by John Brady
“I decided to phone you about one hour ago. It was after a visit I paid to a house earlier this evening. I had already come across something odd at a Garda station in Dalkey. But it was the visit to that house that has me on the phone to you now.”
“Odd,” she said, with what he thought could be a mock sympathy.
“Those gaps I’m trying to fill in,” he said. “Someone else has been trying to do the self-same job already. Did you know that?”
“Other police – other Guards – you mean?”
“Yes of course, but someone else too. A person…well, let’s say he had a chequered past. But the main thing is that it appears he knew Padraig a long time ago.”
His words seemed to have stifled hers. He gave it a count of five before resuming.
“It’s not clear at all,” he said. “But he was trying to find out more about Padraig.” “Who is he?”
“Let’s hold off on that for the moment, if you please.”
“Well, what is he telling you then?”
“He’s not telling me anything, I’m afraid. Nothing directly, at any rate.”
“You’re falling back on some police technique here, are you? Offer some information, and then take it away?”
“Hardly. He went missing, that’s why. But he was found yesterday.”
Something sounded at her end, like a pen falling on the notepad again.
“‘Found?’” she asked. “Does that mean…?”
“You’re right,” he said. He took his time now, as he had planned for this stage.
“Yes. He’s dead. And yes, it’s looking like he was murdered.”
Chapter 31
It was a gasp he had heard all right. He imagined Orna Larkin sitting suddenly upright, her eyes wide with fright. “I’m going to tell you his name now,” he said. “Why? Because there’s a chance that you know him. McCarthy. Joseph, or Joey, McCarthy. Do you know him?” Her reply was barely audible. “Yes.”
“I wondered if you would.”
“Yes,” she repeated, in a murmur. “He’d be the one.”
“The one. What one?”
“The family. His mother, is she…?”
“She’s in hospital. She collapsed when she was given the news.”
“She’s a great age by now. Catherine.”
“She is that. You knew her too, then?”
“And she has a country accent. She had.” Minogue prepared to put out his cigarette.
“Catherine’d say ‘praties,’” she murmured, swallowing. “So we’d say it too. Mother didn’t like that. Papa, I think he liked it but he didn’t let on. He was different that way.”
Minogue was close to losing this thread, but he didn’t want to interrupt.
“It was strange really, because they were both from the country, my parents.” Her accent was softening more.
“But Mother didn’t want that to be so, so apparent. We did elocution lessons, can you imagine? Do you know what elocution is?”
“‘The splendor falls on castle walls –’”
“‘– And snowy summits old in story.’”
She took over as he had hoped. A warmth came into her voice as she recited.
“‘The long light shakes across the lakes,’”
“‘And the wild cataract leaps in glory.’”
“You’re good,” he said. “Not the best I’ve heard, but good.”
“But, how – why – would you know it too?”
“The Christian Bothers wanted to knock some civilization into us, I suppose.”
He realized that he no longer expected her to hang up.
“Just about the worst poem in the world,” he said. “Don’t you think?”
The caution had returned to her voice.
“But it stays with you,” she said. “That’s something, I suppose.”
“Fond memories?” he asked.
She made to say something but held back.
“You were saying,” he tried now. “About Mrs. McCarthy?”
“She worked for us for a number of years.”
“After Father Peter left, was it?”
“You don’t let go, do you?”
Her sudden lurch back to prickly surprised him.
“I should have known. I let down my guard a little and this is what happens.” He decided to push on.
“As I understand, it was after he left the parish. Correct me on that, by all means.” She sighed in exasperation.
“It was after, of course it was after. And you knew this before you ever brought up the subject, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t. But I had heard that Joey McCarthy was brought over to a family so that he could mix with the kids there, people with a good way of life. To keep him out of trouble, I suppose. Role models?”
“He was at the house a fair bit, I remember.”
“Friends with Padraig?”
“No. He was foisted on Padraig. Padraig resented it too. Papa was behind it, I think. He was trying to help out that family a bit.”
“Your father would have known that Mrs. McCarthy was let go from the parish house there, wouldn’t he? Father Peter, and that?”
“He would, I daresay.”
Sparks from the cigarette came out from under his shoe as he ground it underfoot.
“A bit sudden, wasn’t it,” he said quietly. “Father Peter going away like that?”
The tension was suddenly back in her voice.
“Was it? I don’t know how those things work.”
“A diocesan priest is gone on the missions almost the next day after saying mass in his local parish? It is very odd. Do you recall that time?”
“No. Not really. I was a child, remember.”
“Do you remember Father Peter, your uncle I should say?” She did not reply right away.
“Why are you asking me about him?”
“I’m trying to get a better picture.”
“A better picture of what? Of whom?”
“I want to see if something happened that has a bearing on how Padraig lived.”
The silence now was calculated. He began a countdown to the line going dead.
“You know more than you’re letting on,” she said at last. “A lot more. And you’re using that, to see if I say something that doesn’t jibe.”
“I only wish that were the case,” he said.
“That’s very candid, I have to say. But it does you no credit.”
“I think you deserve candour, Ms. Larkin. I think we all do actually. It has been in short supply here for too long.” “You’re daring me to say something, aren’t you?” He opted for silence.
“You know about my parents, my family. So you’ll have all the dirt already then. Why not admit it?”
“It’s not the case at all. I’m not out to dig dirt.”
“But you know about Father Peter. That man. So why keep on pretending here?”
“I phoned you in the hopes that you’d fill in some gaps—”
“—Gaps? Of course. You have a job to do, don’t you.” It was the first time he heard bitterness in her voice. “You know well why I’d never set foot in Ireland again after Mother died. You know damned well.”
“Actually I don’t. But I think I’d like to, if you’re willing to tell me.”
“Do you think I wanted to be the one to do what I did? That I chose to take it on? Look, I’m not that kind of person, I admit it. My father and mother were – charitable, decent people. Good living people. But you’ll never see me in a church, Catholic or otherwise. Never. No, I’m not anywhere near as good as a person as either of them.”
“You’re being fierce hard on yourself. But I know that you took care of Padraig when he lived in London there.”
“While my mother and father were alive, I did – but that was all. When we buried Mother, that was it. I told Padraig there and then, that I’d see to it that Mother and Papa’s wishes were kept with an allowance. But that was it. You cannot reason with a person on drugs. I tr
ied it – many times I tried it. Nothing good came of it in the end.” “You tried to persuade him to…?”
“Oh don’t tell me you didn’t know it now,” she bristled. “Come on.”
“I doubt it.”
“My mother was an alcoholic, for God’s sakes. There – the words you want to hear. I’ll even say them again for you. Yes, an alcoholic. So now you can check that off on your list, as ‘confirmed’ or whatever you write.”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“Oh isn’t it? Look, you don’t have to be a PhD here to see the connection. You’ve said it yourself. You dropped enough hints anyway.”
“I am completely at sea here. I—”
“Do you think Ireland is all postcards and bogs and fiddle music, nice green fields? ‘The Little People’? Is that what they still believe back there?”
“Some probably, because they don’t want to know what goes on here.”
“And do you know what depression is? Why my mother drank?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know any of this.”
“Well all right, then – I could maybe believe that for now anyway. After all, why would you? Why would anybody, really. It might have been the best-kept secret ever in Dun Laoghaire – in Ireland itself maybe. My father did everything. And that’s why we had Catherine Mac come in as a mother’s help. My mother got to a stage where she couldn’t function. It’d last for months on end. ‘Nerves.’ Can you imagine? It was post-traumatic stress and depression rolled into one. That’s what it was. I know that now. But why was she like that, I wondered.” Minogue was not sure which tack he should take. “Things run in families,” he tried. “They’re finding out more these days, aren’t they. Genes and that…?” He heard her give out an exasperated breath. “Genes. Ah yes: genes.”
She hadn’t tried to mute the sarcasm.
“And to think,” she went on, but in a tone so soft that it took Minogue by surprise. “To think, that the fondest wish a family could have was to see a son go into the priesthood.”
“Father Peter you mean?”
“Yes, Father Peter.”
“But I read he was well-liked and everything, very dynamic. Sports and so forth, with the youth?”
“You think,” she began, but her words trailed off.
“Anything you can offer us,” he said, quietly. “Anything.”
“Clare,” she murmured then. “County Clare.”
“That’s the place,” he said.
“You miss it?”
“There are times. But I didn’t get to choose back then.”
“So tell me, when did you see the Cliffs of Moher last?” He took the unlit cigarette from his mouth.
“Years ago. I’m no tourist.”
“Really?”
“That’s how things have gone here,” he said. “So I abstain.”
“Fanore then? The beach?”
“Funny you mention it. I went in for a dip there only last July. Not an edifying sight, I should tell you.”
“As cold as ever, was it?”
Her accent had slipped completely now.
“Cold as a landlord’s heart. As cold as charity, my mother’d say.”
“It has dangerous tides of course – they wouldn’t change.”
“You know Fanore then.”
“We went in the summers,” she said. “Before things went wrong.”
He did not recognize the quiet sounds that were coming at intervals from her end.
“I want to ask you,” he said. “But I don’t think I should.”
“There were always seals,” she said. She was sobbing now. “And I thought, well this was some kind of magic, a sort of miracle even, how they’d come in to see us, and they’d look at us, as though they had something to tell us, or that I could tell them things and they wouldn’t…they wouldn’t tell others….” He lighted his cigarette, and listened to her muffled sobs. “They still come in,” he said then. “I’ve seen dolphins there too.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I am, really.”
The sobs were being replaced by sniffs. He took a long pull from the cigarette.
“Yes, they’re still there,” he said. “Not the same ones maybe. But who’s to know? Come on back and see for yourself. I’ll drive you, if you like.”
She spoke a stifled voice, pausing once to swallow.
“Tell them you did well. Tell your superiors, your boss.”
He bit back hard on a curt retort.
“It doesn’t sound like that to me,” he managed. “Can we talk again maybe?”
“I don’t know. If I have a choice, I won’t.”
“People are depending on you,” he said.
She sighed. He could not tell if she was angry.
“Listen to me,” she said. “The past? There’s no ‘past.’ I understand that. I don’t like it, in fact I hate it, but I accept it. It has taken me a long, long time. I am trained as a scientist, and that was my saving. Papa saw to that, he got me out. And I know it broke his heart. He had terrible things to do, and he deserved none of this any more than Mother did. If I had stayed, I would have been destroyed too, like Mother. Can you see that?”
“I’m working in the dark here,” he said. “I’m only making guesses.”
“You kept up your faith, did you? You’re Catholic, I’m guessing.”
“Well it’s like they say about the Irish atheist, maybe. He doesn’t believe in God, but he’s still afraid of Him.”
“Ah yes. The Devil then?”
“Not keen on him either. He gets the thumbs-down, during the daylight anyway.”
“I don’t believe in God either, but can you understand it if I say that I still believe in the Devil?”
“You could make a fierce good case for that lately, I’m thinking.”
“My mother died of shame,” she said flatly. “Do you understand that?”
“I’m not sure I do. For what happened with Padraig, you mean?”
“No, no. Something happened to her when she was young. She would never tell, and she refused to talk to anyone ever about it.”
Minogue looked through the smoke settling in layers under the light.
“And over the years I have come to decide…to believe, I suppose…that what happened to her, was the same as happened to Padraig. The same thing that almost happened to me.”
Again he waited, fighting back hard against the surge of impatience. He sensed then that she was absenting herself from this, that it was over.
“Would you be willing to put a name on this? A term, I mean.”
“There are no names that work,” she said. “No terms. They can’t describe it.” “Father Peter?”
In the quiet that was to follow her reply, he still held the mobile to his ear. The remorse came at him with unexpected force. He had brought it back to her. She had said it herself: made her live through it again. He swore quietly and squeezed the casing on his phone harder, half-hoping it would fly apart. Had the drink pushed words onto his tongue, made him dig in and push hard at her? It didn’t matter now, did it.
So she had not been clearly angry then, when her hand had wandered over the button and she has pressed it. He thought of her sitting there, staring into space perhaps, replaying the past. She was an educated person, a woman who had carved out a decent life over there. Surely she had known this had to come about?
Her flat tone had signaled the end to the conversation even before he heard that last, short sentence from her, a sentence she repeated in a voice that he had been barely able to hear. He took a small mouthful of beer. It had a metallic taste now. He did not repeat her words again in his mind as he had done several times already. This time he murmured them aloud. “‘My brother wasn’t the only one.’”
Chapter 32
Minogue was awake before the alarm. He had resigned himself to sleeplessness around three, when it seemed to him that any effort to still his thoughts would only backfire. “Rough night? And you were late enough
to bed too.” Kathleen’s eyes caught light from the display, and glistened.
“I was awake anyway,” she added.