“But she had been pregnant.”
Pregnant: in a nun’s vocabulary? He could tilt at Kilmartin with this later on.
“Yes. We’re taking it into account here. Motives, pressure, expectations. Anger.”
She cocked her head as though listening to another conversation. Her glasses reflected the skylight.
“Your Garda Doyle can tell you more than I can,” she said. “Mary came by twice as I recall since the centre opened. She pretended she was inquiring for a pal.”
“Two years ago, you said?”
“About that. Yes. Then she was gone.”
Sister Joe sat back and looked high up on the walls of the restaurant.
“God look down on her and her poor family. You’ll find her boyfriend then?”
“We don’t have a clear view of her companions. We have a high priority on a fella called Liam Hickey, nickname Leonardo. He has a criminal record. He’s gone on the run.”
Sister Joe nodded. “I’ll bear that name in mind then.”
“It’s possible that Mary was in the life all along, er, Joe. Since you last saw her, like.”
“On the game, you mean?”
“Indeed. We’re not able to locate her very well that night. Or where she spent her time outside her flat. She had a part-time job up until several weeks ago. She seems not to have taken it very seriously. I think the job was a prop.”
“Her job didn’t support her, you’re saying.”
Minogue nodded.
“Girls sell themselves and hold down jobs too,” she said. “Married women even.”
“Mary had some connection with a gang called the Egans.”
“Ah.” Her gaze moved down the wall and arrived over to meet his.
“Yes, indeed,” she murmured. “I know nothing of them beyond their reputation.”
She looked down at her cup and closed her eyes. Was she ill, Minogue wondered.
“Are you all right there now, Joe?”
She opened her eyes, smiled and sat up and looked around the restaurant.
“I was just using Bewleys as a church there for a moment. I came up here to Dublin to do social work, you know. I used to come in here every Saturday morning for a cup of coffee. It was my reward for surviving the week. I read up on the history of the Bewleys.”
“Quakers, were they not,” said Minogue.
“Indeed. The Quakers fed people in my home parish of Lisnacree during the Famine. So I think of this restaurant in a special way. How things come around… I’ll wager good money that other people say the odd prayer here too.”
“We’d be fools not to,” he said. She frowned at him.
“Girls are beaten, Inspector. Beaten at home. Beaten by their fathers and their boyfriends and their husbands. By their brothers and their sons. If they turn to a life on the streets, they’re beaten by their pimps. They’re beaten by their clients. With Mary, a girl I can barely recollect, I know that God’ll see her life and the lives of other trapped girls as their own Via Dolorosa.”
Trapped, Minogue considered. He had begun to think of Mary Mullen as a woman with plans and ambition, someone who chose to be close to professional criminals.
“I believe in the resurrection,” said Sister Joe. “So I hold out hope. Always.”
“Are there women who drop into the centre who’d know Mary?”
“Probably. But if you want to find such girls, you’ll let me go about the matter.”
“I want to find who killed Mary Mullen.”
Her eyes stayed on his.
“I understood that from the moment you first contacted us. Do not regard the centre as a resource to be mined, Inspector Minogue from County Clare. I’ll inquire on your behalf.”
“You have my word that I’ll do nothing to jeopardize the women in your care.”
Her eyes bore down on him. He raised his eyebrows.
“Another cup of coffee there, Joe?”
Her forehead lifted.
“Ah, go on,” he chided. “‘Come on the Banner County!’”
She laughed but quickly held a hand to her mouth.
“Tommy?”
Malone shook his head.
In the few minutes it took Minogue to get the coffee, lines of fatigue had appeared on Sister Joe Whelan’s face. He pushed her cup across the marble table-top.
“Thank you. Normally, I wouldn’t now.”
“May I ask now if the woman with the overdose is on the mend?”
“No, she isn’t. This is the fourth time, the fourth that I know about anyway.”
She laid her spoon on the saucer as though it were a delicate archaeological find.
“I hadn’t seen her for a good long while. I began to delude myself into thinking that she was doing better, that she’d gotten out of the life completely. But they’ve gone beyond the streets entirely, I’m beginning to think. So far as I can gather anyway.”
“I’m not sure I get it.”
She looked across the restaurant to where Yvonne was smoking.
“I mean that they may have stopped selling sex on the streets. Some of the girls seem to have graduated to being mistresses of a sort.”
“You mean another type of criminal activity now, or a group?”
“I know little enough about it. First it’s a suspicion, then it’s a rumour.”
She drank more coffee.
“I’ve heard talk about some girls boasting they could go to such-and-such a club and have everything paid for.”
“You’re saying there’s been some change in the ways that girls do their business?”
“If I knew more, I’d tell you. We might be getting left high and dry in the centre. Fewer girls call in. Maybe we need to change our tack. God knows, we’re busy enough with drop-ins and crisis interventions for family violence that maybe we haven’t been able to notice that girls are keeping away from the place. Maybe we’re missing the boat with those girls. They’re slipping away on us. The business changes. AIDS. Heavy drug use. More sophisticated types…”
Her words trailed off. She watched Malone tapping his spoon on his saucer.
“I have to be off now,” she said then. Minogue stood.
“You’ll be in touch if you…?”
“Depend on it now,” she said. “God bless.”
Minogue flopped back down in the chair and sighed. A bath, he thought. Sit in the garden tonight with a lot of ice in a glass of something next to him.
“Is she really a nun?” asked Malone. Minogue rubbed his lip.
“The blue clothes are a giveaway, I suppose,” said Malone.
Malone looked from face to face in the restaurant. Minogue made another effort to gather his wits. His effort gained him little reward. He swallowed the last of his coffee.
TEN
Jammy Tierney stood up and stretched. He turned up the sound on the Walkman, dabbed more oil onto the cloth and hunkered down again. He shoved the rag in between the exhaust pipe and the axle, grasped it as it showed beneath and then continued buffing. The numbers came back to his mind: how much the bike had cost, how much he’d sell it for, what he could use the money for. Trade it in for the new Suzuki or buy a car? He made a face
