Blood Sisters (41 page)

‘I’d be cautious about that,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke. ‘I know at least five Travellers who were more than happy out when they heard that Paddy Fearon had gone to meet his maker. One of them asked me who had done it because he wanted to shake them by the hand for saving him the bother. There’s plenty of other scummers that Fearon upset, too, not just Travellers. He got on the wrong side of Lochian ó Bron once over some drugs business, and you never want to upset the Provos if you prefer to stay physically intact, like.’

‘It’s urgent in any case that we find out who this trainer is,’ said Katie. ‘If he was using buckets of Clairol, he must have been making unusually large purchases of it, so if you can initiate checks on who supplies Clairol wholesale and also who supplies it online. I’ll ask Superintendent Pearse to have his officers make enquiries in all of the shops in Cork where you can buy Clairol, as well as all the hairdressers.

‘At the same time, we need to do some subtle mingling with the racing community. We can have a quiet chat with that reporter from the
Racing Post
, can’t we? What’s his name? Peter Driscoll. And Declan O’Donoghue from the
Sun
. Don’t tell me that one of them hasn’t caught a whiff of this and has at least some idea who’s been doing it.’

‘Charlie O’Reilly from the Ennisbrook Stud, he’s an old pal of mine,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke. ‘Him and me play golf together now and again. He knows just about everybody who’s anybody in the racing game. They’re very tight, though. They look after each other. It won’t be easy to get any of them to make a direct accusation.’

‘Well, let’s try all the same,’ said Katie. ‘Meanwhile, thank you, Tadhg. You’ve done a fantastic job. What are we doing with the horses’ bodies? I don’t want them cremated until this investigation is completed.’

‘I can arrange to have them stored in refrigeration trucks for now,’ said Tadhg. ‘That’s if the Garda can meet the expense.’

‘No bother, I’ll sign that off,’ said Katie. ‘Good luck to you so.’

Tadhg Meaney gathered up his photographs, shook Katie’s hand, and left. However, Detective Inspector O’Rourke stayed behind.

‘I heard all about you being shot at last night,’ he told her.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But as you can see, they missed.’

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t find that very amusing myself. It does sound like there’s somebody out to get you. They’re having a triple funeral on Friday, for Horgan and those two young gardaí who got blown up. We don’t want a quadruple funeral, for God’s sake.’

‘Francis, I have two armed protection officers posted outside my house and they’re going to stay there, twenty-four hours a day, until we’re satisfied that the threat of my being shot at again is over.’

‘You need to be doggy wide, though. They may not shoot at your house next time. They may try to pick you off while you’re shopping, or sitting in a café, or anywhere at all.’

Katie went over and patted his shoulder. ‘Thank you, Francis. I appreciate your concern, believe me. But I can take care of myself. Really. In fact, it’s my job to take care of you.’

Riona ushered Sister Aibrean across the stable yard, with the rain drumming on the large black umbrella that she held high over their heads. Sister Aibrean hesitated two or three times, but each time Riona pressed her hand against the small of her back and pushed her forward.

‘You shouldn’t do anything you’re going to regret when you have to account for yourself to Saint Peter,’ said Sister Aibrean.

‘That’s something that you and your sisters should have thought about when you were running Saint Margaret’s,’ Riona retorted.

‘We never knew that you felt so hard done by. Why didn’t you say anything at the time?’

‘Because if any of us ever tried to complain, we’d get a hard slap, that’s why, or have to go without our supper.’

They had reached the stable door now. Top and bottom were bolted together, but it was slightly ajar and Riona went to push it open wider.

‘Isn’t there some way that I can make amends to you?’ said Sister Aibrean. ‘I’m an old woman now, Riona. I’m not the same woman I was forty years ago. I know that I have never been perfect. I have never pretended to be. But if I did you such a grievous wrong, I am deeply penitent, believe me, and I will go to church as soon as I get back home and confess to it and beg for the Lord’s forgiveness.’

‘The Lord may forgive you, Sister Aibrean, but I don’t and that’s the difference. Anyway, you won’t be going back home ever again, and you’ll never be setting foot in a church again, either.’

Dermot must have heard them talking because he came to the stable door and opened it up wider.

‘All ready for firing up,’ he grinned and gave Riona the thumbs up.

Sister Aibrean leaned over to one side so that she could see past him. The stable was brightly illuminated by two fluorescent tubes in the ceiling, which gave it a flat, unnatural appearance, as if it were a stage set for a school Nativity play. On the brick wall at the back hung a metal hay feeder, still half filled with straggly hay, and the floor was spread with straw. A training saddle and other tack hung from the walls at the sides.

But Sister Aibrean’s attention was caught most of all by the shining stainless-steel machine that was standing in the centre of the stable. It looked like a metal coffin on four legs with wheels. Its raised cover was in two hinged halves, with an oval glass window in each of them, and these had been opened and folded down on each side. Standing on the floor next to it, and connected to it by an orange hose, was a large red cylinder of propane gas.

‘Come and take a look,’ said Riona, pushing Sister Aibrean further forward. ‘It’s not a brazen bull, I’m afraid. You can’t find anybody these days who hires out brazen bulls.’

Sister Aibrean approached the metal coffin and stared at it with mounting dread. Inside there was a long rectangular tray, which had recently been polished into shining semicircles with a scouring pad.

‘What is it?’ she whispered. ‘What is it for?’

She knew very well what it was. She had seen different versions of it several times before, at weddings and church picnics. She was asking only because she wanted to hear Riona say that Dermot had set it up today for a different purpose altogether.

‘It’s a hog tray-roaster,’ said Riona. ‘I rented it from O’Malley’s Barbecues in Macroom. Some people say that the tray-roasters can cook a hog much better than a spit, much more even, with better crackling. The most important thing about it, though, is that you can roast a much bigger beast on it than you can with most spits. Ninety kilos. What do you weigh, Sister Aibrean? Not as much as ninety kilos. Only half that, I’d say.’

Sister Aibrean turned to face her. ‘If your intention was to frighten me, Riona, then you’ve succeeded. You’ve frightened me very much indeed. Now, why don’t you please ask your man Dermot here to drive me back home and we’ll forget any of this ever happened? I could make a complaint about you to the guards, but I won’t.’

‘You still don’t have me, do you?’ said Riona. ‘You’re going nowhere at all. You’re going to suffer as I suffered – only you can thank that God of yours that your suffering isn’t going to last a fraction as long as mine has.’

Sister Aibrean stared at her, with her lip quivering. She was about to say something in return, but she was so terrified now that she couldn’t manage to speak. She sank slowly to her knees and had to grip the side of the hog roaster to ease herself down. She knelt on the straw-strewn floor of the stable with her head bent and closed her eyes, and clasped her hands together in prayer.

‘If I were you, I would ask for some guidance from your precious Saint Eustace,’ said Riona. ‘If anybody understands what you’re about to go through, then he does. That’s if he’s in heaven, which he doesn’t deserve to be. What kind of a man allows his wife and children to be roasted alive because of his beliefs?’

She looked across at Dermot and nodded, and Dermot depressed and twisted the two gas-control knobs so that the burner bars that ran along each side of the roaster popped into life, two rows of small blue flames. Sister Aibrean felt the heat rising out of the open roaster immediately.

‘Will you undress yourself or shall I?’ asked Riona.

Sister Aibrean opened her eyes. ‘
What
? You expect me to undress?’

‘Oh, come on, girl,’ said Dermot. ‘Did you ever see a hog that was roasted in a nun’s habit? “I’ll have a bit of crackling, please, boy, and a slice of that scapular.”’

Sister Aibrean tried to climb to her feet, but she was too weak to manage it unaided and when she reached out to the hog roaster to ease herself up it was already too hot for her to put her hand on it. She let out a peculiar moan of despair and looked wildly around the stable, as if she were expecting some miracle to occur to save her – like the hog roaster being magically transformed into a harmless wooden table, or an angel with a fiery sword walking through the wall to strike the heads off Riona and Dermot and carry her away in his arms.

Riona, however, was growing impatient. She stood behind Sister Aibrean and wrenched off her raincoat, first one sleeve and then the other. Sister Aibrean struggled and grunted as her narrow shoulder blades were folded back. Riona, however, was far too strong and angry for her, and as she was yanking off the second sleeve Dermot came over and gripped Sister Aibrean’s upper arms so that she couldn’t fight back or pitch herself forwards or sideways on to the floor.

‘You can’t! You
can’t
! You must
not
!’ panted Sister Airbrean, but Riona ignored her and pulled off her scarf and her cowl, revealing her short, tufty grey hair, with all its bald patches. Then she dragged her long black scapular over her head, threw it aside, and reached down to untie her woollen belt.

‘Help me! Help me! Oh, God in Heaven, will nobody help me?’

‘You’re absolutely right there, Sister,’ said Dermot. ‘Nobody will help you. There’s only us and the horses here at the moment and the horses don’t give a monkey’s.’

Riona pulled up Sister Aibrean’s habit, almost suffocating her as she tried to wrestle it over her head. After that, with Dermot holding her ankles to stop her from kicking, she forced her on to her back and took down her underskirts.

‘No! Oh God, no!’ wept Sister Airbrean, as Riona tugged down her large white Primark drawers. She couldn’t reach down to cover herself because Dermot was holding her wrists. ‘No man has ever seen me undressed, ever! Please, Riona! Please! I beg you, as a woman!’

‘Chill the beans, would you, darling?’ said Dermot. He looked down at her bony body with its wrinkly, fawn-coloured skin, dotted with moles and patterned with spidery red veins. ‘I wouldn’t climb on you to hang wallpaper.’

Riona went over to the bridles and reins and stirrups hanging on the wall and came back with two lengths of blue nylon cord. Grim-faced, she tied Sister Aibrean’s ankles together, and then her wrists. She tied them so tightly that she clenched her teeth while she was doing it.

‘I beg you, I beg you, I beg you,’ said Sister Aibrean. ‘Please, I beg you, don’t do this. Please, think again. I will pray for you, I promise. I will pray for your forgiveness for sixty minutes of every waking hour. Don’t think what you are doing to me, think what you are doing to your own immortal soul. I may burn here, yes, for a few terrible minutes, but you will burn in hell fire for ever.’

Riona bent over her and looked her directly in the face, unblinking. ‘I don’t believe in hell, Sister, any more than I believe in heaven. How could I, after the way that you and all your sisters treated me? You were the living proof that there
is
no merciful God.’

She stood up straight and said, ‘Come on, Dermot. Let’s get this over with. Every second that this witch stays alive is a second too long.’

Dermot forced his hands into Sister Aibrean’s armpits, and Riona took hold of her ankles, and between them they lifted her up until she was level with the top of the open roaster. Sister Aibrean had her head thrown back. She was staring up at the ceiling and shivering uncontrollably, as if she had been caught naked in an Arctic draught.

‘Ready?’ said Riona.

‘Ready,’ said Dermot, and the two of them gave Sister Aibrean a little swing before dropping her down with a tumbling clang on to the hot metal tray of the roaster. Her bare skin sizzled and crackled, and she convulsed violently, jerking her arms upwards, even though her wrists were tightly bound together. She stretched her mouth wide open, exposing her brown and gappy teeth, but she was in too much shock to scream. Instead, she glared at Riona with unblinking fury even as she twitched and shuddered, as if to say,
How could
you do this to me
?
How could you do this to any human being?

Riona stared back at her for a few seconds, saying nothing. Even she was wondering to herself how she could be so emotionless. But she felt nothing for Sister Aibrean. To her, it was like watching a cockroach waltzing on a kitchen hotplate. What Sister Aibrean and her Sacred Sisters had done to her had emptied her of any pity. She thought that she might have had at least a little compassion if she had been able to understand why the nuns at the Bon Sauveur Convent had treated her so heartlessly, and why they had taken her Sorley away from her – but she couldn’t understand it at all. What religion treats a pregnant teenage girl as if she is an irredeemable whore and steals the child that she adores?

‘
Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh
,’ breathed Sister Aibrean, a soft expression of pain beyond any comprehension. Wherever her shoulders and her buttocks and her thighs were touching the metal tray, her skin was being scorched a livid scarlet and blistering, and the blisters were popping sporadically in the heat.

Dermot sniffed and then pinched his nose between finger and thumb. ‘Lord lantern of Jesus, the hong off of that.’ He sniffed again and then he said, ‘The worst thing is, it almost smells like you could eat it. It’s enough to give you the gawks.’

Sister Aibrean lifted her head and made one last effort to kick and hump herself off the roasting tray, but of course it was hopeless. Her head fell back against the metal with a resounding clonk and her hair began to shrivel.