Begging to Die

by Graham Masterton

  ‘You can’t say that! He always watches the TV! He will hear my name! He will kill me!’

  ‘Who are you talking about, Andrei? Who always watches the TV? You’re not talking about Lupul, are you?’

  Andrei didn’t answer that, but abruptly stood up, so that his chair tipped backwards with a clatter. Detective Markey stood up, too, and then Detective Murrish, followed by Katie and Detective Inspector Mulliken. Murtagh remained seated in the corner, biting his thumbnail.

  ‘Andrei, sit down,’ Katie told him, in her calmest tone – the same tone she used when Barney was getting overexcited. ‘Just sit down, and we can talk this over a little more.’

  Andrei was breathing hard, and he kept glancing towards the door.

  ‘Andrei… we don’t have to give your name to the TV people. But you’ve just admitted that you do know Lupul, don’t you? All we need to know from you is where we can find him. He never has to know that it was you who told us.’

  Andrei stayed where he was, still breathing hard. Then without any warning he lunged towards the door. Detective Murrish was the nearest to him, because she had been sitting right at the end of the table. She stuck out her foot and tripped him up, and he fell sideways on to the floor, hitting his head against the skirting board, but not before he had snatched at her sleeve and pulled her down on top of him.

  He was kicking and struggling, but Detective Murrish gripped him by the throat with her left hand and held his left shoulder against the floor with her right. Detective Markey came around the end of the table and snatched at his ankles to pin him down even further and shouted, ‘That’s it, sham! Stop that fecking kicking, will you?’

  Andrei’s anorak had flapped open, and with his right hand he reached for his belt buckle. He tugged at it, and out came a knife with a short double-edged blade.

  ‘Bedelia, watch out!’ Katie shouted, and Detective Markey scrambled forward and made a grab for Andrei’s arm. But he was too late to stop Andrei from stabbing Detective Murrish straight in the left eye, so forcefully that Katie heard a sharp crunch, and when Detective Murrish fell backwards against the wall, the knife stayed embedded in her eye socket, with the decorative buckle-shaped handle sticking out of it.

  ‘Ambulance! Now!’ snapped Katie. She reached across to the panic button beside the table and hit it hard with the heel of her hand. ‘And drag this bastard out of the way!’

  Detective Inspector Mulliken called 112, while Detective Markey gripped Andrei by his shoulders, lifted him up a little, and then banged his head hard against the floor. He did that three times before Detective Inspector Mulliken came around and said, ‘That’ll do, Nicholas. Jesus Christ. Let’s get him over here.’

  Detective Murrish was lying on her back, shivering and twitching. Blood was sliding from the side of her eye into her ear. She reached up to pull the knife out of her eye socket, but Katie knelt down beside her and grasped her cuff and said, ‘No, Bedelia. No. I know it probably feels like hell itself and I can understand how much it’s hurting but wait until a doctor can take it out for you.’

  The door to the interview room burst open and two uniformed gardaí came in. They looked down at Detective Murrish and one of them said, ‘Holy Mother of God, how did that happen?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how,’ said Katie. ‘Just get this scummer out of here, lock him up and charge him with assault causing serious harm. Don’t forget to caution him.’

  The two gardaí took an arm each and heaved Andrei on to his feet. One of them handcuffed him, while the other recited his rights. As he was frogmarched past Katie towards the door, he twisted his head around and panted, ‘I tell you! I never knew no Lupul! You don’t say that on TV!’

  ‘Get him out of my sight,’ said Katie, without looking up. She was holding both of Detective Murrish’s hands and shushing her. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. The ambulance will be here in just a minute and I’ll be coming with you to the hospital.’

  Detective Murrish was in deep shock now. Her right eye was closed and she was trembling from head to foot. Katie prayed that her injury wasn’t more serious than being blinded in one eye, but the knife blade was very short and hopefully it hadn’t penetrated her brain.

  Detective Inspector Mulliken came and hunkered down beside her.

  ‘Oh, Jesus, the poor girl. What a desperate thing to happen to her. How in the name of God did that fellow manage to fetch a knife into the station? Wasn’t he searched, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘He was of course,’ said Detective Markey. His face was ashen and he sounded as if he had suddenly developed a bad cold. ‘He was given the once-over with the security wand all right, and he was patted down, too, but his belt buckle showed up as nothing more than a belt buckle.

  He coughed, and coughed, and then he said, ‘The fellow was only fetched in for questioning, after all. It was not like he’d been arrested for assault or public disorder.’

  Katie kept hold of Detective Murrish’s hands. She prayed that some of the compassion she was feeling for her would help to keep her warm.

  22

  Katie held Detective Murrish’s hand in the ambulance and stayed with her right up until she was taken into the operating theatre. Detective Murrish whimpered two or three times, and murmured, ‘Mammy, is that you, Mammy?’ but for most of the time she remained unconscious.

  When Katie came back down to the hospital’s reception area, she found Chief Superintendent O’Kane waiting for her. He was wearing a long black overcoat, and underneath he was wearing a dark grey suit and a black tie.

  ‘I came here as soon as I heard,’ he said. ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’ll lose the sight of her eye, I’m sad to say. I have my fingers crossed that it’s not more serious than that.’

  ‘I’ve already rung her parents. They live in Mayo but they’re on their way. Robert said that your man pulled a knife out of his belt buckle.’

  Katie nodded. ‘I’ve seen them a few times before, those belt-buckle knives. But I kind of assumed that he’d been thoroughly searched, do you know?’

  They sat down next to a tired-looking potted palm. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to be holding an official inquiry,’ said Brendan. ‘I’ll be insisting, too, that anyone brought into the station from now on in connection with a crime will have to be rigorously screened. It won’t matter if they’re a suspect or if they’re only brought in for questioning. That young woman’s career has been ended and I never want anything like that to happen at Anglesea Street again – not while I’m in charge, anyway.’

  He looked around, and then he looked at his watch. ‘Are you going to be staying here or do you want a lift back to the station?’

  ‘I’ll be staying here for a while. I’m hoping to see Conor.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Your fiancé. How’s he getting on?’

  ‘Not too well, to be truthful with you, sir. He was fierce badly beaten and he’s going to need two or three operations on his face. He’s a bit depressed about it, as you can imagine.’

  ‘He was beaten? I thought I overheard Michael Pearse saying something about that.’

  ‘He’s a pet detective – you know, he finds lost and stolen dogs and all that. But he’s also something of an activist for animals’ rights. Well – a fanatical activist for animals’ rights. He was investigating a puppy farm up at Ballynahina and they caught him poking around on their property.’

  ‘And they beat him that bad?’

  Katie nodded. ‘Yes, sir. They beat him that bad.’

  ‘Katie – I’ve said it before – I’m off duty right now and when we’re alone together you don’t have to call me “sir”. As a matter of fact, I was over at St Michael’s Cemetery laying some flowers on my late wife’s grave when Robert rang me.’

  ‘Oh. I’m pure sorry. I didn’t know.’

  ‘There’s nothing for you to be sorry about. It’s something I don’t choose to talk about all that much.’

  ‘Were you married long?’

  ‘Six-and-
a-half years, that’s all. Radha, her name was. You read about other women dying of breast cancer when they’re young, but you never imagine that your own wife is going to be taken from you before she’s thirty-five.’

  ‘Any children?’

  Brendan shook his head. ‘She wanted to be a barrister. She’d completed her Kings Inn training and passed her BL degree, but we decided to wait until she’d finished her year of devilling before we thought about having a child.’

  He looked away. Katie could tell that he wasn’t looking at the people coming in and out of the hospital doors, but at something that he could remember. Radha, perhaps, walking between an avenue of summer trees.

  ‘She was diagnosed with the cancer on June the ninth. She had all the chemotherapy but she passed away on December the eighth. We didn’t even have the chance to spend a last Christmas together.’

  He looked back at her. She didn’t know what to say to him. She had lost Paul and she had lost John, as well as baby Seamus, and she knew that however well-meant they were, words of condolence were never enough. Each loss was too personal, and too different.

  He was silent for a few moments, and then he said, ‘So—’ in a different tone of voice altogether, ‘—are you taking any action against whoever it was who beat up your fiancé? Are you going to charge them?’

  ‘I am now,’ said Katie, and she told him about Conor’s probation, and why she had waited until now to search Foggy Fields for evidence.

  ‘I hope you find the bastard,’ said Brendan. ‘I hope you find him and charge him and I hope that he gets what’s coming to him.’

  They talked for another ten minutes, before Conor’s nurse came down to tell her that she could come up to his room and see him.

  ‘Good luck, then,’ said Brendan, as they both stood up. ‘Let me know how it goes tomorrow with the McQuaides.’

  There was an awkward pause, in which Katie felt that Brendan was tempted to kiss her. This was the first time she had talked to him intimately since his appointment, and she could feel the same attraction that she had first felt for him when they were training at Templemore. She could almost believe that all the years that had passed since then had never happened, except that they were both much more experienced now, and mature, and both bruised by tragedy.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning, sir,’ she said, and gave him one of her tight, professional smiles.

  He said nothing, but he stayed where he was as she walked across the reception area towards the lifts, and when she stepped inside the lift and turned around, she could see that he was still standing there watching her.

  *

  Conor was sitting up in his armchair in his dark blue dressing gown, watching television. He switched it off as soon as Katie knocked and came in through the door. His face was much less swollen now, although his bruises had become rainbow-coloured, so that he looked as if he were wearing a Chinese carnival mask.

  ‘I didn’t expect you until later,’ he said. ‘And even then I wasn’t sure that you’d have the time to come.’

  She sat down on the bed next to him. ‘There’s been a fierce nasty incident, that’s why I’m here at the hospital. Although I was planning to come and see you before I went home.’

  She told him how Andrei the coffin-maker had been brought in for questioning and how Detective Murrish had been stabbed in the eye.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘And she’s such a sweet girl.’

  ‘Well, we’re all praying for her.’

  Next she told him that she was all set to go up to Foggy Fields tomorrow morning to question the McQuaide sisters about his beating, as well as searching their puppy farm.

  ‘I decided it was worth the risk, Con. The damage that was done to you, it’s changed your life, and I can’t see that any judge is going to give you a hard time for breaking the conditions of your parole.’

  Conor grimaced. ‘To be honest with you, Katie, I truly don’t care any more. There’s no punishment that could be worse than this. I’d happily serve ten years in prison if I had a choice between that and being a eunuch.’

  ‘Haven’t I told you not to use that word?’

  ‘Why not? It’s what I am. And anyway, I’ve come to a decision.’

  He paused, and she could see his Adam’s apple rising and falling as if he were trying to keep his emotions under control. She reached over and laid her hand on his arm.

  ‘It’s over, Katie,’ he said. ‘It has to be over. I came to you as a man and I proposed to you as a man but now I’m no longer a man. I don’t want you coming to see me again because I can never be the same Conor Ó Máille that I was when you fell in love with me.’

  ‘Con… you mustn’t talk like this. It’s early days yet. You’re still getting over a major operation and you have more operations to go through. And you heard what Mr Sandhu said… there are plenty of prescriptions that can help you.’

  ‘Prescriptions! I want to be able to make love to you because you turn me on, not because I’ve swallowed some little blue pill from Ringaskiddy. No, Katie, it’s not going to work. Come on – you know as well as I do that it’s not going to work. And I know we never talked about having a child together, but there’s no chance of that now, is there? You need a man, not me.’

  ‘You’re still a man, Con, no matter what you say. Are you trying to tell me that some soldier who got blown up and suffered the same injuries as you, or worse, that he’s not a man? Besides, I can’t stop seeing you if I’m going to be charging the fellow who assaulted you, and the McQuaide sisters for inciting him, and for running an illegal puppy farm. I’ll have to interview you, for a witness statement.’

  Conor was silent for a long time, just looking at Katie with hurt in his eyes. ‘Wait till you see those breeding bitches,’ he said at last. ‘Filthy dirty, all shut up in boxes, their coats thick with fleas. They’ve never known anything all of their lives but misery.’

  ‘I know, darling, and I’m going to try to do something about it. I want to make sure that you haven’t made your sacrifice for nothing.’

  There was another long silence between them, and then Conor said, ‘Do you know what they’ve told me? When they operate on my face, they’ll have to shave off my beard.’

  *

  Katie stayed with Conor until it was suppertime. She kissed him gently, and said, ‘Listen… concentrate on getting yourself well. You’ll be thinking differently when you’re better, I promise you. I love you.’

  Conor took a breath as if he were about to say something, but then he didn’t. As she went out of the door, though, he raised the tips of his fingers to his lips and blew her a kiss. She was tempted to go back and kiss him again, but at that moment his nurse came bustling along the corridor with the supper menu, and said, ‘Oh, hallo there, ma’am! How’re you coming on?’

  Katie took one last look at Conor and then she went to see if Detective Murrish had come out of the operating theatre yet.

  She found her surgeon, Mr David McGrath, by the nurses’ station. He was deep in serious conversation with one of the nursing managers and two of the staff nurses. For a consultant ophthalmology surgeon he looked surprisingly youthful, but a little old-school, too. He was concave-chested and round-shouldered, with large black-framed spectacles and hair parted in the centre. He reminded Katie of a young Woody Allen.

  ‘Ah, Detective Superintendent Maguire,’ he said, as she walked up to him. ‘I was on my way to find you.’

  ‘How’s Bedelia?’ asked Katie.

  ‘Still under anaesthetic, of course. We’ve extricated the knife blade from her orbit, and we’ve sutured the upper and lower eyelids. Sadly her eye was eviscerated, but fortunately the point of the blade didn’t penetrate any further than the sphenoid bone, and even more fortunately we were able to suture the scleral shell, and most of the extraocular muscles were left intact.’

  ‘That sounds grand altogether. What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that we can fit her with an ocular prosthetic, and
that her prosthetic will have motility.’

  ‘You’re talking about a glass eye?’

  ‘That’s what they’re popularly known as. Actually, most of them are made of acrylic. But her prosthetic eye will move in harmony with her real eye, so that nobody will be able to tell that she’s lost it. It’ll take her a little time to get used to monocular vision, but we have a brilliant ophthalmology team here, as well as counsellors, and they’ll do everything they can to help her to adapt.’

  ‘Thanks a million, doctor,’ Katie told him. She was relieved, because she could imagine that when Detective Murrish recovered she might still be able to use her on her team. She would probably be restricted to desk work, at least to begin with, but she was a clever and sophisticated detective, and Katie would be sorry if she didn’t come back to Anglesea Street. That was supposing that she had the nerve to come back, after being stabbed and half-blinded.

  Katie looked up at the clock. With any luck, Dr Mary Kelley might still be down in the morgue. Katie knew that she often worked very late, especially when she was carrying out post mortems on homicide victims. Dr Kelley was keenly aware that the sooner the cause of death could be established, the sooner the Garda could identify the killers and start to build a case against them.

  ‘The second we breathe our last, it’s frightening how quickly we start to decay,’ she had once said to Katie. ‘It’s like God is in a hurry to disassemble us, so that he can use our atoms to make new people. So if we want to find out how somebody has passed away, we need to get our skates on, before God erases all the evidence.’

  *

  She had already pressed the button for the lift when she heard somebody calling her name. She turned around and saw Dr Ryan O’Keefe waving to her.

  Katie had first met Dr O’Keefe when she was a young garda in Crosshaven, and a teenager had been pulled from the water after his dinghy had capsized. Dr O’Keefe had been yachting there, and had given the teenager CPR, which had saved his life. After that, Katie and Dr O’Keefe had found that their paths had crossed repeatedly, usually after some drowning or stabbing or road accident, and they had become affectionate if infrequent friends. They had seen less of each other since Katie had been promoted to Detective Superintendent, but Katie thought that he hadn’t changed. Still big and bluff and blond and striding along as if he were crossing the deck of a ship in a heavy swell.