The very thought of it made her go weak at the knees but she kept up the face, scanning the room for Paddy Griffin. She spotted him perched on sports editor Brian Meany’s desk, arms folded, half listening to what Meany was saying but one eye all the while watching her emerge from the lion’s den. She shot two thumbs out at him and widened her smile still further. He grinned and batted her away with a flap of his hand. He’d already given her all the praise he could manage for one week. He had even offered to take her out for a slap-up dinner the night before, his treat. Or rather, his expenses. But she couldn’t, as she’d been asked to go on Questions and Answers, RTE’s political discussion show. She’d never had high-end TV exposure like that before. And she brought the house down. Every word she said, the studio audience clapped. And then they booed the junior minister who’d been dragged on from the Department of Justice. Even John Bowman, the presenter, was impressed and he’d congratulated her warmly after they wrapped up the show. ‘We’d have had you on again,’ he’d said. It was a shame they were retiring the show just as she got her foot in the door.
Still, the big time really did feel as good as she’d always suspected it would.
Even Siobhan was staggered by the strength of the public reaction. If it wasn’t interviews and phone-ins on every talk show on RTE – and Lord knows they could keep you busy for two lifetimes in themselves – now the story was trickling out into the wider world. Sky News had picked it up, and the BBC as well. She’d even been interviewed by some Spanish radio station she’d never heard of. From experience she knew well how some stories can sprout wings and take on a life of their own. It happened all the time, whenever a little kid went missing or some politician was caught with his hand down a rent boy’s trousers. But there was never any telling for sure which would be the stories that would really catch fire, take over the front pages and the news reports for days, even weeks at a time.
She’d had a gut feeling about The Priest but still she hadn’t expected anything remotely like this. Every woman in Dublin, young and old, seemed to be in a panic, looking over their shoulders for fear of God or the devil or whatever else lurked in their sublimated terrors and desires. And all the other hacks in the city, from lowliest reporter to loftiest cultural commentator, seemed to be doing their level best to whip it up still further, and at every opportunity. Front doors were being reinforced, there had been a run on locks in the DIY shops, radio phone-ins were full of young wans saying how they could hardly sleep in their beds at night for fear. For her own part, she’d actually tried to calm things down a bit. Whenever she got the chance, she pointed out that this guy had only struck twice and he had never attacked anyone in their own home – so far as anyone knew. But it didn’t make any difference. Hysteria had taken hold and showed no sign of releasing its grip any time soon. What could she do but ride the wave?
Success had its downside as well, though. Exciting and flattering as all the attention was, the fact that the world and his wife now turned to Siobhan Fallon whenever they wanted to know anything about The Priest was becoming a pressure in itself. She’d run out of anything fresh to say. And repeating the same things over again by rote was just plain boring. Fortunately, she had plenty of ammunition to fire off about the awful rates of unreported sex crime in Ireland, the government’s shameful under-funding of this most sensitive area of law enforcement, and so on.
She meant every word of it. The facts spoke for themselves, providing you could unearth them. And she was spending every spare second digging up more, searching through statistics and government reports, gathering information from every rape crisis centre in the country, fielding calls from experts and academics who were bending over backwards to get their names into one of her pieces. Some were downright nasty, too, accusing her of all sorts of ignominy and infamy. Well, you got that reaction on lots of stories. And it wasn’t like she wanted to be a voicebox for every woman in the country. Leave that to the social scientists and lecturers out in Belfield. No, this had been thrust upon her. She’d tapped into something deeper than just a story. And she’d keep right on digging away at it until she’d got every last inch of decent copy from it.
It was bloody knackering, though, and in the last two days she’d barely stopped to think. Now, by the time she got from Heffernan’s office to her desk, her brain had filled to the brim again with things she had to do. But first a private satisfaction: an email to Vincent Bishop telling him where to stick his stupid bloody record needle. He’d been leaving messages, texting and emailing since Sunday. First congratulations, then peevish little jabs about why she hadn’t been in touch – as if it wasn’t obvious. Not least because she was too damn busy for anything other than work. And then last night, when she’d just got in from RTE on top of the world after her Questions and Answers triumph, her phone rang and she picked it up – naive fool that she was – thinking it would be someone calling to congratulate her, and there it was again, the scratch and hiss of the record player followed by Roy buggering Orbison, this time squeaking ‘Love Hurts’ at her.
‘It fucking will do if you don’t fucking stop this,’ she’d roared down the phone at him – the few drinks she’d had in the green room at RTE helping that one along the way. But Roy just kept on singing and she’d slammed down the phone. That was the weird thing. It hadn’t seemed to matter whether she was there to pick up the phone or not. The record played anyway. Was there anyone at the other end of the line, even? She’d dialled call return, but of course the number was blocked. Feeling dirty and tired then, she’d gone and run a bath and, settling in, listened to the late news on the radio, eventually drowning out all thought of it.
Now, though, a pay rise in the bag and her confidence at an all-time high, it was time to knock this on the head for good, she thought. All the exposure she’d been getting, she wouldn’t need to be beholden to the likes of Bishop for decent stories any more. They’d come by themselves. She tapped the space bar ready to compose the email. Then she thought, stuff that, and got her phone out. This was a message she’d rather deliver in person.
‘Somebody wanting to talk to the ranking officer,’ one of the tips team called across the room to Mulcahy, holding up an imaginary phone as substitute for the headset he was wearing.
‘Why?’ Mulcahy asked, annoyed at having his attention taken away from the prioritisation list he was trying to put together on his computer.
‘Some old copper, won’t talk to a mere mortal like me,’ said the uniform with a sneer.
‘Okay, put him through.’
The voice was thin but amiable, the accent from somewhere in Munster. ‘Are you looking after that Priest case?’
‘Yes, I’m Inspector Mulcahy. How can I help you, sir?’
‘Oh, now, don’t you be sirring me. I only ever made it to sergeant before I retired.’
Mulcahy’s barriers dropped a notch or two. ‘You were in the force?’
‘I was indeed, yes,’ the man answered, sounding like he’d still like to be. ‘Sergeant Pat Brennan, retired. It’s been a few years now, mind – and I didn’t go till I was pushed.’
‘Good for you. My old man served the full term, too. Broke his heart to leave, truth be told. Maybe you knew him, Inspector John Mulcahy?’
There was a thoughtful silence at the other end of the line, a brain flicking through the Rolodex of possible acquaintance, and then: ‘Ah no, not Johnny Mulcahy from Dun Laoghaire! You’re his boy?’
Mulcahy was happy to indulge the wave of nostalgia that washed out from the phone. He loved hearing stories of his father and his colleagues, and of their times. He’d grown up on them. Invariably they sounded like they came from a golden age of innocence before drugs, organised crime and serial sex attackers had taken the bloom off the holy island of Ireland. This guy was from a slightly younger generation, but he’d still spent virtually the whole of his career in the one place, Rathgar Garda Station. That almost never happened nowadays, when uniformed guards were regularly moved around.
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‘The thing is, being in a place for so long, you get to see and hear things that wouldn’t come your way otherwise. You get a feel for people, you know?’
‘I do,’ Mulcahy said. ‘So what’ve you got for us?’
‘Well, we’re going back a few years now, but do you know Palmerston Park?’
‘Sure I do, I grew up in Milltown.’ Mulcahy had often wandered past the semicircle of elegant Victorian villas on his way home from school.
‘Like I said, this is going back a few years, but there was a young fellow lived there. Sean Rinn was his name, from a very good family.’
The name sounded vaguely familiar to Mulcahy.
‘His grandfather was a High Court judge,’ the sergeant continued. ‘But the boy was a nasty piece of work. Got into a few scrapes with me in my time, but of course Chief Justice Rinn was always there with a word in someone high up’s ear to get him off.’
A note of whingeing resentment entered the old man’s voice, the same note that featured in so many of the calls they received; Mulcahy was instantly inclined to put his barriers back up.
‘And this has what, exactly, to do with the case you’re calling in about?’
He must have said it a bit harshly, because the old guy started apologising. ‘Ah, the wife told me not to go bothering you with my old stories. Sure, what good’s a name to you? I never managed to pin anything on him myself. It’s just that when I saw the stuff in the paper about The Priest, I thought of Rinn, and figured maybe I should give you a call, on the off-chance, like.’
Mulcahy felt a twinge of guilt. The man was only doing his duty, after all. ‘Well, give me what you’ve got and we’ll look into it.’
But all the sergeant had was a few vague, meandering stories about a number of violent ‘sex pest’ attacks, as he put it, that occurred in and around Palmerston Park in the mid-to late eighties, which he’d been convinced this guy Rinn was responsible for but could never pin on him.
‘CID just refused to have a look at him, because of who his grandfather was,’ Brennan said. Which was entirely plausible at the time, Mulcahy knew, although the absence of any shred of evidence was likely to have swayed them even more.
‘Or maybe it wasn’t him?’ Mulcahy suggested.
‘Oh, it was him alright. One girl got a good look and gave us a description that convinced me. But I didn’t have anything to back it up. Not with the judge riding our backs over it.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Well, there’s not that much more to it, except that a few months later the attacks just stopped – suddenly, just like that. And guess who’d been sent away at exactly the same time?’
‘Sent away as in sent down?’
‘No such luck,’ the sergeant tutted bitterly. ‘No, sent away as in packed off by the grandparents. They sent him off to All Hallows to train for the priesthood.’
‘The priesthood?’ Mulcahy’s ears pricked up again.
‘You heard me right.’
‘How long ago are we talking about, Sergeant?’
‘Well, eighty-eight or eighty-nine, I suppose. No later than that.’
‘And what about after that? Any more attacks?’
The line went silent for a second or two. ‘No, they stopped.’ The old sergeant was sounding more defensive than ever. ‘But that’s just my point.’
‘And that’s it? That’s the connection you made with The Priest?’ Mulcahy threw his eyes heavenwards.
‘Yes but…’
Mulcahy’s mobile rang. He snatched it off the desk and saw the caller ID was Brogan’s.
‘I’m sorry, Sergeant, I have another call. Give me your number and we’ll get back to you.’
He asked Brogan to hold while he scribbled the number down and promised the old man somebody would call him back for the details.
‘Claire, how can I help you?’
‘Any sign of things slowing up over there?’
A swish of noise in the background gave him the impression she was calling from a car.
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘I wish. The press office guys are going ballistic. Apparently it’s absolute lunacy over there. They want an extra body to field press enquiries. I thought maybe you could spare one of your guys?’
‘Not a chance. The phones are ringing off the hook.’
‘Christ, what a mess. I told you this would happen.’
‘Yeah, you did,’ he said.
‘What in the name of God are you talking about, Siobhan?’
Either Vincent Bishop was the best actor she’d ever had the bad fortune to encounter, or he really, genuinely, categorically didn’t have a clue what she was on about.
‘Look, calm down. Or at least sit down, would you? You’re embarrassing everyone. What’s the matter? And what the hell has Roy Orbison got to do with anything?’
He was holding the CD case up at her, its clear plastic wrapping flaring under the restaurant lights. Shaking his long, narrow, lank-haired head like she’d slapped him in the face or something. Which she had, sort of. It’d seemed such a great idea on the way over: the spike of anticipation as she strutted into HMV and bought the copy of Roy Orbison’s Greatest Hits, the rush of satisfaction when she thrust it at him as soon as she’d reached the table and hissed: ‘Get yourself a fucking CD player, Vincent. You can afford it.’
Didn’t seem such a great idea now. She’d seen more than her fair share of gawps of shock and surprise in her years of door-stepping people for the job. The full gamut. Real and put on. But she’d never before witnessed anything like the look of naked incomprehension that currently held Vincent Bishop’s wan features in a gape of slack-jawed confusion. He couldn’t be faking that, no way.
She had intended to walk straight out again. Now she was stuck, as if her shoes were glued to the floor right there in the middle of a packed-out Marco Pierre White’s, of all places. Half the faces in there, staring at her now from every other table whispering, nudging, sniggering over their lunches – were fellow hacks, for Christ’s sake. What in the name of God had possessed her to do this here?
‘Come on, Siobhan. This is really not acceptable. The whole place is staring at us like we’re a pair of spares. Or worse. I think you owe me an explanation, now.’
Oh, sweet Jesus…
It wasn’t until a couple of hours later that it came to Mulcahy. He’d gone out to get some lunch and was coming back, a latte in one hand and a beef and coleslaw sandwich in the other, obsessing over how, the night before, exhausted and with too much wine in him after yet another takeaway meal at home, he’d called Siobhan to tell her what he thought of her. But greeted by her messaging service he’d found himself suddenly tongue-tied and rung off. I don’t think we should see each other again, he’d texted instead. An act that mortified him now every time he thought about it. Not only cowardly, but bloody presumptuous as well.
That’s what was going round and round in Mulcahy’s head when, out of the blue, it struck him. From nowhere. What that old sergeant, Brennan, had said to him on the phone earlier. About some young kid called Rinn. He had seen the name Rinn somewhere before, he was sure. Written somewhere. He racked his memory but it still wouldn’t come.
The first thing he did when he got back to Harcourt Square was slip into Brogan’s office. She was out somewhere but the boxes of files were still where he’d last seen them. Except that a messenger was there, too, preparing to load them onto a trolley. He was a small, frail-looking man in his mid-fifties, his balding head a gleaming network of oiled-down comb-over strands.
‘These are the boxes that are going back to the archive, right?’ the messenger asked Mulcahy, his accent so thick with old Dublin it should have had a preservation order on it.
‘If that’s what you’ve been told,’ Mulcahy said. ‘But hang on just a sec, I need to grab something from one of them.’
The messenger tutted loudly and screwed up his face. By now Mulcahy had a third of the files out of the main box,
strewn across the floor. ‘Look it, are they ready to go or not?’
‘I’ll only be a minute,’ Mulcahy insisted. ‘I’ll know what I want when I see it. Why don’t you have a smoke or something while you’re waiting?’
‘Ah now, I don’t know about that.’
Mulcahy put his hand in his pocket and quickly dug out his pack and lighter.
‘Here, go on over to the window. No one will ever know.’
The man nodded, looked around to be on the safe side, then took the cigarette and strolled over to the open window. Mulcahy heaved out the last armful of files and, bingo, there it was in his hand. He knew it straight off: a buff folder with a scrawl of previous recipients on the front, and a few loose-leaf typed reports inside. Case No 6B420703SSA: Coyle/Temple Road, D6, 03/08/09. In the status box the handwritten word ‘Active’ had been obliterated by a red stamp – NFA.
He quickly opened the covers and recalled the details as soon as he started reading. He scanned the first page quickly. Mrs C. Coyle, walking home from the Luas stop in Milltown… attacked… dragged into a garden… screams alerted the householder and a passer-by… assailant ran off… victim suffered bruising… clothing ripped. He shuffled through the paperwork to the back, saw what he wanted. Two sheets of paper with Witness Statement printed across the top.
The first statement was from the householder, Quigley, who’d scared off the attacker. Nothing out of place there. But the second, that was it. A taxi driver who said he’d heard screams as he was passing, and had gone to help, whereupon he’d found the householder tending to the victim. No sign of the assailant. Mulcahy flipped over the page to the end of the document and there it was, the driver’s name, typed and signed at the bottom, alongside the home address he gave. He knew he’d seen it before. The name the sergeant had given him, Sean Rinn. And still living in Palmerston Park, just around the corner from where the woman was attacked.
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