‘Did she know what he’d done, to be sent there?’
‘Put out a brasser’s eye with a corkscrew, so she said, because she’d laughed at the size of his micky. Or the lack of it, presumably.’
‘Well, he sounds like a nice enough fellow,’ said Katie. But we shouldn’t have too much trouble tracing him, should we, if he was under a court order? This psychiatric nurse, she didn’t have any idea where he came from, did she?’
‘Not specifically, like, but he was a Cork man, no question about that, and a Norrie, she thought, by the sound of him.’
‘Had he been in work before he was committed?’
‘I didn’t ask her that, to be fair.’
‘Can you get back to her and ask her, in that case, because whatever he did before, he could well have gone back to it. Unless he was unemployed, of course. And also ask her if he ever had any visitors that she can remember, especially regular visitors.’
‘Sure, like, I did ask her that,’ said Detective Brennan. ‘There was a fellow who dropped in to see him now and again, and she thinks that was one of his brothers because he was almost as ugly as he was. Not long before they let him out, though, a nun came to see him and they spent a long time together, she remembers that. It was like the whole afternoon. She asked him about it after and he told her that she had promised him to save his soul when he was released.’
‘That’s interesting, considering he threw a dead nun into the fountain. Where did this nun come from? Did she know that?’
‘I asked her that, too,’ said Detective Brennan. ‘She didn’t know, but she thought it was odd because usually it’ll be a priest who comes to visit the male patients, rather than a nun. The other thing that she thought was odd – and this must have really stuck in her mind, like. The nun smelled of perfume.’
‘Perfume?’ said Katie. ‘What did that person in charge at the Greendale Rest Home tell us about the nun who visited Sister Barbara before she disappeared? Her eyebrows were plucked and her nails were varnished.’
‘That’s right,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘It sounds like it could be one and the same nun. Or nun at all. Sorry. That’s a terrible Horgan kind of a joke.’
Katie lifted her hand to show him that she didn’t mind. ‘If we can remember the friends we’ve lost with a smile, Robert, then that’s the best way. And you could be right. The nun who visited Sister Barbara and the nun who visited this Dermot Gully might have been the same person, and not a real nun – unless there’s a convent in Cork I’ve never heard of where they all wear make-up and Prima Donna suspender belts under their habits.’
‘Don’t get me excited, ma’am,’ said Detective Brennan. ‘My doctor’s been concerned about my blood pressure lately.’
41
Before she went home that evening, Katie visited her father, who lived in Monkstown, on the opposite side of the ferry crossing from Cobh. The rain had persisted all day, steady and heavy, which made his green-painted Victorian house look even more dreary and neglected than usual. The guttering around the front gable had broken so that water was clattering down the walls and streaking them with even darker green damp.
Katie had tried so many times to persuade him to move because the house was far too big for him, and far too expensive to maintain, but he had insisted that he wanted to stay there until he died, with all the memories of Katie’s mother in every room.
When he answered the front door, he seemed to have diminished since the last time she had seen him, which was only two weeks ago. With each visit she thought he looked smaller. It was almost like watching somebody through a telescope, gradually disappearing into the distance.
‘Katie! Grand to see you!’ he said. His voice sounded hoarse and phlegmy, as if he had a cold. ‘Come along in, I’ve just brewed some tea!’
Katie went up the steps and followed him inside. She had found him a new cleaner, a widow from Orilia Terrace who used to do the cleaning at Saint Mary’s School but also cooked meals for the Roaring Donkey pub further down the road. Her name was Bláithín and the only thing about her that irritated Katie’s father was her constant warbling.
‘Sometimes I don’t know if you got me a cleaner or an effing canary,’ he grumbled.
All the same, the fire was lit and the house was warm and smelled of furniture polish. Her father might have been showing the signs of increasing age – his drooping grey cardigan appeared to be two sizes too large for him now, but at least it was clean and she could be happy that he was being well looked after.
‘What’s the craic?’ he asked her, bringing in a second teacup from the kitchen. His hands trembled so that it rattled in the saucer. ‘Would you care for some shortbread? It’s only shop, I’m afraid. Not a patch on what your mother used to bake.’
She wasn’t going to tell him that she had been shot at. That would only have distressed him and given him sleepless nights. Neither did she intend to give him all the grisly details about the nuns who had been murdered: he would have seen as much as he needed to know about that on the television news. But she did tell him about Enda Blaney and Partlan McKey, the two investigators from the Garda Ombudsman, and how they had found out that she was innocent of coercing Jilleen Quaid into giving false evidence.
‘That has all the smell of Bryan Molloy about it,’ said her father. ‘But as you say, if you can prove that it was him who paid Donie Quaid to shoot Niall Duggan, or even raise the strong suspicion of it, he won’t have much chance of pursuing a case against you. That’s very good news. Mind you, it’ll be even better news if he gets prosecuted and locked up in Mountjoy for the next ten years.’
Katie’s father had been a Garda inspector, but he had blown the whistle on a group of senior officers who had been soliciting bribes in exchange for dropping criminal charges and he had been forced by his colleagues to resign. Among that group had been Jimmy O’Reilly, who was now assistant commissioner for the South-East region, and Bryan Molloy.
Katie stirred her tea and then carefully replaced her spoon in the saucer. ‘I have some more good news for you, Dad.’
Her father raised his shaggy white eyebrows. ‘Don’t tell me that you and John are getting hitched? That is good news!’
‘No, Dad, it’s not exactly that. I haven’t told anybody else, but I have to tell somebody or I’ll burst and I thought that somebody would have to be you.’
‘They’re going to promote you, is that it?’
‘It’s not that, either, even if I deserve it. No, the good news is that you’re going to be a grandfather again.’
‘That’s fantastic!’ said her father, slapping his bony knees. ‘Which one of you is it? Clodagh? Deirdre? Fenella? Don’t tell me Moirin’s having another one! I thought she had more than enough on her hands, looking after Siobhan!
‘But, sure,’ he added, shifting himself forward in his chair so that he could speak to her more confidentially, ‘whichever one of you it is, I swear that I’ll keep my mouth shut until she tells me herself, official-like!’
‘You don’t have to do that, Dad,’ said Katie. ‘It’s me.’
Her father slowly sat back again. ‘You? You’re having a baby?’
‘That’s right. Me. Just in time for Easter. A little Easter egg for you.’
There was a long silence. Her father took a clean white handkerchief out of his cardigan pocket, unfolded it, and carefully wiped his nose. Then he looked across at Katie and said, ‘You two didn’t hold your halt then, did you, you and John? How long has he been back from America?’
‘Dad—’
‘You will be getting married, though, you and John? I mean, before it gets too obvious, like? I’m not trying to be censorious or anything. I’m not the Pope. I’m just trying to think what your mother would have said.’
‘Dad, I’m ten weeks’ pregnant. It isn’t John’s.’
Another long silence. Katie’s father opened and closed his mouth two or three times, rotating his jaw as if his dentures were uncomfortable. At last he sai
d, ‘I see. Well. Not that it makes all that much difference, I suppose. A child is a child. But you’re still going to get married, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Katie. ‘It depends how John reacts.’
‘What do you mean, reacts? Doesn’t he know?’
Katie shook her head. ‘Not yet. I haven’t been able to pluck up the nerve to tell him – mostly because I don’t know how he’s going to take it. When he came back he was so sure that we could carry on exactly where we left off, as if nothing had happened. But – Dad – I had no reason to think when he left me that he was ever going to come back. What was I supposed to do?’
‘Oh, come on, I’m not blaming you for finding yourself another man friend,’ said her father. ‘You’re still young, for goodness’ sake. But to get yourself pregnant... whewf, I don’t know. I always thought you were much more sensible than that. Who was it?’
‘What?’
‘Who was it? Someone at the station? Are you still seeing him? Don’t tell me you’re stringing them both along, John and this other fellow? Mother of God, Katie, you’ve totally knocked me sideways, I have to tell you!’
Katie said, ‘Dad, it was a one-off. It was the fellow who had just moved in next door to me. He said he had trouble with his wife and, I don’t know, I was feeling lonely and down and he was very good-looking and one thing led to another. It never happened again, even though he wanted it to.’
‘So, this very good-looking next-door fellow, is he going to take any responsibility for this baby?’
‘He can’t, Dad. He’s dead. That night the Duggans came round to my house and tried to shoot me... he was the one who took the bullet for me. David was his name. David Kane.’
Her father leaned forward again and took hold of her hand. Before Bláithín had started taking care of him his hands had always been dry and cold and his fingernails had always been dirty, but now they were clean and soft and warm, and his wedding ring was shiny. It was almost like having her hand held by a saint.
‘Then, Katie, what can I say to you?’ he told her. His voice was still throaty, but now it was very gentle. ‘Since the father was the one who died saving you... you must have very mixed feelings about this child.’ He watched her with a tender look on his face as a large teardrop rolled out of her right eye, and then the left. Then he patted her hand and said, ‘However this turns out, Kathleen, I’ll always love you, and I’ll always be here to look after you, just so long as I have the breath. I’m your Dad, after all.’
Katie let out a hoot of misery and bent forward in her chair, covering her face with her hands. She sobbed and sobbed until her ribs hurt, while her father laid his hand on her shoulder to comfort her and occasionally patted her and said, ‘There, now. There.’
After a while, though, she began to think of what Dr Murphy had told her when she had visited him last week. ‘Remember from the last time, Kathleen. By now your little baby’s major organs are starting to form, its tooth buds are visible, and you can even make out its fingers and toes. If you haven’t felt it moving already, you will soon. It’s going to be making its presence felt, believe me.’
She sat up and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt, and blinked.
‘I’m all right now, Dad. Thanks. Just a monster attack of the hormones.’
‘So... are you going to tell John tonight, when you go home? You should, you know, sweetheart.’
‘I don’t know. I’ll try. I’ll see. I can’t choose a name for it on my own, can I? So I suppose I’ll have to tell him.’
* * *
When she arrived home, though, John was sitting hunched over the coffee table with his laptop and papers strewn everywhere and he was involved a lengthy Skype conversation with his bald-headed partner in San Francisco.
He blew her a finger-kiss and said, ‘Sorry, darling, this is going to take a while. Do you want to order a takeaway? Or I could heat up that bolognese.’
‘Ah, no, you’re all right for now, thanks,’ Katie told him. ‘I had a decent lunch for a change. Maybe I’ll just have a sandwich later, if that’s all right with you.’
She changed into a loose stripey top and leggings, and then went into the kitchen to make herself a mug of green tea. She felt as if she had been living off almost nothing else for the past few weeks but green tea and chocolate ginger biscuits. She was pouring boiling water on to the teabag when her iPhone rang.
‘Are you at home, ma’am? Oh, sorry about that. It’s Bill – Bill Phinner.’
‘Bill? You’re working late.’
‘I know, but I wanted to finish up all the forensics on the Spring Lane device. Besides, the moth has gone churchifying this evening and there’s nothing on the telly.’
‘So how’s it going?’
‘I think we’re making some progress. It was what I suspected right from the beginning, because so much explosive was used, at least ten per cent more than was necessary for the job in hand. You don’t need three hundred grams of Semtex to blow up a mobile home. You can bring down a two-storey building with fifteen hundred grams. I’m absolutely sure that this device was put together by Fergal ó Floinn, the same fellow we suspected of that Merchants Quay bomb.’
‘Just because he used too much Semtex?’
‘Ó Floinn was always what you might call over-precautionary. When he was blowing safes in Limerick for the Duggans there were two occasions when he didn’t just blow the doors open, he blew the safes clear out of the buildings they were in and halfway across the street. But, no, it’s just not that. Everything about the Spring Lane device says ó Floinn. It’s the fussy way the wiring’s been done, with the ends twisted into a figure of eight, and the detonator was one of a batch that was stolen years ago from that slate quarry near Killoran, which ó Floinn always used.’
‘All right, Bill,’ said Katie. ‘Of course, there’s already a warrant out for ó Floinn’s arrest for the Merchants Quay bombing, but I’ll talk to Superintendent Pearse in the morning to have another alert circulated. I’ll also ask Mathew McElvey put out a new appeal through the media. The only problem is that even the latest pictures we have of ó Floinn were taken about fifteen years ago. He probably has white hair by now, if he has any hair at all, and a beer belly on him.’
‘Somebody must know where he is,’ said Bill. ‘After all, somebody hired him to blow up Paddy Fearon. How did they find him?’
When she had finished talking to Bill Phinner, Katie looked at her tea and saw that it had infused for so long that it was almost black. She tipped it away and switched on the kettle to make a fresh mug. She suddenly felt very tired. She could hear John still talking on Skype, and from what he was saying about pharmaceutical sales projections it sounded as if his conversation was going to go on for at least another half-hour.
She took her mug of tea into the bathroom and ran herself a peach-scented foam bath. When it was ready she wearily undressed and climbed into it. Her breasts were beginning to feel swollen and tender, and even if she didn’t have a baby-bump yet there was no doubt that her waist was thickening. She thought it strange that she couldn’t clearly remember her pregnancy with Seamus and this was almost like having a baby for the first time. Maybe that was God’s way of making sure that women had more than one child. After each pregnancy, He wiped their memories clean, especially their recollections of how much it had hurt.
John came into the bathroom and sat on the side of the bath. ‘How’s my beautiful merrow?’
‘Beat out, to tell you the truth. I went to see the father on the way home.’
‘Oh, your dad. Good. And what did he have to say to you?’
He said: Tell him. You should.
‘Not much. But he’s looking so much better now that Bláithín’s looking after him.’
Tell him.
‘That’s great, Listen, if you want to get yourself dry, I’ll knock up a couple of sandwiches for us. Ham okay? Or would you rather have cheese?’
‘Cheese would be grand. But just
the Coolea. Not that stinky French stuff you got from the market.’
Once he had left the bathroom, Katie sank down into the water so that her breasts floated and she was bearded with bubbles. She had to tell him. She knew that he would be hurt, and jealous, and that it wouldn’t be easy for him to raise another man’s child even if he agreed to do it. So far, he had probably attributed the changes in her mood and her tastes to her usual PMT, but she wouldn’t be able to hide it very much longer.
She heard him singing to himself as he made the sandwiches, ‘The Fields of Athenry’. It brought tears to her eyes again and she had to tell herself, ‘Stop crying, you fool, would you? Will you ever stop? You got yourself into this, now you get yourself out of it!’
42
It was after 11.15 p.m. when Riona walked along the stable block and knocked at the door of the small lean-to annex at the end where Dermot lived. She had to knock again before he opened up, and when he did he squinted at her as if he didn’t recognize her. The living room behind him was foggy with cigarette smoke and he smelled of drink. On the table in the middle of the room she could see an open tin of tuna with a fork beside it, and a half-empty bottle of Paddy’s.
‘She should have cooled down by now,’ she said. ‘It’s been more than an hour since you switched off the hog roaster.’
‘Oh. Yes. Sure,’ said Dermot. ‘I’ll get my jacket. Is it still lashing out?’
Riona didn’t answer but waited under her umbrella while Dermot struggled into his jacket and then pulled on his mud-encrusted rushers.
They made their way across the rainy stable yard and Dermot pushed open the stable door and switched on the lights. The smell of roasted flesh still lingered, but it had almost faded now and the stable smelled more strongly of straw and horses.
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