She would go back and find Mary. Try to limit the damage. Tell her not to mention the bruising on the baby, say she might have been mistaken.
There was no one in the back bar, just their two abandoned glasses, conspiratorial on the table. But Mary hadn’t gone far – she was in a window seat in the lounge, leaning forward to talk to a man in a grey suit. Ali walked towards her, and the man turned in his seat as he saw Mary’s attention shift. Ali knew him. It was her mother’s friend Seán O’Loan, a chubby man whose straggly moustache looked like it was trying to crawl inside his mouth.
Seán showed no surprise to see her there. He stood to shake her hand and kiss her cheek with a wet tickle.
‘Ali, pet. So sorry for what you’ve been through.’
He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Ali made a mumble of thanks.
‘Fate’s very cruel. It was the last thing you needed.’
His pouchy eyes were trying to dig into hers. The hand on her shoulder was a clamp. Seán’s attention was more than plain sympathy.
‘The girl probably needs to get home, Seán,’ said Mary.
Ali took her chance to escape. She had no doubt that they’d been discussing her just before she appeared.
7
The nun who opened the convent door was dark and nervy. She looked to be in her twenties or early thirties. Swan’s eyes moved automatically to her belly. Could you tell if a woman had given birth, just by looking?
The entrance hall that she led T. P. Murphy and himself into was a double-height space with a grand wooden staircase rising up from the centre and dividing in two, so that you had a choice of route to the railed gallery that ran around the upper area. A glass cupola brought in light from above, but it had lost most of its brightness by the time it fell to where they stood. The nun pointed at a row of ecclesiastical chairs against the wall. They were the least comfortable-looking pieces of furniture that Swan had ever seen outside a designer showroom.
‘Please, if you wait here,’ said the nun, and he sat. T. P. Murphy eased himself onto the adjacent chair with a suppressed groan. The nun clipped away up the stairs, leaving them in the gloom. Like Pavlov’s dogs, they were – obedient at the sight of a habit.
Murphy was not Swan’s first choice of partner for a case like this, or any case. But he was the only other murder squad detective available. T. P. was not only a lead-swinger and a slipstreamer; he looked a right eejit too, with those sideburns and aviator specs, not to mention the wide tie just hiding the gaps between his strained shirt buttons. The best you could say for T. P. was that he didn’t take anything too seriously, not even his mistakes.
Swan stood up, stretched his arms out unnecessarily and strolled about. The walls were crowded with paintings, a variety of saints suffering or beseeching behind layers of amber varnish. Only a few bright details shone out – the flash of angel’s wing, the white of an eye rolled heaven-wards, the glint of a sword. There were also portraits of nuns sitting at their desks with a Bible in handy reach or praying on their knees, their plain, redoubtable faces framed by elaborate arrangements of stiff white cloth.
He hated this atmosphere, the varnish and cold tile incarceration. Clearing out the attic recently, he had come across a picture of himself in altar boy’s vestments. Ten years old. The pious solemnity of his younger face, his small unlined hands pressed together and pointing sky-wards. Before he understood what he was doing, he’d torn the photograph to confetti.
The first stages of the investigation had turned up nothing so far. All the babies born in hospitals and in registered maternity homes had been accounted for. A few tip-offs were being followed up – a travellers’ camp by the Dodder, a hippy commune in some old mansion. Most likely the mother was local and had given birth in secret. That was the simplest explanation, and Swan liked to keep things simple until he was forced to complicate them.
A small, precise cough drew their attention upwards. The nun had returned and was gesturing for them.
They climbed into the light and followed her down a series of corridors featuring the same orange-stained wood everywhere, shiny panelling and rails and doors and benches. They finally stopped at the end of a wide corridor lined on one side with glass cases. Another row of straight-backed chairs stood to the side of a door on which a small card read Reverend Mother in crabbed Gothic calligraphy. It was hard not to imagine a line of fretful girls sitting there, awaiting punishment.
The nun took it upon herself to knock and a voice within called, ‘Come!’
Swan had been expecting Mother Mary Paul to be alone, so he didn’t welcome the sight of her sitting shoulder-to-shoulder behind her desk with a priest. The man was wearing a well-cut black suit and a dog collar. A gold chain with a plain cross added to the elegant effect. He had close-cropped hair at the sides and a polished baldness on top.
‘This is Monsignor Kelly,’ said Mother Mary Paul. ‘The archbishop has been good enough to take a special interest in this tragic event and has sent the monsignor to assist us. Monsignor Kelly is trained in law.’
The priest offered them a thin smile, verifying confidence in his qualifications.
Swan introduced Detective Murphy, and they sat down on their side of the desk. Swan had hoped for an informal, wide-ranging chat. With God’s lawyer present, he doubted if there would be much in the way of that. The monsignor already had a pen in his hand, poised over what looked like a typed list of names.
‘I think it would help, Detectives,
