by Paul Charles
‘I can also tell you that there are no needle puncture marks but, apart from that,’ she said as she stood up, pulling off her gloves and removing her suit, using Starrett as a prop to lean on as she did so, ‘I won’t have anything else for you until I get him back to the morgue in Letterkenny.’
‘Nothing else at all, doctor?’
‘Just that he was healthy, died earlier this afternoon and I’d hazard a guess that he didn’t die from natural causes.’
‘I don’t know why I even bother to come up any more, doctor. Sure, you’ve already got it all wrapped up. I could have saved myself the drive past Biddy’s O’Barnes’ and over the Blue Stack Mountains.’
‘I’m not so sure of that, Starrett,’ she replied, but didn’t wait for his wise-crack before continuing, ‘I’d say from your actions you’d have walked the whole way from Letterkenny, through the Barnesmore Gap, past the Blue Stack Mountains, and all in your bare feet for another chance to grab the bishop by the throat.’
‘I’d forgotten all about that, doctor,’ he claimed nonchalantly.
‘I doubt that, Starrett, I doubt that very much.’
Chapter Five
Although Sergeant Packie Garvey had worked longer and closer with Inspector Starrett than Ban Garda Nuala Gibson, it was Gibson who seemed the most confident and the one who wanted to take the lead in the interview.
‘I’m Father McIntyre but me enemies call me Tubsey,’ was the slightly unorthodox introduction offered by the priest as he welcomed the two members of the Gardaí Serious Crimes Unit into his room.
Gibson introduced both herself and her colleague, responding positively to McIntyre’s warm smile and strong, very strong, handshake.
The priest was probably in his early fifties, dressed in black chinos, black socks, and a black open-neck shirt. His head was shaved back and sides, but badly cropped on top with dyed blonde highlights. Gibson felt, and she would later relay this to Starrett in her report, that it looked inappropriate for a priest and certainly out of place on a man of his age. His clean-shaven skin enjoyed the red flush of a whiskey drinker.
McIntyre continued holding her hand in both of his and shaking it vigorously, like he was either trying really hard to make a connection or was just very nervous.
‘Oh my goodness, I cannot believe what happened to our Father Matthew, I mean, it’s terrible. What am I saying? Of course it’s terrible. Do you know exactly what happened to him? I’ve been saying for ages we have to lock the front and back doors. Anyone could just wander in off the streets and murder us in our sleep! I shiver from head to toe when I think of it. These are desperate times we live in. Imagine being murdered just for a few spuds. It could have been any of us I suppose,’ he gushed, with more than a slight hint of camp.
‘So you think he was murdered?’ Gibson asked, as she freed her hand and sat on one of the four seats around the priest’s small pine dining table.
‘Well, it’s either that or one of us did it,’ he announced confidently.
The priest instructed Garvey to sit at the table beside Gibson, then filled the thirsty silver electric kettle and switched it on.
‘Don’t be doing that on our account,’ Gibson said, as the priest took out three mugs and a packet of Jacob’s Kimberley biscuits.
‘Forget on your account dear,’ he tutted, ‘I need an herbal tea to calm me nerves down; you can join in or not but I’d say by the look in your sergeant’s eyes he’s got his wee heart set on at least one of me bickies.’
‘Oh go on then,’ Gibson said, taking a tip out of Starrett’s book of always trying to make these interviews less formal, more conversational.
McIntyre’s attention was now focused entirely on Sgt Garvey.
‘Oh my Go…’ he started, raising his four outstretched and parted fingers to cover his mouth, ‘goodness, you’re not the Packie Garvey are you?’
‘The very same man,’ Gibson replied, on behalf of the modest hurling star.
‘Donegal’s finest on the hurling field – in me wee room? I just can’t believe it! The fathers will never believe–’
Whatever Father McIntyre – or Tubsey, to his enemies – was about to say was loudly interrupted by the whistle of the boiling kettle peaking.
‘You were saying that you thought it was either a stranger or one of the priests who did it then.’
‘Slow down just a wee bit there, Ban Garda,’ McIntyre said, stopping in his tea-preparing tracks, ‘that’s hardly what I meant. What I meant was that he was too young and too healthy to die naturally, although in all my days as a priest I’ve never actually witnessed what could be called a “natural death”. I believe there’s nothing more unnatural than dying.’
McIntyre continued making the tea, in silence. Gibson and Garvey followed suit.
‘So how well did you know Father Matthew?’ Gibson asked, as Father McIntyre brought the tea and the biscuits to the table.
‘Coming up to a year now with the young curate’ the priest started, ‘sorry, I’ve just twigged, you asked me how well I’d known him and I answered you how long I’d known him.’
‘No harm done,’ Garvey said, making a rare contribution to the conversation, ‘we’d have asked you that as well.’
‘Well, you put ten men – eleven if you count the nights the bishop stays over – in a wee house and they’re either going to get on like a house on fire or they’re going to want to ki…strangle each other.’
‘Sorry?’ Gibson said, eyebrows rising.
‘Whoops, that came out all wrong!’ McIntyre apologised after the fact, ‘of course, I didn’t mean you’d actually want to strangle them in the literal sense.’
Then he paused, thought for a bit before mischievously adding, ‘Well, on second thoughts someone clearly did. Whoops…me and me big mouth again!’
‘So how well did you get on with Father Matthew then?’
‘Well, you see, he worked for us, he and Mrs Eimear Robinson, looked after St Ernan’s, took care of us all…’
It appeared that Father McIntyre felt that neither of the Gardaí was getting his drift so he continued with, ‘I’ve always found it’s much safer never to criticise your barber’s wee hurling team, if you know what I mean?’
‘The politer you are, the better the service?’ Gibson offered, but couldn’t help thinking that, by the state of the priest’s hair, he must have done something drastically worse than slag off his barber’s hurling team.
‘Exactly!’
‘Right,’ Gibson said, while acknowledging that, between his supply of Kimberley biscuits, Garvey was making notes. ‘So, how well did you know Father Matthew?’
‘Oh yes, I never really answered that one, did I? I’ll never get on the Graham Norton show now, will I?’
Gibson just stared at the priest.
‘Ehm, let’s see. Me dinner was always great and I would always offer him a wee compliment at that and things like that. But we’d never have deep conversations about the meaning of life or the state of the Roman Catholic Church in modern times. Neither he nor I would ever confide in each other. We’d never go to places together. Like for instance, every Sunday night I go down to Doran’s, the wee pub, just off the Diamond in Donegal Town, and after a few wee drinks I’ll take me turn at the mic and sing a few tunes. Look, we’re talking more Val Doonican here than Bobbie Williams.’
‘Robbie Williams?’ Gibson offered, and then wished she hadn’t.
‘None of him either! No, as I said, just mostly Val and Jim Reeves,’ McIntyre replied, missing her correction, ‘but the point is he’d never ever been down to one of those sessions.’
‘What did he do with himself?’
‘I think he’d go around to Eimear Robinson’s house quite a bit for meals and things. They seemed to get on very well.’
Gibson was unhappy at the amount of information she and Garvey were extracting but then she remembered Starrett advising her in a similar instance to be patient. Just keep talking. When you haven’t something you can think
of to ask them about the case, ask them about themselves. Starrett claimed that people just loved talking about themselves.
‘How long have you been at St Ernan’s?’ Gibson asked, because that was exactly what she was wondering.
‘I’ve been here just over four years,’ McIntyre replied wistfully, ‘the time has just flown by.’
‘Why did you come here in the first place?’ Garvey asked.
‘I lost my faith, I didn’t like what my church had become but at the same time I still wanted to be a priest, I enjoyed being a priest.’
‘Surely if you lose your faith you can’t remain a priest?’ Garvey asked.
‘Well, there’s the thing,’ McIntyre said, as he spooned his teabag around his mug a few times to try and revive a bit of the strength in his herbal tea. ‘I enjoy the lifestyle. I enjoy helping people in a real way rather than trying to bring them spiritual enlightenment. This brought me into conflict with me superiors. I was confronted and asked to either change me tune or leave. I refused and so I was invited to move and see out me days here. I think the Church probably thought they were already fighting on too many fronts, as it were, and so if they could accommodate me here (in every sense of the word) it would mean I’d keep me mouth shut and so they’d save themselves yet another battle.’
‘So what do you actually do here?’ Gibson asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Well, I mean, I don’t have a role in the Catholic Church any more. We don’t perform any services for the Church.’
‘But they still provide food and board for you?’ Garvey piped up again.
‘Well yes – maybe you should consider it as one of the better pension plans.’
‘Do you still get a wage?’ Gibson asked, to satisfy her curiosity. The two things she wondered a lot about were, in order of priority, one, did the captain of teams in the English premier league get extra money for being captain and, two, how much were priests paid.
‘I still get me eighteen thousand euro a year, tax-free,’ McIntyre readily admitted. ‘If I was still in my parish I would of course be paying taxes, but everyone here is deemed to be handicapped in one way or another so we don’t qualify.’
Ban Garda Nuala Gibson figured that, plus food and board, it wasn’t bad at all compared to her thirty-eight thousand euro, which was reduced to twenty-six-and-a-bit thousand euro after deductions. The two thousand-euro pay cut she and all public servants had suffered in the infamous 2010 budget had now been made good again with her annual increase, but it was still very difficult to make ends meet. She knew that these were not the thoughts Starrett (who she figured must be on about sixty-five to seventy thousand a year) would appreciate her having at this stage in an interview. Although, now she came to think about it, of course Father Matthew and his colleagues’ financial situation could be relevant, very relevant to the investigation in fact.
‘So how do you fill your days?’ Gibson asked, trying to get back on track again.
‘Oh you’d be surprised,’ he started, seeming to be excited in the conversation for once, ‘I, ah, well I run the wee gardens, you know. I produce enough vegetables to get us through the year and what excess we have we trade on for some basic provisions, just like they used to do in the olden days,’ he concluded, rather proudly. ‘We also sell some cakes and such like as well.’
‘How well do the residents at St Ernan’s get on?’ Garvey asked.
‘Well, I imagine they’ll all have a wee chat with you about me so I’ll return the compliment,’ McIntyre declared. ‘Let’s see now, Father Matthew worked for us all and generally passed himself off with everyone and favoured no one in particular, although there are some among us who felt he might just have been a wee bit too preoccupied with his looks for a man of the cloth.
'Then there’s Father Fergus Mulligan, a man without enemies but that sadly also means he’s a man without friends.
'Father Robert O’Leary is a very nice wee man, and I mean genuinely a very nice man – he’s been here the longest, the unspoken spiritual leader, a happy man.
‘Father Gene McCafferty, he’s the new boy and so we haven’t really figured him out yet, but he’s always walking around the island with his hands stuck deep in his pockets and his elbows sticking out by his sides like elephants ears. That is why he’s called the Elephant Man; it’s because of his elbows and not his looks, by the way.
'Father Edward McKenzie helps me out in the garden – bit of a comedian, he’s also known as the Ginger Beatle but please believe me, not because of his looks. He’s an Ulsterman and a good worker.
‘Father Patrick O’Connell, now he’s the sharpest dresser in St Ernan’s. He’s our public face as he accepts invitations to every official function in the diocese and has even been known to turn up at the opening of an envelope. He hangs around so much with the blue rinses I’m surprised some of it hasn’t washed off into his own thatch. Wicked I know, but I’m having all of this month’s fun in this single session.
‘And then there are our three wise men: Father Peter Casey and Father Michael Clerkin. I don’t know if both of them are tied to a vow of silence but they rarely leave their room and when they do, they never speak with anyone in sight of the rest of us. Father Mulligan always speaks on behalf of the three wise men.’
‘You said three wise men but you’ve only mentioned two names,’ Gibson said as Garvey wrote away furiously in his notebook.
‘Excellent, well observed,’ McIntyre said in praise before continuing, ‘I was forgetting Father Peregrine Dugan, nickname the Master Writer. He has not been seen outside of his rooms since I arrived here something like four years ago. I’ve never even seen him or spoken to him.’
‘Really?’ Gibson said, echoing Garvey’s apparent disbelief.
‘Really! He’s supposed to be writing a tome called The History of Ireland. Supposedly he spends every waking minute working on it. Father Casey reckons at last count they’d over two thousand pages between them. The remaining two wise men and Father Mulligan, bring him his food and his needs. Fathers Casey and Clerkin are frequently off on trips throughout Ireland, carrying out various research projects for the Master Writer. I believe at the moment that they are somewhere down around Youghal in County Cork. In their absence, Father Mulligan serves Father Peregrine Dugan and, as he’s a scholar himself, he also works on the book. The four of them have their own wee enclave of rooms at the other end of the corridor on this floor. They’re separated from the rest of us by the three empty rooms. I believe in the absence of tenants that they sequestered one of the vacant rooms for their mountains of files.’
Gibson couldn’t help but wonder and be attracted to the theory that somewhere in those files lay the reason for Father Matthew McKaye’s death. But that was going to have to wait.
‘And that’s your lot,’ Father McIntyre offered in conclusion, as though he was signing off from a night’s viewing on Ulster TV.
‘Except for the bishop of course?’ Gibson prompted, remembering vividly Starrett’s reaction to the one in purple the second he saw him.
‘He’s not one of us, he doesn’t live here,’ McIntyre replied, somewhat coldly.
‘But he stays here from time to time?’ Gibson said, sensing the strangeness.
‘He’s not one of us,’ McIntyre replied, with the definite air that this was where he wanted to park that particular part of the conversation.
As Gibson was indicating that she was ready to go, Garvey stared at her, his pen still poised about a quarter of an inch away from a fresh page of his notebook.
“Oh yes, Father,” Gibson started, in a Columbo moment, “could you please tell us what you were doing between 15:30 and 17:30 this afternoon.”
“That’s easy,” the priest replied immediately, “I was visiting Ballyshop, a supermarket down in Ballyshannon, they take some of our vegetables and pies and they’d fallen behind with their payments. I spent the afternoon convincing them that if they didn’t keep up to
date we’d have to move our business to somewhere like Quinns.”
Father McIntyre plucked a business card from his inside pocket and as he wrote Ballyshop’s details on the back he advised Garvey, for the benefit of his notebook, that he’d left for Ballyshannon just after lunch at three o’clock and arrived back at St Ernan’s around twenty to six.
Chapter Six
Meanwhile, Starrett was getting acquainted with the longest serving member of St Ernan’s, Father Robert O'Leary.
Starrett took to the priest immediately. In a different life they could have been friends, possibly even good friends.
The priest was in his late sixties with greying, permanently unkempt, shortish black hair. He’d gentle, smiling brown eyes with a slim frame, probably, Starrett guessed, about five feet ten inches tall. He was wearing black, badly creased trousers, a crisp white-as-new collarless shirt, and when Starrett came calling into his room he was wearing black socks and a pair of red tartan carpet slippers. His room was very clean and benefitting immensely from American Arts and Crafts furniture, which was extremely well polished and looked like it might have been in St Ernan’s since the house was built in the late 1820s. The floorboards were bare and varnished to match the furniture, which meant that Starrett’s movements across the floor were as pronounced as a horse’s hooves on a tarmac road.
Starrett was trying to pick his opening for the interview when O’Leary stole the initiative with: ‘Before we start, I feel I should mention that we have a mutual acquaintance.’
‘Oh?’ Starrett replied, his interest piqued, a feeling he also acknowledged could be read as being a state of distraction.
‘Yes indeed,’ Father Robert O’Leary continued. ‘I know Maggie Keane’s brother-in-law.
‘Oh, that would be Niall’s brother?’ Starrett replied, unsure of where this was going. The late husband of Starrett's now girlfriend had lost his lengthy battle with cancer a few years back, however Starrett still felt he was due the respect of acknowledging his Christian name.
