Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (35 page)

‘You’re sure? In that case, let me press you to a cup of tea, maybe, or coffee. Or a soft drink.’

‘All right, then. Anything will do. Fizzy orange if you have it.’

He went through to the kitchen and came back shortly afterwards with a glass of bitter lemon for Katie, with ice and a slice of lemon in it, and a Satzenbrau lager for himself, which he drank straight out of the bottle.

‘I’ve heard about boys at St Joseph’s being given the snip,’ he said, when he had sat down again. ‘There have been all kinds of rumours and stories about it for years, but nobody has once come out and said it straight.’

‘You think it’s true, then?’

‘I’m sure of it, superintendent. But I think that a combination of factors has kept it quiet. Let me tell you this: I decided to form the Cork Survivors’ Society in the summer of 1998, when I was twenty-nine years old. I was serially abused by the priests at the school I went to, and by one priest in particular. During that summer, purely by chance, I met three or four young men who had suffered similar experiences at
their
schools.

‘None of us liked to talk about it at first. You don’t want to, because it brings it all back to you, and when you grow older you can never understand how you allowed it to happen. I still wonder, after all of these years, if I was partly to blame. The worst thing of all is that some of the abuse was actually enjoyable, and it takes a very strong and well-balanced personality to admit to that.

‘By forming the CSS, we were admitting openly that we had been molested by the priests who were supposed to be taking care of us, and we were actively seeking help and support from each other, and the community around us. Legal help, financial help, but most of all psychological help. We were also naming names, and making specific accusations against specific priests. On top of that, we were demanding that such abuse should never happen again,
ever
, not to one more little boy or one more little girl.’

He leaned forward, looking at Katie with a seriousness that made her think that
he
would have made a good priest himself, especially one to whom you could confess all your doubts.

‘I’ll tell you something, superintendent, the resistance we came up against... well, I expect you know yourself what was done to keep us quiet. They promised us full and open inquiries, but all we got was secret reviews by the diocesan officials themselves, and frantic cover-ups. They promised us punishments – defrockings, dismissals – but all that happened was that the offending priests were moved to other parishes, where, of course, they continued to molest the children in their charge. The Garda Síochána assured us that they would investigate every accusation thoroughly, and that criminal proceedings would follow if they were provable and justified, but not a single criminal case was ever brought.

‘It was all too long ago, and there was no forensic evidence. No priestly pubic hairs or gym shorts with dried semen on them for DNA tests. No witnesses, either, for the most part. No witnesses who weren’t too frightened or embarrassed to speak out, anyway.’

He paused again, and then he said, ‘Yes... we heard all kinds of stories about the boys in St Joseph’s Orphanage Choir. But once they joined the choir they were kept apart from the rest of the children, except during lessons, and they were all given special treatment. They were fed better, and given their own dormitory, and they were excused games and gymnastics.

‘There were so many rumours about why they were treated so well, and some of those rumours came very close to the truth, like the rumour that they had paschal candles pushed up their backsides to make them sing higher. But not one of the boys themselves ever admitted what had
really
been done to them – not one – and after the choir was disbanded, and the boys grew up, not one of them ever made a formal complaint.

‘I made enquiries, believe me, and tried to find out the truth of the matter, but their lips were sealed tight, all of them.

‘The church was still capable of striking the fear of God into them, and they weren’t only threatened with damnation, believe me. They were physically threatened, too – both them and their families. You think the criminal gangs of Cork have their heavies... you should see some of the muscle that the church employs. All very discreetly, of course, Hail Mary, full of grace, Our Lord is with thee,
thump
!’

Katie said, ‘Well... they may have been too scared before now, but we think it’s likely that one or more of those boys from St Joseph’s has at last found the bottle to take his revenge. What I need, Paul, is names.’

‘I’m sorry. I can remember only about four of them, and at least three of them are dead now.’

‘That’s a surprise. Castrati are supposed to live longer than your average man.’

‘Not if they kill themselves, they don’t.’

‘What about the fourth?’

‘Don’t know. Haven’t heard from him in years.’

‘You can still tell me his name.’

‘Denis Sweeney. He called me in the last week of 1999 and said that two of his friends from St Joseph’s Choir had gassed themselves in their car and did I want to know why? He said he would meet me in the Long Valley on Winthrop Street and tell me all about it.’

‘And?’

‘I went to meet him but he never showed. I never heard from him again.’

‘Are you sure you can’t remember any of the others?’

‘There were twins, I remember that. Very shy and never spoke to anybody. I think their name might have been Phelan.’

‘Well, that might help us,’ said Katie.

‘Do you think these two missing priests might be murdered like the other two?’ Paul McKeown asked her.

‘Tortured and murdered, yes. I think there’s a very high probability. And half of what was done to Father Heaney and Father Quinlan we haven’t released to the press.’

Paul McKeown said, ‘What price can you put on a child’s lost innocence? How much should you pay for deliberately taking away a boy’s opportunity to become a man?’

They sat together in silence for a moment. Somewhere in the distance they heard the grumbling of thunder, or it may have been a plane landing at Cork airport, sixteen kilometres off to the south-west.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been able to help you very much, superintendent,’ said Paul McKeown. ‘But I’ll ask around. One or two members of CSS might have a better memory than I have.’

‘Thank you,’ she told him. ‘And you can call me Katie if you like. “Superintendent” always makes me feel frumpy, and old.’

Paul McKeown stood up. ‘Thank you, Katie. You’re anything but that, if you don’t mind my saying so. I was expecting a high-ranking lady detective to have iron-grey hair and steel-rimmed spectacles, but when I opened the door, I have to tell you that I was very pleasantly surprised.’

Katie was about to tell him to get away with himself when her mobile phone warbled. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, and flipped it open.

‘Superintendent ma’am? It’s me again, Patrick.’

‘What is it this time? Don’t tell me another priest has gone missing?’

‘No, ma’am. The opposite. There’s been a fire at a derelict farm cottage about two kilometres west of Killeens. The fire brigade have just called us to say that they’ve discovered a body inside, all trussed up with wire. From the way they described it, it sounds as if it could be Father O’Gara.’

‘Oh, shite,’ said Katie.

Paul McKeown looked at her quizzically, raising one eyebrow.

‘I expect you’ll see it on the news tomorrow,’ Katie told him. ‘Meanwhile, like I said before, I don’t think I have much prospect of getting any sleep tonight.’

She smelled the burned-out cottage long before she reached it – a bitter, black smell that was blown into her car through the vents in the dashboard. Then she turned a corner of the narrow country road and saw the blue and orange flashing lights in a field about two thirds of a kilometre off to her right, and tungsten floodlights.

She drove down the bumpy track that led to the cottage. Both red fire engines from the sub-station at Ballyvolane were parked at an angle beside the still-smoking building, as well as a fire brigade jeep. A Garda squad car and Detective O’Donovan’s car were parked nearby.

She parked her own car as close to Detective O’Donovan’s as she could, to allow room for the technical unit’s van when they eventually arrived. She climbed out and Detective O’Donovan was there to greet her, unshaven, wearing his old brown leather jacket and pale blue jeans. He looked as washed out and baggy-eyed as she felt.

‘What’s the story?’ she asked him.

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘The fire was called in by a passing truck driver about twenty past ten. He said the flames were jumping up fifty feet into the air.’

Close to the cottage, the drifting smoke made Katie’s eyes water. Detective O’Donovan led her across to the far side of the building, where a fire officer was standing talking to three firefighters as they rolled up their hoses. The fire officer had slicked-back hair and a pointed nose and reminded Katie of Bono from U2, even down to the amber-lensed sunglasses that he was wearing.

‘Ah, the famous Detective Superintendent Kathleen Maguire,’ he greeted her, with a grin that bared his teeth. ‘Wasn’t I reading all about you just the other day in the
Echo
? All them Romanian pimps you collared. Good on you.’

Katie gave him a much tighter smile in response. ‘We’ve got ourselves a body here, then?’

‘Right inside, in the bedroom. He’s been badly burned, your man, but he wasn’t burned by
this
fire, and he didn’t die of smoke inhalation.’

Katie looked around at the outside of the cottage. It must have been at least eighty or ninety years old, maybe more. The walls were made of rough stone which had been rendered with a thick mix of lime and cement and painted pink. Now the pink was disfigured with patterns of jet-black soot, which looked as if exultant demons had danced wildly all around the cottage to celebrate its burning, and left their shadows behind.

Part of the roof had collapsed, but the single chimney stack remained. All of the plants and weeds around the walls had shrivelled, and all of the windows had been stained brown by smoke and cracked, or had dropped out altogether.

‘This looks as if it was started deliberately,’ said Katie. ‘Like somebody poured an accelerant all the way around the cottage walls and then set it alight.’

The fire officer said, ‘I’d say so myself,’ as if he were loath to admit that she was right.

‘So it probably wasn’t done with the intention of burning the cottage right down,’ she continued. ‘If they’d wanted to do that, they would have started the fire
inside
rather than outside. It isn’t easy to set fire to a damp exterior wall.’

‘You’ll be wanting to see the body, then?’ asked the fire officer, sounding a little testy.

‘That’s what I’ve come for,’ said Katie, and followed him into the cottage.

The kitchen ceiling had come down, and so the floor was covered in blackened plaster mush and broken slates. Water was dripping down everywhere, and the walls were all streaked with grey. The blue flashing lights of the fire engines parked outside gave the interior of the cottage a jerky appearance, as if they were walking through a 1920s movie.

The fire officer high-stepped over a diagonal beam that had fallen across the hallway, and then turned around to offer Katie his hand, to help her over. Katie didn’t know if she ought to feel pleased or patronized, but she accepted his assistance anyhow. He then piloted her towards the bedroom by placing his hand in the small of her back, and she realized that he had been acting offhand because he fancied her.

The bedroom had suffered very little damage, although like everywhere else in the cottage the window had been broken by the heat and its walls had been darkened by smoke. In the centre of the room stood a metal-framed single bedstead, with no mattress, and lying on it was a dead man, with his wrists fastened behind his back and his knees and his ankles bound together so tightly that his flesh bulged.

‘Like some illumination on the subject?’ the fire officer asked her, holding up a black rubber-covered flashlight. Katie took it and switched it on, directing it first of all at the dead man’s face.

The whites of his eyes were speckled with tiny red petechial haemorrhages and he was staring sightlessly upwards. Although his face was swollen from asphyxiation and his mouth was dragged downwards in a grotesque parody of absolute agony, Katie recognized him at once from the photographs that Maureen O’Dwyer had lent them, especially his broken nose.

She shone the flashlight on to his scalp, with its crispy curls of black and scarlet skin, and then she turned it towards his genitals. Not only had his penis been burned to shreds, but it appeared from the dried runnels of blood across his right thigh that he had been castrated as well, although his legs had been so tightly bound together that it was impossible to be sure.

‘Gave me a fierce funny feeling in the goolies when I first caught sight of
that
, like,’ said the fire officer.

‘I’ll bet,’ said Katie, without looking up at him. She went around to the other side of the bed and examined Gerry’s body more closely. He was tattooed all over with scores of bruises. Some of them were dark crimson, indicating deep soft-tissue damage. Others were little more than finger marks where he had been pulled or pushed or dragged across the bed.

She pulled a pair of latex gloves out of her pocket and snapped them on, tugging at each finger in turn. Very cautiously, she laid the flat of her right hand on Gerry’s stomach, just above the raw, blistered weals where his pubic hair had been. She thought that his abdomen felt a little lumpy, but he had been beaten up so badly that a little lumpiness was hardly surprising. At least, she couldn’t feel anything moving, or squirming, or desperately trying to gnaw its way out of him.

The technicians arrived, climbing noisily over the debris in their Tyvek suits.

‘Well, well, another one,’ said the older technician. He set his case down on the floor, and peered at Gerry’s mutilated body with the slightly detached frown of a Pizza Hut customer making a selection from the salad bar. The younger technician stayed well back. ‘Fecksake,’ he said, under his breath. ‘Look at the fecking state of that.’