‘What do you think, ma’am?’ Sergeant O’Rourke asked her. ‘Revenge killing, by somebody he messed with when he was teaching his music? There’s been wagons of publicity about child abuse lately, hasn’t there? The pope saying sorry and all. Maybe somebody’s been holding a grudge against him all these years, and decided it was time to do something about it.’
‘Well... you might be right,’ said Katie, standing up straight. ‘But let’s not jump to any hasty conclusions. Maybe his killer simply didn’t like him, for some obscure reason or another. You remember that case a couple of years ago in Holyhill? That young woman whose husband died of cancer, and she stabbed the parish priest with a pair of scissors because she said that his prayers hadn’t worked?’
‘There’s a few priests I wouldn’t mind having a good old stab at, I can tell you,’ said Sergeant O’Rourke.
Katie turned to the older technician and said, ‘You can send him off to the path lab when you’re finished. I think I’ve seen everything that I need to see.’
‘Before you go – there’s one quite interesting detail,’ he told her. He held up the two lengths of brass wire that had been used to bind the dead priest’s legs. The ends of both of them had been twisted into neat double loops, like butterfly wings.
Katie said, ‘That’s very distinctive, isn’t it? Is there any particular profession that finishes off its wiring like that?’
‘Not that I know of. But I’ll be making some inquiries.’
‘Okay, good.’
Katie waded out of the river and Detective O’Sullivan gave her a hand to climb up the bank. Immediately, the TV crew from RTÉ came over – Fionnuala Sweeney, a pretty gingery girl in a bright green windcheater, accompanied by an unshaven cameraman – as well as Dan Keane from the Examiner, red-nosed, in his usual raglan-sleeved overcoat, and a pale, round-faced young woman with very black curls and a prominent beauty spot on her upper lip, whom Katie presumed was the reporter from the Catholic Recorder. She had very big breasts and she wore a grey tent-like poncho to cover them.
Fionnuala Sweeney held out her microphone and said, ‘Superintendent Maguire! All right with you if we ask you some questions?’
‘Let me ask you a question first,’ said Katie, sharply. ‘Who tipped you off about this body being found?’
Fionnuala Sweeny blinked rapidly, as if Katie had mortally offended her. ‘I couldn’t possibly tell you that, superintendent. You know that. I have to protect my professional sources.’
‘Oh, stop being so sanctimonious, Nuala,’ said Dan Keane, lighting a cigarette. ‘I had the same tip-off myself but the caller didn’t leave his name, and I certainly didn’t recognize his voice. In fact, I couldn’t even tell you for sure if it was a man or a woman. Sounded more like a fecking frog, to tell you the truth.’
‘All right, then,’ said Katie. ‘Ask me whatever you like. But I can’t tell you very much at all, not at this early stage.’
Fionnuala Sweeney said, ‘Your witness here identified the deceased as Father Dermot Heaney, from Mayfield.’
‘No comment on that. Whatever the witness said to you, we don’t yet know for certain who he is.’
‘In 2005, Father Heaney was one of the priests who were investigated on suspicion of child abuse.’
‘So I’m told. But as far as I know, the DPP took no action against him, and this may not be him. What’s your question?’
‘I just want to know if you’ll be considering the possibility that one of Father Heaney’s victims was looking to punish him for what he did. Or what he was alleged to have done.’
Katie held up her hand. ‘Listen, Fionnuala, how many times? We haven’t yet established the deceased’s identity, not for certain. He might not even be a priest, for all we know. And even if it is Father Heaney, we have no evidence at all who might have wanted to kill him, or what their motives might have been. All I can say at this stage is that we’ll be searching this area with a fine-tooth comb, and interviewing anybody who might have witnessed anything unusual. If any of your viewers think that they can help us to identify the victim, and whoever wished him harm, then as usual we’ll be very grateful.’
‘Do you know what the cause of death was?’ asked Fionnuala Sweeney.
‘Again, we’re not sure yet. Either Dr Reidy, the state pathologist, or one of his two deputies will be carrying out an autopsy as soon as we can arrange it.’
The girl with the beauty spot spoke with a lisp. ‘Ciara Clare, superintendent, from the Catholic Recorder. If your dead man does prove to be a priest, you will be consulting the diocese, won’t you, about the most discreet way to handle it?’
Katie frowned at her. ‘I’m not sure I understand your question.’
‘Well, this has been a very difficult time for the church, hasn’t it?’ said Ciara Clare. ‘The bishop has asked the public for forgiveness for past errors, as you know. I’m only suggesting that this is a time for healing, rather than more scandal.’
‘Excuse me, Ciara? Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
‘I’m only concerned about this murder being sensationalized. I mean, it does seem likely that your man was killed by a victim of child abuse, doesn’t it, in revenge for molesting him, and that could very well incite other victims to take the law into their own hands. We don’t want more priests to be attacked, whatever they might have done in the past.’
‘That’s about three too many ifs,’ Katie told her. ‘Like I said, we need to take this one step at a time. Just because the deceased is wearing a cassock, that doesn’t prove anything at all. He may have been on his way to a fancy-dress party.’
Dan Keane took his cigarette out of his mouth and let out a cough like a dog barking. ‘He was castrated, though, wasn’t he? That would indicate some kind of sexual motivation.’
‘I’m sorry, Dan. We’ll have to wait for the pathologist’s report to find out exactly what injuries he suffered.’
‘You don’t need a pathologist to tell you when a man’s had his mebs cut off. Your anglers saw it with their own eyes. Gelded, that’s what they said.’
‘Well, I’d rather you kept that to yourself for the time being. You too, please, Fionnuala. And you, Ms—’
‘I’m not sure I can do that, superintendent,’ said Dan Keane. ‘It’s the best part of the whole story, don’t you think? “Father loses fatherhood.”’
‘Dan!’ Katie retorted. ‘Do you want me to give you any further co-operation on this case, or not?’
Dan blew smoke and coughed again and said, ‘Very well, superintendent. I’ll hold off for now, until you get the pathologist’s report at least. But if it comes out from any other source, I’m going to have to run with it.’
Katie walked back to her car and kicked off the huge green wellingtons so that they spun away across the grass. As she was tugging on her black leather boots again, Sergeant O’Rourke came up to her and leaned against the car door. ‘I’m having the whole area searched for tyre tracks and footprints and any other evidence. The fields, the pathways, the river bed. Everywhere. We’ve already started a door to door in Ballyhooly and all the surrounding communities. Somebody must have seen something.’
‘Thanks, Jimmy. Keep me in touch. For some reason, I have a very uneasy feeling about this one. I always do when the church is involved. You never get an outright lie, do you? But then you never get an outright truth, either. It’s all incense smoke and mirrors.’
4
Before she went home, Katie called in at the Garda headquarters in Anglesea Street. In the past two hours, a heavy blanket of grey cloud had rolled over Cork City from the south-west, and the sunshine had been swallowed up. As she parked her car, it began to rain, not heavily, but that fine soft rain that could soak through your woolly sweater in a few minutes.
She went up to her office and switched on her laptop. Then she picked up her phone and punched out the number for the state pathologist’s office in Dublin. She got through to Dr Owen Reidy’s secretary, Netta, an
d gave her a message for him to call her. Outside it grew darker and darker, and the rain began to sprinkle against the window.
Perched on top of the multi-storey car park opposite, she could see a row of twenty or thirty hooded crows. She stood up, went to the window and stared at them, and it was so dark outside that she could see her own reflection, with her hair sticking up. It seemed to Katie that the crows only gathered there when her life was about to take a turn for the worse. Maybe she was imagining it. Maybe she simply didn’t notice them when everything was going well.
All the same, they made her feel strangely unsettled, and it wasn’t only because of the man’s body lying strangled and castrated in the Blackwater.
She sat down at her laptop again and checked the child abuse report for the Cork and Ross diocese, published in 2005. Father Dermot Heaney had been the subject of eleven different complaints, mostly of touching boys in the showers after sports, or helping them to dry themselves after swimming and fondling them while he did so. He had also taken boys out for spins in his car, parked in secluded places and encouraged them to engage in mutual stimulation.
In spite of everything, he had been very popular with some of the boys at St Anthony’s – ‘like St Francis of Assisi’ – especially the boys who excelled at music, and those who came from poor or broken families. The report said: ‘Father Heaney gave them his attention, his affection and many small treats, which they were rarely given at home. The principal reasons why they were so reluctant for so many years to lodge any complaint against him was their gratitude for his apparent acts of kindness and generosity, and their abiding guilt about what they allowed him to do to them in return.’
Katie phoned John, to tell him that she would be coming home when she had finished at Anglesea Street. He didn’t answer, so she could only presume that he was out in the fields somewhere, bringing in his cattle. She smiled to herself. She had never imagined when she had first met him that he would make such a natural farmer. He had emigrated to California after leaving college, after all, to escape from Ireland, and set up a very successful online business selling alternative medicines. He hadn’t come back to Ireland, not once in eleven years, until his father had died.
He hadn’t intended to stay in Ireland for more than a few weeks, but his mother had assumed that he would take over his late father’s place as head of the Meagher family, and all of his uncles and aunts and cousins had assumed the same, and he had found it impossible to refuse them – especially his mother. He had reluctantly sold off his dot.com business and returned to take over the farm.
Katie shrugged on her raincoat and was just about to leave when her phone rang. It was Jimmy O’Rourke, calling from the University Hospital.
‘It’s Father Heaney all right.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘One hundred per cent. We called round at his bedsit in Wellington Road and his landlady said that she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since Sunday morning. She said this was very unlike him because he comes back almost every night for his tea, and he always tells her if he’s going away for a couple of days. She recognized him from the picture I took on my mobile phone, so we wheeled her around to the path lab and she identified him in the flesh. Sobbed like a babby, poor old girl.’
‘Thanks a million, Jimmy. But keep it to yourself for now. See what else you can dig up on him and give me a call if you make any progress.’
‘What about the media, like?’
‘I’ll probably call a press conference tomorrow morning, but I want to be very careful about what we give out. I have a strong suspicion that there’s a whole lot more to this than meets the eye. You heard what that girl from the Catholic Recorder was asking us to do – or what she asking us not to do, rather. I don’t want to give the church the chance to put a lid on this before we’ve even started.’
‘Okay, boss. We’ll be searching Father Heaney’s bedsit next, so if we come across anything interesting I’ll let you know. Lives of the Saints and porn mags, that’s what we usually find when we search a priest’s room. And half-empty packets of fruit-flavoured jub-jubs. Don’t ask me why.’
5
It was raining hard by the time she turned into the driveway of her bungalow in Cobh, close to Cork harbour, and almost dark. Her sister Siobhán had switched on the lights in the living room but she hadn’t yet drawn the curtains, so Katie could see her sitting on the couch watching the widescreen television. Barney, her Irish red setter, was lying at her feet, his ears spread wide like Falkor the flying dog in The Never-Ending Story.
Katie let herself in, took off her raincoat and shook it. Barney immediately came trotting out into the hallway to greet her, his tongue lolling out. She tugged at his ears and patted him and then she went through to the living room.
‘Hi, Siobhán,’ she greeted her.
‘Oh, hi, Katie. What’s the story? I thought you were spending the day with John.’
Katie sat down in one of the mock-Regency armchairs and unzipped her boots. Barney stood close to her, panting, his tail whacking against the side table. Katie had intended to redecorate the living room after her husband Paul had died, eighteen months ago, but she had never been able to find the time. Either that, or she had wanted to keep it the way it was, for a little while longer, anyhow. Paul had chosen the Regency-style chandelier and the Regency-striped wallpaper because he thought it was classy, as well as the gilt-framed reproduction paintings, most of them seascapes, yachts leaning against the wind.
The only picture that he hadn’t chosen was the framed photograph of himself, sitting at a cafe table in Lanzarote during their last vacation, grinning, lifting his glass of sangria, with one eye closed against the sunshine.
‘I was called out,’ Katie explained. ‘Two anglers found a dead body in the Blackwater, up at Ballyhooly.’
‘I thought this was your day off. And they’re always finding dead bodies in the Blackwater. There’s probably more dead bodies in the Blackwater than fish.’
‘Well, this dead body was exceptional,’ said Katie, taking her boots through to the hall, and putting them away in the shoe cupboard. ‘He was a priest, for one thing.’
‘I hope he gave himself the last rites before he jumped in.’
‘You’re too cynical for your own good, you. Anyhow, he didn’t jump in, he was murdered and dumped there. Throttled – and I’ll tell you what else, castrated, but don’t you go telling anybody.’
‘Castrated? You mean he had his whatsits cut off? Serious?’
Katie nodded.
‘Ouch!’ said Siobhán. ‘Didn’t do it himself, did he? I’ve read about priests doing that, because they can’t take the temptation any longer.’
‘Not likely, in this particular case. Not unless he was some kind of contortionist.’
‘Urgh. I don’t want to know all the grisly ins and outs of it, thank you.’
‘Drink?’ Katie asked her.
‘No, you’re all right.’
Katie went across to the side table and poured a stiff measure of Smirnoff Black Label into a cut-crystal glass. She took a large swallow, which made her give an involuntary shiver.
‘So what are you doing this evening?’ asked Siobhán. ‘Will you be seeing John again, or do you want me to cook something? I still have some chicken stew left from last night, if you want me to heat it up for you. Or we could order a pizza.’
Katie sat down on the couch beside her. ‘I don’t know yet. I called John, but he’s probably out chasing his cows.’
Siobhán was Katie’s younger sister, the third of a family of seven children, all girls. She looked more like their father than their mother. She was taller than Katie, and plumper, with a rounder face and masses of coppery curls and sea-green, wide-apart eyes. Soon after Paul had died, Siobhán had broken up with her boyfriend, Sean, an estate agent with snaggly teeth and a Jedward hairstyle and a very high opinion of himself, and so she had moved in with Katie. It suited Katie, because Siobhán could take care of Bar
ney while she was at work, keep the bungalow tidy and do the messages.
It also meant that Katie could keep an older-sisterly eye on her, because Siobhán had been wild when she was younger, and was still given to bursts of outrageous behaviour, such as climbing out of her car if other drivers cut her up and banging on their windows, or drinking too much in Kelly’s Bar on a Saturday night and falling over in the road with her legs in the air and her black lacy knickers showing.
‘What did you do last night?’ Katie asked her. ‘Anything good?’
Siobhán was silent for a moment, and then she said, ‘I called Michael, if you must know.’
‘I thought you and Michael had been finished for donkey’s. Quite apart from the fact that he’s married.’
‘I still miss him. And he still misses me. He should never have married that Nola. What a drisheen! She’s more like his mother than his wife. Always fussing. She never lets him go out for a drink with his pals, and he has to take off his shoes every time he steps into the house, and put the toilet seat down. And now she wants to move to Kinsale, because she thinks it’s classier than Carrigaline. Well, it is, but that’s not the point.’
‘Well, there’s nothing you can do about it. You had your chance, and you blew it.’
Siobhán was winding her curls hair around her finger. ‘I think he’s forgiven me, to tell you the truth. I only cheated on him once. Well, twice. Anyhow, he said that he’d like to meet me again, just for one drink like.’
Katie took another swallow of vodka and raised her eyebrows. ‘Up to you, girl. But you’re asking for trouble, if you want my opinion. You know what one drink can lead to, especially with you. And if Nola ever found out, she’s not the forgiving kind, I can tell you that.’
Her mobile phone rang, and she picked it up. ‘Hi, John! I’ve been trying to call you for the past hour! Did you get my message?’
‘I did, yes. Sorry. Somebody left a gate open and half a dozen of the goddamned Jerseys got out. They were halfway to Rathcormac before we rounded them all up.’
Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) Page 2