‘My God, Sorcha, come in!’ said Katie. She reached out and took hold of Sorcha’s arm and helped her into the hallway. Her shoulders were hunched like a little old lady’s and she was shaking uncontrollably all over. Katie guided her into the living room and said, ‘There, sit down there. I’ll bring you a towel. You can dry yourself and then you can put this on.’ She took off her dressing gown and laid it over the back of the couch.
Sorcha perched herself on the edge of the couch, but then almost immediately she stood up again.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I should never have bothered you. It’s not for you to worry about. I’ll just go back home. He’ll be even more angry if he finds out I’ve called on you.’
‘Sorcha, sit down. It’s not a bother at all.’
‘But he’ll be so angry!’ said Sorcha, and she was almost squeaking.
‘I don’t give a knacker’s bang how angry he is, darling. He’d better not try doing to me what he’s clearly been doing to you. Now sit down, please. I won’t be a second.’
She went to the airing cupbard and came back with a thick white bath towel. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Get yourself dry and I’ll put on the kettle. What would you like? Tea or coffee? Or chocolate, if you like.’
Sorcha looked down at the towel that Katie had laid across her knees. She lowered her head for a moment and then she started to sob – deep, wrenching sobs that sounded as if the alveoli in her lungs were being ripped apart.
‘I can’t,’ she wept. ‘I can’t. I can’t do anything any more.’
Katie came back over and knelt down in front of her. She took hold of her hands and held them tight. As she did so, she noticed that Sorcha’s wrists were both bruised and that two of the fingers on her left hand were crooked, which indicated that they must have been broken at one time but failed to set properly.
‘Sorcha,’ she said gently, but Sorcha didn’t look up. All Katie could see was that dark tangle of wet brown hair. ‘David said that all of your arguments, all of that shouting and screaming, that was all your fault. He said you were bipolar – manic depressive – and that you have terrible rages and smash things.’
‘It is my fault,’ said Sorcha. ‘I shouldn’t make him angry. He only punishes me when I make him angry.’
‘Are you bipolar?’
Sorcha shook her head. ‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘Do you suffer from mood swings? You know, happy one minute but really depressed the next?’
Again Sorcha shook her head. ‘I do try to please him. I’m always trying to think of ways to please him. I cook his favourite meals, but most of the time he throws them at me. I made him a summer shirt once but all he did was rip it to pieces.’
‘But what makes him so angry?’
Sorcha started to sob again. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I try and I try but I just don’t know. It must be my fault, but I don’t understand what I keep doing wrong.’
Katie laid the towel to one side and took hold of Sorcha’s shoulders. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s get you dry and warm and then you’ll begin to feel better.’
She helped Sorcha to stand up, then pulled the soaking-wet nightgown over her head. She didn’t say anything when she saw Sorcha naked, but she was horrified. She was so thin that her breasts were nothing but two semicircular flaps against her ribcage, and her pelvis protruded like the rim of a washbasin. Her legs were barely thicker than broom handles.
But it wasn’t her emaciation that disturbed Katie so much as the obvious beatings and other mistreatment that she had been suffering. Her body was tattooed all over with bruises, some yellow and faded, some still purplish. Others were crimson, so they had obviously been inflicted only hours ago. She had teeth marks and scabs all around her nipples, as if they had been bitten, and bitten hard enough to break the skin, and there were runnels of dried blood down the insides of her thighs, so Katie could only guess what had been done to her there.
‘I never wanted anybody to see me like this,’ said Sorcha. ‘I’m so ashamed.’
‘Sorcha, there’s only one person in your relationship who needs to be ashamed,’ Katie told her. ‘Look, you’re shivering with cold. Come and have a warm shower and wash your hair, too, and then you’ll feel much better.’
She led Sorcha through to the bathroom and ran the shower for her. She took off her T-shirt and climbed in with her and while Sorcha simply stood there with her eyes closed and her head bowed, Katie shampooed her hair for her and washed her all over with tea-tree shower gel.
After she had rinsed her hair, with the warm water still cascading over them, she held Sorcha closely in her arms and tried to make her feel her strength and her sympathy, as well as her determination that she was never going to be beaten or abused ever again.
Almost a minute passed and then Sorcha looked up, her right eye still closed, but her left eye dark and glittering. ‘You’re not an angel, are you?’ she said. ‘It feels like you’re an angel.’
***
Katie gave Sorcha a pair of her knickers and some warm blue woollen tights, as well as a navy-blue tweed skirt and a pale blue roll-neck sweater. Then she made them both some coffee and brought out some oat biscuits, although Sorcha only nibbled at the edge of one of them.
Barney came trotting into the living room and sat close beside Sorcha with his head on the couch, looking up at her soulfully, as if he understood how much she was suffering.
Katie had looked out of the kitchen window and seen that the next-door driveway was still empty, with no sign of David’s Range Rover.
‘Do you know when David’s going to be back?’ she asked.
‘He’s gone to Kinsale for the day. There’s some kind of veterinary conference at the Trident Hotel. He doesn’t usually get in till late from one of those things, if he gets in at all. Especially if he finds a woman that he likes.’
‘He tells you about his affairs with other women?’
Sorcha nodded. ‘This woman I was with last night, she was a dream compared with you. Beautiful eyes, beautiful figure, and she really appreciated me for who I am. Unlike you, you stupid waste of space, with your missing teeth and your face like chewed toffee.’
For a moment, Katie was concerned that David might have told Sorcha that he had taken her to bed, too, but Sorcha didn’t seem to know about that – or if she did, she was simply too anaesthetized by David’s brutality to care.
‘Let’s go back next door and collect your clothes and your toothbrush and anything else you need,’ said Katie. ‘Then I can take you to the Cuanlee Refuge. They’re really welcoming there. They’ll probably arrange for you to see a doctor, too. I think you ought to have a check-up.’
‘Can’t I stay here with you?’
‘That’s impossible, Sorcha, I’m sorry. I’m out on duty for most of the time and I wouldn’t want to leave you alone in the house with David right next door. But once I have you settled at Cuanlee, I’ll immediately get in touch with Gallchnó Crann, which is a project I’m involved in to take care of battered and intimidated women. They’ll give you all the help and support you need to sort your life out. I’ll be having a word with David myself, believe me.’
‘You’re not going to arrest him?’ asked Sorcha, fearfully.
‘It depends if you want to make a formal complaint of domestic violence, and even if you don’t I still might consider it, after what he’s done to you. Otherwise, you can go to the District Court and ask for a barring order so that David has to leave the house and never come anywhere near you. As soon as you apply, the judge will grant you a protection order, or an interim barring order, pending your hearing. Whatever you decide, Sorcha, you need to get away from that man. Look at you. Listen to yourself. He’s beaten you physically, but worse than that, he’s beaten you mentally. You’ve just become David’s punchbag, somebody he can use whenever he feels like it to take out his frustrations on.’
‘I can’t collect my clothes,’ said Sorcha. ‘I don’t have a door
key. David’s never given me a door key.’
‘That’s no problem,’ said Katie. ‘One of the skills they teach us in the Garda is lock-picking. And if I can’t open the door like that, they also teach us housebreaking.’
‘You won’t cause any damage? David will go mental if you cause any damage.’
‘Sorcha, it doesn’t matter how angry he gets. He’s not going to hurt you again. You don’t even have to see him again, ever, if you don’t want to. You did the right thing coming here to me this morning. It’s all over. All of the shouting, all of the pain. It’s finished.’
Sorcha sat on the couch in Katie’s pale blue sweater, which was much too big for her, looking nervy and miserable. Barney licked her hand and made a noise deep in the back of his throat as if he was trying to say, There, see, you’re safe now.
32
While Katie waited in the hallway of the Kanes’ house, Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán called her.
‘I’m still here at the hospital,’ she said. ‘Nessa’s parents are here, too, and two of her sisters.’
‘How is she?’
‘It’s not good news, I’m afraid. They operated on her for nearly five hours last night, but the bullet damaged her spinal cord and even if she survives she won’t be able to breathe unaided, apart from having no feeling at all below the neck.’
‘Oh God. All right, Kyna. Thanks. I’ll have Patrick relieve you if you want to go home for a rest.’
‘No, I’d rather stay, ma’am. There’s a bed here that I can use if I need to sleep. The surgeon didn’t say so in as many words, but I don’t think she has very long and I want to be here.’
‘Okay, if that’s what you want. I have a couple of things to take care of first and then I’ll come right over.’
Sorcha came out of the bedroom, pulling a purple wheeled suitcase behind her. She stopped in the hallway and looked into the living room, and then at the kitchen. Katie could see pieces of broken blue and white china on the kitchen floor, and a brown splash mark up the wall which looked like gravy.
‘Have you got everything you need?’ she asked Sorcha.
‘Not really,’ said Sorcha. ‘But I’m ready to go.’
They left the house and Katie lifted Sorcha’s suitcase into the back of her Ford Focus. It had stopped raining at last and a pale lemon sun was visible behind the clouds. As Katie drove into the city, Sorcha talked almost ceaselessly, as if she were trying to persuade herself that she was doing the right thing by leaving David and that she wasn’t to blame for making him lose his temper and hitting her.
‘I asked myself so many times why I didn’t leave him. But what would have happened to him if I had? The trouble is, I loved him. I still love him, even if I have a thousand reasons not to. And I’m sure that he loves me. He wouldn’t hit me if he didn’t love me, would he? He wouldn’t even talk to me, would he, if he didn’t love me, let alone punish me?’
Katie drove along by the river until she reached the Cuanlee building on Kyrls Quay. When she had parked, Sorcha sat for a moment with her hand pressed over her mouth as if she were trying to remember something important.
‘Come on, Sorcha,’ Katie told her. ‘You know you have to do this. You can’t go back now.’
‘No, you’re right,’ said Sorcha. ‘I need to get back into the real world again. I’ve totally forgotten what it’s like.’
***
Katie drove back to Anglesea Street and went up to her office. Detective O’Donovan came in to see her almost at once. His shiny brown tie was crooked and he was eating a snack-size pork pie.
‘No trace of that people carrier,’ he said, with his mouth full. ‘It’s probably tucked away in some garage or workshop by now, or somebody’s barn.’
‘Well, all we can do is keep looking. How many vehicles of that description are there in Cork?’
‘City-wide, only twelve black people carriers, of all makes. County-wide, thirty-eight. Nationwide, one hundred and eleven. We’ve tracked down the owners of all the black people carriers in the city. Three of them are abroad at the moment, two of the vehicles are off the road, and the remaining seven are either being used as taxis or for private hire, or their owners have credible alibis. Either that, or they’re too old and feeble to kidnap anybody.’
Katie said, ‘These two thugs who kidnapped Eoghan Carroll, surely somebody must reck them? They may have had bags on their heads, but the way that Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán described them, they sounded like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. You can’t mistake a pair like that.’
‘They didn’t ring any bells with me and nobody else has spoken up and said that they know them. They could have been the Flynn brothers, Joey and Dermot, except that Joey’s dead and Dermot’s in the nuthouse at Carraig Mor.’
Katie checked her wristwatch. ‘Look, keep me in touch, I’m going to the hospital to see Nessa Goold and then I have to attend the District Court with Derek Hagerty. We need to widen the search for this people carrier. I’ll be making a statement to the media when I get back, so with any luck somebody who knows these two scumbags will come forward. I’m seriously concerned for Eoghan, though, I have to admit. If he’s really been taken by the High Kings of Erin, God alone knows what they could do to him.’
She went over to the coat stand to take down her raincoat, but as she did so, her phone rang.
‘Oh, get it for me, Patrick, would you? Whoever it is, tell them I’m not here.’
Detective O’Donovan picked it up and said, ‘Patrick O’Donovan here. The DS has left for the hospital. You can probably get her on her mobile.’
He listened for a moment, but then he put his hand over the receiver and said, ‘I think you’d better un-leave for the hospital, ma’am. It’s Inspector Fennessy. There’s a woman who’s just come in to report that her husband’s been kidnapped.’
Katie hung up her raincoat again and went across to take the phone out of Detective O’Donovan’s hand. ‘Liam?’ she said. ‘Where is she? Okay, grand. Thanks. I’ll be right down.’
***
The woman who was sitting in the interview room with Inspector Fennessy was tall and angular, with choppy grey hair that looked as if she had cut it herself. She wore no make-up and her eyebrows were unplucked and she reminded Katie of her history teacher from school. She was wearing a light green trench coat with the belt tightly twisted around a very thin waist, and green lace-up shoes.
‘This is Mrs Mairead Whelan, ma’am,’ said Liam Fennessy, standing up. ‘Mrs Whelan, this is Detective Superintendent Maguire, and this is Detective O’Donovan.’
‘They warned me not to come to you,’ said Mairead Whelan, in a voice that was almost a whine. She stood up, too, clutching a large brown leather handbag with curled-up straps. ‘They said that they couldn’t be held responsible for what would happen to Pat if I did tell the guards. But I didn’t know where else to turn. They said they’d do all sorts of horrible things to him if I didn’t pay up, but how can I pay up? Pat’s way over his overdraft limit and I only have sixty-seven euros left in my Permanent Bank account.’
‘Please, Mairead, sit down and try to be calm,’ said Katie. ‘If your husband’s missing and there are people demanding a ransom from you, you did the right thing coming here.’
‘But what if they hurt him? What if they murder him? I can’t pay them two hundred thousand euros! Where in the name of Jesus would I get two hundred and fifty thousand euros?’
She sat down, still clutching her bag tightly, and Katie sat down, too, with Detective O’Donovan sitting on her left. Liam Fennessy remained where he was, standing, with his arms folded. Katie glanced up at him and she thought he had that haunted look again. She badly needed his support at this moment, and she didn’t want him cracking up. Ever since Bryan Molloy had taken over as Acting Chief Superintendent she had felt that fault lines had been opening up in the structure of Anglesea Street and that all of the officers in the station were acting more cautiously, watching their backs, working less as a team.
‘What’s your husband’s name, Mairead?’ Katie asked her.
‘Pat – Patrick Whelan, the owner of Whelan’s Music Store on Oliver Plunkett Street.’
‘Well, I know it, of course. In fact I know him. He helped to organize that music festival last year, didn’t he, in aid of the Good Shepherd Services? When did he go missing?’
‘He closes the shop at six sharp and he’s always in for his tea by half past. Once or twice he used to come in later because some old musician friend of his might have come into the shop, you know, and asked him out for a drink. But he always called me if he was going to do that, and of course these days he hasn’t been able to afford to go to the pub.’
‘So he didn’t come in last night?’
‘No, and I was fierce worried I can tell you. I kept ringing his mobile but there was no answer at all. When he didn’t come in by midnight I was going to ring you anyway. But then about a quarter to twelve I got this phone call.’
Mairead Whelan’s lower lip was trembling and she was very close to tears. Katie reached across the table and said, ‘Go on, Mairead. You’re doing really well.’
‘I thought it was Pat, but of course it wasn’t Pat. It was this fellow who said that Pat had been kidnapped and that I had three days to come up with two hundred and fifty thousand euros or else I would never see Pat again, or at least I would never see him again the way that I was used to seeing him.’
‘Did he say what he meant by that?’ asked Detective O’Donovan.
Tears had been filling Mairead’s eyes but now they suddenly dropped down her cheeks. ‘He said that I would either see him in a coffin, dead, or else he’d be alive but not kicking, because he’d have no legs, and no arms either, and he wouldn’t be able to tell me what had happened because they would have cut out his tongue with a straightrazor.’
Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) Page 27