Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (7 page)

‘You expect me to admit to something that I never did?’

‘I expect you to confess that you did it.’

‘I can’t, no matter what you do to me.’

The Grey Mullet Man stepped back. His expression was now very serious, almost considerate. ‘This will hurt, father. That’s why the Inquisition used to do it.’

Father Quinlan’s narrow nostrils flared. ‘I cannot tell a lie. I cannot perjure myself in the court of God Almighty. You can do your very worst.’

‘Very well.’

The Grey Mullet Man laid his hands on Father Quinlan’s shoulders and pushed him down until he was kneeling. Neither of them spoke as he cut off a length of washing line and then pulled Father Quinlan’s hands behind his back, lashing his wrists so tightly together that he almost cut off his circulation. Then he took the rope that was dangling from the ceiling, looped it between his wrists and knotted it.

Of course, Father Quinlan knew all about the Spanish Inquisition, and the
strappado
, and he couldn’t stop himself from making a whinnying sound in the back of his throat. As the Grey Mullet Man gripped the other end of the rope and pulled it sharply downwards, so that he was hoisted to his feet, he managed to stifle a shout of pain. But when the Grey Mullet Man pulled on the rope again, and again, and he was lifted clear of the floor, with his arms angled sharply upwards behind his back, he let out a shriek of sheer agony.

The ligaments in his armpits tore apart with an audible crackling sound, and his left arm, which he had dislocated as a thirteen-year-old boy playing rugby, was pulled completely out of its socket.

The Grey Mullet Man pulled him up until his feet were kicking eighteen inches above the floor, and then he wound the end of the rope around the bath taps, and tied it fast.

‘I have nothing to confess!’ gasped Father Quinlan. ‘I have nothing to confess!’

The Grey Mullet Man stood in front of him in his face covering and his tall conical hat, absurd but sinister, like an evil clown. ‘How does it feel, father? Is it more painful than anything you have ever experienced in your life? That’s what they say, people who have suffered the
strappado
.’

‘I have nothing to confess! God has forgiven me!’

Father Quinlan’s face was ashy-grey with agony, and his eyes were bulging. The Grey Mullet Man was right: the
strap
pado
was not only more painful than anything he had ever experienced in his life, it was more painful than he could have imagined possible. His torso kept twisting, which increased the grating and jabbing from his broken ribs, and with every attempt to lift himself upwards, the nerves and tendons in his arms tore even more.

As the minutes passed, and every minute took him further and further into hellfire, he began to believe that his sins must be unforgivable, and that God was not going to save him.

‘Kill me!’ he shrieked. ‘Anything, anything, dear Jesus, rather than this!
Kill me
!’

The oak-lined driveway that led them up to the offices of the diocese of Cork and Ross was dappled with sunlight, and Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll hummed tunelessly, as if he were feeling contented, like Winnie the Pooh.

‘You know, I should have been a priest myself,’ he remarked, as Katie turned into the visitors’ car park. ‘My mam wanted me to be a priest, but my auld fellow was dead set against it.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Don’t get me wrong. My auld fellow was very devout, as bus inspectors go, but there were two things he didn’t believe in. One was margarine and the other was celibacy.’

‘Get out of here,’ said Katie.

‘No, it’s true. He always said that if God had not wanted men to eat butter he would not have created cows, and if he had not wanted men to fornicate he would not have created women.’

Katie pulled down the sun visor and primped her hair with her fingers. This morning she was wearing her olive-coloured suit with its small tight jacket and pencil skirt, and a cream blouse with the collar turned up. John always called it her ‘army uniform’. She liked to wear it when she was meeting men that she wanted to impress with her directness and no-nonsense attitude to crime.

She and Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll climbed out of the car and walked across to the nearest entrance. The diocesan offices were stone-built and spacious, halfway between a cathedral and a country house, and set in acres of trees and fields. Earnest-looking young men in dog collars were hurrying up and down the steps, while five nuns in fluttering white habits were gathered in a circle, chattering and shrieking like seagulls fighting over a dead herring.

They were led up to the vicar general’s office by a young priest with thick spectacles and protuberant teeth, and his hair sticking up at the back, who scampered up the staircase so quickly that they could hardly keep up.

The Right Reverend Monsignor Kevin Kelly was sitting at his wide oak desk, his fingers steepled as if he had been waiting for them with growing impatience ever since he had first called. Behind him, through the leaded windows, Katie could see a wide view of the sloping parkland that surrounded the offices, and in the near distance the rooftops and spires of Cork City itself, sparkling in the sunshine.

Two walls of Monsignor Kelly’s office were lined with leather-bound books, while the third wall, mahogany-panelled, was dominated by a large oil portrait of the previous bishop of Cork and Ross, Bishop Conor Kerrigan, in his robes and his purple sash, holding a Bible and obviously trying to look faintly saintly, but not arrogantly so.

‘Ah, Dermot! Thank you so much for coming,’ said Monsignor Kelly, rising from his chair and holding out his hand. When Katie had first entered his office, she had thought that he was quite tall, but as he came forward she realized that his desk had been nearer than she had imagined, and that he was only a little over five feet five.

He was handsome, in a Roman emperor way, with his grey hair brushed forward and a prominent nose with a bump in it, but he had those eyes that Katie was always suspicious of, in men. A little too glittery, and a little too self-satisfied.
You women, I know what you’re thinking, you can’t hide anything from me
.

There may have been times when she was wrong, but Katie liked to think that she could tell when priests had broken their vow of celibacy, especially when they had broken it often, and discovered how intense the passions of the flesh could be. They had a way of eyeing her, both sly and patronizing, as if they had a good idea of what she looked like naked, but weren’t going to compromise themselves by admitting it.

‘You’ve not met Detective Superintendent Kathleen Maguire, have you?’ asked Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll.

Monsignor Kelly took Katie’s hand and clasped it for a moment without shaking it. His own hand was warm and strangely rough. ‘I’ve not yet had the pleasure, no. But it was your detectives who broke up that church-robbing gang of Romanians last year, wasn’t it, detective superintendent, and for that the diocese owes you a great debt of gratitude.’

‘Please, monsignor, call me Katie. The media always do.’

‘Ah yes, the media. Don’t we all love the media?’

‘Only when it suits our purposes,’ said Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll.

‘Please, sit down,’ said Monsignor Kelly. ‘I suppose it’s partly because of the media that I’ve asked you to come here this morning. The bishop is very distressed about all of the sensational publicity that Father Heaney’s murder has been attracting. Of course, it was very newsworthy, but he doesn’t want it to be blown out of all proportion. As far as all this child-abuse business went, we thought we had just about weathered the storm, but then this.’

He lifted from his desk a copy of last night’s
Examiner
, with the headline PAEDO PRIEST’S ‘REVENGE’ KILLING. Police Quiz Abuse Victims.

Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll sniffed and said, ‘Yes, we’ve seen it. But I’m afraid we have no control over what the papers want to come out with.’

‘Well, I’m aware of that,’ said Monsignor Kelly. ‘But fortunately, I believe that the mystery of Father Heaney’s murder has been solved. Or perhaps I should say
sadly
, because a tortured soul appears to have met his maker as a consequence.’

‘Go on,’ said Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll. Katie knew how sceptical he felt about amateur sleuths. As far as he was concerned, most of them couldn’t solve a fecking two-piece jigsaw puzzle, let alone a drug-related triple stabbing in Grawn.

With a pursed-up smile that was very close to triumphant, Monsignor Kelly passed Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll a crumpled sheet of lined paper torn out of a cheap spiral-bound notebook. Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll quickly scanned it and then passed it across to Katie.

‘Where did this come from?’ he asked Monsignor Kelly.

‘It was pushed through Father Lenihan’s letter box at St Patrick’s on the Lower Glanmire Road, some time late last night or very early this morning. Father Lenihan called me at six o’clock, as soon as he found it. I instructed him to tell nobody but to bring it up here.’

‘You didn’t tell him to call us directly?’

‘Well, no,’ said Monsignor Kelly. ‘It might have been a hoax, after all, and I felt it more prudent to take a look at it myself first, in case we were wasting your valuable time.’

Oh what a smooth customer you are, monsignor
, thought Katie,
with your D4 accent and your carefully guarded smiles
.

‘Having our time wasted, that’s part of our job,’ put in Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll.

‘I appreciate that,’ said Monsignor Kelly. ‘But what difference would it have made? By the time Father Lenihan had found the note, it would already have been too late, wouldn’t it? And obviously I wanted to keep any hoo-ha to a minimum. I have the reputation of the diocese to think of, Dermot, as well as the sensitivities of Brendan’s family.’

Katie finished reading the letter. It was written with a green ballpoint pen that looked as if it were just about to run out of ink, in a narrow, backwards-sloping script.

To All Of My Family And Friends, and for Father Lenihan most of all,

I have no shame for what I have done but I know that I have to pay the price for it in the eyes of God and the Law and I would rather pay the price in a way of my own choosing. Father Heaney intrefered with me many times at St Josephs and for all of these years I have thought every day about what I allowed him to do to me, and what in return I did to him.

As you know I have never had a girlfriend or wife and could not think of becoming intimite with a woman because I always believed that as soon as I was undress she would be able to see what had happened to me. I felt as if my body was tatoo all over with Father Heaney’s blacky fingerprints and I would never be able to wash them off. I scrub myself every morning and night with bleech but I never feel clean.

All the talk of abuse in the past few weeks has brought back too many memories and too much torment. I cant sleep for the terrible shame of it. I decided that I could only find peace if I took Father Heaneys life the way he took mine. I am ending things myself now and I will be gone by the time you read this. I know that what I am going to do is supposed to be a mortal sin, but how can it be a sin to kill yourself when you have been killed already?

Goodbye and God bless you, Brendan Doody.

‘So who is Brendan Doody?’ asked Katie.

‘He is –
was
– the odd-job man at St Patrick’s,’ said Monsignor Kelly. ‘He did other bits and pieces all around St Luke’s Cross, for anybody who would pay him. Gardening, window cleaning, bit of decorating, that kind of thing. I met him only a couple of times but he was a queer fellow. Always talking to himself. Well, more like
arguing
.’

‘Did he drive a van?’ asked Katie.

Monsignor Kelly shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know that, Katie. You’ll have to ask Father Lenihan.’

‘Did he seem to you like the kind of person who was capable of murder?’

‘Who knows what
anybody
is capable of, when they’re pushed to the limits of their mental endurance? He was physically strong, yes, and he certainly would have been able to overwhelm Father Heaney and tie him up, and perform the act of mutilation that Father Heaney then suffered, may God have mercy on his soul.’

Katie turned the letter over. ‘No indication as to
how
he might have taken his own life, or where? Or, indeed, if he’s really taken it at all?’

‘Father Lenihan went to Brendan’s flat after he had found the letter but Brendan wasn’t there. The door was unlocked and there were five or six empty whiskey bottles on the table, as well as empty beer cans. Father Lenihan phoned his mother in Limerick and his brother in Midleton but neither of them had seen hide nor hair of him.’

‘I see,’ said Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll. ‘But before we jump to any hasty conclusions, we need to go looking for your man. We can’t assume that he’s topped himself until we find his body, and we can’t be sure that this letter means anything at all until we’ve had the chance to talk to him – that’s if he hasn’t topped himself, of course. If he’s such a queer fellow, maybe it’s all in his head.’

‘Do you think so?’ frowned Monsignor Kelly. ‘I’d say myself that this letter is a very credible confession of guilt – and, believe me, I’ve heard a few confessions in my time.’

Katie said, ‘What the public don’t generally realize is that whenever a murder is committed, at least half a dozen people come forward to confess that they did it. Sometimes they’re seeking attention, sometimes they simply have a screw loose and really believe that they’re guilty. Sometimes they’re looking for nothing more than a decent supper and a warm bed.’

Monsignor Kelly raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh,’ he said – and then, after a long pause, ‘The bishop and I were very much hoping that this would close the book, as it were.’

‘It may,’ said Katie. ‘But first of all we have to be sure that Brendan Doody actually wrote this note himself; and if he really has committed suicide, or simply absconded. Do you think that Father Lenihan will have a picture of him that we can circulate?’