‘He’s a big shite, that’s what he is,’ Patrick said.
‘I’ll burn the bastard with one of them frigging candles. Burn him in the goolies,’ Fitzy said. His voice echoed off the walls.
Sally heard the fear crawling around in their breathing, smelled it oozing from their skin. It manifested itself so painfully clear, she believed she could see it, touch it even. She listened at the door, hoping the priest hadn’t followed them. She didn’t like the dark.
‘We have to do something,’ she whispered.
‘Yeah,’ Patrick said, ‘like what?’
‘I mean it. Honestly. What can we do?’ Sally sobbed, gulping down her tears.
The slap of bare feet thumped up the stairs. She swirled round and saw the whites of the boys’ eyes shining in the moonlight. Terror had struck them immobile.
‘Lads, what are we going to do?’ she cried.
James began to sob.
DAY SEVEN
5th January 2015
Sixty-Four
Detective Sergeant Larry Kirby was tacking computer-printed photographs to the board in the incident room when Lottie arrived just after five thirty a.m. She hadn’t slept well and a bitch of bad humour was itching to escape.
‘You’re up early,’ she said, placing her lukewarm coffee on the windowsill and pulled off her jacket.
She’d left her car at the station the night before but the walk into work had done nothing to brighten her mood. She stood beside Kirby. Cigar smoke clung to his clothes, like dirty socks in the bottom of her laundry basket. She was glad she’d cleared all the laundry last night. One less chore to worry about.
‘Didn’t go to bed, so I didn’t have to get up,’ he said, clumsily pushing thumbtacks into the photographs. His tobacco-stained fingers were too large for the small steel pins. One fell on the floor, joining a multitude already gathered there.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Decided to reorganise the incident board. It’s a week since all this started.’
‘Don’t remind me. Do you want me to do that for you?’
Kirby shook his head.
Lottie shrugged, picked up her coffee and sat down behind him.
‘Tell me what I’m looking at.’ Maybe she should have brought a coffee for him. He looked like he could fall asleep any minute.
‘Photos of the main players in our drama,’ he said.
She scanned the board. So far, he had Patrick O’Malley, Derek Harte, Tom Rickard and Gerry Dunne hanging crookedly side by side. He held the bishop’s photo in one hand, a tack in the other.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ she advised.
He looked at her, his grey-haired belly showing through an open button halfway down his creased, off-white shirt, a spotty tie poking out of his jacket pocket.
‘And why not? After your episode with him yesterday, I think he’s the star of the show.’
‘Superintendent Corrigan might have something to say about that,’ said Lottie. ‘After all, they are golfing friends.’
She hadn’t returned his call last night. She’d be in for a bollocking soon. Hopefully Mrs Corrigan had sent her husband out with a smile and a full stomach this morning.
‘To hell with him,’ said Kirby, sticking a thumbtack squarely in the bishop’s neck, as if he couldn’t be arsed jamming in three more pins. He stepped back and admired his handiwork. A tired grin crawled up his face toward bloodshot eyes, like a creamy head forming on a pint of Guinness.
‘They’re not really suspects,’ said Lottie.
‘They’re the next best thing.’
He slumped into a chair. They sat in the silence of the morning. She handed him her coffee. He took it, raised it in a mock toast and drank.
‘We’ve a very narrow spectrum of candidates,’ he said, looking up at the lopsided display.
‘We could add Mrs Murtagh, Bea Walsh, and Mike O’Brien the bank manager,’ she said, ‘then we have the sum total of all the people we know about who knew the victims. Christ, it’s like Brown and Sullivan lived in an enclosed order of nuns.’
‘Shit, where did I put O’Brien?’ Kirby rooted around a pile of papers on the chair, found what he was looking for and pinned another photograph on the board.
‘What about Father Joe Burke?’ asked Boyd as he walked in, his cropped hair glinting under the fluorescents, fresh from his morning shower.
‘What about him?’ asked Lottie, her defences bumping tiny goosepimples up on her skin.
‘He was first on the Sullivan crime scene after Mrs Gavin, the cleaner,’ said Boyd, sitting down beside Kirby. He had a mug of coffee in his hand. Lottie took it from him and drank.
‘We better get a photograph of Mrs Gavin too,’ she said, unable to disguise her sarcasm.
‘Let’s be serious here for a minute,’ said Kirby.
Lottie knew Kirby didn’t like anyone denigrating his work into a sideshow. He was over-tired.
Kirby pointed at Derek Harte’s photo.
‘Lover boy could have killed the priest, Father Angelotti, in a jealous rage,’ he said. ‘Then killed Brown when he found out.’
‘But why kill Sullivan?’ asked Boyd.
Kirby glared at him. ‘I don’t know . . .’
‘Yet,’ Lottie added.
‘Next, we have Tom Rickard. Property developer extraordinaire,’ said Kirby. ‘Acquired St Angela’s for a song. Got a Material Contravention of the development plan pushed through the council, probably with a bribe, so he can build anything he likes on the site. Once his friend, Gerry Dunne, grants planning permission.’ He pointed over at the victims’ photographs. ‘The two council employees could’ve been trying to stop him or maybe were running a blackmail caper. Hence, the large sums of money transferred into their bank accounts, some of which resided in Sullivan’s freezer box. Brown called Tom Rickard, before he met his maker. With both Sullivan and Brown out of the way, he can give everyone the finger behind their backs.’ Kirby jabbed his thick forefinger at the photo of Rickard.
‘For a minute, let’s assume you’re right, where does Father Angelotti fit in?’ asked Boyd.
‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ said Kirby, scratching his head of wiry hair. ‘But he might’ve been following the money.’
‘Continue,’ said Lottie, getting more interested in Kirby’s little drama.
‘Speaking of money . . . Mike O’Brien.’ Kirby studied the photograph for a second. ‘He knows who transacted the monies into the victims’ accounts. Is he a middleman? I don’t know. Maybe we should look at him more closely. And then we have our mutual friend, Bishop Connor.’
He paused for effect, then continued. ‘He sold St Angela’s below its market value. Who is to say he didn’t get a fat brown envelope bursting with euros, straight from Rickard’s paw? We should check his freezer too.’ He laughed at his own joke, then smothered it with a cough. ‘Back to Father Angelotti. Why was he here? I don’t buy this “finding himself” shite. He came here for a reason.’