The story that followed unfolded like a farce. Scully’s parents had refused the sergeant entry to their house on the grounds that he was an hour early. Cassidy said he’d wait but wanted some proof that their son Patrick was actually on the premises. But while the parents repeatedly assured him that Patrick would soon be out of the bathroom, the minutes kept ticking away. Until Cassidy lost his rag and threatened to do them for wasting police time. At which point a fracas broke out, a forced entry was effected and the discovery was made that not only was Patrick Cormac Scully not in the bathroom, he hadn’t been anywhere in the house for many hours and certainly hadn’t slept the night there.
‘I could hear the Sarge bellowing down the phone at the boss from over here, y’know, while it was all going off,’ Maura continued, swivelling her eyes. ‘After that she went straight up to Healy and I think he must’ve given her a terrible rollicking cos I’ve never seen her come back from anywhere so pale-faced. Jesus Christ, it was tense… Anyway, it’s been mad here ever since. I’ve been on the phones, calling in anyone who’s available. Most of these guys are giving up their free Saturday to help.’
Just as she was finishing, a fresh murmur of anticipation ran through the room and Mulcahy stood up to see a grim-faced Healy, flanked by Brogan and Cassidy, entering the incident room from the corridor. As they came in Healy surveyed the room, spied out Mulcahy and, with a jerk of his head, signalled him to join them up front by the whiteboards. Mulcahy pushed through the mass of bodies and positioned himself beside Brogan, trying to catch her eye to see how she was doing, but she avoided his gaze. Even Cassidy seemed unable to drag his eyes from the floor for once.
‘Okay now, c’mon, a bit of whisht now, I’m going to have to keep this brief,’ Healy began, nodding appreciatively as silence fell upon the room. He gestured vaguely behind him at the boards. ‘I’m sure you’ve all gathered some idea by now of why you’ve been asked in today. In a few minutes, Sergeant Cassidy here and a couple of his colleagues will give you newcomers a crash course on the two hideous sexual assaults that have occurred on our city’s streets this week. One last Sunday, another this morning – both of them off the scale in terms of violence but last night’s stopped so short of murder, I’m telling you, it’s a miracle we’re not talking in those terms yet. In fact, there’s a strong possibility that this second victim – a young woman, whose name we don’t even know for now – will yet succumb to her injuries.
‘I’m telling you, lads,’ Healy continued, his brow furrowing even deeper, ‘it’s no exaggeration to call this the work of the devil. But don’t forget it’s a man who’s attacking these young girls, a very dangerous, sick and evil man, who’s out there committing these offences and leaving a trail of agony and grief behind him. But that’s not the only trail he’s leaving. And that’s what we have to focus on. Every move this fella makes, he leaves a trace. And together we’re going to find those traces, put them all together and track him down. Every single one of us, lads, we’re going to work our bollocks off so that we can string him up by his. Are ye with me?’
There was a muted roar of encouragement from the crowded room but Healy put a hand up to quell it. ‘Good men,’ he continued. ‘I’ll be leading this investigation from now on, with Inspector Claire Brogan here on point and Inspector Mike Mulcahy assisting. Any questions you have, address them to Sergeant Cassidy or another of his team for now. I need to sit down with these guys right away and talk tactics.’
The murmuring rose loud again as Healy swept out, followed by Brogan and Mulcahy. The sound of Cassidy calling for quiet was the last thing they heard as they slipped into Brogan’s office and closed the door. Healy made straight for Brogan’s chair behind her desk.
‘Any news on Scully?’ Mulcahy asked her, as they dragged the two spare chairs away from the wall.
‘No,’ she shook her head vigorously. ‘Not yet.’
‘Good to see you here, Mike,’ Healy interrupted sharply, obviously in no mood to waste time. ‘Tell us what you got from the scene. Anything we can run with for now?’
‘Not much that you don’t already know from the prelims, Brendan. It looked to me identical in every significant respect, apart from location. I’ve absolutely no doubt this is the same offender.’
‘I heard you were in the Mater Hospital afterwards. What took you down there?’
‘Just wanted to see her for myself. Get the feel, you know?’
Healy nodded, tolerating the gesture as a good one. ‘Anything else from the scene?’
‘Three things struck me. None crucial, maybe, but worth mentioning. One was the location – major route, phenomenally busy. You must go past there yourself all the time. Opposite that row of shops on Marino Parade, near where the Clontarf and Malahide roads meet. Even in the early hours there’s traffic constantly going by. This guy parks up and heaves a semi-conscious girl over four-foot railings and the hedge behind it. Vehicles passing, loads of first-floor viewpoints from across the road. Somebody must have seen something. And there were more sheltered spots available to him either side of where he did it, even within a few hundred yards. Which makes me think he must’ve wanted to be seen this time.’
‘Interesting,’ Healy remarked, looking at Brogan.
‘Yeah,’ was all she said in reply.
‘Or maybe he wanted the girl found quickly,’ Mulcahy added.
‘So why not leave her on the pavement? Why throw her over the railings?’ said Brogan.
‘I don’t know,’ Mulcahy said. ‘It was just a thought.’
‘You have any more, Mike?’ Healy asked.
‘Yeah, some short red plastic fibres found on the girl’s clothes. I’ve rushed them over for priority analysis. I thought I remembered seeing something similar in the Technical reports from the Jesica Salazar assault.’
‘You’re right, there was,’ Brogan said. ‘We thought she might have acquired them from the floor of the attacker’s van.’
‘That’s what I thought. Good for a possible match, then. It would tie the attacker to both offences. Which brings me to point number three, regarding the van. Or rather a van, any van.’
‘What about it?’ asked Healy.
‘Well, the CSM said he couldn’t tell what kind of vehicle had been parked up on the pavement. I suggested he look for short wheelbase Transit type tyre marks and he said he’d have another look but didn’t hold out much hope. The point is, if we do get an eye witness in Marino and they confirm a van was used, then maybe we should think again about Scully. I mean, what’s the likelihood of him having access to another van – that’s assuming Technical still have his father’s van impounded.’
Brogan nodded that they did.
‘Even with him on the run, you don’t fancy him for it?’ Healy said. ‘Some coincidence, don’t you think?’
‘I honestly don’t know. My concern would be the drugs. Could be he’s more worried about the ecstasy possession charge. With his form, he’d be facing three to five years. I’ve known plenty of dealers who’d keep a stash of cash and a passport handy to do a runner from a stretch like that.’
‘Well, obviously it’s something we’ve already given a lot of thought to this morning,’ Healy said, again glancing over at Brogan. ‘Claire’s come up with some pretty compelling new information about his academic interests that points it back towards him, which I’m sure she’ll fill you in on in a moment. But for now, I agree, it’s best we keep an open mind and widen the scope of the investigation. For now, we’ve got alerts out at all ports and stations and Scully’s description has been circulated as priority one. What we’ve now got to consider is: what if it wasn’t him?’
Healy paused to draw a breath. ‘One thing I’m thinking we can say for certain, though, is there’s almost no chance now of any Spanish political angle to this.’ A tiny upward twitch of his lips betrayed a flash of relief before the stern mask of formality returned.‘ It’s not about who Jesica Salazar’s father is. Are we agreed?’
Mulc
ahy and Brogan shared a glance.
‘The guys in the ambulance said our new victim mumbled a few things before she was sedated,’ Brogan said. ‘Nothing useful for us, but they’re pretty sure she’s local.’
Mulcahy nodded. ‘That was always a long shot anyway.’
‘Good,’ Healy said. ‘Let them know at the embassy, Mike. Now, going forward…’
The next few hours went by in a tumult of briefings, job allocations and technical meetings. The strategy agreed on was to put a small specialist team in place to lead the manhunt for Scully using the Garda Network – a battery of electronic tools for monitoring the use of mobile and landline phones, cash cards, email, internet service providers and any other electronic signatures and imprints a suspect might leave – plus four detectives following up on Scully’s known associates, relatives, ex-girlfriends and so on. In the meantime, the majority of the new bodies on board were to be thrown at the second incident, in a co-ordinated drive to collate as much information on victim, perpetrator and crime as was achievable in a condensed space of time.
As a result, by early afternoon the information on the second assault began to trickle through. The most important piece of the jigsaw provided an ID for the girl and, as a result, a location of sorts for the actual attack. A door-to-door inquiry in Pearse Avenue, Fairview, turned up a Mrs Fidelma Plunkett who was beginning to wonder why her daughter hadn’t yet returned from a night out at a club up the road with friends. Alarm bells rang, a description of clothing matched the victim’s, and a car was sent round. By mid-afternoon a team of detectives had gleaned enough information from shell-shocked relatives and friends, about the victim’s background and movements, to give the key facts: nineteen-year-old Catriona Plunkett was a pretty dental secretary who’d gone out for a Friday night bop at the Kay Club up in Killester with her pals, drank a bit too much, felt a little tired and decided to leave early. The bouncer, pulled out of his bed, confirmed that he’d seen her leaving the club alone at around 12.45 a.m. Both these facts were subsequently confirmed by the club’s exterior CCTV. At which point the trail went ice cold, until Catriona turned up half dead a couple of miles away in Fairview Park at 5.25 a.m.
Another team of four Gardai, led by Maura McHugh, had already been dispatched to seize and view the footage from all CCTV and traffic cameras covering the many roads and approaches that converged on Marino Parade and Fairview Park. But that was a mammoth task which could take days. One small fact that did bloom into significance out of the many flooding back was that yes, Catriona did have a cross and chain, a lovely gold one bought for her from Fields on Henry Street for her eighteenth birthday. Catriona loved it so much, her mother claimed, that she never took it off, not even to have a bath. Mulcahy knew it hadn’t been on her when she was found and a double check with the hospital and Technical confirmed that it wasn’t among the items dumped with her in Fairview Park either. He led a brainstorming session for case officers on the significance of crosses, chains, burning, branding and the rising level of violence – with some useful ideas emerging. Further out in the circle of operation, arrangements were put in train for Catriona Plunkett’s item of jewellery to be identified with the help of staff at Fields, should an example be required for comparison purposes. It wasn’t until after five that Mulcahy got out again, only to be called straight into Brogan’s office where she and Healy appeared to be engaged in a private conference.
‘Sit down, Mike. Claire said you should sit in on this,’ Healy said to him.
‘What’s up?’
‘Bit of an emergency. Last thing we need is another bloody distraction, but the press are on to us.’
Mulcahy shrugged. ‘Hardly surprising, given the number of people we’ve brought in on this today.’
‘Yeah, but this is a bit different, Mike. I’ve just had a call put through to me – from a tabloid journalist called Siobhan Fallon from the Sunday Herald. Wouldn’t talk to anybody else but me. Wants me to tell her all about “The Priest”.’
‘The Priest?’
‘Claire here says it’s the nickname you came up with for our attacker.’ Healy raised his eyebrows at him in a what-do-you-have-to-say-about-that expression. ‘I’d’ve thought that with sensitivities towards clerical abuse being what they are, you could’ve been a bit smarter about—’
‘Hold on a second, Brendan,’ Mulcahy interrupted, doubly defensive at Healy’s accusing tone and the mention of Siobhan. ‘I didn’t come up with any nickname. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was—’
‘Forget that,’ Healy snapped back. ‘The point is, how did this Fallon woman get hold of it?’
‘I’ve no idea. How would I know?’
‘Do you know her, Mike?’
The question came from nowhere but he knew he couldn’t afford to fluff it.
‘Yes I do, as it happens. But I sure as hell didn’t give her any information.’
‘You’re certain about that?’
‘Didn’t I just say so?’
Healy looked sideways at Brogan and gave her a nod.
‘Glad to hear it, Mike. So how do you suggest we respond?’
‘Well, do we know how much she’s got?’ Mulcahy asked. ‘I mean, has she said yet what she wants, specifically?’
‘She’s being very cagey about her information and where she got it from. At first I thought she was just fishing but then she gave me some detail. She seems to have quite a lot of detail. More than she could have got since lunchtime from some newbie on the case. Most of it had to do with young Jesica Salazar.’
‘So she did tell you what she wanted?’
Again Healy and Brogan exchanged glances.
‘Yes, she did, Mike,’ Healy said, licking his lips as if they’d suddenly gone as dry as dust. ‘She was very specific about it. She wants a statement from me as to why myself and the Minister for Justice shouldn’t be held personally responsible for the torture and near death of Catriona Plunkett, since we’ve both known for a week that there’s a madman called The Priest loose on the streets of Dublin attacking teenage girls and we did nothing to warn the general public about it.’
‘Shit.’
‘My sentiments exactly, Mike. And, you can be sure as fuck, somebody around here is going to be neck-deep in it as soon as I find out where she got that from…’
12
He was skimming across calm, flat water, a strong breeze filling out the sail, pulling away towards a pale blue horizon, when the trill of his ringtone shattered the dream. He opened a bleary eye on the clock-radio beside the bed. What were they doing ringing him at a quarter to eight? He wasn’t due on duty until eleven.
‘Ungho,’ he said into the mouthpiece, rubbing his face with the back of his hand.
‘Have you seen the papers?’ It was a woman’s voice and for a second he thought it must be Siobhan. But of course it wasn’t.
‘What papers? No, no, of course not. Christ, I haven’t even got out of bed yet.’
‘Well you’d better have a good look at them before you come in, especially the Sunday Herald.’
With that Brogan clicked off, leaving him sitting fog-eyed on the edge of the bed, staring into the swirling spiral galaxies of the bedroom carpet, cupping his head in his hands like he was afraid it would roll off his shoulders. Why the hell had she done that? The evening before, they’d spent a good couple of hours hammering out a media plan with Healy, discussing the pros, the cons, what to give and how much to hold back. They’d eventually decided the only chance they had of dealing with the Herald would be to hold a press conference in which they did precisely what Siobhan Fallon had been accusing them of stalling on: warning the public. Or at least that’s how Mulcahy had argued it.
It wasn’t a political decision so much as a pragmatic one. As soon as the second attack happened, it had been inevitable that some press leakage would occur. The girl was local, her discovery was public, her family were upset and getting increasingly vocal about it. Siobhan Fallon, it transpired, hadn’t been the
first reporter to ring the Garda press office about it that day, but she was the first who refused to be fobbed off with the low-key information Healy had provided them with. Once she’d pulled the pin out of the grenade and lobbed it at them, the only way to go was full disclosure. Or at least as full as they could without handing out an open invitation to every freak, weirdo and pervert in the city to have a go for themselves.
On that issue, Brogan had been particularly forthright. ‘Maybe Mike’s forgotten what an irresponsible bunch of gougers the press in this country can be with a story like this, sir,’ she’d argued to Healy. ‘Especially the tabloid element who, you can guarantee, will seize on the more lurid elements and pump them up out of all proportion. The only outcome that is likely to generate for us is complete panic on the part of the public, and the possibility of copycat attacks. Our resources are limited enough without having to deal with that.’
It was a good point. They agreed which details would be definitely held back and Healy and Brogan went downstairs to conduct the hastily convened press conference at eight-thirty p.m. By then, of course, all but the late editions had gone to press, but that was half the point of doing it. Nobody could say they hadn’t responded. It would be interesting to see who’d pick it up. Mulcahy, who’d gone home directly, flicked on the main RTE news bulletin and saw that they hadn’t. A good sign, he’d thought. After which he’d tumbled straight into bed.
Now he pulled on a grey cotton sweater, jeans and a pair of trainers, thinking that if Brogan had gone to the trouble of warning him, he’d better go discover the worst. The streets were empty and he knew the shop where he usually bought his Irish Times and Sunday Tribune wouldn’t be open yet. Long gone were the days when they used to sell the papers outside the local church after mass but he headed down that way anyway, past the imposing single-spired, grey stone building from which the mumble of a responsorial psalm was already reverberating through the chill morning air. Sure enough, across the road from the church and beside a shuttered-up pub was a newsagents he’d never noticed before and, miraculously, it appeared to be open for business, despite the early hour. Inside, he was greeted cheerily by a kid in a T-shirt and baggy surf shorts, who was dragging stacks of bundled newspapers out in front of the magazine racks that stretched the full length of one wall.
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