The Priest

by Gerard O'Donovan

  Now that Byrne had been charged, as far as Griffin and the rest of them were concerned, the story was as good as dead in the water until it came up again in court. Not only that, but every other hack on the paper knew that if anything more exciting came up during the day, Griffin would clear the decks for it, and her Priest stuff could end up buried on page seven. Nobody, least of all the two Murder Squad guards who came to take her statement and collect the parchment, seemed to give any credence to the idea that there was a madman still on the loose. As for the prospect of Griffin allowing his chief reporter to go tearing off on a wild hunch that maybe Byrne was the wrong man? Forget it. On a slow day, maybe, but not on press day, and especially not today.

  That Griffin was probably right hardly mattered. The suspicion had a grip on her gut tighter than a stomach staple, and it wouldn’t let go. All she needed was a little time to herself, to get back into it again. Mulcahy was on to something, she was convinced, and she was determined to find out what. But, for the moment, all she could do was get on with the job she was paid for, making as few waves as possible. That way, she might be able to use the hour Griffin spent in conference with Heffernan and the other section editors to get in a few calls of her own, and so set the ball rolling.

  As soon as Griffin disappeared, she was straight on the phone.

  ‘Hello, Donegal Courier,’ she heard, when she got through, the accent thick enough to make cheese from. She got an immediate image in her mind of a fat woman in a fleece with a scowl on her face and a chocolate eclair poised halfway into her gob.

  ‘Can I speak to Eamon Doherty, please?’

  ‘He’s not here – only me on the small ads and notices.’

  It took a second for Siobhan to twig that the editor of a regional weekly wouldn’t need to come in on a Saturday. That it would be the weekend for him, like any normal person.

  ‘Do you know where I can get hold of him? It’s urgent.’

  A big sigh came from the other end of the line. ‘I suppose he’ll be out on the golf course by now. That’s where he usually goes on a Saturday morning. You can get him on his mobile.’

  ‘And his mobile number is?’

  ‘We don’t give out that information over the phone.’

  No matter how she pleaded, the woman refused to give Siobhan the number. But after a bit of cajoling she did agree to get in touch with Doherty and pass on to him a message to call.

  ‘Tell him it’s Siobhan Fallon from the Sunday Herald in Dublin. Be sure to say it’s urgent.’

  Siobhan grumbled away to herself as she put down the phone, convinced the woman wouldn’t do as she’d asked. In the meantime she scrolled down through her contacts book, searching for someone else who might have a connection with Doherty and know his number. She’d just identified a couple of likely candidates when the phone rang.

  ‘Eamon Doherty from the Courier here.’

  ‘Wow, that was fast.’

  ‘Is that the Siobhan Fallon I’m talking to?’

  A shiver of pleasure went through her when he said that. It was kind of how she’d always imagined life should be. She heard him cupping a hand over the phone and telling someone to go on without him, as he had an important call. He’d catch them up.

  ‘I hope I’m not interrupting your round of golf,’ she said, when he came back on.

  ‘I’m not playing golf,’ he said. ‘If I was, I wouldn’t be available even for the Siobhan Fallon. I’m actually down your neck of the woods today, for the big match in Croke Park. We’re just up the road from you, packing away some pre-match hospitality in the Shelbourne Hotel, you know, on St Stephen’s Green.’

  There was a flirtatious lilt and a vein of wickedness in his voice. Used to being a big fish in a small pond, she thought, and he sure had that confidence. She looked at the closed door of Harry Heffernan’s office and made a snap decision.

  ‘Do you think you could drag yourself away from the bar, Eamon, for a quick chat, if I was able to join you there in the next few minutes?’

  The clock hadn’t yet struck noon but even so the Shelbourne Hotel’s elegant Georgian tea room was packed with clumps of men in jeans and football shirts, knocking back pints of Guinness. The spill-over from the Horseshoe Bar, Siobhan knew – and incongruous as they looked, she also knew it was ever thus on match days. Siobhan found Doherty by the reception desk and, as soon as she’d introduced herself, grabbed him by the elbow and drew him over to a couple of empty chairs in a quiet corner of the lobby. He wasn’t what she’d been expecting: shorter, hairier and a good deal older-looking than she’d imagined. But she saw straight away that she wasn’t disappointing him. He’d obviously already downed a fair bit of that hospitality he’d mentioned. She only prayed to Christ it wouldn’t affect his memory.

  ‘So what’s so urgent that you had to interrupt my drinking for it?’ he twinkled at her, not quite as irresistibly as he thought.

  She told him about the report of his she’d seen from 1997 and asked him if he remembered anything about it, especially its connection with the earlier story about Helen Martin. After his initial grunt of surprise, she all but heard the cogs creaking into place in his brain. Sure enough, before he gave an answer, he came back with a question himself.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask why you want to know this?’

  She gave him the smile. ‘It’s just some background I’m doing for a story, Eamon. Look, I know I should never have said it was urgent. It’s just that your receptionist didn’t sound very keen on letting me crash your weekend. But, if it comes to anything I’ll give you and the Courier a credit. I’ll even try for a few quid for you, if you like.’

  She hadn’t really answered his question, but it seemed to satisfy him for the moment.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure what I can tell you. I mean, that thing with Helen Martin must be more than twenty years ago – before my time, anyway. I didn’t join the Courier until 1994, so I’d have been still in college in 1988. And I’m from the other end of the county, anyway, down Killybegs way. But you hear things going around, alright.’

  Siobhan heard a raucous burst of laughter from the bar and looked up at the clock. Griffin and the others wouldn’t be coming out of conference for a while yet.

  ‘Like what?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, Helen Martin was a young one from Gweedore. Lovely girl by all accounts, but the family moved away shortly afterwards, so Lord knows where they are now. Anyway the story, as I heard it, was that she was attacked – she was fifteen or sixteen at the time – by this other kid, a young lad from Dublin who was up there for the summer. And then there was a big cover-up, caused a lot of bad feeling locally.’

  ‘Any details?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really, only that this young lad is supposed to have battered Helen to within an inch of her life with a… with an iron—’

  He broke off suddenly and sat up from the slump he’d settled into while talking. For now he said nothing but, from the flickering of his eyes, she could see his head was working hard.

  ‘Hey, Eamon, are you still with me?’ she said, prodding his arm gently.

  Boy, was he still with her – he was right on top of her, turning towards her intently now. What he said next nearly made her hair stand on end.

  ‘This has to do with that Priest fella, doesn’t it?’

  If she’d been eating or drinking anything, she’d have choked on it. As it was, it still took a huge effort of will not to betray herself. She took a deep breath before replying. ‘What are you talking about, Eamon?’

  ‘The cross,’ he said.

  ‘What cross?’

  ‘The cross he battered her with,’ Doherty whispered, looking around to see if anybody had heard him. ‘A big old iron thing. The story goes they went into the churchyard in Gweedore together, for a lie-down in the long grass. But instead of giving her, y’know, a cuddle, he started clattering the bejaysus out of her with this big iron cross that he picked up off one of the graves. I thought that was a bit of a l
ocal legend, you know, a kind of fairytale to give the girls a scare. But that’s why you wanted to know, right? Because of the cross. It was him, wasn’t it – The Priest?’

  She saw a bead of sweat break out on his forehead, and could see he was almost shaking with the excitement as he searched her face for an answer. Now her own mind was in the grip of the tremors, too. Mulcahy had been bloody on to something. But she hadn’t expected it to jump out at her anything like as quick as this. And, fool that she was, she’d let the cat out of the bag to Doherty. She had to close it down. Think quick. Quicker than him, at any rate, and find a way to keep him calm and not leap to all the same conclusions she was leaping to. If he did, the story would be splashed across every other newspaper as well as her own.

  ‘Hey, hey, Eamon, steady on there, will you?’ She laughed out loud at him, thanking Christ that he was half cut already – she could work with that. ‘I think the drink might be making you jump the gun a bit. All I’m doing is a bit of background. I mean, the boys in blue are convinced they’ve caught The Priest. I’m just doing a sidebar on, you know, other weird religious crimes that’ve happened down the years. You’d be amazed how thin on the ground they are. In Ireland, of all places. A pal of mine mentioned that he’d heard about this thing in Gweedore – so I thought I’d do a bit of digging and called you.’

  She tried to make her tone as patronising as possible, playing on the fact that, for all his swagger, he still probably thought he was a provincial yokel compared to her working on a big Sunday paper. It seemed to work.

  ‘Really?’ All of a sudden, he didn’t sound so sure of himself.

  ‘’Fraid so,’ she laughed again. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, like, but as far as I know, there’s no connection. I mean, I don’t even know this kid’s name. Do you? The one who attacked Helen Martin? But I’ll bet a thousand euro it wasn’t Emmet Byrne, the guy they have in custody here.’

  That one seemed to stump him. Siobhan spotted a waitress walking past and nabbed her. ‘Could you bring a nice cold pint of Guinness over for my friend here?’ she asked.

  Doherty looked a little flustered now – even he was beginning to think he must be pissed.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, okay. Maybe you have a point, Siobhan. And maybe we don’t get enough excitement up our way, either.’ He laughed, but it was tinged with embarrassment. ‘You’re right about the name as well.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, to be honest, I’m not sure what the kid’s name was. As you know, it never went to court and—’

  ‘Why didn’t it go to court?’

  ‘Oh, the boy was connected to a local bigwig. Or used to be local. His grandfather was a senior member of the judiciary, an old IRA boy who’d risen high.’

  ‘IRA?’

  ‘Yeah, but as in 1922 and all that. A friend of De Valera’s, y’know – a founding father of the Republic. They called them “The Great Ones”, a gang of Donegal lads who were hugely influential at the start. I think this guy was President of the High Court at some stage.’

  ‘A judge?’ The hairs rose up on the back of Siobhan’s neck, as all the keywords from Mulcahy’s searches started pinging in her brain. She remembered the obituaries he had been reading. They were all about some old judge. She dug in her pocket for a ten-euro note as the waitress returned with the pint for Doherty, waving her away quickly and telling her to keep the change.

  ‘Yeah, a judge,’ Doherty said, taking a glug before continuing. ‘A local boy made good, Gweedore born and bred. Had a big old house by the sea that he used when the Dublin courts weren’t in session. And a right old bastard, too, by all accounts. He had the power to silence people and used it – with the guards especially. As I heard it, after the attack the boy was whisked away and never seen again. Helen Martin was sent to a private hospital and the whole thing was hushed up. The judge even pushed through an injunction on the Courier. Not a word could get out. I’m told he paid the girl’s family off but I don’t imagine they had much choice but to shut up about it. Young Helen must’ve recovered alright in the end, anyway, cos they all moved away soon after. To England, I think.’

  Poor girl, Siobhan thought with a shudder, wondering what sort of hillbilly backwoods place Gweedore would have to be to let that happen as recently as 1988.

  Doherty must have seen in her expression what she was thinking. ‘If she’d died it would’ve been different, y’know. Even in the eighties, the old ways of kowtowing to priests and politicians still had a hold up there – especially with the Troubles at their height across the border. But their power was on the wane. And, after something like that, well, people were just sickened by it.’

  ‘This judge, though, he got away with it?’

  ‘Yeah, but like I say, times were changing. There was a huge amount of bad feeling about it round the place. He never came back after that, and the big house stayed empty until it was sold after he died. That must’ve been before 1997, or else we’d never have published even the small reference that you read online. The editor back then wasn’t exactly the campaigning type, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Oh, I know, alright,’ Siobhan said, just to keep him happy. ‘I’m beginning to think it might be a bit too dodgy for my editor to wear even now. I mean, whatever about a court case, there probably wasn’t even an arrest, or a police record of the incident, was there?’

  Doherty sat back in his seat and shrugged. ‘If there was, it’ll have disappeared years ago. But, now that you come to mention it, it might be worth looking into. I think everyone’s forgotten about the whole thing, to be honest.’

  ‘Well, don’t go doing anything on my account,’ Siobhan said hurriedly. ‘I’m pretty sure I won’t be using it now. But if you do dig up something, will you promise to let us have first dibs?’

  Doherty laughed. ‘Right you are then, Siobhan. It’s a deal. Although I’ve a feeling it won’t be knocking anything off our front page next week. This match today and the cutbacks at Letterkenny General Hospital are what people are interested in, up my way.’

  Siobhan apologised again to Doherty for wasting his time and said she had to get back to the grindstone, leaving him to saunter back towards the bar with his half-drunk pint. It had been risky, that final double-bluff, but she was as confident as she could be that Doherty wouldn’t pursue the story now. Unless he was an even cuter operator than she gave him credit for. But she didn’t think so. By saying she wouldn’t pursue it herself, she’d effectively pulled the plug. For him it was nothing more than old news again. And even if he did do some digging, she was sure he’d be enough of an old hack to want to sell it on through her to the Sunday Herald first; get a bit of the big time out of it.

  She ignored the doorman’s offer to get her a taxi, and ran down the steps outside, snagging one for herself straight away, right from under the eyes of a startled tourist. In under five minutes, she was back in the newsroom again, checking out Harry Heffernan’s office. She was in luck, the conference had overrun – the rumble of conversation was still coming from behind the closed door. Heated it sounded, maybe even heated enough to give her time to do a quick follow-up on this old judge. And his grandson, who’d be, what, in his mid-to late thirties by now? If God really was being kind to her, the grandson would be a scion of the male line. Lovely word that, scion. And there couldn’t be many people in Dublin with that surname, now could there?

  For the first time that day, Siobhan felt a genuine smile playing on her lips.

  19

  The Salazar residence took up the entire top floor of a majestic period block situated between the Palacio Real and the Opera, a huge wedding cake of a building, the swirls and swags of its stucco-work like white icing baked in the glare of the midday sun.

  ‘This is only their pied-a-terre, you understand,’ Martinez whispered as they were ushered into a finely appointed sitting room by a middle-aged man in a charcoal-grey business suit – the uniform, Mulcahy assumed, of the modern-day butler. ‘The family of Don Alfonso has
a nice house, too, over near the Retiro,’ he continued. Not a sound intruded from the busy city outside. ‘But I hear that it is currently leased to a Russian billionaire.’ He laughed. ‘The family’s historical residence is even more impressive, Palacio Salazar, out in the country near El Escorial. Which shows you for how long they have been close to the centre of power, here in Spain.’

  Mulcahy understood alright. The old power systems, those of family, wealth and privilege, were still very much alive in Spain, even if hidden from view by the youthful thrusting face that was the nation’s preferred image to the outside world. He looked around him. The room was sparsely but elegantly decorated in a style that was antique in itself. Everything from the carved furniture to the pale silk wall hangings had an air of faded elegance, as if the very notion of home improvement were beneath contempt. Just then came a sound of footfalls from the corridor outside, and the door swung open. Martinez was on his feet instantly, smoothing down his suit with one hand and striding across the room towards the tall, lean man who entered with a loping, authoritative stride.

  Mulcahy recognised him immediately from television and the newspapers. Don Alfonso Mellado Salazar. Dressed in a dark grey pinstripe suit, the silver of the stripe a perfect match for his hair, he had to be in his early seventies at least. But while not exactly burdened by age, he looked a little weakened by it. His thin, hollowed-out face still had a hawk-like imperiousness to it, the silver hair swept back from a broad forehead that topped a high-bridged nose, intense brown eyes, and pale fleshy lips. But his posture was more stooped, less fearsome, than Mulcahy had anticipated.