Blood Sisters

by Graham Masterton

  The woman gave Sister Aibrean a smile, although it was more of a smile of satisfaction than a smile of welcome.

  ‘Sister Aibrean!’ she said. ‘Thanks a million for coming. It’s been an age, hasn’t it?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Sister Aibrean. ‘Who are you? I’m not here for choicer, I can tell you that.’

  ‘I didn’t go to Saint Margaret’s for choicer, Sister Aibrean. But that’s life for you, isn’t it? People who are stronger than us tell us what to do and we have to do what they say whether we like it or not, or they’ll give us a beating. All for our own good, of course. All for the sake of our souls.’

  ‘You went to Saint Margaret’s?’ said Sister Aibrean. ‘Saint Margaret’s was closed down years ago.’

  ‘You can close down a mother and baby home,’ the black-haired woman retorted. ‘What you can never close down is the memories of what happened inside it.’

  ‘I have no idea at all what you’re talking about.’

  ‘If you’d care to come inside, I’ll explain it to you. Right at this moment my hair’s getting wet and I’ve only just had it done.’

  Sister Aibrean reluctantly unbuckled her seat belt and Dermot helped her out of the car. She followed the black-haired woman into the house, while Dermot stayed unnervingly close behind her, as if he was making sure that she couldn’t turn around and make a run for it. As if she could, at her age, in the pouring rain, with the last house she had seen at least five kilometres away. In the whole of her life she had never felt so isolated and yet so trapped.

  The black-haired woman led her into a large gloomy living room, with huge shabby sofas upholstered in chintz and a peat fire smouldering in the grate. On the walls hung oil paintings of thoroughbred horses, most of them with their heads too small for their bodies, and nineteenth-century prints of classic horse races, and framed rosettes.

  ‘Sit down, and I’ll explain why Dermot’s fetched you here,’ said the black-haired woman. ‘There’s no joy at all in getting your revenge on somebody if that somebody doesn’t know that you’re getting your revenge on them. I could have told Dermot to tie you hand and foot and throw you in the reservoir. But what would have been the point of that? You would have thought that you were simply being murdered for no reason at all. Not punished for what you did, you and your six Sacred Sisters.’

  Sister Aibrean remained standing. She clenched and unclenched her bony, liver-spotted hands, trying to summon up the strength to reply to this black-haired woman calmly and with confidence. Remember, she told herself, the Lord is right behind you.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘is it safe for me to presume that you were one of the fallen girls we took into Saint Margaret’s?’

  ‘That’s right, sister. Riona, that’s my name, Riona Nolan, although I doubt if you remember me.’

  ‘Riona Nolan? I do remember you. I do clearly. You were very meek and obedient as far as I recall.’

  ‘Browbeaten and intimidated, you mean. Every word you ever said to me was calculated to make me feel worthless and ugly and sluttish.’

  ‘Holy Lamb of God! How can you say such a thing?’

  ‘Because it’s true. You were a witch and a bully, and so were all of your sisters. There was only one person in those days who made me believe that I had any value at all as a human being and that was my son Sorley. If it hadn’t been for Sorley, I would have hanged myself, just like my friend Clodagh, and I mean that.’

  Sister Aibrean slowly sat down, tucking a brown velveteen cushion behind the small of her back to support herself. ‘But now, Riona. We looked after you. We gave you a roof over your head and a bed to sleep in. We fed you and clothed you. We kept you warm in the winter. We tended to you whenever you fell sick. We prayed for you constantly, that you should see the light, and we showed you how to lead an upright and moral life.’

  Riona shook her head and kept on shaking it. ‘You gave us the most miserable existence that anybody could imagine. You made all of us work like slaves. Our dormitory was freezing in the winter and suffocating in the summer. Our sheets were changed only once a month and we had to wear the same knickers for a week. Our food was gristle and cabbage and potatoes, and we were lucky if we got any gristle. And all the time you kept telling us that we were no better than common prostitutes.’

  She stopped for breath. After what she had done to Sister Bridget and Sister Mona and Sister Barbara, she hadn’t thought that she would still be boiling with so much anger. Yet she could easily have crossed the room and slapped Sister Aibrean across the face – twice, three times, left and right. Instead, though, she sat down next to her and leaned forward so close that Sister Aibrean couldn’t focus on her and had to lean back.

  ‘You made me feel like nothing,’ said Riona. ‘Not only that, you made me feel that even if I repented and begged God for His forgiveness that I would still be nothing. And, like I say, Sorley was all that stopped me from killing myself. He loved me because I was his mother, and he never judged me. And what did you do? You took him away from me. You stole him, you witch! You took away the only meaning that my life ever had.’

  ‘Well – all I can say is that I’m sorry you feel that way,’ said Sister Aibrean. ‘As far as I’m concerned, we did the very best for you that we could, you and your son. You were in no position to bring him up yourself and, besides, he was God’s child, not yours.’

  Riona sat back as if this was an argument that she was no longer interested in pursuing. Instead, she said to Dermot, ‘Can you go and get it ready?’

  Dermot gave her the thumbs up and left the living room, and Sister Aibrean heard the side door slam.

  ‘You always devoted yourself to Saint Eustace, didn’t you?’ said Riona.

  ‘Yes, I did. And I am still devoted to him. He was one of the most inspirational of all the saints, although many claim that he was only mythical. I believe that he really existed and that the story of his martyrdom is true. I have felt his presence many times. I have heard his voice giving me encouragement.’

  Riona said nothing for a moment and then she stood up. ‘You know, of course, how Saint Eustace died?’

  ‘Of course. Saint Eustace and his whole family, his wife and his sons. He had found Christ and so he refused to make a pagan sacrifice, and for that the Emperor Hadrian ordered him to be put to death.’

  Riona went to the window. She could see that Dermot had opened one of the stable doors, directly opposite. ‘Go on,’ she said to Sister Aibrean. ‘How exactly was he put to death?’

  ‘Why are you asking me? You know already, don’t you? I told you enough times when you were at Saint Margaret’s. I even showed you pictures of it.’

  ‘I’d like to hear you tell me again, that’s all.’

  ‘But why? If you hated Saint Margaret’s and you despised me so much, why do you want to hear it now?’

  ‘Just tell me,’ said Riona. She could see her face faintly reflected in the rain-spotted window and she wondered if this is what she would look like after she had died and became a ghost, staring wistfully into the life she had left behind.

  ‘The Emperor Hadrian had the statue of a huge bull cast out of bronze,’ said Sister Aibrean. ‘It was hollow, with a hinged lid in its side. Saint Eustace and his wife and sons were forced to climb inside it and the lid was locked. Then a fire was lit underneath the bull’s belly, so that they would slowly be roasted to death.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Riona. ‘Tell me about their screaming.’

  ‘They screamed, of course they screamed, as anybody would,’ said Sister Aibrean. ‘But the statue had been made with special reeds in its nostrils so that their screams would sound instead like the bellowing of a bull.’

  ‘How long did it take them to die?’

  ‘Three days, according to the stories.’

  ‘That’s unlikely, wouldn’t you think? Who could survive being roasted for three days?’

  ‘God was protecting them, remember,’ said Sister Aibrean.

  ‘So God
made him and his family suffer unbelievable agony for three long days before He finally allowed them to die. Yes, I can believe that, considering my experience of God and all who believe they are acting on His behalf. Cardinals and canons and all the other gobshites who call themselves clergy.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear you speak like that,’ said Sister Aibrean. ‘Without the church, and without those who serve it, there would be great desperation and hopelessness in the world. But why did you ask me to tell you about Saint Eustace again?’

  Riona turned around. Sister Aibrean looked up at her, but she was silhouetted against the window and she couldn’t see the expression on her face.

  ‘Because I am going to give you the chance to prove that your faith is just as strong as his was. I think that’s what you call killing two birds with one stone. You can be a martyr, like the saint you’ve adored for so many years, while I can get my revenge on you.’

  Sister Aibrean stared at her in horror. ‘What are you going to do to me?’

  Riona turned back and looked out of the window. Dermot had appeared from the open stable door and waved to her.

  ‘Come with me. You’ll find out soon enough.’

  Sister Aibrean crossed herself. ‘Dear Jesus,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Riona. ‘My thoughts exactly.’

  38

  When Katie arrived at the station she was irritated to find that Enda Blaney and Partlan McKey from the Garda Ombudsman were waiting in reception for her. She ignored them and went over to the sergeant on the desk, shaking her umbrella. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘The weather.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Jesus.’

  Enda stood up and came over to her with what she obviously imagined was a smile, although she still looked to Katie as if she were right on the verge of bursting into tears. ‘Good morning, Detective Superintendent! It’s teeming out, isn’t it? We trust you can spare us a few moments more of your time.’

  ‘As long as it’s only a few moments, Enda. I have a heap of things to sort out this morning.’

  ‘We think we might have some good news for you,’ said Enda. ‘Better news, anyway.’

  ‘All right, then. Let’s go up to my office.’

  Once they had taken off their coats and sat down in Katie’s office, Katie said, ‘All right, listen. I’m sorry I had to break off our last meeting so abruptly. I have two major investigations under way right now and the situation with each of them is developing almost hourly. You’ll have heard about the bombing up at Spring Lane and two of our officers getting killed. That’s apart from everything else I have on my plate.’

  ‘We do appreciate that you’re a very busy woman, Detective Superintendent,’ said Partlan. The way he said ‘woman’ sounded to Katie as if he were comparing her to a harassed little housewife, but then again, she thought, perhaps she was being too sensitive.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said, opening up the folder in front of her and starting to skim through it. ‘So what’s this “better news” you have for me?’

  ‘Since we last talked to you, we’ve been looking further into the complaints made against you by Bryan Molloy and Jilleen Quaid,’ said Partlan. ‘Whatever anybody says about us Garda Ombudsman investigators, nobody has ever accused us of not being thorough.’

  Partlan and Enda smiled at each other and then Enda said, ‘We double-checked the ballistics tests that were carried out on the SIG Sauer pistol that was alleged to have been used to shoot Niall Duggan.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘There’s not much doubt that the bullet that killed him was fired from the same weapon. And it’s almost certain that it was Donie Quaid who fired the fatal shot. It was difficult to lift any latent fingerprints from the butt because of its criss-cross pattern, and, of course, you fired the weapon yourself, so the only clear fingerprint on the trigger was yours. But all the remaining bullets in the clip still had Donie Quaid’s prints on them. And apart from that, we’ve verified where the weapon originally came from. It was definitely the Garda station at Tipperary Town and, as you said, it was signed out by the late Inspector Colin McManus.’

  Partlan held up a sheet of paper, although Katie didn’t look at it. ‘Donie Quaid’s letter confessing to the shooting was checked by our handwriting experts and that’s almost certainly genuine, too. He had a unique way of forming his fs, like fish swimming.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve confirmed what I knew already,’ said Katie, still pretending that she was reading.

  ‘There’s more than that, though. Jilleen Quaid’s complaint was that she had never seen the gun or the letter before she met you, but that you and Sergeant Gary Cannon intimidated her into saying that she had. That in itself would have been an act of gross misconduct on your behalf.’

  ‘It would have been if I had done it, but I didn’t.’

  ‘That’s the better news. We know you didn’t. We went up to the prison yesterday on Rathmore Road and interviewed Lorcan Devitt.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Katie, looking up. Now she was interested. She had arrested Lorcan Devitt for his part in the murder and extortion racket that had been run by Niall Duggan’s son and daughter, Aengus and Ruari. He had been one of the most feared members of the Duggan crime gang in Limerick, but ever since his conviction he had proved to be very obliging in providing information to the Garda – anything to reduce his seventeen-year sentence. Aengus and Ruari were dead now, so he had nothing to fear from them, and now that the Duggan gang had split up it was unlikely that any of the other one-time gang members would realize that he was grassing to the shades.

  ‘Lorcan told us that his nephew Phelim and some of Phelim’s classmates had been bullying Jilleen Quaid’s son Sean at school,’ said Enda. ‘In the end the bullying got so bad that Jilleen told Sean that Donie had shot Niall Duggan, just so that Sean could prove to Phelim and the rest of them that he came from a hard family, and that they’d better lay off him.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Katie. ‘Jilleen admitted to me herself that she’d done that. But now she’s obviously going to deny it, isn’t she? And her son will develop filial amnesia, more than likely.’

  ‘Ah, but Phelim Devitt hasn’t lost his memory, and neither have his pals at the Villiers Secondary School. We located them all, except one, and they all told us more or less the same story, that Sean came into school on the first day of summer term and boasted that his uncle had shot Niall Duggan and that his mother still had the gun in her possession. He told them that the gun had been given to Donie by Bryan Molloy and that was how Molloy had got rid of Niall Duggan and pretty much stamped out the worst of the crime feuds in Limerick, so they had better watch out.’

  ‘They won’t testify to this in court, will they, these lads?’ asked Katie.

  ‘They won’t have to,’ said Enda, and she looked pleased with herself now and much less weepy. ‘We went back to Jilleen Quaid and told her what the boys had all said. We warned her that if she lied under oath in court she could be prosecuted herself, and even imprisoned. Would you believe that she withdrew her complaint then and there? “Ohh,” she said, “I think I must have been a bit confused.” “Puggalized” was the actual word she used.’

  ‘“Puggalized” isn’t the word for it!’ said Katie. ‘But she’s withdrawn her complaint? Fantastic! But where does that leave Bryan Molloy? Have you told him about this yet?’

  ‘We’ll be talking to his lawyers as soon as we’ve finished discussing this with you. Under the circumstances I’d say that it won’t be easy for him to pursue his accusations of harassment against you. In fact, it’s quite possible that he’ll be facing criminal charges himself. It depends what the DPP thinks about it, although there may not be sufficient evidence and it might not be considered in the public interest.’

  ‘That’s up to her,’ said Katie. ‘But that is better news. I’m delighted.’

  ‘We thought you’d be pleased,’ Partlan put in. ‘And we’re pleased, too. We think this has gone a long way to clearing
up some very dubious practices in the Garda, especially money and favours changing hands for the dropping of criminal charges.’

  Katie said, ‘I have to admit that I did feel a certain amount of hostility towards you two the last time we met. Fair play to you, though, you seem to be doing a grand job altogether. Very thorough, like you say.’

  ‘We take the reputation of the Garda very seriously,’ said Enda. ‘Sometimes more seriously than many gardaí themselves ever do. It doesn’t always make us very popular, but you won’t find the word “popular” in our job description.’

  ‘No,’ said Katie. ‘I don’t think it’s in mine, either.’

  * * *

  Hardly had Enda and Partlan left her office than Tadhg Meaney, the ISPCA inspector, knocked at her door. He was carrying two polystyrene cups of Costa coffee.

  ‘Oh, you’re a life-saver,’ she told him.

  ‘I saw you going up with those two and that you didn’t have time to get yourself anything to drink. I guessed cappuccino. Is that right?’

  ‘That’s perfect,’ she said. ‘No wonder you’re so good at taking care of animals.’

  ‘Do you have five minutes?’ he asked her. ‘We’ve finished examining all of the horses now and we’ve come up with some fierce extraordinary findings.’

  ‘Of course. Sit down. Do you want a biscuit? I have some chocolate gingers somewhere in my drawer here. I don’t know why, but I’ve become addicted lately.’

  As if I didn’t know perfectly well why, she thought.

  Tadhg laid a file on her desk and opened it up to show her at least forty shiny colour photographs of the twenty-three dead horses laid out at Dromsligo.

  ‘Just as we thought, they’re all thoroughbreds. I have a complete list here. We’ve estimated the approximate date of death of each of them, as well as what injuries were likely to have been caused by them being thrown off the cliff, and what injuries they might have sustained beforehand, and when.’