Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) Page 3

  ‘I had a hunch you were chasing after cows – didn’t I, Siobhán?’

  ‘That’s what makes you such a natural-born detective,’ said John. ‘Listen – can we meet this evening? How about those mussels you were craving after?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not so sure I’m that hungry any more. And I’m tired, too.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘It’s your fault, John,’ said Katie, winking at Siobhán. ‘You were the one who tired me out.’

  John said, ‘Please, Katie. There’s something really important I want to tell you. I should have told you last night but one thing led to another. I’ll come and pick you up at quarter to eight. How’s that?’

  ‘All right,’ said Katie, pushing her fingers through her hair. ‘I’ll go and take a shower. That should wake me up.’

  She hung up and looked at Siobhán with her lips pursed and her eyebrows lifted.

  ‘What?’ said Siobhán.

  ‘He says he has something really important to tell me.’

  Siobhán frowned for a moment and then let out a high-pitched scream. ‘I know what it is! He’s going to ask you to marry him! He’s only going to propose!’

  ‘Oh, get away with you! Of course he’s not!’

  ‘I’ll bet you he is! Think about it! Paul’s been in the ground now for more than a year and a half, I’d say that’s a decent interval, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Siobhán, I’m sure he’s not going to propose. And what would I say to him if he did?’

  ‘Well, yes, I hope! You know you love him! And he’s gorgeous! That wonderful American accent! He sounds just like that fella with the really deep voice at the beginning of Law & Order, who says “These are their stories!”’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not so sure I do love him.’

  ‘Of course you do. And what’s the competition? Roddy Phelan, at the Water’s Edge Hotel?’

  ‘I like Roddy. He makes me laugh.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, girl. That haircut of his. Makes him look like a squirrel.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Katie, ‘I’m going for a shower. If anybody rings, I’m not here, and I’m not expected back, either.’

  Standing in the shower, with her eyes tight shut, she suddenly felt very alone and unexpectedly vulnerable. Paul had been a chancer, and a gambler, and he had cheated on her with some of the brassiest women in Cork. He had been prepared to do anything for money – as his drinking friends at the Ovens bar used to say, he would have minded mice at a crossroads for you, if you had paid him enough.

  All the same, she had known him since school, and in the early years of their marriage she had found him funny and enchanting. No matter how much of a loser he had eventually turned out to be, she had never imagined that there would ever be a time when he simply wasn’t there any more.

  6

  Five minutes before John was due to arrive to pick her up, the phone rang and it was Sergeant O’Rourke.

  ‘We finished searching Father Heaney’s room but to be honest, ma’am, we didn’t find a whole lot. A box of Polaroids of young boys in their bayd-nas, paddling in the sea at Youghal, it looks like, but they must be more than thirty years old. Three diaries, bound in leather with locks on so we had to bust them open, and even when we did the writing’s so small that you practically need a microscope to read it. Not only that, it’s all in Latin, like.’

  ‘I know a classics professor at the university,’ said Katie. ‘He’ll translate them for us, although I expect he’ll be asking a hefty fee for doing it.’

  ‘Oh, very public-spirited.’

  ‘Well, I could ask the vicars general if they could recommend a priest who would translate them for us free and for nothing – to make some amends for the clergy’s transgressions, as it were. But I wouldn’t trust any priest to make a totally unbiased translation, would you? Especially if Father Heaney’s written anything incriminating in them, and if he’s implicated other priests, too. The church takes care of its own, Jimmy, and we’ve seen just how much.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ said Sergeant O’Rourke. ‘I’ve bagged the diaries up anyway and I’ll bring them in. And the Polaroids, too. It’s a hell of a long shot, like, but maybe we can identify some of the boys in the sea.’

  ‘Anything else interesting?’

  ‘A whole heap of sheet music. All religious, I’d say. There’s one here called “Vir perfecte haec dies” and here’s another one called “Panis angelicus” and another one called “Pie Jesu”.’

  ‘How are you spelling “Pie”?’

  ‘P – I – E, like.’

  ‘I think you’re supposed to pronounce that pee-ay, like the Latin for “pious”, not pie like in steak and kidney.’

  ‘Don’t ask me, boss. They never taught us Latin at Templemore.’

  ‘All right, Jimmy. Bring that in, too. You never know.’ John’s car had just turned through the front gate and its headlights were shining through the curtains, so that Katie had to lift her hand to shield her eyes.

  ‘Okay, ma’am – and, just for the record, we didn’t find any jub-jubs. Only rhubarb and custards, and they were so old they were stuck together.’

  John rang the front doorbell and Siobhán answered it. He came in carrying a large bouquet of pink roses, in shiny gold paper, and a box of dog treats for Barney.

  ‘These are gorgeous,’ said Katie, taking the flowers. As she did so, Siobhán gave her a meaningful look behind John’s back.

  ‘You still feel like going out tonight?’ John asked her. ‘I mean, if you really don’t want to—’

  ‘I haven’t washed my hair and put on my best designer jacket for nothing,’ smiled Katie, and kissed him. His cheek was still wet from the rain and he smelled of some musky, leathery aftershave. ‘Besides, I’m starting to feel seriously hungry.’

  They left Siobhán standing at the front door with Barney and climbed into John’s dark blue Mercedes. They turned west towards Cork City and the raindrops glittered as they slid across the bonnet.

  ‘You rounded up all of your cows, then?’ asked Katie.

  ‘In the end, yes. Poor old Gabriel was supposed to be helping me but he was more trouble than he was worth, as usual.’

  ‘I think it’s very good of you to keep him on, considering how useless he is.’

  ‘Sure... but apart from my mam, he’s the last living connection with my dad, isn’t he? The last person who went out drinking with him and got up to all kinds of shenanigans with him. My mam always thought that my dad was really miserable and tight-lipped – not to mention tight-fisted. But Gabriel saw a side to him that my mam never did.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘You bet. He was quite the practical joker, apparently. One evening a Gaelic band came to play at the Roundy House, where my dad and Gabriel usually drank, and my dad opened up a can of sardines and poured the oil over the seats of all their chairs. The landlord had about five cats to keep the mice down, and for the rest of the evening they followed these guys round the pub, sniffing at their arses and licking their lips and mewing.

  He paused, and grinned, and then he said, ‘Hey – it must have been pretty funny at the time.’

  ‘Hilarious,’ said Katie, pretending to be totally unamused. ‘I’m just glad that you haven’t inherited your father’s sense of humour.’

  They drove along Horgan’s Quay into the city, with the cranes and lights of the docks on the opposite side of the river. The rain was easing off now, although the streets were still glistening. John turned across Patrick’s Bridge and parked close to Emmet Place, the wide pedestrian precinct in front of the Crawford Art Gallery. He opened the door for Katie and they crossed the precinct to Luigi Malone’s restaurant. Three boys were skateboarding up and down the precinct, their wheels making furrows in the puddles.

  It was bustling and bright inside the restaurant, but John had booked them a table in a relatively quiet corner. He ordered dry white wine and the waitress came and filled their glasses for them. John
lifted his glass and said, ‘Sláinte!’

  ‘Sláinte,’ Katie echoed, much more quietly, looking him in the eyes. She waited, and then she said, ‘So – what is it that you want to say to me that’s so important?’

  John opened up his menu and said, ‘Let’s eat first. I’m starved.’

  ‘No – first of all tell me what you want to say to me. I won’t be able to swallow a single solitary mussel until you do.’

  John stared at the menu and said nothing for a long time, even though it was obvious to Katie that he wasn’t choosing what he wanted to eat. He always chose the same thing, anyhow, chicken fajitas.

  ‘I’m, ah...’ he began, but then he stopped and looked up at her. ‘I’m in trouble.’

  ‘Trouble? What kind of trouble?’

  ‘Money. What other kind of trouble is there? Like everybody else in Ireland, Katie, I got caught with my financial pants round my ankles.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that when I sold my dot.com business in California and came over here, the economy was booming. The Celtic Tiger was roaring fit to burst. Share prices were buoyant, new business were starting up all over the place.

  ‘Now, of course, it’s all gone down the crapper. Prices have shot up. Property values have dropped through the floor. It was tough enough when times were good, making any kind of a living out of that farm. Now, it’s impossible.’

  ‘But you inherited it,’ said Katie. ‘Its value may have dropped, but you haven’t lost any of your own capital in it.’

  ‘The trouble is, Katie, that’s not even half of the story. I made a very healthy profit from selling my dot.com business, for sure. But I invested almost all of it here in Ireland – about a third of it in new Irish companies, and the rest in big internationals. It was only a couple of years ago that businesses like Pfizer and Hitachi were falling over themselves to open up new factories in Ireland. I had every expectation that I was going to be seriously rich.

  ‘Instead of that, I’m only about five euros away from being bankrupt.’

  Katie took hold of his hands across the table. ‘What are you going to do? Can’t your bank see you through?’

  ‘My bank is in a worse mess than I am, believe me.’

  ‘Well, I could maybe help you a little, but I don’t have much.’

  John smiled and shook his head. ‘Thanks for the offer, sweetheart, but you have no idea how much I’m talking about. I’m talking millions of euros. Millions.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t have any choice, sweetheart. I’m going to have to sell the farm and go back to San Francisco and start over, from scratch.’

  It took Katie a few seconds to understand what he was saying. The background music and laughter in the restaurant sounded oddly muffled, as if she were hearing it underwater.

  ‘You’re selling the farm? And then you’re going back to America?’

  John nodded, and then grimaced, and it was only then that Katie realized that his eyes were crowded with tears.

  She squeezed his hands tighter and said, ‘You can’t. Surely there’s some way out of it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know – something.’

  ‘Oh, sure. I guess I could go busking on the corner of Patrick Street. The trouble is, I haven’t played the banjo since I was at college, and then I was all thumbs. And you don’t want to hear me singing “Hey, Mr Tambourine Man”, you really don’t.’

  ‘Don’t joke with me, John.’

  ‘I’m not joking, sweetheart. I wish to God I were. I’ve been trying to keep my head above water for months, but it’s no good. I talked to my accountant yesterday and he told me that I was well and truly screwed. The farm goes on the market tomorrow, but I’ll be lucky to get more than a hundred and fifty thousand for it. That’s if I can sell it at all.’

  Katie let go of his hands. She felt breathless.

  ‘What about us?’ she asked him.

  ‘I haven’t been able to think about anything else. I’ve been trying to find out if I can set up a new business here in Ireland, so that I can stay here. But it’s a question of contacts, and suppliers, and most of all it’s a question of investment. The shape the Irish economy is in right now, it’s hopeless, and it looks like it’s going to be hopeless for a very long time to come. Another decade, easily.’

  He paused, and she could tell what was coming. Apart from the details, she could almost have said it with him.

  ‘Two old friends of mine have started up an online pharmacy business in Los Angeles. It’s going so well that they need somebody else to come on board and help them out. So far, it’s the only realistic offer I’ve had.’

  ‘I see,’ said Katie. Paul had hurt her with all of his stupid affairs, but she couldn’t remember when she had last felt a pain as intense as this. At least Paul had stayed with her and pretended to love her, even if he hadn’t.

  She started to speak, but then she had to clear her throat. ‘You do understand that I can’t possibly come with you.’

  John was dabbing his eyes with his paper napkin. ‘I know that, sweetheart. I know.’

  ‘John, I’m a detective superintendent. I’ve fought tooth and nail to get where I am. I’ve fought so much sexual prejudice and so much ill will. I’ve had to prove myself every single inch of the way. What do you think it would look like, if all of a sudden I turned my back on it all, as if none of it mattered?

  ‘I have so many things to take care of. People, as well as police duties. I owe so many people so much. Besides, what would I do, in California? I couldn’t join the police, could I? I could lie by the pool, I suppose, and count myself lucky that I was out of the rain. But what else?’

  The waitress came over, smiling, and asked them if they would like to order.

  John said, ‘How about it? You still want those mussels?’

  ‘You know what?’ she retorted. ‘I may be over-emotional, but I find it really difficult to cry and eat at the same time.’

  7

  Father Quinlan locked the door of the sacristy and started to come down the steps, but stopped abruptly. He thought that he had caught sight of somebody standing deep in the shadows on the opposite side of the car park. The single fluorescent light was buzzing and flickering intermittently, so that it was difficult to tell for sure, but Father Quinlan stayed where he was, his face strained, like a man who fears that the demon that has been pursuing him all his life may at last have caught up with him.

  The rain had stopped about twenty minutes ago, but the wind still felt damp, and it carried with it all the sounds of the city below him, the traffic and the throbbing of oil tankers along the dockside and the doleful clanking of cranes.

  Mrs O’Malley slammed the church doors so loudly that he jumped. ‘Goodnight, father!’ she called out. ‘See you tomorrow evening!’

  ‘Yes, yes – goodnight, Mary!’ Father Quinlan called back, with an awkward wave of his left arm. ‘Thanks for everything!’

  Immediately, however, he turned his attention back to the opposite side of the car park. Was that a man standing there, close to the side of that white minibus, or was it nothing more than a complicated pattern of shadows and overhanging branches?

  Mrs O’Malley stopped, hesitated, and then came walking back towards him. ‘Just one thing, father. I couldn’t finish the lily arrangement in the Lady chapel because Moran’s only sent the five bunches instead of the six, but I’ll bring in some more tomorrow before the bereavement Mass and sort them all out so.’

  Father Quinlan gave her a quick, distracted smile. ‘Yes, Mary. Bless you.’

  Mrs O’Malley frowned at him. ‘Is everything all right, father?’

  ‘Yes, Mary. Of course.’

  But Mrs O’Malley looked around, trying to work out what he was staring at. ‘It’s not them kids again, is it? They need a good lashing, that’s what they need.’

  ‘No, no. It’s nothing. I was trying to remember where I left
my address book, that’s all.’

  ‘On top of your car, it wouldn’t surprise me, like that box of eggs you left there the other day.’

  Father Quinlan said, ‘Yes, I expect you’re right. I really must learn to concentrate, mustn’t I?’

  Mrs O’Malley said goodnight again and walked off. Father Quinlan remained where he was for ten long seconds, and then slowly descended the rest of the steps. He was a very thin man, with a bald dome surrounded by a puffball of white hair. His eyes were deep-set and glittery and close together and his nose was long and bony, so that he resembled one of the elders from the Planet of the Apes. He walked with the stiff, disjointed gait of a man plagued by rheumatism.

  He crossed the car park and reached his car, a ten-year-old blue Volkswagen Passat estate, which was parked underneath a horse-chestnut tree. Before he unlocked the door, he looked around again, but there seemed to be nobody in the car park apart from him.

  You’re giving yourself the heebie-jeebies for no reason at all, he told himself. What happened, that was thirty years ago. You’ve done your penance, so God has forgiven you. Time has forgiven you, too. Even if you had gone to prison, they would have let you out by now.

  He opened the door, and was halfway into the driver’s seat when somebody stalked up to the side of his car, seized the top of the door and slammed it against his leg.

  ‘Ow-ah!’ he cried out, and looked up in shock. A heavily built man in a large grey raincoat was leaning against the door, keeping Father Quinlan’s shin pinned against the sill. His face was covered with a white cloth with two circular eyeholes cut into it, and on top of that he was wearing a tall conical hat, marked on the front with a black question mark. He looked to Father Quinlan like one of the Nazareno priests who parade in Spain in Holy Week, or a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

  Underneath his face covering he was breathing hard, as if he were furious.

  Father Quinlan was badly frightened. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded, much more shrilly than he had meant to. ‘What do you think you’re doing? You’re hurting me! You’re hurting me! Leave go of the door, will you?’