Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (39 page)

Katie waited for a long moment, and then she said, ‘Has Monsignor Kelly given you any idea at all who the killers might be? Do you think he knows who they are? Or at least has an inkling of who they are?’

‘No. But they’re boys who were sexually abused by priests when they were at school, aren’t they? Getting their revenge, like.’

Katie neither confirmed nor denied it. She waited for another long moment, while the car trembled in the rising wind and the first few drops of rain fell on to the roof. In her rear-view mirror she could see lightning crossing the distant horizon like stilt-walkers.
Don’t worry, the circus will be here before you know it. The clowns will be coming to get you
.

‘Do you mind if I ask you one or two personal questions?’ she said. She was very aware of Ciara’s perfume. A strong, seductive scent, heavy on hyacinth and musk, just right for lunch with an alpha-plus male, especially an alpha-plus male in a thirty-three-button soutane. Chamade, something like that.

‘You want to ask me about me and Kevin?’

‘Yes. Do you usually go to bed together properly? You know, like lovers?’

Very long pause, more cross-fiddling, then, ‘Sometimes.’

‘Sometimes, but not as often as you’d like to?’

‘He’s very busy. And of course it’s difficult. You know – if we were to be seen together.’

‘So what is it mostly – oral sex in the office, like you did the other day?’

Ciara blushed, but Katie had been interviewing women about their sexual adventures and misadventures for a very long time, ever since she was a young garda on the streets of Cork on a Saturday night, and she knew how desperately most of them wanted to talk about it, especially to another woman.

‘You wouldn’t ever expect him to give up the cloth and marry you, would you?’

‘Of course not. I couldn’t ask him to do that. Anyway, he’s a man of God. He’s completely devoted to his calling.’

‘Doesn’t that make you feel a little bit
excluded
? I mean, there you are, giving him your best attention, as it were, and he’s standing there thinking about the Virgin Mary.’

‘He says that when I’m kneeling in front of him it’s the same as kneeling in prayer because I’m worshipping his body, which was made by God, the same as mine was.’

And what happens when you swallow
? thought Katie, although she never would have said it out loud, and she felt blasphemous even thinking it.
Transubstantiation
?

But her intimate questioning and her religious cynicism had served their purpose. She now had a confession from Ciara that Monsignor Kelly had outrageously abused his position as one of the vicars general in order to coax her into giving him sexual favours. It was a confession that Ciara might later try to deny, but not under oath, in a court of law.

As they climbed out of the car they heard the first rumbling of thunder. Ciara turned to Katie, her hair whipped by the wind, and said, ‘You
will
find him, won’t you?’

‘Of course, we’ll find him all right.’

‘And what I told you – you know – about our relationship?’

Oh, that’s what you call it, licking the mickey of some vertically challenged cleric, a relationship
.

‘Of course,’ Katie told her, although she didn’t say precisely what ‘of course’ was supposed to imply.

Ciara began to walk back across the car park towards her own car, a pale green Nissan Micra. As she did so, Katie’s mobile phone played ‘The Fields of Athenry’.

‘Katie? This is Nurse Monahan from the hospital. I’m happy to tell you that your sister has just regained consciousness.’

‘Oh, my God,’ said Katie. She pressed her hand over her mouth and burst into tears.

‘She’s well in herself, but —’ Nurse Monahan started to tell her, but then thunder crashed right over Katie’s head and drowned out everything else she had to say.

She pushed her way in through the hospital doors, lowered her umbrella and shook it hard. As she crossed the reception area, a voice called out, ‘Katie! Hold on a minute, would you?’

It was Michael, wearing a saggy grey gaberdine raincoat with a tightly twisted belt, and carrying a plastic shopping bag from Tesco’s.

‘Michael! What’s the story? Have you been up to see her yet?’

‘Not yet. As a matter of fact, I was waiting for you.’

‘What were you waiting for me for? Listen, I have to go up and see her. You know that she’s recovered consciousness?’

‘They told me, yes. I’m ashamed to face her, if you must know.’

Katie had reached the lifts now, and pushed the button for ITU. A small boy was standing close by, looking up at Katie and Michael and listening attentively to what they were saying, as if they were characters in a play.

‘Push on, kid,’ Michael told him, but he stayed where he was.

The lift doors opened. Katie stepped inside and Michael followed her. He held up the Tesco bag. It was covered with raindrops and obviously contained something heavy.

‘I was under the sink this morning, looking for the tap to turn off the water because we had a leak in one of the radiators. That’s when I found this. It was behind all of the dishcloths and the Brillo pads and all of that. It’s me hammer.’

‘What was your hammer doing there, under the sink?’

‘That’s exactly what I asked myself. I took it out and had a good look at it and it’s got hair on it, I think, and what looks like blood.’

He was about to reach into the bag to take the hammer out and show her, but she said, ‘No – leave it there. It’s been contaminated enough already.’

Michael had tears in his eyes. ‘It was Nola. It must have been. Only Nola would be mad enough to attack Siobhán with a hammer, for God’s sake, and only Nola would be stupid enough to hide it under the sink without even taking the trouble to wash it. Jesus, I wish I’d never set eyes on the bitch.’

When they reached the third floor, Katie took out her mobile phone and called headquarters. ‘Send O’Donovan round to CUH, would you? I’ll be here with my sister in intensive care.’

She took the Tesco bag out of Michael’s hand and spoke to him gently. ‘I want you to wait right here in the corridor, Michael. I’ll call you in a minute and you can see Siobhán, too, if the nurses will allow it. Meanwhile, please stay here. What happened, it wasn’t your fault and you shouldn’t be after blaming yourself for it. You’ve done really well to bring me the hammer.’

She could hear how calm her voice was, as if a ventriloquist were talking out of her mouth. Inside, though, her brain was kaleidoscopic with splinters of anger, not only at Nola for nearly killing her sister but at Michael for messing both women around, and at Siobhán, too, for having a relationship with a gowl like him.

Michael sat down on the end of a row of plastic chairs, his head slumped. Katie stood beside him for a moment and then walked along the corridor to Siobhán’s room.

She found Siobhán propped up with pillows, with her eyes open. Her head was still thickly bandaged and her vital signs were still being monitored, but when Katie came into the room she managed a weak, disorganized smile.

One nurse was taking her blood pressure while another was writing up her notes. Katie put the Tesco bag down on the chair and walked around the bed to embrace her.

‘Oh, you don’t know how glad I am to see you with your eyes open! How are you feeling, darling?’

Siobhán shook her head and made a barely audible bleating noise, like a lamb caught in barbed wire. The nurse who was taking her blood pressure said, ‘She can’t talk yet, I’m afraid.’

‘But she
will
be able to? In time?’

‘You’d have to talk to Mr Hahq about that. We’ve done two more scans and there’s some improvement, but it’s very early days yet.’

Katie turned back to Siobhán, took hold of her hands and smiled. She
looked
like Siobhán, although her face was puffier than usual, but there was nothing in her expression that reminded Katie of her quick, mischievous self. She smiled back at Katie sweetly, but so tiredly that she could have been eighty years old.

‘Is there anything she needs? Anything I can get her?’ Katie asked.

‘Not at the moment, Katie. We’re still feeding her through the drip, although we expect to take her off that in a day or two. And she can’t read yet, because her eyes can’t focus well enough. It’s grand that she can recognize yourself.’

Katie stayed by Siobhán’s bedside until Detective O’Donovan arrived with two uniformed gardaí. Michael was still waiting obediently in the corridor, his head still bowed. Katie gave Detective O’Donovan the Tesco bag.

‘Take him in and have him make a full statement. I want him to explain the whole background in his own words – like his relationship with Siobhán and how they split up and how he married Nola but then started seeing Siobhán again. Also, get this hammer over to the technical unit pronto.’

Then, ‘
Michael
?’ she said.

Michael lifted his head. She had rarely seen anyone look so wounded. ‘What is it?’

‘Where is Nola working now? Is she still at Penney’s?’

‘No. Debenham’s, in the make-up department. Jesus, I wish I’d never seen that woman’s face.’

Katie nodded to Detective O’Donovan. ‘Go and pick her up, too. Nola Lyons. Arrest her for attempted murder.’

‘Right you are, then.’

Before she returned to headquarters, she visited the path lab. Father O’Gara’s body had arrived from Killeens and was lying on a stainless-steel autopsy table while Dr Collins was circling around it, ducking and weaving with her digital camera, taking photographs from every angle.

Katie walked the length of the laboratory, between the sheeted figures that lay on both sides, deliberately keeping her eyes straight ahead of her and not glancing at any of them for signs of movement.

Dr Collins stood up straight as she approached. ‘Ah, Katie. I’ve just finished taking my first round of pictures.’

She stepped back and put down her camera. ‘Now, I think it’s time to cut the wires and find out exactly what this poor wretch has had done to him.’

‘God, he must have suffered some terrible pain,’ said Katie, shaking her head over Father O’Gara’s burned and battered body.

‘Being burned to death – that’s the most painful death of all,’ Dr Collins told her. ‘Not just anecdotally, but neurologically.’

‘Anecdotally? How can anybody tell you what it was like anecdotally?’

Dr Collins went across to her instrument table and picked up a pair of sharp-nosed pliers. ‘It’s the fact that people rarely scream while they’re being immolated. You look at those newsreels of Buddhist monks burning themselves to death. The agony is too overwhelming to think about screaming.’

She cut the wires that bound Father O’Gara’s wrists behind his back. She held up the wire and peered at it through her glasses. ‘I think your technician was right. This does look like piano wire.’

Now she could manoeuvre Father O’Gara’s arms until they were parallel to his sides. His shoulders and elbows made a crunching sound as she did so, like a chicken’s joints. She rolled him on to his back, and then she cut the wire that kept his ankles tight together.

At that moment, Katie’s mobile phone played. She checked the screen and saw that Inspector Fennessy was calling her.

‘Liam? What’s the form?’

‘We’ve had a sighting of the black van with the crozier on it, only about five minutes ago, out on the Carrigrohane Road, about a half-mile west of Ballincollig.’

‘Heading?’

‘West. We could set up a roadblock on the N22 at Clodagh, say. It didn’t appear to be travelling very fast.’

‘No – no roadblock. But try to pick it up and tail it. I want to know where they’re going, these Fidelios. I mean, they don’t seem to care that their van is so easy to pick out, do they? You’d have thought they would have had sense enough to drive around in a vehicle that was totally nondescript.’

Dr Collins was having a difficult time cutting through the thick-gauge piano wire that fastened Father O’Gara’s knees together. It looked as if it had been wound around at least twenty times, and plaited together, too. She was twisting her pliers from side to side, and each strand gave way only reluctantly, with a flat ping-
snap
! sound.

‘Right you are, then, ma’am,’ said Inspector Fennessy. ‘We’ll put a tail on it but we’ll keep our distance.’

But Katie suddenly thought:
The Fidelios don’t seem to care that their van is so easy to pick out, do they? But why don’t they care? They’ve abducted and likely killed all four of the priests who castrated them, and abducted Monsignor Kelly, too; and they must realize that we’re out looking for them the length and breadth of County Cork
.

Then she thought,
shite
, and shouted out, ‘Stop it!’

‘What?’ asked Dr Collins, looking up from her autopsy table.

‘No, not you, doctor,’ Katie told her. ‘Liam – stop that van, and arrest whoever’s driving it.’

‘I thought you wanted us to follow it – find out where it’s going, like.’

‘It’s not going anywhere in particular. It’s a decoy, I’m sure of it.’

‘A what?’

‘A decoy. They made no attempt at all to hide that van, did they, when they dumped Father Heaney’s body in the Blackwater, and when they ran over Father O’Gara on Patrick Street, and when they collected Father ó Súllibháin from St Dominic’s Retreat Centre? For all we know, they made no more effort to hide it when they strung up Father Heaney, because it must have taken them long enough to do it, and it was only chance that nobody saw them – or remembers seeing them, anyway.’

‘Well, I don’t know, superintendent. You might be giving them credit for being as clever as you are, whereas they could be as thick as shite, and just careless.’

‘I don’t think so, Liam. They have an agenda, these people. They feel they have to do everything to make their revenge complete, I’m sure of it. They may not mind being caught after that... but they don’t want to be caught just yet. Stop that van as soon as you can. I’ll bet you twenty euros there’s only one person in it, and that’s the fellow who’s driving it, and I’ll bet you he doesn’t know a castrati from a castanet.’