Living Death
Page 35
Grainne helped Dermot to heave Gerry out of the wheelchair and on to the operating table. Dermot fastened a wide black canvas strap around his thighs, and tightly buckled it up, and then he forced his arms down by his sides and buckled a second canvas strap across his midriff.
‘Not hurting you at all, the straps?’ Dermot asked him.
‘Get away to feck with you, Dermot,’ Gerry retorted. ‘As if you give a shite.’
They waited for Gearoid to join them. Gerry lay helplessly bound to the table, staring up at the ceiling, while Dermot jabbed at his mobile phone and Grainne hummed ‘Red Is The Rose’. For a moment, Gerry thought that she was humming it only to mock him, because he had sung it to his girlfriend Aoife when he had proposed to her, more years ago than he could count. Aoife had died of ovarian cancer when she was only thirty-seven, and Gerry had never remarried. After Aoife had gone, his only companions had been his dogs, and most of those he had never much cared for.
Oh, Aoife, if you could see me now, that boy who sang to you.
Gearoid came into the room. He didn’t speak as he took down his green surgical gown from the hook by the door and pushed his arms into it. Grainne tied it up for him at the back. Then he put on his surgeon’s cap, and his mask, although he didn’t pull his mask up over his face. He leaned over Gerry and smiled and said, ‘You won’t be needing the anaesthetic for this, Gerry. This is a very simple procedure and in spite of what you might think, it doesn’t hurt too much. So I’m told, anyway, not having experienced it for myself.’
He beckoned Dermot to come around to the top end of the operating table. ‘Grab a hold of Gerry’s ears for me, Dermot, and hold his head still. This won’t take long but we don’t want him shaking his head around like a wet retriever.’
He opened Gerry’s right eye wide with his index finger and his thumb, and then he turned to Grainne and said, ‘Pass me the speculum, will you?’
She handed him a wire speculum, and he inserted it under Gerry’s eyelid to prevent him blinking. Gerry grunted and tried to twist his head to one side but Dermot was gripping his ears far too tight.
‘Spoon,’ said Gearoid, and Grainne gave him a long-handled surgical spoon, with a very small bowl at the end of it.
Gearoid said to Gerry, ‘This is what we call enucleation, Gerry. As I said, it’s probably one of the most painless ways of blinding you. I’ve tried all kinds of different methods, like caustic liquids and penetrating the eyeball with a pointed instrument, but I think you’ll agree with me that this is the least traumatic.’
He inserted the spoon into Gerry’s eye socket, wiggling it slightly so that it cupped the back of the eyeball. Gerry gasped, and panted. He would have screamed, but he didn’t have enough air in his lungs.
Very slowly, and with a soft sucking sound, Gearoid scooped Gerry’s glistening eyeball out of its socket. It stared at him without expression on the end of his spoon, still fastened to the thin pink optic nerve.
‘Scissors,’ he said, and Grainne passed him a pair of scissors with small curved blades. He snipped the optic nerve, which shrivelled back into Gerry’s empty eye socket like a worm with its head cut off.
Gearoid carefully removed the speculum and Gerry’s eyelid drooped shut, although blood slid out from under it, diluted by his tears.
‘There... that wasn’t so bad, was it, Gerry?’ said Gearoid. He held up Gerry’s right eye in front of his left one, so that he could see it. Still panting with shock, Gerry stared at it in disbelief.
‘What did Humphrey Bogart say at the end of Casablanca?’ said Gearoid. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”’
Gerry exhaled loudly through his nose, and then his left eye closed, too. Grainne prodded him, and when she got no response, she said, ‘Look, he’s passed out. Did you have to do that, like – show him his eye? Hasn’t he suffered enough trauma already, for the love of God, what with his leg.’
Gearoid pulled down his face mask. ‘Come on, Grainne. What’s the point of punishing someone if they don’t see how they’re being punished? He could have ruined everything. He could have cost us millions. We could have ended up doing ten years in jail because of him.’
Dermot was growing impatient for a smoke. ‘He’s wiped,’ he said. ‘How much longer do I have to keep holding on to his ears for?’
Gearoid looked down at Gerry. His cheeks were still rough and scarlet but the rest of his face was chalky white, so that he looked like a comatose clown. Gearoid thought for a few seconds and then said, ‘Kidney bowl,’ to Grainne. She held the bowl out for him and he dropped Gerry’s eye into it. The eye stared at the bottom of the bowl as if it didn’t understand what it was doing there.
‘All right,’ said Gearoid. ‘Let’s extract the other eye while we’re at it. There’ll be too much for us to do this afternoon getting the ambulance ready.’
He pulled up his mask again, held out his hand, palm upwards, and said, ‘Spoon.’
35
Katie had intended to arrive at the station early that morning, but she overslept and didn’t arrive until 10:15, yawning and carrying a cup of strong black coffee. Her only breakfast had been two oat-and-honey bars which she had eaten in the car.
John had called out for her three or four times during the night. First he had complained that he was suffering excruciating phantom pain in his legs. Then his throat had been burning with a raging thirst and he had drunk all of his water. Next his bedcover had slipped off on to the floor and he was shivering with cold, but his legs had been hurting too much for him to get out of bed and pick it up. After that he had been woken up by a nightmare that Katie had been badly injured at work and he had wanted to make sure that it wasn’t true.
As she drove into the city, in a downpour that was almost blinding, she had received a message from the chief technical officer Bill Phinner to call him as soon as she could. Once she had reached her office, she took off her hooded raincoat and shook it, fluffed up her hair, and then rang him.
He came up carrying the brown leather briefcase. She couldn’t tell from his expression what his test results might have been, because he always looked miserable, as if he couldn’t understand why God had put him on this earth to perform such a grisly job.
‘How’s it going on, Bill?’ Katie asked him.
Bill set the briefcase down on her desk and clicked it open. The bundles of money were still inside, covered in bubble-wrap.
‘Like er, we found traces of saliva and phlegm on the interior lining of the briefcase and also on some of the banknotes, which would indicate that whoever was handling them sneezed while they were doing it. We also found two grey human hairs.’
‘So who are we looking for? Somebody old, with a cold?’
‘As per your instructions, we compared the saliva with a swab taken from Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly’s telephone handset, and we also took a sample from a toothbrush in his toilet. The hairs we compared with hairs that we found on the back of his chair and also on the carpet under his desk.’
‘And?’
‘There’s no doubt about it at all. If Jimmy O’Reilly didn’t fill that briefcase with money himself, then he was unquestionably present while somebody else was doing it. And sneezed.’
Katie sat down. She felt as if all her suspicions had been vindicated, but she also felt deflated and more than a little apprehensive. She wished in a way that Bill had said that there was no evidence that Jimmy O’Reilly had packed that money for Maureen Callahan, because now she was faced with having to confront him, and the dilemma of whether or not she should report him to the GSOC.
She thought it was sad, too, that Jimmy O’Reilly hated her so much, and found her so threatening. She hadn’t told anyone about his relationship with James Elvin, but he obviously found it intolerable that she knew about it. His plan to discredit her had been absurd and ill thought-out, but if she hadn’t taken the precaution of tracking Maureen Callahan’s car, and if Kyna hadn’t almost miraculously produced that photograph of Branán
O’Flynn in Las Palmas, he still could have damaged her career so drastically that she would have had to resign.
‘What’s the story behind this, ma’am?’ asked Bill. ‘I asked Ó Doibhilin but he said to ask you.’
‘Let’s just say that it’s very complex,’ said Katie. ‘Apart from that, I don’t know what the consequences are going to be. We took the hair and saliva samples from Jimmy O’Reilly’s office without his knowledge or consent. However they’re both non-intrusive samples and I’m sufficiently senior to have authorised it and I have every reason to believe that an offence has been committed.’
‘Really? What nature of offence, exactly?’
‘I’m going to be discussing this with Jimmy O’Reilly face-to-face, Bill, and we’ll see where we go from there. Meanwhile if you can keep this whole thing to yourself.’
‘Well, that won’t be difficult since I have no idea what “this whole thing” actually is. But I assume that if I looked into a crystal ball I might see a violent collision between “shite” and “fan” in the very near future.’
‘You have it, Bill. Thank you. I’ll keep you up to date.’
*
Half an hour later, Conor rang her and asked her if she still had the afternoon free.
‘So far as I know. I have some paperwork to catch up with, but after that, yes.’
‘Maybe we could have lunch together. Where’s good on a Sunday?’
‘Perrott’s Garden Bistro at the Hayfield Manor if you can get us in. They’re usually very busy, but their Sunday lunch is fantastic.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. Is it okay if I mention your name? And your rank?’
‘Don’t you dare. If they’re all booked up we’ll go for a Thai.’
It took her only another hour to go through all of her files and all her reports. She checked with Detective Dooley on Keeno’s condition at the Mercy, but he told her that there was still no change.
‘No better, but no worse. Who knows? He might stay like that for ever. Stuck between heaven and hell, like, and welcomed by neither.’
She also checked to see if any members of the public had responded to their new appeal for witnesses to the stabbing of Martin Ó Brádaigh, but none had.
She had almost finished going through her budget figures when Detective Scanlan knocked at her door.
‘Pádraigin,’ said Katie, putting down her pen. ‘I didn’t think you were working today.’
‘It was the best day to catch that priest you wanted me to talk to, Father Brennan. He was fierce evasive, and he wouldn’t talk at all about what happened when he visited the Knocknaheeny Youth Project. I went very easy on him, though, and I’ve arranged to talk to him again. I think I’ll get more out of him next time, when he’s not so defensive. I didn’t want to scare him into wiping his laptop, either.’
‘So have you finished for today?’
‘I have, yes. But I was surprised to see Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly just now. I thought I heard you say that he was in Dublin this weekend.’
‘He’s here? Now?’
‘I saw him go into his office. I said good morning but he didn’t even look at me. I’d say he’s real thwarted about something.’
Katie opened her desk drawer and took out the note that James Elvin had written for Jimmy O’Reilly. Then she pulled a pair of forensic gloves out of her jacket pocket, snapped them on, and picked up the briefcase. Detective Scanlan looked at her, puzzled.
‘What?’ she said. ‘Have I said something?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ Katie told her, with the grimmest of smiles. ‘Or maybe not. It depends.’
Detective Scanlan went back to the squad room to fetch her coat, while Katie walked down the corridor to Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly’s office. The door was closed so she rapped on it, hard. At first there was no answer, so she rapped again.
‘Who is it?’ Jimmy O’Reilly called out, impatiently. ‘I’m up the walls right now.’
Katie opened the door and went in. Jimmy O’Reilly was standing behind his desk, holding his phone to his ear. He was wearing a dishevelled light grey suit, and he had loosened his black Freemasons tie.
‘Hold on a moment, David,’ he said. ‘I have a visitor.’ Then to Katie, he said, ‘What is it you want, Katie? I have my solicitor on the phone here.’
Katie held up the briefcase. Jimmy O’Reilly stared at it, and then he said, ‘David? Listen, David, something’s come up. I’ll ring you back in just a while.’
He put down the phone. ‘What do you expect me to say?’ he asked Katie.
‘I’m sure you’ll say nothing,’ said Katie. ‘Nothing to incriminate yourself, anyway.’
‘So what are you holding up that briefcase for?’
‘You know why, sir.’
‘I never saw that briefcase before in my life.’
‘So you filled it with twenty thousand euros with your eyes closed, did you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. My God, you’d do anything to stir up trouble for me, wouldn’t you?’
‘If anybody’s an expert on stirring up trouble, I’d say that it’s you. Well, maybe you’re not. Paying off Maureen Callahan to fool me into thinking that there was an arms shipment, that wasn’t too expert, was it? And trying to fix it so that I organised a raid on a children’s birthday party? Forget about my reputation. What if a child had been hurt, or even killed?’
‘I still have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘I’ve had this briefcase and the banknotes inside it checked by Bill Phinner’s technical experts for DNA. It matches your DNA, sir, I’m sorry to say. Do you remember sneezing while you were wrapping up that money?’
Katie and Jimmy O’Reilly stared at each other for almost a quarter of a minute without saying anything. They both knew what Jimmy O’Reilly had tried to set up, and that he had failed, and they both knew that there was no point in him trying to deny it.
‘I’ll, ah – I’ll, ah – be having that briefcase back now, if you don’t mind, Katie,’ said Jimmy O’Reilly, holding out his hand.
‘No, sir. This is evidence.’
‘It’s my briefcase, for Christ’s sake, and the money inside it is also mine. It cost me dear, raising that money, I can tell you, in more ways than one. I can’t afford to lose it.’
‘I’m fully aware of that, sir,’ said Katie. She took James Elvin’s note out of her inside pocket and put it down on his desk. He frowned at it, and said, ‘What’s that?’ but then he saw his name Jimmy scrawled on it, in blue ballpen. He looked up at Katie and his face was stricken.
Katie said, ‘Look, listen, I’ll leave you in peace to read what it says. Then maybe you and I can have a talk later about what steps we’re going to take next. I’ll be here for the next half-hour, then I’m leaving for the rest of the day.’
Jimmy O’Reilly didn’t answer her, and made no move to pick up James Elvin’s note. Katie left his office and walked back to her own, half-expecting him to come running after her down the corridor to snatch the briefcase out of her hand. She even looked over her shoulder, but although his office door remained half-open, he didn’t appear.
She sat at her desk and waited for twenty minutes, although she was more than ready to leave. She thought that she should at least give Jimmy O’Reilly the time for what she had said to him to sink in – that, and James Elvin’s note that he was leaving him.
She stood up, opened her black patent shoulder-bag and took out her hairbrush and her make-up. She was pouting at herself in her mirror to apply some fresh lipstick when Jimmy O’Reilly suddenly materialised in her office doorway like a beamed-up character out of Star Trek.
He walked up to her until he was almost close enough to take the lipstick out of her hand. His default expression was miserable, but she had never seen him look like this before. He had a strange unfocused look in his eyes as if he were drunk, but he didn’t smell of drink, only faintly of stale cigarettes and body odour.
‘Do you know what they say?’ he whispered. He was so quiet that she could hardly hear him. ‘They say that every man has a Nemesis, and that Nemesis punishes every man who happens to be blessed with good fortune.’
‘Listen, sir – ‘Katie began. She wanted to tell him that he had given her no choice, but he lifted his finger to his lips and said, ‘Shhh! You listen.’
He came even closer, and Katie couldn’t back away because her leg was already pressed against her desk.
‘You, Katie Maguire, you’re my Nemesis,’ he continued. ‘I had one of the most respected positions in the Garda. I had a young man who adored me. Then you came into my life, and now I have nothing at all.’
‘Sir – I’m sure we can come to some kind of a compromise about what you tried to set up with Maureen Callahan,’ said Katie. ‘If you never try to do anything like that again, there’s no reason why we can’t put it behind us. Everybody makes rash decisions at times, and you were very angry with me. I understand that.’
‘But you’ll always have that threat hanging over me, won’t you? You’re not only my Nemesis, you’re my sword of Damocles! I’m supposed to be your superior officer, but how can I act like your superior officer when I know that you could ruin me at a moment’s notice – because I said something that upset you, or because you disagreed with one of my orders, or for no other reason except you were having your monthly?’
‘Sir—’
‘Ever since I first met you, Katie, I disliked you. I disliked your cleverness, and your self-satisfaction, and the fact that they promoted you only because you’re a woman. And that’s what I dislike about you most of all – you’re a woman.’
Katie was about to say something else to calm him down when he produced a nickel-plated Sig-Sauer automatic from behind his back. Katie recognised it immediately: it had been presented to him for twenty-five years’ service. He lifted it up so that it was pointing toward the ceiling, and ostentatiously cocked it.