The Priest (13 page)

It must’ve been the twentieth file he’d pulled up and sifted through that morning, but it was proving just as much a dead
end as the others. Some young gouger had pulled a Stanley knife on an ex-girlfriend and forced her to give him a blowjob by
the communal rubbish bins round the back of a block of flats out in Artane. Then he’d slashed her face and walked away, leaving
her screaming, puking and drenched in her own blood. Asked why he’d done it, he said he’d been drinking and, anyway, hadn’t
she asked for it by getting pregnant with another fella? He was charged, convicted and was doing a three-year stretch in Portlaoise.
All of which made a kind of sense to the Garda in Mulcahy. It’s how things were in the world: some people were irredeemable
shits.

What still didn’t make any sense at all to him was what had happened to Jesica Salazar. Less than ever since he’d spoken to
Frank Geraghty. A kid gets raped and tortured half to death yet there’s no forensic evidence of sex? How the hell could that
be? The idea that anyone could get their
rocks off by causing that amount of pain was alien enough to Mulcahy. All he knew for certain was that, compared to this,
Drugs was a walk in the park. At least there you knew what you were up against most of the time: ruthless greed, abject addiction
and heartless exploitation. It was a trade, no matter how evil, and it worked according to its own set of rules.

Mulcahy shook the thought from his head and realised he’d forgotten to call Brogan and pass on Geraghty’s message. He dialled
the number, got put through to her voicemail and left a message. That was it, then. He grabbed his jacket, squeezing the pockets
to check his smokes and lighter were there, and strode out into the empty incident room. Passing the whiteboard, he saw someone
had pinned up the two CCTV images of Jesica emerging from the nightclub, one head-and-shoulders, one full-length shot. Such
a beautiful girl. Her clothes, though minimal, looked expensive – and why not? Her father was one of the wealthiest men in
Spain. What she was doing at a Dublin language school for four weeks, Mulcahy couldn’t begin to imagine. He always thought
that kind of wealth brought nothing but privilege: private tutors, finishing schools and so on. Then he remembered the photos
he’d seen of her father, in newspapers and magazines. A hawkish face, a thin, spare frame: more like a hermit than a politician.
More like a grandfather than a father? He thought of what Martinez had told him about Salazar, and wondered what the man must
now be feeling. For all his wealth and power, he hadn’t been able to
prevent this random intrusion of tragedy into his daughter’s life.

Mulcahy moved a step nearer to the close-up photo of Jesica: her gleaming hair and teeth, the cross and chain glittering against
her white top. Gold on the swabs? That must be it, he thought, recalling how she’d touched the red weal on her neck in the
hospital. At some stage the attacker had pulled the chain from her neck. Maybe he tried to choke her with it. Mulcahy imagined
a hand gripping the chain, twisting it, breaking it. Had some of the gold flaked off on his hand?

Mulcahy rubbed a hand across his face, massaging his tired eyes with forefinger and thumb. Nothing about this case made any
sense. He patted his jacket pocket, feeling for the cigarette pack again, his subconscious reminding him that he’d been on
his way out for a smoke. He looked out the window, to where the sunlight picked out the red and black gable end of the Bleeding
Horse pub. Make that a pint as well, he thought, looking at his watch. Might as well be lunchtime. He fished his phone out
– Liam was probably gasping for one himself by now.

Siobhan was making progress. After only five phone calls to St Vincent’s Hospital she’d tracked down someone who had been
on duty over the weekend and was able and willing to confirm that, yes, a Spanish student had been treated in Emergency, and
subsequently admitted to the hospital, on Sunday morning. No names or clinical details, of course:
patient confidentiality and all that, especially where journalists were concerned. Still, on the back of this information
she was able to phone Dundrum Garda Station and put the details to them, to see what the reaction would be. The note of panic
in the voice of the Garda who answered the phone, and the speed with which she’d been passed on to his unhelpful sergeant,
bolstered her belief that Consodine’s lead was solid and she was on to something. But what?

Siobhan had a quick word with Paddy Griffin, gave him a rough idea of what she had discovered and got his okay to spread a
few euro around, if necessary. Grabbing her keys, she took the lift down to the basement car park and folded down the black
cloth roof of her beloved, if ancient, red Alfa Spider. Then she was off, bursting up the ramp towards the bright blue sky,
and out on to the quays. She could have just as easily taken a taxi on expenses and that way made use of the bus lanes. But
a beautiful cloudless day like this offered too good an opportunity to put the top down, feel the sun on her face, the wind
in her hair and any other cliché you might throw at her. She loved them all. The traffic crawled at its usual stop-start pace,
but she made good time on a cut-through she knew in Ballsbridge and was soon zipping across the junction at Nutley Lane, and
parking in the stunted multi-storey car park that defaced the southern reaches of the hospital grounds. Walking out of it she
had a flashback to – what, twenty-five years before? – when her dad had been taken into this hospital. Her, ten or eleven,
no more, leading him up the concrete steps, holding his hand,
chattering words of comfort, when all the time it was him who was really consoling her, calming her, encouraging her not to
be afraid, and to take good care of her mother.

Back then the hospital buildings had been widely spaced, the grounds landscaped with health-promoting shrubbery and lawns.
And, even if they were never beautiful, those square-edged sixties buildings had radiated – at least it seemed then – a kind
of benign medicinal authority. Nowadays, though, the boom years had allowed for all sorts of add-ons and extensions to eat
up the healing green spaces. Inside, the corridors were much as she recalled them, but without the spectral glow of memory.
Walls rubbed down to the plaster by too many passing bodies. The floors too footworn now to hold the glossy wax polish that
had squeaked beneath the nurses’ plimsolls as they took her dad off to his ward. She shivered at the thought: her lovely dad,
walking away, waving back to her, the light streaming in from the far end of the corridor eating away at his outline until
he was just a stick.

‘Jaysus, you’re going soft already, and you’ve only been there a couple of days. They’ll have you carrying a handbag next.’

Mulcahy looked up from his
Irish Times
to see Detective Sergeant Liam Ford grinning down at him. He’d been so absorbed in the crossword he hadn’t noticed him coming
in. Not easy as, at six-foot-four, eighteen stone and always kitted out in the same brown leather bomber jacket, jeans and
knackered Nikes, you could normally spot Liam Ford
from half a mile off. In his mid-thirties now, some of the muscle was running to fat and the long hair made him look more
like an ageing rocker than a Drugs cop. But that was the general idea, and while he was too noticeable ever to excel in the
area of discreet surveillance, put him in a small room with a suspect and he came into his own.

‘It’s only the Simplex crossword,’ Mulcahy objected.

‘The what?’

‘The easy one, you ignorant git. Don’t you ever read the paper?’

‘Not that one, I don’t. The
Sun
or the
Herald
’ll do me. I like to be able to understand what I’m reading.’

Mulcahy smiled at the accent. Over a decade in Dublin and he still sounded like he was straight out of Cork. Ford pointed
at Mulcahy’s partially consumed pint of Guinness on the bar.

‘Another one?’

‘Go on, then.’

He called the order to the barman, then dragged up a stool.

‘How’s it going? Anything I should know about?’ asked Mulcahy, laying his paper aside.

‘Not a lot. Everybody’s a bit on edge with this freeze still on. We’re under too much feckin’ pressure. Seems like every second
desk in the place is empty. Ludicrous, it is.’

Ford broke off to hand the barman a note for the two pints, and took a long gulp while he waited for the change. By the time
the glass hit the bar again it was half empty.

‘How about yourself? You’re being very cagey about what’s going on over there. What in Jesus’s name would Sex Crimes be needing
you for anyway?’

Mulcahy tapped a finger against his nose. ‘Nothing that would interest you, Liam. And nothing they couldn’t be getting on
with all by themselves, either. At the moment, I’m a total waste of space over there.’

Ford looked at him like he had two heads. ‘Well, you’ve got to get yourself the hell out of there then, don’t you.’

‘Yeah, I guess. But it’s not as simple as that.’

Ford leaned an elbow on to the bar and lowered his voice. ‘But maybe it is, boss. Look, a fella I know from Southern Region
got a whisper yesterday that HR are going to force Tommy Dowling to throw in the towel. You heard about him, yeah?’

Mulcahy nodded. Dowling was head of the Southern Region Drugs Squad. He’d got shot in the liver a few months back, when a
raid on a house in Youghal went badly wrong.

‘The latest medical didn’t go well,’ Ford said. ‘Looks like he’s never going to be match fit again, so they’re making him
an offer – full pension and appropriate compensation to be agreed. Word is he’ll be gone within the month. I reckon you just
have to put in for it, and it’s yours. Murtagh would be mad not to take you on. I know it might not be exactly what you want,
but it would get you back in the groove at least.’

Far from being dismissive of the opportunity, Mulcahy
was feeling like a drowning man who’d just been thrown a lifebelt. ‘Are you sure about this?’

‘As sure as I can be.’

‘Who else would be up for it? Who’s covering for Dowling now?’

Ford was grinning from ear to ear, getting up some real enthusiasm for the idea.

‘That’s just the thing. The DI who’s been holding the fort, Sean McCarthy, reckons he’s a dead cert for it, but word is that
Murtagh hasn’t been impressed by his performance. He’s not popular with the lads, and there’ve been a couple of bad fuck-ups.
But the main thing is, it’s a detective superintendent’s post. No way does McCarthy have the legs for that, especially not
if you put your hat in the ring. I reckon it’s got you written all over it.’

Mulcahy tried to damp down the excitement rising inside him. Other opportunities he’d got wind of in the past six months had
shrivelled up and died in the face of the recruitment freeze. But they couldn’t let a Regional job like that go unfilled –
and it
would
suit him down to the ground, even more than Ford realised. Donal Murtagh, the Southern Region chief superintendent, was probably
the man he’d collaborated most closely with on intelligence while he was in Madrid. For years they’d battled to combat drug
smuggling along Ireland’s vulnerable south coast. He had huge respect for him and they’d always got on well.

‘Thanks, Liam. Maybe I’ll give Murtagh a call.’

‘You make sure you do.’ Ford grinned again. ‘The lads
down there would love it if you came on board. There’s lots of ’em remember you from way back.’

‘Only one fly in the ointment.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’d have to live in bloody Cork.’

Ford let out a big guffaw before knocking back the rest of his pint. ‘You should be so bloody lucky. They don’t call it the
Pearl of the South for nothing.’

‘They don’t call it the pearl of anywhere, as far as I recall.’

Mulcahy signalled the barman to give Ford another pint and tried to stop thinking about just how ideal this job would be.
Even the move to Cork would be interesting, as the south coast was the absolute frontline when it came to drug smuggling.
Ford, meanwhile, chatted heatedly for a while about his own gig at the National Drugs Unit in Dublin Castle, finishing off
with an amusing tale of a well-known small-time dealer who’d been hit by a car while trying to evade arrest.

‘Three cracked ribs, a broken collarbone, and his jaw’s smashed in so many bits it had to be wired shut. He’s not going to
be talking to anybody for while. Or going anywhere either, except for the infirmary – we found fifty-three wraps of coke in
the lining of his jacket.’

Mulcahy was still laughing when he heard a loud foreign accent behind him. He turned on his stool to see a portly black man
in his forties standing at the counter, ordering a coffee and a sandwich. His voice was full of the rounded vowels of Africa,
but what was even more striking was that
he was a priest. The gleaming white collar encircling his neck stood out in sharp contrast to both his skin colour and his
well-tailored charcoal-grey suit.

Craning his neck to see who the priest was with, Mulcahy noticed a whole group of clergymen, a mix of Africans and Europeans
from the sound of their conversation, sitting in an alcove to his right. Most had cups, saucers and half-consumed sandwiches
already in front of them. He must’ve been really lost in the crossword not to spot them before. A gang of priests in a pub
was a weird thing to see nowadays, even if they were only drinking coffee. Must be some kind of religious conference taking
place nearby, and now taking a break for lunch.

‘Are you waiting for them to give us dispensation for another one?’ Ford asked, holding his empty pint glass in his hand and
nodding towards the clerics.

Mulcahy turned and looked at his own barely touched second drink. ‘I’m fine for the minute,’ he said, taking a swallow. Something
was niggling furiously at the back of his mind. ‘But you go ahead, Liam. I’m not in any…’

As he was saying this, something shunted in his brain and slipped into place. He put his pint down sharply, the smack of the
glass on the countertop drawing curious looks from more than just Ford. But Mulcahy was oblivious, his eyes locked onto one
of the men sitting facing him from the alcove. Another priest, or a bishop maybe, given his purple shirt. But it was what
was hanging in front of the shirt that was the focus of Mulcahy’s close attention: a large gold cross
dangling from a chain. Big and brash, it was at least five or six inches in length, and flat-surfaced, plain, devoid of a
figure of Christ or any other adornment.