Living Death (26 page)

‘So you don’t even trust
him
?’

‘Jimmy O’Reilly and me go back a long way, Kathleen. I trust him implicitly. In this case, though, it was safer for all concerned if he didn’t know our operative’s name.’

‘Very well, Matthew,’ said Katie. ‘Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’

‘You’ll keep me informed about this arms operation? It could be quite a feather in your cap if you pull it off, couldn’t it? I’ll promise you this: if you do, I’ll buy you lunch at the Greenhouse.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Katie, although she thought,
Jesus, how old-school Gardaí can you get? I’m surprised he doesn’t offer me honorary membership of the Masons.

‘Good luck to you Matthew,’ she told him, and put down the phone. Then she sat sipping her coffee for a few minutes, thinking, with that blank unblinking stare that her late husband Paul used to call her Sínead O’Connor face. He hadn’t dared to disturb her when she looked like that ‘in case you jump up and bite my fecking balls off, just because I’m a man’.

She had picked out at least one factual discrepancy in what Matthew O’Malley had told her. He had insisted that Jimmy O’Reilly didn’t know the identity of the SDU detective, while Jimmy O’Reilly had said that he did, even though he wasn’t allowed to tell her. Not only that, he had responded to all of her questions in the way that many criminal suspects did, strong on bluster but weak on detail, because they were making up their answers as they went along and they were challenging their questioner not to believe them. She could imagine that he had been fiddling with his pen while he spoke to her, and furrowing his eyebrows, and suddenly tilting back in his chair.

Her experience told her that he was lying about something, or at least not telling her the whole truth. But why? He had so much to gain if the Callahans were caught and convicted. It would shut down one of the biggest suppliers of illegal weapons into the country, both to criminals and dissident Republicans, and the SDU could take the credit for making the initial contact with Maureen Callahan.

*

She finished her coffee and then she decided it was time to go down to the holding cells to see if Keeno was in any state to be interviewed. When she arrived there, though, she found that there were three gardaí crowded in the corridor outside Keeno’s cell, and that his cell door was open.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

The gardaí shuffled aside so that she could enter Keeno’s cell. Keeno was lying flat on his back on his bunk while a middle-aged female paramedic was kneeling beside him, packing away a defibrillator. A male paramedic was standing in the corner holding up a stretcher. Keeno’s eyes were closed and his face was a strange dusty grey, as if somebody had emptied a pepperpot all over it.

‘What’s happened?’ asked Katie.

‘SCA,’ said the paramedic in the corner. ‘His heart’s beating normally again now but we’re going to take him to the Mercy for observation. You can thank your officers there for saving his life.’

The duty garda said, ‘It was real sudden, ma’am. He wasn’t too bad this morning although he was complaining about a pain in his chest. I fetched him some toast and a mug of tea and he was right in the middle of drinking his tea when he collapsed. I gave him CPR until Brogan could fetch the defibrillator.’

‘Well done the both of you,’ said Katie. She looked down at Keeno and said, ‘All right, you’d better take him away. At least one officer will have to go with him. Brogan – could you sort that out with Sergeant Kenny?’

Garda Brogan raised his hand in acknowledgement and went off. The paramedics lifted Keeno on to their stretcher and covered him with a blanket. He looked ghastly. If Katie hadn’t been able to see his chest rising and falling as he breathed, she would have sworn that he was dead.

‘He’s in desperate bad shape,’ said the female paramedic. ‘He has severe bruising to his chest, almost like somebody’s hit him with a sledgehammer. That could have been the cause of his arrhythmia. His blood pressure’s way up, too. One hundred and forty over ninety.’

‘He’s going to recover, though?’

‘I wouldn’t put money on it. The state he’s in, he could have another arrest at any time.’

Katie followed the paramedics to the front doors of the station and stood watching as they carried Keeno out and hurried him through the rain to the waiting ambulance. She realised that the consequences of this could be serious. If Keeno died, and it was established by the state pathologist that her kick to his chest was the cause of it, then it was almost certain that she would be suspended pending a full enquiry. It wouldn’t matter that she had kicked him while defending herself and her fellow officers. As Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin had warned her, there were plenty of civil rights groups who would immediately jump on what she had done as yet another example of ‘Garda brutality’.

She was still standing in the reception area when a taxi drew up outside the station. A tall man in a brown cap and a long brown coat climbed out, carrying a briefcase. He came briskly up the steps, pushed his way in through the doors, and walked across to the front desk.

Katie had been about to return to her office but she stayed where she was for a few moments because the man was extremely good-looking, almost film-star good-looking. After he had lifted off his cap to shake the rain off it, he ran his left hand through his wavy brown hair, which was as dark and shiny as polished mahogany, and Katie had immediately noticed that he was wearing no ring on it. His profile was strong and slightly Nordic, with a straight nose and a prominent jaw, and he had a dark neatly trimmed beard; but what caught Katie’s attention more than anything else was the way he was smiling. He seemed to be very relaxed with the world, and very sure of himself, even in a Garda station. He was carrying a brown leather overnight case.

He went up to the desk and spoke to Sergeant Mulligan. Katie was too far away to hear what he was saying, but she saw Sergeant Mulligan shake his head. The man said something else, and then Sergeant Mulligan pointed towards Katie with his biro.

The man turned around, saw Katie, and smiled even more broadly. He came across the reception area and said, ‘Detective Superintendent Maguire, is it?’

There wasn’t only humour in his smile, there was humour in his eyes, too. They were the same polished-mahogany brown as his hair, and they shone, as if he had just thought of something that really amused him.

Katie nodded, closing her eyelids in a blink that was slightly longer than a normal reflexive blink, even though she knew why she was doing it. It was the long appreciative blink of a woman who likes what she sees, and can’t help communicating it.

‘That’s me, yes. Is there something I can help you with?’

The man kept on smiling. ‘I was supposed to be meeting Detective Scanlan, is it? But I’m a little early and I’ve just been told that she isn’t back yet.’

‘And you are?’

‘Oh, forgive me.’ The man put down his case, took out his wallet and handed Katie a business card. ‘Conor Ó Máille, Sixth Scents, Pet Detective.’

Kieran opened his eyes. He could see nothing but a pale green fog, and if it hadn’t been so warm he could have believed that he was floating out at sea somewhere. His whole body felt as if he were made of waterlogged sponge, and he was only just managing to keep his face above the surface. He thought that he was dipping up and down, and slowly turning round and round, and after a while the sensation began to make him feel sick.

He seemed to have been floating for over an hour when a face suddenly appeared in front of him. Perhaps he had nearly drowned and somebody had pulled him out of the water. Yet he still felt as if he were dipping up and down, even when the face came nearer, and stared at him intently.

It was a man’s face, lean and sharply chiselled, almost starved-looking, with cavernous eyes and hollow cheeks and a complicated nose. His lips were tightly pursed, as if he were sucking a particularly sour lemon drop.

‘How do you feel?’ the man asked him, after a while. His voice sounded small and far away, as if he were trying to make himself heard from another room. ‘Are you feeling any pain?’

Kieran had to open and close his mouth two or three times before he could remember how to speak. He had to think hard about the man’s question, too.
Was
he feeling any pain? He was feeling sodden, and nauseous, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t quell the sensation that he was bobbing up and down. But was he feeling any pain? He didn’t think so, although for some reason he was aware that he
had
been hurt – devastatingly crushed, and recently, too – but he couldn’t clearly recall how. It was like trying to remember what it had been like being born.

‘
Mo
,’ he managed to enunciate. He had meant to say ‘no’ but his lips were too bloated.

‘Listen to me, Kieran –
are
you feeling pain, or are you not? I need to know, so that I can adjust your morphine dosage correctly. You don’t want me to be giving you an overdose, now do you?’

Kieran slowly managed to turn his head to one side, even though his neck-muscles felt stiff and badly bruised. He could see now that he wasn’t floating on the ocean at all, or that he was even outdoors. The pale green fog wasn’t fog at all, but pale green walls. He turned his head back again, and he could see a fluorescent strip-light on the ceiling, and dark green curtains, and a wallchart, and a picture of trees.

‘Do you know where you are?’ the man asked him. His voice was becoming louder and more distinct, as if he had entered the room now and was walking towards him.

‘
Mo
,’ said Kieran.

‘I’ll apprise you, in that case. I’m a doctor and you’re in a clinic. St Giles’ Clinic. You’ve had an accident.’

Kieran tried to take a deep breath but his lungs were too congested and all he could manage was a squeak.

The man leaned even closer. ‘Do you remember the accident? Do you remember what happened to you?’

‘Mo.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you. You stepped into the road without looking both ways and you were hit by a passing car. It ran over your legs so I’m sorry to say that your legs are not in very good shape at all. In fact to be honest with you they’re a mess. You have other injuries too, even more serious.’

‘What? What
im
-juries?’

‘You have what we call an “open book” fracture of the pelvis. That means that there was a traumatic external rotation of your hemi-pelvis on the left-hand side. This caused the separation of the left and right halves of your pelvis front and rear. Like a book opening up.’

Kieran stared at the man blankly. He didn’t understand what he was talking about at all. In fact he wasn’t really listening. He just wished that the bed would stop undulating and that he didn’t feel so sick. What was he doing here? He thought he was on his way home to see his parents in Killarney. Maybe he was still in bed and dreaming and it wasn’t time to get up yet. He mustn’t forget to stop at O’Connor’s Newsagents on the way home and buy his mother a box of chocolates. Lily O’Brien’s chocolate mint cremes, those were her favourite.

‘Fortunately, Kieran, you suffered no major damage to your blood vessels or your internal organs. The disruption of your pelvic ring is the worst of it, and I can fix that for you without invasive surgery. I’ll be rigging up an external fixation around your pelvis to keep the halves securely in position while they fuse themselves back together.’

‘I have to get up,’ said Kieran.

‘What?’

‘I have to go home. They’re expecting me.’

‘Kieran, there’s no way at all you’re going anywhere. You’re in no fit condition. Both of your legs are pulverised and your pelvis is cracked apart. You’re going to be fixed up with a metal framework screwed into your bones for at least a month, if not longer.’

Kieran tried to move but all he succeeded in doing was making himself feel as if he were wallowing up and down.

‘Later today I’ll be doing what I can to salvage your legs,’ the man told him. ‘I’ll be taking the measurements, too, for your fixation. All you have to do now is relax and rest and try not to get yourself all worked up. Are you thirsty at all? Would you care for some water?’

‘I have to go home. They’re expecting me, Mum and Dad. Mum said that she was making her fish pie for me, special. Help me up, will you?’

‘Kieran, I told you. You’re too badly injured. I’ll ring your mum and dad for you and tell them what’s happened to you and where you are. How about that?’

‘You don’t know their number.’

‘It’s on your mobile. Don’t worry, that was recovered after your accident, along with your bag. Like I say, Kieran, all you have to do is rest. You have people here who are going to take the very best care of you, I promise you that.’

Kieran tried one more time to get up, but this time he sicked up about a beakerful of brownish liquid, mixed with orange sludge, which was half-digested baked beans. It ran down the sides of his neck on to the bed.

‘Grainne!’ called the man. ‘I need some cleaning-up here, please! Kieran’s just decided to show us what he had for breakfast!’

‘I have to admit that I never met a pet detective before,’ said Katie, stirring her coffee.

She and Conor Ó Máille were sitting close together on the oatmeal-coloured couches in her office. Rain was trickling fitfully down the windows, and it was so dark and grey outside that she had switched on the table-lamps.

‘You never did? Well, that doesn’t surprise me,’ said Conor, still smiling at Katie with that winning smile. ‘There’s not too many of us, to say the least. We could have held an all-Ireland pet detectives’ convention in one of those old telephone boxes, and there would still would have been plenty of room for a pole-dancer.’

Katie smiled back at him. ‘So, Conor, how did you get into the pet detection business? If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look even in the slightest how I imagined you were going to look.’

‘No? And how did you imagine I was going to look?’

‘I don’t know. Cable-knit sweater. Corduroy trousers. And bald. And smelling faintly of dog.’