Living Death (49 page)

‘We’re only going to get the answer to that if we ask him,’ said Detective Sergeant Begley.

‘Exactly. Has he called CUH to ask how his patient is, and when he might expect her to be returned to his clinic?’

‘There was a call, yes, from some woman called Grainne Buckley.’

‘Oh, right. That was the same woman who came back to us about Gerry Mulvaney’s taxi fare. What did she have to say?’

‘She only asked how their patient was faring. Didn’t mention her by name. The hospital passed the call to Garda O’Malley, and Garda O’Malley told her that she was recovering and that the hospital would ring her back as soon as she was fit enough to be collected.’

‘That Garda O’Malley sounds fierce crabbit altogether. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s doing my job in a few years’ time.’

‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Detective Sergeant Begley.

‘Let me talk to Bill Phinner first about Siobhán’s disabilities and how his expert thinks they might have been inflicted. I might even go to see Siobhán for myself. Then we can work out what we’re going to do next. But I don’t want this going off at half-cock. If Dr Fitzgerald is clever enough to have got away with murdering somebody else’s baby, then he could have a very plausible excuse for mutilating Siobhán.’

Moirin said, ‘If he did what Rose and Denny believe he did, then he’s long overdue for punishment, that’s all I can say.’

*

Katie went down to the Technical Bureau and found Bill Phinner in his office. He was mournfully reading through an MRI scan report on a homeless man who had been found dead on Saturday morning in the only doorway in Crane Lane, in the city centre.

‘Ah – it’s yourself, ma’am,’ said Bill. ‘I’ve been expecting you. You’ve come about the missing young woman with all the injuries.’

‘Injuries?’ said Katie.

‘You can scarce call them disabilities. Here, take a look. I was just about to send these up to you anyway.’

He inserted a CD into his computer and brought up a series of photographs of Siobhán O’Donohue lying on a bed in the hospital’s recovery room. Katie pulled over a chair and sat beside him, so that she could see the images more clearly. Siobhán’s eyes were the first image – brown eyes staring blindly at nothing at all.

‘There’s no obvious external damage to her eyes,’ said Bill. ‘Apart from that she has no cataracts, neither of her retinas are detached, and both macula are perfect, with no degeneration and no holes. We’ll need an MRI scan for tell for sure, but our guess is that her optic nerve has been severed.’

Next he showed her Siobhán’s throat, and the neat sutures in it. ‘Again, we need a scan to confirm it, but this suturing is consistent with a throat operation such as a laryngectomy,and she’s been stitched up by somebody who really knows what they’re doing.’

‘Like Dr Gearoid Fitzgerald, for example.’

‘Stop! Gearoid Fitzgerald? He’s not your suspect, is he?’

‘He could be. Do you know him?’

‘Gearoid Fitzgerald? One of the best surgeons in the country, he was, before he suddenly decided to retire. I met him a few times. Strange character, though, very driven. I don’t know why he gave it all up so early. One day he was right on top of his game, the next day,
pff
, he was gone.’

‘I know why he went, but I’ll tell you that in a minute,’ said Katie. ‘Let me have a look at the rest of these pictures first.’

Bill brought up the photographs of Siobhán’s legs, and close-ups of her knees, which were swollen and lumpy and almost twice as wide as they should have been. ‘By the look of it, she was crushed by something fierce heavy. My opinion is that she was run over by a vehicle of some sort. The injuries are consistent with that.’

‘When will you be doing your scans?’

‘Sometime later today, hopefully. If not, tomorrow morning. She had a minor myocardial infarction shortly after Tyrone had examined her, and so we’re liaising with CUH. They have her on a heart monitor just at the moment.’

‘After what’s been done to her, I’m surprised she’s still living and breathing. But let me tell you about Dr Fitzgerald.’

When she had described why Dr Fitzgerald had been struck off, Bill sat back and let out a long, soft whistle.

‘Do you know, in a funny sort of a way, that doesn’t surprise me about him at all. Every time I talked to him I had the feeling that he considered himself superior to the rest of us poor mortals. He held up his hands to me once and said, “You see these? These have the power of life or death.” I’ll bet he thought that poor little baby with the Down’s syndrome could never expect the same quality of life as his son, so for him it was no contest. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he murdered her – maybe even took out her heart while she was still alive.’

‘We don’t know that, Bill, and we’ll never be able to prove it.’

‘I’m only saying that it wouldn’t surprise me. Any road – what are you going to do now? Arrest him?’

‘I’ll be sending a couple of officers up to his clinic to keep an eye on it, but I’m going to hold off lifting him until I’ve received the results of your MRIs. I want to have watertight evidence that Siobhán was wilfully maimed, and as far as possible that it was Dr Fitzgerald who did it. If her optic nerves have been severed without any obvious damage to her eyes, that would have taken a high degree of surgical skill, wouldn’t it? So unless there’s another surgeon working at St Giles’ Clinic that we’re not aware of, it must have been him.’

‘Okay, then. I’ve asked Dr Moran to call me as soon as Siobhán has recovered enough to be scanned. I’ve sent you all of these photos now, and as soon as Tyrone’s written up his report I’ll send you that too.’

Katie stood up and nodded at the MRI report that Bill had been looking through when she came in. ‘Is that the fellow in Crane Lane you’re reading about? Any idea what the cause of death was?’

‘Take your pick. Cirrhosis of the liver, ulcerated stomach lining, bowel tumour, kidney stones and deep vein thrombosis.’

‘No evidence of foul play, though?’

‘No,’ said Bill. ‘Just a foul life, that’s all.’

Although it was only 10:30 in the morning, Eoin was already drunk. He was sitting in the living-room in the same red check shirt that he had been wearing for the past three days, and the fly of his jeans was undone. His hair was matted and he was unshaved, and he smelled strongly of body odour.

He was staring at the television with the volume turned right down so that it was almost inaudible. In his right hand he was holding a cigarette with a long crooked ash on it. In his left hand he was holding an empty half-bottle of Paddy’s whiskey.

Cleona came in through the front door, wearing her long khaki raincoat and rushers. She took off her rushers in the hallway and then she came into the living-room, unbuttoning her coat.

‘Is that all you’re going to do all day?’ she asked Eoin. ‘Sit there like a zombie watching
1000 Heartbeats
with the sound off?’

‘What the feck else is there do?’ Eoin retorted. ‘The kennels have gone down the tubes. If you can suggest some other line of work that I’m qualified for, then send me your suggestions on a postcard, please.’

‘We can rebuild the business, Eoin. We still have seven dogs to take care of, and we can advertise for more. It’ll take a little time, but maybe if we changed the name.’

‘To what? Dognappers’ Delight? Nobody’s going to trust us again. We might as well give those seven dogs back to their owners and close down for good and all.’

‘Eoin, look at the state of you. You haven’t shaved and there’s a smell of benjy off you. You’re totally wrecked. You have to pull yourself together for the love of God, otherwise we’re going to go bankrupt and find ourselves sleeping on the streets.’

Eoin let the ash from his cigarette drop on to the carpet. ‘Pull myself together? I’ve lost twenty-six valuable dogs and the insurance are quibbling because the alarms weren’t switched on. I’m still on police bail for blowing that scumbag’s head off. I was forced to watch my wife being shagged right in front of me by some lowlife, and I can’t get the picture of it out of my head. And you want me to pull myself together? Get real, Cleona, for feck’s sake. We’re finished here. And we’re finished too. You and me.’

Cleona sat down beside him and put her hand on his shoulder, but he pushed it off.

‘What do you mean, we’re finished? We
can
get over this, Eoin. All we have to do is be strong.’

‘You’re codding me, aren’t you? Every time you take off your clothes, all I can see is that bastard sticking his disgusting micky into you. All right, you’ve told me, you’ve washed and you’ve washed and you’ve washed any trace of him away, but you can’t wash my brain, girl. All the soap in the whole fecking world is never going to wash that picture out of my head.’

‘Eoin, give it time. You’re still suffering from shock. But maybe a shock is what you and me both needed. Things haven’t been going well between us for a long time now, have they? I mean, admit it. Even before this happened, we hardly ever made love any more, did we? And we were always having ructions about the smallest things.’

Eoin thought for a while, and then he tried to stand up. He promptly sat down again, but then he held on to the arm of the couch and managed to pull himself upright. He stood swaying for a while, and belched, and then he started to make his way towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’ Cleona asked him.

‘I’m going to drain the main vein, if you must know. Then I’m going into Ballinspittle to buy myself a couple more bottles of forgetting juice.’

‘You’re not driving, the state you’re in.’

‘What’s it to you? Why don’t you go find that scumbag who shagged you and beg him for some more?’

With that, he staggered across the hallway to the toilet, crashing into the door before he managed to turn the handle. Once he was inside, he started to urinate loudly and at great length, and Cleona could hear that most of it was clattering on to the floor. She got up and quickly tiptoed into the kitchen. She took the car keys down from the hook beside the door and dropped them into the drawer where she kept all her cooking utensils.

By the time Eoin came out of the toilet she was back in the living-room. She hadn’t turned up the television or switched channels, because she knew that Eoin would only throw a rabie if she did, as if he wasn’t going to throw enough of a rabie when he found that the car keys were gone.

He struggled into his black waterproof jacket and then he went into the kitchen. She heard him scuffling around and muttering to himself, and then he came back into the living-room.

‘Where’s the car keys, Clee?’

‘How should I know? You were the last one to drive it.’

‘I hung them up on the hook. I always hang them up on the hook. Where the feck are they?’

‘I don’t know, Eoin. Up in Nelly’s room behind the wallpaper, I expect.’

‘Don’t get fecking funny with me, girl. You’ve hid them, haven’t you? You’ve fecking hid them. Well, I’m giving you three, and then I want them right here in my hand.’

‘I don’t have them, Eoin, and in any case you’re not fit to ride a kiddie’s scooter, let alone drive a car. If you don’t kill yourself you’ll kill somebody else, and then you’ll really be in trouble with the law.’

Eoin came up to her chair, seized hold of her wrists, and pulled her up on to her feet.

‘Eoin! You’re hurting me! Let go!’

He stared at her with red-rimmed eyes. His breath smelled like rotten chicken.

‘Where are the fecking car keys, Clee? This is the last time I’m asking you nicely, because if I have to ask you again, I’ll have to slap you. You understand me?’

‘Eion, I have no notion at all where they are. Now let go of my wrists, will you? You’re going to be giving me bruises.’

‘Bruises?’ spat Eoin. ‘What do you think you’ve given me? Nothing but fecking grief, ever since we started this business. Always fecking nag, nag, nag.’

‘I’ve never nagged you. It’s all been too much for you, that’s all. I always told you that we needed help but you never listened. You’ve been running yourself into the ground.’

Eoin closed his eyes for a few seconds. Then he opened them again and screeched out, ‘
Where – are – the – fecking – keys?
’

‘For the last time, Eoin, I have no idea,’ said Cleona, trying to stay calm. ‘Now why don’t you sit down and I’ll make you a good strong mug of coffee and you can sober yourself up?’

Without hesitation, Eoin let go of her wrists and punched her on the left cheekbone. She dropped abruptly back into her chair, lifting her hand to her eye, but Eoin dragged her up on to her feet again, and punched her on the right breast, and then her stomach, and then her stomach again.

‘
No
!’ she screamed at him, shielding her stomach with both hands and backing away from him. ‘
No, Eoin!
Don’t!
Don’t hit me again!
’

But Eoin was mad with drink and adrenalin and he went for her again, punching her stomach so that she doubled up and fell awkwardly sideways on to the floor, hitting her head against the leg of the couch.

‘
Eoin!
No!
’ she begged him, as he tried to heave her up on to her feet again. ‘
I’m pregnant!
’

Eoin lurched back, knocking the television off its table with a loud crash. There was a crackle and then its screen went blank.

‘What –
what
did you just say?’ Eoin demanded.

‘I’m pregnant, Eoin. I’m expecting a baby.’

‘How can you be pregnant? It isn’t possible! We haven’t—’

He stopped, and when he spoke again, his voice was very quiet and blurred, like somebody speaking through a thick woollen scarf. ‘We haven’t—’

Cleona grasped the arm of the couch and pulled herself up to sit on it. Her left eye was already swollen and closing, and she was holding her stomach in pain.

Eoin looked down at the television, and then he looked back at her. ‘It’s not mine, is it?’

Cleona wouldn’t answer.

‘It’s not mine, is it, you slut? Go on, admit it! It can’t be mine! So whose is it?’