The Priest (28 page)

She’d had a gut feeling about The Priest but still she hadn’t expected anything remotely like this. Every woman in Dublin,
young and old, seemed to be in a panic, looking over their shoulders for fear of God or the devil or whatever else lurked
in their sublimated terrors and desires. And all the other hacks in the city, from lowliest reporter to loftiest cultural
commentator, seemed to be doing their level best to whip it up still further, and at every opportunity. Front
doors were being reinforced, there had been a run on locks in the DIY shops, radio phone-ins were full of young wans saying
how they could hardly sleep in their beds at night for fear. For her own part, she’d actually tried to calm things down a
bit. Whenever she got the chance, she pointed out that this guy had only struck twice and he had never attacked anyone in
their own home – so far as anyone knew. But it didn’t make any difference. Hysteria had taken hold and showed no sign of releasing
its grip any time soon. What could she do but ride the wave?

Success had its downside as well, though. Exciting and flattering as all the attention was, the fact that the world and his
wife now turned to Siobhan Fallon whenever they wanted to know anything about The Priest was becoming a pressure in itself.
She’d run out of anything fresh to say. And repeating the same things over again by rote was just plain boring. Fortunately,
she had plenty of ammunition to fire off about the awful rates of unreported sex crime in Ireland, the government’s shameful
under-funding of this most sensitive area of law enforcement, and so on.

She meant every word of it. The facts spoke for themselves, providing you could unearth them. And she was spending every spare
second digging up more, searching through statistics and government reports, gathering information from every rape crisis
centre in the country, fielding calls from experts and academics who were bending over backwards to get their names into one
of her pieces. Some were downright nasty, too, accusing her of all sorts of
ignominy and infamy. Well, you got that reaction on lots of stories. And it wasn’t like she wanted to be a voicebox for every
woman in the country. Leave that to the social scientists and lecturers out in Belfield. No, this had been thrust upon her.
She’d tapped into something deeper than just a story. And she’d keep right on digging away at it until she’d got every last
inch of decent copy from it.

It was bloody knackering, though, and in the last two days she’d barely stopped to think. Now, by the time she got from Heffernan’s
office to her desk, her brain had filled to the brim again with things she had to do. But first a private satisfaction: an
email to Vincent Bishop telling him where to stick his stupid bloody record needle. He’d been leaving messages, texting and
emailing since Sunday. First congratulations, then peevish little jabs about why she hadn’t been in touch – as if it wasn’t
obvious. Not least because she was too damn busy for anything other than work. And then last night, when she’d just got in
from RTE on top of the world after her
Questions and Answers
triumph, her phone rang and she picked it up – naive fool that she was – thinking it would be someone calling to congratulate
her, and there it was again, the scratch and hiss of the record player followed by Roy buggering Orbison, this time squeaking
‘Love Hurts’ at her.

‘It fucking will do if you don’t fucking stop this,’ she’d roared down the phone at him – the few drinks she’d had in the
green room at RTE helping that one along the way. But Roy just kept on singing and she’d slammed down the
phone. That was the weird thing. It hadn’t seemed to matter whether she was there to pick up the phone or not. The record played
anyway. Was there anyone at the other end of the line, even? She’d dialled call return, but of course the number was blocked.
Feeling dirty and tired then, she’d gone and run a bath and, settling in, listened to the late news on the radio, eventually
drowning out all thought of it.

Now, though, a pay rise in the bag and her confidence at an all-time high, it was time to knock this on the head for good,
she thought. All the exposure she’d been getting, she wouldn’t need to be beholden to the likes of Bishop for decent stories
any more. They’d come by themselves. She tapped the space bar ready to compose the email. Then she thought, stuff that, and
got her phone out. This was a message she’d rather deliver in person.

‘Somebody wanting to talk to the ranking officer,’ one of the tips team called across the room to Mulcahy, holding up an imaginary
phone as substitute for the headset he was wearing.

‘Why?’ Mulcahy asked, annoyed at having his attention taken away from the prioritisation list he was trying to put together
on his computer.

‘Some old copper, won’t talk to a mere mortal like me,’ said the uniform with a sneer.

‘Okay, put him through.’

The voice was thin but amiable, the accent from somewhere in Munster. ‘Are you looking after that Priest case?’

‘Yes, I’m Inspector Mulcahy. How can I help you, sir?’

‘Oh, now, don’t you be sirring me. I only ever made it to sergeant before I retired.’

Mulcahy’s barriers dropped a notch or two. ‘You were in the force?’

‘I was indeed, yes,’ the man answered, sounding like he’d still like to be. ‘Sergeant Pat Brennan, retired. It’s been a few
years now, mind – and I didn’t go till I was pushed.’

‘Good for you. My old man served the full term, too. Broke his heart to leave, truth be told. Maybe you knew him, Inspector
John Mulcahy?’

There was a thoughtful silence at the other end of the line, a brain flicking through the Rolodex of possible acquaintance,
and then: ‘Ah no, not
Johnny
Mulcahy from Dun Laoghaire! You’re his boy?’

Mulcahy was happy to indulge the wave of nostalgia that washed out from the phone. He loved hearing stories of his father
and his colleagues, and of their times. He’d grown up on them. Invariably they sounded like they came from a golden age of
innocence before drugs, organised crime and serial sex attackers had taken the bloom off the holy island of Ireland. This
guy was from a slightly younger generation, but he’d still spent virtually the whole of his career in the one place, Rathgar
Garda Station. That almost never happened nowadays, when uniformed guards were regularly moved around.

‘The thing is, being in a place for so long, you get to see and hear things that wouldn’t come your way otherwise. You get
a feel for people, you know?’

‘I do,’ Mulcahy said. ‘So what’ve you got for us?’

‘Well, we’re going back a few years now, but do you know Palmerston Park?’

‘Sure I do, I grew up in Milltown.’ Mulcahy had often wandered past the semicircle of elegant Victorian villas on his way
home from school.

‘Like I said, this is going back a few years, but there was a young fellow lived there. Sean Rinn was his name, from a very
good family.’

The name sounded vaguely familiar to Mulcahy.

‘His grandfather was a High Court judge,’ the sergeant continued. ‘But the boy was a nasty piece of work. Got into a few scrapes
with me in my time, but of course Chief Justice Rinn was always there with a word in someone high up’s ear to get him off.’

A note of whingeing resentment entered the old man’s voice, the same note that featured in so many of the calls they received;
Mulcahy was instantly inclined to put his barriers back up.

‘And this has what, exactly, to do with the case you’re calling in about?’

He must have said it a bit harshly, because the old guy started apologising. ‘Ah, the wife told me not to go bothering you
with my old stories. Sure, what good’s a name to you? I never managed to pin anything on him myself. It’s just that when I
saw the stuff in the paper about The Priest, I thought of Rinn, and figured maybe I should give you a call, on the off-chance,
like.’

Mulcahy felt a twinge of guilt. The man was only doing his duty, after all. ‘Well, give me what you’ve got and we’ll look
into it.’

But all the sergeant had was a few vague, meandering stories about a number of violent ‘sex pest’ attacks, as he put it, that
occurred in and around Palmerston Park in the mid-to late eighties, which he’d been convinced this guy Rinn was responsible
for but could never pin on him.

‘CID just refused to have a look at him, because of who his grandfather was,’ Brennan said. Which was entirely plausible at
the time, Mulcahy knew, although the absence of any shred of evidence was likely to have swayed them even more.

‘Or maybe it wasn’t him?’ Mulcahy suggested.

‘Oh, it was him alright. One girl got a good look and gave us a description that convinced me. But I didn’t have anything
to back it up. Not with the judge riding our backs over it.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Well, there’s not that much more to it, except that a few months later the attacks just stopped – suddenly, just like that.
And guess who’d been sent away at exactly the same time?’

‘Sent away as in sent down?’

‘No such luck,’ the sergeant tutted bitterly. ‘No, sent away as in packed off by the grandparents. They sent him off to All
Hallows to train for the priesthood.’

‘The priesthood?’ Mulcahy’s ears pricked up again.

‘You heard me right.’

‘How long ago are we talking about, Sergeant?’

‘Well, eighty-eight or eighty-nine, I suppose. No later than that.’

‘And what about after that? Any more attacks?’

The line went silent for a second or two. ‘No, they stopped.’ The old sergeant was sounding more defensive than ever. ‘But
that’s just my point.’

‘And that’s it? That’s the connection you made with The Priest?’ Mulcahy threw his eyes heavenwards.

‘Yes but…’

Mulcahy’s mobile rang. He snatched it off the desk and saw the caller ID was Brogan’s.

‘I’m sorry, Sergeant, I have another call. Give me your number and we’ll get back to you.’

He asked Brogan to hold while he scribbled the number down and promised the old man somebody would call him back for the details.

‘Claire, how can I help you?’

‘Any sign of things slowing up over there?’

A swish of noise in the background gave him the impression she was calling from a car.

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘I wish. The press office guys are going ballistic. Apparently it’s absolute lunacy over there. They want an extra body to
field press enquiries. I thought maybe you could spare one of your guys?’

‘Not a chance. The phones are ringing off the hook.’

‘Christ, what a mess. I told you this would happen.’

‘Yeah, you did,’ he said.

‘What in the name of God are you talking about, Siobhan?’

Either Vincent Bishop was the best actor she’d ever had the bad fortune to encounter, or he really, genuinely, categorically
didn’t have a clue what she was on about.

‘Look, calm down. Or at least sit down, would you? You’re embarrassing everyone. What’s the matter? And what the hell has Roy
Orbison got to do with anything?’

He was holding the CD case up at her, its clear plastic wrapping flaring under the restaurant lights. Shaking his long, narrow,
lank-haired head like she’d slapped him in the face or something. Which she had, sort of. It’d seemed such a great idea on
the way over: the spike of anticipation as she strutted into HMV and bought the copy of
Roy Orbison’s Greatest Hits
, the rush of satisfaction when she thrust it at him as soon as she’d reached the table and hissed: ‘Get yourself a fucking
CD player, Vincent. You can afford it.’

Didn’t seem such a great idea now. She’d seen more than her fair share of gawps of shock and surprise in her years of door-stepping
people for the job. The full gamut. Real and put on. But she’d never before witnessed anything like the look of naked incomprehension
that currently held Vincent Bishop’s wan features in a gape of slack-jawed confusion. He couldn’t be faking that, no way.

She had intended to walk straight out again. Now she was stuck, as if her shoes were glued to the floor right there in
the middle of a packed-out Marco Pierre White’s
,
of all places. Half the faces in there, staring at her now from every other table whispering, nudging, sniggering over their
lunches – were fellow hacks, for Christ’s sake. What in the name of God had possessed her to do this here?

‘Come on, Siobhan. This is really not acceptable. The whole place is staring at us like we’re a pair of spares. Or worse.
I think you owe me an explanation, now.’

Oh, sweet Jesus…

It wasn’t until a couple of hours later that it came to Mulcahy. He’d gone out to get some lunch and was coming back, a latte
in one hand and a beef and coleslaw sandwich in the other, obsessing over how, the night before, exhausted and with too much
wine in him after yet another takeaway meal at home, he’d called Siobhan to tell her what he thought of her. But greeted by
her messaging service he’d found himself suddenly tongue-tied and rung off.
I don’t think we should see each other again
, he’d texted instead. An act that mortified him now every time he thought about it. Not only cowardly, but bloody presumptuous
as well.

That’s what was going round and round in Mulcahy’s head when, out of the blue, it struck him. From nowhere. What that old
sergeant, Brennan, had said to him on the phone earlier. About some young kid called Rinn. He
had
seen the name Rinn somewhere before, he was sure. Written somewhere. He racked his memory but it still wouldn’t come.

The first thing he did when he got back to Harcourt Square was slip into Brogan’s office. She was out somewhere but the boxes
of files were still where he’d last seen them. Except that a messenger was there, too, preparing to load them onto a trolley.
He was a small, frail-looking man in his mid-fifties, his balding head a gleaming network of oiled-down comb-over strands.

‘These are the boxes that are going back to the archive, right?’ the messenger asked Mulcahy, his accent so thick with old
Dublin it should have had a preservation order on it.