Blood Sisters (51 page)

‘Mr Karosas, you assaulted her in front of three witnesses,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke.

‘So what?’ said Karosas. ‘It was self-defence. Those witness cannot deny that bitch hit me first. Look at my fucking eye. Fuck! You think if I hit that bitch first, she could do this to me? If I hit that bitch first, she would not be in hospital. She would be in cemetery. And good rid.’

Detective Inspector O’Rourke opened the blue plastic folder that he had brought in with him and held up a sheet of paper. ‘Do you know what this is, Mr Karosas? A Garda technical expert examined your car – the car that you swore to Detective Superintendent Maguire nobody else has ever driven except for you. You saw the technical expert examine the car yourself, and this is his report. He found blonde hairs on the passenger seat, as well as traces of urine, both of which he matched to Roisin Begley, one hundred per cent. He also found Roisin Begley’s fingerprints on the dashboard, in a pattern that suggested that she was forcibly removed from the car against her will.

‘Not only that, he found beads on the floor of your car that belonged to the bracelet that Roisin Begley was seen to be wearing only minutes before she met you. You can say whatever you like, Mr Karosas, but all the evidence points to your abducting Roisin Begley and subsequently killing her.’

‘You’re stuffed, boy,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘Even you must appreciate that.’

Karosas looked around the interview room, first to the left, and then to the right, and then up at the ceiling, as if he couldn’t quite understand what he was doing there. Detective Inspector O’Rourke and Detective Dooley waited patiently for him to answer, although Detective Dooley could see that Detective Inspector O’Rourke’s fists were clenched so tight that his knuckles were spots of white.

‘Okay, it was accident,’ said Karosas at last.

‘What was an accident?’ asked Detective Dooley. ‘Kicking Detective Superintendent Maguire or drowning Roisin Begley?’

‘Drowning. I took her, yes, okay. But only to scare her, nothing else. He say not to hurt her or to leave mark. Only to scare, so she no speak in court.’

‘Who said that?’

‘Who you think?’

‘You tell me,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke.

‘Of course Michael Gerrety. He say he pay me one thousand euro to scare her. Do whatever you like, he tell me, but not to leave mark on her body, so she can no prove nothing. Only scare.’

‘So what happened, exactly?’ asked Detective Dooley. ‘You met her outside Havana Brown’s and drove her away in your car. Why did she come with you?’

‘I tell her I have money for her. Money for fucking with men but Michael Gerrety not pay her yet. Six thousand five hundred euros.’

‘And she believed you?’

‘Why not? She know me. I fuck her once myself and I pay her good.’

‘So how did this “accident” happen?’ asked Detective Inspector O’Rourke.

‘We are driving. She is laughing. I think maybe she little bit drunk. I ask her if she can swim and she say yes, of course she can swim. I drive to marina, next to river, by slipway. I park there. I say how you like to swim now?’

‘Then what?’

Karosas sat up straighter now and kept rubbing his hands on his thighs. ‘She say no, she no swim in river. I say you no speak in court against Michael Gerrety. She say screw you, something like that. I pull her out of car and take her to edge of river, down on slipway. Now I say you promise you no speak in court against Michael Gerrety, otherwise you swim. She try to fight me. She scream at me. Maybe I push her, I no remember. Then she fall in river. I think maybe she is okay, because she can swim. But river is very cold, and she is drunk, and she wears coat and tight skirt and shoes.’

Now he leaned so far forward that his chest was pressing against the edge of the table. ‘She is gone. I look, but nothing. She no shout to me. She no wave. Nothing. She is gone.’

There was silence in the interview room for nearly half a minute. Detective Inspector O’Rourke scribbled down some notes, while Detective Dooley sat back with his arms folded. Karosas remained as he was, leaning forward, staring at the table top or nothing at all. Perhaps in his mind he was staring at the River Lee, at night, black and cold and polluted and slopping up against the slipway.

At length, Detective Inspector O’Rourke looked up from his notepad and said, ‘So, Mr Karosas, to get this absolutely straight, Michael Gerrety offered to pay you a thousand euros to frighten Roisin Begley so that she wouldn’t stand up in court and give evidence against him for having sexual relations with her when she was under the legal age of seventeen?’

‘Yes,’ said Karosas. ‘But he no cheat me. When I tell him what happen, he give me the money anyway.’

‘All of it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re prepared to testify to this under oath in the criminal court?’

‘It was no murder. Absolutely no murder. Just accident. She fight me, she fall in river. Splash! That’s all. Gone.’

Detective Inspector O’Rourke stood up. Detective Dooley could tell by the way that his mouth was puckered that he was tempted to say something blistering to Karosas, but he was holding it in.

‘Thank you, Mr Karosas. I think that you’re going to be needing a lawyer after all. More than that, though, I think you’re probably going to be needing a bodyguard. Michael Gerrety never took kindly to anybody who dropped him in it, and that’s for sure.’

‘Chalk it down,’ said Detective Dooley. He stood up and pushed in his chair. Usually, if he got a confession like this, he felt like punching the air and saying,
Yessss
! But all he could think of was Roisin Begley with her pretty heart-shaped face and her shiny blonde hair and her sparkling naivety – a naivety that had allowed scumbags like Gerrety and Karosas to groom her, and degrade her, and then to throw her in the river.

* * *

Detective Inspector O’Rourke rang Katie about half an hour later.

‘We’ve wound up our preliminary interview with Karosas, ma’am. I’m not counting chickens, like, but I think we’ve cracked this one. He’s confessed that Michael Gerrety offered him a thousand euros to intimidate Roisin Begley into keeping her mouth shut. He’s trying to claim, though, that he never meant to drown her and that it was only an accident.’

‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he? But did Gerrety still pay him?’

‘Yes, he did. He’d got the result that he wanted, after all, Roisin Begley’s mouth shut, even if things went a bit further than he intended.’

‘Thanks a million, Francis. You’ve given
me
the result that
I
wanted. As soon as I get in to the station tomorrow I’ll read through Karosas’s statement, and maybe question him myself. Then we can go and arrest Gerrety.’

‘Glad I could give you one bit of good news, at least,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke. ‘As my old granny used to say, it takes only a single candle to show you the way back home, even on the darkest night.’

‘I’m not too sure I understand what that means,’ said Katie.

‘Don’t bother about it. I don’t think she did, either.’

When Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán arrived at the Bon Sauveur Convent a fine rain had started falling. This time there were no floodlights shining in the gardens to make the rain sparkle. The search team had almost completed their excavations and would be clearing up tomorrow.

She rang the doorbell and after a long wait the door was opened by Sister Rose.

‘Oh,’ said Sister Rose. ‘It’s you.’

‘You don’t look very pleased to see me,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, only half serious.

Sister Rose cast her eyes down at the floor. ‘Of course you’re welcome. All are welcome.’

‘You’re wishing you never showed me that jawbone you found.’

‘It’s – it’s all been very disturbing. Perhaps those little children should have been left in peace.’

‘In a septic tank? Is that where
you
’d like to be buried?’

‘The body is not important,’ said Sister Rose, still looking at the floor. ‘It’s the soul that goes to Jesus.’

‘Oh, I see. Is that what Mother O’Dwyer told you? So why do we revere the bodies of our saints so much? Even dooshie little pieces of their bodies? The Vatican’s been showing off the bones of Saint Peter, haven’t they? And Saint Anthony of Padua, all that’s left of him is his tongue but people still kneel and pray to it. And we still have Christ’s foreskin, so I’ve been led to believe. I mean, for Christ’s sake, Sister Rose. Of course the body’s important.’

‘I’ve made you angry,’ said Sister Rose. ‘I apologize.’

‘No, no, it’s my fault entirely,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘I shouldn’t be shouting at you. You brought those poor children some justice and that was very brave of you. Now, is Mother O’Dwyer available at the moment? There’s something I need to take a quick sconce at.’

‘We’ve just finished our supper, so she’ll be in her office. I’ll take you to her.’

When Sister Rose knocked at her half-open door, Mother O’Dwyer was bent over her desk, writing in her diary,

‘Sorry to disturb you, Mother O’Dwyer, but Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán would like a word with you.’

Mother O’Dwyer looked up. Her glasses were now joined together in the middle with Elastoplast. ‘What is it now?’ she said. ‘Will you never leave us in peace?’

‘I’ve been asked to take a look at something,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘That picture on the wall there, as a matter of fact.’

Mother O’Dwyer turned around in her chair, took off her glasses and frowned at the picture of Saint Margaret. ‘
That
picture? Why? I don’t understand. It’s only a picture. A very sacred picture, but only a picture.’

‘All the same, if you don’t mind.’

‘What difference would it make if I
did
mind? Very well, then, go ahead, but be careful with it, please. It’s very old.’

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán went up to the picture and took hold of the sides of the frame. It was quite heavy, but not too heavy for her to lift up off the hook from which it was hanging and lower it down to the floor.

The wall behind it was nothing but a blank wall with the shadow of the picture frame on it. There was no wall-safe there as Katie had guessed there might be.

‘Well?’ asked Mother O’Dwyer impatiently. ‘What exactly were you hoping to find?’

‘I was just checking, that’s all,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. She lifted up the picture and after three or four attempts managed to hang it back on its hook.

‘I don’t understand. Checking what?’

‘It’s because you said to me that Saint Margaret protects the children who were taken into care here, even today. We weren’t sure what it was that you meant by “even today”.’

‘So you thought
what
? That there was something hidden behind that picture? A mural of Satan? Well, as you can see, there’s nothing at all. You people, I don’t know. I understand that it’s your job to be suspicious but you’re really clutching at straws now, aren’t you?’

‘I’m sorry if I’ve been a bother,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán.

‘A very good night to you, Detective Sergeant,’ said Mother O’Dwyer snippily, and picked up her pen. Lifting her left hand, she said, ‘Go in peace.’

Sister Rose led Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán back along the corridor to the convent’s front door in silence, except for the clacking of her boot heels and a repetitive whipping noise. Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán looked down and saw that one of her bootlaces was undone. She stopped beside the gleaming bronze statue of Saint Margaret and knelt down on one knee to tie it up again.

As she knelt there, almost like a supplicant in front of Saint Margaret, she noticed something that she never would have seen otherwise. The statue was standing on a mahogany plinth, about sixty centimetres high, with ebony beading around it. There was nothing remarkable about it except that there were four decorative bronze knobs, one at each corner, and the top right-hand knob had a tiny screw above it and faint semicircular scratches next to it.

‘Excuse me, Sister Rose, would you stall there, please, for a moment?’ Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán called out. She crouched forward and examined the plinth more closely. When she touched the top right-hand knob with her fingertip she found that she could swing it to one side. It wasn’t a knob at all, but an escutcheon, covering a keyhole.

How about that
, she thought.
If the plinth has a keyhole, then it must have a door, and if it has a door, then it’s not just a plinth, it’s a cupboard
.

‘What is it?’ asked Sister Rose, coming back to stand beside her.

‘Would you be kind enough to ask Mother O’Dwyer if she has the key to this cupboard here.’

Sister Rose looked baffled. ‘That’s a cupboard? I never realized that it was a cupboard.’

‘Well, the way it’s made, you’re obviously not supposed to. But you can see that it’s been opened up now and again, so somebody must have a key to it and I’m presuming that’s Mother O’Dwyer.’

Sister Rose pressed her hand over mouth and her eyes widened.

‘It’s okay, you’re grand,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, seeing how frightened she was. ‘I’ll go and ask her myself.’

She walked back to Mother O’Dwyer’s office and knocked at her door.

‘Have you not left yet?’ asked Mother O’Dwyer, taking off her glasses.

‘Well, no, it doesn’t look like it, does it? I’ve come back to ask you if you have a key for that cupboard underneath the statue of Saint Margaret.’

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán had seen suspects physically collapse when presented with irrefutable evidence against them, but Mother O’Dwyer appeared almost to crumble as if she were an Egyptian mummy that had suddenly been exposed to the air. Her jaw dropped and her face turned ashy white. She half stood up and then she sat down again.

‘A key?’ she said. ‘To the cupboard?’

‘That
is
a cupboard underneath the statue, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Mother O’Dwyer. ‘But the things inside it – they have to remain private. That’s why they’re in there.’

‘Things like what?’