Katie stayed at St Dunstan’s hall for another two hours, introducing herself to the rough sleepers one after another and making sure they were settled. Their belongings all arrived, and the bags were set down by the main doorway so that they could pick out their own. The two dog owners were shown pictures of their dogs in the Garda kennels, and reassured that they would be well taken care of, and given any veterinary treatment if they needed it, like worming or injections.
By one-thirty in the morning, after the hungry had been fed, and everybody had visited the toilet and washed, the lights were lowered, and the hall fell quiet, except for snoring and the mumbling of one man who was endlessly repeating ‘The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water’ by W.B. Yeats, over and over again.
Katie stood with Kyna by the door, ready to leave.
‘How’s Conor?’ asked Kyna. ‘He’s back home now, is he?’
Katie gave her a non-committal shrug. ‘Yes, and he’s mending all right. But being beaten up like that, it did a lot to dent his self- confidence. And, well—’
She was tempted to tell Kyna that Conor was now having to face up to being celibate, and so was she, but she was interrupted by one of the sleepers who had heard ‘The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water’ more times than he could tolerate.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the disciples, will you shut your bake about them old men with their fecking thorny knees! I’m trying to get some fecking shut-eye here!’
*
When she arrived home at Carrig View, Conor was deeply asleep and she knew that he was on painkillers so she didn’t try to disturb him. Only Barney was awake and he sat up in his basket in the kitchen when she came in to pour herself a glass of water. They looked at each other, Katie and Barney, and Katie was sure that she could see sympathy in Barney’s eyes, if not understanding, and this was one time when she really wished that dogs could talk.
43
The first person Katie called into her office the next morning was Detective Cailin Walsh. She came in wearing a red tartan tweed suit with a very short skirt, thick brown tights and brown leather boots. Katie thought she looked more like a young Sinéad O’Connor than ever.
‘So – how did it go with your ambulance driver?’ she asked her.
‘Fan-tas-tic! We got along together like a house on fire. Sorry – that wasn’t exactly the most tasteful way of putting it, was it?’
‘Not to worry, Cailin. Did you manage to get much out of him about Brianna Cusack?’
‘I did, yes. Almost too much. About the only thing he didn’t tell me about her was her bra size. Brianna’s not been herself lately, that’s what Darragh told me. It seems like her boyfriend’s a gambling addict and they’re sore strapped for cash. She used to be chatting all the time but now she barely speaks to him at all.’
‘Anything else?’
‘You’re not joking. He and Brianna have lost seven of the patients that they’ve been sent to pick up, and that’s only since the start of the year.’
‘Seven? Mother of God.’
‘Well, right. That’s what I thought. And according to Darragh that’s more than they lost in the whole of the past eighteen months. And on top of that it’s more than all the rest of the Southside ambulance crews have lost this year put together.’
‘When you say they’ve lost them – you mean they passed away in between the time Darragh and Brianna picked them up and the time they arrived at the emergency room?’
‘That’s it, yes, exactly. And of course it’s during that time that they were in Brianna’s care and nobody else’s.’
‘Have the ambulance service themselves not looked into it?’
‘Darragh says all seven died of natural causes, so there’s been no need for the coroner to take it any further.’
Katie sat back in her chair and frowned. ‘So what in the name of God is going on here, do you think? Brianna’s our most obvious suspect in the murder of Saoirse Duffy, so if she’s capable of murdering one patient, perhaps it’s conceivable that she did for all those other patients, too – or some of them, anyway. But then – if the coroner’s satisfied that they all died a natural death – maybe she didn’t. Maybe it’s just bad luck.’
‘Seven dead in less than six weeks? That’s not just bad luck, ma’am, that’s desperate bad luck. That’s the kind of luck I have with scratch cards.’
‘Yes, but what would her motive be, always supposing she’s not just a homicidal psychopath? Your new friend Darragh’s told you she’s broke, so lack of money could be a motive – but how do you make money out of accident victims dying in your ambulance? You can’t set up some sort of life insurance scam because you’ve no way of knowing who they’re going to be, have you, before you’re called out to pick them up. They’re probably unconscious or in pain, so it’s not likely that you can persuade them to ring up their solicitors to change their wills. I suppose you could threaten them with not reviving them unless they hand over their bank account details, and then not revive them. But even at the best of times I can’t remember my bank account details off the top of my head – let alone if I had to do it after I was run over by a bus or had a heart attack or I’d been drowning in the Lee.’
‘Couldn’t we track her ambulance for a week or so, every time she gets called out? Then we could assess the victims she picks up, to see how seriously they’d been injured, and what the odds are on them dying before they make it to the emergency room.’
‘That’s not such a bad idea in principle, Cailin, but how are we going to carry out examinations like that without her noticing, and without her realizing that she’s being followed wherever she goes? And how are we going to know what she’s doing inside her ambulance on its way to hospital? Even if her patients haven’t been dying of natural causes, maybe Brianna can make it appear as if they did. She’s an advanced paramedic, after all.’
At that moment, Detective Inspector Mulliken and Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán knocked at Katie’s door, and Katie beckoned them in.
Kyna tapped her own cheek in the same spot as Katie’s plaster, and said, ‘How’s the walking wounded?’
‘I’m grand altogether, thanks, Kyna. It’s almost healed up already. I might end up with a twinchy scar there, but I reckon that’ll only make me look tougher, like, do you know what I mean?’
She turned to Detective Walsh. ‘Cailin – tell DI Mulliken and DS Ni Nuallán everything that Darragh the ambulance driver told you. Maybe they can come up with some ideas.’
Detective Inspector Mulliken and Kyna listened while Detective Walsh recounted the conversation that she and Darragh had shared in Flannery’s. Then Detective Inspector Mulliken said, ‘You’re right, of course, ma’am. There’s no way that we could examine this Brianna’s patients before she took them off to hospital, not without her being aware of it, and then of course she’d only make sure that they were still alive and kicking when they got there.’
‘That’s right,’ said Katie. ‘Darragh’s busy driving, so apart from Brianna herself, there’s only one person who can tell us what goes on inside that ambulance, and that’s her patient. But… what if her patient wasn’t really sick or injured or unconscious, but was only putting it on?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean what if the “patient” was really one of us?’
‘You took the words right out of my mouth there, ma’am,’ said Kyna. ‘I could be a patient, couldn’t I? I could easy make it look like I’d had an accident – maybe fainted and fallen down the escalator in Merchants Quay shopping centre or something like that. I was always good at drama when I was at school. I won a prize for when I played Estragon in Waiting for Godot. “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!”’
Katie said, ‘It could be fierce risky, Kyna. We don’t know the full details of how the other seven patients died, but Saoirse Duffy was injected with a lethal overdose of fentanyl, wasn’t she? The same could happen to you before you had the chance to say ouc
h.’
‘Ah, but Saoirse Duffy wasn’t awake and alert, was she? She was heavily sedated and I don’t suppose for a moment that she was trained in Wing Chun like me.’
‘Oh yes, the Wing Chun,’ said Katie, and couldn’t help smiling. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget you knocking out that gobdaw who grabbed that waitress’s bottom in O’Brien’s sandwich bar. For starters, though, we’ll need the Chief Ambulance Officer to know what we’re up to, so that we can be sure that it’s Darragh and Brianna they dispatch to pick you up, and not some other crew. What do you think, Tony?’
‘That shouldn’t be too much of a problem, ma’am. He’s the Area Operations Manager as well as the Chief Ambulance Officer and I’m sure I can cook up some story so that he’ll co-operate. Leave it to me so.’
‘Do you know when Darragh and Brianna are next on duty?’ Katie asked Detective Walsh.
‘Darragh said they have two evening shifts coming up – one tonight and one tomorrow night – six till two in the morning – then they have the weekend off.’
‘In that case we could go for it tonight. Merchants Quay closes at six. But Brown Thomas is open till seven and you could make out that you’ve tripped on their escalator.’
‘This Brianna’s bound to check your vital signs, though, isn’t she?’ said Detective Inspector Mulliken. ‘Wouldn’t she be suspicious if they’re normal?’
‘That’s one thing about Wing Chun,’ Kyna told him. ‘They teach you to slow your heart rate right down. You may look like you’re dancing the fandango, but all the time your heart’s beating slow so that you’re calm and calculating and you know exactly where you’re going to hit your opponent next, so as you can make the maximum impact.’
‘Okay, grand, let’s go for it, then,’ said Katie. ‘Tony – if you can fix things up with the ambulance chief and then have a word with the manager at Brown Thomas to explain what we’re planning, we’ll meet back here at seventeen hundred.’
When Detective Inspector Mulliken and Detective Walsh had left, Katie went up to Kyna and took hold of both of her hands.
‘You don’t have to do this, you know. It’s possible that this Brianna’s innocent, and totally harmless, but my gut feeling about her is that she’s pure dangerous, and clever with it.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. You know that I can take care of myself.’
Katie looked over her shoulder to make sure that Moirin’s door was closed, and then kissed Kyna on the lips.
‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ said Kyna. ‘Is it something between you and Conor?’
‘Nothing that the future won’t sort out.’
‘You know what the Dalai Lama said. “There’s only two days in the year when nothing can be done, yesterday and tomorrow.”’
‘The Dalai Lama doesn’t have a dog detective from Limerick for a lover.’
*
At noon, just as Katie was buttoning up her coat to go out, Bill Phinner rang her.
‘Nothing much to report, ma’am, I’m sorry to tell you. We found nothing on those jerrycans that were dumped in the back garden at Alexandra Road. No fingerprints, no DNA. They were bought from Halfords at Mahon Retail Park on Tuesday morning. The barcodes told us that. Nobody else bought jerry cans that morning, but whoever bought them paid cash. There’s some footprints but the grass was too overgrown and weedy for them to be of any use for identification purposes, and so far we’ve come across no other forensics in the house itself.’
‘I see, Bill. How’s it going with the notebook?’
‘Very, very slow, as expected, but coming along. It’s incredibly delicate work, separating the pages. But I’m confident that we can make most of them readable.’
‘Okay. Thanks a million. We’re on our way up to Mayfield in a minute to talk to our twenty rough sleepers so maybe we can cajole some incriminating evidence out of them.’
‘Good luck with that, ma’am. Have you heard from immigration yet on who those three fire victims might have been?’
‘No. I’m still waiting. It’s likely that they were all members of Lupul’s begging ring, and one of them could be Lupul himself, but immigration warned me that they could be difficult to trace. They could all have arrived in Ireland on different days from different countries and at different ports of entry. One into Rosslare, for instance, and one into Shannon, and the third into Ringaskiddy. And of course their passports could have been forged, or stolen, which makes it a hundred times harder to find out who they are and where they’ve come from.’
Once she had finished talking to Bill Phinner, Katie went down to reception to meet up with Detective Inspector Fitzpatrick and Kyna and Detective O’Donovan. Murtagh the balding translator was there, too, in a baggy green waxed jacket, breathing on his glasses to clean them and holding them up to the light. They went out to the car park together, climbed into an unmarked Land Cruiser and drove up to Mayfield. It started to rain again, but only a sprinkle.
The rough sleepers had all been fed a fry-up for their breakfast, with bacon and eggs and black pudding, and given a change of clothes if they wanted it. A flat-screen TV had been set up for them at the far end of the hall and some of them were sitting on the floor watching Doctors. Others had returned to their cubicles to sleep, while a GP and a nurse from the Knight’s Hill medical centre were going around from one cubicle to the next, examining any who felt ill, and handing out methadone for any with a heroin habit or lorazepam for those addicted to spice.
The lurching man was there, too, sitting cross-legged on his mattress with his right arm in a sling. As Katie passed by his cubicle, he scowled at her and mouthed the word ‘witch’.
Katie stopped, and went into his cubicle. Detective O’Donovan stood and waited for her, in case he turned aggressive again.
‘Come here, I’m sorry I hurt you,’ said Katie. ‘You can scarce blame me, though, can you, the way you pulled that knife on me?’
‘You could have left me alone, couldn’t you? Why didn’t you leave me be? I was okay back at Paul Street. I don’t even know why you’ve fetched me here.’
‘Why do you think we fetched you here? We want to help you to turn your life around.’
‘You’re codding, aren’t you? How can I turn my life around if I’m going to be clattered to a fecking pulp, or cremated?’
‘Nobody’s going to hurt you. We’ll see to that.’
‘I don’t give a shite what you say, if I’m not back down by Tesco to give them their share of the fecking money I’ve begged, which I won’t be, they fecking will hurt me, and don’t you have the slightest doubt about that.’
‘No, they won’t, because we’re going to go after them and haul them in and make sure that they’re convicted and locked up.’
‘Oh, right! Like, how come you’ve never done it before now? All you’ve ever done before is move us on, or do us for obstruction.’
‘That’s because we had very limited resources and beggars weren’t being killed before now, not like they have been recently. Rough sleeping isn’t illegal but organized begging is and so is murder.’
Katie waited for this to sink in. She noticed that the man was grinding his teeth and that his left hand was trembling.
‘Do you want a drink?’ she asked him.
He looked up at her. She could see now that his eyes were yellow with jaundice. He said nothing but Katie turned around to Detective O’Donovan.
‘Patrick, there’s some baby Powers in the kitchen. Could you fetch me a couple? In fact, make it three.’
Detective O’Donovan went off and Katie turned back to the lurching man. ‘Are you going to tell me your name? I’ll have to write a report about breaking your wrist, and I don’t want to admit that I didn’t even know who you were. You could be entitled to some compo, too, but we can’t pay compo to Mr Anonymous.’
‘Phelan,’ he said, grudgingly. ‘Phelan O’Meara. Of no fixed abode, as if you didn’t know.’
Katie knelt down on the floor besi
de his mattress. ‘And how long have you been homeless, Phelan?’
Phelan closed his eyes and counted on his fingers. ‘Three years now. Three-and-a-half, to be precise.’
‘So how did you become homeless?’
Detective O’Donovan returned with three miniature bottles of Powers whiskey. Katie screwed the top off one of them and handed it to Phelan. He lifted it up, said, ‘Sláinte’, and downed it in three noisy gulps. When it was empty he licked the neck of it and shivered and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Katie could see that his eyes were already fixed on the second bottle, which she was holding up in front of him but keeping tightly clenched in her fist so that only the stopper was showing. They both knew perfectly well that a deal was being negotiated here, whiskey in exchange for information.
‘I was working in the Honda garage at Victoria Cross. Mechanic. I lent a borrow of a customer’s car one Sunday and drove it down to Kinsale with two pals.’
‘Go on,’ said Katie, making it clear that she wasn’t yet ready to give him the second baby Powers.
‘We got langered, didn’t we? Wrecked. Totally buckled. On the way back to Cork I knocked an auld wan off his bike and came close to killing him. That was the end of my job and the end of my marriage and the end of everything.’
44
Katie screwed the top off the second bottle and gave it to him. This time he drank it more slowly, swilling it around his mouth and breathing in deeply while he did so, so that he could smell it as well as taste it.
Begging to Die Page 35