The Priest

by Gerard O'Donovan

  ‘This guy, Rinn, uses taxis to pick up his victims. One’s a van. And look at those sacks,’ Mulcahy said pointing to the corner. ‘Remind you of any fibres you’ve seen recently?’

  Cassidy’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the pile, then he suddenly cursed and dashed across the garage. ‘What the fuck is that?’ he shouted.

  But he had already answered his own question, pulling away some of the empty sacks to reveal first a man’s foot, then a leg, then an entire body. Mulcahy ran over beside him. Lying there was a big bear of a bearded man, showing no signs of life. Mulcahy knelt down to check his airways.

  ‘He’s still breathing. Give me a hand, quick.’

  Together they dragged the man into the recovery position. An oozing head wound gave graphic testimony as to how he’d been struck from behind with something sharp and heavy. Some time ago, too, to judge by the amount of blood that had already congealed on the floor.

  ‘A press photographer?’ Cassidy suggested, pointing to the professional-looking cameras lying by the man’s side. ‘They must have come here together and both been caught on the hop.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mulcahy said, trying to visualise the scene in the garage. ‘But what the hell’s happened to Siobhan?’

  ‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ Cassidy said, getting up. But something else caught his eye and he walked over to the empty parking space and bent down to examine an oil stain on the ground. ‘This must be where he kept the van. Something’s been parked here fairly recently. Do you think he’s taken her somewhere else? Knowing he’s been rumbled?’

  ‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ Mulcahy said. ‘That van is his mobile torture chamber. But we’ve got to check this place out properly first. With this other girl missing as well, they could just as easily both be inside in the house somewhere.’

  Mulcahy stood up and went to the door, desperately trying to come up with a plan of action. By the time Cassidy finished on the phone, he had the beginnings of one. ‘You’d better give Brogan a call, too, and get the cavalry over here double quick. I’m going back to the house to see if I can find anything.’

  Mulcahy grabbed a torch from a shelf and ran out shouting Siobhan’s name. He banged furiously on the front door again, and peered through the downstairs windows. But the only response he got was lights flicking on in the house next door. He ran around to the passageway leading between the garage and the house. The wooden gate was locked but he just tilted at it with his shoulder and it sprang open with a crash against the wall and he ran into the back garden, still calling out Siobhan’s name at the top of his voice.

  The world was as black as pitch and everything but the electric dread of the pain felt dull and far way. Only the pain mattered, like a blade of white light, stalking her, seeking her out where she lay curled in the corner, desperately trying to hide from it, crying from the fear of it, praying to be dead rather than that it should find her out again. And then a bang. And a bell. And another bang, still louder. And every muscle in her tensed in the effort to make herself still smaller so that whatever new agony this was, it wouldn’t come her way.

  Then the noises stopped and she drifted in and out of the nothing, overwhelmed. It could have been an hour that passed, it could have been a minute. She’d already been there for ever. The banging came again, and a crash that seemed to tremble like thunder in the air around her. She tried to shrink further, felt her heart hammer, her ribs hurt, her breathing quick and low. Then she heard the voice. Not the voice. Not his voice. Not the voice she feared as much as the pain, the voice that was the pain. But a new voice. And it was shouting her name. So distant, so like it, she was sure it was her name. From somewhere in the mire of dead emotion inside her, a bubble of hope broke loose and drifted to the surface.

  She tried to hang on to it, to make herself rise with it. She tried to answer, to call out to the voice. Her sole fear now was that it would go away and leave her as she’d been before. But no sound came from her throat. She tried again and gagged on the effort, realising too late there was something in her mouth, blocking not only her voice but her breath, too. She remembered her arms and legs, like forgotten territories, found she could move them. And, through a tide of pain, she forced herself to roll over on her back and there, above her, saw a glass pane high on a wall, a pale yellow light washing across it, so close it all but touched her.

  Now she heard her name again, so loud, so clear she had to call out, although she knew she couldn’t, knew the panic would rise against the gag, push the breath back inside her, make her lungs feel like they would burst. And she knew too, now, that it was too late, that her own cries were strangling her, that she was gagging and puking and choking and she was going to die like a rat in this hole. A spasm of desperation took hold of her and without even knowing, without even thinking, her limbs lashed out and as she fought for one last breath she felt her arm crack against a hard edge, then her ankle with a shuddering stab of agony in the bone and there was a creaking and a popping and the whole world collapsed on her and she knew that it was all over, that this was what death was like.

  Mulcahy’s first thought was that Cassidy had taken matters into his own hands and smashed one of the front windows. But then the crashing continued, popping and bursting, and he realised it was coming from inside the house. But from where? He was about to run round to the front when a last smash rang out and his eye was drawn downwards. There was a tiny window, barely more than a couple of feet square, in the wall at ground level. He bent for a closer look but the glass just bounced the glare of the torch back into his eyes.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Cassidy said, coming down the side passage and seeing him doubled over.

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure I heard something from down there after I called Siobhan’s name. There has to be a basement but I can’t see any way into it.’

  He shone his torch along the base of the wall again and for the first time noticed the shallow slope running towards the back of the house. Then he recalled the steps leading down from the living room to the garden. He said nothing further but bolted round the back of the house again, Cassidy hard on his heels. Seconds later, he shone his torch on one side of the flight of steps and saw a padlocked wooden door leading in under them. With one kick of his boot he staved the door in and leaped inside, the beam of the torch picking up mostly dirt, grime and gardening equipment, but no sign of Siobhan or anyone else. Cassidy came in behind him and found a light switch. Only then did they spot the other door at the back. Mulcahy barrelled though it, the light from the outer room following him into this much larger space in which stood a crude wire cage, a huge table that looked like a metal workbench, and around the walls the accumulated detritus of generations. Over in one corner, beneath a small window, enveloped in a rising cloud of dust, he saw what looked like a collapsed dresser. Everywhere around it lay tipped-open boxes, their contents strewn about, broken bottles and glass and what looked like a vast dinner service smashed to smithereens on the cold concrete floor. And out from beneath this mess poked another leg, this one naked, and female.

  ‘Siobhan!’ He ran over, pulling panels and shelves of rotten wood away as fast as his hands could get to them. They dragged the worst of it off her quickly, the gall rising in him as they exposed the lower half of her body and, through the dust and dirt that clung to her, he saw the horror of the wounds that had been inflicted on her belly and groin. But even as his stomach heaved at the thought of the pain she’d suffered, he realised something wasn’t right. Something about the shape of the hips, the length of the arms. Then the hair, it wasn’t dark enough. As he pushed the last shards of crockery away from her face he saw clearly now: it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Siobhan. And a blind panic swept over him, which he had to kill while the cop in him yanked away the duct tape from her mouth, pulled back an eyelid for any hint of life, cleared the puke, dust and grit from her mouth with a crooked finger, and pressed his lips to hers, desperate to breathe life back into this girl, this woman who wasn’t Siobh
an but who had to be saved, had to be brought back, even as the hope in his own heart faded and guttered but refused to go out.

  They found her name on a student card in a worn pink purse on the workbench: Shauna Gleeson, a second-year arts student at UCD. Beside it was a bag Mulcahy thought he recognised as Siobhan Fallon’s, inside it a voice recorder, then, confirming his fears, her wallet complete with press cards and ID. By then he’d already taken a mallet from the rack beside the bench, and he ran up the steps outside, smashing his way in through the French windows to Rinn’s living room. Cassidy came behind, the girl covered by his jacket, shivering in his arms. They had to find something warmer, a blanket, a fire, to get some heat and life back into her. Mulcahy checked out the other rooms on the ground floor, found a soft wool picnic rug draped over a kitchen chair, threw it back in to Cassidy who was settling the girl on the sofa, then he galloped up the stairs. Within a couple of minutes he’d been in and out of every room in the huge three-storey house. No sign of Siobhan Fallon, or of Rinn.

  On the top floor, though, he found a small room, what looked to be a private chapel of sorts. On one side he could see a narrow table serving as an altar, covered in embroidered linens, candles and what appeared to be a large gold tabernacle. On the wall above it a thin finger of wavering red light illuminated a yellowing picture of the Sacred Heart. On another wall hung a faded silk banner, its six-inch letters in an embroidered arc spelling out SODALITY OF THE MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD. Which creeped Mulcahy out but meant nothing to him. If this was Rinn’s hideaway, his hidden place, then here, he knew, he might find what he needed. Mulcahy approached the makeshift altar, its linen crisp, white and bare apart from the candle sconces and a small plain wooden cross with a grey spelter figure of Christ attached to it with jagged-looking pins. The tabernacle, on the other hand, was extraordinarily extravagant: large, at least eighteen inches square, and highly decorated in chased gold and silver. The mere sight of it tempted Mulcahy to bless himself, summoning intense memories of his own brief period as an altar boy. At the front, an ornate gold sunburst splashed across double doors, flanked on either side by ghostly silver saints, one holding a book, the other wielding a sword. On a frieze above and all round the upper rim was a motto bearing the words Sanctus, Sanctus, etched repeatedly.

  Mulcahy used his handkerchief to turn, cautiously, the small key protruding from the lock at the centre of the sun, then levered each of the doors open with a pen. Inside, a silver chalice, with a burnished gold interior, glinted out. What took his breath away, what made him lean further in and stare with disbelief, was what was crowded in behind the chalice. Six wooden crosses, identical to the one outside on the altar, but each of these had another crucifix hanging by a chain from the arms and draped across the figure of the Christ. One was as tall as the wooden cross from which it hung, all flaking gold paint and blobs of coloured glass; he guessed immediately it had to be Grainne Mullins’s ‘Versace’ cross. Another, not quite as big but brassy and plain, was probably the ‘vicar’s’ cross Caroline Coyle had lost. Towards the front he saw a glittering chain holding a delicately wrought figure of Christ on a gold cross tipped at each extremity with a large brilliant-cut diamond and knew it had to be Jesica Salazar’s. The others, he guessed, would be Catriona Plunkett’s, Paula Halpin’s and, perhaps, Shauna Gleeson’s.

  But none yet for the other crucifix standing bare outside on the altar linen. Waiting. He swallowed hard.

  He looked around the room again. It was telling him everything he needed to know about Rinn except the one thing he wanted more than anything: where the hell had he taken Siobhan? Outside he heard a faint wail of sirens, then a shout from below. He ran out of the room and by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, Cassidy was already standing by the open door, a blaze of blue emergency lights reflecting into the hall, directing one paramedic in green and yellow overalls into the back room, telling another to see immediately to the man out in the garage.

  ‘How’s the girl?’ Mulcahy asked him.

  ‘Not good, poor kid,’ Cassidy said, looking a bit pale himself now. They both stepped back as another paramedic bustled past them, a walkie-talkie squawking on her epaulette.

  ‘Did you find anything up there?’ Cassidy asked him.

  Mulcahy nodded. ‘Like his own private monastery. All sorts of religious stuff. It was him, no question. All the girls’ crosses are up there. Trophies. But I’m damned if I can find anything about where he might have taken Siobhan.’

  ‘Did you see this stuff in here?’ Cassidy opened the heavy panelled door into the dining room at the front of the house. Mulcahy had stuck his head in earlier but, seeing no sign of his goal, he had moved quickly on. Cassidy pointed towards the long mahogany dining table, which had a mass of papers spread out across its surface. One of the dining chairs was pushed away from the table as if someone had stood up suddenly and left.

  ‘I thought maybe this was what he was doing when Fallon and her photographer pal turned up,’ Cassidy said. ‘He’d have seen them coming in the gate, from here.’

  Sure enough, most of the front garden, the gate and part of the garage were visible from that angle through the large bay window. Cassidy’s mobile rang and he went straight back into the hall. The only words Mulcahy caught were, ‘Yeah, boss, that’s right’ as he went out. He went over to the table, tried to make out what it was Rinn had been doing there. Some sheets of paper were fanned out on the polished surface, along with a large-format book and a fold-out map of the Phoenix Park. Mulcahy glanced over the map, saw nothing out of the ordinary. Most of the paper sheets were photocopies. Turning a couple of them towards him, he saw that they were blow-ups of lines from religious texts. They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. (Gal 5:24) and Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature… the wrath of God is coming. (Col 3:5–6) He turned them away, repelled, and drew the book towards him. It was a glossy picture book commemorating the Papal visit to Ireland in 1979. On the cover was a picture familiar to Mulcahy, a head-and-shoulders shot of Pope John Paul II, resplendent in vestments of green, white and gold, holding aloft his crozier. Mulcahy opened the book at a place bookmarked by an old photo. The image on the large double-page spread inside was equally familiar to him: a high crane shot of the vast sea of people surrounding the huge raised altar in the Phoenix Park, flags on tall standards fluttering in the breeze, everything dwarfed by the massive cross behind.

  Mulcahy glanced at the photograph that had been used as a bookmark, its poorly fixed Polaroid colours faded by the years. It was of a group of boys and girls, all ten or eleven years old, all staring at the lens awkwardly. The kids looked like they were on a day trip from a disaster zone. Some were in wheelchairs, others on crutches, their limbs encased in plaster. At one end of the group, Mulcahy thought he recognised the face of a much younger Sean Rinn, a sad-looking boy with buzz-cut hair and a forced smile splayed across his mouth. Beneath a gaping shirt and cardigan, the whole of his torso, from his chin down to the waistband of his smartly pressed trousers, was swaddled in bandages. In the background was the same vast crowd and altar he’d seen in the book. He flipped the photo over. Scrawled in ink on the back was a caption: Sodality of the Most Precious Blood, Phoenix Park, Sept 29, 1979.

  He heard footsteps behind him and turned.

  ‘Brogan’s on her way,’ Cassidy said. ‘Says some of the others will probably get here first. She has to come in from Tallaght.’

  Mulcahy nodded. ‘Any idea what a sodality is?’

  Cassidy squinted uncomprehendingly. Mulcahy held up the photo, pointed at Rinn, then showed him what was written on the back. ‘I saw it upstairs on some kind of a banner, too.’

  ‘It’s like a kind of association,’ Cassidy said, ‘set up for people to offer special devotions, prayers and masses on feast days and special times of the year. That one would be to commemorate the “precious blood” Jesus spilled on the cross for the salvation of mankind.’
r />   ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I was schooled by the Presentation Brothers. They made us learn all that stuff about feast days and sodalities by rote. Beat the stuff into us. The Feast of the Most Precious Blood is sort of movable, if I remember right. The first Sunday of July each year. Around now, in fact.’

  Mulcahy didn’t need to check the date on his watch, but he did so automatically. ‘It’s tomorrow,’ he said, and somehow that piece of information didn’t make him feel any easier.

  Cassidy held his hands up, moving past him to the table.

  ‘What are you bothering with all that stuff for?’ he said, sharply. ‘This is what I thought you’d be interested in. I know the boss will.’ He pushed away the book and sheets of paper, clearing space around the map of the Phoenix Park. It was an old Ordnance Survey map, exquisitely etched and printed. Cassidy was stabbing his finger towards the left hand side, where a circle had been drawn in pencil around the Y of the Furry Glen and the crowded contour lines marking out the hollow where Paula Halpin’s body had been found.

  ‘Bang to fuckin’ rights,’ Cassidy was saying, but Mulcahy’s eye had snagged on another part of the map, an area of empty parkland where there was no pencil circle, just a broad expanse of green with its name, the Fifteen Acres, printed across it. Beneath the name, hardly distinguishable from the print above it, something had been added in a tiny script: Deus non irridetur. His heart stalled. It was the same message Siobhan had been sent: God will not be mocked.

  Mulcahy’s mind was swirling now, arching up, reaching towards understanding but swamped by too much information to process it quickly. Fractured images of Siobhan on the television, of places and dates, of crowns of thorns, jagged pins and the blood of Christ. Too many possibilities, none of them good.

  ‘He must’ve had a plan for Paula Halpin,’ Mulcahy said. ‘But it didn’t work out. You said she had heart trouble, didn’t you? Maybe she had a coronary when he was assaulting her but he didn’t realise until it was too late. So he stashed the body near to where he needed it to be, but it was discovered. Then he went out and got another girl, but at the last moment fate intervened and got him someone even better, even more appropriate.’