‘She doesn’t have to answer that,’ said Partlan Devine. ‘As you well know, she doesn’t have to say anything at all.’
‘I don’t care,’ Brianna told him, pulling her hand away. ‘I’ve been trying to live with it and it’s been giving me nightmares. Yes, I injected Saoirse Duffy with the fentanyl. I thought she was going to die in the ambulance on the way back from Blackrock but she didn’t. And she knew that I was trying to do away with her, so when she woke up she’d only tell everybody that I’d tried to murder her, wouldn’t she?’
‘Brianna, for Christ’s sake, don’t say any more,’ snapped Partlan Devine. His assistant was sitting next to him wide-eyed, her pencil poised above her legal pad. She hadn’t written a word.
‘There were five of them altogether,’ said Brianna. She was so wracked with emotion that every sentence was punctuated by a harsh, painful intake of air.
‘Five? And you’re telling us that you ended all five of their lives in the ambulance, on the way to hospital, in the same way that you tried to suffocate DS Ni Nuallán?’
Brianna sobbed, and nodded. Partlan Devine shook his head in exasperation and said, ‘Mary and Joseph and Jesus. Brianna.’
‘But why, Brianna?’ asked Kyna, and Katie heard that particular tone of voice that Kyna could adopt, a tone of voice that somehow encouraged almost everybody she questioned to admit to everything, no matter what outrage they had committed. She sounded so gentle and so understanding. Instead of being accusing, she seemed to be offering forgiveness and redemption.
‘It started when I met Niall Dabney in the Old Oak last October,’ said Brianna.
‘You mean Niall Dabney from Dabney’s the undertakers?’ asked Katie.
‘That’s right. I’d asked for a Bacardi Breezer but when it came to it I couldn’t scrape up enough grade to pay for it, and I was morto. Niall was standing next to me in the bar and he chipped in and bought it for me.’
‘So you were broke? Didn’t you have your wages?’
‘Of course. But my boyfriend, Jimmy, was addicted to betting and he cleaned me out completely, all my savings, everything. He was always saying that a big win was coming up and that he was going to pay me back twice over, but he never did. He even stole the diamond earrings that my granny gave me and pawned them off.’
She turned to Partlan Devine, who was pressing his fingertips to his forehead as if he had suddenly contracted a migraine.
‘I’m fierce sorry, Mr Devine,’ she said. ‘But it’s all going to come out anyway and there’s no point in trying to pretend that it wasn’t me, because they know it was, and they have the evidence, don’t they?’
‘Go on, then,’ said Partlan Devine. ‘All I can say is, on your own head be it. But I’ll stay here as I’m obliged to and make sure that these officers stick to the rules. You haven’t been charged with any other offences yet, apart from assaulting DS Ni Nuallán, so if you decide to retract anything else you’ve said, you’re perfectly within your rights.’
‘So you met Niall Dabney,’ put in Kyna. ‘What happened then?’
‘Me and Niall got to talking and I told him all about Jimmy and how I was skint. He said that he’d been having some cash-flow troubles too and maybe we could help each other out. If I was to recommend Dabney’s to the next of kin of anybody who passed away, he’d give me a cut of the proceeds, like.
‘We had two fatal call-outs in November – one when that chipper up in Ballyvolane caught fire and that poor feen was practically fried alive, and the other when that bus overturned on the N20, and that young lad got beheaded by the window.’
‘God, yes, I remember that little boy,’ said Katie. ‘That was tragic.’
‘I went around to visit the families of both of them,’ Brianna went on. ‘I told them that Dabney’s would give them the best funeral they could wish for, and a discount, too – ten per cent cheaper than Jennings or Jerh. O’Connor’s. They both took me up on it, and Niall paid me my share of both of them. But of course I was able to buy myself some new clothes and pay for the messages then and Jimmy caught on that I must have made myself some grade. He was sniffing around again before you could say blackjack.’
‘You didn’t have to give him your money, did you?’
Brianna said nothing, but pulled up the sleeve of her dress and showed them the bruises on her arms. Some of them were yellow and fading, but others were purple and crimson and obviously fresh.
‘I see,’ said Kyna. ‘But what happened then? What about these five other patients whose lives you ended?’ Katie noticed that she didn’t used the words ‘murdered’ or ‘killed’.
Brianna closed her eyes tight and squeezed her fists together and the tears kept sliding freely down her face.
‘I couldn’t see any other way out. I was terrified of Jimmy. I still am. I don’t understand why, but I still loved him. The thought of losing him was more than I could bear. I still love him now. Why do I still love him now? He kept on asking me for money but there weren’t enough patients dying. An auld wan died in a road crash on the North Ring on St Stephen’s Day but her family wanted her buried in Mayo, where she came from, so I didn’t get any money out of her.’
‘So you thought – what?’ Katie coaxed her. ‘You thought that maybe you could give some of your patients a helping hand to get to Heaven? Is that it?’
‘I promised myself that it would only be the ones who were close to passing away anyway – the ones who probably wouldn’t make it to the emergency room, or if they did, they’d spend the rest of their lives in a coma, or too badly disabled even to feed themselves, do you know?’
‘Do you have to go on, Brianna?’ asked Partlan Devine. ‘I’m sure Detective Superintendent Maguire has got the point by now.’
Katie ignored him. ‘How did you do it?’ she asked. ‘There were no queries raised by the coroner. All of them appeared to have died naturally or accidentally. Did you suffocate them, like you tried to do with DS Ni Nuallán?’
‘It’s easier than you’d think, after an accident,’ said Brianna. ‘Your patients are almost always in some state of shock. Haemorrhagic shock. Neurogenic shock. Even if it’s only psychological shock. It doesn’t take much to stop their hearts when they’re in that condition. Usually it’s enough to cut off their oxygen. Not many people can survive for longer than two or three minutes without breathing. After that you’re looking at brain death in less than six minutes.’
‘Your victims,’ said Katie. ‘Do you know their names and addresses?’
‘I can only remember some of them. Niall has the full list. Ask Niall.’
‘Well, I expect Niall was delighted with all these new clients you were fetching him. Does Niall know how they died?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he guessed. You’ll have to ask him.’
‘All right, Brianna, that’ll do for now,’ said Katie. Then she turned to Partlan Devine and said, ‘This will take some considerable time, Mr Devine. We’ll have to identify all Brianna’s victims and have each one of them exhumed to establish if she really did kill them. Meanwhile, I’m arresting you, Brianna Cusack, on suspicion of murder. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.’
‘I think she’s just about said it all, don’t you?’ said Partlan Devine, zipping up his briefcase so fiercely that he caught the tip of his finger in it.
*
Back in Katie’s office, Kyna said, ‘What do you think?’
Katie sat down at her desk, looking abstracted. She picked up a report that had been sent to her by Dr Kelley and then put it down again. ‘What do I think? I think she’s putting it on.’
‘Serious? You think she’s faking it?’
‘Come here, she knows that we’re on to her, and that we have enough evidence to convict her, so she’s playing the part of the poor abused woman who was forced to do what she did because she was terrified of her boyfriend. She’s an advanced paramedic, a
s Partlan the Not-So-Devine kept reminding us. Don’t tell me she doesn’t know all about behaviour under stress. It’s part of their basic training.’
‘But you do believe that she was bullied by her boyfriend, and that she killed those patients of hers because she needed the grade?’
‘Sure, like. I can accept that. But from that performance of hers downstairs, I’d say that she enjoyed killing them, too. It gave her a feeling of power, which of course she didn’t have with her boyfriend. It might even have given her a sexual thrill, too. Even confessing to those murders turned her on, in a way. Did you notice how flushed she was, and how she kept lifting herself up and down a little in her chair, like she was squeezing her thighs together?’
Kyna gave her a smile and the smallest shake of her head. ‘Holy Mary, Katie, you have a sharp eye all right. Next time you and me are together, if we ever are, I think I’ll turn the lights off.’
She looked at Katie for a moment without saying anything. Then she said, ‘Bacardi Breezer. Do you think a Corkman called it that, for a laugh?’
48
Ştefan Făt-Frumor was sitting in front of the television in his vest and tracksuit bottoms, with a can of Carlsberg Special Brew in his hand, studiously picking his nose.
His doorbell rang, but he ignored it. When it rang a second time, and then a third, he called out, ‘Daciana! Didn’t you hear that? Someone’s at the door! See who it is, you stupid cow!’
‘I can’t!’ his wife called back, from the kitchen. ‘I’m right in the middle of stirring the mămăligă!’
The bell rang yet again, and Ştefan said, ‘Să moară mama! What am I, my own fucking servant?’
He heaved himself out of his sticky red vinyl armchair and went out into the hallway, still holding his can of Special Brew. Rain-sodden Uggs and worn-down loafers were cluttering the floor and he kicked some of them out of the way. Before he opened the door, he looked up at the small fanlight at the top of it and shouted out, ‘Who is it? What do you want?’
‘Mytaxi!’ came the answer.
‘What? You must have the wrong house, boy. I don’t order no taxi.’
‘This is number twenty-seven, right?’
‘That’s right. Number twenty-seven. But I don’t order no mytaxi. Daciana! You don’t order no mytaxi?’
‘No,’ Daciana called back. ‘I don’t order no mytaxi.’
‘I can show you the order, sir,’ said the voice on the other side of the door. ‘Someone at this address ordered a mytaxi and that’s for definite, like. If you cancel you have to pay six euros.’
Even while he was reaching for the doorknob, Ştefan knew that he was taking a risk. In Bucharest the Poliţsia had come banging on his front door more times than he could count, and twice rival gangsters had blasted holes in his door panels, once with a shotgun and once with a sub-machine gun. Here in Cork, though, he had very few enemies.
Dragomir Iliescu had given him some trouble, but he had arranged for his house to be burned down, with him in it, and he reckoned that he had put the fear of God into Dragomir’s beggars by setting fire to that young girl. He was confident that he no longer had anything to fear from the one they called Lupul or any of his gang. There were local gangs, of course, the O’Flynns and the Murphys, but from the day he had arrived here in Cork he had cannily kept them on side by supplying them from time to time with young prostitutes that he had trafficked from Romania, and cut-price heroin, which he smuggled in from Kazakhstan.
It could be the Garda ringing at his doorbell, but he doubted it. He knew they had cleared all his beggars off the streets last night, but they had done that before, especially when the Pope or some other dignitary was about to visit the city. He expected them all to be back on their pitches by this evening, or tomorrow morning at the latest. The council had neither the finance nor the will to provide them with permanent housing.
‘Okay, okay!’ he called out. ‘Stall your bean!’
He had only just unlocked the door, though, when it was banged wide open with such force that Ştefan was thrown backwards on to the untidy heaps of shoes and his can of Special Brew went flying down the hallway and clattered into the kitchen.
‘What’s that?’ shrilled Daciana. ‘Ştefan! What’s happening? Who is that?’
She came to the kitchen door in her apron, with her wooden spoon dripping cornmeal on to the floor. She was just in time to see Ştefan being hoisted roughly to his feet by two burly men in black. He was pulled out of the front door and then frogmarched down his concrete garden path.
‘Ştefan!’ she screamed. ‘Ştefan!’
But it was too late and there was nothing that she could do. The two burly men jammed Ştefan into the back seat of a dark grey Mercedes, slammed the doors, and drove off into the rain.
Daciana’s neighbours the Popescus came out, both of them, husband and wife. Their children wanted to come out and see what was happening, too, but Andrei Popescu shooed them back in.
Daciana sank to her knees on the wet concrete path, still holding her spoon. Her shoulders shook and her grey braids sparkled with rain and she let out a hooting sound like a mother whale who has lost her calf.
Every single day since she and Ştefan had been married she had been frightened that he would be taken away from her, or shot, but he was so close to retirement now and in Cork she had never felt as threatened as she had in Bucharest. But now – just like that – he was gone. It had happened so quickly and she hadn’t even had time to kiss him one last time. And it would have been the last time, too, because she knew that he was never coming back – not alive, anyway. If she ever saw him again, he would be lying in a coffin.
*
They had been driving for almost five minutes before anybody spoke, but as they turned up Spring Lane, heading north-eastwards towards Ballyvolane, the man sitting in the front passenger seat turned around and said, ‘Ştefu! It’s been too long!’
It was Dragomir Iliescu, Lupul. He was wearing a new brown leather jacket and the interior of the car smelled of wet new leather, as well as stale cigarettes.
‘You’re shocked, Ştefu?’ said Lupul. ‘Oh! I get it! You were sure that you had turned me into burned chiftele, is that it?’
‘I don’t understand you, Dragos, what you mean,’ Ştefan told him, although the sight of Lupul had given him a sudden sharp cramp in his belly and made him feel as if he urgently needed to open his bowels. ‘I don’t know nothing from nothing, I swear it. Nothing from nothing.’
‘You, Ştefu, are liar. But you are worse than liar. You are murdering shit.’
‘I told you. I don’t know nothing.’
‘You set fire to house where all my people were staying. I know it was you because we found your pet monkey Bogdi and we beat Bogdi until he told us. By the way, if you’ve been wondering where Bogdi is today, he’s gone for dip in River Lee, only he has shopping trolley tied to his ankle, so I don’t think he’s been able to swim very far.’
Ştefan bent forward because his belly hurt even more. At this moment he felt that trying to stop himself from filling his trousers was even more critical than trying to stay alive. But the two burly men sitting either side of him pushed him back upright, and he had to grit his teeth and squeeze his eyes shut and concentrate with every muscle in his body on keeping his anus clenched tight.
‘What’s the matter, Ştefu? You look like you’re going to cry. Are you sad? Well, let me tell you, nenorocitule, if anybody should be crying in this car it is me. Do you know what you did when your pet monkeys set fire to that house? You killed my sister and her husband. They had come here to Ireland to visit, and you killed them. You burned them to death. But there was somebody else you killed, too, and if you think I could ever forgive you for that – ever – then you have no imagination at all.’
Lupul opened his eyes wide and stared at Ştefan with an expression contorted with such rage and hatred that Ştefan couldn’t hold on to his muscles any longer, and he flooded his trousers with warm dia
rrhoea.
‘You killed my stepfather,’ said Lupul, his voice shaking. ‘You killed man who brought me up from when I was six years old. You killed man who was my mother’s husband and loved her. You burned him alive.’
Ştefan could do nothing but stare back at him and feel the sticky wetness between his legs. They had almost reached the Spring Lane halting site now, where there was a large gathering of Travellers’ mobile homes and caravans. As they turned up the narrow lane towards it, the man sitting on Ştefan’s left side suddenly sniffed and waved his hand in front of his nose and said, ‘Maica Domnului, care este acel miros teribil!’
*
They drew in to the side of the lane before the halting site itself came into view, and stopped next to a mountain of rubbish – sodden mattresses and broken bicycles and rusting gas cookers and cardboard boxes and torn black plastic bags.
‘It was an accident, Dragos,’ Ştefan pleaded. ‘I told them to make sure that the house was empty. Be sure it’s empty, I told them. I never set out to hurt nobody.’
‘Oh, same like young Loredana? Don’t tell me it wasn’t your pet monkeys who set fire to her, too? That’s your trademark, isn’t it, Ştefu? Burning people alive. Well, now you’re going to find out what it’s like to burn in hell.’
The two burly men in black started to drag Ştefan out of the back of the car, but he held on tight to the headrest in front of him and wouldn’t let go.
‘We can do a deal, Dragos! We can share the profits! I didn’t mean nobody to get hurt, I swear to God! You and me, we could run all the begging business in Cork together!’
Lupul breathed in and out as if he were on the point of exploding. ‘What? You think I would do business with bastard who murdered my stepfather and my own sister? You are more of a cretin than I thought you were. I will piss out candles on your mother’s birthday cake. And you stink. Get him out of here, Aleks, before I throw up.’
The two men wrenched Ştefan’s vest three or four times, ripping it apart, and at last succeeded in pulling him out of the car. Between them they dragged him up the mounds of rubbish, his feet clinking and clanking as they trailed against empty bottles and discarded tin cans. When they had almost reached the summit, next to an abandoned refrigerator that was leaning at an angle like a gravestone, they dropped him face down on to some filthy yellow sofa cushions and one of the men planted his boot in the middle of his back to stop him from getting up. Ştefan clenched his fists and, very quietly, he started to sob. If my mother could see me now, lying in all this garbage in the rain, with my pants full like a baby – if she knew that I had died like this, she would die herself of shame.
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