‘Does that help, sir?’
‘No. It still means it was the stupidest thing you could have done.’
‘He was goading me. I think he almost wanted me to do it.’
‘That wouldn’t surprise me. And you gave him what he wanted.’
Stefan nodded; he knew that all too well himself.
Broy turned to the chaplain. ‘Do you know this Father Carey?’
‘I’ve never met him, but I’ve asked around now. He has a history of this kind of thing. In his last parish there were complaints about him refusing to sanction mixed marriages, even when dispensation had been given, and there was some insulting behaviour towards the Church of Ireland minister. There was also a child taken away from her father in similar circumstances to Sergeant Gillespie’s. In the end the man converted to keep his daughter. It caused such bad feeling that Carey was moved on. But even though I’ve never met the man, he has written to me, about you, Sergeant Gillespie.’
‘What for?’ Stefan was puzzled.
‘He wanted my opinion on your suitability as a father, in the light of your wife’s death, and bearing in mind that you weren’t a Catholic. I told him it wasn’t my business to have any opinion on your abilities as a father, but that the Garda Siochana had a very high opinion of you as a policeman. He wrote again asking me to put what he called “professional pressure” on you to convert to Catholicism. I have to say I didn’t bother to reply to that.’
‘You’ve made a pig’s ear of it, Sergeant,’ interrupted Broy.
Stefan didn’t need telling.
‘Look, sir, when I was married I agreed our children would be brought up as Catholics. I took it seriously and I’ve stuck to it — so have my parents. There’s hardly a Sunday Tom misses Mass. And it’s not even what my wife would have wanted. I persuaded her we should marry in a Catholic church. I knew what it would do to her family if we didn’t. Now, whatever I do it’s never enough. It’s not like I’m ramming anything down Tom’s throat, I don’t even believe — ’ He stopped, feeling he was making things worse.
‘There you go again, Sergeant. If you’re going to be an atheist you need to be a Catholic atheist, not a Protestant one!’ The chaplain smiled.
‘There’s a pile of shite here any self-respecting bishop would have thrown back at the man.’ Ned Broy gestured at the file on his desk. ‘You can feel the spit coming off the page. Jesus, you’d think you were running the Hellfire Club down in Baltinglass. He’s got lists of books in your father’s sitting room we should all be out there burning. There’s even the year you spent at Trinity to show what an evil-thinking bollocks you are. God only knows what kind of low-life Protestant bastards you were associating with! It goes on. I don’t know how many nights you’ve had a few too many in Sheridan’s in Baltinglass with Sergeant Kavanagh. It can’t be that many. You don’t live there! But you’re a drunk as well. I know Kavanagh as it happens. Now he is a drunk! This gobshite’s got it in for you and he’s got his bishop behind him now. But what was this jaunt to the fecking synagogue?’
‘It was ten minutes, that’s all. I was just following up on some information in a case.’ He stopped, unsure. It wasn’t exactly the truth. ‘It was a stupid thing to do. I should have left it. I wasn’t thinking …’
‘You picked the wrong curate,’ said Father McCauley, shaking his head. ‘I can’t say your boy standing in the Adelaide Road synagogue would keep me awake. I know Rabbi Herz. I wouldn’t be sorry to see some more priests who knew the Old Testament like he does. But Father Carey belongs to a different school; the nest of Christ-killers and communists school; the Monsignor Fitzpatrick crowd. Do you know who I’m talking about?’
Stefan knew all too well. He was slightly uncomfortable. The Commissioner was looking through the file on the desk again. This was a personal matter, but that didn’t mean Ned Broy hadn’t had something to do with putting the lid on his investigation. There was the way any serious questioning of Father Byrne had been pushed aside, and the way everything was now in the hands of Special Branch. Broy continued reading. Father McCauley spoke again.
‘Where do they want your son to go? It’s Tom, isn’t it?’
‘My brother-in-law’s, in Portlaoise.’
‘That’s not so far.’
‘He’s not even five. I wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘If it came to a court case, I’m not sure what the consequences would be,’ replied the chaplain. ‘There are a lot of people in the Church who don’t like this sort of thing, I assure you, but there are risks in taking a bishop on. And it’s not as if you’re with the boy all the time. You’re working in Dublin. Is it really so different, seeing him in Laois and seeing him in Wicklow?’
‘It’s not his home. It would be different to him.’
‘To him or to you?’
‘I know my son.’
‘You need to think hard, Sergeant, very hard. It’s not easy advice — ’
‘I don’t need to think at all, Father.’
‘I wish you would. I will do what I can on your behalf. I know the bishop. But they are serious about this, that’s all I can say, very serious.’
‘Thanks, Derek.’ The Commissioner closed the file.
The chaplain got up. He smiled at Stefan and then left.
‘It’s good advice, Gillespie,’ said Broy. ‘Perhaps it’s the only advice. I can’t help you with that side of things. I wish I could. I’ve got enough on my plate with your assault on the fecking curate. I can’t ignore it, can I?’
Stefan said nothing.
‘The bishop’s full of threats about a prosecution for assault. It’s bollocks. I can probably sit on that one. But he wants me to kick you out.’
Stefan nodded. Why would he have expected anything else?
‘There are a variety of disciplinary charges involved. I don’t know where we’d end up if we went down that road. So we won’t bother. I’m going for the chaplain’s approach. That means I won’t fight everything.’
‘So I’m out?’
‘No, we go along with it, but only so far. I have the power to suspend you, without any recourse to formal disciplinary procedures. I don’t need to ask anyone or explain it to anyone. I’ll write to the bishop and express my horror at what you’ve done, and say I’m suspending you forthwith. I can make that sound as near to a dismissal as makes no difference. You go away. We all shut up and forget about it. And in six months’ time I reinstate you.’
‘When would my suspension — ’
‘For now, just make Inspector Donaldson a happy man. Go home.’
‘I’m in the middle of a case.’
‘Not any more. You know what forthwith means. Fuck off, now!’
As Stefan Gillespie walked through the Phoenix Park it was colder. There was ice in the air. Uppermost in his mind was what waited for him in Baltinglass. The threat that was hanging over the house and over Tom was a real one. He had pushed it aside because he couldn’t believe it, but the chaplain’s words were in his head now. Other people did believe it. Tom couldn’t know, whatever else happened. His parents would have to share the burden though. So far he’d only told them of another row with the curate, but they already knew it was more serious than anything that had happened before. Now his father had spoken to the Commissioner too. He still had his job after a fashion; if he shut up and kept his head down. That was the real message from the Commissioner and the Garda Chaplain. But how far was Ned Broy really sticking his neck out? They were telling him to do what the Church wanted and pretend it was a way out. People always said the Irish had three curses: the English, the drink and the Church. The English had faded away; the drink was your own choice in the end; but the priests were always there. And once he took the first step, once he accepted that they could decide what happened to his son, there’d be no turning back. He couldn’t do it, not to Tom, not to himself, not to Maeve. If losing his son was the price for keeping his job, then the job wasn’t worth having.
He didn’t bother to go back to Pearse Street. They could have Susan Field and Vincent Walsh. They could have Hugo Keller and Jimmy Lynch. It didn’t matter. The only thing left from that was Hannah Rosen. He wondered where she was. But there was no point needing a woman he would never even see again. He walked on faster. Kingsbridge was just beyond the park gates. He reached Albert Quay and crossed the Liffey to the station. Fifteen minutes later the train was taking him back home to West Wicklow.
The upstairs room looked out over Main Street in Baltinglass. The solicitor’s office was untidy, cluttered with
