‘Their belongings are all still there,’ he said. ‘In one sense that is good for they obviously intend to come back here at some stage. Perhaps they’ve just gone to join the party. But in another sense, Inspector, nothing could be worse. In every single murder on this journey the victim has been lured away by the killer, up a hill of volcanic rock, over to the side of a river, out to the back of a church, up to an upper room in a set of cloisters, and every time the killer strikes. All of those pilgrims bar one are in deadly peril, and that one is the murderer. Where easier to kill than in the streets of Pamplona in the hour before dawn when another body lying in the street will not arouse any interest? Even if there is blood flowing it will be taken for wine. We must search the whole town until we find them, Inspector. Pray God that the missing five come back alive!’
‘Lord Powerscourt, forgive me.’ A hotel porter had materialized from behind the front desk. ‘This came for you yesterday morning. We forgot to pass it on. Our apologies.’
Powerscourt was about to stuff it in his pocket but something told him to open it. He skimmed rapidly through the contents. It came from Franklin Bentley in Washington. ‘I have news from Pittsburgh,’ the message began. ‘Thirty years ago Michael Delaney lived there. He was married with a son aged two. When the wife was three months pregnant Delaney walked out and went to live in New York. Wife died in childbirth. Baby stillborn. Priests and nun contacted many relations in hope of finding somebody who would take on the boy and bring him up.’
Outside a drunk was singing in the street. Powerscourt had no idea what was coming next. ‘Nuns even offered to pay for him to be taken back to England or Ireland or wherever a willing Delaney might be found. One nun volunteered to escort him across the Atlantic to a new home. But there were no willing Delaneys. There was no new home. They all refused to bring up a child who was a member of their family. The boy was eventually adopted by a devout Catholic couple with no children of their own, and here is a strange coincidence. The priest who gave me this information said I was not the only person to ask him for news about the boy Delaney. Six months ago a very angry man had been to see him who had discovered adoption details in his father’s papers after his father died unexpectedly. He went to the priest for confirmation of what he had discovered. Reluctantly the priest backed up the details. I myself had to make a generous contribution to the Church Missionary Society before he divulged all. This man was indeed the little son Michael Delaney abandoned. He had been given the surname of his new parents. He left the priest an address in Washington to send any further information that might emerge. His name is Waldo Mulligan. Hope this information is useful,’ Bentley concluded. ‘Something tells me you will not be looking for any more research on this side of the Atlantic. Warm regards, Bentley.’
‘Sorry for the delay,’ Powerscourt said to his colleagues. ‘Inspector, Johnny, we have a name at last. If your men find Waldo Mulligan, Inspector, arrest him immediately. We haven’t time now for me to tell you why, but I am virtually certain he is the killer. Now, we must find the pilgrims before he kills again.’
‘I will fetch more men,’ said the Inspector. ‘I suggest you try in that direction over there, my lord. That is the area where the running of the bulls takes place. And quite soon too. If I were a young man, tired of being cooped up by policemen, that is where I would go.’
Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald set off in the dark. Five prisoners had escaped. In an hour or two the bulls would be loosed to charge down the streets of Pamplona. The streets were wet from the night rain. Watching them from the darkest point behind the hotel Waldo Mulligan set off in pursuit of them, careful not to be spotted, his right hand holding very firmly on to something in his inside pocket.
Powerscourt lost Johnny Fitzgerald five minutes after leaving the hotel. He shouted his name but there was no answer. He was now in a great press of people, almost all of them young, heading for the start of the running of the bulls in Santo Domingo Street. The dawn was coming and he saw that nearly all of the young men were wearing white shirts and bright red scarves round their necks. Some of the older ones wore red sashes round their waists. They had the forced gaiety, Powerscourt thought, of young men about to go into battle. He had seen it so often before, a mixture of bravado, excitement and a fear that you would never admit to except to very close friends. Young men had to keep up a show in these circumstances, they couldn’t let people see they were frightened. Many of them held rolled-up newspapers in their hands to deflect the bulls’ attention. They told jokes or made plans to meet their girls after the run.
Powerscourt found himself thinking about an angry Waldo Mulligan conferring with the priest in Pittsburgh. He told himself to concentrate on the events ahead or he could end up killed or injured while his mind had wandered off to Washington. He could see now that parts of the route were lined with double rows of barriers with a small gap between them to allow runners to escape or medical staff into the route to remove the wounded. There was a clattering up above as people in houses with balconies crowded on to them drinking great cups of chocolate to keep warm.
Waldo Mulligan had manoeuvred himself into a position three or four people behind Powerscourt and almost invisible to him. It was ten to seven in the morning. Powerscourt and the others were held in by police barriers keeping the runners in their place. There was no escape now.
The running of the bulls in Pamplona has an ancient history going back to the days when the bulls were brought into the town to fight in the public square, which was also used as a bullring. In modern time the bulls are brought in at eleven o’clock the night before and kept in a corral. Six bulls make the run accompanied by one group of eight oxen with bells round their necks and followed by a further three oxen to sweep up any stray bulls on the route. Each bull weighs about twelve hundred pounds and can run at fifteen miles an hour, faster than most humans. For the bulls this is their first exposure to masses of people and to loud noise so they can become disoriented. If that happens they can turn dangerous. The route starts at Santo Domingo on a slope that favours the bulls as their front legs are shorter than the hind ones. After about three hundred yards the bulls enter the Plaza Consistorial Mercaderes for a stretch of a hundred yards or so. Then there is a sharp right-hand turn of ninety degrees called the Estafeta Bend which leads into the longest stretch of the route, the Calle Estefeta, a narrow street three hundred yards long where the only protection is in the doorways. Then there is a short stretch called the Telefonica where the double barriers come into play, acting as a funnel. The bulls are slower now, approaching the callejon or lane which leads into the bullring. There the runners are told to fan out along the side of the bullring while the bulls are corralled again, ready for the bullfight later in the day and death in the afternoon.
Powerscourt was trying to remember what he had been told years before about the encierro, the running of the bulls. It didn’t last very long, he seemed to recall. Only the brave or the foolhardy tried to run with the bulls for as long as they could before they slipped off to one side. Some reckless souls, he thought, started their run near the end and tried to time it so they just beat the weary bulls into the ring. Above all, he remembered, it may be many things, an ancient ritual, a trial of manhood, a test of nerve, but it’s not a race. There was no medal for the first runner or bull into the ring. Above all it showed the same Spanish obsession with death that marked the bullfight itself. There it was usually the bulls who died. Here on these narrow streets with the crowds behind the barriers and up on their balconies it was the humans who were more likely to perish. The prospect of sudden and violent death brought that extra frisson to the spectacle.
Waldo Mulligan was just two paces behind Powerscourt now. He could trip him up, or shove him into the path of a bull. It was five to seven. The young men began to sing to San Fermin to ask for his protection. ‘We ask of San Fermin, for he is our patron, to guide us in the bull run and give us his blessing.’ They waved their rolled-up newspapers and
shouted ‘Viva San Fermin!’ in Spanish and in Basque. At three minutes to seven they sang it again.
Suddenly Powerscourt turned round. His eyes locked on to those of Waldo Mulligan as surely as a matador might lock eyes with a bull in the ring. Powerscourt knew. He knew that Waldo Mulligan was the killer. Worse, looking at Mulligan, Powerscourt was certain that Mulligan knew that Powerscourt knew that he, Mulligan, was the killer. The prayer rang out for a third and final time. Powerscourt joined in where it talked about guiding us in the bull run. Mulligan was going to try to kill him in the next few minutes. Death would come for him in the morning.
Lady Lucy felt helpless when she realized Francis had gone in pursuit of the missing pilgrims. She wondered what she should do. If she went out on to the streets she could be another potential victim. She remembered the two bolsters hacked to shreds in the hotel in Aire-sur-l’Adour. She opened the doors and went out on to the balcony. The sun was high in the sky now. It was going to be a beautiful day. She could hear the noise of the running of the bulls but she could not see it. Lady Lucy didn’t know that her husband was in deadly peril, and not just from the twelve-hundred-pound bulls.
Johnny Fitzgerald too had been sucked into the event, but further down the course from Powerscourt. He had made friends with a man with a couple of wineskins tied round his waist. Johnny thought the day was beginning to look up already.
At seven o’clock precisely the clock of San Cernin struck the hour. A rocket shot up into the sky, announcing that the mighty gates of the corral holding the bulls and the oxen had been opened. The police removed the barriers that had held the runners in. The encierro was under way. Powerscourt’s group began to run, not very fast, down Santa Domingo towards the Plaza. Other braver or more foolish souls waited to run as long as they could with the bulls in this opening stage. You could hear them before you saw them, Powerscourt thought, a rumbling noise like thunder getting closer or the pounding noise the closest spectators heard as the horses came round the last bend in the Derby.
As he looked round he saw that Waldo Mulligan was right behind him and trying to trip him up. Very suddenly Powerscourt turned and smashed his elbow into the centre of Mulligan’s mouth as hard as he could. Mulligan stumbled and held his hand to his face. The crowd was so tightly packed that he only slipped back a little, but he was no longer directly behind Powerscourt. Looking back again Powerscourt saw the bulls for the first time, dark brown brutes running as fast as they could, threatening to trample anybody who stood in their way. They were about twenty yards behind them now. Mulligan, swearing to himself, had returned to a position behind Powerscourt. Again he tried to trip him up. Then the crowd behind carried him to the right-hand side of the course. Powerscourt had been edging to his left, to the side of the street, away from the centre where the bulls were running. They had reached the Estafeta Bend now and the bulls were ahead of them now, two young men running just in front of them at top speed waving their rolled-up newspapers in the air.
Then disaster struck. The cobblestones were slippery. The largest and fiercest-looking bull slipped on the wet surface right at the edge of the ninety-degree bend. He fell slowly to the ground, less than ten feet from the crowd. The bull didn’t seem to know how to get up again for it took him the best part of a minute. He looked around sadly. All his companions had disappeared. He staggered towards the centre of the street. Runners swerved left and right to avoid him. He straightened himself up at last and seemed to Powerscourt to have an expression that said, Somebody is going to pay for this. Powerscourt pressed himself up against a wall. Some of his companions flung themselves to the ground and curled up into human balls. Powerscourt had often been in positions of extreme danger in his military service, under attack from mounted Pathan tribesmen on the North-West Frontier, strafed with shell fire in the Boer War, climbing up dangerous mountains for a night attack in India. Never had he been as frightened as this. The bulls were so big and so stupid. Anything could happen. This one, stumbling about in the wet street, might soon be close enough to shake hands or shake horns.
There was a scream from one of the balconies. The surrounding crowd had fallen silent, holding on to each other in their fear. Was the bull strong enough to break through the barrier? Would he soon be amongst them, goring as he went? The bull turned, still disoriented, and went back towards the other side. Powerscourt saw Waldo Mulligan shaking his head and trying to make himself invisible pressed against the barrier. Younger, fitter or more frightened people were climbing over the top of the fences, helping hands waiting to lift them to safety. Maybe it was the movement that tipped the bull over the edge. He stared at Waldo Mulligan. Mulligan looked at the bull and raised his fists to cover his face. The bull may have taken that as a hostile act. A couple of steps and the bull bent down. He gored Mulligan just above the groin, the horn ripping deep into his body, and flung him backwards to land on the cobblestones of the Calle Estafeta.
Blood was pouring onto the street. The crowd was screaming. Mulligan’s blood, almost the same shade of red as the scarves and the sashes, dripped across the cobblestones. The bull glowered at Mulligan as if thinking of a second goring to reinforce the first. Powerscourt remained pressed against his wall. The bull lumbered down the edge of the barrier where the crowd were now running away as fast as they could; he was looking for another victim. A group of cowherds with long sticks who were policing the event forced the bull back into the middle of the road and down the street to rejoin his companions in the bullring. Four medical orderlies raced through the gap in the barriers and put Mulligan on a stretcher. They carried him down to the hospital in the bullring. The staff there were used to gored people. They saw them virtually every afternoon on the days of the bullfights. Another rocket shot up into the morning sky. The bulls were all in the bullring. It was four minutes past seven.
Lady Lucy could sense the excitement as she looked at the crowds streaming past her balcony, heading for the bullring to hear news of the victim. When she went downstairs to the reception a porter with a little English told her that an Englishman had been gored running with the bulls. He pointed her in the direction of the hospital. Lady Lucy found she could not hurry as she would have wished. The crowd, sombre now, the high spirits before the start ebbing away like Mulligan’s blood, was so thick that all she could do was to allow herself to be carried along. Was it Francis? Was it Johnny? Were they even now breathing their last, their insides ripped to shreds by the horns of a bull, and she wasn’t there to hold their hands and stroke their faces?
Running as fast as he could, dodging in and out of the crowd, Powerscourt forced his way into the hospital. He had to speak to Mulligan before he died. He explained his position to a doctor who spoke French, that he was investigating four murders, that he believed Mulligan to be the murderer, and that he must speak to him before he died. If he died. Wait till we have looked at him, said the doctor. Inspector Mendieta appeared, panting, to add local weight to the foreigner’s pleas. They sat on hard chairs in a little waiting room. Pictures of bullfighters and bullfights filled the walls. It was growing hot in the Pamplona hospital. A couple of flies were buzzing around the ceiling. There were no pictures of the bulls’ victims who were carried here on what proved all too often to be their last journey.
‘You can have a couple of minutes,’ the doctor said, ‘no more. He may not last that long.’
Mulligan was heavily bandaged right round his middle. His dark eyes looked up at Powerscourt, filled with pain that turned to hatred.
‘I think you should tell us the truth now,’ said Powerscourt, speaking very quietly. ‘Did you commit the four murders? You don’t have to speak if that’s too painful, you can just nod your head.’
Mulligan’s eyes travelled to and fro between Powerscourt and the Inspector, coming to rest on a painting of the Virgin on the wall. Maybe it was the Madonna that did it. He nodded his head, slowly but unmistakably.
‘Are you Michael Delaney’s son? Were you planning to kill him
at the end?’
Again Waldo Mulligan’s eyes came to rest on the picture of the Mother of God. Pray for us now and in the hour of our death, Amen. Another nod.
‘Were you planning to kill all the pilgrims? Because they too were Delaneys?’
Mulligan grew agitated. His eyes searched for the doctor. His face turned even paler.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the doctor, ‘I’m afraid you must go now. The patient is becoming disturbed. If you wait outside I will tell you more in a moment.’
They passed a priest coming into the ward as they went out. The last rites had arrived for the man from Washington. They would never know how many pilgrims Mulligan intended to kill. They would never know whether he picked his victims at random as the opportunity presented itself or whether he had a predetermined list of targets in his mind. Half an hour later the doctor came back to tell them Mulligan was dead. He made the sign of the cross.
Walking back to the hotel, Powerscourt suddenly realized the full import of what he had just seen. He thought back to Franklin Bentley’s telegram. Waldo Mulligan had plotted his revenge on the relations who had abandoned him and the father who had deserted him. Mulligan must have thought the pilgrimage was his lucky break, the perfect opportunity to take his revenge with all those Delaneys collected in one place like lambs to the slaughter. Michael Delaney had launched this great venture as a thank you to God for saving the life of one son. He did not know that another son had travelled in his party halfway round the world on a deadly mission of retribution for events thirty years before. Nemesis travelled from the New World to the Old. The pilgrimage had been ruined by murder, the pilgrims travelling by day in a sealed train and sleeping most of the time on the floor of police cells or the unforgiving concrete of the local jails. Now it was clear that another of Delaney’s sons had come out of the past to kill him and nearly succeeded. James was the son who was saved in the New York hospital under the picture of St James the Great. Waldo Mulligan was the other one, abandoned all those years ago in Pittsburgh. His life had not been spared. It was ended early on a Wednesday morning by the horns of a bull from Pamplona.
Death of a Pilgrim Page 30