Blood Sisters (49 page)

‘Of course it’s racist,’ said Katie. ‘It has nothing at all to do with the fact that you have a record of violence and sex-trafficking and that you were caught on CCTV at a time when a vulnerable young girl went missing.’

‘Dah, fuck you, you are pig!’

After about twenty minutes, Tyrone climbed out of the car and called Katie and Detective Dooley to come over and join him. He shone his ultraviolet lamp on to the headrest of the passenger seat and said, ‘There... you see those fine bluey-white strands? Human hair, and it’s blonde when you see it under natural light.’

‘Karosas might have a blonde girlfriend,’ said Detective Dooley.

‘Of course, but I’ve taken samples and we’ll be able to make a comparison with Roisin Begley’s hair.’

Next he directed the lamp at the dashboard. ‘Fingerprints, a whole fine mess of them, and this wasn’t just from passengers opening and closing the glovebox. The newest prints are consistent with a passenger pushing hard against the dashboard with the heel of their left hand but also trying to grip it with both hands.’

‘So they could have been struggling, is that what you’re saying?’ Katie asked him. ‘Trying to stop somebody from pulling them out of the car?’

‘That’s a possibility, yes. Especially when you look at the seat.’

He pointed the lamp downwards and Katie could see that the leather had circular smears in the middle of it, as if it had been wiped with a cloth. Under natural light the smears were invisible, but in ultraviolet they showed up with an unearthly blue glow.

Tyrone said, ‘Somebody was clearly making a hurried attempt to clean the seat, but they weren’t nearly thorough enough. That’s urine. At some point, whoever was sitting in this seat wet themselves.’

‘And of course you’ve taken samples of that, too?’ said Katie.

‘Oh, yes. That could give us the most damning evidence of all. Well – that’s always assuming that it matches Roisin Begley’s DNA. If not, we’ll just have to presume that Mr Karosas had a friend with him who couldn’t wait until they got home.’

Katie wished that he would change the subject. The breeze that was blowing across the industrial estate was even chillier now and she was feeling that pressure on her bladder again. She was sure, too, that when they were driving here she had felt her baby stir.

‘That’s not all, though,’ Tyrone added. ‘This is the
pièce de
what’s-its-name.’

‘
Résistance
,’ said Katie.

‘Yes, that. In fact, there’s several. I found these under the passenger seat. It looks like they dropped on to the floor, rolled backwards under the seat when the car accelerated, but then rolled forwards again when it slowed down and got caught underneath the floor mat. If somebody was trying to clean the car out in a hurry, which they probably were if these urine stains are anything to go by, they could easily have missed them.’

He opened up the breast pocket of his Tyvek suit and took out a small transparent evidence bag, laying down his ultraviolet lamp on the car seat and picking up his halogen flashlight instead so that Katie could clearly see what it contained.

Inside the bag were five or six sparkling opalescent beads, like flower petals, with crystals for stamens. They were identical to the beads that had made up Roisin Begley’s bracelet – the bracelet that Abisola’s selfie had shown her wearing at Havana Brown’s only minutes before she went out to meet Davydos Karosas.

Katie walked back to the doorway. Karosas greeted her with a billowing cloud of cigarette smoke and said, ‘Well? You satisfy?’

‘Just answer me one question,’ said Katie. ‘Do you allow anybody else to drive your car?’

‘
What
? You know what that cost, Lexus G3? I don’t let nobody touch it. It make me sick in my stomach to see you pigs touch it. I have to have it valet now, get rid of your stink. I should send you bill.’

‘So nobody has ever driven it, except you?’

‘That’s right,’ said Karosas. ‘You deaf or what?’

‘In that case, I have to ask you to come with me to Anglesea Street Garda station for questioning.’

Karosas twitched his head as if he had Tourette’s syndrome. ‘
What
? You crazy? What for? I don’t come to your fucking Garda station. What for? Go and fuck yourself. Pig.’

‘All right, if you won’t come voluntarily, I am hereby arresting you for the abduction and murder of Roisin Begley,’ Katie told him. ‘You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.’

Karosas twitched his head again and then he suddenly stepped back into the doorway and tried to slam the door shut. Before he could do so, Katie seized the sleeve of his coat and swung him against the wall, forcing the door open again with her shoulder. Then she hit him hard in the chest with her left elbow and punched him even harder on the cheekbone with her fist.

Karosas lost his balance and stumbled backwards towards the stairs. Katie stalked in after him, her fists raised, ready to kick him if he tried to resist her. Detective Dooley had now come in through the door after her and the two young gardaí were right behind him.

‘It’s okay, ma’am, we’ve got him!’ said Detective Dooley.

Katie lowered her fists and was about to step back when Karosas pressed one hand against the wall to steady himself, swung his leg back, and kicked Katie in the stomach.

Katie toppled backwards and sideways into Detective Dooley’s arms, stunned, unable to breathe, unable to speak. Detective Dooley laid her down gently on the floor, while one of the gardaí pushed his way past them and grabbed hold of Karosas’s arms. His companion followed him and together they handcuffed Karosas and pushed him face-first up against the wall.

Katie lay on her side, holding her throbbing stomach with both hands and trying to drag air back into her lungs. The only sound that she could make was a thin, panicky squeak. Detective Dooley knelt beside her and laid one hand on her shoulder.

‘Ma’am? How bad has he hurt you? Do you want me to call for the paramedics?’

She shook her head, but then she felt a sensation in her stomach like a washing-machine drum turning over, full of sodden, heavy washing. Her throat tightened and she vomited on to the floor, all of the sandwiches that she had eaten for lunch, and her coffee.

‘I’m sorry, I’m going to call for a white van,’ said Detective Dooley.

Katie shook her head again, but then she vomited a second time, mainly chewed-up pieces of apple and acidic yellow bile.

Detective Dooley stood up. He took out his phone and Katie could hear him asking for an ambulance. She tried to sit up, but her stomach muscles hurt so much and were clenched so relentlessly tight that she could only let out a whimper and ease herself down on to the floor again, so that her hair became stuck in her own wet sick.

She managed to raise her head a little and when she did so she saw Detective Dooley go up behind Karosas and shout, ‘You bastard! You’d kick a woman like that, would you? You’re nothing but a worthless lump of shite! What are you?’

Karosas tried to turn his head around. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Fuck all you pig.’

Detective Dooley seized the curly black hair at the back of Karosas’s head and slammed his face so hard against the wall that Katie heard his nose crack.

Upstairs, the accordion music stopped abruptly. Katie heard the woman call out, ‘
Davydos
?
Kas vyksta
?
Kas ten su jumis
?’

But then her stomach convulsed and the pain was so unbearable that she was blinded and deafened and she felt as if her whole world was contracting into nothing but a tiny speck. She was swallowed up by darkness, as if she had fallen down a well.

She opened her eyes and there was a middle-aged nurse in a white top smiling at her.

She looked around and saw that she was lying in a hospital bed, in a private room. The blind was pulled down, but only a little more than halfway, so that she could see that it was dark outside.

She lifted up the blanket that was covering her. She was wearing a hospital gown with a pattern of small purple flowers on it.

Her stomach was throbbing, but mostly she felt numb.

‘Where am I?’ she asked. Her voice sounded muffled, as if she were wearing earplugs.

‘You’re at CUH,’ said the nurse, still smiling. ‘You were attacked, if you recall, and you suffered an injury. How are you feeling?’

‘I don’t know,’ Katie told her. ‘Strange. My stomach hurts. My back, too. Ouch. What time is it?’

‘Three twenty.’

‘Three twenty in the morning, you mean?’

‘That’s right. You’ve been under the anaesthetic.’

Katie tried to sit up, but her arms didn’t seem to be strong enough to lift her. The nurse came over and helped her to lean forward while she tucked another large pillow behind her.

A succession of images was tumbling through Katie’s mind. She remembered driving with Detective Dooley to Ballycurren Industrial Estate. She remembered talking to Davydos Karosas, and the stink of his cigarette smoke. Then wrestling with him in the doorway and punching him.

‘I don’t – I can’t...’ she began.

‘That’s all right, my dear,’ said the nurse in a soothing voice. ‘It’s only the anaesthetic. It’ll all come back to you.’

‘I’m very thirsty,’ Katie told her. ‘Do you think I could have a drink of water?’

The nurse poured her a glass and held her head forward to make it easier for her to drink it. She was still swallowing when she suddenly had a flash of Karosas swinging his leg back and kicking her as hard as he could in the stomach. She spluttered and almost choked.

‘There, there,’ said the nurse, tugging out a Kleenex and dabbing her chin. ‘We don’t want to be drowning ourselves, do we?’

‘My baby,’ said Katie. She was panicking now. ‘Is my baby all right?’

The nurse set the glass back down on the bedside locker and then sat down on the bed and took hold of Katie’s hands. The look on her face was regretful and sympathetic, but in a professional way, as if she had to look regretful and sympathetic almost daily. Katie couldn’t help noticing that one of her eyes was brown and the other was blue.

‘You lost the baby, my dear, I’m sorry to tell you. That was a fierce hard blow you sustained, right to your abdomen. You’ve been badly bruised, although there was no other injury, thank God. He could easy have ruptured your spleen. The doctor tried his very best to save your child, but you had a placental abruption and it was too late by the time they got you here to the hospital.’

Katie reached down and felt her stomach. It still felt swollen, as it had for the past few weeks, although it felt very tender, too. She found it impossible to believe that there was no longer a baby inside her. How could it have gone? She was suddenly washed over by an overwhelming sense of loneliness.
It’s just me now, all on my own. That little life inside me has left me for ever
.

‘Was it a boy or a girl?’ she asked, her voice still sounding muffled. ‘Or was it too early to tell?’

‘Too early to say with any certainty,’ said the nurse. ‘Whatever it was, though, a he or a she, the Lord will welcome it into His arms with the greatest of love.’

Katie nodded. She wasn’t sobbing, but the tears were running down her cheeks and sliding down her neck into her hospital gown. The nurse said, ‘You have somebody waiting for you downstairs. Do you want to see them now or shall I ask them to come back later?’

‘Who is it?’

‘A young lady. I think she works with you. She’s been waiting ever since you were brought in.’

She handed Katie another Kleenex and Katie wiped her eyes. ‘Yes... yes, all right, then. Thank you.’

After she had left Katie did her best to smarten herself up, dabbing at her eyes again to make sure that there was no blotchy mascara on them and tweaking at her hair. As she patted the left side of her head, however, she realized that her hair was stuck together with dried sick. She was still trying to pull it out when the door opened and Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán came in.

‘Kyna,’ she said.

Without a word, Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán leaned over the bed and kissed Katie on the forehead. Then she dragged over a plastic chair and sat down close to her. She looked very tired and her eyes were reddened as if she had been crying, too.

‘You were
pregnant
,’ she said. ‘That was such a shock.’

‘What? You didn’t realize? I was absolutely sure that you’d guessed it.’

‘Not at
all
! I just thought you were
blooming
, do you know what I mean, like? You seemed like you were so full of beans. But I thought that was because you were happy, that was all, because you had John back with you and you were getting on so well together. That was one of the reasons I wanted a transfer. If you were as happy as all that, I thought there was absolutely no chance for me at all.’

She reached out and grasped Katie’s hand. ‘But I’m so sorry for you, losing the baby like that. It must be breaking your heart.’

‘It wasn’t John’s,’ said Katie.

‘No? Oh. Serious?’

‘That was why he left me. I had to tell him, and when I did he just walked out. I’ve tried ringing him since but he won’t answer any of my calls. I haven’t been back home yet to see, but I think he might have come back to collect all of his clothes.’

‘Oh, Katie,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘And now this. I’m so sorry.’

‘Fate, I think,’ said Katie, with her eyes filling up again with tears. ‘One of those things that wasn’t meant to be. One of those
children
who wasn’t meant to be. They couldn’t even tell if it was a boy or a girl.’

‘We’ve formally charged Karosas and we have him in custody,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘We’re holding him for assaulting a police officer, as well as abduction and homicide. Tyrone should know by the end of the day if those hair and urine samples and fingerprints belonged to Roisin and he’s testing those beads, too, for DNA.’

Katie nodded. ‘That’s grand. I should be able to get myself discharged later. I’m paying a tribute to Detective Horgan at the funeral.’