by Nicola White
‘Someone I know killed herself last night.’
Considine frowned. ‘Well – I’m sorry to hear that. We won’t force you to cooperate right now, but if you don’t, we’ll just have to bring you here again tomorrow. It will happen, Ali, easier to just get it over with, eh?’
Considine looked past her, as if waiting for someone to appear in the car park.
‘Is my mother here?’ asked Ali.
‘No, though I did speak to her this morning. The thing is – your mother says she doesn’t know where you were at the time of the murder. Your friend Carmen says you were in the convent grounds. And you managed to discover the body in a place that you had no real business being in.’
‘I didn’t, Fitz did.’
‘There’s other things too.’
Ali looked behind her. There was nobody but the two of them in the big hallway, but she felt crowded in. She hadn’t had the chance to have that bath. The sweat and alcohol and smoke fumes of the night before would still be clinging to her skin. She was in no state to be peered at, or poked at or whatever. Despite the half-sleep in the car she felt frayed, like she might cry if someone said boo to her. She needed to be home, she needed to be clean and alone and have a think about what had happened to Joan.
‘I can see you’re upset,’ said Considine.
Ali bit the inside of her cheek hard to stop the tears from coming.
‘Would it be you that examines me?’ she asked.
‘No, we have a proper doctor for that.’
Ali didn’t remember saying yes, but neither did she say no, and somehow she found herself in a cold room, sitting on a paper sheet on an examination bench while a nurse in a plastic apron opened cupboards and set out small implements. She had been told to take off her ‘lower things’, so she removed her jeans and pants and then her socks because they looked odd on their own. She was glad that her t-shirt was long, and pulled at the hem of it with both hands until it was tented over her knees.
The nurse approached with a syringe and asked Ali to look over at the door. The policewoman’s face hovered there, framed in a small glass window. Ali felt the prick on the inside of her elbow, and the sensation of a needle stretching the underside of her skin. She was starting to feel wobbly, and was aware that the nurse kept shooting her hard little looks. Once, she heard her click her tongue against her teeth.
‘Sorry?’ said Ali.
‘Nothing. Doctor’s on his way.’
Ali was staring at a metal bin, fixing on it as a still point that would save her from nausea, when the door swung open and the doctor from The Late Late Show walked in, Doctor Beasley, a determined smile on his face. This couldn’t be right, thought Ali, all queasiness banished by the shock of seeing him here, of the dawning realisation of what an examination might entail. She reached out for her folded clothes, but the nurse was already carrying them to the far side of the room.
‘Hello Alison. Quite a different setting we meet in this evening.’ He pulled on some thin latex gloves that the nurse handed him. ‘Did you enjoy your television experience?’
She remembered him stuttering and irritable under Mary’s barrage.
‘Not really.’
He worked the gloves down between his fingers.
‘I’m surprised. You got quite the easy ride, I thought. If you would be so good as to lie back and relax?’
‘Wait,’ said Ali. ‘I need to talk to that policewoman.’ But Considine had vanished from the doorway.
‘It’s seven o’clock, I’m sure we’d all like to go home soon.’
Ali heard the nurse ‘tsk’ behind Beasley’s back.
‘I don’t think I want to do this right now. I don’t feel well.’
‘It won’t take long. The Gardaí need the information to do their job, that’s all. Nothing personal.’ He pulled over a curtain to block out the view from the door.
She was lying back now, following the nurse’s orders to put her feet flat on the bench, to bend her knees. She felt her will give way, a falling sensation.
Beasley stood to one side of the bench, level with her waist. He kneaded her stomach and asked her about sex. How often she had it. Not if.
‘Not often. Three times is all.’ Beasley raised his eyebrows and waited, as if another answer might follow. Ali said nothing.
‘Okay so, when was the last time you had sex?’
A flash of herself rolling around in the van, Ivor laughing and reaching for her hips. She couldn’t say last night.
‘A while ago, a few months ago.’
‘Hmmm.’
He moved down the bench, asked her to part her legs a bit. She felt cold rubber fingers on her, poking. She looked right into the bulb of the big lamp that hung over her until black blobs obscured her vision. The nurse handed him something metallic. As he put it inside her, she felt it as angular, cold as ice. The blood drained from her head and saliva pooled in her mouth. Then he did something that made it push her apart inside. It wasn’t sore exactly, but it felt wrong, like something that happens just before something very painful. Her whole body was tense as bone. The stretch became an ache.
She glanced down and saw that he was leaning right over her with a torch, looking inside her, his brows clamped in concentration. Minutes seemed to pass.
‘Please…’ Ali said.
In answer, he raised one rubber-clad finger, indicating she should wait a moment, never taking his eyes from his task.
Ali looked beyond the light to the white tiles that covered the ceiling, the galaxy of tiny holes that perforated each of them. She imagined she could float up and crawl into one of those small holes, hide away in the darkness there.
She was aware of something scraping her inside, of sticks and swabs being dropped into plastic bags and vials.
‘What are you doing?’ her voice came out shaky.
Doctor Beasley sighed elaborately.
‘Alison, If I do a full range of tests now, the police will have all they need, and you won’t have to come back to me.’
They left her lying there, a cold draught across her naked thighs, while they went to the other side of the room and muttered together with their backs turned.
At last he came back over, released the pressure and took the instrument out of her. He dropped it into a dish on a trolley beside him. The nurse looked at her as if she had produced something filthy.
‘You shouldn’t be let near anyone.’ Ali’s words were brave, but her voice still wavered.
The nurse came over to the bench as Beasley retreated.
‘The doctor is just doing his job. If you don’t like it, you should of thought of that before you did what you did.’
This woman knew nothing about her, nothing. Ali stood up, inches from her.
‘What is it you think I did, you stupid cow?’
The nurse looked around, but Beasley had left. She flared her nostrils and clamped her mouth, gathering the roll of paper towelling from the bench.
‘That’s for the guards to decide, darlin’,’ she said finally, stepping on the pedal of the bin so hard that the lid clanged against the wall.
TWENTY - THREE
Swan set off for the hospital the minute that Considine phoned. He met his wife coming up the garden path, her blue overnight case in her hand.
‘Better?’ he asked.
‘So-so,’ said Elizabeth and bent away from him to tickle the cat who was lying on the hot dirt of the flowerbed.
As he started the car he realised she might have been referring to herself, not Auntie Josie. But there wasn’t time to go back and check.
The hospital was strangely deserted, fluorescent light falling in the empty corridors, dusk pressing at the windows. At last he spotted Considine looking through a door into a room beyond. He called her to him.
‘The doctor’s in with he
r,’ said Considine.
‘Did you find a good one?’
‘Goretti Flynn gave me the name, says he’s very well regarded – Donald Beasley.’
‘Beasley. The name’s familiar all right. Well done.’
‘The staff said we could make use of a room down here.’
Gina led the way to a side room. The lighting tubes rat-tatted on, revealing two formica tables and a scatter of chairs. Health service posters lined the walls; a smiling skeleton with a red heart hovering in its ribcage, an old man sitting beside an electric fire with a Thermos flask on his blanketed lap. Dominating one corner was a human-sized cardboard cut-out of Postman Pat.
‘How’s our girl?’
‘Looking a bit shook – she said something about someone she knows committing suicide. I didn’t know whether to believe her.’
‘But she agreed to be examined,’ said Swan.
‘Well, I persuaded her.’
There was a knock on the open door and Swan turned to see an oddly familiar face.
‘I’ve completed the examination. Do you want me to run through the initial findings?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Considine.
‘Just give us a minute,’ said Swan.
Doctor Beasley agreed to come back shortly.
‘Jesus, Gina!’ Swan hissed as the doctor’s footsteps faded, ‘Him! Did you not see that Late Late?’
Considine stood her ground while Swan ranted about how it could taint the evidence, the bastarding smallness of Dublin and their generally atrocious luck on this case.
‘Flynn said he was the top man,’ she said. ‘Done dozens of expert witness slots for the force – sure, his evidence will stand up in any case. How was I to know the girl made him look a tit on the telly?’
Beasley re-appeared with a camel-coloured coat over one arm and a snappy, un-doctorly attaché case.
They sat at one of the tables for Beasley to talk them through his examination of Ali.
‘There are certain signs to support your theory – the extra weight carried on the abdomen, slight swelling of the uterus, the evidence of recent abrasion at the mouth of the vagina. Also I’m certain that she lied to me about her sex life. She’s certainly no virgin.’
‘Her virginity wasn’t the question. We just need to know if she was recently pregnant,’ said Swan.
‘Well, it’s difficult to be definitive on this. As I say, she’s young, very healthy. Things can return to normal quite quickly. There’s little research to measure it against, so I don’t want to rule anything out.’
‘What about the cervix?’
Beasley’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead. ‘What about the cervix?’
‘I believe it changes, or the entrance does – something about a slit, not a dot.’ Swan could almost feel Considine gawping at him. Heat rose from his collar.
Beasley brushed the back of his hand over the table, as if wiping away these hypothetical body parts. ‘It’s not as simple as that.’
‘Okay, Doctor, this is what it sounds like you’re telling me. There’s no evidence that she was recently pregnant, but at the same time you won’t rule it out. Is that it?’
‘What I’m actually telling you is that I will prepare a full report as requested, and I’m happy to testify in court that a pregnancy can’t be ruled out. If that’s what you’re after. I’ll write up my notes tonight and telex you a copy. And I’ll send the invoice to the finance office.’
Top man indeed. The baby was born two weeks ago. Surely that would do something to a woman’s insides that you’d notice. Swan was a great admirer of the resilience of women, but Christ, that would be some bounce-back.
‘What about a scan?’
‘Yes, a scan, as I said, would be helpful but the machine operator won’t be in until Tuesday, unfortunately. If you would like to bring the suspect back then…’
‘We’ll let you know,’ said Considine, and showed him to the door. Swan stared at the innocent face of Postman Pat across the room.
‘What do you think, Gina? From a woman’s point of view?’
‘I think he’s a prick,’ said Considine.
‘I mean about her being pregnant.’
‘Dunno. He says he won’t rule it out. And there’s all the other stuff – the blouse, the fact of her being on the spot. But you’d think a doctor could tell.’
‘You would,’ said Swan.
‘Are we going to get her scanned?’
‘I think what we need is another doctor.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Sorry for biting your head off.’
Swan found Ali alone in the examination room, sitting stiff-backed on a chair behind the door, a pair of socks in her hands, tears wet on her face. He squatted down in front of her, wondering if it was Beasley that had upset her.
‘Can I go home?’ Ali asked, her voice polite but strained.
‘Garda Considine told you why we had to do this.’
‘What did he say? Did he say I had a baby?’
‘Did you?’
‘No! Is that what he said? He hates me.’
‘He’ll do a report for us. Is there anything you want to tell me?’
Ali shook her head vigorously. As her dark hair swung back he spotted a mark on her neck – a smudge of bruising with a dotted crimson centre. The mocking voice of Beasley came back to him. She’s no virgin. Well she mightn’t be a virgin, but it didn’t mean she was a mother. He felt that familiar deflation of a neat theory beginning to disintegrate.
‘Am I under arrest?’
‘No. I’ll get a car to bring you home. We’ll have a chat tomorrow.’
The girl bent forward to put on her socks with shaking hands. Pink socks, dotted with little hearts.
TWENTY - FOUR
Swan caught himself smiling at some children in their mass clothes outside Rathmines church. He was sitting in traffic, waiting for the lights to turn, and a tiny girl with a ponytail sticking up from the top of her head raised a little hand and wiggled her fingers at him. Without thinking, he grinned like a cretin and waved back. A bigger boy behind her put a protective hand on his sister’s shoulder and flicked a V-sign at Swan. That was more like it. He laughed and drove on.
By the time he had gotten home from the hospital the night before, Elizabeth had made house cosy again, the way he never could. Table lamps glowed, Benny purred on a fringed cushion. They didn’t discuss his work and they didn’t discuss her time in Kilkenny. Their sparse chat was about what was on the radio, how well the garden looked. The stuff of strangers at a bus stop. It was only when she sat at the piano, at his urging, and music flowed about them that he felt they existed in the right realm together, romantic, emotional, speechlessly close.
He drove on to Ranelagh and parked outside Hogan’s. Considine was standing by the gate. Before they reached the front door, it opened and Deirdre Hogan, dishevelled in that dressing gown yet again, drew him in by the sleeve, leaning close to whisper that Ali wasn’t herself, would hardly budge from her room.
He refused her offer of coffee.
‘We’ll just go on up to her room, if that’s okay.’ As they walked through the hall, he noticed that the receiver was dangling down from the payphone. He looked at Considine, and was pleased to see she had noticed it too. She was in asset, this one.
The bare steps squeaked and bowed as they climbed the curved staircase. It could be such a lovely house. He imagined the home that Elizabeth could make of it.
Ali was standing in the doorway of her bedroom wearing men’s striped pyjama bottoms and a baggy jumper.
‘A woman from the Gay Byrne show has been calling here all morning looking for me,’ she said, ‘one of your lot must have said something, because I didn’t.’
Swan immediately thought of Beasley. ‘It wasn’t us. Mayb
e someone in the hospital recognised you from The Late Late.’
‘Oh, my fault, is it?’
‘I didn’t mean that. Look, I’m sorry about yesterday.’
Ali turned and walked back into her room. He took it as an invitation.
‘Doctor Beasley took things further than required,’ he said, as they followed her. Strictly speaking, he shouldn’t be admitting any fault to her, but the guilt was itching him. He’d been taken aback at the full gynaecological detailing of Beasley’s report which had arrived promptly that morning.
He hadn’t really thought it through, had left it to Considine and the doctor and allowed himself to assume that there were less invasive ways to determine these things. Considine managed to get him the home number of the consultant at Holles Street that the pathologist had recommended. Swan read Beasley’s findings over the phone to him before he showed the report to anyone else. The consultant laughed off the idea that the girl described had delivered a full term child a fortnight before.
It was just as Swan suspected. After Elizabeth’s last miscarriage she had been in bed for a week and the bleeding had gone on and on. That was after just four months, and the baby would have been no bigger than something that could be in your palm, perhaps. He hadn’t seen it himself, just stood outside the locked bathroom door as Elizabeth wailed with a ferocity that made her a stranger to him. That was when the cool had come down between them, that second time.
The consultant from Holles Street said a scan wasn’t even necessary to clear Alison Hogan, but Swan was wondering if it might be still useful to kill Beasley’s report. Close the door on it.
‘Why did it have to be him?’ said Ali, ‘ And that nurse was horrible – ‘
‘I think maybe we should get another doctor – perhaps a woman doctor – to look at you. Give you a scan.’
‘How could I have a baby and not know it?’
They were standing in the middle of her bedroom, facing each other.
‘Can we sit down?’