Living Death (56 page)

The convoy of Garda vehicles jostled their way slowly down the lane to the rusty metal gate outside Bartley Doran’s farmyard. The St Giles’ Clinic ambulance was parked on the left-hand side, close to the barn. Katie and Conor climbed out of Katie’s car, and as they did so, Bartley himself came limping out of his house with his blackthorn stick.

‘What the feck is all this?’ he demanded, waving with his stick at the three patrol cars and the ERU Volvo.

‘We’ve come for Dr Fitzpatrick,’ said Katie, taking out her ID and showing it to him.

Bartley stared at her, and then at Conor. ‘So, you two were shades all the time. I thought you both had a smell of bacon about you, but I thought that if the Guzz trusted you, then you must be straight.’

‘Will you open the gate, please, Mr Doran,’ said Katie. ‘We don’t want any trouble. We’re only looking for Dr Fitzpatrick, and any of his staff who might have come with him.’

‘I’ll tell you what you can do, girl,’ said Bartley, spitting on the ground. ‘You and all of your piggy pals here can go away to feck. Go on, the lot of you. Away to feck with you. This is my land and you’re not setting foot on it.’

‘Please open the gate, Mr Doran.’

Bartley turned around and started to limp back towards his house. ‘Gearoid!’ he shouted out. ‘Lorcan! There’s a whole herd of pigs have showed up!’

‘So – Lorcan’s here too,’ Katie said to Conor. ‘That’s probably why he came here.’ She turned around to the garda standing behind her and said, ‘Would you do the honours, please?’

The garda beckoned to his partner and his partner opened the boot of their patrol car and came across with a large pair of bolt-cutters. He cut through the chain on Bartley Doran’s gate and pushed it wide open. Then the whole posse of them spread out and walked towards the house, with Katie in the middle and the four ERU officers on either side, holding their Heckler and Koch MP7 submachine-guns across their chests.

Katie said to Conor, ‘Stay behind me, Conor. Just in case.’

‘That’s the first time in my life that a woman has ever said that to me,’ said Conor. ‘The first time she’s meant it, anyway.’

They were still thirty metres from the front of the house when the front door was thrown open and Grainne appeared. She came walking towards them with her hands held up. She was followed by Dermot, in a thick grey roll-neck sweater and jeans that were still heavily stained with blood.

‘We give up!’ called Grainne, in a high, shrill voice. ‘Look, we’re coming quietly!’

As soon as Dermot had stepped down from the porch, however, Lorcan came out of the front door, with Gearoid close behind him. Like two escaping thieves in a melodramatic play, they ran along the front of the house and across the scrubby grass patch that led to the barn.

The uniformed gardaí started to run after them, with the armed officers jogging close behind. But Grainne crossed diagonally in front of them, waving her arms and shrieking, ‘
No!
No!
It’s not them you want!
It’s us!
’

Dermot made a half-hearted attempt to obstruct one of the gardaí, too, but the officer pushed him hard in the chest and he fell backwards on to the muddy tarmac, and lay there with his arms spread, as if he had really had enough, and couldn’t be bothered to get up.

Gearoid and Lorcan had reached the front of the barn, and they were obviously intending to continue along the sheds where Bartley kept his dogs, but one of the ERU officers fired an ear-splitting shot into the air and shouted, ‘
Stop!
’

Gearoid and Lorcan both stopped, looking confused. Katie was running up to them, with Conor next to her, and she thought that she had them now. As he turned around, though, Gearoid saw that the barn door was right behind them. He pushed it open and tugged Lorcan by the sleeve to follow him inside. They slammed the door behind them, and they were gone.

By now, Bartley had come out of the house again and was standing on the edge of the porch. When he saw Gearoid and Lorcan disappear into the barn, he screamed out, ‘
No,
Gearoid, no!
Not in the barn!
Not in the fecking barn for feck’s sake!
’

He started to limp towards the barn himself, until Katie shouted at him, ‘Stop! Stay where you are, Bartley! You keep out of this!’

‘But it’s the dogs!’ Bartley shouted back at her. ‘They have the fecking dogs in there and they’re having a mass bump!’

‘That’s a mock-fight, Katie, to make them more aggressive,’ said Conor. ‘I wouldn’t go in there, if I were you.’

‘I have to,’ Katie told him, tersely.

As they neared the barn, they could hear dogs barking in a frenzy, and men shouting. Katie beckoned the ERU officers and said, ‘We’re going inside, but cover us. If any of those dogs looks like it’s out of control, don’t hesitate to shoot it. You’ll probably be doing it a favour.’

One of the black-uniformed officers pushed at the door, but it seemed that it was bolted from the inside. He kicked it, and it gave way a little, so he kicked it again even harder, and it shuddered open. Holding up his submachine-gun, he stepped inside. Katie went in after him, followed by another armed officer, and Conor, and three gardaí.

Bartley’s three young helpers were there, inside the makeshift ring of crates, and they were each desperately holding on to two pit-bull terriers – six slavering dogs between them. Each pit-bull had a chain leash, which was wrapped around the young men’s wrists, but they were straining against their leashes so violently that the young men could barely keep on their feet. The dogs’ eyes were bulging, their teeth were bared, and their mouths were dripping with foam and blood. Two of them had their ears in bloody tatters, and all of them had teeth-marks and rips along their flanks. The penis of one of them was dangling by a fleshy thread of skin.

They must have been fighting each other before Gearoid and Lorcan had come stumbling into the barn, but now they were all pulling strenuously at their leashes to get at them, because they must have thought that they were bait, and much easier to attack. They may also have smelled that they were frightened, and that could have aroused their blood-lust even more.

‘Gearoid and Lorcan Fitzpatrick!’ Katie shouted out. She could barely make herself heard over the pit-bulls barking.

‘You can’t prove anything!’ Dr Fitzpatrick shouted back. It was almost a scream. ‘You can’t prove anything!’

‘What have you done with John Meagher?’ Katie shouted. ‘Where is he? What have you done with him?’

‘You can’t prove anything!’ Dr Fitzpatrick repeated. Then he held up both of his hands and said, ‘I’m entitled! Don’t you know that? I’m entitled! God gave me these hands! These hands hold life and death! I’m entitled!’

Lorcan called out, ‘He’s right! We’ve never done nothing! You can’t arrest us when we’ve done nothing!’

Dr Fitzpatrick started to back away, and Katie could see that there was another door at the other end of the barn. She said to the two gardaí close beside her, ‘Can you restrain both of them and fetch them outside? I can’t read them their rights in here. They’ll complain to their lawyers they couldn’t hear them!’

The gardaí unclipped their handcuffs from their belts, and started to walk around the circle of wooden crates towards Gearoid and Lorcan. Before they could reach them, though, two of the pit-bulls pulled so hard on their chains that the young man holding them fell forward on to his knees. The dogs dragged him right across the ring, and both of them bounded over the crates, one after the other, so that the young man collided with them and lost his grip on their chains.

Gearoid staggered backwards and tried to beat the dogs off, but both of them launched themselves at him, snarling and snapping and tearing at his sleeves and his hands. He fell on to the sawdust-covered floor and they went for his head, their teeth ripping at his ears and his nose and his cheeks. He screamed, and tried to roll himself free, but the pit-bulls were determined to wrench the flesh from his face.

Lorcan kicked the dogs as hard as he could, again and again. He kicked them in their ribs, and in their testicles, and in the side of their heads, but they had endured worse kicks than that in their lives and they ignored him.

‘Shoot them!’ Katie shouted. Two of the armed gardaí came up close to the pit-bulls as they struggled and wrestled with Gearoid on the floor, pointing their automatic pistols at them, but hesitant to fire in case they hit Gearoid. Katie pulled her own revolver out of its holster but that was only because the other four pit-bulls were mad with excitement now, leaping up into the air and barking and pulling at their chains so hard that they were nearly strangling themselves.

It was then that Conor walked quickly around the ring and stood behind the two armed gardaí. He did nothing for a few seconds, simply standing there, but then he put two fingers between his lips and let out a weird, piercing whistle. Nothing happened at first, but then he whistled again and both dogs stopped biting at Gearoid’s face and lifted their heads and looked at him.

Even the dogs in the ring quietened down when they heard him whistle, although two of them kept on barking alternately, as if they were some kind of threatening double-act.

Conor said, ‘Come on, you two.
Am chun tú a chodladh
. Time for you to sleep.’

The two dogs stood in front of him with those bulging eyes, their jaws dripping with Gearoid’s blood, their docked tails twitching. They stared at him as if they couldn’t understand what he was or where he had come from.

‘Now you can do it,’ said Conor. The two armed gardaí stood either side of him, holding their automatics in both hands. They pointed them directly between the pit-bulls’ eyes, and fired, one after the other. The pit-bulls’ heads burst open like watermelons and they dropped sideways on to the floor, one on top of the other, their legs quivering.

The shots had been deafening, and the other four pit-bulls became hysterical, throwing themselves around so wildly that one of the young men was knocked off his feet and barely managed to keep hold of them. Gearoid tried to sit up, making a bubbling noise between lips that were hanging free from his face like thin strips of raw liver. His nose had been bitten off, leaving a dark triangular hole, and the skin and flesh had been torn from his cheeks, so that the white bones were visible. He lifted one hand, but then he fell back on to the floor and lay there, shaking.

Lorcan looked down at his brother, and then turned around and stared at Katie with almost theatrical malevolence. He walked stiffly towards her, but as he came nearer, a garda stepped forward and said, ‘That’s close enough, sham.’

‘It’s
you
, isn’t it?’ he said, ignoring the garda and still staring at Katie. ‘I’ve heard about you. You think you were sent from Heaven to judge the rest of humanity. You think you’re fecking immortal. Well, here’s my answer to that misconception, detective not-so-superintendent.’

He reached inside his jacket and out flashed his triangular knife. The garda lunged forward to grab his wrist but Katie was quicker. She lifted her revolver and shot him point-blank in the chest.

Lorcan looked at her in amazement. Then he looked at his knife, and dropped it on to the floor. He sagged to his knees, with blood running out of the side of his mouth. Then, abruptly, he coughed more blood, and slowly lay down on his side, as if he were settling himself in bed for the night.

Katie could hear nothing at all. The garda was saying something to her but she could see only his lips moving. She raised her hand to acknowledge him, and then she turned around and stepped out of the barn, into the rain.

Conor followed her. He stood close to her but he obviously didn’t want to hold her in his arms, not in front of all of these gardaí.

‘How did you do that?’ she said, at last, although she was still half-deaf.

‘What, the whistling, with the dogs? I suppose I can understand dogs better than I can understand people, that’s all.’

Katie looked up at him. She had raindrops in her eyelashes. ‘I don’t understand people at all, Conor. Not in the slightest.’

She was still standing there when a garda came across from the farmyard where the St Giles’ Clinic ambulance was parked. He had white hair and grey eyes and he looked very grim-faced.

‘We’ve searched the ambulance, ma’am, and in the back we found a deceased individual. From your description of his condition – his amputated legs, like – we believe it to be John Meagher.’

‘I see,’ said Katie. ‘Do you have any idea how he might have died?’

‘Throat cut, ma’am, I’m sorry to say.’

She looked up at Conor. She felt numb now, as well as deaf.

‘Why would they bring his body here, of all places?’ she asked him. Then she faintly heard the pit-bulls barking inside the barn, and she said, ‘Don’t answer that.’

Her iPhone rang. It was Bridie, and she sounded bewildered.

‘I went back to pick up John after I’d done my shopping, and there was nobody there but loads of guards who wouldn’t tell me nothing. What’s happened to him? He’s all right, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, Bridie. He’s grand altogether. He’s not suffering any more, anyway.’

‘I’m sorry, Katie. I don’t quite know what you mean.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me at all, Bridie. I’m not sure that I do, either.’

The next morning was cold, but at least it was dry and sunny. Katie’s first meeting of the day was with Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin, to discuss the details of John’s murder and the shootings at Bartley Doran’s farm, and how they were going to present these to the media.

Dr Gearoid Fitzgerald had survived his mauling by the pit-bull terriers, but he was being treated in the Mercy for catastrophic facial injuries. ‘If only he could operate on himself,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin, wryly. ‘He’s about the only surgeon in the country with the skill to make himself look halfway normal again.’

Lorcan Fitzgerald had survived, too, with a punctured lung, and he was recovering in CUH. When he was ready to be discharged he would be arrested for dognapping and with grievously wounding Martin Ó Brádaigh. The knife that he had taken out to stab Katie had matched the plastic knife that Dr Kelley had 3D-printed, in every microscopic detail.