Blood Sisters (56 page)

‘You can’t kill me. I’m your mother.’

Riona frowned at her and said, ‘
What
? What in the name of God are you rambling about? You’re not my mother! How could you be my mother? My mother was Shauna Nolan, God rest her soul!’

‘Shauna Nolan was your adoptive mother. Your real mother is me.’

Riona gradually lowered the shotgun. ‘I was
adopted
? Don’t talk such shite! I was never adopted!’

‘You were, Riona. It was all covered up. There were no adoption papers, not in the usual way.’

‘I don’t believe this, not a word of it! You’re making this up so that I won’t kill you!’

‘No, Riona, it’s true. I swear to you on the Holy Bible it’s true.’

‘So – if you’re my real mother, why did you treat me so badly when I was taken in here? Why did you pick on me all the time? A real mother wouldn’t treat her own daughter like that!’

‘I’m sorry to say that I was ashamed of you. I was ashamed that you’d fallen, just as I fell. Every time I punished you, I suppose I was punishing myself. Let me say to you now that I deeply, deeply regret it. I regret it to the bottom of my heart.’

Riona looked around the hallway in disbelief. ‘I can’t take this in! You’re lying! You were a
nun
, for Christ’s sake! How could a nun be my mother?’

‘I was very young, Riona, and very easily taken in. Canon O’Flynn used to pay regular visits to the convent from the Holy Family Church and sometimes hold Mass here. He was a very charismatic man, Riona, and I fell in love with him. That’s all.’

‘You’re trying to tell me that Canon O’Flynn is my father and that you’re my mother?’

‘It’s true, Riona. I swear it. If you kill me now, perhaps it’s because the Lord thinks that I deserve to die for the sins that I’ve committed, but you will be committing an even greater sin by killing the woman who gave you life.’

There was a long pause. Riona stood with the shotgun half lifted, her ears still singing, and utterly stunned. Just then, though, the front door of the convent banged open and the two gardaí who had been standing beside the convent entrance came bursting in, wielding their batons.

‘Lay down that weapon!’ one of them shouted. ‘Do you hear me? Lay it down now!’

Riona seized Mother O’Dwyer’s scapular and pulled her roughly towards her. She held up the shotgun and called back, ‘Stay where you are! If you come any closer I’ll blow off her head! I mean it!’

‘Lay down that weapon!’ the garda repeated. ‘There’s an armed response unit on its way and you won’t stand a fecking chance!’

Riona started to walk towards the front door, dragging Mother O’Dwyer along with her. Mother O’Dwyer kept saying, ‘Don’t, Riona! Don’t! For the love of God, don’t!’

Riona said nothing, but kept on walking. As she approached the two gardaí she raised the shotgun even higher. They both raised their hands and backed away.

‘You’re making a fierce bad mistake here, girl,’ one of them said. ‘This is only going to end in tears, I promise you.’ Riona bared her teeth at him in a humourless grin and pushed Mother O’Dwyer out of the door.

Now she really hurried. Keeping a tight grip on Mother O’Dwayer’s scapular, she stalked as quickly as she could down the sloping car park, out of the convent gates and down the hill. Mother O’Dwyer tripped once or twice, and lost her left shoe, but Riona pulled her to her feet again and kept on going. A reservist turned around and saw them and shouted out, ‘Hey!’ and started to go after them, but one of the gardaí came out of the front door and said, ‘Don’t! She’s armed! We’ve already called for the ERU!’

Riona dragged Mother O’Dwyer down to Herbert Park. Two small girls in pink anoraks were playing hopscotch on the pavement and they stared at them in bewilderment. Dermot was sitting in his car smoking and listening to Cork 96 FM. As soon as he saw Riona and Mother O’Dwyer come stumbling around the corner he tossed his cigarette away and switched off the radio

‘Jesus Christ, Riona! What the feck?’

Riona opened the back door of the car and pushed Mother O’Dwyer inside. Then she climbed in next to her so that she could keep the shotgun digging into her side.

‘Please, Riona!’ said Mother O’Dwyer. ‘Please think twice about this! They’re sending the armed guards after us! You’ll be getting the both of us killed!’

‘Just keep your mouth shut, Sister Hannah,’ said Riona. ‘Dermot, get us out of here, and quick!’

‘We’re pulling a fecking horsebox with a horse in it! I can’t go that quick!’

‘Sure, I know that, but quick as you can. We have a hostage, so it doesn’t really matter too much. Nobody’s going to give us any grief while we’re holding the holy mother here.’

‘Riona—’ said Mother O’Dwyer, but Riona dug the shotgun muzzle even harder into her ribs and said, ‘Don’t! I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear your prayers or your apologies or your excuses! My mother was Shauna Nolan and there’s an end to it! Now shut your bake!’

‘What’s the story?’ asked Dermot as they drove down Summerhill towards the city, the horse trailer bumping and jolting behind them.

‘Sister Virginia’s dancing with the devil, so that’s another one of those witches accounted for.’

‘I thought you were going to stab her, like.’

‘I didn’t have the time, Dermot. At least she saw my face before she went downstairs to meet Satan.’

Mother O’Dwyer clasped her hands together and closed her eyes and started to mutter a prayer. Riona jabbed her again and almost screamed at her, ‘
No praying
!
Do you hear me, you witch
?
No effing praying
!’

‘By the way,’ said Dermot, as they drove over the Brian Boru Bridge and the river filled the car with reflected sunlight, ‘where are we heading off to, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Nohaval Cove, of course. We’ve a horse to dispose of.’

Katie took a long, warm shower, leaning her head back against the tiles and letting the water gush all over her face. Her stomach was still swollen and there was a huge charcoal-coloured bruise in the middle of it, tinged around the edges with crimson. All the same, it didn’t throb as badly as it had done yesterday and she was beginning to feel less battered, although her back still hurt.

She stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around her head and put on her bathrobe. On the shelf over the bathroom basin there was only one toothbrush now, and John’s razor and aftershave had gone. It was the same in the bedroom – all of his clothes had disappeared from the wardrobe. His sweaters, his shoes. In the hallway his coats and scarves were no longer hanging on the pegs.

He had taken his portfolio of paintings and drawings, too. All that he had left behind was the nude study of Katie, ripped in half.

Katie stood in the doorway for a moment and thought of all the people in her life who had left her, one way or another. Her mother. Seamus. Paul. And now John.

Under her breath she whispered the song that her father always used to sing at New Year. ‘
So fill to me the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all
.’

She went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. She thought it was strange that her tastes had changed so abruptly now that she was no longer pregnant, but she couldn’t face the thought of green tea or chocolate ginger biscuits.

While she was waiting for the coffee to brew, Barney came and nudged at her leg with his nose. He looked up at her soulfully and she wondered if he had really had any empathy with how she was feeling, or if he was trying to tell her that he felt like a walk.
Dogs and men
, she thought.
There’s no accounting for the way they treat you
.

She looked at her iPhone lying on the kitchen counter. She was tempted to give John one more try, but then she thought that would give him the impression that she was begging. If he didn’t want her, if she disgusted him because she was shop-soiled, then that was his problem. She could find better men than him. Men who didn’t run away from reality, like John had run away from Ireland when he was younger, and then run away from her. Twice.

‘If that’s the way you feel, boy,’ she said as she poured out her coffee. At that moment, though, her phone rang and almost made her spill it.

It was Detective O’Donovan. ‘I know you’ve only just made it back home, ma’am, but Detective Inspector O’Rourke asked me to ring you and let you know that Riona Mulliken appears to have shot dead one of the nuns at the Bon Sauveur Convent.’

‘Tell me that’s not true. Jesus.’

‘Not only that, she’s abducted the mother superior.’

‘Are you serious? That old Mother O’Dwyer?’

‘That’s the one, Mother O’Dwyer, and Riona Mulliken’s still armed with a shotgun as far as we know. She’s heading south in a car that we believe is being driven by that Dermot fellow we were supposed to be arresting. A blue Toyota Avensis. The ERU have two cars tailing them and we’ve alerted Superintendent Barry at Carrigaline, too, because that’s the direction they’re taking.

‘You’re not going to believe this, though. They’re towing a horse trailer, and it has a horse in it.’

‘A
horse
trailer? With a
horse
in it?’ said Katie. ‘What murderer tries to make a getaway towing a horse trailer with a horse in it? What sort of a speed are they doing?’

‘Only about 65 kph. We’re right behind them but we don’t want Riona Mulliken to panic, like, do you know what I mean? One of the sisters in the convent overheard her threatening to blow a hole in Mother O’Dwyer, and she blew the head off one of the nuns there when she was lying asleep, so I’d say she’s serious.’

‘Well – all we can do for now is follow her and see where she’s going,’ said Katie. ‘She must realize that she can’t get away. Are you following her yourself?’

‘I am, yeah, and Dooley’s with me. We’re on the N28, just coming up to the Shannonpark roundabout. We don’t know which way she’s going yet... she may be heading for Ringaskiddy and the ferry terminal... no, she’s taken the next turning... she’s definitely making for Carrigaline.’

‘I’m coming to join you,’ said Katie, unwinding the towel from her head.

‘There’s no need for that at all, ma’am. Besides, you shouldn’t be driving.’

‘I have a protection officer right outside the house. He can drive me.’

‘You’re grand, though, really. Everything’s under control. Detective Inspector O’Rourke says he’s going to call for the Air Support Unit if he has to. The Eurocopter’s only at the airport at the moment because it brought the commissioner down from Baldonnel this morning for a meeting with the county council. We could have it overhead in no time at all.’

‘I’m still coming, Patrick. I’ll call you when I’m leaving, so you can tell me where you are.’

‘Ma’am—’

Katie ended the call, quickly swallowed a mouthful of scalding coffee, and then went through to her bedroom. She dried her hair roughly in front of the bathroom mirror and then dressed herself. Barney watched her hopefully as she put on a warm black roll-neck sweater and a speckled grey trouser suit.

‘No walkies yet, Barns,’ she told him, patting him on the head. ‘Later, I promise you.’

Barney got the message, because he sat down for a few moments and then lay down, with his head on his paws, and looked up at her as sadly as a Christian martyr.

* * *

They had to take a circuitous, twenty-seven kilometre loop to reach Carrigaline, first driving north to join the main E30, then south on the N40 through the Jack Lynch Tunnel to join the N28.

Katie’s protection officer drve hair-raisingly fast, however. Even though his BMW 5-Series was unmarked, it was fitted with blue response lights behind the front grille and a siren.

‘You should have been a professional racing driver,’ said Katie as they sped through Jack’s Hole and then burst out into the sunshine again.

‘I used to rally until I got myself involved in a bit of an accident,’ said her protection officer. ‘It wasn’t my fault, but a young wain was badly injured and I gave up after that. Didn’t exactly lose my nerve, like, but kept thinking what the consequences would be if something went wrong, and you can’t rally in that frame of mind.’

‘I don’t know your name,’ said Katie.

‘Garrett. Stephen Garrett. Most of my friends call me Dusty.’

‘Dusty? Why do they call you that?’

‘I always kept myself to myself when I was a kid and nobody could ever find me. You know what people say when they can’t find someone. They’ll ask, “Where is he?” and somebody will say, ‘up in Nelly’s room behind the wallpaper,” or something like that. That’s what they used to say about me. “Oh, Stephen. He’s up in the dusty garret.”’

They were driving through the centre of Carrigaline now and they stopped talking because Garda Garrett had to concentrate on weaving his way through the early afternoon traffic. Katie glanced over at him, though, and couldn’t help thinking what a good-looking, straightforward man he was. She realized now that he had stayed so silent when he was driving her home from the hospital because he had been shy – she, after all, was a detective superintendent.

Once they had left Carrigaline behind, Garda Garrett put his foot down again, even though the roads were becoming narrower and twistier and there were high hedges on either side. Katie clung onto the door handle as they slewed around corners and almost took off whenever the road dipped. After another ten minutes she saw a Volvo estate from the Regional Support Unit up ahead of them, and as the road straightened out she saw another Volvo estate ahead of that, and then an unmarked Ford Mondeo.

In front of all of them a khaki horse trailer was trundling along at no more than 40 kph. Its top door was open, although it was too far away and too dark inside for Katie to be able to see the horse that it was supposed to be carrying.

Garda Garrett slowed down and they fell in behind the patrol car. Katie called Detective O’Donovan to tell him that she had caught up with him.

‘Does Riona Mulliken have a mobile number?’ she asked.

‘She does, yeah, and I’ve been ringing her constantly,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘It could be that she doesn’t want to answer or maybe she doesn’t have her phone with her. Either way I’m getting nothing.’