The Priest

by Gerard O'Donovan

  ‘Don Alfonso, thank you so much for admitting us to your home.’ Martinez was formal to the point of obsequiousness, approaching Salazar with his head bowed and a hand outstretched. Salazar nodded as he took the proffered hand and shook it warmly.

  ‘Good afternoon, Javier. Thank you for taking the time to handle this personally.’

  By now, after just a few hours back in the city, Mulcahy could feel the language returning to him. During lunch he’d suggested to Martinez that they switch to speaking Spanish, and after half an hour or so of stumbling it had started flowing for him again. Enough to pick up now on the subtleties of the exchange taking place before him, and to be surprised that his friend was on what amounted to first-name terms with Salazar, the older man using the intimate ‘tu’ when addressing him. Quite clearly, they had met many times before. Mulcahy wasn’t the only one who’d been done a favour by Javier’s trip to the airport, it seemed.

  ‘This is the police officer from Dublin, sir,’ Martinez announced, as he steered Salazar across the room. ‘A good man, and a friend of mine, Detective Inspector Mike Mulcahy.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know of him,’ the old man said. ‘They thought highly of him at the embassy there. He speaks the language, yes?’

  The question was directed at Martinez, but Salazar had his gaze fixed firmly on Mulcahy.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ Mulcahy said. ‘It is an honour to meet you. My Spanish is far from perfect, but I hope it will be sufficient for the task ahead. I will do my best to make the process as painless as possible for your daughter.’

  This formal approach was what Martinez had suggested but Salazar wasn’t interested in niceties.

  ‘So this man you arrested, is he the same one who attacked my daughter?’ The old man’s tone was accusing. ‘They tell me he has murdered a girl since – another child. Is that correct?’

  ‘The investigation is ongoing but, yes, our suspect may have committed both crimes, and at least one other. But it is not possible to say more than that, at this stage.’

  He paused as Salazar harrumphed and shot a sceptical glance at Martinez, who did a magnificent job of pretending not to notice it. Before the old man could say anything else, Mulcahy went on. ‘We’re hoping that any information your daughter can give us will greatly help our efforts to take this man off the streets permanently.’

  For a second or two Salazar looked like he was about to say something combative in reply, but then a shadow crossed his face and his entire posture seemed to slump fractionally. A faint air of sadness seeped out of him now. He extended a hand to Mulcahy.

  ‘I believe I owe you a debt of gratitude for halting the interrogation my child was subjected to, so disgracefully, on the day she was attacked. That should never have occurred. It was an outrage. But, for your intervention, I want you to know I am most grateful.’

  Mulcahy wasn’t sure how to respond to that, since it wasn’t entirely true. As he couldn’t really see how contradicting the man would help progress matters, he shook the hand offered and remained silent.

  ‘I thought it would be good for her, you see,’ Salazar continued, the gaze with which he fixed Mulcahy now sadder, more resigned than the gruff public persona of the politician. ‘To get away from me for a few weeks, from the bustle of politics that surrounds us, to see how ordinary people live. So I gave in to her pleading to be allowed to go to Dublin with her schoolfriends. I thought it is Ireland, and a Catholic country, so it will be safe for her. I should have known better.’

  Retrospect, the politician’s greatest friend, Mulcahy thought. But again he resisted the impulse to respond. It was better to move on, stay on neutral ground.

  ‘May I ask how your daughter is now, sir?’

  ‘Thank you, she is as well as can be expected. In fact, we should proceed. The sooner it is done, the sooner she can begin to put it all behind her. I will take you to her now.’

  Salazar asked the butler to show his visitors the way, and they walked through a series of tastefully decorated but dismal corridors, Salazar lagging behind a little, engaging Martinez in a whispered conversation of which Mulcahy could make out nothing other than that it was about some mutual acquaintance. When the butler eventually opened a door and ushered them through, Mulcahy was surprised to find himself in a kind of sparsely furnished anteroom, where three other people were already waiting. From the way they turned and looked at him appraisingly – the man with a decidedly lawyerly sneer – he could tell they already knew why he was there.

  Salazar made the introductions. ‘Inspector Mulcahy, this is Doctor Mendizabal, my daughter’s psychiatrist, and Señor Don Ruiz Ordonez, my lawyer. And, eh…?’

  ‘The police stenographer, Don Alfonso,’ Martinez interjected hurriedly. ‘To record the interview for the purposes of the witness statement.’

  ‘Ah, good. Well, please, let us go in.’

  Mulcahy shot a questioning glance at Martinez. He’d only agreed that the psychiatrist could sit in, and obviously the stenographer, too. But where the hell did the rest of them think they were going? Martinez shrugged, at a loss himself, leaving Mulcahy, in the end, to stop them at the door and suggest that the fewer people were present, the better. At which point the psychiatrist stepped in to agree, tactfully suggesting to Don Alfonso that while his daughter would doubtless be comforted by his presence, she might be inhibited by it too. As for the lawyer, he could read the stenographer’s transcript afterwards. Neither Salazar nor Ordonez were happy about this but, like Mulcahy, Dr Mendizabal stood her ground. He smiled gratefully at her as they went through the doorway into the adjoining room.

  Press day hadn’t got any easier, and Siobhan hadn’t found time to follow up on the leads Doherty had given her. Griffin had been on her case ever since he’d come out of conference in a foul humour, muttering about the editor’s solitary habits. Heffernan had done a U-turn on the front end, insisting that the Emmet Byrne piece was no longer strong enough for a front-page splash.

  ‘Stupid wanker, he’s still pissed off with Lonergan and the DPP,’ Griffin grumbled. ‘Doesn’t want to give credit where credit is bloody well due.’

  Then, about half an hour later, a story Griffin had been keeping an eye on all week, about a pensioner who’d been missing for days from a residential nursing home in Cork, came good when the old boy turned up dead in a clump of bushes just three hundred yards from the home itself. Ever the opportunist, Griffin saw a chance for sensation. So Siobhan had been glued to the newsdesk for hours, working up the material coming in from stringers, agencies and whatever she could muster herself on the phones, into a hectoring lead about the appalling state of Ireland’s nursing homes. At least it would have her byline all over it.

  She’d just about got all that under her belt and was taking a short break when, scrolling through the AP wire service on her monitor, she spotted something that made her cough into the lukewarm cup of coffee she was sipping.

  ‘Jesus, Paddy, come here. Have you seen this?’

  Griffin, who’d been berating one of his junior reporters down the phone for failing to follow up information about a rat-infested old-folks’ home in Tubbercurry, slammed his handset down and strode over to Siobhan, his face etched with stress.

  ‘What now?’ ‘Look at this.’ She pointed at the agency feed she had frozen on her screen.

  3.35 p.m. Dublin: Gardai are refusing to comment on unconfirmed reports that a young woman was snatched from outside a city centre nightclub in D’Olier Street last night, saying only that they are ‘investigating all aspects’ of the incident.

  ‘What about it?’ Griffin said.

  She could see from the way his eyebrows were narrowing that he knew exactly what she was getting at, but he wasn’t willing to play ball.

  ‘Oh, come on, Paddy. What if it really wasn’t Byrne?’

  ‘And what if this is some Associated Press arsehole trying to make a great big heap out of fuck all,’ he countered. ‘We all know what “outside a nightclub” means. S
ome gobshite off his face on coke, and too thick to read the papers, sees some fella cutting up rough with his girlfriend and calls in the guards. And as for “unconfirmed reports”, you know that puts it in the bullshit tray straight away.’

  ‘And what if it’s not? There might be some kid out there in trouble.’

  Griffin stared at her and shook his head slowly. ‘You’re going to crucify me if I’m wrong, aren’t you?’

  ‘For the next year, minimum, no let-up.’ She smiled, then stuck in the knife. ‘And I’ll tell everyone else, as well. It’d be a sad end to a great career.’

  ‘Fuck you, too,’ he growled, then looked over at Heffernan’s door. ‘But fuck him even more. Go on, hit the phones and see what you can dig up. It might be worth a few inches. Make sure you get on to that Garda contact of yours. I want to know if Lonergan and his crew are even aware of it. If they’re not, screw them over good and proper.’

  ‘Thanks, Paddy, I love you – sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah, bollocks you do,’ he said, turning away so she wouldn’t see him grinning.

  Mulcahy had assumed they’d be going into a bedroom. He had expected Jesica would be too unwell still to be up and about. So it was with a rush of relief that he realised the room set aside for the interview was a normal, comfortable sitting room. And that now, only a few weeks on from her ordeal, Jesica Salazar was recovered enough to be back on her feet again. Perched on a small sofa, in baggy grey joggers, matching hoodie and immaculate white trainers, she looked like a girl who was making an effort to appear like a normal teenager. But nothing, not the long strands of hair she tugged at to hide behind, or the huge cushion she clasped protectively to her chest, could conceal the bruising that still mottled and distorted her face in places, or the deep black bags splayed like ink stains beneath her eyes. Everything about her seemed wary, coiled tighter than a spring.

  The psychiatrist asked Jesica if she recognised Mulcahy. The girl studied him anxiously, as if she had done something wrong, and then said, no, she didn’t.

  ‘We met in the hospital in Dublin,’ Mulcahy said. ‘My colleagues wanted to ask you some questions. I translated.’

  Jesica put her hand up to her neck. If the red weal around her throat was still there it was hidden now by the high neckline of her tightly zipped hoodie. But his words clearly meant something to her because she nodded then with a simple ‘Si’ and bowed her head.

  ‘As we discussed earlier, Jesica,’ the psychiatrist said, ‘the inspector needs to ask you some questions. If you feel well enough, okay?’

  Jesica ignored her and, lifting her head, addressed Mulcahy from the side of her mouth.

  ‘Did you find my cross and chain?’

  ‘No. We’re still looking for it.’

  ‘It was my mother’s,’ she said indignantly.

  ‘We’ll do everything we can to find it.’

  Again her head came up, this time looking at him straight, anger in her voice. ‘He has it, doesn’t he?’

  In her eyes he could see pain, fear and, more than anything else, humiliation. But before he could reply the psychiatrist intervened again.

  ‘Perhaps we should focus on something more constructive initially.’ She spoke quickly, her accent unfamiliar to him, so he had to concentrate hard to get it all. ‘I was told, Inspector, that you wanted Jesica to tell you in her own words what happened that night. Perhaps we should just stick to that, for now.’

  ‘I told you before, I don’t remember anything,’ Jesica insisted. ‘I’ve already told you everything I know.’

  The girl’s anger seemed directed at the psychiatrist rather than at him, so he said nothing for a few seconds. When the tension had dissipated a little, he sat forward and caught Jesica’s eye.

  ‘I know this is difficult for you, Jesica,’ he said. ‘But if you can’t tell me yourself, perhaps you would let me put some questions to you.’

  The girl relented. So slowly, gently, he started on the list of questions he had prepared, asking again about her time in the GaGa Club, who she had gone there with, who she had left with and at what time. But whether unwilling or unable, Jesica now seemed even less capable of answering his questions than she had been on the day she was attacked. What few answers she could give were slow, self-conscious and uncertain, her recollections hesitant and painful. Mulcahy could only feel pity for her, since she was obviously doing her best but was clearly also mortified that what had happened to her should be the focus of their attention. Just keep plugging away, he thought, so long as she can cope. Something might come of it. But he could see it was going to be a long and painful process.

  The breakthrough came at around four-thirty p.m. Not thanks to anything Jesica or he himself said, but rather a remark the psychiatrist made while walking out of the room with Mulcahy after forty minutes of little or no progress. The low point had come when he presented the mugshots of Byrne to Jesica, and she had barely even glanced at them before shaking her head. ‘I don’t know what he looks like, I told you,’ was all she said.

  That was when Dr Mendizabal suggested taking time out.

  ‘Sometimes, you know, in cases such as this,’ she observed, once they were outside, ‘the mind will protect itself from a pain that is unbearable. Only by finding a way round its internal defences can we hope to get to a place where we can address the trauma.’

  ‘And how do you do that?’ Mulcahy asked.

  ‘Well, in a clinical situation, by hypnosis or hypnotherapy, for instance. That would be an obvious route in a case like this. You instruct the mind to lower its defences, and in such a state of relaxation it is remarkable what can emerge and begin to heal.’

  ‘Do you think that would work with Jesica?’

  ‘It is a therapeutic course that I fully intend to pursue.’

  ‘So would it work if we tried it now?’

  The psychiatrist frowned. ‘It would be of no benefit to you. I don’t know what the situation is in your country, but here in Spain it has long been established that testimony obtained under hypnosis is not admissible in a court of law. There are many precedents.’

  ‘I’m sure it is the same in Ireland, Doctor, but if we’re not going to get anything useful by any other means maybe admissibility doesn’t matter. If we could uncover something that put our suspect’s involvement beyond doubt, then our investigators might find another route back to proving it. Do you see what I mean?’

  Dr Mendizabal was considering this when Mulcahy’s phone beeped with a message alert. He excused himself and stepped aside to open it, noting with surprise that it was from Siobhan:

  Another kid snatched last night, still missing. Lonergan, Brogan all in full-scale denial. Call me!

  The shock hit him like a sneaky left hook. Rinn’s face immediately leaped up, snarling, to fill the vacuum in his thoughts. The night before he’d considered the possibility that Rinn and Byrne might have been working together as some kind of team, but he’d dismissed it. There had never been any sign or indication that The Priest’s attacks were the work of more than one man. Mulcahy was still thinking it through again when Dr Mendizabal approached him.

  ‘Lo siento, Inspector, but are you alright? You look a little disconcerted.’

  ‘Yes,’ was all he said, before he remembered who he was talking to. ‘Doctor, did you ever get any sense from Jesica that she was attacked by more than one person?’

  Even as he was saying it, he thought of how the girl herself had always only referred to her attacker in the singular.

  ‘No, never,’ the psychiatrist said. ‘In fact, I would think it would be unlikely, given what was actually done to Jesica. You know, sometimes sexual predators can operate in pairs but this is comparatively rare. And virtually impossible when you consider the severity of the psychosis manifested in the attack on Jesica. This is not pleasure that is being taken by the perpetrator, but a compulsion that is being acted out. It is not something that, at a psychological level, it is possible to share. It is only for the person
who does it, him alone, do you understand?’

  Mulcahy nodded, trying to recall what Siobhan said her psychologist contact had told her the night before. ‘Yes, that makes sense.’

  ‘Why did you ask?’

  ‘I’ve just been informed that another girl’s gone missing in Dublin.’

  ‘But you already have a man in custody, yes?’

  ‘Yes, Doctor,’ Mulcahy said, his voice lower now. ‘But is he the right man? At this moment, the only one of his victims who can possibly help us with that question is Jesica.’

  ‘But she says she did not see him.’

  Mulcahy rubbed his forehead in frustration and, suddenly, the memory flashed up again of Jesica in the hospital bed in Dublin, rubbing the red weal on her neck, her voice filled with confusion and pain:

  Hizo la señal del Cristo.

  That was it, of course. Mulcahy turned to Dr Mendizabal again, looked her straight in the eye and felt sure she would understand.

  ‘When I spoke to Jesica on the day of the assault, she told me that she’d seen her attacker make the sign of the cross.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Mulcahy said, demonstrating the gesture for her, exaggerating the motion of his hand as he drew it down across his face from his forehead to his chest and up to each shoulder in turn. ‘She must have seen his face if she saw him do that. Even if she doesn’t remember it now.’

  As the psychiatrist took his words on board, her right hand smoothed the white cotton of her shirt on the left shoulder. Mulcahy wondered if she was aware of the habit, which he’d noticed her do repeatedly at tricky moments in the interview, earlier.

  ‘Of course, I must put my patient’s therapeutic needs first, Inspector,’ she said at last. ‘And we would also require Don Alfonso’s permission, and Jesica’s consent. But I think, in the circumstances, a case can be made for trying hypnosis. Jesica really does want to assist you, and you can see she is distressed by her inability to do so. It is arguable that if we enable her to help you now, it may contribute to her emotional recovery in the longer term.’