Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (32 page)

‘Father ó Súllabháin?’ Pause. ‘Father ó Súllabháin? This is Detective Superintendent Maguire from the Garda Síochána.’

There was no reply, so Katie knocked again. ‘Father ó Súllabháin – I know you’re in retreat, and you’re praying, but it’s absolutely critical that I talk to you. It’s about Father Heaney and Father Quinlan and Father O’Gara, and St Joseph’s Choir.’

They waited, but there was still no reply. Katie looked at Detective O’Donovan, who shrugged and said, ‘Either he’s deaf or he’s climbing out the window.’

Katie tried the door handle. The door was unlocked, so she immediately opened it up and called out, ‘Father ó Súllabháin? Detective Superintendent Maguire! I need to talk to you!’

She stepped inside, and the first thing she saw was an olive-green armchair, which was lying on its side. She looked around quickly, with Detective O’Donovan close behind her. The room was cream-painted and carpeted in dark green, with only one picture on the wall, a print of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, being comforted by an angel. At the right-hand side of the room stood an unmade single bed, with a pine bedside table and a yellow-shaded lamp. To the left, a washbasin with a mirror. She walked up to the washbasin and examined the toiletries on the shelf. Palmolive shaving foam, Aquafresh toothpaste, Savlon antiseptic cream and a Dove roll-on deodorant for men. A yellow plastic razor and a splayed-out toothbrush were leaning side by side in a green plastic mug, like two drunks in a Patrick Street doorway.

‘Deodorant?’ Detective O’Donovan remarked, looking over her shoulder. ‘That’s progress. All of the priests I ever knew reeked of BO. And they always had smelly breath. Father Beckett, we used to call him Paint Stripper.’

Katie went over to a plain pine chest and pulled out the drawers one after the other. In the two small drawers at the top she found clean white Y-fronts, an empty spectacle case, a hotel sewing kit, some tissues and a three AA batteries, as well as a half-eaten bar of plain chocolate and a small Bible covered in white plastic that was so worn out that it was stuck together with yellowing Sellotape.

The three drawers below contained the clothes that Father ó Súllabháin had brought to the retreat with him – a black sweater, an oatmeal sweater, at least eight neatly folded shirts, and socks that had been paired and rolled up into balls.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘Father ó Súllabháin’s belongings are all here. But where is Father ó Súllabháin?’

‘Maybe he just went to check on the cabbages.’

‘I can’t believe those two eejits downstairs. I gave their sergeant a specific order that they were to contact Father ó Súllabháin as soon as they arrived here and apprise him that he was going to be protected from now on by at least two armed gardaí, twenty-four hours a day.’

‘Well, like I say, he’s either gone to check on the cabbages, or he left here of his own free will, or somebody’s come in here and abducted him.’

‘That tipped-over chair. That makes me think he could have been taken against his will. And the bed’s still messed up, even though it’s five in the afternoon. But if he has been taken, the real question is when was he taken? And who took him? And
why
?’

‘Could be our friend,’ said Detective O’Donovan.

‘You could be right. Maybe he got wind of the fact that we were on to him and decided to bring his next abduction forward a few days.’

‘Maybe he thinks we know more about him than we actually do,’ said Detective O’Donovan solemnly. ‘On the other hand, maybe we
do
know more about him, more than we realize, but he doesn’t know that, and neither do we.’

Katie blinked at Detective O’Donovan, and thought,
There’s no answer to that
. But he obviously knew what he meant, and she kind of knew what he meant, and that was enough. ‘Have those two uniforms start searching the building,’ she told him. ‘Every room, no matter who’s in there or what they’re doing. And call for some back-up from Mayfield to search the grounds. I’ll go and talk to the director.’

They went back down to the first floor, taking the staircase this time, which was illuminated in reds and blues by a tall stained-glass window depicting a mournful-looking St Dominic, with one hand raised. Detective O’Donovan pushed his way back outside to talk to the two uniformed gardaí, while Katie went looking for the director’s office. There was still nobody around, and the entire building was eerily silent, as if it had been evacuated.

She came to a door marked
Director: Benedict Tiernan, OP
. She gave a rapid knock but walked straight in without waiting for an answer. Inside, she found the director sitting at his desk, giving dictation to his secretary – a tall balding man in a white Dominican habit. He had a single grey cow’s lick of hair, which was all that remained of a widow’s peak. His eyes were very deep-set, with coal-dark rings around them, and he had a large predatory nose. The sun was shining through the window and it lit up his nostrils scarlet.

His secretary was a small fat woman in a pale green cardigan and a plaid skirt. She lifted her pen and held it poised in mid-air as if she was waiting for the director to tell Katie that he was too busy to talk to her, and continue his dictation.

Benedict Tiernan looked up at Katie with undisguised displeasure. ‘Detective Superintendent Maguire,’ he said, in a rusty, tremulous voice that changed pitch from one sentence to the next. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you in person.’

‘I came to talk to Father ó Súllabháin,’ she said. ‘I thought I made it clear over the phone that I needed to interview him as soon as possible.’

‘You did, superintendent. You did indeed. But I thought I made it clear to you that Father ó Súllabháin is in spiritual retreat. He is meditating, and praying, and we cannot disturb him. When you said “as soon as possible” I took you to mean when his retreat comes to an end, which will be Sunday, after lunch.’

‘Friar Tiernan, it is absolutely essential that I talk to him right now. A man’s life could be at stake.’

She explained briefly about Father O’Gara and how he had been run over in Patrick Street and apparently abducted.

‘Well, I’m extremely sorry about this,’ said Benedict Tiernan, steepling his fingers. ‘I was, of course, quite happy to give you permission to position guards around the retreat, as much for the protection of myself and my staff as for Father ó Súllabháin. I also understand that you cannot divulge to me the exact details of why Father ó Súllabháin
needs
protection, although I wasn’t born yesterday, superintendent. I am quite aware of what goes on in the world, beyond the walls of this retreat.’

He paused. He sat back, and as he did so withdrew the end of his nose from the beam of light, as if he had switched it off.

‘However, Father ó Súllabháin is here at St Dominic’s under our protection. We are safeguarding his spirit as well as his body. I cannot allow you to speak to him until his time in retreat is over. Can you imagine if Jesus had cut short his forty days and forty nights of fasting in the desert? We would never have had Lent. Or only a very short Lent.’

Jesus
, thought Katie.
And I thought Patrick O’Donovan was illogical
.

‘I’ve ordered a thorough search, house and grounds,’ she told him. ‘Let’s hope for his own sake that Father ó Súllabháin has simply wandered off around your gardens somewhere, for a spot of contemplation.’

Eleven uniformed gardaí searched the house and its grounds for over an hour and a half, but eventually one of them came trudging up the car park to Katie and Friar Tiernan and shook his head.

‘There’s no sign of him at all, ma’am. We even took a sconce at the garden shed.’

Katie looked around, biting her lip in frustration. ‘I can’t believe that not a single person saw him leave.’

Friar Tiernan shrugged. ‘As you can see for yourself, superintendent, St Dominic’s is a place for reflection. Most of our retreatants are absorbed in prayer and in dealing with their own internal struggles. Why, the pope himself could probably walk past them and they wouldn’t notice.’

Detective O’Donovan glanced across at Katie and the expression on his face said
what a load of bollocks
, and Katie agreed with him, but neither of them said anything out loud.

When Friar Tiernan had gone back into the house, Katie said to Detective O’Donovan, ‘Are you sure you questioned everybody here? All of the friars? All of the kitchen staff? All of the – what does he call them – “retreatants”?’

‘Every one of them, ma’am. Nobody saw a dicky bird.’

Just then, about hundred metres away, Katie caught sight of a gardener in a long brown apron pushing a wheelbarrow up the sloping lawn.

‘How about him? The gardener? He must have been outside for most of the day.’

Detective O’Donovan tapped his forehead with his fingertip. ‘He’s a pure stones, apparently. I was going to talk to him myself, but one of friars told me I would be wasting my time.’

‘All right,’ said Katie. She watched the gardener as he reached the top of the lawn. He looked young, only in his early twenties, with a small head and a pointed, leprechaun-like face. He was wearing a green bandana knotted so that it looked as if he had leprechaun’s ears.

Without saying a word to Detective O’Donovan, Katie walked across the lawn and came up to the gardener as he tipped up a tangled heap of weeds and branches on to a compost heap. If he was aware that she was there, he didn’t show it. He used his fork and a few kicks from his wellington boots to tidy up the compost, and then he turned around and started to push his empty wheelbarrow back down the slope. Katie kept pace with him, not walking too close. She didn’t want to intimidate him. He glanced across at her now and again, but he still didn’t say anything.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked him.

He glanced at her again, and blinked.

‘You can tell me your name, can’t you? My name’s Katie.’

‘Don’t talk to no strangers,’ he said, in a peculiar, duck-like voice, as if he were quoting something that he had been told by his mother.

‘That’s all right. I’m not a stranger. I’m a police detective.’

‘You’re a lady.’

‘I know I’m a lady, but you can have lady detectives right enough. Didn’t you ever see
CSI
, on the television? They have lots of lady detectives. Ladies are good at being detectives, because they don’t know how to mind their own business.’

The gardener gave a single honk of amusement, which Katie thought was promising. At least he had understood what she meant. They walked down the slope a little further, with the empty wheelbarrow making a trundling noise, when the gardener suddenly stopped and said, ‘Tómas?’ as if it were a question.

‘That’s your name, then? Tómas? That’s a very good name, Tómas. Do you know what it means? It actually means “twin”.’

The gardener frowned at her. ‘I
am
a twin, but my brother died before he was born. I was alive, inside of my mam, but Brian was dead.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right, like. I still used to play with him. I could always see him, even if nobody else could. That was because we were twins. I can still see him, but we don’t play any more. Well, we’re grown up now.’

Katie said, ‘You must see a lot of things that other people don’t see.’

‘Yes,’ said Tómas. ‘But they don’t like me talking about it.’

‘Who doesn’t like you talking about it?’

He looked up towards the retreat. ‘The friars. They say that my brother’s in heaven so how can I see him here on earth? But I know he’s dead. I’m not thick. I know he’s dead but I can still see him. He stands over there by that summerhouse, especially when the sun’s shining.’

He picked up his edging shears and began to trim the grass around the rose bed. ‘I’m not thick,’ he repeated. ‘I know the difference between alive and dead. I know
everybody
here, all of the friars, I know every last one of them. And I know all of the cleaners and all of the cooks and all of the people who come here to pray. When they arrive, and when they go. I don’t know their real names, all of them, but I give them names. Like Mister Sadbeard, or Mrs Twix, because she’s always coming out into the garden when she thinks there’s nobody looking to eat a Twix bar.’

Katie watched him working for a while and then she said, ‘There was a priest who would have come here last Sunday. His real name was Father ó Súllabháin, and he was staying in room 202.’

The gardener stood up straight. He had a single blonde whisker, disconcertingly long, growing out of the right side of his chin. Katie wondered why he never cut it, or plucked it.

‘I think I know the fellow you mean,’ he said, blinking. ‘Not too tall, not too short. Round head, like a football. That’s what I christened him. Father Football.’

‘Did you see Father Football today, Tómas? Maybe he was going out for a walk, something like that.’

The gardener said, ‘No. I haven’t seen him since Monday afternoon at a quarter past two. He came out into the garden and sat in the summerhouse for twenty-two minutes and then he went back in again. He looked like he was praying, because he had his eyes closed most of the time, and he was going through his rosary nineteen to the dozen.’

He held up his left hand, and pulled down his sleeve to display a red plastic Swatch. ‘See? I have a watch.’

‘So you definitely haven’t seen him today? How about new people? Have you seen anybody you didn’t recognize? Anybody unfamiliar?’

‘The guards. There’s two of them, isn’t there? Garda Here and Garda There, that’s what I call them, because one of them always seems to be looking for the other one.’

‘Have you given
me
a name yet?’ asked Katie.

The gardener looked embarrassed and turned his head away. ‘I haven’t, no. I thought you were only visiting for a very short while and I don’t usually give names to people who visit for only a very short while. Like you, and that fellow with you, and those three fellows who came this morning and went away again almost as soon as they’d arrived.’

He suddenly clamped his dirty grey gardening glove over his mouth, and his eyes looked stricken, as if he had just said something that he shouldn’t.