The Priest (17 page)

‘Ah, go on, you should know better than try to get me to reveal a source.’

A source? He thought of what Ford had said about a woman calling, wanting to know where he was. The conspiratorial chuckle.
Liam must’ve been a bit more forthcoming than he’d let on.

‘Anyone would think you weren’t glad to see me.’ She didn’t pout, but it was implicit. Instead, she raised her sunglasses
up and he felt the full blue hit of her eyes.

‘No, it’s not that…’

She was so close now, if he wanted to he could put an arm out and scoop her into him, kiss her hard on the mouth. She laughed
and took a small step back, like she could see it or feel it in him. He glanced back at the building behind him to
break the spell of her, and drew some air deep into his lungs. By the time he turned to face her again, he was over it.

‘It’s good to see you,’ he said. ‘I enjoyed the other night.’

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘I got your message and thought maybe you’d fancy having a bite to eat tonight. It’s such a beautiful
evening, we could hop in the car and head up the mountains to Johnnie Fox’s or the Blue Light, or somewhere. The traffic’s
not looking too bad – we could be there in half an hour. Watch the sun go down? What do you think?’

‘I think that’s very spontaneous of you.’ He was smiling now.

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that. You took a fair bit of tracking down.’

‘I hope I’ll be worth it,’ he laughed, relaxing into the idea, playing her at her own game.

‘Seems like a long shot, I admit.’ She stood there, blazing him with the smile. ‘But, then, you never know. Are you coming
or not?’

She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned on her heel, opened the car door and slid inside.

Up in the privacy of her fourth-floor office, Brogan leaned into her desk, blessed herself in an only half-ironic fashion,
then picked up the phone, cursing Mulcahy and Cassidy. If it hadn’t been for their stupid macho squabble, she might have got
away on time. As it was, that extra ten minutes put the mockers on everything, because she then got a call from
Dermot Rafferty in Technical saying he hoped to have some initial results back from the tests on Scully’s van within the hour,
if she wanted to hang on. Well, what was she going to say to that? No, actually, I’ve got to go home right now or my husband
will miss his game of penny poker. Yeah, right. By which time it would have taken a miracle, or a pair of motorcycle outriders
at least, for her to get home to Tallaght in time.

She dialled her home number, made the call to Aidan and, by the time she put down the phone again, felt as if her soul had
shrunk by yet another small but significant percentage. He hadn’t moaned or cursed or shouted. She probably would have felt
better if he had. Instead, all she got was the usual surly resentment, a few abrupt words of acceptance, and the certain knowledge
that she’d be paying for this with the silent treatment for days. For the millionth time, she cursed herself for ever suggesting
that he should give up his job to stay at home and do the house-husband thing. It had seemed like such a good idea at the
time.

She was eyeing up the paperwork on her desk, thinking to make good use of her hour’s detention, when the faint roar of a car
revving wildly outside caught her ear. She leaned back in her chair, looked out the floor-length window and, down below, saw
a red convertible reversing, with nothing like due care and attention, out of a parking bay at the front of the building and
into the roadway. Some midget-dick from the Drugs Squad, was her first thought. Which seemed to be confirmed immediately when
she recognised, with
some surprise, that it was Mulcahy sitting in the passenger seat. Then she registered the dark curling hair, the trim figure
behind the wheel, and the fact that it was a woman driving. A split second later Brogan was on her feet, pressing her hands
against the glass as the car made a tyre-shredding turn, shot across the road and disappeared into Hatch Street opposite.

She didn’t turn around again until she heard a knock behind her, and the door opening.

‘Everything alright, boss?’

It was Cassidy, a look of concern masking nosiness.

She considered telling him what she’d just seen. Felt a giddy pang of temptation to share the juicy bone she’d just been thrown.
But it would only end up being a blunt instrument in Cassidy’s hands. This was something to savour and use more judiciously.

She shook her head. ‘Yes, fine thanks, Andy. Just some arsehole outside, driving like a maniac.’

‘Yeah, I heard.’

Miraculously, the evening traffic melted away ahead of them. Once they got out past Marlay Park and on to the Ticknock Road
it disappeared altogether and, more often than not, now, theirs was the only car on the narrow, winding roads that led steeply
up into the Dublin mountains. It was years since Mulcahy had been out this way, and it amazed him to remember just how quickly
it was possible to escape the city. It wasn’t half an hour since they’d got in the
car, and already they were hundreds of feet up. Flashing by, behind hedgerows, dry-stone walls and houses, was a view to still
the heart: the flat, built-up bowl of the city bathed in a rosy light falling softly from the west, the dark green of the
sea to the east broken only by the flecked white wakes of ships and sailboats threading in and out from Dublin port and Dun
Laoghaire harbour.

‘My dad used to bring me up here all the time when I was a kid,’ he shouted over the noise of the engine and the rushing air.
‘He was always a country man at heart, had to get out of the city every chance he got.’

She glanced over at him, nodding eagerly.

‘Mine too,’ she said, turning back in time to ram the engine down a couple of gears and take a hairpin bend with all the confidence
of a Schumacher. ‘All of us, the whole family, he shoved us into the back of the car every Sunday, and took us up to the Pine
Forest, out to Enniskerry or Powerscourt, over the Sally Gap. Or in summer we’d go down to Brittas for the day.’

‘Those were our haunts too.’ Mulcahy grinned, half a childhood washing over him in one go, pricking his heart with the thought
that he’d been away from it all for too long. He’d lost touch with such a large part of his past. ‘Very, very occasionally
we’d go out to Rush or Skerries. But I think he regarded anywhere north of the Liffey pretty much as foreign territory. He’d
only really go up there for work, or maybe curiosity, but never relaxation. Even if it was just for a couple of hours, he’d
be off to Dalkey, Killiney or Bray.
But never Howth or Malahide. In fact, I don’t think I got out to Howth until I was well into my teens, when I could get there
under my own steam.’

‘Nort’siders – dey’re nuttin’ bu’ a buncha bleedin’ knackers,’ she shouted back at him in broadest Dublinese, laughing, her
glossy red lips drawn taut against her small, bright-white teeth. He was about to respond in kind when the car crested a rise
and they shot out into a vista that took his breath away. The terrain around them was transformed in a blink from grey rock
and steep commercial woodland into a spectacular broad, brown plateau of upland bracken and bogland, stretching away for miles
towards Wicklow and the mountains proper.

‘I just love it up here,’ she cried into the wind, slipping the car into fifth and flooring the accelerator. They were totally
alone, not another car on the ribbon of road that spun out three, four miles in front of them towards the Sally Gap. Not another
soul to be seen in the still, empty landscape they hurtled through, as the sun slipped towards the rim of the world behind
them.

They settled, in the end, on the Blue Light pub, high on the slopes of Sandyford at the foot of Barnaculia. An ancient old
place that, last time he’d been there, maybe twenty years before, had looked a lot closer to the piggery it once was than
a popular spot for late-night revellers. Now, though, it had been rediscovered, done up, and for once was the better for it.
Especially when it came to food. Inside, the bar was packed,
close and noisy. But outside, in the warm evening air, they found a table that afforded them comparative solitude and a spectacular
view out over Dublin, all the more so now that night had begun to draw down, and the million lights of the city below were
glimmering like a bowl of diamonds.

She waited until they’d ordered the food and he’d had a few sips of wine before she broached the subject.

‘So what were you doing over in Harcourt Square – assuming they haven’t just opened up a new outpost for the Drugs Squad over
there?’

‘It’s a temporary assignment. I’ll be back to my usual duties in a few days time, I hope.’

‘Which are?’

‘How do you mean?’

Her mood seemed to have shifted completely from how it had been in the car. Her carefree expression was replaced by a frown
of inquisition that was beginning to make him feel uncomfortable. He turned away from her to look out over the sparkling city.

‘Look, Siobhan, I thought we agreed we weren’t going to do the work thing?’

‘We did.’ She paused just long enough to make him turn back to her. ‘But that was before I went down to St Vincent’s today
and heard your name mentioned in connection with a story I’m interested in.’

To say he was caught on the hop hardly covered it. He did his best to conceal his reaction, but it was no use. He could see
her taking in the surprise in his expression. For all
he knew, she was just on a fishing expedition, but it didn’t sound like it. Best he could do was try to close it down calmly,
maybe find out how much she knew.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Siobhan.’

‘Oh, come off it, Mulcahy. Don’t give me that. A Spanish kid is raped at the weekend and, from what I’ve been able to scrape
together, it sounds completely horrific. But for some weird reason I can’t get a squeak out of any of my Garda contacts about
it. If anything, I get the distinct impression they’re running scared. Then I hear a whisper that Mike Mulcahy is involved
and I think, hang on, rape
and
drugs? And if it’s him, it’s not just any old drugs but international drugs, big drugs. Jesus, you can hardly blame me for
being intrigued.’

That was more than enough for him. ‘Change the subject, Siobhan.’

‘Why should I?’ There was a faint note of outrage in her voice now, as if she wasn’t the one who was entirely out of order
here.

‘Because you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting me to talk about this. Look, I meant what I said in that message.
I wanted to see you again and I hoped that you might feel the same way. But if I was wrong about that, I’ll put my hand up.
I’m an idiot, okay? But let’s not draw it out any longer than necessary. Let’s just finish up here and I’ll go order myself
a taxi.’

She seemed to think about that a moment, then he saw the tension drain out of her body and she leaned across towards him.

‘Oh, come on, you know that’s not why I got you up here. I was really pleased when I got your message. I was looking forward
to seeing you again. But then your name came up today and, you know, I had to ask the question.’

‘Yeah, but you didn’t have to ambush me like that, did you?’

This time the air of offence she adopted looked genuine.

‘That’s so not what I was trying to do. I mean, if that was all I wanted, I could have just clobbered you with it while you
were coming out of Harcourt Square. In fact, maybe I should’ve, because you looked like you were on another planet altogether
then, and I’d probably have had a better chance of jumping you into an answer. But I didn’t do it.’

He had to laugh at that. ‘Okay, fair point, but look, you have to believe me. I’d help you if I could, but I’m absolutely
not the person you should be talking to about this.’

‘So who is?’

‘Have you tried the Garda Press Office?’

‘Very funny. You know all that crowd does is read out press releases and spout statistics.’

‘Sorry, that’s the best I can do. It’s the best I’m ever going to be able to do.’

She smiled at that, like she didn’t mind him making the assumption.

‘Fine, I’ll do my best not to bring it up again. Does that mean you’ll stay and eat?’

‘I’d like that,’ he said, beginning to relax again.

‘Me too,’ she smiled. ‘But won’t you at least tell me what the hell your job is now? Or is that a bloody state secret, as
well?’

‘I wasn’t trying to hide anything. It’s just that it was complicated – a complete fuck-up, if you want the truth of it. And
some of it, well, to be honest, it’s just not the sort of stuff you want to be getting into on a first, eh…’

‘Date?’ Siobhan prompted, helpfully.

‘Yeah,’ Mulcahy said. ‘I don’t know if Mark told you but while I was in Madrid I got married.’

Siobhan didn’t look at all surprised, didn’t respond in any way other than to nod encouragingly. Protecting her source, probably,
even if it was only Mark. Still, it left him feeling freer to tell things his own way.

‘Gracia worked at Europol, too, as a policy adviser. Her background was in economics.’

‘But was she good-looking, yeah?’

‘Yes, really.’ Mulcahy smiled, amused again by her directness. ‘Incredibly beautiful and elegant, in that dark Spanish way.
Totally out of my league, or so I thought. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it was great for a while. Terrific wedding. Lovely
honeymoon. We bought a fabulous flat in the heart of Madrid, just behind the Prado. She had her career, I had mine. Life was
perfect.’

‘So what happened?’ Siobhan asked. ‘I mean, I assume
something
happened?’

She was making it easy for him.

‘Sure. About a year ago, nobody’s fault but my own, she asked me to move out.’

‘You’d been a naughty boy?’

Mulcahy nodded, but he hardly needed to; the fault was etched on his face like an epitaph.

‘And you’re not quite over her yet, is that it?’

Mulcahy was surprised to hear an edge of resignation in her question.

‘No, not at all. We’d been… well, things had fizzled out between us by then. We were well on the way to splitting up already. That
just sped things up. I mean, it was upsetting, of course – still is, to be honest – but it would have happened anyway.’