Himself(32)

‘Avoid Sister Veronica as you would avoid death itself. The boys who have crossed her are hacked to pieces in a freezer in the basement. They’re labelled up as pork joints.’

General Mahony twitched his cape. ‘The rules for the priests you ask?

‘They catch a beetle, yeah, a devil’s coach horse, and they screw it into the head of their cane. This gives them speed and skill in their work. But if a priest breaks the cane over your arse then the beetle’s soul will escape to take vengeance. This is the only way you have of killing a priest: make them break their stick by beating the shite out of you. If this happens it might take twenty years for the beetle to work on the priest, or he might fall dead there and then. There’s no way of telling.

‘Don’t admit to anything in confession; they’ll use it against you. Cross your fingers behind your back and then cross your hands. Then there’s a chance that you might not go to hell, but only if it’s not a mortaller. If you lie about a mortaller you’re as good as burning in your shoes. But after all you can only be sent to hell once.

‘And remember: although priests move slower than nuns they can see around corners.’

But there were no rules for the dead.

Mahony knew that from the first, when the recently deceased Sister Mary Margaret appeared to him on the first-floor landing.

There he was, sitting at the top of the stairs in a warm square of light from the hall window. He’d just been thinking on her. He’d been thinking on her lying under the soil.

Thinking about Sister Mary Margaret being dead was something that had taken up a lot of Mahony’s time since she’d died. He’d wonder if they’d buried her with her teeth in or if they’d given them to another nun. If so, would they get her smile? He’d wonder if she could hear the weather inside the box. And was she cold down there in the soil? He didn’t like to think of her being cold.

Mahony was thinking these thoughts, that day on the landing, when something rolled along the floor and stopped beside him. It was small and round and elderberry dark, as intricate as a walnut, with curved ridges and valleys. He was so fascinated that he forgot to be scared when he looked up to see Sister Mary Margaret drifting three foot above him. He could see the scuffs on the wall through her. He could see the light fittings through her. He could even see dust motes through her, still turning.

Sister Mary Margaret reached forward and picked up the dark fruit. She held it cupped and covered in her hands. Then she pitched it hard, like a fast bowler, through the closed window. Mahony jumped up, ran to the window and saw it turn through the air, up, up, up. Then it was gone and he was alone again, with his nose steaming a misty butterfly on the glass.

Mahony told Martin Doyle that he’d seen Sister Mary Margaret bowling her cancer out of the window and Martin Doyle went off, like a bollock, and told the nuns. Sister Veronica came down on Mahony like judgement and trailed him before the priest. Father McCluskey confirmed that there was a severe want in the boy that couldn’t be rectified and gave him a sound hiding.

Mahony didn’t mention the subject again, although the dead had become frequent visitors. Sometimes they just howled or sobbed by him. Sometimes they stayed a while, like old Mother Whorley, the cleaner with the lungs, who’d haunt the dormitory nightly, wheezing stories about dance halls and game girls. Or Mr Mullins, who fretted about the refectory for a lost key, knew all about birds’ eggs and had died of pernicious gout.

But that’s history, thinks Mahony, as he heaves his arse out of the bed, gives his balls a good scratch and lights his second cigarette of the day.

Mrs Cauley is breakfasting on the veranda with a coat over her nightdress and a silk scarf wrapped around her head. She looks a little tired today.

‘Who did you say Johnnie was?’ says Mahony.

‘I didn’t. Johnnie is Johnnie. That’s all you need to know, kiddo.’

‘Well, your man is down there lying on the path.’

‘I know. I saw you step over him.’

Johnnie rolls over onto one elbow and blows Mahony a kiss, then lies back down to stare up at the clouds with his hands dipping through the paving stones. Mahony notices the dim caverns of his cheeks.

‘What did he die of?’

‘It wasn’t good.’

Johnnie’s foot twitches slightly in remembrance but otherwise he is still. A robin lands and hops through his left knee.

Mrs Cauley nods at the teapot and Mahony pours them both a cup.

‘So, Sherlock, we’ve a missing girl, no body, a rake of motives and not one reliable witness.’

Mahony pulls up a chair. ‘I was thinking on Tom Bogey.’

Mrs Cauley nods. ‘A nice easy suspect, creeping about the forest, wearing necklaces of milk teeth and dreaming of sabre-toothed children traps.’

Mahony shrugs; it all sounds a bit obvious when she says it. ‘Well, he’s a suspect, isn’t he?’

‘Like every man between the ages of fourteen and dead on the day Orla left town.’

Johnnie stands up and saunters over to the flowerbed.

Mrs Cauley smiles foxily. ‘Why don’t you bring Shauna up to the forest with you? She can show you where to find Tom. It’ll give me a bit of peace from all her prodding and poking and bloody cleaning. Get her out from under me feet.’

‘You wouldn’t be without her.’