Sister Caravaggio

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘So Bruno knows the area very well,’ Alice said, and signalled for two more glasses of wine. ‘He probably stole the painting, so he knows the convent inside out. Which means that he knows I’m in the convent. And now, that dickhead, Sebastian, wants me to go back there?’

  ‘And Bruno?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘They think he may have left the country. He’s done it before – skipped to Málaga.’ Alice took the new glass of wine from the waitress’s tray and held it in both hands. ‘But you know something, Maggie? I don’t think he has left the country, I think he’s right here still. And I think I know how to find him.’

  Maggie was glad of the extra alcohol hit. She wondered how she would cope without alcohol when she went back to the convent; but then, she realised, there might soon be no convent to go back to.

  County Kerry

  17 June, 8.45 PM

  Davy drove the Volkswagen at high speed over the narrow mountain road, and along the winding way from Dingle. Between contractions, Winnie spoke non-stop about Jeremy Meadowfield, her childhood, Dingle, the Blaskets, Jeremy Meadowfield, her neighbours, her plans for the future, Jeremy … For a woman who had taken a vow of silence, she had an awful lot to say. Occasionally the flow of verbiage was broken by a brave little gasp of pain, or a less courageous scream.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Davy would say, glancing at her in horror. Please don’t let her have this baby here on the side of the road between Lispole and Camp with only me to be the midwife, he thought. ‘Nun gives birth in ditch on side of road.’ What a story: it would be the biggest scoop in the history of Davy Rainbow, Hack. But he couldn’t use it. She had sworn him to secrecy about the father of her child-to-be. Still, the fleeting moments of imagination that he had enjoyed as to his own role, and might possibly use to advantage in the future, had been wonderful. Winnie winced and Davy swerved to avoid a ewe and her lamb crossing the boreen. He saw Tralee in the distance.

  Dublin Northside

  17 June, 9.15 PM

  In her earlier life, Alice had spent many nights sitting in an unmarked car in the neighbourhood of Ska Higgins’s house. Now, as she and Maggie walked towards it, on an avenue of leafy trees, the details of Ska’s house flashed through her mind. It was one of a row of detached villas, with flat roofs and rounded corners, each with two portholes of frosted glass embedded either side of the hall door, like two round blind eyes. The main windows were unusual too: long and narrow, like slits in the walls of a medieval castle. Although Ska had invested a lot of his crime proceeds in this residence, buying at the top of the property boom, he seldom spent a night here, preferring to bed down in one of several apartments, cheap hotel rooms and houses, some owned by himself and some by his associates.

  ‘What makes you so certain that Bruno will be here?’ Maggie asked as she pushed in the gate.

  Inside the house a siren had become activated. Unseen dogs were barking.

  ‘Call it instinct,’ Alice said as she walked briskly up the path and rang the doorbell. ‘It came to me when we left Cassidy’s pub last night. What was Ska Higgins doing there? Keeping an eye on Bruno’s missus, that’s what.’

  Like all good cops, she felt that she knew each criminal personally, as a sister knows a brother, so that every turn and kink of that criminal’s mind was as familiar to her as her own. She knew how Bruno thought. Knew how he responded to situations and, despite all the evidence, she knew that Bruno Scanlon, vicious and despicable though he was, did not carve letters on to the backs of people he had just murdered.

  The dogs inside were going berserk. She thought of her plain white cell in Doon Abbey, as calm as the inside of a shell. The chapel, white candles, white lilies, white-robed nuns singing white hymns. The bare patch on the chapel wall where the Caravaggio had once hung.

  Through one of the frosted portholes, Alice could discern a figure moving. The siren ceased. The dogs stopped their barking. As the door was opened a chink on its safety chain, Alice shrank back behind Maggie.

  ‘Yeah?’

  Over Maggie’s shoulder, Alice instantly recognised Primrose Higgins, Ska’s daughter, herself a star of the juvenile courts – thanks, in part, to Alice.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ Maggie said. ‘We’re from the Legion of Mary.

  We’re here to see Mr Higgins.’

  ‘Da’s not here,’ said Primrose Higgins.

  ‘Oh, dear, we were told he would be,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Who told you that?’ Primrose asked.

  ‘The parish priest,’ Maggie said.

  At that moment, at knee level, a child’s arm reached out towards Maggie.

  ‘Hello!’ Maggie said, hunkering down. ‘What a beautiful little girl!’ The child laughed and held out her hand further to Maggie.

  ‘Such bright eyes! What’s her name?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Jennifer,’ said Primrose, as Jennifer giggled at Maggie. ‘Hold on a second, you’d better come in.’

  The door closed and the chain was unclipped.

  ‘I didn’t think Da knew the parish priest,’ Primrose began as Alice and Maggie stepped into the hall. She froze. ‘Detective Inspector Dunwoody …’

  ‘It’s okay, Primrose,’ said Alice, ‘calm down.’

  Primrose put back her head and opened her mouth wide. ‘Bruno!’ she screamed. ‘Bruno!’

  ‘Primrose …’ Alice said.

  She hadn’t time to finish the sentence. A huge German shepherd dog was bounding down the hall. Two strides from Alice, it leaped for her throat.

  County Kerry

  17 June, 9.30 PM

  Davy sat in the corridor of the hospital, waiting.

  Sober, clear-headed, he felt strangely empowered. He would drive back to County Kildare, take his secret from its hiding place and bring it to the gardaí. Sister Diana would not be pleased, but he didn’t care. His mind was made up.

  He approached the desk of maternity admissions, where a lone nurse was at work.

  ‘How long will it be?’ he asked her.

  ‘How long is a piece of string?’ she grinned at him, as if this was all a bit of a joke. ‘It’s her first, isn’t it?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘Prepare for a bit of an ould wait.’

  ‘Oh.’ Davy glanced at his watch. ‘I have to go actually.’

  The nurse looked at him. She had a round pink face and cheeky bright blue eyes which looked knowingly into Davy’s face.

  ‘But aren’t you going to be present?’ She scrutinised him carefully. ‘You are hubby, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, I’m just … a friend. And I have to go home urgently.’

  The nurse nodded, a bit wearily. ‘And does …’ she glanced down at the sheet that Winnie had recently filled up. ‘And does Oonagh have anyone?’

  ‘She’s a single mother, if that’s what you’re asking. There’s no father,’ Davy said.

  The nurse laughed. ‘A sort of immaculate conception, is it?’

  ‘No, no, what I mean is, the father is dead … I think.’

  She looked up. ‘You think?’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, an emergency has cropped up. I have to go home,’ Davy said. ‘Ask … Oonagh for information.’

  The nurse had had enough. Her pink complexion deepened.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said, and bent over her files.

  ‘Can you phone me when, you know, when she has it?’ Davy said.

  She took her time looking up. Then she fixed him with an impatient glare. But she wrote down the number he gave her.

  Dublin Northside

  17 June, 10.15 PM

  Slowly Alice came to. Her hand stroked the skin of her throat. She opened her eyes. She was in the front room of the same house, judging by the windows: in the sitting room, in an armchair. She patted her pockets. No phone.

  ‘Maggie?’

  Maggie was lying, mouth open, eyes closed, on a long, smooth, pale grey sofa. Alice’s heart pounded. Her last memory was of the dog’s muzzle, its teeth bared.
Her stomach heaved ominously and she felt the blood draining from her head.

  ‘Maggie?’

  Alice crept over to Maggie and smelt a sudden whiff of chemicals. Dentist, she thought. Chloroform. Oh, God! What had happened when they’d been knocked out? She shook Maggie violently.

  ‘Maggie! Wake up!’

  Maggie groaned and opened her eyes. ‘Panda?’

  ‘It’s all right, Maggie,’ Alice said, and fanned Maggie with a copy of Hello magazine that had been lying on the coffee table. ‘It’s okay.’

  Maggie sat up, put her head between her legs and took several deep breaths.

  ‘I’ve got a bad headache,’ she moaned.

  ‘I’m sorry, Maggie.’ Alice was distraught. ‘We were crazy to come here in the first place.’

  Maggie looked up. ‘I wouldn’t be anywhere else,’ she said with a brave little smile.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ Alice said, and began to walk around the room.

  She started with the windows. It was dark outside, but nobody was going to squeeze in or out of those narrow slits, even if the windows weren’t locked – which they were. Breaking the glass would not help. She didn’t even try the door. Maggie too was taking a walk around the room.

  ‘Look!’

  Her face turned paler than it was already. She was pointing to what looked like a big rectangular flowerbed, at the back of the room, against the wall; except that the flowerbed wasn’t a flowerbed, it was a cage with chicken wire on top to prevent the escape of its sole occupant, an enormous snake, coiled up, its girth as big as a man’s chest. Beside this creature lay a pile of gleaming white bones, possibly human, and a row of grinning teeth. One of the snake’s eyes flickered speculatively.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Maggie’s stomach was heaving again. ‘Why…? What …?’

  ‘I think Ska Higgins has changed the way he recycles his victims,’ Alice said.

  ‘We should say a prayer,’ Maggie said between breaths. ‘A decade of the Rosary?’

  She was on her knees, at the sofa. Alice sank down, more from exhaustion than piety. As Maggie began with the Our Father, a familiar voice could suddenly be heard in the hallway.

  ‘Did your oul’ fella never tell you? Never open the door to effin’ strangers!’

  Alice could hear Primrose Higgins whimpering.

  ‘They said they were from the Legion of Mary, Bruno.’

  ‘My arse, they are,’ Bruno snarled. ‘One of them’s the bitch that killed my little Bruno.’

  A key could be heard in the lock. Maggie was wide-eyed with fear.

  ‘Pray!’ Alice hissed.

  ‘Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners …’

  Bruno Scanlon was dressed in shorts and a loose, flowery shirt. There was no sign of a dog. Just a Glock with a silencer in Bruno’s fist. He sniggered.

  ‘And there I was goin’ to get yez to kneel down, but yez knew what was comin to yez anyway – right?’

  Alice tried to work out the logistics: two metres to his shins, which she could cover in about point-seven-five of a second, versus the speed of a bullet going at several zillionths of a second … Forget it.

  ‘Forget it,’ Bruno snarled as if they were co-wired. ‘Still on your knees, go to the cage.’

  ‘Oh, God help us,’ Maggie whispered.

  ‘You’re making a big mistake, Bruno,’ Alice said as she shuffled across the room until she came to the wire cage. The snake’s tongue darted out. ‘You’ll never get away with this.’

  ‘What do I care?’ Bruno said. ‘It’s all over anyway. You got ten seconds. Which is more than you gave my little boy, you bitch.’

  Alice felt the nose of the gun at the back of her neck. She had seen the result of these executions. Decapitation would not adequately describe them. As she closed her eyes, she heard Maggie’s soft voice.

  ‘The Third Sorrowful Decade: The Crowning with Thorns. Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name …’

  Alice joined in: ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth …’

  Alice braced herself for the impact. Someone had suggested in a forensics paper given at an EU police conference she had attended that a shot in the head was no more painful than a general anaesthetic.

  Provided it was into the head. What about the neck?

  ‘Give us this day our daily bread …’

  Alice blinked in disbelief. From the corner of her eye, Alice saw Bruno sink to his knees. Then his gravelly voice in the response: ‘And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen.’

  Maggie went right on, leading the Hail Marys. Bruno answered.

  When the decade was over, she started again.

  ‘The Fourth Sorrowful Mystery: the Scourging at the Pillar …’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Bruno said, and got up. ‘You don’t think that changes anything, do you?’

  ‘Only that we can go to heaven safe in the knowledge that we’ll meet you there too, dear Bruno,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Dear … what?’ Bruno spat. ‘Me, in heaven? Are you mad?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Maggie replied. ‘You’ve just shown us your spiritual side. Beneath it all, whatever happens, you’re not a bad man, Bruno Scanlon.’

  Alice watched Bruno’s face churn like porridge.

  ‘How did yez find me?’ he snarled. ‘Who else knows I’m here?’

  Alice took a deep breath. ‘Bruno, you may find this hard to believe, but I promised Natalie, your lovely wife, that I would find you and make sure that no harm came to you.’

  She turned her head away, eyes closed, wincing as Bruno bunched his fist.

  ‘Y’expect me to believe that?’ he roared.

  ‘She told me you light church candles for me,’ Alice said. ‘Is that true?’

  Since there was no reply, she opened her eyes. Bruno was ogling her.

  ‘Nats told you that?’

  ‘Yes, she did. She’s afraid any harm may come to you – and so am I. You see, I know that there are worse than you involved in all of this,’ Alice said.

  ‘You killed my son,’ Bruno said, and his eyes were as narrow as the windows.

  ‘Yes, because he tried to shoot me, but I sympathise with you as his father,’ Alice said. ‘I was doing my duty. The truth is the incident had a huge effect on me. I entered a convent because of it.’

  ‘You’re all the same,’ Bruno sneered. ‘You think only of yourselves.’

  ‘But I think of your son too.’

  Bruno stared. ‘Do you pray for his soul?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Suddenly Bruno’s head went down and he was sitting, the Glock dangling lightly from his fingers, for all the world like a vagrant in a doorway. Maggie and Alice edged closer to him.

  ‘I told him, but he wouldn’t listen,’ Bruno said. ‘He was an eejit to do the things he done. If I told him once, I told him a thousand times: there’s only one way this thing is going to end up, son. With you in a hearse of lilies. Did he listen? The only people who made money out of the Toffee Wars were Interflora. Christ! And the way he left me? With no one to trust in the world? Look at me! Holed up here. Terrified. Look at me!’ ‘We can help you,’ Alice said.

  ‘No one can help me,’ Bruno said. ‘No one.’

  ‘Did you not feel better when you prayed with us just now?’ Maggie asked.

  Bruno blinked. ‘Mammy said the rosary every night,’ he whispered.

  ‘Is she still alive?’ Maggie asked.

  Bruno shook his head. ‘Passed away two years ago. She was barely seventy.’

  ‘You must miss her.’

  ‘Till the day I die.’

  ‘She’s looking out for you,’ Maggie said. ‘From up there.’

  Maggie was the confident one, Alice thought. The praying had given her strength. She was the real thing. The real nun thing.

  Bruno was fighting back his tears. ‘I should’na dunnit,’ he
choked. ‘I knew stealin’ from nuns was unlucky. That’s why I lit the candles – to ask for forgiveness.’

  ‘Who are you afraid of?’ Alice asked, and deftly removed the Glock from Bruno’s hands.

  Bruno looked defeated. ‘Of Metro,’ he said. ‘He’s doing stuff like this all the time. I’m just a minnow in a sea of sharks the size of effin’ articulated trucks.’

  Alice made a decision. ‘I can get you into the witness-protection programme,’ she said. ‘We’ll protect you from Metro. You have my word.’

  Dublin Northside

  17 June, 10.45 PM

  Bruno growled, then leaped to his feet, lumbered to the door and opened it. ‘Primrose!’ he shouted. ‘Would you ever bring us a cup of tea?’ He slumped back into an orange chair. ‘Tell me more,’ he said.

  ‘Co-operate with us, not just on this but on your past crimes, and you’ll get a new identity, a new address,’ Alice said. ‘But first we want to know what’s going on.’

  Bruno looked up as Primrose Higgins came in. Fake-tan legs. China teacups, a silver teapot, a plate of home-made biscuits. God, thought Maggie, a house-elf who bakes biscuits!

  ‘Did you kill Meadowfield, Bruno?’ Alice asked as Primrose left the room.

  ‘Me?’ Bruno looked genuinely surprised as Maggie poured his tea. ‘Kill that scumbag? You must be joking. That eejit is the reason I’m in the mess I’m in.’

  ‘Did you kill Metro’s hitman, Brice, yesterday?’ Alice asked. ‘And before you answer, you should know that a screwdriver with your prints all over it was found at the scene.’

  Bruno folded back the collar of his shirt. His neck was marked by a livid scar.

  ‘Brice had me within an inch of Saint Peter and the pearly gates. Then something happened that I never would have believed in a thousand years,’ he said.

  The nuns stared.

  ‘A huge big woman wearing a hat appeared behind him and broke his neck,’ Bruno said in wonder.

  ‘Sister Mercy Superior!’ Maggie gasped.

  ‘I didn’t wait to be introduced,’ Bruno said. ‘I managed to wedge the corpse between us and escaped out the window.’

  Alice sat down slowly. ‘Or Sister Diana,’ she said grimly.

  ‘I’m glad she’s not my sister,’ Bruno said.