Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (42 page)

She opened the door wider so that she could see into the living room. Because of the acute angle between the two doors, she could see only one of the armchairs, a lamp, and part of the window, but a hunched-up shadow was moving across the curtains, as if somebody was swaying from side to side.

She eased herself out of the bathroom. The front door was still ajar and a strong breeze was blowing in from the street outside. She could see the street lights flickering behind the trees, and the glistening of the water in the harbour. Dr Collins was lying on her back, both arms raised, with a bloody hole in her chest the size of Barney’s red dog bowl. She was staring up at the ceiling and her mouth was wide open as if she were just about to shout something. Katie’s white towelling robe was bundled up around her waist.

Katie crept towards her bedroom, keeping her back to the wall. Her discarded clothes were still strewn across the bed, but it wasn’t her clothes she was after. It was the flat TJS hip holster that was lying on top of her chest of drawers on the left-hand side of the door, with her nickel-plated Smith & Wesson .38 revolver.

She picked up the holster and gently tugged the gun out of it. As she did so, there was another knocking sound from the living room, and yet another cough, and then a man in a dark green sweater and black jeans suddenly stepped out into the hallway, carrying a double-barrelled shotgun in his left hand and all of Father Heaney’s notebooks in his right.

Katie cocked her revolver and pointed it at him, holding it in both hands.

‘
Drop it
!’ she shouted at him, almost screaming.

The man flinched, jerking up his right elbow so that all of the notebooks fell on to the floor. He tried to swing the shotgun around, but very awkwardly, and the barrel caught on the radiator on the opposite wall. Katie shot him, twice, in the chest.

The man toppled backwards, dropping his shotgun. He tried to keep his balance, but he stumbled over Dr Collins’s body and fell heavily on to the floor, both legs swinging up into the air together, like a rocking horse. His left hand scrabbled for his shotgun but Katie bent down, picked it up, and tossed it back along the hall, out of his reach.

‘Look – you’ve only fecking shot me,’ the man croaked at her. He looked down at his chest and there were two dark stains on his sweater. Blood was bubbling out of one of them, so Katie must have hit him in the lung.

Katie stared down at him unblinking, keeping her revolver pointed at his face. He had jet-black hair that had been cut lopsidedly, as if he had done it himself. He was of medium height, pudgy, with a roundish face and a nose like a pink broad bean.

Katie said, ‘I
know
you. Your hair’s a different colour, isn’t it? But it’s you all right. What the hell are you doing in my house?’

‘You’ve only fecking shot me,’ the man repeated.

‘You’ve just shot this woman,’ Katie snapped back at him. ‘You’ve killed her.’

‘I need a white van,’ the man begged her. His voice had become a thin, reedy rasp. ‘I’m bleeding to death here.’

‘You’re Brendan Doody, aren’t you?’ said Katie.

‘You’ve only fecking shot me. I’m dying.’

‘You’re Brendan Doody, aren’t you? I’ve seen your photo, Brendan. You’ve dyed your hair black but you can’t tell me it’s not you. What in the name of Jesus are you doing coming to my house with a shotgun?’

She went to the front door and closed it.

‘I was told to,’ said Brendan Doody.

‘Who told you to?’

‘I can’t tell you. He’ll kill me.’

‘You’re going to die anyway. What difference does it make?’

Blood slid out of the side of Brendan Doody’s mouth, and he coughed. ‘I need a white van. I’m drowning here. I’m drowning in my own blood.’

‘Who sent you here, Brendan?’

Brendan Doody took three bubbly breaths, and then he wheezed, ‘The monsignor sent me. He said I had to shoot you as soon as you opened the door. But it wasn’t you, was it?’

‘Did you shoot Father Lowery, too, and Detective Sergeant O’Rourke?’

Long, concentrated pause. Then, ‘O’Rourke? Was that his name? I’m sorry. Please. I didn’t know what his name was. He shouldn’t have followed us. Please, I’m dying here.’

‘Why did you do it, Brendan?’

‘The monsignor said I had to.’

‘Did he tell you why?’

‘He said that if I didn’t he would call for the guards and tell them it was me who killed Father Heaney and then I’d have to go to the Mountjoy for the rest of my life.’

‘But it
wasn’t
you who killed Father Heaney, was it?’

Brendan Doody shook his head, and coughed up more blood. ‘I said that it was but it wasn’t.’

‘But why would you do that?’

‘The monsignor said that I had to help the bishop because the bishop was in terrible trouble and it was the bishop who made sure that I was taken in and taken care of when I was a small kid, like. He dictated me a letter to say that it was me who killed Father Heaney and then I had to say that I was going to kill myself, too, but I didn’t. One of the priests found me a room in Grawn and I had to dye my hair and tell everybody that my name was Tommy Murphy.’

All of this came out in a bubbling slur that Katie could barely understand. But there was a panicky look in Brendan Doody’s eyes and she could tell that he was prepared to tell her everything if she would only call for an ambulance and save his life.

‘The
bishop
?’ she said. ‘What kind of trouble are we talking about?’

‘Please,’ he pleaded with her. ‘I don’t know what kind of trouble. I truly, truly don’t.’

‘But wait a minute. Which bishop do you mean? They took you in at St Patrick’s long before Bishop Mahoney was appointed. You don’t mean Bishop
Kerrigan
?’

Brendan Doody nodded. His eyes kept rolling up into his head and each breath was shorter and shorter.

‘But Bishop Kerrigan died years ago,’ Katie persisted. ‘How could he be in trouble?’

‘Not dead,’ said Brendan Doody.

‘He’s not dead? Then where is he?’

‘Dripsey. Big house. Near the monument. I did some decorating there.’

‘And that’s where he is now?’

Brendan Doody nodded again. ‘I’m supposed to go there now. Meet the monsignor. He said it’s the time.’

‘It’s the time? The time for what?’

‘Please.’

Brendan Doody’s head dropped back on to the carpet and his eyelids half closed. He was still breathing, however, and when Katie knelt beside him she could feel a pulse in his neck. She stepped carefully around Dr Collins’s body and went into the living room to call for an ambulance. After that she called headquarters and asked to be patched through to Inspector Fennessy.

‘Liam?’ She told him what had happened and Inspector Fennessy simply said, ‘Jesus.’

‘Brendan Doody said Bishop Kerrigan is still alive and kicking and that he lives in a house near Godfrey’s Cross in Dripsey.’

‘Come here to me? I don’t believe it!’

‘That’s what he said. He also said that he was supposed to go there after shooting me and meet up with Monsignor Kelly. “
It’s the time
,” he said, although he didn’t tell me
what
time. But if Monsignor Kelly has gone there, there’s a fair chance that our Fidelio characters have gone there, too. In fact, they probably took him there.’

‘This is pure amazing. How do you want to play it?’

‘Get your team up to Dripsey and see if you can identify the property. I expect that any one of the locals will tell you. There’s only a post office and a couple of pubs and one of those is closed.’

‘So what do we do once we’ve located it?’

‘Nothing at all. Just keep an eye on any comings and goings until I can get there. I have to stay here and wait for the paramedics and the technical boys and some back-up, but as soon as they’ve arrived I’ll be with you.’

She went back into the hallway. Brendan Doody was still alive, although she didn’t know for how much longer. She stood looking down at him and for the first time in her life she didn’t feel any remorse at having had to shoot a man, or guilt that she had questioned him before calling for the paramedics. He had shot and killed Jimmy O’Rourke in cold blood; and Dr Collins, too; and Father Lowery. It was no excuse that he was mentally slow and emotionally vulnerable, or that Monsignor Kelly had exploited him for his own distorted purposes.

She saw flashing blue lights outside and it was only when she stepped over Dr Collins and saw herself in the hall mirror that she realized that she was still completely naked.

By the time Katie arrived in Dripsey it was almost twenty past eleven. Dripsey was a small village in the hilly countryside twenty kilometres to the west of Cork City, on a tributary of the River Lee –
Druipseach
– ‘the muddy river’. The tributary had once provided the power for a paper mill and a woollen mill, but both factories had long gone to ruin.

A very fine rain was falling, more like a veil of wet chiffon than rain. The windows of the Weigh Inn pub were still brightly lit, but the Lee Valley Inn was in darkness. Katie drove around the left-hand curve in the road, which was the social centre of the village, and headed further west to Godfrey’s Cross.

It was here in 1921 that an IRA ambush had been foiled by the British army after a tip-off from a local woman, and a monument had later been erected to the IRA men who had been captured or wounded, and those who had later been tried and sentenced to death.

Katie turned into the car park beside the monument. Four squad cars were parked at the far end, under the overhanging trees, as well as two Garda vans.

She climbed out of her car and Inspector Fennessy came across to meet her, accompanied by a uniformed sergeant. Inspector Fennessy was wearing a black raincoat with the collar turned up and he looked tired and strained, like a worn-out schoolmaster.

‘We’ve found the house so. It wasn’t difficult. Everybody in the Weigh Inn knew it, but all of them think that some retired writer lives there. None of them seem to have a clue that it’s Bishop Kerrigan.’

Katie buttoned up her coat. ‘Considering that Bishop Kerrigan is supposed to have gone to meet his maker years ago, I’m not surprised. I googled him and he should be eighty-seven by now, if it really
is
him.’

‘We carried out a quick reconnoitre,’ Inspector Fennessy told her. ‘There are three vehicles parked in the driveway – a grey Ford Transit van and two saloon cars, a Toyota and an Opel. I have two men keeping an eye on the house, and about five minutes ago they reported that the downstairs lights are still on, as well as the staircase and two of the upstairs rooms, but they have not yet seen anybody inside.’

Katie nodded and said, ‘All right. Normally I’d want to wait this out, at least until daylight, but if they have Father ó Súllibháin in there, and they’re torturing him, we need to go in without any messing. Monsignor Kelly could be in there, too, but we don’t have any idea whether he went with them willingly or unwillingly.’

‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Inspector Fennessy.

‘The plan is we drive straight in there, block off their vehicles and surround the house front, back and sides. We give them one chance to open the front door, and batter it open if they don’t.’

‘Nothing too complicated, then?’ said Inspector Fennessy, with the faintest hint of sarcasm. He had always been one of the subtlest of Katie’s team, preferring to set up elaborate stings to catch the criminals he was after, with listening devices and phone taps and misleading text messages. Battering down doors was not really his style.

They assembled all of the gardaí together beside the monument, twenty-four of them in all, and Katie explained what she wanted them to do.

‘These people are violent and sadistic and very unpredictable and we have no clear idea of what their agenda is. Because of that, we need to get in there fast and restrain everybody immediately, no matter who they are. We can separate the perpetrators from the victims once we have them all locked down.

‘We believe that Bishop Conor Kerrigan may be inside, as well as Monsignor Kevin Kelly, one of the vicars general. I want them restrained, too, just as quickly and securely as the others. Whatever they say to you – even if they threaten you with excommunication – don’t hesitate.’

The men all looked so grim that she had to add, ‘Excommunication, that was a joke.’

‘Oh, right,’ they said, but none of them laughed.

The Garda sergeant divided his men into groups – seven of them to cover the back of the house, four on either side, and the remaining eleven to enter by the front door, either by invitation or by force.

They were walking back to their cars when Inspector Fennessy’s mobile phone rang. He answered it and said, ‘Yes. Yes. Well, how about that?’

‘What is it?’ Katie asked him.

He closed his phone. ‘They found the van with the crozier on it, in a country pub car park not far from Macroom. Empty, and partly burned out. It seems like your instinct was correct, ma’am. Sorry if I doubted it.’

Katie laid a hand on his sleeve and gave him a smile. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’m too flah’d out to feel smug.’

They left the monument car park in a convoy, with Katie following Inspector Fennessy. He took a left at the cross and drove down the winding, unlit road – which, if they had followed it for another eight kilometres, would have taken them all the way back down to the River Lee. After less than a kilometre, however, he turned right, in between two tall stone pillars and a pair of rusted iron gates that looked as if nobody had closed them in decades.

They jolted along a narrow, gravelled driveway between overgrown bushes, which lashed at the sides of their vehicles. The rain was so fine that Katie’s windscreen wipers kept up a monotonous rubbery squeaking. She was beginning to feel more than physically tired: she felt emotionally exhausted too, almost as if she could cry.

After half a kilometre, a large grey stone house appeared among the trees. It was one of the grand nineteenth-century houses that had been built for the owners of the Dripsey paper mill, with a mansard roof and clusters of barley-sugar chimneys and a wide porch with twisted pillars. As they slewed to a halt right in front of the porch, two gardaí came out of the shadows on the left-hand side of the house and jogged over to join them.