Cold Steel (23 page)

Molloy interrupted. 'That's correct, Danny. That was me and a friend. We were looking for something.'

Danny dabbed at the side of his mouth.
'
That's where the girls hide their schoolbags.'

Clarke looked over at Molloy. He could see the excitement on the other man's face. Danny Carton's diary was now known to be accurate as well as detailed.

Finally. 'Monday, 11 May.' Danny paused and held the pages closer, eyes moving as he read his own writing. '9.47 pm, shouting from Sandymount Park. 10.11 pm, girl screaming.' Clarke's heart began pounding in his chest. '10.23 pm, man ran from side of Sandymount Park onto Mercers Road.'

Molloy cut across. 'Are you sure about that, Danny? It's important. You saw a man running from the park in this direction and down that road out there?'

Danny dabbed at his mouth, squinted at the page, then laid the exercise book down. He seemed very tired.
'
That's what I wrote.'

Clarke moved closer and held one of the boy's hands. 'You're doing great, Danny. Can you remember if the girl was still screaming then. Was there still shouting?'

Danny didn't resort to his notes. 'No. Everything had gone very quiet. I remember that well.' He looked again at the exercise book.
'
The man drove off in a real hurry. I could hear the tyres screeching.'

Molloy grasped Annie Carton's shoulders, squeezing them tightly. 'You're very good on cars, Danny,' he said. 'You seem to know them all. Did you write down what make it was?'

The exercise book was lifted, the words pored over. 'I didn't recognise it. I'd say it was an American job. It was big and heavy. It was very powerful.'

Molloy frowned. 'Why an American job?'

Danny threw a wet tissue into the bin and looked up, his face excited. 'I looked out. It was a left-hand drive.'

31

8.37 am,

Tuesday, 19 May.

The Goon was waiting again.

Joan Armstrong sat on a metal seat at the commuter railway station on Sydney Parade Avenue in Sandymount. Early morning sun was filtering through the surrounding trees but it was still cool. Traffic along the side roads was heavy and the smell of diesel hung in the air. The train pulled up on time, dropping off a small group of office workers and businessmen. The girls wore summer blouses, the men pin-stripe suits, trying to look important as they chattered into their mobile phones.

Joan Armstrong climbed on board with three companions. They were engaged in a deep conversation about school, boys, examinations, boys, the summer holidays and boys. One girl started complaining about her acne and the rest took turns to inspect and advise. They were on good form. Even Joan Armstrong. Until she spotted the Goon. He moved into the same carriage and stared at her, his body swaying slightly with the movement of the train. He flicked at his moustache with the tip of his tongue. Armstrong tried not looking. She shifted to the opposite seat, keeping her back to him. She suddenly became intensely interested in a conversation about hockey, a game she didn't play. The Goon walked past, turned and faced her again. He had a slight grin at the side of his mouth, one of the many irritating features Joan despised.

The train pulled in at Blackrock Station, the stop where the convent girls usually got off for school. Armstrong tried forcing her way through the crush but found her left wrist suddenly gripped. She tried shaking it free but the fist held tight. As the passengers walked along the platform, the Goon pulled Armstrong aside.

'Mo wants to talk, Joan. He's sent me to get you.' He suddenly noticed the other girls staring at him and let go. Joan Armstrong ran ahead, false laughter trying to hide her fear.

'What a wanker,' she cried when she reached safety. 'Another reporter trying to get a scoop about Jennifer.'

The girls began crowing at the Goon's retreating back. They didn't see his fists grip and ungrip with rage.

10.12am

'He's not ready.'

'We have to talk to him.'

'You can talk all you want, I can't guarantee he'll make sense.'

Jim Clarke was on the telephone to Patrick Dillon.

'We've had a definite sighting of a second man,' Clarke explained, trying to contain his excitement. 'Someone ran from the back of the park and drove away in a powerful car. Your theory's making sense.'

'Glad to hear that.'

'He's the only suspect in custody. The way it's looking he'll never get out of gaol.'

'He'll never get out of
hospital,'
Dillon came back immediately.

'Can we just talk with him?' Clarke's exasperation grew by the minute.

'It'll have to be through me,' Dillon began laying down the ground rules, 'and only one of you present.'

'Okay.'

'No pens or paper. If you want to record what he says use a Dictaphone.'

'Agreed.'

'Better still,' added Dillon after a brief pause, 'use one of those concealed microphones. He's so paranoid he'd run a mile if he thought you were recording his thoughts.'

Clarke scribbled the instructions on a pad. 'Anything else?'

'We'll have to play this by ear. He's still confused and disturbed. He might remember something, he might not.'

'Okay.'

The traffic along Dublin's northside was slower than usual with roads dug up for gas-pipe laying. Just before the motorway to the countryside a large JCB was pulled halfway across the road, moving mounds of earth from one hole in the ground to another. In the back of their car Clarke and Molloy watched, fighting to contain their impatience.

'Wouldn't you swear to God they waited until today to do that just to annoy us.' Molloy was in his complaining mood.

'At least the roads are dry,' Kavanagh shouted over his shoulder against the background of heavy machinery.

The morning had begun bright and sunny. A pleasant warmth had cleared the early chill. It was shaping up to be a fine day.

In his cell in Rockdale Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Micko Kelly sat at the end of his bed staring through the heavily barred windows. He ran his right hand along the spiking hair on his head and felt the early stubble on his chin. He was hungry and thirsty, the first signs of recovery. He was dressed in hospital-issue pyjamas, clean and reasonably well-fitting. He stood on the bottom of the bed to get a better look outside and sighed deeply. He wanted to be get away from the tiny cell. He wanted to pee and old habits took him to the sink unit even though there
was a toilet in the corner. He stared at the mirror above the hand basin, fascinated at the changed reflection. He barely recognised himself. His long, dank hair was gone, his face shaven apart from overnight stubble. His eyes were still sunken and yellow. He inspected his hands, astonished at how short and clean the nails were. For a moment he felt pleased, then confused, then suspicious. Where were his nails and hair? Who had taken them? Why had they been taken? He shuffled up and down the tiny space between door and wall, stopping and turning. Keys rattled in the lock and he sat down abruptly.

'Here's your breakfast,' a heavily built warder pushed a trolley inside and lifted a plastic tray onto the bed. 'I'm leaving the door open. You can go in and out as you please. No fucking high-jinks like yesterday,' he added.

Kelly didn't look up. The warder moved on to the next patient. Kelly looked at the tray. The fare was the same as most days. Cornflakes inside a plastic bowl to be eaten with a plastic spoon. A plastic beaker full of milk. Buttered toast on a plastic plate with some marmalade inside a small plastic cup to be spread with a plastic knife.

Hunger urged Kelly to eat but he was frightened. The morning before had been hell. When he'd looked down at the flakes of corn he'd seen a face. Not one face but many faces. Each face was identical. It was the same on each cornflake, the face of a young girl. The girl's mouth was open, as if in a scream. She had dark hair. It was not a face he knew and yet there was something familiar about it. That disturbed him further. He'd ignored the bowl until gnawing hunger drove him to eat. He'd averted his eyes from the flakes and poured the milk. And blood had streamed from the plastic beaker. Warm, bubbling, thick, sticky blood. He'd wanted to scream but couldn't, the sound stuck in his throat. The blood had poured over the tiny faces inside the plastic bowl, moving them around. The dark-haired, open-mouthed screaming faces slowly became covered in blood. Kelly had lifted the spoon and
bowl to his mouth.

'Taste her blood.'

He roared and dropped the bowl of cereal and milk over his pyjamas. 'I'm covered in her.' He rushed into the corridor, tearing furiously at the mess stuck to his pyjamas. 'I'm covered in her blood.' He tore the pyjamas off and sat naked in a corner, curled in a ball.

It took the warders forty minutes to calm and sedate.

Kelly now peered cautiously at the cornflakes, half-expecting to see faces again. Only golden flakes rested innocently in the bowl. He forced a darting glance inside the plastic beaker, relieved at the whiteness of the milk. Then he devoured his breakfast, relishing the taste, relieved at the normality. The voices inside his head were less intimidating, less frequent, less frightening. His hallucinations were abating but his paranoia had not settled. When he left his cell, his eyes were averted, always checking over his shoulder.

Conversation was avoided or answers given in short 'yes' or 'no' or 'fuck off'. Fellow patients gave up on him and conversed their mad ideas among themselves. The warders were noticing an improvement and Kelly took his anti-psychotic and drug-dependency medication without question or aversion. He was stabilising. He was looking better.

'I need to talk with you.' Patrick Dillon sat on the edge of the bed trying to establish eye contact. Kelly's eyes darted from side to side, up and down, anywhere but towards the man opposite.

'He's no friend, Michael. He wants your mind.'

Dillon came closer and Kelly recoiled, as if touched by hot steel. He crawled off the bottom of the bed and sat in a corner, both knees tucked under his arms. He tried to squeeze into a ball. 'Fuck off.'

Dillon waited for a moment. 'Michael, I need to talk with you. Something terrible happened and you may be part of it.'

'Fuck off.'

Dillon waited another five minutes. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly midday. He had suggested a meeting at noon in the outer garden where he'd reckoned Kelly might feel less intimidated. He'd been warned by the warders not to expect much cooperation. They hadn't been happy at the haste to question. A beam of sunlight filled the cell. Outside the morning was a mixture of bright sunshine and great cotton-wool clouds. There was heat in the air.

'Would you like to get out for a while? Get into the sun and move around a bit?'

For the first time Kelly looked over, eyes a mixture of suspicion and expectancy. He said nothing. The psychiatrist stood up, stretched and yawned. He went to the barred window and squinted out. 'There's a grand garden out there. Why don't we have a walk. Stretch our legs and sit in the sun. There's a few benches.' He stepped out of the cell and began conferring with one of the warders.

Kelly checked no one was looking, then padded across to the barred window. He gazed down at the green below. Rockdale Hospital had been built around a central garden. The wards stretched along four wings, north, south, east and west. The single cells looked over the garden, the connecting corridors running along the outer perimeter walls. The garden itself, was quite large, almost three hundred square yards of lawn and shrubbery with electrically pumped streams and small waterfalls. There was a bright red footbridge over one stream. The setting had been created to induce a sense of calm and order. The lawns were tended by those patients deemed safe to use tools and mowers. Once, in the early fifties, a sad misjudgement had been made in this regard and a seemingly safe inmate had plunged a pitchfork through the throat of a fellow patient. From then on all tools were of the non-sharp variety.

As Kelly gazed down at the beckoning lawn his will to resist waned. He yearned to be out of the wards and tiny
cell, away from his hated fellow inmates. He pulled tighter against the bars to get a better view and sunlight momentarily dazzled. He was confused and angry, uncertain why he was in such a place, unsure he was ever going to get out. He spent long periods trying to remember what had happened, to make sense of his situation. While little glimpses might suddenly light up the darkness, more often he was left frustrated by large blank gaps. It just wouldn't come. Blood was blocking his mind. Thick, sticky, oozing, bright red blood. Kelly could almost smell it.

'Are you coming?' Dillon stood in the doorway.

'He stole your hair and nails. He'll steal your mind.'

Kelly glared sullenly.

'We don't let many out from the wards,' said Dillon. 'This could be your only chance.' He walked along the outside corridor and turned keys in the barred gate. A suspicious and angry Micko Kelly edged out from his cell.

'Wait, ye fucker,' he shouted. 'I'm coming.'

A warder fell in behind, keeping within ten-steps distance. The trio walked along high-walled corridors, through locked doors, past isolation and treatment units. Confused faces stared out at them. They reached ground level. As Dillon walked onto the outside grass Kelly stopped, frightened to move. His suspicious eyes checked what lay ahead. The warder waited patiently. With tentative steps, Kelly finally edged his way into the garden. The warm country air momentarily surprised and he sniffed, savouring the different smells. In the back of his head voices surged but he felt so elated he suppressed their anger.

Dillon strolled lazily towards a small gravel square in the middle where there were two wooden benches. He sat down with a great show of relaxing, his movements casting weak shadows along the lawn. He stretched both hands behind the back of his head and locked them in place. With a satisfied sigh he closed his eyes and basked in the noon sunshine. From the edge a paranoid and suspicious Kelly watched.

'Come on over here. There's great heat in the sun.' Dillon kept a wary eye for any sudden movement behind his back. His protective instincts were never sharper. He'd been cautioned against taking unnecessary chances with Kelly. He was still considered dangerous and unpredictable.

Kelly made his way across the lawn, amazed with the impressions his feet left in the fading dew. He was still in hospital-issue pyjamas and wore a pair of worn sneakers, much too large for his feet. Every three or four steps he stopped and posed as if listening for some distant sound. Then he rubbed both hands along the spiky hair on head and chin and ventured further. His journey was painstakingly slow and erratic. Finally he stood rock still, one ear cocked in the air. He scuffed at the earth with his right foot, like a bull pawing before a charge. Then, lightning fast, he darted to the bench opposite Dillon and sat down. The staccato movements took the psychiatrist by surprise and he jerked to attention, then relaxed as he watched Kelly shove his face directly at the sun and close his eyes.

They heard Jim Clarke approach long before they saw him. The drag of a leg, the crunch of crutch on gravel alerted. Kelly looked over suspiciously. Clarke sat beside Dillon and pushed his leg out.