‘But there was nobody else there at the clinic? No nurses – no office staff?’
‘Nobody, ma’am. The two surveillance officers said they were let in by a very charming woman, which is why they didn’t suspect that they were being duped.’
‘And they allowed her to lock them in? I think we’ll have to send them back to Templemore for retraining.’
She reached Anglesea Street and turned into the station car park. She could have gone up to St Giles’ Clinic herself, but she trusted Detectives O’Donovan and Markey. Now that a large quantity of blood had been found, it was technically a crime scene, and they were quite capable of following procedure. Apart from that, if it was John’s blood, which it very well might be, she didn’t want to see it. She wasn’t squeamish, but she didn’t want her last abiding memory of the man she had once loved to be a lake of blood in some unfamiliar house.
As she walked across the station’s reception area, she saw to her surprise that Conor was sitting there. He dropped the newspaper that he had been reading and came across to her.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him.
‘Waiting for you, believe it or not. I had to come into town anyway and I was wondering if you might be able to spare half an hour for coffee. Your assistant told me that you were at the hospital, but she said you shouldn’t be too long, so here I am.’
‘I’m sorry, Conor, I have a crisis on my hands just now,’ Katie told him. ‘John has done something very stupid and now I’m worried that he might have been hurt, or even killed, God forbid.’
Conor followed her to the lift, but when the door opened he said, ‘Listen, I don’t want to be in your way. Call me later if you can. I’ll go and see how Sergeant Browne’s getting along with my fighting dogs.’
‘No, come up for a moment, and I’ll tell you what’s happening. If something really bad has happened to John, I could use some moral support.’
They went up in the lift. Conor saw Katie biting at the side of her thumbnail and said, ‘He’s more than a friend, isn’t he? Or used to be. Am I right? And that’s why you’ve been looking after him.’
Katie gave him nothing but a brief smile to acknowledge that he was right. Then she walked along to her office and he followed her.
Before she did anything else, she rang Bridie, for the fifth time. All she heard was Bridie’s answering service, asking her to leave a message after the tone.
Conor sat down and said, ‘So what’s happened? How do you know that John’s been hurt?’
Katie was in the middle of telling him about the call that she had received from John while he was hiding at St Giles’ Clinic, when her phone rang.
‘Ma’am? DS Begley. We’ve located the ambulance. We thought it might have been heading for Ringaskiddy or Rosslare, to get on a ferry, or possibly due north to the border. But it’s been spotted by a Tipp patrol and it was driving through Cashel town centre. They must have gone all the way up by the back roads, Goatenbridge and Ballybacon, that way.’
‘Cashel? Are they following it now?’
‘At a fierce discreet distance, yes – waiting for our instructions on how to proceed.’
‘They’ve been seen in Cashel,’ Katie told Conor, covering the phone with her hand. Then, to Detective Sergeant Begley, ‘Which way are they heading now?’
There was a long pause, and then Detective Sergeant Begley said, ‘Palmer’s Hill. No – they’ve turned off now, to the right-hand side, down some unmarked track.’
Katie said to Conor, ‘They’re heading for Bartley Doran’s place. They must be. Why in the name of Jesus are they going there? Come on, I’m going up there now myself. Will you come with me? If there’s dogs involved I’d like to have you there.’
She called Superintendent Pearse and told him where she was going, and why, and asked for half-a-dozen uniformed gardaí and an armed response unit. She asked him also to contact Superintendent O’Neill at Tipperary Town to keep him up to date on what she was doing, and request some back-up, if he could spare it.
‘Don’t I get a gun?’ asked Conor, as they went back downstairs and hurried out in the car park.
‘If there’s any danger of shooting, I’ll lend you a ballistic vest.’
‘Oh, okay. But that’s not quite so exciting as having a gun.’
‘Believe me, Conor, there is nothing exciting about shooting somebody. It’s just about the most dreadful thing that I’ve ever had to do.’
*
They didn’t follow the winding route through the South Tipperary countryside that the St Giles’ Clinic ambulance must have taken. Instead, Katie drove at high speed up the M8, the same road that she and Conor had used when they went up to Ballyknock to visit Guzz Eye McManus.
In spite of the fine rain that was still falling, she drove at nearly 170 kph on the motorway, and it took them less than thirty minutes before she turned off for Palmer’s Hill. The Tipperary patrol car was parked beside the entrance to the narrow lane that led up to Bartley Doran’s property, with two gardaí sitting in it. Katie got out and went to talk to them, explaining that back-up was already on the way.
It was less than ten minutes before three more patrol cars arrived, two from Cork and one from Tipperary Town, as well as an Emergency Response Unit, in a Volvo SUV, carrying four armed officers dressed from head to foot in black.
Katie called all the gardaí to gather around her. The soft rain kept falling and sparkled on her dark red hair.
‘As far as we know, the ambulance that we’ve been pursuing has been used to smuggle drugs from the UK to Cork. We believe the man behind the operation is Dr Gearoid Fitzpatrick, a surgeon who was struck off the medical register but who started up his own clinic, presumably as a cover for his drug operation.
‘We suspect that he’s been deliberately mutilating people so that they can appear to be seriously disabled patients, and thereby avoiding a thorough search of his ambulances by customs officers. He knows now that we’ve discovered what he’s doing, which is why he’s made a run for it today. I can’t say that I’m sure why he’s come here. This is the home of a man who trains dogs for dog fighting. But Dr Fitzpatrick’s brother Lorcan is involved in dognapping and dog fighting, and so it’s possible that he’s here today, too.
‘We’re here to arrest Dr Fitzpatrick and any members of his clinical staff who may have come along with him. I’m not expecting any fierce resistance but these are serious criminals we’re dealing with here so be wide.’
She paused, and then she said, ‘There’s one thing. There may be a disabled man on board in a serious condition who has lost a lot of blood. I’ve organised an ambulance which will be here very soon, but if you find him please let me know as soon as you can. That’s all. Let’s go.’
The convoy of Garda vehicles jostled their way slowly down the lane to the rusty metal gate outside Bartley Doran’s farmyard. The St Giles’ Clinic ambulance was parked on the left-hand side, close to the barn. Katie and Conor climbed out of Katie’s car, and as they did so, Bartley himself came limping out of his house with his blackthorn stick.
‘What the feck is all this?’ he demanded, waving with his stick at the three patrol cars and the ERU Volvo.
‘We’ve come for Dr Fitzpatrick,’ said Katie, taking out her ID and showing it to him.
Bartley stared at her, and then at Conor. ‘So, you two were shades all the time. I thought you both had a smell of bacon about you, but I thought that if the Guzz trusted you, then you must be straight.’
‘Will you open the gate, please, Mr Doran,’ said Katie. ‘We don’t want any trouble. We’re only looking for Dr Fitzpatrick, and any of his staff who might have come with him.’
‘I’ll tell you what you can do, girl,’ said Bartley, spitting on the ground. ‘You and all of your piggy pals here can go away to feck. Go on, the lot of you. Away to feck with you. This is my land and you’re not setting foot on it.’
‘Please open the gate, Mr Doran.’
Bartley
turned around and started to limp back towards his house. ‘Gearoid!’ he shouted out. ‘Lorcan! There’s a whole herd of pigs have showed up!’
‘So – Lorcan’s here too,’ Katie said to Conor. ‘That’s probably why he came here.’ She turned around to the garda standing behind her and said, ‘Would you do the honours, please?’
The garda beckoned to his partner and his partner opened the boot of their patrol car and came across with a large pair of bolt-cutters. He cut through the chain on Bartley Doran’s gate and pushed it wide open. Then the whole posse of them spread out and walked towards the house, with Katie in the middle and the four ERU officers on either side, holding their Heckler and Koch MP7 submachine-guns across their chests.
Katie said to Conor, ‘Stay behind me, Conor. Just in case.’
‘That’s the first time in my life that a woman has ever said that to me,’ said Conor. ‘The first time she’s meant it, anyway.’
They were still thirty metres from the front of the house when the front door was thrown open and Grainne appeared. She came walking towards them with her hands held up. She was followed by Dermot, in a thick grey roll-neck sweater and jeans that were still heavily stained with blood.
‘We give up!’ called Grainne, in a high, shrill voice. ‘Look, we’re coming quietly!’
As soon as Dermot had stepped down from the porch, however, Lorcan came out of the front door, with Gearoid close behind him. Like two escaping thieves in a melodramatic play, they ran along the front of the house and across the scrubby grass patch that led to the barn.
The uniformed gardaí started to run after them, with the armed officers jogging close behind. But Grainne crossed diagonally in front of them, waving her arms and shrieking, ‘No! No! It’s not them you want! It’s us!’
Dermot made a half-hearted attempt to obstruct one of the gardaí, too, but the officer pushed him hard in the chest and he fell backwards on to the muddy tarmac, and lay there with his arms spread, as if he had really had enough, and couldn’t be bothered to get up.
Gearoid and Lorcan had reached the front of the barn, and they were obviously intending to continue along the sheds where Bartley kept his dogs, but one of the ERU officers fired an ear-splitting shot into the air and shouted, ‘Stop!’
Gearoid and Lorcan both stopped, looking confused. Katie was running up to them, with Conor next to her, and she thought that she had them now. As he turned around, though, Gearoid saw that the barn door was right behind them. He pushed it open and tugged Lorcan by the sleeve to follow him inside. They slammed the door behind them, and they were gone.
By now, Bartley had come out of the house again and was standing on the edge of the porch. When he saw Gearoid and Lorcan disappear into the barn, he screamed out, ‘No, Gearoid, no! Not in the barn! Not in the fecking barn for feck’s sake!’
He started to limp towards the barn himself, until Katie shouted at him, ‘Stop! Stay where you are, Bartley! You keep out of this!’
‘But it’s the dogs!’ Bartley shouted back at her. ‘They have the fecking dogs in there and they’re having a mass bump!’
‘That’s a mock-fight, Katie, to make them more aggressive,’ said Conor. ‘I wouldn’t go in there, if I were you.’
‘I have to,’ Katie told him, tersely.
As they neared the barn, they could hear dogs barking in a frenzy, and men shouting. Katie beckoned the ERU officers and said, ‘We’re going inside, but cover us. If any of those dogs looks like it’s out of control, don’t hesitate to shoot it. You’ll probably be doing it a favour.’
One of the black-uniformed officers pushed at the door, but it seemed that it was bolted from the inside. He kicked it, and it gave way a little, so he kicked it again even harder, and it shuddered open. Holding up his submachine-gun, he stepped inside. Katie went in after him, followed by another armed officer, and Conor, and three gardaí.
Bartley’s three young helpers were there, inside the makeshift ring of crates, and they were each desperately holding on to two pit-bull terriers – six slavering dogs between them. Each pit-bull had a chain leash, which was wrapped around the young men’s wrists, but they were straining against their leashes so violently that the young men could barely keep on their feet. The dogs’ eyes were bulging, their teeth were bared, and their mouths were dripping with foam and blood. Two of them had their ears in bloody tatters, and all of them had teeth-marks and rips along their flanks. The penis of one of them was dangling by a fleshy thread of skin.
They must have been fighting each other before Gearoid and Lorcan had come stumbling into the barn, but now they were all pulling strenuously at their leashes to get at them, because they must have thought that they were bait, and much easier to attack. They may also have smelled that they were frightened, and that could have aroused their blood-lust even more.
‘Gearoid and Lorcan Fitzpatrick!’ Katie shouted out. She could barely make herself heard over the pit-bulls barking.
‘You can’t prove anything!’ Dr Fitzpatrick shouted back. It was almost a scream. ‘You can’t prove anything!’
‘What have you done with John Meagher?’ Katie shouted. ‘Where is he? What have you done with him?’
‘You can’t prove anything!’ Dr Fitzpatrick repeated. Then he held up both of his hands and said, ‘I’m entitled! Don’t you know that? I’m entitled! God gave me these hands! These hands hold life and death! I’m entitled!’
Lorcan called out, ‘He’s right! We’ve never done nothing! You can’t arrest us when we’ve done nothing!’
Dr Fitzpatrick started to back away, and Katie could see that there was another door at the other end of the barn. She said to the two gardaí close beside her, ‘Can you restrain both of them and fetch them outside? I can’t read them their rights in here. They’ll complain to their lawyers they couldn’t hear them!’
The gardaí unclipped their handcuffs from their belts, and started to walk around the circle of wooden crates towards Gearoid and Lorcan. Before they could reach them, though, two of the pit-bulls pulled so hard on their chains that the young man holding them fell forward on to his knees. The dogs dragged him right across the ring, and both of them bounded over the crates, one after the other, so that the young man collided with them and lost his grip on their chains.
Gearoid staggered backwards and tried to beat the dogs off, but both of them launched themselves at him, snarling and snapping and tearing at his sleeves and his hands. He fell on to the sawdust-covered floor and they went for his head, their teeth ripping at his ears and his nose and his cheeks. He screamed, and tried to roll himself free, but the pit-bulls were determined to wrench the flesh from his face.
Lorcan kicked the dogs as hard as he could, again and again. He kicked them in their ribs, and in their testicles, and in the side of their heads, but they had endured worse kicks than that in their lives and they ignored him.
‘Shoot them!’ Katie shouted. Two of the armed gardaí came up close to the pit-bulls as they struggled and wrestled with Gearoid on the floor, pointing their automatic pistols at them, but hesitant to fire in case they hit Gearoid. Katie pulled her own revolver out of its holster but that was only because the other four pit-bulls were mad with excitement now, leaping up into the air and barking and pulling at their chains so hard that they were nearly strangling themselves.
It was then that Conor walked quickly around the ring and stood behind the two armed gardaí. He did nothing for a few seconds, simply standing there, but then he put two fingers between his lips and let out a weird, piercing whistle. Nothing happened at first, but then he whistled again and both dogs stopped biting at Gearoid’s face and lifted their heads and looked at him.
Even the dogs in the ring quietened down when they heard him whistle, although two of them kept on barking alternately, as if they were some kind of threatening double-act.
Conor said, ‘Come on, you two. Am chun tú a chodladh. Time for you to sleep.’
The two dogs stood in front of him
with those bulging eyes, their jaws dripping with Gearoid’s blood, their docked tails twitching. They stared at him as if they couldn’t understand what he was or where he had come from.
‘Now you can do it,’ said Conor. The two armed gardaí stood either side of him, holding their automatics in both hands. They pointed them directly between the pit-bulls’ eyes, and fired, one after the other. The pit-bulls’ heads burst open like watermelons and they dropped sideways on to the floor, one on top of the other, their legs quivering.
The shots had been deafening, and the other four pit-bulls became hysterical, throwing themselves around so wildly that one of the young men was knocked off his feet and barely managed to keep hold of them. Gearoid tried to sit up, making a bubbling noise between lips that were hanging free from his face like thin strips of raw liver. His nose had been bitten off, leaving a dark triangular hole, and the skin and flesh had been torn from his cheeks, so that the white bones were visible. He lifted one hand, but then he fell back on to the floor and lay there, shaking.
Lorcan looked down at his brother, and then turned around and stared at Katie with almost theatrical malevolence. He walked stiffly towards her, but as he came nearer, a garda stepped forward and said, ‘That’s close enough, sham.’
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ he said, ignoring the garda and still staring at Katie. ‘I’ve heard about you. You think you were sent from Heaven to judge the rest of humanity. You think you’re fecking immortal. Well, here’s my answer to that misconception, detective not-so-superintendent.’
He reached inside his jacket and out flashed his triangular knife. The garda lunged forward to grab his wrist but Katie was quicker. She lifted her revolver and shot him point-blank in the chest.
Lorcan looked at her in amazement. Then he looked at his knife, and dropped it on to the floor. He sagged to his knees, with blood running out of the side of his mouth. Then, abruptly, he coughed more blood, and slowly lay down on his side, as if he were settling himself in bed for the night.
Living Death Page 44
