by John Brady
“God,” Immaculata sighed, and she let out a deep breath. “So many. So many.”
“Sister—”
“—Mary,” she said, meeting his eye, and smiling. “Come on now.”
“Look,” he said. “I never imagined I’d be in this position. But here I am, sitting here, having to issue a warning to a goodliving, decent person like yourself.” “A warning. For me?”
“I have to caution you against getting in the way of the law.”
“In the way? Do you mean obstruction?”
“I don’t want to be talking like that,” he said. “I want to sort this out as ordinary people, you and me. A chat. Give and take.”
She pursed her lips and looked away.
“So tell me something now,” he said. “Not about the antics out there now. Something else. Something about Padraig Larkin.” Her look came back, sharpened into a stare.
“Padraig was gay,” he said. “Am I right?”
“I don’t know that.”
“But it occurred to you.” She seemed to be weighing a response.
“Is that an important issue?” she asked, finally.
“It could be. But if I don’t know about it, then it gets to be important.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know…”
“A lot of distressed people like you see here can be mixed up, confused. Some damage themselves too in that regard, the choices they’ve made, or not made. The things they let happen because they didn’t know what to do, or who to turn to.”
She paused.
“And I hardly need to tell you about the other matter. What’s coming out now?” “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.” She spoke slowly.
“A lot of these men have been abused. Are you following me now?”
“I think so,” he said. “Sexually, you’re saying?”
“That too. And if it’s done to you, you do it to others. The cycle?”
“I’ve heard that said all right.”
“You’re thinking, my God, what would an old broken-down nun know about such matters. Aren’t you?”
His eye was now drawn to how the cross and chain shifted slightly each time she tugged at her polo neck.
“Broken down?”
She released a cautious smile. Minogue examined his hands. “So Davey McArdle is gay then,” he said. Her frown returned.
“Well why is Seánie Walshe yelling about AIDS?” he asked her.
“Seánie yells about everything,” she said. “Sooner or later.”
“There’s nothing to it?”
“Even if there were, should I be telling a policeman the confidential health records of one of these poor men here? Even if I knew them?”
Minogue squinted at her.
“You would use your judgment, I hope. And then I think you’d tell me what was needed to find who murdered Padraig Larkin. That sound about right?”
For once, he felt he had her on the run. It didn’t last. “Judgment,” she murmured. She smiled. “I’ll tell you something now about that word. May I? I went to Africa as a missionary nun. You probably know this?”
“I had heard.”
“All fired up, I was. That’s the Holy Spirit for you: ‘You’re going to Africa, Mary – on the Missions!’ And that was that. Did you have black babies in your schooldays?”
“No actual babies. Just the collection boxes.”
“I was going to Africa to save people, you see,” she went on.
“To rescue them. I’m not ashamed to admit I used to think that way, either. I had already judged them, hadn’t I. They were all the one in my mind a, ‘them’ or ‘those people.’ Oh sure, I learned all about the different languages, and the tribes, and the history. Do you see what I mean about judgement?”
“Maybe like the Chinese sailor on shore leave in Dublin.”
“What Chinese sailor? I don’t get what you mean.”
“Someone shoves a microphone at him, asks him what he thinks of these Irish people. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ says he. ‘These Irish all look the same to me.’”
The sight of her buckling with laughter made him imagine her from before her nun life. A bit of a tomboy, he’d wager. Close to her father, probably.
“You’re a bit of a rogue,” she said.
“Well if I am, we’re well met, I’m thinking.”
“Where was I? Ah yes, a young nun, a farmer’s daughter from Annaghyduff. The one who knew everything. Well there I was, in Africa. I was teaching – I was even building the school, for the love of God. Me with my bricks and my plaster, my spirit level… Oh such craic we had! But it didn’t strike me that I had things upside down until one day. One of the women there, her husband came home. I had never even known him. I thought he was another shiftless fella who ditched his family, and headed off to the sheebeens along the roads there. Brothels – that’s what they are. But he tottered into the village, and he sat down outside this house. Not a penny had he sent home to his family all the time he was away. All he brought home was disease. But do you know what happened?” Minogue shook his head.
“He was brought into the house, that’s what. And there he stayed until the day he went to meet his maker. He was bathed, and fed, and taken care of. He couldn’t do a stroke of work of course, he could barely get to his feet. That was the start of the
AIDS thing, that’s how it came to us what was happening. And now look?”
“A calamity, to be sure.” Her eyes took on a new intensity.
“Not one of them judged him. Not one said a bad word to him, or about him. They took him in, and that was that. And here I was, thinking what I would teach these people? Little did I know that God has His own plans! He had asked these people to go on a mission to me and the rest of us here in this part of the world. You see? I had to go there so they could fulfill their mission! That’s the mystery of His ways – right there.”
She was waiting for some sign that he approved, or at least heard, her message.
“You know what the future will be?” she went on. “It’ll be those same Africans coming here on the missions to us. Like our monks in the old days, our island of saints and scholars, rescuing people from darkness. Full circle! Now do you see?”
“We’re a bit short these days in the saints and scholars line, I have to say.”
The fervor in her eyes dimmed a little at his words, but it soon returned.
“It’s on the missions I learned – I really learned – that it’s not our job to judge. We’re not called to run the universe. Just to do what we can.”
It was not easy to meet her eyes, but it was something he had to do.
“It’s the law decides,” he said. “No law means no society. We do what we can.”
To his dismay, she seemed to enjoy this prospect of an argument. She sat back.
“Well this I do know,” she said. “Society doesn’t mean much to these men. And as for the law, well the law is a blunt instrument in their lives. Some have been done wrong by the agents of the law. Can you see that?”
“I don’t want to add to their problems,” he said. “But I have to wonder if those two lads – those two in particular – know more than shows up in their statements.”
“Is it their fault that the Guards didn’t talk to them right? The ones who did those interviews, as you call them? Is it their own fault that they were frightened of them?”
“Frightened,” he repeated. “Aren’t you gilding the lily a bit there?”
“Look,” she began. “When you have been inside their heads and seen…”
She let the rest of her words go unsaid, but they seemed to hover somewhere between them. He spoke slowly and deliberately.
“No mention in any statement of the possibility that Padraig Larkin might be gay. Not one. Not from the lads out there, and not from you. That strikes me as odd.”
She was blinking now. He wondered if she were really lost for words.
“Nobody tried t
o conceal anything,” she said. “If that’s what you’re saying.” He gave her a long, cool look.
“Maybe it was out of some notion of decency? But it was a bad idea.”
“I can’t just abandon them,” she said, her voice hardening.
“Was I asking you to?”
She sat back and placed her palms on the table, ready to rise.
“Fine,” she said, and drew in a breath. “You’ll do what you want, I daresay.”
***
Minutes into his interview with McArdle, Minogue had enough. He put his pencil slowly and carefully on his notebook, and he looked over at Immaculata.
“Can we have a chat outside,” he said.
“I’m going with you,” McArdle said to her.
“You stay here, Davey. We’ll be back in a minute.”
Minogue waited by the door, as far as he could get from McArdle. There was a sickly sweetness to the smell coming from him, like stale talcum powder, but charged with a medicinal smell that hinted at something he didn’t want to know, or think about.
Immaculata closed the office door. She was in no hurry to meet Minogue’s glare.
“This isn’t working,” he said. “He’s leaving you to do the talking for him.”
“But he has a hard time putting things into words.”
“It didn’t sound like that earlier.”
“Nerves. He knows you’re a Guard.”
“You have to let him try.”
She said nothing. He heard someone complain about the television station being changed. That Emer character was watching him again. Emer of the jigsaw skull.
“Is he high?” he asked. “There’s a smell of something.”
“High? I can’t be sure. But have a go with him, instead of waiting.”
“If he was arrested and held over, he’d sober up, I think. Do you?”
“Arrested?” she snapped. “Don’t be stupid.” Her eyes went wide and she took a step back, and her hand went to her mouth.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know where that one came from.”
Minogue didn’t put any effort into trying to hold back his grin.
“You’re not the first one to say that.”
“I am shocked,” she said.
The door opening behind shook her out of her embarrassment.
“Can I go now?”
“Sit down, Davey,” she said.
“I smell cooking. What is it?”
“That’s for later,” she said. “You had your sandwich, Davey.”
“I don’t want to miss it,” he said. “It’s shepherd’s pie. Isn’t it?”
“I forget, Davey. I’m distracted.”
“Shepherd’s pie,” he said.
“You’ll get your shepherd’s pie,” Minogue said. “But later on, after our chat.”
“I don’t like you. You’re a Guard. And I don’t like Guards.” Minogue thought again of the strange shape to McArdle’s head, the tall forehead that was surely mismatched on one side. He exchanged a look with Immaculata.
“Here’s my plan,” he said. “We’ll continue our chat over a cup of tea.”
“I had my tea. I don’t want any more tea now. No.”
“It doesn’t have to be tea. We’ll go somewhere, get a cup of something nice.”
“Go somewhere? Where will we go?”
“A drive,” Minogue said. “We’ll go for a little drive.”
“To the Garda station?”
“No. No Garda station. We’ll find a nice place.”
McArdle glanced at Immaculata and then at Minogue.
“You’re trying to cod me. I don’t like you. You Guards are all bastards.”
“Davey,” said Sister Immaculata.
“Would Sister be coming too?”
Minogue eyed her, wondering if she sensed he was mulling the hard option again.
“If she likes,” he answered finally. “I’ll get the car and bring it up outside.”
It was a relief to be out standing by his car. He let the cold air pour into his open coat. But even with a cigarette going, he was sure that stink had followed him out. Still no word yet from Malone. Was he dragging his heels? Malone answered on the second ring.
“Where are you?” he said. “Under a hairdryer?”
“I’m standing outside the drop-in centre. It’s windy. Tell me what you have.”
“Those two patrol fellas, that were at the scene first?”
“First tell me you found there’s a gay scene out here in the Park.”
“How badly do you want there to be one? ’Cause that’s not what I’m getting.”
“Nothing, is it? Violence against them? Gay-bashing?”
“Nothing showing, boss. Really. Want me to phone around the stations?”
Minogue considered it for a moment.
“Okay,” he said. “Park it down the list a bit. How about JJ Mac, any word?”
“His answering thing is full. I’m working through his contacts. There’s a woman Mary…wait: Mary O’Toole. She used to be with him. He gets fierce jumpy, she says. What’s jumpy, I says. Apparently he downs tools and just hits the road every now and then. ‘When things don’t go his way,’ says she.”
“What didn’t go his way?”
“She has no clue. She’s on the outs with him a good long while. He was big into the music scene and all, but it’s a while back, that stuff. She’s not bitter now, she says. But she had to walk. ‘Being an adult gets to him sometimes.’”
“That sounds bitter to me.”
“Yeah, well. He’s an only son – only child actually. Let me see, I got the names of pubs he likes, a few fellas he hangs around with.”
“And?”
“And? And we need more staff. But that’s just my opinion.”
“Thanks. Drop it in a Powerpoint for me will you? I’ll forward it to somebody.”
“So are we ready to put in a find with the coppers in Amsterdam?”
Minogue didn’t answer for a moment.
“Or hold fire on him for now?” Malone went on. “Like, what’s the deal with him? I’m not getting it yet. What is he? Druggie? Gobshite? Suspect?”
“For now he’s a gap,” said Minogue in place of an answer. “Keep trying with McCarthy’s contacts. Maybe they’ll know where he stays, or hides, or whatever he’s doing. I’ll be here awhile yet. I want to check something here, something about a cemetery.”
“A cemetery. A graveyard, like?”
“Right. There could be something from one of Larkin’s cronies here, carry-on up in some cemetery. I’m taking him out for a drive, see if he can show me the place.” “I’m missing all the fun. Again.”
“You’d like to be dealing with headcases and nuns – at the one time?”
“Too good to miss, boss. Is that oul nun walking all over you again?”
“Walking, I don’t know. Maybe she has the steering wheel, and won’t let go.”
The door to the drop-in opened. Minogue watched McArdle edge out, his eyes narrowing in the breeze. Immaculata had a purple knit scarf wrapped high up to her chin.
She had spotted him right away. Minogue began to retrace his steps toward the car. He had taken considerable care to arrange the old blanket that he kept in the boot on the passenger seat where he’d be sitting McArdle.
“So I’m heading out now,” he said to Malone. “With this McArdle character, and Sister Immaculata. The Horse Whisperer.”
“What? What horse?”
“Go-between, translator – whatever. I’ll tell you later.”
Chapter 17
After McArdle got his belt fastened, Minogue checked the edges of the blanket again. No way would he permit any gap between that blanket and the upholstery.
He drove with his window open a quarter way. He had no qualms about the cold air whooshing into the back seat on Immaculata. His glances to the rearview mirror avoided any eye-contact. He geared down for the climb up Hill Road toward the quarry. McArdle was
still half-turned toward the door panel, staring out the window like a child.