Blood Sisters
Page 42
‘Thank you, sir. I’ll pass this information on to the officers in charge of this investigation.’
‘There’s something else, too. I think there’s some kind of a horse-racing racket going on at Clontead More.’
‘A horse-racing racket? Can you tell me something more about it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Gerry. He was feeling panicky now and kept glancing into his rear-view mirror to make sure that nobody from the stud farm was coming after him. ‘ I don’t have much in the way of proof, but I think that they might be running ringers. You know, substituting one horse for another so that they can fix the betting.’
‘What makes you think that, sir?’
‘I can’t tell you now. I have to go.’
‘If you can possibly call in at a Garda station, sir, and give them that information in person. They’ll treat it as confidential, I can assure you of that.’
‘All right, all right. Grand. I’ll think about it. But now I have to go.’
He rang off and dropped his iPhone on to the seat beside him. Then he put his foot down and drove away from the farm gate in a slithering spray of mud and grass.
51
Even before Gerry’s car was out of sight, Riona hurried around to the back of the garage, where Dermot was crouching down and sorting through his bag of tools, searching for a spanner.
‘Dermot! Quick! Andy’s found them! Sister Nessa and Sister Virginia! I’m just going to change and then we’re going after them!’
‘What about this tap?’ said Dermot.
‘You’ve left it leaking for two days. You don’t think another day is going to make any difference? Now hurry!’
‘What’s all the fecking rush?’ Dermot asked her, closing up his tool bag and standing up.
‘I’ve been waiting thirty years for this, that’s the rush! I don’t want to wait a minute longer!’
Dermot saw something in Riona’s eyes that he had never seen before, even when they were slitting open Sister Mona’s stomach or branding Sister Barbara’s breasts with that red-hot monstrance, or cooking Sister Aibrean in the hog roaster. Her pupils had darkened until they appeared almost black, so that he could have believed that she was possessed. He had seen women in the Carraig Mor asylum who had looked like that – women who had screamed that Satan was inside them. Even the way she walked seemed to have changed – making her way back to the house with jerky arm and leg movements, as if she were being controlled by some demonic puppeteer.
While she went inside to change, Dermot opened the garage and started up his car. He had emptied most of the rubbish out of the back of it but there were still several tins of Ronseal in there which gave the interior a strong smell of fence varnish. He drove out into the stable yard and waited for Riona with his window open, smoking.
Ryan came out of Saint Sparkle’s stable and said, ‘You off, boy?’
Dermot handed him a cigarette and said, ‘It’s herself. She’s gone skitzo again.’
‘Well good fecking luck with that then.’
After about ten minutes Riona came out of the house with a long black coat slung over her shoulders. She was dressed in her full nun’s vestments, complete with a cowl and a scarf and a large silver cross around her neck. Ryan put his hands together as if he were praying, which plainly didn’t amuse her at all.
‘Have you finished rubbing down Sparkle yet?’ she snapped at him. ‘Or are you just giving yourself another one of your undeserved breaks?’
‘Sparkle’s finished. He’s grand. I’ve fed him his turbo flakes, too.’
‘Right, well, I’ll probably be away for at least two hours. You can take Mister Lintock out for a breeze, but go very easy. I think that bowed tendon has pretty much healed but I don’t want it damaged again.’
‘I have you. Don’t worry. I’ll ride him as if he was my own.’
‘Yes. That’s what I’m worried about.’
Riona climbed into the passenger seat of Dermot’s car, tugging at her scapular and habit so that she was sitting comfortably, and they drove off.
‘We’ll go for Sister Nessa first, in Knocka,’ she said.
‘Poor Sister Nessa,’ said Dermot. He had thrown away his cigarette but he was still breathing out smoke as he talked. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s in for. By the way, what is she in for? We don’t need anything special, like, do we? Not another hog roaster? That was a pig to clean, that fecking hog roaster. Hey – get it? Pig, hog! I’m a fecking comedian and I don’t even know it!’
‘Sister Nessa was a mean and nasty piece of work,’ said Riona. ‘She’d have you washing and ironing all the sheets and if you made even the smallest brown mark on the sheets when you were pressing them, she’d pick them up and drop them on the floor and wipe her feet on them so you’d have to wash and iron them all over again. And if anybody gave a biscuit to Sorley, she’d snatch it away from him because she said that bastards didn’t deserve treats.’
‘She sounds like a saint all right,’ said Dermot. They had reached Coachford now and he turned towards Dripsey and Cork. The sky was cloudless and frost was still sparkling in the hedgerows.
‘Oh, she thought she was a saint,’ said Riona. ‘She modelled herself on Saint Agnes of Rome, the patron saint of virgins, so she believed that all of us girls at the home were the dirtiest of the dirty.’
‘And what happened to Saint Agnes?’ Dermot asked her. ‘What I mean is, how did they top her, like?’
‘She refused to burn incense to the Roman gods, because she said she was promised to Christ. She was only twelve years old and still a virgin, so by Roman law they couldn’t execute her until she had lost her virginity.’
‘That sounds sensible,’ said Dermot. ‘Chopping a girl’s head off before she’d had it away, that would be a total waste of good pussy.’
Riona ignored that. ‘The Roman priests sent her to a brothel to lose her virginity. They stripped her naked and dragged her through the streets behind a horse. The legend has it that her hair miraculously grew to cover her modesty, but I don’t think that’s going to happen with Sister Nessa.’
Dermot glanced over at her. ‘Is that what you have in mind, then? Dragging her through the streets in the nip? Don’t you think that somebody might notice?’
‘We’re not going to drag her down St Patrick’s Street, for the love of God. A nice gritty country road, that’s what I’m thinking. And we’ll use this car instead of a horse.’
‘That should send her on her way to join that saint of hers.’
‘Well, I hope so. Although Saint Agnes survived it and they had to cut her head off in the end. She told the executioner to hurry up because a bride shouldn’t keep her groom waiting. Meaning Jesus, of course.’
‘Jesus,’ said Dermot, as they joined the main R618 towards Cork. ‘These fecking martyrs. Enough to make your hair stand on end. What about the other one? Sister Vinegar, or whatever her name is?’
‘Sister Virginia. But you’re right for once. She should have been called Sister Vinegar. I only have to remember the way she treated me and Sorley and it gives me the worst sour taste in my mouth. When Sorley wet the bed she made him sleep in it all night to teach him a lesson even though the sheets were soaking, and when he was potty training she wouldn’t let him change his pants for the rest of the day if he accidentally shit himself, and the poor little boy was only eighteen months old.’
‘And what do you have planned for her?’ asked Dermot.
‘Oh, something painful, I can assure you. She was devoted to Saint Perpetua, the patron saint of expectant mothers. Saint Perpetua was a married noblewoman in Carthage, which was part of the Roman Empire, and she was a nursing mother, too. She was martyred, though, because of her Christian faith. They stabbed her in between every bone in her body so that she would feel as much pain as possible before she died, and it was said that she was shrieking. She was in so much agony that she grabbed hold of the blade of the exectioner’s sword and cut her own throat with it.’
‘I remember it because I can’t forget it, and those sisters made sure of that.’
‘The only thing that I can remember from when I was younger is “The Bog Down in the Valley-O”, said Dermot. He tapped the rings on his fingers on the steering wheel and sang, in a flat and wheezy voice, ‘The flea on the feather, and the feather on the bird, and the bird in the egg, and the egg in the nest, and the nest in the tree, and the tree in the bog, and the bog down in the valley-o!’
‘Mother of God,’ said Riona. ‘Apart from the fact that you missed out half of it, you’ve made my ears bleed.’
It took them just under an hour to reach Knocknaheeny, on the north-west side of the city. They turned off Kilmore Road into Dunmore Gardens, which was a row of neat but depressing bungalows facing a fenced-off sports ground.
‘Sister Nessa’s – that’ll be further along,’ said Riona. She pulled at her sleeves to straighten them and Dermot could tell that she was becoming agitated, the same as she had been when he dropped her off at the Greendale Rest Home to spirit Sister Barbara away.
He drove slowly, thinking about tying Sister Nessa to his tow bar, naked, and driving along the road with her dragging along behind him. He wondered how fast he could go before bits of her would start to fall off.
‘The tree in the bog,’ he murmured under his breath. ‘And the bog down in the valley-o.’
‘Stop!’ said Riona.
‘Oh come on,’ he said. ‘I’m not that shite at singing.’
‘No, stop the car, I mean! Turn around!’
‘What? What’s the problem?’
‘Look up ahead of us, you blind eejit! Turn around!’
Further up the road, outside a small grey bungalow with a hedge around it, a Garda patrol car was parked and two uniformed gardaí were standing by the concrete pillars on either side of its driveway. Dermot jammed his foot on the brake and reversed, his Toyota whinnying like a horse. Then he wrestled with the steering wheel so that they could execute a three-point turn.
As he did so, Riona saw a blonde-haired woman in a dark-grey business suit walk up the driveway and speak to one of the guards.
‘The shades!’ Dermot panted, as they drove back down Dunmore Gardens towards the main road. ‘What were the shades doing there?’
‘I think they’re on to us,’ said Riona. ‘That blonde woman – did you see her? I’ll bet anything she’s a detective. I think they’ve worked out what we’re doing.’
‘That’s no fecking surprise. We haven’t exactly been keeping a low profile, like, have we? I don’t know why we haven’t been advertising on the telly! We could have buried them in a bog somewhere and nobody would have been any the wiser!’
‘But that’s the whole point!’ Riona retorted, clenching her teeth. ‘I want them to be wiser!’
When they reached Kilmore Road, Dermot said, ‘Now what? Do you want to go back to Clontead?’
‘No. Let’s go for Sister Virginia. Maybe the guards don’t yet know that we’re after her, too.’
‘You mean now, like?’
‘Yes, now! When did you think I meant? Next Thursday fortnight?’
‘This is getting crazier than ever,’ said Dermot. ‘They’re going to catch us, like. You know that.’
‘Of course I know that. I don’t care.’
‘Well, me neither, so long as they put me in a proper prison and not that Carraig Mor shitehole with all them loonies. I’m allergic to loonies, I tell you.’
Riona unfolded the sheet of paper from Andy’s notebook. ‘Here it is. Sister Virginia lives in Iona Road, Mayfield. Do you know how to get there?’
‘Do I know how to get there? We only used to fecking live there when I was younger. Two streets away from Roy Keane.’
‘Good. Then let’s go there.’
* * *
Iona Road was much smarter than Dunmore Gardens, although most of the houses were bungalows. These bungalows, however, were discreetly hidden from the road by well-trimmed hedges and white-painted walls, and there were new cars parked in the driveways.
They found the bungalow where Sister Virginia was living with her cousin’s daughter and Dermot parked about three houses away, on the opposite side of the road. There was no sign of any Garda patrol cars here, or any unmarked car from which protection officers might have been keeping an eye out. The sun was still shining and there was only the faintest cold breeze blowing.
Riona crossed the road and went up to the porch. The front garden was covered with pebbles, with a concrete cherub holding up a bird bath, and the steps up to the porch were shiny red with Cardinal polish.
She rang the doorbell and she could hear chimes inside the house. She had been calm before, with the other four sisters, but now she could feel her heart palpitating. It was beginning to feel as if time was running out. The breeze made her shiver, as if somebody had stepped on her grave.
The door opened and a young woman in a red jumper appeared, holding a chubby baby boy. The boy had chocolate mousse around his mouth.
‘Oh,’ said the young woman. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I hope I haven’t interrupted this little fellow’s lunch,’ said Riona. ‘Is Sister Virginia in by any chance?’
‘And you are?’
‘Sister Margaret Rooney, from the Bon Sauveur Convent. I’m visiting all of the sisters who used to be part of our congregation to check on their welfare. It’s part of our new outreach initiative, to make sure that none of our former sisters are neglected or abandoned, or need any kind of special care.’
‘Oh,’ said the young woman. ‘That’s strange.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Well, my great-aunt isn’t here. She’s been very frightened about those sisters from your convent being murdered and she thought the same thing might happen to her. I told her she had nothing to worry about and that she was quite safe here with us, but yesterday she packed a bag and went back to the convent. She said she’d be safer there.’
‘She’s gone back to the convent?’
‘That’s right. Didn’t you know? Tommy – not with your chocolatey fingers!’
‘I – ah – no, I didn’t know,’ said Riona. ‘But then I haven’t been back to the convent myself since Friday. Ah, well, then, that’s good. That’s very good, saves me a bit of trouble. It’ll be very good to see her again.’
‘I’m sorry for your bother,’ said the young woman with a smile and closed the door.
Riona stood in the front garden for a moment in her nun’s vestments and stamped her foot and said, ‘Shit!’
Almost immediately, the front door opened up again and the young woman was standing there, holding out a gilt medallion.
‘She forgot this,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t be kind enough to give it to her, would you?’
Riona took the medallion and smiled. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘God bless you. And God bless your beautiful boy.’
I used to have a boy like that once, she thought. But my boy was never allowed chocolate, and who was to blame for that? Your beloved great-aunt.
She held up the medallion as she walked back across the road. It bore the image of a sorrowful-looking woman on it and was inscribed S. Perpetua Mater Misericordiae – Saint Perpetua Mother of Mercy. Just before she reached Dermot’s car she dropped it down a grating.
‘Where’s Sister Vinegar?’ asked Dermot as she climbed back in.
‘Not there, Dermot. It turns out that Sister Virginia was so scared by all the news she’s been hearing about nuns from the Bon Sauveur Convent being murdered that she’s gone to seek refuge, guess where?’
Dermot waited for her to tell him, and when she didn’t, he said, ‘How the feck should I know? Jackie Lennox’s Fish and Chip Shop?’
‘The Bon Sauveur Convent, you fool. She’s gone back to the Bon Sauveur Convent.’
‘I just thought... you know... where else does vinegar end up?’
‘I’m only trying to look on the bright side,’ said Dermot. ‘If you can’t have a laugh, like, what’s the fecking point of anything? So, what do we do now?’
‘We go to the convent and get her, that’s what we do.’
‘Ah, come on, you may be wearing the habit and all but they’ll know you’re only mock-ee-ah, won’t they?’
‘That’s a risk I’ll just have to take. If the guards are after us now, we won’t have very much time before they realize that Sister Virginia’s on our hit list, too. I want her, Dermot! I want to see you stab her and stab her and stab her between her bones until all she wants to do is cut her own throat.’
Dermot’s mouth turned down. ‘Okay, then. If that’s the way you want it. You’re paying the piper.’
He started up the engine, but as he did so Riona’s iPhone rang. When she saw who was calling she touched his arm to tell him not to drive away yet.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’
She listened and then she said, ‘How?’ Then she listened some more and said, ‘Mother of God, you can’t trust anyone these days. What a bastard! All right. Okay, Yes. Well, thanks a million. I owe you one. I’ll fix it.’
Once she had ended the call she said to Dermot, ‘Back to Clontead.’
‘What? I thought you wanted to go to the convent.’
‘Clontead, I said! And put your foot down!’
‘I don’t know,’ Dermot grumbled as he pulled out into the road. ‘It would help if you made your mind up now and again. With all due respect, like.’
‘It’s Gerry Brickley,’ Riona told him. ‘He’s only told the guards that we’ve been fixing races. He showed up at the Garda station in the city about half an hour ago and said that he’d seen Sparkle the Second and he was sure we’d used him as a ringer.’
‘The scummer! I can’t believe it! We should go and fix him up before we fix up Sister Vinegar!’