Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (30 page)

Sergeant O’Rourke showed him his badge. ‘I’m on very urgent business. I have to get through.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, sergeant, but there’s no way. You can see for yourself. We can’t even get our own cars through until the tow-truck arrives.’

‘Oh, yes? And when is that likely to be?’

‘He said twenty minutes, like, but you never know. He was out clearing an accident in Rosscarbery when we called him.’

Sergeant O’Rourke said, ‘I’m working on a major case and we’re fierce tight on time. I need to get through here now.’

‘Can’t be done, sir. Sorry.’

Sergeant O’Rourke opened his door and climbed out of his car. He jostled past the garda in the waterproof cape and headed directly towards a uniformed sergeant who was watching the vet as he manipulated one of the cow’s upraised forelegs, feeling for fractures. The cow was rolling her eyes in pain and bewilderment.

He held out his badge and said, ‘Detective Sergeant O’Rourke, Cork City.’

The sergeant gave his badge the most cursory of glances. ‘Oh, yes, detective sergeant? And what brings you down here on a day like this? Come to take some detecting lessons from us culchies?’

‘I’m working on a major case.’

‘Oh, yeah? Major, is it?’

‘Sorry, but it’s confidential.’

‘Confidential?’

‘That’s right. I have to locate a very important witness. As soon as humanly possible, like. Your man here says I can’t get past.’

The uniformed sergeant had a big face as orange as gammon skin, with pale blue eyes and gingery eyebrows.

‘Normally, I’d say you could go through town, back up to Wolfe Tone Street and then along the Western Road. But the Western Road is closed because of a burst water main, so it looks like you’re stuck here like the rest of us. Sorry about that.’

‘If that’s the situation, I’m going to have to borrow one of your squad cars from the other side of that truck.’

‘You’re what? You’re messing, aren’t you?’

‘Sorry, sergeant. Serious.’

The sergeant shook his head. ‘I could have one of my lads drive you. How about that?’

‘Sorry. This is totally confidential. I need to have the car to myself.’

The sergeant shook his head again and continued shaking it. ‘Can’t do that for you, no matter what.’

Sergeant O’Rourke took out his mobile phone and punched out Katie’s number. After a few seconds Katie answered him and snapped, ‘What is it, Jimmy? Haven’t you found Father Lowery yet? We’re running out of time, for God’s sake.’

Sergeant O’Rourke explained about the overturned cattle truck and the burst water main and the fact that he wanted to borrow a squad car. Then he handed his mobile phone to the uniformed sergeant.

‘Detective Superintendent Maguire. Tell her that I can’t have a car.’

The uniformed sergeant began to plead that he couldn’t allow Sergeant O’Rourke to take one of his cars because otherwise Clonakilty Garda station could be short of transport that evening, and once the Kilty Stone and Mick Finn’s and Phair’s closed their doors they needed all the transport they could get.

At that point it was obvious that Katie had interrupted him, because all he said after that was ‘yeah but – yeah but – yeah but—’ and then he nodded, and nodded again, and said, ‘All right, then. All right, then, agreed.’

He handed back the mobile phone. His mouth was puckered as if he had just bitten into something extremely nasty-tasting. ‘Name of Jesus,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t like to work for
her
. Go on, take one of the cars. But bring it back to the Garda station as soon as you can, all right? Once we’ve cleared up all this mess, we’ll take your own car up there and have it waiting for you. We’re halfway up McCurtain Hill – take a left before Harrington’s pharmacy.’

Sergeant O’Rourke climbed around the front bumper of the overturned truck and made his way through the long wet grass and weeds at the side of the road. Three Garda vehicles were parked at an angle in the middle of the road, two Ford Focuses and a Renault people carrier. As he reached the nearest car, he heard the sharp crack of a captive bolt stunner as the vet killed one of the injured cows. Before he could climb into the driving seat he heard another crack, and then another.

He started the engine, slewed the car around and drove away, with his windscreen wipers going at full speed –
whump, whump, whump, whump
! It sounded like the heartbeat of a man who realizes that a terrible creature is hot on his heels, but he can never outrun it.

It took him only another fifteen minutes to reach Rathbarry, in spite of the rain. It was a small, hilly, pretty little village in the middle of nowhere – what the Cork City people called ‘up back of leap’. It had won awards for being tidy and hospitable, although this afternoon it was almost deserted.

He drove past the Cáiteach, the signpost in the centre of the village made out of upturned scythes and sheaves of corn, and on to St Michael’s church. An elderly woman was standing by the grey stone wall outside, with a wet grey shawl draped over her head, and a wet grey curly-haired dog sitting beside her.

Two cars were parked at the opposite end of the wall, one with its engine running and a plume of exhaust twisting in the wind. Sergeant O’Rourke climbed out of the Garda car and approached the woman, turning up his collar against the rain.

‘What’s the story, girl?’ he asked her.

The woman had a face as wrinkled as an old potato. She may have owned a set of dentures, but if she did, she hadn’t put them in today. ‘You’ll be watching for the divil, won’t you?’ she said.

‘I’m looking for a priest, as a matter of fact.’

‘A priest, is it? They’re divils, too, every one of them. Is it Father Fitzpatrick you’re after?’

‘Father Lowery. He was only visiting.’

The old woman shook her head. ‘Never heard of him. But I’ll bet you that
he’s
a divil, too.’ Her dog looked up at her from beneath its dripping grey fringe as if it had heard this many times before and just wanted to go home to a bowl of dog biscuits and a basket with a warm blanket in it.

Sergeant O’Rourke left the woman and her dog where they were and walked up the path toward the church’s main door. As he did so, the door opened and a big fifty-ish man appeared, with a brick-red face and sandy-coloured hair and a shirt collar that was two sizes too tight for him.

‘Can I be helping you there?’ he asked, locking the door behind him.

‘I hope so. I’m looking for Father Lowery. I was told that he was visiting the church here for a car boot sale.’

‘Oh, yes, indeed he was. But that was all finished by lunchtime. Every time we hold a car boot sale here, the heavens open. I sometimes believe that the Lord is trying to discourage us.’

‘So Father Lowery’s gone back to Cork?’

‘No, not yet. He’ll be spending tonight at Ardfield, at St James’s, with Father Fitzpatrick. In fact, I don’t believe he’s left yet. A taxi arrived for him only five minutes ago – and, look, yes, that’s it.’ He pointed toward the car with the smoking exhaust. ‘There, if you make quick, you can catch him.’

Sergeant O’Rourke clapped the red-faced man on the shoulder and said, ‘Thanks a million.’ He hurried back along the path, his raincoat flapping, but just as he reached the gates, the taxi pulled away and headed off towards the village. He glimpsed a white-haired man in a black biretta sitting in the back seat, but then the car turned the corner and disappeared downhill out of sight.

Sergeant O’Rourke immediately ran back to the squad car. As he passed her, the old woman with the shawl over her head called out, ‘
Divils
!
Every last one of
them
!
Evil incarnate
!’

He started the engine, released the clutch, and shot forward ten metres with a rattling spray of shingle. Then he handbrake-turned and sped back the way he had come, past the Cáiteach and down the hill. He wanted to catch up with Father Lowery’s taxi before the driver reached the main road. If he was going to Ardfield, he would take a left, and then the first right. It was only about a ten-minute journey, if that.

But as the taxi came to the junction with the R598, its offside indicator started to flash. Its driver waited for a farm tractor to come trundling past, towing a trailer loaded up high with straw. Then he turned right, towards the sea, speeding away with an audible squitter of tyres. Not only was he heading in the wrong direction, but he seemed to be driving inconsiderately fast for a taxi driver with a geriatric priest for a passenger.

Sergeant O’Rourke turned right, too, and went after him. He had been planning on switching on the squad car’s blue lights and overtaking the taxi as soon as possible, but now he held back. He wanted to see where Father Lowery was being taken. He wondered if Monsignor Kelly had contacted Father Lowery and warned him to make himself scarce for a while. Why else had it been impossible to contact Father Lowery by phone? He hadn’t answered any calls to his mobile and the small boy with the clogged-up nose who had picked up the phone at St Michael’s had sworn blind that he had looked everywhere but couldn’t find him.

From Rathbarry, this road would take them due south, towards the sea, but then turn westward and run parallel to the coast, through Long Strand. After that, though, it turned northward again until it rejoined the main N71, so Father Lowery could be heading anywhere at all – to Skibbereen, in the west, or eastward even, back to Cork City.

The taxi drove faster and faster, until it was speeding along at nearly seventy, with a bridal veil of spray trailing behind it. Sergeant O’Rourke was finding it hard to keep up, although he didn’t want to come so close that the taxi driver realized he had a two-bulb on his tail. In his white Ford Focus with its yellow and blue Battenberg squares, he could hardly have been more conspicuous, and he cursed his luck for having been obliged to leave his own unmarked car behind on the Croppy Road.

After less than two kilometres, however, without indicating that he was turning, the taxi driver swerved down the narrow road on the left that led to Castlefreke Warren and Donoure. That was one thing settled, anyway – Father Lowery was definitely
not
making for the N71.

As he approached the corner to follow him, Sergeant O’Rourke slowed right down to give the taxi driver plenty of time to widen his lead. This was a very quiet rural road and it was highly unlikely that there would be any other traffic, especially in this weather.

He still couldn’t work out where the taxi driver was going. It
was
possible to get to Ardfield this way, but he would definitely be taking the scenic route, through villages and caravan parks and farms, and it would take three times as long as driving there directly.

The road was only single-track here, with Castlefreke woods on the left and the sea on the right. The sea was the colour of gunmetal and very choppy. On the horizon, through the rain, Sergeant O’Rourke could just make out the pale grey outline of a giant oil tanker heading towards the Atlantic, like the ghost of the
Lusitania
.

When he looked back to the road ahead, however, the taxi had vanished.

‘
Shite
,’ he said, under his breath. He could see at least half a kilometre in front of him, and the road was reasonably straight, but there was no sign of the taxi at all. He took his foot off the accelerator and leaned forward over the steering wheel, narrowing his eyes to see if there were any side turnings up ahead.
Feck it
, he thought.
How could I have lost him? But one second he was right there in front of me, I swear to God, and the next second he wasn’t – just like some fecking magic trick.

He drove another seven hundred and fifty metres and then he pulled in to the side of the road. The rain was easing off now, and so he set his windscreen wipers to intermittent. He was tempted to call control at Clonakilty Garda station and ask for directions, but if he did that, the local cops would want to know where he was and what he was after doing, and Katie had insisted that he tell nobody that he wanted to talk to Father Lowery, or why.

He turned the car around and started to creep very slowly back the way he had come. He had covered less than two hundred metres when he noticed that some of the bushes by the side of the road had freshly broken branches, and that there were four deep tyre tracks in the muddy verge. The taxi driver must have turned off the road for some reason, plunging straight into the undergrowth, and headed towards the trees.

Sergeant O’Rourke drove on a few metres further and then parked the Garda car in a small gravelly lay-by. The woods were only about thirty metres away and quite dense – spruce and sycamore and maritime pine – and so the taxi driver couldn’t have gone very far. Sergeant O’ Rourke crossed the road, climbed up over the verge, and began to make his way through the bushes, his right elbow lifted in front of his face to shield it from a barbed-wire fence of brambles. All the same, they snatched and tore at his coat.

There was a strong fresh smell of sea in the air, mingled with the smell of wet undergrowth.

As he went further into the woods, he saw the taxi half-concealed behind a beech tree, not covered with leaves or branches, but parked in such a way that it couldn’t be seen from the road. He circled around it, keeping at least twenty metres distant, but the driver’s door and the nearside passenger door were both wide open, and the taxi was empty.

So where the hell were they
?
Father Lowery and his taxi driver
?

Sergeant O’Rourke reached into his coat and lifted his SIG Sauer automatic out of his shoulder holster. He cocked it, and held it up high in both hands, and then he approached the taxi’s rear door, his knees slightly bent, all the time glancing from side to side in case he was being watched.

He heard a sharp crackle of leaves and twigs, and he swung around with his automatic held out stiff-armed in front of him. God almighty. But it was nothing more than two squirrels chasing each other, tearing around and around and up and down trees.