The Grey Mullet Man said, ‘I light this candle in memory of all the lost boys at St Joseph’s Orphanage – of all the happy futures that were never to be – of all the terrible pain and humiliation they suffered. Most of all, I light it in the sure and certain knowledge that what they went through will never happen to another boy, ever. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ echoed the man in the bishop’s mitre and the man in the white pierrot mask, and the Grey Mullet Man touched the burning match to the top of Gerry’s head.
Instantly, with a sharp crackling noise, Gerry’s hair burst into flame. For the first few seconds, he couldn’t feel anything at all, but the fire burned fast and fierce, with flames leaping up more than two feet above his head, and as soon as all his hair was shrivelled, and the blazing gel began to burn his bare scalp, he let out a screech that made the man in the pierrot mask clamp his hands to the sides of his head.
Wearing a crown of living flames, Gerry threw himself wildly from side to side, so that the bed frame screeched and groaned in protest and its feet danced a frantic rumba on the floor. But the thin black nylon straps that were holding Gerry up against the bedhead were unbreakable, and in the end there was nothing he could do but sit absolutely rigid, his teeth gritted, his face contorted with agony, his fists clenched, while the fire flared up higher and then eventually died down.
After three or four minutes, the last flames licked at his blackened, bloody scalp, and then slunk off into oblivion. Gerry’s head slumped forward. He was unconscious again from shock, and his whole body was quaking as if he were freezing cold. Acrid smoke rose lazily up towards the ceiling and then got caught in a draft and shuddered away.
The man in the bishop’s mitre crossed himself. ‘Well,’ he asked, ‘do you think he saw hell?’
‘Only a glimpse of it, I’d say,’ said the Grey Mullet Man. He screwed the top back on to the Diet Coke bottle and placed it back on the chair. ‘But don’t worry, he’ll soon find out what it’s really like, the same way that all of us did.’
31
Katie’s cappuccino had gone cold but she drank it anyway, tugging a tissue out of the box on her desk to wipe her mouth. She had just picked up her phone to call the hospital when John knocked at her office door. He was wearing his brown leather bomber jacket and a green and white check shirt and he had just had a haircut, so he looked five years younger.
‘Katie,’ he said, giving her that quick, cautious smile.
‘John! Hi, darling. You’ve caught me right in the middle, I’m afraid.’
‘No time for lunch, then?’
‘We have a media conference at 2.30 and I’m trying to make some progress in this priest-killing case, so that we have something newsworthy to tell them.’
John came into the room and stood beside her desk. ‘Hey – why sweat it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘All you have to do is tell the press that you’re investigating some extremely promising new leads, and that you’re only a few days away from making an arrest, and that you’ll get back to them as soon as you’ve had a late lunch at the Clarion with the man you love and maybe a half-hour’s hanky-panky in a room upstairs.’
Katie gave him a mock-exasperated look. ‘I can’t do that, because I don’t have any extremely promising new leads, and because I seriously do have to make some progress. Nobody’s supposed to know this yet, but another priest has gone missing – well, ex-priest – and we’re seriously concerned that the same thing is going to happen to him – that’s if it hasn’t happened already.’
‘You mean...?’ John lifted two fingers and snipped them in a scissors gesture.
Katie nodded. ‘And likely even worse, if what they did to Father Quinlan is anything to go by.’
‘Jesus.’
Katie stood up and came around her desk and put her arms around John’s waist. ‘Listen,’ she said, much more quietly, ‘you don’t know how sorry I am that all of this has blown up now.’
He kissed her – once, twice, three times. ‘Come on, sweetheart. You have your job to do, I know that. Most important, though, how’s your sister?’
‘Still the same, the last time I saw her. I was just about call and find out.’
He held her close. ‘I’m really sorry I was so pushy when I came to the hospital. I guess I’m afraid that I’m going to go out to San Francisco and that you’re never going to follow me. It’s like every day a new reason comes up why you won’t be able to.’
He hesitated, and then he said, ‘What I was going to tell you today was that I really have to go as soon as possible. I can’t even wait until the end of next month. The guys are screaming for me to get out there and organize all the online sales distribution.’
‘Then you should go.’
He looked down at her, looked intently into her eyes. ‘I don’t want to go unless I’m one hundred per cent sure that you’re going to be following me, once your sister recovers and once you’ve wrapped this case up. I don’t want to go out there and discover that I’m never going to see you again.’
Katie pressed her head close against his chest – so close that she could feel his heart beating through his soft cotton shirt. When she breathed in she could smell cinnamon and oak aftershave, and just him. She couldn’t find any truthful words to say to him, because she knew that, right at this moment, she couldn’t promise on the Holy Bible that she would follow him to San Francisco; but she also knew that he couldn’t possibly afford to stay here in Ireland.
‘You know the old saying,’ she told him. ‘The test of the heart is trouble.’
At that moment, Detective O’Donovan appeared in the open doorway. He cleared his throat to announce his arrival, and John and Katie separated.
He held up a USB stick. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, ma’am, but the photography boys in Phoenix Park just sent me this and I think you need to see it urgent-like.’
‘Of course,’ said Katie. She tilted her head up to give John a kiss. ‘I’ll talk to you later this evening, okay? Maybe we can manage to get together for a drink and something to eat.’
John said nothing, but gripped her hand tightly for a moment, and then left.
‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Detective O’Donovan repeated.
‘No, you’re all right. Let’s have a look at what you’ve got there.’
Detective O’Donovan went across to Katie’s computer with its wide-screen monitor and plugged in the memory stick. Instantly the black and white newspaper photograph of the Cork Survivors’ Society demonstration appeared on the screen. There was Monsignor Kelly standing on the steps of the diocese building under that monstrous black umbrella, surrounded by his heavyweight priests, and there was Paul McKeown from the CSS confronting him, and the motley crowd of masked and hooded protestors gathered behind him, like refugees from a travelling carnival.
‘This is a print taken from the original negative,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘The background’s out of focus, like, but they used that Kneson Imagener software and you won’t believe what they were able to bring up. Amazing.’
He clicked the mouse and the photograph jumped into sharp focus. He clicked the mouse a second time and the screen was filled with a close-up of the black van with the two question marks on the back doors. There was lettering on the van’s side panel, too, and Katie could read it quite clearly.
‘Get everybody in here,’ she said. ‘I want the whole team to see this. And Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll, too, if he’s back from lunch.’
Within five minutes, Inspector Fennessy and Sergeant O’Rourke and Detective Horgan and three other detective gardaí had crowded into Katie’s office.
‘This has to stay strictly under wraps until I say so,’ Katie cautioned them. ‘Before we tell anyone at all, I need to go and talk to Monsignor Kelly again.’
Sergeant O’Rourke went up close to the monitor and peered at it with a concentrated frown. After a while he turned around and said, ‘These question marks on the back doors of that van, t
hey’re not question marks at all, are they? They’re like those shepherd’s crook things that bishops tote around with them.’
‘You’re right,’ said Inspector Fennessy. ‘Croziers, that’s what they are. Two bishop’s croziers.’
‘Exactly,’ said Katie. ‘And look what it says on the side of the van. Diocese of Cork and Ross. Redemption Road, Cork. And the telephone number.’
Sergeant O’Rourke was slowly shaking his head from side to side. ‘So this fecking van that this priest killer’s been driving around in, and using for carting bodies around, it belongs to the church?’
‘It obviously did at one time, anyhow,’ said Katie.
‘I can’t say that I ever saw it around the city.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t really notice it unless you were looking for it specially,’ Detective O’Donovan put in. ‘They’ve blacked out the lettering on the side, and they’ve changed the number plate, but for some reason they never got around to painting out more than one of the two croziers.’
‘Maybe they ran out of paint,’ suggested Detective Horgan.
Sergeant O’Rourke said, ‘Maybe they did. Stupider things have happened. You remember that fellow who killed a horse and cut off its legs so that it would fit into the back seat of his car and drove along Grand Parade with its head sticking out of the window? “He’s like a dog, see, he likes the wind in his face,” that’s what he said when we stopped him.’
‘So, what’s the plan of action now?’ asked Inspector Fennessy.
‘A visit to Redemption Road, I think, don’t you?’ said Katie. ‘Let’s get right back to the root of this. Liam – I’d like you to come with me. I think I’m going to need your calculating mind.’
Katie wanted to catch Monsignor Kelly by surprise, so she drove to Redemption Road without calling his secretary first to make an appointment. A hard rain was rattling down and she and Inspector Fennessy ran across the car park outside the diocesan buildings with their collars turned up. They bounded up the stairs to Monsignor Kelly’s office, and Katie gave a single sharp knock on his secretary’s door before they walked straight in.
Monsignor Kelly’s secretary was a washed-out looking nun with a pointy, pink-tinged nose. She had a half-finished chicken sandwich on her desk but her mouth was so small that Katie wondered how she managed to get any words out, let alone eat anything.
Katie held up her badge. ‘Detective Superintendent Maguire. I’d like to see the monsignor, please.’
‘Oh, I see. Oh. I don’t know,’ flustered the nun, and her nose blushed even pinker. ‘Is the monsignor expecting you?’
‘No,’ said Katie.
The nun looked across at the open diary on her desk and frowned very hard, as if frowning alone could magically fill up this afternoon’s appointments.
‘I’m afraid he’s not available. Not just now, anyhow.’
Before she could protest, Katie came around her desk and peered over at the diary for herself. ‘Five p.m. Golf with Councillor Murphy at Fota, weather permitting. That’s all he’s got written down here. And what’s the time now? Only just half past twelve. He’s got a full four and a half hours free to talk to us. And besides that, it’s raining buckets, so weather is not permitting.’
‘I’m sorry, superintendent. It’s not written down here but just at the moment he’s holding a media briefing.’
‘A media briefing? A media briefing about what? He knows that he’s not supposed to talk to the media about the case we’re working on. Not without consulting me first.’
‘I’m not sure at all what it’s about,’ said the nun. She was becoming increasingly agitated, and kept tapping her fingers softly on her desk, as if she were trying to convey a warning in Morse code to the man in the room behind her.
‘Well, who does he have in there? The Examiner? RTÉ? I didn’t see any TV vans parked outside.’
Katie made a move toward Monsignor Kelly’s heavy oak door, but the nun sprang up from her desk and intercepted her before she could knock, grasping the door handle possessively.
‘I’ll see if he can spare you a few minutes,’ she said. She reminded Katie of those thin, bruised, browbeaten wives who panic whenever the gardaí ask them where their husbands are, and swear to God that they haven’t seen them in weeks, even though they’re hiding under the bed in the children’s room, or crouching in the bottom of the airing cupboard with a fitted sheet over their heads.
‘This is a murder inquiry,’ Katie told her. ‘The monsignor has to spare us as much time as we require.’
The nun said nothing, but rapped at the door. ‘Monsignor Kelly,’ she called, weakly. There was no reply, so she rapped a second time.
‘Monsignor Kelly – Detective Superintendent Maguire is here. She says that she needs to see you!’
There was a long silence, but just before the nun could rap a third time, they heard the key turn very quietly in the door, and Monsignor Kelly say, ‘Come!’
The nun opened the door and they all stepped into Monsignor Kelly’s office. It was deeply gloomy in there, because none of the lights had been switched on, not even the desk lamp, even though the sky outside the window was as dark as slate.
Monsignor Kelly was standing a little way behind his desk in what Katie thought was an oddly forced pose, partly defensive and partly aggressive, with his right hand on his hip, and his left hand brushing back his hair. He looked like a man who has stumbled while getting off a bus, and hasn’t quite retained his balance and his dignity.
Besides Monsignor Kelly, however, there was nobody else in the room – only the faintly saintly portrait of Bishop Kerrigan.
‘Katie,’ said Monsignor Kelly, trying to sound warm. He came forward and held out his hand. ‘I would have appreciated it if you had made an appointment, you know. It would have helped me to give you all the attention you deserve.’
Katie thought, I can read that teeth-clenching smile, monsignor. You think I deserve shite. She looked around the office and said, ‘So – where are the media?’
‘Media?’
‘The media. Your secretary here told us that you were holding a media briefing. By the way, this is Inspector Liam Fennessy. I don’t think you’ve met him before.’
‘Media briefing...’ said Monsignor Kelly, his hand held over his mouth as if he didn’t quite understand what the words meant.
But at that moment a side door next to the bookshelves opened up and Ciara Clare from the Catholic Recorder stepped out, with the sound of a toilet flushing behind her. When Katie had first met her up at Ballyhooly – on the morning they had found Father Heaney’s body in the Blackwater – Ciara Clare had been wearing a large grey poncho to conceal the size of her breasts. Today she was wearing a tight V-necked sweater, which dramatized her enormous bosom with broad red and purple stripes. She was also wearing a very short purple skirt and shiny purple stilettos. Her curly black hair was messily pinned up with barrettes and Katie noticed that her cranberry-coloured lipstick had been freshly applied. The beauty spot on her upper lip was more noticeable than ever.
‘Well, well,’ said Katie. ‘Nice to meet you again, Ciara. I’m guessing that Ms Clare here is the media that you’ve been briefing, monsignor?’
‘A reporter from the Catholic Recorder comes once every week for a private press conference,’ Monsignor Kelly snapped at her. ‘After all, the Recorder is the only organ through which the diocese can speak directly to the public at large.’
Katie was tempted to make a sarcastic comment about organs, but held her tongue. Instead, she said, ‘I need to ask you some questions about some new evidence that we’ve come up with, monsignor. If you don’t mind, Ciara?’
Ciara Clare picked up a long purple cardigan from the back of a chair and said, in her distinctive lisp, ‘I’ll call you later, monsignor, if that’s all right, so that you can finish giving me all the details about that church youth festival at Clonmacnoise.’
She said it in such a flat, tele-prompt way that Katie immediatel
y knew that she was trying to give Monsignor Kelly an alibi. Katie would have bet money that he hadn’t even started to tell her about the church youth festival at Clonmacnoise, or any other diocesan events, for that matter. She could smell it, and it was all cat’s malogian.
‘Please, take a seat,’ said Monsignor Kelly, once Ciara Clare had left the room and closed the door behind her.
‘This won’t take long,’ Katie told him. She opened her briefcase and took out a print of the CSS demonstration photograph.
Monsignor Kelly studied the photograph and then gave Katie another tight smile and shook his head. ‘I remember that day, Katie. Not with any pleasure, I might tell you. The so-called survivors were extremely aggressive.’
‘Well, maybe they had some justification, but that’s beside the point. I’d like to know about this van parked in the car park.’
Monsignor Kelly studied the photograph again. ‘Yes... it’s the van we used to use for all kinds of odd messages around the diocese. Shopping, or picking up clothing donations, for example. Or carrying sports equipment. Or taking furniture from one church to another. You know the kind of thing.’
‘Do you know what happened to it?’
Monsignor Kelly narrowed his eyes. ‘What happened to it? What are you suggesting? How should I know what happened to it?’
‘It isn’t still owned by the diocese, is it?’
‘Well, no. As far as I know, we got rid of it about three or four years ago. We have a new van now, white. In fact, we have two of them. I presume this van was sold in part exchange.’
‘Who would know for sure?’
‘Well, Father Lowery would know. He’s in charge of transport and logistics. But does it matter what happened to it?’
‘Yes, it does, monsignor. It matters very much.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘I can’t tell you just yet, I’m afraid. But I may come back to you about it. Is Father Lowery based here? The sooner we can talk to him the better.’
Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) Page 20