Red Light

by Graham Masterton

  He leafed through his papers until he found the scribbled report that he was looking for. ‘Taken in quantity over a long period of time, Agbo jedi-jedi can cause kidney and liver damage, and there were signs of that, too.’

  ‘All the same, this isn’t one hundred per cent proof that he’s Nigerian, is it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t. But I reconstructed as much of his face as I could. Do you want to see that?’

  ‘Go on. I haven’t eaten yet.’

  Dr O’Brien passed Katie a photograph of the dead African’s reassembled features. He had painstakingly tweezered together all of those fragments of skin that had been blasted apart by the two shotgun shells and arranged them over a clear plastic mask. The result was a lumpy jigsaw of the African man’s face. He was eyeless, and his nostrils were flared grotesquely wide. Half of his upper lip was missing, so that he appeared to be sneering.

  ‘Best I could do, I’m afraid,’ said Dr O’Brien. ‘His skull was so badly smashed that it was impossible to tell for sure what he really looked like.’

  ‘Obviously there’s no way that we can hand this picture out to the media,’ said Katie. ‘We don’t want to be giving everybody nightmares. I’ll send a copy to our sketch artist, though, Maureen Quinn, and see what she can make of it. She’s brilliant when it comes to recreating faces from autopsy photographs. Some young woman may have been floating in the river for three days and blown up like a balloon, but Maureen can make her look like somebody you’d whistle at in the street.’

  ‘Ah! But look here, and here!’ Dr O’Brien interrupted, triumphantly. ‘The most important thing that this reconstruction shows us is the scarring on the victim’s cheeks. See? Two teardrop scars, one on each cheek. Those are tribal marks, which would have been inflicted when our friend was a baby. Yoruba, most likely, from north-western Nigeria. They don’t do it so much these days, except in rural areas, but it would have been the accepted custom when our friend was born. A priestess would make the cuts with a ritual knife and then rub snail secretion into the cuts to cool them, followed by charcoal to stem the bleeding. Nigerian, no question.’

  ‘Fair play to you,’ said Katie. ‘Apart from having a Nigerian nickname, I think we can now say with certainty that Mawakiya was a Nigerian. That’s really going to help us actually, because we can narrow our enquiries down to the Nigerian community and forget about the Somalis and the Ghanaians and all the rest of them. There’s less than seven hundred Nigerians living in Cork – at least one of them must recognize him. Once we know who he is, it’s going to be very much easier to find out who had enough of a grudge against him to make him cut off his own hand and blow his brains out.’

  ‘I haven’t yet completed all the blood tests on the Romanian,’ said Dr O’Brien. ‘Again, though, I’m almost totally sure that he is a Romanian – and not just because of his tattoos. His teeth are the obvious giveaway. His jaw was shattered, but I’ve begun to put his dental work back together again and he had six implants, all of them very high quality. Without any doubt they were done in Romania. The enamel is almost certainly Romanian and the dental practices around Bucharest are some of the best in the world – easily as good as American dentists, and very much cheaper, too. Stomatologists, they call them. In the UK or America, six implants would have cost at least twenty thousand euros. In Romania, probably a third of that, so even an ex-con would have been able to afford them. Obviously I’m only theorizing at the moment, but I would be very surprised if he didn’t turn out to be Romanian.’

  ‘Right,’ said Katie. ‘It may be jumping the gun, but I’ll have some questions asked among the Romanians, too. You’ve done some grand work here, Dr O’Brien. I’ll get in touch with our sketch artist right now and see if she can’t produce a likeness of Mawakiya by the morning. We think we’ve made some progress with the possible identity of our perpetrator, too. We have CCTV pictures of an African girl following an African man in a purple suit, recorded on the morning we believe he was murdered. They should be shown on the Six One news tonight, and in the papers tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Well, that’s encouraging,’ said Dr O’Brien, as he stowed his photographs and papers back in his bag, Then, with unexpected shyness, ‘You don’t have to call me Dr O’Brien, you know. Nobody else does. Not even the dreaded Dr Reidy. The name’s Ailbe.’

  ‘Ailbe. The patron saint of fishermen.’

  ‘That’s right. My old feller named me that because he was always mad on fishing. Not me, though. I always found fishing too boring, and when I did catch a fish I always felt sorry for it. I mean, imagine what it would be like if you were walking around minding your own business and suddenly a great hook came down out of the sky and caught you in the mouth and hauled you up into the air?’

  ‘I’m not so sure that I want to,’ said Katie.

  ‘Oh well, that’s just me,’ said Dr O’Brien. ‘I suppose it’s the job. I often look at the people lying on the autopsy table there in front of me and try to imagine what they must have gone through before they died. The pain, you know. The thought: Why me? I should be more detached, I suppose, but a human being is a human being after all.’

  Katie picked up the photograph of Mawakiya’s reconstructed face. ‘I can keep this one? But send me a JPEG of it, too – and the pictures of his forearms.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I expect I’ll hear from you tomorrow, then. Right now, I have to see if I can contact Maureen Quinn and get the press office all geared up.’ She paused and then she said, ‘Thanks, Ailbe. Good man yourself.’

  Twenty

  It was past 9.30 p.m. when she eventually arrived home. It wasn’t raining, but it was misty and there were luminous haloes around the street lights, like dandelion puffs.

  Barney came to the front door to greet her when she let herself in, but John didn’t. She found him in the living room in front of the television watching the evening news. Next to him on the coffee table was a thick maroon folder and a half-empty glass of whiskey.

  ‘Well, you’re back at last,’ he said, without looking at her and without getting up from his chair.

  She crossed the room and gave him a kiss on the forehead, but he didn’t lift his face to kiss her back. ‘I did text you,’ she said. ‘I was about to leave the station when Dr O’Brien came in with his autopsy reports on those two homicide victims.’

  ‘Those guys are dead. Couldn’t it have waited till tomorrow?’

  ‘Look – I’m sorry I’m so late, but it couldn’t wait, no. There’s a young woman out there mutilating people and blowing their heads off and I have to find her before she does it to anybody else.’

  ‘If she’s planning on doing it to anybody else. You don’t know that for sure.’

  ‘I can’t take the risk. It looks like she may have had a serious grudge against these two victims and it’s quite possible that somebody else has upset her. It’s not like these killings were family-related or even race-related. She has some other agenda.’

  ‘I saw her picture on the news just now,’ said John. ‘She didn’t look like the vengeful type to me. In fact, I hate to say it, but I thought she was quite a looker.

  He held his hand out to her. ‘Listen, Katie, I don’t mean to be grouchy, but I’m only thinking of you. You’ve been working so goddamned hard lately. I’m thinking of us, too. We hardly seem to see each other these days. You’re up at six and not back until nine or ten. I’ve practically forgotten what you look like.’

  ‘You’ll be starting work yourself on Monday,’ Katie reminded him.

  ‘That’s one of the reasons I was hoping you’d be home early. I’ve drawn up all my plans for online marketing for ErinChem and I’d like you to take a look at them and tell me what you think.’

  ‘I will. I promise. Just let me change and get my head back together. Has Barney been for his walk yet?’

  ‘I took him about an hour ago. And, yes, he did his business.’

  ‘How about you? Are you hungry?’

  ‘I wa
s, but I’m not so much now.’

  ‘I’ve got that lamb stew if you want me to heat it up.’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. I think I’m past lamb stew. Maybe we could just have a pizza or a sandwich or something.’

  Katie went into the bedroom she still called the nursery, unfastened her holster and locked her revolver away in the top dresser drawer. Then she went into the main bedroom, undressed, and went into the bathroom. When she reappeared, wrapped in her pink towelling bathrobe, John was waiting for her, sitting on the side of the bed.

  ‘Sorry. Forgot to tell you. Your sister Moirin called about an hour ago.’

  ‘Moirin? What did she want?’ Moirin was five years younger than Katie, the fifth of a family of seven, all daughters. She was small and pretty, in a sharp-faced way, but she was incorrigibly bossy. She lived in the seaside town of Youghal, fifty kilometres east of Cork city, with an estate agent called Kevin, who seemed permanently sad and was very bad at golf. Katie and Moirin had never got on well and Katie hadn’t seen her since last Christmas.

  ‘She’s staying with your dad for a few days, with Siobhán. She wants to know if we can go over there for lunch on Sunday. She says your dad has something important he wants to tell us.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, I hope she’s not cooking. She’s a terrible cook. Why didn’t she call me at the station?’

  ‘I suggested it, but she said she doesn’t like to interrupt you at work because your work’s so important.’

  Katie shook her head. ‘Never changes, Moirin. Always sarcastic.’

  ‘We don’t have to go. You could do with a quiet day off.’

  ‘I should, though. What’s this “something important” that Dad has to tell us? Did she give you any idea?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t ask her?’

  ‘I’m not the detective. And it’s your family, after all.’

  ‘Jesus, you could have asked her.’

  ‘Don’t take it out on me. You don’t want to go there any more than I do.’

  ‘It’s Moirin, that’s all. I’m not in the mood for her.’

  ‘Well, don’t go, then.’

  ‘I have to.’

  John stood up. ‘I would really like it, you know, if once in your life you stopped feeling that you’re responsible for everybody.’

  ‘You resent me getting you that job. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t resent it. Of course I don’t resent it. It’s a great job and it means I can stay here with you. But I’m like any other man. I need to do things for myself. I don’t like to feel that I’m being manipulated.’

  ‘I got you that job because I love you, not because I wanted to manipulate you!’

  ‘Then why do I feel like some kind of fucking puppet?’

  Katie stood looking at him, tired and shocked. He raised both hands as if to say that he was sorry, that he hadn’t meant to say that, that he didn’t really feel like that, but with his hands lifted he actually looked as if he was impersonating a puppet.

  ‘I think I need a drink,’ said Katie.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said John. ‘No, I’m not. Why do I have to keep saying I’m sorry?’

  Katie went through to the living room and poured herself a large glass of Smirnoff Black Label. She took a swallow and shivered. John came into the room and stood behind her. He laid his hand on her shoulder, but she turned away from him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m just a little off, that’s all. I’ll read your plans later. I promise.’

  She sat down. Barney came up to her and rested his head in her lap, and she tugged at his ears. John stayed where he was, biting his lip.

  ‘Why don’t you put the oven on,’ said Katie, after a while. ‘I don’t think it would do either of us any harm to have something to eat.’

  ‘Sure,’ said John.

  ‘That’s not an order, though,’ Katie told him. ‘I don’t want you to think that I’m pulling your strings.’

  John took a breath as if he were about to come back at her, but he went into the kitchen without saying anything.

  ‘Two hundred!’ she called after him.

  Later that evening, as Katie slept, John reached across the bed and eased his folder out from under her elbow. She had read as far as page three: Attracting Professional Endorsements for Online Medication.

  Twenty-one

  Before she left home the next morning, she called Father Dominic at Cois Tine. Outside, the sky was dark grey and it was raining hard. John was standing in the kitchen with a bowl of muesli, staring at the raindrops dribbling down the window.

  ‘I’m very glad you called, Katie,’ said Father Dominic. ‘Faith Adeyemi and Amal Galaid visited the hospital yesterday. Faith is Nigerian and Amal is Somali. They were soon able to establish that your girl Isabelle is Nigerian.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start, anyway.’

  ‘Faith will be calling in to see her again at about ten o’clock before she goes to work. You’ll like Faith. She was a sex worker herself once, but she was saved by Ruhama, God bless them for the work they do, and she still helps them to rescue other women from prostitution. She told me that she didn’t make an awful lot of progress with Isabelle yesterday, but she believes she’s managed to win her trust. Your girl is very frightened, she said, and not only of physical retribution.’

  ‘So what else is she frightened of?’

  ‘She’s very superstitious, apparently. Faith can tell you more about it. I can ask her to call into the Garda station later this afternoon, if you like, when she’s finished at Dunne’s Stores. She works in the cafe at lunchtimes.’

  ‘No – what’s the time now? I can meet her at the hospital if she’s going to be there at ten. I’d like to see the girl again anyway. Does Faith have a mobile number?’

  ‘I’ll call her if you like, Katie, and tell her you’re coming.’

  John finished his muesli and put the bowl in the dishwasher. ‘Any idea when you’ll be home tonight? Or is that too speculative? I was hoping I might be able to take you out for dinner, even if we only go to Gilbert’s.’

  Katie went up to him and put her arms around his waist and looked up into his eyes. ‘Don’t be angry with me. I’ll get home as soon as I can. I’ll call you. And I swear on the Holy Bible I’ll finish reading your plan tonight.’

  John kissed her, and smoothed his hand over her coppery hair. ‘I’m sorry about the puppet thing. We Meaghers have always been a prickly lot. Actually, I get it from my mam. She thought that everybody was out to take advantage of her – even God.’

  By the time she reached the hospital the rain had begun to clear, and when she reached Isabelle’s room a watery sun was shining through the window. Isabelle was sitting up in bed, while a large African woman in a jazzy red and orange dress was sitting close to her. The woman was wearing a red silk scarf which had been folded into a high, complicated headdress, and huge hoop earrings. She had a broad, pleasant face, with a wide gap between her front teeth.

  She lifted herself out of her chair when Katie came in and held out her hand.

  ‘Hallo, I’m Faith,’ she said. ‘And you must be Katie. Father Dominic rang me to say you were coming. I’m sorry. I know your title is chief detective something, but Father Dominic said you wouldn’t mind me calling you by your first name.’

  ‘Katie’s grand, Faith. Don’t worry about it. How are you this morning, Isabelle? You’re looking much better.’

  Isabelle smiled, and Faith said, ‘She is so much better. She knows now that she is safe. You know that you are safe now, don’t you, Lolade?’

  ‘That’s her name? Lolade?’ asked Katie. ‘I’d better stop calling her Isabelle.’

  The girl smiled even more broadly and said, ‘I tell Faith that you are a very kind person.’

  Faith said, ‘It took a little time, but Lolade is no longer afraid to say what happened to her, are you, Lolade? She has been telling me so much this morning.’

 
‘Father Dominic said something about superstition,’ said Katie.

  ‘That’s right. Lolade believed that she was cursed. She was trafficked from her home village near Ibadan, in south-west Nigeria. That was about eight months ago, as far as she can remember.’

  ‘How was she taken?’

  ‘Her aunt said that she was going to find her work as a cleaner for a wealthy family in Lagos and that she would be able to send her parents money every month. But her aunt was involved in trafficking and she was flown here. More than likely she was given false documents. There are plenty of officials in Nigeria who will give you travel documents in exchange for the right payment.’

  ‘Mother of God. It’s the same old story. It’s enough to make you cry.’

  ‘There is worse, though. Before she was sent here, her aunt took her to a juju priestess. The priestess held a special ceremony and then she took clippings of Lolade’s nails and hair and wrapped them up in front of her. She warned Lolade that if she tried to run away or to tell anybody that she was being forced to be a prostitute, she would be struck dead by lightning and all of her family would fall sick.’

  Katie nodded. ‘Our immigration people were telling me all about that not too long ago. They say it’s quite a common way that traffickers make sure that their girls all do what they’re ordered to and don’t try to run off. When you come to think about it, I suppose it’s no more bizarre than us Catholics believing that our souls will die if we have sex with a goat, or cheat at poker, or commit some other mortal sin. So that’s why the poor girl wouldn’t talk to me.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Faith. She reached across the blanket and held Lolade’s hand. ‘I told her, though, that I too was threatened by a juju priest before I was sent here to Ireland. I was forced to work for two years in a brothel on Pope’s Quay and I will tell you it was like a living death. I was a prisoner, no person to speak to. I became useless, meaningless, helpless and hopeless. I felt I had to do whatever my minders told me, because I was terrified, just as Lolade was. The juju priest had warned me that I would burst into flames and all my skin would shrivel up, and that back in Nigeria my father and mother and all of my brothers and sisters would choke to death.