As soon as he got back on the N11 northbound, Mulcahy put his foot down and worked the car in and out through the heavy traffic heading into Dublin, trying to make up time. It really hadn’t helped when Mrs Brennan, a spritely little woman who looked as fit as her husband, had appeared carrying a mountainous plate of smoked-salmon sandwiches and a pot of tea and insisted that he stay for lunch with them. Nice as it was, the conversation had ground to a halt at that point. Brennan was not one to discuss ‘work’ in front of his wife and Mulcahy found himself sitting there politely, talking about the great weather they’d been having and wondering what the hell he’d got himself into. Sure, everything Brennan had told him about Rinn had set alarm bells ringing. But he still couldn’t see how, if Rinn was as out of control as Brennan said he’d been, he hadn’t been caught – regardless of who his high-powered grandfather was. It was the eighties when all this had supposedly gone on, not the bloody Middle Ages. Why the hell hadn’t Rinn been active in the meantime? Surely somebody would have to have picked up on that?
The one thing that did continue to niggle away at him was the Caroline Coyle connection, since there was something just not right there. Everyone, from his dad to the fat-necked martinets who’d trained him years ago at Templemore, had bludgeoned the same thing into him: never trust a coincidence. His own hard-won experience had taught him to temper that maxim with a healthy dose of common sense, convincing him that sometimes life just throws up entirely random conjunctions. But, even so, his gut told him the Coyle thing wasn’t right.
He was trying to manoeuvre past an overtaking lorry when he heard the pips for the news on the radio.
‘Reports are coming in of an arrest in the so-called Priest case.’
Mulcahy pressed the tab on his steering wheel to raise the volume, willing the newsreader to get the words out of his mouth faster.
‘A Garda spokesman announced a few moments ago that a man was detained by Gardai at his home in Chapelizod, Dublin, earlier today and is now helping Garda investigators with their enquiries relating to the so-called Priest case. The spokesman said that, following the discovery of the body of a young woman in the Phoenix Park in the early hours of this morning, the case had progressed rapidly, resulting in an arrest. No other details are available at present but a further announcement will be made at a press conference later today. In related news, the row over a Spanish military unit allowed to operate on Irish soil continues. In the Dáil today, the Minister for Foreign Affairs resisted calls…’
Mulcahy made a long, low whistle and turned down the volume. Christ almighty, that was fast. What the hell had happened to bring about an arrest so quickly? He spotted a lay-by ahead and pulled into it. He had to find out immediately what was going on. He scrolled down to Brogan’s number and tapped the call button, but got put straight through to voicemail. Of course he did. Everybody and his wife would be ringing her now. He left a message asking her to call him back. He’d barely hung up when the phone rang.
‘Is that Inspector Mulcahy?’
It was a man’s voice, light and refined, the accent full of the rounded vowels of Dublin 4. Mulcahy had a quick glimpse of the number before responding. He didn’t recognise it.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘My name is Sean Rinn. You left a card at my home yesterday, asking me to call you.’
It wasn’t so much a statement as a question: why? Mulcahy sat back in his seat, wondering what to say. News of the arrest had knocked all thoughts of Rinn from his head, replacing them, it seemed, with a vacuum.
‘Um, yes, Mr Rinn. Thanks for getting back to me. It was in relation to an incident you were a witness to last year. I was reviewing the case and wanted to have a word with you, if that would be possible?’
‘Is it really necessary?’ Rinn complained. ‘I told the Gardai everything I knew at the time. It’s all in my statement. Nothing’s changed since then, has it?’
Something about the way he said it irked Mulcahy. A fleeting memory of Caroline Coyle’s face as she nearly collapsed in her own front door flashed through his mind. Followed by one of Brennan describing a boy beating another with a brick.
‘It’s routine but necessary, yes, Mr Rinn.’ He looked at his watch. Everybody back at Harcourt Square would be fixated on the arrest for hours now. This might be the last chance he’d get to do anything about it. Fuck it, why not?
‘Look, I’m going to be in your area in half an hour, Mr Rinn. Will you be at home?’
When the door bell jangled this time, he was rewarded by the sound of footsteps approaching across a tiled hall. The door swung open and the man who answered it was not at all what Mulcahy had been expecting: not exactly a small man, five ten or so, in his mid- to late thirties, slim built with sandy hair and a narrow kind of face distinguished only by the sort of absence of features that sinks into the background in photographs. Somehow, from Brennan’s description, he’d imagined he would be entirely different – younger, certainly. The only notable thing about this guy was that he dressed a little bit older than his years, a red polo-neck sweater hanging from his thin frame, a pair of well-worn tan cords sagging above battered brown leather brogues.
‘Mr Rinn?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m Inspector Mulcahy. We spoke earlier…’
‘Yes,’ he said, looking at the warrant card Mulcahy was holding up.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Oh,’ Rinn said, as if the thought had never crossed his mind. ‘Well, of course, yes. Come in.’ He stepped back to allow Mulcahy through the front door into a huge hallway. The floor was a worn mosaic of brown and white tiles, leading to a fine mahogany staircase that was let down by a threadbare pale green carpet. The hall furniture looked dated – dark, bulky antiques – and the paintings and pictures on the walls looked relentlessly gloomy.
‘Excuse me, Inspector,’ Rinn said. ‘I don’t get many visitors. Why don’t we go into the sitting room? The doors there are open on to the garden.’
Mulcahy followed him into a marginally brighter room. There the furniture seemed somehow less heavy; the carved marble mantelpiece had a lightness to it, as did the faded silk shades on the table lamps, dripping with tassels and frills. It was a room that felt like it had the hand of a woman about it.
‘You certainly have a fine big house and garden here, Mr Rinn,’ Mulcahy said, moving towards the open French windows and looking out across the wide flight of lichen-stained stone steps leading down to the garden below. From this elevated position it looked even more strikingly beautiful than on his previous visit. Only the half-laid path in front of the left-hand borders marred its elegance.
‘Yes, my grandparents left it to me. I’m lucky, I suppose. I spent a long time teaching abroad, never living the high life exactly. And then I came back to this. I do rattle around in it a bit, and both the house and garden take quite a bit of upkeep. But it’s worth it. Will you sit down?’
Mulcahy chose the armchair closest to the window.
‘You lived abroad, you said?’
‘Yes, until a couple of years ago.’
‘And you live here now,’ Mulcahy continued. ‘On your own?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Rinn said. ‘Why?’
Mulcahy shrugged. ‘As you said, it’s a lot for one person.’
Rinn didn’t respond to that, so Mulcahy went on. ‘Like I said, I’m here about the assault over on Temple Road last year.’
‘Yes,’ Rinn said, ‘nasty incident. I was hoping you’d caught someone for it, at last, when I saw your card.’
‘I’m afraid not. But we are reviewing the case. I was wondering if we might go back over a couple of details in your statement.’
‘I suppose so. Although I’m not sure how well I remember what I said in it now.’
‘That’s okay. I have a copy right here.’ Mulcahy flapped the thin folder in front of him. ‘But maybe first you could tell it to me as you recall it now – to see if anything new comes up.’
�
��Alright, if that’s what you need.’ Rinn scratched his head and took a deep breath. ‘As I recall I was driving up Temple Road at the time. It must have been a warm night as I had the window down. I heard screams coming from one of the gardens and, well, it sounded like a woman in trouble, so I stopped the car and ran back until I came upon a man standing over a young lady who was sitting on the grass. She was crying and shaking, and the man was trying to calm her.’ He paused, as if replaying the scene in his mind before continuing. ‘It was so dark it was hard to tell exactly what was going on, so I challenged them, and the man said the woman had been attacked and that the Gardai were on their way. I didn’t know the man, but the front door was open and the light was on so I assumed it was his house. I asked him if he’d seen the attacker and he said no, that he must have panicked and run off. So I waited with them until the patrol car and an ambulance came and next day, as requested, I made a statement at Rathmines Garda Station. And that, Inspector, was it, I’m afraid. I didn’t see or hear anything else.’
‘Thank you, Mr Rinn. Nobody passed you as you ran up after parking?’
‘Not that I was aware of. Perhaps he went in the opposite direction—’
‘That’d be the direction you were coming from in your car. You didn’t see anything then, either?’
‘No,’ Rinn said flatly.
‘Very public spirited of you to stop.’
‘Well, like I said, the young lady sounded like she was in trouble.’
‘And nothing else has occurred to you about the incident since you made your statement? Sometimes things come back, small things that—’
‘Recollections in tranquillity?’ Rinn interrupted, and moved away from the mantelpiece to look out over the garden through the open doors.
‘If you like.’
‘No. I did think long and hard about it at the time. I was quite disturbed by the incident, in fact. As you can imagine, things like that don’t happen very often around here.’
Mulcahy stared at him, wondering just how deeply Rinn might have thought about it afterwards, and how often.
‘I was hoping you might tell me in more detail how you came upon the incident, Mr Rinn. I wasn’t very clear on that from your statement.’
Rinn turned to him quickly, surprise on his face. ‘No? I thought I’d made it quite explicit.’
Mulcahy said nothing.
‘Well, as I said, I was just driving up the road.’
‘Going to? Coming from?’ Mulcahy prompted.
‘I’m afraid I don’t remember, Inspector. I must have been coming home from somewhere, I suppose.’
‘You weren’t working then?’
‘Working?’ Rinn sounded genuinely surprised. ‘All this occurred at ten o’clock at night.’
‘Nine forty-five,’ Mulcahy supplied, helpfully.
‘Whatever,’ Rinn said, slightly tetchy now. ‘The thing is, Inspector, the time is irrelevant because I wouldn’t have been working anyway. What I mean is, I don’t work. As I said, I’m very lucky. My grandparents left me well provided for. I don’t need to work, so I don’t.’
Now it was Mulcahy’s turn to be gobsmacked. ‘But in your statement it says that you’re a taxi driver by profession.’
He’d rarely seen a jaw drop quite as precipitately as Rinn’s did, followed by a great boom of laughter. ‘A taxi driver? Me? You must be confusing me with someone else, Inspector. Or maybe a colleague has been pulling your leg? Where does it say that? Show me.’
Mulcahy flicked the file open and checked the statement. Sure enough, in the box marked occupation, the words ‘taxi driver’ were typed. He showed it to Rinn, and pointed to his signature at the bottom of the page.
‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but whoever typed this statement made a mistake. Obviously, I wouldn’t have signed it if I’d noticed that at the time. But I’m sure you’ll see there’s no such reference in my statement. There couldn’t be. I’m sure I checked it thoroughly at the time.’
Mulcahy scanned through the body of the statement and, as Rinn said, there was nothing about him driving a taxi, only a car. How the hell could he have missed that? Somehow the Garda who’d taken the statement must have inserted the wrong details. And now Mulcahy had gone down completely the wrong track after him. Not only that, he was being made to feel a complete prat in front of Rinn, just to cap it all.
Mulcahy stood up, apologised to Rinn for disturbing him, and was heading for the door when his eye was caught by a small, bright painting on the wall: a lush coastal landscape, with a sailboat cleaving through blue-green water in the foreground. It reminded him so powerfully of sailing with his dad on childhood summer holidays in Cork, he just had to stop and look. Somehow, the artist had captured all the pleasure of sailing in a single scene.
‘What a beautiful painting.’ Mulcahy leaned in closer to examine the small brass lozenge embedded in the frame. Gweedore Summer by Padraig Rinn, it read.
‘Yes, my grandfather was a gifted amateur artist,’ Rinn said.
‘Looks like it.’ Mulcahy’s eyes were still entranced by the swirl of blue and green on the canvas, but not so much that the rest of him couldn’t sense a crackle of anxiety coming from Rinn beside him. The man’s mood seemed to have turned in an instant.
‘It’s so summery,’ Mulcahy said. ‘You can practically feel the light bouncing off the water.’
‘Indeed.’ Rinn seemed unbearably uncomfortable now, fiddling with the neck of his sweater as if feeling the heat of the day for the first time. For just a second, Mulcahy caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a spectacular scar of purple puckered skin wrapped around his throat, and he thought of what Brennan had said about Rinn being badly injured in the crash that killed his parents. That explained the polo-neck sweater, at least. Then it hit him – Brennan had mentioned something about Gweedore. Some incident or another.
‘Gweedore?’ Mulcahy said, looking Rinn full in the eyes. ‘That’s up in Donegal, right?’
‘That’s right,’ Rinn replied, a slightly strained tone in his voice now.
‘You have family connections up that way?’
‘My grandfather was raised there. He dragged us up there for a month every summer when the courts were not in session. Beaches, safe swimming, rowing boats to take us out fishing. And, of course, the sailing, which he was passionate about.’
‘It shows,’ Mulcahy said, thinking Rinn’s tone didn’t exactly exude enthusiasm. ‘You don’t get back there very often yourself, I take it?’
‘No,’ Rinn replied. ‘I haven’t been in years. Why do you ask?’
Again Mulcahy could feel the tension radiating from Rinn.
‘No reason,’ Mulcahy said. What a weird reaction. What the hell was he being so defensive about? The grandfather, maybe?
‘Is this the man himself?’ Mulcahy pointed at a faded old photograph in a glass frame on the mantelpiece. It was a head-and-shoulders portrait of a glum-looking man with slicked-back hair, a large fleshy nose and thick tortoiseshell glasses, his expression as stiff and unyielding as the starched shirt collar that dug into his neck. Beside it was another photo, retouched by hand in muted colours, of a group of young men standing formally to attention, all wearing some kind of green uniform. Mulcahy recognised the man at the centre as the one in the portrait, younger but with the same heavy glasses and what looked like a gold chain of office around his neck. In the background, a long white banner read: International Eucharistic Congress, 1932.
Rinn hadn’t replied to his question, so Mulcahy turned and asked again. ‘Is this your grandfather, sir?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake…’ Rinn spluttered, his agitation getting the better of him. ‘Yes, it is. Now please, Inspector, if you have nothing else pertinent to your enquiries, I really must get on.’
Mulcahy stared Rinn down for a couple of seconds, then took one last look at the painting of the boat on the water and made his way out through the gloomy hallway to the front door.
‘Okay, Mr Rinn. If you do thi
nk of anything, you have my details.’
He was sitting in the Saab outside, still trying to get his head round how he’d tell Brogan that his great tip-off about a taxi driver had turned out to be nothing but some fucker in uniform’s typing error, when his phone went off. Another voice he didn’t recognise, a woman’s this time.
‘Noreen from Superintendent Healy’s office here, Inspector. He wants to see you.’
Mulcahy looked at his watch. Two thirty-five. God alone only knew what the traffic would be like.
‘I’m just on my way back in, Noreen, I’ll probably be half an hour.’
‘Shall we say three, then?’
‘Yeah, fine.’
The line went dead. He started the car and pulled out. This was one meeting he really didn’t want to be late for.
His mobile rang again just as he was about to get into the lift in Harcourt Square. It was Brogan, finally getting back to him. He let the lift go and walked over to a quiet corner, congratulating her on the arrest and begging her for details. From the rush in her voice, he could tell she was still high on it.
‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘it was more to do with Lonergan than us. That guy has some luck: I couldn’t believe how fast it happened. Apparently, when the Techs were preparing the girl’s body for the post-mortem exam, one of them noticed a piece of paper stuck to a corner of the plastic wrapping. It was all torn but there was some half-legible typing on it and also some kind of a code. I’m telling you, Mike, these guys can work like lightning when they want to. In under an hour they matched it to a gardening wholesaler – Hartigans, in Chapelizod. You know how close that is to the Phoenix Park. So we all go screeching round to the place and this weedy little guy in Hartigans says, “Oh yeah, that’s the back end of one of our delivery numbers”, like it’s no big deal.’
He heard her break off on the other end of the line and say something muffled to someone else. Then she was back. ‘Are you still there?’
The Priest Page 27