Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (33 page)

‘What three fellows?’ asked Katie.

‘I’m not supposed to say. Oh, God. I’m really not supposed to say.’

‘What? Why? Who told you that you couldn’t?’

‘Friar Tiernan himself. Friar Tiernan, he’s the director. After they’d gone away those three fellows, he turned around and saw me trimming the rose bushes and he came down here himself and told me not to tell anybody what I’d just seen. Nobody at all. He said that even if I did, nobody would believe me, just like nobody believes that I see my twin brother. And now I’ve gone and told
you
.’

Katie laid a reassuring hand on his sleeve. ‘It’s all right, Tómas. I’m not just anybody, I’m a police detective. You’re allowed to tell me. In fact, it’s your civic duty and you may even get a reward for it.’

‘But supposing Friar Tiernan finds out?’ said the gardener. He was growing extremely agitated, tugging at the fingers of his gardening gloves as if he had already been dismissed and told to take them off.

‘Friar Tiernan is not going to find out unless I tell him and I promise you that I won’t. Do you understand me? Cross my heart and hope to die. Now, you’re very good at describing people – what were they like, these three fellows?’

The gardener kept on tugging at his gloves and looked deeply miserable. ‘I saw only the backs of them, like. One of them was a real big fellow with curly yellow hair and one them wasn’t so big but he was still biggish, you know, and he had dark hair. The third one of them I could hardly see at all on account of the van door was open and he was mostly hidden behind it.’

‘They had a van?’

The gardener nodded. ‘They came in a van and they drove it backwards all the way up the driveway, right up to the entrance. They opened the doors and then they closed the doors and drove off again.’

‘And what did the van look like, Tómas?’

‘I shouldn’t be telling you this. I’ll be done.’

Katie reached inside her jacket and took out a manila envelope with a picture of the black van with the crozier painted on the back.

‘Is this the van that you saw?’

The gardener said nothing, but looked at the picture, and then stared at Katie, and nodded so furiously that she was afraid that his head might fly off into the rose bushes.

She walked quickly back to the house, where Detective O’Donovan and three uniformed gardaí were waiting for her.

‘Well?’ asked Detective O’Donovan, with a sloping smile. ‘Did you get any good tips about how to grow bananas?’

‘You can laugh,’ Katie told him. ‘But if you want the truth about anything at all, always ask the simplest person you can find. They won’t have any agenda and they won’t try to embroider the facts to impress you and they’ll always remember things just the way they were.’

She paused, and then she said, decisively, ‘Benedict Tiernan, OP, was giving us a whole lot of BS, I’m sure of it. Our perpetrator came here in his van this morning and I’ll bet you money that he took Father ó Súllabháin away with him, and that for some reason Friar Tiernan gave him his full co-operation.’

Detective O’Donovan opened and closed his mouth, and then he said, ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’

‘Not at all.’

‘And what? You’re relying on what some mong of a gardener told you?’

‘I’m relying on my own instincts, if you must know.’

‘So what are we going to do? Arrest Friar Tiernan on suspicion of being an accessory to kidnap?’

‘We’re going to leave Friar Tiernan well alone for now. First of all, I want to find out who drives that van. Haven’t you heard from Jimmy yet? Surely he must have found Father Lowery by now.’

‘I’ve been calling his mobile, but he’s not answering. Neither is Father Lowery. I called St Michael’s church in Rathbarry and they’re not answering either.’

Katie checked her watch. ‘He should have reported back by now. Let’s give him another half-hour anyway.’ She looked back towards the retreat. ‘We’re being given the runaround here, Patrick, but I know who I need to talk to next.’

Gradually the window darkened, although the hydrangea kept on tapping against it,
tappity-tap, tappity-tap
, like a ghost who had long since given up hope of being let in, but who continued tapping all the same.

Is there anybody there? said the traveller, knocking at the moonlit door
.

Gerry opened his eyes. He was suffering such pain that he found it hard to believe that he was still alive. Surely you could die from pain alone. Surely there was a way in which you could wish yourself dead.
Dear God in heaven, please stop my heart. Please stop it now, so that I no longer have to go through this unbearable agony
.

But of course God had turned His back on him, and no matter how desperately he pleaded, God would pretend that He hadn’t heard.

The room grew gloomier and gloomier, until it was almost completely dark. Gerry rose in and out of consciousness, like a swimmer dipping up and down in the ocean, except that he felt that the surface was on fire, as if it was spread with blazing oil, and whenever he reached it he was blinded and seared and deafened by his own screaming.

Without warning, the room filled up with dazzling white light. He tried to raise his head to see what was happening, but he didn’t have the strength, and the tendons in his neck were too tight.
Please, Mary, Mother
of God, let it be an angel, come to carry me away
.

‘
Help me
,’ he said, inside his head; but not out loud.

It wasn’t an angel. It was the Grey Mullet Man, holding up a hurricane lamp. He was still wearing his mask and his pointed hat, but now he was covered in a long red apron that smelled strongly of rubber, and his forearms were bare, and covered in tattoos. He stood at Gerry’s bedside for a long time without saying anything, staring through his eyeholes at Gerry’s black and scarlet scalp and then turning to look at the shrivelled remains of his penis, like a burned-out indoor firework.

‘How was
that
for a penance?’ he said. ‘The burning bush, no less! Do you think that the good Lord has seen fit to forgive you yet?’

Gerry stared up at him, but it took all of his concentration to cope with his pain and he could hardly think, let alone decide if he had been redeemed.

The Grey Mullet Man held the hurricane lamp closer, so that Gerry could feel its heat against his cheek and hear its snake-like hissing. ‘I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re nearly there, but not quite, like Christ on his way to Calvary, carrying His cross. You still have some way to go, and you don’t have Simon the Cyrenian to carry your cross the rest of the way for you, I’m afraid. Not that I believe that Christ dropped the cross at all. It doesn’t say anywhere in the New Testament that Christ dropped the cross. In fact, it doesn’t say anywhere that He even carried it a single inch. But let’s pretend that He did, like; and now you’re carrying
your
cross, just the same.’

‘John nineteen, verse seventeen,’ Gerry croaked at him.

‘Ah, there you are!’ said the Grey Mullet Man, in triumph. ‘I knew the priest in you would come out at last! No good denying it any longer, Father O’Gara! But you could still be wrong, you know, about Christ dropping the cross. It depends on your translation of the Greek word
opisthen
, for “after”. Did Simon carry the cross
after
Jesus had carried it, like
after
in time? Or did he carry it
after
him, meaning behind?’

The Grey Mullet Man waited, and then he said, ‘You don’t look like you fecking care, to tell you the God’s-honest truth, do you? So let’s be getting on with it, shall we? Let’s get on and bring your penance to its glorious conclusion. Lads, are you there?’

The man in the bishop’s mitre appeared; and, close behind him, the white expressionless face of the man in the pierrot mask was looking over his shoulder.

Oh, Jesus
, thought Gerry.
What are they going to do to me now? I’m already dying, so why don’t they just leave me alone? Shock or septicaemia or dehydration or hypothermia – one or all of them will get me in the end. I don’t need to go through any more torture
.
Please
.

The Grey Mullet Man carefully set the hurricane lamp down on the plastic-topped kitchen chair.

‘By the way,’ he said, snapping his fingers, ‘I thought you’d be pleased to know that we have the last of you now. Father Heaney, Father Quinlan – yourself, of course – and now we have Father ó Súllabháin.’

‘He’s
here
?’ asked Gerry.

The Grey Mullet Man shook his head, his mask flapping from side to side. ‘Oh, no. It wouldn’t have been appropriate to bring him here. Not a fitting fate for him at all. To be honest with you, father, I didn’t want to go and bring him in just yet. We still haven’t finished with you, have we? And here we are, having to go out and catch ourselves another one. The last one, I’m happy to say.

‘The trouble is, the schickalony have been a little quicker off the mark than we thought they would. So we had to make sure that they didn’t mess things up for us.’

He took a craft knife out of his pocket and then leaned over to cut the black nylon straps that were holding Gerry’s wrists against the bedhead. Gerry felt an overwhelming urge to throttle him, but he couldn’t even feel his arms, let alone lift them up and seize the Grey Mullet Man by the throat.

The Grey Mullet Man dropped his craft knife back in his pocket and picked up a coil of shiny steel wire. ‘Recognize this? Fourteen-gauge piano wire. Thin enough to hurt, father, but not too thin to cut through your skin. Very popular with some of your lot for self-flagellation, and why not? You fecking deserve all the flagellation you can give yourselves, you perverts.’

The man in the pierrot mask came forward, took hold of Gerry’s left arm, and pulled him over until he was lying on his right side. He held him there, gripping his sleeve hard to prevent him from falling back. Behind him, the Grey Mullet Man unwound a long piece of piano wire and clipped it off with pliers. Then he pulled Gerry’s wrists together and bound them tight, around and around, until Gerry thought that he was going to cut his hands off altogether. Fortunately, he was so numb that he felt scarcely any more pain than he was feeling already. His hands felt ice-cold, and nothing else.

Once his wrists were wired together, the man in the pierrot mask let him drop back on to the bedsprings. They made a jouncing, squeaky sound, like they would have done if a couple had been making love on them.

Now the man in the bishop’s mitre lifted Gerry’s legs as far apart as possible, and the Grey Mullet Man wired each of his ankles to the bed frame. His legs had been shapely and muscular when he played rugby, but now they were lean and white as chicken skin, and streaked with dark hair.

‘There now,’ said the Grey Mullet Man, tossing the coil of wire to one side. ‘All lashed tight and ready for the gelding. First, though, let’s hear you singing for mercy.’

He went back to the kitchen chair and picked up a jar of clear honey. He unscrewed the lid, dipped a tablespoon into it, and came up to Gerry and held it over his lips. Some of it dribbled on to his chin and ran stickily down the side of his neck.

‘Here you are, Father O’Gara. You know it’s good for the larynx. You’ll be singing sweeter than Pavarotti before you know it. Oh, I forgot. Pavarotti’s dead. Never mind, so will you be, soon enough.’

‘Mmmffff,’ said Gerry, and kept his lips tightly closed.

‘Come on, swallow it,’ insisted the Grey Mullet Man.

Gerry still kept his lips closed, so the Grey Mullet Man nodded to the man in the pierrot mask and he gripped Gerry’s nose between finger and thumb so that Gerry couldn’t breathe. When at last he opened his mouth, the Grey Mullet Man rammed the spoon into his mouth so hard that he broke one of his front teeth in half, and he swallowed the fragment of tooth along with the honey. He choked, coughed, gagged, and nearly vomited, but the Grey Mullet Man dug another spoonful of honey out of the jar and forced it between his lips.

‘Now then,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t so difficult, father, was it? So, let’s hear you sing for forgiveness. In your time, one-two-three,
la-a-a-a-a
!’

Gerry could do nothing but cough, and cough, and in the end he coughed so much that he let out a loud, cackling retch. The Grey Mullet Man said, ‘Jesus, I’ll be chugging myself in a moment if you go on like that. That’s not what I was looking for at all. I wanted sweet, holy music. I wanted a song of redemption, not the sound of someone talking to Hughie.’

He started to sing, in a high, eerie voice – the same voice that Gerry had heard singing ‘The Rose of Allendale’:

Hallelujah, God with us!

Hope restored and death undone!

Sinners saved and captives freed!

Beautiful redemption song!

Gerry retched again. There was nothing in his stomach but honey and saliva and phlegm, so he couldn’t vomit.

‘I give up,’ said the Grey Mullet Man. ‘I fecking give up. Let’s forget the sinners saved and the stone rolled back and get down to business.’

There was very little left of Gerry’s penis apart from a blackened rag that looked like a burned wash leather, surrounded by a cluster of fluid-filled blisters of differing sizes. His scrotum had been scorched red-raw, but the man in the pierrot mask was still able to grasp it in his left hand and squeeze it until Gerry’s testicles bulged. Gerry thought that he might have screamed again, but he wasn’t certain. Everything seemed like one continuous scream. Even the bright white light from the hurricane lamp seemed like a scream, rather than a light.

The man in the pierrot mask handed the steel-bladed
castra
tori
to the man in the bishop’s mitre. The man in the bishop’s mitre held them up in front of Gerry’s face, chopping them open and shut so that Gerry understood what was about to be done to him.

‘
I know you
,
you gowls
,’ he breathed. ‘
I know all of your names
.’