Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (10 page)

‘Of course not! Thou shalt not kill, under any provocation whatsoever. Besides, I know for a fact that whatever Father Heaney did, he was truly repentant.’

‘But you believe that Brendan had a very strong motive to punish him?’

‘That depends on how forgiving you are, superintendent.’

‘Hmm,’ said Katie. She ran her fingertip along a small tenon saw, but its blade was rusty rather than bloody, and she put it down again. ‘Did Brendan own a van?’

‘No, not himself. He used to borrow one from the nursery up at Ballyvolane whenever he needed a van for any of his odd jobs.’

‘What did it look like, this van?’

Father Lenihan pulled a face. ‘It wasn’t always the same van. I saw a blue one once, and a black one, but I’m not really the man to ask about vans.’

‘The black one – did you notice anything unusual about it? Any markings?’

‘Only a name that somebody had painted over, but you couldn’t read what it was.’

Detective O’Donovan held up a spiral-bound notebook, and a green ballpoint pen. ‘I found these on the table here, ma’am. This must be the pad he used to write his suicide note in.’

Katie took the notebook and leafed over a few pages. They were all blank, but when she angled it against the light she could still make out the indentation of somebody’s handwriting. She passed it back to Detective O’Donovan and said, ‘Yes, let’s bag this, too – and the pen, please.’

She took a last look around, lifting up the cushion on the basketwork chair, and then the crocheted blanket on the sofa. The leatherette fabric was worn through, so that the springs were showing, and Brendan Doody had pushed dozens of crumpled-up sweet wrappers down the back of it, mostly Snickers and Aero bars.

‘Well, he never let himself go hungry,’ she remarked. She let the blanket drop back and then she said, ‘Did Monsignor Kelly tell you that we’d be needing a picture of him?’

Father Lenihan led them back into the church and through to his dark panelled presbytery office. On the wall above his desk hung a very miserable-looking Madonna, as if she were mourning what the world had become, in spite of having sacrificed her only son. In fact, Katie thought she was the most dejected Madonna she had ever seen.

Father Lenihan shook two photographs out of a manila envelope and handed them over. ‘This one – this small one here – that’s your most recent. That was taken at a family christening three weeks ago. The larger one – Brendan’s not so clear in this one, but that’s him standing in the background with the cap on.’

Katie examined the photographs closely. Brendan Doody looked about five feet six or seven, podgy, with scruffy caramel-coloured hair that he had probably cut himself, and protruding ears. He had an expression that was both eager to please and slightly bewildered, as if he were excited by the events in which he was participating, but didn’t quite know how to join in.

‘Thanks a million, father,’ said Katie. ‘These two pictures will be grand. We’ll probably be putting at least one of them out on the TV news tonight. Meanwhile, if you can think of anything else at all that might help us to find him.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Father Lenihan. ‘But you’ve read his letter, haven’t you, and you can tell for yourself that he was always quite a queer fellow. With us in
body
, as it were, but not...’ and he tapped his forehead with his fingertip. ‘Not entirely, anyhow.’

They shook Father Lenihan’s hand and walked back down the steps of St Patrick’s. As they did so, Katie looked across the river and saw the white shirt that had earlier been flying over the rooftops lying spreadeagled in the filthy geay water, its arms rising and falling in a sinuous mockery of a dance.

They climbed back into the car and slammed the doors. ‘What do you think to that then, ma’am?’ asked Detective O’Donovan.

‘What makes you think I think anything?’

‘Because it’s plain bloody obvious that you do. You’ve got that look in your eye. That famous look that O’Driscoll calls your “cat’s malogian meter”.’

They backed out of the parking space in front of St Patrick’s. Father Lenihan was still watching from the top of the church steps with his hands clasped.

‘He was lying through his teeth,’ said Katie.

‘Father Lenihan? Name of Jesus, he’s a reverend!’

‘So what? You don’t seriously think that reverends ever lie? All that codswallop about Brendan Doody whispering about Father Heaney being a demon, and how he was going to be sorry one day.’

‘You didn’t believe that?’

Katie shook her head. ‘Not for a second. And you could tell how uncomfortable Father Lenihan felt, saying it. But – somebody further up the diocesan food chain told him he had to say it, or words to that effect. Otherwise – think about it – there would be no witnesses at all who heard Brendan threaten Father Heaney before his murder.’

‘Brendan didn’t call him “Father Heaney”, though, did he? He called him “Skelly”.’

‘Nice touch, that, I thought. It made his threat sound all the more authentic, because if Father Heaney had abused him at school, that’s what Brendan would have called him. Anybody who went to St Joseph’s would have known who “Skelly” was. I’ll bet you still remember
your
schoolteachers’ nicknames, don’t you, even today?’

Detective O’Donovan thought about that as they waited at the traffic lights to cross back over the river. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Father Duckfart. I don’t even remember his real name now, but I’ll never forget the noise he used to make, walking along the corridor. Some of the bold boys use to throw breadcrumbs after him.’

Katie went up to the media office and handed over the two photographs of Brendan Doody so that they could be sent to the RTÉ TV studios for the evening’s six o’clock news bulletin, and then to the newspapers: the
Examiner
and the
Corkman
and the
Southern Star
in Skibbereen
.
She was just about to go back out again when Sergeant O’Rourke tilted his head out of the squad-room door and called out, ‘Phone for you, ma’am!’

‘Whoever it is, tell them that I’m somewhere else altogether, because I very nearly am.’

‘It’s personal, apparently. Aoife’s father.’

Aoife’s father
. Aoife, of course, was John’s collie bitch. Katie stopped with her hand against the door. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then she turned around and walked back. Sergeant O’Rourke was trying hard not to smile at her as he passed her the receiver.

‘
John
,’ she breathed.

‘Caught you at last! I’ve been trying all morning. You haven’t been answering your mobile.’

‘Not to you, no. I’ve been up to my ears. We’re right in the middle of this Father Heaney murder. I’m just about to go back up to Ballyhooly.’

‘Katie... do you think we could talk?’

‘What about? There’s nothing more to say, is there? Whatever we feel about each other, you’re going and I’m staying, and that’s all there is to it.’

‘Please. I have some ideas. Maybe we can work something out.’

‘What, like alternate weekends? California one week and Cork the next?’

‘Katie – please, just hear me out. Is there any chance I can meet you this evening?’

Katie’s instincts said,
no, this is going to mean nothing but more arguing and nothing
but more pain
. But she checked her wristwatch and said, ‘I’m having supper with my father at seven. Why don’t you come round then?’

‘I wouldn’t want to impose on him.’

‘You won’t be. He loves company and Mrs Walsh always cooks far too much. I can’t guarantee what she’s going to be serving us up tonight, but if you’re prepared to take pot luck...’

‘Sure. I’ll eat almost anything, you know me. Except please, please,
please
– not that tripe again, that stuff that she boils in milk.’

Katie hesitated. She knew that this was a terrible idea, but she was already missing John badly. Just to see him and to touch him would make her feel that she wasn’t completely on her own again. And maybe there was an outside chance that they
could
work out some way of staying together. Maybe she could talk to some of her contacts and find him a job here in Cork, although she knew that most of the major companies were shedding more and more staff every day. Two entire factories had closed last week, for good, Z-Line Electronics and Pargeter’s Foods. But then again, maybe John could run his business completely online.

Detective O’Donovan came out of the gents’ toilet, shaking his hands. ‘Bloody dryer’s bust again. Are we ready?’

Katie nodded.

‘This is getting up your nose, this case, isn’t it?’ Detective O’Donovan asked her, as they crossed the car park.

‘It helps when your witnesses tell the truth, at least to the best of their ability.’

‘My father used to say that he wouldn’t trust a priest to peel a turnip.’

‘I’m beginning to agree with him.’

They drove up to Ballyhooly under a blue sky filled with tumbling white clouds. On the way they passed the driveway that sloped up to the Meagher farm at Knocknadeenly and Katie saw that there was already a sign outside it: FOR SALE, Christy Buckley Auctioneers. Detective O’Donovan saw it, too, but he made no comment.

Patrick O’Donovan had a fair idea of what was happening in Katie’s life, as did everybody else at Anglesea Street, but mostly they respected her privacy and kept it to themselves. At least John was an improvement on her late husband, Paul, who had been a notorious local chancer. The number of times they had turned a blind eye to Paul’s dealings in building materials of doubtful provenance, and to all of those cases of Johnnie Walker that he had offered at half price in the back bar of the Flying Bottle in Hollyhill, no questions asked.

Margaret Rooney lived in a small, cream-painted house on Ballyhooly’s Main Street, with its red front door right on the road. Detective O’Donovan knocked and inside a dog started yapping. He knocked again and at last the door was unlocked. A vexed-looking woman appeared, with close-together eyes and lips that looked as if they had been tightly sewn together, like a shrunken head.

‘Yes, what do you want?’ she snapped, holding up hands that were dusted in flour. ‘Can’t you see that I’m baking?’

Detective O’Donovan leaned across and smiled at her, holding up his badge. ‘Remember me from yesterday, Margaret? Detective O’Donovan. I brought my boss to talk to you about that fat fellow you saw in the river.’

Katie held up her badge, too, and said, ‘Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire, Mrs Rooney.’

Mrs Rooney frowned at them irritably. ‘I thought I’d told you people everything you wanted to know.’

‘Well, yes, you did,’ said Katie. ‘But we have some pictures now, and I was hoping that you’d be kind enough to take a look at them for me.’

‘Pictures, is it?’

Katie held them up. ‘We think they could be the man you saw in the river, but we really need to know for sure.’

Without a word, Mrs Rooney opened the front door wider and flapped her floury hand to indicate that they should follow her into her living room. Her dog was a brindled Boston terrier with bulging eyes and it jumped up and barked at them furiously as they came in, scratching at Katie’s shiny new boots with its claws.
About as hospitable as your mistress, thought Katie, you little bush pig
.

‘Sit down,’ said Mrs Rooney, going through to the kitchen to wash her hands. ‘You won’t be wanting any tea, will you?’

‘No, thank you,’ Katie told her. She and Detective O’Donovan wedged themselves side by side in a high-sided two-seater couch, while Mrs Rooney came back in and perched herself in her armchair, surrounded by balls of fawn-coloured wool and knitting patterns.

The living room was so small that their knees almost touched, and the claustrophobic effect was intensified by all the decorative china plates and religious plaques that crowded the walls. Mrs Rooney’s dog kept circling around and around, snuffling and bumping them and stepping on their feet. There was a strong smell of burned milk, which reminded Katie of her grandmother’s house.

‘About what time was it when you saw the man in the river?’ asked Katie.

‘I wouldn’t know exactly, like, I don’t have a watch. But I’d say about five past seven. When I was walking past Michael Sullivan’s house on the corner I saw Michael pulling open his bedroom curtains, and I know that he always gets up at seven.’

‘So you were crossing the bridge, and that’s when you first caught sight of this man?’

‘I would never have seen him at all if Micky hadn’t stopped and barked at him. It was so misty like, you couldn’t see further than the other side of Grindell’s farm, where the lane comes down to the river. That’s where the fellow’s van was parked with its doors open. It was black, the van, or maybe dark blue. I told Micky to come away but then I saw the fellow himself and he was all hunched over with his back to me, like, and he was dragging what I thought was a sack of coal.’

‘Did you call out to him?’

‘Why would I? I didn’t know then that he was dragging a dead priest after him, did I?’ She made a shivery noise and crossed herself. ‘If he hadn’t been wearing that hat, I would have walked on and thought nothing at all about it, but that hat made me stop and stare at him, like.’

‘Oh, yes – that pointed hat that you told Detective O’Donovan about.’

Mrs Rooney said, ‘That’s right. Just like the dunce’s cap they used to make us wear in high babies, whenever we got our sums wrong.’

‘Detective O’Donovan tells me you caught a glimpse of his face.’

Mrs Rooney pursed her sewn-together lips and nodded. ‘Yes – but only for an instant, mind. Like I told your man here, he was a big fellow, and he was fat, but in a sweet-looking way, if you know what I mean. There’s a painting of a whole bunch of angels and cherubs in St Patrick’s in Fermoy, and that’s what he reminded me of. A cherub.’

Katie took out the photograph of Brendan Doody at the christening, and passed it across to her. ‘Do you recognize this man here – the one with the circle drawn around him?’

Mrs Rooney put on her rimless spectacles and peered at the photograph as intently as if she were trying to burn a hole in it. ‘No. I don’t know this fellow at all.’