Blood Sisters

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sister Rose. ‘Thank you so much and God bless you.’

  Unexpectedly, she gave Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán a quick hug. Then she smeared the tears from her eyes with her fingers, pushed open the convent door, and went back inside.

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán stood in the porch for a few moments, looking at the door and listening to the rain crackling in the yew bushes. Then she went down the steps and walked back down the slope to her car.

  She believed in God, and in Jesus Christ, and in the perfect love of the Virgin Mary. But ever since she was at school she had instinctively distrusted those who claimed to be their representatives on earth – cardinals, bishops, priests and nuns.

  On this wet afternoon, though, she suspected that she was carrying in her pocket a small fragment of a lost child – and that small fragment had the potential to bring down whole cathedrals, and whole religious hierarchies, in an avalanche of stone and stained glass and silk and gilded mitres.

  As she drove out of the convent gates on to Gardiner’s Hill, a nun walked past her carrying a large black umbrella.

  The nun smiled at her.

  ‘You’re going to need that umbrella, sister,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán to herself, out loud. ‘It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.’

  6

  Katie didn’t return home until half past eight. It was a comfort to see that the lights were on and the curtains were drawn, and when she let herself into the hallway she could smell chicken and vegetables cooking. Barney came pit-pattering out of the kitchen to jump at her, closely followed by John.

  ‘Home is the detective superintendent, home from the crime scene,’ John misquoted, and came forward and took her in his arms.

  It was nearly three weeks now since he had come back and she adored having him here, in spite of the pain she had suffered when he had left her. With one sleeve of her coat half off, she let him hold her tight against him. He was wearing a long striped butcher’s apron which smelled of cooking, but underneath the smell of cooking she could smell him, that spicy oaky smell that she could breathe in when he got out of bed in the morning and she moved over to rest her head on his pillow.

  He had cut his black hair shorter and brushed it up higher, to look more business-like, but she still thought he had that god-like look about him – those dark-sapphire eyes and that long, straight nose. After all, many of the Irish were supposed to be descended from the Iberians, or even from Éber Donn, the Dark One, the god of the underworld.

  ‘I couldn’t stand the thought of another Chinese takeaway,’ he told her as she hung up her coat and went through to the living room. ‘I’ve made us my legendary smoked chicken stew.’

  ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have bothered. I’m not that hungry. But thank you, anyway.’

  ‘Did you eat at work?’ he asked her.

  ‘I had a turkey salad sandwich and an iced slice.’

  ‘I thought you hated turkey. Remember when I said we should start breeding turkeys at Knocknadeenly? You told me they tasted even more disgusting than they looked.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. I just have a thing for turkey at the moment.’

  ‘Supper will be ready in about twenty minutes, if you want any. If you don’t, don’t worry, we can always heat it up tomorrow. How about a drink?’

  He went over to the drinks table and picked up the bottle of Smirnoff Black Label, but Katie said, ‘No – no, thanks. I’ll just have a glass of Tanora.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re feeling okay?’ John asked her. ‘You’re not coming down with the flu, are you?’

  ‘No, no. I’m grand altogether. Just tired, that’s all. It’s been a long day. Have you watched the news at all yet?’

  ‘Unh-hunh. I was working on my laptop till six, then I started cooking.’

  ‘Oh, well. Somebody’s been throwing horses off the cliffs at Nohaval Cove, twenty-three of them. I had to go down there and check them out myself. It was carnage, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Horses? Jesus. What did they do that for?’

  ‘That’s what we have to find out. They were racehorses, so that may well give us an answer.’

  ‘Jesus. Were they dead when they were thrown off, or were they still alive?’

  ‘I don’t know. We have to find that out, too. And we had a murder to deal with, at an old folks’ nursing home in Montenotte. Some poor old nun.’

  ‘You make my day sound utterly boring. The most exciting thing I did was sell a shipment of PfSPZ malaria vaccine to the Jajo Hospital in Lagos.’

  Katie reached up and took hold of his hand. ‘Don’t say that’s not exciting. That’s that new vaccine you were telling me about the other day, isn’t it? The one that gives you the same resistance as if you’ve been bitten by a thousand mosquitoes.’

  ‘That’s right. Without actually looking like you’ve been bitten by a thousand mosquitoes.’

  ‘Don’t you have a drink?’ she asked him.

  ‘Sure. I have a beer in the kitchen. I’ll get you that Tanora, too.’

  ‘It’s just that I need to talk to you.’

  John kept hold of her hand but raised one eyebrow. ‘Okay... what about?’

  ‘Get your beer and I’ll tell you.’

  He went into the kitchen and Katie could hear him opening the oven and checking his stew. He came back with a bottle of beer and a glass of Tanora for her.

  ‘Okay, then,’ he said, sitting on the couch next to her. ‘What do you need to talk about? You think I should start paying you rent, is that it?’

  She leaned across and kissed him on the lips. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to pay me rent. Having you back, that’s all the payment I need. I thought I was never going to see or hear from you, ever again.’

  John shrugged. ‘I was an asshole. I couldn’t see the bigger picture for my daily sales targets. I guess that’s the default mentality of people in online sales.’

  ‘Oh, come on, John. You had to think of your own career. You didn’t want to be stuck here in Cork if it meant you couldn’t develop your own business potential.’

  ‘Well, I know that, and I guess that it’s still partly true. Cork isn’t exactly the sales centre of the universe. But that very first morning, I sat down at my desk in San Francisco and my pal Nathan came over and said, ‘I’ll bet you don’t miss Ireland one iota, do you? All that rain. All that economic austerity.’ And do you know something? I realized that I did miss Ireland. I missed Ireland so much that it physically hurt. I missed Ireland because nobody else in the world understands us Irish, and never will. But most of all, I missed Ireland because I missed you.’

  Katie touched his cheek very gently with her fingertips, as if she needed to reassure herself that he was really here. But he was here, and he was just the same John. He still had that small scar on his forehead. He still looked away when he was talking to her and then immediately looked back again as if he didn’t ever want to take his eyes off her.

  She wanted him so much, but she needed to tell him that she was pregnant. He had already noticed that her tastes in food and drink had changed dramatically, and how tired she was at the end of the day. Fortunately, he hadn’t yet heard her being sick in the mornings, but it was only a matter of time before he realized what was happening.

  The trouble was, how was she going to explain why she had taken her next-door neighbour to bed? Because she was lonely, after John had left her? That would sound as if she were blaming him for her falling pregnant. Because she felt sorry for herself and needed to be reassured that men still found her sexually attractive? That would sound so selfish and small-minded. Out of anger? Out of lust?

  David Kane had been a charmer, but he had also turned out to be a liar and an arrogant wife-beater. She hadn’t realized what a bully he was before they had sex, although she had to admit to herself that she may have suspected it. She kept on seeing him in her mind’s eye, when he was on top of her, so detached and self-absorbed, as if he didn’t care wh
o she was, as long as she was a woman and bringing him to a climax. In spite of that, though, he hadn’t forced himself on her.

  In the end, too, he had sacrificed his own life to protect her by shielding her from a gangster’s bullet. But had that redeemed him? He had assured her that he had had a vasectomy and didn’t need a condom, but now there was another life involved.

  ‘So, what did you need to tell me?’ asked John, swigging his beer.

  ‘I needed to tell you that I’m scared.’

  ‘What are you scared of? Is it something at work? It’s not that assistant commissioner is it, that goddamned what’s-his-face?’

  ‘Jimmy O’Reilly.’

  ‘That’s him, Jimmy O’Reilly. Come on, Katie, you don’t have to worry about him. You told me yourself that your dad gave you enough dope on him and his scams to keep you safe for ever. All you have to say to him is “High Kings of Erin” out of the corner of your mouth and he’ll be buffing up your shoes with the grease from his nose.’

  Katie shook her head. ‘It’s nothing at all to do with Jimmy O’Reilly. In any case it would be practically impossible for me to prove that he took bribes from criminals in return for dropping charges against them, and he knows it, so these days we’re just frosty to each other. Polite, but frosty. In fact, we’re so frosty that Kyna Ni Nuallán wondered if we were having an affair.’

  ‘If you are, I’ll give him a beating.’

  ‘Of course I’m not. I’m allergic to the man.’

  ‘All right. So what is it you’re scared of?’

  Katie took hold of his hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m scared of history repeating itself. You came back because you missed me, but what’s going to happen after a few months when you realize that Cork is still as small and narrow-minded as it ever was and that it’s still raining and it’s still a struggle for you to make yourself a decent living?’

  ‘Katie, I’ve thought about that, believe me. But like I told you, Nils and Nathan and me had a long discussion about it, and for the time being they’re happy for me to run their European and Middle-Eastern and African sales from here. I can also set up my own freelance sales business on the side.’

  ‘And you really won’t miss San Francisco?’ she asked him. Tell him you’re pregnant.

  ‘Of course I will. I’d be lying to you if I told you I won’t. I’d also be deceiving you if I said that I won’t have another shot at persuading you to come out and live there. You’d love it. But in the meantime, if the condition for living with you is living in Cork, then I choose to live in Cork.’

  Katie closed her eyes for a moment. Tell him you’re pregnant.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I only hope you feel the same way in the middle of February, when it’s really damp and cold and you haven’t seen the sun for so long that you’ve forgotten what it looks like.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, sweetheart. I was a prick before, resenting the way you arranged that job for me at ErinChem. But it’s surprising how distance makes you look at your life in perspective. From six thousand miles away, I could see that you loved me and that you’d only been trying to make it easier for me to stay here. I could see that there was no way that you were going to quit the Garda – not then, anyhow, and maybe not yet. But I can wait for you, Katie. Maybe it does rain a whole lot. But I have an umbrella and I can put it up and stand underneath it and wait for you for as long as it takes.’

  Tell him you’re pregnant.

  The clock in the hallway chimed nine. Katie said, ‘Oh – nine o’clock – I want to see the news. I’m wondering if the TV people managed to get down to Nohaval to film those horses. Horgan told me their van got bogged down on some farm track somewhere.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit there and watch the news and I’ll bring you some of my amazing stew?’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Katie, tucking her feet up under her. ‘But just a dooshie bit, okay?’

  John stood up, but then he leaned over her and lifted her face in both hands and kissed her. God, she loved that blue-black colour of his irises. Looking so intently into his eyes was like staring into deepest outer space, glittering and mysterious.

  ‘I love you, Katie Maguire,’ he told her, so close that she felt his breath against her lips.

  Tell him you’re pregnant. That was what you needed to tell him, so tell him.

  I can’t. Not now. The moment’s passed.

  The moment is never going to pass, girl. You have to tell him.

  I can’t.

  So what are you going to do? Get rid of it and never tell him?

  I can’t do that. Wherever it came from, it’s a human life. It’s a baby.

  That depends on whose life is more important. Do you seriously mean to tell me that you’re going to give up this one chance of happiness for a child you never asked for, and never wanted, and was conceived because you were lied to?

  The nine o’clock news came on and Katie reached over for the remote and turned up the sound.

  ‘Good evening and welcome. Tonight’s main headline... twenty-three racehorses are found dead on the beach at Nohaval Cove. Gardaí say they were thrown from the eighty-five-metre-high cliff top. When they were discovered by a local couple walking their dog, one at least was still alive.’

  ‘Jesus, that’s loud!’ called John, from the kitchen. ‘Are you sure they can hear you in Sligo?’

  Katie folded her arms and stared at the screen, although she wasn’t really listening to the news bulletin. All she needed was the volume. Anything to drown out the argument inside her head.

  * * *

  In bed that night, John turned over and held Katie very close. She could feel the bone-like hardness of his penis through her nightgown, against the small of her back. He stroked her shoulder and ran his fingers into her hair. God, she was aching to have him inside her.

  But, ‘John,’ she murmured, reaching over her shoulder and clasping his fingers. ‘I’m really, really tired. Maybe in the morning.’

  ‘You really don’t have anything to be scared of,’ he told her. ‘I’m not going to leave you again, Katie. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not going to leave Ireland, either. This is where I was born, this is where I was brought up. My cousins are still here. My mom and dad are buried here. In fact, I’m going to go to Ballyhooly this weekend and lay some flowers on their graves.’

  Katie twisted herself around and kissed him. ‘I’ll say one thing for you, John Meagher. You really know what to say to turn a woman on, don’t you?’

  7

  They had been fishing all morning in the shallows of the Glashaboy River, trying to catch trout. The trout season was closed until 1 February, but they had hopped off from school for a day and they were bored and they were too well known in Dunne’s Stores to try and hobble a few bars of chocolate.

  After yesterday’s rain it was a dry, fresh day and the surface of the Glashaboy was glittering. They had caught nothing so far, although they had seen six or seven small speckly fish among the weeds. Bradan blamed Tommy for the bait he had brought, which was small cubes of toasted cheese, the remains of his family’s breakfast.

  ‘For feck’s sake, you can only catch trout with things that they eat in their natural habitat,’ Bradan had told Tommy, when Tommy had first opened the grease-stained bag of toasted cheese to show him what he had brought. ‘Trout don’t eat cheese and in any case where would they get a toaster from?’

  ‘Well, yeah, I suppose you’re right,’ said Tommy with a frown. He looked around at the wide, wind-rippled river. ‘And, you know, like, even if they did manage to get hold of a toaster, they’re in water, aren’t they? They’d all be electromacuted.’

  Bradan was thirteen and he had learned the word ‘habitat’ from attending at least three natural science lessons at school. Tommy, his friend, was eleven and still had difficulty reading any words at all. They lived two streets away from each other in Mayfield, but they could have been brothers. They were both tall and gangly-legged for their age, with wiry fla
x-coloured hair and pasty faces and buck teeth. Their long-suffering history teacher, Mr Coughlan, said that they could have been street urchins from a photograph taken in the 1930s, come to life.

  ‘What we need is worms,’ said Bradan.

  ‘Mind you, if they was electromacuted,’ mused Tommy, ‘they would all float to the top, wouldn’t they, and then we could catch them easy.’

  ‘For feck’s sake, Tommy, stop talking buinneach, would you? They don’t have a fecking toaster and even if they did, where would they plug it in?’

  Tommy looked around again, as if he half-expected to see an extension lead lying on the grass next to the water’s edge.

  ‘We’ll have to dig for some,’ said Bradan.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Worms, you daw! What have you got that we could dig with?’

  ‘I have this,’ said Tommy, unbuttoning one of the pockets of his baggy cargo pants and taking out a stainless-steel dessert spoon.

  ‘That’s a fecking spoon! What the feck are you carrying a fecking spoon around for? Don’t tell me – your mam wouldn’t allow you to have a knife!’

  ‘No, my grandpa said I should always carry a spoon with me. Much more useful than a knife. You can do all sorts things with it like getting flies out of your drinks, or taking a few crafty mouthfuls out of a peanut-butter jar in the supermarket.’

  ‘Oh yeah, and I can just imagine the security guard coming up to you and saying, ‘Did I just see you taking a few crafty mouthfuls out of that peanut-butter jar with your spoon? And you’re going, “Mmmff? Mmmmm-mmh! Me? Mmmwwoh!”’

  ‘Ah, g’way.’ Tommy knelt down on the river bank and started to dig with his spoon into the mud. Bradan searched around for a stick so that he could dig, too. He was still looking when three large silvery-grey balloons soundlessly appeared over Glanmire Wood on the opposite side of the river. They were all tethered together, and as he watched them they rose higher into the air, clearing the treetops, and then they came floating across the river towards them.