Living Death (32 page)

She laughed and Conor laughed and they held each other close. She hadn’t felt so much like herself for years. Every day since she had first joined An Garda Siochána she had been aware that she was responsible for the care and protection of other people, and so she had always been restrained in what she said and how she behaved, and she had always tried to set a moral example. Tonight she felt free to be rude and relaxed and slutty and do whatever she liked. Her late Uncle Sean always used to say that ‘inside every garda there’s an anarchist bursting to get out – look at your father’.

In the very small hours of the morning, in darkness, they started to make love again, but gave up halfway through, laughing, because they were both too tired. The next time Katie opened her eyes it was 5:55. It was still dark outside but it was morning and she knew that it was time for her to get up and go.

When she was dressed she kissed Conor’s bare shoulder and whispered, ‘I’ll see you after, Mr Hound Lover.’ Then she left the room and quietly closed the door behind her.

It was still raining, and the streets were still glistening and black. As she drove along the Lower Glanmire Road, beside the River Lee, the radio was playing ‘My Love Took Me Down to the River to Silence Me’ by Little Green Cars. It was a song about a girl being abandoned, but Katie sang along with it, in a very high voice, feeling happier and sillier than she could remember.

‘He’s out so,’ said Dermot, lifting the mask off Gerry Mulvaney’s face. He flicked the tip of Gerry’s nose with his finger just to make sure.

‘It’s a fierce pity in a way, that they have to be anaesthetised,’ said the doctor, methodically pushing down the fingers of his surgical gloves, one after the other. ‘It would be interesting to see how much each procedure hurt, and what reaction you’d get. Maybe if I gave them a hefty dose of meldonium. Rugby players take that, so that they can carry on playing even when they’re badly injured. It could work with surgical patients too, don’t you think?’

‘What are you planning to do to him, like?’ asked Dermot, although he sounded more interested in going outside for a cigarette than learning how the doctor intended to mutilate Gerry Mulvaney.

‘Well – I considered leaving him his eyesight, because he knows who we are already, and I thought what difference would it make? But maybe Grainne’s right and he could communicate by blinking; and if he still had his eyesight he could see where we were taking him and how much stuff we were shifting, and all kinds of incriminating details, even if we were careful. So the eyes have to go.’

‘Poor old Gerry,’ said Dermot. ‘If he wasn’t such an eejit I’d almost feel sorry for him.’

‘Then of course we’ll have to stop him from speaking, so it’s the laryngectomy, just like the others. On the other hand, I may try a glossectomy, which means taking out his tongue, although he still might be able to speak in a gargled sort of a way. But then I was trying to think of a new way to stop him from writing, and to stop him from running off. What I’m going to try is, removing his radius and his ulna from his forearms, as well his carpals and metacarpals and phalanges from his hands.’

‘Come here to me?’

‘Dermot, the love of God, haven’t I taught you all of this? How do you think you’re going to become a fully qualified surgical assistant if you can’t remember the simplest human anatomy? They’re all bones, Dermot –
bones
.’

‘Oh, well, sorry, like. Bones. You should have said so.’

‘I did. I simply gave them their proper names. Like your gluteus maximus and your gluteus medius muscles constitute your arse.’

‘All right, I have you. I’ll remember that in future.’

‘I’ll also remove his tibia and his fibula from his lower legs, as well as the tarsals and metatarsals and phalanges from his feet.’

‘That’s more bones you’re talking about, is it?’

The doctor nodded, closing his eyes briefly to indicate how long-suffering he was. A highly respected surgeon who used to mingle with TDs and media celebrities like Pat Kenny. One single misjudgement had reduced him to the company of criminals like Gerry Mulvaney and fools like Dermot. And who could blame him for that misjudgement? It had been moral, rather than surgical. His superior skill had never been in question.

‘Let’s get started, shall we?’ he said, and Dermot lifted off the green surgical sheet that had been covering Gerry Mulvaney up to his neck. Under the stark overhead lights, he looked pitifully emaciated, with dead-white skin and wiry grey body hair. The doctor could see a diagonal scar under his right rib-cage, where he must have had his gall-bladder removed.

At this point, Grainne came into the room, tying up a surgical apron around her waist.

‘Lend us a hand here, Grainne,’ said the doctor. ‘He needs to be face-down.’

Between the three of them they turned Gerry Mulvaney over, angling his head to the right so that Dermot could keep an eye on his breathing. Between his shoulder-blades there was a full-colour life-size tattoo of the face of Jesus, with long auburn curls and a crown of thorns, which gave the doctor the uncomfortable feeling that the Son of God was watching him.

Grainne sponged the back of Gerry Mulvaney’s leg with water and then smeared on Chloraprep antiseptic with a white plastic applicator.

The doctor waited for a minute for the Chloraprep to dry, humming to himself. Then he said, ‘Number twenty-two, please, Grainne,’ holding out his hand but without taking his eyes off Jesus. Grainne passed him the scalpel and he held it in a fingertip grip before starting to make a slide incision down Gerry Mulvaney’s calf-muscle. There was very little blood. The incision opened up to reveal fat and flesh, all the way down to his bones.

‘So, when you’ve done this, like –’ said Dermot, ‘– when you’ve taken out his bones, he’s going to be kind of floppy, isn’t he?’

The doctor was carefully slicing around the cartilage where the tibia joined the patella. ‘That’s exactly it, Dermot. Not the medical word for it, but yes –
floppy
. Floppy legs so that he won’t be able to walk, and floppy arms so that he won’t be able to write, or draw, or do anything at all except wave his floppy hands around. He’ll be blind and dumb and have no more rigidity in him than a raggy doll.’

Today, the doctor was going to remove only the bones from Gerry Mulvaney’s right leg and foot. He would start on the left leg and foot tomorrow morning, and possibly one of his forearms, if he had time. There was no need for him to rush. He was sending an ambulance on Sunday afternoon to catch the evening ferry to Fishguard, but he could use Siobhán again for that trip, and one of the first patients that Milo and Ger had picked up for him, a homeless teenage boy called Fearghal. At least they had assumed Fearghal was homeless, because they had found no address on him, and his disappearance had never been mentioned in the media. The doctor had amputated his right leg and his left arm, so that he was asymmetrical, and would never be able to balance himself, and then he had blinded him by spraying oven cleaner into his eyes.

The doctor was well aware that some people would regard him as cruel, but as far as he was concerned, he was doing his patients a considerable favour. Once he had operated on them, they had some purpose in this world, which is more than they had ever had before.

*

It took him over three-and-a-half hours to complete his surgery on Gerry Mulvaney, and then suture and dress his incision. Gerry Mulvaney’s two leg bones lay in a plastic washing-up bowl on the side-table, as well as his ankle and toe bones, like a scattering of fivestones.

Gerry was beginning to regain consciousness, because he was muttering and groaning and his right hand kept twitching.

The doctor snapped off his surgical gloves and said to Grainne, ‘I’ll leave you and Dermot to take care of him now, will I? Lorcan should be here by now. Give him the morphine to keep him quiet. The usual dose.’

He took off his bloodstained green apron, bundled it up, and dropped it into the dirty clothes basket beside the door. He felt quite pleased with what he had decided to do to Gerry. He could be sitting in the ambulance, with his arms neatly folded over his blanket, and yet he would be incapable of doing anything with them except to flap them. He wouldn’t be able to see and he wouldn’t be able to speak, so no matter how frantic it was, a bit of flapping would communicate nothing to the customs officers at Rosslare.

Before he went downstairs, the doctor crossed the corridor to check up on Kieran. Since his operations, Kieran had been running a high temperature, well up to 38 degrees C, and the doctor was more than a little concerned about post-operative fever. He had measured Kieran for his fixation, the metal framework which he would use to re-set his broken pelvis, and sent off the specifications to GS medical supplies in Dublin. However he didn’t expect to receive the parts for at least another two days, and he was concerned that Kieran might succumb to infection or lung collapse before they arrived. That would face him not only with the problem of disposing of Kieran’s body, but paying for the fixation too, for no profit whatsoever. He could hardly charge it as a business expense.

He stood over Kieran, who was deeply sedated now, his plump face white and glistening with sweat, like a glossy death-mask fashioned out of lard. His breathing was shallow and quick, and it wouldn’t have surprised the doctor if he had stopped breathing altogether while he stood there. He wished to God that Ger hadn’t run him down with such enthusiasm. He had needed only to knock him over, and break a leg if possible, not crush him.

He stayed for a little longer, but when he was satisfied that Kieran was reasonably stable, he left the room and went downstairs.

The grey-haired man was waiting for him in the reception room. He was standing in front of the fireplace and looking at himself in the mirror, smoking. He was wearing a grey tweed suit with a black waistcoat and his hair was lank and straggly, as if he had been caught in the rain but hadn’t bothered to comb it since.

On the chesterfield next to him there was a large green tartan holdall, with its handles fastened together with brown parcel tape.

The grey-haired man blew smoke and then nodded towards the window, which was boarded up with plywood.

‘What’s the story about that then?’

‘Gerry was trying to leave us in a hurry. Collins will be coming round tomorrow morning with replacement glass.’

‘I always told you that fellow was trouble. He’s one of life’s incompetents.’

‘He certainly is now. I’m taking out his leg bones below the knee and his forearm bones below the elbow, and I’ll be blinding him so.’

The grey-haired man raised his eyebrows. ‘Nobody could ever accuse you of not being inventive, Gearoid, I’ll give you that.’

‘Huh,’ said the doctor, as if he didn’t take that as much of a compliment. Then, ‘How much do you have there?’

‘Eleven thousand seven hundred and ninety,’ said the grey-haired man. ‘And that’s just for the five of them. That woman in Belgooly gave me four-and-a-half grand to get her Samoyed back, which was about what she paid for it in the first place.’

The doctor ripped off the parcel tape and opened the bag. He rummaged inside and took out two packets of brand-new €500 notes. He sniffed them as if he were making sure that they were fresh and then dropped them back into the bag.

‘I imagine you advised her what would happen if she notified the guards?’

The grey-haired man nodded. ‘I told her that Samoyeds with no heads win very few best-of-breed prizes in dog shows, and I believe she took the hint.’

‘When do you think you’ll have the rest sorted?’

‘Hard to say. Most of the owners are out of the country which of course was why their dogs were in the kennels in the first place, and I haven’t been able to contact them yet. But Aileen’s working on them for me. It shouldn’t take longer than a week or so.’

‘Okay, if that’s the best you can do. I have enough to pay Ward for this weekend’s shipment, but O’Driscoll hasn’t stopped pestering me for more, and Vasilescu says he can’t keep up with demand. I mean, holy Saint Joseph, the amount they’re selling, you’d think the entire population of Cork was sniffing or smoking or shooting up.’

‘They’re paying you, though, aren’t they? O’Driscoll and the others?’

‘Of course. Holy Mother of God, Lorcan, I’d soon cut them off if they didn’t. It’s the delay, that’s all, while the cash gets laundered. I have no intention of being caught out by the Criminal Assets Bureau – not like that Patrick Duggan, with all those empty beer kegs full of euros buried under his farmyard. It’s not only that, though – we need to expand the business much faster if we’re going to dominate the market, and that means converting at least three more ambulances, and doing it soon. We’re going to need more patients, too.’

The grey-haired man crushed out his cigarette and blew out a last stream of smoke. ‘There’s a breeding kennels in Mullingar that has twenty or thirty pedigree Akitas that we could go after. They’re fetching very decent prices in the UK just at the moment, Akitas, and we can sell them for fighting, too. The Pakis in Manchester will always pay well over the odds for Akitas.’

‘What about those fighting dogs? What’s happening with them?’

‘Bartley took them up to Ballyknock. He’s handed them over to some friend of McManus to train them. We could be looking at a hundred grand out of them if we’re lucky.’

The doctor said, ‘I have no belief in luck, Lorcan, you know that. There’s no such thing. There’s only winning or losing, and the only difference between winning and losing is forward planning. Like the father used to say, the road to ruin is signposted with spontaneity.’

The grey-haired man said nothing to that. They both knew that the doctor had acted spontaneously just once in his career, and that had been the finish of him.

‘I’ll get this dealt with,’ said the doctor, picking up the holdall. ‘Are you still okay for Sunday? It’ll be Siobhán again, and Fearghal. Fiontán’s not too fit at the moment.’

‘That’s the whole fecking point, isn’t it?’ grinned the grey-haired man. ‘None of them are supposed to be fit. The unfitter, the better, that’s what I thought.’