Living Death

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I know, it’s beyond horrible, but it’s happening all the time,’ Conor told her. ‘These dog fighters go to animal shelters and make out they want to adopt a dog, or a cat. Either that, or they’ll look online for people advertising unwanted animals “free to good home”. Of course all they really want them for is bait.’

  Katie said, ‘That Bartley. I swear to God I could have shot him.’

  ‘I know. But I think you showed amazing restraint. Jesus, you even managed to smile at the fellow, and that must have taken some effort. The problem is, he trains dogs for dog fighting because it makes him a fortune, all tax-free, and he knows he’s going to get away with it. Like you told me yourself, the Garda don’t have the time or the budget to go chasing after people like him who are mistreating dogs. And what we saw today, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. If a bait animal is fit enough to fight back, Bartley will wrap its snout with duct tape, so that it can’t bite one of his precious fighting dogs. Either that, or he’ll yank out all of its teeth with a pair of pliers. No anaesthetic. And even if it manages to survive a baiting, he’ll throw it to his dogs to kill afterwards.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to hear any more. Let’s go in and get those two scumbags their money.’

  They went into the bank and Katie asked to see the manager. He was young and bald and bespectacled and very obliging. She showed him her ID, and he confirmed it by ringing Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin at Anglesea Street and the manager of AIB in South Mall, where the Cork Garda and Katie herself both had accounts. Within less than twenty minutes, Katie and Conor walked out of the bank with four thousand euros in cash in a Tesco bag.

  Katie saw a maroon-painted pub on the opposite side of the street, Pat Fox’s Bar. She really could have done with a drink right then, but she knew that they were pressed for time, and even as ‘Sinéad’, she didn’t think it was a good idea to go back to Bartley Doran and Guzz Eye McManus with vodka on her breath.

  Before they got into the car, though, she said, ‘Don’t forget the Peggy’s Legs. You don’t want those Pavee kids letting our tyres down.’

  They crossed the road, went into SuperValu and bought twelve Peggy’s Legs – sticks of hard caramel-flavoured rock with the slogan Peggy’s Leg that never wore a garter on the label.

  ‘I used to love them when I was a kid but I’ve almost forgotten what they taste like,’ said Conor, as they drove back along Palmer’s Hill. ‘I should have bought a few for myself.’

  ‘Just as well you didn’t,’ said Katie. ‘They’re murder on the teeth.’

  *

  While they had been away in Cashel, Bartley had dosed up the Great Dane with Zylkene tranquilliser tablets. It was so dopey that it could barely walk, and it took all three of Bartley’s young assistants to heave its huge haunches into the back of their Mercedes. Once it was inside, it sprawled out on the seats and fell asleep.

  ‘I gave him double the recommended dose,’ said Bartley, as he fastidiously counted his money, licking his thumb every now and then as he turned over the new €100 notes. ‘He’s a hell of a big beast, though, and you’ve a way to go back to Carrigahorig, haven’t ye, an hour and a half at least. Make sure ye give him plenty of water when he wakes up. He’ll be dehydrated, like, and confused, too. I don’t suppose he’ll feel like shagging much for a day or two, till his head’s cleared.’

  They left Bartley’s place and drove back to the Ballyknock Halting Site. The children ran over as soon as they saw them, and Conor called out, ‘All-a-bah!’ again and tossed the Peggy’s Legs into the air. Normally, Katie would have been amused to see the children scrambling after them, because it reminded her so much of her own childhood, playing rats-and-rabbits and shadows in the alley at the back of her parents’ house, but she was still tense and sick to her stomach after watching the poodle being torn apart.

  Guzz Eye McManus took his commission without even bothering to count it, as if it were a long-overdue debt that Conor was giving him, and if it were short, Conor would live to regret it.

  ‘You have the Great Dane then, Mr O’Dea?’ he said, puffing at the stub of his cigar. From the way that he called Conor ‘Mr O’Dea’, Katie guessed that he had checked up on the Mercedes’ number plate while they were away.

  ‘He’s in the back of the car, Guzz. Dreaming about bones, probably.’

  ‘Make sure you fetch him back to Bartley within three weeks so. He’s going to need at least a month to train him up.’

  Still Katie said nothing, but between them, Bartley and The Guzz had given her a rough idea of when the next dogfight was going to be held.

  When they left Ballyknock, Katie told Conor to drive northwards for a while, as if they were really going back to Carrigahorig. She kept turning around in her seat to make sure that they weren’t being followed by one of Guzz Eye McManus’s men, but the road behind them was empty, and when they reached the intersection with the M8 at Garranmore, they joined the motorway and headed south.

  ‘You can step on it now,’ said Katie. ‘If you get caught for speeding, I’ll make sure that the penalty points are wiped off your licence.’ It was a joke, but a bitter one, considering the scandal of wiped-off penalty points that had led to the resignation of the previous Garda Commissioner, Martin Callinan.

  Conor said, ‘Serious?’ and when she nodded he put his foot down and they sped back to Cork city at over 120 kph, with the Great Dane snoring stentoriously in the back. Katie felt wrung out, but she didn’t want to close her eyes because she knew what would happen if she did: she would see the gory remains of that poodle, as vividly as if she had managed to take a photograph of it.

  Her iPhone pinged. It was another text from Detective Dooley: KEENO STILL OUT. That was one relief, anyway.

  It had been dark for over an hour by the time they arrived back at Anglesea Street. The Great Dane was still sleeping but he had stopped snoring and was making little wuffling noises, as if he were gradually returning to consciousness. Katie had phoned ahead to Sergeant Nolan of the Dog Support Unit, who was waiting for them in the car park with a van, ready to take the Great Dane to the unit’s kennels.

  Like the German Shepherd and the Viszla that they had recovered from Gerry Mulvaney, the Great Dane would be thoroughly checked by a vet, and treated for any illnesses or injuries or drug abuse, but he would not be returned to his owners. Katie had stipulated that none of the dogs’ owners should have their pets returned to them yet, or even be notified that they had been found. She didn’t want the dognappers to get any inkling of how far they had progressed in their investigation, and in particular she didn’t want Guzz Eye McManus or Bartley Doran to realise that they had been duped by ‘Redmond’ and ‘Sinéad’.

  Sergeant Browne came waddling up to them in his yellow high-viz jacket as they parked the Mercedes. He saw at once that its sides were badly scratched.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You didn’t go driving it through a barbed-wire fence, did you?’

  ‘Sorry about that, sergeant,’ said Katie. ‘Collateral damage.’

  ‘That’s going to need a full respray, like,’ said Sergeant Browne, running his fingertips along the scratches. Then he opened the back door of the car and said, ‘God Almighty! I don’t believe it! That hound’s pissed all over the seats!’

  Katie and Conor left him to fuss over his scratched and soiled Mercedes and went inside the station. They stood in the reception area facing each other. Although it was still so early in the evening, a very drunk man was having his details taken at the desk, with a uniformed garda to support him on either side. He was singing the chorus from ‘The Fields of Athenry’, over and over.

  ‘Our love was on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing, it’s so lonely round the fields of Athenry.’

  Conor said to Katie, ‘What are you doing now? Do you want to have something to eat, and then come back to the guest house with me?’

  She was tempted to reach up and stroke his beard, and kiss him, but instead she said, ‘Not tonight
, Conor. I have to get my team started on tracking down this Lorcan Fitzgerald. Then I have to take myself home. I do have other people in my life I have to take care of.’

  She didn’t say that after today’s experience at Bartley’s she had no appetite at all, and that she was feeling too stressed and hormonal to think about making love to him.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll walk back to Summerhill. I could use some fresh air and some thinking time. I won’t kiss you, not here in front of your fellow officers, but consider yourself kissed.’

  ‘You too,’ smiled Katie. ‘I’ll call you later so, when I’m home.’

  ‘Low lie the fields... of Athenry... where once we watched the small free birds fly…’ sang the drunk, and then fell over backwards.

  29

  John was delighted to have her home so early, and he couldn’t resist giving her a demonstration of how well he could make his way around the house on his stumps. Before she had even had the chance to take off her raincoat, he had shown her how he could walk in and out of the nursery and into the kitchen.

  He had combed his hair and shaved and he was wearing the paprika-coloured sweater that she had bought him for his birthday last year, and neatly rolled-up pyjama trousers.

  ‘And now –’ he said, triumphantly, ‘– now I’m going to pour you a well-deserved drink. Sit down, make yourself comfortable. I’m not an invalid any more. I’m your partner again, fully mobile.’

  Katie hung up her coat and sat down on the couch. Barney sat close to her, and she tugged at his ears and stroked him and couldn’t help thinking about the poodle at Bartley’s place.

  John poured her a large Smirnoff Black Label with a slice of lime in it and brought it over for her, although he was still unsteady and halfway across the room he staggered and nearly spilled it.

  ‘I should be having my first prosthetic fitting by the end of next week,’ he told her, lifting himself up on to the couch next to her. ‘When’s your next weekend off? We could drive down to the Ring of Kerry maybe and have lunch at that lobster restaurant you like.’

  Bridie appeared in the doorway and said, ‘I’ll be away now, Katie. I defrosted that chicken pie like you asked me. I’ll see you tomorrow so.’

  ‘Thanks a million, Bridie. Goodnight.’

  Katie sipped at her drink but it didn’t relax her in the way that it usually did, and for some reason it tasted bitter. Maybe the lime was off. She put it down on the coffee table and sat up very straight, clasping her hands tightly together.

  John laid his hand on her shoulder and said, ‘How was Tipperary? You look like you’ve had a hard day.’

  ‘You could say that, yes. It wasn’t easy.’

  ‘How about I put that chicken pie in the oven? You’ll feel better once you’ve had something to eat.’

  ‘Yes, put it in the oven. You have some. I’m not at all hungry.’

  ‘I’m not going to eat if you’re not going to eat. I know how hard your job is, Katie, but you mustn’t allow it to stress you out so much. You have to take better care of yourself.’

  Katie turned to him and snapped, ‘I can’t take better care of myself! How do you expect me to take better care of myself when I have to take care of so many other people? I have to take care of the whole of Cork, for the love of God – and you, on top of that.’

  John took his hand away. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise I was that much of a burden.’

  ‘You’re not. No more than anybody else. I’ve had a traumatic day, that’s all.’

  ‘Then let me help you get over it. Come on, Katie, I’m your partner. I’m your lover.’

  Katie took a deep breath. There were a thousand hurtful things she could have said to him then, but she was too tired to start an argument. All she wanted was for John not to be there any more, but where could he go? She couldn’t throw him out of the house.

  ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ she said, standing up.

  ‘Katie—’

  ‘Heat that pie up, John. I’ll talk to you after.’

  She went into her bedroom, closed the door, and stood with her fists and her forehead pressed against the door panel, her teeth clenched with anger. She wasn’t angry with John. She was angry at herself for not having the courage to tell him how she really felt. As soon as he had been delivered to her door, she had realised that she no longer loved him, but now that she had met Conor, she didn’t even like him any more.

  She undressed and put on her dressing-gown, and she was about to go to the bathroom when her iPhone played ‘Tá Mo Chleamhnas a Dhéanamh’. It was Detective Dooley. She had given him Lorcan Fitzgerald’s number before she left the station, to see if he could trace him.

  ‘It’s a stealth phone number, ma’am, so we haven’t been able to get a fix on it. One of those Nokia 5000-D2s I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t entirely surprise me. Is there any record of him on Pulse? There must be a good chance that he’s had previous convictions.’

  ‘There’s Lorcan Fitzgerald the footballer who plays for Bohemians in Dublin, but I can’t imagine for a moment that he’s into dognapping. Altogether in the whole country there’s two hundred and eight more Lorcan Fitzgeralds. About a third of them we can eliminate because of their age or where they live or their professions – you know, if they’re a priest, like, or somebody whose job wouldn’t allow them the time to go dognapping, like a doctor or a firefighter or a publican maybe, or a chef. I have Scanlan and Markey checking through the rest.’

  ‘We can ring him,’ said Katie, ‘but let’s leave that until tomorrow morning. I’ll have the pet detective do it, because he knows all the ins and outs of the dognapping business and he’ll sound more believable than any of us.’

  ‘You trust him, this pet detective?’

  ‘Trust him? Oh, yes, Robert. I trust him.’

  *

  Katie showered and washed her hair and then put on her pale blue nightgown and went into the living-room to talk to John. He was no longer there, although she hadn’t heard him clumping down the hallway. He wasn’t in the kitchen, either, and when she looked in the fridge she saw that he hadn’t taken out the chicken pie.

  She went to the nursery door, and gently knocked. There was no answer, so after a few seconds she opened it. John was lying on the bed, his eyes closed, still wearing his paprika sweater and his rolled-up pyjama trousers. She went across and bent over him to make sure that he was breathing. Although she didn’t think that he was suicidal, his painkillers and sedatives were very strong and he might accidentally have taken an overdose.

  As she was leaning over him, he opened his eyes and stared at her.

  ‘John?’ she said. ‘Mother of God, you made my heart go sideways there for a second!’

  He didn’t answer, but continued to stare at her, unblinking. Then he closed his eyes again.

  ‘John?’ she repeated, but he still didn’t answer. Either he was asleep, and his eyes had opened as an unconscious response to her coming so close to him, or else he was awake and he was deliberately ignoring her.

  She waited for a while to see if he would open them again, but he continued to lie motionless, breathing steadily, until she had to assume that he really was sleeping.

  Very quietly, she tiptoed out of the nursery, but she left the door about ten centimetres open, in case he called out for her during the night.

  *

  As exhausted as she was, she found it impossible to get to sleep herself. She was still awake when the clock in the hallway chimed midnight, and so she switched on her bedside light again and lay there listening to the rain pattering against the window. She couldn’t get the picture of the dismembered poodle out of her mind, and she was also wondering when Maureen Callahan was going to call her and tell her that the arms shipment had been delivered.

  She had roughed out a plan for a raid, but until she knew where the weapons and explosives were going to be stored, it was almost impossible for her to work out how many office
rs she was going to need. She would certainly have to call on the Regional Support Unit for armed officers, and bomb disposal experts from Collins Barracks. But there could be all kinds of tactical problems, depending on the building they were raiding – whether it was located in a residential area where civilians might be put at risk, or out in the countryside where the Callahans would be able to see them coming from a distance.

  On top of that, she was still deeply suspicious of Maureen Callahan, and the way in which she had been put in touch with her. Maybe she would have been more trusting if the contact hadn’t been arranged through Jimmy O’Reilly. In his early days in the Gardaí, Jimmy O’Reilly had been an outstanding officer, promoted rapidly through the ranks until he had been appointed Chief Superintendent of the Wexford Division and then Assistant Commissioner of the Southern Region. But Katie had discovered that he had been borrowing money from the gang leader Bobby Quilty to pay off his boyfriend’s gambling debts, and now she wouldn’t trust him to fetch her a cup of coffee from the canteen without spitting in it.

  She felt equally wary of Detective Superintendent O’Malley, of the SDU. She was prepared to accept that she was being paranoid, especially with all of the stress that she was facing at work and at home, but her father had often told her, ‘Trust your nose, Kathleen – more than your eyes, and more than your ears. Somebody may look like Saint Dionysus, and they may sound pure plausible, but if what they’re telling you doesn’t smell right, then it won’t be right.’

  Eventually, she switched off the light, turned over in bed, and managed to drop off to sleep. She was woken just after 4:20 by John clumping down the hallway to use the toilet, but then she dozed for another two hours. She had a vivid dream that she was walking very quickly along Lavitt’s Quay. The sky was grey and a strong wind was blowing. She was trying to catch up with her late husband Paul, who was hurrying ahead of her with his head bowed and his coat flapping. She wanted to tell him about Bartley Doran and how horrible the dog-baiting had been, but even when she called out to him he wouldn’t slow down. He disappeared around the corner of St Paul’s Avenue and when she turned the corner after him he was gone.