Begging to Die

by Graham Masterton

  She knew that, indirectly, her devotion to duty had led to John’s death, and as she looked at herself in the mirror now, she could see that she was still asking herself if her commitment to her job was continuing to cost people their lives. That black man, lying on the quay with his broken glasses beside him – he was somebody’s husband, somebody’s father, somebody’s grandfather. If she hadn’t pursued those two Eastern European men, he would have enjoyed a good dinner on board the cruise liner yesterday evening and now be sleeping soundly in his cabin. Instead, he was lying in a refrigerated compartment in the ship’s mortuary, waiting to be taken back to whichever country he had come from, for his funeral.

  She went to bed and switched off the light and tried to sleep, but instead she lay in the darkness with her eyes open. As well as the chaos at Deepwater Quay tonight, she couldn’t stop thinking about Conor. She adored everything about him, even his rashness. Perhaps his rashness more than anything. But what if he was never able to make love to her again? It was no good her pretending to herself that she could live without sex. Her sex drive was integral to what she was. It gave her determination, and the strength to stand up to those misogynistic officers who tried to belittle her. It gave her power, and courage. She would never have chased after those two men tonight if she hadn’t been confident that she could face up to them once she had caught them.

  Lying there, her thinking was distorted by tiredness and delayed shock, and she could almost believe that her sexuality brought nothing to those around her but disaster. If she was any creature from mythology, she was more like the Dullahan, the harbinger of death, than a selkie.

  She made up her mind about one thing, though. She wasn’t going to let Conor’s beating go unpunished. He may have broken the conditions of his bail, but she doubted that any judge would insist that he had to go to jail and serve out the rest of his suspended sentence, not now that his injuries had proved to be so life-changing. Surely losing his manhood was punishment enough.

  As her mind churned over, one thought kept surfacing again and again. Why had those two men demanded that she hand over ‘the girl’? She had to assume they meant Ana-Maria, and presumably they hadn’t realized that Tusla had taken her into temporary care, and thought that Katie was still looking after her. Lupul had risked arrest for assault in his attempt to get his hands on her, and these two had followed Katie all the way from Anglesea Street and threatened her. Why did they want this little girl so desperately?

  Katie slept for about an hour, but in the middle of a strange dream in which she was floating about ten centimetres off the floor and somebody was laughing at her, her phone warbled. It was Detective Sergeant Begley.

  ‘Sorry to ring you so early, ma’am. Patrick O’Donovan has just been giving me the latest about what’s been happening down at Cobh. Three dead, that’s what he heard. Are you okay yourself?’

  ‘I’m grand altogether, thanks, Sean. I’ll be giving you all a full briefing about it later this morning, as soon as I get in.’

  ‘So long as you’re not hurt or nothing. From what Patrick was saying, it sounded like a fecking war zone. But – listen – the main reason I’m ringing you is about that dead fellow from Cook Street, that Matty Donoghue. We’ve identified his woman friend. We found a notebook among their possessions and it had a few phone numbers in it, as well as about a million sketches of dresses and jackets and hats and stuff. One of the numbers turned out to be her sister.’

  ‘Stall it for a moment, Sean,’ said Katie. ‘I just need to switch on the light and blink myself awake.’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Should I ring you later?’

  ‘No, no. I’m conscious now. Go on.’

  ‘The woman’s name is Máire O’Connor. She’s thirty-four years old, homeless now but used to live with her parents on Deanrock Avenue, by Clashduv Park. She was a fashion student at Mallow and showing a whole lot of promise. That’s what her sister said anyway. But then she got herself mixed up with this Matty Donoghue and drugs and it was downhill all the way after that.’

  ‘Any response to the EvoFIT?’

  ‘One of the bouncers at the Sparkle Club recognized her and knew her by name. He said that she was always hanging around waiting for the dealers, and giving out to them because of what they were charging for crack.’

  ‘But nobody’s seen her since last night?’

  ‘No. And judging by what she’s left behind, I’d say that she didn’t leave Cook Street voluntarily. Not just her notebook, but a couple of spare sweaters and underwear and soap and a toothbrush and tampons even.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’

  ‘I’ve sent the EvoFIT down to Inspector O’Rourke so that he can hand it out to his beat patrols, and I’ll be contacting the Missing Persons Bureau so that they can post it on their website. I expect you’ll be wanting to have it shown on the TV news, and all the social media, too. I’ll be having a word with Mathew McElvey as soon as he shows up.’

  ‘Good man yourself, Sean. Give me an hour or so and I’ll be in. I have one small errand to run first and besides that I want to give this whole investigation some serious thought. What happened last night could have been connected to this Lupul character, too. I was confronted by those two fellows in the Toyota who died, and they sounded like they could have been Romanians. But it was all a total disaster, and I don’t want to go rushing in blind and risk anything like that happening again.’

  She went to hang up the phone but dropped it on the floor, so she had to get out of bed to pick it up. She was still tired but it was seven twenty-one now and she knew she would never be able to get back to sleep. She shuffled into the kitchen, filled the kettle and stood staring out at her garden. It was still dark outside and it was still raining. She couldn’t remember when it had last been a pet day. In fact, she could hardly remember when it hadn’t been winter.

  *

  The grey detached houses on Lime Trees Road were all identical, so Katie had to drive slowly along it peering at the numbers on the front doors. Eventually she reached Caoimhe O’Neill’s house and parked outside. She carried Walter’s dog crate up to the front door, rang the doorbell and waited. Walter let out one of his miniature sneezes and she bent over and said, ‘You’re grand, boy, don’t worry. You’ll be back with your missus in a minute.’

  Caoimhe answered the door herself, a big, dark-haired young woman in a white blouse and a grey skirt, clearly dressed for her work at City Hall. Katie had already texted her to say that she was bringing Walter back to her, and she was flushed with excitement and almost in tears.

  ‘This is so, so kind of you!’ she said. ‘Come on in… come through to the kitchen. Here, let me take the box for you.’

  She led Katie through to the kitchen, where her father was sitting at the table with a mug of tea and her mother was standing at the sink, drying dishes.

  ‘Pa, Ma, this is Superintendent Maguire.’

  Caoimhe’s father stood up and gave Katie an appreciative nod of his head. ‘Caoimhe told us that you’d be fetching Walter over yourself because Conor wasn’t too well. Nothing too desperate, I hope?’

  ‘Well, he’s recovering. But he wanted me to have a word with you about Walter. You know that he took him to the vet, for a check-up? I’m afraid it’s not very good news.’

  Caoimhe lifted Walter out of the dog crate and held him in her arms. Walter sniffed and wheezed and sneezed but he was plainly overjoyed to be home.

  As gently as she could, Katie told the O’Neills what was wrong with him, and why he needed radical treatment if he was going to survive. Then she told them how much Domnall would charge for surgery.

  Caoimhe’s father slowly sat down again. ‘Holy Saint Joseph. Three thousand euros? There’s no way in the world we could manage that. I suppose we could try that what-do-ye-call-it. That crowd-funding. A cousin of ours had the prostrate cancer and he raised enough to be treated.’

  Caoimhe clutched Walter tight, with tears rolling down her cheeks.

  ‘I know it
’s a desperate expense but maybe you can find a way,’ said Katie. ‘All I can say is that Conor has agreed to waive his fee for finding Walter. He’s totally passionate about illegal puppy farming and how people like Caoimhe are being conned into buying puppies that should never have been bred at all.’

  She paused, and then she said, ‘Have a think about what you want to do. When you’ve decided, give me a call at Anglesea Street. Look, here’s my card.’

  She left the family standing at their front door, miserable and numb, and walked back to her car in the rain.

  *

  Even before she had hung up her coat or switched on her PC or prised the lid off her cappuccino, Katie called down for Kyna.

  Kyna appeared looking pale and tired. Her blonde hair was tangled and she was wearing no eye make-up. Katie didn’t ask her what she had been doing last night, or where she had been, and who with. She didn’t want to know, and in any case she had something more critical on her mind. As she was driving in to the station, she had decided that she was going to start taking positive and immediate action in all of the investigations that she had been considering up until now. No more caution, after last night’s carnage, and to hell with the risks.

  ‘Whatever Cairbre’s working on, Kyna, can you tell him to drop it and go across to the District Court? I want a search warrant for the Foggy Fields puppy farm. Specifically, we’re looking for forensic evidence of an assault causing serious harm.’

  ‘You’ve decided to follow it up then?’

  ‘I have, yes. Conor’s injuries… well, let’s just say that they’re a fierce sight worse than the doctors first thought. I mean, it’s possible that a judge might insist that he goes to jail for breaking the conditions of his bail, but I don’t think any judge would be that hard-hearted.’

  ‘Like, how bad is he really?’

  ‘Let’s just say that it’s going to take him a long time to get over what’s been done to him, and maybe he never will.’

  ‘Oh, Katie. I’m so sorry. Give him my best wishes, won’t you?’

  ‘I will of course. And for his sake, I also want to see if I can prove that the McQuaide sisters ordered him to be beaten, or at least turned a blind eye to it. If I can do that, I may be able to close down their puppy farm. I know it’s not going to be easy. There’s no political interest at all in stamping out illegal puppy-breeding. But I can try my damnedest.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll go back down now and have Cairbre run over to Washington Street.’

  Katie sat down at her desk and while she quickly shuffled through the memos and files that Moirin had left for her, she called for Detective Inspector Mulliken, Detective Markey and Detective Scanlan.

  Detectives Markey and Scanlan arrived first, and a few minutes later Detective Inspector Mulliken walked in, carrying a cardboard cup of coffee.

  ‘Change of plan,’ she told them, standing up and ushering them over to sit on the couches by the window. ‘After what happened at Deepwater Quay last night, I’ve decided to forget about the softly-softly approach. Bill Phinner tells me that we haven’t yet been able to identify the two fellows I was chasing after because they were as good as cremated. But they both had Eastern European accents and I believe they followed me home because they thought I was still taking care of that little Romanian girl.

  ‘I may be wrong, but I’d say that it’s a bent cent to a euro that they were connected to this Lupul fellow, and I want to track him down now and haul him in before anybody else winds up getting themselves killed. We need to bring in that coffin-maker who’s dossing down outside the Savoy Centre and question him about Lupul’s possible whereabouts.’

  ‘But Lupul’s going to find out that we’ve lifted your man, isn’t he?’ asked Detective Inspector Mulliken. ‘And if he’s guilty, he’s likely to pull a disappearing act, like you said he might.’

  ‘Yes, he might. But if he does, we’ll alert the immigration to keep their eyes peeled for him and notify the airlines and Stena Line ferries. I admit that he could still manage to slip out of the country and spirit himself back to Romania. If he does – well, we may be able to have him extradited back here, maybe not. At the very least, he’ll no longer be a threat to Cork’s rough sleepers.’

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but all of this is still pure hypothetical,’ said Detective Inspector Mulliken. ‘Like, we have no evidence at all that Lupul is responsible for killing Gearoid Ó Beargha and Matty Donoghue, do we? And even if those two fellows who ended up dead at Deepwater Quay sounded to you like they were Eastern European, we can’t be sure that they were associated with Lupul, or even that they were Romanian. One Eastern European sounds very much like another – to me, anyway. I can’t tell my Poles from my Czechs from my Bulgarians.’

  ‘Fair play to you, Tony,’ said Katie. ‘But now the body count’s doubled and as far as I’m concerned that changes everything. This investigation is going absolutely nowhere and I would rather find out that I’m wrong than find out nothing at all. Maybe Lupul isn’t our killer driller, but there’s a fair chance that he might be. We’re never going to know for sure unless we find him and haul him in.’

  ‘Sure like, but would a few extra days really make a difference? Can’t we wait until Bill Phinner’s put names to those two dead fellows – or their nationalities, at the very least?’

  ‘I’d agree with you if Matty Donoghue’s girlfriend wasn’t missing. Hopefully, she’s still alive, even if that blood in the doorway on Cook Street turns out to be hers. And if she is still alive, where is she? We need to find her, alive or dead, and urgent-like. I’m sorry, Tony. You may think it’s rash to pick up our coffin-maker. I think it’s rash. But after last night I don’t see that we have much choice. I don’t want to see any more innocent lives being lost.’

  ‘Well… you’re the boss,’ said Detective Inspector Mulliken. He turned away to look out of the window as if he had only been half-listening to what she was saying, and had his mind on something else altogether.

  Katie turned to Detectives Markey and Scanlan. ‘Sean – Padragain – I’ve decided that we should keep a tail on Eamon Buckley for at least three or four more days. I’m with you, Sean, about Buckley’s financial circumstances. There’s definitely something that doesn’t add up there, although it may turn out to be nothing at all. It’s that ring that’s still begging the question, do you know what I mean? How did it find its way into Mrs Devlin’s mince? There could be some totally innocent explanation, like maybe a magpie dropped it out of its beak as it was flying over Mrs Devlin’s kitchen and it dropped down the chimney and bounced into her mixing bowl.’

  ‘I’ll bet a month’s pay that didn’t happen,’ said Detective Markey.

  ‘Well, of course it didn’t. And even if it did, how did the magpie get the ring off Ana-Maria’s mother’s finger?’

  ‘I’m trying my best not to be prejudiced, but I’m one hundred per cent convinced it was that gobshite Buckley,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘I’m sure it was him and when I can prove it, it’ll make my day to see him in court. In fact, it’ll make my year.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Katie. ‘Keep Buckley under surveillance until the end of your shift. I’ll arrange with Superintendent Pearse to have a couple of uniforms watch him tomorrow morning until you come back on.’

  When Detectives Markey and Scanlan had left, Katie tried ringing Conor. His nurse answered his phone and told her that he was downstairs having a CGI scan. Mr O’Connell, the maxillofacial consultant, was assessing how much reconstruction work would be needed on his cheekbone and his palate, and how his nose could be straightened.

  ‘How is he in himself?’ asked Katie. ‘He was very down last night.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Please, tell me the truth. You know that we’re going to be married.’

  ‘I changed his dressings this morning and he’s healing well.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Don’t tell him I told you this, but he’s sad. I’ve been in nursing for eleven
years and I swear I never saw a man as sad as him. I saw that statue of Jesus at Knock weeping real tears, but I swear that the Lord Jesus was the soul of cheerfulness compared to your Conor.’

  Katie didn’t know how to respond to that, so all she said was, ‘Thank you, nurse. Thank you for being so honest,’ and then she hung up. Afterwards she sat at her desk for a long time staring at the framed photograph of Conor and herself, a selfie they had taken in the grounds of Blarney Castle, one windy afternoon in October, with the dry leaves blowing in the air all around them like brown moths.

  Kyna came back into her office. When she saw Katie sitting there, she walked around her desk, stood behind her, gently laid her hands on her shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

  Katie reached up and took hold of one of Kyna’s hands and squeezed it. ‘Why does life do this to us, Kyna? Tell me that.’

  ‘If I knew that, Katie, I’d be a billionaire, like, no question at all. I’d be on a beach in the Bahamas, and you’d be lying next to me. But I don’t know, and so I’m not.’

  19

  ‘Bran!’ shouted Saoirse. ‘Bran, would you come back here, you stupid eejit!’

  Her Wheaten terrier took no notice, but carried on scampering along the grass verge beside the river, chasing after three ducks that alternately waddled and flapped their wings to get away from him, letting out an occasional irritated quack. They seemed to regard him as more of a nuisance than a threat.

  ‘For the love of God, Bran, would you do as you’re told and come back here, otherwise it’s no kelties!’

  Saoirse started to jog after him. She was nineteen, with a plump, doll-like face and braided brown hair. She was studying beauty therapy at Cork College of Commerce, but she had taken the past three days off because of a rotten cold. This was the first time she had been outside since Monday, and she had wrapped herself up warmly in her thick red duffel coat and her knitted yellow scarf. She was small, only five feet one tall, and in her pink rushers she looked almost like a young child.