I Have Sinned

by Caimh McDonnell

  “Those are some strong numbers,” agreed Bunny.

  Gabriel nodded.

  Rosario gave him an awkward hug.

  Bunny laughed. “Contain yourself, Señorita.”

  “Oh hush,” she responded, before wagging a finger at Gabriel. “And this is all because of the thing in the paper. I told you we should do it.”

  Gabriel nodded and tried to force a smile. “Yes, yes you did.”

  Rosario blessed herself again and quickly kissed the cross around her neck. “I prayed to St Jude.”

  “Ah yeah,” said Bunny, “he’s the best one.”

  “I gotta go,” said Rosario, looking at her watch. “I’m so late!”

  She took off down the church, her heels clacking on the tiled floor.

  Bunny turned back to Gabriel. “Well, you’ve made her happier than any priest should really be making a woman.”

  His words bounced off Father Gabriel, who walked into the office and sat heavily into his chair.

  “Are you alright?” asked Bunny, following him in.

  “I…” Gabriel started. He stared at the mountain of paperwork in his in tray.

  “What?”

  Gabriel waved his hand in the air. “It doesn’t matter. Did you want to talk to me about something?”

  “Well,” said Bunny, “I figured I probably had a bollocking coming, so I thought I’d get it out of the way early.”

  “What?”

  “I wanted to apologise for earlier.”

  Gabriel furrowed his brow.

  “In the gym.”

  “Oh. Right. Yes. OK.”

  Bunny sat on the edge of the table. “Alright, what’s up?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Really? I walk in here not only expecting but probably deserving a right boot up the backside, and you don’t give me one. In the time I’ve been here, that’s the closest thing you’ve had to a hobby, so what’s up? Was it that meeting? Was the eight overgenerous?”

  “I never actually said eight. All I—”

  They were interrupted by the sound of running feet in the church. “Father G! Father G!” It was Emilio.

  Gabriel and Bunny rushed out of the office. The quip on Bunny’s lips died when he saw Emilio, his gait painfully awkward as his scurried forward, his working arm holding the limp one. “F… Father.”

  “It’s alright, Emilio. We’re here. We’re here.”

  The boy came to a stop in front of them, sweating profusely. Bunny putting his hand out to steady him.

  “I was w… w… w… sta… started walking home. We… Trey…” His face contorted as the words he wanted wouldn’t spill forth.

  Gabriel reached out and placed his hands on his shoulders. “Emilio, it’s OK. Take a deep breath. Relax. Whatever it is, we can fix it.”

  Bunny nodded agreement. “’Tis OK. Take your time.”

  Emilio took a moment to gather himself, gulping in air before continuing. “It’s T… Trey.”

  Despite what he’d just said, Father Gabriel tightened his grip on Emilio’s shoulders and involuntarily shook him. “Trey? Is Trey OK?”

  Emilio’s expression of consternation became more pronounced as his frustration built. “He’s O… O… OK. He’s OK. P… P… P…”

  Such was Father Gabriel’s concern, he broke the rule of what you should never do to someone with a stammer. “Pocket?”

  Emilio nodded his head, grateful. Then, a thought striking him, he reached into his jeans and fished out his phone. He held it up to Father Gabriel, who read it and then closed his eyes and hung his head.

  “What is it?” asked Bunny.

  “Pocket,” said Gabriel. “He’s been shot.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Father Gabriel pushed through the swing doors, Bunny, Emilio and Rosario following in his wake. He knew his way around St Martin’s Hospital – sadly all too well. They had caught Rosario before she’d driven off and then they’d all squeezed into her Ford Fiesta. It had taken them a painfully long time to determine which hospital Pocket was in – Trey wasn’t answering his phone – but eventually one of Father Gabriel’s hospital contacts had given them the information. They’d had to calm Rosario down as she drove, so that they didn’t end up as patients themselves.

  All the way over, Gabriel’s mind raced in other directions. As he’d walked back from the meeting with Abraham, the choice had seemed simple: he had to run. Pick up his things and leave the parish. Disappear off the face of the Earth. It was the only way to protect those he loved. Abraham would never stop and anyone near him was a target now.

  Then Pocket and Trey… It was always the way with Coopersville: whatever plan you had, the random, senseless violence laid waste to all in its path.

  Gabriel got to the reception desk of the ER and saw Nurse O’Mara. She seemed to work every night shift here, as far as Gabriel could see. She gave him a grim nod, born from the familiarity between two people who only see each other in the worst of circumstances.

  “Nurse, do you have a John Darnold here?”

  Technically, information could only be given to family, but Father Gabriel was known and exceptions made. She nodded grimly. “GSW to the chest and another in the leg. They rushed him into surgery about an hour ago. It’s…” She glanced at the three people standing behind Gabriel. “It’s not great, Father.”

  Gabriel nodded. “His brother is here somewhere?”

  “Yes, there’s a lot of them…” Her voice carried an undercurrent of disapproval. “They’re up in waiting room three. We could do with less of them being here.” A light flashed on a board behind her, indicating that someone needed assistance elsewhere. “You’ll have to excuse me.”

  The nurse headed down the hall and Father Gabriel hurried in the opposite direction.

  “It’s just up here,” said Gabriel.

  As they rounded the corner, they nearly banged into a group of three men. It looked like the elder was giving his two young associates instructions. They all wore the New Bloods colours of red and black. The two younger men were not much more than boys when you looked closely, barely older than Emilio. One was overweight, with a goatee, and the other tall, wearing a baseball cap that shadowed most of his face. The eldest wore gold earrings in both ears and his body language displayed that he was the clear alpha of the group.

  Gabriel went to step around them towards the door to waiting room three, but the alpha stepped into his path.

  “This room is private.”

  Gabriel looked up at the man, who had a good eight inches in height advantage on him. He wore designer shades and, closer now, Gabriel could see the angry whirl of damaged skin that ran from the front of the man’s neck up to his right cheek; scarring left by previous damage that had never fully healed.

  Gabriel could sense Bunny tense behind him, and he raised his hand to still any action he might be tempted to take.

  “I wish to speak to Trey. I am his and John’s parish priest.”

  “I know who you are. It’s family only.”

  Gabriel spoke calmly. “You are not his family.”

  The man straightened himself up. “We all family. Pocket is our brother. His bro is our bro.”

  The other men nodded.

  “I see. What was their mother’s name?”

  “What?”

  “If you are family to these two boys, you should know their mother’s name.”

  “What’s that got to—”

  “She died almost three years ago – cancer. Her anniversary is Saturday, as it happens. I conducted the funeral mass.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I am their priest and I am going into that room to see Trey. The only way you can stop me is through force. How do you think that will go?”

  The two men stood there in a frozen tableau for several moments before the younger took a step to the side. “Fine. I’ll allow it. Only you though.”

  “You can—” Bunny was silenced by Gabriel turning
to him and shaking his head. “It’s fine.”

  Bunny mumbled something beneath his breath, but he took a step back.

  Gabriel turned to the heavyset younger man. “And James, your grandmother’s hip is getting worse. You should visit her.”

  The kid nodded mutely.

  Gabriel put his hand on the door and then paused, looking up at the man who had stepped aside. “Karen. Her name was Karen. She was a very nice lady.”

  He looked away, as if Gabriel no longer existed in his world.

  Gabriel went through the door.

  It was the same as every waiting room in every hospital he had ever been in: the same nondescript furnishing, neutral paint and bland artwork which only had the function of filling a space on a wall. Members of the New Bloods sat around, talking quietly in twos and threes or just staring at their phones. Trey sat in the corner with a man Gabriel recognised as Ben “Ice” Redmond, the gang’s leader. He had his arm wrapped around Trey’s shoulders, talking softly into his ear.

  Gabriel walked across and bent down in front of Trey. His face had a blank, almost numb, look to it that Gabriel recognised as the disbelief of the young when reality came crashing down around their ears. “Are you OK, Trey?”

  Trey nodded.

  “We came as soon as we heard. Have the doctors spoken to you?”

  “Yeah, uh… a lady spoke to me. Said the bullet in his chest passed near his spine, so they gotta look at that and then, the other one in the leg, it hit near an artery and they gonna do something with that too.”

  Gabriel nodded. “This doctor, was it a lady called Doctor Chen?”

  Trey nodded again.

  “That’s good. She is superb at her job. John is in the best hands possible.”

  “He better be,” said Ice.

  Gabriel glanced at him and then returned his attention to Trey. “How are you holding up, son?”

  Trey shrugged.

  “If you want, we can clear everyone else out and just you and I can wait here for news.”

  “’Scuse me?” said Ice, a note of indignation in his voice.

  Gabriel ignored him. “Sometimes a bit of space is a good thing when dealing with these things.”

  Ice tightened his arm around Trey’s shoulder, pulling him closer to him. “Pocket is my right hand, and his brother is my brother.”

  Gabriel tried to keep the irritation from his voice. “Trey is not in your world.”

  “You all in my world.”

  Gabriel dipped his head lower, to push himself into Trey’s eyeline. “How about we go down to the chaplaincy? Emilio is outside in the hall; Rosario and Brother McGarry too. We could all go down and pray for John?”

  Ice leaned forward. “You’d be better praying for the fools who shot him. They the ones who gonna die.”

  This was met with a murmur of assent from around the room. Ice stood, forcing Gabriel to shift backwards. “Thanks for dropping by, Father, but Trey cool hanging with us.”

  Gabriel stood upright and looked directly into Ice’s eyes. As he did so, he was aware of a shift in the body language of the others in the room. “I have no interest in your wars and neither does this boy.”

  “Who do you think you are? Coming in here making demands, disrespecting me?”

  “I have no interest in you. Just this boy and his brother.”

  “It’s alright, Father,” said Trey. “Honestly, I’ll be OK. You head home.”

  “No, I’m staying here with you.”

  Trey stood. “Please, just go. Alright? Go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Gabriel opened his mouth to protest.

  “Go. Please.”

  He bit his lip in frustration. “You have your phone?”

  Trey nodded.

  “Call me any time, day or night. I don’t mind.”

  “OK.”

  “And… where are you going to stay?”

  “We got that,” said Ice.

  “No, you don’t. The boy is under sixteen and he needs to stay with a designated adult.”

  “It’s cool,” interjected Trey, before Ice could say anything. “I’ll crash at Emilio’s.”

  Gabriel paused for a moment and then nodded. He was out of moves.

  “OK then. Call any time.”

  Trey nodded. “Yeah, I got it.”

  Ice patted him on the shoulder and guided Trey back down to the chair. “We got this. Be seeing you, Father.”

  With one last look at Trey, who was back to staring at the floor, Gabriel turned and exited the room.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Bunny’s eyes opened; he knew this sensation. He was not what you would call a morning person, but sometimes he awoke instantly alert. It did not happen without reason, though. It was a peculiarity of the Bunny McGarry physiology that he could sleep through anything and yet sometimes be awoken by the slightest of sounds. It used to drive his old partner Gringo demented way back in the day. So much so that, to prove a point, Gringo had once broken into Bunny’s house “in the name of science”, as he’d grandly put it. This experiment had resulted in Gringo getting a proper wallop in the kisser, which even he admitted afterwards had been richly deserved. Bunny hadn’t known who he was punching when the blow landed, but he didn’t regret it once he realised that Gringo had been acting the maggot.

  What so annoyed Gringo was that Bunny seemed capable of sleeping through ludicrously loud things – even snoozing on when an actual brass band passed them while they were on an unofficial stake-out. He was also capable of sleeping through his own percussive and occasionally downright explosive farts, which was the bit that really annoyed Gringo. And yet if Gringo attempted to pinch a biscuit out of the emergency pack of chocolate Hobnobs that Bunny kept in the glove compartment, he would instantly wake up. Through some evolutionary quirk, there appeared to be a part of Bunny’s brain that stood sentry, processing background noise while the rest of him slept, deciding what did and didn’t warrant waking him up. Bunny himself didn’t understand it, but he had learned to trust it, which was why he lay there, unmoving – wondering what had triggered his sudden awakening.

  It had not been a good night. They had returned from the hospital with Father Gabriel in a foul mood. From all Bunny had seen over the last week, the man genuinely cared about every single kid who passed through the doors of St Theresa’s, but it was inevitable that he’d become closer to some than others. Trey was a special kid, as were Emilio and Bianca, and whatever had happened in that waiting room had wounded the priest. Gabriel had said almost nothing on the drive home, but from what little Rosario’s questioning had gleaned, he’d gathered that Trey had sent him away. Bad enough that the poor lad’s brother was touch and go to make it, now it seemed that Gabriel wasn’t able to reach him. As soon as they’d returned, Gabriel had said he had paperwork to catch up on and locked himself away in the office.

  Bunny had gone to help with the evening’s training sessions in the gym. The kids had been full of talk about the latest developments in the gang war between Los Diablos Rojos and the New Bloods. The shooting of Pocket was front-page news; it seemed he was the power behind Ice’s throne and there would be a reckoning. Bunny had done what he could to move the kids away from the topic. Bianca had been unusually quiet – clearly worried about her friend. She and Emilio had both been texting Trey but got little response.

  When training had finished, Bunny had heated some of the food Rosario insisted on making them and delivered a plate of it to Gabriel in the office. He had found the priest sitting drumming his fingers on the table.

  “The poor lad is in a lot of pain,” said Bunny. “I wouldn’t take it personally.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t. I just… I’ve seen this before. These kids can go one of two ways in this situation. If they let it out, if they talk about it, it can be handled. But if they bottle it up…” Gabriel looked up at the ceiling as if searching for inspiration. “They bottle it up and it comes out somehow – never in a good way.”
>
  Bunny nodded. He’d dealt with enough young men back in Dublin to know the truth of what Gabriel was saying. It was hard to watch a kid you thought you’d reached slip away from you. Bunny could sympathise, not that it would do any good. Father Gabriel was a closed book. Every time Bunny attempted to engage with him, he shut down.

  After that, Bunny had read for a while and then drifted off to sleep. The mattress in the storeroom wasn’t exactly palatial, but he’d had worse. At some point, he was dimly aware of Father Gabriel passing through into his bedroom on the far side of the room.

  According to the radio alarm clock that Bunny had rescued from a box of junk, it was 3:12am. Mind you, it was permanently stuck on a station that played nothing but eighties hair rock, so it couldn’t be one hundred per cent trusted. Bunny didn’t know why he was awake, but he was willing to bet there was a reason. He did a quick self-assessment. He didn’t need to pee, which meant…

  All those years ago when Gringo had got a proper thump, he had been trying to sneak into Bunny’s bedroom to leave him a sarcastic note. Gringo had sworn blind he hadn’t made any noise. While Bunny had pretended otherwise at the time, he’d believed him. To whatever little sentry stood guard in his mind, the most alarming sound was the entire absence of it. The kind of absence created by somebody deliberately attempting to not be heard. Bunny lay there unmoving and watched through lidded eyes while the figure in black moved silently across the room. It wasn’t Father Gabriel, not unless he had taken to wearing a balaclava to go for a pee. The intruder slowly and deliberately opened the door to Gabriel’s room, the hinges offering only the slightest of squeaks. As the figure slipped inside, Bunny silently rose from his bed and grabbed the item he had stashed under it. The other great peculiarity of the Bunny McGarry beast was how unnervingly quiet it could be when required.

  As Bunny’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see the figure standing in the doorway more clearly. He guessed male, from the gait. The only source of light was a red Sacred Heart cruciform bulb on the far wall. The bed was all of six feet away, and in it lay the slumbering form of Father Gabriel, entirely oblivious. The intruder stood there, looking down at him for a moment. Just as he was taking a step forward, he stopped, as cold steel was pressed against his back.