Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

hold it up only for a few seconds.
    He was lying in an upstairs bedroom with grubby whitewashed walls and a floor covered in worn-out dark green carpet. Apart from the bed, the only other furniture was a sagging brown leather armchair. The windows were old-fashioned sashes, and the plaster on the ceiling was flaking and covered in hairline cracks, so he could tell that he was in an old, nineteenth-century building. Straining his head up a second time, he saw the flat pastel-coloured facades of shop buildings on the opposite side of the street, and the painted letters ‘ Tom Murphy Outfitters ’. He recognized at once that he was on the third storey of a shop or office on the north side of Patrick Street, Cork’s main thoroughfare.
    ‘Dear God,’ he breathed, through split lips, and let his head drop back. Judging by the sunlight, it must be about eleven o’clock in the morning. He could remember yesterday evening, stepping out of the sacristy and locking the door and saying goodnight to Mrs O’Malley. He could remember thinking that there was somebody standing in the shadows close to his car, but he couldn’t think what had happened to him after that. He couldn’t even remember being beaten, although he must have been, and viciously.
    From one of the floors below, he heard somebody galumphing down bare uncarpeted stairs, two or three at a time, and he immediately called out, ‘Hey! Hey there! Is anyone there? Will somebody please help me?’
    He heard a door slam, but then he could hear nothing but the beeping of traffic in the road outside, and the clattering of feet on the pavement, and the tremulous strains of ‘ Ave Maria ’.
    ‘Will somebody please help me?’ he repeated, so softly that nobody could have heard him except God or one of his angels. Then he said a prayer.
    ‘ Domine Iesu, dimitte nobis debita nostra, salva nos ab igne inferiori, perduc in caelum omnes animas, praesertim eas quae misericordiae tuae maxime indigent .
    ‘O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are most in need of your mercy.’
    Nearly an hour passed. The singing from St Joseph’s Orphanage Choir went on and on – the ‘ Kyrie ’, the ‘ Credo ’, the ‘ Agnus Dei ’, and then the ‘ Ave Maria ’ again. Father Quinlan found it deeply disturbing, rather than uplifting, as if it were being played for the express purpose of frightening him. Of course Elements was massively popular, especially here in Ireland, and it was being played everywhere, in shops, in restaurants, in pubs even, but what unsettled him was the way that it was being played over and over.
    ‘ Help !’ he shouted out, again and again, even though he doubted that anybody could hear him – or, even if they could, that they would come to set him free.
    But without warning, the door handle rattled and the bedroom door was opened up. From where he was lying, he was unable to see who had just stepped in, but he twisted his head around and said, ‘Please! Please help me, whoever you are!’
    There was a moment’s silence, and then he heard the same hoarse voice that he had heard in the church car park the previous night. ‘It’s help you’re asking for, is it?’
    ‘What do you want?’ asked Father Quinlan. ‘Are you trying to punish me, is that it?’
    ‘Oh, I think you know only too well what I want,’ the man replied. ‘If justice is a cake, of sorts, I want my slice of it.’
    ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
    The man hesitated for a few seconds longer, and then came around and stood close to the side of the bed so that Father Quinlan could see him. He was wearing the same face covering with the eyeholes and the same pointed hat that he had worn the night before. He was bulky and tall, about six foot two or three, with a bulging belly that hung over the belt of his baggy grey trousers. He was wearing a shapeless grey jacket with sloping shoulders, and a grey