Broken Angels (Katie Maguire)

by Masterton, Graham

  ‘So what’s your plan now?’ asked Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll uneasily. ‘Are you going back to Redemption Road to have a word with the good monsignor?’

  ‘Not just yet,’ said Katie. ‘The first thing I’m going to do is go round to Jimmy’s house and tell Maeve what’s happened.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘After that I want to tie up all the loose ends in this case. I’m not going to talk to Monsignor Kelly again until I’ve seen Dr Collins’s autopsy report on Father O’Gara, and got all the details on how Jimmy and Father Lowery were killed. When I do go back to Redemption Road, I want to know more about what’s going on than Monsignor Kelly does. We might think that he’s reckless, and that he’s panicking, and he may be, but he’s a very cute hoor, that one, cute as a fox. I can see him taking a chance, but only if he’s pretty sure that he can talk his way out of it.’

  She turned to Inspector Fennessy. ‘Liam – would you and Pat McFadden drive down to Clon and liaise with Inspector Pearse for me? I’d very much like to see what the technical boys come up with, and as soon as you can. Where Jimmy was shot and what he was shot with, what time of day, what these woods are like where they found him. And if the last time that Father Lowery was seen was in a taxi, find out the name of the taxi company, and who the driver was. I expect Inspector Pearse knows all of this already, but just double-check for me, would you?’

  Inspector Fennessy said, ‘Right you are, boss,’ and left. When he had gone, Katie sat down in her chair and she and Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll looked at each other in mutual sorrow.

  After a while, Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll picked up her grey metal wastepaper basket from under her desk and dropped what was left of his sandwich in it.

  She spent over an hour with Maeve O’Rourke, in her airless front parlour in Sidney Park. Maeve was a small doll of a woman with fiery cheeks and wildly fraying white hair. She sat in her armchair in her black Marks & Spencer cardigan and her green leafy-patterned dress, hugging her stomach as if she had acute indigestion and letting the tears roll over her bright red cheeks without any attempt to wipe them away.

  There was a framed photograph of Detective Sergeant O’Rourke on the sideboard next to a bowl of wrinkled apples, and on the mantelpiece stood another photograph of Jimmy and Maeve on their wedding day. Jimmy had one eye closed in his wedding picture because of the sunshine, but it looked as if he was winking.

  Maeve O’Rourke’s youngest daughter, Aileen, went next door and came back with one of their neighbours, Mrs Shand, and then the priest arrived, Father Murphy, stoop-shouldered and so ponderously bellied that he almost filled up the whole of the parlour on his own, and then two more neighbours, Mrs Monaghan and Mrs Feeney. Mrs Monaghan drew the curtains as a mark of respect and the parlour became so gloomy and crowded and there was so much sobbing that Katie at last gave Maeve O’Rourke a kiss of sympathy and promised to call her when she had more news.

  ‘You won’t be staying for a cup of tea?’ said Maeve O’Rourke, with tears still rolling down her cheeks.

  ‘Another time,’ Katie promised her.

  Outside, on the front step, a brisk wind was blowing from the south-west, and it was a relief to breathe some fresh air. From there, Katie could see Cork spread out along the River Lee, with the shadows of the clouds leaping silently over the city’s rooftops like the shadows of some long-forgotten steeplechase. She climbed into her car and pulled down the sun visor. In the vanity mirror she was surprised to see that her own eyelashes were sparkling with tears, too, but maybe it was the wind, as much as her grief.

  She drove back to headquarters, parked, and took the Elements CD out of her car. The hooded crows on the rooftops watched her walk into the main entrance, their feathers black and tatty in the wind. One of them let out a loud, abrasive caw, but the rest of them remained silent, as if they preferred to watch and wait.

  She bought a cappuccino from the coffee machine and carried it to her desk. Her bacon and egg sandwich was still there, but she didn’t feel at all hungry and she dropped it into her waste bin, along with Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll’s.

  She took the Elements CD out of its box and slid it into the Bose music player that stood on top of her filing cabinet. She played it very quietly, but all the same the high, clear voices of St Joseph’s Orphanage Choir seemed to make her whole office resonate to the same pitch as Gloria. Even the glass in the windows sang.

  She sat down and lifted a large sketchpad out of the bottom drawer of her desk. She opened it up and took a purple felt-tip pen from the mug that had been presented to her when she had graduated from Templemore. In neat block capitals, she wrote down the names FATHER HEANEY, FATHER QUINLAN, FATHER O’GARA and FATHER Ó SÚLLABHÁIN.

  Although Father ó Súllabháin was still officially ‘missing’, she was realistic enough to acknowledge that there was very little hope of them finding him alive. Even now, while she sat at her desk and wrote down his name, he was probably suffering pain beyond human understanding.

  After that she wrote down MONSIGNOR KELLY, and beside it she wrote down the names of all those people she believed were under his influence, in one way or another – FATHER LENIHAN at St Patrick’s, BRENDAN DOODY (alive or dead??), CIARA CLARE from the Catholic Recorder (sexual liaison??), BENEDICT TIERNAN, OP, at St Dominic’s Retreat.

  Next she wrote down all the answers to which she still didn’t really know the questions. The four priests had been selected to form a world-class choir at St Joseph’s Orphanage. They had been recruited to do it by some mysterious go-between called the REVEREND BIS. But who was the Reverend Bis, and whose instructions had he been following?

  The idea behind the choir seemed to be that, somehow, God would be encouraged to show Himself in some physical form or other on earth. But why would anybody want to do such a thing, even if it were possible? And was it possible? Historically, had anybody ever attempted it before? And had they ever succeeded?

  The three priests whose bodies they had found so far had all been tortured with extreme cruelty and finally castrated and garrotted. If Father Heaney’s notebooks were even partly fact and not all pornographic fantasy, Katie thought it was reasonable to assume that these killings had been done by castrated members of St Joseph’s Orphanage Choir, in revenge for what had been done to them when they were young. But who were they, these castrati, and how many of them had got together to punish the priests who had taken away their manhood?

  Monsignor Kelly appeared to be doing everything he could to hinder Katie’s investigation. He might even have ordered the murders of Father Lowery and Sergeant O’Rourke, although she had no proof whatsoever that he was responsible – not yet, anyhow. But why? What secret was he trying to suppress, if any? Then again, Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll could be right, and the only thing about him that supported her suspicions of Monsignor Kelly was the simple fact that she disliked him so much.

  Katie picked up the CD box and tugged out the little booklet inside. It explained that St Joseph’s Orphanage Choir had been formed in 1981 and disbanded in 1985. During those four years it had gained a reputation for being ‘the sweetest and most melodious of children’s choirs ever heard in Ireland or anywhere’.

  The choir’s appearances, however, had been inexplicably limited, and only ever in churches, even though they had won accolades wherever they sang. Their four choirmasters had explained that their singing was ‘for the adoration of the Lord, not for entertainment’, and that ‘too many performances would jeopardize the extreme purity of their voices’.

  They had made just one recording, at the cathedral of St Mary and St Anne – this collection of sacred songs, which had been chosen to represent the four elements of the world that God had created: fire; water; air; and earth. The original tapes had been mislaid or shelved until 2010, when they had been ‘miraculously rediscovered’ and brought out as a ‘devotional tribute’.

  Katie noticed that there was no mention in the booklet that Element
s had been released to take advantage of the recent upsurge in sales of sacred music. Ensembles such as the Priests and the Benedictine Nuns and the Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz were bringing in enormous profits.

  She had such a strong feeling that the key to these killings was here, in this recording, although she didn’t yet completely understand why. Perhaps the surviving members of the choir had seen what a commercial success Elements had become and had broken their self-imposed silence to demand a share of the royalties. Perhaps the diocese had refused to give them any, on the grounds that they were all for charity – or refused to give them as much as they felt they deserved.

  Perhaps it was nothing to do with money at all. Perhaps the recording had simply brought back all of the unbearable suffering that they had endured as young boys, and they had decided it was time to punish their four choirmasters for what they had done to them.

  However, this still didn’t explain what part Monsignor Kelly was playing in this tragedy. Katie could fully understand why he should be so anxious to suppress it. But surely the most effective way to suppress it would have been for him to help her to identify the priest killers as quickly as possible after Father Heaney was found dead, before any more of them were tortured and murdered.

  She was still frowning and doodling when Detective O’Donovan and Detective Horgan announced their arrival with a knock and a cough.

  ‘A bit of progress, I think, ma’am!’ said Detective O’Donovan, waggling his notebook triumphantly.

  ‘Thank God. I could do with a bit of progress.’

  ‘Well – you told us to check out the music supply stores on the interweb, and that’s what we did. There’s an online company in Galway that sells Gaelic harps and all kinds of accessories for harps and other musical instruments besides – John Bestwick’s Music Stores. And would you believe that one of John Bestwick’s most recent orders was for fifth-, sixth- and seventh-octave harp wire. It came from a small group called Fidelio, who you can hire to play music for you at weddings and christenings and funerals, and also at receptions.

  ‘Not only that, but Fidelio recently bought piano wire, too, in several different gauges. And here’s the clincher, they bought nylon string and beeswax for tying new reeds on to bassoons.’

  Detective Horgan said, ‘These Fidelio characters are based in Cork City, so they say. There’s an email address, but no postal address, but it tells you all about them and how to contact them if you want to have them singing at your daughter’s wedding – or garrotting your parish priest, whichever you prefer.’

  Katie ignored that last remark and said, ‘Come on, then, show me.’

  Detective Horgan leaned across her desk and used two fingertips to type out the URL. Immediately, the Fidelio website appeared, displaying a shining gold background with a heading in purple letters: Fidelio: Sacred Music for your Special Occasion. It showed a photograph of the inside of a church, with sunlight streaming in through the stained-glass windows, and three men in dark three-piece suits standing in front of it, their hands clasped over their crotches. They were heavily built men, all three of them, and in spite of their pious smiles they looked more like nightclub bouncers than choristers. A pretty young blonde girl was standing beside them, wearing a clinging pale turquoise dress and holding up a violin.

  ‘Would you credit it?’ said Katie, shaking her head. The man in the middle of the group was the biggest, with curly fair hair and a face that was unnervingly baby-like for a man his size. ‘How did that Mrs Rooney describe your man, up in Ballyhooly? “Just like a cherub.”‘

  The two men on either side of him were slightly shorter, and not so broad-shouldered, but it was interesting was how much they looked like each other. They both had protuberant brown eyes and pointed noses and bulging cheeks, as if they both had their mouths full of too many biscuits; and they both had recessive chins, with six-o’clock shadow.

  ‘Twins, I’d say,’ Detective O’Donovan remarked.

  ‘And I’d agree with you,’ said Katie. ‘They’re twins all right. Does this website tell you what their names are?’

  Detective Horgan scrolled down to the bottom of the website until he found the credits. Vocals, Denis Todd, Charles Wolf, Sean Whelan and Sinéad O’Shea. Gaelic harp, Denis Todd. Piano, Charles Wolf. Flute and other wind accompaniment, Sean Whelan. Violin, Sinéad O’Shea.

  ‘Well, there’s three glaring pseudonyms for you,’ said Katie.

  ‘Pseudonyms?’ asked Detective O’Donovan. ‘So, what – you don’t think these are their real names, like?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have guessed if Paul McKeown hadn’t told me about some of the boys he remembered from St Joseph’s Orphanage Choir – Denis Sweeney and the Phelan twins, they were the only survivors he knew of. And look at these three fellows.’

  ‘I still don’t get it.’

  ‘It’s simple. Denis Todd, as in Sweeney Todd, the demon barber – Denis Sweeney. Then Charles Wolf. The Gaelic for wolf is ó Faoláin, and the anglicized version of ó Faoláin is Phelan. Then Whelan, and Whelan, as you know, is the same name as Phelan. One Sweeney and two twin Phelans, just like Paul McKeown told me.’

  ‘That’s very impressive, ma’am,’ Detective Horgan had to admit. ‘I’m not surprised they promoted you, like.’

  ‘You’re the ones who found the website. Well done to both of you.’

  ‘So what’s the story now?’ asked Detective O’Donovan. ‘We find these Fidelio fellows and feel their collars for them?’

  ‘Yes – like right now. You can find their address through their web provider, can’t you? With any luck they won’t have started on Father ó Súllabháin yet – or at least they may not have castrated him and killed him.’

  41

  At five past three that afternoon, four squad cars sped into opposite ends of Marlborough Street in the centre of the city, a narrow, pedestrian-only street that runs between Patrick Street and Oliver Plunkett Street. No sirens, no flashing lights. Passers-by stood back against the walls and took shelter in the entrance to O’Donovan’s pub as five detectives and eleven uniformed gardaí scrambled out of their vehicles and shouldered their way into a narrow doorway next to Hotlox the hairdresser’s. No shouting, only the syncopated drumming of boots on the uncarpeted staircase.

  It was gloomy inside the building, and smelled of damp and the dustbins that were crowded into the hallway. On the left side of the second-floor landing there was a small bar called Dorothy’s, whose only occupants were three elderly men sitting silently in front of their half-empty glasses of Murphy’s, and a woman with a shock of bright red hair whose head was resting on the table, fast asleep, her face as yellow as a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec.

  On the opposite side of the landing was a brown-varnished door with a wooden painted sign beside it saying, ‘Fidelio Sacred Choir. Please Ring and Enter.’

  Detective O’Donovan didn’t bother to ring. He rattled the door handle and it was locked, so he turned around and nodded to the beefy garda who was carrying the small, 10-kilo, red-painted battering ram they used for narrow doors and hallways.

  It took three deafening blows before the locks broke and the frame splintered and the door shuddered open. The red-haired woman in Dorothy’s lifted her head from the table and screamed out, ‘What the feck? Can’t anybody get any feckin’ sleep around here?’

  Detective O’Donovan went in first with his gun drawn, closely followed by Detective Horgan and then by Katie herself. The offices of the Fidelio Sacred Choir were dark and empty, and smelled empty, in the sour hopeless way that only a damp building can. There was a half-torn poster for Fidelio on the wall, with Denis Sweeney and the Phelan twins standing together in their black suits trying hard to look sacred. A green metal filing cabinet stood under the window with all of the drawers pulled open, and empty, and a sofa with a brown stretch-nylon cover was lying on its back with its legs in the air.

  ‘Damn it,’ said Katie, holstering her gun and prowling from one room to the other
and back again. There was no evidence here at all. No harp wire, no piano wire, no nylon restraints, no clothing, no blood.

  ‘Go next door, would you, and ask them when was the last time that anybody was seen leaving this office,’ Katie told Detective Horgan. ‘Mind you, they all look too langers to know what day of the week it is, let alone who’s been coming and going.’

  ‘It doesn’t look to me like our Fidelio fellows have been here in quite a few days,’ remarked Detective O’Donovan. ‘I checked their website before we came out, though, and they’re still taking bookings.’

  ‘They might be taking bookings but that doesn’t mean they’re going to show up.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Detective O’Donovan.

  Katie was just about to answer him when her mobile phone played ‘The Fields of Athenry’.

  ‘Superintendent Maguire? It’s Ciara Clare from the Catholic Recorder.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ciara. I’m totally up to my eyes in it right now. Call me back later.’

  ‘But it’s the monsignor.’

  ‘What do you mean, “it’s the monsignor”?’

  ‘We were supposed to meet at lunchtime at Greene’s, but he never came. So I called his mobile but his mobile’s switched off, and so I called his secretary and his secretary said that he left his office this morning with a man she didn’t know and wouldn’t tell her when he’d be back.’

  ‘So he missed a lunch appointment. What are you so upset about?’

  ‘It’s these priests who keep turning up dead. He’s been really worried about it. He keeps asking me to see what I can do to keep it quiet, but it’s gone beyond that now. I can’t keep a story quiet that’s on RTÉ every night and Sky News and everything.’

  Katie said, ‘What has he told you about these dead priests? Anything?’

  ‘He just says that they did something with the priests that they shouldn’t have done, and they stopped it, whatever it was, but it’s all come back to haunt him.’