The Priest (27 page)

Mulcahy refused the offer.

‘Right,’ Healy said, sitting into his chair again. ‘You’ve seen the press, I suppose. Christ, we took some pasting there.
The bloody Minister and Commissioner have been taking turns hauling me over the coals since six this morning. I’m telling
you, if I could’ve got my hands on that reporter, Fallon, I know what
I’d
be doing with the rest of my days. Serving them out in Mountjoy prison for bloody strangling her.’

Mulcahy smiled as politely as he could.

‘The thing is, Mike, we can’t afford to be having leaks like that. I said to Claire last night that, after this settles down,
I should get you to have a look into it to see if we could root out the rotten apple. You impressed me a lot yesterday, I
don’t mind telling you, so I was all the more surprised when Claire said she thought you knew Fallon. Then you seemed so offhand
when I asked you about it, I thought, fair enough, we all know journos. And then, fuck me, what should drop into my inbox
this morning but this. I’d like you to tell me what you make of it, Mike.’

Healy swivelled his computer screen round so that Mulcahy could see him double-clicking on his email queue, then on an attachment
within the email he’d opened. He just had time to read the two-word message ‘hacked off’ before the media player launched
a black subscreen which stalled a moment, then ran some good quality CCTV
footage of two people, a man and a woman, approaching each other on the street, stopping to chat, then climbing into an open-top
sports car.

Oh shit.

‘I recognised
you
straight away, Mike.’ There was a strain of incredulity in Healy’s voice now. ‘But, would you believe it, I had to ask a colleague
who the woman was. She said she thought it might be Siobhan Fallon from the
Sunday Herald
. Tell me it isn’t true, Mike?’

Mulcahy swallowed, completely wrong-footed. The video clearly came from one of the gate cameras outside Harcourt Square, and
the imprinted timecode identified it as being from the previous Wednesday. No getting away from that. But how the hell could
anybody have got their hands on it? More to the point, who had sent it? He immediately thought of Healy’s exchange of glances
with Brogan during the media meeting the night before.

He straightened up in his seat and looked Healy in the eye.

‘I told you last night that I knew her, Brendan. And I also told you I hadn’t given her any information about this investigation.’

Healy snorted. ‘Sure, you said you
knew
her. But didn’t you think it worth mentioning, especially last night, that you’d been off for a jaunt in her car with her
only three days earlier? I’d call that one hell of an omission, Mike. I mean, you must see how that looks?’

It was Mulcahy’s turn to become irritated.

‘Of course I see how it looks. It looks like someone’s trying to stitch me up.’

‘So, what’re you saying? You’re trying to tell me this meeting didn’t take place?’ By now Healy was jabbing his finger at
the screen.

‘No, obviously it did. But what I’d like to know is who sent you this material. It’s clearly malicious. Haven’t you considered
why someone would want you to see this?’

‘Sure I have. So I’ll tell you who sent it to me. “A friend” it says here. Untraceable, of course, but do you know what? Right
now, I’m thinking, maybe they have been a friend to me. Or at least a hell of a better one than you’ve been.’

Mulcahy decided it was best to roll with that one. ‘Brendan, as I keep telling you, I was not the source of this leak.’

‘So you just happened to meet Fallon straight after you’d left a briefing regarding this very case, and at no stage did she
bring up the subject of either Jesica Salazar or The Priest?’

‘No, not as such.’

It would have been easier to lie, but he couldn’t. That might only backfire worse in the long run if it ever emerged. And
of course Healy pounced on it like a starving cat.

‘What the hell does that mean, “Not as such”?’

There was only one answer left to him. ‘It means she asked me if I knew about a Spanish girl who’d been attacked, and I refused
to discuss the matter with her in any way, shape or form.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Healy hissed at him. ‘She asked you this on
Wednesday evening, and you didn’t think it was worth mentioning to either Claire or myself?’

‘No. How could I have known what Fallon was planning? Like you, yesterday, I just thought she was on a fishing expedition.
I didn’t think it was relevant.’

Healy stood up. He was seething now, his voice shrill, barely able to control himself.

‘Relevant? I’ll tell you what’s bloody relevant. Someone’s been leaking like a drain to this bitch all week, as a result of
which I’ve had my arse chewed off and my prospects blown to buggery for Christ knows how long. And you couldn’t even be bothered
to give us a heads-up? I can’t believe it, Mike, that you, of
all
people, who I’ve been carrying for months, giving you an easy time, waiting to pop you back into your bloody beloved Drugs
Squad, could come in here and see me drowning last night, and you couldn’t even be arsed to throw me a lifeline.’

That was it. He couldn’t just sit there and take that. ‘With respect, Brendan, that’s bullshit. I spent most of last night
busting my balls to come up with an intelligent media response that would leave us looking as good as we could in the circumstances.
And now I come in here and find you’re happier to believe some anonymous shit-stirrer—’

‘Bollocks,’ Healy cut in again, his finger jabbing the air. ‘This is about loyalty, trust and fair play. And I’ll tell you,
this isn’t my idea of any of them. Nor is it a decent return on favours done. So I’m telling you now, Mike, you can go fuck
yourself as far as I’m concerned. Don’t you come in
here looking for favours from me in future, because I damn well won’t be doing you any.’

In the event, Healy didn’t have enough manpower to freeze Mulcahy out of the investigation completely. Later that day, he
called to say he would be handing responsibility for liaising with the Spanish back to the Minister’s office but, beyond that
– and a distinctly chillier note to their day-today encounters – there was little practical difference to Mulcahy’s role over
the next few days as the investigation was ramped up beyond all previous measure. The long hours went by in a blur of frenetic
activity, peppered by briefings, meetings and general slog. Healy might have considered himself to be leading the investigation
but, as his chief representative on earth, Brogan was still in everyday charge. Much to everyone’s relief, rumours that she
was to be replaced by a big-hitter came to nothing as Healy’s rearguard action, essentially a fight for self-preservation,
was more effective than most would have anticipated.

So, for all that everyone felt the pressure increase a hundredfold, the most palpable effect was a welcome further injection
of manpower and resources. For those on the ground the storm itself seemed to move off now, up to another level, the one above
them where a war of words between press and politicians raged. Down below, a kind of bunker mentality set in, one where teeth
were gritted, shoulders were squared and every member of the crew focused on one thing only – getting a result.

As for the world outside, it seemed to the Garda team as if madness had taken hold. Not just the city of Dublin but the whole
of Ireland was in a full-blown panic over The Priest. From that Sunday lunchtime, the entire media apparatus had gone into
absolute tunnel-vision hyperdrive. Every front page, every TV news bulletin led on the story. Every radio talk-show fell on
the subject with pornographic glee, inviting every under-informed pundit, over-opinionated academic and the verbally diarrhoeic
public at large to hash and rehash, corrupt and over-inflate the threat, oozing raw sentiment and fantasy, and above all whingeing
about the incompetence of the Gardai, the government and anyone else they could think of blaming.

Mulcahy got through it all by adopting much the same attitude as everyone else. There was talk of an internal investigation
to trace the source of the leak, but it was just talk. Mulcahy had his own suspicions – how could he not have? – but in the
absence of any evidence, or the time to go find it, he was happy for things to stay as they were for now; not so bothered
about clearing his own name as avoiding the risk of being stitched up by some ambitious Internal Affairs weasel keen for a
quick and easy result. Tasked by Healy to review the case against Scully, he spent untold hours with his face glued to a computer
screen reading and rereading all the initial interviews, poring over negative forensics reports, and going through the material
on Scully’s seized PC with a detective Garda from the IT Dept. There was nothing of interest there, no buried files, no hidden
sadoporn,
no password-protected portals to websites advocating the torturing and mutilation of young Spanish or Irish women.

He even ploughed through Scully’s thesis work on the so-called Irish Inquisition, the title of which had understandably come
close to giving Brogan a stroke. But it was nothing more than a dull historical account of the persecution of a young Irish
noblewoman from Kilkenny who’d been tried for sorcery in the early fourteenth century. Scully had clearly been trying to work
it up into a shocker but the material was doing its best to resist. Like everything else, it was a dead end that led Mulcahy
back to the conclusion he’d reached earlier about Scully. He was an unsavoury character, there was no doubting that, and it
was easy to see why Brogan had become convinced there was more to him than met the eye. Because indeed there was: he was a
drug dealer worried he was being nobbled for something he hadn’t done. And so he ran. But for now, at least, Mulcahy could
turn up nothing further to link Scully to the attack on Jesica Salazar.

Having delivered his conclusions to Healy, the superintendent handed Mulcahy another poisoned chalice straight away, putting
him in charge of the tips and leads team. As Brogan had predicted, the result of the press and public hysteria about The Priest,
in information-gathering terms at least, was pandemonium. So much so that a rota of six guards had been assigned to field
and respond to the deluge of phone calls, letters and emails coming in from the general public.

They all had to be followed up, wherever feasible: every
suspicious neighbour, every idiot with an axe to grind or just ringing in to share their fears, preoccupations and morbid
fantasies. The prospect of further public humiliation as a result of missing a vital piece of information, especially one
handed to them on a plate by a right-thinking citizen, simply didn’t bear thinking about. Mulcahy became the filter. It was
up to him to assess and prioritise, task initial responses, hand on to the appropriate quarter what wasn’t pertinent to the
team’s own investigation, and pass up anything that was relevant, to Brogan, whose people would then do the onward enquiries.
It was hard, intense work. It kept him busy, and so tired when he got home of an evening that he was unable to dwell on anything
much else in his life. Not even Siobhan, the thought of whom still generated a maelstrom of contradictory feelings in him.

Coming out of Harry Heffernan’s office that Wednesday morning, Siobhan Fallon was beaming so bright even the word-blunted
subs perked up and took a look at her. Everyone had been taking a lot more notice of her. These last few days she’d never
been so busy, never been anywhere near so big. Doing radio shows over the phone, TV news interviews in front of the brass
Sunday Herald
sign by the main door downstairs. Once, even, up here in the newsroom, much to the annoyance of every begrudger in the place.
All that tutting when the camera crew set up their lights. She couldn’t help wondering if it was because she was leaving the
rest of them in the shade.

And now Heffernan had finally gone and bestowed on her the only acknowledgement of success that meant anything to him, or
to any of the rest of them when it came down to it. He’d called her into his office and announced that he was going to talk
to the chief exec about getting her that raise she wanted. Twenty per cent minimum, he’d said. It had better be. She’d already
had a sniff that morning from Alan Hanley, the news editor over at the
Irish Times
. And a pal at the
Sunday Tribune
said her name had been mentioned as a possible poach over there, as well. If the ball kept rolling her way, she might be
able to name her own price by the end of the week.

The very thought of it made her go weak at the knees but she kept up the face, scanning the room for Paddy Griffin. She spotted
him perched on sports editor Brian Meany’s desk, arms folded, half listening to what Meany was saying but one eye all the
while watching her emerge from the lion’s den. She shot two thumbs out at him and widened her smile still further. He grinned
and batted her away with a flap of his hand. He’d already given her all the praise he could manage for one week. He had even
offered to take her out for a slap-up dinner the night before, his treat. Or rather, his expenses. But she couldn’t, as she’d
been asked to go on
Questions and Answers
, RTE’s political discussion show. She’d never had high-end TV exposure like that before. And she brought the house down.
Every word she said, the studio audience clapped. And then they booed the junior minister who’d been dragged on from the Department
of Justice. Even John Bowman, the presenter, was impressed
and he’d congratulated her warmly after they wrapped up the show. ‘We’d have had you on again,’ he’d said. It was a shame
they were retiring the show just as she got her foot in the door.

Still, the big time really did feel as good as she’d always suspected it would.

Even Siobhan was staggered by the strength of the public reaction. If it wasn’t interviews and phone-ins on every talk show
on RTE – and Lord knows they could keep you busy for two lifetimes in themselves – now the story was trickling out into the
wider world. Sky News had picked it up, and the BBC as well. She’d even been interviewed by some Spanish radio station she’d
never heard of. From experience she knew well how some stories can sprout wings and take on a life of their own. It happened
all the time, whenever a little kid went missing or some politician was caught with his hand down a rent boy’s trousers. But
there was never any telling for sure which would be the stories that would really catch fire, take over the front pages and
the news reports for days, even weeks at a time.