The Priest

by Gerard O'Donovan

  ‘What’re you on about?’ Cassidy said, looking up.

  ‘It must’ve seemed like a miracle to him: Siobhan Fallon just walking in his gate like that.’ Mulcahy paused, breathing hard, making sure it pieced together right in his mind. ‘What do you make of that?’ he said, pointing to the Fifteen Acres on the map.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ Cassidy said, ‘just grass.’

  ‘But it’s an old map, isn’t it,’ Mulcahy said. ‘What’s there now? What’s been there since thirty years ago? Since 1979. What’s there that ties in with all this other shite around here?’

  Then it dawned on Cassidy too, and for a second all he did was yawp and utter a low, breathy, ‘Shit!’

  But Mulcahy was already halfway out the door, in far too much of a panic to care if Cassidy was following him or not.

  Mulcahy barely registered the great sweep of grand old Dublin he sped through as he negotiated the last clumps of late traffic in Rathmines, jumped the bridge over the Grand Canal and onwards, past the arc-lit spires of St Patrick’s Cathedral, tilting down beneath the gothic arches of Christchurch into Winetavern Street until, with a caterwauling of abused tyres, he swung the car hard left onto the riverside at Merchant’s Quay. From there he put his foot to the floor and kept his hand on the horn as they sped past bridge after bridge, leaving it to fate and sobriety to stop any other traffic straying into his path. Cassidy, who’d only just made it into the passenger seat before Mulcahy gunned the Saab and roared away, spent most of the journey in silence, one hand lodged like a shock absorber between the car ceiling and his head, cursing every time a wheel slammed into a pothole, watching the road ahead with the fixed focus of a man who’s been in many a chase at speed and never once enjoyed the experience. Mulcahy barely noticed him or, if he did, he didn’t care. His focus was on beating the Irish land speed record. Up the quays he sped, from Merchant’s to Usher’s to Victoria until finally, at Heuston Station, he ripped a few more millimetres off his tyres swinging north across the bridge to hare up Parkgate Street and in through the monumental stone pillars guarding the entrance to the Phoenix Park.

  ‘Are you not even going to ask me why?’ Cassidy finally said, as they plunged headlong into the darkness of the Park itself. Mulcahy switched on his main beams then glanced quickly over at him, as much time as he could spare before he had to twist the car into and out of a roundabout.

  ‘No,’ he said coldly. ‘You shafted me. Why would a reason, good or bad, make any difference to me?’

  ‘Maybe now’s not the time,’ Cassidy said. And Mulcahy just grunted as he floored the accelerator again, blazing a full mile up the rule-straight carriageway until, at the Phoenix Monument, he swung the wheel hard left and sped down into the still deeper darkness of Acres Road. Without any warning, he killed the headlights, and his speed, and let the car coast on into the black stillness. Mulcahy hushed Cassidy’s gasp with a peremptory ‘Shush!’ He strained forward, trying to make out the way ahead, then steered the car onto a narrow slip road. He slowed to a snail’s pace. Around them a thinly wooded copse of silver birch loomed like the endlessly mirrored bars of a cage, blocking their line of sight both ahead and to the right. To their left, spread out beyond the broad grass plain stretching away to the south, the lights of the suburbs twinkled on the skyline like a galaxy of earthbound stars. Mulcahy brought the car to a halt in front of a low red-and-white metal barrier that blocked any further progress.

  At just that moment, as if some higher power had decided to lend a hand, the thick cloud cover split apart and a huge moon lit up the landscape all around them. Finding themselves staring ahead across a vast expanse of lonely car park, both men seemed awestruck by what was revealed in the distance ahead: the steep grassy mound rising up from the flat land all around, the high sweep of stone steps cut into its side, the vast metal cross rising fifty, maybe sixty metres into the night sky, its twin arms spread in glory, its cold, hard steel blazing white in the moonlight. And below it, even more exposed than they were, a lone white van was parked at the bottom of the steps – the only vehicle in sight.

  ‘It’s him.’ Mulcahy turned to Cassidy, the tension cracking his voice.

  ‘What the fuck is he up to?’ Cassidy whispered. But neither of their imaginations wanted to go there.

  ‘Can you see anybody over there?’ Mulcahy asked. But he knew it was too far away. From this distance, the base of the cross merged into the darkness of the park beyond. ‘They could still be in the van, but either way, we’ve got to get over there now. And on foot, so we don’t spook him and get ourselves into a hostage situation.’

  Mulcahy opened his door but Cassidy put a restraining hand on his arm.

  ‘Wait, I’ll call for back up, then we’ll go.’

  They skirted around the south side of the car park, keeping low, as good as invisible against the dark grass now that the cloud had come over again. For a while, every rustling footstep, every breath, seemed to scream out their presence to the emptiness around them, but they got used to that. And as the cross loomed ever closer, the stiff wind began to carry sounds other than their own towards them. Strange sounds, an irregular metal-on-metal hammering and a faint clanking that reminded Mulcahy of a sea breeze whipping through rigging. As they approached the base of the mound, he waved Cassidy down with the flat of his hand and they crouched on the grass, eyes fixed on the van parked only twenty metres away now. There was no sign of life from it. Above them, the hammering stopped and the sound of something heavy being dragged across a concrete surface reached them briefly before being snatched away again by the wind.

  ‘Whatever he’s at, it’s all going on up there,’ Mulcahy whispered, pointing to the top of the steps. ‘I’ll go up the grass bank on this side and have a look, you head to the van and look after Siobhan if she’s in there. If not, come by the steps to back me up. If he bolts he’ll be coming your way. Okay?’

  Mulcahy watched for a moment as Cassidy headed towards the van, then started making his way up the side of the mound. The wind was picking up, and the slope was steeper than it appeared from below. He felt the grass cold and moist against his hands, getting slipperier the more he sought purchase. As he neared the top, he looked up. All the weight and majesty of the towering steel cross seemed to bear down on him. Then he saw something strange. Swinging against the night sky, two long loops of rope were whipping in the wind, one hanging down from each of the great steel arms. And then he understood what the clanking sound he’d heard had been. But before he could figure out their purpose, he saw the ropes suddenly go taut, and what appeared to be a long, dark bundle began rising in a jerking motion against the upright column of the cross. As the bank of cloud above broke once more, the moon again illuminated the scene. And Mulcahy’s worst fears were realised. Above him, a grotesque crucifixion was being enacted. The naked, lifeless body of Siobhan Fallon hung from a crude timber cross, which in turn was suspended by the ropes from the great steel arms above. Her hands and feet were dark with blood where they met the timber. Beneath her right breast a horizontal gash bled profusely down her belly. Her head, slumped forward, bore what could only be a barbed crown.

  For a split second Mulcahy was paralysed by what he was seeing, fear and exhaustion threatening to overcome him. But there was no time to think, and something in his training, or in his heart, willed him up the last few feet and out on to the wide concrete platform at the top. Six or seven metres away at the base of the cross, dwarfed by it, Sean Rinn stood, hauling, hand over hand, his obscene crucifixion higher and higher. He was dressed in what appeared to be climbing gear, metal clips and fastenings dangling from a belt across his chest. But it was what he had in his hands that Mulcahy cared about: a loop of steel-tight rope that stretched up into the night and down, via a complicated-looking belay system, to a hook embedded in the concrete at his feet.

  Could he take him by surprise? Mulcahy wondered where Cassidy had got to, but there was no time to wait. He stepped out onto the exposed platfor
m, trying to keep behind his man. But before he’d even got halfway there, Rinn sensed his presence and turned, panic and recognition seizing his face.

  ‘Stop, you – keep back,’ he snarled at Mulcahy. ‘If I let go she’ll fall. She’ll die.’

  Mulcahy didn’t move a muscle, but the flicker of hope in his chest flared up like a gas main. She was alive.

  ‘Come on, man, don’t be a fool,’ Mulcahy shouted into the wind. ‘Don’t make it any worse for yourself. Let her down. It’s not too late.’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ Rinn screamed at him. ‘Shut up or I’ll drop her. It’ll be on your conscience, not mine.’

  Mulcahy risked one more step forward, but even that was a step too far. Screaming at him again, Rinn let go of the rope. As it ran through his hands, Siobhan plummeted with sickening speed. Then, just as quickly, Rinn jerked the rope to a stop again, the thump of the abrupt halt eliciting a long, low groan of pain from above. Mulcahy froze as a shower of blood spattered down around them.

  ‘Okay, Sean, I’m stopped, see,’ Mulcahy said to him, as calm as he could despite the fear clawing at his brain, desperate to find something to say to make Rinn keep hold of that rope. ‘I’m just trying to help you do the right thing here. I know you didn’t mean to kill that girl, Paula. And you don’t want to do that to Siobhan up there, either. She didn’t do anything to deserve this, did she?’

  ‘Deserve it?’ Rinn roared. ‘She’s the worst whore of them all, wearing the sign of Christ’s sacrifice round her neck even as she spews her filth to all and sundry. I told her, I told them all that God would not be mocked. But did anyone listen? Well, they’ll listen now—’

  Something in Mulcahy’s face must have betrayed him, a flicker of his eye, perhaps, because Rinn suddenly whirled around then and saw Cassidy, advancing towards him from the top of the steps on the other side of the platform.

  ‘Stay back or she dies,’ Rinn howled, his eyes ping-ponging from Cassidy to Mulcahy, all but popping out from panic. Mulcahy knew he wouldn’t have such a strong chance again, and he lunged towards him. But he wasn’t fast enough to cover the ground. Rinn let go of the rope and ran.

  For Mulcahy there was never any question: he was always going for the rope and not the man. The rush of its terrible burden falling, the shriek of the line streaking through the belay filled his ears. But his mind saw himself catching it, and his hand closed round something thin and hard and pliable, and he felt his palm scorched raw and his wrist snap back with a vicious crack. The force of it almost ripped his arm from its socket – but he had it. He had her. Both hands now. And through the pain he was holding on, and Cassidy was beside him, telling him that he, too, had a hold on it, and if they just paid it out slowly together they could lower Siobhan safely the last few feet to the ground.

  It was all a blur to Mulcahy. His wrist kept shooting fusillades of pain up his arm and his shoulder felt like it had been torn apart. As the wooden cross finally touched the ground they laid it out as gently as they could until it settled flat on its back with a soft thud. Siobhan was in an awful mess, far beyond anywhere he could reach her, from the shock and the loss of blood, moaning and whimpering but still, just, alive. He went to try and lift her to him, to comfort her somehow, but Cassidy held him back, pointing to the ropes binding her wrists and ankles to the cross, and to the crude iron nails driven through her palms and the arches of her feet. He took off his jacket and covered her as best he could. On the wind, just then, they both heard the distant clunk of a van door closing and looked up together.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ Cassidy said, phone in his hand, already dialling. ‘I made sure that van’s going nowhere, and back up should be here any minute.’

  But Mulcahy’s head was addled by pain and full of a black rage. He stood up and stumbled towards the steps, all his focus now on the van and the murderous madman inside it, who was still trying to get the engine to turn over. As he ran down each step another jolt of pain rasped through him like a bandsaw. He could hear a low wail of sirens and see the blue scatter of emergency lights through the trees, but he had to be the one who got there first. He was the one enflamed by righteous anger now. He was the one determined to exact revenge.

  It was only when he reached the van that he realised he was in no condition to act as anyone’s avenging angel. Lightheaded already, when he pulled the handle on the driver’s door a crippling torrent of agony flamed back up his arm and into his shoulder. Still behind the wheel of the van, Rinn was leaning away from him, desperately pulling something from the glovebox and at the same time kicking out with all the might in his legs. The van door shot out and smacked Mulcahy square on the chest and chin, sending him sprawling backwards on the grass. Lying there, everything became clearer and slower as a fresh agony pulsed from his shoulder into every individual nerve-cell in his body.

  He saw Rinn jump from the van and loom above him, a gun cradled in his hands – a rust-mottled ancient old Webley revolver that must’ve been his grandfather’s – a look of maniacal triumph on his face, screaming the Lord’s Prayer at him.

  ‘Our Father, who art in heaven,

  hallowed be Thy name…’

  The long barrel was aimed right at Mulcahy’s eyes, and he couldn’t even raise an arm to shield himself.

  ‘Thy Kingdom come…’

  Instinctively Mulcahy tried to roll away from him but couldn’t and then, like a vision from above, he saw a dark shadow rushing up behind Rinn. It was Cassidy, with something big and black and glinting in his hand – it looked for all the world like a big metal cross – and he was swinging it.

  ‘Thy Will be done…’

  The last thing Mulcahy saw was Rinn going down like a dynamited chimney, the last sounds a sickening crunch of skull, the song of sirens and the screech of brakes and Cassidy cursing above him.

  ‘Jesus Christ almighty, some gobshites just can’t leave well enough alone.’

  Epilogue

  Mulcahy lay back in the stern of Seaspray, his wrist cast resting on a cushion, his left shoulder tight, snug and comparatively pain-free in the compression brace he’d been wearing every day for the best part of a fortnight. A dislocated shoulder, torn ligaments and a radial fracture of the wrist should really have cost him a lot more pain, he thought, but most of the repair work had been done while he was under sedation, and they’d got him up and out of hospital the following day. Now, so long as he was careful not to move suddenly and kept taking the anti-inflammatories, the worst he suffered was the occasional vicious twinge. Despite the threat of torturous physio to come, as far as he was concerned his injuries looked a lot worse than they actually were. Even beneath the baggiest T-shirt he could find, the Kevlar-like brace and wrist restraints made him look like an extra from a sci-fi movie – a fact that hadn’t escaped his shipmate for the day.

  ‘Ahoy, Robocop, get that down your neck and maybe then you’ll loosen up enough to show me how to get this yoke moving,’ Liam Ford said, handing him another Bud and sitting down so heavily the keel threatened to break water on the port side.

  Mulcahy let a disdainful grunt be his answer to that. There was no way they could take the boat out. He couldn’t so much as man the rudder with this brace on, and Ford wouldn’t know one end of a boat from the other. But, even tied up at the marina in Dun Laoghaire, just lying there in the cool air, with the sun on his face and a cold beer in his one useful hand, was enough for him. He closed his eyes and let the heat and alcohol lull him away until a curse, a rustle of newspaper and Ford’s booming Cork basso forced him back to consciousness.

  ‘I see your woman’s been at it again,’ he said, pointing at the wide red banner splashed across the top of the Sunday Herald’s front page. MY CRUCIFIXION HELL, PART II by Siobhan Fallon, with a photograph to match. Not that it was the main story any more, two weeks on: that honour going to some politician who’d been snapped snorting coke in a Leeson Street nightclub. ‘Jaysus, will she ever shut up about it, do you think?’

  �
�Not until they’ve milked every last drop from it,’ Mulcahy said, smiling at Ford’s pathetic effort to wind him up.

  He’d already read the piece, as well as her first instalment the week before, and thought it was pretty good overall. How she’d done it from her hospital bed was beyond him. She must’ve had to dictate it to someone, he guessed. And although it was all hyped up too much for his taste, it was amazingly atmospheric. Oddly enough, though, both of Siobhan’s articles, and the rest of the Herald’s coverage, were comparatively restrained by the standards of the rest of the press, who had proceeded to fall upon Rinn like a pack of ravenous wolves. Especially when word came back from on high that it was unlikely Rinn would ever see the inside of a courtroom, as he’d been sectioned within hours of his arrest and was now detained indefinitely at the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum. His court-appointed counsel had already indicated that any attempt by the DPP to take the case to trial would be met with a motion to declare Rinn unfit to stand. And the consensus of opinion on that was that it would almost certainly be upheld, not least when Interpol enquiries regarding the years he’d spent teaching abroad revealed a long history of schizophrenia and abuse.

  Thus unconstrained by any judicial threat of contempt, the press had gone to town on Rinn – by way of the butchers. Every unearthable fact of his life was pulled out, torn apart and pontificated upon by as many half-cocked pundits as had opinions to peddle. No one seemed even to notice, let alone care, that Emmet Byrne had been released, his reputation intact, or that Catriona Plunkett and Shauna Gleeson, Rinn’s two surviving victims, were both still fighting for their lives in hospital. A couple of papers had given them a paragraph or two but the rest just trampled right over them in the easy stampede to heap judgement on Rinn.