‘Chalk it down. I told you.’
‘Well, if you want to work for me, you’ll do what I tell you, and if I tell you “away up the stairs with you”, you’ll be away up the stairs.’
Kyna glanced upstairs and then at Bobby Quilty. He jerked his head in an upward direction to emphasize what he had just told her.
She hesitated for a few seconds. She knew that whatever was going to happen upstairs, it wasn’t going to be good. She had a choice now. She wasn’t on official Garda duty. She was only doing this because Katie had begged her for help, although Katie had made it clear that she wouldn’t blame her if she decided that she didn’t want to go through with it. But what if she didn’t go through with it and John was blinded, or mutilated, or murdered? How could she ever face Katie again?
She took a step up the stairs, and then another. As she climbed, she could still feel the tightness of the stitches where the surgeons had sewn up her stomach after she had been shot. Bobby Quilty watched her, smoking, but it was only when she was halfway up that he began to haul himself up after her.
She reached the landing. The upstairs rooms were furnished in the same soulless modern style as the reception rooms downstairs. They were carpeted in pale grey throughout and every bedroom had white fitted wardrobes with mirrored doors and beds covered with black-and-white diamond-patterned throws. On the walls hung more Jack Vettriano prints and on some of the windowsills stood white earthenware vases of dried chrysanthemums. There was a strong smell of jasmine carpet freshener, which was probably intended to mask the eye-watering reek of Bobby Quilty’s cigarette smoke.
Bobby Quilty pointed to what looked like the master bedroom, obviously indicating that Kyna should lead the way inside. Kyna walked in and went across to the window. Through the tall, ivy-covered trees at the end of the garden she could see the dull silvery shine of the River Lee and an orange oil tanker making its way towards the Shell depot.
‘Grand view you get from here,’ she said.
Bobby Quilty came up and stood close behind her. ‘You could make it ten times better. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Oh, yes?’ she said, without turning round. She dreaded to hear what he was going to say next.
‘Why don’t you pull down your breeks?’ he suggested. His smoke was drifting over her shoulder and she could hear the phlegm rattling in his lungs. She started to turn around but he seized her right shoulder, hard, and forced her to remain facing the window. ‘You just enjoy the scenery, sweetheart. Pull down your breeks and watch the boats go by.’
‘They’re too tight,’ she said, trying not to sound panicky. ‘It took me all the morning just to get them on.’
Bobby Quilty reached around her waist and unfastened her mock-crocodile belt. As he did so, she could feel his belly pressing up against her back.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she protested.
‘I’m showing you why they call me the Big Feller. I’m also testing you out, just to make sure you’re always going to do what I tell you to do, no matter what it is, no questions asked.’
‘And what if I tell you to take your grubby maulers off me, you fat stinky bastard?’
The instant Kyna said that, Bobby Quilty slapped her around the back of the head so hard that she felt as if her skull had cracked. She staggered forward, her knees giving way, so that she had to grab at the windowsill with both hands to keep herself upright. For a split second, every muscle in her body was tensed up to hit him back. Even though she was still convalescing, she was still fit and she was still highly trained in tae kwon do, and she could have spun around and almost kicked his football-like head clear off his shoulders.
But no, she stayed where she was, her eyes tight shut, her teeth clenched, holding on to the windowsill. He’s not worth it, she thought, even though her head was ringing. Bobby Quilty was wearing several heavy signet rings and she could already feel where they had bruised her. Think of John. Most of all, think of Katie.
‘You ever fecking speak to me like that again, sweetheart, and by Joseph and Mary I swear that I’ll smack your kite a hundred times harder than that, so I will!’ snapped Bobby Quilty. He gripped the back of her neck so hard that she felt as if she were going to black out and for a few seconds she could feel him fumbling around behind her. Then, suddenly, she felt a sharp cold pocket-knife blade pressing against the small of her back and he was sawing roughly through the waistband of her jeans. She heard the stitches tear and then he released his grip on her neck so that he could use both hands to wrench the seat of her jeans apart, and then down. As tight as they were, he managed to pull them nearly down to her knees.
‘Keep your bake shut and don’t move a muscle!’ he told her. His words were indistinct because he still had a cigarette waggling between his lips. ‘Don’t you even think about it, not for a second!’
Kyna was conscious of more fumbling behind her, and more wheezing. Then Bobby Quilty gripped the cheeks of her bottom and spread them wide open, as if he were opening up a book. His fingernails dug into her skin so hard that she couldn’t stop herself from sucking in her breath, and then she felt him push his penis in between her thighs, and she sucked in her breath a second time and let out an ‘aaaahhhhh’ of sheer discomfort. His penis was stiff and he had been right to boast, it was enormous. But it was very dry, like a wooden rolling pin, and Kyna was dry, too, and he had to force it into her vagina a centimetre at a time. He grunted with every thrust, blowing out ash and cigarette smoke. Kyna kept her teeth gritted and clung on to the windowsill, but he was hurting her now, more and more, and she didn’t know how much longer she was going to be able to stand it.
‘Jesus, doll, you’ve a flange like the fecking Sahara Desert!’ Bobby Quilty protested.
He tried three or four more thrusts, but all he managed to do was push Kyna’s hips repeatedly up against the wall.
‘I can’t fecking believe this,’ he said. He withdrew his penis, took his cigarette out of his mouth, and spat on his fingers so that he could lubricate himself. By the time he managed to jostle himself back into position, however, his erection had begun to subside. He squashed it up against the lips of Kyna’s vulva, but it was far too soft now and no matter how hard he squashed he couldn’t penetrate her.
‘Ach, that’s me,’ he said and stepped away from her. Kyna turned around to see him bending over so that he could pull up his trousers. ‘I never knew any floozy as dry as you, I swear to God. It wouldn’t surprise me if you had camels up your cunt.’
Kyna managed to tug up her ripped-apart jeans and buckle her belt. ‘I suppose you’re going to pay for a new pair,’ she said. ‘River Island, these are.’
‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do with you, you fridge-did bitch,’ Bobby Quilty told her. He snatched hold of her wrist, twisting it hard, and when she tried to pull away from him he lifted his other hand as if he were going to slap her again.
‘You want another one? You’re welcome, so you are.’
With that, he tugged Kyna across the master bedroom and opened the door to the en suite bathroom.
‘Fridge-did bitch,’ he repeated, as he pushed her inside.
The bathroom was tiled floor to ceiling with mottled grey ceramic tiles with pink flamingos on them and there was a vast jacuzzi and a corner shower with a curved glass door. He pulled her over to the shower and opened it.
‘There, get in.’
‘What?’ said Kyna.
‘This is your last chance, sweetheart. Do you want to work for me or not? If you do, then by God you do whatever I tell you. And since you’re too fridge-did even to flah, you’ll just have to show me in another way, won’t you? Now, get in.’
Even though she still had her wedge-heeled shoes on, Kyna stepped into the shower and stood there with her arms crossed defensively over her breasts.
‘Kneel down,’ said Bobby Quilty. His cigarette had burned down right to the filter now but he gave it a last suck before he lifted the lid of the toilet and flick
ed it in.
Awkwardly, Kyna knelt down. She couldn’t think what he was going to do next. Turn on the shower and soak her in freezing water? But when she looked up at him she saw that he was pulling down his cargo trousers again. He took out his flaccid penis and held it in front of her face. It looked now like a crumpled, grumpy worm.
‘Look up,’ he said. His voice was strange now – still harsh, but unsteady with excitement. ‘Look up, and open your mouth, and keep it open.’
Mother of God, no, thought Kyna. But then Bobby Quilty shivered and started to urinate. He aimed it directly into Kyna’s face, stinging her eyes and flooding her mouth with acrid liquid. She spat, and spat again, and shook her head, but he continued to relieve himself all over her. It streamed from her chin and dripped from her earlobes and she could feel it running down warm inside her pink TROUBLE T-shirt.
When he had finished, she stayed where she was, dripping, her eyes closed, trying not to breathe in the alcoholic smell of his urine.
‘There, good girl. I think we can say that you’ve passed the test with flying colours,’ said Bobby Quilty as he tucked himself away. ‘You stay there, sweetheart, and I’ll have Margot come up with some dry clothes for you.’
He walked out of the bathroom, leaving the door open. As soon as he had gone, Kyna clambered to her feet, pulled off her shoes and threw them out of the shower cubicle, followed by her jeans. She was whimpering with disgust as she did so and when she had to drag off her wet T-shirt she retched and would have vomited if she had eaten any breakfast.
Naked, she turned on the shower full, as hot as she could bear it, and soaped herself all over with the shower gel that was hanging from the taps. It smelled of lavender and she knew that she would never be able to smell lavender again without feeling sick.
She was still standing under the shower when Margot came in, carrying a pair of jeans and a top. She stood patiently outside the shower door while Kyna washed her hair again and again. Through the steamy glass she looked like a sympathetic ghost.
Seventeen
At lunchtime, Katie drove to the three-storey building on Lavitt’s Quay that housed the Walnut Tree shelter for battered women, which she had helped to set up. It was a run-down nineteenth-century property, which had once been a music shop, and it was still in need of rewiring and some redecorating, but donations had fixed the leaky roof and five of the seven bedsitting rooms were now wallpapered and carpeted.
She was feeling so anxious about John and Kyna that she had almost put off this visit. However, the house manager, Blathnaid O’Keeffe, had called her this morning and told her that they had taken in a new family late yesterday evening and that the mother, Neala Murphy, was very keen to meet her, and thank her.
Katie rang the doorbell outside the dark red-painted facade and Blathnaid opened it so quickly that Katie thought she must have been waiting in the hallway for her.
Inside the house, there was a smell of takeaway pizza and Katie could hear children running about upstairs and laughing. There was always a family atmosphere at Walnut Tree. Katie had insisted from the beginning that it should feel more like a friend’s house than a refuge from violence and bullying. There was no lack of crying or arguing, but the women who came here always had a sympathetic counsellor to calm them down and wipe their eyes.
Katie went into the day room, where three young women and their children were watching television. She knew all of them by name. She knew their partners, too, only too well. A fair-haired mother of twin girls was called Moira, and the bruises that still encircled her eyes like yellowish racing-goggles had been inflicted by her boyfriend, Flynn. Fiona was only thirty-six years old but her hair had turned completely white. Her husband, Michael, had burned her with cigarettes all around her genitals and upper thighs and had broken one of her arms so badly that she held it like a pigeon’s wing.
Aoife smiled at Katie briefly but didn’t speak. As a punishment for cooking meals that he didn’t like, her husband, Michael, had kept her locked in a cupboard under the stairs, sometimes for days on end.
‘Saw you on the box, Katie,’ said Fiona. ‘You looked like you was fair odd with that news reporter woman.’
‘Oh, you know me,’ Katie told her. ‘Never happy unless I’m giving somebody a hard time.’
One of Moira’s twin girls came up to Katie and held up her a floppy pink bear for her to look at. The girl was only about four years old, with tangled blonde hair and a faded Peppa Pig T-shirt.
‘Pink Bear was crying,’ she said, very seriously.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Katie. ‘Why was that?’
‘She got pushed down the stairs and she bumped her head really, really hard.’
‘That’s terrible. Who pushed her down the stairs?’
The little girl shook her head so that her hair covered her face. ‘She’s not allowed to tell.’
‘Well, I hope she’s feeling better now,’ said Katie, touching the little girl gently on the shoulder. She wasn’t trained as a child psychiatrist and she knew better than to get involved in conversations like this with children from violent homes.
Blathnaid said, ‘Neala’s upstairs, Katie. Do you want to come up and have a chat with her?’
‘Of course,’ said Katie, and followed Blathnaid’s large brown-trousered behind up to the second floor.
Neala and her two children had been given one of the newly decorated rooms at the front of the house, overlooking Lavitt’s Quay and the river. The ceiling was sloping because it was an attic room, but it was sunny and bright. A boy of about three was kneeling in the window bay playing with two toy cars, while a little girl of about six was lying on one of the beds sucking her thumb.
Neala herself was a taut, nervous-looking young woman with her black wiry hair pulled back in a bunch. Her face was pinched and angular with enormous brown eyes and her wrists were as thin as wooden spoon handles. She was wearing a skimpy purple T-shirt and a voluminous black skirt that looked three sizes too big for her. She started to stand up when Katie came into the room, but Katie said, ‘You’re all right, Neala, relax.’
‘I was hoping you’d come,’ said Neala, in a voice that was hoarse from stress and smoking. ‘Well, to be honest with you, I was hoping you’d come and I was hoping you wouldn’t.’
‘You’ve lovely children,’ said Katie. ‘What are their names?’
‘Peter, and that’s Donna.’
Katie smiled at Donna, but Donna stared back at her solemnly, still sucking her thumb.
‘I don’t know what to call you,’ said Neala.
‘Call me Katie. This isn’t the Garda station and you’re certainly not under arrest.’
‘That’s why I wanted to see you, in a way,’ said Neala. She kept glancing around the room as if she were terrified that somebody might be hiding behind the curtains, or under the bed, listening to her.
‘Are you all right?’ Katie asked her. ‘I mean, physically all right?’
‘She has some contusions,’ put in Blathnaid. ‘Doctor Mulroney will be round later to examine her, and the children, too.’
‘He’s always careful not to leave bruises where anybody can see them,’ said Neala, looking at Donna as she did so. She obviously thought that it was pointless not to discuss her husband’s violence in front of her children because they had already witnessed it, daily, for themselves.
‘Do you want to make a formal complaint against him?’ asked Katie. ‘If you do, I can send a garda around to take a statement. A female garda.’
Neala shook her head vigorously. ‘There’s no future in that at all. He was up in front of the court before and all that happened was that he was fined and given a warning and after that he slapped me around worse than ever.’
‘You still shouldn’t let him get away with it,’ said Katie. ‘Just because he’s your husband, that doesn’t make his assault any less serious.’
‘I know that. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you, to put a stop to it for good and all.’
‘That detective garda that was killed on the Brian Boru Bridge – you know, the one who was hit by a car.’
‘Detective Barry, yes. We’re still looking for the driver.’
Neala glanced around again and then placed her hand over her heart as if she were swearing an oath, or feeling the bruises to remind herself of what her husband had done to her, or both.
‘It was Darragh. My Darragh.’
‘Your husband was driving the vehicle that hit Detective Barry?’
‘That’s right. He told me. It was on the news on the telly, like, and he said, “That was me,” and he was laughing about it. I was like, “You’re codding me, aren’t you?” but he was like, “No, serious, that was me driving with Bobby in the front seat. Bobby told me to squish the pig and I did.”’
‘You’re sure he wasn’t just boasting, or doing his best to scare you?’
‘Darragh doesn’t have to say things like that to frighten me. He’d been late back home for his tea that day. We live in Parklands, like, and he only works in a garage in Blackpool, but he said he was late because he’d had to drive all the way down to Boycestown to get rid of the car. He said he’d set light to it. He was pure pleased with himself, believe me.’
Now Katie was convinced that Neala was telling the truth and that her husband, Darragh, hadn’t simply been trying to intimidate her. On Katie’s instructions, the Garda press office had still not announced that they had found the burned-out Land Rover that had killed Detective Barry. Almost every time they were investigating an unsolved murder some header would come forward to confess to it, especially when it involved a police officer, so she always made sure that several critical details were held back from the media.
‘He won’t find out that it was me who told you, will he?’ said Neala. ‘If he ever does, I swear to God he’ll do for me. Either he will, or that Bobby Quilty. He has the Devil standing in him, that Bobby Quilty. He’s totally evil, through and through.’
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