Blood Sisters (6 page)

‘All right, then,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. She stood up and straightened her skirt. ‘I’ll probably bring another officer with me, if that’s all right, just to get through things quicker.’

‘No bother at all,’ said Mother O’Dwyer. ‘I’m absolutely certain, though, that you’ll be wasting your time. You’ll hear the same story from every single one of them. We’re a community of women who have given their lives to God and to helping those unfortunate individuals who, for one reason or another, are incapable of helping themselves. We get along very well, thank you. That’s one of the reasons they call us “sisters”. Sisters of Jesus Christ, sisters to each other.’

Mother O’Dwyer opened the door and Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán stepped out into the waiting room and took a deep breath. It had been so leathery and stuffy inside Mother O’Dwyer’s office that she had been close to suffering an attack of claustrophobia.

Sister Rose was sitting outside, in her white novice’s habit. She stood up immediately and Mother O’Dwyer said, ‘I hope I’ve answered all of your questions, sergeant, and put your mind at rest, at least as far as this congregation is concerned. Sister Rose will show you out. God be with you.’

‘Thank you, and with you,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, and followed Sister Rose along the corridor towards the front door.

When they were out on the porch, though, Sister Rose nervously looked back and then closed the door behind her until it was only an inch ajar.

‘I don’t know if I should be showing you this,’ she lisped.

‘Sorry, what?’

‘
This
,’ said Sister Rose. She reached underneath her scapular and took out a pale-blue handkerchief, folded into a pyramid. She glanced behind her again and then looked left and right across the glistening wet asphalt car park. When she seemed satisfied that nobody was watching them, she held up the handkerchief in the palm of her hand and carefully unfolded it.

Inside it was a small curved piece of bone, only a little more than three centimetres long. One end was slightly stained, as if it had been soaked in tea. At the other end there were three tiny teeth.

‘Where did you get this?’ asked Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. She took a pair of crumpled latex gloves out of her coat pocket and tugged one of them onto her right hand. Then she reached across and carefully picked up the bone up between finger and thumb.

‘In the garden, at the back,’ said Sister Rose. ‘I was weeding and I just found it there, sticking out of the flower bed.’

‘When was this?’

‘About six weeks ago. I didn’t know who to tell. I showed it to Sister Brenda and I asked her if I should take it to Mother O’Dwyer, but she said best not to. She said best to throw it in the bin and forget I ever found it. There would be all kinds of trouble and they might even close down the convent.’

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán turned the bone this way and that. ‘Why
didn’t
you throw it in the bin?’ she asked.

‘Because it’s part of a small child’s jawbone, isn’t it? Sister Brenda said it might be a dog’s, but I did biology at school and I know it’s not a dog’s.’

‘Well, I’d say you’re right,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘It is a child’s jawbone, and these are its milk teeth. If you were going to show it to anybody at all, you should have showed it to us.’

They heard the sound of footsteps inside the convent hallway and Sister Rose turned around in panic, wringing her hands together.

‘Please don’t tell Mother O’Dwyer I gave it to you! Please! This is what I’ve wanted ever since I was at school, to join the convent! If she finds out what I’ve done, she’ll throw me out! She’ll probably have me excommunicated!’

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán dropped the piece of bone into the left-hand latex glove and tied a knot in it to make it secure. Then she laid a reassuring hand on Sister Rose’s shoulder and said, ‘Look, don’t worry. We don’t have to say where it came from. But we’ll have to investigate. If there was a jawbone in the garden, there could be more bones, too, the rest of the child’s skeleton; and if there’s one child’s skeleton there, there could be more.’

‘I know,’ said Sister Rose, and there were tears sparkling on her eyelashes. ‘That’s why I kept it. It’s a sacred part of that poor child’s body. I prayed for its little soul. I don’t know who it was or how it died but I prayed that it didn’t suffer, and I commended its spirit to God, and to the Virgin Mary, so that She could be its mother and take care of it now.’

‘Well, it’s taken you some time, but you’ve done the right thing now,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘What I need to know is exactly
where
in the garden you discovered it. I don’t want you to show me now because we’d be seen and soon as we send a technical team to search the convent grounds the sisters would realize it was you who tipped us off. Do you have access to a computer?’

‘Yes, in the secretary’s office.’

‘Then draw me a sketch map of the garden, with a cross to mark the spot where you found the jawbone, scan it and send it to me. Here’s my card with my email address. Do it as soon as you can, please, Sister Rose. Meanwhile, I’ll be taking this jawbone to have it examined and a DNA sample taken. With any luck at all it
will
be possible to find out how it died, this child, and who it is. And hopefully we can find the rest of its remains and give it the decent burial it deserves.’

‘Thank you,’ said Sister Rose. ‘Thank you so much and God bless you.’

Unexpectedly, she gave Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán a quick hug. Then she smeared the tears from her eyes with her fingers, pushed open the convent door, and went back inside.

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán stood in the porch for a few moments, looking at the door and listening to the rain crackling in the yew bushes. Then she went down the steps and walked back down the slope to her car.

She believed in God, and in Jesus Christ, and in the perfect love of the Virgin Mary. But ever since she was at school she had instinctively distrusted those who claimed to be their representatives on earth – cardinals, bishops, priests and nuns.

On this wet afternoon, though, she suspected that she was carrying in her pocket a small fragment of a lost child – and that small fragment had the potential to bring down whole cathedrals, and whole religious hierarchies, in an avalanche of stone and stained glass and silk and gilded mitres.

As she drove out of the convent gates on to Gardiner’s Hill, a nun walked past her carrying a large black umbrella.

The nun smiled at her.

‘You’re going to need that umbrella, sister,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán to herself, out loud. ‘It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.’

Katie didn’t return home until half past eight. It was a comfort to see that the lights were on and the curtains were drawn, and when she let herself into the hallway she could smell chicken and vegetables cooking. Barney came pit-pattering out of the kitchen to jump at her, closely followed by John.

‘Home is the detective superintendent, home from the crime scene,’ John misquoted, and came forward and took her in his arms.

It was nearly three weeks now since he had come back and she adored having him here, in spite of the pain she had suffered when he had left her. With one sleeve of her coat half off, she let him hold her tight against him. He was wearing a long striped butcher’s apron which smelled of cooking, but underneath the smell of cooking she could smell
him
, that spicy oaky smell that she could breathe in when he got out of bed in the morning and she moved over to rest her head on his pillow.

He had cut his black hair shorter and brushed it up higher, to look more business-like, but she still thought he had that god-like look about him – those dark-sapphire eyes and that long, straight nose. After all, many of the Irish were supposed to be descended from the Iberians, or even from Éber Donn, the Dark One, the god of the underworld.

‘I couldn’t stand the thought of another Chinese takeaway,’ he told her as she hung up her coat and went through to the living room. ‘I’ve made us my legendary smoked chicken stew.’

‘Oh, you shouldn’t have bothered. I’m not that hungry. But thank you, anyway.’

‘Did you eat at work?’ he asked her.

‘I had a turkey salad sandwich and an iced slice.’

‘I thought you
hated
turkey. Remember when I said we should start breeding turkeys at Knocknadeenly? You told me they tasted even more disgusting than they looked.’

‘Well, I don’t know. I just have a thing for turkey at the moment.’

‘Supper will be ready in about twenty minutes, if you want any. If you don’t, don’t worry, we can always heat it up tomorrow. How about a drink?’

He went over to the drinks table and picked up the bottle of Smirnoff Black Label, but Katie said, ‘No – no, thanks. I’ll just have a glass of Tanora.’

‘Are you sure you’re feeling okay?’ John asked her. ‘You’re not coming down with the flu, are you?’

‘No, no. I’m grand altogether. Just tired, that’s all. It’s been a long day. Have you watched the news at all yet?’

‘Unh-hunh. I was working on my laptop till six, then I started cooking.’

‘Oh, well. Somebody’s been throwing horses off the cliffs at Nohaval Cove, twenty-three of them. I had to go down there and check them out myself. It was carnage, I’ll tell you.’

‘
Horses
? Jesus. What did they do that for?’

‘That’s what we have to find out. They were racehorses, so that may well give us an answer.’

‘Jesus. Were they dead when they were thrown off, or were they still alive?’

‘I don’t know. We have to find that out, too. And we had a murder to deal with, at an old folks’ nursing home in Montenotte. Some poor old nun.’

‘You make my day sound utterly boring. The most exciting thing I did was sell a shipment of PfSPZ malaria vaccine to the Jajo Hospital in Lagos.’

Katie reached up and took hold of his hand. ‘Don’t say that’s not exciting. That’s that new vaccine you were telling me about the other day, isn’t it? The one that gives you the same resistance as if you’ve been bitten by a thousand mosquitoes.’

‘That’s right. Without actually
looking
like you’ve been bitten by a thousand mosquitoes.’

‘Don’t you have a drink?’ she asked him.

‘Sure. I have a beer in the kitchen. I’ll get you that Tanora, too.’

‘It’s just that I need to talk to you.’

John kept hold of her hand but raised one eyebrow. ‘Okay... what about?’

‘Get your beer and I’ll tell you.’

He went into the kitchen and Katie could hear him opening the oven and checking his stew. He came back with a bottle of beer and a glass of Tanora for her.

‘Okay, then,’ he said, sitting on the couch next to her. ‘What do you need to talk about? You think I should start paying you rent, is that it?’

She leaned across and kissed him on the lips. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to pay me rent. Having you back, that’s all the payment I need. I thought I was never going to see or hear from you, ever again.’

John shrugged. ‘I was an asshole. I couldn’t see the bigger picture for my daily sales targets. I guess that’s the default mentality of people in online sales.’

‘Oh, come on, John. You had to think of your own career. You didn’t want to be stuck here in Cork if it meant you couldn’t develop your own business potential.’

‘Well, I know that, and I guess that it’s still partly true. Cork isn’t exactly the sales centre of the universe. But that very first morning, I sat down at my desk in San Francisco and my pal Nathan came over and said, ‘I’ll bet you don’t miss Ireland one iota, do you? All that rain. All that economic austerity.’ And do you know something? I realized that I
did
miss Ireland. I missed Ireland so much that it physically hurt. I missed Ireland because nobody else in the world understands us Irish, and never will. But most of all, I missed Ireland because I missed you.’

Katie touched his cheek very gently with her fingertips, as if she needed to reassure herself that he was really here. But he
was
here, and he was just the same John. He still had that small scar on his forehead. He still looked away when he was talking to her and then immediately looked back again as if he didn’t ever want to take his eyes off her.

She wanted him so much, but she needed to tell him that she was pregnant. He had already noticed that her tastes in food and drink had changed dramatically, and how tired she was at the end of the day. Fortunately, he hadn’t yet heard her being sick in the mornings, but it was only a matter of time before he realized what was happening.

The trouble was, how was she going to explain why she had taken her next-door neighbour to bed? Because she was lonely, after John had left her? That would sound as if she were blaming
him
for her falling pregnant. Because she felt sorry for herself and needed to be reassured that men still found her sexually attractive? That would sound so selfish and small-minded. Out of anger? Out of lust?

David Kane had been a charmer, but he had also turned out to be a liar and an arrogant wife-beater. She hadn’t realized what a bully he was before they had sex, although she had to admit to herself that she may have suspected it. She kept on seeing him in her mind’s eye, when he was on top of her, so detached and self-absorbed, as if he didn’t care who she was, as long as she was a woman and bringing him to a climax. In spite of that, though, he hadn’t forced himself on her.

In the end, too, he had sacrificed his own life to protect her by shielding her from a gangster’s bullet. But had that redeemed him? He had assured her that he had had a vasectomy and didn’t need a condom, but now there was another life involved.

‘So, what did you need to tell me?’ asked John, swigging his beer.

‘I needed to tell you that I’m scared.’

‘What are you scared of? Is it something at work? It’s not that assistant commissioner is it, that goddamned what’s-his-face?’

‘Jimmy O’Reilly.’

‘That’s him, Jimmy O’Reilly. Come on, Katie, you don’t have to worry about him. You told me yourself that your dad gave you enough dope on him and his scams to keep you safe for ever. All you have to say to him is “High Kings of Erin” out of the corner of your mouth and he’ll be buffing up your shoes with the grease from his nose.’