The Priest (32 page)

‘We’ll be here all night waiting for you to make up your mind, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘Eh, isn’t that Inspector Brogan I see
over there? She knows me well.’ She beamed the special smile at him, anything to cover the lie.

The sergeant followed the direction of her pointing finger. He peered, looked back, then back again at Brogan, scepticism
evident in the arching of an eyebrow.

‘She knows you, how?’

‘Ah, sure, we’re great pals. We go way back. I’m sure she’d be happy to talk to me. Do you think you might go over and ask
her for me?’

‘She’s busy,’ said the sergeant, handing back her ID cards.

He was right. Just then the white-domed heads of two men in coveralls appeared over the rim of the hollow, and the others
stepped back to let them clamber out. They turned and pulled up behind them what appeared to be a lightweight metal stretcher,
which in turn was being pushed carefully from below by another two men, arms upstretched
to keep their load as level as possible. The four of them struggled to balance their long and narrow burden, and it wasn’t
until they were all out and upright again that Siobhan was able to see for certain what it was they had strapped on the stretcher.
A body bag, no doubt about it.

‘Holy mother of God,’ said the sergeant beside her in hushed tones, blessing himself and touching an imaginary crucifix to
his lips. Like Siobhan, and the rest of the uniformed cops standing back on the perimeter, he was totally transfixed as the
stretcher bearers halted by the waiting detectives. The one who’d been doing the talking unzipped the bag at the top end and
made several rapid hand gestures towards what could only be, in Siobhan’s mind, the head and chest of a dead body. Remembering
the stranger in their midst, the sergeant turned to her with a baleful look.

‘Like I was saying, I don’t think the inspector will be wanting to be disturbed right now.’

‘Yeah, maybe you’re right,’ Siobhan conceded, opening the flap of her bag and shoving her notebook, pen and cards back into
it. She’d been tempted to shout out, do anything to get a quote from Brogan but couldn’t help feeling all she’d get for her
trouble would be a night in some stone-cold cell somewhere. Now was not the time to make a fuss. She’d seen more than enough
already. Her priority was to get away as soon as possible and get the story out.

‘I’ll just have to hang around for a bit, then,’ she said to the sergeant. ‘Take in the sights. Unless you could get one of
your fellas to give me a lift back to my car?’

The sergeant looked over at the five or six patrol cars parked up on the roadside behind them, their drivers standing or leaning
against them, still absorbed by the activities of the stretcher bearers who by now were loading their burden into the back
of an ambulance. The detectives had already disappeared.

‘For a friend of Inspector Brogan’s?’ the sergeant said, a considerate tone entering his voice now. ‘Where did you say you
left it?’

‘Way over on the main road,’ she said with a sigh, and a small pout for added effect. ‘It took me half an hour to walk here,
thanks to you fellas blocking all the roads.’

‘Ah, sure, like you said yourself, we’re only doing our jobs. And do you know what?’

His smile was now on the verge of saintliness and had completely transformed his features.

‘No, what?’ she gleamed back.

‘That doesn’t include chauffeur services for scum like you.’

She was so taken aback by the snarl with which he said it that she was stunned into silence. By the time she’d composed herself
enough again to respond, the sergeant had put up the palm of his huge bogman’s hand in front of her face and turned to summon
the same Garda who’d found her in the woods.

‘Crilly,’ he said, ‘walk this bloody parasite up to the road where you found her and shove her off in the direction she came
from. Then stay there and make sure she doesn’t
come back again. Cos if she does, I’ll have your bollocks for breakfast.’

She may have cursed him to the very highest heaven all the way back to the car, but bless his heart, it was the redneck sergeant
who gave Siobhan her second most precious gift that morning. Because if he hadn’t forced her to trudge back the route she
came, across the trackless, sodden parkland, she’d never have seen it. Even though she was dog-tired and her legs felt like
lead pipes welded to her hips, she’d been making good progress. For some time, dawn had been diluting the darkness and the
pink shimmer of daylight in the sky was growing paler by the minute. Skirting a dense clump of tangled vegetation, Siobhan
came to a sudden standstill. Ahead of her a small herd of fallow deer was emerging slowly from the trees, grazing as they
came, snouts gently nuzzling the thin layer of white mist that tickled the top of the grass. But beyond them, out across the
flat expanse of open ground stretching away to the east, was what took her breath away, so completely she could only stop
and gaze in wonder.

Towering in the distance, half a mile away or more, vast against the empty skyline and the rising sun beyond, was the enormous
steel cross erected for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in 1979. Her father and mother had taken her to the Phoenix Park
that extraordinary day when almost half of the population, one and a half million people, flocked from all corners of the
country to see and hear the
charismatic father of the Catholic Church celebrate mass in the open air. Six years old, wearing her white communion dress,
the same colour as the Pope’s vestments, the same colour as the cross, she remembered the press of the vast crowd, the flapping
of the banners and flags in the breeze, the excited cries rising and falling as the Popemobile drove round and round to get
him within viewing distance of all the throng. Mostly, though, she remembered when the Holy Father finally made it to the
altar, her own father cheering madly as he held her aloft in his long, strong arms, high above his head, as the roar of the
crowd carried her higher and higher and she felt like an angel ascending to heaven.

‘Young people of Ireland, I love you,’ the Pope said, and an entire nation fell at his feet.

Where had all that feeling, that spirit, gone, she wondered? It was like nothing she’d ever experienced again. She couldn’t
imagine it occurring today. Ireland was so totally different back then. It was like any other country now. People would barely
remember that day if it wasn’t for the Papal Cross. She looked at it again, its white steel burned deepest black against the
fiery red orb of the sun rising, huge, behind it. The cross had been a symbol of hope, of faith, back then. This morning,
though, it was more like some awful sign from a wrathful Old Testament God, throwing its long flat shadow across the park
like an accusing finger towards her, and all the death and Garda activity going on in the Furry Glen behind her.

A lurid image to fit lurid circumstances, Siobhan thought, recognising it instantly for all its tabloid worth.

‘Okay, guys, gather round. This is important. Come on, now, wakey-wakey.’

There must have been fifty people crammed into the tiny incident room but, as soon as Brogan clapped her hands, the murmuring
came to a swift halt. Suit creased, hair a mess, she looked like she’d been up all night, her eyes puffy but on high alert.
Buzzing on something, for sure, Mulcahy reckoned, hoping it was legal. Cassidy, too, exuded a bristling energy. He was holding
something rolled up in his hand, a peculiar expression of expectancy crinkling his face.

‘Some of you will have heard this on the news already, but for those of you who haven’t, a body was found in the Phoenix Park
last night. A couple walking their dog – I won’t spell it out, you know the score – found the remains of a young girl, a teenager,
wrapped in plastic sheeting, stuffed under a drainage pipe in the Furry Glen. We suspected it from the outset, but once we
got her back to the mortuary there was no more room for doubt. It was our man did her, alright.’

As Cassidy unfurled the large print-off he was holding there were muted gasps in the room. The image had all the stillness
of death. A girl cocooned in clear plastic turned opalescent by a camera flashing on the layers that had been peeled back
from her bare head, shoulders and torso. Her hair was a dark auburn, thick and wavy, framing a face that
was alabaster-white – angelic almost, with eyes closed as if in sleep – except for one smudge of dirt on the forehead. The
look of peace on her face was in stark, barely credible contrast to the appalling injuries that had been inflicted on what
could be seen of her chest and upper arms. Everyone present had seen those marks before, on Jesica Salazar and Catriona Plunkett
– the horror that results when white-hot metal is applied to flesh – but these appeared to have been applied with still more
fury. There was hardly a square inch of skin that hadn’t been burned, hideously blackened and blistered. Mulcahy guessed he
wasn’t the only one offering up a silent prayer that death had come swiftly and protected the girl from the worst of it.

‘So, as you can see, this case is now a murder inquiry.’ Brogan paused for effect. ‘I got called in at three a.m. to confirm
the Murder Squad’s suspicions that this was our man’s doing – although with all the press coverage we’ve been having they
were never really under any illusion that it could be anyone else. Whether that press coverage actually contributed to an escalation
in The Priest’s campaign is something that remains to be seen.’

A rush of whispered anger rippled through the room.

‘Alright, alright, settle down,’ Brogan said. ‘What’s done is done, and there’s no going back. Let’s get on with it now. The
time of death has yet to be established, but as rigor was still pretty much full on when she was found the medical examiner
was willing to give an unofficial initial estimate of twenty-four to forty-eight hours since she was killed. That
puts it roughly between midnight Tuesday and midnight Wednesday, although it looks as if the poor kid’s ordeal started long
before that. The points being this – and there are two of them – that, since his appearance in the press, our man has decided
to up the stakes and cross the border nobody can come back from. He has killed. The second point is that, as a result of this
now becoming a murder investigation, the case is being reassigned.’

‘Ah, for fuck’s sake!’ Hanlon shouted in disbelief, unable to control his feelings and pretty much summing up the sentiments
of everyone in the room. ‘Do they not know that we’ve been working our arses off on this thing?’

‘Shush, now.’ Brogan patted the air to quell the swell of disgruntled voices. ‘I understand your disappointment, but you all
know the score. Murder is murder.’ While she was waiting for that to sink in she turned to Cassidy, who for some was reason
was trying to stop himself grinning. Mulcahy was beginning to wonder if he was hallucinating, or dreaming, when Brogan turned
back to the room and she, too, was smiling.

‘One last thing,’ she said. ‘I want you to listen more carefully to me from now on. I said the case was being reassigned.
I didn’t say we weren’t going with it. In fact, I made a very compelling case for them to take us on as a job lot. We’re on
the murder team, you dozy bunch of prats. They’re throwing everything we’ve got at it.’

There was a roar of triumph as smiles and applause broke out all around the room. It was ever thus, Mulcahy
knew: the bigger and bloodier the case, the more any decent cop wanted to be involved in it, all the way to the finish. Especially
when they’d invested as much time and emotion as this team had. For most detectives, working a murder was the best, most exciting
job they could ever hope for. The fact that a girl was dead had not been forgotten. They just knew they had a bigger, even
more important job to do now.

Cassidy was waving for a bit of hush, holding up Brogan’s arm as if she’d just won a challenge cup.

‘She even got herself made deputy senior investigating officer, lads – so we won’t be pushed to the sidelines.’

There was another flurry of approval and applause.

‘Right, so gather up all your paperwork and discs,’ Brogan continued. ‘Anyone with laptops bring them with you. The main incident
room’s now over in Kilmainham Garda Station. Be ready to reconvene there for a full briefing from Detective Superintendent
Lonergan at eleven hundred hours. Make sure you call ahead to get your cars cleared through for parking. Sergeant Cassidy
here has the number.’

As the noise of scraping chairs filled the room and bodies began milling about excitedly, Mulcahy noticed Brogan’s gaze searching
him out and, with a jerk of her head, calling him aside.

‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘Smoothly done.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

‘A bit bizarre, don’t you think? Him hiding the body like
that. Especially after all the trouble he’d gone to mark her and all.’

‘Weird,’ she agreed. ‘The same thought occurred to me. Stuffing her under that pipe, she could have been down there for months
before anybody stumbled on her.’

‘You couldn’t get more opposite to what he did out in Fairview.’

‘I know, it doesn’t make any sense. Why would he want to hide her?’

‘Why does anyone want to hide anything?’

She eyed him directly, trying to figure out exactly what he meant by that. ‘Are you thinking all this press coverage was maybe
too much for him? That he couldn’t take the heat?’

Mulcahy shrugged. ‘I doubt it. Everything else, he’s done in such a way that you’d have to think he wanted it to be known
about as quickly as possible.’

‘So you’re thinking maybe he’s ashamed of it suddenly? How likely is that, given what he’d already done to the others? He
might not have killed them, but he as good as left them for dead.’

‘Maybe that’s not how he sees it. Maybe for some reason it was important for him not to actually kill the girls, who knows?
And now he’s overstepped the mark, got carried away or something – I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t part of his plan.’

‘Whatever that may be,’ Brogan nodded, still thinking about it, filing the conversation away for future consideration.
Then she took a half step back and looked closely at him. ‘You know this is the end of Healy’s involvement? Lonergan will
take over control of the entire investigation.’