Begging to Die

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Okay, then, I’ll see what I can find,’ he said, and started to struggle with the zip fastener on the side of the sleeping bag, which was always awkward because several teeth were missing.

  He managed to jerk the zip halfway down and crawl out of the sleeping bag on to the cold, wet pavement. He was still on his hands and knees when three men appeared out of the rain and walked up to him.

  ‘You’re going somewhere, my friend?’ one of the men asked him, in a strangely musical foreign accent, almost as if he were singing it.

  Matty reached out and gripped the sill on the side of the shop doorway to help himself on to his feet. As he did so, the men stepped closer, hemming him in. One of the men was tall while the other two were shorter, although all of them were heavily built. The tall man wore a grey leather jacket, while the others were dressed in black anoraks and jeans.

  ‘What are you after?’ said Máire, in a reedy voice. ‘We’ve no grade if that’s what you’re after, and we’ve no gravel either.’

  ‘We don’t want no money, nor drug,’ the tall man told her. ‘All we want is you move.’

  ‘What do you mean, move?’ Matty demanded. ‘It’s the middle of the fecking night, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘What does that matter?’ the tall man asked him. ‘You move, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re not cops, are you?’

  ‘Do we look like cops?’

  ‘Well, if you’re not cops you can go and jump in the river. We’re not going anywhere. This is our pitch.’

  The tall man turned to look at his two companions for a moment, as if he wanted their reassurance that he was being reasonable.

  ‘What difference one doorway or some other doorway? Go find yourself and this curvă some other doorway.’

  Matty was shaking now, and his knees were so weak that he had to lean against the shop window again. He didn’t feel like arguing. He didn’t feel like anything except creeping back into the sleeping bag and bundling himself up and going back to sleep. Why didn’t these men just go away and leave him and Máire alone? He was too tired and disorientated to think about moving, and apart from that, this doorway was more than just a shelter from the rain. They had settled into it six weeks ago when the previous occupant had disappeared, and they had found it to be the most profitable spot for begging that they had ever known. Before this they had squatted in the entrance of an empty estate agent’s office on South Mall, and they hadn’t collected half the money that they were making every day here on Cook Street.

  ‘Go,’ the tall man repeated. ‘Pick up all this crap rubbish of yours and sling hook.’

  ‘Get stuffed,’ said Matty. ‘We’re going nowhere.’

  The tall man cupped one hand to his ear and leaned forward as if he hadn’t heard. ‘What did you say, my friend?’

  ‘I said, get stuffed. Go on, up the yard with you. We’re staying right here and there’s no way you can budge us.’

  ‘Marku,’ said the tall man, quietly, taking a step backwards.

  One of the shorter men slung a khaki canvas bag off his shoulder, unbuckled it, and lifted out a black cordless drill. Before Matty had a chance to say anything, or to react, the tall man took another step back and said, ‘Danut!’ in that sing-song way, like ‘Dah-nooot!’

  The other man stepped into the shop doorway, seized Matty’s shoulders and twisted him around so that he lost his balance and staggered down on to one knee. He almost fell on top of Máire, and Máire tilted herself away and screamed out, ‘What are you doing, you skanger? Leave him alone! Get off him!’

  The tall man ignored her and said nothing, watching dispassionately as Danut forced Matty face down on to the pavement and knelt on his back.

  ‘Get off him! Leave him alone!’ Máire kept on screaming, wrestling her arms out of the sleeping bag and taking hold of Danut’s sleeve, trying to pull him off. Marku handed the cordless drill to Danut and then he slapped Máire hard around the side of her head – first with his right hand and then with his left.

  ‘Liniște!’ he snapped. ‘You shut up your mouth!’

  ‘You bastard!’ she screeched at him.

  ‘Taci!’ he retorted, and slapped her again, so hard that she pitched backwards and hit her head with a loud klokk! against the shop door. She fell sideways, stunned, making a thin mewling sound.

  Danut had tugged down Matty’s hood and with his left hand he was feeling the back of his skull through his prickly grey hair. Once he had found the lump that he was looking for, he held his thumb against it as a marker while he pressed Matty’s nose hard against the pavement. Matty was too weak to struggle. Like everything else in his life these days, he just lay there and accepted whatever was going to happen to him. He didn’t even pray.

  Danut looked up at the tall man and said, ‘Okay? Nimeni nu vine?’

  The tall man glanced up and down the pedestrian precinct and then nodded, and said, ‘Okay.’ Danut positioned the tip of the drill bit up against Matty’s neck, about a centimetre underneath his thumb. Then – with a sharp whine – he drilled into his skin. Matty jumped as if he had been electrocuted, and let out a strangely childish cry, more like a small boy who has lost something dear to him than a grown-up man in agony.

  Danut waggled the drill up and down and from side to side, and then carefully drew it out. Underneath him, Matty was lying completely lifeless. Danut handed the drill back to Marku and pulled Matty’s hood up.

  Máire was sitting up now, blinking in pain, with one hand holding the side of her head. ‘Matty!’ she said, huskily. ‘Matty?’

  ‘He said he would not go, but see! now he is gone,’ said the tall man. ‘That is what you get when stupid.’

  ‘Matty! Oh Jesus, Matty! What have they done to you? Matty!’

  Máire kicked her legs out of the sleeping bag and climbed over to Matty’s body. She knelt beside him and shook his shoulder, but when he didn’t respond she tried to turn him over on to his back.

  ‘Matty!’ she wept, miserably. ‘Don’t leave me, Matty! You can’t leave me alone, Matty! I won’t be able to live without you! Where will I go? What will I do? I’m going to die without you, Matty! Matty, wake up! Matty!’

  ‘He won’t wake up, curvă, not never,’ said the tall man. ‘So time for you to go also, and to forget you saw us.’

  Máire stood up, swaying as if she were drunk in her sagging knee-length orange cardigan. ‘Forget you? How am I ever going to forget you? You killed my Matty! I saw you! How am I ever going to forget that? You scumbags!’

  She lurched towards him, both hands lifted like claws. She had taken only two stumbling steps, though, before Danut stepped across and seized both of her wrists, forcing her back into the shop doorway and up against the door.

  ‘Get your filthy disgusting hands off me, you dirtball!’ she spat at him, and a long string of saliva and phlegm dangled from her lower lip. ‘You’ll be locked up for what you’ve done to my Matty, don’t think that you won’t!’

  ‘Marku,’ said Danut, tersely. ‘Dă-mi burghiul electric. Apoi, vino aici și ține mâinile acestei femei.’

  Marku passed him the drill and then took over holding Máire’s wrists. Máire twisted and thrashed and then tried to drop herself down to the ground, but Marku kept her pinned up against the door.

  ‘Întoarceţi femeia în jur!’ Danut told him, and Marku tried again and again to turn Máire around so that she had her back to him, but again and again she twisted around to face him, spitting and gasping and swearing. He was strong but she was hysterical, bursting with fear and hatred and adrenaline.

  With his left hand Danut grabbed Máire by the throat, forcing her head back. She spluttered and choked, her eyes bulging, but she still managed to spit at him. He lifted the drill and pointed it at the centre of her forehead, and when she spat at him again he drilled straight into her skull. The drill bit snagged for a second against her bone and made a high squeaking noise, and the drill stalled; but Danut jiggled it and pressed the trigger again
and managed to pull it out.

  ‘Aaaahhhhh!’ Máire screamed at him. ‘You murderer! You shitehawk! You bastard!’

  Danut said nothing, but moved the drill three centimetres to the right and drilled into her forehead again. She kept on screaming for a few seconds but then suddenly she stopped. Danut took the drill out, moved it up a further three centimetres and drilled a third hole. He drilled another and another and another, until Máire’s forehead was riddled with them. Her eyes were still open but now they were glassy and focused on nothing.

  Danut took his hand away from her throat and her head dropped forward. He lifted the drill as if he was going to bore more holes in the top of her skull, but the tall man laid his hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Ajunge. No more. She is dead now.’

  Danut and Marku let Máire slide down to the pavement. The three men then stood over the bodies, discussing quickly and quietly what they were going to do with them. The tall man decided that they would leave Matty where he was, because he looked as if he had died from natural causes, but that they would have to carry Máire away with them.

  They rolled her back into her sleeping bag, pulled up the zip as far as they could, and then Danut hoisted her over his shoulder, like a butcher carrying a side of beef. The three of them made their way along Cook Street to Oliver Plunkett Street, where their green Hyundai was parked in the loading bay outside Soundstore. Again the tall man looked quickly up and down the street to make sure that there was nobody in sight, and then they opened up the boot of the car and dropped Máire’s body inside, so that it thumped on top of some plastic shopping bags.

  Without a word, they all climbed into the Hyundai, with Marku behind the wheel, and drove away.

  Back along Cook Street, a dishevelled stray cat came padding up to Matty’s body and sniffed at it. Matty lay there with his cheek against the pavement, his eyes closed, not even dreaming of the life he should have had as a lawyer, smart and prosperous, with a house overlooking the River Lee and a family that would never be.

  13

  It was ten past one in the morning before Mr Sandhu came into the waiting room. Katie was sitting with her eyes closed and an open copy of Stellar about to tip off her lap. Mr Sandhu reached out and touched her gently on the shoulder.

  ‘Are you sleeping?’ he asked her.

  Katie instantly opened her eyes and sat up straight, and the magazine dropped on to the floor.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘No… just resting, that’s all. What time is it?’

  ‘It has gone one o’clock. Your fiancé’s operation took longer than I expected, but it is all over now, and he has been taken upstairs to a private room to recover. He is not awake yet, but you will be able to go up and see him if you like.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  Mr Sandhu sat down beside her. ‘I wanted to talk to you about this before you saw him. As I explained before, he was suffering from torsion of his testes. If he had been able to reach the emergency room within an hour or two, it was likely that we could have untwisted his spermatic cords and we might have been able to save at least one testicle.’

  ‘But what are you trying to tell me? That he left it too late?’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid so. Not only had the blood supply to his testicles been cut off for more than five hours, but his left testicle was ruptured. This is quite a rare injury, but it can happen when the testicle receives a very hard direct blow.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Katie. She was beginning to feel that she was still asleep, and that she was dreaming this. She was the only person left in the waiting room, and outside the hospital was eerily quiet, except for the distant sound of trolley wheels squeaking and a phone endlessly ringing, unanswered.

  ‘We did what we could, but I have to tell you that it was necessary to remove both testicles.’

  ‘Mother of God. Poor Conor.’

  Mr Sandhu could only sit with his hands together, blinking at her sympathetically. ‘I have no idea what your future plans were – for your marriage, and perhaps the possibility of having children. But I regret that your fiancé is now unable to become a father.’

  He paused, clearly uncertain about saying any more. But then he gave a brittle little cough, and added, ‘For some time, too, he might also have difficulty in having conjugal relations.’

  Katie hadn’t even been thinking about that. She had only been thinking about Conor and how devastated he would feel when he found out that he was no longer fertile. Unlike her, perhaps he hadn’t been considering that they could have a child together, and perhaps it was selfish of her to feel distressed that it was no longer going to be possible. Perhaps it was even more selfish of her to worry that he might no longer be able to make love to her. But what kind of a marriage would it be if they couldn’t have sex?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mr Sandhu. ‘As I told you, we did everything we could, but it was hopeless.’

  Katie nodded. ‘I’d like to see him now, if I can.’

  ‘Of course. It may be three or four hours before he regains consciousness, but if you would prefer to explain his condition to him yourself, before I talk to him—’

  ‘Yes. But I think I’ll need you there. It’s not going to be easy.’

  Mr Sandhu stood up. ‘Whichever gods we believe in, it is sometimes difficult to understand why they punish us in the way that they do.’

  Katie picked the copy of Stellar up off the floor. ‘At this particular moment, doctor, I’m seriously thinking of becoming an atheist.’

  *

  She sat beside his bed in his dimly lit room, watching him steadily breathing. He was never as peaceful as this when they slept together. He was continually jolting and murmuring, as if he were dreaming that he was having an argument or chasing some dog-napper headlong down a windy hill in Kerry.

  She felt so sad for him that she couldn’t even give her sadness a shape. He was so virile-looking: tall and fit, with his muscular gym-honed stomach and his dark chestnut beard. He could have been one of the Vikings who landed in Cork more than a thousand years ago. He was so original in his thinking and so passionate, too. She had thought that he was attractive the very first moment she had seen him walking into the station, but the more she had grown to know him, the more she had felt that he was the right husband for her. He cared for her, but he respected her independence, and he understood her devotion to duty, even when it made life difficult for both of them.

  He also understood completely the grief she felt for her late father, because his own father had taken his life when Conor was only fifteen. Katie’s father had committed suicide after he had shot the man who had defrauded him and scores of other elderly people out of tens of thousands of euros. Conor’s father had embezzled money from his own life insurance business. But no matter what crimes they had committed, that didn’t make it any easier to lose them before their time.

  A nurse came in at two thirty-five to check on Conor’s vital signs. Katie decided to leave him then and drive home. She was exhausted and, apart from sleep, she needed a shower and a change of clothes, and she wanted to make sure that her next-door neighbour, Jenny Tierney, had fed Barney and Foltchain, and taken them out for their evening walk.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning, darling,’ she said, and kissed Conor’s swollen, purple-bruised cheek. Conor didn’t stir.

  *

  She was awakened a few minutes after seven by her bedside phone ringing. She reached across for it, and at the same time switched on the lamp. Behind the curtains, she could hear rain pattering against the window.

  It was Detective Sergeant Begley. ‘Hope I didn’t disturb you, ma’am,’ he told her, and then he sneezed.

  ‘Bless you,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry – I’m allergic to early mornings, like.’

  ‘Well, you’re not the only one. What’s the story, Sean?’

  ‘About half an hour ago another homeless fellow was found deceased in a doorway on Cook Street, between Pana and Oliver Plunkett Street.’


  ‘Oh, Jesus.’

  ‘We’ve cordoned that section of the street off both ends and Bill Phinner’s sending a technical team out there shortly. I’ll be heading out there myself in a minute with Bedelia.’

  ‘Any obvious cause of death?’

  ‘The fellow’s body hasn’t been touched yet, but Sergeant O’Farrell says he couldn’t see any visible trauma and nothing at all in the way of blood, although it’s been lashing all night to be fair. But it was the same with that Gearoid, wasn’t it?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘There’s one thing more, though. One of O’Farrell’s officers knew the fellow well enough to chat to, although he never found out his name. He said that there was always a woman with him. There’s women’s clothing and other female bits and bobs in the doorway, along with the deceased fellow’s things, but there’s no sign at all of her.’

  ‘Have you spoken to DI Mulliken yet?’

  ‘I have, yes. It was him who said that I should ring you.’

  ‘All right. I’m glad you did. For starters, we need to find this missing woman, don’t we, if only to confirm that she wasn’t on the scene when your man passed away. That officer who knew her – make sure he gets down to the lab asap and starts preparing an EvoFIT. And let’s see if we can find anybody else who might be able to give us a description. Shopkeepers and café staff on Cook Street. Traffic wardens. Street sweepers.’

  Katie pushed back the fat pink duvet and swung her legs out of bed. ‘I have to go to CUH first, Sean, but I’ll be into the station as soon as I can. There’s CCTV covering Cook Street, isn’t there?’

  ‘Not that pedestrian stretch of it, although there’s cameras on Pana and Oliver Plunkett Street, so they will have picked up anybody who went in or out of it.’

  ‘Okay, if you can get the lads upstairs to start looking through all that footage. Have any of the media been in contact yet?’

  ‘Not so far as I know. Mathew McElvey’s not in to the press office yet, although they might have rung him on his moby.’