Blood Sisters (50 page)

‘You’re doing nothing of the sort! I was talking to the doctor who treated you and he said that you have to stay here until tomorrow at the earliest. You need to rest and recover. Not only that, they want to keep you under observation to make sure you don’t get blood clots or any other complications.’

‘But it’s a state funeral, Kyna. And Horgan was one of my team.’

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán emphatically shook her head. ‘I’ve told Chief Superintendent McCostagaín what’s happened to you. Well, not about losing the baby – he doesn’t know about that. He sends you his very best wishes for a speedy recovery but Francis O’Rourke will stand in for you at the church.’

‘Kyna—’

‘No, Katie. You can’t be responsible for every single person in the whole of Cork, twenty-four seven. One of those people in Cork is you and you need to take care of yourself. You don’t want to end up having a breakdown like Liam Fennessy.’

‘What about Barney? Barney needs to be fed and taken for his walk. He’s all shut up in the kitchen and he must be wondering where I am.’

‘Don’t worry. We thought of that. Dooley phoned your father and told him what had happened. He’s lent his spare key to one of his neighbours who’s going to take care of Barney until you get back home.’

Katie lay back on her pillows. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I’m going to get myself out of here as soon as I possibly can.’

‘Get some sleep,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘I’ll be saying a prayer for you before I go to bed myself. Not just you, but the little one, too. My mum lost a baby once. Well, she probably lost more than one, but she never told us about all of them. After this one, though, I remember her saying that she was waiting for the clouds to clear away so that she could see a new star shining. She was going to call him Patrick.’

‘I hadn’t thought of any names yet,’ said Katie. ‘Now I don’t have to, do I?’

* * *

At lunchtime she managed to finish half a bowl of tepid tomato soup and two cream crackers with cheese. Then she sat in the armchair by the window to watch the state funeral on television. A solemn parade marched along St Patrick’s Street, with gardaí from every department in the country in full dress uniform, as well as firefighters and paramedics and TDs and local councillors. The pavements were crowded with hundreds of people and the men all took off their hats as the three hearses drove slowly past them, the coffins inside them heaped with lilies.

‘Goodbye, Kenny,’ said Katie under her breath as she saw his hearse turn the corner into Grand Parade. ‘God bless you.’

* * *

Later that afternoon, Dr Mazdani came to examine her and ask how she was feeling. He was softly spoken and when he felt her stomach he did it with the utmost tenderness, as if he could actually feel Katie’s pain through his fingertips.

‘In one way, you were very lucky,’ he told her. ‘The kicking you received detached the placenta from the uterus and that starved your baby of oxygen. I am sorry to say that there was no way that it could have survived. However, you could have died yourself from loss of blood, so it was a good thing that they brought you here to the hospital so quickly.’

‘When can I go home?’ asked Katie.

‘Unless there are any complications, you should be able to return home tomorrow. I must advise you, though, to rest for at least another week and to contact us immediately if you experience any unusual pains.’

He lowered her gown and then he said, ‘I realize it might be premature of me to say this, but in case you are wondering, you should have no difficulty in conceiving again and bringing a child to full term.’

‘Oh, you mean I can have a replacement?’ said Katie, although she regretted saying it almost as soon as the words came out of her mouth.

Dr Mazdani sadly shook his head. ‘No lost baby can ever be replaced, Mrs Maguire. One child is never a substitute for another. That is why I fight so hard to save the lives of unborn children. It is my calling, to be a protector of children.’

‘Of course,’ said Katie. ‘I’m sorry. I think I’m feeling more than a little cynical at the moment.’

‘No bother, Mrs Maguire. I understand perfectly.’

When Dr Mazdani had gone Katie pulled up her blanket and slept for another hour. When she woke up she didn’t get out of bed but lay on her back with one hand resting on her stomach, staring at the ceiling tiles. Outside, the sky gradually began to darken again and one by one the hospital windows were lit up, and she could hear the squeaking of trolleys as the patients’ evening meals were brought around.

She couldn’t stop thinking of the words that Dr Mazdani had used. They reminded her of something that she had heard not too long ago, and the thought kept tapping at her brain again and again, as persistent as a wasp at a window.
A protector of children. A protector of children
.

Then she remembered. It had been Kyna, when she had reported back from her first visit to Mother O’Dwyer. She had been describing the picture of Saint Margaret of Cortona that hung on the wall in Mother O’Dwyer’s office. ‘I think that’s how Mother O’Dwyer sees herself,’ Kyna had told her. ‘She may be a shrivelled old crow, but she thinks of herself as young and beautiful, like that picture of Saint Margaret, with her hands spread out to communicate with Jesus. She thinks she’s just like Saint Margaret. I’d go even further than that – I think she thinks she
is
Saint Margaret, “a protector of children, both born and unborn, who still protects them, even today”.’

Katie, of course, had sat in Mother O’Dwyer’s office more than once and seen that picture of Saint Margaret for herself, and she had thought about Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán’s words while she did so. Did Mother O’Dwyer really believe she looked as radiant as that, and that she had truly protected the children in her care – regardless of the fact that hundreds of them had died and had ended up as skeletons?

Because none of the children had been baptised, and so couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground, perhaps she had believed that their bodies were worthless in the eyes of God and could simply be thrown away like rubbish. Perhaps they had all died of natural causes and the sisters had simply been too poor to give each of them a proper funeral. But how could Mother O’Dwayer and Saint Margaret still be protecting them ‘even today’? They were bones. What was there left to protect?

Again and again, she kept thinking of a large rambling house in Carrigaline that she had searched when she was a twenty-three-year-old garda, and how they had found nothing until her attention had been drawn to a large oil painting on the living-room wall of the owners’ three cats.

She wondered if she was still suffering from shock. Maybe the opioids she had been given to dull the pain were affecting her thinking. But the wasp kept tapping away at the window.
A protector of
children, even today
. Why ‘
even today
’? What did that actually mean? She knew from experience that offenders often gave away clues that led to their guilt being discovered, not because they were deliberately playing cat and mouse with their interrogators but simply because they couldn’t get their offences off their minds. Sometimes, subconsciously, they wanted to be caught because they felt so guilty about what they had done. Even more frequently they had an irresistible urge to boast about it – even rapists and murderers and terrorists.
Especially
rapists and murderers and terrorists.

She turned over and picked up her iPhone from the bedside locker. She pressed Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán’s number and she answered almost at once.

‘Yes, ma’am?’

‘Where are you, Kyna?’

‘I’m still at the station. I’ve a whole rake of things to clear up after the funeral.’

‘How was it?’ Katie asked her. ‘I saw some of it on television but I wish I’d been there.’

‘Very moving, actually. Everybody was bawling. The Tánaiste gave a lovely speech. She said that people who criticise the police should remember that when gardaí leave for work in the morning their wives and children have no guarantee that they’re ever going to see them again.’

‘Kyna – do you remember what Mother O’Dwyer said to you about that picture of Saint Margaret she has hanging on her wall?’

‘What? Vaguely. Only that Saint Margaret had been a single mother herself once. Oh yes – and that she spoke to Jesus almost every day. The poor Saviour. He must have felt like hanging up on her sometimes. Why?’

‘“A protector of children”, wasn’t that what you said? “A protector of children, even today.”’

‘That’s right. That’s almost exactly what she said, near enough.’

‘I may be drugged up or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but supposing Saint Margaret
is
protecting the children, even today?’

There was a long silence, and then Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán said, ‘To be honest with you, I don’t really understand what you’re driving at.’

‘We’ve already agreed, haven’t we, that the sisters must have kept
some
record of the children who died? But so far we’ve searched that convent top to bottom, even the attics and the cellars and under the floorboards, and we’ve found no record at all.’

‘No, we haven’t. But I still don’t get what you’re asking me.’

‘Have you looked behind the picture of Saint Margaret?’

‘No. Well, no, I shouldn’t think so. No.’

‘Well, could you go up there now, please, and take a quick sconce? If there’s nothing behind it but a blank wall, then I’ll know for sure that it’s the codeine talking. In fact, I’m almost sure that it’s the codeine talking. But I won’t be able to sleep tonight until I know for certain.’

‘All right, then,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, although she sounded dubious. ‘Do you want me to call you back?’

‘Please, if you would. It’s just that years ago I was searching a house in Carrigaline and we couldn’t find anything until the owner started boasting about his cats being as good as guard dogs. “Better than guard dogs!” he said, and he was really strutting around as if he had got one over on us. But there was a painting of his cats in the living room and it occurred to me to look behind it and – would you believe it? – there was a wall-safe hidden there with over over fifty thousand punts in it and a bag of cocaine and half a dozen counterfeit passports.’

‘All right,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallan, still sounding dubious. ‘I’m not sure we’re going to find anything like that behind Saint Margaret. But I’ll go up there and take a look and I’ll get back to you so.’

Less than five minutes later, Detective Inspector O’Rourke called her.

‘How are you feeling, ma’am?’ he asked her. ‘Everybody at the station sends you their best.’

‘A bit bruised, but better, thanks,’ Katie told him.

‘And, well, I’m sorry about your loss. That kind of surprised us, I have to admit.’

‘You didn’t know?’ said Katie. ‘I really thought you knew.’

‘You never told us, ma’am. And none of us are mind-readers.’

‘It’s just that you were so – protective. Not only you, but Patrick O’Donovan, too. And one or two others.’

‘Go away, I hope that we’re always protective. Not of you, in particular, but of each and every one of us. That was what Joan Burton was saying in the church today, when she gave her address. It’s a fierce pity you missed it.’

‘I should be back at work tomorrow,’ said Katie. ‘Maybe not all day, but long enough to catch up. What about Karosas? Who’s going to be interviewing him?’

‘That’s the second reason I’m ringing you, ma’am,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke. ‘Tyrone from the Technical Bureau has just fetched me the results of the tests he’s been doing on the hair and the fingerprints and the urine sample from Karosas’s car. We’ll have to wait a little longer for the DNA results from the bracelet beads, but there’s no question at all. Karosas took Roisin Begley into his car that night and all the circumstantial evidence suggests that he killed her. I’m going downstairs in a minute to interview him myself, along with Dooley.’

‘Take it very easy with him, Francis,’ said Katie. ‘However you feel about him assaulting me, and my losing this child, don’t show you’re angry with him. He’s very quick to come to the boil and that won’t help us at all.’

‘I’d be happy to give him a slap for you, I’ll say that.’

‘I know. I’d be more than happy to give him a slap myself. The doctor said he could have killed me. I’d love to be there to question him with you, but it’s probably a good thing that I’m not. Don’t let it become confrontational, that’s all – that won’t get you anywhere, not with Karosas. But he’s a coward as well as a bully, and if you get him into a situation he thinks he can’t get out of, you’ll be surprised what he’ll tell you to save his own skin.’

‘You mean, like, who put him up to it?’

‘You have it exactly.’

* * *

Davydos Karosas was leaning back in his chair with his hands in his pockets when Detective Inspector O’Rourke and Detective Dooley came into the interview room. His right eye was purple and swollen and almost completely closed, as if he had a plum instead of a monocle. As they sat down opposite him he showed them how bored he was by stretching his mouth wide open in a long and luxuriant yawn, so that they could see his yellow-furred tongue and all of his silver-filled teeth.

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind, Mr Karosas,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke, with exaggerated courtesy, as he sat down at the table between them.

Karosas shrugged. ‘Ask what you like. I no have to answer.’

‘You’re entitled to have legal representation, you do know that?’

‘Of course I know that. You think I no do this before? Lawyer is waste of money.’

‘You’re sure? These are very serious charges against you and you can be represented at the state’s expense.’

‘I am sure. Because you can prove nothing.’

‘You assaulted Detective Superintendent Maguire, causing her actual bodily harm. You kicked her and she had to be taken to the hospital. She might have died.’

Karosas stuck his finger into his right nostril and screwed it around. Then he took his finger out, frowned at it, and wiped it on his trousers.