The Priest Read Online Free PDF

Siobhan said, a penitent smile lighting up her face. ‘I couldn’t find anywhere to park.’
    ‘That’s alright. It gave me a chance to catch up on the news.’ He folded his paper and started to get up, but she motioned
     him to stay where he was, shrugging off her coat, delving in her bag for her purse, refusing to let him go up to the bar for
     her.
    He sat back and took a long pull on his pint, watching her as she went, liking the way her black hair kinked and curled as
     it fell to her shoulders, the way her hips moved under the soft, hugging cotton of her skirt. The way she made the grouchy
     tosser of a barman beam at her just by asking him for a drink. Mulcahy had liked her from the moment his old pal Mark Hewson
     – nowadays a minor force in Dublin public-relations circles – had introduced her to him at a birthday bash a fortnight before.
     Because, despite the changed hairstyle and the passing of time, he immediately knew her – the memory rising like a ghost in
     his mind, something he’d never realised was there but which emerged fully formed and instantly recognisable. Siobhan Fallon,
that
reporter. The one who’d come out on a job with him that time, years ago, after he first got his own team – when he’d flummoxed
     even himself by bagging one of the biggest caches of smack ever seized in Dublin.
    He thought he saw it in her eyes, too, those amazing blue eyes, the surprise and delight at meeting again. For half an hour
     they’d battled the mad churn of the party, jostled by passing bodies, talking into each others’ ears,cheeks brushing casually like old friends, trading laughs. Then they were separated when a bunch of her friends turned up
     and dragged her away, and he didn’t see her again until later, when he caught her eye from across the room as she was leaving
     with them. She smiled, he waved, and that was it. Or so he thought. It had been on his mind to look her up. But a woman like
     that, he reckoned, had to be with someone already… until she called him a few days later. She’d got his number from Mark. Would
     he like to go for a drink? Straight out, no messing around – another thing to like about her.
    ‘You’d better put those away or you’ll have to arrest yourself,’ she said as she sat down, drink in hand, pointing at the
     pack of cigarettes he’d left on the table.
    ‘I thought I might need an excuse to get out of here quick,’ Mulcahy joked.
    ‘Well, be warned, I like a smoke myself now and again, so I’d have an excuse to come after you.’
    Her eyes hooked him with a flash of pale sapphire. It was the first thing he’d thought of when she called. That look.
    ‘I heard you on the radio this morning, talking about Gary Maloney,’ he said. ‘Sounds like you kicked up a storm with that
     one.’
    ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s big alright. The nation’s favourite footie hero and all that. But it’ll be in all the other papers
     by tomorrow – won’t really be mine any more.’
    Mulcahy didn’t see why that would matter to her. For all that he thought cops and hacks had a lot in common, andcould sometimes be pretty useful to one another, he’d never been much taken by the tabloid thing, all that goggling at other
     people’s indiscretions. How she’d go about finding a story like that, on the other hand, did interest him.
    ‘Oh, you know, sources, rumours,’ she replied. ‘You’re a detective, you know how all that stuff works. Half the job is knowing
     the right people, being in the right place to get the whisper. Other times they come to you. Jimmy X is pissed off with Johnny
     Y. He wants revenge, or his job. Or just the dosh. That’s how you fellas get most of your leads, isn’t it? Contacts, informants,
     general begrudgery.’
    She was right. People liked to believe what they saw on television, that for cops it was all about careful weighing and measuring
     of clues or, even more stupid, high-tech forensics. But the truth was that the