‘I don’t understand why you were so afraid to speak out,’ said Katie. ‘All this happened nearly thirty years ago. Times were different then, as you say, and you thought that you were doing the right thing by those girls and their babies. Who knows what might have happened to them if Satan had kept them in his clutches.’
‘I’m not a fool, Detective Superintendent,’ Mother O’Dwyer retorted. ‘I don’t appreciate sarcasm, either. I am quite aware of how the world has changed and how our treatment of those girls is regarded these days. What was considered to be a righteous Christian upbringing in the 1970s is now considered to be cruelty. What our priests believed was the selfless giving of affection to children who had known no love at home is now considered to be paedophilia.
‘I am telling you this in the strictest confidence. There were seven sisters who were known among us to be the most devout, but they were also the strongest disciplinarians. If a young mother was wilful, or blasphemous, she would be chastised, or made to stay up all night praying for forgiveness. If a child misbehaved or was disobedient, it went without food. I admit that there were casualties from that, from sickness mostly, or malnutrition.
‘Sister Bridget and Sister Mona and Sister Barbara were three of those seven. You can only imagine what the media would do to the Bon Sauveurs if this were to come out. That is why I said nothing. That is why I told your detective an untruth about recognizing Sister Mona. If this became public knowledge, it would mean the end of the congregation as we know it.’
Katie waited while she tugged a tissue out of a box, took off her glasses, and wiped her eyes. Instead of looking like a diminutive Darth Vader, she now looked like a small, miserable child who had inexplicably grown old before her time.
‘We’ve found the bones, mother,’ said Katie. ‘There’s no point in trying to protect the Bon Sauveurs now. The evidence is there for everybody to see.’
‘I mustn’t say any more,’ said Mother O’Dwyer. ‘I’ll have to talk to my legal advisers first. I don’t even know why I told you all of that.’
‘You told me all of that because in spite of everything you have a heart,’ said Katie.
Mother O’Dwyer gave her a quick, twisted smile and then she opened a drawer in her desk and took out a notepad and a black address book. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting the names of the other four sisters from the Sacred Seven.’
‘Is that what you used to call them? The Sacred Seven?’
‘That is what they called themselves, although they thought that none of the other sisters knew. Here, I’ll write them down for you, along with their last known addresses. I don’t know for certain if all, or any, of them are still alive, to tell you the truth.’
Katie waited while she wrote down the names and addresses. Outside in the garden she saw one of the reservists holding up a bone that she had found in her riddle, and Bill walking towards her.
‘What I’ve told you today, you won’t be disclosing it to the media, will you?’ said Mother O’Dwyer, as she tore out the sheet of paper from her notebook and handed it over.
‘Do you really think it will make any difference if I do?’ Katie asked her. ‘It might help to save the lives of these other four, if they’re still with us.’
Mother O’Dwyer remained at her desk, looking defeated. ‘It’s a disaster, isn’t it? How can an act of charity that you did in the past turn out to be a crime in the future?’
Katie stood up. ‘There’s only one person who knows the answer to that, Mother, and you know Him very much better than I do.’
31
Katie went to find Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, who was still in a side room in the convent with Sister Caoilainn, systematically checking the records of all the mothers and babies who had been taken in by Saint Margaret’s Mother and Baby Home before it had been closed.
The room was gloomy and smelled of oak panelling and old books. At the far end there was a stained-glass window with an image of Jesus on it, holding up a lamp. Sister Caoilainn was sitting underneath it, a large pasty-faced woman with a dark moustache. She was biting her thumbnail and looking bored.
‘Could you excuse us for a moment, please, Sister?’ asked Katie. ‘I need to have a word with Sergeant Ni Nuallán here.’
Sister Caoilainn stood up and bustled out of the room, making it plain from her upturned nose what she thought about being ordered around by the Garda. When she had gone, Katie closed the door and passed Detective Sergeant Nuallán the list of sisters that Mother O’Dwyer had given her. Very briefly, she explained who they were and what Mother O’Dwyer had told her about them.
‘You can leave these records for a while. It’s urgent that we locate these four women, if they’re still alive, and put them under immediate protection. If you can go back to the station and organize that with Superintendent Pearse.’
‘Right, I’ll do that,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘I’ll come back to these records after, though. If what Mother O’Dwyer has told you is true, our offender could well be one of these young women. There’s not just lists of names here, there’s a whole rake of correspondence with adoption agencies in America, and daily reports on the young girls’ behaviour. Some of them protested when their children were taken away from them for adoption. Some of them self-harmed and attempted suicide, and others actually attacked the sisters. One of them set fire to a rubbish bin and nearly burned the whole convent down.’
‘What a can of worms,’ said Katie. ‘Listen, I’ll leave it with you for now. I have to pay a visit to the Begleys.’
‘The Begleys? I don’t envy you that. Dooley said they were in bits.’
‘Well, there’s more to it than meets the eye. It turns out that Roisin’s suicide note was probably a forgery.’
‘You’re codding!’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Do we know who might have done it?’
‘I’m dreading finding out, if you must know.’
‘You don’t think... Jesus.’
‘I’m thinking nothing at all at the moment, not until I talk to the Begleys. I promised anyway that I’d call by to give them my sympathies and let them know how our investigation was coming along. This is going to make it all rather awkward, to say the least, but I think I’m probably the best person to be doing it. I’ll be back at the station no later than five, I should have thought. Inspector O’Rourke’s on his way back from Dublin and apparently he has something of great moment to tell me.’
‘I, ah... ’Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán began.
‘What is it, Kyna?’
‘No, it’s nothing at all. No bother.’
‘Go on, tell me.’
‘No, like I say, it’s nothing. I’ll get back to Anglesea Street directly and start looking for these four old sisters.’
‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ Katie asked her.
Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán shook her head. ‘Nothing wrong at all. If anything, it’s all too right.’
She lifted her blue wool jacket from the back of her chair and shrugged it on, then she scruffed up her short blonde hair. Katie waited for a moment, but it was obvious that whatever she might have had on her mind, Kyna wasn’t going to tell her what it was. Not yet, anyway.
* * *
The Begleys lived in a modern new-build house on Montenotte Road, on the steep northern slope that overlooked the River Lee. It was white and angular, with a swimming pool in front of it and a balcony that gave them a panoramic view of the city.
Montenotte Road was walled and narrow, with cars parked in it, and it took a seven-point turn for Katie to manoeuvre into the Begleys’ driveway. She pulled up behind Jim Begley’s red Range Rover Sport and climbed out. The house was lit up inside and she could see a huge plasma TV flickering in one of the downstairs rooms. The swimming pool was empty, with a few dry leaves scurrying around in it. A chilly breeze was blowing from the south-west and Katie shivered.
She walked up the steps to the white-painted front door and pressed the door
bell. It played the opening bars of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’. She waited, rubbing her hands together to keep warm, and just as she was about to press the bell again she heard footsteps and the light in the hallway was switched on. The door was opened by Aileen Begley, who blinked at her and said, ‘Yes?’
Katie produced her badge. ‘Detective Superintendent Maguire, from Garda headquarters at Anglesea Street. I think Detective Dooley told you that I’d be calling around to see you. This is not a bad time, is it?’
‘At the moment, Superintendent, any time is a bad time, as I’m sure you can understand,’ said Aileen. ‘But come in anyway.’
‘I can come back tomorrow if it’s better for you,’ said Katie.
‘No, no, since you’re here. You can’t make things any worse.’
She opened the door wider so that Katie could step inside. She was a dark-haired, bosomy woman of about forty-five and she had been eye-wateringly over-generous with the Estée Lauder Beautiful. She was wearing a black wool dress that was a size too small for her, so that Katie could see where her midriff bulged over the top of her tights. Her face was puffy, probably from too many years of vodka cocktails, but Katie guessed that she must have once been just as pretty as Roisin.
Inside, the Begley house was plain and minimalist, with white leather couches and revolving armchairs, and sparkling chandeliers made of triangles of glass. On one living-room wall hung a large landscape by the Cork artist Maurice Desmond, the top half a lurid blue and the bottom half sludgy brown. On the facing wall hung a large crucifix, and Katie couldn’t help thinking of Saint Gemma levitating into the air to drink the blood of Christ from the wound in His side.
‘I wanted to offer my condolences to you and your husband on behalf of the Garda,’ said Katie. ‘Is your husband here?’
‘He’ll be down directly,’ said Aileen. ‘Can I get you a drink at all?’
‘No, thank you, I’m grand altogether,’ Katie told her, but noticed Aileen glancing towards a cut-glass tumbler on one of the side tables with ice cubes and a slice of lemon in it. ‘But, please, don’t let me stop you. This must have been a terrible time for you. Roisin was the only child you had living at home, wasn’t she?’
‘That’s right. We have two sons, Darragh and Coileán. Darragh’s in Dubai just now, working for a construction company, and Coileán’s at UCC, studying architecture. They both take after their father, thank God.’
‘And Roisin? Who did she take after?’
‘God knows. That girl, may she rest in peace. It’s not right to speak ill of the dead, I know that, but she was trouble from the very moment she was born. Jim used to wonder if we’d offended the Lord in some way that we weren’t aware of, to be burdened with a child like her.’
At that moment they heard Jim Begley coming down the stairs. He walked into the living room in a cloud of cigar smoke, like a demon making his entrance in a pantomime.
‘I thought I heard the front door,’ he said, in a harsh, phlegmy voice.
‘This is Detective Superintendent Maguire, Jim,’ said Aileen. ‘She’s very kindly come to offer her condolences.’
Jim was a tall, heavily built man with a wave of white hair. Everything about him seemed larger than a normal human being. He had a huge, long face with deep-set eyes and a lantern jaw, and there was a cleft in the end of his nose. He was wearing a light-grey Adidas tracksuit top and white trackie bottoms, almost a parody of the millionaire property developer relaxing at home. When he held out his hand to Katie, she could see that he was wearing a massive gold ring with a crest on it.
‘It’s good of your to take the trouble,’ he said. ‘We’re holding the funeral mass at St Joseph’s on Thursday. It’ll be a quiet affair, under the circumstances. Close family only.’
‘None of her school friends? She was very popular at school, I understand.’
‘Yes, but suicide. Self-murder is a mortal sin and there was a time when we couldn’t have held a mass at all. As for inviting her school friends, I didn’t consider that at all appropriate. They’d be weeping and wailing and saying what an angel she was. A funeral isn’t a time to eulogize the dead. It’s a time to worship Christ’s victory over death and to console those left behind.’
‘We don’t yet have definitive proof that Roisin took her own life, Mr Begley. That’s another reason I’ve come to see you today.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Jim. He sucked at his cigar until the end glowed red and then blew a long stream of smoke out of the side of his mouth. ‘She was ashamed of giving evidence in court about prostituting herself and so she drowned herself in the river. What more proof do you need than that?’
‘Do you mind if we sit down?’ said Katie.
‘Help yourself,’ said Jim and pointed to one of the armchairs. When Katie had perched herself on the edge of the seat, he lowered himself on to the couch next to her, with his belly in his lap, tapping his cigar ash into a large glass ashtray. Aileen retrieved her drink and took a sip of it, and then another, and then sat down on the other end of the couch, keeping her distance from him.
‘So, what’s the problem?’ asked Jim.
‘The note that was found under Roisin’s pillow, that’s the problem.’
‘I don’t see why that should be. She made it perfectly clear that she was mortified by what she’d done and that she wanted to end it all. She wanted to turn out the light, that’s what she wrote.’
‘I agree with you, Mr Begley, that’s what the note said, but the high probability is that Roisin didn’t write it. Our technical experts have examined it and they’re ninety-nine point nine per cent certain that it’s a forgery.’
‘What?’ said Aileen. ‘What do you mean, it’s forgery? I found it myself, under her pillow. There was nobody else in the house that night but us. Who else could have written it but Roisin?’
Katie said nothing but looked at Jim and raised her eyebrows. Jim had been about to take another puff of his cigar, but now he lowered it. He turned to look at Aileen and then turned back to face Katie.
‘Jim?’ said Aileen.
Jim ignored her and heaved himself to his feet. He loomed over Katie and said, in that brick-harsh voice, ‘I think you’d best leave, Detective Superintendent.’
‘We’re talking about the death of your daughter, Mr Begley. The unexplained death of your daughter. If you refuse to discuss it now, I shall have to ask you to come down to Anglesea Street Garda Station and answer questions about it there, under caution.’
‘And if I refuse to do that?’
‘Well, I’m very much hoping that you won’t, but if you do, I shall detain you.’
Jim continued to loom over her, breathing hard. The smell of his cigar smoke was so acrid that it made Katie feel as if she had been smoking a cigar herself and she began to feel nauseous. She thought about standing up herself and leaving and sending Detective Dooley around tomorrow to bring Jim in for questioning. But just as she was about to get to her feet, Aileen said, ‘Jim? It wasn’t you wrote the note, was it?’
Jim opened and closed his mouth like a huge landed salmon. Then he sat down again and Katie could see that he was trembling.
‘Jim?’ said Aileen. ‘Tell me it wasn’t you. Please, Jim, tell me it wasn’t you.’
‘She was prostituting herself,’ said Jim. ‘Our own daughter. I had to make it look as if she was feeling at least some remorse for bringing so such shame on us.’
‘So you wrote the note?’ asked Katie.
He closed his eyes and nodded. ‘Have you any idea at all what it’s been like, sitting in church every Sunday morning at Mass, and everybody’s eyes on us, and whispering. “That’s the Begleys. You know what their daughter Roisin does for a living? She’s only a hoor!”’
‘One of our oldest friends came up to us and told us that she didn’t know how we had the nerve to come and take communion alongside decent folk.’
He opened his eyes and looked at Katie as if he were asking for understan
ding, but she could tell that he was still more angry than sorrowful. I thought I had a beautiful clever daughter and she turned out to be a brasser. What she would have said in court, that would have ruined our reputation for good and all.
‘Oh, Jim,’ said Aileen and reached across and laid her hand on top of his.
‘Are you satisfied?’ Jim asked Katie. ‘Maybe you can leave now.’
‘You know there’s one more question I have to ask you,’ said Katie. ‘Was it you who drowned her?’
The silence was so total that Katie could almost have believed that she had gone deaf. It was broken only by Aileen making a suppressed mewing sound, like a kitten that had been shut in a cupboard. At last Jim stood up again. His cigar had gone out but he sucked at it all the same.
‘I asked you to leave, Detective Superintendent.’
‘I will at once, if you answer my question.’
‘I don’t have to answer a question like that. Coming from a senior Garda officer like you, that’s an outrage. Don’t you have any idea who I am? I’m a county councillor for Cork City South-East, for one thing. For another thing, I could buy and sell you in the same street.’
Katie stood up. ‘I’m sorry you feel unable to give me a straight answer, Mr Begley. But I think you’re capable of understanding why I had to ask you. I’m not going to take this any further at the moment, but when I get back to the station I’m going to be meeting Detective Dooley, who’s been handling Roisin’s case. We’ll be wanting to talk to you again.’
‘Not without my lawyer,’ said Jim.
‘Not a bother,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll have Detective Dooley ring you to make an appointment.’
Jim was about to say something else, but Aileen stood up and took hold of his arm and shook her head, warning him not to. She showed Katie to the front door. The draught that blew in when she opened it was damp and cold, and they could hear an oil tanker mournfully hooting as it made its way down the river and the dry leaves crackling in the swimming pool.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Katie.
Aileen shrugged, as if to show Katie that she didn’t believe her.
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