Broken Angels (Katie Maguire)

by Masterton, Graham

  ‘Look – you’ve only fecking shot me,’ the man croaked at her. He looked down at his chest and there were two dark stains on his sweater. Blood was bubbling out of one of them, so Katie must have hit him in the lung.

  Katie stared down at him unblinking, keeping her revolver pointed at his face. He had jet-black hair that had been cut lopsidedly, as if he had done it himself. He was of medium height, pudgy, with a roundish face and a nose like a pink broad bean.

  Katie said, ‘I know you. Your hair’s a different colour, isn’t it? But it’s you all right. What the hell are you doing in my house?’

  ‘You’ve only fecking shot me,’ the man repeated.

  ‘You’ve just shot this woman,’ Katie snapped back at him. ‘You’ve killed her.’

  ‘I need a white van,’ the man begged her. His voice had become a thin, reedy rasp. ‘I’m bleeding to death here.’

  ‘You’re Brendan Doody, aren’t you?’ said Katie.

  ‘You’ve only fecking shot me. I’m dying.’

  ‘You’re Brendan Doody, aren’t you? I’ve seen your photo, Brendan. You’ve dyed your hair black but you can’t tell me it’s not you. What in the name of Jesus are you doing coming to my house with a shotgun?’

  She went to the front door and closed it.

  ‘I was told to,’ said Brendan Doody.

  ‘Who told you to?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. He’ll kill me.’

  ‘You’re going to die anyway. What difference does it make?’

  Blood slid out of the side of Brendan Doody’s mouth, and he coughed. ‘I need a white van. I’m drowning here. I’m drowning in my own blood.’

  ‘Who sent you here, Brendan?’

  Brendan Doody took three bubbly breaths, and then he wheezed, ‘The monsignor sent me. He said I had to shoot you as soon as you opened the door. But it wasn’t you, was it?’

  ‘Did you shoot Father Lowery, too, and Detective Sergeant O’Rourke?’

  Long, concentrated pause. Then, ‘O’Rourke? Was that his name? I’m sorry. Please. I didn’t know what his name was. He shouldn’t have followed us. Please, I’m dying here.’

  ‘Why did you do it, Brendan?’

  ‘The monsignor said I had to.’

  ‘Did he tell you why?’

  ‘He said that if I didn’t he would call for the guards and tell them it was me who killed Father Heaney and then I’d have to go to the Mountjoy for the rest of my life.’

  ‘But it wasn’t you who killed Father Heaney, was it?’

  Brendan Doody shook his head, and coughed up more blood. ‘I said that it was but it wasn’t.’

  ‘But why would you do that?’

  ‘The monsignor said that I had to help the bishop because the bishop was in terrible trouble and it was the bishop who made sure that I was taken in and taken care of when I was a small kid, like. He dictated me a letter to say that it was me who killed Father Heaney and then I had to say that I was going to kill myself, too, but I didn’t. One of the priests found me a room in Grawn and I had to dye my hair and tell everybody that my name was Tommy Murphy.’

  All of this came out in a bubbling slur that Katie could barely understand. But there was a panicky look in Brendan Doody’s eyes and she could tell that he was prepared to tell her everything if she would only call for an ambulance and save his life.

  ‘The bishop?’ she said. ‘What kind of trouble are we talking about?’

  ‘Please,’ he pleaded with her. ‘I don’t know what kind of trouble. I truly, truly don’t.’

  ‘But wait a minute. Which bishop do you mean? They took you in at St Patrick’s long before Bishop Mahoney was appointed. You don’t mean Bishop Kerrigan?’

  Brendan Doody nodded. His eyes kept rolling up into his head and each breath was shorter and shorter.

  ‘But Bishop Kerrigan died years ago,’ Katie persisted. ‘How could he be in trouble?’

  ‘Not dead,’ said Brendan Doody.

  ‘He’s not dead? Then where is he?’

  ‘Dripsey. Big house. Near the monument. I did some decorating there.’

  ‘And that’s where he is now?’

  Brendan Doody nodded again. ‘I’m supposed to go there now. Meet the monsignor. He said it’s the time.’

  ‘It’s the time? The time for what?’

  ‘Please.’

  Brendan Doody’s head dropped back on to the carpet and his eyelids half closed. He was still breathing, however, and when Katie knelt beside him she could feel a pulse in his neck. She stepped carefully around Dr Collins’s body and went into the living room to call for an ambulance. After that she called headquarters and asked to be patched through to Inspector Fennessy.

  ‘Liam?’ She told him what had happened and Inspector Fennessy simply said, ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Brendan Doody said Bishop Kerrigan is still alive and kicking and that he lives in a house near Godfrey’s Cross in Dripsey.’

  ‘Come here to me? I don’t believe it!’

  ‘That’s what he said. He also said that he was supposed to go there after shooting me and meet up with Monsignor Kelly. “It’s the time,” he said, although he didn’t tell me what time. But if Monsignor Kelly has gone there, there’s a fair chance that our Fidelio characters have gone there, too. In fact, they probably took him there.’

  ‘This is pure amazing. How do you want to play it?’

  ‘Get your team up to Dripsey and see if you can identify the property. I expect that any one of the locals will tell you. There’s only a post office and a couple of pubs and one of those is closed.’

  ‘So what do we do once we’ve located it?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Just keep an eye on any comings and goings until I can get there. I have to stay here and wait for the paramedics and the technical boys and some back-up, but as soon as they’ve arrived I’ll be with you.’

  She went back into the hallway. Brendan Doody was still alive, although she didn’t know for how much longer. She stood looking down at him and for the first time in her life she didn’t feel any remorse at having had to shoot a man, or guilt that she had questioned him before calling for the paramedics. He had shot and killed Jimmy O’Rourke in cold blood; and Dr Collins, too; and Father Lowery. It was no excuse that he was mentally slow and emotionally vulnerable, or that Monsignor Kelly had exploited him for his own distorted purposes.

  She saw flashing blue lights outside and it was only when she stepped over Dr Collins and saw herself in the hall mirror that she realized that she was still completely naked.

  46

  By the time Katie arrived in Dripsey it was almost twenty past eleven. Dripsey was a small village in the hilly countryside twenty kilometres to the west of Cork City, on a tributary of the River Lee – Druipseach – ‘the muddy river’. The tributary had once provided the power for a paper mill and a woollen mill, but both factories had long gone to ruin.

  A very fine rain was falling, more like a veil of wet chiffon than rain. The windows of the Weigh Inn pub were still brightly lit, but the Lee Valley Inn was in darkness. Katie drove around the left-hand curve in the road, which was the social centre of the village, and headed further west to Godfrey’s Cross.

  It was here in 1921 that an IRA ambush had been foiled by the British army after a tip-off from a local woman, and a monument had later been erected to the IRA men who had been captured or wounded, and those who had later been tried and sentenced to death.

  Katie turned into the car park beside the monument. Four squad cars were parked at the far end, under the overhanging trees, as well as two Garda vans.

  She climbed out of her car and Inspector Fennessy came across to meet her, accompanied by a uniformed sergeant. Inspector Fennessy was wearing a black raincoat with the collar turned up and he looked tired and strained, like a worn-out schoolmaster.

  ‘We’ve found the house so. It wasn’t difficult. Everybody in the Weigh Inn knew it, but all of them think that some retired writer lives there. None of them seem to
have a clue that it’s Bishop Kerrigan.’

  Katie buttoned up her coat. ‘Considering that Bishop Kerrigan is supposed to have gone to meet his maker years ago, I’m not surprised. I googled him and he should be eighty-seven by now, if it really is him.’

  ‘We carried out a quick reconnoitre,’ Inspector Fennessy told her. ‘There are three vehicles parked in the driveway – a grey Ford Transit van and two saloon cars, a Toyota and an Opel. I have two men keeping an eye on the house, and about five minutes ago they reported that the downstairs lights are still on, as well as the staircase and two of the upstairs rooms, but they have not yet seen anybody inside.’

  Katie nodded and said, ‘All right. Normally I’d want to wait this out, at least until daylight, but if they have Father ó Súllibháin in there, and they’re torturing him, we need to go in without any messing. Monsignor Kelly could be in there, too, but we don’t have any idea whether he went with them willingly or unwillingly.’

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Inspector Fennessy.

  ‘The plan is we drive straight in there, block off their vehicles and surround the house front, back and sides. We give them one chance to open the front door, and batter it open if they don’t.’

  ‘Nothing too complicated, then?’ said Inspector Fennessy, with the faintest hint of sarcasm. He had always been one of the subtlest of Katie’s team, preferring to set up elaborate stings to catch the criminals he was after, with listening devices and phone taps and misleading text messages. Battering down doors was not really his style.

  They assembled all of the gardaí together beside the monument, twenty-four of them in all, and Katie explained what she wanted them to do.

  ‘These people are violent and sadistic and very unpredictable and we have no clear idea of what their agenda is. Because of that, we need to get in there fast and restrain everybody immediately, no matter who they are. We can separate the perpetrators from the victims once we have them all locked down.

  ‘We believe that Bishop Conor Kerrigan may be inside, as well as Monsignor Kevin Kelly, one of the vicars general. I want them restrained, too, just as quickly and securely as the others. Whatever they say to you – even if they threaten you with excommunication – don’t hesitate.’

  The men all looked so grim that she had to add, ‘Excommunication, that was a joke.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ they said, but none of them laughed.

  The Garda sergeant divided his men into groups – seven of them to cover the back of the house, four on either side, and the remaining eleven to enter by the front door, either by invitation or by force.

  They were walking back to their cars when Inspector Fennessy’s mobile phone rang. He answered it and said, ‘Yes. Yes. Well, how about that?’

  ‘What is it?’ Katie asked him.

  He closed his phone. ‘They found the van with the crozier on it, in a country pub car park not far from Macroom. Empty, and partly burned out. It seems like your instinct was correct, ma’am. Sorry if I doubted it.’

  Katie laid a hand on his sleeve and gave him a smile. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’m too flah’d out to feel smug.’

  They left the monument car park in a convoy, with Katie following Inspector Fennessy. He took a left at the cross and drove down the winding, unlit road – which, if they had followed it for another eight kilometres, would have taken them all the way back down to the River Lee. After less than a kilometre, however, he turned right, in between two tall stone pillars and a pair of rusted iron gates that looked as if nobody had closed them in decades.

  They jolted along a narrow, gravelled driveway between overgrown bushes, which lashed at the sides of their vehicles. The rain was so fine that Katie’s windscreen wipers kept up a monotonous rubbery squeaking. She was beginning to feel more than physically tired: she felt emotionally exhausted too, almost as if she could cry.

  After half a kilometre, a large grey stone house appeared among the trees. It was one of the grand nineteenth-century houses that had been built for the owners of the Dripsey paper mill, with a mansard roof and clusters of barley-sugar chimneys and a wide porch with twisted pillars. As they slewed to a halt right in front of the porch, two gardaí came out of the shadows on the left-hand side of the house and jogged over to join them.

  ‘Still no movement,’ said one of them. ‘The curtains in the lounge are wide open but if there’s anybody in there they must be lying on the floor.’

  ‘Let’s just get inside,’ said Katie. She and Inspector Fennessy hurried up the steps to the front door, closely followed by the uniformed sergeant and three gardaí, one of them carrying a battering ram. The rest of the gardaí split up and disappeared around the sides of the house to cover any other exits.

  The front door was solid oak, weathered to a pale grey colour. The cast-iron knocker had the face of a leprechaun, with a disconcertingly mischievous smile, as if he knew exactly what Katie’s business was here, even before she had knocked.

  Katie took hold of it and banged it three times, as hard as she could.

  ‘Armed gardaí!’ she shouted. ‘Open the door!’

  They waited for a few seconds, but there was no response, so she banged the knocker again.

  Still no answer. Katie stepped away and pulled out her gun. ‘That’s it. Let’s have it open.’

  The garda with the battering ram stepped forward without hesitation and slammed it into the door panels. This was a heavy duty Stinger, weighing thirty-five pounds, and the door burst open immediately. Katie ducked into the hall, followed closely by Inspector Fennessy and the rest of the gardaí.

  ‘Armed gardaí!’ she repeated. ‘Come on out and show yourselves!’

  She crossed the hall to the living-room door, which was half ajar. Inspector Fennessy joined her and gave the door a kick to open it wider. Katie nodded at him and he quickly glanced inside.

  ‘Anybody there?’ she asked him.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it.’

  Both of them pushed their way into the living room with their guns held up stiffly in front of them, but there was nobody here, not even lying on the floor.

  ‘Search the rest of the house, quick!’ Katie ordered. Three gardaí clambered upstairs, while two more went through to the kitchen and the dining room and the downstairs cloakroom. For a few minutes, the house echoed to the sound of slamming doors and hurrying boots.

  Eventually the sergeant came back into the living room and held up both hands. ‘Nobody home,’ he announced.

  ‘Then where in the name of Jesus have they got to?’ said Katie. ‘Their van and their cars are all here. Don’t tell me they’re walking. Where would they walk to?’

  They went back outside. The rain was growing more persistent and Katie could hear thunder. Just the weather for a disastrous night like this.

  She walked around the right-hand side of the house, where there was a wet stone patio with a rose pergola, although the roses were badly neglected and most of them were shrivelled. Inspector Fennessy came up to her and said, ‘What now?’

  ‘I don’t honestly know, Liam. We search the house to see if they left any indication of where they were going, and how. Maybe they have accomplices who came to pick them up and take them away before we even got here. In which case, they could be absolutely anywhere at all. They could be halfway to Mayo by now.’

  She walked through the pergola to the back of the house. Apart from a light in one of the kitchen windows, the gardens were shrouded in darkness. She stood quite still and listened to the rain falling through the trees, and the occasional rumbling of thunder.

  ‘Right,’ she said, after a while, more to herself than anybody else. ‘I think I’m going to call it a night. Let’s put a guard on the house for now, and we can come back in the morning and make a really thorough search.’

  She turned around, but as she did so she heard a high piercing wail, almost unearthly. It faded away almost immediately and then there was nothing but the sound of the rain, and the gardaí ta
lking to each other, and squad car doors slamming.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ she asked Liam.

  ‘Did I hear what?’

  ‘That sound. I don’t know. It was like somebody crying.’

  Inspector Fennessy listened for a few seconds. ‘No,’ he said, impatiently. ‘I can’t hear a sausage. And I’m beginning to get very wet here, ma’am.’

  More thunder, but then Katie heard that same falsetto wail. ‘There!’ she said, triumphantly. ‘You must have heard it that time!’

  ‘It’s a vixen, most likely,’ Inspector Fennessy told her. ‘They make all kinds of weird noises, vixens, especially when they fornicate. Like Montenotte girls.’

  He started to walk back through the rose pergola, but as he did so the high-pitched sound started yet again, and this time it didn’t fade away. It grew louder, and sweeter, and more harmonious.

  Katie and Inspector Fennessy stood staring at each other.

  ‘I never heard a vixen singing “Gloria” before,’ said Katie.

  ‘Me neither, I’m afraid to admit. It’s them, isn’t it? It’s those fecking Fidelios. They’re only out here singing, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Ssh,’ said Katie, raising one hand to her ear. ‘Can you work out where it’s coming from?’

  They both stayed silent for almost half a minute. The ‘Gloria’ continued, although it swelled and diminished in the wind, and now and then it was blotted out by thunder. Eventually, Inspector Fennessy pointed into the darkness and said, ‘Just about there, I’d say. From behind those trees.’

  ‘I think you’re right. Call Sergeant O’Brien back, would you? Let’s get down there and take a look.’

  While Inspector Fennessy went to tell the Garda sergeant what they could hear, Katie made her way down a flight of stone steps that led from the patio to the lawns. The lawns sloped at quite a steep diagonal to the south-west, and they were bordered by a copse of tall, mature oaks. As she made her way down the slope, Katie could hear the singing more and more clearly. There was no doubt that it was coming from somewhere beyond the trees. A cappella, unaccompanied, in the style of the chapel, but sweeter than any singing that she could imagine. Somehow the rustling of the rain and the distant rumbling of thunder made it all the more enchanting.