by Paul Charles
The first order of business was for Garvey and Browne to tell Starrett and Gibson the real reason for their urgent call to Donegal Town, which was to impart the information they’d recently discovered on Father Gene McCafferty.
Starrett was generous with his praise and asked Garvey to remind him to also thank Garda Francis Casey for his sterling work, a fact which seemed to make Gibson very happy.
‘Right, let’s recap,’ the inspector announced, as he took a crisp stick of chalk to wrote ‘St Ernan’s’ at the top left of the blackboard, underlining it with a squiggly wave. Beneath that – pausing every now and again to get the correct spelling or reminders from his daily updated notebook – he wrote, in his distinctive yet readable handwriting:
Fr. Matthew McKaye (deceased)
Fr. McIntyre (gossip, camp, Tubsey, blond, ukulele, Jim Reeves)
Fr. Fergus Mulligan (author of list, old choirboy, solid alibi)
Fr. Robert O’Leary (speaks with fingers, clever, oldest resident)
Fr. Gene McCafferty (thief, Cork & Ennis, elephant-ear elbows, newest res.)
Fr. Edward McKenzie (gardener and Ginger Beatle, farmer)
Fr. Patrick O’Connell (o.weight, ladies’ man, snazzy dresser)
Fr. Peter Casey (researcher for Master Writer, V of silence, absent)
Fr. Michael Clerkin (researcher for Master Writer, V of silence, absent)
Fr. Peregrine Dugan (Master Writer, Methuselah, voice of God, in room)
Bishop Cormac Freeman
Then he took a space and added:
Eimear Robinson (St Ernan’s housekeeper)
Gerry Robinson (Eimear’s husband)
Mary Mooney (Eimear’s sister)
Jessica Robinson (Eimear’s 18-year-old daughter)
Julia Robinson (Eimear’s 16-year-old daughter)
Starrett then made two chalk rectangular boxes and wrote ‘Swindle/McCafferty’ in one and ‘Rare John Hamilton nibs/ Fr. McKaye’ in the other. Then he set down the chalk, dusted the remnants from his hands and said, ‘So…where do we begin?’
'What’s Father Mulligan’s solid alibi?' Gibson asked.
'Father O’Leary was looking out through the window of his room and he spotted Father Fergus leave St Ernan’s around 3:30 and come back in again just after the 5:30 traffic report,” Starrett replied as he drew a thick line through Father Fergus’ name. “That’s good enough for me. So, where do we begin?”
‘Father McCafferty?’ Browne offered.
‘Yes,’ Starrett agreed. ‘We can’t deny the potential motive developing.’
‘I’d like to talk to Eimear’s daughters,’ Nuala Gibson volunteered. ‘You know, they’re closer in age to Father Matthew and if, as Eimear said, he was always around the Robinsons’ house they might have been in a better position to pick up stuff the mother didn’t.’
‘Good. Good,’ Starrett grunted. ‘Maybe we should also include Eimear’s sister as well at this stage – she seemed to be around the Robinson house a lot.’
‘And should we really accept that the two “missing” writers-slash-researchers, Fathers Casey and Clerkin, were indeed missing yesterday?’
‘Fair play to you, Packie,’ Starrett said, rubbing his hands.
‘You know, they could have pretended to leave on Tuesday, snuck into the house yesterday afternoon, murdered Father Matthew, snuck out again and disappeared to do the research?’ Garvey continued. ‘Do we know how he was actually murdered yet?’
‘Dr Aljoe is still trying to figure that one out,’ Starrett offered. He wasn’t exactly lying but, at the same time, not exactly telling the whole truth. It wasn’t that he didn’t want his team to find out the exact details – he didn’t even know the exact details yet – no, it was more that he didn’t even want the subject discussed while they were in St Ernan’s.
‘Francis could track them down?’ Gibson offered, betraying her distraction.
‘Good idea, Ban Garda, and also get him to check on the worldwide web thingy for John Hamilton’s pen nibs. See if he can find out for us how much they’d be worth?’
Gibson made a note to herself to instruct Francis accordingly.
‘Okay,’ Starrett said, ‘now we have this new info on McCafferty, I’d like to have another chat with Father O’Leary on that subject – maybe he’ll be a bit more forthcoming this time. Perhaps they all will.’
He circulated the chalk around between his fingers for a few seconds, using only one hand – the one with the permanently crooked finger – as he continued to stare at the names he’d written on the blackboard. He realised this was fast turning into one of those cases where the more you discovered, the more you didn’t know.
Then an idea struck him.
‘Packie,’ he said, ‘does anyone in St Ernan’s know you requisitioned this blackboard?’
‘I would imagine someone would have seen or heard me getting it up the stairs?’ Garvey said.
‘Yeah, you’re right. Please, give us a hand here,’ Starrett said and gestured to the blackboard and the main window on the other side of the room.
The two men hauled both blackboard and easel closer to the window, in fact so close that the tilted top nearly touched the wall. When the inspector had it in position, he moved to one side of the board, gripped it and instructed Packie to so the same, and together they flipped it over so that the clean side of the board was visible in the room. Starrett got the chalk again and wrote Father Matthew’s full name and estimated time of death in one box. He finished it off by adding ‘Potato Experiment’. In a second box he wrote ‘Father Clerkin & Bishop Freeman’, and, in a third, ‘high tide and causeway’. Then he drew a wee boat and two men at the bottom right of the blackboard in some rippling circles and dusted his hands once more, satisfied with at least part of his morning’s work.
Chapter Twenty-One
Starrett couldn’t be sure, but when he and Garda Romany Browne next visited Father Gene McCafferty in his room – next-door-but-one to the boys’ room in which they’d just finished their meeting– the priest with the apparent desire for inclusion in the wills of Donegal’s aged congregation was visibly tipsy.
Admittedly, the sun wasn’t at its lunchtime high, but not exactly long since.
Father Gene McCafferty had his hands deep in his pockets, elbows flying wide and perpetually flapping like wings but, just like chicken wings, they never threatened to raise the subject from the floor. In fact, the priest seemed to have an aversion to the wooden floor; he looked as though it was either too hot for his soles or he was scared it was going to give way under him. In addition to all of this, he seemed to be having great difficulty retaining his balance.
‘You know, I find that balance is all about confidence,’ Starrett said, as he walked over to the priest and helped him back into his chair. ‘Really, you know, the human body should not be able to move by the process of walking. We should all really fall over between each step – look at how thin our ankles are and how much weight they carry. But, as I say, the secret is that our confidence, and our natural momentum, not only keep us going but also keep us going in the required vertical position.’
If Father Gene McCafferty was unsteady of foot, this was not the case with his mouth or his mind; he was mentally prepared for his meeting with Starrett and now that he was seated – tethered, albeit indirectly, to terra firma – his physical momentum had caught up.
Well, that was no doubt what he was hoping for, but if the opened bottle of poteen on his untidy table and his Buddy Holly glasses cranked on the bridge of his nose at a 120-degree angle were anything to go by, his brain was not orchestrating his body ballet to the full potential. Or, as Starrett succinctly put it, to himself mind you, ‘The man’s stocious, as pissed as a parrot!’ Not that Starrett had ever seen a pissed parrot, which made him wonder, but only for a split second, where such a saying had originated.
Father McCafferty would have been well within his rights to cry foul, admit to his intoxication and request that the
interview be conducted at a later date. But he did none of the above. Equally, Starrett realised that any information he did manage to obtain in the interview would not, or could not, be used in a court of law. But with the priest’s guard down, information might flow freely and, at this stage, Starrett was hoping for a river.
‘Why don’t you and I just have a wee chat for now?’ he started, nodding at Browne to put his pen and notebook away. ‘We can do the interview when you’re…well, we can do it at a later date.’
McCafferty gave one of his signature fade-out laughs. ‘How should I put this?’ he started off, steady enough.
Starrett waited some seconds for the priest to continue and eventually he did.
‘No, I meant “How should I put this?” It was a question.’
‘Oh, right I see,’ Starrett smiled, ‘I’d say, honestly.’
The priest stood up, looked in the mirror and straightened his glasses just in time before he fell back into his seat.
‘Ehm, I don’t think we need to worry about this now–’ Starrett started.
‘How should I put this?’ This time the father did follow through with his thread. ‘People need to worry, Inspector. Of course, people worry about stuff all the time, and it’s good for them.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, Inspector. They worry about their jobs, their health, their family, their money, their love…’
‘Their love?’ Starrett interrupted.
‘Yes, Inspector. How should I put this? Yes, everyone needs to love.’
Starrett raised an eyebrow but decided to park the ‘love’ issue there for now.
‘They also need to worry about their cars, their mortgage,’ Father Gene continued, ‘their kids’ schooling, and then it all eventually starts over again when their kids grow up to have worries of their own. And the parents let their kids take up the worrying mantel.’
‘Bejeepers, Father, that’s a Hel…that’s a heck of a lot of worrying,’ Starrett offered.
‘It sure is, Inspector.’
‘And so tell me this, Father; when all of that’s been resolved and they leave their kids to their own worries, then what do they worry about?’
‘When, and if, they get through all of the above they are in grave danger of entering the “happy ever after phase”, and they avoid that by sitting down and starting to worry about being run over by a double-decker bus.’
Starrett couldn’t help it, he had to laugh at that. In his mind the detective kept going back to the priest’s statement of everyone needing love. He began re-running his own emotions from around the time he’d considered joining the priesthood. Perhaps he’d been running away from love, the love for and of Maggie Keane? On the same night that he took her love for the first time, he’d already had a plan in place to leave the town and Maggie Keane the following morning. Since then, he’d never been able to come to terms with how he’d reacted to his feelings. He’d never even known before that night – all those times he’d acted like a cad – that he was capable of having such feelings. He’d never even believed it possible for a human being to act in a way that was so foreign to his or her own principles. And yet, he had done just that. And, while he accepted that his crime was merely a crime of the heart, could more serious crimes – maybe even murder – come from such a seed, planted way, way deep within a person’s DNA? Starrett was thinking about a seed that its host is not even aware of, let alone suspect that someday it might rise up and override one’s instincts, with no respect whatsoever for its owner?
He thought of Bishop Cormac Freeman, but banished the thought immediately, unable to deal with its implications. He knew being unable to deal with it must have something to do with the fact that he himself had a son, a son borne from the fruits of that initial night with Maggie Keane, that night when the needs of the seed within overrode, totally ignored, his undeclared plans.
He also accepted that he was wrong to continue this particular chat with Father Gene McCafferty, no matter how unofficial it was, no matter that he would never want to, or be allowed to, use it as evidence. It would appear that Father McCafferty had been involved in taking advantage of the elderly, that much was true. Whatever that made him, the priest himself did not deserve to be treated with ill grace. And no matter how much Starrett might have right on his side when it came to dealing with Father McCafferty, due to his methods, he would be no better than the priest should he continue.
‘I think, Father, that we need to leave this until you are in a better position to speak for yourself,’ Starrett declared, as Romany Browne’s mouth dropped open in shock.
Starrett arose, took up his conscience and walked. He was followed shortly thereafter by his shocked, but equally impressed, younger colleague.
‘I think,’ he continued to the bemused looking priest, ‘that you should find one of your fellow priests and spend a couple of hours with a coffee pot and then we’ll reconvene for a formal interview with one of the other priests in attendance.’
‘With a priest you say,’ Father McCafferty spluttered, ‘ehm…how should I put this. Well, let’s just say you should never put your trust in any one of us. Ehm…how should I put this, well let’s just say priests, sure we’re all the same: our dog-collar does not equal divinity. For instance, in here, in St Ernan’s, I’m sure we have a gambler, at least one womaniser, a thief, a capitalist, a relative of Joe Kennedy, and a trio who are just too good to be true – God only knows what they’re up to. And while we’re on that particular subject, please tell me this, Inspector: Who pays their bills when they’re away doing their research? Their fancy hotels and their travel and their per diems? Pray do tell me who pays for all of that, Inspector Starrett?’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Starrett was annoyed that the interviews seemed to be throwing up more questions than answers. Though he wasn’t overly concerned. It was really just a matter of chipping away at that mountain of mystery and eventually – well, eventually assuming of course that they were tackling the correct mountain – it would crumble. Perhaps, though, they were going to require more assistance from Gabriel’s Horns than what had been was necessary to bring down the walls of Jericho.
‘So, tell me this,’ Starrett began, as he sat down with Father Robert O’Leary in the elder priest’s rooms ten minutes later. ‘In St Ernan’s, just who is the gambler?’
Father O’Leary looked over at Starrett from his coffee preparation routine, surprised enough by the question to pause in his endeavours.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you Father Gene McCafferty,’ Starrett said under his breath.
‘It’s a gambler you’re after now, is it?’ Father O’Leary asked, momentary lapse of concentration gone as he continued to make the coffee.
‘Well,’ Starrett began, as he helped to carry cups, saucers, milk, coffee pot, spoon, sugar, and a packet of boring Rich Tea biscuits over to the priest’s dining area, ‘I’ve a few other catagories on my shopping list but unlike Maggie, my girlfriend, who can happily divert to another product, picking up her provisions as she passes Whoriskey’s shelves, I need to collect everything in the order it appears on my list.’
‘Right,’ Father O’Leary said as he smiled, looking as though he’d regained his footing and his ability to air-write. ‘Well, here’s what I’d like to do, Starrett – I’ll give you one guess and if you guess correctly I promise I’ll confirm it for you but, if you guess incorrectly, we’ll move on and you’ll just have to discover the answer for yourself. Okay?’
‘Seems fair, this way it won’t be like you betrayed them?’
Father O’Leary neither confirmed nor denied the detective’s assumption. He merely waited for the name.
‘Okay,’ Starrett said, ‘I’d say that that our gambler is…’ He paused and concentrated on Father O’Leary, the way The X Factor audience would a contestant waiting under the glaring spotlight to discover whether they’d been dumped from the show or made it through to the next round. In truth, the suspense was
more imagined on his part, as the priest happily nibbled away on his second Rich Tea biscuit.
‘…is Father…Pat O’Connell.’
Father O’Leary did not vocally acknowledge the admiration evident in his eyes. Rather he signed a tick with the forefinger and thumb of his right hand as if he had a pen between them.
‘Are we talking of a serious gambling habit here or…’ Starrett started when it became clear that the priest wasn't willingly going to betray his fellow priest any further.
‘That wouldn’t be for me to say,’ the father claimed, ‘however, if I was a detective, I’d be tempted to visit some of the bookies in Donegal Town. I’m sure they’d be much better equipped to answer such a question.’
Before Starrett had a chance to offer his sincere thanks, the priest continued, continuing with his rather amusing air-writing, ‘and, ah, as it looks like it’s going to be a sunny day, I’d most likely stay within the shadows of the castle tower if I were you.’
Starrett didn’t want to chance his arm guessing the identity of any other souls on Father McCafferty’s Judas list because, at this stage, they would be exactly that: guesses, and to continue to keep Father O’Leary’s vital confidence, he’d need to get that air-tick every time. Although in one way he didn’t mind: the more he got to speak with O’Leary and witness his unusual habit, the more he believed he could decipher the words from the signs, so visually arresting were they. He also (sadly) accepted the fact that should the spoken word not be present, the reality was that he wouldn’t have the faintest clue what the priest was going on about.