The Priest (5 page)

She did mind, but once it was established that Luisa, being sixteen, didn’t need to be accompanied, Mrs Mannion didn’t have
much room for argument. Not even when she suggested she should stay ‘
in loco parentis
, as it were’.

Brogan thanked her, reminding her how she’d already told them Luisa’s English was better than average, then got up and closed
the door behind her as the woman left the room. Brogan smiled at Luisa and touched her arm reassuringly, directing her to
sit down on the sofa, beside her.

‘Don’t worry, Luisa, you’re not in any trouble.’

Luisa smiled weakly, but wasn’t convinced.

‘You’re a friend of Jesica Salazar, is that right?’ Brogan asked.

‘
Sí
… I mean, yes,’ she stumbled.

‘Well, I don’t want to worry you, but Jesica’s had an accident and is in hospital.’

Brogan gave the girl a moment to translate this to herself. A second later, shock and understanding hit home
simultaneously, and some of the natural gloss of her complexion faded.

‘What happen to her?’

‘You don’t need to worry about that for the moment,’ Cassidy butted in, a little harshly.

The girl looked back to Brogan, anxiously.

‘But she is okay, no?’

‘Sure, Luisa, she’s okay for now,’ Brogan equivocated. ‘But we need to ask you some questions. Did you see her last night?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Brogan glanced at Cassidy, who was hunched forward, all the tiredness gone from his face now.

‘You were out with Jesica last night?’

‘Yes, we went to, uh, to dancing together, in a club, with some of the other students.’

‘Can you tell us where this club was?’

‘
Por supuesto
… by the crossing in Stillorgan. You know the club, the GaGa? It is not very nice, but is, uh, near to here, you understand?’

‘The place near the bowling alley?’ Cassidy inquired.

‘Yes, this one.’

‘And what time did you leave the club?’

Again she looked up guiltily.

‘It was late. Mrs Mannion, she wasn’t very happy…’

‘Forget about Mrs Mannion, Luisa. We’re only interested in what happened to Jesica. Did she leave the club with you?’

‘No.’ The girl looked surprised they could even ask the
question. ‘No, she go early with…’ And then the penny, the peseta, the Euro… or whatever it was, dropped, and her eyes opened
and her face flushed, and all of a sudden she was frightened.

‘Jesica… she
is
okay, no?’

‘Like I said, she’s doing alright, Luisa,’ Brogan replied. ‘But we really need to know who she was with in the club and afterwards.
Did she leave with somebody else? With a boy? Is that what you’re saying?’

Again the girl looked unsure whether to answer or not. Brogan guessed Jesica must have breached some sacrosanct school rule
by leaving the club with someone other than a fellow student.

‘Come on, Luisa. We won’t tell anybody. This is important. Did she leave with a boy?’

‘No, not a boy, exactly.’ She hesitated. ‘He was more old. Maybe twenty, twenty-two. They were together all of the night,
you know. They dance, they, uh, kiss. She said he will take her home to her house. He looked nice…’ Again she frowned, fear
fighting understanding. ‘Was he…?’

Cassidy pulled the car keys from his pocket and popped the locks before they were halfway down the drive. There was something
about the instantaneous clunk and flash of orange lights that he found satisfying. He eased himself in behind the steering
wheel while Brogan dumped herself unceremoniously into the passenger seat. Their long day was taking its toll on both of them.

‘Right,’ Brogan said, ‘let’s call in at that club on the way back and see if we can get any CCTV. Leave it any longer, they
might record over it. Then we’ll call it a day. You look done in.’

Cassidy didn’t disagree. He wouldn’t have disagreed a couple of hours ago.

‘And when we get there,’ Brogan continued, ‘maybe you could give Maura and Donagh a quick call and tell them to get over to
the language school first thing in the morning, to take statements from those other kids Luisa just gave us the names of.
That should allow the two of them enough time to get back to the office for eleven, so phone the rest of the guys, too, and
tell them I want everyone in for an initial briefing at eleven sharp.’

Cassidy groaned inwardly. Done in or not, if he had to track down the entire team at this hour of the night, it’d probably
be another couple of hours before his head could hit the pillow. But of course that wouldn’t occur to Brogan – no way. They
were all the bloody same. And as for that wanker at the hospital, Mulcahy. He had to be called that, didn’t he? The name alone
was enough to keep the anger fizzing in his veins. Who did he think he was, strutting around like he owned the place? Greasing
up to that poncy little Spanish git, him with his fucking apologies. If he ever crossed his path again, he’d make him regret
that, one way or another. Cassidy dug the phone from his pocket to start the call-round, when he was pipped by the chirrup
of Brogan’s mobile. He waited as she answered, grimaced, and mouthed Healy’s name.

‘Sir?’

Cassidy looked on, curiosity mounting, as Brogan’s frown deepened to the point where her eyebrows very nearly met.

‘But that’s hardly necessary, sir. I mean…’

He could just about hear the whine of Healy’s voice emanating from Brogan’s phone, but not well enough to make out a single
word.

‘Okay, sir, okay…Yes, first thing.’

Brogan said goodbye, through gritted teeth, and hung up.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ she shouted, thumping the dashboard with the flat of her hand. It was as emotional as Cassidy had ever
seen her. ‘You won’t believe what Healy’s gone and bloody done.’

Mulcahy slammed his foot on the brake just in time to save himself a respray job. He thought he’d got used to negotiating
the ridiculously narrow gateway of his parents’ semi-detached house in Milltown during the past few months. But coming back
in the dark, his edge blunted by drink, he’d swung the steering wheel too freely into it, and only just stopped short of side-swiping
the gatepost. He threw the car into reverse, lined it up, then eased it forward onto the scarf-sized patch of concrete that
passed for a drive. He hadn’t even had a driving licence last time he lived here.

He sat in the car, damning himself for driving home over the limit. This wasn’t Spain, and the days when a flash of your warrant
card would get you a nod and a wink and a
wave on from the lads in Traffic were long gone. Careers had foundered on less, and his was in a parlous enough state as it
was. But that was the bloody problem with everything, wasn’t it? It had been a bad night to go out: the interview with that
poor Spanish girl still raw in his mind, his annoyance at missing an afternoon’s sailing still lingering. But the lure of
Siobhan Fallon had been strong. He’d wanted to get something good from this day before it ended. And it seemed like he would,
too, after they’d gone outside to have that smoke. From the second they got out there, before he’d even held out his lighter
and watched her lips purse round her cigarette and draw in the smoke, they were chatting like old pals. About Mark and the
party, who they’d known there, making the connections. Huddled there in the tiny porch of the Long Hall, standing in from
the rain, he’d smiled to himself at what a pair they must look. Himself big-boned, crude-carved, towering over her. Siobhan
short, shapely, head tilted back to look up at him, laughing. Even in heels, she barely made it to his shoulder.

Back inside, they couldn’t steer away from the subject of work for long. It was too big a part of both their lives. Certainly
there didn’t seem to be much going on in hers apart from work. No man that he could tell, although he’d already adjusted his
assumptions in that regard when she called him. Even then, they kept it to generalities. She told him about some of her big
stories, how being chief reporter for the
Herald
was alright but no great shakes, how she was still set on bigger things. When she asked him again, he told
her more of what his job in Madrid had been, how intelligence work differed from regular policing, the opportunities it offered.
He even offered to help her out with some info on EU joint prevention if she did decide to do a story. But by then he was
fairly sure that it was him she was interested in, and not just a story.

A flurry of rain drumming on the car roof pulled Mulcahy out of his thoughts. Fat drops burst lazily across the windscreen,
snaking away down the long black bonnet. Beyond, behind the garage doors, his dad’s Nissan Almera was parked. Untouched for
almost a year, like the house and all its contents, it was his now. And, like everything else, he didn’t want it. He couldn’t
bear even to sit behind the wheel and turn the engine over once in a while. It felt wrong. In the end, he’d gone out and bought
a car of his own. It wasn’t much, a big bruiser of an old Saab. That was all he could afford with the drop in pay and him still
forking out for the apartment in Madrid. But at least now, when he woke in the night, he could look out the window and see
something that was his.

He gathered his stuff from the passenger seat and hurried to the front door, the bag of takeaway food he’d picked up in Ranelagh
interfering with his efforts to get the key in the lock. Probably look drunk to anybody watching, he thought, though he was
far from it.

‘You liked it over in Madrid then?’ Siobhan had asked, leaning in towards him, all interest, the chandeliers above striking
sparks off her eyes.

‘Absolutely loved it. Best place I’ve ever worked, by a
mile. There’s such a buzz, such a strong sense of life out on the streets there, in the sun, in the heat. It was great, for
the most part.’

‘So what made you decide to come home?’ She sat back a little. ‘It sure as hell wasn’t the weather.’

‘No, it wasn’t the weather,’ he confessed, trying to laugh his way through the sudden catch in his voice. ‘The powers-that-be
decided to set up a new operation in Lisbon. MOAC – the Marine Operations Analysis Centre.’

Siobhan nodded. ‘Yeah, I think I read something in the
Irish Times
about that. Some kind of global drugs-tracking centre, isn’t it?’

‘That’s it, for monitoring seaborne trafficking across the Atlantic mostly, but also sharing intel with other countries, co-ordinating
rapid interventions, that kind of thing.’

‘Sounds exciting.’

‘It was. Or at least it would have been,’ he said ruefully. ‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, that put the kibosh on the
Madrid operation, everything went west to Lisbon – and my role went with it.’

‘So how come you didn’t go, too?’

It was the second time in a day that somebody had asked him. God knows how many times he’d been asked it in the six months
since his return. And the fact that Siobhan sounded like one of the few who were genuinely interested didn’t make him feel
any more comfortable with it.

‘I could have gone, but I didn’t. Like I said, it’s a long story.’

He glanced at his watch, anything rather than look her in the eye.

‘So go on, tell me. I’m not doing anything else tonight, if you’re not.’

His head came up in time to catch the smile rippling across her mouth. Some day, he thought, he might wake up to those lips,
those eyes, bathe in their light like the morning sun, and be warm and happy. But not tomorrow – not if it meant first having
to wade through all the crap of the past six months, and the twelve that had gone before them.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, finally. ‘It’s too complicated. There was a whole load of other stuff going on, as well. I’d prefer
not to go into it right now.’

‘That’s okay,’ she said, though clearly surprised by his reticence. ‘It’d be awful if we suddenly got all serious at this
hour of the night.’ She swirled the remains of her drink around in the glass and knocked it back in one, then nodded towards
his empty. ‘It’s my twist. Same again?’

But the spark was gone from the evening after that, and while they had another couple of drinks, chatting happily enough,
they’d called it a night fairly early. He hoped he hadn’t killed it completely. As they were leaving the pub he said he’d
like to meet up again, and she’d given him that smile and said she’d like that, on the tips of her toes as he bent to kiss
her cheek. There was something between them alright. He’d just have to wait till next time to pursue it.

Back in the now, the stale smell of his parents’ past enveloped him as he pushed the door shut behind him. The
still sharp memory of undertakers bearing their remains out that door, within six months of each other, cut into him as it
did every night on his return. He headed for the kitchen in the dark. No need to see the faded green wallpaper, the tired
carpet, the half-moon telephone table and the coat-stand in the hallway. He already knew everything was covered in a thin
patina of dust. The tiny red bulb in the answering machine blinked at him as he swept past, but he ignored it.

Mulcahy flicked the light on in the kitchen, trying his best to keep the house’s deathly atmosphere from settling on him.
The kitchen and the spare bedroom were all he ever used now, during the few hours he could bear to be there. Sometimes he
turned on the television in the living room for the news, but never sat and watched it, preferring to listen instead from
the kitchen. As for the spare bedroom, he had no choice. His own room, with its narrow single bed and wardrobe crammed with
relics from his childhood, felt as small and constricted as a tomb now.

He upended the carton of takeaway – a glutinous mass of noodles, water chestnuts and pallid chicken pieces – onto a plate
and left it steaming weakly while he grabbed a bottle of Navarra from the counter top, uncorked it and filled a small, short-stemmed
glass. One more drink wouldn’t make any difference. As he turned, he noticed an odd orange glow above the overgrown hedge
at the bottom of the garden. It looked like the shimmer from a fire. Glass in hand, he climbed the stairs and went to the
small back room
upstairs. Out of the window he could see over the line of high hedges into the small public park beyond. No more than a couple
of acres of grass and clumps of stunted shrubbery, but it had been half the world of his boyhood, a place where cowboys roamed
and would-be soccer stars scored the best goals of their lives. Looking out across it now, he saw a small bonfire flare up
as another log was thrown onto it, flames casting shadows across the faces of the half-dozen kids sitting around it, talking
and laughing as they sheltered from the rain under a long sheet of plastic, a makeshift tent. He thought of his meal going
cold in the kitchen but felt no impulse to go eat it. The scene outside held him spellbound, recalling how years ago he’d sat
round fires there with his gang.