Living Death (13 page)

‘Faded or not, they could be a fierce help in putting a name to him,’ said Katie. ‘What are they of?’

‘They’re not new, like Doctor Kelley said. There’s Jesus, and Saint Patrick, but one of them’s Val Doonican, believe it or not. The Technical Bureau have forwarded the jpgs to us so you can see them on your PC, and I left a print-out on your desk.’

‘I’m sorry, I haven’t seen it yet,’ said Katie. ‘I’ve been running about a day-and-a-half behind, to tell you the truth.’

‘Not to bother. We’re already checking them against tattoo patterns online and I’ve also sent out Markey and O’Mara to canvas the tattoo parlours in case any of their needle jockeys recognises them.’

‘Any other progress?’

‘Early days yet, but the technical experts have sampled just about everything except his earwax and they’re running their tests right now. They’ve taken all of his clothes too, even his shoes, in case they can work out what kind of mud he’s been walking in, so they can tell what part of Cork he came from. I’ll tell you, it wouldn’t surprise me if they
have
taken a sample of his earwax, so that they can find out who’s been talking to him, and what they said.’

‘Thanks, Sean,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll call Bill Phinner when I come back if he doesn’t call me first. Right now I’m going out with Dooley and Scanlan to look at these dogs.’

‘You’re going out yourself?’

‘You can see a painting in a book, Sean, but sometimes you can only really understand what it’s all about if you go to the gallery in person and look at it hanging on the wall in front of you, in the flesh, so to speak.’

Detective Sergeant Begley gave her a bemused little smile but she could tell that he had no idea what she was talking about.

‘I’ll see you after,’ he said. ‘There’s a girl been reported missing and I have to go and see what
that’
s all about.’

‘What age?’ Katie asked him.

‘Nineteen. So far as I know she went out clubbing on Hallowe’en and hasn’t been seen since. There’ll be a note on your PC about that, too.’

‘Thanks, Sean. I have a whole rake of catching up to do. I’m beginning to think I never will.’

‘That’s the story of my life,’ said Detective Sergeant Begley. ‘Just ask the one I married.’

It was still raining so Garret brought the ambulance round to the front of the clinic and reversed it right up to the porch. Milo and Grainne and the doctor were already waiting for him inside the oak-panelled lobby. Another man stood close behind them, grey-haired and nearly as tall as the doctor, tightly holding a Labrador cross in a guide-dog harness.

Between them, Siobhán lay strapped on a trolley. She was wrapped in a pale blue honeycomb blanket with her bandaged arms folded across her stomach. Both of her eyes were covered with white gauze pads, held in place by a shiny black plastic sleep mask. Her throat, too, was thickly bound with surgical gauze, under a medicine-pink neck collar. She was unconscious, although every now and then she gave a little jump, and her hands twitched, as if she were dreaming.

Garret opened the rear doors of the ambulance and then helped Milo to push the trolley up to the steps, fold up its wheels, and lift it inside. Both of them were wearing dark green trousers and dark green zip-up jackets, which gave them the appearance of paramedics.

‘How are we doing for time?’ asked the doctor, looking at his Rolex.

‘Oh, we’re grand,’ said Milo, with a sniff. ‘In fact we’re probably too early. But at least we’ll be able to stop in Waterford for a nosebag.’

‘No drinking, though,’ the doctor warned him. ‘The customs have only to catch the faintest whiff of alcohol on you.’

‘Don’t you be worrying about that, sir. We’ll be making Father Mathew proud, believe me.’

‘Just make sure you do,’ said the doctor. Then he turned around and snapped, ‘What’s taking Dermot so long? What a dodderer! I swear to God that man thinks ‘punctual’ is a hole in your bicycle tyre.’

He went back into the lobby and called out, ‘Dermot! What in the name of all that’s unholy is keeping you back now?’ but almost as soon as he had done so, a squat bald man in a white surgical jacket appeared, pushing a wheelchair. He looked more like a potato-peeler in a restaurant kitchen than a nurse.

Sitting in the wheelchair was an emaciated young man in his early twenties, startlingly pale, wearing red-striped pyjamas and a beige dressing-gown and slippers. His eyeballs were milked over and his light brown hair was patchy, and his head lolled from side to side. He was limply holding up his arms as if he were a puppeteer with two invisible marionettes dancing in his lap.

‘Fiontán needed a piss, like,’ said Dermot. ‘You know he can’t get started if I don’t whistle a few tunes to him, and even then it’s fits and starts.’

‘All right, Dermot, I don’t need a blow-by-blow account,’ said the doctor, impatiently. ‘Get him stowed aboard and the lads can get going.’

Milo helped Dermot to lift the wheelchair into the back of the ambulance, and then to lock it into place next to the trolley where Siobhán was lying. Fiontán continued to nod and dip his head, and to flap his hands up and down. Dermot said to him, ‘There you are, boy. Have a safe journey and don’t you go messing with any of those English brassers! You wouldn’t want to be catching one of them sociable diseases!’

Fiontán made a strange froglike sound deep in his larynx that could have been a laugh or could have been a cry of utter hopelessness. There was no way of telling.

Grainne climbed into the ambulance and sat herself in the high-backed chair immediately in front of the trolley, so that she could keep an eye on both Siobhán and Fiontán. There was always a risk that one or other of them might start choking or suffer some kind of a seizure, and the last thing they wanted on a trip like this was to have a dead body to dispose of. Grainne was wearing a dark green overall so that she, too, could be taken for a certified paramedic.

‘All right there, girl?’ Milo asked her, before he closed the doors.

Grainne reached into her large woven bag and held up a dog-eared paperback. ‘I’ll be grand altogether, Milo, don’t you worry. I’m halfway through the
Fifty Shades of Grey
.’

‘Jesus! So long as you don’t try and jump on me when we get to Waterford. I’ve a bad back, like, and my front’s no better, and I never did fancy that M and M.’

‘S and M, you gom.’

‘Well, whatever.’ He walked around and opened the passenger door, but before he could climb in, the doctor came up to him and said, ‘Milo – just remember what I told you. Take this one very, very easy. If the customs stop you, you know nothing about nothing. Remember what happened to Vogelaar and the rest of those Dutchmen.’

Milo nodded, and tugged an imaginary zip-fastener across his lips.

‘Mind you,’ said the doctor, ‘Vogelaar would never have been caught if he hadn’t made that one stupid mistake, and that’s one stupid mistake that
we’re
not going to be making, and that’s for sure.’

‘Well, Vogelaar was a mog all right,’ said Milo. ‘The shades may be on the slow side, some of them, but the one thing they’re not is totally thick.’

Once Milo had climbed in, and Garret had started up the engine, the doctor stood back, admiring the ambulance. It was a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 316 CDI, which he had bought second-hand from a van dealer in Corracunna. It had originally been yellow, with the green chequered Battenberg squares of the HSE emergency services, but he had arranged for it to be resprayed white. Now it carried the lettering
St Giles Clinic
Montenotte
Cork
on the sides in dark blue italics, and a mediaeval-style picture of Saint Giles holding a wounded hind with an arrow sticking out of its back.

Both classy and pious
, he thought,
and which customs officer would have the effrontery to challenge an ambulance that looked so classy and pious?
Not only that, but an ambulance which was carrying two young people with such overwhelming incapacities? There was no way that anybody could think that Siobhán and Fiontán were feigning their blindness, or their inability to speak, or walk, or even stand up on their own.

The grey-haired man handed the Labrador’s leash to Dermot and came up behind the doctor, laying one hand on his shoulder. ‘Wardy’s just sent me a text. He’ll have the rest of the stuff by midday tomorrow but it’ll probably take six or seven hours to stow it all away and he doesn’t want to rush it and make a hames of it. We’ll be staying overnight in Basildon and coming back on the morning ferry on Thursday.’

‘Take as long as you need,’ said the doctor. ‘You know how much is involved here. And make sure that Grainne takes good care of young Siobhán, won’t you? She’s still in recovery, and I don’t want her picking up some infection, or having a clonic tonic seizure. I gave her a thorough check-up this morning and I’m sure she’s going to be grand. I wouldn’t have let her go, else. But it’s better to be wide than sitting in Portlaoise for fifteen years with a crowd of smelly old Provos.’

‘Sure I know that,’ said the grey-haired man. ‘If everything goes to plan, though, we’re going to need at least a dozen more like her, aren’t we? Did you hear from Michael about those other two ambulances?’

‘He’s calling me later. He says he might have a third one, too, a Fiat Scudo. It seats five but I reckon that might be too small, capacity-wise, if you know what I mean.’

‘All right, then,’ said the grey-haired man. ‘I’ll see you late Thursday so, unless there’s any problems. Tell Dermot not to give Smiley any chocolate. You can fecking kill a dog, giving it chocolate, and that bitch is worth nearly a grand-and-a-half.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

The grey-haired man turned up the collar of his jacket and hurried out into the rain. The same shiny black Opel Insignia in which Milo and Garret had picked up Siobhán was parked close to the dripping wet laurel hedge, and he climbed into it, brushed the raindrops off his sleeves, and started up the engine. As he came round to the front of the clinic, he gave Garret a blip on his horn, and the ambulance started off down the driveway, and he followed it. They turned left, down the steep narrow slope of Lover’s Walk, heading for Tivoli, and the N25, which would take them east.

*

They had been driving for an hour when the grey-haired man felt his iPhone buzzing in his jacket pocket. They had passed the seaside town of Youghal now, and crossed over the estuary of the River Blackwater. The rain had eased off altogether, and the sky was clear, although there were still some black clouds scowling in the distance up ahead of them.

‘It’s Milo,’ said Milo.

‘I know,’ said the grey-haired man. ‘What’s the story, Milo?’

‘We’ve about a third of a tank of petrol left. Like eh, we could make it to Rosslare no bother at all but Garret reckons that if we stop and fill up here that would take us all the way to Essex and the petrol here is a whole lot cheaper than it is in England, especially on the motorway.’

‘I suppose that makes sense. But he should have stopped and filled up when we went through Youghal, shouldn’t he? I’m not turning around now and going all the way back.’

‘No we won’t have to. Like there’s a pump outside Michael O’Brien’s store in Grange, not too far up ahead.’

‘Go on, then. I could use some more steamers any road.’

They continued to drive across the wide green upland and there was nothing in sight except for a few distant farmhouses and some hazy purple hills. A few kilometres further on, however, they came to Grange. On the opposite side of the road there was a single-storey shop and post office. Behind it stood a small grey limestone church, Our Lady of the Assumption, with a graveyard populated by white marble angels and a pensive-looking figure of the Virgin Mary, as if she had forgotten where she had left the baby Jesus.

Garret pulled the ambulance up to the single petrol pump outside the store, while the grey-haired man parked close behind him and went into the store to buy himself some cigarettes. A thin chilly wind was blowing, which made the grass by the roadside sizzle softly, but apart from the low groaning of the petrol pump and the cars and trucks which went whizzing past in both directions, there was no other sound out here at all.

‘Right, boy, let’s get on,’ said the grey-haired man, standing outside the store and lighting a cigarette. ‘I’d like to be in Waterford in time for something to eat. They serve up a deadly steak and onion rings at McLeary’s.’

Milo was counting out the cash to pay for the petrol. From the other side of the ambulance Garret called out, ‘Grainne says could you buy her one of them Tayto chocolate bars with the cheese-and-onion crisps in it?’

‘Mother of God, have you ever tasted one of them? It’s like being sick, backwards.’

‘Oh, yeah, and a bottle of Tanora, too.’

‘Jesus.’

When Milo had paid and given Grainne her chocolate bar and her drink, they climbed back into their vehicles and started up their engines again. Garret waited for a huge timber lorry to pass, heading west, and then he pulled out sharply across the road. What he failed to see was that a silvery-blue Subaru sports car was speeding up behind him at over 80 kph, and its driver had to brake so hard to stop it from rear-ending the ambulance that there was a shrill scream of rubber, like a Wagnerian chorus, and clouds of black smoke poured out from its tyres.

The Subaru driver blasted his horn, and then he swerved out to overtake the ambulance and went speeding off.

Garret hesitated for a few seconds, and then carried on driving. The grey-haired man pulled out after him, twisting around in his seat to make sure that no other vehicles were approaching from behind him.

Milo phoned him and said, ‘Holy Saint Joseph, did you see that? I don’t know what speed he was doing, that feller, but I reckon that
all
of us would have needed this fecking ambulance if he’d hit us, like, do you know what I mean? What a fecking nutjob!’

‘Forget it,’ said the grey-haired man. ‘We don’t want any trouble at all on this run, and especially not some road traffic accident.’