The Priest (7 page)

‘As I said, lads,’ Cassidy went on, ‘the damage you can see here to the girl’s face and chest is nothing compared to what
he’s done to her down below. But if you’re still in any doubt about what kind of a twisted sick fucker we’re after, the photos
taken by the burns specialist at the hospital are here in a folder for you to look at afterwards.’

He paused as every gaze in the room took in the folders stacked on the table to his left, weighing up whether they really
wanted to open them and see the worst – knowing that morbid curiosity would get the better of them all in the end.

‘Right, we’re not doing too badly on this so far. We tried to interview the victim yesterday, but she was too distressed to
give up any detail and our translator wasn’t exactly on the ball. Still, we managed to get a couple of things… Ah, speak of
the devil.’

Cassidy broke off and every head in the room turned to
the back of the room as Mike Mulcahy came in through the door, flushed and short of breath.

‘So you managed to join us,’ Brogan said, and all eyes returned to her, momentarily, before ping-ponging back to Mulcahy again.

Mulcahy nodded. He’d arrived at Harcourt Square to be told that no one had booked a space in the basement car park for him,
and there were none left now anyway. It had taken him the best part of half an hour to find a spot in the crowded side streets
nearby and another ten minutes to walk back. Sweating and visibly annoyed, this wasn’t the impression he was used to making
on entering a room.

Cassidy waded into the gawping silence, drawing the attention back to himself again.

‘Okay, lads, this is Inspector Mulcahy. He normally hangs out with the glam boys in Drugs, but he’ll be working with us on
this. Now, as I was saying…Yes, Maura?’

McHugh, the only woman seated in the group, her blonde hair cut in a bob, her short stature emphasised by the swell of a pregnant
belly, had put up a hand. She turned to look towards Mulcahy for a moment, before asking Cassidy her question.

‘Is there a drugs angle to this you haven’t told us about?’

‘No, at least not that we know of,’ Cassidy laughed grimly. ‘But the inspector here is fluent in the old
es-pan-yole
and he was the one who helped us talk to our young victim yesterday.’ Cassidy glanced over at Brogan before continuing. ‘For
which we’re very grateful, I’m sure. But not as
grateful as the Spanish. They liked him so much they wanted to buy him.’

A few sniggers broke out in the room as Cassidy grinned broadly at his joke.

‘Well, at least we prevented
you
from making matters any worse, didn’t we, Sergeant?’ Mulcahy said, gritting his teeth.

Eyebrows raised, every face in the room now turned from his to Cassidy’s in time to see it flush with indignation. At which
point Brogan pushed herself away from the table and intervened.

‘Alright, lads, settle down. What the sergeant meant is that Inspector Mulcahy here is kindly lending us his expertise in
all things Spanish, and in particular liaising with the embassy – for reasons we really don’t need to go into just now.’

All heads turned back to Mulcahy again, one or two nodding a bit more respectfully this time as Brogan invited him to take
a seat and instructed Cassidy, flatly, to get on with it. The sergeant flicked an angry glance at Mulcahy before resuming.

‘As I was saying, we’ve yet to pin down the actual scene of the assault but given the severity of the girl’s injuries she
can’t have staggered too far from where she was found. What we do know now is where she was beforehand. It’s a club called
the GaGa, out on the Stillorgan Road, where she was with some of her student pals. We tracked one of them down last night and
she says Jesica left the place early to go off with some fella she picked up – an older guy, early to
mid-twenties, we reckon. So, for the moment, tracking him down has got to be our number-one priority. Asap, alright?’

Asap, my arse, Mulcahy muttered to himself. Clearly, Cassidy had been watching too many American cop shows and they’d gone
to his head. The man was a complete and utter tool. The sullenness, the smart-arse remarks, the fists-first approach: all the
redneck, bullshit attitude that gave the Gardai a bad name. Mulcahy looked up and saw the sergeant pointing at a large question
mark written on the whiteboard behind him, beneath which were scribbled various notes and key words.

‘In terms of ID-ing this guy, so far we’ve only got the one vague description: tallish, good-looking, brown hair – but that’s
under club lights – and wearing a stripy shirt. That’s all. The good news is that me and the boss popped into the GaGa last
night and managed to score some CCTV from around the right time. We went through a couple of hours’ worth this morning and
managed to locate Jesica’s gang of students entering the venue at 9.35 p.m.’ – he pointed over his shoulder at a video printout
pinned on the board – ‘and, also, the rest of them leaving, as they claimed, at about 12.55 a.m. But, so far, no luck on Jesica
departing with the mystery fella. That means, Whelan, you and me’ll have the delightful job of trawling through the rest of
that CCTV footage this morning.’

A skinny, wavy-haired detective in his mid-thirties, a cheap grey suit and what looked like a GAA tie, groaned loudly, and
got a poke in the back from Hanlon sitting behind him.

‘Before we move on,’ Brogan interrupted, ‘Donagh and Maura were round at the school earlier, mopping up statements from the
other kids – some of who were also at the club. Got anything to add to that, guys? Did any of the kids get a good look at
this fella?’

The two detectives shook their heads and launched into a dull summation of why everything they’d got there tallied exactly
with what had been reported already. Mulcahy was hardly even listening, still simmering over Healy, over Cassidy, over being
stuck on a shitty Sex Crimes case. Christ, he hadn’t been forced to deal with this kind of crap for years.

‘Okay now, lads.’ Cassidy was up at the board again. ‘Tasty as this guy may look, one thing we did manage to get from our
victim was that her attacker came out of nowhere, and apparently on the street. She only referred to him as, quote, “a man”,
which implies a stranger. Isn’t that right, Inspector Mulcahy?’

Mulcahy looked up, surprised to be consulted.

‘Uh, yes…’ he stumbled, ‘you could say that. Although, from the little the victim was able to give us, it’s hard to know whether
or not she got a proper look at him at all. One thing she did say was “everything went dark”, so maybe something was pulled
over her head. Anyway, her whole emphasis was on how sudden and brutal the attack was. She gave no sign of knowing who her
attacker was.’

‘Which would seem to rule out the fella she’d been snogging all night,’ Cassidy went on, various heads bobbing in
agreement. ‘But not necessarily. So, we need to find this guy, pronto.’

‘It might be a case of him not getting what he wanted,’ one of the others interjected.

‘It
might
.’ Cassidy cleared his throat and pointed at the medical folders again. ‘But something to bear in mind is that one of the
first things the medics pointed out to us was that the victim’s burns weren’t the result of flames, but the application to
the skin of a flat, almost certainly red-hot, metal surface, like a branding iron or something.’

There were one or two gasps as this piece of information struck home.

‘Technical, obviously, have to come back to us on that, but for the moment it’s pretty clear that this fella would’ve needed
some kind of equipment with him to inflict these kinds of injuries – a blowtorch at the very least, and a metal bar, or whatever,
to heat. Not the sort of thing everybody carries around with them in the wee hours. Also he’d have needed something to restrain
the victim. There’s severe bruising on the girl’s wrists and ankles consistent with being tied up or otherwise restrained.
Probably with cable ties or similar. None of which is easily done out in the open. And what about the screams? The girl’s
injuries are of a severity nobody could take quietly. Yet we’re told there’re no obvious signs that she was gagged. So, pinning
down the scene of the assault is vital. Who knows, maybe Technical will find something. The point is, this probably wasn’t
a random spot-and-drag-into-the-bushes job. All the signs are that the
attack, if not necessarily the victim, was carefully planned in advance.’

Brogan pushed herself away from the desk and again took centre stage.

‘Thanks, Andy. So, guys, apart from the CCTV and the guy she left the club with, a house-to-house on the Kilmacud Road has
to be our other big priority for today. An attack as violent as this… somebody’s got to have seen or heard something. Donagh,
you can organise that with the help of our two colleagues here from Dundrum. The station sergeant over there’s said we can
have some extra uniforms for today and tomorrow as well, so make the most of them. And remember – don’t give out any details,
especially about the girl’s nationality. A “vicious assault on a young woman”, that’s all we call it. Okay? Any questions?’

She obviously wasn’t expecting any, so it was with a look of strained patience that she pointed to one of the young uniformed
guards, a skinny, carrot-haired lad of barely twenty years, who’d raised a hand.

‘Was the girl raped, then?’ the uniform asked, self-conscious in front of all the detectives.

‘How long are you out of Templemore?’ Brogan asked him, meaning the training college in Tipperary that every candidate Garda
attended, on and off, for three years, before graduating.

‘Since April twelve months,’ he answered, nerves betraying more of his thick Kerry accent.

Brogan’s response was as brittle as ice. ‘Well, in that case,
Garda, you shouldn’t need me to tell you that Section 4 of the Criminal Law Rape Act, 1990, states unequivocally that any
penetration of the vagina, however slight, by any object held or manipulated by another person constitutes rape.
Any
object,’ she repeated emphatically. ‘I think that probably includes a red-hot metal bar, don’t you?’ She looked at each of
them in turn before continuing. ‘Which means that when we get the sick fucker who did this, he’s going down for life.’

As soon as everyone else had filed out of the room Brogan came over to Mulcahy. She didn’t smile or offer a hand in welcome. Then
again, he wasn’t exactly thrilled about being foisted on her himself, so what could he expect? What she said next, though,
surprised him.

‘Sorry about Cassidy back there. I’m sure he thought he was being funny.’

‘He’s not the only one pissed off about me being brought in on this.’

Mistaking his meaning, Brogan put up a hand to stop him. ‘You’re right, I’m not ecstatic, but let’s not get too hung up about
it, okay? Anyway, far as I’m concerned, liaison isn’t necessarily a bad thing. So long as you keep your Spanish pals off my
back, then I’ll be happy.’

‘They’re no more my pals than they are yours.’ Mulcahy bridled. ‘And if your hair-trigger sergeant hadn’t lost his rag, neither
of us would be in this mess.’

Again she put her hands up, this time a thin smile playing across her lips.

‘Okay, okay, so neither of us wants this. In which case, you stick to your brief, I’ll stick to mine, and we’ll put on a united
front whenever necessary.’

‘Fair enough,’ Mulcahy said.

She stopped, one arm crooked and resting on her hip, and looked around the room as if she’d rather be anywhere else in the
world. Then she came out with it: ‘While you’re here though, y’know, I thought we might as well make use of you.’

‘Did you have something specific in mind?’

‘Well, just from what you were saying yesterday, I was wondering if we shouldn’t be putting some emphasis on
who
she is, as being a possible motive.’

Mulcahy raised an eyebrow. ‘Who her father is, you mean?’

‘Yeah, just that as Interior Minister he must have a lot of enemies, right?’

‘In Spain, maybe,’ Mulcahy frowned. ‘But why would they do anything
here
, and to his daughter? Then leave no sign that it had to do with him, not her. A bit unlikely, don’t you think?’

‘Who knows?’ she shrugged. ‘I’m ruling nothing out at this stage. I’ll go whatever way the evidence takes me, so if we turn
up something to point us in that direction, we’ll go down that road. In the meantime, you could ask the Spanish police if
they have any leads or suspicions along those lines to pass them onto us. I’m sure you can cover all that as part of the liaison
brief.’

‘Sure,’ Mulcahy said. ‘Leave no stone unturned.’

She turned to move away, but then stopped and looked back at him.

‘Actually there was something else I was hoping you could do for me, as well. It’s a bit dull, though.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, smiling now. ‘Like I was saying yesterday, it’s a racing certainty that this guy’s done something, if not
exactly like this, then at least similar – less obvious, maybe – before. I’ve asked one of the lads to do me a PULSE trawl
of all reported violent sexual assaults in the greater Dublin area over the last year – everything that’s been logged either
locally or through us here. I take it you’ve been back long enough to have familiarised yourself with PULSE?’

‘Of course,’ Mulcahy nodded. The national crime database had been introduced since his posting to Madrid but he knew enough
about it to agree with those who said the acronym – Police Using Leading Systems Efficiently – would have been far more appropriate
as THROB, or Totally Hopeless Retarded Old Bollocks.

‘What we get back,’ Brogan continued, ‘is a feed of names, dates, places and offences, but there’ll be hundreds of them and
I need someone to sift through the lot, and see if anything chimes with this incident – in terms of MO, locality, weapon,
or whatever – and, if it does, to pull the file and do a follow-up. It’s a bit of a slog, and a one-man job really, but if
you fancy it, it’d be a big load off my back and it’ll give you a chance to get acquainted with the kind of things we do.’