The Priest (21 page)

‘I only want to talk to you.’

‘Yeah, right, just like that other fucker did, I suppose?’

‘Look, I don’t know what you’re on about, Grainne, but I swear this is important. I think the fella who attacked you has done
it again. But worse this time. I need your help – to stop him.’

He felt the weight coming off his foot, saw the shadow of her body lifting away from the glass pane. Her face appeared around
the door: just her eyes and that scarred forehead.

‘Was it another workin’ girl?’ she asked. ‘I’d’a thought I’d’a heard about that.’

‘No. Just a kid.’ Even as he said it, he was aware of the irony that this woman could be barely four, five years at most,
older than Jesica Salazar.

‘Well, you better come in, then, I suppose.’

It didn’t take him long to work out why her case hadn’t been investigated properly. Prostitutes never got a fair deal from
anybody, least of all the Garda Siochana. She didn’t come right out and say it, but Branigan, the detective who’d been assigned
to her case, had obviously decided he could trade some kind of protection for sexual favours, and when she wouldn’t play ball
any more after the first couple of times, he made sure the case got buried – for his own sake. Grainne Mullins had just assumed
that life had given her one more kick in the guts and got on with it, unaware that Branigan had been transferred, and convinced
that if she ever pursued the matter he’d only try the same thing again.

Mulcahy told her he’d try to do something about it, but didn’t hold out much hope. She wasn’t impressed. Cynicism was dyed
deep in her by now. The only thing that got through to her at all was the idea that the man who attacked her had done it to
somebody else, and might do it again.

‘Seems like ages ago,’ she said, pointing at the infant in
the rocker beside her. ‘Had this little one since. I’d only just been given this place because I already had the other two.’

The baby was asleep, a soother in its mouth, no sign of the other children. She’d brought Mulcahy into the tiny, sparsely
furnished living room. A blue foam sofa, an armchair and a small television on an upturned plastic storage box took up what
bits of floor weren’t strewn with baby gear and toys. Everything was cheap, filthy and falling apart. He looked again at the
scar on her forehead, and shuddered to think what her other injuries must look like. How had she even been able to keep on
doing business?

She read his mind.

‘You’d be surprised what some creeps get turned on by. There’s fellas now I can charge extra just to take me top off for them.’
She snorted at the stupidity of it. ‘The rest of them are usually so blathered by the time they get down to it, they never
even notice.’

‘What about the man who attacked you?’ Mulcahy asked.

‘You must be jokin’ me,’ she hooted, mistaking his meaning. ‘That bastard wasn’t interested in doin’ anything. All he did
was fiddle about uselessly, then got on with carving me up.’

‘He cut you because he was angry at not being able to do it?’

‘How would I know?’ she said. ‘It might sound kinda obvious, but I was more scared of the knife than anything else. Once he
got me down and got me hands tied, he never
tried to touch me that way. It was weird. It was only when he cut me bra that he started fiddlin’ with himself, but y’could
see his heart wasn’t in it. But his eyes lit up when he went to cut me. I was so scared I didn’t even feel it, just saw the
blood comin’ out. I lost it completely then. Can’t remember much after that, except trying to scream and not bein’ able to
cos he’d stuffed a cloth in me mouth.’

‘What happened to the cloth?’ Mulcahy asked.

She looked at him like he had two heads.

‘It’s evidence. It might give us a clue,’ he said. ‘I mean, did anyone come and examine the scene afterwards, or collect evidence?’

The look of scorn only intensified on her face. ‘Jesus, you’re really working in the dark, aren’t you? Look, the only fella
who came out here was that pig, wassisname?’

‘Branigan.’

‘Yeah. And, like I said, the only thing he was interested in collecting was his rations. Once he heard I was a workin’ girl,
that was it. Fair game, that’s what he said. Always the bleedin’ same.’

‘Can you tell me what you were doing before the attack?’ Mulcahy asked, deciding it was better to avoid that issue for the
moment.

‘What’s the fuckin’ point – you’re not going to catch him now, are you? And how d’ya know it’s even the same fella?’

‘I don’t, but I’m kind of hoping there’s no more than one freak going around doing this kind of thing.’

‘Okay, look, I was just comin’ up to the house, lookin’ for
me keys. I’d been out doing an at-homer out in Glasthule. The fella’s a regular – always pays me a taxi home.’

‘Could the taxi driver have seen anything? Didn’t he drop you to the door?’

‘Yeah, well, that’s just my bloody luck, isn’t it. The driver said he was runnin’ low on petrol and asked could he drop me
off at the bottom of the road so he could go over to the garage on Bath Street. I wasn’t bothered. Saved me tippin’ him. Course
it’d have to be the one night a pervert was on the loose.’

‘Were you aware of the attacker beforehand? Did he follow you up the street?’

‘Haven’t a clue. He came at me from the back, as I was putting the key in the lock. It was like he hit me with his chest or
something, at a run. My face went smack into the door and I was nearly knocked out. Keys and everything went flyin’. Next
thing I knew, I was on the ground, hands tied behind me back, and he was stuffin’ this rag into me gob. I thought I was going
to puke but when I saw the knife I just froze. I was too terrified to move.’

‘So you saw his face?’

‘For fuck’s sake, what do you think? He’d just knocked me halfway into next week. The only thing I was seein’ was stars.’

‘But you must’ve got some impression of him?’

‘Not really.’

‘What about his age? Was he young or old?’

‘Jesus, I don’t know. Like I said, I was too groggy and all my attention was on the knife.’

‘Well, what would your gut say, your instinct?’

She shrugged. Clearly, this question hadn’t been put to her before.

‘Well, not a kid, like, but not too old either. He was strong but not huge, y’know.’

‘It says in the report that you didn’t know the man? What was it made you so sure? Did he say something, is that it – was
it his voice you didn’t recognise?’

‘Are ya kiddin’ me? Jesus, ya wouldn’t hear that voice twice and not know it. Soft, like, and a bit educated, too, now I think
of it. Not from around here, for sure. An’ he was mitherin’ all the time. Especially after he cut me. He just kept on, low
like, not so much excited as fuckin’ mad. Cursin’ and mumblin’ all this crap, like he was sayin’ his prayers or some shite.’

‘Prayers?’

‘Ah, I don’t know.’ She shook her head again. ‘It was double Dutch to me. All I knew was he was a mad shite and he was doin’
a bleedin’ good job of cutting me up.’

‘Did he try to burn you at all?’

‘Holy fuck,’ she gasped. ‘What do you want? Didn’t he do enough to me, or what?’

‘Sorry, just checking.’ Mulcahy smiled apologetically but he didn’t get one back. ‘I suppose I should be going. Let you get
on with things.’

As he got to the door, he stopped and asked: ‘He didn’t take anything from you, did he?’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Something personal, a piece of jewellery, you know, a necklace maybe, or—’

‘Y’mean me Versace?’ She was staring at him now, something like laughter in her eyes.

‘Your what?’

‘Ah, go on,’ she said. ‘The other girls used to always take the piss out of me for it. It was like one of those big Versace
crosses you used to see a few years back. You know them?’

Mulcahy said nothing, afraid to interrupt the flow.

‘It was a big gold cross all studded with fake jewels and glass and stuff, like the sort them rappers wear, on a chain.’

‘And you were wearing this at the time?’

‘Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t real or anythin’, just a piece of crap I got on Henry Street for a laugh. People were always going
on about it, y’know, given me line of business.’

‘And he took it from you? I didn’t see any mention of that in the incident report.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m sure I said somethin’ about it at the time. But maybe I didn’t. It was only a piece of old tat. He’d carved
me up, for Jaysus’ sake.’

‘But he took it? You’re sure?’

She shook her head and sighed.

‘Yeah, positive. Soon as he got me on my back, he pulled it tight like he was tryin’ to choke me with it. Course, it was such
cheap shite, the chain snapped as soon as he gave a tug on it. That pissed him off – must’ve thought it was worth somethin’. That’s
when he started on with the prayers and rantin’ on about Jesus dyin’ for our sins.’ She paused, then
a note of pain mingled with the exasperation in her voice. ‘What the fuck would he know about it, eh? Carving me up while
spoutin’ on about Jesus on the cross.’

‘Like a priest,’ Mulcahy said, mostly to himself.

‘Not like any priest I’ve ever met,’ she said. ‘Not that I get many. Most of them lot is only interested in fiddlin’ with
little boys.’

She waited for the greeting on Mulcahy’s answering service to play out, then the beep.

‘Hiya, Inspector, it’s the chief reporter here. Sorry I couldn’t stay for breakfast this morning but I was expecting some
calls and needed to be at my desk first thing. I did try to wake you but you were completely sparko. Anyway, just wanted to
say, y’know, thanks for last night and hope your head doesn’t hurt too much this morning. I’m looking forward to us not helping
each other with our enquiries again soon.’

Siobhan put her mobile down and smiled to herself for the first time in a few hours. It had taken most of the day to get back
to what she’d been wanting to do most. First, that ludicrous email had taken up half the morning. When she’d called Bishop
he’d come over all defensive and apologetic about it. Pathetically so, claiming his name was never supposed to be on the itinerary. That
the holiday was just for her – ‘
if you want it that way
’ – the bloody creep. As if she’d even consider it. The thought of his clammy skin coming anywhere near hers was, by now,
almost enough to make her retch. But for some
reason – the last vestiges of self-interest probably – after he’d promised to cancel the whole thing, she’d calmed down and
let him swing the conversation round to some new titbit of gossip he’d uncovered about Marty Lenihan, and they’d eventually
hung up on reasonably amiable terms again.

In her gut she knew it couldn’t last. Even if Bishop thought his attentions were innocent, to her they were getting creepier
by the day. And no amount of stories was worth that sort of hassle. If she didn’t put some serious distance between herself
and Bishop, she knew it could only get worse. How best to go about that, though, she still wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to
make an enemy of him either. But she had no time to think about that. As soon as she got back with the coffee, she and Paddy
had had to go straight in to Harry Heffernan’s office for the post-mortem he insisted on holding every Tuesday, where he banged
on about every misplaced comma, wrong name, cocked-up photo caption and breached deadline from the previous week’s edition
– ad-bloody-nauseam.

By the time she got out of there it was lunchtime and of course that was already booked – out in Dun Laoghaire with a Fianna
Fail councillor who was helping her with a piece she was researching on the financing of local politics. It was past three
by the time she got back from lunch, whereupon she thought of Mulcahy and decided to give him the call. She was glad she only
got his message service. Too much else to be getting on with. But just the thought of him was comforting.

She picked up a pencil and pulled a spiral-bound notebook towards her across the desk, then flicked back a couple of pages.
She tapped the pencil against her teeth, then used it to circle a name she’d scribbled on the page in front of her. A touch
on the mouse brought her computer monitor flickering back to life again. She keyed in her password and double-clicked on a
folder entitled
Active
and, within it, one called
JMS
. The number of files inside was growing. A single keystroke brought up the Google search engine and she typed in ‘Spanish
politicians’. A long list came back, most relating to news stories, but it didn’t take long to refine her search and find
a roster of the current members of the Cortes. Seconds later, her breath was stilled as her eyes matched the name in her notepad
to an entry on the list in front of her.

‘Bloody hell,’ she said, looking around to see if Paddy Griffin was anywhere in the vicinity.

For once, though, he wasn’t.

Over in Harcourt Square, Mulcahy’s hopes of making rapid progress had not been realised. Brogan and Cassidy had been in the
interview room most of the day, trying to wear Scully down. He’d passed a note through to them about what he’d found out at
Grainne Mullins’s, and sent an excited-looking Hanlon off to look into the possibility that Scully might have a footprint
in the world of Republican subversion – but had heard nothing back on either front. In the meantime he’d done some following
up of his own regarding Detective
Branigan and, finally, traced him to an armed-robbery task force working out of Dublin West. But his efforts to get in touch
were met with the news that Branigan was away on leave until the following day, and to call back then. After going through
the rest of the replies to his round robin, and not turning up anything else interesting, he put in a call to Javier Martinez
in Madrid to see if they’d come up with anything on their ETA lead. They hadn’t.

When Brogan and Cassidy reappeared for the evening briefing, it proved a pretty dismal affair. While the suspect had been
cockily polite and ‘helpful’ all the way through, they reported back, he had obstinately refused to change his story about
leaving Jesica at Stillorgan shopping centre and going straight home. And just to help matters he absolutely denied that the
drugs found in his bedroom were his, too. In fact, he’d stated for the tape no fewer than twenty-five times that they must
have been planted there by members of the Garda search team. Meanwhile, the forensics on the van hadn’t exactly flooded back
in, and those that did arrive had yielded nothing. Worst of all, the blood sample taken from the interior definitely did not
match Jesica’s, although it had been identified as human. It had yet to be checked against either Scully or his father, both
of whom had so far refused to give a sample. Overall, then, the case against Scully was beginning to stall. Brogan decided
to keep him in custody overnight again and told him she’d be charging him with possession in the morning and to have a legal
representative present.