Turbulent Priests Part 29

The men jumped the steps and disappeared into the church hall. Sensing that something was up, the crowd that had been loitering in the yard began to hurry up the steps after them.

*What do you think?' Patricia asked.

*I saw them earlier, they were guarding Mary Reilly.'

*I thought that was the cop's job?'

*It was.'

*So?'

*We better find out.'

I started to move towards the steps.

*You are going to give me a hand with this pram?' Trish said.

I stopped. I looked back. *No,' I said, *you shouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place.'

I pushed through the church-hall doors. I half fancied that the word *b.a.s.t.a.r.d' followed me in, but I might have been mistaken.

Inside a crowd had formed at the bottom of the hall, surrounding the door which led into the church. I spotted Duncan Cairns hovering near the back and gave him a tap on the shoulders.

*What's up?' I asked. *Somebody win the lottery?'

*Lottery's banned.'

*Figures.'

*Sensational evidence has been found which proves Mary Reilly's innocence.'

*Has it?'

*No.'

He smiled.

A sense of humour.

Maybe he wasn't the complete a.r.s.e I'd taken him for.

Then the crowd began to move back as the doors were slowly opened from within. Father Flynn appeared, followed by Father White and the members of the Council. They were all grim-faced. A dozen questions were shouted as they entered, but ignored. Flynn raised his hands, then moved them up and down like he was patting an invisible horse, waiting for quiet. The men with shotguns hovered by the church doors.

Slowly the excited jabber faded and Flynn lowered his hands. *Thank you. Ahm, ladies and gentlemen,' he said gravely, *I'm afraid there's going to be a bit of a delay in today's proceedings.' He glanced at one of the gunmen. *In the eloquent words of Marcus Farrell, Mary Reilly has done a runner.'

Gasps.

*Yes, she seems to have escaped.'

Father White wasn't able to hold himself back. *But she will not escape divine retribution!'

A roar of approval. A stamping of feet.

*No, thank you, Father, she will not,' Flynn replied with quiet authority. *As I was saying, she has disappeared from Constable Murtagh's house. And so, it would appear, has Constable Murtagh.'

Gasps upon gasps.

Again he waved calming hands. *Settle down. There's no point in getting into a state about it, let's all just try and remain calm. At the moment we just don't know exactly what is going on. The house is empty, the police car is still there, so they must be on foot. She may have overpowered the constable and forced him to go with her. She might have injured him and left him somewhere. There's even the possibility that he has decided to go with her of his own accord. We just don't know.'

A man in the audience shouted: *I thought we were keeping an eye on her?'

*Yes, Jimmy, we were. As far as we can establish they slipped out the back way. I should warn you all that Constable Murtagh has a gun, so we can only presume that Mary Reilly has access to it and is loose somewhere on the island. So we're all going to have to be very careful until she's back under lock and key.'

*What about Christine?' Duncan Cairns asked. *What if Mary goes after her again?'

*Christine is already under armed guard. We also have men down at the harbour, so they won't be making their escape that way.'

*They won't be making their escape at all!' Father White bellowed, and got a rousing cheer for his effort. He stepped in front of Flynn. *We need everyone who has a gun to go home immediately and collect it. Ask anyone who couldn't make it today as well. Meet back here in thirty minutes, then we'll search every inch of this island. She won't get away!'

There was another cheer for him.

*The rest of you, go on home, lock your doors and pray that we find her before she hurts anyone. Go now!'

It was last in, first out. I was carried along on a wave of aspiring vigilantes and deposited in the churchyard beside Patricia and the pram. She handed me a plastic bag. It was warm.

*What's this?' I asked.

*A bag of s.h.i.te.'

*Right.'

30.

By noon a rag-bag of some sixty agitated islanders had congregated in the churchyard. They were all men, and they all had guns. Most were shotguns, but there were a few weapons of an altogether more sophisticated hue, which was, frankly, surprising. I'd expected slings and arrows, cudgels, rolling pins, Moses crooks and fish hooks. Not AK-47 a.s.sault rifles.

Father White addressed them from the steps of the church. Father Flynn stood by the church gates. He intended to bless them as they went a-hunting. Not the gates, the hunters. He had delegated the actual mechanics of the search to Father White, although I wasn't altogether convinced that he had much choice about it. *He's neither younger nor fitter,' he explained, *but he could have planned the invasion of Normandy in half the time.'

It was said with grudging respect. He looked worried. His voice was dry, his eyes were pinched up pensive. The mob was excited, baying to be off, and though they didn't need it, Father White was whipping the frenzy up further. It was a simpleton's version of a fox hunt, chasing a big girl around half a dozen square miles of bramble, scrub and wind-bent tree.

*That's an awful lot of hardware for an island this size, Father. What's this, the forgotten wing of the IRA?'

He laughed. *No . . . of course not . . . we get a lot of ships call by, and they're usually keen to trade. Particularly the Russians. G.o.d love their impoverished wee souls. There's a fair bit of bartering goes on.'

*You mean like half a dozen cabbages for a Kalashnikov.'

*Actually, you're not that far off. They've no shortage of weapons but their rations leave a lot to be desired. Poor scrawny half-starved wee men. You could probably equip a small army in exchange for sixty-four of Mrs McKeown's meat pies.'

*It looks like you have.' I shook my head. *That's still an awful lot of weaponry to track down an eighteen-stone schizophrenic. She's not Rambo, Father, she's Dumbo.'

*Dan, she's with Constable Murtagh, and as far as we're concerned he is Rambo. He has a gun and he knows how to use it.'

*He's also the law, Father.'

*Not on this island.'

*Father, you know that's not right.'

Before he could respond Father White appeared at his elbow. He had a shotgun under his arm.

*You're still here, Starkey?' he snapped.

*No, I'm a hologram.'

If he heard it, or understood it, he decided to ignore it. Good thing too. He probably didn't know I was a master of kung fu. If I got really angry there were few ageing priests in the world who would last more than a few minutes with me in a tussle. No, he had more important things to do. *If you're not joining the hunt,' he said urgently, *I'd advise you to get on home and lock your door. You too, Frank, just in case.'

He turned then and waved his hunting party forward, then led them out of the churchyard.

I tutted. Flynn looked at me. *What's wrong now?' he asked.

I shrugged.

*Dan, she needs to be captured. She's dangerous.'

*Maybe she is. I still think you're taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.'

*Dan a you're going to write about all this, and I can't put any restrictions on what you write, all I can ask is that you try to look at this whole thing from our point of view. I know you're not yet converted to Christine, but we are, we've given our whole hearts to her, we're devoted; so when someone tries to harm her it's natural that we should seek to protect her, and make sure it doesn't happen again. Do you understand?'

I nodded.

*We have something precious here, and we don't want to lose it.'

We watched as the last of Father White's band of vigilantes turned down the slope from the end of the church lane onto Main Street.

Father Flynn delved into his jacket pocket, looking for something. I heard rustling. He produced a crumpled paper bag and reached it out to me. *Can I offer you a boiled sweet?' he asked.

*Are they brandy b.a.l.l.s?' I enquired.

There are some foods Patricia can't prepare at all. For example, once when she attempted an Ulster fry she made so much that there was plenty for the firemen as well. But she does make a mean ham sandwich. Ham. Bread. Low-fat margarine. Colman's English Mustard. Just the basics, but perfectly a.s.sembled. With a whole loaf I could have bargained a nuclear sub off the Ruskies.

I had always believed that the way to a man's heart was a neat incision in the chest with an extremely sharp instrument, but Patricia's creations made me fall back on old cliches. I chomped a plateful at the kitchen table and it made me feel better about the long walk home and how I'd pa.s.sed through the line of hunters stretched out across the island, coast to coast. It wasn't what they said that worried me. It was what they didn't say. Hard looks. If my coat had been any baggier they might have searched me to see if Mary Reilly was hidden in any of the pockets. Some of these men, I knew, had tried to kill me. As I walked ahead of them my shoulders were hunched up, as if that might be some sort of protection against a sudden shotgun blast.

I munched, Patricia looked out the window, and worried.

*So where'd you leave him?'

*Up the church tower, telescope in hand. You can see just about everything from up there.'

*And what did he see?'

I shrugged. *I left him to it. He was hogging it.'

*Do you think the pressure's getting to him?'

*I don't know. It's getting to me.'

And it was. At home, no matter how much of a bind you were in, there was always the off-chance of being rescued by the police or army; there was always the reticence of the terrorist when it came to public appearances. Here there was no recognisable law. Here there were too many guns. Here there was no way off the island unless they wanted you to leave.

*They will be caught, won't they? Before the day's in.'

*I suppose. I mean, Mary and Murtagh are both island people, so it's conceivable that they know every last inch of the place and how to use it to best advantage. But they're hardly unique in that respect. Flynn seems to think they'll be captured in a very short while. He says there's a sort of historical precedent for it.'

*Meaning?'

*Meaning that about a hundred and fifty years ago there was another blow-up here. A Protestant minister and his family tried to set up a church, raised everyone's hackles in the process, and there was a trial.'

*For what?'

*I don't know. G.o.d. The meaning of life. The usual thing an island community likes to busy itself with. It seems a surprise, surprise a that the trial wasn't going in the Prods' favour, and they did a bit of a runner as well. So just about the whole of the island turned out to hunt them down.'

*And?'

*And they found them. And they hacked them to death.'

*Oh. Dear.'

*Of course that was then, and this is now. We live in altogether more enlightened times now.'

*Right.'

They came to Snow Cottage around six. Three of them. Two came up and knocked on the door, the other I saw pa.s.s the side window to take up a position in the back jungle. They were perfectly polite, even a little embarra.s.sed, said they were checking every house, asked if we minded them checking ours.

*Sure, fire ahead. Any sign of them yet?'

*Nah. Jamie McBrinn found a shoe that might have been Mary Reilly's out by the lighthouse, but it could just as well have belonged to any big-footed woman.'

We stood respectfully back, let them get on with it. Patricia whispered to me about making them a cup of tea. I told her to catch herself on and reminded her about the cups of tea people had made for the British Army when they were first sent to Belfast; they'd enjoyed them so much they'd stayed for thirty years.

The searchers said h.e.l.lo to Little Stevie, the miracle baby. Little Stevie bubbled something thick and transparent out of his nose in response. They took a little longer in the garden because there was a little more of it. They found a wheel-barrow in the dark undergrowth, but no killer whale. Then they thanked us for our patience and moved on. We watched them go through the kitchen window, noting the thin line of hunters spread out beyond the garden wall as far as the eye could see.

Patricia looked at her watch. *It'll be getting dark soon.'