The Priest (8 page)

Mulcahy nodded. It sounded boring as hell but at least it would keep him occupied and out of her way for now.

‘So, let’s find you somewhere to work.’

Siobhan bent sideways from the waist as she gave the strands of her hair one last vigorous rub with the towel, before shaking
them out and straightening herself up again. Twisting the towel into a turban, she paused for a moment in front of the wardrobe
mirror, pulling the white bathrobe open and letting her eyes roam over her body, critically, assessing just how much damage
these last few days’ absence from the gym had done. She pinched her waist and cursed as a couple of centimetres of flesh slipped
between her fingers. Not as bad as it might have been, but she was unwilling to let herself off the hook entirely. She’d have
to go at it harder tomorrow.

She had just finished a long and reviving session in the gym downstairs: fifteen minutes each on the rowing machine and bike,
followed by a quick fifty lengths in the pool. Then she’d had a gorgeous, energising sweat in the steam room, which was always
empty mid-morning. Actually, the basement gym was the main reason she put up with paying the astronomical service charge on
her flat. Having it there was the only way she could be sure of exercising regularly. Now, after a shower, she felt fully
tuned up, tingling for the new day.

As she began tugging on her white Louise Kennedy sweater, the soft cotton slipping over her arms, she felt herself momentarily
back in the swimming pool, gliding
through the warm water, her back arched, her thighs feeling the burn. Fifty lengths was getting way too easy. The pool was
tiny, barely long enough for her to fit five strokes in, so God alone only knew what it would be like for somebody tall. Unbidden,
an image of Mike Mulcahy – his big arms making long rhythmic strokes in a slow crawl across open water – drifted into her
imagination and found a welcome there.

She pulled the jumper over her turbaned head, flicked the tail end of the towel out, readjusted the delicate little silver
cross and chain she always wore and took another close look at herself in the mirror. Surely she couldn’t have scared him
off with that crack about being free for the rest of the night? He wasn’t that much of a prig. A bit reserved, maybe, but
she felt something else was at the root of that. She remembered the way his team had all looked up to him that night she’d
gone out on the drugs raid with them, how he’d kept them calm, reining in their excitement until just before the go. Real
respect was what those guys had for him, and that wasn’t won easily. There was something about him, definitely, even if he’d
been hiding it well last night.

Siobhan unwound the towel from her head, pushing the thought away while shaking out her hair and reaching for the hairdryer.
Mondays were supposed to be still the weekend for hacks who flogged their guts out on Saturdays, working for a Sunday paper.
But she hardly ever took the whole day off and, as usual, had a busy afternoon planned. First, lunch with TV presenter Ryan
Tubridy, who’d finally
succumbed to her request for an interview. Then an afternoon in the
Herald
office beckoned, setting up her diary for the week. She liked it there on Mondays, when usually just herself and Paddy Griffin
were on the desk. It was the only time the place was ever quiet enough for her to hear herself think.

And later, drinks in the Pembroke with Vincent Bishop. Again. He’d probably tell her when she got there that he’d booked a
table for dinner as well. That he’d like her to join him. Like the last time. Once more Mulcahy’s face rose in her imagination,
that smile twisting the corners of his mouth. When he’d asked her about whether her sources ever expected anything in return?
Christ, he’d hit the nail on the head with that one.

Siobhan had been introduced to Bishop a few months earlier by a friend at a Sport Ireland function, and already she’d come
to regard him as a bottomless well of invaluable information. She’d heard of him previously, of course. One of Ireland’s new
perma-rich, unblunted even by the recession. She knew how he’d sold his father’s dance-hall business in the seventies to found
the Bishop insurance group – ‘Irish security for Irish people’ – and made millions, selling that in turn to found a slew of
staggeringly successful internet and media-based concerns. In his spare time, wherever he found that, he was well known as
one of the main drivers of the Irish art boom in the early 2000s – a dogged collector with a fierce reputation for always
acquiring what he wanted, no matter what the price.

In person he was polite but reserved. Guarded. A bit weird to look at. Tall, pale and bone thin, lank black hair – dyed probably
– limp handshake, limp everything, probably. Widowed for years, he was a bit awkward, a bit clammy with her at first but seemed
to take a shine all the same, and opened up to her when she started getting a bit gossipy. Maybe he sensed she had no interest
in his money. His contacts, on the other hand… Christ, but they were phenomenal, and across the board in business, the arts,
sport and politics. How he did it, she had no idea, but he seemed particularly well up on all the dirt. And he knew its value.
So they had that much in common, and they’d met up fairly regularly since. Not on dates. As far as she’d been concerned, he
just wanted someone to have an in-the-know yak with. But that was then.

She turned off the hairdryer, threw it on the bed and walked through to the living room, straight to the small desk where
her telephone was, leaned over and pressed the play button on the answerphone. From the cheap grey plastic speaker came a
brief hiss and crackle, like the start of an old 45rpm record, then a single strum of a guitar, and an eerie disembodied voice
started warbling.

It was Roy Orbison, singing ‘In Dreams’, though she hadn’t really taken that in when she first played the message. It had
seemed a lot funnier when she got home last night, a bit tipsy from the drinks with Mulcahy and a little deflated by the way
things had gone with him. Or, more accurately, hadn’t. To walk in, press a button and hear that
wash of music fill the room. Just the song. Nothing else. No message. Christ, talk about from one extreme to the other. Hilarious.
She’d just laughed it off and tottered away to bed – and she went out like a light.

Now it was beginning to creep her out. First thing this morning, it crowded in on her waking thoughts, going round and round
in her head – not in a good way. She’d never liked Orbison’s music. Her father used to have one of his LPs and as a little
girl, something about the cover picture had freaked her out. She could see it now, that image of a puffy-faced old man in
dark glasses and weird black hair, trying to look like someone half his age, trying to look cool. She shuddered at it still.
As for ‘In Dreams’. Jesus. Not in hers. That was for sure.

Similar stuff had happened a couple of times recently. She’d hardly noticed. A call at work, some other Orbison warble. She
hadn’t even listened to it, had thought it was some cold-calling ad crap and hung up. Then on her mobile, a song on voicemail:
‘Pretty Woman’. She’d been intrigued enough to listen to the end. But it had just clicked off. Again, she’d thought nothing
of it, really. Some joker taking the piss, maybe, at most. But she’d had second thoughts when Bishop started coming over all
courtly during dinner the next time she saw him, saying how nice she’d looked walking down the street and handing her the
Gary Maloney story virtually gift-wrapped. Like some old-style suitor offering his lady a token of his esteem. Up till then
she’d thought he was getting his kicks just by seeing some of the stuff he’d told her about appear in print. But now?

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it had nothing at all to do with Bishop. Maybe the other stuff was just coincidence. But that would
be even creepier in some ways. Who the hell else could have got her home number? She was ex-directory and only a close circle
of friends and family had that number. She hadn’t given it to Bishop. But everyone knew money like his could buy such information
easily. And somehow the whole clammy, courtly, passive-aggressiveness of those songs seemed to fit him to a T. It
had
to be him. The only question left was what the hell was she going to do about it – without causing a rift? Because in any
terms other than romantic, she needed Bishop more than he needed her. Gary Maloney wasn’t the only story he’d tipped her the
wink on, and she was sure there were lots more there just for the asking.
If
she handled this the right way.

Siobhan shook her head in grim amusement as Orbison came to his vaguely masturbatory climax and the answerphone clicked off.
Maybe that was it. Maybe the right way was just to ignore it. What harm could an old song on an answering machine do to her,
anyway? All she had to do was press a button, delete it, and it was gone. Compared to that, the chance of getting another
cracking story from Bishop had to be worth any little awkwardness that might come up between them. And if he tried to take
it any further, well, she could handle that, too, when the time came, she was sure.

‘I thought you might like your own space,’ Brogan said, opening the door onto a tiny office off the incident room.
Space was hardly the appropriate word for this airless, windowless grey box with a metal desk and chair all but crowbarred
into it.

‘Thanks… I think,’ Mulcahy said.

Brogan wrinkled her nose, then stepped back to let him pass. ‘It’s the best we can do.’

Mulcahy took a breath and reminded himself again that he was the interloper here. It was all a far cry from the sumptuous
EU-funded office he’d worked out of in Madrid. Nothing but the best there, from the carpets and computer equipment all the
way up to the expensive artwork hanging in the public areas. He’d laughed so often at the jaw-drop reactions of visiting Garda
colleagues as they crossed the threshold of the Europol building on Recoletos, but he’d grown used to it in the end. Now he’d
have to pinch himself if he ever went back.

‘Not to worry,’ he said. ‘I’ve worked in worse. I’ll leave the door open to keep the oxygen level up and to make sure I don’t
miss anything going on out there.’

Brogan didn’t look any happier with his friendly approach, but he caught her smiling again as he squeezed awkwardly round
the desk.

‘Is there somewhere I can put these?’ he asked, indicating two cardboard boxes that, apart from the computer terminal and
phone, were the only things on the desk.

Brogan put a hand to her mouth and coughed. ‘Actually, that’s some stuff we dug out from our own paper archive, for you to
have a look through until the results come in from PULSE. They’re all sexual assaults from the last year or so.
That lot on the right are the ones it’s been possible to initiate some kind of investigative action on. The positive-outcome
cases, where we made an arrest and charged a suspect, are in the small red folder at the bottom. And the big pile on the left
comprises reports that have only been investigated locally, or referred to us – for statistical purposes only – as being unactionable,
whether due to complete lack of evidence or simply not enough to justify expenditure of scant resources.’

Mulcahy peered into the box on the right. There must’ve been getting on for a hundred files in that one alone. And there were
considerably more in the other box: the unactionable ones.

‘Surely these can’t all be from the last twelve months?’

‘I’m afraid they can – and are,’ said Brogan. ‘I told you at the hospital how things are with us. Sex crime is one of the
few growth areas Ireland’s got left these days. And because we compile the stats for the Department of Justice, every logged
incident has to be cross-reffed to us. Like I said, it’ll give you a taste of what we do.’

Mulcahy shook his head. How the hell could a tiny unit like the DVSAU get through all that work? But the answer, he knew,
lay right in front of his eyes. They didn’t.

‘Yeah, just what I wanted,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’d better get cracking before the next wave comes rolling in and drowns me
completely.’

Brogan bumped into Cassidy in the corridor, coming out of the loo.

‘How’s he liking his new quarters, boss?’

‘I’m beginning to think you’re deliberately trying to wind the man up, Andy. Couldn’t you have found anything better for him?’

‘Not on this floor,’ Cassidy grinned. ‘But, if he complains, there’s loads of space down in the basement.’

‘Very funny. You just watch your step with him. He could have you buried before breakfast. He’s well in with Healy.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that, boss,’ Cassidy said. ‘I’ve been doing some checking up on him. Turns out I knew his old
man years back. He was an arsewipe of the first order, too.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Andy,’ Brogan broke in sharply. ‘What’s his old man got to do with anything?’

‘I’m telling you, he was an inspector with the old “A” Division out in Clondalkin when I was there. A right old stab-in-the-back
merchant, he was. Bastard cost me my first chance at stripes…’

Brogan shook her head impatiently and suppressed a curse. ‘I don’t have time for this crap. I don’t give a damn who his father
was. Or who Mulcahy is either, for that matter, other than the fact that he’s here on my patch and will probably be reporting
our every move back to Healy. So just watch what you say and do in front of him, alright?’

‘Right, boss.’ Cassidy chewed his bottom lip for a moment. ‘Look, all I’m trying to say is that, for all his airs and graces,
there’s something not right about him. This pal
of mine who just got back to me says he’s not even in Drugs any more. And he’s only on attachment to NBCI.’

Brogan raised an eyebrow, not sure what to make of that. ‘Still Healy’s domain though, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, but a bit of a comedown from the feckin’ European Commissioner for Drugs, or whatever he fancies himself as, don’t
you think?’

Brogan shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to think, other than that an unknown quantity’s more dangerous than a known one.’