s lodging a formal complaint against you and several other officers here at Anglesea Street.’
‘What for?’ Katie demanded. ‘If anybody should be lodging a formal complaint against anybody, it should be me against him.’
‘Well, he says that he was the victim of constant harassment and insubordination from your junior officers, which was actively encouraged by you, and that you personally made a number of false and slanderous accusations against him. This led to him suffering from a nervous collapse and having to quit his position as Acting Chief Superintendent.’
‘False and slanderous accusations?’ said Katie, in utter disbelief. ‘Bryan Molloy paid a gunman to kill one of the most high-profile gang leaders in Limerick so that he wouldn’t have to go to the bother of arresting him! He accepted hundreds of thousands of euros in bribes to let some of the worst criminals in the district escape prosecution!’
She was so angry that she had to stand up and pace up and down her office. ‘It’s pure incredible! I only have in my possession the actual gun that he supplied to Donie Quaid to shoot Niall Duggan! And witnesses, too! And as for persecuting him, Mother of God! He only spent every minute of ev
ery day trying to belittle me and undermine me. He had me suspended!’
‘Well, I know all that, Katie,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin, with a sniff and a mournful sigh. ‘I came only to warn you. I think he wants to get his own back on you, and damages. But more than anything else, I’d say he wants his pension restored, and I think he’ll do anything and say anything for that.’
‘Have you told Jimmy O’Reilly yet?’
‘I have, yes. I don’t think he was all that surprised, to tell you the truth.’
‘Of course he wasn’t surprised. Jimmy O’Reilly and Bryan Molloy are as thick as thieves. He’s probably known where Molloy was hiding himself ever since he went missing. They’ve probably been texting each other twenty times a day like a couple of giggly teenagers.’
‘Now, then, Katie,’ Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin cautioned her. ‘Careful what you’re saying. You need to be doggie wide with this one. I know that certain accusations were made against Bryan Molloy and Jimmy O’Reilly. But you know as well as I do that you need cast-iron proof of what they were accused of, especially when it comes to those two. They have friends in high places. They have friends in low places, too, who are even more dangerous.’
‘Nervous collapse!’ said Katie scornfully, shaking her head. ‘That man doesn’t have a single nerve in his entire body!’
Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin stood up. ‘I’ll let you know if and when I receive any further information,’ he told her. ‘It may very well be that the GSOC turn him down. He’s no fool, that Simon O’Brien. But all the same, Bryan Molloy can be very convincing, and you can’t question his record against the gangs in Limerick. Well, I know you do, but everybody else still believes that he was the boy.’
When he had gone, Katie sat down again. Bryan Molloy. She could hardly believe it. She had assumed that she had seen and heard the last of him. Still, she knew what a bully he was, and how vengeful, and it must have really rankled that his corruption had been uncovered by a woman officer. He had probably felt like a jihadist who discovers that he has been bombed by a female pilot.
She was making notes on her tablet about the Gerrety prosecution when her phone rang. It was Detective Horgan, sounding weary.
‘Just to let you know that all the horses have been hoisted off the beach, ma’am. They’ve been shipped to an old tractor shed near the Equine Rescue Centre at Dromsligo. That fellow from the ISPCA will be starting tests on them in the morning, along with another vet from Horse Racing Ireland, and some fellow from the Department of Agriculture.’
‘All right, Horgan, good. I’ll try to get up there myself this afternoon. As soon as we check the horses’ identities and find out how they died, we can start asking questions around the training stables and the racetrack. I don’t want to go rushing into this, though. Racing’s a fierce tight business and it’s not going to be easy to persuade anybody to talk about this.’
‘Tell me about it. My cousin Tierney works for Jim Culloty at Churchtown and the only tip he’s ever given me is not to waste my money betting on the horses.’
* * *
She finished reading through the Book of Evidence against Michael Gerrety and then stood up and went across her office to take her coat from its hook. She could see that the lights were on in Michael Gerrety’s apartment at the top of the Elysian, and she wondered how he was feeling now that she had at last managed to take him to court, with a very fair chance of conviction. Irritated, probably, but contemptuous. Michael Gerrety was another of those men who thought that women had been put on this earth simply to serve them.
She was walking along the corridor when Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán stepped out of the lift and came briskly towards her.
‘Ma’am? Are you heading off somewhere?’
‘Dromsligo. They’ve taken all of those dead horses up there for a post-mortem. There’s going to be media there, too, so I’ll have to be saying a few well-chosen words.’
‘I talked to Mother O’Dwyer at the Bon Sauveur Convent.’
‘And?’
‘And I got the strongest feeling that Sister Bridget was not at all popular. The trouble is, Mother O’Dwyer wouldn’t say so directly, and there’s no possible way of proving it.’
‘She didn’t give you any names? Anybody who might have borne a grudge against her for any reason?’
Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán shook her head. ‘They’re all sisters in Christ, she said, and they get along with each other like sisters.’
Katie said, ‘Pff! If my relationship with my sisters is anything to go by, there’s more fighting in that convent than the Battle of the Boyne.’
‘There was something, though,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. She took the twisted latex glove out of her coat pocket and held it up so that Katie could see the fragment of jawbone inside it. ‘The young nun who answered the door gave me this – Sister Rose O’Sullivan. She said she found it in the convent garden when she was weeding the flower beds.’
Katie took it and examined it carefully. ‘It has teeth in it. A child’s first teeth, by the look of it. When did she find it?’
‘About six weeks ago, that’s what she said. She showed it to one of the other sisters but she told her to throw it away and forget about it. She’s only a novice, so she was scared to show it to Mother O’Dwyer.’
‘What’s a child’s jawbone doing in a convent flower bed? The Bon Sauveur used to be a home for unmarried mothers and their babies, that’s what I find disturbing. I hope to God we’re not going to find it’s another Tuam.’
‘I asked Sister Rose to draw me a sketch map, showing exactly where she found it. She’s going to email it to me.’
Katie handed the jawbone back to her. ‘Take it to Bill Phinner, would you? See what he has to say. We may have to send it to the path lab in Dublin. Oh, Jesus. This is just what we need. They found the bones of seven hundred and ninety-six children buried at Tuam, didn’t they? Let’s pray that there was only one little soul buried at the Bon Sauveur.’
Just then her iPhone warbled. She took it out of her pocket and said, ‘Detective Superintendent Maguire.’
‘Oh, glad I caught you, ma’am. It’s O’Donovan. I’ve just had a call from Sergeant Finlay at Glanmire. You’re not going to believe this. It’s another dead nun.’
‘Please tell me you’re joking,’ said Katie, looking at Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán with her eyes wide. Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán frowned, and mouthed, ‘What?’
‘He says she’s about the same age as Sister Bridget. Late seventies, early eighties, something like that.’
‘Where was she found?’
‘She came down in the Butlerstown River, that’s what he said, right by the Glanmire Bridge.’
‘I don’t follow you. What did he mean “she came down”?’
‘It seems like she was hanging from three gas balloons, ma’am. Hanging by a cord around her neck.’
‘What? I can hardly believe this.’
‘Sergeant Finlay says he’s closed off the road. He’s been down to inspect the body to make sure that life was extinct but otherwise nothing has been touched.’
‘Okay, Patrick. I was supposed to be going to Dromsligo to look at all of those dead horses, but I think the horses will have to wait. I’ll be down directly. Have you notified the Technical Bureau yet?’
‘Not yet, ma’am, but I will.’
Katie pushed her iPhone back into her pocket.
‘Another elderly nun,’ she told Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘This one was floating through the air, apparently, hung from three gas balloons. She’s landed in the Butlerstown River.’
‘Holy Mary. No wonder you couldn’t believe it.’
‘Come on,’ said Katie. ‘I’m beginning to think that we’re being plagued by nuns.’
9
She climbed over the low limestone wall at the side of the bridge and made her way cautiously down the precipitous slope that led to the water’s edge, pushing some
of the bushes aside and grabbing at others to stop herself losing her footing.
Detective O’Donovan was already there, along with Sergeant Finlay and three other gardaí from the Glanmire Garda station, which was only a few metres down the road. Tangled in the trees beside them were the silvery-grey balloons. Two of them were almost completely deflated now, but one was still bulging and bumping in the breeze. The nun was lying face-down in the bushes, with her feet in the river. The cord with which she had been suspended was still knotted around her neck.
‘So what happened?’ asked Katie, holding out her hand so that Detective O’Donovan could help her take the last few steps down to the river bank.
‘Two young mums were pushing their kids across the bridge and they just looked up and saw these three balloons coming down and getting themselves all snagged up in the trees,’ said Sergeant Finlay. He was a short, round man with a bristly grey moustache and two double chins. He looked as if he were close to retirement, if he didn’t explode first. ‘They came rushing down to the station, “There’s all these balloons, there’s all these balloons, with a nun hanging off of them!” I thought they were messing to begin with, but you never saw anybody in such a panic.’
‘And by the time you got here, she was definitely dead?’
‘Oh, no question,’ said Sergeant Finlay, shaking his head from side to side as if he needed to convince Katie beyond any doubt at all that there was nothing he could have done to save her. ‘Her eyes was wide open but she didn’t blink when I waved my hand in front of her face and her lips was blue. I felt for a pulse, but nothing. Apart from that I haven’t interfered with her at all. This is exactly how she landed.’
Katie looked around. The river here was only about twenty metres wide, and shallow, and the peaty soil had stained it to the colour of weak tea. It ran very slowly, so that further away from the bridge there was an archipelago of green weed. The breeze was rustling in the trees, but apart from the swishing of passing cars, and the gardaí talking to each other, the afternoon was strangely quiet, as if God had said, Hush, one of My servants is sleeping her very last sleep.
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