The Gathering of Souls

by Gerry O'Carroll

  ‘It’s about as serious as it gets,’ Murphy told her.

  ‘And you’ve Conor for it, have you?’

  ‘We spoke to him, but there’s nothing we can charge him with. At least not yet.’

  ‘So what do you want with me?’

  Murphy perched on the bed beside her. ‘Do you remember Jane Finucane?’

  ‘The girl at the trial? Of course.’

  ‘She claims he was with her on Sunday night around the time we think Eva Quinn was abducted.’

  ‘And you don’t believe her?’

  Murphy made a face. ‘We didn’t believe you.’

  ‘No, well, I wasn’t very convincing, was I? But then I’d drunk half of Kerry by the time it all kicked off.’

  ‘Conor claims you only changed your story through spite.’

  Molly laughed. ‘Because he dumped me: that’s a laugh. I was about to dump him, guard: that’s the truth of it. Anyway, the judge threw it out, so me changing my story did no good at all, did it?’

  ‘You told the truth, that’s what mattered.’

  ‘Right, I told the truth. So what do you want from me now?’ Molly asked her.

  ‘I want you to talk to his girlfriend. Tell her what happened. Tell her how he made sure you gave him his alibi. If he’s done the same with her, I want her to ask herself why. I want her to understand that another woman’s life is at stake, only this time we might be able to save her.’

  She patted Molly on the knee. ‘Do you think you can do that?’

  Sitting in the passenger seat of Murphy’s car, Molly could see the flashing blue light reflected in shop windows. She’d met Maggs here in Dublin back when she was working in a regular salon close to St Mary’s Cathedral. He had come in with his shaggy black mop and dark eyes. He was a quiet soul, but well spoken. He was about thirty-five – a lot older than her – and she’d just split from a much younger lad who worked in the power station at Poolbeg.

  There was something about him; he was cultured compared to most of the men she’d dated. She didn’t see him for a while, then six weeks later he came back for another haircut and he had two tickets for the All-Ireland football semi and asked her to go with him.

  *

  Back at his flat afterwards, they drank a bottle of wine sitting together on the sofa. They made small talk, and whereas before he’d been fairly chatty, now he seemed almost nervous.

  Finally he kissed her.

  He was trembling: a thirty-five-year-old-man, and he was trembling. There was something engaging about that: he had a boyishness, a sense of caution about him; a sense of uncertainty. They had a few more drinks, then she slipped his hand inside her shirt and pressed his palm to her breast. She could feel the tension in his touch: she could see the erection beginning to strain at his zipper. She took him out, and he came right there in her hand.

  Face scarlet, he was on his feet and muttering a panicked apology.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘it’s all right. Really, don’t worry about it: it’s OK, Conor. I’m sure it happens to lots of men.’

  His vulnerability attracted her; there was something about the way he looked – his physical frame, perhaps –that made her want to mother him – and Molly had never wanted to mother anyone.

  ‘I’ve got something,’ she told him. ‘Something that’ll chill you out. And later we can do it again.’ She had a little grass she’d scored a few nights before, and she fetched it now and rolled a modest joint.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she reassured him, ‘I don’t mind. We’ll just chill out and you can relax and then we can try again.’

  A few weeks later, he took her to the music festival in his home town in Kerry. He’d rented a caravan above the cliffs at Ballybunion.

  Before they went into town, Molly sat in the evening sunshine smoking dope and drinking wine. By the time they got into the car, she’d drunk a whole bottle and was pretty merry. Conor was silent, and she was beginning to think the quietness she’d been attracted to at first might actually be a little irritating.

  In fact, she’d been debating whether to come at all: as the weekend grew closer, he seemed to have more and more on his mind, as if he was expecting something and wasn’t sure how to handle it.

  ‘So will she be there, then?’ she asked him, as they headed towards town.

  In the driver’s seat of the old Granada, he stiffened. She’d hit a nerve: there was someone; that was what had been bothering him. ‘Just lately, you’ve been even more subdued than you normally are. You ought to learn to chill out, Conor. All that pent-up anxiety in a man your age: it’ll be the death of you.’

  He turned his head and stared at her. ‘And all that shit you smoke,’ he said. ‘That’ll be the death of you.’ In that moment, she realised that she may not have known him at all. But she’d had a few to drink, and the dope had dulled her senses enough that she just kept going.

  ‘Who is she, then? An old flame you don’t want to see?’

  He smiled coldly. ‘You’ve got it wrong. There’s no one, Molly; I mean, no one that matters. I know lots of people, of course I do: I lived here for the first twenty years of my life.’

  ‘There’s someone, I can tell. Someone you either want to see or don’t want to see, I can’t decide which.’ They were pulling into town and already plenty of people were on the street. Conor nodded at a scrawny-looking man getting out of a battered Land Rover.

  ‘There’s someone I don’t want to see,’ he stated. ‘Jimmy the fucking Poker.’

  They moved from bar to bar and tent to tent listening to different kinds of music. In John B. Keane’s bar, Molly went out the back for a cigarette and downed a couple of pints of cider. Conor was inside, where she’d left him sitting at a table by the window. She’d noticed that wherever they went, he always wanted to be near the door or the window. He kept glancing up and down the street. He was anxious; excited, maybe, about seeing someone – and it sure as hell wasn’t Jimmy the Poker.

  And then she felt his presence. When she looked up, he was behind her; she’d not even seen him coming.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her. ‘Can I get you another drink?’ She had a pint of Magners still in front of her, and she was already bleary-eyed.

  ‘I’ve a full glass,’ she told him.

  ‘Are you coming in?’

  ‘I’m staying here.’ She was slurring her words. ‘I need the air, and I can still hear the music.’

  She’d passed out. Closing her eyes to stop her head swimming, she’d woken up God knows how long later. She was hunched in a corner against the wall. Getting to her feet, she left the still-brimming glass and stumbled into the bar. It was packed; everyone singing; the music pounding in her head. She looked for Conor but, not able to find him, she picked her way awkwardly out to the street.

  There was no sign, though, so she went back to the bar. Outside, she smoked cigarettes. Some time later – she couldn’t remember how long – she looked up as he tapped her on the shoulder.

  Tuesday 2nd September 12.45 pm

  The Kerry police were searching Jimmy’s house. His father was moulded into his chair, his arms tight around his chest, and he was shouting at anyone who walked across the room. Jimmy was in the kitchen smoking roll-ups.

  The place was filthy; a chipped table and metal chairs; dog bowls that hadn’t been washed in weeks. There were dishes piled in the sink, and the smell of grease permeated the whole house.

  ‘Your father seems to be getting worse, Jimmy,’ McCafferty observed quietly. ‘Maybe you ought to think about getting him some proper care.’

  ‘Ah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Get the nutter to the nuthouse and give the neighbourhood a bit of peace. Would you look around you, guard?’ Jimmy gestured through the window to the open fields, the estuary and the ruins of Carrigafoyle. ‘There is no fuckin’ neighbourhood.’

  ‘Calm down, lad. I was only suggesting.’

  ‘Yeah, well, don’t. He’s my dad, and I’ve been taking care of him
since you dragged my mam from the water.’

  At that moment, a younger officer came padding down the stairs carrying an old shoebox, which he placed on the table.

  ‘Found this lot in your man’s room.’ He jerked a thumb at Jimmy.

  McCafferty considered the contents: a whole stack of Polaroids, together with the camera that had been used to take them. ‘What’s all this, Jim?’ he said.

  Jimmy rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘That’s a lot of photos.’

  ‘So? Is there some law against that then now, is there?’

  Stepping outside, McCafferty gazed across the water. Taking his mobile, he phoned Dublin.

  ‘Joseph,’ he said when Doyle answered, ‘Martin McCafferty here. I thought you’d like to know we’ve found a Polaroid camera.’

  Tuesday 2nd September 12.50 pm

  Quinn was at the door to his office when Doyle came in to tell him the Kerry police were on their way up with Jimmy Hanrahan and a Polaroid camera.

  A breakthrough, finally. Quinn’s heart began to beat that little bit faster: A maggot in her head, that’s what they said, but only Mary knows.

  Was Jimmy Hanrahan capable of coming up with a line like that? Jimmy, who’d dished out thirty-two stitches to an old woman before his mother drowned and his father disappeared into the hellish prison of his own drink-sodden conscience. Jimmy, who’d wasted no time in blabbing to them how he’d seen Maggs with Mary Harrington and who lived within spitting distance of where they found her body.

  He moved to the window. Hands in his pockets and shoulders stretched, he spoke without looking round. ‘Did it ever bother you that we had no physical evidence, Doyler?’ he asked.

  ‘No fibres or anything from that old Granada?’

  ‘No, it didn’t.’ Doyle exhaled audibly. ‘We had what we had, and we did our jobs accordingly.’

  Crossing to his desk, Quinn opened Mary’s file and began to flick through the pages.

  ‘Jesus, you’re obsessed with that now, aren’t you?’ Doyle commented.

  ‘The way you are with the Maggot, you mean?’

  ‘I know a guilty man when I see one.’

  ‘So you keep telling me, and I suppose if we can prove it this time, it’ll vindicate you being in that cell.’

  ‘Moss,’ Doyle said, ‘I’m not looking for vindication, and both you and Frank knew fine what was going on that night.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Eva’s been gone almost two days. It’s the Maggot, for Christ’s sake. Let’s pick him up again, and this time let me ask him.’

  Quinn didn’t reply, and for a few minutes there was silence, with Doyle restless at the window and him restless at his desk.

  ‘Do you really think it might be Jimmy then?’ Doyle shook his head. ‘I can’t see it; for the life of me, I cannot see it at all.’

  ‘He gave us Maggs, didn’t he?’ Quinn stated. ‘And he was quite capable of beating an old woman over the head for a few quid. He’d have known we’d be looking at him, so he made damn sure we knew Maggs had spoken to her. Everyone in Listowel knew how it was with us, and Maggs and Jimmy the Poker was no exception. Let’s face it, we didn’t let them down, did we? We went after him with everything we had. All we needed was the right word, and we got it both from Jimmy and from Patrick Maguire.’

  ‘And we got him, Moss: we found out the Maggot lied through his teeth.’

  ‘He could’ve lied just because he was frightened.’ Quinn looked hard at him then. ‘Do you not think - standing back now, I mean – that the pair of us might not have been just a little bit prejudiced?’

  Doyle sat down. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I suppose it’s possible. But Jimmy the Poker? He lives in Kerry. Was he even up here on Sunday night? And if he was, what the hell’s he ever had against Eva?’

  ‘I don’t know, but when he gets here we can ask him.’

  Quinn looked at his watch. He could feel the tension eating away at him. ‘You know, Eva and I argued about Maggs,’ he said.

  He could see her in front of the Victorian fireplace telling him pointedly that he was wrong. And for all the man’s failings, his misconceptions, there was no way Conor could kill anyone. He had no history of violence, no matter what her uncle claimed. ‘She told me straight it wasn’t him: she said that you and I were going after him for personal reasons, and she’d lost respect for the both of us because of it.’

  Doyle considered the hive of frenetic activity outside in the incident room. ‘So if it isn’t Maggs,’ he said, ‘if this is someone else, what’s with all the cryptic bollocks, then?’

  Quinn lifted his palms. ‘Maybe he’s pissed off, Doyler: a little indignant or something. Maybe he’s telling us that we have to look again; maybe he’s telling us we got it wrong with Mary and if we find who really killed her, we’ll find Eva.’

  Doyle lifted one eyebrow. ‘So the lilywhite boys then; they’re from the poem, aren’t they: ‘Green Grow the Rushes O’. ‘Two, two, the lilywhite boys, clothe them all in green, ho ho.’

  ‘I thought about that,’ Quinn stated. ‘The “clothe in green” part, at least. I don’t know, but it could be something to do with being buried, maybe; some connection with what happened to Mary.’

  ‘Mary wasn’t clothed in green though, was she? There was no turf on her, Moss: she was hidden under the floor.’ Doyle considered for a moment. ‘Kildare, maybe,’ he muttered. ‘A lilywhite is what they call someone who comes from Kildare.’

  Logging on to the internet, Quinn called up a search engine, then typed the words ‘Green Grow the Rushes O’ and hit the enter button.

  Doyle leant on the desk next to him.

  Going to the Wikipedia entry, Quinn read from the introduction: “The song is referred to as ‘The twelve prophets or the carol of the twelve numbers’. ‘I’ll sing you one, ho, green grow the rushes, o. What is your one, ho? One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so.’ “‘He read to himself for a moment, then all at once he glanced up. ‘Look at this,’ he stated: “The phrase ‘Green grow the rushes, o’ sounds sufficiently out of place that one is inclined to ascribe it to the same origin as ‘Fine flowers in the valley’, which is a similar type of line and can be found in one version of the ballad “The Cruel Mother”.’

  ‘Click on it,’ Doyle said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘“The Cruel Mother”: click on it.’

  Quinn did as he suggested, and another page popped up.

  ‘A woman gives birth to one or two illegitimate children (usually sons). She kills them and buries them. Going home, she sees children playing, and says that if they were hers, she would dress them in fine garments and otherwise take care of them. The children tell her that when they were hers, she did not dress them so but murdered them. They tell her she will be damned for it.’

  Doyle flared his nostrils. ‘Maggs was an illegitimate son,’ he said, ‘whose mother made his life a misery.’

  ‘She did,’ Quinn agreed. ‘The piece talks about one or two illegitimate sons though, doesn’t it?’ He thought about that for a moment. Then, going back to the previous page, he read the original poem again. Another line caught his eye and it bothered him; it bothered him a great deal.

  Seven for the seven stars in the sky; or seven for the seven who went to heaven.

  He glanced through the open doorway to the incident room, where, on Murphy’s desk, the files they were supposed to be taking to Naas were piled one on top of the other.

  ‘Seven for the seven who went to heaven,’ he murmured. ‘Six women are dead, Doyle, and one more is missing.’

  Tuesday 2nd September 1.15 pm

  The interview room was small and cramped, and Jane Finucane was sitting with her hands clasped as Murphy showed Molly in. For a moment, the two women regarded each other carefully, the atmosphere a little awkward.

  ‘I’m not sure that you were ever introduced,’ Murphy said. ‘Jane Finucane, this is Molly Parkinson.’

  �
�I saw you at Conor’s trial,’ Jane said. ‘You testified against him.’

  ‘That’s right, I did.’

  ‘What’re you doing here?’

  Molly didn’t reply. She looked at Murphy for encouragement.

  ‘I thought you girls might like to have a chat,’ Murphy explained. ‘After all, you’ve quite a bit in common.’

  Taking a seat, Molly looked a bit nervous. ‘I think the guard is talking about Conor, Jane. I know you were with him at the trial: I saw you on the steps when he was giving that press conference. Are you still seeing him now?’

  Jane nodded. ‘We got together when he was on remand. He sent an open letter telling everyone what had happened to him and how it led to such a dramatic conversion. I belong to a church group, you see, and his letter touched not just me but all of us.’

  ‘So you wrote back to him?’

  ‘Yes, then I visited him in Mountjoy.’

  ‘And that’s when you fell for him?’

  ‘It was pretty instant.’

  ‘I suppose it can be like that,’ Molly agreed. ‘I remember I wanted to mother him, and that isn’t like me at all. But he was always a little vulnerable. I remember when he came to the salon, I saw it even then. I’m a hairdresser, you see, and Conor came in one day. He didn’t say much, but there was something about him that really seemed to get to me.’

  ‘He’s genuine,’ Jane told her. ‘That’s a rare quality these days. There’s no second-guessing with Conor: what he says is what he means.’

  ‘He appears genuine,’ Molly told her. ‘But the night Mary Harrington was murdered, he told me what to say.’

  ‘You mean he had to remind you. I heard your testimony, Molly, and Conor and I talked about it. We have no secrets. He told me he had to tell you what happened because you’d had such a load to drink you couldn’t remember anything.’