Living Death (48 page)

*

She was woken by the sound of a door opening. She opened her eyes and lay there, listening intently. It had stopped raining and the night was silent, except for Conor’s steady breathing against her bare shoulder. The moon had risen, and was shining through the thin linen curtains, so that the bedroom was lit almost as brightly as daylight.

She lifted her head a little so that she could see her bedside clock. 2:47. Her mouth was dry and she was beginning to feel a headache behind her eyes, and she knew she should have drunk at least a pint of water before she went to bed.

She was about to ease herself out of bed and go to the kitchen when she heard a bump, followed by another bump, and then another, unsteady but insistent.

Dear Jesus, it was John. He had left the nursery and was walking down the hallway on his stumps. She needed to get up quickly and stop him from coming into the bedroom.

It was too late. As she tried to lift Conor’s heavy arm off her without waking him, the bedroom doorknob turned, and the door slowly opened.

Katie dropped her head back on to the pillow and closed her eyes. Whatever John’s reaction was going to be when he saw Conor lying next to her, she didn’t want to confront him, or tell him to get out of her bedroom, not now, in the middle of the night.

The door opened wider and she heard two more bumps as he came into the room. He stopped, but she could hear him panting from the effort of having walked down the hallway.

Please don’t say anything. Please just turn around and go back to bed and sob and rage and hate me as much as I deserve you to hate me. But please don’t wake up Conor and please don’t make some appalling scene
.

She heard one more stumbling bump as John came closer. He was obviously trying to see who was lying next to her with his dark-haired arm around her. The panting continued, a little harsher now, and quicker.

Almost half a minute went by. Then she heard John turn around and slowly balance his way out of the bedroom. He closed the door behind him, very quietly.

Tears slid out of Katie’s eyes and she had to bite her knuckle to stop herself from sobbing out loud. Her lungs hurt from suppressing her grief. All she could think of now was John painfully returning to his bed, having seen for himself now that she no longer loved him.

‘He’s still very optimistic about the future, if you know what I mean.’

Yes, Bridie, I know what you mean. I also know what it means to hurt him so badly that he will probably want to do nothing but die.

Conor was still sleeping at 6:15 when Katie climbed out of bed. She made as little noise as she could as she opened her wardrobe and took out her clothes and dressed. Today she wore a charcoal-grey merino sweater and a black trouser-suit. She was in mourning, and she was mourning more than the suicide of Jimmy O’Reilly.

She looked into the nursery but John was still asleep, too. She was reluctant to go in, but she crept halfway across the room so that she was close enough to hear him breathing.

At 6:35 she went back into her bedroom with a glass of grapefruit juice and a mug of coffee for Conor. She switched on the lights and even though it was still dark outside and the sun wouldn’t rise for another hour and twenty minutes, she opened the curtains.

Conor opened his eyes and blinked at her as if he didn’t recognise her. ‘What?’ he said, and looked around him.

‘It’s morning,’ she told him. ‘I have to be at the station before eight. We can have some breakfast when we get there.’

‘I was having a dream,’ said Conor. ‘I was dreaming that I was running down a hillside with a pack of hounds, and we were chasing after this fellow. The hounds were baying and we were running as fast as we could but we never seemed to be able to catch up with him.’

Katie sat on the bed and kissed him. ‘That was a dream of sexual frustration.’

He kissed her back. ‘If that was only a dream, how come I’m still sexually frustrated now that I’ve woken up?’

‘Maybe tonight,’ said Katie. ‘Let me see what the day brings first.’

Bridie arrived at seven and at seven-thirty Mrs Tierney from next door came to take Barney for his morning walk. Conor gave Barney a last affectionate ear-tugging and Barney seemed reluctant to leave him.

‘You’ve made a friend for life there, Conor,’ said Bridie.

Before she left for Anglesea Street, Katie went in to the nursery again to see John. This time he was awake, and he had switched on his bedside lamp. His face was expressionless, as if he hadn’t yet decided if he should look wounded, or angry, or contemptuous, or forgiving, or something else altogether.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked him. ‘Do you still have pain in your legs?’

‘What legs?’ he said, flatly.

‘They’ll be fitting your first prosthetics this week. You said yourself that it would make all the difference.’

‘Maybe it’s too late for anything to make a difference.’

‘John—’ Katie began, but she couldn’t think what to say to him.
Sorry
? because she wasn’t sorry – not for having slept with Conor, anyway.
I still love you, but not in the way I used to
? because that would be a lie, too.

‘Have a good day,’ he told her. ‘Will I be seeing you this evening, or what will you be doing?’ He nodded his head towards the open door as if to indicate that he was asking her about Conor.

‘I don’t know yet. We’re up the walls right now. I’ll try to get back early, though. There’s some things I need to talk to you about.’

‘Oh, really? Don’t put yourself out. I may not have legs but I have all the time in the world.’

Katie bent over him as if to kiss his forehead but he sharply turned his face away.

‘I’ll see you after so,’ she told him.

Conor was waiting for her beside her car. He held up her keys and said, ‘Do you want to drive?’

‘No. You can, if you like. It makes for a pleasant change, having somebody else in the driving-seat.’

*

She had been sitting at her desk for only five minutes before Detective Sergeant Begley knocked at her door. He still had a yellowish bruise on his forehead from Keeno’s head-butting, but otherwise he looked fit and rested. He also looked excited.

‘Good to have you back, Sean,’ said Katie. ‘What’s the story?’

‘They told me all about Jimmy O’Reilly so soon as I came in this morning. Holy Mary, ma’am, I can’t even find the words.’

‘No, I know. It hasn’t leaked out yet, but I expect the Commissioner will be making a formal announcement later today.’

‘You’re all right yourself, though? Apart from the shock of it, like.’

‘Apart from having drunk a scatter of vodkas last night and feeling as sick as a plane to Lourdes – yes, Sean, I’m grand altogether.’

‘Pleased to hear it, ma’am. But come here till I tell you this. Inspector Mulhare has just called me. I mean, literally two minutes ago. Two of his traffic cops attended a private ambulance which was broken-down on the N8 yesterday afternoon, round about fifteen-thirty – mostly because it was blocking up the entrance to the Lota Brothers of Charity. The cops found two disabled patients on board, a young girl and a young fellow, and when they took a lamp at them to make sure they were okay, guess who the young girl was?’

‘Sean, it’s a little early for guessing games, and like I say, I’m feeling a little delicate.’

‘Siobhán O’Donohue, that’s who it was – that girl reported missing after Hallowe’en night at the Eclipse Club. One of the traffic cops recognised her immediately.’

‘But – what, she was
disabled
? Siobhán O’Donohue wasn’t disabled, was she?’

‘She wasn’t when she went missing but she is now. And I mean gravely disabled. She’s blind, she’s unable to speak, and she’s lost the use of both hands. Both legs have been badly fractured and not set properly, so she can’t walk, either.’

‘Mother of God. What action did he take? The traffic cop?’

‘It was a she, actually. Garda Róisin O’Malley. She didn’t want to alert the nurse who was taking care of Siobhán that she recognised her – not until she’d been able to confirm her identity one hundred per cent. So she made out that she was worried that Siobhán looked as if she was having a seizure and called for a regular ambulance to take her to the Wilton Hilton.’

‘That was smart thinking. But now we know that it’s definitely her?’

‘Her mother was called in late last night, and she identified her. Not only that, but one of Bill Phinner’s technical experts took a DNA test, too, to make absolutely sure, and that proved ninety-nine-point-nine per cent positive. Inspector Mulhare had the results of that only about ten minutes ago, which is why he called me.’

‘So Siobhán can’t speak? She can’t tell us how she became disabled?’

‘No. But the technical expert took a rake of photographs. He’ll have them all sorted and downloaded in a half-hour or so, and you’ll be able to see what she looks like for yourself. The technical expert told Mulhare that in his opinion none of her disabilities appeared to be genetic, or caused by illness or accident. That’s all except for her legs, which look as if they’ve been crushed somehow, but which weren’t properly reset – not as they should have been, and which any hospital would have done for her.’

‘So her disabilities could have been inflicted on her deliberately?’

‘That was the technical expert’s opinion, yes, ma’am. He said he was sure of it. But not by any amateur, either. She’s been given a throat operation and he said the stitching was expert – like, only a trained medical professional could have done it.’

‘This private ambulance – who did it belong to? And the nurse – where was she from? And what about the young man who was in it, along with Siobhán? I presume Garda O’Malley has filed her report about it.’

‘She has, yes. It’s up now, if you want to read it.’

Katie switched on her desktop PC. She logged on to the latest reports that had been entered in the past twelve hours by all of the gardaí stationed at Anglesea Street and scrolled through until she reached the entry from Garda O’Malley. It was accompanied by the photographs of the ambulance that Garda O’Malley’s fellow traffic garda had taken while she was inside it, talking to Grainne.

‘Well, now, is this a coincidence or what?’ she said. ‘St Giles’ Clinic. The very same St Giles’ Clinic who claimed they knew nothing about the mysterious taxi-ride taken by Gerry Mulvaney.’

She scrolled down further, to Garda O’Malley’s written report. Out loud, she read, ‘The female medic protested at our removal of the young woman and said that the director of St Giles’ Clinic Dr Gearoid Fitzpatrick would be lodging a formal complaint. She said: “I will make sure that your boss gives you down the banks.”’

It was then that Moirin put her head around the door. ‘Excuse me for eavesdropping,’ she said. ‘Did I hear you say “Dr Gearoid Fitzgerald”?’

‘Yes, you did,’ said Katie. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t mean to butt in or anything, ma’am, but when I heard the name Dr Gearoid Fitzgerald—’

‘What is it, Moirin? Do you know him? Come on in and tell me.’

Moirin came into Katie’s office and Katie was concerned to see that she was looking quite upset.

‘It’s only the very name of him gives me the shivers,’ she said.

‘Here, sit down,’ said Katie, and led her over to the couches under the window. Detective Sergeant Begley came to join them, but sat a little way away so that Moirin wouldn’t feel crowded.

‘I never saw anything about it in the papers or on the TV, so it must have been kept very quiet,’ said Moirin.

‘Go on,’ Katie coaxed her, and took hold of her hand.

‘It was my cousin Rose,’ said Moirin. ‘She was pregnant with her third, and she’d been told already that the baby was a girl, but she had the Down’s syndrome. Rose was sad about that, of course, but every life is a life, and she was pure prepared to raise and nurture the little child and do whatever she could to make her happy. She and her husband Denny even had a name for her, Aibhlinn, because that means a child that is longed for.’

She paused, and wiped a tear from her eye with her fingertips. Katie squeezed her hand but waited for her to compose herself.

‘Little Aibhlinn was three weeks premature and struggling when she was born. They took her into intensive care but Rose was told that it was touch and go. What she didn’t know was that Dr Fitzpatrick’s wife was giving birth at the same time, and that
her
little boy was born with a hole in his heart, and wasn’t expected to live more than a day or two.

‘As it was, little Aibhlinn passed away, although the cause of death was never made clear to Rose at all. And to this day I don’t think anybody exactly knows how he did it, but it seems like Dr Fitzpatrick falsified some papers which gave him permission to take the poor little girl’s heart, and to transplant it into his own child, which he did.

‘Rose and Denny still believe that he murdered little Aibhlinn, suffocated her maybe, so that he could save his own son.’

‘I’ve never heard about this, ever,’ said Katie. ‘When did this happen? And where? If Dr Fitzgerald forged any legal documents, that should have been reported to us straight away.’

‘It was three-and-a-half years ago, at the University Maternity Hospital. Rose and Denny only found out by accident that little Aibhlinn’s heart had been stolen from her. One of the junior nurses happened to say that she must be in Heaven because she had given her heart so that another child could live a full life. They made a complaint, and the Medical Council made a full enquiry, like. After about nine months they were told that Dr Fitzgerald had been struck off the register.’

Katie turned to Detective Sergeant Begley. ‘Struck off, but now he has his own clinic. I suppose he could have applied to be re-registered.’

‘I can check with the Medical Council. If he’s still practising as a doctor without being registered we can lift him for fraud.’

‘He wouldn’t have needed to re-register if he’s simply running a care home for people with severe disabilities. But after what you’ve told me about Siobhán O’Donohue, it seems like he might be disabling his patients himself. Now, why in God’s name would he want to do that? It might make sense if he was extracting fees from their relatives for looking after them, but Siobhán’s parents didn’t even know where she was.’