Blood Sisters (12 page)

Katie stood up. ‘Michael – Shelagh – thank you both for coming forward. You’ve been really helpful. We can contact you again if we need to?’

‘You won’t be putting our names in the papers or nothing?’ asked Michael.

‘No, we won’t be doing that. And I doubt if we’ll be asking you to appear in court as witnesses, either. Your selfie is the most important evidence you’ve given us. At least we have somewhere to start looking.’

Detective Dooley escorted the young couple along the corridor to the reception area and saw them out of the building. Katie was waiting for him outside the visitors’ room when he came back.

‘We’re going to have to play this one very, very careful,’ she said. ‘You know what Spring Lane is like. Even if we manage to find this Paddy Fearon, he’ll probably say that he’s never owned a horsebox in his life, or that he’s not really Paddy Fearon at all but somebody else altogether, and
that’s
if we can manage to interview him without having rockers and bottles thrown at us or some saintly social worker from Pavee Point accusing us of racism.’

‘Well, of course,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘I wasn’t planning to rush around to Spring Lane mob-handed. I’ll start to ask some discreet questions among the Travellers first. There’s a couple of young girls I know from the halting site who think I’m a DJ. And I’ll also see if I can’t locate this horsebox. With any luck it won’t have been resprayed or scrapped or burned out on some farm somewhere.’

‘DI O’Rourke has some good contacts in the Traveller community,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a word with him.’

She looked at her watch. ‘I’m going to talk to Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin about Horgan and then I think we’ll probably have a station meeting. I expect we’ll be holding a media conference, too, once Horgan’s next of kin have been informed.’

Detective Dooley shrugged and nodded, but said nothing. Katie went up to him and straightened his tie. ‘Come on, Dooley,’ she said gently. ‘There’s always a risk involved in this job. That’s part of the reason we do it. Tuck your shirt in, take a deep breath, and try to remember the last time Horgan made you laugh.’

‘He always used to say that if he got killed, he’d throw a mickey fit.’

‘Oh, I doubt if he’s doing that,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll bet he’s sitting outside the pearly gates right now, itching to tell Saint Peter one of his terrible knock-knock jokes.’

* * *

Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin was sitting at his desk looking glummer than ever. Detective Inspector O’Rourke was in his office, too, as well as Superintendent Pearse and Sergeant O’Farrell and the keen new press officer, Mathew McElvey.

‘Well, Katie, this is a fair shock and no mistake,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘Francis here tells me that you weren’t hurt at all, and that’s a blessing.’

‘I’ve been wracking my brains trying to think who might have done it, though,’ said Katie. ‘Like, the list of possible suspects is almost endless, but why now, and why there?’

Superintendent Pearse finished making an elaborate performance of blowing his nose and then he said, ‘You’re right. The timing is a puzzler. On top of that, how the devil did they know you were up at Dromsligo at that particular time and what car you were in?’

‘I have no idea,’ Katie admitted. ‘Not unless we have another mole in the station.’

‘They could have been waiting for you outside the station here and followed you,’ said Superintendent Pearse. ‘That would have been risky, though, with all the parking restrictions around here. There’s that loading bay in Eglinton Street, right opposite the car park entrance, but even if they hadn’t been moved on or given a ticket, they would have been picked up on CCTV. In fact, I have Sergeant Byrnes going back through all of today’s footage right now.’

Detective Inspector O’Rourke held up a torn-off sheet of notepad and said, ‘I have all the details of Horgan’s next of kin here, ma’am. I don’t know if you feel up to informing them yourself, or if you’d prefer me to do it. Apparently his girlfriend’s rung the station already asking for him, but she was told that he was unavailable.’

‘Where do they live?’ asked Katie.

‘Old Youghal Road, Mayfield.’

‘That’s all right. I’ll go up there myself. I’ll take Kyna Ni Nuallán with me. She’s good at breaking bad news.’

Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin peered at his watch and said, ‘If you can be back by seven, Katie, we’ll be having a station meeting in the conference room. I’ve already been in touch with the Cork Counselling Centre and they can send a therapist around if anybody feels the need for one. After that we’ll be holding a short media briefing.’

‘That’ll be at eight, in time for the nine o’clock news and the newspaper deadlines,’ added Mathew McElvey. Katie thought he looked more like a junior sales assistant in the Bedding Department at Brown Thomas than a Garda press officer, and she was convinced that he plucked his eyebrows. All the same, he was very clever at keeping the media happy without giving away too many operational details.

She was turning to leave when Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin said, ‘Katie, one more thing,’ and got up from his desk. He took her out into the corridor and along to the glass-enclosed staircase at the back of the building, where they wouldn’t be overheard.

‘Don’t tell me,’ she said, ‘you’ve had an update from the Ombudsman’s office.’

‘That’s right,’ he told her. ‘They’ll be sending two of their people down on Thursday morning to ask you some questions about Bryan Molloy. He’s not only alleging that you bullied and harassed him. He’s also accusing you of concocting false evidence against him. He says that you bribed one or more criminal informants in Limerick and he claims that he can produce witnesses to prove it.’

Katie stood with her mouth open, barely able to believe what Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin had just said to her. ‘That man is a living outrage. I really mean it. You know yourself what a gowl he is.’

‘No comment, Katie. He really turned things around in Limerick, fair bows, and he’s always been straight with me.’

‘Yes, but you’re a man and you played golf with him.’

‘True. But I think he quite fancied you if the truth be known.’

‘Well – I’m not going to start worrying about him now,’ said Katie. ‘I have much more important things to be doing. Like, I have to tell Mr and Mrs Horgan that they’ve lost their only son, and I have to tell his girlfriend that the baby she’s carrying is going to be born an orphan.’

‘Oh no, is that true?’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘That’s tragic.’

‘He told me on the way to Dromsligo. He said he didn’t know what he was going to do about it. He liked the girl but he didn’t want to marry her.’

‘Lord lantern of Jesus, it’s enough to make the angels weep. And talking of that, what’s the story with the flying nun? Do you think there’s any link at all with that sister who was killed at the Mount Hill Nursing Home?’

‘I won’t get a post-mortem report from Dr O’Brien until late tomorrow at the earliest,’ Katie told him. ‘We haven’t even been able to identify her yet, as far as I know. She might have belonged to a different order altogether. I’m hoping that Kyna Ni Nuallán will be able to give me an update. I sent her off to apply for a search warrant for the gardens at Bon Sauveur Convent before I left for Dromsligo. She should have it by now.’

‘Oh yes, the child’s jawbone,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘Come and have a word with me as soon as you know that you have your warrant. It’s going to take us a day or two at least to set up a search team. Of course, if we find anything at all we’ll have to be calling in RMR Engineering to carry out a ground-radar survey, and if
they
find anything at all we’ll have to be calling in the forensic archaeologists.’

He waited while a female garda came clattering down the stairs, smiling at her briefly and then returning to his default gloomy expression.

‘There goes my annual budget, in other words,’ he added.

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán was waiting for her in her office, holding a blue plastic folder and staring out of the window. Katie came in and closed the door behind her, then she walked over to the window and stood facing her. Neither of them spoke, but they looked intently into each other’s eyes, trying to interpret what they were feeling.

It had started raining again and the rain made a soft pattering sound against the glass.

Without a word, Katie took Kyna into her arms and held her close. Kyna dropped her folder on to the carpet and held Katie, too. They kissed, tenderly but chastely, both with their eyes open, as if they needed to see one another as close as possible.

‘Thank God you’re safe,’ said Kyna, touching Katie’s cheek and then stroking her hair.

For a moment they pressed their foreheads together and then Katie gave Kyna’s hand a quick squeeze and walked across to her desk. Kyna bobbed down to pick up her folder and followed her.

‘You managed to get the search warrant?’ asked Katie.

‘Here you are. All signed and stamped. His Honour Judge Monaghan took a little persuading, on account of us wanting to dig up the grounds of a convent, which has only ever been tended by nuns. But I think he was persuaded when I mentioned all of the children’s skeletons that were found at Tuam. If he’d refused to grant the warrant, he would have had to explain
why
he hadn’t granted it and His Honour Judge Monaghan doesn’t like having to explain himself to anybody. Even more than that, he doesn’t like scandal.’

‘Good,’ said Katie. She took the folder, opened it up and quickly scanned the search warrant. ‘In fact, this is more than good. He’s not only given us the authority to search the convent gardens, but the convent building, too. How did you manage to persuade him to do that?’

‘I convinced him that we might find some very important supporting evidence if we could search the entire premises. Maybe there’s still some left-over clothing that belonged to the children who were taken in there. Or maybe we can find ledgers that list all of their names and tell us what happened to them. Like, you know, which children were adopted, and which children died, and what did they die of, and what happened to their remains?’

‘Excellent work, Kyna. Good. And have you managed to get in touch with Dr O’Brien?’

‘Only briefly. He was up the walls when I called him, especially with that second nun being brought in for an autopsy. He confirmed that the cause of Sister Bridget’s death was asphyxiation, most likely with a goose-down pillow because he found a goose feather stuck to the back of her oesophagus. Immediately prior to death she had been forcibly penetrated with a blue-painted resin figurine, both vaginally and anally. The anal penetration had caused perforation of the rectum, which accounts for the blood we saw on her sheet.’

‘I don’t suppose he’s had a chance yet to look at the other nun.’

‘Not yet, no. Not in any detail, like. But he did say that it looked as if she had died from loss of blood. In other words, she was hanging by her neck from those balloons but the rope wasn’t tight enough to strangle her. It wasn’t likely that she would have been conscious, in his opinion, but while she was floating over the Glashaboy she was probably still alive.’

‘Mother of God. I’ll be very surprised if these two killings aren’t connected in some way. Whoever the offender is, you can’t accuse him of lacking imagination. Or
her
.’

‘I don’t think we’re looking for a woman, ma’am,’ said Kyna. ‘I can’t see a woman treating another woman like that. Especially with the figurine. That was
rape
.’

The emphatic way she said
rape
made Katie look up at her. But she had turned away now, so she couldn’t see the expression on her face. She was momentarily tempted to ask her about it, but then she decided to leave it. This wasn’t the time for psychoanalysis. They had to drive up to Mayfield and tell Detective Horgan’s parents that their son had been killed.

* * *

The Horgans lived in a small orange-painted house in the middle of a terrace of four houses opposite the Cotton Ball pub. The houses on either side of them were dank, with unpainted pebble-dash and litter in their driveways, but the Horgans obviously took a pride in their property. There was a low pierced-concrete wall around the front yard and two privet bushes in wooden tubs. A three-year-old Hyundai hatchback was parked outside, with a cardboard pine tree hanging from the rear-view mirror.

As soon as Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán pressed the doorbell, the door was opened up by a short, dark-haired girl in a blue wool dress. She had a pale oval face and wore no make-up except for two spots of purple eye-shadow. Behind her in the narrow corridor stood a bespectacled, middle-aged woman in an oatmeal-coloured cardigan. As soon she saw Katie and Kyna she let out a loud honk of dismay.

‘Oh, sacred heart of Jesus, I knew it was him! Please don’t tell me it was him!’

Tears began to roll down the dark-haired girl’s cheeks, streaked with purple. ‘You’d best come in,’ she said, standing aside.

Mrs Horgan ushered them through to the small, gloomy front parlour, which smelled as if normally nobody was allowed to sit in it. All of the side tables were covered in lace tablecloths, and there was even a row of lace doilies along the mantelpiece underneath a collection of china dogs. Over the fireplace hung a large reproduction of Jack Butler Yeats’s painting of a galloping horse,
The Whistle of a Jacket
.

‘My neighbour came in and said she’d heard on the news that a Cork detective was murdered,’ said Mrs Horgan, miserably twisting the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘I don’t know why I should have been so sure that it was Kenny. I just felt it in my water. I had Muireann ring him at the station but they said he wasn’t there and that’s when I knew for certain. I’ve been sitting here waiting all day for you to come and tell me that it was him and here you are.’

‘Did he – did he suffer at all?’ asked Muireann.

‘No,’ said Katie gently. ‘I was with him when it happened and it was instantaneous. He wouldn’t have felt anything.’

‘Oh God, oh God, I don’t know what his father’s going to say,’ sobbed Mrs Horgan. ‘Kenny was always his bar of gold. He’s going to be devastated.’