Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (6 page)

‘How’s it going, then?’ he asked her, with his mouth full.

‘Too soon to say yet. I think the autopsy will tell us a lot more.’

‘Would you believe that I’ve just this minute had a phone call from the diocese offices on Redemption Road? The Right Reverend Monsignor Kevin Kelly, vicar general.’

‘Oh, yes? What did
he
want?’

‘He says that he might have solved our murder for us.’

‘Really? I know that some clergy are supposed to be able to work miracles, but how exactly has he managed to do that?’

‘He preferred not to tell me over the phone, but respectfully asked if we could pay him a visit at the diocese office.’

‘Oh, well, fair play to him. If he asked us
respectfully
. And if he really has solved it, that will save us quite a bit of trouble, won’t it?’

Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll finished his pasty and smacked his hands together to get rid of the crumbs. ‘You never know, Katie. Stranger things have happened. About six or seven years ago I was totally stumped by a stabbing I was looking into, in Sunday’s Well. I had no witnesses, no weapon, and no forensics at all. But as soon as the victim’s name was printed in the paper, a priest rang me up and said that by chance he had got a crossed line when he was calling his mother, and he had overheard the dead fellow arguing with another fellow, and this other fellow had threatened to come around and stick a knife in him. The priest only caught the other fellow’s nickname, which was Tazzer, but since the dead fellow had only ever known one fellow whose nickname was Tazzer, I was able to collar him in about half an hour flat.’

‘And the priest was given a reward, I hope?’

‘No. The budget didn’t run to it. But he’ll get his reward in heaven, one day, you can be sure of that.’

As he regained consciousness, Father Quinlan became aware that he could faintly hear singing – the high, sweet, penetrating voices of St Joseph’s Orphanage Choir, singing ‘
Ave Maria
’.

He opened his eyes to see a triangle of sunshine on the ceiling. His vision was blurry and he felt as if he had been beaten all over. His nose was throbbing and blocked up with dried blood, his shoulders ached, and his ribs were so tender that he had to breathe in quick, shallow gasps. Both of his knees were painfully swollen, and even his toes felt smashed, as if somebody had repeatedly stamped on his feet.

He grunted and tried to sit up but he had been lashed with nylon washing line to the single bed he was lying on, and he could manage only to lift his head two or three inches. Apart from that, his neck was so stiff that he could hold it up only for a few seconds.

He was lying in an upstairs bedroom with grubby whitewashed walls and a floor covered in worn-out dark green carpet. Apart from the bed, the only other furniture was a sagging brown leather armchair. The windows were old-fashioned sashes, and the plaster on the ceiling was flaking and covered in hairline cracks, so he could tell that he was in an old, nineteenth-century building. Straining his head up a second time, he saw the flat pastel-coloured facades of shop buildings on the opposite side of the street, and the painted letters ‘
Tom Murphy Outfitters
’. He recognized at once that he was on the third storey of a shop or office on the north side of Patrick Street, Cork’s main thoroughfare.

‘Dear God,’ he breathed, through split lips, and let his head drop back. Judging by the sunlight, it must be about eleven o’clock in the morning. He could remember yesterday evening, stepping out of the sacristy and locking the door and saying goodnight to Mrs O’Malley. He could remember thinking that there was somebody standing in the shadows close to his car, but he couldn’t think what had happened to him after that. He couldn’t even remember being beaten, although he must have been, and viciously.

From one of the floors below, he heard somebody galumphing down bare uncarpeted stairs, two or three at a time, and he immediately called out, ‘Hey! Hey there! Is anyone there? Will somebody please help me?’

He heard a door slam, but then he could hear nothing but the beeping of traffic in the road outside, and the clattering of feet on the pavement, and the tremulous strains of ‘
Ave Maria
’.

‘Will somebody please help me?’ he repeated, so softly that nobody could have heard him except God or one of his angels. Then he said a prayer.

‘
Domine Iesu, dimitte nobis debita nostra, salva nos ab igne inferiori, perduc in caelum omnes animas, praesertim eas quae misericordiae tuae maxime indigent
.

‘O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are most in need of your mercy.’

Nearly an hour passed. The singing from St Joseph’s Orphanage Choir went on and on – the ‘
Kyrie
’, the ‘
Credo
’, the ‘
Agnus Dei
’, and then the ‘
Ave Maria
’ again. Father Quinlan found it deeply disturbing, rather than uplifting, as if it were being played for the express purpose of frightening him. Of course
Elements
was massively popular, especially here in Ireland, and it was being played everywhere, in shops, in restaurants, in pubs even, but what unsettled him was the way that it was being played over and over.

‘
Help
!’ he shouted out, again and again, even though he doubted that anybody could hear him – or, even if they could, that they would come to set him free.

But without warning, the door handle rattled and the bedroom door was opened up. From where he was lying, he was unable to see who had just stepped in, but he twisted his head around and said, ‘Please! Please help me, whoever you are!’

There was a moment’s silence, and then he heard the same hoarse voice that he had heard in the church car park the previous night. ‘It’s
help
you’re asking for, is it?’

‘What do you want?’ asked Father Quinlan. ‘Are you trying to punish me, is that it?’

‘Oh, I think you know only too well what I want,’ the man replied. ‘If justice is a cake, of sorts, I want my slice of it.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

The man hesitated for a few seconds longer, and then came around and stood close to the side of the bed so that Father Quinlan could see him. He was wearing the same face covering with the eyeholes and the same pointed hat that he had worn the night before. He was bulky and tall, about six foot two or three, with a bulging belly that hung over the belt of his baggy grey trousers. He was wearing a shapeless grey jacket with sloping shoulders, and a grey flannel shirt. He kept wiping his hands together, and Father Quinlan felt that he had a soft and creepy air about him, a
dampness
, as if the palms of his hands and the creases between his thighs were constantly sweaty.

His hat was well over eighteen inches tall, and it looked as if it had been made out of frayed grey silk glued on to cardboard, with two pointed earflaps. On the front it was marked with a black symbol that resembled a question mark, but which could equally have been a billhook, or a farmer’s sickle.

‘Who are you?’ Father Quinlan asked him.

The man produced an odd, high-pitched snorting noise in one nostril. ‘It doesn’t matter who I am, father. It’s all going to end up in the same bucket, no matter what.’

‘You sound so much like little Charlie Dooley. Are you Charlie Dooley?’

‘That’s not a name I recognize, father. The Grey Mullet Man, that’s what they call me these days. Need some justice done? Need a score settled? Still haunted by some shameful memory that never seems to leave you go, no matter what? Send for the Grey Mullet Man, that’s what. The Grey Mullet Man will do the business for you for sure and for certain, guaranteed.’

‘Was it you who mangled me like this?’ asked Father Quinlan.

‘Oh. You don’t think you deserved it?’

‘I have confessed and paid penance for every sin that I might have committed, venial or mortal. I am in a state of grace.’

‘You seriously believe that, do you?’

‘Yes, my son, I do. I made my peace with God a long time ago, and I am quite content that I have been granted His forgiveness. Now, what do you want from me? You have hurt me severely, you know you have, and I am pleading with you now to untie me and let me go. I think that you have broken at least three of my ribs and I need to get to the hospital.’

All the time Father Quinlan was saying this, the Grey Mullet Man was slowly shaking his head, his pointed hat tilting from side to side with the regularity of a metronome. When he had finished, the Grey Mullet Man said, ‘Not a chance, father. There’s something altogether different in store for you, I’m afraid.’

‘Then may the Lord have mercy on your soul,’ croaked Father Quinlan.

The Grey Mullet Man made the sign of the cross. ‘And on yours, father,’ he replied.

With that, he took out a large clasp knife and opened it with a snap. Father Quinlan immediately closed his eyes tight and began to pray. Whatever was going to happen to him now, he begged forgiveness for any transgressions that he may have overlooked and for which he had not done penance, and any offence that he may have unwittingly caused to others, but most of all he begged not to suffer any more pain.

Strangely, into his mind came a memory of standing in his mother’s kitchen on a summer’s afternoon. He couldn’t have been more than four or five. His mother was mixing a large bowl of barmbrack fruit loaf. She had stirred in the caster sugar and the candied fruit peel, and had covered the bowl with a teacloth to give it time to rise.

He lifted one corner of the teacloth, dipped his finger into the pale brown mixture, and licked it. Then he dipped it in again. He could still taste the sweetness of the uncooked bread flour and milk. He could still see the sun shining in through the pots of geraniums on the kitchen windowsill. He could hear his mother walk into the kitchen behind him, the sound of her shoes on the quarry-tiled floor. She snapped, ‘Sacred heart of Jesus!’ and then she slapped him so hard around the side of the head that he fell over and hit his head on the table leg. All he could hear was a loud singing noise, and the blurry voice of his mother shouting at him. All he could feel was pain.

He started to cry, and as he lay on this narrow bed with the Grey Mullet Man standing over him, he started to sob yet again, more for his childhood self than the bruised and miserable old man that he was this morning.

‘Ah, why are you crying there, father?’ asked the Grey Mullet Man, hoarsely. He was leaning over him so closely that Father Quinlan could smell the onions on his breath. At the same time, he was cutting through the washing-line cord that was keeping Father Quinlan tied to the bed, and dragging it loose.

‘There, you’re free so,’ he said, and Father Quinlan opened his eyes. The Grey Mullet Man was looping the cord around his elbow as he did so, the way that women wind wool.

‘You’re letting me go?’ asked Father Quinlan, painfully easing himself into a sitting position and dabbing at his wet eyes with his fingertips.

‘Oh, nothing quite as merciful as that, father. You’ll see.’

He took hold of Father Quinlan’s left elbow and helped him to stand up. Father Quinlan took one step forward, but the pain from his broken ribs was like being stabbed with a large kitchen knife, and he had to stop for a moment, gasping for breath.

‘I can’t – I’m not sure that I can – perhaps I had better lie down again.’

‘Of course you can, father. We’re only going through to the next room, like. You can manage that. A man of dedication such as yourself.’

‘I really can’t – I’ll have to—’

But the Grey Mullet Man pulled him roughly towards the door – so roughly that Father Quinlan howled out in pain and his knees buckled.

‘
I can’t I can’t I can’t oh Jesus I can’t
—!’

The Grey Mullet Man yanked him up on to his feet again, and this time the pain was so excruciating that the room darkened and he felt that he was going to faint.

‘You should never say
can’t
, father. That’s what you always taught your boys, wasn’t it? Never say
can’t
, always say
can
. “Do you think Our Lord Jesus said
can’t
when he was toting the cross up to Calvary?” That’s what you used to say to your boys, wasn’t it, father? “Pain brings you closer to God.”’

‘Please,’ wept Father Quinlan.

The Grey Mullet Man ignored him and dragged him through the door and into the next room, ducking his head as he did so. This was a damp-smelling bathroom, with a streaky green linoleum-covered floor and flaking green walls. On the left-hand side stood a huge old-fashioned bathtub with lion’s-claw feet and taps that looked as if they had been taken from the engine room of the
Titanic
. The inside of the bath was streaked with grey and rust-coloured grime, and the taps were continually dripping.

Next to the bath stood a toilet with a broken mahogany seat and a washbasin with a mirror above it. The mirror was fogged over, but it reflected the blue sky outside and the clouds that moved across it, like a dim picture of freedom and happiness soon to be lost forever.

In the ceiling, in between the two sash windows, a pulley had been fastened, with a long rope through it that dangled on to the floor.

‘You’re not going to hang me?’ said Father Quinlan, in horror.

‘Not in the way that you’re thinking of, father. But in a manner of speaking. You’ve heard of the
strappado
?’

‘No, no, no, you can’t do that to me.’

‘Oh, I think I can so. How else do you think I can get you to reflect on what you did, and to see it for the heresy that it really was?’

‘It was never heresy! It never was! It was all done for the greater glory of God, you know that! It was all done to open up the doors of heaven, so that God’s light could shine on us directly!’

The Grey Mullet Man pushed his face so close that Father Quinlan couldn’t focus on him. The smell of raw onions on his breath was overwhelming, enough to make Father Quinlan start weeping again. ‘It was not done for the greater glory of God, father. It was all done for the greater glory of we-all-fecking-know-who. What
you
have to do, father, is admit it.’