The stationhouse of the Royal Irish Constabulary was situated on the outskirts of the town along the Dublin Road. From a distance, it looked like a sturdy, two-storied dwelling but when Keating got closer, he saw the walls were merely whitewashed and all the ground-level windows heavily barred.
A priest stood waiting at the front door of the station. He was a wiry individual whose prematurely, thinning hair made the size of his head look excessive despite his thick, unkempt beard. He wore wire glasses, a starched white, clerical collar, and black cassock.
As the constable unlocked the front door, Keating could tell from his expression he would have preferred to ignore the priest, brush him aside if he could, but the man stood firmly in his way.
"What is it, Father Gahan?" asked the constable irritably.
"Tell the sergeant I must speak with him immediately." The priest spoke with a Kerry accent, soft and lyrical, but there was no mistaking his determination.
"You can't. He's busy. Call back tomorrow."
"Constable O'Donnell, when you go inside make the sergeant aware that I am here. Make sure to tell him I am not going away until I speak to him."
"Okay, Father, but you'll be waiting quite a while."
"So be it", said the priest. He followed Keating and the constable into the building and sat on a chair beside the reception hatch.
The young police officer brought Keating through the building to a room at the back. Instead of the cell he was expecting, he found himself in a simple kitchen with a small, wooden table in the center and a large dresser along one wall, containing crockery and utensils.
Two men were seated side by side at the table. Keating did not need to see the chevrons on the sergeant's jacket sleeves, which was slung over a chair, to recognize who he was, for the other man clearly had the downcast and nervous demeanor of a prisoner. The sergeant was a tall, bulky man who Keating guessed was approaching fifty but whose frame suggested considerable physical strength despite his years. His mustache, although quite grey, was full and complimented by bushy muttonchops of the type still fashionable among the older, lower ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary.
"Excuse me, sir, if I don't get up to greet you", said the sergeant turning to look at Keating with a beaming, genial smile, "but our young charge here has picked up a few cuts and bruises along the way and we wouldn't want them turning septic, now would we?"
"That's quite all right, Sergeant Ryan", said Keating. "Please carry on."
The constable approached his superior and whispered in his ear. Keating guessed it concerned the priest who waited outside.
"Okay, I'll see to him later", said the sergeant before he added, 'Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness'". Keating couldn't tell from his tone if his intention was cynicism or sincerity.
The constable quietly left the room closing the door behind him and Keating took a seat at the table.
The prisoner was a young man, barely into his twenties, stripped to the waist and revealing a face and body that contained a mix of grim cuts and bruises. A particularly ugly, red tear to the skin on his left arm, and the sergeant was gingerly, almost tenderly, daubing it with a wet cloth. On the table was a bowl of liquid that Keating recognized from its smell as vinegar mixed with water. Despite the sergeant's care, each contact with the cloth elicited a wince and sometimes a moan of pain from the prisoner.
"I hasten to add, Inspector, none of these injuries were inflicted upon our young charge while in our custody." Then turning to the prisoner, "Isn't that the case?
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Death at Balfefield Abbey
Mystery / ThrillerArabella Darley was brutally murdered. Young, beautiful, and the mistress of Balfefield Abbey, the violence of her death was matched only by the obscenity in which her naked body was elaborately posed for those who would find her. In a story that s...
