‘What about the cars? You say there was a black one. What about the other one?’
‘I can’t recall, to be honest with you,’ said Mr Byrne. ‘Maybe silvery, or silvery-blue.’
‘And the ambulance? Was that a regular ambulance, yellow with green squares on it?’
‘Not at all, no. It was white, white all over. It had some lettering on the side of it but I didn’t have the time to read it. I did see a picture on it, though – like a monk holding on to some kind of animal, and the animal had an arrow sticking out of it. I remember that, because I thought that was kind of a quare picture to be painted on the side of an ambulance.’
Katie stood up, went over to her desk and switched on her PC. She Googled an image of St Giles, nursing an injured hart. Mr Byrne stood up, too, taking out a pair of half-glasses. He put them on and peered at the computer screen with his head tilted back.
‘Spot on,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly the same picture almost.’
‘Thank you, Mr Byrne,’ said Katie. ‘You’ve been extremely helpful.’
‘Did something happen to one of them fellers?’ asked Mr Byrne. ‘Is that why you was asking for witnesses?’
‘Yes. A short time after you saw them, one of them was run over by a truck and killed. The big one.’
‘Holy Mary. That’s terrible. May his soul rest in peace.’
Detective Dooley escorted Mr Byrne out of the station, and then immediately came back. ‘Would you believe it?’ he said. ‘St Giles’ Clinic rears its ugly head again. And the Grey Man, too. Or another grey man. Or do you think that’s just a coincidence?’
‘You know that I don’t believe in coincidences, Robert. All I want to find out now is what that ambulance was doing there, and what the grey-haired man and Martin Ó Brádaigh were discussing so intimately, and whether the grey-haired man stabbed him or not, and how Martin Ó Brádaigh came to be run down by a Paddy’s Whiskey truck.’
She lifted her raincoat off its hook and said, ‘I’ll be going over to CUH now with Pádraigin Scanlan to make that video of poor Siobhán O’Donohue. Once we have that, I think we’ll be more than ready to go to a judge for a search warrant for St Giles’ Clinic, and arrest warrants for Dr Gearoid and Lorcan Fitzgerald.’
*
‘Bridie!’ called John. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of porridge in front of him which he had barely touched, and a mug of tea.
Bridie came in from the living-room and said, ‘What is it, John? What’s the matter? Don’t you care for the porridge? I put cream in it so.’
‘I’m not very hungry, Bridie, to be honest with you. I’m feeling too tense. Katie wants you to take me to this private clinic this morning to have an assessment.’
‘What? What are you talking about? She never said nothing to me.’
‘I expect she forgot. She has her hands full at the moment and I’m the last of her worries.’
‘So you don’t want that?’ Bridie asked him. She took his bowl of porridge away, ate a spoonful of it herself, and then turned on the tap and washed the rest of it down the sink.
‘It’s because of yesterday, the pills and all,’ said John. ‘She thinks that my medication may be wrong. Maybe it’s making me depressed when I shouldn’t be. I mean, you know me, I’m always looking on the bright side, aren’t I? As soon as I have my prosthetic legs I’ll be nearly the man I used to be, and Katie and I will get back together. So she’s suggested that I have some blood tests, and my reflexes checked, and maybe even a brain scan.’
‘Well, that’s news to me,’ said Bridie. ‘Where does she want you to have these done?’
‘St Giles’ Clinic, it’s on Middle Glanmire Road, in Montenotte. They specialise in taking care of people with severe disabilities. People like me.’
‘And she wants me to take you there this morning? Has she made an appointment?’
‘I don’t think you need one. You just walk in and they assess you on the spot.’
Bridie said, ‘I’d best ring her, you know, just to make sure.’
‘You won’t get through to her, Bridie. She’s in court all morning and most of the afternoon. I’m really surprised that she didn’t tell you about it, but I know that she wants me to have it done.’
‘Well, all right, then,’ said Bridie. ‘I suppose that it’s a good idea. I don’t want to come back from getting the messages one day and find that you need your stomach pumping, or that you’ve gone to meet your Creator.’
John said, ‘Grand. I’ll just go to the jacks and then I’ll put on my coat and we can go.’
*
They drove through the mizzle in Bridie’s ten-year-old Ford Galaxy, and all the way to the outskirts of Cork Bridie never stopped talking. John remained silent. He was too busy thinking about what he was going to say to the owners of St Giles’ Clinic to persuade them to take him in.
‘How long is this assessment going to take?’ Bridie asked him, as they turned off the main road and drove up between the high stone walls of Lover’s Walk. ‘If it’s hours, like, I could go into town and look round the shops, couldn’t I? I haven’t had the chance to do that for ages. I could really do with some new bras, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
‘We’ll have to see,’ said John. He had come up with the idea of having himself admitted to St Giles’ after Katie had told him last night about her investigation into Dr Fitzgerald, although his plan was still only half thought-out. He hadn’t been at all sure that he would be able to convince Bridie to drive him here, but she had obviously relished the opportunity to get out of the house for a few hours.
‘Here it is,’ she said, turning into Middle Glanmire Road and up the steep-sloping driveway into St Giles’ Clinic. She stopped outside the front porch and pulled on the handbrake. There was nobody around except for a mechanic in a grubby blue boiler suit, who was tinkering with an ambulance around the side of the house. There were two ambulances parked right behind it – one with plastic sheeting over the windscreen to protect it while it was being resprayed, and one yellow ambulance with green Battenberg squares on it, and the lettering Emergency: Lifeline Ambulance Service.
‘You can wheel me inside, Bridie,’ said John. ‘Whatever you do, though, don’t mention Katie’s name or who she is. Tell them a friend of yours saw the St Giles’ Clinic website, and suggested you bring me here to be taken care of. If it gets out that Katie’s been second-guessing the doctors at the University Hospital, or that she’s been having trouble with a suicidal boyfriend... well, you can imagine what the Irish Times would make of it.’
‘So what do you want me to say?’
‘Tell them that, up until now, you’ve been looking after me yourself, but now it’s becoming a bit too much of a burden for you, so you’d like them to assess me to see if I’m eligible for care at St Giles’. Tell them that I have no living relatives, which is true, but also say that they can send their invoice for their assessment and any other treatment to Caremark. Katie’s told me that she’ll pay for any new medication and any therapy, if I need it.’
‘But doesn’t that sound like I’m asking them to take care of you permanent-like?’
‘It does, yes. But if they think that I might be coming here to live, they’ll give me a very thorough assessment. They look after people who don’t have any hope of recovery, so when they see that all I need is a change in my medication, that’s what they’ll tell me. Give them your mobile number when you go in, and when they’ve finished assessing me they can call you and you can come and collect me.’
Bridie looked dubious about this, but then she shrugged and said, ‘All right. If this is what Katie wants. She’s footing the bill, after all.’
She lifted John’s wheelchair out of the back of her Galaxy and brought it around to the passenger side so that he could swing himself into it. Then she pushed him up to the clinic’s front door and rang the bell.
Nobody answered, so she rang again. Immediately, Grainne opened the door. She looked flush
ed, as if she had been interrupted in the middle of an argument. She stared at John, and then she raised her eyes to Bridie and said, ‘Yes? What is it? What do you want?’
‘We’ve, ah – we’ve come for an assessment,’ said Bridie. ‘Well, John here – not me. He’s come for an assessment.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Grainne. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. What kind of assessment?’
‘To see if you could take him in, like. A friend of mine said she’d seen your website and that’s what you do. Take in people like John – people with the serious disabilities.’
John deliberately didn’t say anything, and didn’t look up at Grainne.
‘Well, yes, we do,’ said Grainne. ‘But it depends on their background. We only take in severely disabled people who can’t find care from anywhere else. People with no family to take care of them. People with no funding. We’re a charity, really.’
‘John has no relatives. I work for Caremark and I’ve been looking after him, but he’s been very depressed because of his disability. It’s reached the point where he’s been thinking of ending it all, if you know what I mean. If you could give him an assessment to see what’s the best way that we can take care of him – well, that could even save his life.’
Grainne didn’t answer immediately, but even though he was pretending that he was staring blankly at nothing at all, John could see from the way that her eyes were darting from side to side that she was thinking very hard.
‘Dr Fitzgerald isn’t here at the moment,’ she told Bridie, after a while. ‘It would be up to him to assess whether your John was suitable for us. But – what time is it? – he’ll be back in less than half an hour, I expect. He’s only seeing his bank manager. Is it possible that you can wait?’
‘Could I leave John here, and then you can ring me when he’s been assessed?’
‘Well... all right. I don’t see why not. He doesn’t have any special needs, does he? I mean, he’s continent? And he’s not carrying any communicable diseases?’
Grainne bent down and spoke to John very slowly and clearly. ‘Are you happy with that, John? If you wait here for a little while for Dr Fitzgerald?’
John glanced up at her and whispered, ‘Yes.’
43
Bridie gave Grainne her mobile number, and then she said, ‘G’luck, John, I’ll see you after.’ She walked quickly back to her Galaxy, climbed into it and reversed down the driveway. It was then that John realised how pleased she was to have some free time away from him. All that nursing, all that sympathetic listening to his feelings about Katie – she had done that only because she was paid to do it, and not because she really cared about him. In a strange way, it made him feel worse than walking into Katie’s bedroom in the middle of the night and finding her asleep with another man.
‘What’s your name, then?’ Grainne asked him. ‘We’ll be filling in the proper registration forms for you if Dr Fitzgerald decides that we should assess you.’
‘John,’ said John, in a slow, thick voice, as if his tongue were swollen.
‘Yes, I heard John. But John what?’
‘Meagher. John Meagher.’
‘And how old are you John?’
‘Thirty-six. I think so, any road.’
‘Where have you been living, John?’
‘With Bridie. In Cobh. She saw me at the hos – she saw me at the hospital – and she took pity on me. Because of my legs. Because of my no legs.’
‘What happened to your legs, John? How did you lose them?’
‘Accident. Fell – fell off my motorbike. Hit my head too.’ John pointed to his left temple and said, ‘I had a bleed. Now I can’t remember things so good.’
Grainne patted him on the shoulder and said, ‘That’s grand altogether, John. I think that Dr Fitzgerald may well want to give you some tests, so that we can admit you.’
John gave her a sloping smile as if he didn’t really understand her. She released the brake on his wheelchair, turned him around, and pushed him down the hallway and into the large reception room. The window into which Gerry Mulvaney had thrown himself was still boarded up.
‘I doubt if Dr Fitzgerald will be longer than a half-hour,’ said Grainne. ‘Can I fetch you anything in the meantime? A glass of water maybe? How about today’s paper?’
Grainne’s initial reaction to John’s appearance at the front door had been bordering on the outright hostile, but now it seemed that she couldn’t do enough to make him feel welcome. This was just what he had been hoping for. With any luck, it might give him the opportunity to look around the clinic and see if there were any more patients who had been deliberately mutilated like Siobhán. How grateful Katie would be, if he could. Not only would it save her from having to mount an expensive Garda search of the premises, it would prove to her that even without his legs he was still a man, with strength and initiative. When they had first become lovers, she frequently used to tell him that he looked like a Greek god. Maybe the god had been cut down to size, but everything else about him was intact. I could still make love to you, Katie, like I used to, if only you would let me.
After about ten minutes, Grainne came back into the reception room and said, ‘Dr Fitzgerald just rang me. He’ll be back in about twenty-five minutes. Are you still okay for the moment? I have to pop around to the shop but I won’t be long. If there’s anything you need urgent shout out for Dermot. He’s in the kitchen at the back, clearing out the wastepipe. The things that people tip down the sink, you wouldn’t credit it.’
She went away again, leaving the door a few centimetres ajar. John waited for a while, and then wheeled himself up to it, and listened. At first he could hear nothing except a water-tank rumbling somewhere. That was probably caused by Dermot, whoever Dermot was, flushing out the wastepipe. Then, very faintly, he heard somebody howling.
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.
Living Death Page 42
