But as the taxi came to the junction with the R598, its offside indicator started to flash. Its driver waited for a farm tractor to come trundling past, towing a trailer loaded up high with straw. Then he turned right, towards the sea, speeding away with an audible squitter of tyres. Not only was he heading in the wrong direction, but he seemed to be driving inconsiderately fast for a taxi driver with a geriatric priest for a passenger.
Sergeant O’Rourke turned right, too, and went after him. He had been planning on switching on the squad car’s blue lights and overtaking the taxi as soon as possible, but now he held back. He wanted to see where Father Lowery was being taken. He wondered if Monsignor Kelly had contacted Father Lowery and warned him to make himself scarce for a while. Why else had it been impossible to contact Father Lowery by phone? He hadn’t answered any calls to his mobile and the small boy with the clogged-up nose who had picked up the phone at St Michael’s had sworn blind that he had looked everywhere but couldn’t find him.
From Rathbarry, this road would take them due south, towards the sea, but then turn westward and run parallel to the coast, through Long Strand. After that, though, it turned northward again until it rejoined the main N71, so Father Lowery could be heading anywhere at all – to Skibbereen, in the west, or eastward even, back to Cork City.
The taxi drove faster and faster, until it was speeding along at nearly seventy, with a bridal veil of spray trailing behind it. Sergeant O’Rourke was finding it hard to keep up, although he didn’t want to come so close that the taxi driver realized he had a two-bulb on his tail. In his white Ford Focus with its yellow and blue Battenberg squares, he could hardly have been more conspicuous, and he cursed his luck for having been obliged to leave his own unmarked car behind on the Croppy Road.
After less than two kilometres, however, without indicating that he was turning, the taxi driver swerved down the narrow road on the left that led to Castlefreke Warren and Donoure. That was one thing settled, anyway – Father Lowery was definitely not making for the N71.
As he approached the corner to follow him, Sergeant O’Rourke slowed right down to give the taxi driver plenty of time to widen his lead. This was a very quiet rural road and it was highly unlikely that there would be any other traffic, especially in this weather.
He still couldn’t work out where the taxi driver was going. It was possible to get to Ardfield this way, but he would definitely be taking the scenic route, through villages and caravan parks and farms, and it would take three times as long as driving there directly.
The road was only single-track here, with Castlefreke woods on the left and the sea on the right. The sea was the colour of gunmetal and very choppy. On the horizon, through the rain, Sergeant O’Rourke could just make out the pale grey outline of a giant oil tanker heading towards the Atlantic, like the ghost of the Lusitania.
When he looked back to the road ahead, however, the taxi had vanished.
‘Shite,’ he said, under his breath. He could see at least half a kilometre in front of him, and the road was reasonably straight, but there was no sign of the taxi at all. He took his foot off the accelerator and leaned forward over the steering wheel, narrowing his eyes to see if there were any side turnings up ahead. Feck it, he thought. How could I have lost him? But one second he was right there in front of me, I swear to God, and the next second he wasn’t – just like some fecking magic trick.
He drove another seven hundred and fifty metres and then he pulled in to the side of the road. The rain was easing off now, and so he set his windscreen wipers to intermittent. He was tempted to call control at Clonakilty Garda station and ask for directions, but if he did that, the local cops would want to know where he was and what he was after doing, and Katie had insisted that he tell nobody that he wanted to talk to Father Lowery, or why.
He turned the car around and started to creep very slowly back the way he had come. He had covered less than two hundred metres when he noticed that some of the bushes by the side of the road had freshly broken branches, and that there were four deep tyre tracks in the muddy verge. The taxi driver must have turned off the road for some reason, plunging straight into the undergrowth, and headed towards the trees.
Sergeant O’Rourke drove on a few metres further and then parked the Garda car in a small gravelly lay-by. The woods were only about thirty metres away and quite dense – spruce and sycamore and maritime pine – and so the taxi driver couldn’t have gone very far. Sergeant O’ Rourke crossed the road, climbed up over the verge, and began to make his way through the bushes, his right elbow lifted in front of his face to shield it from a barbed-wire fence of brambles. All the same, they snatched and tore at his coat.
There was a strong fresh smell of sea in the air, mingled with the smell of wet undergrowth.
As he went further into the woods, he saw the taxi half-concealed behind a beech tree, not covered with leaves or branches, but parked in such a way that it couldn’t be seen from the road. He circled around it, keeping at least twenty metres distant, but the driver’s door and the nearside passenger door were both wide open, and the taxi was empty.
So where the hell were they? Father Lowery and his taxi driver?
Sergeant O’Rourke reached into his coat and lifted his SIG Sauer automatic out of his shoulder holster. He cocked it, and held it up high in both hands, and then he approached the taxi’s rear door, his knees slightly bent, all the time glancing from side to side in case he was being watched.
He heard a sharp crackle of leaves and twigs, and he swung around with his automatic held out stiff-armed in front of him. God almighty. But it was nothing more than two squirrels chasing each other, tearing around and around and up and down trees.
He looked inside the taxi. On the back seat there was a folded copy of the Catholic Recorder and an open spectacle case, with the spectacles still inside, but no Father Lowery.
When he checked the front seat, however, Sergeant O’Rourke began to suspect that this wasn’t a taxi at all. There was no two-way radio, no clipboard, no business cards, and nothing to indicate that the driver spent hours driving around or waiting for passengers – no crisp packets, no newspapers, not even a roll of extra-strong mints.
So what were they doing together in the woods, Father Lowery and a taxi driver who didn’t appear to be a taxi driver at all? Holy Mary, Mother of God, I dread to think.
He ventured a little further into the trees. They had started to drip now, from high above, and Sergeant O’Rourke grew jumpier with every drip. He was seriously beginning to think that however strictly Katie had told him to keep this investigation to himself, he needed help from the local boys.
He made a detour around a fairy ring of toadstools. His mam’s mam had always told him that fairy rings were the entrance to the underworld, so you’d better not step inside of one, young Jimmy, unless you want to disappear for a hundred years and come back to find that all your loved ones are long since dead and buried.
A few metres past the fairy ring Sergeant O’Rourke saw a black biretta with a pompom lying on the ground. He walked over to it and picked it up. No doubt about it – it was the same biretta that Father Lowery had been wearing in the back of the taxi. Sergeant O’Rourke looked around, hat in one hand and gun in the other. Raindrops continued to fall from the trees – sometimes singly, sometimes several all at once, with a sudden clatter.
Off to his right, he saw a wide depression in the ground, filled with leaves and broken twigs. He approached it slowly. Lying in the middle of it, with his arms and legs spread wide in an X shape, as if he had fallen from hundreds of feet in the air, was Father Lowery. At least, he assumed it was Father Lowery. As he came closer, he saw that the priest had virtually no face. It looked as if he had received the full blast of a shotgun at what must have been point-blank range. His jaw was missing so that his tongue hung straight downwards like a plump lilac-coloured cravat. He had no nose at all, only two narrow triangular holes, but both his eyeballs had been blown upwards
out of their sockets, still attached to the optic nerves, and were perched on his forehead, staring up at Sergeant O’Rourke as if they were waiting for him to put them back in again.
‘Jesus,’ said Sergeant O’Rourke. He crossed himself twice, and he was so shaken that it took all of his strength not to drop to his knees. He tugged his mobile phone out of his pocket to call Katie, but there was no signal, not here in the woods around Castlefreke, on the edge of the Irish Sea. He would have to go back to the Garda car and make his call from there. Meanwhile, where the hell was the taxi driver – if he really was a taxi driver? Had he shot Father Lowery, or had he been shot, too, by somebody else?
Sergeant O’Rourke began to make his way hurriedly back towards the road, panting, his feet chuffing through the leaves. He gave the taxi a wide berth, even though it was still parked behind the beech tree and its doors were still open. He looked left and right, and then behind him, to see if there was any sign of the taxi driver, alive or dead, but he could see nothing. He listened, but all he could hear was the trees dripping and the squirrels scampering and very far away, the mournful hooting of the oil tanker.
As he came around the beech tree, however, he found the taxi driver was standing in his way, waiting for him. A stocky man, wearing a brown tweed cap and a black nylon zip-up jacket. The lower part of his face was covered with a black woollen scarf, so that Sergeant O’Rourke could see only his eyes. He was carrying a shotgun, its barrels lifted almost vertical, as if he were just about to let off a shot into the treetops.
‘You could of minded your own business, you know,’ said the taxi driver. His voice was muffled, but he definitely sounded like a southsider from Cork City.
Sergeant O’Rourke pointed his automatic at him. ‘Break the shotgun, all right?’
‘Oh, yeah? And who’s going to make me?’
‘Break it, boy, and then lay it down on the ground. Slow and careful, on the ground in front of you. Then back away with your hands on top of your head.’
‘I just said, who’s going to make me?’
‘I am, me. Because I’m going to count to three, and if you haven’t done it by then, I’m going to shoot you. I’m not going to aim at your shoulders or your legs or anything like that. I’m going to shoot you straight through the fecking heart and fecking kill you, because I think you’ll find that we’re allowed to do that if a suspect’s armed.’
The taxi driver stared at him for a moment and then he slowly shook his head and turned away, so that he had his back to him. ‘You’re a joke, you cops. I’m going to fecking kill you. What a fecking sham-feen!’
‘Turn back around!’ Sergeant O’Rourke shouted at him. ‘Do you hear me, boy? Turn back around!’
The taxi driver continued shaking his head. Sergeant O’Rourke said, ‘One – two—’
‘What comes after two?’ the taxi driver challenged him. ‘Two and a half? Two and three quarters? You haven’t got the balls!’
With that, he dropped to his knees and twisted around at the same time, firing his shotgun at Sergeant O’Rourke’s stomach. Sergeant O’Rourke was knocked backwards, falling flat on the ground with his arms spread wide, just like Father Lowery. He hadn’t heard the shot that had hit him, but he heard it echo through the woods, and the sudden flurry of birds that it had disturbed.
He tried to get up, but he couldn’t. He had dropped his automatic when he fell, and when he turned his head sideways he could see it lying amongst the leaves. He willed his hand to reach out and pick it up, but his hand wouldn’t respond. In fact, he felt numb all over. He couldn’t feel his arms and he couldn’t feel his legs.
With an effort, he raised his head and looked down at his stomach. The front of his coat had been torn to riotous shreds, and he could see pale coils of glistening intestine bulging out.
The taxi driver came up to him, with his shotgun tilted over his shoulder. He had taken off the scarf that had covered his face and now he looked down at Sergeant O’Rourke with an exaggerated frown of deep concern.
‘I didn’t want to have to do that at all,’ he said. ‘Why did you make me do that?’
Sergeant O’Rourke attempted to speak, but his lungs refused to give him any air. He felt as if were being suffocated.
‘Hnneeeep,’ he said, trying breathe in.
‘What’s that, copper?’
‘Hnneeep.’
‘I told you, you should of minded your own business. You’re interfering in things you don’t know nothing about. Well, I don’t know nothing about them, neither, but I do know that you’re messing with people who won’t be messed with under any circumstances.’
Sergeant O’Rourke couldn’t manage to draw in another breath. He looked up at the complicated patterns of branches above his head and it occurred to him that he was dying. He had never imagined that it would be like this, lying on his back in a wood. He was sure he could see faces in the spaces between the branches – not so much faces as an absence of faces. One of them looked as if it was winking at him, but that was only the wind blowing a single leaf.
He wished that Maeve were here, in her apron, smelling of baking, kneeling beside him and holding his hand. He wished that he hadn’t been so impatient with her all their married life, and told her that he loved her more often.
‘Does it hurt?’ asked the taxi driver.
Sergeant O’ Rourke gave the slightest shake of his head.
‘Well, I have to say I’m surprised about that. Your guts are pouring out all over the shop.’
He looked down at Sergeant O’Rourke for a few moments longer, biting his lower lip, as if he were trying to come to a decision. Then he said, ‘I have to go now. I’m sorry, but I can’t be hanging around here any longer. Somebody might have heard my gun go off.’
He lifted his shotgun off his shoulder and aimed it directly at Sergeant O’Rourke’s nose. The ends of the barrels were so close that Sergeant O’Rourke could smell the sour reek of burned gunpowder from the cartridge that had hit him in the stomach. He wished that he had the breath to plead with the taxi driver not to shoot him in the face. He had seen Father Lowery’s face and if he ended up looking like that, the funeral directors would have to close his coffin and Maeve wouldn’t be able to kiss him goodbye.
‘I’m sorry, like, but I can’t leave you here alive,’ said the taxi driver.
No, I assumed not, thought Sergeant O’Rourke, and he was amazed at how practical he was being, considering what was going to happen to him.
He hadn’t heard the first shot and he didn’t hear this shot, either, but he did feel a red-hot blast in his face as if a furnace door had slammed open right in front of him. Then nothing.
The taxi driver stood still for a while, as if he couldn’t decide if he had done the right thing or not. Sergeant O’Rourke’s head had been almost completely blown apart, and the top of his skull was three metres away, among the toadstools that clustered around the beech tree, with clumps of his hair still attached.
It started to rain again, pattering down through the leaves. The taxi driver walked back to his car and climbed into it. He saw his eyes looking back at him in the rear-view mirror. They seemed emotionless, but he knew that wasn’t true. He just hoped that he got his reward for what he had done today, both on earth and in heaven.
36
‘Wait a second,’ said Katie, as Detective O’Donovan opened the car door for her. ‘I just want to see if I can get in touch with Jimmy.’
Detective O’Donovan waited patiently while she dialled Sergeant O’Rourke’s mobile number. She was surprised that she hadn’t heard from him sooner. It was very unlike him not to keep in constant touch when he was out on a case. In fact, he often irritated her by calling in every half-hour to tell her that he had nothing to tell her.
Katie heard a ringing tone, but Sergeant O’Rourke didn’t answer. She tried a second time and still he didn’t answer. ‘No,’ she said, at last. ‘I’ll have to try him again later.’
‘You get an awful patch
y signal down past Clon,’ said Detective O’Donovan.
‘Either that, or he’s talking to Father Lowery and doesn’t want to be interrupted. Anyhow, let’s go and see what this Father ó Súllabháin has to say for himself.’
They drove across the river and up Summerhill until they reached St Luke’s Cross, by Henchy’s pub, where they turned right towards Montenotte. This was one of the more desirable districts of Cork, with mature trees and flint walls and panoramic views to the south across the River Lee and out towards the airport, and the hills beyond. From there you could see the weather rolling in a good half-hour before it arrived. St Dominic’s Retreat Centre was built on top of a hill, surrounded by neatly manicured lawns and rose beds crowded with red roses. The main retreat was a plain, stone-faced building with a grey slate roof and white-framed windows. Two Garda cars were parked outside, and two armed gardaí were standing by the front door, talking to one of the Dominican friars.
Katie climbed out of the car and walked towards them, and as she did so one of them nudged the other and they both stood up straighter. The friar appeared to remember that he was wanted urgently elsewhere, and hurried away.
‘Afternoon, superintendent, and how’s yourself?’ said one of them, a hefty young man with ruddy cheeks, who looked to Katie like the bolder of the two.
‘I’m grand, thanks for asking,’ she replied sharply. ‘I just came up to have a few words with Father ó Súllabháin.’
‘He’s in retreat,’ said the garda.
‘I know he’s in retreat, but I still need to talk to him.’
‘Well, he’s isolated, like. Saying his prayers. Nobody’s supposed to interrupt him.’
‘That’s too bad. I’m afraid that this inquiry is infinitely more urgent than the saving of Father ó Súllabháin’s soul.’
‘He’s in room 202,’ the garda told her. ‘But like I say, he’s in retreat, and I don’t know if he’ll talk to you or not.’
‘Have you talked to him? Is he aware why we’re giving him protection?’
Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) Page 24