The Priest Page 6

  ‘Which would seem to rule out the fella she’d been snogging all night,’ Cassidy went on, various heads bobbing in agreement. ‘But not necessarily. So, we need to find this guy, pronto.’

  ‘It might be a case of him not getting what he wanted,’ one of the others interjected.

  ‘It might.’ Cassidy cleared his throat and pointed at the medical folders again. ‘But something to bear in mind is that one of the first things the medics pointed out to us was that the victim’s burns weren’t the result of flames, but the application to the skin of a flat, almost certainly red-hot, metal surface, like a branding iron or something.’

  There were one or two gasps as this piece of information struck home.

  ‘Technical, obviously, have to come back to us on that, but for the moment it’s pretty clear that this fella would’ve needed some kind of equipment with him to inflict these kinds of injuries – a blowtorch at the very least, and a metal bar, or whatever, to heat. Not the sort of thing everybody carries around with them in the wee hours. Also he’d have needed something to restrain the victim. There’s severe bruising on the girl’s wrists and ankles consistent with being tied up or otherwise restrained. Probably with cable ties or similar. None of which is easily done out in the open. And what about the screams? The girl’s injuries are of a severity nobody could take quietly. Yet we’re told there’re no obvious signs that she was gagged. So, pinning down the scene of the assault is vital. Who knows, maybe Technical will find something. The point is, this probably wasn’t a random spot-and-drag-into-the-bushes job. All the signs are that the attack, if not necessarily the victim, was carefully planned in advance.’

  Brogan pushed herself away from the desk and again took centre stage.

  ‘Thanks, Andy. So, guys, apart from the CCTV and the guy she left the club with, a house-to-house on the Kilmacud Road has to be our other big priority for today. An attack as violent as this… somebody’s got to have seen or heard something. Donagh, you can organise that with the help of our two colleagues here from Dundrum. The station sergeant over there’s said we can have some extra uniforms for today and tomorrow as well, so make the most of them. And remember – don’t give out any details, especially about the girl’s nationality. A “vicious assault on a young woman”, that’s all we call it. Okay? Any questions?’

  She obviously wasn’t expecting any, so it was with a look of strained patience that she pointed to one of the young uniformed guards, a skinny, carrot-haired lad of barely twenty years, who’d raised a hand.

  ‘Was the girl raped, then?’ the uniform asked, self-conscious in front of all the detectives.

  ‘How long are you out of Templemore?’ Brogan asked him, meaning the training college in Tipperary that every candidate Garda attended, on and off, for three years, before graduating.

  ‘Since April twelve months,’ he answered, nerves betraying more of his thick Kerry accent.

  Brogan’s response was as brittle as ice. ‘Well, in that case, Garda, you shouldn’t need me to tell you that Section 4 of the Criminal Law Rape Act, 1990, states unequivocally that any penetration of the vagina, however slight, by any object held or manipulated by another person constitutes rape. Any object,’ she repeated emphatically. ‘I think that probably includes a red-hot metal bar, don’t you?’ She looked at each of them in turn before continuing. ‘Which means that when we get the sick fucker who did this, he’s going down for life.’

  As soon as everyone else had filed out of the room Brogan came over to Mulcahy. She didn’t smile or offer a hand in welcome. Then again, he wasn’t exactly thrilled about being foisted on her himself, so what could he expect? What she said next, though, surprised him.

  ‘Sorry about Cassidy back there. I’m sure he thought he was being funny.’

  ‘He’s not the only one pissed off about me being brought in on this.’

  Mistaking his meaning, Brogan put up a hand to stop him. ‘You’re right, I’m not ecstatic, but let’s not get too hung up about it, okay? Anyway, far as I’m concerned, liaison isn’t necessarily a bad thing. So long as you keep your Spanish pals off my back, then I’ll be happy.’

  ‘They’re no more my pals than they are yours.’ Mulcahy bridled. ‘And if your hair-trigger sergeant hadn’t lost his rag, neither of us would be in this mess.’

  Again she put her hands up, this time a thin smile playing across her lips.

  ‘Okay, okay, so neither of us wants this. In which case, you stick to your brief, I’ll stick to mine, and we’ll put on a united front whenever necessary.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Mulcahy said.

  She stopped, one arm crooked and resting on her hip, and looked around the room as if she’d rather be anywhere else in the world. Then she came out with it: ‘While you’re here though, y’know, I thought we might as well make use of you.’

  ‘Did you have something specific in mind?’

  ‘Well, just from what you were saying yesterday, I was wondering if we shouldn’t be putting some emphasis on who she is, as being a possible motive.’

  Mulcahy raised an eyebrow. ‘Who her father is, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah, just that as Interior Minister he must have a lot of enemies, right?’

  ‘In Spain, maybe,’ Mulcahy frowned. ‘But why would they do anything here, and to his daughter? Then leave no sign that it had to do with him, not her. A bit unlikely, don’t you think?’

  ‘Who knows?’ she shrugged. ‘I’m ruling nothing out at this stage. I’ll go whatever way the evidence takes me, so if we turn up something to point us in that direction, we’ll go down that road. In the meantime, you could ask the Spanish police if they have any leads or suspicions along those lines to pass them onto us. I’m sure you can cover all that as part of the liaison brief.’

  ‘Sure,’ Mulcahy said. ‘Leave no stone unturned.’

  She turned to move away, but then stopped and looked back at him.

  ‘Actually there was something else I was hoping you could do for me, as well. It’s a bit dull, though.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, smiling now. ‘Like I was saying yesterday, it’s a racing certainty that this guy’s done something, if not exactly like this, then at least similar – less obvious, maybe – before. I’ve asked one of the lads to do me a PULSE trawl of all reported violent sexual assaults in the greater Dublin area over the last year – everything that’s been logged either locally or through us here. I take it you’ve been back long enough to have familiarised yourself with PULSE?’

  ‘Of course,’ Mulcahy nodded. The national crime database had been introduced since his posting to Madrid but he knew enough about it to agree with those who said the acronym – Police Using Leading Systems Efficiently – would have been far more appropriate as THROB, or Totally Hopeless Retarded Old Bollocks.

  ‘What we get back,’ Brogan continued, ‘is a feed of names, dates, places and offences, but there’ll be hundreds of them and I need someone to sift through the lot, and see if anything chimes with this incident – in terms of MO, locality, weapon, or whatever – and, if it does, to pull the file and do a follow-up. It’s a bit of a slog, and a one-man job really, but if you fancy it, it’d be a big load off my back and it’ll give you a chance to get acquainted with the kind of things we do.’

  Mulcahy nodded. It sounded boring as hell but at least it would keep him occupied and out of her way for now.

  ‘So, let’s find you somewhere to work.’

  Siobhan bent sideways from the waist as she gave the strands of her hair one last vigorous rub with the towel, before shaking them out and straightening herself up again. Twisting the towel into a turban, she paused for a moment in front of the wardrobe mirror, pulling the white bathrobe open and letting her eyes roam over her body, critically, assessing just how much damage these last few days’ absence from the gym had done. She pinched her waist and cursed as a couple of centimetres of flesh slipped between her fingers. Not as bad as it might have been, but she wa
s unwilling to let herself off the hook entirely. She’d have to go at it harder tomorrow.

  She had just finished a long and reviving session in the gym downstairs: fifteen minutes each on the rowing machine and bike, followed by a quick fifty lengths in the pool. Then she’d had a gorgeous, energising sweat in the steam room, which was always empty mid-morning. Actually, the basement gym was the main reason she put up with paying the astronomical service charge on her flat. Having it there was the only way she could be sure of exercising regularly. Now, after a shower, she felt fully tuned up, tingling for the new day.

  As she began tugging on her white Louise Kennedy sweater, the soft cotton slipping over her arms, she felt herself momentarily back in the swimming pool, gliding through the warm water, her back arched, her thighs feeling the burn. Fifty lengths was getting way too easy. The pool was tiny, barely long enough for her to fit five strokes in, so God alone only knew what it would be like for somebody tall. Unbidden, an image of Mike Mulcahy – his big arms making long rhythmic strokes in a slow crawl across open water – drifted into her imagination and found a welcome there.

  She pulled the jumper over her turbaned head, flicked the tail end of the towel out, readjusted the delicate little silver cross and chain she always wore and took another close look at herself in the mirror. Surely she couldn’t have scared him off with that crack about being free for the rest of the night? He wasn’t that much of a prig. A bit reserved, maybe, but she felt something else was at the root of that. She remembered the way his team had all looked up to him that night she’d gone out on the drugs raid with them, how he’d kept them calm, reining in their excitement until just before the go. Real respect was what those guys had for him, and that wasn’t won easily. There was something about him, definitely, even if he’d been hiding it well last night.

  Siobhan unwound the towel from her head, pushing the thought away while shaking out her hair and reaching for the hairdryer. Mondays were supposed to be still the weekend for hacks who flogged their guts out on Saturdays, working for a Sunday paper. But she hardly ever took the whole day off and, as usual, had a busy afternoon planned. First, lunch with TV presenter Ryan Tubridy, who’d finally succumbed to her request for an interview. Then an afternoon in the Herald office beckoned, setting up her diary for the week. She liked it there on Mondays, when usually just herself and Paddy Griffin were on the desk. It was the only time the place was ever quiet enough for her to hear herself think.

  And later, drinks in the Pembroke with Vincent Bishop. Again. He’d probably tell her when she got there that he’d booked a table for dinner as well. That he’d like her to join him. Like the last time. Once more Mulcahy’s face rose in her imagination, that smile twisting the corners of his mouth. When he’d asked her about whether her sources ever expected anything in return? Christ, he’d hit the nail on the head with that one.

  Siobhan had been introduced to Bishop a few months earlier by a friend at a Sport Ireland function, and already she’d come to regard him as a bottomless well of invaluable information. She’d heard of him previously, of course. One of Ireland’s new perma-rich, unblunted even by the recession. She knew how he’d sold his father’s dance-hall business in the seventies to found the Bishop insurance group – ‘Irish security for Irish people’ – and made millions, selling that in turn to found a slew of staggeringly successful internet and media-based concerns. In his spare time, wherever he found that, he was well known as one of the main drivers of the Irish art boom in the early 2000s – a dogged collector with a fierce reputation for always acquiring what he wanted, no matter what the price.

  In person he was polite but reserved. Guarded. A bit weird to look at. Tall, pale and bone thin, lank black hair – dyed probably – limp handshake, limp everything, probably. Widowed for years, he was a bit awkward, a bit clammy with her at first but seemed to take a shine all the same, and opened up to her when she started getting a bit gossipy. Maybe he sensed she had no interest in his money. His contacts, on the other hand… Christ, but they were phenomenal, and across the board in business, the arts, sport and politics. How he did it, she had no idea, but he seemed particularly well up on all the dirt. And he knew its value. So they had that much in common, and they’d met up fairly regularly since. Not on dates. As far as she’d been concerned, he just wanted someone to have an in-the-know yak with. But that was then.

  She turned off the hairdryer, threw it on the bed and walked through to the living room, straight to the small desk where her telephone was, leaned over and pressed the play button on the answerphone. From the cheap grey plastic speaker came a brief hiss and crackle, like the start of an old 45rpm record, then a single strum of a guitar, and an eerie disembodied voice started warbling.

  It was Roy Orbison, singing ‘In Dreams’, though she hadn’t really taken that in when she first played the message. It had seemed a lot funnier when she got home last night, a bit tipsy from the drinks with Mulcahy and a little deflated by the way things had gone with him. Or, more accurately, hadn’t. To walk in, press a button and hear that wash of music fill the room. Just the song. Nothing else. No message. Christ, talk about from one extreme to the other. Hilarious. She’d just laughed it off and tottered away to bed – and she went out like a light.

  Now it was beginning to creep her out. First thing this morning, it crowded in on her waking thoughts, going round and round in her head – not in a good way. She’d never liked Orbison’s music. Her father used to have one of his LPs and as a little girl, something about the cover picture had freaked her out. She could see it now, that image of a puffy-faced old man in dark glasses and weird black hair, trying to look like someone half his age, trying to look cool. She shuddered at it still. As for ‘In Dreams’. Jesus. Not in hers. That was for sure.

  Similar stuff had happened a couple of times recently. She’d hardly noticed. A call at work, some other Orbison warble. She hadn’t even listened to it, had thought it was some cold-calling ad crap and hung up. Then on her mobile, a song on voicemail: ‘Pretty Woman’. She’d been intrigued enough to listen to the end. But it had just clicked off. Again, she’d thought nothing of it, really. Some joker taking the piss, maybe, at most. But she’d had second thoughts when Bishop started coming over all courtly during dinner the next time she saw him, saying how nice she’d looked walking down the street and handing her the Gary Maloney story virtually gift-wrapped. Like some old-style suitor offering his lady a token of his esteem. Up till then she’d thought he was getting his kicks just by seeing some of the stuff he’d told her about appear in print. But now?

  Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it had nothing at all to do with Bishop. Maybe the other stuff was just coincidence. But that would be even creepier in some ways. Who the hell else could have got her home number? She was ex-directory and only a close circle of friends and family had that number. She hadn’t given it to Bishop. But everyone knew money like his could buy such information easily. And somehow the whole clammy, courtly, passive-aggressiveness of those songs seemed to fit him to a T. It had to be him. The only question left was what the hell was she going to do about it – without causing a rift? Because in any terms other than romantic, she needed Bishop more than he needed her. Gary Maloney wasn’t the only story he’d tipped her the wink on, and she was sure there were lots more there just for the asking. If she handled this the right way.

  Siobhan shook her head in grim amusement as Orbison came to his vaguely masturbatory climax and the answerphone clicked off. Maybe that was it. Maybe the right way was just to ignore it. What harm could an old song on an answering machine do to her, anyway? All she had to do was press a button, delete it, and it was gone. Compared to that, the chance of getting another cracking story from Bishop had to be worth any little awkwardness that might come up between them. And if he tried to take it any further, well, she could handle that, too, when the time came, she was sure.

  ‘I thought you might like your own space,’ Brogan said, opening the door onto a tiny
office off the incident room. Space was hardly the appropriate word for this airless, windowless grey box with a metal desk and chair all but crowbarred into it.

  ‘Thanks… I think,’ Mulcahy said.

  Brogan wrinkled her nose, then stepped back to let him pass. ‘It’s the best we can do.’

  Mulcahy took a breath and reminded himself again that he was the interloper here. It was all a far cry from the sumptuous EU-funded office he’d worked out of in Madrid. Nothing but the best there, from the carpets and computer equipment all the way up to the expensive artwork hanging in the public areas. He’d laughed so often at the jaw-drop reactions of visiting Garda colleagues as they crossed the threshold of the Europol building on Recoletos, but he’d grown used to it in the end. Now he’d have to pinch himself if he ever went back.

  ‘Not to worry,’ he said. ‘I’ve worked in worse. I’ll leave the door open to keep the oxygen level up and to make sure I don’t miss anything going on out there.’

  Brogan didn’t look any happier with his friendly approach, but he caught her smiling again as he squeezed awkwardly round the desk.

  ‘Is there somewhere I can put these?’ he asked, indicating two cardboard boxes that, apart from the computer terminal and phone, were the only things on the desk.

  Brogan put a hand to her mouth and coughed. ‘Actually, that’s some stuff we dug out from our own paper archive, for you to have a look through until the results come in from PULSE. They’re all sexual assaults from the last year or so. That lot on the right are the ones it’s been possible to initiate some kind of investigative action on. The positive-outcome cases, where we made an arrest and charged a suspect, are in the small red folder at the bottom. And the big pile on the left comprises reports that have only been investigated locally, or referred to us – for statistical purposes only – as being unactionable, whether due to complete lack of evidence or simply not enough to justify expenditure of scant resources.’