Cold Steel (15 page)

'Hi there, Dr Clancy. What can we do for you here in Chicago?' The voice was friendly and accommodating.

'Well, it's a simple problem, really,' began Clancy. 'I'm looking after a patient from the US who is on a drug we don't have in our formulary.' He was making it up as he went along, it was easier than explaining conspiracy theories. 'I was wondering if you could identify the drug in particular and whether there are any known side-effects recorded against it?'

'No problem, Dr Clancy. Just tell me all you know and I'll do an immediate search.'

'D/N Aspirin. Could you give me a physical description and side-effect profile.'

'One moment.' Even over the transatlantic line Clancy could hear the tapping on a keyboard. 'Here we are,' the nurse came back within two minutes. 'D/N Aspirin: comes in one strength only, three hundred milligrams. It's manufactured by Cynx Pharmaceuticals in Boston, comes as one preparation only, a slow-release, once-a-day version.'

'Do you have a physical description of it?' pressed Clancy. 'You know, what it actually looks like?'

Tap-tap on the faraway keyboard. 'Yes, sir, it's an oval-shaped yellow tablet, scored down the middle on both sides. Letters CP on one side only.'

A voice suddenly echoed in Clancy's head. Harold Morell's plump and careful wife's description of his medication: 'the pinky-blue tablet for his angina'. Clancy knew that was Capoten 12.5 mgs, he had recognised the description immediately. It was the second tablet, the 'little blue one' that wasn't fitting in now. The D/N Aspirin being prescribed and handed out personally by Linda Speer was not matching its description in the US National Pharmaceutical Formulary.

'I'm sorry,' Clancy sounded as confused as he felt. 'Could you repeat that?' His pen was pressed and ready to record.

'Yes, sir. An oval-shaped yellow tablet, scored down the middle on both sides. Letters CP on one side only.'

'You sure?'

The friendly voice suddenly hardened. 'Dr Clancy, it's my job to be sure. People don't ring me for information and expect me not to be sure.'

'Oh God, I'm sorry,' Clancy mumbled. 'It's just that your description doesn't fit in with what I've got here.'

'Then you ain't got D/N Aspirin.'

Clancy stared at the earpiece, speechless.

'Are you still there, Dr Clancy?'

'Yes,' said the haematologist, his head spinning.

'Do you still want the side-effect profile?'

Clancy stared at his written description of D/N Aspirin.

'No, it's okay, that won't be necessary, thank you very much. I think you're right. I ain't got D/N Aspirin.'

'Have a nice day and say "hello" to Dublin from me.'

6.10 pm

'Turn left here and take the second left again.' Joan Armstrong sat slumped in the back seat so no one would see her. She allowed no more of her head up than necessary to give directions. 'Now go down this road to the T-junction and take a right.'

Molloy drove past red-bricked terraced houses, apartment complexes, cricket greens and small shop clusters selling anything from videos to Chinese takeaways. The roads were a mixture of wealth and second-rate wannabees.

'Do you see that disused electricity meter box about halfway down the road?' Joan Armstrong was sitting higher, straining past Molloy's neck.

Molloy slowed to a crawl and let a motorbike courier shoot past on the wrong side. 'Where?' He spotted it and swerved to the other side of the road and parked beside. He glanced up and down, there was no activity. A graffiti-scarred nameplate said Mercers Road. Underneath it rubbish lay scattered from a burst garbage bag. A dog nosed at an empty packet of crisps.

'Quiet here, isn't it?' he said.

'That's why we use it.'

Molloy turned and grinned. 'Where's the bag?' he asked quickly, not wanting his grin to defuse the gravity of the situation.

'Inside it.'

'Inside that meter box?'

'Yeah. Look in there, I'll bet that's where she stuffed it. That's where we usually hide our bags.'

Joan Armstrong watched from the car. Molloy poked at
the rusty lock on the meter box with the top of his biro and the doors parted easily. He pushed one door open fully. The schoolbag sat innocently in one corner. It looked untouched. A spider had spun a web that covered the upper flap. He slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and went to the boot of the car and removed a large evidence bag. The schoolbag was slipped inside. The meter box was checked again carefully, inside and out. There was nothing. Molloy looked up and down. There was no one on the road, no one at any of the windows of nearby houses, no one to witness the small piece of drama being enacted on the quiet slip road in Sandymount in the warmth of the evening sun. Only the spider whose web he had destroyed.

'Why here? Where's Sandymount Park?' The locality was well off Molloy's beaten track and he was unsure of his bearings. He sat in the driver's seat, door open for air. Joan Armstrong was slumped down again in the back seat. A van sped past, much too fast for the road but Molloy ignored it.

'There's a gap in the wall at the very back of the park used by heads. You can reach it from here.' A finger pointed past Molloy's left ear. 'You go down to the end of this road and take a right. You'll see three big granite rocks with the name of the apartment block there. You can squeeze past the rocks and there's a narrow path that goes along the side of the park. It's only a few minutes from here.' The finger changed direction and Molloy's head swivelled to follow. He still wasn't sure of his co-ordinates and turned the engine on, allowing the car to glide slowly to the end of the road. There was a newish looking two-storey block of flats in a cul-de-sac to the right. The road ended after about one hundred yards. The granite rocks stood out like fallen meteorites,
'THE PALMS'
was chiselled into one. Molloy squinted at the apartments and decided he couldn't have thought of a less appropriate name. He climbed out of the car, squeezed between two of the
boulders and discovered the narrow path. Brushing dust and grit off his clothes he returned.

'Where did she get money to buy drugs?'

'From her parents.' Joan Armstrong's voice changed again, from confident to unsure. 'They're filthy rich,' she added for good measure. 'You know, like, it's really weird, they just gave her whatever she wanted.'

Molloy was too preoccupied wondering what was inside the schoolbag to challenge. He squinted at the girl in the rear-view mirror. The head of jet-black hair was low, the provocative lips were being nibbled. The make-up was not concealing the anxiety. He decided she'd had enough for one day.

'Great girl,' he beamed as he left her back at the house. 'She's been a great help.' The Armstrongs forced weak smiles as they ushered their daughter inside.

7.35 pm

DID PSYCHO JUNKIE KILL JENNY?

Jim Clarke scanned the
Evening Post
headlines and quickly read the report underneath Barry Nolan's by-line. Inside, four pages were devoted to the dawn raid on Hillcourt Mansions ('Dublin's notorious drugs' flashpoint, where junkies rule the roost') and the arrest of an unnamed male 'in his thirties, well known to the police'. Nolan described how 'the suspect' had been first taken to the Bridewell holding centre and then to Rockdale Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The account carried photographs of Hillcourt Mansions, photographs of the cortege screaming away from the tenement buildings and a file photograph of Rockdale. There followed a list of the more notorious inmates at the hospital and their crimes. Clarke twisted the paper into a side pocket of his jacket and stared out at the slow-moving traffic along O'Connell Street, Dublin's main traffic artery.

'You better take me home, Mossy, my leg's killing me.' Moss Kavanagh glanced at the pain-racked face in the rear-view mirror and pressed the accelerator.

'Your father's like a bear, for God's sake don't say anything to annoy him.' Clarke's wife Maeve was fussing in the kitchen trying to get a meat pie heated. She poured a glass of white wine. 'Take that to him and talk to him for a minute 'til I get his dinner.'

Katy took a furtive sip and carried the rest to her father. Clarke was lying on the couch, one eye on the television news, the other on a blister he'd just discovered on his damaged leg. The early evening news lead with the arrest of the still-unnamed Micko Kelly on suspicion of being involved in the murder of Jennifer Marks. A quick flick through the channels confirmed the story was being carried on most networks. Clarke took the glass without a word and knocked it back. Katy made a face and went back to the kitchen to fill up again.

'His leg looks awful bad tonight, mum,' she whispered as she fiddled inside the fridge for the wine bottle.

Maeve made a low shoosh. 'I know. Don't say anything to him though, it'll only upset him more.'

Katy poured a full glass and took another furtive sip behind her mother's back. Without turning, Maeve growled at her.

'Don't you touch another drop. That's all I've left and with the mood he's in he may as well have the whole lot.'

Katy grinned and took a deeper sip, topped the glass up and went back inside the sitting room. The tension was unbearable and she slipped upstairs to her room and took up a book.

Clarke ate his dinner in silence, drank the best part of three-quarters of the bottle of wine and groaned his way to bed. He neither spoke nor acknowledged his wife or daughter. Inside his room he inspected the blister. It had got bigger, now at least an inch in diameter and full of dark
blood. The leg ached unbearably and he knocked back two more painkillers despite the warning they shouldn't be taken with alcohol. He slumped back and was asleep within minutes.

20

9.45 pm

'I think you should come out now.'

Dr Patrick Dillon, consultant forensic psychiatrist at Rockdale Hospital for the Criminally Insane, was standing outside the institution's one and only padded cell. Beside him in the corridor were three warders and two medical students, both female. Dillon had gently eased the lock and opened the cell door. It was later than he would have liked but Micko Kelly's increasingly agitated behaviour had delayed his hand. Dillon had finally sedated him with an intramuscular dose of Clopixol Acuphase.

'This is a fast-acting major tranquilliser,' he explained to the students. 'It should start to work in about twenty minutes. I'll leave him an hour, maybe a little longer before we open the door again. He should be a lot calmer.' The students listened attentively, scribbling notes. 'He's been settled in the corner for the past forty minutes. I'd say we coax him out now.'

Dillon's voice was calm and quiet, deliberately so as Kelly had been one of the most disturbed patients seen for some time. Word of his attack at Bridewell had reached the hospital. No one was prepared to take any chances. Already a special holding cell had been prepared.

'I think you should come out now. You're getting cold and it's late.'

Kelly's head lifted as he searched for the voice. For
almost five minutes he didn't stir and no one approached. His eyes had a glazed, distant look and he blinked occasionally and slowly, as if wiping the lenses clean. Those watching had been warned not to make any noise or sudden movement. All stood still, breathing softly.

'I'm coming in now,' Dillon murmured as he inched into the padded cell. Behind, the warders followed.

The medical students watched intently, notepads put away. They were allowing their senses to record and observe. This was human drama at its sharpest, nothing that could be learned from a textbook.

Kelly's hair was matted down with sweat. A hand went up as if to ward off the approaching figure.

'It's all right, Michael, you're safe now.'

The hand went up again, fly-swatting movement, and Kelly stared straight at Dillon. His eyes moved slowly as if his brain was barely registering. Dillon knelt down. Kelly recoiled. 'Fuck off.' The rebuke was half-hearted.

Dillon took a hand and held it firmly. 'Try and get up. You're getting cold.'

The thick walls of the institution always kept the corridors and rooms warm after the summer sun. Inside the padded cell no heat penetrated. Dillon placed one hand firmly on an elbow, the other on a wrist and dragged Kelly to his feet. He stood unsteadily, eyes rolling, mouth opening and closing as he chewed on the side of his tongue. Dillon lead him into the corridor. Kelly stood shivering, eyes shielded from the sudden brightness. He rested one hand against a wall. The small group of onlookers stepped back.

Kelly looked thin and malnourished. His ribs were too obvious, his hips carried little meat. His legs were spindly and his long dank hair was dishevelled. His eyes were vacant and distant, hands moving as if through treacle. Dillon held an elbow and escorted his patient along the corridor, stopping when Kelly stopped, allowing him to take in his surroundings. His staring gaze reflected
astonishment, bewilderment, incomprehension. Twice he tried to shake off the gripping hand.

'I want you to come into this room.' Dillon steered the weak frame towards the holding cell.

Kelly stopped at the door and squinted at the single bed in the centre of the floor. Beside was a small hand basin and lavatory. The walls were clean and unmarked, only barred windows reflecting prison status. He allowed himself to be guided inside and slowly laid on the bed. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. The tiny room filled up. He continued to chew slowly on the side of his tongue and occasionally yawned, a long, open-mouthed yawn that exposed poor dental hygiene.

'Angela,' Dillon addressed one of the medical students, a pretty blonde with hair tied in a bun. 'I'm going to examine him now. We have to rule out any physical cause of this psychosis. Perhaps you'd record my observations?'

Micko Kelly's hospital chart was passed over and Angela clicked a biro into action. Dillon slipped on two pairs of surgical gloves, one on top of the other.

'There is infestation with head lice, this involves the beard as well.' He stopped. 'We're going to cut your hair and shave you.'

Kelly's eyes rolled and he mouthed an answer no one could make out. One of the warders moved to the top of the bed and produced a pair of scissors. Within minutes the lice-ridden hair and beard lay in a small cardboard box.

'Burn that,' ordered Dillon. 'The nose shows marked mucosal swelling and there is conjunctival hyperaemia with icteric changes.' Dillon directed the students to the yellow tinge of jaundice in Kelly's eyes. 'Open your mouth.'

Kelly obliged, eyes rolling as he watched. Dillon made sure his hands were well out of the way.

'There is poor dental hygiene.' Experienced fingers now glided along Kelly's neck. 'There are no glands enlarged.' The fingers ran along shoulder and arms. 'There are
needle-track sites at both elbows with vein thrombosis. The nails are very long.' Clip, clip. The nails were cut. 'Sit him forward.' A stethoscope was placed on chest. 'Lungs clear, heart sounds normal. You can lay him back again.' A blood pressure reading was recorded. 'He has significant gynaecomastica.' Dillon explained the significance of this. 'He has an almost female distribution of fat over the breasts.' Heads craned to inspect. 'That suggests longstanding liver disease.' Dillon's fingers continued to explore Kelly's abdomen. 'The liver is enlarged and extends to five fingers breadth beneath the right sub costal margin. The edge is hard and irregular. There are spider naevi on the trunk and abdominal skin surfaces.' Hands now examined Kelly's groin and slipped underneath his underpants. 'There is testicular atrophy.' Dillon double-checked. 'It's quite marked in fact.'

In the corridor outside the clinical findings and suggestions on management of patient number 1142, Michael Leo Kelly, were being discussed.

'He presented with a violent, aggressive paranoid psychosis,' began Dillon. Out of the corner of an eye he watched warders coming and going from the holding cell. 'He has a history of drug abuse. That strongly suggests this is a pharmacologically induced event. He also shows signs of chronic liver failure. According to his prison file he has hepatitis B and C.'

'Might that explain his psychosis?' the bun-haired blonde asked. 'Maybe this is a toxic reaction because of his impaired liver?'

Dillon thought this over. 'It's a possibility. We'll do a full blood count, liver and renal function tests and toxicology report for alcohol and drug screen. We'd better re-check his infective hepatitis status.'

He stopped to check the holding cell. Kelly lay as he'd left him, staring at the ceiling, eyes vacant and glazed. He was yawning large, open-mouthed yawns and continued
chewing on the side of his tongue. Dillon returned to the students.

'He's much calmer, easier to manage. We'll have to treat him carefully, fatten him up, get him back to health, physically and mentally.' He remembered the earlier conversation with Jim Clarke. 'Then he'll be crucified.'