The Gathering of Souls

by Gerry O'Carroll

  He looked into his brother’s face. ‘That was when she started wearing the necklace.’

  ‘Did it remind you of our mam?’ Frank asked him.

  Patrick pushed out his lips. ‘In a way, I suppose it did. I’d never seen her wear it before, but there it was one day around her neck. She told me how she got it and that she’d not worn it in years. She had to wear it now though, because it was the heart of Jesus, and with Danny gone the religion was all she had to cling to.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her it was rubbish then,’ his brother said. ‘About Jesus, I mean. That the world and all of us – everything – was just some accident of the universe?’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘That would’ve been cruel, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Where is she?’ Frank asked him.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You have to tell us.’

  ‘I can’t if I don’t know.’

  ‘There’s no time, Paddy. If we don’t get to her soon, she’s going to die.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then you have to tell us; you have to tell me.’

  ‘I can’t tell you if I don’t know.’ Patrick leant across the table and looked him right in the eye. ‘Do you really think this is how it is, Frank? I mean, deep down in your heart of hearts, do you believe I could abduct my best friend’s wife? Do you think I’ve buried her someplace, left her to die without water just like Mary Harrington?’

  Frank studied him, the tension working across his shoulders a physical pain now. ‘What about the others?’ he said. ‘What about the five missing women we’ve never found any trace of? Eva was a single mother, Pat, like you say. She’d pushed Moss away and she was all alone with those two girls. That made her just the same as the others. You knew two of them, didn’t you?’

  Patrick looked almost sadly at him. ‘Do you think I killed them, I mean really? Patrick Pearse Maguire, a serial killer, the most brutal murderer this country has ever known?’

  ‘Are you?’

  Patrick closed his eyes. ‘Just because I fit the profile doesn’t mean I did it. And just because I had no love as a kiddie doesn’t mean I did it. Did it never occur to you, Frankie, that because of you I turned out all right?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘So I took a leak on a statue at St Boniface. Big deal. It was a statue, Frank, that’s all it was, and I was shit-faced drunk.’

  ‘But why did you do that of all things, when you knew how it would look, you knew you’d have to leave.’

  ‘I can’t remember doing it. And I doubt I would’ve cared how it looked. I was eighteen and I wanted to leave: it was only ever the monks who said I should join the Society. I’d had enough of religion. I didn’t believe any of it any more, and whatever anyone reads into it I’d had such a skin-full that night that I have no recollection of even being in the bloody chapel.’

  He sat forward again, his shoulders hunched and his gaze fixed. ‘I haven’t done this. It isn’t me. I no more abducted Eva than I abducted Mary Harrington. This isn’t me, Frankie. You’ve got it wrong; you’ve all got it wrong. The necklace was our mother’s, not Eva’s.’

  Frank shook his head. ‘Our mother’s was buried with her.’

  ‘No it wasn’t.’

  ‘Paddy, come on, I was there.’

  ‘Yes, you were: you and me in the chapel of rest. But I went back, remember? You were talking to the undertaker; you were being all grown up and dealing with everything as usual, and I told you I was going for a pee.’ Reaching across the table, he took his brother by the arm. ‘I went back, Frankie. I went back and I took it. I lost the chain years ago, but I always kept the heart. It reminded me of our mam; of being in her lap. And that was the only good memory I ever had of her.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I can see how this has come about. I’ve spent my life in prisons seeing how things get twisted, how they get misconstrued. But you’re the one who hid our past, not me. If you hadn’t, then Moss wouldn’t even have begun to be suspicious. Don’t you see? Half the reason things look like they do is because you were so worried about what other people might think. But you have to forget all that now and you have to trust me. You have to look me in the eye and you have to believe what I’m saying. I’m not your man. This isn’t me. I didn’t do any of it.’

  Wednesday 3rd September 9.50pm

  In the living room at Jane’s flat, Maggs was watching the garda commissioner making a statement to the press. He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Jane was sitting on the arm of his chair; she was holding his hand, and her eyes were bright with excitement.

  ‘We have two people in custody,’ the commissioner was saying. ‘They’re both currently assisting us in the search for Eva. That’s all I have to say right now. I’m sure you have a multitude of questions, but you’ll have to forgive me: I cannot answer any at the moment.’

  With that, he walked up the drive.

  Suddenly Jane was in Maggs’s lap, her arms around his neck. She was smothering him with kisses. ‘Oh, Conor,’ she said, ‘did you hear that? You’re vindicated: your name is cleared finally.’

  Maggs was still staring at the screen. Only he was no longer seeing it: he was in the dock at the Four Courts, and there in the public gallery Eva was twisting the necklace he’d given her around her little finger.

  All at once his shoulders sagged, the relief suddenly visible. Jane had his cheeks cupped in her hands and she was kissing him again and again. ‘Oh love, it’s marvellous; it’s fantastic. Praise the lord, Conor, praise the lord.’

  Maggs didn’t say anything. Getting up, he stood there for a few moments, gazing through the hall to the front door without really seeing anything.

  ‘Conor,’ Jane said, ‘are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine. It’s just that after all this time, I’m not sure I can get my head around it.’ His eyes were wide suddenly. ‘They no longer think it was me, Jane. Doyle and Quinn, after all they did: they no longer think it was me.’

  Tears brimmed in his eyes now; he was trembling slightly. ‘You believed in me,’ he said. ‘When nobody else was there, you always believed in me.’

  ‘And I always will. I’ll always be there for you. I love you, Conor. You know I do. I’m in this for the long haul.’

  He slipped his arms round her neck. ‘I love you too. And you know what? We should celebrate. This is a moment in history; a watershed, perhaps, in our relationship. We’ve won a great victory and we should celebrate. Let’s buy champagne, Janey; let’s buy champagne and go to bed. Let’s celebrate in bed.’ He smiled now and he kissed her. ‘Get undressed,’ he told her. ‘Take off all your clothes and get into bed. I’ll fetch the champagne.’

  Grabbing his jacket, he picked up his wallet and stepped outside. Jane remained in the hall for a couple of minutes, basking in the glow. She knew how much she loved him; she knew how much he loved her; and she was thinking then that there wasn’t much else in the world that really mattered right now.

  She wondered if he might ask her to marry him. She was singing as she went into the bathroom to run the bath. While it was filling, she went through to the tiny bedroom and laid out her sexiest nightdress, then set about making the bed. She heard footsteps coming along the landing outside. ‘Conor, if that’s you back already, the door’s open.’

  There was no reply, and she wondered then if they had champagne in the corner shop or if he’d nipped up to the hotel. She heard the front door open behind her and, with a smile, she turned.

  ‘That was quick …’ She took a step backwards.

  Two heavily built men stepped into the hall. They were big men, hard men: one wearing a leather coat, and the other a donkey jacket. Both were skinheads; one had home-made tattoos scrawled on the backs of his hands.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What’re you doing in my flat?’

  The first one just stared at her. The other went into the bathroom and turned off the shower.

  ‘Your cousin wants a word,’ he told her. ‘You have to
come with us.’

  Before Jane could say or do anything, he took her by the elbow and lifted her coat from the peg. ‘It won’t take but a minute, love. You have to come with us.’

  Wednesday 3rd September 10.03 pm

  Seventy-two hours. Quinn was staring at the clock. Doyle was on the phone; Murphy was on the phone. There was no sign of Maguire: as far as Quinn was aware, he was still across the river at Amiens Street.

  He felt helpless, lost; more alone even than when he’d woken this morning. The noise from the incident room was incessant: the conversation, the hubbub of phones ringing and messages coming in. But it was seventy-two hours now, and he’d been to Blackrock, he’d been to Clare and he’d been to Carrigafoyle, where Doyle had told him not to give up. But all hope seemed to be lost now. Pat Maguire was in custody; Jimmy Hanrahan was in custody; and still nobody could tell him what had happened to Eva.

  He just sat there. The frustration was so great that it was as if his muscles had seized and all he could do, as the clock ticked beyond the point of no return, was watch helplessly as people worked feverishly around him.

  His phone rang. Shovelling a rough hand into his jacket pocket, he dug it out. For a moment he looked at the screen, not recognising the number, then realised that it was the lab calling from across the city.

  ‘Quinn,’ he said.

  ‘Moss, this is John May.’ May was a ballistics expert he’d worked with many times in the past.

  ‘What do you know, John?’

  ‘Is there any news on Eva?’

  Quinn bit his lip. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no news. We’ve two men in custody and fuck-all good it’s doing us.’

  ‘Jeez, I’m sorry. Look, Mossie, I wanted to talk to you as soon as I had anything on that pendant. The chain that Scene of Crimes picked up showed links with distinctive striation marks.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, I’m sitting here now with the pendant under the electron microscope we use for bullets.

  You’ve seen it: it magnifies two million times.’

  ‘What’s it telling you?’

  ‘The striation marks don’t match, Moss. I’m still checking, of course, and I’ve a couple of assistants checking it too, but as far as I can see the pendant you gave me was never attached to the chain.’

  Wednesday 3rd September 10.03 pm

  Jane had never been to her cousin’s boat, and in the back of the car with the tattooed skinhead seated alongside her the nerves almost got the better of her. Johnny Clogs was actually her dad’s cousin, and the two of them didn’t get on at all. Whereas Johnny was a multi-millionaire developer and allegedly a gangster, her father had never amounted to anything more than a council worker in south Finglas.

  ‘What does Johnny want to see me about?’ she asked the man sitting next to her. He was looking ahead as they drove towards the quays and O’Connell Bridge. ‘I haven’t seen him in years. What does he want with me all of a sudden?’

  The thug filling most of the back seat didn’t answer. He didn’t look at her; he sat stony-faced as the driver negotiated the midweek traffic. At the bridge, they swung along the quay past the service alley that opened onto Abbey Street. Jane could see the massive cabin cruiser tied up at the moorings. When they were on deck, they pushed her down the steps into the salon below.

  White leather sofas, a flat-screen plasma TV and a well-stocked bar, where her cousin was standing in a silk robe and a pair of leather slippers. He had his back to her; he was shapeless and squat, the pink slab of skin at the back of his head glistening as if he’d just stepped out of the shower.

  She heard the chink of ice in a glass and, looking back, she saw the man who’d been sitting next to her standing at the top of the steps with his tattooed hands clasped in front of him. Jane was trembling slightly: she could feel perspiration gather under her armpits and at the tops of her thighs. She thought of Conor coming back to the flat and finding no trace of her.

  ‘John,’ she said. Still he didn’t turn around. ‘Johnny, you wanted to see me?’

  As if he didn’t even know she was there, Finucane busied himself with making a drink. When he had poured it, he remained with his back to her while he sipped it. She saw him reach for a cigarette from the open packet and take his lighter. She could smell the smoke; it clogged her throat in the confined atmosphere. Then he turned and considered her: piggish-eyes buried in fleshy holes in the pudgy moon of his face.

  ‘Jane Finucane,’ he said softly. ‘Tell me, how is your dad?’

  Jane looked puzzled. ‘He’s fine, John – or at least he was the last time I spoke to him.’

  ‘Still with the council, is he? I’ve a couple of projects going on up there in Finglas. Ah, but he works the roads though, doesn’t he – nothing to do with the building.’

  He motioned for her to sit down and then, taking a tub of fish food, he crossed the thick pile carpet to a large tank, where a number of brightly coloured exotic fish were swimming back and forth.

  ‘I hear you’re keeping the company of a maggot,’ he said softly.

  Jane coloured. ‘I don’t follow you, Johnny.’

  ‘Conor Maggs, the lad the guards lathered before his case was thrown out.’ He smiled to himself, dribbling a little fish food onto the surface of the water. ‘That’s what they call him, you know: the type of creepy-crawly thing I’d normally feed to the fish.’

  ‘He’s just been exonerated, Johnny, he’s …’

  ‘He’s full of shite is what he is.’ Setting the tub down, her cousin looked coldly at her. ‘And he’s caused me a lot of trouble just lately.’

  ‘I don’t understand. How could he be trouble to you?’

  ‘The guards, Jane. One Joseph Doyle, an old bog-trotter from County Kerry.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Not a lad to cross is Doyle, and neither is Moss Quinn. You see, they’re not the kind of coppers who understand the modern world. They live in the past: an Ireland that no longer exists. They don’t understand that a citizen has certain rights and they’re not to be intimidated.’

  ‘But what’s any of this got to do with me?’

  ‘Sunday night, pet. Sunday last, around ten o’clock: where were you?’

  ‘On Sunday I was home, Johnny. I was home at the flat.’

  ‘And the Maggot? Was he with you?’

  She faltered.

  His eyes flashed darkly. ‘Don’t lie to me now. Fine for the coppers, if that’s what you want, but do not lie to me.’

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again, and her cousin nodded slowly. ‘I always know when a person is lying, Jane.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘I’ve this built in shit-detector, you see, had it all my life. And the one thing that really sticks in old Johnny’s craw is a cheap fuckin’ lie. We’re family, Jane, you and me. But if I thought you were lying, I’d weigh anchor and off we’d trot up the Liffey and into the Irish Sea. Then I’d tie a set of chains around your ankles and lower you over the side.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘No more Jane Finucane, and no more little lies.’

  Jane almost wet herself, sitting there on her cousin’s leather sofa with his eyes boring holes in her. At the top of the stairs the skinhead was watching, with a wolfish grin on his face. Johnny sat down next to her. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’m going to ask the same question again, and now you know how it works you can answer. I’ll tell you, though, it’s like a TV quiz: I can only accept your first answer. If you have to change your mind, then it’s the boat trip, and before you go I’ll let Dessie there have his way with you.’ He looked over to the stairs. ‘And Dessie likes it rough, Jane. He likes to hurt his women.’

  She was shaking; it was all she could do to stop herself from urinating all over his furniture.

  ‘So tell me,’ he said softly. ‘I’m asking you now, and I’m doing it once: was the Maggot there with you, or did you lie to the cops?’

  Wednesday 3rd September 10.10 pm

  Maggs bought a bottle of cava from the mini-supermarket on Lower Camden S
treet; he had had to walk all the way down there because there was nothing at the Spar. His pocket wouldn’t stretch to a bottle of Moet but Jane wasn’t proud, and this stuff tasted just as good anyway. Shoving the bottle inside his coat, he wandered back towards the canal. There was no rain now, though there was a wind blowing across the city.

  Two men in custody; that brought a smile to his face. Quite the turn-up after all this time. But justice was justice, no matter how long it took.

  Ten minutes later, he turned into the service alley and looked up at the sixties-built flats: the grey stone balconies, the cheap tiles and the large square windows. He was free, clear; finally they had somebody else, and that meant he could spread his wings if he chose to. He’d need to do something about earning some money, though: he had no job as yet, and sooner or later the generosity of groups like the one at Harold’s Cross was bound to run out.

  The stone stairwell was smelly; he’d not really noticed before, but perhaps with this newfound sense of freedom there was a freeing up of his other senses also. He could smell where some little scrote had taken a leak right where people had to walk. They’d move on perhaps, him and Janey: they could do better than a place like this. Taking his key, he let himself into the flat. ‘I’m back, love,’ he called, ‘but we’ll have to settle for cava.’

  There was no answer.

  ‘I’m back,’ he called again. ‘I couldn’t get proper bubbly, so I picked up a bottle of the Spanish stuff, and I had to go all the way down to Camden Street just to get that.’