He handed it to Katie. The paper was A4 size, lined, and looked as if it had been torn out of a school exercise book. The writing on it was large and scrawly, in blue liquid-ink pen.
Dear Ma and Pa and Shauna and Keeva and Tom, you will hate me I know but I cannot face going to court and having to tell everyone what I did. I love you all so much but I wish I had never been born. Everything was so wrong inside my head and the only way I can think of putting it right is to switch off the light for ever. Try to think good things about me. Love and love and love again Roisin XXXXX.
Katie read it a second time and then handed it back. ‘Holy Mary,’ she said. ‘It’s enough to bring the tears to your eyes. Poor girl.’
‘I took one of her schoolbooks as well, so the technicians can make a comparison and verify her handwriting. They’ll be checking the paper for dabs, too, of course, and DNA, although I doubt if they’ll find much of that.’
‘Thanks, Robert. I’m sorry you had to do the news-breaking duty.’
‘No, you’re grand. It had to be me. Her mum and dad knew it was me that got her out of that so-called massage parlour. She was a beautiful girl, you know. Just too frisky for her own good.’
Katie put on her duffel coat. The last of the evening sun was gleaming on the green glass windows of the Elysian Tower and she could see the lights shining in Michael Gerrety’s top-floor apartment. She wondered what he was thinking right now – whether he had Roisin Begley on his mind at all, or had completely wiped her from his conscience already. Whether Roisin had genuinely drowned herself or not, he was still responsible for it.
‘Everything all right, like?’ asked Detective Dooley.
‘Yes, sure, fine, thanks, Robert. Just a little tired, that’s all.’
‘You remember what you said to me my first day here?’
Katie switched off her desk lamp. ‘I can’t say that I do.’
‘You said, “You can’t take care of everybody, just give the best care possible to the people you can.”’
‘Did I say that? That was very philosophical of me.’
‘You also said, “There is often the look of an angel on the Devil himself.”’
Katie closed her office door behind her and walked along the corridor with him. ‘My granny used to say that. I think she was talking about her local priest, but it’s equally true of criminals. And politicians. And one or two assistant commissioners, too.’
And David Kane, who used to live next door to me and made me pregnant.
* * *
John was out when she arrived home, although he had left the porch light on for her, and a table lamp in the living room, as well drawing the curtains.
There was a note on the kitchen table: Gone to Bishopstown. Won’t be late. Barney’s been walked. Made my spicy shepherd’s pie. Love you, Det. Supt!
Katie changed out of her grey tweed work suit into jeans and a sloppy white sweater. The waistband of her jeans was becoming a little tight, so she left the top button undone, but the sweater covered it and she hoped John wouldn’t notice She sat down in the living room with a glass of Tanora and switched on the television. Fair City had just started, but she had missed so many episodes that she couldn’t follow what Callum was trying to do to help Dermot and Jo.
She was still channel-hopping, looking for something else to watch, when she heard John’s car arriving outside. She went to open the front door for him, with Barney jostling excitedly around her knees.
John came in carrying a large black artist’s portfolio, over a metre wide. He took it into the living room and propped it up against the sofa, then he removed his tan corduroy coat and hung it up in the hallway. Katie put her arms around him and kissed him, and he kissed her back.
‘So, what did you go to Bishopstown for?’ she asked him.
He walked back into the living room, ruffling his hair. ‘For this. It’s a lunchbox for giant sandwiches.’
‘Oh, stop codding.’
‘It’s my drawings and my paintings. When I sold the farm I put them into storage at William O’Brien’s. I always imagined that when I went to San Francisco I’d be far too busy to be doing any art. But now I’m back here, well, I have a reasonable amount of free time, so I can take it up again. And I was vain enough to think that you’d be interested to take a look.’
‘You never told me you were good at art,’ said Katie.
‘There were three or four of my landscapes up on the walls at the farm, and a portrait of my ma, God bless her.’
‘Well, yes, I remember them. But I didn’t realize you’d painted them.’
‘I’ve always liked drawing. I was top in art at school. Look.’
John unzipped the portfolio and laid it open on the floor. Inside were twenty or thirty sheets of cartridge paper with sketches of fields and trees and drinkers sitting in pubs. He lifted these out and underneath lay at least a dozen oil-painting boards with landscapes and riverside scenes and portraits of local people, mostly women. All of the paintings were rendered in sombre colours, varying shades of grey and green, but John had caught the greyness of Cork on wet and cloudy days, and his portraits were so highly finished that their sitters almost looked as if they were alive and would open their mouths to speak at any moment .
‘John,’ said Katie, ‘these are fantastic. I had no idea.’
She looked through them all, one by one, until she came to the last one, which was a picture of a thin naked girl looking out of a window at a rainy garden. She had long brunette hair tied up in a grey velvet ribbon and she had her face turned coyly towards the artist.
‘Who’s this?’ asked Katie.
‘Erm, well, that’s my ex, Belinda.’
‘She’s a very pretty girl.’
‘Pretty, yes, but argumentative. Whatever I said to her, she’d say different. If I said chalk was cheese, she’d say it was champ.’
Katie laughed, ‘Sounds like my sister Moirin. She disagrees with me on principle. She’d eat a bowlful of spiders for her breakfast if I told her that I couldn’t stand the taste of them.’
John carefully stacked the paintings and drawings back into the portfolio and zipped it up again.
‘The thing is, Katie, it’s you who’s inspired me to take up painting again.’
‘Oh yes? And how did I manage to do that?’
‘Serious, I want so much to show you how much I love you. If I can paint you, it will give me a way of proving how committed I am to us being together. And apart from that, goddamnit, you’re beautiful. I really want to celebrate that beauty in a portrait.’
‘You don’t mean nude, like Belinda?’ asked Katie.
John shrugged. ‘If you’ll let me. You have the most fantastic body.’
‘I’ve put on weight lately. Too many boxty lunches in the canteen.’
‘Oh, come on. You look great. You’re not overweight at all.’
‘John – I’m a senior Garda officer. I’m not sure that posing for a portrait in the nude is exactly prudent. Supposing somebody else gets hold of it.’
‘Like who? We’ll hang it on the bedroom wall and keep it to ourselves. Katie – I love you, darling, I’m crazy about you, and it would give me so much pleasure. Musicians write songs for the women they love, don’t they? “Lady in Red”, “Wonderful Tonight”, “Layla”, songs like that. Painting this picture would be the same kind of thing for me.’
‘I don’t know, John. I love you, too. I really, really do. But maybe wearing one of those lovely Sarah Pacini dresses I bought last week. Or just head and shoulders.’
John held her close and kissed her, again and again. ‘Katie Maguire, I want you naked, just as you are. I want to paint every inch of you.’
She smiled, and kissed him back. ‘Let me think about it.’
‘Of course. Think about it, and then say yes. I’ll be waiting, darling – with my palette all filled up and my brush poised ready.’
Katie laughed and gave him a playful push. ‘You’re a sex maniac, do you know
that?’
‘And why do you think that is?’ asked John. ‘Because of you.’
* * *
At about two in the morning, John reached across the bed and started to lift up Katie’s nightgown. He stroked her thigh and then he began to reach around her hip.
‘No, John, please,’ she told him and pushed her nightgown down again.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked her. ‘When was the last time we made love?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t have to be sorry. Just tell me what’s wrong. Is it something I’ve done? You’re upset because I want to paint you? Is that it?’
She twisted herself around in bed and stroked his prickly cheek. ‘It’s not that at all. It’s just that work has been fierce traumatic lately, what with Kenny Horgan getting shot like that, and then today there was Roisin Begley.’
‘What about her?’
‘She was found in the river. It looks like she committed suicide because she couldn‘t face giving evidence against Michael Gerrety.’
‘Jesus, Katie. Why didn’t you tell me? No wonder you’re upset.’
‘I don’t like to bring my work home, that’s all. What am I supposed to do, sit at the supper table and talk about people being glassed in the face and smashed up in car crashes and choking on their own vomit?’
John held her close and kissed her forehead and ran his fingers through her hair. She thought that it felt dry and that, last time, her hairdresser had cut it too short. ‘Hey,’ he told her, in that American way he had picked up while he was working in San Francisco. ‘I’ve known right from the very beginning what you have to cope with. Look what happened at Knocknadeenly, that was enough to give anybody the screaming ab-jabs for the rest of their life, those women getting all cut up like that. I still have nightmares about it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Katie repeated.
‘Don’t be sorry. You don’t have a single thing to be sorry about, believe me. But I love you, darling, and you turn me on and I would like to think that we can have a good sex life together.’
Tell him you’re pregnant.
No, I can’t. Not now. I’m too tired and stressed and he’s all stressed, too, even though he’s trying to sound so calm and reassuring.
They held each other for a while in silence. Somewhere in the distance, in Cobh, a clock struck three, a clock she never heard in the daytime. A clock for the lonely and those who couldn’t sleep.
She touched his cheek again. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said.
‘Do what?’
‘The portrait. I’ll pose for you.’
‘I don’t want you to feel like you’re obliged to do it.’
‘I don’t. I’ll do it. I won’t be able to sit very still for you, you know that. My mother always used to call me Fairy Fidget. But I’ll do my best, I promise. It’s something you want, and if you want it, then I want it, too. I love you, John. Don’t ever forget that, no matter what happens.’
John kissed her. ‘Do you know what my ma used to say to my da? “Sometimes I hate the face off ye, but I couldn’t live without ye.”’
‘Very romantic woman, your mother, wasn’t she?’ said Katie. ‘Now I need to get some sleep.’
21
The two investigating officers from the Garda Ombudsman arrived from Dublin at 11:30 the next morning, while Katie was talking on the phone to Dr O’Brien. They knocked at her open office door and she waved them inside.
They sat down in the two chairs facing her desk, giving her brief, uncomfortable smiles. Both of them wore grey suits. One was a barrel-chested man with rough red cheeks and a greasy comb-over. The other was a very thin woman with a large complicated nose and sad eyes, who looked as if she might start silently weeping at any moment. One of them smelled of liniment, although Katie couldn’t be sure which one.
‘I’ve completed the post-mortem on Roisin Begley now,’ said Dr O’Brien. ‘I’m still waiting on the hair follicle tests for drug metabolites, but I should get those by late tomorrow or the day after. There are no drugs or alcohol in her blood or urine. You can tell the Begleys that they can send the undertakers round to collect her now.’
‘Thanks a million, Ailbe. Let me know the minute you get the results from the hair tests.’
She put down the phone and walked around her desk to shake the two GSOC officers by the hand.
‘I’m Enda Blaney and this is my deputy, Partlan McKey,’ said the woman, in a sharp D4 accent. ‘We’re here to investigate a complaint that’s been lodged against you by former Acting Chief Superintendent Bryan Molloy.’
‘Yes,’ said Katie, sitting down. ‘I was notified by Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin and I received your email. What I don’t understand is why he made his complaint to the GSOC and what your justification is for following it up. I thought you only handled complaints against Garda officers from the public.’
‘Well, that’s right,’ said Enda. ‘But with Bryan Molloy we’re dealing with what you might call a grey area, in that he’s resigned from the Garda and is now legally a civilian.’
‘That might well be the case,’ Katie told her. ‘But surely his complaint relates to the time when he was still a serving officer.’
‘That’s part of what makes this a grey area,’ said Enda. ‘But there’s an added complication. We have a related complaint from a woman called Jilleen Quaid. She says you coerced her into providing you with false evidence – specifically that her brother Donie had been hired by Bryan Molloy to execute a Limerick gangster called Niall Duggan.’
‘Coerced her? Coerced her how? She gave me her evidence of her own free will. She handed me the very gun that Bryan Molloy had supplied to her late brother so that he could shoot Niall Duggan, and a letter signed by Donie confessing to what he’d done. I still have them.’
Partlan opened a pale-green folder on his lap and said, ‘Ms Quaid told us that before she met you in the Cauldron Bar in Limerick she had never seen either the gun or the so-called letter of confession. You told her that you were dead set on ousting Bryan Molloy from his position as acting chief superintendent, and if she helped you to prove that he had paid Donie Quaid to murder Niall Duggan, that would be the finish of him. Your actual words were, “he’d be hockeyed”.’
‘She was talking raiméis, if you’ll excuse my saying so,’ Katie replied. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever said “hockeyed” in my life. Besides, I have a very reliable witness. I was introduced to Jilleen Quaid by Gary Cannon, who used to be a sergeant at Henry Street, and he was sitting right next to us in the Cauldron when Jilleen gave me the gun and the letter.’
Enda tugged at the tip of her nose as if she were moderately surprised to find that it was still there. ‘We’re aware of that, Detective Superintendent. Ms Quaid told us that it was former Garda sergeant Cannon who arranged for her to meet you. I’m sorry to have to inform you, though, that he was found deceased at his house on Thursday last week.’
‘He’s dead?’ said Katie. ‘How? What happened?’
‘Apparent suicide,’ put in Partlan. ‘Shot himself in the mouth with a shotgun. Almost took his head off.’
‘Did he leave a note?’
‘You know as well as we do that only one in six suicides leaves a note,’ said Enda. ‘In this particular case, no, he didn’t.’
‘Was he married?’
‘Yes, he was. His wife said that he had been depressed about not finding work, and it seemed he had some serious gambling debts, too.’
‘Had he talked to his wife about Bryan Molloy? Or to any of his friends?’
‘His attitude towards Bryan Molloy was generally resentful and he blamed him for his losing his job at Henry Street. That may have been why he was willing to assist you in fitting up Bryan Molloy with false evidence.’
Katie said, ‘Now, you listen. You’re talking as if I actually did falsify the evidence against him, but I didn’t. I had the pistol checked by the Technical Bureau and they confirmed that it was a Garda-issued we
apon with the serial number filed off it, although it didn’t come from Limerick. It was signed out of Tipperary Town Garda station by Inspector Colm McManus, who happened to be a fellow Freemason and golfing partner of Bryan Molloy’s. Inspector McManus claimed that he had lost the weapon while pursuing a suspect who was trying to escape along the River Ara. But, quite clearly, he wasn’t telling the truth.’
‘Have you interviewed Inspector McManus?’ asked Enda.
‘No. He’s another deceased witness, I’m frustrated to say. Of all the ways for a Garda inspector to go, he was poisoned by carbon monoxide while he was on a caravan holiday in Killorglin.’
‘So you have nobody to rebut Jilleen Quaid’s allegation against you?’
Katie was growing increasingly impatient with Enda and Partlan’s questioning, but she was trying very hard to keep her temper in check. ‘Apparently not,’ she said. ‘But the material evidence is conclusive enough, whether I have any living witnesses or not. I have Donie Quaid’s confession and I can have the handwriting checked to confirm that he wrote it. Most important, though, the bullet that was retrieved from Niall Duggan’s body was definitely fired from the gun that I have in evidence, and where would I have got that gun from if Jilleen Quaid hadn’t given it to me?’
‘It’s possible that Gary Cannon gave it to you,’ said Partlan. ‘He was just as determined to see Bryan Molloy lose his job as you were.’
‘You can suggest that Gary Cannon gave it to me until you’re black in the face,’ Katie retorted. ‘The plain truth is that he didn’t, and where would he have got it from? If anybody wanted anybody else to lose their job, it was Bryan Molloy who was taking every conceivable opportunity to undermine me. You have only to see what he said about me at media conferences, and read his reports.’
‘Well, we have,’ said Enda. ‘He is critical of you, but with some justification. It seems clear that you mishandled your investigation into a series of kidnappings, to say the very least, and the consequence was that two young gardaí lost their lives.’
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