The Priest (18 page)

‘So what are you saying, that you came back to Dublin to escape her? What about your job? Didn’t you want to hang on to that?
I thought it was really important to you.’

All he could do was hold his hands up again. ‘There’s more to it than that. I told you it was complicated.’

‘Too right,’ she said, shifting in her seat. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if I should’ve brought a cushion. These benches get fierce
uncomfortable after a few hours.’

Mulcahy knocked back the last of his wine and felt a wave of relief wash over him. He looked up at the dark mass of the mountain
above them, heard the babble of happy chatter coming from inside the pub. He felt happier and more unburdened than he’d felt
in months. Whatever you might think about Catholicism generally, he decided, you couldn’t beat a good confession.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘why don’t I go in and get us a bottle of this stuff, and see what’s happened to the food while I’m about
it. Then I can tell you the rest when I get back.’

‘Okay, but remember I’m driving. You’ll have to drink most of it on your own.’

‘You got me on the right night for that,’ Mulcahy admitted, and headed in towards the bar.

Brogan switched off her computer and bent her head forward, cupping her hands over her ears and massaging the nape of her
neck with her thumbs. It was nine-thirty p.m., and she’d waited not one but two hours for Rafferty to come back with a preliminary
on the van. And the news was disappointing: so far, they’d found nothing definite to link in Scully. But it wasn’t all bad. There
were hairs and fibres and skin flakes from the floor to analyse; and, in particular, a length of old matting that had been
badly soiled by something recently – but they wouldn’t know what exactly until the morning. Then, when they’d put in the UV
lamps they’d picked up some blood spatter on one of the side panels. She didn’t like to pin her hopes on a slim chance but
she had a feeling it would come right. Once again, though, it would take until noon the next day at the earliest before they
could get a type comparison with Jesica’s blood – and probably days for the DNA to come back. But it might be something to
throw at Scully in the interview.

She sat up straight and swept the few items left on her desk – pens, a few loose reports and request forms – into her
desk drawer and locked it. She felt almost too tired to drive, especially when she thought of the sulk Aidan would be in when
she got home. As she rose from her chair and stretched across to take her jacket from the coat stand, a twinge shot through
her shoulder. She gasped from the pain of it. God curse this job and its endless hours.

At the lift she’d just pressed the call button when she saw Cassidy emerge from the Gents’ rubbing his hands vigorously, looking
unusually animated.

‘Jesus, Andy, you nearly put the heart crossways on me. I thought I was the only one left up here.’

‘I had a few last-minute things to see to, boss.’

The lift clanged its arrival and the doors lumbered open. Brogan stepped in, but for some reason Cassidy didn’t follow her
in.

‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘Eh, no,’ he hesitated. ‘Not just yet. Just got to go downstairs to see someone first.’

‘Alright, then. See you in the morning.’

The lift doors shut with a thud and a wide grin ripped across Cassidy’s face again. He pushed through the stairwell door beside
the lift shaft, skipping down the steps to the floor below, humming to himself, all but tasting the sweetness of vengeance
in his mouth as he made his way to a small office at the end of the corridor. Sometimes the ball landed right at your feet,
and there was nothing to do but pick it up and run with it.

‘How’ya, Mattie – everything going okay, is it?’

Garda Mattie Creasy, sitting with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, blinked as he swivelled away from the bank of
monitors in front of him, the light behind Cassidy in the doorway being that much brighter than in the security room. Creasy
was getting on, by modern-day standards – you hardly ever saw a uniform in his late fifties these days, except in the upper
ranks, and his slicked-back, dyed-black hair got him known to everyone in the building as Creasy 2000.

‘Ah, I’m alright, Sergeant. Yourself? I heard ye got walloped in the hurling on Sunday.’

‘Ah, now, don’t get me started, Mattie. That referee should be done for bribery and corruption. But I was actually wondering
if you could help me out with something. How would I get hold of one of the tapes from the security cameras covering this
place? From outside, like, not the interview room stuff.’

Cassidy’s conspiratorial whisper was obviously just what Mattie, bored out of his tree after six hours straight staring at
CCTV monitors, needed to hear.

‘Outside, is it?’ Mattie pondered, as if the question were vital to the security of the entire nation. ‘Well, now, I can’t
see that it’d be a huge problem. We record everything, and keep it for at least a month. But not on tape. It’s all saved on
a hard-drive system so there’s no messing around with tapes and things. No storage problems either. Very fancy it is. A far
cry from the old days.’

Cassidy doubted they’d had electricity in Mattie’s
old days
, let alone videotape.

‘So there’d be no trouble getting hold of some stuff from the Harcourt Street gate earlier this evening – around seven, half-seven?’

‘Was there a problem out there?’ Mattie’s brow furrowed as the possibility dawned that he might have missed the one interesting
thing to happen in ages.

‘No, no, nothing like that. I just need to check something. On the quiet, like.’ Cassidy winked at him, and gave him a roguish
grin for good measure. It did the trick.

‘Ah, I get the picture, now.’ Mattie winked back. ‘It’s for your eyes only, is it? Well, there’s nothing simpler. It’d only
take me a couple of minutes to do, but I’ll have to wait till Fahy gets back from his break. Is it urgent, like? Do you want
me to give him a call?’

‘No, no, let the man have his tea. That way we can keep it between ourselves.’

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do.’ Mattie was all enthusiasm for the conspiracy now. ‘If you like, I’ll download it later and transfer
it on to a disk. Then I can leave it on your desk for you.’ He tapped his nose as he continued. ‘That way you can peruse it
in your own time on your own computer. Between seven and half-past, was it?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Well, there’s two cameras out on that gate, and I can fit over half an hour’s worth from each onto the one DVD. Will that
be enough for you?’

‘More than,’ Cassidy grinned. ‘Thanks a million, Mattie. You’re a star. I owe you.’

‘Oh, now, don’t get carried away, Sergeant. We’re here to serve.’

Siobhan knew all about waiting for the lock on a story to click open. And, while she might not have got exactly what she set
out to get from him, Mulcahy was more than making up for it with other stuff. In fact, she could hardly remember having a
more enjoyable night out of late.

He’d decided on his way back from the bar that, rather than just give it to her straight, they should treat it as a trade-off.

‘How do you mean?’ she’d asked.

‘Like a mutual exchange of information. You know, I tell you something, you have to tell me something back. It’ll make it more
interesting, what do you say?’

‘Okay, so tell me something,’ she said.

And he laughed so loud that people all around turned to have a look at them.

‘No way,’ he said. ‘I’ve just told you about my infidelity and my divorce. It’s your turn.’

She started telling him some juicy gossip she’d heard on the grapevine about the personal habits of Johnny Logan, the former
Eurovision winner, but he stopped her in her tracks. She wasn’t getting off that lightly. It had to be something about her.
Something embarrassing. A secret. He was clearly hoping for something intimate. Vincent Bishop and his priceless bloody brooch
vaulted into her mind, but that felt too uncomfortable. Or just sleazy. Either way, she wasn’t
going there. No chance. Not with Mulcahy. Not yet. Probably not ever.

So she racked her brain, and told him how she’d pushed her little brother Paul down the stairs when she was seven and he was
five. How he was knocked unconscious and was bleeding so much he had to be rushed to hospital in an ambulance. And nobody
ever found out it was her, not to this day. And how she still rubbed the scar on Paul’s forehead every time she saw him. For
luck.

Mulcahy appeared to be impressed by that. Maybe a little shocked, even. But mostly charmed, she thought. As their meal arrived
and they tucked in, she reminded him what he’d said in the Long Hall about coming back to Dublin because of his parents, by
way of a prompt.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t go into all that the last time. I’d had a bit of a rough day. That wasn’t a good night for me
to be out.’

A line of questioning immediately occurred to her. She couldn’t help it. She’d already figured out that if Mulcahy was involved
in this Spanish thing, it would have been the same day they’d first met up for a drink. But she forced herself to put the
thought aside, not even sure she cared about all that any more, for now. At least, not compared to finding out more about
Mulcahy himself. There really was something about him. Something, she was beginning to think, she actually might not want
to get confused with work.

‘That’s okay,’ she said. ‘It can’t be easy talking about it.’

‘No,’ Mulcahy nodded, ‘but really that was what started it all. Dad’s death, it just knocked me off the rails completely.
Coming so soon after my mother died.’

‘Oh, my God,’ Siobhan said. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’

‘How would you have.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m convinced it was love killed him, really. Mam had a stroke the year before and Dad
struggled to care for her at home, on his own. He was a proud old fella, and absolutely besotted with her. Wouldn’t hear of
anyone else looking after her. I tried to do what I could from Spain, came over as often as possible. But Mam never recovered.
Then, six months after I stood and held his hand and watched her buried, he went the same way. Peacefully, they said, but
it near killed me that I hadn’t been there to see either of them go.’

He swallowed hard, disguising his emotion by grabbing for the wine bottle and refilling his glass. She reached across the
table, folding a hand over his. ‘I really am sorry,’ she said. ‘I can see they meant a lot to you.’

He nodded again. ‘I was mad about them both,’ he said. ‘My mother was the best you could wish for, and she always spoiled
me rotten. But it was my dad’s going that really got to me. You can’t believe how much I looked up to him: the big hero in
his uniform – when things like that seemed to matter to people. It was because of him I joined the Guards. I wanted to be
just like him.’

‘He was a policeman, too?’

‘Yeah, an inspector.’

‘Like you.’

‘Yes, like me.’ He laughed again, but at her this time. ‘You better watch it or you’ll have me in tears.’

‘I’m not so far off it myself,’ she said, snuffling melodramatically. She thought of her own father racked by cancer, wasting
slowly away, and her alcoholic mother wanting only to be oblivious to it all. Twenty-five years on, the ache of it still hadn’t
gone away.

‘Anyway,’ Mulcahy said, sitting up, trying to shake the mood off him with a roll of his big shoulders. ‘Dad’s death only doubled
my domestic troubles in Spain. It was bad enough after Mam died. I don’t think I knew how upset I was, cos most of my worry
got turned on Dad then. And Gracia, she just wasn’t able to meet me halfway. All the things I’d fallen in love with – her
calmness, her self-reliance – they all seemed to make her just retreat from me emotionally. In the end it was like
she
was the one who was hiding from my pain. I’m sure it was never her fault. I must have been impossible to live with, but when
Dad went I felt so alone all of a sudden, and the last remaining person I had any hope of getting comfort from was backing
further away from me…’

He stopped and put his hands up. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m waffling on now.’

‘No,’ she said, appalled at the idea he might stop. ‘I mean, please, go on.’

He laughed shyly. ‘There’s not much more to say. Other than that I was out one night and took some comfort elsewhere when
it was offered and Gracia found out. By that
time, there was all this stuff about MOAC being set up in Lisbon and lots of politicking among the powers-that-be as to what
countries would take the key posts of responsibility. Well, I reckoned I could see the writing on the wall for the Europol
set-up in Madrid. So, while I was back in Dublin to sort out the will and all that, I met up with an old boss of mine and
I asked him what would be the possibility of coming back to Dublin.’

‘Why would it have been a problem? I thought you were only on loan to Europol?’

‘Yeah, but I’d got kind of caught in the specialism trap – there aren’t many top jobs in intelligence-gathering in the Garda
Siochana.’

‘Intelligence is definitely a rarity in that organisation,’ she laughed.

‘Watch it, you,’ he said, wagging a finger ironically. ‘With your damn media cynicism.’

Then he refused to go on until she revealed another secret. So she told him about the time she’d accidentally libelled the
Minister for Defence, the one before the current one, in a front page article about an escort agency. The story hadn’t been
about the minister himself, and it was just an aside, a throwaway comment, but she’d spent weeks convinced he’d sue her and
the paper for everything they’d got. But no one ever noticed it or, at any rate, contested it.

‘That scar of your brother’s really works,’ Mulcahy said.

It was then that he told her how this old boss of his had rung up a few days later and offered him a job heading up a
new Garda unit coordinating intelligence-gathering on drug smuggling into Europe via Ireland. It was perfect. Made for him.
There’d even be a promotion in it: Superintendent Mulcahy. And it was based in Dublin. Even though he’d moved out of their
flat by then, he begged Gracia to come with him, to make a new start. But she wouldn’t. He gave notice in Madrid, worked out
his time, handed over to his replacement and arranged a couple of weeks’ vacation with friends in Valencia. Only to hear four
days before he was due to take up the new job in Dublin that the whole thing had been killed off overnight in the government’s
cost-cutting blitz. He’d been credit crunched. Well and truly. Unable to go forward, unable to go back. Stuck. He couldn’t
even get back into the Drugs Squad because of the recruitment freeze.