by J. M. Smyth
‘What was the cause of the foal’s condition?’
‘It had been born six weeks prematurely.’
‘His prognosis?’
Don’t back it to win the Derby.
‘He suggested putting it out of its misery. Conor Donavan agreed and asked him to carry out a post-mortem.’
‘Is that standard procedure in the death of a foal?’
‘The vet wanted to determine whether the mare had foaled early because of an infection. If so, it would have to be identified and treated before she was later served to prevent it being passed on to the stallion.’
‘And the results of the post-mortem?’
‘Traces of follicle-inducing stimulants were found in the foal’s system.’
‘And what is their relevance?’
‘The mare had been fed them deliberately to bring her into labour.’
‘Why would the Donavans do such a thing?’
‘They didn’t.’
Wonder who did.
Tom Fred knew.
‘Lucille Kells, Detective Sergeant, when she was found unconscious in her holiday home, as part of your house-to-house inquiry’—me and Corn dropped her off—‘what was found beside her?’
‘Farming books.’
We dropped those off as well.
Tom Fred took them over to Chilly. ‘Are these the books?’
‘Yes.’
‘Each has several pages folded. They were like that when you found them?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do they describe?’
‘How mares and bulls have been known to cause fatal accidents and—’
Boring details establishing how big Ed and Amy came by the info first-hand.
‘What else do they describe?’
‘How to eradicate strangles.’
Boring details establishing Conor got eradicated the same way.
‘What was found beside these books?’
‘Lucille’s birth certificate and a laptop.’
We dropped those off as well.
‘What was recorded on the laptop?’
‘Emails to Picasso.’
Boring details proving Corn was blackmailed into killing the Donavans.
‘In Edna, Amy and Conor Donavan’s case, was he instructed to use the same methods described in the farming books?’
‘Yes.’
Stacks more stuff followed. Tom Fred should put me on his Christmas-card list. I’d given him enough evidence to choke Jaws. Any more and he’d’ve never got it in the fucking door.
Brady had a go.
‘Detective Sergeant Winters, did Lucille explain how she came to be so easily found unconscious in her holiday home?’
‘She has no knowledge of how she got there.’
We didn’t tell her we’d be dropping her off unconscious.
‘When she regained consciousness, what was her first concern?’
‘She kept asking, “Is my mother all right? Please tell me my mother is all right.”’ (Her mother’s fine, as far as I know. Mind you, I haven’t seen her in twenty years. That reminds me, I told her I’d get back to her. Hope she’s not still sitting in Whites’ farmhouse waiting on my call.) ‘When I told her that Anne Donavan had been murdered, she became even more hysterical. She was covered in bite marks. When I asked what had happened “Picasso’s rats” was all that I could get out of her. Questioning had to wait until she’d been taken to the station and a doctor brought in.’
‘Were you troubled at any time that the amount of evidence against Lucille was found so conveniently?’
‘Really, Your Honour, perhaps Mr Brady would like to ask the accused if she too was troubled that the amount of evidence against her was found so conveniently?’
‘Yes, I was troubled.’
‘Why?’
‘Because every question I put to Lucille had been answered “I don’t know”. A girl who’d pull a stroke like this would have all kinds of get-outs. But she hadn’t one. A clever criminal on the one hand, a fool on the other. No poison had been used, no guns, no sticks or bats, no running people over, no pushing in front of trains or from high windows, no kickings, no drug overdoses. Three of the Donavans had been killed in ways I had never come across. There was a mind at work here. Yet how did that mind allow itself to get caught so easily?’
I think Chill had a soft spot for Lucille. A touch of compassion there in the way he said that. Maybe fathers who’ve had their daughters kidnapped and who find themselves charging them for murder twenty years later feel sorry for them automatically even though they don’t know they’re their daughters. That’s just my theory. I doubt anyone’s done a study. Maybe they tried but couldn’t find any long-lost kidnapped daughters to question.
Next up came the shrinks, to explain how Lucille appeared to be unaware of the crimes she’d committed. One acting for her barrister, the other for the state. One for, one against.
The former said she had no memory of them because, in his view, she hadn’t committed them. The latter said he reckoned she had a split personality. She had a good side – it came through when she was with people who’d been kind to her – and a bad – evil and cunning, which came through when she was with people who’d maltreated her.
Tom Fred brought in witnesses from the orphanage. They’d been seated outside and didn’t know what the shrinks had said. A Sister Angeline said she was very fond of Lucille, that she was kind and compassionate. But when they called a Sister Dominic, and she said Lucille was anything but, everyone in the courtroom knew that she had maltreated her.
Here’s what a reporter covering the trial wrote. (I got all this from the media by the way – I could hardly turn up in court and have Chilly thinking, ‘Here, that’s Red Dock. Wonder what he’s doing here.’) ‘Sister Dominic wasn’t aware as to why the hushed courtroom was looking at her accusingly. But the point had been substantiated. Lucille had an evil and cunning side.’
Lucille’s turn.
‘Lucille, while you were deceiving your mother, what were your feelings towards her?’
Brady piped in at the ‘deceiving’. No good. Overruled. Shut the fuck up, Brady. You’re holding up the proceedings here.
‘She seemed very nice. I wanted to get to know her better.’
‘You did not blame her for having placed you in the care of Sister Dominic?’
Oh, I meant to say, when Corn sent his collection to art galleries, they printed them in their catalogues – notoriety gets the punters in I suppose – and Tom Fred had copies. He held up a few.
‘These portraits, Picasso’s subject matter: nuns in Christian Brother cassocks, replete with belts and crucifixes, portraying androgynously – yet predominantly through the female sex – the evil of which both sexes are capable, is said – as we have heard from an eminent criminal psychologist – to illustrate the background of the artist, his experiences as a child. In particular this one – the Medusa painting. It depicts a nun with two faces, one beautiful, the other – on the back of her head reflected in a mirror – of Medusa. A small boy cowers for protection behind a statue of Christ, which the Medusa face has turned to stone. If such a boy, having suffered maltreatment to the point of insanity, grew to express these experiences by preying on the female sex, does it not follow that others who had undergone such maltreatment might also be capable of such depraved acts?’
Nah, you’re way off the mark there, Tom Fred. I know stacks of people who turned out all right – look at me.
‘Did you ever cower behind a statue of Christ, Lucille?’
‘Oh, sweet Jesus, please help me. Jesus, please, please help me.’ That was Lucille.
‘Later to prey on your great-aunts, mother and grandfather to obtain his estate: the idyll denied to you as a baby?’
‘No.’
‘You have told the court that the most ruthless killer this country has ever known, having held you in a cell, having subjected you to the horrors of almost being eaten alive, then mysteriously –
perhaps out of the goodness of his heart – allowed you to go free. How many of Picasso’s victims have enjoyed such a reprieve?’
‘None.’
Corn’s not into reprieves.
‘Then why you?’
‘I have no explanation.’
‘You took lessons at the Donavan riding stables?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where follicle-inducing stimulants were in the tack room?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which were used to bring a mare into labour?’
‘Yes.’
‘To which you had access? Since you took riding lessons there?’ A lot of objections and gavel banging going on.
‘Which also applied to the ingredients used to make the formalin gas which killed Conor Donavan?’
‘Yes.’
‘You also told the court that your fingerprints and yours alone were found on the laptop computer used to blackmail Picasso?’
‘Yes.’
‘That, with the beneficiaries dead, only you, as your mother’s and grandfather’s closest living relative, stood to benefit?’
‘Yes.’
And on and on and on. And on. And on.
One reporter wrote that she ‘looked pitiful, as if she was in another dimension, an observer in a dream in which others argued over a future she had no say in’. I was hoping he’d write that with Tom Fred on a roll against her, and what with the temperature hitting the eighties, that – for once – she’d taken off those long sleeves she was always wearing and Chill’d copped that birthmark on her arm and realised who she was. I’d’ve laughed my bollocks off. Still, there are other ways to laugh your bollocks off – not at the verdict: that was always a foregone – four lives each to run concurrently.
‘Wanna know what it’s like to be up for murders you never committed and sit listening to testimony that proves you did it when all along you know you didn’t and you feel like some fucker’s tied you to a chair in a target range with a bullseye round your neck and invited anyone with evidence to fire it at you? Yeah? Then you’ll have some idea of how your daughter felt? That was her up on the stand, ya daft bastard. Bye, Chill.’
That’s how I’d like to have told him. Didn’t matter – he’d find out anyway. After I’d been to see my solicitor my name’d be out in the open and Chilly’d be getting a call that’d take his mind back to the day his baby was taken.
‘Mr Winters, Conor Donavan’s solicitor here. You asked me months ago to notify you if anyone came forward to claim Conor’s estate.’ Standard cop stuff. ‘Well, someone has. And he can prove it.’
‘Who is he?’
‘A Mr Robert Dock.’
‘Robert Dock?’
‘Yes.’
‘Red Dock?’
‘His solicitor did refer to him as Red, yes.’
‘Fuck!’
‘Mr Winters are you—’
Down would go the phone.
Up until now, with my name out of the equation, Lucille was seen as just another sorry case who’d bumped off her family to get their money. With my name in the equation, all that’d change.
‘And all very conveniently after Lucille’s been put away for it, who should step forward but Red Dock’ would ping away in that brain of his until ‘Forget that there’s no evidence against him, Red Dock has motive and he’s well capable of framing people’ told him that Lucille had been a pawn, used, manipulated, all that.
By the time he got round to ‘But why frame Lucille? Why her? And to frame her, Dock’d have to have known she was a Donavan. How? Even she didn’t know till her birth certificate turned up. It was that cert that led her out to Clonkeelin, and within weeks the Donavans were dead. But how reliable is that cert? If Dock’s behind this, its authenticity has to be questionable. Is it hers? If not, she’s not a Donavan. Then who is she?’ The answer’d be on his desk. Thought I’d send him a couple of snapshots – one front-pager showing Lucille fainting when the verdict was read out, another taken by me when she was a baby on the steps of that orphanage I’d taken her to – and a silver St Christopher she’d been wearing round her neck, which I’d kept ’specially for the occasion.
Fuck him. What could he do?
Ask his boss for a retrial?
‘No problem, Chill. Let’s go see the chimp.’
‘Yeah, well, y’see, Your Honour, I’ve been having a bit of a think.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Lucille’s my daughter.’
‘You screwed Anne Donavan?’
‘No, no, I didn’t screw Anne Donavan.’
‘Does Lucille know?’
‘No.’
‘You gonna tell her? Look how she treated her other relatives. Ask Tom Fred.’
‘They’re not her relatives.’
‘But she thought they were. The evidence says so.’
‘That’s because Red Dock set her up.’
‘You can prove that?’
‘Well, no, I …’
‘Why would he set her up?’
‘He hates me.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m a cop.’
‘So’s the supe. Dock didn’t kidnap his daughter.’
‘He hasn’t got a daughter.’
‘You ain’t got a daughter?’
‘Ah, no, my wife and I couldn’t have a …’
‘I didn’t know that. Get him t’fuck outta here.’
Again, what could he do? Go and tell Lucille the good news?
‘Excellent. Can I go home now?’
‘Ah, well, no, not exactly, Lucille. Knowing and proving are two different things.’
‘But …’
‘Sorry, I tried to get that fucking judge to listen to reason but he reckons I’m full of bullshit.’
He’d never be able to jigsaw all the pieces into place, but the name Red Dock would tell him he never would. And the best part’d be that he’d have to live with the fact that he’d put his daughter away and could do sweet fuck all about it.
He’d just have to go around like a lunatic until he could figure out some way to invite me in to play with his tape recorder. That’s the only way he’d get her freed. And the only person who could help him to invite me was Corn. And whether or not Winters knew it, Corn had shown him exactly how to do it.
You must have noticed it. Tom Fred stuck it in your face, for fuck’s sake. The Medusa painting. The boy in it. Who do you think that boy is? Corn painted himself.
Once Winters twigs to that he’ll trace the orphanage inspectors who went round those industrial schools, the brothers and sisters who ran them … He might even go see the bishop. ‘Have a look at this painting, Bish. I need to find the setting. Which industrial school was that statue in?’
Somebody’s bound to recognise it as the one me and Corn were in.
At one point the majority of prostitutes and prisoners here were ex-industrial school. Tens of thousands of kids went through those places. All he needed was one to put a name to the face in the painting.
Then there were those punters of Gemma’s. Corn’d hit on them. And knowing him, he’d go back for a second helping. He might even try for a third. He thought that plan of his was foolproof. But a blackmailing scam only works once. Keep milking it and the guys you’re hitting on start to think up get-outs. Successful businessmen aren’t successful because they’re stupid.
Even if they didn’t pay someone to lay in wait for him, his ruse worked only if they didn’t go to the law. Because he was playing them two at a time, if one went to the law, the other would be seen as the blackmailer and vice versa. But if both went, the law would see through it. They’d tell the pair of them to go to the waste bin as instructed then leave. Corn would think it safe to collect and they’d grab him. Lucille would ID him as Picasso – and, as I say, he’d take me down with him.
Or would he? If I got caught I’d go down for the rest of my natural whether I squealed on Corn or not. Same goes for him.
Here’d be Winters. ‘Tell us about Doc
k’s part in this, Corn.’
‘In return for?’
‘Well, we can ask the judge to drop the charges for those twenty-odd women you scalpeled, but, ah … he’s a bit of a funny cunt that judge.’
Corn hates the law and the system as much as I do. We’re too much alike. All Winters’s likely to get out of him about me is an ‘Apropos?’
There was one other threat to me of course, but you already know about it. No point going over it again.
Fuck it. Time to do what I’d spent my life planning since the age of nine.
My brief had arranged for a funeral company to have Sean reburied and I had to show the undertaker to Sean’s grave.
After he’d gone, I stayed a while. Nothing worth describing. Just a dump of a cemetery in the grounds of a burnt-down industrial school. St Pat’s they called it. Sean’s was a well-tended grave. I always visited him regularly and kept it tidy. Five names were on the headstone. A small stone with no space to carve anything but names and dates of death.
A couple of hours and he’d have a nice new casket with brass handles and be laid to rest on the brow of a hill overlooking the cottage we should have been brought up in. Proper headstone with his name, date of birth, date of death, and ‘Loving Brother of Robert’ carved on it. Just the way he’d like it.
Winters came over. No doubt Conor’s solicitor had told him this’d be taking place. I’d caught a glimpse of him inside the chapel ruins, looking up at an old beaded arch. The same one above the statue in Corn’s painting. He’d found the setting. Or I’d led him to it. What was left of it anyway. For all the good it’d do him. .
‘I’ve told Lucille who she really is. It’s only a matter of time before you and that animal Picasso are taking her place.’
Yeah, well, a matter of time might be a long time getting here, Chill. We all might be in the ground by then.
‘Know what gets me, Dock? The methods you used. I always knew you were twisted but getting an animal to kick someone to death, using a slurry pit, poisonous gas …’
‘Know what gets me, Winters? I always knew you were twisted, but getting an animal to kick someone to death, using a slurry pit, poisonous gas… Don’t tell me you don’t recognise your own part in this. It was you who set the whole thing in motion. Now fuck off out of my way – I’ve got my brother’s funeral to attend to.’
