Now and Then, Amen

by Jon Cleary

“Anything specific?”

  All at once she looked tired, ready to break. She put down her glass and the whisky splashed on her housecoat. Malone, as so often, felt the sudden hatred of his job. He was continually bruising people, most of them innocent, as if the law compelled him to carry his bunched fist ready to hit them. He was not concerned with justice, that came later from other, supposedly better-educated people; but on the way to justice the law (and society) sometimes expected too much of men like himself and Clements. He glanced at Clements and saw that the big man had turned his head away and was staring out at the distant water.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Hourigan—” In normal circumstances, he guessed, she would not bruise easily, if at all. Today, however, she had lost a child, her only one, and she had abruptly realized the depth of her loss.

  Then she drew herself together; it was a visible effort. “Why don’t you ask my brother?” she said spitefully. “The Archbishop has always had great regard for specifics. His sermons are full of them.”

  “We’ll do that. But we may have to come back . . .”

  She nodded and stood up, swaying a little. The Italian houseman hurried forward and took her arm. “The signorina will have to lie down. Could you please see yourselves out, signori?”

  They went slowly out of the room, he now with his arm round her, she with her head on his shoulder. Malone looked at Clements and the latter raised his thick, untidy eyebrows.

  “Is that what servants are for?” said Clements softly.

  “Why not?” said Malone. “You miss out on a lot in an egalitarian society.”

  “Egalitarian? You been reading the Times on Sunday again?”

  The shallow joke camouflaged the pity they felt for the woman. It was not something they could confess to each other.

  II

  They drove back to the city under a now bright blue sky, against the Sunday morning traffic heading for a last day on the beaches before the weather turned cold. A convoy of three battered cars cruised by them, surfboards strapped to the roofs, fins sticking up like those of cruising sharks. At Brookvale the crowd was already arriving for today’s rugby league matches, going into the ground with their club scarves and beanies and flags, like hordes of squires ready to set up the battlefield for their knights.

  “Who do you think will win today? I’ve got twenty bucks on Manly.”

  “Russ, is there anything you won’t bet on?”

  “I’ve never bet on the outcome of a case,” said Clements, looking sideways at him. “You thinking of betting on this one?”

  “With the Pope as the Archbishop’s trainer? But I think we’ll go and have another look at his form.”

  When they reached the Hourigan mansion they had to go through a repeat routine. “It’s Inspector Malone again. I’d like to see the Archbishop.”

  The intercom crackled with disapproval. “Have you got an appointment with His Grace?”

  “Just tell him I want to go to confession.”

  There was another wait of a minute or two, then there was the buzz and the gates opened. The housekeeper was waiting for them at the front door, looking as unwelcoming as the first time. Malone had a moment of fantasy in which he saw her as one of the guard dogs, a Doberman with an Irish bark.

  “What has a policeman got to confess?” she demanded.

  “Where’s your sense of humour, Maggie?”

  “Mrs. Kelly, from you. And I keep me sense of humour to meself.” And she would, like a family secret.

  She led them this time not into the big drawing-room but into a library only slightly smaller. Or perhaps it was an office: on side tables stood a word processor, a computer, a copying machine and a wire basket full of documents. But books lined the walls to the high ceiling and the titles there were as eclectic as the pieces out in the drawing-room. Fingal Hourigan sat behind a magnificent antique desk at which nothing less than a major armistice of war should have been signed. Or a papal bull.

  Archbishop Hourigan sat beside the desk in a high-backed chair designed for the hierarchy, either ecclesiastic or commercial. Malone and Clements were motioned towards two lesser chairs. Malone had the sudden feeling that he was in an annexe of the Vatican, that at any moment the Swiss Guards might appear on the terrace outside the big french doors.

  “Have you come to tell us you’ve found the person who murdered Mary Magdalene?”

  “No, Your Grace. We’re not much more informed than when we left here a couple of hours ago. Except that we’ve found out she was your niece. And your granddaughter, Mr. Hourigan.”

  Father and son looked at each other. There was sudden pain in the Archbishop’s face, but his father’s had no expression at all. Then Kerry Hourigan said, his voice unexpectedly hoarse, “I suppose we should have told you that. But we were trying to protect my sister.”

  “Oh? In what way?”

  The Archbishop waved a hand: not helplessly but uncertainly. “I really don’t know. It was instinctive. My father doesn’t like publicity . . .”

  “You’ve had plenty of publicity, Your Grace. This past month you’ve been on TV, in the newspapers . . . How do you feel about that, Mr. Hourigan?”

  Fingal was still showing no expression. “If it helps the Church, I have no objection. My son is a public figure.”

  So are you, mate. “Your daughter also doesn’t like publicity.”

  “So I’m told,” said Fingal, but didn’t say who had told him.

  Malone looked again at the Archbishop, who now seemed to have regained some of his composure. “Why did you tell us earlier that you didn’t know her?”

  “I really don’t know. I suppose I was just so shocked by the news. It was stupid—”

  “Yes, damned stupid,” said Malone, feeling that for the moment he was in command here. But out of the corner of his eye he could see Fingal Hourigan, who would never let any situation get away from him. “I understand you and Sister Mary didn’t agree on certain Church matters?”

  “They were generational differences.”

  “What exactly do you do at the Vatican? I’ve forgotten what the papers said.”

  “I’m the Director of the Department for the Defence Against Subversive Religions.”

  “Subversive religions being communism, things like that?”

  “Not only communism. The new Islamic fundamentalism. Certain other religions.” He had the smug certainty of someone who had got the word direct from Jesus Christ. Malone, a live-and-let-live Christian, the sort who turned the other cheek out of laziness, felt the intolerance he always felt when other people sounded intolerant. But maybe the others were more aware of the dangers . . . “There are enemies, Inspector.”

  “Sergeant Clements is a Congregationalist—or was. Would he be part of the enemy?”

  The Archbishop glanced at Clements, smiled, raised a hand as if he were about to bless him. “I’m sure the Congregationalists aren’t subversive, Mr. Clements. Do they still exist?” His arrogance was going to be a handicap when he got to Heaven, but nobody has proved Heaven is full of humble citizens.

  “Was Sister Mary subversive?” said Malone.

  “Yes,” said her uncle emphatically. If he and his father felt any grief over her death it had been rapidly submerged.

  “Did she disagree with anyone else besides you?”

  “She would have disagreed with Jesus Christ himself,” said Fingal. He had the look and sound of a man who would have done the same himself, as an equal. “She was looking for trouble.”

  “Jesus Christ!” said Clements, but only Malone heard him.

  “So she might have made some enemies?”

  “You can be sure of that,” said Fingal, taking over from his son.

  “In Nicaragua, maybe?”

  “Possibly. There could be some Nicaraguans here. The country’s full of people from everywhere these days.” He had been in Australia long enough to consider all late-comers as foreigners. He had the same antipathy towards the Aboriginal Australians, who
were too foreign for him to understand. “Why don’t you look there, amongst the Latin Americans?”

  “We’ll do that,” said Malone. “Were you ever in Nicaragua, Your Grace?”

  The Archbishop nodded after a moment’s hesitation. “Some years ago, before the Sandinista Government took over.”

  “And not since then?”

  Again there was a slight hesitation, as if he were checking his memory, then he said, “No.”

  Malone looked at both of them, father and son. “So you have no idea who might have killed her?”

  Archbishop Hourigan looked shocked, or tried to look that way. “Did you really expect us to? Good God, man, we don’t know murderers!”

  I wonder what mortal sins you’ve heard in the confessional? But Malone didn’t ask that question. Whoever had killed Sister Mary Magdalene wouldn’t be the sort to ask for absolution.

  “No, I suppose not. It’s never as easy as that—I mean for us police. Oh, your sister left us before—”

  “You’ve been to see her?” said Fingal.

  “Of course. Didn’t you expect us to?” The look on the old man’s face told Malone he had scored a point, but he didn’t press it. He went on: “We didn’t have time to tell her the body is in the City Morgue. Mother Brendan, from the convent, was going to claim it, but she didn’t know Sister Mary Magdalene was a Hourigan.”

  “She was never that,” said Fingal Hourigan.

  “Oh yes, she was,” Kerry Hourigan told him. “She took Brigid’s name by deed poll when she came home three months ago. I guess she hadn’t told them that at the convent.”

  The expression on the old man’s face suggested that Teresa Hourigan had introduced AIDS into the family instead of just herself. He stood up and without a word walked out of the room, the silver walking-stick thumping once on the tiled floor of the entrance hall like a rifle shot.

  “You must forgive my father,” said the Archbishop, pressing a button on the desk; somewhere at the back of the house a bell rang. “He is a man of strong feelings.”

  “He’ll have plenty of practice with them,” said Malone as he and Clements rose. “I’m sure we’ll be back to test them.”

  Mrs. Kelly, all a-glower, swept them out of the house. “You had no right coming here! They are decent gentlemen, both of them!”

  “Maggie,” said Malone quietly and kindly, “haven’t they told you? Mr. Hourigan’s granddaughter, the Archbishop’s niece, has been murdered.”

  “Holy Mother of God!” She was suddenly flattened, turned to a cardboard figure in the frame of the big doorway. Then she frowned, as if she hadn’t heard right. “Who?”

  “The young nun who came here yesterday. It was yesterday, wasn’t it?”

  She blessed herself, mouth trembling in a silent prayer. “Yes. She came several times . . .”

  “Maggie!”

  Fingal Hourigan stood behind her, a small figure of towering rage. The silver stick quivered like a lightning bolt; for a moment it looked as if he might strike the housekeeper. Then, abruptly, there as an amazing change. The rage disappeared, gone as if a mask had been whipped off him; he smiled at Malone, tapped the floor with the stick as if seeking some rhythm. Mrs. Kelly looked over her shoulder at him: she was unafraid of his temper.

  “Someone around here should be praying for her, yes,” she said and pushed past him and disappeared into the house.

  Malone looked directly at Fingal Hourigan. “It would seem that someone around here isn’t telling the truth.”

  Hourigan smiled; but it was a challenge, not a friendly expression. “The truth is a dangerous weapon, Inspector. It should be prohibited by law. Good-day to you.”

  He shut the door in Malone’s face.

  III

  Malone made it home in time that evening to go to six o’clock Mass with Lisa and the children. He sat in a back pew of the Sacred Heart Church in Randwick and listened to Father Joannes, the parish priest, drone on with all the old platitudes that were now brassy with usage. He came from the old school of priests and politicians who taught that everything had to be said thrice, as if the sinners and voters were criminally slow on the uptake. He believed in fear of the Lord and not love of Him. He was followed by a trio twanging guitars and singing a pop hymn whose words were as banal and meaningless as those heard on Countdown. Malone sat and wondered what he was doing here in this gathering, which, except for the guitars, might have been the same sort of service his mother had come to fifty years ago. He found himself wondering what Sister Mary Magdalene, the rebel, had thought of it all, she with the mud and misery of Nicaragua on her Ferragamo shoes. If, indeed, she had worn any shoes at all in that racked country.

  Going home Lisa said, “A bad day? You really look down in the dumps.”

  “I always am when I have to work on Sundays.”

  “Weren’t they terrific hymns?” said Maureen, the rock video fan. “They make Mass interesting.”

  “Jesus,” said Malone quietly.

  “Are you swearing?” said Tom.

  “No, I was praying. Who wants to go to McDonald’s for supper?”

  “I’d rather go to Prunier’s,” said Claire, who read the social columns of the Sun-Herald.

  Malone looked at her. One day she would be beautiful and would probably be featured in the Sun-Herald herself; by then, he knew, he would have half-lost her to another man. “Let’s settle for McDonald’s tonight.”

  They all agreed to, including Lisa, the Dutch gourmet. “Well, at least I shan’t have to cook,” she said defensively. “I’m like you, I don’t like working on Sundays.”

  The meal was the best spot of the day for Malone. He munched on his Big Mac and looked at his family and compared it to the Hourigans. We’re happy, he thought, and what more can I offer them? Maybe dinner at Prunier’s or Berowra Waters, but he was sure happiness wasn’t an item on the menu at those restaurants.

  They drove home and the children were put to bed. Then he and Lisa settled down to finish off the weekend papers. But first Lisa said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He knew what she meant. After fourteen years of marriage nothing had to be spelled out between them, not unless they were arguing and wanted to be defensive. They were compatible, but in the best of ways, by not being too alike. She had a natural patience; he had had to learn to wear his. Being a Celt, he had not been born a listener, but he had learned to be that, too; being Dutch, coming from the crossroads of so much historical trade, she listened to the bid before she made her counter-bid. Invariably she always left him with the feeling that he had lost all their arguments.

  Tonight there was no argument. “I’ve got a young nun, murdered, and two-thirds of her family don’t seem to care a damn.”

  “Who’s the one-third who does care?”

  “Her mother.” He explained the circumstances of the case. “Old Man Hourigan doesn’t worry me—he seems to be just a self-centred rich old bastard. But the Archbishop . . . I could have been telling him Martin Luther was dead, for all he seemed to care.”

  “Do you think archbishops are so much different from other men?”

  “They’re expected to be. A little more charity and compassion . . .”

  “You expect too much of people.”

  “When did you become so cynical?”

  “I’m not. It just hurts me to see you lose your illusions.”

  “They were lost years ago, even before I met you.”

  She shook her head, leaned across and kissed him. “You’re wrong. They’re like your sun cancers—I don’t think you’ll ever get rid of them.”

  Then the phone rang out in the hallway. She got up, went out and came back a moment later looking concerned. “It’s for you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  Malone got up, hoping this wasn’t another call to duty, went out and picked up the phone. “This is Inspector Malone. Who’s that?”

  “It doesn’t matter who I am, Ins
pector.” The man’s voice was soft, with a faint accent. “We’ll probably never meet. For your sake, I hope not. Take heed of my warning, Inspector—” The formality of the words brought a small grin to Malone’s face, though he knew the man did not mean to sound humorous. “It will be better for all concerned if you let the Sister Mary Magdalene case just rest. Let it die quietly.”

  “Thank you for the warning, Mr.—?”

  “No names, Inspector.” One could almost see the man smiling at the other end of the line.

  “Righto, no names. But no deal, either. I don’t drop murder cases, warning or no warning.”

  There was a moment’s silence; then: “You will regret your attitude, Inspector. Good-night.”

  The phone went dead in Malone’s ear. He replaced the receiver and stood staring at the wall in front of him. It was not the first threat he had received; he could be afraid but not alarmed. When such threats were made he thought not of himself but of his family: they would suffer more than he, even if, or especially if, he were killed. But no archbishop would go that far . . . Then he wondered why he had instantly connected Archbishop Hourigan with the threatening stranger.

  He went back into the living-room. This was home, his harbour: he felt safe here. The house, an old-fashioned one with gabled roof and decorated eaves, had been built at the turn of the century when houses had been built to last and tradesmen had taken pride in their work. It had survived the climate, termites, burglars, mortgages and the Malone kids. The Malones had bought it cheaply, because of its rundown condition, and Lisa had lovingly restored it. It was no castle, but it was a fort against the woes of the world, political doorknockers, Avon ladies and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  But even now, at nine-thirty on a Sunday evening, there was a knock at the door. “Don’t answer it,” said Lisa.

  He looked at her, curious at the fear in her voice: she was not normally like this. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know,” she said lamely. “I just feel . . . I don’t know.”

  This time there was a ring at the front door; whoever it was had found the bell. “There’s someone at the front door!” yelled Maureen, ever helpful.

  Malone walked down the hall, switched on the outside light, opened the front door but kept the chain on. Through the screen of the iron-grille security door he saw a dark-haired young man in jeans and brown tweed jacket. He carried a black motor-cyclist’s helmet in one hand, like a spare skull.