Living Death (54 page)

He eased himself out of the wheelchair and stood on his stumps. He opened the door a little wider, and he could distinctly hear howling. Or maybe it was singing. It was the most extraordinary noise that he had ever heard a human being make, so maybe it wasn’t a human being at all, but some kind of animal. But what animal could howl, and then utter a shrill and repetitive whirring sound, and then a series of deep, tragic sobs?

He stepped out awkwardly into the hallway, almost losing his balance. There was nobody around, and even the water-tank had stopped rumbling. Directly opposite the reception room was a wide staircase, with mahogany newel posts in the shape of cruel-eyed eagles. The howling was coming from the first floor – thinner and sadder now, but definitely human.

John steadied himself by holding on to the doorframe, and then he stumbled across the hallway until he reached the staircase. He rested for a moment, panting, but from upstairs now he could hear another voice. It sounded like a woman keening at a funeral, and it went on and on, joining the howling and the whirring and the sobbing. John felt as if he had tricked his way into a madhouse, or a house that was crowded with grieving ghosts.

Holding on to the banister rail, he climbed up the stairs until he reached the first-floor landing. He stopped to rest again, and catch his breath. It was gloomy up here, with a shiny parquet floor, and it smelled of oak and furniture polish and antiseptic. He stumped slowly along the corridor, keeping one hand against the wall to stop himself from falling over.

The howling was coming from inside the first door that he reached. Howling, and then sobbing, and then that extraordinary whirring. The woman’s keening was coming from further along the corridor, and John had never heard such grieving in his life.

He glanced behind him to make sure that he wasn’t being watched or followed, and then he opened the first door. The inside of the room was dim, because the blind was drawn down. Up against the opposite wall stood a large hospital-type bed, with a bedside table, and a plain plywood wardrobe. Lying on the bed was a fiftyish-looking man with two thick white surgical pads covering his eyes. His face was sallow and his chin was covered with prickly white stubble. The pale beige blanket that covered him from the waist down was humped up, and John could see the outline of a metal frame that was obviously intended to keep the pressure of the bedclothes off his legs.

He must have heard John come bumping into the room, because he suddenly stopped howling, and listened. Then he made a gargling sound, as if he were being sick, although nothing came out of his mouth.

John went up to the side of the bed and cautiously touched the man’s hand. The man jumped, as if he had been given an electric shock, and gargled again.

‘Ssh, it’s okay,’ John told him. ‘My name’s John and I’ve come here to find out what’s happened to you.’

The man let out a cackle, more like a chicken than a man.

‘Can you speak at all?’ John asked him.

The man shook his head.

‘What I have to find out is, how did you get this way? Did you have an illness, like cancer or something?’

The man shook his head again, and pink dribble ran from the side of his mouth.

‘Did you have an accident?’

Another shake.

‘So this was done to you deliberately?’

Nod.

‘What? You can’t speak, and you’ve been blinded? Did Dr Fitzpatrick do this to you?’

Another nod, frantic this time.

John said, ‘Listen... I’m going to check up on that woman I can hear down the corridor. Then I’m going to call the guards. My partner’s a senior detective. She knows what’s been happening here, and she’s going to make sure that Dr Fitzgerald pays for what he’s done to you.’

The man gargled again, and then let out a chirrup. John couldn’t work out what Dr Fitzgerald might have done to him to make him sound like this. He could tell that the man was desperately trying to talk to him, but he was completely incapable of speech, and almost drowning in blood-streaked saliva.

‘I’ll be back, I promise you,’ he said, and balanced his way out of the room and into the corridor. The woman had stopped keening, but she was still making sad honking noises. John was sure that he could hear another man sobbing, too.
Jesus
, he thought.
Talk about the house of horrors. This place is hell on earth.

He opened the door of the woman’s room. It was completely dark in there, so he groped for the light-switch and turned on the overhead light. A young red-haired women was lying in bed at the side of the room. Her eyes were closed but she was honking and moaning and it was obvious that she wasn’t asleep. John approached her and touched her bare shoulder, and she flinched, but she kept on honking, and gave him no indication at all that she knew he was there.

She was quite pretty, with a heart-shaped face and freckles across the bridge of her nose, and John guessed that she couldn’t have been older than fifteen or sixteen.

‘Can you hear me?’ he asked her.

She didn’t answer, so he leaned over her and spoke clearly and loudly in her left ear. ‘Can you hear me at all?’

He waited, but she still didn’t respond, so he assumed that she was either deaf or mentally impaired. He laid his hand on her shoulder again, trying to make her aware that he was here, and that he had come to help her. It was then that she lifted her left arm out from underneath the blanket, and he saw that her hand had been amputated, and she had nothing on the end of her arm but a smooth round wrist. He raised the blanket and saw that her right hand, too, had been amputated.

He took a staggering step back. At the end of the bed the blanket was lying flat, so he lifted it up there. Both of the girl’s feet had been amputated, ending at the ankles.

John didn’t have to see any more. He couldn’t guess how many disabled people Dr Fitzgerald was keeping in his clinic altogether, but it was enough for him to have seen two – especially since one of them had nodded his assent that it had been Dr Fitzgerald who had mutilated him.

He left the girl’s room, closing the door as quietly as he could, and started to walk back towards the staircase. He had almost reached it when he heard the front door open, and voices in the hallway, a man and a woman’s. He couldn’t distinctly hear what they were saying at first, but he recognised Grainne’s voice.

They came nearer to the bottom of the staircase. He slowly retreated, still holding on to the wall to keep his balance.

‘So who brought him here?’ asked the man.

‘He has a young female carer,’ said Grainne. ‘She works for Caremark, but I think she took it on herself to take care of him because he’s a good-looking feen and she felt fierce sorry for him. But now she’s finding him too much to cope with.’

‘It’s the same old story, isn’t it? People never realise how taxing it’s going to be, looking after a chronically disabled person day and night, week in and week out. And if they take good care of them, and don’t conveniently allow them to die of thirst, or malnutrition, or the bedsores – well, it can seem like they have to take care of them for ever.’

‘He’s here, in the reception room,’ said Grainne, opening the door. ‘John – Dr Fitzgerald is back! Give him a moment to take off his coat and he’ll be with you directly.’

John backed further away, along the corridor. He was grinding his teeth, which he always did when he was stressed. Maybe there was another way out of here, a servants’ staircase, a fire escape, something like that, but even if there was, it would be almost impossible for him to get away on his stumps. It would be agonisingly painful, too.

He heard Grainne say, ‘He’s not there. Gearoid! I left him waiting in the reception room.’

‘Maybe he went to water the horses.’

‘But his wheelchair’s still here. He’s lost his legs from the knees downwards. I didn’t think for a moment that he could walk.’

Grainne walked to the end of the hallway, opened a door, closed it, and then came back again. ‘No, he’s not in there. Dermot!’

‘What is it now?’

‘Have you seen a feen with no legs walking around?’

‘No, but I once saw a feller with no fingers scratching his arse.’

‘Oh, for the love of Jesus, Dermot, this isn’t funny. He was supposed to be waiting in the reception room for Dr Fitzgerald to come back from town, but now he’s not there any more.’

‘Maybe he got tired of waiting and just decided he’d had enough.’

‘What, and walked out, without any legs? Head off, will you.’

It was then that Dr Fitzgerald said, ‘Maybe he heard some of the patients calling out. You know what a Godawful racket they can make. Maybe he went upstairs to see what all the noise was about. If he’s thinking of being admitted here, after all, he’d want to find out what he was letting himself in for, wouldn’t he? I use earplugs myself, at night, especially when it’s a full moon and Dermot turns himself into a werewolf.’

His words may have sounded like banter, but even from up here on the landing John could tell by his tone of voice that Dr Fitzgerald was irritated, and very serious. He had no doubt at all that he would be coming upstairs in a moment, just to make sure that John hadn’t been poking around. If he was running a major drugs-smuggling racket, as Katie suspected, he wouldn’t be the kind of man who left anything to chance.

John retreated further down the corridor, opening one door after another. In each gloomy room, there was a hospital bed, and somebody lying in it, either asleep and snoring or awake and moaning. At the end of the corridor there was a green stained-glass window with a wistful-looking merrow on it, sitting on a rock. Next to that, a door led into Dr Fitzgerald’s operating room, with its stainless-steel sink and its stainless-steel side-table and its cases of surgical instruments. John could hear footsteps coming up the stairs, so he hobbled into this room and closed the door. If he stood close to the wall behind the door, and somebody opened it to take a quick sconce inside, maybe they wouldn’t see him, especially since there were so many surgical gowns hanging on the back of it.

His stumps were hurting badly now, and he had to take a few seconds to squeeze his eyes tight shut and try to suppress the pain. When it had eased a little, he took his mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled Katie’s number.

He could see that her phone was ringing, but she didn’t answer.
Please let her not be driving, or in a meeting, or interrogating somebody. I need her now.

He dialled her number a second time. Now he could hear footsteps coming along the corridor, and doors opening and closing. Dr Fitzgerald must be looking into each patient’s room to see if he was there.

‘John?’ said Katie. ‘What is it? I’m at CUH. We’re just about to start filming our video.’

‘I’m at St Giles’ Clinic,’ John whispered.

‘What? Could you speak up, please? There’s an awful lot of people talking at once and I can’t hear you.’

‘I’m at St Giles’ Clinic,’ he repeated, but only a little louder.

‘What in the name of God are you doing there? Where’s Bridie?’

‘Bridie’s gone shopping.’

‘
What?
She’s left you at St Giles’ Clinic and gone shopping? Are you codding me, John?’

‘No, darling. I’m stone-cold serious. I persuaded Bridie to fetch me here. I thought it would save you having to raid the place.’

‘John, I can’t believe what you’re telling me. Please say that this is a joke.’

‘I’ve seen them for myself, Katie. There’s a fellow here who can’t speak and it looks like he might have been blinded, and there’s a young girl with no hands and no feet. I haven’t had time to check them all, but you can hear them screaming and crying and wailing. I tell you, it sounds like Purgatory.’

‘You have to get out of there now, John. I mean it. Get out of there now and ring Bridie and tell her to come back and pick you up, urgent. I’ll call her myself, too.’

‘I can’t get out. Dr Fitzgerald’s come back and he’s looking for me.’

‘So where are you?’

‘I’m hiding myself in some kind of an operating room, upstairs.’

‘Then stay there. I have two surveillance officers directly outside and they’ll come in to get you right now. Stay there and don’t move but if Dr Fitzgerald finds you and wants to know what you’re doing there, don’t say a word. Act like you can’t speak. For God’s sake don’t tell him that you were looking around for evidence.’

John said, ‘I’ve fucked this up, haven’t I?’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Katie. ‘Just stay where you are and keep this phone open. I’m having Pádraigin call the surveillance officers right this second.’

John was about to describe to Katie exactly where he was, in the room next to the stained-glass window, when the door opened and Dr Fitzgerald came in. He was still wearing his long black raincoat and from John’s point of view he appeared so tall and attenuated with his hawklike nose and his swept-back hair that he could have been a vampire.

John pressed himself back against the wall but Dr Fitzgerald turned around and saw him immediately.

‘Who are you and who are you talking to?’ he snapped, in his dry, schoolmasterly voice.

John said nothing, so Dr Fitzgerald came up to him and twisted his mobile phone out of his hand. His fingers were long and very strong and John was too weakened by his medication to resist him.

Dr Fitzgerald peered at the screen with his lips tightly pursed and then he held the phone up to his ear.

‘John?’ said Katie. ‘John, what’s happening? The surveillance officers won’t be more than a couple of minutes.’

Dr Fitzgerald prodded the phone to end the call and then slung it sideways across the room.

‘So who are you?’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a guard. I know the Garda recruit men with no brains but I didn’t realise they’re taking on men with no legs.’

John still didn’t answer, so Dr Fitzgerald took hold of his sleeve and dragged him, stumbling, out of the corner.

‘Get back downstairs,’ he ordered him. ‘Get back downstairs and if any guards come knocking at the door, tell them that you’re fine and that there’s nothing wrong.’

It took all of his self-control for John not to shout back at Dr Fitzgerald, but he had to recognise that without his legs he was physically powerless, and that anything he said would only cause Katie more horrendous complications. Slowly and painfully, and trailing his hand along the wall, he hobbled his way back towards the staircase. Grainne was waiting for him there, with her arms folded, and a disgusted expression on her face, as if he were a child and she couldn’t believe how badly he had let her down.