The Priest (47 page)

Palmerston Park was dark, empty and deathly quiet. Mulcahy roared up the road in the Saab and screeched to a halt behind a
filthy blue Golf GTI. As he jumped out, the Golf’s occupant got out too and walked back to stare at the minimal gap left between
their two cars.

‘Christ almighty, another couple of millimetres and you’d have had my back bumper off. What the fuck is going on? I thought
you were off the case?’

Sergeant Cassidy wasn’t looking at all happy about having his Saturday night disrupted. And Mulcahy wasn’t in any mood to
placate him.

‘Shut up, Sergeant. I don’t want any crap from you. Just your attention, alright?’

Cassidy scowled angrily at him. On the phone, Mulcahy had been nothing if not abrupt, only dictating Rinn’s address to him
and telling him to meet him there,
asap
– if he still wanted to have his job on Monday. It was a risk, he knew, but having Cassidy at his back was better than
nobody at all, especially now he had a hold on him. The explanations could wait till later.

Mulcahy looked up and down the road and saw exactly what he’d hoped not to see: the red open-top Alfa Spider was parked by
the railings, about thirty yards further down the road. He pointed it out to Cassidy.

‘Don’t you recognise it?’

Cassidy looked blankly at it, then a slow glimmer of realisation lit up his features.

‘That’s right, Sergeant. It’s your paymaster’s car, and she’s in big trouble here.’

Cassidy looked totally stumped by that, as if he didn’t know whether to protest or not, let alone how to go about it.

‘I don’t know what you’re on about, Inspector, but you’re making a big—’

‘You wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t right, so just shut the fuck up,’ Mulcahy hissed at him. He turned away and pointed at the
house. ‘A guy by the name of Rinn lives in there. He likes to play at being a taxi driver, but you know him better as The
Priest.’

‘What are you bleedin’ talking about, we’ve—’

‘I think this guy’s got Siobhan Fallon, but I don’t want to spook him if I’m wrong. He already knows me, so just back me up,
okay? That way, maybe I won’t tell Superintendent Healy who was behind the leaks to the
Herald
. Maybe you’ll even get to keep your job.’

Pushing Cassidy ahead of him, they went through the
open gates of Rinn’s house. The place appeared to be in complete darkness.

‘Bloody madness,’ Cassidy grumbled. ‘There’s nobody in there.’

‘Just go knock on the front door,’ Mulcahy said. ‘We need to get in if he’s here. Tell him somebody reported a disturbance
and see if you can get yourself inside. I’ll come straight after you, as soon I’ve checked out the garage.’

Mulcahy headed for the old coach house, hoping the sound of Cassidy crunching across the gravel would mask the sound of his
own footsteps. He stopped at the garage door and listened, hearing knocking at the front door, then the jangle of the old-fashioned
bell from inside, then louder knocking as Cassidy upped his efforts to raise the household. Mulcahy looked back. There were
no lights going on, or any other signs of life. He pulled the wooden garage door open and in the gloom inside saw a grey saloon
car with a taxi sign on top. Not out on the hunt, then. But there was an empty space for another vehicle, big enough for a
van. And another, larger, taxi sign was leaning against the garage wall beside it.

Locating a light switch by the door, Mulcahy flicked it on. Almost the first thing he saw made him stop. A pile of red plastic
sacking lay in a corner, exactly the colour and texture of the fibres they’d found on all the victims’ clothing. A couple
of layers of full sacks were sitting on a wooden pallet beside the empties, shreds of opaque bulk-wrapping still stapled to
the base of the pallet. Coconut husks, he read, for laying garden paths. He saw now how Byrne must have
ordered them and brought them over to use in the garden, only for Rinn to put the empty sacks and wrapping to less innocent
use. Before he could investigate further, he heard Cassidy come in the garage door behind him, looking fit to kill someone.

‘Like I told you, there’s nobody bloody in there.’

Mulcahy shook his head and pointed at the taxi. Cassidy shrugged but then stooped down and scooped something out from beneath
the car.

‘Looks like he’s incommunicado, too,’ he said, turning over the find in the palm of his hand and showing it to Mulcahy. A
smashed-up mobile phone that looked like it had been stamped on. With a lurch of his stomach, Mulcahy recognised the flashy
Motorola handset immediately.

‘No, that’s Siobhan’s.’

For the first time, Cassidy looked like he might actually credit Mulcahy with some belief. ‘You’re sure about this?’

Mulcahy nodded. ‘Her car, her phone – what do you think? And you know there’s another kid missing, right?’

‘Fuckin’ hell,’ Cassidy gasped. He looked at the handset in his palm again, then quickly around the garage, reason getting
the better of his scepticism.

‘This guy, Rinn, uses taxis to pick up his victims. One’s a van. And look at those sacks,’ Mulcahy said pointing to the corner.
‘Remind you of any fibres you’ve seen recently?’

Cassidy’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the pile, then he suddenly cursed and dashed across the garage. ‘What the fuck is
that?’ he shouted.

But he had already answered his own question, pulling away some of the empty sacks to reveal first a man’s foot, then a leg,
then an entire body. Mulcahy ran over beside him. Lying there was a big bear of a bearded man, showing no signs of life. Mulcahy
knelt down to check his airways.

‘He’s still breathing. Give me a hand, quick.’

Together they dragged the man into the recovery position. An oozing head wound gave graphic testimony as to how he’d been
struck from behind with something sharp and heavy. Some time ago, too, to judge by the amount of blood that had already congealed
on the floor.

‘A press photographer?’ Cassidy suggested, pointing to the professional-looking cameras lying by the man’s side. ‘They must
have come here together and both been caught on the hop.’

‘Yeah,’ Mulcahy said, trying to visualise the scene in the garage. ‘But what the hell’s happened to Siobhan?’

‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ Cassidy said, getting up. But something else caught his eye and he walked over to the empty parking
space and bent down to examine an oil stain on the ground. ‘This must be where he kept the van. Something’s been parked here
fairly recently. Do you think he’s taken her somewhere else? Knowing he’s been rumbled?’

‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ Mulcahy said. ‘That van is his mobile torture chamber. But we’ve got to check this place
out properly first. With this other girl missing as well, they could just as easily both be inside in the house somewhere.’

Mulcahy stood up and went to the door, desperately trying to come up with a plan of action. By the time Cassidy finished on
the phone, he had the beginnings of one. ‘You’d better give Brogan a call, too, and get the cavalry over here double quick.
I’m going back to the house to see if I can find anything.’

Mulcahy grabbed a torch from a shelf and ran out shouting Siobhan’s name. He banged furiously on the front door again, and
peered through the downstairs windows. But the only response he got was lights flicking on in the house next door. He ran
around to the passageway leading between the garage and the house. The wooden gate was locked but he just tilted at it with
his shoulder and it sprang open with a crash against the wall and he ran into the back garden, still calling out Siobhan’s
name at the top of his voice.

The world was as black as pitch and everything but the electric dread of the pain felt dull and far way. Only the pain mattered,
like a blade of white light, stalking her, seeking her out where she lay curled in the corner, desperately trying to hide
from it, crying from the fear of it, praying to be dead rather than that it should find her out again. And then a bang. And
a bell. And another bang, still louder. And every muscle in her tensed in the effort to make herself still smaller so that
whatever new agony this was, it wouldn’t come her way.

Then the noises stopped and she drifted in and out of the nothing, overwhelmed. It could have been an hour that
passed, it could have been a minute. She’d already been there for ever. The banging came again, and a crash that seemed to
tremble like thunder in the air around her. She tried to shrink further, felt her heart hammer, her ribs hurt, her breathing
quick and low. Then she heard the voice. Not
the
voice. Not
his
voice. Not the voice she feared as much as the pain, the voice that
was
the pain. But a new voice. And it was shouting her name. So distant, so like it, she was sure it was her name. From somewhere
in the mire of dead emotion inside her, a bubble of hope broke loose and drifted to the surface.

She tried to hang on to it, to make herself rise with it. She tried to answer, to call out to the voice. Her sole fear now
was that it would go away and leave her as she’d been before. But no sound came from her throat. She tried again and gagged
on the effort, realising too late there was something in her mouth, blocking not only her voice but her breath, too. She remembered
her arms and legs, like forgotten territories, found she could move them. And, through a tide of pain, she forced herself
to roll over on her back and there, above her, saw a glass pane high on a wall, a pale yellow light washing across it, so
close it all but touched her.

Now she heard her name again, so loud, so clear she had to call out, although she knew she couldn’t, knew the panic would
rise against the gag, push the breath back inside her, make her lungs feel like they would burst. And she knew too, now, that
it was too late, that her own cries were strangling her, that she was gagging and puking and choking
and she was going to die like a rat in this hole. A spasm of desperation took hold of her and without even knowing, without
even thinking, her limbs lashed out and as she fought for one last breath she felt her arm crack against a hard edge, then
her ankle with a shuddering stab of agony in the bone and there was a creaking and a popping and the whole world collapsed
on her and she knew that it was all over, that this was what death was like.

Mulcahy’s first thought was that Cassidy had taken matters into his own hands and smashed one of the front windows. But then
the crashing continued, popping and bursting, and he realised it was coming from inside the house. But from where? He was
about to run round to the front when a last smash rang out and his eye was drawn downwards. There was a tiny window, barely
more than a couple of feet square, in the wall at ground level. He bent for a closer look but the glass just bounced the glare
of the torch back into his eyes.

‘Are you okay?’ Cassidy said, coming down the side passage and seeing him doubled over.

‘Yeah, I’m sure I heard something from down there after I called Siobhan’s name. There has to be a basement but I can’t see
any way into it.’

He shone his torch along the base of the wall again and for the first time noticed the shallow slope running towards the back
of the house. Then he recalled the steps leading down from the living room to the garden. He said nothing further but bolted
round the back of the house again,
Cassidy hard on his heels. Seconds later, he shone his torch on one side of the flight of steps and saw a padlocked wooden
door leading in under them. With one kick of his boot he staved the door in and leaped inside, the beam of the torch picking
up mostly dirt, grime and gardening equipment, but no sign of Siobhan or anyone else. Cassidy came in behind him and found
a light switch. Only then did they spot the other door at the back. Mulcahy barrelled though it, the light from the outer
room following him into this much larger space in which stood a crude wire cage, a huge table that looked like a metal workbench,
and around the walls the accumulated detritus of generations. Over in one corner, beneath a small window, enveloped in a rising
cloud of dust, he saw what looked like a collapsed dresser. Everywhere around it lay tipped-open boxes, their contents strewn
about, broken bottles and glass and what looked like a vast dinner service smashed to smithereens on the cold concrete floor.
And out from beneath this mess poked another leg, this one naked, and female.

‘Siobhan!’ He ran over, pulling panels and shelves of rotten wood away as fast as his hands could get to them. They dragged
the worst of it off her quickly, the gall rising in him as they exposed the lower half of her body and, through the dust and
dirt that clung to her, he saw the horror of the wounds that had been inflicted on her belly and groin. But even as his stomach
heaved at the thought of the pain she’d suffered, he realised something wasn’t right. Something about the shape of the hips,
the length of the
arms. Then the hair, it wasn’t dark enough. As he pushed the last shards of crockery away from her face he saw clearly now:
it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Siobhan. And a blind panic swept over him, which he had to kill while the cop in him yanked away
the duct tape from her mouth, pulled back an eyelid for any hint of life, cleared the puke, dust and grit from her mouth with
a crooked finger, and pressed his lips to hers, desperate to breathe life back into this girl, this woman who wasn’t Siobhan
but who had to be saved, had to be brought back, even as the hope in his own heart faded and guttered but refused to go out.

They found her name on a student card in a worn pink purse on the workbench: Shauna Gleeson, a second-year arts student at
UCD. Beside it was a bag Mulcahy thought he recognised as Siobhan Fallon’s, inside it a voice recorder, then, confirming his
fears, her wallet complete with press cards and ID. By then he’d already taken a mallet from the rack beside the bench, and
he ran up the steps outside, smashing his way in through the French windows to Rinn’s living room. Cassidy came behind, the
girl covered by his jacket, shivering in his arms. They had to find something warmer, a blanket, a fire, to get some heat and
life back into her. Mulcahy checked out the other rooms on the ground floor, found a soft wool picnic rug draped over a kitchen
chair, threw it back in to Cassidy who was settling the girl on the sofa, then he galloped up the stairs. Within a couple of
minutes he’d been in and out of every room in the
huge three-storey house. No sign of Siobhan Fallon, or of Rinn.