Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (29 page)

‘Reverend
Bis
?’ asked Katie. ‘What kind of a name is that?’

‘I have no idea. But
bis
means “twice” in Latin.’

‘All right, then, what did this Reverend Twice want from him?’

‘Apparently, the Reverend Bis was deeply impressed with Father Heaney’s music-teaching ability. Among many other accolades, St Anthony’s had been voted top primary school choir for three successive years at the Cork Choral Festival, and they had been given the honour of singing for Pope John Paul II when he visited Ireland in 1979.

‘Anyhow, Father Heaney went along to this secret meeting, which took place in a large private house in Lovers’ Walk in Montenotte. Apart from Father Heaney and the Reverend Bis, the only other people present were two young priests, neither of whom spoke a single word throughout the entire meeting, and a middle-aged woman who didn’t say anything either but took shorthand notes of what was being proposed.’

‘Which was?’

‘That Father Heaney should take an extended leave of absence from St Anthony’s and create a new choir at St Joseph’s Orphanage, from scratch.’

‘Did the Reverend Bis say
why
they wanted to create a new choir?’

‘No, not in so many words. But he made it very clear that it would have to be the finest choir that the diocese had ever known, even better than St Anthony’s. His exact words were “
a choir to delight the ears of God
”.’

‘That sounds the same as like what your Pope Sixtus was after,’ put in Detective O’Donovan. ‘Don’t tell me this Reverend Bis was trying to cajole God into making a guest appearance in Cork. You can imagine it, can’t you, God turning up in Knocka? “Aight, God? How’s it hangin’, kid?”‘

Stephen Keenan turned around and said, ‘You can laugh all you want, Patrick, but it does seem as if that
was
his intention. I’ll tell you this, though – I have the distinct feeling from what Father Heaney has written here that the Reverend Bis was not your principal instigator of this plan to form a choir. Father Heaney refers to him several times as
cursor
, which in Latin doesn’t mean the little arrow on your PC screen; it means “messenger”.’

‘So it was somebody else who wanted to put this choir together, and the Reverend Bis was simply a go-between?’

‘I’d say it was.’

‘So what was the outcome of this secret meeting?’ Katie asked him. ‘Presumably Father Heaney agreed to do it.’

‘Oh, yes! In fact, he was so inspired that he went home and prayed all night without sleeping to thank God for choosing him to be His vessel. The next day he wrote a hymn called “
Vox Angelus
–
The Voice of an Angel”. Composed it on the harp, because that was his instrument of choice, although he played violin and cello and piano, too.’

‘He played the
harp
?’

‘Oh, yes. He mentions it several times. He thought the harp was the musical equivalent of the wind blowing through angels’ wings.’

‘There was no sign of a harp in his room, was there, when we searched it?’ said Detective O’Donovan.

‘He explains that himself,’ Stephen Keenan told them. ‘His harp was damaged by the removal men when he moved to his new lodgings, and he couldn’t afford to have it repaired and restrung, so he left it in his sister’s garage in Ballincollig.’

Katie glanced across at Detective O’Donovan, who nodded to show her that he knew what she expected him to do – drive out to Ballincollig and bring the harp back to headquarters for fingerprinting, as well as authenticating what Father Heaney had written in his notebooks.

‘Three other priests were brought in to organize the St Joseph’s Orphanage Choir,’ Stephen Keenan went on, and he counted them off on his fingers. ‘Father O’Gara, Father Quinlan and Father ó Súllabháin. Each one of them had outstanding musical expertise – each different, but each complementary. According to Father Heaney, Father ó Súllabháin is one of the best voice coaches in Ireland when it comes to sacred music. He trained the North Monastery Boys’ Choir before they recorded their album
I Love All Beauteous Things
. Father Quinlan plays woodwind – flute and bassoon – and Father Heaney writes that he’s also a highly gifted arranger, both of ancient and modern music.’

‘
Was
a highly gifted arranger,’ Katie corrected him. She couldn’t help visualizing that enormous rat, struggling gorily out of Father Quinlan’s stomach.

‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry, ‘ said Stephen Keenan, and he flustered and dropped some of his papers on the floor.

‘What about Father O’Gara?’

‘Father O’Gara is a brilliant organist, so Father Heaney says; and an organist is essential for a top-flight choir. However, he was not very easy-going. Prickly, or
thorny
, if I’ve translated his Latin correctly.
Iratus
. He didn’t tolerate any misbehaviour and he was never slow to use the pandybat.’

‘I see. So these four priests were brought together by this mysterious Reverend Bis to develop a special choir at St Joseph’s Orphanage. An exceptional choir,
a choir to delight the ears of God
.’

‘But why St Joseph’s, for feck’s sake?’ asked Detective O’Donovan. ‘Have you seen the kids there, even today – and God knows what they were like thirty years ago. Underweight, most of them, or obese from too many chips. Rotten teeth, if they had any left. Accents like fecking chainsaws. Mouthy, smelly, ill-disciplined, Jesus. Why would you choose
them
to put a choir together?’

Katie sat back in her chair and pressed her fingertips to her forehead like a fortune-teller. She had
seen
this, right from the very beginning, but she had been far too slow in fitting all of the pieces together.

‘What’s the story, ma’am?’ said Detective O’Donovan, in bewilderment.

‘They chose them, Patrick,
because
they were orphans, not in spite of it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They chose them because nobody else in the whole world cared about them. Their parents were either separated or abusive or constantly langered or simply couldn’t look after them. The social services were overworked and underpaid and couldn’t wait to get them off their hands. Those boys were totally dependent on the priests and nuns at St Joseph’s for everything. Food, drink, shelter, warmth, and most of all
affection
. That’s why they were much less resistant than any other boys might have been to what the four priests who organized that choir wanted to do to them.’

Detective O’Donovan blinked at her. ‘You mean, molest them?’

Katie fiercely shook her head. ‘They didn’t molest them. Well, they might have done, but they did something much worse than that. They castrated them. Do you know, I’ve been listening to that
Elements
CD in my car for weeks, thinking how beautiful the singing was, and
of course
it’s beautiful. It’s the same singing they had in the papal choir in the sixteenth century.

‘It’s the castrati. The orphan boys at St Joseph’s were chosen for the choir by Father Heaney and Father Quinlan and Father O’Gara and Father ó Súllabháin, and they all had their little balls cut off so that they could sing like angels.’

‘It’s shocking, isn’t it?’ said Stephen Keenan, closing his folder. ‘But after reading these notebooks I think that’s only the possible conclusion you can come to. You have to read between the lines, but it’s all in here. Father Heaney doesn’t once use the word “castrate”. Instead, he refers to
purificationis
, or “ritualized purification”, but I’m sure that by that he means castration. He gives times and dates of when they did it – sixteen boys in all. He doesn’t name them, and he gives no clue to their identities, but I imagine the orphanage will have records.’

‘But this happened in 1982,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘These lads have had over thirty years to get their revenge. Why in the name of Jesus have they decided to do it
now
?’

Katie stood up and went to the window. The hooded crows were still clustered on top of the multi-storey car park, their black feathers fluttering in the wind. There must have been at least twenty of them. She always felt that they were waiting for her, tattered but patient, because they knew something that she didn’t, or couldn’t, even guess at.

‘Perhaps it was hearing that
Elements
CD,’ she suggested. ‘Like, you can’t go anywhere just at the moment without hearing it, can you? They were even playing it in Brown Thomas the other day. Maybe it brought it all back. Or maybe it was all this recent publicity about child abuse by priests – that might have triggered them off.’

Stephen Keenan nodded. ‘You could be right. All those stories in the papers, they’ve really opened up some cans of worms, haven’t they? One of my best friends told me only last week that when he was nine years old he was systematically molested by his parish priest for over a year. He burst into tears when he told me –
cried
, like he was still a small boy. I didn’t know what to say to him. “It’s all over, Bryan, forget about it”? For him –
no
– it never will be over. The shame lasts for the rest of your life. The thought that you should have said no.’

Katie said, ‘Being abused – God – that’s bad enough. But can you imagine how difficult it would be to come out in public and say that you’d been castrated? It’s not something you’d want your friends to know, is it, even if they’ve always thought that you were different.’

‘What happens now, investigation-wise?’ asked Detective O’Donovan. ‘I’m taking it that we don’t rush out and arrest every man with a squeaky voice and no stubble.’

‘We have to have a long and serious think about strategy, that’s what we have to do now,’ Katie told him. ‘After all, we’re not just dealing with two present-day murders, are we? We’re also dealing with sixteen cases of serious bodily harm, even if they did happen thirty years ago. Stephen – I’ll have to ask you leave us now. We have some confidential things we need to talk about, and although I
do
trust you...’

Stephen Keenan gave her a small, round-shouldered bow. ‘That’s all right, superintendent. I understand perfectly. And I promise you that my lips are sealed about all of this translation.’

‘Of course they are,’ said Katie. ‘Otherwise I’ll have to have you arrested. But that was grand work you did there and we’ll pay you for it. Send me an invoice.’

She called an emergency meeting in the conference room, with Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll, Inspector Fennessy and seven detectives, including O’Donovan and Horgan, as well as fifteen uniformed gardaí. Only Sergeant O’Rourke was absent: he had been unable to contact Father Lowery by phone, so he had driven down to Rathbarry to see if he could find him.

Katie very quickly summed up what they had deduced from Stephen Keenan’s translation. Then she said, ‘So far as we know, our perpetrator is still holding Father O’Gara aka Gerry O’Dwyer. No body has been dumped anywhere yet, so we have to assume that he’s still alive, even if he’s being tortured.

‘It’s essential that we don’t alert the perpetrator to the fact that we’ve identified his motive. As I said before, I still believe that he
wants
us to catch him, eventually, because he believes that his cause is just and he wants to be able to explain publicly why he took his revenge on these particular priests.

‘If there’s one thing we can be relieved about, it’s that he probably intends to kill only those four priests who organized St Joseph’s Orphanage Choir – not every single priest in Cork who was suspected of abuse. But we don’t want him to kill even one more priest, whatever that priest might have done. We don’t have any idea where he’s keeping Father O’Gara. I’m just praying that he isn’t hurting him too badly. But at the moment, Father ó Súllabháin is staying at St Dominic’s Retreat Centre in Montenotte, meditating. I’ve detailed six guards to give him round-the-clock protection, so he should be safe enough – for now, anyhow.

‘I’ll be going up to Montenotte myself to interview Father ó Súllabháin directly after this briefing. He must have some idea who our perpetrator might be. As far as we can tell from Father Heaney’s notebooks, he and his brother priests, they castrated those boys. The whole experience must have been traumatic for all of them, priests and boys alike. Don’t tell me that Father ó Súllabháin can’t remember any of their names – especially those who protested.’

‘They
all
would have protested, wouldn’t they?’ asked Detective Horgan. ‘I can tell you for sure that I’d lose the head if somebody tried to chop off
my
caideogs.’

A cattle truck had turned over on the Croppy Road south of Clonakilty town centre, and the traffic on the N71 was backed up for more than three kilometres. Not only that, it had started to rain again, cold and hard.

Sergeant O’Rourke overtook the long line of traffic on the right-hand side, until he was flagged down by a garda in a waterproof cape. He could see the filthy old truck resting on its side across the road, completely blocking it from one grass verge to the other. It looked as two of its front tyres had burst, because they were hanging down in rubbery rags, as if the truck driver had run over some witches. Seven or eight bewildered-looking cows were standing around, twitching their heads sporadically to fend off the rain.

At least three more cattle were sprawled in ungainly positions on the tarmac, either dying or dead already, one with its legs in the air. A tall fellow in a putty-coloured raincoat and a brown trilby hat was crouching beside one of them. He looked like an IRA gunman from the 1920s, but he was the local vet, more than likely. Three gardaí stood beside him with their arms folded and watched him work, with rain dripping from the peaks of their caps.

The garda in the waterproof cape tapped on Sergeant O’Rourke’s window and he wound it down.

‘You’ll have to turn around and go to the back of the line, sir. You can’t jump the queue like that. There’s other people been waiting here for nearly an hour.’