Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (26 page)

‘It obviously did at one time, anyhow,’ said Katie.

‘I can’t say that I ever saw it around the city.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t really notice it unless you were looking for it specially,’ Detective O’Donovan put in. ‘They’ve blacked out the lettering on the side, and they’ve changed the number plate, but for some reason they never got around to painting out more than one of the two croziers.’

‘Maybe they ran out of paint,’ suggested Detective Horgan.

Sergeant O’Rourke said, ‘Maybe they did. Stupider things have happened. You remember that fellow who killed a horse and cut off its legs so that it would fit into the back seat of his car and drove along Grand Parade with its head sticking out of the window? “He’s like a dog, see, he likes the wind in his face,” that’s what he said when we stopped him.’

‘So, what’s the plan of action now?’ asked Inspector Fennessy.

‘A visit to Redemption Road, I think, don’t you?’ said Katie. ‘Let’s get right back to the root of this. Liam – I’d like you to come with me. I think I’m going to need your calculating mind.’

Katie wanted to catch Monsignor Kelly by surprise, so she drove to Redemption Road without calling his secretary first to make an appointment. A hard rain was rattling down and she and Inspector Fennessy ran across the car park outside the diocesan buildings with their collars turned up. They bounded up the stairs to Monsignor Kelly’s office, and Katie gave a single sharp knock on his secretary’s door before they walked straight in.

Monsignor Kelly’s secretary was a washed-out looking nun with a pointy, pink-tinged nose. She had a half-finished chicken sandwich on her desk but her mouth was so small that Katie wondered how she managed to get any words out, let alone eat anything.

Katie held up her badge. ‘Detective Superintendent Maguire. I’d like to see the monsignor, please.’

‘Oh, I see. Oh. I don’t know,’ flustered the nun, and her nose blushed even pinker. ‘Is the monsignor expecting you?’

‘No,’ said Katie.

The nun looked across at the open diary on her desk and frowned very hard, as if frowning alone could magically fill up this afternoon’s appointments.

‘I’m afraid he’s not available. Not just now, anyhow.’

Before she could protest, Katie came around her desk and peered over at the diary for herself. ‘
Five p.m. Golf with Councillor Murphy at Fota, weather permitting
. That’s all he’s got written down here. And what’s the time now? Only just half past twelve. He’s got a full four and a half hours free to talk to us. And besides that, it’s raining buckets, so weather is
not
permitting.’

‘I’m sorry, superintendent. It’s not written down here but just at the moment he’s holding a media briefing.’

‘A
media
briefing? A media briefing about what? He knows that he’s not supposed to talk to the media about the case we’re working on. Not without consulting me first.’

‘I’m not sure at all what it’s about,’ said the nun. She was becoming increasingly agitated, and kept tapping her fingers softly on her desk, as if she were trying to convey a warning in Morse code to the man in the room behind her.

‘Well, who does he have in there? The
Examiner
? RTÉ? I didn’t see any TV vans parked outside.’

Katie made a move toward Monsignor Kelly’s heavy oak door, but the nun sprang up from her desk and intercepted her before she could knock, grasping the door handle possessively.

‘I’ll see if he can spare you a few minutes,’ she said. She reminded Katie of those thin, bruised, browbeaten wives who panic whenever the gardaí ask them where their husbands are, and swear to God that they haven’t seen them in weeks, even though they’re hiding under the bed in the children’s room, or crouching in the bottom of the airing cupboard with a fitted sheet over their heads.

‘This is a murder inquiry,’ Katie told her. ‘The monsignor has to spare us as much time as we require.’

The nun said nothing, but rapped at the door. ‘Monsignor Kelly,’ she called, weakly. There was no reply, so she rapped a second time.

‘Monsignor Kelly – Detective Superintendent Maguire is here. She says that she needs to see you!’

There was a long silence, but just before the nun could rap a third time, they heard the key turn very quietly in the door, and Monsignor Kelly say, ‘
Come
!’

The nun opened the door and they all stepped into Monsignor Kelly’s office. It was deeply gloomy in there, because none of the lights had been switched on, not even the desk lamp, even though the sky outside the window was as dark as slate.

Monsignor Kelly was standing a little way behind his desk in what Katie thought was an oddly forced pose, partly defensive and partly aggressive, with his right hand on his hip, and his left hand brushing back his hair. He looked like a man who has stumbled while getting off a bus, and hasn’t quite retained his balance and his dignity.

Besides Monsignor Kelly, however, there was nobody else in the room – only the faintly saintly portrait of Bishop Kerrigan.

‘
Katie
,’ said Monsignor Kelly, trying to sound warm. He came forward and held out his hand. ‘I would have appreciated it if you had made an appointment, you know. It would have helped me to give you all the attention you deserve.’

Katie thought,
I can read that teeth-clenching smile, mon
signor
.
You think I deserve shite
. She looked around the office and said, ‘So – where are the media?’

‘Media?’

‘The media. Your secretary here told us that you were holding a media briefing. By the way, this is Inspector Liam Fennessy. I don’t think you’ve met him before.’

‘Media briefing...’ said Monsignor Kelly, his hand held over his mouth as if he didn’t quite understand what the words meant.

But at that moment a side door next to the bookshelves opened up and Ciara Clare from the
Catholic Recorder
stepped out, with the sound of a toilet flushing behind her. When Katie had first met her up at Ballyhooly – on the morning they had found Father Heaney’s body in the Blackwater – Ciara Clare had been wearing a large grey poncho to conceal the size of her breasts. Today she was wearing a tight V-necked sweater, which dramatized her enormous bosom with broad red and purple stripes. She was also wearing a very short purple skirt and shiny purple stilettos. Her curly black hair was messily pinned up with barrettes and Katie noticed that her cranberry-coloured lipstick had been freshly applied. The beauty spot on her upper lip was more noticeable than ever.

‘Well, well,’ said Katie. ‘Nice to meet you again, Ciara. I’m guessing that Ms Clare here is the media that you’ve been briefing, monsignor?’

‘A reporter from the
Catholic Recorder
comes once every week for a private press conference,’ Monsignor Kelly snapped at her. ‘After all, the
Recorder
is the only organ through which the diocese can speak directly to the public at large.’

Katie was tempted to make a sarcastic comment about organs, but held her tongue. Instead, she said, ‘I need to ask you some questions about some new evidence that we’ve come up with, monsignor. If you don’t mind, Ciara?’

Ciara Clare picked up a long purple cardigan from the back of a chair and said, in her distinctive lisp, ‘I’ll call you later, monsignor, if that’s all right, so that you can finish giving me all the details about that church youth festival at Clonmacnoise.’

She said it in such a flat, tele-prompt way that Katie immediately knew that she was trying to give Monsignor Kelly an alibi. Katie would have bet money that he hadn’t even
started
to tell her about the church youth festival at Clonmacnoise, or any other diocesan events, for that matter. She could
smell
it, and it was all cat’s malogian.

‘Please, take a seat,’ said Monsignor Kelly, once Ciara Clare had left the room and closed the door behind her.

‘This won’t take long,’ Katie told him. She opened her briefcase and took out a print of the CSS demonstration photograph.

Monsignor Kelly studied the photograph and then gave Katie another tight smile and shook his head. ‘I remember that day, Katie. Not with any pleasure, I might tell you. The so-called survivors were extremely aggressive.’

‘Well, maybe they had some justification, but that’s beside the point. I’d like to know about this van parked in the car park.’

Monsignor Kelly studied the photograph again. ‘Yes... it’s the van we used to use for all kinds of odd messages around the diocese. Shopping, or picking up clothing donations, for example. Or carrying sports equipment. Or taking furniture from one church to another. You know the kind of thing.’

‘Do you know what happened to it?’

Monsignor Kelly narrowed his eyes. ‘What
happened
to it? What are you suggesting? How should I know what happened to it?’

‘It isn’t still owned by the diocese, is it?’

‘Well, no. As far as I know, we got rid of it about three or four years ago. We have a new van now, white. In fact, we have two of them. I presume this van was sold in part exchange.’

‘Who would know for sure?’

‘Well, Father Lowery would know. He’s in charge of transport and logistics. But does it
matter
what happened to it?’

‘Yes, it does, monsignor. It matters very much.’

‘May I ask why?’

‘I can’t tell you just yet, I’m afraid. But I may come back to you about it. Is Father Lowery based here? The sooner we can talk to him the better.’

Monsignor Kelly clasped his hands together. Katie was trying hard to read his expression, but all she could tell was that his mind was working at very high speed.

‘Father Lowery
does
have an office here, yes, but I’m not at all sure that he’s going to be here today. There’s a charity car boot sale at St Michael’s Church in Rathbarry and he’s more than likely there. Besides... I think that protocol demands that I inform the bishop first that you want to talk to him. The bishop is not at all happy about An Garda Síochána questioning his clergy at random.’

‘There’s nothing random about my questioning, monsignor,’ said Katie. ‘This is a major murder case and the only protocol that comes into it is the protocol of finding out who killed and castrated Father Heaney and Father Quinlan before he does it to anybody else.’

Monsignor Kelly gave her that teeth-clenching grin again. ‘Very well. I’ll talk to the bishop directly and then I’ll call you if I may and tell you where you can find Father Lowery. I won’t delay, I promise.’

Katie went for the door, with Inspector Fennessy following close behind her.

‘By the way,’ Monsignor Kelly called out, ‘any news yet of Brendan Doody?’

‘Nothing so far. If he
has
committed suicide, as he threatened in his letter, he’s certainly done it somewhere that’s very hard to find.’

‘He’ll be found one day, Katie,’ said Monsignor Kelly. ‘And on that day I’ll be proved to have been right about him, you mark my words.’

Katie had opened the door and was looking at the pink-nosed nun, who was sitting behind her desk with a look of extreme agitation on her face.
You poor girl
, she thought.
When we’re gone you’re really going to catch it because you didn’t manage to turn us away
.

On the way back to Anglesea Street it stopped raining, although the streets were still wet enough to make their tyres sizzle.

‘So, what do you think, Liam?’ Katie asked Inspector Fennessy, as they crossed the river. The sun was shining so brightly from the surface of the water that she had to fold down her sun visor.

‘I’m thinking that not everybody in the clergy appears to be taking much notice of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin,’ said Inspector Fennessy, slyly. Katie knew what he was getting at. During a recent ordination ceremony in Dublin, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin had resoundingly reaffirmed the church’s commitment to priestly celibacy.

‘I suppose it depends on your definition of celibacy,’ said Katie. ‘I think we’re probably talking Monica Lewinsky here rather than going the whole hog.’

‘On the other hand, she may have been doing nothing more than using his facilities,’ Inspector Fennessy put in, in a tone of voice that suggested that he didn’t believe it for a moment.

Katie shook her head. ‘Number one, his door was locked, which tells us that whatever the good monsignor was doing he didn’t want to be interrupted. Why should he be worried about being interrupted if he was doing nothing more than telling a reporter from the
Catholic Recorder
about a teenage festival in Clonmacnoise?

‘Number two, Ciara Clare had freshened up her lipstick, which suggests that she might have been doing something to mess it up. There was no food or drink in the room, so she couldn’t have smudged it on a cup or a sandwich.

‘Number three, and I’ll bet you didn’t notice this, the buttons on the front of Monsignor Kelly’s soutane were wrongly fastened, right in the middle. In his hurry to make himself decent, he had missed out one buttonhole.’

Inspector Fennessy let out a ‘
pfff
!’ of amusement. ‘So Monsignor Kelly is a dirty old vicar general. But where does that lead us to?’

‘I’m not sure, but it tells us a lot about his character. And there’s no doubt at all that there’s something about this priest killing that he’s very anxious for us not to know.’

‘I think the van could be key to this,’ said Inspector Fennessy. ‘When you asked him what had happened to it, he was far too shifty. It’s my guess that he knows exactly what happened to it and he was simply stonewalling us.’

‘I’m with you there, Liam. I think I can go back to this media conference and tell them that we’ve found a critical new clue. Meanwhile, see if you can locate Father Lowery. He must have a mobile, or you could try phoning St Michael’s. I don’t want you involving the local gardaí. You know what will happen if you do, they’ll get all over-excited and one of them will blab what we’re up to. If you can’t get hold of Father Lowery on the phone, you’ll just have send somebody down to Rathbarry. Jimmy O’Rourke maybe. It won’t take him more than an hour.’