by Jo Spain
The last sentence was a whisper.
They both cocked their ears at the sound of an approaching car. Everything outside was so silent that its struggling progress on the snowy road could probably be heard for miles around. It stopped just outside the convent. Then they heard its doors open.
Ellie looked out the window and Ray stood paralysed, wondering what this development would bring.
She turned back to him. ‘You know, I think that’s our bosses. I should go down to meet them.’
Though it seemed like everything was happening in slow motion, Ray still couldn’t reach the window in time.
He yelled and reached out for her, just as she slipped her other leg over the sill and jumped, leaving his desperate hands grasping at air.
Chapter 58
Tom and Emmet had just pulled up at the gate of the convent. Sister Concepta had taken the inspector’s advice about being prepared for the media, and the gate was locked.
Tom cursed. How were they going to open it? He pulled his phone out and started dialling. Why the hell wasn’t Ray answering?
‘What’s the plan here?’ Emmet said. ‘Which one of us is going to give the other a leg-up?’
As they stood holding the bars of the gate, something caught Tom’s eye and he looked up.
The words he intended to say caught in his throat. It was Emmet who swore and yelled, ‘What in God’s name?’ as he noticed the woman half in and half out of the second-floor window. ‘Is that Ellie?’ he said.
Then they were both panicking and shaking the gate, realizing they couldn’t get in to stop what was about to unfold.
It didn’t seem like it happened in real time.
Ellie’s other leg emerged from the window, and then she was falling. Hands reached out after her and, for a second, Tom wondered if she’d been pushed, until he realized the hands were trying to grab her.
Ray’s pained face appeared in the window, accompanied by a stricken cry.
Ellie fell on to the roof of the outside corridor with a sickening thud. She didn’t fall through it, as Laura’s aunt had all those years ago. The snow-covered tiles broke her fall – and probably her neck.
Then Tom heard another thud and realized that Emmet, the man who routinely looked at dead bodies for a living, had just fainted beside him.
*
Tom rubbed his tired eyes and shifted wearily in the uncomfortable chair beside Emmet’s bed. ‘How are you, my old friend?’
The other man looked around him, confused.
The inspector watched his face as the memory of what he’d witnessed came back.
‘It used to be, Tom, that waking up like this in a strange bed with no idea of how I got here meant I’d been on the beer the night before. What happened – did I have a heart attack?’
Tom snorted. ‘Do you think you’d still be in the convent if you’d had a heart attack? You don’t think we’d get you to a hospital for an ECG or something?’
Emmet sat up, grunting as he tried to raise himself into a comfortable position. ‘Well, I know you didn’t keep me here because it’s a five-star establishment. Would it kill you to get me another pillow?’
Tom stood up and fetched a pillow from the wardrobe behind him. Emmet sat forward as he placed it behind his back.
‘Thank you. Is my body clock wrong? I feel like it should be morning, but it’s pitch black outside.’
‘It’s two in the morning. You had what they refer to colloquially as a “turn”. You fainted.’
Emmet shook his head mournfully. ‘How embarrassing.’
‘It was a nasty shock. Unsurprising, really.’
Emmet’s expression turned grave. ‘I was no use to you. When she fell. I should have been able to help. I presume they’ve taken her.’
‘She’s gone to Limerick University Hospital,’ Tom said. ‘They brought Sister Clare up, too. She’s in a bad way. Almost froze to death. Ellie tied her up outside and left her to die. She never left the convent after she rowed with you. She just carried out the rest of her plan.’
Emmet raised his eyebrows. ‘They should have taken Ellie to the Dublin mortuary. Headquarters could have taken care of her.’
‘It’s not a mortuary she needs,’ Tom said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She didn’t die, Emmet. She has a broken leg, fractured ribs, a broken wrist and concussion, but she’s not dead. If it hadn’t been snowing, she might be. But as it turned out, the drop was too short and the snow too thick for her to kill herself. She misjudged it. I’d say she wasn’t in her right mind, but that’s a given.’
‘My God!’
‘Yes. She was saved. Though it might take her a long time to appreciate it. Ray travelled with her in the ambulance. Broke Laura’s heart for a second time.’
‘Laura has a thing for Ray, does she?’ Emmet asked, struggling to keep up. ‘Well, I suppose she has a chance now. Nothing like your love rival being a multiple murderer to give you an edge.’
‘Ray’s completely oblivious to Laura – and anyway, I think it will take him a while to recover from this. Laura has more self-esteem than to allow herself to be a shoulder to cry on. She has enough on her own plate; her aunt was in this place, and now she knows what happened to her. She has to go home and tell her mother the story . . .’ Tom paused.
His mind flashed back to earlier. Willie had opened the convent door and let them through the gate. He hadn’t even realized what Ellie had done, just heard the two men yelling outside. Willie saw to Emmet while Tom roared at him to ring an ambulance, before racing into the house and up the stairs. His heart was pounding so hard he thought it would explode.
He found Ray collapsed at the window, his whole body shaking. Tom sank to his knees beside him.
‘I couldn’t stop her, Tom, I couldn’t reach her. She did it. She did it.’
Tom sat with him until the others arrived – in the dormitory and outside – pointing at the prone figure on the roof of the corridor.
They hadn’t realized she was alive until Michael managed to hoist himself, with Jack and Willie’s help, up on to the roof. He checked the young woman’s pulse, then started yelling that she was alive.
This shook Ray from his despair. The first ambulance took Sister Clare. A second arrived shortly afterwards for Ellie, after Ciaran convinced emergency services that, yes, they did need another vehicle.
Emmet listened now, as Tom relayed the night’s events.
‘I don’t know whether to feel anger at her for what she did, or relief that she’s not dead,’ he said, when the inspector had finished. ‘Is it right that I should feel this conflicted about a murderer, Tom? I thought I knew her.’
Tom shook his head. ‘Of course you feel conflicted. You liked her. I liked her. But she was very disturbed. She had an awful life. Ray told me something of her background before the ambulances arrived. And it seems she was manipulated into doing what she did. Laura got back here not long after us. She and Ciaran met Noreen Boyle. Turns out she dropped as much poison as she could into Ellie’s head.
‘That woman wanted Ellie to kill Mother Attracta and Father Seamus. Ellie was a puppet to her. She’s an accomplice, and I’ll see her charged for something. I’d have had more respect for the woman if she’d committed the murders herself.’
‘Sad, sad, sad,’ Emmet said, shaking his head.
Tom said nothing for a minute, then ‘Will I fetch you something to drink?’
‘Please. My mouth feels like sandpaper.’
‘Have a sip of the water there, and I’ll get you something stronger from downstairs.’ Tom stood up but paused at the door. ‘You know who’d be good to talk to, to get your head around what’s happened?’
‘If you say that quack’s name, I’ll have another heart attack.’
‘You didn’t have a heart attack the first time, you old fool. All right, then. Wait there.’
‘Like I’m going anywhere. I probably have low blood sugar or something. It’s unlikely I j
ust fainted.’
‘I’m sure that’s it,’ Tom smiled.
*
Most of the nuns were in bed at this stage, though the guards were still up, trying to come to terms with the shock of discovering one of their own had committed such heinous acts.
The inspector found Linda McCarn loitering in the hall.
‘Is he all right?’ she asked, nodding her head up towards the rooms on the balcony from which Tom had emerged. ‘Silly old man. He’s not actually sick, is he?’
Her tone was dismissive, but Tom could detect a hint of concern. He hesitated for a few seconds before replying.
‘I won’t lie, Linda, he’s not in a good place. In his head, I mean. It’s more your kind of doctoring he needs at this stage.’
‘Do you think I should go up? I should go up, shouldn’t I? We are adults, after all. I mean, I’m qualified . . .’
She looked uncertain, clearly torn between not wanting to see Emmet, genuine worry and an overriding mischievous desire to see him incapacitated.
Tom shrugged.
Linda’s eyes widened with determination.
‘Right, then,’ she said. ‘Into the breach. A sacrifice for my profession.’
He stood at the kitchen door and counted. He’d got to twenty when he heard it.
‘What the hell? Jesus Christ! No, you don’t. Get out! Help!’
The yelling must have woken half the convent.
Tom smiled a self-satisfied grin.
They didn’t mind pulling him into their little drama, but they wouldn’t tell him the backstory. If they were going to act like children, why should he be a grown-up?
*
In the kitchen, Sister Concepta and Sister Bernadette sat in a huddle with Sister Gladys. They all had glasses of whiskey, their hands wrapped around the spirit like it was the only thing propping them up.
Sister Concepta stood up, shakily, when Tom came in. ‘Inspector, you look exhausted.’
Tom yawned. ‘I didn’t want to leave my colleague before he came to. I wanted to tell him that Ellie had survived the fall.’
Tom was unsure what Sister Concepta and Sister Bernadette were going to say to him. He’d had a long day and really wasn’t up to an argument. But they were looking at him with compassion.
‘I just want to get Emmet a glass of whatever you’re having yourselves,’ he said. ‘If that’s okay.’
‘More than okay. Let me get it for him, and one for you as well.’ Sister Bernadette stood up and fetched the bottle. Tom imagined the nuns’ stores of alcohol had diminished somewhat over the last few days.
‘How is he?’ Sister Gladys asked.
‘Cranky. Relieved. Confused. Looking for drink, which is a good sign.’
‘I meant your deputy.’
‘Oh.’ Tom dropped his head. Ray had told him he’d gone to Sister Gladys and asked her about Maggie Downes. ‘He’s very shaken at the moment.’
‘Not surprising, after what he witnessed,’ Sister Bernadette said.
‘It wasn’t just that,’ Sister Gladys spoke again. ‘He was very taken with that young woman. I didn’t see her when she was here. There were so many of you running in and out. But I heard him talking about her with the other lad you have. If I’d seen her, I think I would have recognized her. Her mother’s face is imprinted on my brain.’
Sister Gladys clasped her hands together and brought them to her breast. ‘I was there when Attracta took her baby from her. I can still hear her screams.’
She was transported back thirty-five years to the hospital ward, where Mother Attracta stood wrapping the newborn while Maggie begged to hold her baby, just once. She’d agreed to give her up for adoption. But once the young women had delivered and laid eyes on their children, it was always the same. And she, Gladys, had held Maggie firmly in the bed when Attracta called her a whore and strode from the room with the infant.
‘I should have stopped Attracta. I was afraid and weak. I’m a stupid woman. I wish her daughter had killed me.’ Tears streamed down the elderly nun’s face.
Sister Concepta reached out and placed a sympathetic hand on the elderly nun’s arm. There was little that could be said to make the old woman forget, or forgive, herself.
‘We were just talking about it,’ Sister Bernadette said, handing Tom his glass, placing Emmet’s on the countertop.
Tom lifted the tumbler to his lips and took a good swig.
‘It’s a tragedy,’ he said. He owed Sister Bernadette an apology, even if he had just been doing his job. ‘I want to—’
‘Don’t.’ She held up her hand and shook her head dismissively. ‘There’s no need to say it. I understand. And if I’m honest, there’s part of me that feels we are all guilty. We are part of a system that set in motion a chain of events, the consequences of which unfolded here in the last few days. Mother Attracta and Father Seamus were the authors of their own misfortune.’
‘That’s not really how the law works,’ Tom said.
‘You worry about the law,’ Sister Concepta said. ‘We’ll worry about the morals of what happened. I don’t blame that young woman. She is quite obviously ill. The real sin is that she was made that way.’
Tom raised his glass to the three women, humbled by their insight and grace.
‘I’d better bring Emmet up his prescription,’ he said. ‘By my reckoning, he’ll really need it now.’
He left the sisters bent over their drinks, whispering and remembering an appalling past that had led to a calamitous present.
Everything else in the convent was quiet.
The ghosts that haunted it were silent, for now.
Epilogue
Five months later
‘Can’t you drive any faster? They’re not going to wait for us.’
‘Boss, do you want me to break the law?’
Tom glared at Ray. He would buy a new car next week, and this time he’d let Pat Donnelly, his mechanic, choose it.
‘To hell with this.’ He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the portable siren. Rolling down the window, he leaned out and placed it on the roof.
Ray looked at him, amused.
‘All right, then, just this once,’ he grinned. ‘Hold on to your hat.’
They managed to get to the hospital without killing themselves – or anybody else – though Tom was pretty sure that owed more to luck than Ray’s driving.
‘Fast doesn’t have to mean dangerous,’ he yelled, jumping out of the car, relieved to be in one piece.
Ray shouted after him. ‘Make up your mind. I’ll park and get the cigars.’
Tom ran in through the front door. He looked around, uncertain. The main reception area of the maternity hospital was to the right. He spun on his heel and almost crashed into a heavily pregnant woman.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, grabbing her arms to make sure she was okay.
Something about her was familiar. Then he clocked it. It was Anne, Michael’s wife.
‘Anne!’ he exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’
He hadn’t seen her in months but knew that she was doing well with her pregnancy. It showed in her radiant face.
She smiled broadly at him. ‘I’m fantastic, Tom. I was just in for an antenatal appointment and I saw Louise bringing Maria in. Things seemed to be moving so fast for her, I thought I’d hang on and see how they went.’
Tom nodded politely. Happy as he was to see Anne, he really wanted to find his family.
Anne laughed at his frantic look. ‘Go. Tell them she’s in the labour ward.’
He kissed her on the cheek and raced over to the reception desk.
The man standing behind it was on the phone and smiled at Tom politely, indicating he’d be finished in a moment. Tom was about to flash his badge to speed things along when the receptionist hung up.
‘How can I help you?’ he said.
‘My daughter, Maria, she came in here an hour ago. She’s in the labour ward.’
The man smiled at
him. ‘We usually only allow the father of the baby up there, sir. Would you like to sit in the waiting room? I’m sure the new dad will come down and tell you when the baby’s arrived.’
‘There’s no dad up there,’ Tom said. ‘Her mother’s with her.’
The man sighed, the smile never leaving his lips. ‘Her name?’
‘Maria Reynolds.’
The receptionist typed something into his computer. ‘Oh. She’s been moved to St Mary’s ward already. You must be Tom Reynolds, are you? You’re a designated visitor.’
‘What? Yes. What do you mean, she’s been moved?’
‘It means she’s had her baby. I’ll just get you to fill out this card and you can go up.’
Tom felt the world spin. ‘She’s had the baby?’
His heart felt like it was about to stop. In the last few minutes he’d been made a grandfather, and he hadn’t felt anything change.
He filled out the card impatiently and then took the man’s instructions, flashing the visitor’s pass at security and racing up four flights of stairs when the lift didn’t come fast enough.
Eventually, he found the ward.
Some of the mothers looked up at him with interest; others were too busy with their new arrivals to notice.
He saw them immediately. Maria was in the second bed. Louise was sitting beside her, alternately stroking their daughter’s hair and the head that poked out of a small bundle in Maria’s arms.
‘Dad!’ she exclaimed.
He stood at the end of the bed, speechless.
‘You just missed it,’ Louise said. ‘She nearly had the baby in the car. We only got into the labour ward and out she popped.’
Tom found his voice.
‘She?’ he asked.
Maria nodded. ‘She. Born thirty minutes ago. Seven pounds, eight ounces. Two weeks early. Well, come on, Grandad, come round here and have a hold.’
‘Oh, see who’s the lucky one,’ Louise said. ‘I only got to hold her when they were moving us up to the ward. Maria hasn’t let go of her since.’
Tom edged round the bed.
A little hand flew out of the yellow bundle, accompanied by a cry.