Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) Page 5

  From one of the floors below, he heard somebody galumphing down bare uncarpeted stairs, two or three at a time, and he immediately called out, ‘Hey! Hey there! Is anyone there? Will somebody please help me?’

  He heard a door slam, but then he could hear nothing but the beeping of traffic in the road outside, and the clattering of feet on the pavement, and the tremulous strains of ‘Ave Maria’.

  ‘Will somebody please help me?’ he repeated, so softly that nobody could have heard him except God or one of his angels. Then he said a prayer.

  ‘Domine Iesu, dimitte nobis debita nostra, salva nos ab igne inferiori, perduc in caelum omnes animas, praesertim eas quae misericordiae tuae maxime indigent.

  ‘O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are most in need of your mercy.’

  Nearly an hour passed. The singing from St Joseph’s Orphanage Choir went on and on – the ‘Kyrie’, the ‘Credo’, the ‘Agnus Dei’, and then the ‘Ave Maria’ again. Father Quinlan found it deeply disturbing, rather than uplifting, as if it were being played for the express purpose of frightening him. Of course Elements was massively popular, especially here in Ireland, and it was being played everywhere, in shops, in restaurants, in pubs even, but what unsettled him was the way that it was being played over and over.

  ‘Help!’ he shouted out, again and again, even though he doubted that anybody could hear him – or, even if they could, that they would come to set him free.

  But without warning, the door handle rattled and the bedroom door was opened up. From where he was lying, he was unable to see who had just stepped in, but he twisted his head around and said, ‘Please! Please help me, whoever you are!’

  There was a moment’s silence, and then he heard the same hoarse voice that he had heard in the church car park the previous night. ‘It’s help you’re asking for, is it?’

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Father Quinlan. ‘Are you trying to punish me, is that it?’

  ‘Oh, I think you know only too well what I want,’ the man replied. ‘If justice is a cake, of sorts, I want my slice of it.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

  The man hesitated for a few seconds longer, and then came around and stood close to the side of the bed so that Father Quinlan could see him. He was wearing the same face covering with the eyeholes and the same pointed hat that he had worn the night before. He was bulky and tall, about six foot two or three, with a bulging belly that hung over the belt of his baggy grey trousers. He was wearing a shapeless grey jacket with sloping shoulders, and a grey flannel shirt. He kept wiping his hands together, and Father Quinlan felt that he had a soft and creepy air about him, a dampness, as if the palms of his hands and the creases between his thighs were constantly sweaty.

  His hat was well over eighteen inches tall, and it looked as if it had been made out of frayed grey silk glued on to cardboard, with two pointed earflaps. On the front it was marked with a black symbol that resembled a question mark, but which could equally have been a billhook, or a farmer’s sickle.

  ‘Who are you?’ Father Quinlan asked him.

  The man produced an odd, high-pitched snorting noise in one nostril. ‘It doesn’t matter who I am, father. It’s all going to end up in the same bucket, no matter what.’

  ‘You sound so much like little Charlie Dooley. Are you Charlie Dooley?’

  ‘That’s not a name I recognize, father. The Grey Mullet Man, that’s what they call me these days. Need some justice done? Need a score settled? Still haunted by some shameful memory that never seems to leave you go, no matter what? Send for the Grey Mullet Man, that’s what. The Grey Mullet Man will do the business for you for sure and for certain, guaranteed.’

  ‘Was it you who mangled me like this?’ asked Father Quinlan.

  ‘Oh. You don’t think you deserved it?’

  ‘I have confessed and paid penance for every sin that I might have committed, venial or mortal. I am in a state of grace.’

  ‘You seriously believe that, do you?’

  ‘Yes, my son, I do. I made my peace with God a long time ago, and I am quite content that I have been granted His forgiveness. Now, what do you want from me? You have hurt me severely, you know you have, and I am pleading with you now to untie me and let me go. I think that you have broken at least three of my ribs and I need to get to the hospital.’

  All the time Father Quinlan was saying this, the Grey Mullet Man was slowly shaking his head, his pointed hat tilting from side to side with the regularity of a metronome. When he had finished, the Grey Mullet Man said, ‘Not a chance, father. There’s something altogether different in store for you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Then may the Lord have mercy on your soul,’ croaked Father Quinlan.

  The Grey Mullet Man made the sign of the cross. ‘And on yours, father,’ he replied.

  With that, he took out a large clasp knife and opened it with a snap. Father Quinlan immediately closed his eyes tight and began to pray. Whatever was going to happen to him now, he begged forgiveness for any transgressions that he may have overlooked and for which he had not done penance, and any offence that he may have unwittingly caused to others, but most of all he begged not to suffer any more pain.

  Strangely, into his mind came a memory of standing in his mother’s kitchen on a summer’s afternoon. He couldn’t have been more than four or five. His mother was mixing a large bowl of barmbrack fruit loaf. She had stirred in the caster sugar and the candied fruit peel, and had covered the bowl with a teacloth to give it time to rise.

  He lifted one corner of the teacloth, dipped his finger into the pale brown mixture, and licked it. Then he dipped it in again. He could still taste the sweetness of the uncooked bread flour and milk. He could still see the sun shining in through the pots of geraniums on the kitchen windowsill. He could hear his mother walk into the kitchen behind him, the sound of her shoes on the quarry-tiled floor. She snapped, ‘Sacred heart of Jesus!’ and then she slapped him so hard around the side of the head that he fell over and hit his head on the table leg. All he could hear was a loud singing noise, and the blurry voice of his mother shouting at him. All he could feel was pain.

  He started to cry, and as he lay on this narrow bed with the Grey Mullet Man standing over him, he started to sob yet again, more for his childhood self than the bruised and miserable old man that he was this morning.

  ‘Ah, why are you crying there, father?’ asked the Grey Mullet Man, hoarsely. He was leaning over him so closely that Father Quinlan could smell the onions on his breath. At the same time, he was cutting through the washing-line cord that was keeping Father Quinlan tied to the bed, and dragging it loose.

  ‘There, you’re free so,’ he said, and Father Quinlan opened his eyes. The Grey Mullet Man was looping the cord around his elbow as he did so, the way that women wind wool.

  ‘You’re letting me go?’ asked Father Quinlan, painfully easing himself into a sitting position and dabbing at his wet eyes with his fingertips.

  ‘Oh, nothing quite as merciful as that, father. You’ll see.’

  He took hold of Father Quinlan’s left elbow and helped him to stand up. Father Quinlan took one step forward, but the pain from his broken ribs was like being stabbed with a large kitchen knife, and he had to stop for a moment, gasping for breath.

  ‘I can’t – I’m not sure that I can – perhaps I had better lie down again.’

  ‘Of course you can, father. We’re only going through to the next room, like. You can manage that. A man of dedication such as yourself.’

  ‘I really can’t – I’ll have to—’

  But the Grey Mullet Man pulled him roughly towards the door – so roughly that Father Quinlan howled out in pain and his knees buckled.

  ‘I can’t I can’t I can’t oh Jesus I can’t—!’

  The Grey Mullet Man yanked him up on to his feet again, and this time the pain was so excruciating that the room darkened and
he felt that he was going to faint.

  ‘You should never say can’t, father. That’s what you always taught your boys, wasn’t it? Never say can’t, always say can. “Do you think Our Lord Jesus said can’t when he was toting the cross up to Calvary?” That’s what you used to say to your boys, wasn’t it, father? “Pain brings you closer to God.”’

  ‘Please,’ wept Father Quinlan.

  The Grey Mullet Man ignored him and dragged him through the door and into the next room, ducking his head as he did so. This was a damp-smelling bathroom, with a streaky green linoleum-covered floor and flaking green walls. On the left-hand side stood a huge old-fashioned bathtub with lion’s-claw feet and taps that looked as if they had been taken from the engine room of the Titanic. The inside of the bath was streaked with grey and rust-coloured grime, and the taps were continually dripping.

  Next to the bath stood a toilet with a broken mahogany seat and a washbasin with a mirror above it. The mirror was fogged over, but it reflected the blue sky outside and the clouds that moved across it, like a dim picture of freedom and happiness soon to be lost forever.

  In the ceiling, in between the two sash windows, a pulley had been fastened, with a long rope through it that dangled on to the floor.

  ‘You’re not going to hang me?’ said Father Quinlan, in horror.

  ‘Not in the way that you’re thinking of, father. But in a manner of speaking. You’ve heard of the strappado?’

  ‘No, no, no, you can’t do that to me.’

  ‘Oh, I think I can so. How else do you think I can get you to reflect on what you did, and to see it for the heresy that it really was?’

  ‘It was never heresy! It never was! It was all done for the greater glory of God, you know that! It was all done to open up the doors of heaven, so that God’s light could shine on us directly!’

  The Grey Mullet Man pushed his face so close that Father Quinlan couldn’t focus on him. The smell of raw onions on his breath was overwhelming, enough to make Father Quinlan start weeping again. ‘It was not done for the greater glory of God, father. It was all done for the greater glory of we-all-fecking-know-who. What you have to do, father, is admit it.’

  ‘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 strappado 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!’

  11

  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.’