Himself(52)

Mrs Cauley purses her lips. ‘So Father Jim, sitting scratching his holy bollocks on the commode there, is of no use to us?’

Mahony shrugs. How can he explain? How can he explain to Mrs Cauley that Father Jim is just a vague copy of his former living self? That just like any other dead person, his mind, if you can call it a mind, has ceased to exist. For the dead don’t change or grow. They’re just echoes of the stories of their own lives sung back in the wrong order: arsewards. They’re the pattern on closed eyelids after you turn away from a bright object. They’re twice-exposed film. They’re not really here, so cause and effect means nothing to them.

Mahony knows that only very rarely, and through no fault of their own, will the dead tell you something useful, like the whereabouts of an unread will, or a box of furled banknotes, or the name of a killer.

Mrs Cauley shakes her head. ‘Well, it’s a shocking waste of a good weapon. You should be wielding your shining sword of clairvoyancy against your adversaries; I know I would be.’

Father Jim raises his eyebrows. Mahony picks up his book of poetry.

‘Squandering. That’s what it is.’ Mrs Cauley pushes away her Ouija board with disgust and takes up her map to plot likely sites for an illicit burial in and around Mulderrig.

Peace settles nicely on the room; now and then there is the quick sharp scuttle of a mouse along the skirting boards, now and then the shifting sound of a book settling into a deeper sleep.

Mahony is just closing his eyes when the dead priest jumps up from the commode with a terrifying roar.

‘He started to drive her home,’ he screams, and lurches towards Mahony. ‘That was when all the trouble started. It was him, don’t you see? It must have been him: he had a car.’

‘Jesus. What?’ Mahony is up off the floor, moving out of his way.

Father Jim frowns. ‘The daddy – for the life of me I can’t remember his name.’ Father Jim grins triumphantly. ‘But I know this, you little gobshite: she stopped letting me walk her home because he would give her a lift.’

He turns and walks off through a bookcase, punching the air without as much as displacing a dust mote.

Mahony stares at the space where the dead Father Hennessy used to be. ‘Who owned a car around the time that Orla fell pregnant?’

Mrs Cauley looks up from a promising patch of alluvial wasteland. ‘Ask Bridget Doosey, she’ll know.’

‘Ask Daddy, he’ll know,’ says Shauna, coming in the door with the tea and the biscuits. She looks at Mahony. ‘You could take him down his cup of tea and ask him.’

‘I could.’

‘And maybe you could get him to change his socks and go out for a walk?’

‘Daddy doesn’t like going out; leave the man alone,’ says Mrs Cauley, pushing biscuits off her plate.

Shauna looks at the old woman in despair. ‘If you don’t want the biscuits just leave them on the side.’

Mrs Cauley claws up a plain one. ‘I told you, not the creamy ones.’ She scowls. ‘You know I’m trimming to get into that lamé number for the play and you’re trying to sabotage me. Thundering little witch.’

Shauna rolls her eyes. ‘If you do head into town you might want to go and see Father Quinn. He’s left another message for you.’

‘He’s been trailing you for days,’ says Mrs Cauley. ‘You should go and see what he wants, the shitehawk.’

Mahony pulls on his jacket. ‘All right, I’ll take your old fella down for a stretch of the legs to town.’

‘You won’t get Daddy further than Roadside Mary but you can leave him there for a bit. He says he won’t mix with the village philistines.’

Shauna wraps the biscuits in a napkin. ‘Take these down for Tom Bogey; if she won’t eat them he will.’

‘And watch your back with that priest one,’ says Mrs Cauley. ‘An interview with Quinn is like fighting a yellow snake in a sandpit.’

Desmond Burke won’t change his socks but he’ll come for a walk down to the shrine and back again. He’s got an article on woodturning that might interest Tom. He thinks he might like to look at the pictures.

‘Have you never met the man?’ asks Mahony as they cut across the field to join the village road.

‘No.’

‘Not even a glimpse?’

‘No.’

‘Seriously, and no one else has?’

‘No, Jack Brophy only; he helped him move there.’

‘So Jack could be making him up to keep the kids from running mad in the forest.’

‘Tom is real. We leave food, a few necessities and he leaves woodcarvings.’

‘And no one’s tried to find him? To get a look at him?’

‘We respect his solitude.’

‘Or there’s Jack Brophy to answer to?’

Desmond glances up at Mahony with the trace of a smile. ‘There’s that too I suppose.’

‘Why do you think Jack protects him?’ Mahony asks.

‘He’s a guard; he has a sense of duty.’

Mahony tries not to snort.

Desmond refuses go any further than Roadside Mary, not even for a pint.

‘When was the last time you had a pint?’ asks Mahony.

‘Do you know, I can’t even remember,’ smiles Desmond.