Blood Sisters (57 page)

I know the feeling
, thought Katie.

She looked out of the window and saw that they were passing through the little village of Nohoval – a single street of neat, freshly painted houses. There was a crossroads at the end the street, overlooked by Saint Patrick’s Church. Standing in the garden in front of the church was a life-sized figure of the Virgin Mary, her pale-blue robes shining in the sunlight. When she saw it, Katie quickly crossed herself. She could see that the Toyota and its horse trailer were turning left, followed by the three Garda cars, and she had a dark, sick feeling that something really bad was going to happen.

‘Where in the name of God are they heading?’ asked Garda Garrett.

‘Unless I’m mistaken, Nohaval Cove,’ said Katie.

‘That’s where all those dead racehorses were discovered, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. That’s where all those dead racehorses were discovered.’

The procession of vehicles drove slowly between the fields until they reached the clifftop at Nohaval Cove. The Toyota and its horse trailer jounced and jolted through the wind-blown grass until it was only ten metres from the edge, where it stopped. Katie called Detective O’Donovan and said, ‘That’s far enough, Patrick. Give them plenty of space.’

Detective O’Donovan halted his car on the track that ran alongside the very last field before the cliff top. The two Volvos pulled in behind him and seven armed gardaí in black windcheaters and bulletproof vests scrambled out, all of them carrying Heckler & Koch MP7 sub-machine guns. They hurriedly took up positions in a semicircle about sixty metres away from the Toyota and the horse trailer, some of them kneeling, some lying in the grass.

Katie climbed out of Garda Garrett’s car and walked along the row of vehicles to Detectives Donovan and Dooley, who were both standing behind their Mondeo with their SIG Sauer pistols raised.

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ said Katie, before either of them could speak. ‘You didn’t want me to come. But this one I have to see through to the end.’

The Garda sergeant from the armed response unit came up to them and said, ‘Any luck yet making contact?’

‘No,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘But you wouldn’t call this a realistic attempt to escape, would you? It’s not exactly the brainiest thing to do, making a getaway pulling a horsebox behind you and driving yourself to a total dead end. Like, how do they think they’re going to get out of this situation, do you know what I mean?’

‘They might ask that we allow them free passage to leave the country, like, you know, in exchange for the mother superior,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘Other than that, though, I can’t see what their options are.’

‘Free passage? They can whistle for that,’ said the sergeant. ‘You want me to see if I can raise them with the loudhailer?’

Katie thought for a moment. The wind was making a soft, sizzling sound in the grass and beyond the edge of the cliff the sea was glittering turquoise. She had a terrible sense of foreboding about this. Riona Mulliken had been seeking revenge on the sisters of the Bon Sauveur Convent. She had done it blatantly and openly, and with monstrous cruelty, but that was because she believed that the sisters had been monstrously cruel to her. What greater cruelty could you inflict on a mother than to take her child away from her? thought Katie. She herself had lost little Seamus, and yesterday it had happened again, and the emotional pain of that was indescribable. She realized that she could happily kill Davydos Karosas – maybe by having him kicked to death.

When she turned back to the sergeant she had tears in her eyes.

‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ he asked her.

‘Of course, yes. Fierce cold wind this.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and then she said, ‘I’ll talk to her. If you would fetch me the loudhailer.’

The Toyota and the horse trailer remained stationary and there was no sign of life except for the horse whuffling and impatiently stamping its hooves. When the sergeant returned with the loudhailer, he was also carrying a black bulletproof vest.

‘Here,’ he said, handing it to Katie. ‘Don’t want you full of holes. Bad enough the wind blowing around you, let alone blowing straight through you.’

Detective Donovan helped Katie to fasten the vest and then she picked up the loudhailer.

‘Riona!’ she called out. ‘Riona Mulliken!’

She waited, but there was no response.

‘Riona!’ she called out again. ‘This is Detective Superintendent Kathleen Maguire from Cork Garda station. I understand why you’ve taken Mother O’Dwyer! Can you hear me? I know what you’ve been through and why you’ve done what you’ve done!’

Still no response.

‘I reckon we should shoot their tyres out,’ said the armed unit sergeant. ‘That’ll make them realize they’re not going anywhere.’

‘Riona!’ called Katie. ‘Riona, all I want to do is talk to you! There
is
a way out of this!’

‘Sure there is,’ said the armed unit sergeant. ‘Straight through the criminal court and into the women’s wing at Limerick Prison.’

Katie turned to him and said, ‘Will you keep your comments to yourself, sergeant?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am. Just trying to ease the tension, like.’

Katie lifted the loudhailer again, but before she could call out anything the doors of the Toyota opened. Riona climbed out first. She was holding the shotgun in one hand and keeping it pointed into the rear of the car.

With a clattering sound, the armed gardaí all raised and cocked their sub-machine guns and pointed them at her, but the sergeant shouted, ‘Hold fire! There’s a hostage in there!’

Riona bent over and dragged Mother O’Dwyer out of the back seat. Mother O’Dwyer stood ashen-faced, with the wind whipping up her scapular so that it made a distinctive snapping sound. Riona stood beside her, pointing the shotgun at her head.

‘Riona!’ said Katie through the loudhailer. ‘Please put your gun down! Please! No good is going to come of this! I know why you hate these sisters so much, but you’ve done enough now! You’ve shown us all how much you’ve suffered!’

Riona didn’t answer but turned around and said something to Dermot, who now swung himself out from behind the steering wheel and stood up beside her. Riona handed him the shotgun and the armed gardaí all aimed their weapons at him, but again the sergeant shouted, ‘Hold fire!’. He might have been flippant, thought Katie, but thank God he wasn’t trigger-happy. She couldn’t begin to imagine the repercussions if they allowed a mother superior to be shot dead right in front of them.

Katie didn’t call out to Riona again. She could see that whatever Riona had decided to do, nothing was going to change her mind. She walked around to the back of the horse trailer, unfastened the catches, and let down the ramp. She went inside, untied Sparkle the Second, and then gently backed him down the ramp until he was standing in the grass.

‘What the
hell
is she doing?’ said Detective Dooley. ‘She’s not going to try and get away on that horse, is she?’

Detective O’Donovan glanced around at the fields behind them. ‘It’s crazy, but she might. We couldn’t follow her, could we?’

‘Oh, great, and have the ISPCA all over us.’

‘The woman’s killed five nuns, for the love of Jesus.’

‘I know. But the fecking horse hasn’t killed anybody.’

Stepping on to the trailer’s mudguard to give herself a boost up, Riona swung her leg over Sparkle the Second and mounted him bareback. Then, gripping his mane to guide him, she eased him forward until he was standing beside Mother O’Dwyer and Dermot. All this time Dermot was keeping the shotgun pointed only centimetres away from Mother O’Dwyer’s head.

‘Holy Mother of God,’ said Katie. ‘I hope she’s not thinking of doing what I think she’s thinking of doing.’

Still keeping a firm hold on Sparkle the Second’s mane, Riona leaned over and seized Mother O’Dwyer’s right arm. Mother O’Dwyer tried to wrench herself free and drop to her knees so that Riona couldn’t reach down to her, but Dermot shifted the shotgun into his left hand and thrust his right hand into the depths of her vestments, right between her legs, and heaved her upwards like a black sack of coal. Riona dragged her over Sparkle the Second’s back and for the first time Mother O’Dwyer screamed.

‘
God help me
!
Somebody help me
!
Jesus, save me
!’

The armed gardaí stood up and some of them began to walk forward, but Dermot prodded Mother O’Dwyer’s buttocks with the shotgun and shouted out, ‘Don’t you even think about it, or I’ll blow her fecking arse off!’

Sparkle the Second stepped forward a few paces. He was twitchy and kept shaking his head and snorting. It was clear that he could sense the hostility all around him. Riona was sitting on him bolt upright, as if she were entering a dressage competition, while Mother O’Dwyer was hanging over his back in front of her, face-down. She was kicking like a small child but Riona had a firm grasp on her belt to prevent her from sliding off.

Katie picked up the loudhailer again and called out, ‘
Riona
!
Don’t
!’

But Riona turned Sparkle the Second around in a nervous 360-degree circle and then she abruptly dug her heels into his flanks. Sparkle the Second jerked forward and started cantering straight for the edge of the cliff.

‘
Riona
!’ Katie screamed out, although she knew it was far too late.

Sparkle the Second leaped off the cliff top as if he were trying to clear the highest hurdle that he had ever faced in his life – his head lifted, his front legs stretched out. For a second, he could have been Pegasus flying up into the air.

Then, however, he lost all of his momentum and dropped downwards, his hind legs frantically pedalling to feel some ground beneath his hooves. Mother O’Dwyer, screaming, slithered from his back. Riona somehow managed to stay astride him until his head pitched forward, and then they all disappeared from sight.

Katie heard a jarring crash as Sparkle the Second hit the rocks on the beach below, but the wind was too blustery for her to hear Mother O’Dwyer or Riona.

The armed gardaí now surrounded Dermot. He kept his shotgun raised but he continued to back away, grinning uneasily. Every now and then he quickly glanced behind him to see how close he was to the edge of the cliff.

‘Come on, let be laying that down now, shall we, feen?’ said the sergeant. ‘I’d say we’ve had enough dying for one day.’

Dermot hesitated. It was impossible to tell from his expression what was going on inside his mind. But then he suddenly tucked the shotgun stock into his shoulder and aimed it directly at the sergeant.

He didn’t get the chance to pull the trigger. There was a staccato rattling of sub-machine gun fire and fragments of flesh flew off his body and into the air as if a flock of scarlet butterflies had been startled. He twisted around and around and then he fell back into the grass, his eyes still open, staring straight up at the sky.

Katie walked over and looked down at him. He was even uglier and more troll-like than Eithne O’Neill had depicted him.

‘Not exactly an oil-painting, is he?’ said Detective O’Donovan, right behind her.

‘No,’ she said, and thought for a moment of the painting that John had torn in half.

Next, she went right to the edge of the cliff. The tide was coming in and she could see Sparkle the Second in the surf. He was no longer Pegasus, the flying horse. His legs were sprawled apart and his belly had split open so that his intestines were rising and falling in the water. Not far away, Riona and Mother O’Dwyer were lying side by side on a tilted boulder that was almost like a rough limestone bed. They were facing each other and Mother O’Dwyer appeared to have her arms around Riona, as if she were consoling her.

Almost like a real mother
, thought Katie.

It was dark by the time Garda Sergeant Garrett drove Katie to Anglesea Street. She felt very tired, but they needed to hold a preliminary debriefing and she would have to make a statement to the media.

Almost as soon as she had switched on the lights in her office, Detective Inspector O’Rourke knocked at her door.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked her.

‘Oh, grand. That’s if you like acting out Greek tragedies for a living.’

She sat down at her desk and he handed her a folder. ‘That nun she shot, we’ve identified her as Sister Virginia O’Cleary.’

‘One of the Sacred Seven,’ said Katie. ‘What was she doing at the convent?’

‘It seems like she’d heard about all the other nuns being murdered and she was afraid for her life. She went to the convent for refuge.’

‘Well, that didn’t help her much, did it? Have they taken her to the mortuary yet?’

‘Not yet. Probably later today.’

‘Jesus. What a bloodbath. And there was me thinking that the Duggan twins were vicious.’

Detective Inspector O’Rourke pointed to the folder he had given her. ‘There’s a fair amount of background about Riona Mulliken in there already. She was ostracised by her parents when she got pregnant at the age of fifteen and sent to Saint Margaret’s Home. She stayed there for three years until her son was sent off to America for adoption. There’s no record of what treatment she received there, but my guess is that she wasn’t too happy about it.’

Katie opened the folder and glanced at the first two pages. ‘How did she get into racing?’ she asked. ‘I read something in the paper about her trying to sue the Bon Sauveurs because they’d sent her son away for adoption without her consent. They said that she was one of Cork’s most successful horse breeders, but that’s about all I can remember.’

‘That’s right,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke. ‘After she left Saint Margaret’s she found herself a job at a stud farm in Ballinhassig. Only a stable-girl, like, mucking out the horses. But she used to go to the races regular with the breeder who ran the place and that’s how she caught Stephen Mulliken’s eye – the fellow who owned the Clontead Stud. Stephen Mulliken had lost his wife to cancer a couple of years before and even though Riona was thirty years younger than him, he was lonely and wealthy and she was attractive and broke and one thing led to another and they got married.