The Priest (38 page)

That’s when he thought again of the blown headlamp. He pulled the Traffic Offence file up on the monitor again and scrutinised
the page more closely. And there it was. ‘The driver Mr Sean Rinn, of Palmerston Park, Dublin, was issued with an eighty-euro
on-the-spot fine for driving on a public carriageway in a vehicle not properly equipped with lights, viz driver’s-side headlamp
on cab was defective.’ Fuck! Mulcahy did a double take and checked it again. Cab, not car. His eye must have skipped over
it first time round. He scanned the document for further evidence that he wasn’t going completely mad and, seconds later,
saw it. There, at the bottom of the document, underneath the vehicle registration number for a grey 2003 Toyota Corolla 03-D-35982,
the vehicle’s taxi plate number was also inscribed: 19374. Now that
couldn’t
be a coincidence.

Seconds later, he was calling up the register of taxilicence holders but Rinn’s name was not listed on it. He cross-reffed
for the taxi plate but found it was registered to someone else entirely, a Mr Eric Dawson of Clondalkin, and that the licence
was currently inactive. Which could mean only one of two things: that Rinn was the victim of yet another bizarre Garda typing
error, or he was driving around with a fake sign attached to the roof of his car, pretending to be a taxi driver.

By now Mulcahy’s head was hurting from the screentime and his lungs were bursting for a smoke. He grabbed his jacket and headed
for the lift. Maybe a cigarette would help him think it through more clearly. He’d only just sparked up outside when his mobile
rang.

‘
Buenas tardes, Mike. Cómo estas?’

It was Javier Martinez. Christ, how did he always manage to sound so bloody happy?

‘I’ve been better, Jav. How about you?’

‘Yes, good. Sorry to call so late but you have heard about Jesica Salazar? You are coming tomorrow, no?’ ‘Yeah, for sure.
On the first flight out. It’ll be good to see you. It’s really good, too, to hear the girl’s recovered enough already.’

It was hard to believe; it didn’t feel so long since he’d seen the poor kid lying there in a hospital bed, her face all bruised
and broken, the pain and terror working through her like she was possessed. The young were so resilient. Suddenly, he felt
something stir in his head, a sensation that was almost physical, shifting, sinking sharp talons into his memory. An image
mushroomed in his mind, of Jesica touching the red welt on her neck where the chain had been ripped from it, and reaching
out to him.

‘
Hizo la señal del Cristo,
’ she whispered. ‘
Hizo la señal del Cristo
.’

By the time Siobhan finished writing up her notes she was feeling pretty tired, but still running hard on the excitement
of it all. After three hours’ work she now had two more stories, in outline at least, to add to her stock for Sunday. Not
a bad haul, and still a day in hand. Time to think about getting home and catching up on the ironing. Or the telly. Or maybe
both. That was enough to make her change her mind and instead – probably from some odd sense of obligation to Fr Touhy – open
up another new file, to begin an altogether more speculative piece on whether Byrne was actually the right man. Round and
round her thoughts went, fingers lapping the keyboard like waves, trying to tease out and reconnect every strand, every loose
morsel – getting it all down. Not for this Sunday, but for the following week’s paper, maybe. News was news, and in this case
that amounted to Byrne’s arrest and his dodgy past. Any doubts she might have over the arrest, she could afford to hold in
reserve. After all, they hadn’t even charged him yet. It would only make an even better splash further down the road – in
the unlikely event that the boys in blue really were trying to stitch Byrne up.

Her email pinged and she clicked on a reply from a psychologist contact of hers who she’d emailed earlier. She was so engrossed
in reading its contents that she only grunted when – it must have been about eight p.m. – someone came and placed something
on her desk. Not until ten minutes later, after she’d bashed out another string of questions in reply and sent them on their
way, did she drag her eyes from the screen and notice the padded envelope now sitting by her elbow, with nothing but her name
scrawled
on the front. Picking it up and tearing it open, she went to grasp whatever was inside. But the second she touched it, she
knew there was something wrong, and then the smell hit her and she yelped like a kicked dog, and dropped the lot onto her
desk. Trembling now, she looked down and saw, half drawn out from the envelope, what looked like a sheet of folded paper.
But it didn’t feel like any paper she’d ever touched before. It was cold and hard yet slightly greasy to the touch – and as
for the smell, it was absolutely horrible. Like burned skin or something, like… oh, for God’s sake.

She picked up a pencil and poked at the envelope, looking inside to see if there was anything else, anything dangerous inside.
But all she could see was the folded sheet. Taking a deep breath, she coaxed it out further and what flopped open onto the
desk, she now saw, was a thick parchment folio, hide-like in its yellow opacity and grainy texture and flex. What sent a rivulet
of cold anxiety coursing down her spine, though, was that it was scorched all over with cross marks of different sizes, some
deep black gouges, others burned all the way through, leaving only ragged x-shaped holes, charred black around their edges.

She grabbed the phone and dialled the front desk, demanding to know where the package had come from. The girl below said she
thought it had been handed in at reception about an hour earlier, but nobody had seen who delivered it. It had just appeared
there, left, presumably, by someone who’d come in off the street. Siobhan rang security,
only to be told the CCTV over reception had been down for a week, waiting for the contractor to come and repair it. She cursed,
but then nothing about how cruddy the equipment levels were at the
Sunday Herald
ever really surprised her. She sat down and poked at the sheet of parchment with her pencil again, looking it over more closely
now, trying to figure out who it might have come from. Was it somebody’s idea of a sick joke? She wouldn’t put it past some
of the ghouls who worked at the
Herald
.

Then, between all the scorch marks and gouges, she saw something different: a few words of text that seemed to have been tattooed
on to the fabric, or else burned with a much finer… a much finer what? But her mind had gone beyond that now, as she realised
what the message burned into it said. Suddenly she was cold around her shoulders, and noticed that her hands were shaking.
She looked around, across the banks of monitors, to see if Griffin, Heffernan or any of the others were still there. But she
already knew they weren’t. It was too late in the day. Even the guys from the sports desk had given up. There was nobody around
but herself, and she was instantly aware of how looming, dark and empty the newsroom – the whole deserted floor – was. At
just that moment, her phone rang and she lunged for it, glad of the chance to hear another human voice.

‘Hello,’ she said. And then she said it again. But she got no reply, just a faint hiss from the other end of the line. ‘Is
there anybody there?’

‘God will not be mocked,’ the man’s voice said, angry,
loud – the breathing heavy as it had been before. ‘You’ll see. You will be the witness to it.’

The line went dead and Siobhan put the phone down, cursing. It was the same wanker who’d been on to her the other night, but
ten times scarier now. It must’ve been him who left the packet. What the fuck was he talking about, she’d be ‘the witness
to it’? What the hell had he meant by that? The witness to what?

She gathered her jacket tighter round her shoulders and looked behind her again, shaking from head to toe now. What if he
hadn’t just left the envelope? Nobody had seen him. What if he’d passed the security barriers as well? He could be lurking
out there in the dark, behind any one of the desks, right now. Would she have noticed him come in? No way – she hadn’t even
seen the messenger deliver the envelope. If it was the messenger? Oh, Jesus, fuck.

No, she thought, forcing herself to calm down. Be sensible. A freak or a nut job wouldn’t have just left it there; he’d have
tried to deliver his message in person. She slipped her jacket on awkwardly, without standing up, and started saving and closing
the files on her screen one by one, as quickly as possible, then logged off. ‘I’ve got to get out of here before I go mad,’
she said to herself, sweeping the envelope and its contents into her bag, and hurrying for the door. She was jabbing at the
lift button impatiently when her mobile rang. She looked around suspiciously, half believing still that there was someone
hiding there, staring at her, stalking her, following her every move.

Her mobile trilled again, and she answered it but again heard nothing at first, just the crackle and hiss of the line. Totally
spooked now, she was about to hang up when she heard the voice coming through, all jagged and remote: ‘God will not be mocked.’

Then the lift doors clanged open in front of her, and she nearly collapsed in terror.

‘M
ulcahy? Is that you?’

He knew her voice instantly, even though it sounded so shaky.

‘Yeah, of course,’ he said, trying to push past the spark of wariness in his own voice. For a moment, the only sound at the
other end of the line was of a long breath being released. ‘Are you okay, Siobhan? Is something the matter?’

‘No, it’s okay. I’m fine now.’ She laughed, but it didn’t sound very heartfelt. ‘I just got a fright, that’s all. I don’t
even know why I called you. I suppose I panicked. I was waiting for the lift, and when the doors opened all I saw was this
yawning blackness. Put the heart crossways on me, it did. I thought someone was going to jump out and kill me but it was just
that the light was broken inside. Anyway, I wasn’t going to chance it. I legged it. I’m taking the stairs now.’

As if in confirmation, he heard a clacking of heels on a hard surface echo down the line.

‘You’re still at work?’

‘Just leaving. Where are you?’

‘Just coming around College Green.’ He looked up at the brightly lit façade of Trinity College behind the railings, its elegant
curve mirrored across the road by the sweeping blank colonnades of the old Bank of Ireland.

‘That’s only around the corner from me.’

‘You sound like you could do with a drink.’ He heard his voice falter even as he said it. What sort of idiot would she take
him for? She’d as good as admitted she hadn’t intended to call him.

‘Are you kidding me?’ she said. ‘I’ll need about six just to stop shaking.’

It had to be either the Palace or Mulligans so they opted for the latter, mostly because it was on Poolbeg Street and more
or less beside the
Herald
offices. Siobhan didn’t want to be out on the street. She must have got in there a minute or two before him at most, but
as he went in the door, into the crowded dark interior, he couldn’t see her amid the throng yakking noisily around the bar. Then,
as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he spotted her, sitting by herself in a dark corner cranny, well away from the main bar,
with a couple of drinks sitting untouched on a small table in front of her.

‘I ordered for you,’ she said matter-of-factly as he sat down opposite her, even though there was plenty of room in the corner
beside her. The dark wood, the mottled mirrors on the walls around, and the buzz of conversation all around cocooned them in
privacy immediately.

‘Thanks,’ he said, taking a pull on his pint. Now she was there in front of him, he wasn’t sure what to say to her. ‘You sounded
kind of scared on the phone.’

‘I was, a bit,’ she said, still not looking him in the eye. ‘I mean, I got a bit spooked, all by myself in the office, you
know? Somebody sent me… I mean, I wanted to show you something. See what you think, maybe?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

Siobhan leaned over to open the shoulder bag lying on the floor at her feet, then changed her mind. She sat up again and glared
at him.

‘You needn’t think I’ve forgiven you, y’know,’ she said.

‘You, forgive
me
?’ he laughed, shocked. ‘Shouldn’t that be the other way around?’

‘Why?’ She wasn’t smiling, wasn’t pouting, wasn’t playing any games at all, that he could see. She was being serious. ‘All
I was doing was my job. I even warned you in advance. You didn’t have to cut me off like that. I mean, a bloody text, Mulcahy.
Couldn’t you even say it to my face?’

‘Christ, Siobhan, you can’t even begin to understand how much trouble you’ve caused me. Everyone from the Commissioner down
assumes it was me who gave you the story. We were seen out together. I as good as got kicked off the investigation, and now
I’m going to be stuck in bloody Sex Crimes for Christ knows how long as a result.’

This time she at least had the good grace to look upset.

‘Why would they think you had anything to do with it? I mean, you made it clear enough to me you wouldn’t help.
And I made sure to keep you out of it. And that wasn’t easy, trust me. Your name came up a lot, and it wasn’t all complimentary
either.’

That came so far out of the blue, he almost had to repeat it to himself.

‘What the hell are you talking about? When did my name come up? Where did you come by all this information of yours, anyway?’

‘Look, Mulcahy, you know I can’t talk about sources, so just don’t start, okay?’

‘No, that’s not good enough, Siobhan,’ he said, real anger in his voice now. ‘You’ve as good as said someone was bad-mouthing
me. Who the hell was it?’

‘Shush, now,’ Siobhan reached across the table and put a finger to his lips. Her touch jolted through him like a lightning
strike to ground. ‘On my life, Mulcahy, I can’t tell you who it is. I’m not even sure who it is myself. But look, anyway,
that’s not the point. What I wanted was to—’