Broken Angels (Katie Maguire)

by Masterton, Graham

  Inside the copse, it was very dark at first, and she had to tread very carefully to avoid making too much noise. As she went further, however, she saw a single bright light shining between the trees, and it became easier to see where she was going. She looked back. The criss-cross beams of at least fifteen flashlights were coming down the slope behind her.

  The singing continued, heartbreakingly beautiful. Katie made her way to the very edge of the copse. She kept herself close to an oak that was thickly covered in ivy, by way of camouflage, and peered between the leaves.

  Beyond the copse there was a grassy field, in which a pressure lantern had been hung on a tent pole. Around the lantern stood three figures dressed in extraordinary costumes. All of them were robed in white, but one of them was wearing a tall pointed capirote, while another one had a hat like a bishop’s mitre, and the face of the third figure was covered by a white, expressionless mask, like a clown. In the strongly contrasting light and shadows they looked like characters out of some religious nightmare.

  It was these three who were singing, their hands pressed together as if in prayer. Katie recognized the chorus from her Elements CD, but if these were the same boys who had sung on that record, their voices had filled out and matured and developed an otherworldly dimension that made Katie feel that she was standing in a cathedral, rather than a rainy field in west Cork in the middle of the night.

  But it wasn’t only the ethereal singing that made Katie feel as if she had entered another reality. Close behind the Fidelios, three tall scaffolding poles had been erected, each of them at least four metres high, and each with a shorter length of scaffolding clamped across the top to form a T shape. They were arranged in the same way that the crosses on Calvary had been arranged, when Christ was crucified.

  On each scaffold a naked man had been bound with his arms spread wide. Each man was bruised and scratched and streaked in blood, and each man was wearing a crown of razor wire. Their heads were slumped down on their chests so that Katie found it hard to recognize them at first, but when the man on the left-hand scaffold lifted up his face to the sky and soundlessly opened his mouth, she realized with a shock that it was Monsignor Kelly. He appeared to look in her direction, but she very much doubted that he could see her, concealed amongst the ivy, especially since he had so much blood in his eyes.

  The man hanging in the middle was emaciated and white-haired, with yellowish skin and a ribcage like the back of a kitchen chair, and Katie could only guess that this was Bishop Conor Kerrigan. On the right, a sallow man with a round head and a pot belly hung motionless. His left cheek was swollen with one huge inky-coloured bruise. This must be Father ó Súllibháin, whom Tómas the gardener had described as ‘Father Football’.

  Inspector Fennessy caught up with her, and the rest of the gardaí now came crashing through the copse.

  ‘I don’t believe what I’m seeing here,’ said Inspector Fennessy. ‘This is like the Stations of the Cross gone mad.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Katie. She had never felt so determined in all of her career, although her voice was shaking. ‘Let’s put an end to all of this. Can somebody call for the paramedics and the fire brigade? Like now, please.’

  She took out her revolver and stepped out from behind the tree, followed by Inspector Fennessy. The three Fidelios immediately stopped singing, and stepped back towards the scaffolds.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ Katie called out.

  The three Fidelios backed away even further, until they were standing right next to the scaffolding poles, one by each of them. They moved almost as if they had been directed by a choreographer.

  ‘I said stay where you are! If you move one inch more, I’ll shoot you!’

  The three Fidelios stayed where they were, but slowly raised their hands. Katie stalked up to them, keeping them covered, and said, ‘Let’s have those masks off, shall we?’

  The man with the pointed capirote lifted it off and tossed it sideways on to the ground. He was a bulky man, round-shouldered, but he looked just like the cherub that Mrs Rooney had described, up in Ballyhooly. His hair was curly and his cheeks were round and ruddy and, most unnervingly, he was smiling at her, as if he had done something especially sweet to please her.

  ‘Denis Sweeney, is it?’ Katie demanded.

  The man shrugged. When he spoke, his voice was a throaty treble, like a young boy’s, or a woman’s. ‘I have all kinds of names for myself.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The Grey Mullet Man, I call myself sometimes, or, when I’m feeling bombastic, the Exactor of Divine Recompense. But Denis Sweeney will do.’

  Inspector Fennessy said to the other two Fidelios, ‘You two – get those masks off before I fecking blow them off.’

  They did what they were told, and dropped their masks on to the grass. They looked exactly like their pictures on the Fidelio website, with bulging brown eyes like hamsters and receding chins.

  ‘The Phelan twins, I presume?’ said Katie.

  ‘That’s them,’ said Denis Sweeney. ‘They sing like angels but they don’t converse much, except with each other.’

  ‘All right,’ Katie told him. ‘I want all three of you to lie flat on your faces on the grass and put your hands behind your backs.’

  ‘No,’ said Denis Sweeney. In the distance, there was another deep mumble of thunder.

  ‘No?’ said Katie.

  ‘That’s right, no. I refuse.’

  ‘Well, all I can tell you, Denis, is that if you don’t do it willingly these officers will be forced to make you do it unwillingly. With batons, if necessary.’

  Denis Sweeney looked up Bishop Kerrigan and smiled. ‘It was all his fault, you know. A man of God shouldn’t make promises and then go back on them.’

  ‘Denis, this is your last chance. Lie flat on your face on the grass and put your hands behind your back.’

  ‘There’s a problem there,’ said Denis Sweeney. ‘The problem is that I’m holding in my right hand here a wire, and this wire is connected to the double coupler at the top of this scaffolding tube. Do you know very much about scaffolding, do you?’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘I’m trying to explain to you that if I drop flat on my face on to the grass, I will inevitably pull on this wire and the crosspiece will topple off and Bishop Kerrigan will topple to the ground along with it. Now a fall like that would be life-threatening enough for a man of his age but there’s another problem, which you may not yet have noticed.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about the second wire, which is fastened around his testicles and which will castrate him when he falls.’

  He nodded towards Monsignor Kelly, hanging from his scaffold, and then to Father ó Súllibháin. ‘The same for these two. If the Phelan twins pull on their wires, that’ll be two more instant castrations.’

  Katie stepped up close to him, still pointing her gun at his chest. He had tiny clear beads of perspiration on his upper lip. She looked up quickly at Bishop Kerrigan and saw that he wasn’t lying. A thin wire, like the wire they used to cut cheese in supermarkets, was wound tightly around his scrotum. It made his tiny penis stick up like the penis of a newborn baby boy, or a cherub in a Renaissance painting.

  Denis Sweeney said, ‘I was going to do castrate them all anyway, if nothing happened.’

  ‘What do you mean, “if nothing happened”?’

  ‘What do you think we’re doing here tonight? They made a promise to us, did they not – this bishop, and this gligeen of a reverend, and those four priests, but then they never kept it. We gave up our manhood for what they promised us. It was the only thing in the whole world that a boy would give up his manhood for.’

  Katie stared at him. ‘You believed them?’

  ‘Of course we believed them. They told us that Bishop Kerrigan himself was going to make us the most astounding choir that the world had ever known. With our singing, Bishop Kerrigan was going to bring the
glory to the diocese of Cork and Ross, and when I say the glory I mean The Glory with a capital T and a capital G. He was going to do what Pope Sixtus V had never been able to do.

  ‘We were orphans. Nobody had ever loved us, not even our own parents. We had never known anything but material poverty and emotional rejection. Suddenly these priests were offering us the earth. No – much more than the earth. They were offering us heaven, too.’

  Inspector Fennessy said, ‘Let go of the fecking wire, Sweeney.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I said let go of the fecking wire.’

  ‘Wait a second, Liam,’ said Katie, ‘I want to hear this.’ She turned back to Denis Sweeney and said, ‘Bishop Kerrigan promised you that if you agreed to become castrati, you would get to meet God? Like, for real?’

  ‘Yes. But we never did, and then we were told that Bishop Kerrigan had died and the choir was disbanded. All of us were left emasculated, with nothing at all to show for it – not even The Glory. None of us ever told anybody what had been done to us. Would you, if that had happened to you? But we never stopped believing that we could meet God one day.’

  ‘So what made you kill Father Heaney and Father Quinlan and Father O’Gara? And why have you strung up Bishop Kerrigan and Monsignor Kelly and Father ó Súllibháin like this?’

  ‘Because we heard that CD, of course. We heard our own voices again, and we realized how much we uplifted people, and we remembered why we had given away our manhood. We wanted to try it again, that’s all. We knew we could do it. Don’t you try to tell me that God would allow sixteen innocent boys to be castrated for nothing. That is not the God that I believe in.

  ‘I went to see Monsignor Kelly and told him that I was thinking of re-forming the choir with as many of the boys as I could find. He said he would help me as much as he could, but I wasn’t to mention to anybody what had been done to us at St Joseph’s. He gave me some money and he gave me the van and he wished me luck, but that was all.’

  ‘But why did you have to commit murder?’

  ‘Why do you think? I got together with the Phelan brothers and we formed Fidelio and we sang our hearts out, but God still didn’t show Himself. Monsignor Kelly stopped answering my calls, so I went to meet Father Heaney, but Father Heaney said he couldn’t and he wouldn’t help us, so I gave him nothing more than what he justly deserved.’

  ‘Did Monsignor Kelly know that it was you who killed him?’

  Denis Sweeney glanced up at Monsignor Kelly with an expression of total disgust. Monsignor Kelly was still conscious, but he was beginning to tremble as if he were having a fit.

  ‘I called Monsignor Kelly, yes, and this time he took my call and I told him that it was me who did away with Father Heaney. But he said that if anybody found out that Bishop Kerrigan had tried to create a choir of castrati, and why, it would be a disaster for the church. An absolute catastrophe. He said so long as I promised to keep quiet and not to harm the other three priests, he could arrange for somebody else to take the blame.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Brendan Doody.’

  ‘I don’t know what his name was. Some handyman.’

  ‘But you didn’t keep your part of the bargain, did you? You didn’t stop killing? You went after Father Quinlan, and then Father O’Gara?’

  Denis Sweeney suddenly lost his temper, and his voice became even more shrill. ‘Because Monsignor Kelly let it slip that Bishop Kerrigan was still alive. He said that I shouldn’t keep on trying to see God because Bishop Kerrigan hadn’t been right in the head and that was why they retired him and told everybody that he was dead. But I think that he was lying to me. I think that all of the clergy in the diocese were terrified that Bishop Kerrigan would actually make God appear – scared shitless, because God would then see for Himself how greedy and corrupt they were – how they lined their own pockets, and abused innocent children, and lived off the fat of the land.’

  He looked up at the night sky, blinking against the raindrops that fell in his eyes. He was breathing deeply with emotion. ‘You ask me what we’re doing here tonight? We have punished the wicked and we have cleansed the unbelievers and tonight we are going to sing for God and if God appears tonight then these three sacrifices will be allowed to live.

  ‘If not...’ He looked down again, and suddenly gave Katie that sweet, disarming smile. ‘If not, we will bring them down to earth, which will complete our retribution. Water, air, fire and earth. The four elements, about which we sang so sweet.’

  The Garda sergeant came up behind Katie and touched her shoulder. ‘Paramedics on the way. Fire brigade too. Five minutes tops.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Katie. ‘Be sure to tell them no sirens.’ Then, to Denis Sweeney, ‘I’m going to give you one last chance, Denis. I want you to let go of the wire and lie on the ground. Otherwise we will have to shoot you. Do you understand that?’

  Denis Sweeney kept on smiling, and as he did so he wound the end of the wire around his wrist, and twisted it tight. ‘If you shoot me, and I go down, Bishop Kerrigan is coming down with me.’

  ‘I thought you believed in Bishop Kerrigan.’

  ‘I do. I did. But God is more likely to appear, isn’t He, if He sees that somebody who really believes in Him is going to be sacrificed if He doesn’t?’

  ‘Do you know something, Denis?’ put in Inspector Fennessy. ‘You’re a fecking header, and no mistake.’

  Denis Sweeney still didn’t stop smiling. ‘I want you to do something for me now, please. I want all of you to go back at least as far as the trees. My dear brothers and I are going to start singing, and if the Lord appears to us, it will be like the sun itself coming out, and I wouldn’t wish any of you to be hurt or blinded.’

  ‘Header,’ Inspector Fennessy repeated.

  But Katie said, ‘Do as he says, Liam. We have to keep this very, very calm. We’ve lost enough priests already, don’t you think?’

  ‘Whatever you say, ma’am.’ said Inspector Fennessy. He turned around to the Garda sergeant and flapped his hand to indicate that all of his men should step back a few paces.

  Denis Sweeney looked at Katie and she saw something in his expression that she had never seen in anybody, ever. It was a longing so intense that it was painful. Perhaps he was longing for the man he never was.

  47

  The Fidelios began to sing. They started with ‘Gloria’, by Guillaume de Machaut, and then they sang ‘Ave Maria’.

  Although there were only three of them, their harmony was hair-raising, even more moving than the Elements CD. The scenario was surreal, with those three naked priests hanging suspended from their scaffolds, but Katie couldn’t help herself being transfixed by the sound of their voices, soaring higher and higher, and when she looked around she saw that the gardaí were standing in the rain as if they had all been turned to stone.

  Ye watchers and ye holy ones,

  bright seraphs, cherubim, and thrones,

  raise the glad strain, Alleluia!

  Cry out, dominions, princedoms, powers,

  virtues, archangels, angels’ choirs: Alleluia!

  ‘Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

  At the final ‘Alleluia!’ Bishop Kerrigan unexpectedly lifted up his head. His face looked like a bloody skull, with empty sockets for eyes. He opened and closed his mouth three or four times without uttering a sound, but then he screamed, ‘It cannot be!’

  His voice was reedy and thin, but he screamed loud enough for Katie to be able to hear him over the singing.

  ‘It cannot be!’ he repeated. ‘The Lord will never show His face! It is not for us to call on Him! How can we presume?’

  Exhausted, his head dropped back on to his chest, so that all Katie could see was his crown of razor wire. But in a few desperate words he had probably explained everything.

  He may have believed once that God would show Himself, but perhaps he had gradually come to realize that it was never going to happen, no matter how sweetly we sing to Him. Perhaps he had seen at last how ar
rogant it was, for humans to expect that their maker should prove His existence, how lacking in faith and how futile. That was what could have driven him over the edge, mentally, and led to his resignation, or his removal.

  Now the Fidelios were singing the ‘Kyrie’. Even though each of them was still grasping one of the wires that would have brought down the crossbars, they were able to hold out their arms and join hands. Their singing rose to a pitch that was almost beyond human hearing, so that it was not so much a sensory experience to listen to it but a spiritual one. Katie felt as if the air around them was crackling with static, and she could literally feel her hair standing on end. Even the rain was sparkling.

  Kyrie eleison!

  Christe eleison!

  Kyrie eleison!

  And then – without any other warning at all, no rumble of thunder, no sudden downdraught – a dazzling fork of lightning struck all three scaffolds. The krakkkk! of electrical energy was deafening, and Katie was knocked over backwards into the grass.

  Each of the three scaffolds crawled and crackled with blinding sparks, which jumped between the three Fidelios, too. Their faces became blazing masks, and smoke poured out of their wide-open mouths. On the scaffolds themselves, Monsignor Kelly and Bishop Kerrigan and Father ó Súllibháin were all shrivelling up, faster and faster, until they resembled nothing more than figures made out of brown autumn leaves.

  There was a final snapp! like a short-circuited fuse and then there was silence. Smoke drifted away through the rain, and the flaking ashes of the three incinerated priests softly tumbled after it.

  Inspector Fennessy helped Katie back on to her feet. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Maybe they did it. Maybe God did pay them a visit, after all.’

  Cautiously, still seeing after-images of lightning floating in front of their eyes, they approached the three scaffolds. Inspector Fennessy kept on looking upwards, as if he was half expecting a second bolt to hit them from the sky, but Katie said, ‘You know what they say. Lightning never strikes twice. And even if it did, you wouldn’t see it coming.’