Living Death (52 page)

She was about to ring Bridie when her phone warbled, and when she picked it up and said, ‘DS Maguire,’ it was Bridie.

‘Bridie! I was just about to call you! Is everything okay?’

Bridie sounded out of breath. ‘Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but it’s John. He’s been very down all day, barely saying a word. In the end he told me that he’d surprised you with this new fellow of yours Conor and that all his hopes for the future had been dashed, like.’

‘Go on,’ said Katie.

‘I popped down to Centra just now to buy some fresh milk and the paper and when I got back I checked John’s medication to have it ready for the evening and all the boxes of codeine were gone. I went into his room and he was sitting there with all the codeine tablets on the bedside table next to him, over fifty of them, and a glass of orange juice.

‘He said his life wasn’t worth the living without you and that he was going to take all of the tablets and I shouldn’t try to stop him. Of course I scooped them up and took them away. I can’t say if he was really intending to kill himself, but he’s fierce depressed, I can tell you that.’

Katie pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. ‘Okay, Bridie,’ she said, tiredly. ‘I’m finished here at the station so I’ll come home and have a talk with him. I’ll be with you in forty minutes so.’

She sat back for a moment and then she called Conor.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘Somebody’s robbed the AIB and you can’t come and meet me.’

‘Well, it’s worse than that. But, no, I can’t meet you. Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow, with any luck.’

‘That’s all right, darling. I know how demanding your job is. I’m prepared to wait for you.’

Katie took a deep breath. ‘I have to warn you, Conor. It’s always going to be like this.’

‘I understand that, Katie, completely. But that’s what I love about you. I never came across a woman in my life before with such dedication to other people.’

‘I’ll ring when I’m free, sweetheart,’ said Katie, and put down the phone.

When she arrived home, John was sitting in the living-room watching television. She found Bridie and Barney in the kitchen.

‘How is he?’ she asked Bridie.

‘Let’s say that he’s less than happy,’ said Bridie. ‘I don’t think that he’s seriously suicidal, otherwise he would have swallowed all of those codeines before I came back from the shop. But I’ve seen this so many times before. It’s a cry for help, do you know what I mean? “Look at me, I’m disabled, I’m ruined, and even the people who used to love me don’t love me any more.”’

Katie said, ‘It’s not only his legs, Bridie. John and I broke up several times before. We loved each other, I’m not saying we didn’t, but we had different paths in life, that’s all. We never could have been happy together.’

‘Are you going to tell him that? Because even now he still seems to think that there’s a chance.’

‘Thank you, Bridie,’ said Katie. ‘You can go home now. I’ll have a chat with John and see if we can work something out.’

When Bridie had left, Katie went into the living-room and sat down on the couch beside John.

‘I suppose Bridie told you about the pills,’ he said, without looking at her.

‘Of course she did. I’m paying for her to take care of you.’

‘I thought about taking them, I have to admit. But then I thought about you, and all of the stress that you must be under. You never talk about it, that’s the trouble. You never tell me what you’re dealing with, at work. I mean, murderers, and rapists, and drug smugglers, and frauds. And you never say a word. How can we possibly have any future together if you won’t even tell me what you’ve been doing, during the day?’

‘I can’t tell you, John. It’s confidential.’

‘So – even when we’re married – it’s still going to be confidential?’

Merciful Heaven
, thought Katie.
He still believes that we’re going to be married. He’s seen me in bed with Conor, and he still believes that he and I are going to be spending the rest of our lives together.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘See how much you can stomach of this. I’m investigating St Giles’ Clinic, in Montenotte, because we have evidence that the doctor in charge is using ambulances to smuggle drugs from the UK into Cork.’

‘Ambulances? Serious?’

‘That’s right. It looks like he’s building up a fleet of ambulances which are specially fitted out to hold millions of euros’ worth of heroin and cocaine and God knows what else. He’s making sure that they’re getting through customs without being searched because they have severely disabled patients on board.’

‘Oh, like me, you mean?’

‘You’re not as severely disabled as these people. They’re blind, and incapable of speech, and none of them can walk. We believe that the doctor in charge has been maiming them himself. We’ve already rescued one girl and she’s given me a lot of evidence about what he’s been doing.’

‘So – have you arrested him?’

‘We will do, but we need to make sure that our evidence is rock solid. We’re going to interview the girl that we rescued tomorrow morning, but we have to make sure that it was Dr Fitzgerald who blinded her and mutilated her.’

‘That’s his name, is it, Dr Fitzgerald?’

‘John, I shouldn’t have told you any of this. It’s all strictly confidential. But I want you to understand that it’s not the stress of my job that’s driven us apart, and it’s not you losing your legs, either. We’re two different people, with different ideas and different destinies ahead of us.’

‘Just because we’re different, Katie, that doesn’t mean we can’t have a happy life together. Millions of people are happy together, even if they don’t see eye to eye at all.’

Katie took hold of his hand. It didn’t feel familiar any more, not like her lover’s hand. It was like holding the hand of a complete stranger.

‘Let’s just see how things work out, John, all right? You’ll have your new legs this week, won’t you? Please promise me you won’t try to take those pills again.’

John turned to her and there was a look in his eyes which she had never seen before. Cunning, as if he had decided on some plan of action, but wasn’t prepared to tell her what it was.

‘I promise – if you promise to marry me.’

‘What’s the point of my promising to marry you if you can’t promise that you’ll still be alive?’

John was silent for a while, but then he lifted Katie’s hand away from his and said, ‘You were going to spend the night with him tonight, weren’t you? That Conor.’

‘John – I came home to make sure that you weren’t still bent on taking your own life.’

That seemed to satisfy John, because he said, ‘Okay,’ very quietly, and turned up the volume on the television so that he could listen to
Nationwide.

*

Lorcan said, ‘Jesus, Gearoid, they must suspect something, the state of her.’

Gearoid turned away from his office window. He had been watching Sonny Powers from Powers Motors working on the broken-down ambulance. It was already dark outside, but Sonny had three halogen lamps around him, which reminded Gearoid of an operating theatre.

‘They can suspect all they like, but they won’t be able to prove anything,’ he said, quite calmly. ‘If they come here to question me about her condition, all I have to say is that she was left here in that condition by God alone knows who, abandoned on the front porch, and that out of the goodness of our hearts we took her in.’

‘And you think they’ll swallow that? For real?’

‘What choice will they have? I don’t have to say anything at all, if I don’t want to. That’s my legal right. And how are they going to prove who operated on her?’

‘Oh, come on. Who in the world but you could have cut her vocal cords and severed her optic nerves? Who else would have had a reason to?’

‘That’s not the point, Lorcan. All I have to do is deny it. Siobhán can’t give evidence because she can’t speak and she can’t write and since she’s totally blind how is she going to identify me in a court of law?’

Lorcan took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, and blew out of a long stream of smoke. ‘All I can say is, boy, you have some fecking nerve.’

‘In surgery, you have to. Everybody trusts surgeons, but if they only knew for instance what a fine line it is between successfully stitching up an aortic aneurysm and a catastrophic haemorrhage, they wouldn’t feel even a tenth so confident. But there you are. All a surgeon can do is hold his nerve and do his best. Emotion never comes into it. If your patients survive, that’s very good for your track record. If they die, well, that’s life. You sterilise your scalpels and go on to the next one.

‘Besides,’ he said, turning back to the window, ‘we’re already making a fortune out of this business and I’m certainly not going to give it up now. Not because of some stupid mechanical failure.’

‘Fair play to you, Gearoid,’ said Lorcan, looking around for an ashtray. ‘When does Sonny think he’s going to have the ambulance up and running again?’

‘Tomorrow morning at the latest. I’ve already told Wardy we’re going to be a day late. Are you going to be okay to go over there with them?’

‘I’ve arranged to meet some kennel owner from North Tipp to check out some dogs he has for sale, but I can put it off until later in the week.’

‘That’s grand. From what Wardy was telling me, the latest shipment is all first-class quality and he estimates that one run alone will net us forty to fifty thousand. I promise you this, Lorcan, by the middle of the summer we’re going to be the dominant supplier in the whole of Munster.’

Lorcan sucked at his cigarette, and then he said, ‘I can feel a trip to Charles Hurst the Ferrari dealers coming on.’

‘No, you don’t. The way you survive in this business is to keep your profile low and your bake tight shut.’

*

After John had gone to bed, Katie sat up in her pink pyjamas to finish her drink. She switched off the television so that the only sound was the clinking of ice in her glass. Barney lay sleeping on the carpet close beside her, although he kept twitching and snuffling as if he were dreaming. It was clear to her now that she would have to make arrangements for John to be taken into a convalescent home. She had agreed to look after him because she felt so guilty about him losing his legs, but she was only causing him emotional agony on top of the physical pain that he was already suffering. She would call his therapist in the morning and see what they could recommend.

Once she had finished her drink she switched off the lights and shut Barney in the kitchen. Although she went to bed she couldn’t fall asleep, and she lay there staring into total darkness like Siobhán.

About an hour later she heard John cry out. She stayed where she was, but after another twenty minutes he cried out again, like a small boy who has lost his mother in Dunne’s Stores. She threw back her duvet and went to see what he wanted.

It was raining the next morning, fine and soft, not a dead-umbrella day, but drenching enough, and it was forecast to last until late afternoon. Katie left the house early, before John was awake. As she drove, she thought again about sending him into care, and she knew that she had made the right decision. His continued presence was causing her almost as much stress and pain as he was going through.

As she turned into the car park at Anglesea Street, her iPhone pinged. She had the first of her twice-daily updates from Detective Ó Doibhilin on Keeno.
Stable but still in coma
. She wondered if Keeno might stay asleep for the next twenty years, and wake up to find that Katie had retired from the force to marry Conor, and that she had three or four children, and that all of his dognapping cronies were either dead or serving time on Rathmore Road.

When she sat down at her desk and started on her paperwork and messages, Moirin came in with a cup of coffee for her. Moirin didn’t mention Dr Fitzpatrick, but as she was going back to her office, Katie said, ‘Moirin – just to let you know – we’re getting ourselves all geared up to arrest Dr Fitzpatrick. Don’t you worry – he’s going to get what he deserves.’

‘Well, I know my cousin Rose will be happy out, if he’s punished at last for what he’s done,’ said Moirin. ‘Myself, I don’t think I’ll believe it until I hear with my own ears the judge saying that he’s guilty and sends him to prison for ten years or more. That could have been my niece, that little Aibhlinn. Down’s baby or not, she could have had a pure happy life.’

A few minutes later, Detective Dooley came in, accompanied by a bald middle-aged man, who was grinning with nervousness. He was wearing a belted raincoat and carrying a broad-brimmed hat pressed to his chest, and Katie thought that he looked as if he had stepped right out of a 1920s photograph of the Cork IRA.

‘Morning, ma’am,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘This here is Mr Patrick Byrne. Mr Byrne – this is Detective Superintendent Maguire. Mr Byrne saw that bulletin on the news last night about Martin Ó Brádaigh and he reckons he witnessed that incident himself.’

‘A very good morning to you, detective superintendent,’ said Mr Byrne. ‘Not weatherwise, I have to admit, but otherwise.’

‘Come on in,’ said Katie, and led Mr Byrne over to the couches under the window. Mr Byrne perched himself right on the edge of one of them and laid his hat in his lap.

‘Sorry, my coat’s a little wet.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Katie. ‘Tell me exactly what you saw.’

‘Like er, I didn’t realise until I saw it on the telly last night that it was of any importance at all,’ said Mr Byrne. ‘Me and the missus was on our way to Rosslare, like, to spend a few days with our youngest daughter in London. We was driving along when we came across this black car slapbang in the middle of the road, like, and in front of this black car there was an ambulance, and in front of
that
there was another car. We had to stall for a moment before we could overtake because there was a few cars coming the other way, so when we did pass we was going fairly slow.

‘At first we thought there might have been an accident, like, do you know what I mean, what with there being an ambulance there. But we couldn’t see nobody injured or nothing, and there was no paramedics there, only these two fellers.’