Broken Angels (Katie Maguire)

by Masterton, Graham

  Father Lenihan shook two photographs out of a manila envelope and handed them over. ‘This one – this small one here – that’s your most recent. That was taken at a family christening three weeks ago. The larger one – Brendan’s not so clear in this one, but that’s him standing in the background with the cap on.’

  Katie examined the photographs closely. Brendan Doody looked about five feet six or seven, podgy, with scruffy caramel-coloured hair that he had probably cut himself, and protruding ears. He had an expression that was both eager to please and slightly bewildered, as if he were excited by the events in which he was participating, but didn’t quite know how to join in.

  ‘Thanks a million, father,’ said Katie. ‘These two pictures will be grand. We’ll probably be putting at least one of them out on the TV news tonight. Meanwhile, if you can think of anything else at all that might help us to find him.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Father Lenihan. ‘But you’ve read his letter, haven’t you, and you can tell for yourself that he was always quite a queer fellow. With us in body, as it were, but not...’ and he tapped his forehead with his fingertip. ‘Not entirely, anyhow.’

  They shook Father Lenihan’s hand and walked back down the steps of St Patrick’s. As they did so, Katie looked across the river and saw the white shirt that had earlier been flying over the rooftops lying spreadeagled in the filthy geay water, its arms rising and falling in a sinuous mockery of a dance.

  They climbed back into the car and slammed the doors. ‘What do you think to that then, ma’am?’ asked Detective O’Donovan.

  ‘What makes you think I think anything?’

  ‘Because it’s plain bloody obvious that you do. You’ve got that look in your eye. That famous look that O’Driscoll calls your “cat’s malogian meter”.’

  They backed out of the parking space in front of St Patrick’s. Father Lenihan was still watching from the top of the church steps with his hands clasped.

  ‘He was lying through his teeth,’ said Katie.

  ‘Father Lenihan? Name of Jesus, he’s a reverend!’

  ‘So what? You don’t seriously think that reverends ever lie? All that codswallop about Brendan Doody whispering about Father Heaney being a demon, and how he was going to be sorry one day.’

  ‘You didn’t believe that?’

  Katie shook her head. ‘Not for a second. And you could tell how uncomfortable Father Lenihan felt, saying it. But – somebody further up the diocesan food chain told him he had to say it, or words to that effect. Otherwise – think about it – there would be no witnesses at all who heard Brendan threaten Father Heaney before his murder.’

  ‘Brendan didn’t call him “Father Heaney”, though, did he? He called him “Skelly”.’

  ‘Nice touch, that, I thought. It made his threat sound all the more authentic, because if Father Heaney had abused him at school, that’s what Brendan would have called him. Anybody who went to St Joseph’s would have known who “Skelly” was. I’ll bet you still remember your schoolteachers’ nicknames, don’t you, even today?’

  Detective O’Donovan thought about that as they waited at the traffic lights to cross back over the river. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Father Duckfart. I don’t even remember his real name now, but I’ll never forget the noise he used to make, walking along the corridor. Some of the bold boys use to throw breadcrumbs after him.’

  15

  Katie went up to the media office and handed over the two photographs of Brendan Doody so that they could be sent to the RTÉ TV studios for the evening’s six o’clock news bulletin, and then to the newspapers: the Examiner and the Corkman and the Southern Star in Skibbereen. She was just about to go back out again when Sergeant O’Rourke tilted his head out of the squad-room door and called out, ‘Phone for you, ma’am!’

  ‘Whoever it is, tell them that I’m somewhere else altogether, because I very nearly am.’

  ‘It’s personal, apparently. Aoife’s father.’

  Aoife’s father. Aoife, of course, was John’s collie bitch. Katie stopped with her hand against the door. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then she turned around and walked back. Sergeant O’Rourke was trying hard not to smile at her as he passed her the receiver.

  ‘John,’ she breathed.

  ‘Caught you at last! I’ve been trying all morning. You haven’t been answering your mobile.’

  ‘Not to you, no. I’ve been up to my ears. We’re right in the middle of this Father Heaney murder. I’m just about to go back up to Ballyhooly.’

  ‘Katie... do you think we could talk?’

  ‘What about? There’s nothing more to say, is there? Whatever we feel about each other, you’re going and I’m staying, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Please. I have some ideas. Maybe we can work something out.’

  ‘What, like alternate weekends? California one week and Cork the next?’

  ‘Katie – please, just hear me out. Is there any chance I can meet you this evening?’

  Katie’s instincts said, no, this is going to mean nothing but more arguing and nothing but more pain. But she checked her wristwatch and said, ‘I’m having supper with my father at seven. Why don’t you come round then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to impose on him.’

  ‘You won’t be. He loves company and Mrs Walsh always cooks far too much. I can’t guarantee what she’s going to be serving us up tonight, but if you’re prepared to take pot luck...’

  ‘Sure. I’ll eat almost anything, you know me. Except please, please, please – not that tripe again, that stuff that she boils in milk.’

  Katie hesitated. She knew that this was a terrible idea, but she was already missing John badly. Just to see him and to touch him would make her feel that she wasn’t completely on her own again. And maybe there was an outside chance that they could work out some way of staying together. Maybe she could talk to some of her contacts and find him a job here in Cork, although she knew that most of the major companies were shedding more and more staff every day. Two entire factories had closed last week, for good, Z-Line Electronics and Pargeter’s Foods. But then again, maybe John could run his business completely online.

  Detective O’Donovan came out of the gents’ toilet, shaking his hands. ‘Bloody dryer’s bust again. Are we ready?’

  Katie nodded.

  ‘This is getting up your nose, this case, isn’t it?’ Detective O’Donovan asked her, as they crossed the car park.

  ‘It helps when your witnesses tell the truth, at least to the best of their ability.’

  ‘My father used to say that he wouldn’t trust a priest to peel a turnip.’

  ‘I’m beginning to agree with him.’

  They drove up to Ballyhooly under a blue sky filled with tumbling white clouds. On the way they passed the driveway that sloped up to the Meagher farm at Knocknadeenly and Katie saw that there was already a sign outside it: FOR SALE, Christy Buckley Auctioneers. Detective O’Donovan saw it, too, but he made no comment.

  Patrick O’Donovan had a fair idea of what was happening in Katie’s life, as did everybody else at Anglesea Street, but mostly they respected her privacy and kept it to themselves. At least John was an improvement on her late husband, Paul, who had been a notorious local chancer. The number of times they had turned a blind eye to Paul’s dealings in building materials of doubtful provenance, and to all of those cases of Johnnie Walker that he had offered at half price in the back bar of the Flying Bottle in Hollyhill, no questions asked.

  Margaret Rooney lived in a small, cream-painted house on Ballyhooly’s Main Street, with its red front door right on the road. Detective O’Donovan knocked and inside a dog started yapping. He knocked again and at last the door was unlocked. A vexed-looking woman appeared, with close-together eyes and lips that looked as if they had been tightly sewn together, like a shrunken head.

  ‘Yes, what do you want?’ she snapped, holding up hands that were dusted in flour. ‘Can’t you see that I’m
baking?’

  Detective O’Donovan leaned across and smiled at her, holding up his badge. ‘Remember me from yesterday, Margaret? Detective O’Donovan. I brought my boss to talk to you about that fat fellow you saw in the river.’

  Katie held up her badge, too, and said, ‘Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire, Mrs Rooney.’

  Mrs Rooney frowned at them irritably. ‘I thought I’d told you people everything you wanted to know.’

  ‘Well, yes, you did,’ said Katie. ‘But we have some pictures now, and I was hoping that you’d be kind enough to take a look at them for me.’

  ‘Pictures, is it?’

  Katie held them up. ‘We think they could be the man you saw in the river, but we really need to know for sure.’

  Without a word, Mrs Rooney opened the front door wider and flapped her floury hand to indicate that they should follow her into her living room. Her dog was a brindled Boston terrier with bulging eyes and it jumped up and barked at them furiously as they came in, scratching at Katie’s shiny new boots with its claws. About as hospitable as your mistress, thought Katie, you little bush pig.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Mrs Rooney, going through to the kitchen to wash her hands. ‘You won’t be wanting any tea, will you?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Katie told her. She and Detective O’Donovan wedged themselves side by side in a high-sided two-seater couch, while Mrs Rooney came back in and perched herself in her armchair, surrounded by balls of fawn-coloured wool and knitting patterns.

  The living room was so small that their knees almost touched, and the claustrophobic effect was intensified by all the decorative china plates and religious plaques that crowded the walls. Mrs Rooney’s dog kept circling around and around, snuffling and bumping them and stepping on their feet. There was a strong smell of burned milk, which reminded Katie of her grandmother’s house.

  ‘About what time was it when you saw the man in the river?’ asked Katie.

  ‘I wouldn’t know exactly, like, I don’t have a watch. But I’d say about five past seven. When I was walking past Michael Sullivan’s house on the corner I saw Michael pulling open his bedroom curtains, and I know that he always gets up at seven.’

  ‘So you were crossing the bridge, and that’s when you first caught sight of this man?’

  ‘I would never have seen him at all if Micky hadn’t stopped and barked at him. It was so misty like, you couldn’t see further than the other side of Grindell’s farm, where the lane comes down to the river. That’s where the fellow’s van was parked with its doors open. It was black, the van, or maybe dark blue. I told Micky to come away but then I saw the fellow himself and he was all hunched over with his back to me, like, and he was dragging what I thought was a sack of coal.’

  ‘Did you call out to him?’

  ‘Why would I? I didn’t know then that he was dragging a dead priest after him, did I?’ She made a shivery noise and crossed herself. ‘If he hadn’t been wearing that hat, I would have walked on and thought nothing at all about it, but that hat made me stop and stare at him, like.’

  ‘Oh, yes – that pointed hat that you told Detective O’Donovan about.’

  Mrs Rooney said, ‘That’s right. Just like the dunce’s cap they used to make us wear in high babies, whenever we got our sums wrong.’

  ‘Detective O’Donovan tells me you caught a glimpse of his face.’

  Mrs Rooney pursed her sewn-together lips and nodded. ‘Yes – but only for an instant, mind. Like I told your man here, he was a big fellow, and he was fat, but in a sweet-looking way, if you know what I mean. There’s a painting of a whole bunch of angels and cherubs in St Patrick’s in Fermoy, and that’s what he reminded me of. A cherub.’

  Katie took out the photograph of Brendan Doody at the christening, and passed it across to her. ‘Do you recognize this man here – the one with the circle drawn around him?’

  Mrs Rooney put on her rimless spectacles and peered at the photograph as intently as if she were trying to burn a hole in it. ‘No. I don’t know this fellow at all.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Never saw him before. Never.’

  ‘He’s not the man with the pointed hat you saw in the river?’

  ‘No. That fellow was much bigger.’

  Katie passed her the second photograph. ‘How about him?’

  Mrs Rooney looked at her impatiently. ‘This fellow is the same fellow as this fellow. But neither this fellow nor this fellow is the same fellow as the fellow I saw in the river.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll send a sketch artist up to see you, and you can describe your cherub to her. Will you do that for me? I can’t tell you how important your evidence is, Margaret. You’re the only witness we have so far. You’re the only person who actually knows that the murderer looks like.’

  ‘But what about this fellow?’ asked Mrs Rooney, handing back the photographs of Brendan Doody. ‘What’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘Him?’ said Katie. ‘I wish to God I knew.’

  Mrs Rooney picked up her dog and stood looking at Katie for a long time, as if she were going to come out and say something deeply profound. Eventually she reached out and touched Katie’s hair. ‘You’re too pretty to be chasing after murderers, girl. You should be chasing after a husband instead.’

  For the first time in a very long time, Katie felt her cheeks blush hot.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I will so, when I get the time.’

  16

  The Grey Mullet Man bent down and picked up Father Quinlan, with his arms and his legs dangling like Christ being lifted down from the cross, and lowered him naked into the deep, empty bathtub.

  Father Quinlan was aware of the chilly enamel walls all around him, but no matter how furiously he blinked his eyes he could see nothing but a milky-white fog, and his ears felt as if they had been packed with creaking wads of cotton wool.

  He couldn’t think where he was, or what he was supposed to be doing here. He was juddering with cold, but when he tried to wrap his aching arms around himself to warm himself up, he could feel the chicken-like skin that hung around his stomach and he realized that he had no clothes on.

  Was this real? Was he awake, or was he dreaming it all? He could hear a choir singing ‘Credo in unum Deum’ from Mozart’s mass in C minor, so perhaps he had inadvertently fallen asleep in church. But he wouldn’t be naked in church, would he, not unless he was dreaming? Perhaps he was dead. That was it. Perhaps his body was lying in a chilly back room at Jerh O’Connor’s funeral directors, ready for embalming, and the singing was nothing more than mood music from the showroom, to console his grieving relatives.

  Perhaps he was both – dead and dreaming. Did the dead dream? Was that possible?

  But – ‘How are you feeling now, father?’ asked the Grey Mullet Man, in his softer, more conciliatory voice. ‘Still woozy, I hope, for your own sake.’

  ‘Where am I?’ he whispered. ‘Am I dead?’

  ‘Not dead yet, father, but you’ve arrived at end of the line. The place where all sinners eventually end up. You’ve admitted your wrongdoings, and here you are, all ready to pay the price for them.’

  ‘Price? What price?’

  ‘Come now, father, you always knew that you would have to pay for your sins, didn’t you? You didn’t think that all you had to do was confess to what you did, and say how heartily sorry you were, and forty-nine Hail Marys, and that would be the end of it, amen?’

  Father Quinlan strained his eyes and through the fog he could dimly make out the shadows of the Grey Mullet Man, with his dark circular eyeholes and his pointed hat.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘Whatever you’re going to do to me, you could at least tell me your name.’

  ‘I told you my name, father. The Grey Mullet Man.’

  ‘That’s not what your parents christened you.’

  ‘No, but it tells you much more exactly who I am than the name that I was given – whoever gave it to me.’
>
  ‘I don’t follow you at all.’

  ‘Think about it, father. What does your grey mullet feed on?’

  ‘What? What are you talking about? Your grey mullet is a fish.’

  ‘Of course it’s a fish! And it feeds on sewage, father – that’s what your grey mullet feeds on!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you never stood on Patrick’s Bridge and seen all of those dozens of grey mullet crowding around the outpipe? Raw sewage, they gobble it up. Not to mention food scraps and waste diesel oil and detergents and all of the other toxic sludge that we discreetly pour into our rivers and oceans in the hope that nobody will notice. Me – I’m just like your grey mullet, only human. I feed on all varieties of filth, all manner of detritus, except that I find my filth floating around churches and schools and seminaries – wherever sanctimonious abusers like you are contaminating the clear waters of childhood innocence.’

  ‘So what are you telling me? That you really can’t bring yourself to forgive me?’ Father Quinlan’s tone of resignation was so black and despairing that it sounded almost as if he were making a joke.

  The Grey Mullet Man’s hat waggled as he shook his head. ‘No, father, to be honest with you, I cannot. Look – I’m in no position at all to say that God hasn’t forgiven you. Jesus may have forgiven you, too, for all I know, and Our Lady may have decided in Her heart that you are truly, truly sorry for what you did. But not me, not myself. Nor have any of the other boys you used for your own self-gratification and your own self-glorification – and which of those was the worse I couldn’t say, the gratification or the glorification.’

  The Grey Mullet Man paused for breath. When he spoke again, he loomed so close that Father Quinlan felt his cloth mask flapping against his cheek.

  ‘Nobody has yet coined a word horrible enough to describe what you are, father, and even if they had, I very much doubt that anybody could ever bring themselves to speak it, for fear that their tongue would be blackened and blistered forever, and they would have to have it cut out.’