The Priest (42 page)

‘Sure. He must have been sixty when little Jesica was
born. His first wife died in an ETA car bomb in the 1980s. He married again later to a very beautiful, very aristocratic lady
with many names and titles. Jesica was their child. But this wife also died, very tragic. I think he only works to forget
it. Maybe that was why he wanted his daughter back so quickly from Dublin. I know it caused trouble for you, Mike, but she
is everything to him.’

Mulcahy shrugged, not wanting to commit one way or the other on that point. His concentration wandered as he glanced around
him. Everything foreign, yet familiar – not so long ago, this had been his life. Normality had been heat and light beating
down from above, not the dull hug of a scarf or overcoat. Even the brown pall of pollution that hung permanently above the
city seemed normal back then. As Martinez drove down the great spine of the Avenida de las Americas, and on into Castellana,
it hit Mulcahy full on just like the heat had: the car horns, the waspish buzz of scooters, the hurtling, bustling sense of
humanity always on the move. For so long they had been the things that had made him feel alive. He was actually finding it
hard to believe that going back to Dublin could ever have seemed like a good option to him. Indeed, he was so absorbed by
sensations, so swamped by the familiar sights and sounds around him, that he realised too late that Martinez had taken the
wrong turn off Plaza Cibeles and was heading up Gran Via.

‘Hey, where are you going, Jav?’ he protested. ‘I thought we were going to your office first. I badly need to freshen up a
bit before we go see Salazar.’

Martinez didn’t make any effort to stop, simply grinned at Mulcahy and pointed at his Rolex, tapping the face.

‘That is for later. You have been travelling, so you need to eat. Fortunately, I plan ahead and booked for lunch at La Bola.
You look like you could do with some
cocido á la madrileña
to get the colour back in your cheeks.’

It couldn’t have been a more disastrous morning, as far as Siobhan was concerned. In the wake of Griffin’s early-morning skirmish
with the DPP, and the confirmation that Byrne had been charged with murder, orders had gone out from the editor’s office that
they were to go easy on the Priest stories today. Straight-down-the-line reporting was all they could use: no messing about
with speculation, however justified it might be. Harry Heffernan had no intention of wasting money being dragged through the
courts for contempt, and the Saturday papers were swamped in reports on the arrest already, anyway. For the moment the plan
was still to lead with Siobhan’s piece about Byrne’s previous arrest, simply because that at least looked like it might keep
fresh until the morning. But, even at that, it had been so filleted by Heffernan and blue-pencilled by the lawyer, it didn’t
look so very exciting any more. As for her ‘I Saw the Body in the Park’ piece, which they were still intending to run as the
centre spread, it was beginning to look like the old news it was, especially since the general opinion was that The Priest
was safely behind bars.

Now that Byrne had been charged, as far as Griffin and
the rest of them were concerned, the story was as good as dead in the water until it came up again in court. Not only that,
but every other hack on the paper knew that if anything more exciting came up during the day, Griffin would clear the decks
for it, and her Priest stuff could end up buried on page seven. Nobody, least of all the two Murder Squad guards who came
to take her statement and collect the parchment, seemed to give any credence to the idea that there was a madman still on
the loose. As for the prospect of Griffin allowing his chief reporter to go tearing off on a wild hunch that maybe Byrne was
the wrong man? Forget it. On a slow day, maybe, but not on press day, and especially not today.

That Griffin was probably right hardly mattered. The suspicion had a grip on her gut tighter than a stomach staple, and it
wouldn’t let go. All she needed was a little time to herself, to get back into it again. Mulcahy was on to something, she
was convinced, and she was determined to find out what. But, for the moment, all she could do was get on with the job she
was paid for, making as few waves as possible. That way, she might be able to use the hour Griffin spent in conference with
Heffernan and the other section editors to get in a few calls of her own, and so set the ball rolling.

As soon as Griffin disappeared, she was straight on the phone.

‘Hello,
Donegal Courier
,’ she heard, when she got through, the accent thick enough to make cheese from. She got an
immediate image in her mind of a fat woman in a fleece with a scowl on her face and a chocolate eclair poised halfway into
her gob.

‘Can I speak to Eamon Doherty, please?’

‘He’s not here – only me on the small ads and notices.’

It took a second for Siobhan to twig that the editor of a regional weekly wouldn’t need to come in on a Saturday. That it
would be the weekend for him, like any normal person.

‘Do you know where I can get hold of him? It’s urgent.’

A big sigh came from the other end of the line. ‘I suppose he’ll be out on the golf course by now. That’s where he usually
goes on a Saturday morning. You can get him on his mobile.’

‘And his mobile number is?’

‘We don’t give out that information over the phone.’

No matter how she pleaded, the woman refused to give Siobhan the number. But after a bit of cajoling she did agree to get
in touch with Doherty and pass on to him a message to call.

‘Tell him it’s Siobhan Fallon from the
Sunday Herald
in Dublin. Be sure to say it’s urgent.’

Siobhan grumbled away to herself as she put down the phone, convinced the woman wouldn’t do as she’d asked. In the meantime
she scrolled down through her contacts book, searching for someone else who might have a connection with Doherty and know
his number. She’d just identified a couple of likely candidates when the phone rang.

‘Eamon Doherty from the
Courier
here.’

‘Wow, that was fast.’

‘Is that
the
Siobhan Fallon I’m talking to?’

A shiver of pleasure went through her when he said that. It was kind of how she’d always imagined life should be. She heard
him cupping a hand over the phone and telling someone to go on without him, as he had an important call. He’d catch them up.

‘I hope I’m not interrupting your round of golf,’ she said, when he came back on.

‘I’m not playing golf,’ he said. ‘If I was, I wouldn’t be available even for
the
Siobhan Fallon. I’m actually down your neck of the woods today, for the big match in Croke Park. We’re just up the road from
you, packing away some pre-match hospitality in the Shelbourne Hotel, you know, on St Stephen’s Green.’

There was a flirtatious lilt and a vein of wickedness in his voice. Used to being a big fish in a small pond, she thought,
and he sure had that confidence. She looked at the closed door of Harry Heffernan’s office and made a snap decision.

‘Do you think you could drag yourself away from the bar, Eamon, for a quick chat, if I was able to join you there in the next
few minutes?’

The clock hadn’t yet struck noon but even so the Shelbourne Hotel’s elegant Georgian tea room was packed with clumps of men
in jeans and football shirts, knocking back pints of Guinness. The spill-over from the Horseshoe Bar, Siobhan
knew – and incongruous as they looked, she also knew it was ever thus on match days. Siobhan found Doherty by the reception
desk and, as soon as she’d introduced herself, grabbed him by the elbow and drew him over to a couple of empty chairs in a
quiet corner of the lobby. He wasn’t what she’d been expecting: shorter, hairier and a good deal older-looking than she’d
imagined. But she saw straight away that
she
wasn’t disappointing him. He’d obviously already downed a fair bit of that hospitality he’d mentioned. She only prayed to
Christ it wouldn’t affect his memory.

‘So what’s so urgent that you had to interrupt my drinking for it?’ he twinkled at her, not quite as irresistibly as he thought.

She told him about the report of his she’d seen from 1997 and asked him if he remembered anything about it, especially its
connection with the earlier story about Helen Martin. After his initial grunt of surprise, she all but heard the cogs creaking
into place in his brain. Sure enough, before he gave an answer, he came back with a question himself.

‘Do you mind if I ask why you want to know this?’

She gave him the smile. ‘It’s just some background I’m doing for a story, Eamon. Look, I know I should never have said it
was urgent. It’s just that your receptionist didn’t sound very keen on letting me crash your weekend. But, if it comes to
anything I’ll give you and the
Courier
a credit. I’ll even try for a few quid for you, if you like.’

She hadn’t really answered his question, but it seemed to satisfy him for the moment.

‘Well, I’m not sure what I can tell you. I mean, that thing with Helen Martin must be more than twenty years ago – before
my time, anyway. I didn’t join the
Courier
until 1994, so I’d have been still in college in 1988. And I’m from the other end of the county, anyway, down Killybegs way.
But you hear things going around, alright.’

Siobhan heard a raucous burst of laughter from the bar and looked up at the clock. Griffin and the others wouldn’t be coming
out of conference for a while yet.

‘Like what?’ she asked.

‘Well, Helen Martin was a young one from Gweedore. Lovely girl by all accounts, but the family moved away shortly afterwards,
so Lord knows where they are now. Anyway the story, as I heard it, was that she was attacked – she was fifteen or sixteen
at the time – by this other kid, a young lad from Dublin who was up there for the summer. And then there was a big cover-up,
caused a lot of bad feeling locally.’

‘Any details?’ she asked.

‘Not really, only that this young lad is supposed to have battered Helen to within an inch of her life with a… with an iron—’

He broke off suddenly and sat up from the slump he’d settled into while talking. For now he said nothing but, from the flickering
of his eyes, she could see his head was working hard.

‘Hey, Eamon, are you still with me?’ she said, prodding his arm gently.

Boy, was he still with her – he was right on top of her, turning towards her intently now. What he said next nearly made her
hair stand on end.

‘This has to do with that Priest fella, doesn’t it?’

If she’d been eating or drinking anything, she’d have choked on it. As it was, it still took a huge effort of will not to
betray herself. She took a deep breath before replying. ‘What are you talking about, Eamon?’

‘The cross,’ he said.

‘What cross?’

‘The cross he battered her with,’ Doherty whispered, looking around to see if anybody had heard him. ‘A big old iron thing.
The story goes they went into the churchyard in Gweedore together, for a lie-down in the long grass. But instead of giving
her, y’know, a cuddle, he started clattering the bejaysus out of her with this big iron cross that he picked up off one of
the graves. I thought that was a bit of a local legend, you know, a kind of fairytale to give the girls a scare. But that’s
why you wanted to know, right? Because of the cross. It was him, wasn’t it – The Priest?’

She saw a bead of sweat break out on his forehead, and could see he was almost shaking with the excitement as he searched
her face for an answer. Now her own mind was in the grip of the tremors, too. Mulcahy
had
been bloody on to something. But she hadn’t expected it to jump out at her anything like as quick as this. And, fool that
she was, she’d let the cat out of the bag to Doherty. She had to close it down. Think quick. Quicker than him, at any rate,
and find
a way to keep him calm and not leap to all the same conclusions she was leaping to. If he did, the story would be splashed
across every other newspaper as well as her own.

‘Hey, hey, Eamon, steady on there, will you?’ She laughed out loud at him, thanking Christ that he was half cut already –
she could work with that. ‘I think the drink might be making you jump the gun a bit. All I’m doing is a bit of background.
I mean, the boys in blue are convinced they’ve caught The Priest. I’m just doing a sidebar on, you know, other weird religious
crimes that’ve happened down the years. You’d be amazed how thin on the ground they are. In Ireland, of all places. A pal of
mine mentioned that he’d heard about this thing in Gweedore – so I thought I’d do a bit of digging and called you.’

She tried to make her tone as patronising as possible, playing on the fact that, for all his swagger, he still probably thought
he was a provincial yokel compared to her working on a big Sunday paper. It seemed to work.

‘Really?’ All of a sudden, he didn’t sound so sure of himself.

‘’Fraid so,’ she laughed again. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, like, but as far as I know, there’s no connection. I mean, I don’t
even know this kid’s name. Do you? The one who attacked Helen Martin? But I’ll bet a thousand euro it wasn’t Emmet Byrne,
the guy they have in custody here.’

That one seemed to stump him. Siobhan spotted a waitress walking past and nabbed her. ‘Could you bring a nice cold pint of
Guinness over for my friend here?’ she asked.

Doherty looked a little flustered now – even he was beginning to think he must be pissed.

‘Yeah, yeah, okay. Maybe you have a point, Siobhan. And maybe we don’t get enough excitement up our way, either.’ He laughed,
but it was tinged with embarrassment. ‘You’re right about the name as well.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, to be honest, I’m not sure what the kid’s name was. As you know, it never went to court and—’

‘Why didn’t it go to court?’

‘Oh, the boy was connected to a local bigwig. Or used to be local. His grandfather was a senior member of the judiciary,
an old IRA boy who’d risen high.’