Blood Sisters

by Graham Masterton

  Katie lay on her side, holding her throbbing stomach with both hands and trying to drag air back into her lungs. The only sound that she could make was a thin, panicky squeak. Detective Dooley knelt beside her and laid one hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Ma’am? How bad has he hurt you? Do you want me to call for the paramedics?’

  She shook her head, but then she felt a sensation in her stomach like a washing-machine drum turning over, full of sodden, heavy washing. Her throat tightened and she vomited on to the floor, all of the sandwiches that she had eaten for lunch, and her coffee.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m going to call for a white van,’ said Detective Dooley.

  Katie shook her head again, but then she vomited a second time, mainly chewed-up pieces of apple and acidic yellow bile.

  Detective Dooley stood up. He took out his phone and Katie could hear him asking for an ambulance. She tried to sit up, but her stomach muscles hurt so much and were clenched so relentlessly tight that she could only let out a whimper and ease herself down on to the floor again, so that her hair became stuck in her own wet sick.

  She managed to raise her head a little and when she did so she saw Detective Dooley go up behind Karosas and shout, ‘You bastard! You’d kick a woman like that, would you? You’re nothing but a worthless lump of shite! What are you?’

  Karosas tried to turn his head around. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Fuck all you pig.’

  Detective Dooley seized the curly black hair at the back of Karosas’s head and slammed his face so hard against the wall that Katie heard his nose crack.

  Upstairs, the accordion music stopped abruptly. Katie heard the woman call out, ‘Davydos? Kas vyksta? Kas ten su jumis?’

  But then her stomach convulsed and the pain was so unbearable that she was blinded and deafened and she felt as if her whole world was contracting into nothing but a tiny speck. She was swallowed up by darkness, as if she had fallen down a well.

  47

  She opened her eyes and there was a middle-aged nurse in a white top smiling at her.

  She looked around and saw that she was lying in a hospital bed, in a private room. The blind was pulled down, but only a little more than halfway, so that she could see that it was dark outside.

  She lifted up the blanket that was covering her. She was wearing a hospital gown with a pattern of small purple flowers on it.

  Her stomach was throbbing, but mostly she felt numb.

  ‘Where am I?’ she asked. Her voice sounded muffled, as if she were wearing earplugs.

  ‘You’re at CUH,’ said the nurse, still smiling. ‘You were attacked, if you recall, and you suffered an injury. How are you feeling?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Katie told her. ‘Strange. My stomach hurts. My back, too. Ouch. What time is it?’

  ‘Three twenty.’

  ‘Three twenty in the morning, you mean?’

  ‘That’s right. You’ve been under the anaesthetic.’

  Katie tried to sit up, but her arms didn’t seem to be strong enough to lift her. The nurse came over and helped her to lean forward while she tucked another large pillow behind her.

  A succession of images was tumbling through Katie’s mind. She remembered driving with Detective Dooley to Ballycurren Industrial Estate. She remembered talking to Davydos Karosas, and the stink of his cigarette smoke. Then wrestling with him in the doorway and punching him.

  ‘I don’t – I can’t...’ she began.

  ‘That’s all right, my dear,’ said the nurse in a soothing voice. ‘It’s only the anaesthetic. It’ll all come back to you.’

  ‘I’m very thirsty,’ Katie told her. ‘Do you think I could have a drink of water?’

  The nurse poured her a glass and held her head forward to make it easier for her to drink it. She was still swallowing when she suddenly had a flash of Karosas swinging his leg back and kicking her as hard as he could in the stomach. She spluttered and almost choked.

  ‘There, there,’ said the nurse, tugging out a Kleenex and dabbing her chin. ‘We don’t want to be drowning ourselves, do we?’

  ‘My baby,’ said Katie. She was panicking now. ‘Is my baby all right?’

  The nurse set the glass back down on the bedside locker and then sat down on the bed and took hold of Katie’s hands. The look on her face was regretful and sympathetic, but in a professional way, as if she had to look regretful and sympathetic almost daily. Katie couldn’t help noticing that one of her eyes was brown and the other was blue.

  ‘You lost the baby, my dear, I’m sorry to tell you. That was a fierce hard blow you sustained, right to your abdomen. You’ve been badly bruised, although there was no other injury, thank God. He could easy have ruptured your spleen. The doctor tried his very best to save your child, but you had a placental abruption and it was too late by the time they got you here to the hospital.’

  Katie reached down and felt her stomach. It still felt swollen, as it had for the past few weeks, although it felt very tender, too. She found it impossible to believe that there was no longer a baby inside her. How could it have gone? She was suddenly washed over by an overwhelming sense of loneliness. It’s just me now, all on my own. That little life inside me has left me for ever.

  ‘Was it a boy or a girl?’ she asked, her voice still sounding muffled. ‘Or was it too early to tell?’

  ‘Too early to say with any certainty,’ said the nurse. ‘Whatever it was, though, a he or a she, the Lord will welcome it into His arms with the greatest of love.’

  Katie nodded. She wasn’t sobbing, but the tears were running down her cheeks and sliding down her neck into her hospital gown. The nurse said, ‘You have somebody waiting for you downstairs. Do you want to see them now or shall I ask them to come back later?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘A young lady. I think she works with you. She’s been waiting ever since you were brought in.’

  She handed Katie another Kleenex and Katie wiped her eyes. ‘Yes... yes, all right, then. Thank you.’

  After she had left Katie did her best to smarten herself up, dabbing at her eyes again to make sure that there was no blotchy mascara on them and tweaking at her hair. As she patted the left side of her head, however, she realized that her hair was stuck together with dried sick. She was still trying to pull it out when the door opened and Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán came in.

  ‘Kyna,’ she said.

  Without a word, Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán leaned over the bed and kissed Katie on the forehead. Then she dragged over a plastic chair and sat down close to her. She looked very tired and her eyes were reddened as if she had been crying, too.

  ‘You were pregnant,’ she said. ‘That was such a shock.’

  ‘What? You didn’t realize? I was absolutely sure that you’d guessed it.’

  ‘Not at all! I just thought you were blooming, do you know what I mean, like? You seemed like you were so full of beans. But I thought that was because you were happy, that was all, because you had John back with you and you were getting on so well together. That was one of the reasons I wanted a transfer. If you were as happy as all that, I thought there was absolutely no chance for me at all.’

  She reached out and grasped Katie’s hand. ‘But I’m so sorry for you, losing the baby like that. It must be breaking your heart.’

  ‘It wasn’t John’s,’ said Katie.

  ‘No? Oh. Serious?’

  ‘That was why he left me. I had to tell him, and when I did he just walked out. I’ve tried ringing him since but he won’t answer any of my calls. I haven’t been back home yet to see, but I think he might have come back to collect all of his clothes.’

  ‘Oh, Katie,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘And now this. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Fate, I think,’ said Katie, with her eyes filling up again with tears. ‘One of those things that wasn’t meant to be. One of those children who wasn’t meant to be. They couldn’t even tell if it was a boy or a girl.’

  ‘We’ve formall
y charged Karosas and we have him in custody,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘We’re holding him for assaulting a police officer, as well as abduction and homicide. Tyrone should know by the end of the day if those hair and urine samples and fingerprints belonged to Roisin and he’s testing those beads, too, for DNA.’

  Katie nodded. ‘That’s grand. I should be able to get myself discharged later. I’m paying a tribute to Detective Horgan at the funeral.’

  ‘You’re doing nothing of the sort! I was talking to the doctor who treated you and he said that you have to stay here until tomorrow at the earliest. You need to rest and recover. Not only that, they want to keep you under observation to make sure you don’t get blood clots or any other complications.’

  ‘But it’s a state funeral, Kyna. And Horgan was one of my team.’

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán emphatically shook her head. ‘I’ve told Chief Superintendent McCostagaín what’s happened to you. Well, not about losing the baby – he doesn’t know about that. He sends you his very best wishes for a speedy recovery but Francis O’Rourke will stand in for you at the church.’

  ‘Kyna—’

  ‘No, Katie. You can’t be responsible for every single person in the whole of Cork, twenty-four seven. One of those people in Cork is you and you need to take care of yourself. You don’t want to end up having a breakdown like Liam Fennessy.’

  ‘What about Barney? Barney needs to be fed and taken for his walk. He’s all shut up in the kitchen and he must be wondering where I am.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We thought of that. Dooley phoned your father and told him what had happened. He’s lent his spare key to one of his neighbours who’s going to take care of Barney until you get back home.’

  Katie lay back on her pillows. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I’m going to get myself out of here as soon as I possibly can.’

  ‘Get some sleep,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘I’ll be saying a prayer for you before I go to bed myself. Not just you, but the little one, too. My mum lost a baby once. Well, she probably lost more than one, but she never told us about all of them. After this one, though, I remember her saying that she was waiting for the clouds to clear away so that she could see a new star shining. She was going to call him Patrick.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of any names yet,’ said Katie. ‘Now I don’t have to, do I?’

  * * *

  At lunchtime she managed to finish half a bowl of tepid tomato soup and two cream crackers with cheese. Then she sat in the armchair by the window to watch the state funeral on television. A solemn parade marched along St Patrick’s Street, with gardaí from every department in the country in full dress uniform, as well as firefighters and paramedics and TDs and local councillors. The pavements were crowded with hundreds of people and the men all took off their hats as the three hearses drove slowly past them, the coffins inside them heaped with lilies.

  ‘Goodbye, Kenny,’ said Katie under her breath as she saw his hearse turn the corner into Grand Parade. ‘God bless you.’

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Dr Mazdani came to examine her and ask how she was feeling. He was softly spoken and when he felt her stomach he did it with the utmost tenderness, as if he could actually feel Katie’s pain through his fingertips.

  ‘In one way, you were very lucky,’ he told her. ‘The kicking you received detached the placenta from the uterus and that starved your baby of oxygen. I am sorry to say that there was no way that it could have survived. However, you could have died yourself from loss of blood, so it was a good thing that they brought you here to the hospital so quickly.’

  ‘When can I go home?’ asked Katie.

  ‘Unless there are any complications, you should be able to return home tomorrow. I must advise you, though, to rest for at least another week and to contact us immediately if you experience any unusual pains.’

  He lowered her gown and then he said, ‘I realize it might be premature of me to say this, but in case you are wondering, you should have no difficulty in conceiving again and bringing a child to full term.’

  ‘Oh, you mean I can have a replacement?’ said Katie, although she regretted saying it almost as soon as the words came out of her mouth.

  Dr Mazdani sadly shook his head. ‘No lost baby can ever be replaced, Mrs Maguire. One child is never a substitute for another. That is why I fight so hard to save the lives of unborn children. It is my calling, to be a protector of children.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Katie. ‘I’m sorry. I think I’m feeling more than a little cynical at the moment.’

  ‘No bother, Mrs Maguire. I understand perfectly.’

  When Dr Mazdani had gone Katie pulled up her blanket and slept for another hour. When she woke up she didn’t get out of bed but lay on her back with one hand resting on her stomach, staring at the ceiling tiles. Outside, the sky gradually began to darken again and one by one the hospital windows were lit up, and she could hear the squeaking of trolleys as the patients’ evening meals were brought around.

  She couldn’t stop thinking of the words that Dr Mazdani had used. They reminded her of something that she had heard not too long ago, and the thought kept tapping at her brain again and again, as persistent as a wasp at a window. A protector of children. A protector of children.

  Then she remembered. It had been Kyna, when she had reported back from her first visit to Mother O’Dwyer. She had been describing the picture of Saint Margaret of Cortona that hung on the wall in Mother O’Dwyer’s office. ‘I think that’s how Mother O’Dwyer sees herself,’ Kyna had told her. ‘She may be a shrivelled old crow, but she thinks of herself as young and beautiful, like that picture of Saint Margaret, with her hands spread out to communicate with Jesus. She thinks she’s just like Saint Margaret. I’d go even further than that – I think she thinks she is Saint Margaret, “a protector of children, both born and unborn, who still protects them, even today”.’

  Katie, of course, had sat in Mother O’Dwyer’s office more than once and seen that picture of Saint Margaret for herself, and she had thought about Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán’s words while she did so. Did Mother O’Dwyer really believe she looked as radiant as that, and that she had truly protected the children in her care – regardless of the fact that hundreds of them had died and had ended up as skeletons?

  Because none of the children had been baptised, and so couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground, perhaps she had believed that their bodies were worthless in the eyes of God and could simply be thrown away like rubbish. Perhaps they had all died of natural causes and the sisters had simply been too poor to give each of them a proper funeral. But how could Mother O’Dwayer and Saint Margaret still be protecting them ‘even today’? They were bones. What was there left to protect?

  Again and again, she kept thinking of a large rambling house in Carrigaline that she had searched when she was a twenty-three-year-old garda, and how they had found nothing until her attention had been drawn to a large oil painting on the living-room wall of the owners’ three cats.

  She wondered if she was still suffering from shock. Maybe the opioids she had been given to dull the pain were affecting her thinking. But the wasp kept tapping away at the window. A protector of children, even today. Why ‘even today’? What did that actually mean? She knew from experience that offenders often gave away clues that led to their guilt being discovered, not because they were deliberately playing cat and mouse with their interrogators but simply because they couldn’t get their offences off their minds. Sometimes, subconsciously, they wanted to be caught because they felt so guilty about what they had done. Even more frequently they had an irresistible urge to boast about it – even rapists and murderers and terrorists. Especially rapists and murderers and terrorists.

  She turned over and picked up her iPhone from the bedside locker. She pressed Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán’s number and she answered almost at once.

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  ‘Where a
re you, Kyna?’

  ‘I’m still at the station. I’ve a whole rake of things to clear up after the funeral.’

  ‘How was it?’ Katie asked her. ‘I saw some of it on television but I wish I’d been there.’

  ‘Very moving, actually. Everybody was bawling. The Tánaiste gave a lovely speech. She said that people who criticise the police should remember that when gardaí leave for work in the morning their wives and children have no guarantee that they’re ever going to see them again.’

  ‘Kyna – do you remember what Mother O’Dwyer said to you about that picture of Saint Margaret she has hanging on her wall?’

  ‘What? Vaguely. Only that Saint Margaret had been a single mother herself once. Oh yes – and that she spoke to Jesus almost every day. The poor Saviour. He must have felt like hanging up on her sometimes. Why?’

  ‘“A protector of children”, wasn’t that what you said? “A protector of children, even today.”’

  ‘That’s right. That’s almost exactly what she said, near enough.’

  ‘I may be drugged up or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but supposing Saint Margaret is protecting the children, even today?’

  There was a long silence, and then Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán said, ‘To be honest with you, I don’t really understand what you’re driving at.’

  ‘We’ve already agreed, haven’t we, that the sisters must have kept some record of the children who died? But so far we’ve searched that convent top to bottom, even the attics and the cellars and under the floorboards, and we’ve found no record at all.’

  ‘No, we haven’t. But I still don’t get what you’re asking me.’

  ‘Have you looked behind the picture of Saint Margaret?’

  ‘No. Well, no, I shouldn’t think so. No.’

  ‘Well, could you go up there now, please, and take a quick sconce? If there’s nothing behind it but a blank wall, then I’ll know for sure that it’s the codeine talking. In fact, I’m almost sure that it’s the codeine talking. But I won’t be able to sleep tonight until I know for certain.’