The Priest (26 page)

Another team of four Gardai, led by Maura McHugh, had already been dispatched to seize and view the footage from all CCTV
and traffic cameras covering the many roads and approaches that converged on Marino Parade and Fairview Park. But that was
a mammoth task which could take days. One small fact that did bloom into significance out of the many flooding back was that
yes, Catriona did have a cross and chain, a lovely gold one bought for her from Fields on Henry Street for her eighteenth
birthday. Catriona loved it so much, her mother claimed, that she never took it off, not even to have a bath. Mulcahy knew
it hadn’t been on her when she was found and a double check with the hospital and Technical confirmed that it wasn’t among
the items dumped with her in Fairview Park either. He led a brainstorming session for case officers on the significance of
crosses, chains, burning, branding and the rising level of violence – with some useful ideas emerging. Further out in the
circle of operation, arrangements were put in train for Catriona Plunkett’s item of jewellery to
be identified with the help of staff at Fields, should an example be required for comparison purposes. It wasn’t until after
five that Mulcahy got out again, only to be called straight into Brogan’s office where she and Healy appeared to be engaged
in a private conference.

‘Sit down, Mike. Claire said you should sit in on this,’ Healy said to him.

‘What’s up?’

‘Bit of an emergency. Last thing we need is another bloody distraction, but the press are on to us.’

Mulcahy shrugged. ‘Hardly surprising, given the number of people we’ve brought in on this today.’

‘Yeah, but this is a bit different, Mike. I’ve just had a call put through to me – from a tabloid journalist called Siobhan
Fallon from the
Sunday Herald
. Wouldn’t talk to anybody else but me. Wants me to tell her all about “The Priest”.’

‘The
Priest
?’

‘Claire here says it’s the nickname you came up with for our attacker.’ Healy raised his eyebrows at him in a what-do-you-have-to-say-about-that
expression. ‘I’d’ve thought that with sensitivities towards clerical abuse being what they are, you could’ve been a bit smarter
about—’

‘Hold on a second, Brendan,’ Mulcahy interrupted, doubly defensive at Healy’s accusing tone and the mention of Siobhan. ‘I
didn’t come up with any nickname. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was—’

‘Forget that,’ Healy snapped back. ‘The point is, how did this Fallon woman get hold of it?’

‘I’ve no idea. How would I know?’

‘Do you know her, Mike?’

The question came from nowhere but he knew he couldn’t afford to fluff it.

‘Yes I do, as it happens. But I sure as hell didn’t give her any information.’

‘You’re certain about that?’

‘Didn’t I just say so?’

Healy looked sideways at Brogan and gave her a nod.

‘Glad to hear it, Mike. So how do you suggest we respond?’

‘Well, do we know how much she’s got?’ Mulcahy asked. ‘I mean, has she said yet what she wants, specifically?’

‘She’s being very cagey about her information and where she got it from. At first I thought she was just fishing but then
she gave me some detail. She seems to have quite a lot of detail. More than she could have got since lunchtime from some newbie
on the case. Most of it had to do with young Jesica Salazar.’

‘So she did tell you what she wanted?’

Again Healy and Brogan exchanged glances.

‘Yes, she did, Mike,’ Healy said, licking his lips as if they’d suddenly gone as dry as dust. ‘She was very specific about
it. She wants a statement from me as to why myself and the Minister for Justice shouldn’t be held personally responsible for
the torture and near death of Catriona Plunkett, since we’ve both known for a week that there’s a madman called The Priest
loose on the streets of Dublin attacking
teenage girls and we did nothing to warn the general public about it.’

‘Shit.’

‘My sentiments exactly, Mike. And, you can be sure as fuck, somebody around here is going to be neck-deep in it as soon as
I find out where she got that from…’

H
e was skimming across calm, flat water, a strong breeze filling out the sail, pulling away towards a pale blue horizon, when
the trill of his ringtone shattered the dream. He opened a bleary eye on the clock-radio beside the bed. What were they doing
ringing him at a quarter to eight? He wasn’t due on duty until eleven.

‘Ungho,’ he said into the mouthpiece, rubbing his face with the back of his hand.

‘Have you seen the papers?’ It was a woman’s voice and for a second he thought it must be Siobhan. But of course it wasn’t.

‘What papers? No, no, of course not. Christ, I haven’t even got out of bed yet.’

‘Well you’d better have a good look at them before you come in, especially the
Sunday Herald
.’

With that Brogan clicked off, leaving him sitting fog-eyed on the edge of the bed, staring into the swirling spiral galaxies
of the bedroom carpet, cupping his head in his hands like he was afraid it would roll off his shoulders. Why
the hell had she done that? The evening before, they’d spent a good couple of hours hammering out a media plan with Healy,
discussing the pros, the cons, what to give and how much to hold back. They’d eventually decided the only chance they had of
dealing with the
Herald
would be to hold a press conference in which they did precisely what Siobhan Fallon had been accusing them of stalling on:
warning the public. Or at least that’s how Mulcahy had argued it.

It wasn’t a political decision so much as a pragmatic one. As soon as the second attack happened, it had been inevitable that
some press leakage would occur. The girl was local, her discovery was public, her family were upset and getting increasingly
vocal about it. Siobhan Fallon, it transpired, hadn’t been the first reporter to ring the Garda press office about it that
day, but she
was
the first who refused to be fobbed off with the low-key information Healy had provided them with. Once she’d pulled the pin
out of the grenade and lobbed it at them, the only way to go was full disclosure. Or at least as full as they could without
handing out an open invitation to every freak, weirdo and pervert in the city to have a go for themselves.

On that issue, Brogan had been particularly forthright. ‘Maybe Mike’s forgotten what an irresponsible bunch of gougers the
press in this country can be with a story like this, sir,’ she’d argued to Healy. ‘Especially the tabloid element who, you
can guarantee, will seize on the more lurid elements and pump them up out of all proportion. The only outcome that is likely
to generate for us is complete panic
on the part of the public, and the possibility of copycat attacks. Our resources are limited enough without having to deal
with that.’

It was a good point. They agreed which details would be definitely held back and Healy and Brogan went downstairs to conduct
the hastily convened press conference at eight-thirty p.m. By then, of course, all but the late editions had gone to press,
but that was half the point of doing it. Nobody could say they hadn’t responded. It would be interesting to see who’d pick
it up. Mulcahy, who’d gone home directly, flicked on the main RTE news bulletin and saw that they hadn’t. A good sign, he’d
thought. After which he’d tumbled straight into bed.

Now he pulled on a grey cotton sweater, jeans and a pair of trainers, thinking that if Brogan had gone to the trouble of warning
him, he’d better go discover the worst. The streets were empty and he knew the shop where he usually bought his
Irish Times
and
Sunday Tribune
wouldn’t be open yet. Long gone were the days when they used to sell the papers outside the local church after mass but he
headed down that way anyway, past the imposing single-spired, grey stone building from which the mumble of a responsorial
psalm was already reverberating through the chill morning air. Sure enough, across the road from the church and beside a shuttered-up
pub was a newsagents he’d never noticed before and, miraculously, it appeared to be open for business, despite the early hour.
Inside, he was greeted cheerily by a kid in a T-shirt and baggy surf shorts, who was
dragging stacks of bundled newspapers out in front of the magazine racks that stretched the full length of one wall.

‘Howya, grand morning,’ the boy said without looking up.

Mulcahy barely grunted, his breath catching in his lungs as his eye roamed the newspapers arrayed in front of him. Almost
every front page carried the same story, but most looked hurriedly cobbled together in a late-edition rush compared to the
massive headline splashed below the
Sunday Herald
logo. THE PRIEST! it screamed across the full width of the page, dwarfing the heading
FRENZIED RELIGIOUS RAPIST ATTACKS TEENAGE GIRLS
that ran underneath. To the right and lower down, a smaller headline
SPANISH TROOPS IN DUBLIN
topped a sidebar running down the outside edge, a border of words framing two grainy, blown-up photographs of Jesica and
Alfonso Mellado Salazar.

Fucking hell.

Siobhan’s byline was all over the page, twinned with that of someone called Paddy Griffin, news editor. Hers alone headed
up the ‘exclusive’ main story which focused heavily on the assault on Jesica Salazar but led, vividly, with the second attack,
on Catriona Plunkett. As he pulled the paper open he saw there were five or six more pages of coverage inside, complete with
pictures of Catriona Plunkett, her family, more of the Salazars and even maps and graphics illustrating the locations of the
attacks. Where the hell had Siobhan got her information from? And so quickly? This wasn’t so much a leak as a cracked main.

As he read on, Mulcahy was astounded by what a credible blend of accurate reporting and wildfire conjecture Siobhan’s writing
was – gruesome detail of the two attacks garnished with blood-curdling speculation about the terrors of having ‘a maniac in
our midst’. It was exactly as Brogan had predicted. There were even quotes from some of the medics who’d treated the two girls. Worse,
though, was the fury with which, on the inside pages, both the Garda Commissioner and the Minister for Justice came under
fire for incompetence and procrastination. The poor sods in the Garda press office had been caught on the hop – the only statement
reproduced being the first one Healy had left them with. There it was, word for word, pathetically inadequate. The criticism
tilted into the red zone as the time lag between the two assaults was highlighted; a years-old file photo of Brendan Healy
in uniform, looking grim, was captioned: ‘Could he have done more?’

As if that weren’t enough, the leader page launched yet another vicious attack on the Minister for Foreign Affairs for shaming
the entire country by allowing military representatives of a foreign power, albeit a friendly one, to barge into an Irish
hospital and remove a patient. Were our medical and justice systems held in such low esteem by other EU nations that we couldn’t
be trusted with the care of their citizens? Surely the Minister should tender his resignation forthwith?

Mulcahy knew all the political stuff was piss and wind, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be hell to pay. He could
picture all too well the repercussions: two ministers and a Garda Commissioner on the warpath, hundreds beneath them desperate
to avoid the flak, frantic to find answers to the inevitable storm of questions that would be asked in the Dáil, and even
more so to find scapegoats to throw to the slavering press.

And the woman whose bed he’d slept in on Wednesday was behind it all. How in the name of God had that happened?

He was still turning it over when he got into Harcourt Square at eleven. On the fourth floor, Brogan’s office door was shut
but a light was visible through the opaque glass so he stuck his head round it. She was sitting at her desk looking frazzled.
He’d never seen her so much as glance at a newspaper before, but there was a collapsed heap of them strewn across the floor
beside a jumble of box files.

‘How goes it?’

‘I’m sitting in the middle of the biggest shitstorm I’ve ever been involved in, so how do you
think
it’s going?’ she said, looking up from the file she was studying. ‘Action this, review that, double check the bastarding
other. By the way,’ she paused, indicating the box files. ‘I had to take those back from your office.’

He shrugged. ‘The fallout’s bad?’

‘Nuclear.’

‘Anything I can help with?’

‘No,’ she said, lowering her head again. Then, almost in
passing: ‘Healy says he wants to see you, upstairs, soon as you get in.’

‘Upstairs?’ Healy rarely saw anyone in his office on the sixth floor, preferring to emerge occasionally to poke his nose into
everyone else’s business instead. ‘Any idea why?’

Brogan shook her head. ‘I’ve got enough crap on my plate without worrying about yours.’

He headed back to the lift, pressed the button for the top floor. There the accommodation was more salubrious. Even the difference
in carpet grade was immediately obvious. His shoes sank into thick Garda-blue tufts the second he stepped out. Here on the
sixth there was no open-plan space, just corridors and discrete offices, some with small secretarial areas outside with desks
and monitors. These were mostly empty now, it being a Sunday. Except for Healy’s, whose secretary was sitting there with her
coiled hair and her two-piece suit, typing something on a screen.

‘Go straight in, Inspector,’ she said.

Apart from the standard-issue lamp on his desk, Healy’s office couldn’t have been less like Brogan’s. It was four times the
size, with a big oak desk, executive chair and three monitors. There was also a two-seater sofa and armchairs over to one side,
plus an assortment of filing cabinets and bookcases. But above anything else it was spotlessly tidy.

‘Come in, Mike, come in,’ Healy said, getting up. He was looking tired, Mulcahy thought, noticing the dark semicircles forming
beneath his eyes. When he put a hand out it was not to shake but to point at the straight-backed chair in
front of his desk. ‘Sit yourself down there. Can I ask Noreen to get you a coffee?’