The Priest (44 page)

She’d just about got all that under her belt and was taking a short break when, scrolling through the AP wire service on her
monitor, she spotted something that made her cough into the lukewarm cup of coffee she was sipping.

‘Jesus, Paddy, come here. Have you seen this?’

Griffin, who’d been berating one of his junior reporters down the phone for failing to follow up information about a rat-infested
old-folks’ home in Tubbercurry, slammed his handset down and strode over to Siobhan, his face etched with stress.

‘What now?’ ‘Look at this.’ She pointed at the agency feed she had frozen on her screen.

3.35 p.m. Dublin: Gardai are refusing to comment on unconfirmed reports that a young woman was snatched from outside
a city centre nightclub in D’Olier Street last night, saying only that they are ‘investigating all aspects’ of the incident.

‘What about it?’ Griffin said.

She could see from the way his eyebrows were narrowing that he knew exactly what she was getting at, but he wasn’t willing
to play ball.

‘Oh, come on, Paddy. What if it
really
wasn’t Byrne?’

‘And what if this is some Associated Press arsehole trying to make a great big heap out of fuck all,’ he countered. ‘We all
know what “outside a nightclub” means. Some gobshite off his face on coke, and too thick to read the papers, sees some fella
cutting up rough with his girlfriend and calls in the guards. And as for “unconfirmed reports”, you know that puts it in the
bullshit tray straight away.’

‘And what if it’s not? There might be some kid out there in trouble.’

Griffin stared at her and shook his head slowly. ‘You’re going to crucify me if I’m wrong, aren’t you?’

‘For the next year, minimum, no let-up.’ She smiled, then stuck in the knife. ‘And I’ll tell everyone else, as well. It’d
be a sad end to a great career.’

‘Fuck you, too,’ he growled, then looked over at Heffernan’s door. ‘But fuck him even more. Go on, hit the phones and see
what you can dig up. It might be worth a few inches. Make sure you get on to that Garda contact of yours. I want to know if
Lonergan and his crew are even aware of it. If they’re not, screw them over good and proper.’

‘Thanks, Paddy, I love you – sometimes.’

‘Yeah, bollocks you do,’ he said, turning away so she wouldn’t see him grinning.

Mulcahy had assumed they’d be going into a bedroom. He had expected Jesica would be too unwell still to be up and about. So
it was with a rush of relief that he realised the room set aside for the interview was a normal, comfortable sitting room.
And that now, only a few weeks on from her ordeal, Jesica Salazar was recovered enough to be back on her feet again. Perched
on a small sofa, in baggy grey joggers, matching hoodie and immaculate white trainers, she looked like a girl who was making
an effort to appear like a normal teenager. But nothing, not the long strands of hair she tugged at to hide behind, or the
huge cushion she clasped protectively to her chest, could conceal the bruising that still mottled and distorted her face in
places, or the deep black bags splayed like ink stains beneath her eyes. Everything about her seemed wary, coiled tighter
than a spring.

The psychiatrist asked Jesica if she recognised Mulcahy. The girl studied him anxiously, as if she had done something wrong,
and then said, no, she didn’t.

‘We met in the hospital in Dublin,’ Mulcahy said. ‘My colleagues wanted to ask you some questions. I translated.’

Jesica put her hand up to her neck. If the red weal around her throat was still there it was hidden now by the high neckline
of her tightly zipped hoodie. But his words clearly
meant something to her because she nodded then with a simple ‘
Si
’ and bowed her head.

‘As we discussed earlier, Jesica,’ the psychiatrist said, ‘the inspector needs to ask you some questions. If you feel well
enough, okay?’

Jesica ignored her and, lifting her head, addressed Mulcahy from the side of her mouth.

‘Did you find my cross and chain?’

‘No. We’re still looking for it.’

‘It was my mother’s,’ she said indignantly.

‘We’ll do everything we can to find it.’

Again her head came up, this time looking at him straight, anger in her voice. ‘He has it, doesn’t he?’

In her eyes he could see pain, fear and, more than anything else, humiliation. But before he could reply the psychiatrist
intervened again.

‘Perhaps we should focus on something more constructive initially.’ She spoke quickly, her accent unfamiliar to him, so he
had to concentrate hard to get it all. ‘I was told, Inspector, that you wanted Jesica to tell you in her own words what happened
that night. Perhaps we should just stick to that, for now.’

‘I told you before, I don’t remember anything,’ Jesica insisted. ‘I’ve already told you everything I know.’

The girl’s anger seemed directed at the psychiatrist rather than at him, so he said nothing for a few seconds. When the tension
had dissipated a little, he sat forward and caught Jesica’s eye.

‘I know this is difficult for you, Jesica,’ he said. ‘But if you can’t tell me yourself, perhaps you would let me put some
questions to you.’

The girl relented. So slowly, gently, he started on the list of questions he had prepared, asking again about her time in
the GaGa Club, who she had gone there with, who she had left with and at what time. But whether unwilling or unable, Jesica
now seemed even less capable of answering his questions than she had been on the day she was attacked. What few answers she
could give were slow, self-conscious and uncertain, her recollections hesitant and painful. Mulcahy could only feel pity for
her, since she was obviously doing her best but was clearly also mortified that what had happened to her should be the focus
of their attention. Just keep plugging away, he thought, so long as she can cope. Something might come of it. But he could
see it was going to be a long and painful process.

The breakthrough came at around four-thirty p.m. Not thanks to anything Jesica or he himself said, but rather a remark the
psychiatrist made while walking out of the room with Mulcahy after forty minutes of little or no progress. The low point had
come when he presented the mugshots of Byrne to Jesica, and she had barely even glanced at them before shaking her head. ‘I
don’t know what he looks like, I told you,’ was all she said.

That was when Dr Mendizabal suggested taking time out.

‘Sometimes, you know, in cases such as this,’ she
observed, once they were outside, ‘the mind will protect itself from a pain that is unbearable. Only by finding a way round
its internal defences can we hope to get to a place where we can address the trauma.’

‘And how do you do that?’ Mulcahy asked.

‘Well, in a clinical situation, by hypnosis or hypnotherapy, for instance. That would be an obvious route in a case like this. You
instruct the mind to lower its defences, and in such a state of relaxation it is remarkable what can emerge and begin to heal.’

‘Do you think that would work with Jesica?’

‘It is a therapeutic course that I fully intend to pursue.’

‘So would it work if we tried it now?’

The psychiatrist frowned. ‘It would be of no benefit to you. I don’t know what the situation is in your country, but here
in Spain it has long been established that testimony obtained under hypnosis is not admissible in a court of law. There are
many precedents.’

‘I’m sure it is the same in Ireland, Doctor, but if we’re not going to get anything useful by any other means maybe admissibility
doesn’t matter. If we could uncover something that put our suspect’s involvement beyond doubt, then our investigators might
find another route back to proving it. Do you see what I mean?’

Dr Mendizabal was considering this when Mulcahy’s phone beeped with a message alert. He excused himself and stepped aside
to open it, noting with surprise that it was from Siobhan:

Another kid snatched last night, still missing. Lonergan, Brogan all in full-scale denial. Call me!

The shock hit him like a sneaky left hook. Rinn’s face immediately leaped up, snarling, to fill the vacuum in his thoughts.
The night before he’d considered the possibility that Rinn and Byrne might have been working together as some kind of team,
but he’d dismissed it. There had never been any sign or indication that The Priest’s attacks were the work of more than one
man. Mulcahy was still thinking it through again when Dr Mendizabal approached him.

‘
Lo siento
, Inspector, but are you alright? You look a little disconcerted.’

‘Yes,’ was all he said, before he remembered who he was talking to. ‘Doctor, did you ever get any sense from Jesica that she
was attacked by more than one person?’

Even as he was saying it, he thought of how the girl herself had always only referred to her attacker in the singular.

‘No, never,’ the psychiatrist said. ‘In fact, I would think it would be unlikely, given what was actually done to Jesica.
You know, sometimes sexual predators can operate in pairs but this is comparatively rare. And virtually impossible when you
consider the severity of the psychosis manifested in the attack on Jesica. This is not pleasure that is being taken by the
perpetrator, but a compulsion that is being acted out. It is not something that, at a psychological level, it is possible
to share. It is only for the person who does it, him alone, do you understand?’

Mulcahy nodded, trying to recall what Siobhan said
her psychologist contact had told her the night before. ‘Yes, that makes sense.’

‘Why did you ask?’

‘I’ve just been informed that another girl’s gone missing in Dublin.’

‘But you already have a man in custody, yes?’

‘Yes, Doctor,’ Mulcahy said, his voice lower now. ‘But is he the right man? At this moment, the only one of his victims who
can possibly help us with that question is Jesica.’

‘But she says she did not see him.’

Mulcahy rubbed his forehead in frustration and, suddenly, the memory flashed up again of Jesica in the hospital bed in Dublin,
rubbing the red weal on her neck, her voice filled with confusion and pain:

Hizo la señal del Cristo
.

That was it, of course. Mulcahy turned to Dr Mendizabal again, looked her straight in the eye and felt sure she would understand.

‘When I spoke to Jesica on the day of the assault, she told me that she’d seen her attacker make the sign of the cross.’

‘And?’

‘Don’t you see?’ Mulcahy said, demonstrating the gesture for her, exaggerating the motion of his hand as he drew it down across
his face from his forehead to his chest and up to each shoulder in turn. ‘She must have seen his face if she saw him do that.
Even if she doesn’t remember it now.’

As the psychiatrist took his words on board, her right hand smoothed the white cotton of her shirt on the left
shoulder. Mulcahy wondered if she was aware of the habit, which he’d noticed her do repeatedly at tricky moments in the interview,
earlier.

‘Of course, I must put my patient’s therapeutic needs first, Inspector,’ she said at last. ‘And we would also require Don
Alfonso’s permission, and Jesica’s consent. But I think, in the circumstances, a case can be made for trying hypnosis. Jesica
really does want to assist you, and you can see she is distressed by her inability to do so. It is arguable that if we enable
her to help you now, it may contribute to her emotional recovery in the longer term.’

To Mulcahy’s surprise, Dr Mendizabal even offered to go and propose this course of action to Salazar, and seek his permission.
As soon as she was gone, Mulcahy started dialling Siobhan’s number but stopped, wondering what the hell he thought he was
doing. Was he suddenly in league with her? Instead, he clicked on Brogan’s number and waited as it rang and went straight
through to her voice-mail. He cursed and hung up. What was the point of calling her, anyway, when he didn’t even have a crumb
of evidence for her yet. He sat down on a chair in the corridor, breathing heavily, wondering what to do next. All going well,
he might be forced to make that call, and soon. But, for the moment, he was damned if he was going to entrust his future to
an answering machine.

It didn’t take long for Jesica to go under. In the room’s dim light, Mulcahy looked on, absorbed, as the doctor took her
through the lead-in, getting her to lie on the sofa, asking her first to look up at a fixed point on the ceiling, then to
relax, to feel her eyelids grow heavy, then her body, limb by limb, get warm and weighty, to relax, to go down into warmth
and stillness, to relax, push away the demands and pains of the world around her, to forget the clamour and needs of other
people, to feel only the warmth and heaviness in her limbs, her neck, her head, to relax…

It couldn’t have taken more than two or three minutes before the girl was still and quiet, the only sign of life being her
chest heaving low and slow, and her eyes, which seemed to flicker with a life of their own beneath closed lids. Mulcahy was
amazed that Jesica had consented so readily to undergo this procedure. Perhaps with her physical healing under way, she felt
a need to take on the mental trauma too.

Mulcahy watched as the psychiatrist did a few quick checks to make sure Jesica was fully under, asking her to raise the index
finger on her right hand if she understood, which she did, then telling her she had nothing to fear, that there would be two
voices talking to her from now until the session was over – her own and that of Señor Inspector Mulcahy – and that if at any
time Jesica encountered something that was too painful to recall, she could lift her index finger again, and they would either
move on to another subject or bring her back to a waking state.

Mulcahy had discussed a list of prompts and questions with Dr Mendizabal beforehand, and this list she now consulted in tandem
with a series of her own notes on a
clipboard. Mulcahy noted that her approach wasn’t all that different from his own interview technique, first asking Jesica
some general questions as a lead-in: about when she first arrived in Ireland, what the school was like and who her friends
had been. At this stage Dr Mendizabal focused only on the positive, and steered away from anything that Jesica might find
uncomfortable. Throughout this time, Mulcahy was struck by how mobile the girl’s facial features had become, taking on an expressiveness
rarely seen on people’s faces in waking life, the muscles making subtle little smiles, tics and frowns of concentration that
seemed to mirror her emotions and interior mental processes. Yet in her answers her voice rarely varied from a flat nasal monotone
that reminded him, somehow, of the few occasions when he’d heard Gracia talking in her sleep.