As I studied the window I became aware of someone behind me, and when I looked around there was a tall man standing a few metres away. He had his back to me and was gazing up at the window behind the high altar, his swept-back grey hair rolling onto his collar. He was dressed in a long black coat, which was rather unsummery attire even in Ireland, and he struck me as a visitor rather than a parishioner.
I sat in a pew and quickly sketched the elements in the different panels of the window, including four circular panes set into a rose window above the main light. In these were featured a key and a sword together, a jar with a conical lid, a yellow flag iris like the ones I’d seen the previous day, and what looked like a snakeshead fritillary – a purple, bell-shaped flower with chequered markings.
As I sketched, I became aware that the man was still behind me, and on glancing round I saw he was now studying the same window as myself. At close range the crevassed skin of his gaunt face was the colour of the candles on the high altar.
I turned away and thought about it for a few moments. What was he doing here? Hardly scrutinising the window for the same reason I was. I shrugged it off and continued drawing. Next time I checked over my shoulder, he was gone.
I closed my sketchpad and slipped it back in my leather shoulder-bag. I needed to find out more about the window. But that would mean talking to Father Burke.
I called around to Ben Adelola’s house on the way to the hospital, but there was no response when I rang the bell. Before leaving I looked into the window of the front room. There was no sign of life, but he didn’t live alone: there was a bright sunflower-print jacket – about size ten, I estimated – hanging on the back of a chair.
Walking back to the car, I saw Oisín McKeever coming along the path. I hailed him as he was about to turn into his house.
‘Mam’s at work,’ he said croakily. Oisín had his mother’s green eyes and her smile, his father’s dark hair and stocky build, and when his vocal cords eventually settled down he would have his deep voice too.
‘I know. Early shift from today. But it’s you I want to talk to.’ I pointed to Ben Adelola’s house. ‘Do you know the people who live there?’
‘Eh…not really. It’s a man and a woman, I think.’
‘Well, could I ask you a favour? The next time you see the man coming or going, would you ask him to contact me?’
Oisín scratched his head and grimaced. ‘I don’t really know him…’
‘OK. How about ringing me if he comes home – would you do that?’
‘Sure.’
‘Thanks. By the way, what do you think of Daisy’s new boyfriend? He’s got a brilliant motorbike, hasn’t he?’
‘Yeah. It’s a Ducati 999. Twin-cylinder Testastretta engine, 140 horsepower. He’s really mean about it, though; he wouldn’t even let me sit on it.’
‘I saw Daisy on it yesterday.’
Oisín honked with laughter. ‘Yeah, she was mad at him afterwards because her arms and legs were sore from being sprayed with pebbles, and there were millions of flies stuck in her hair.’
‘She didn’t even have a crash helmet on – that was pretty reckless.’
‘Yeah, stupid. I said he should have made sure she had one and that you should always wear leathers on a bike like that, it was so uncool not to. She got annoyed with me at first, but then she asked me not to tell Mam what had happened. And this morning she told him to use his car when he was collecting her.’
‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Not as good as her telling him to scram – that’s what I’d like her to do.’
‘You don’t like him much, do you?’
‘No. Because I don’t think he likes Daisy the way she likes him. I think he’s only going out with her because of how it makes him look.’
It was an interesting insight into Byrne’s character.
Terry Johnston was the only patient in the ICU. A respirator was supplying air through a tube in his mouth, a line ran into the back of his hand from a drip-bag; the electrodes bristling on his chest, the BP cuff on his arm and a sensor attached to his forefinger were all linked to the vital-functions monitor on a bracket on the wall behind him. His eyes were closed, his face flushed and fixed in an expression of discomfort, as though he had been wincing in pain at the moment he fell unconscious.
I sat in a chair beside the bed, feeling a bit ridiculous in my mask and gown and latex gloves. He was hardly going to infect me. But then I noticed the sores on his neck and shoulders. It looked like he’d been sprayed with shotgun pellets and each entry wound had become infected. The pustules were red around the edges but much darker in the middle. God’s tokens, I thought. At the time of the Black Death, red ulcers appearing on the body were regarded as an even deadlier sign than the swellings in the lymph nodes – the buboes. In later outbreaks they became known as ‘God’s tokens’. According to some folklorists – but others disputed this – they were the source of the rosy ring in the children’s rhyme that Terry himself had recited on Friday night. But more often, the chroniclers of the time said that the plague pustules reminded them of lentils. And as I peered at the sores, I could see that the centre of each one was a dark-green bulb of pus.
But I wasn’t qualified to give a medical opinion and I hadn’t come here to form one. ‘Hi, Terry,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d drop in and see how you were doing. Did Gayle get to tell you about the statue? It’s quite something…’
I stayed with him for another half-hour, talking about anything that might be of interest to him. Fran always maintained that unconscious patients should be brought into conversations around them, on the basis that their hearing might still function occasionally, and that those with a chance of recovery could be stimulated in this way.
When I left the hospital, it was with a certain amount of relief that I had the rest of the day to myself. I would relish a chance to chill out, read the Sunday papers, maybe have a coffee with my mother and poke about in the flowerbeds with her later in the day. I also had a new Beth Nielsen Chapman album to listen to, but I would save that until I was preparing my evening meal, which I decided was going to be a mushroom risotto.
I was lying flat, flipping through a supplement, when Father Burke rang, returning a message I had left on his answerphone after Mass.
‘Thanks for getting back to me, Father. I was wondering if you still have records of the building of St Patrick’s? I’m interested in the stained-glass window of Our Lady in particular. I assume it was installed at that time.’
‘Yes, in or around 1900. We still have the files – in the form of accounts, mostly. I believe that all the funding for that window came from a single benefactress – a Miss Katherine Duignan. She was the last living representative of an old Castleboyne family of that name.’
‘How would the theme for the window have been decided?’
‘I suppose the priests of the parish and the church-building committee would have proposed the subject and then provided what they could of the shrine’s history to the stained-glass studio. An artist there presumably made a drawing or painting that was sent for their approval.’
‘But the benefactress might have had a say too.’
‘Possibly. But in what aspect, I can’t imagine.’
‘Are there any letters or drawings in the files to do with its design?’
‘I’m not sure, but I’ll go and dig out what information I can for you.’
I wondered if this was the prelude to a bit of bartering and decided to nip it in the bud. ‘I appreciate your help. And by the way, Father, the National Museum will be collecting the statue of the Virgin tomorrow and bringing it to Dublin. After that, a woman called Muriel Blunden will be in charge of it and any negotiations about its future will have to be done through her.’
‘Going to Dublin so soon, eh? That’s disappointing.’
I felt he was implying I hadn’t done enough to hold on to the statue. ‘It’s the law, I’m afraid.’
‘Hmm.
Then it’s time we went looking elsewhere for a solution.’
‘As in political interference?’
‘No. As in divine intervention.’
Father Burke wasn’t the only one to invoke divine intervention that day. Coming up to six o’clock, I was slicing mushrooms for the risotto when Cora Gavin rang to say that Terry was in trouble. Septicaemia had set in, his blood pressure was on the floor and his kidneys weren’t functioning properly, so he had been hooked up to a dialysis machine. If they could identify whatever was producing the toxins in his blood, then there was an outside chance it could be treated. In the meantime the prognosis was poor, and he was facing the prospect of multiple organ failure.
‘Can anything be done? Is there a specialist we could call on?’
‘No. There’s nothing anyone else would do right now that we haven’t done or considered ourselves. You can count on that.’
‘Is there nothing I can do to help?’
‘No luck with contacting any of his relatives?’
‘Not so far, I’m afraid.’
‘Then we’ll have to inform the Gardaí. See if they can track them down.’
‘And you’re sure there’s nothing else I can do?’
‘You could pray,’ she said.
Chapter Thirteen
Shortly after 8.00 a.m. on Monday, I was getting dressed after my shower when I received a call from a ward Sister at the hospital. Terry Johnston’s condition was critical. The staff who had been caring for him were about to have a case conference and were anxious that I be there to hear the outcome: we still hadn’t been able to track down his family, and I was the closest contact they could find. I gulped down a cup of tea and drove to St Loman’s, where I sat in a small waiting room beside the ICU after leaving word at the nurses’ station that I had arrived.
About ten minutes later Cora Gavin entered the room, with a man whose eyes glittered like obsidian chips and whose black beard looked as if it had been chiselled off an Assyrian statue.
‘Illaun, I think you’ve already had some contact with my colleague, Hadi Abdulmalik,’ Cora said by way of introduction.
Abdulmalik’s handshake was neutral, neither firm nor soft. ‘How do you do?’ he said politely, then made room for Cora as he leaned back against the door of the waiting room.
Cora sat down beside me, unsmiling. ‘I’m afraid Mr Johnston’s condition has deteriorated even further since last night. Septic shock has set in…’ She looked up at her colleague.
Abdulmalik’s eyes were fixed on a window set high in the opposite wall. ‘His heart, lungs, liver and kidneys have all been damaged by the bacterial toxins in his bloodstream. Multiple organ failure is under way and irreversible. Renal function is being carried out by machine, and he cannot breathe without the aid of the respirator. The sepsis has also affected cerebral activity, and he is unlikely to regain consciousness, even when we discontinue sedation.’ His gaze never wavered as he recited the ominous list.
‘So if you take him off the respirator and dialysis he’s going to die, is that what you mean?’ I asked Cora.
‘That’s what will happen, yes,’ she replied. ‘But he’s not going to recover one way or the other.’
‘And normally you would seek agreement from the patient’s next of kin?’
‘Yes. And, in fact, he had a visitor yesterday morning. The nurse on duty said she thought he had an English accent. But we don’t know who he was, and he hasn’t returned. We have no idea what Mr Johnston’s religious beliefs were, if any, but he has received visits from representatives of both Christian denominations in the town.’
There was silence. I became aware that the two doctors were waiting for me to give my consent to their decision, even though they were probably legally entitled to implement it anyway. But out of respect to their patient, they wanted to observe some semblance of the proper formalities.
I knew, as most first-borns of families do, that someday I might have to face this situation in relation to one of my parents, and had decided that it was probably going to be my father. But Terry Johnston’s case was entirely different. It was unexpected. He was unrelated. I hardly knew him. He wasn’t much older than me. What gave me the right to make the decision about ending his life? If you looked deeper into it, there was even a question mark over how appropriate it was for me, his employer, to be involved in the decision, especially if it were proved that he had contracted the infection while in my employment.
And could they be absolutely sure he wouldn’t recover, or that something they hadn’t tried yet would cure him? Couldn’t they wait another day or two? What difference would it make?
Probably none. And that was the point. I knew the situation was hopeless.
‘I’d like to be with him,’ I said.
They looked at each other.
Cora took my hand in hers. ‘Yes. That would be quite all right. Just give us a little while to make him comfortable… What is it, Illaun?’ I had squeezed Cora’s hand as a thought occurred to me.
‘If he’s suffering from septic shock, could it be that he contracted the septicaemic version of plague?’ Septicaemic plague was the third and most rapidly lethal manifestation of the same illness.
‘No, it’s not plague in any shape or form,’ said Abdulmalik.
‘The infection is still puzzling us,’ said Cora. ‘But we know why it’s had such a catastrophic effect. Mr Johnston—’ Cora’s pager went off. She took it from her pocket and checked it, then picked up a phone on the wall and rang an extension.
‘Cardiac arrest in A&E,’ she said to Abdulmalik, putting the phone back in its cradle. She looked at me. ‘I’ll have a nurse let you know when you can go in to Mr Johnston. We’ll talk to you again as soon as we’ve dealt with this emergency.’
Terry looked peacefully asleep, his arms by his sides, his face less tortured than it had seemed the previous day. He was in a quiet room on his own. All the tubing and lines had been removed from his face and hands. The hiss and click of the respirator was absent. Then I noticed his own breathing. It was shallow and the breaths were widely separated, not capable of bringing enough oxygenated blood to his brain to keep him conscious or to prevent damage.
The only other item in the room, apart from a chair, was a yellow clinical-waste container for the disposal of my protective clothing.
I sat down and placed my hand on his. ‘Terry,’ I said softly. ‘I don’t know if you can hear me. I’m sorry about what happened. And I’m not sure what you meant the other night, but your own…diagnosis was correct. It wasn’t bubonic plague that got you.’ It was hardly of any comfort to a dying man to know what hadn’t killed him, but I felt it was important somehow to say it because of the peculiar horror that plague holds in the race memory.
Terry took another breath, but it was only discernible because I had my hand near the side of his chest. The pustules on his neck had darkened even more. I looked at his face and saw that there were a number of smaller spots, the size and colour of poppy seeds, on his forehead. As I studied them, one seemed to grow larger until it was the size of a match-head. Then it spilled onto his skin. There was blood coming from his pores.
I found a tissue in my bag and dabbed the blood away. By the time I had finished mopping it up, Terry had only breathed once. It couldn’t be long now.
I dropped the bloody tissue into the waste container, amazed at how the instinct to care had overcome my fear of contamination.
After what seemed like an age Terry breathed again, but this time the exhalation seemed to go on longer than before and I knew he had just taken his last breath. Immediately following that, like a blush in rewind, the colour drained from his face. His heart was no longer pumping. I made the sign of the cross and said a short prayer, wishing his soul to heaven.
‘The problem was that we seemed to be dealing with several diseases at once,’ said Cora. She and I were sitting together in the waiting room. I’d been at the hospital for nearly three hours now.
&nb
sp; Abdulmalik, who had assumed his position leaning back against the door, continued. ‘His chest X-rays showed a severe lung infection, which we diagnosed as bacterial pneumonia, but then his blood and sputum began to show evidence of what we call opportunistic infections, and a bronchoscopy helped us identify pneumocystosis.’
‘Which is?’
‘A fungal infection of the lungs,’ said Abdulmalik. ‘Sometimes called PCP.’
‘Mostly found in immuno-compromised individuals,’ added Cora.
Fran had been right. ‘You mean Terry Johnston died of Aids?’
‘Yes, Illaun. But what we have to pin down is what made it go into meltdown mode in a few days.’
I sat there, letting the news sink in. There were several things I didn’t understand. But where to start? ‘What about the bleeding? I wiped blood from his face in there.’
They looked at each other. Abdulmalik answered. ‘There was internal bleeding and bleeding into the skin. Septicaemia can damage blood vessels as well.’
‘And the sores?’
‘Pustular lesions. We’re not sure what was causing them. But with HIV and Aids you can expect skin disorders. We’ve taken samples of the purulent matter and we’re waiting to see what we can cultivate from it.’
‘I’d be very, very interested to know what that might be.’
‘Always the curious one, Illaun, eh?’ A trait remembered from our schooldays.
‘There were two of us, I think.’
A faint hint of a smile played around Cora’s mouth.
‘At least we know it’s not plague,’ said Abdulmalik.
I felt my cheeks reddening. ‘No – that’s not strictly true. You know it’s not bubonic plague, but it could be something…far worse.’ I realised I was echoing Terry’s words.
The Lazarus Bell, an Irish Murder Mystery Page 9