‘Rory,’ said Fiona sharply. ‘What’s the matter with you? She’ll help us.’
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. ‘I just want you, Fi. And the baby! A wee baby. Even if it’s not mine, I don’t care. I want us to be away from here and safe, with no one coming after us.’
‘We can be! There’s Seamas, and there’s Rainbow and Grainne and, God, everyone else to blame it on. I’ll say you helped me, when it mattered. You saved me. You hid me away to keep me safe.’
He was shaking his head. ‘Matt,’ he said quietly.
Fiona was calm. ‘An accident—’
‘But she knows. She knows, doesn’t she? And then, jail . . . Christ, Fi, we’d never be together again. Waiting for someone to come out of prison? That’s no life. I don’t want that for us.’
Fiona turned her eyes to Paula. The look of control was gone, and Paula could see her rethinking everything. And then she saw the thought as clearly as if Fiona had said it aloud – I’m sorry. And she realised, her stomach shelving away: there would be no help for her here.
Before Paula really knew what was happening, Rory was taking large steps towards her, across the wobbly deck of the boat, and her mouth was open to protest – Maggie, please, for Maggie – and then someone was rising out behind the seat on deck, and Rory was down, his mouth open in an ‘O’ of surprise. Blood seeping from the cut on his forehead. She looked up, stunned, at the person holding the wrench, who had emerged from below them in the boat.
‘You OK?’ said Guy.
‘I thought you were . . . I thought . . .’ She couldn’t say it, feeling the fear of it seeping into her like cold water, now she knew it wasn’t true and he was standing safe in front of her, driving the boat. ‘I lost you. In the water.’
Guy’s clothes were stiff with saltwater, his hair matted and face red-raw. ‘I held my breath. Climbed up the back of Seamas’s boat when they weren’t looking. Then, in the marina, I saw Rory take you onto this boat.’
‘You’ve been hiding the whole time?’
He nodded. ‘I was going mad with worry. I didn’t know why they’d taken you, what they’d do.’
She opened her mouth to explain how it had been when she’d thought him gone, the clutching panic of it. Instead she said, ‘You held your breath?’
He smiled, lopsided. ‘Underwater swimming champ of the Upper Sixth.’
She muttered, ‘The name’s Brooking, Guy Brooking,’ and she felt rather than saw his smile widen.
The hatch of the cabin was pushed up and Fiona came out, stepping carefully. ‘Is he OK?’ asked Guy. ‘I didn’t know if I’d judged it right, hitting him.’
‘He’ll be OK. He’s out cold. Concussion, maybe.’ She spoke dispassionately. Paula had wondered, just for a moment there, on the boat when all seemed lost, if Fiona had in fact really cared for him – Rory had seemed convinced that she did – but now Paula was sure it was just a very good act. If not she would be down there, weeping over him, pushing his hair back with gentle hands, wiping the blood from his face. The way Paula felt every time she thought of Aidan. Wanting to put her arms round him and never let go, press her face to his back at night, breathe him in.
‘I’m glad to see you, Dr Watts,’ Guy told Fiona. ‘We thought – well, it didn’t seem like that was an option.’
‘Oh, I’m still here,’ she said. ‘Not so easy to get rid of after all. Like yourself, Inspector. What’ll happen now?’
Guy checked his watch – which seemed like a good investment; it was still ticking after his near-drowning. ‘Gardaí boat should be getting in about now. Then, I guess, the clean-up.’ Paula tried to think what that would encompass – most people on the island charged with something, the company shut down, and retrieving what they could of Matt’s body.
‘Rory?’ asked Fiona.
‘Well. It was him who – he killed Matt?’ She nodded. Guy said, ‘I’ll make sure he goes down for it. A police officer too. The judge will likely go harder.’
She nodded, lifting her face into the growing light. ‘I want him gone for as long as possible. Matt – Matt was sick, yes, but he didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t his fault.’
Paula put an arm around her, and Fiona smiled, weakly, and together the three of them drove towards the rising sun, a bloom of orange-red against the darkness of the sea and land.
Fiona
When I was a junior doctor, I killed someone. It’s no big deal, actually. Ask any doctor – ask them late at night when they’ve had too many gins – and they’ll admit they’ve done it too. Can you blame us? You trust us with the power of life and death, and you can’t always expect we’ll choose the former.
My first kill was called Gavriel Lemin. An old, old man when he came to me. Ninety. Jewish, born in Poland. Dying slowly, painfully, of a lung tumour. Coughing up bits of himself in blood and bile.
It was one of those cases where someone is so far gone that death is eating them out from the inside like a hungry dog, but they won’t let go. They just can’t. And it starts to spread out through the ward, through their family if they even have one – how are they still here? How can this be going on still? We have it all wrong in the modern world. Death shouldn’t be prolonged. Watching someone die is the most painful thing you can do – better to get it over with. The Irish have the right idea, with their rituals and wakes. Speed the person to the grave, in an exhausting blur of booze and soil. Let them go and then settle yourself on the earth that no longer has them in it. A different place, now and forever.
Anyway, I was on nights, and Gavriel was still with us, still not dead, dying by inches, no, centimetres. He was in so much pain the morphine wasn’t even touching him. I could see it in his face, how he bared his remaining teeth. If he was a dog he’d have been put down long ago. And yet we keep humans alive, because we can’t bear to sever that link. We can’t bear to face our own mortality.
I was checking his pulse, when I noticed tears leaking out of his old eyes. Onto the pillow, leaving round, damp spots. Are you OK, Mr Lemin? What a stupid thing to say. Of course he wasn’t OK.
I had to go close to hear what he croaked out. He had so little breath left in him. Please, he said. I need go.
I understand, I said soothingly. Just let go, Mr Lemin.
I can’t, he whispered to me, in the dark of that ward. Green-lit, like the bottom of the sea. I can’t let go. I don’t know how.
I was feeling the pulse on his wrist, and he turned his arm slightly, and his gown fell, and I saw it, on the saggy underside of his thin arm. The numbers, tattooed in a line. I understood what that meant. What this man had survived. Maybe surviving is a habit like anything else. Maybe sometimes we need to break it.
I can’t, he said, more tears of frustration falling from his eyes. I can’t. Please help me. Help me.
I’d like to tell you I went into agonies about right to die and physician’s oaths and responsibilities. I’d like to tell you that the fact euthanasia is very illegal gave me pause. The truth is, I didn’t pause at all. I checked to see no nurses were around, and then I gently held my hand over his mouth and nose. I felt his breath flicker against me – warm, like the essence of his life was ebbing away – and then he struggled, but that was just the body’s last instinctive fight, and then something turned over in his eyes, and I could tell he’d crossed the border and he wasn’t there any more. He just didn’t exist. That line is so much thinner and closer than any of us like to believe.
I waited until my hand grew cold again, and then I went to the door and spoke calmly to the nurse. Nurse, I need to certify Mr Lemin. He’s slipped away. She gave me an odd look, maybe because I was so calm, so unmoved, but no one ever suspected I’d killed him. And I didn’t, of course. Lung cancer killed him. Old age killed him. Life killed him. All I did was open the door he was slumped against, scrabbling for the handle.
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Chapter Forty
The pier on the mainland, drab and windswept, was one of the lovelier things that Paula had ever seen. The Gardaí boat had sped them over the waters, leaving behind that island with its barren shores and twisted secrets. Later, there’d be questions to ask, and someone would have to be punished for what was done to Matt Andrews and Mary O’Neill and Andrea Sharkey, and the other victims of this, but everyone else was alive and the sun was coming up. Even Dara had been picked up by a fishing boat, half-crazed, clinging forlornly to a buoy, but alive. She’d survived too. And Guy was beside her, wrapped in a foil blanket, eyes tired against the red of the rising sun. She turned and found him watching her, and for a moment allowed herself to lean against him. So warm, so solid. Always there when she’d needed him, despite all she’d done to push him away. Maybe now it was time. Once the dust settled, she would tell him. She would throw the weight of this secret overboard and be free of it, be light and open and unburdened, come what may. And then, if he could forgive her, maybe she’d take that job. Restart her life, as Aidan wanted. Shake Ballyterrin from her feet.
On the shore, police vans were drawn up and she spotted Fiacra, leaning on a crutch. She disembarked, taking a moment to bless the solidity of the ground under her feet – already feeling the difference when you were used to the movement of the sea beneath you – and went to him. ‘Well, Sergeant Hopalong, are you OK?’
He didn’t smile. ‘Are you all right? Christ, I was worried sick.’
She grimaced. ‘You were right to be. I’m OK, though. Thanks to DI Brooking.’
Fiacra was still stony-faced. ‘Listen, Paula, we were trying to ring you. We couldn’t reach you, but—’
‘Sergeant Quinn!’ Guy was approaching, hand held out. ‘Good to see you.’
‘And you, sir, but—’
‘You’ll want our statements right away, I imagine. Lots of loose ends to tie up.’
‘Yes, you’re right, but I need to tell Paula – Dr Maguire – I need to tell you something.’
Suddenly, Paula was feeling the solid ground shift like waves. ‘What?’
‘We couldn’t reach you . . . got the call yesterday . . . got a car waiting . . .’
She couldn’t follow. ‘Fiacra. What’s happened?’
He couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘There’s been an accident. In Ballyterrin.’
‘Maggie.’ Her legs were giving way.
‘No, no, she’s fine, I swear, Maguire, but it’s your—’ He didn’t know the word to use.
A young, pink-faced female Guard that Paula now noticed behind him started talking. ‘It’s your husband, Dr Maguire.’
‘I don’t have a husband,’ she said stupidly. Some mistake. Someone else’s family in an accident, God help them . . .
It was Guy who explained, who took over, in his ‘relatives’ voice, the one she loved but hated when it was turned on her. ‘Paula, they’re talking about Aidan. Something’s happened to Aidan.’
She turned to him. His fair hair lifting in the early morning breeze, turned red by the rising sun. He’d saved her, once again. He’d always been there for her, unlike Aidan, who’d waited till the moment she was happiest and then set fire to their life together, burned it up to ashes. Whereas Guy had held back, quietly offering help. A job. And she still hadn’t told him about their child. She was still lying to him. And now, once again, she was going to have to choose.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I have to go to him.’
Sometimes Paula could actually feel all the times she’d entered Ballyterrin Hospital, as if compressed into one terrible journey. Going in the ambulance with her father, stabbed by a killer who’d been looking for her. Rushing Gerard Monaghan to hospital, holding her scarf over his stomach while Fiacra drove madly, gouts of blood vomiting onto her hands and front. Then her own dash, Maggie suddenly coming too soon, her terrified and splitting open. But this – this was the worst of all. She knew it, deep in her bones. The journey seemed to take hours. In her head she was dividing it. Boat to shore. Get off boat. Get into police car. Smile mechanically at the young driver, who was obviously mortified she’d been the one to bring the news. Onto the motorway. Watching the miles tick by, every moment of traffic making her hands clench up by her sides. Every red light an hour. Finally, the signs for Ballyterrin, and the road markings changing – they were over the border. The driver – she didn’t even learn her name, and later she would have stupid pangs of worry about that – took her straight to the door, pulling up. Paula scrabbled at the handle, suddenly afraid. What ward? What would she find?
‘I hope it’s all right so,’ the driver said in her thick Kerry accent, and Paula was nodding, then out and running into the vacuum of the hospital. Stairs. No time for lift. Looking around wildly for surgical signs. Then spotting a broad, stooped figure she’d know a mile off. ‘Dad!’ Her voice too small in her throat, he could never have heard her. But he looked up all the same and she saw it written on his face – not good.
‘What’s happened? Where – oh God.’ Curled by her dad’s side on the waiting room chairs, wrapped in a pink blanket, was Maggie. Paula bent to her, pushing aside the covers. Maggie was flushed with sleep, out cold despite the noises that came and went around her. Paula didn’t wake her, but despite her panic something settled inside her. She had her child back now, and everything else she could stand, she would find a way to bear. ‘What’s happened?’ She lowered her voice.
PJ was staring at his feet, a crunched-up polystyrene cup between his hands. ‘Not good, pet. They had to use – that thing, you know, the paddles.’
‘Defibrillation?’ Christ, that was worse than she’d thought.
‘But it’s OK now? Where is he?’
‘He?’ PJ seemed not to understand.
‘Aidan! I got the message, he’s hurt, they beat him up, in the prison!’
‘Oh.’ PJ sighed. ‘Bloody eejits have got mixed up. There was a wee fight in the prison, aye, but no, pet, he’s all right. Broke his nose a bit, that’s all. They thought he’d maybe a concussion but he’s grand. You see, he heard the news and thought they wouldn’t let him out, so he kicked off.’
‘So what do you mean? You said not good . . .’
Her father drew in a big, shuddering sigh. ‘It’s Pat, love.’
Then Paula understood. ‘She . . . but she was doing so much better.’
‘Aye. Her heart, you know. It puts a strain on. Chemo. Her heart just gave out.’
She’d been so tired the other day. In bed early, which wasn’t like her. Pat’s heart, so big and full, big enough for a whole town, far too big for the one child she’d been allowed, the one grandchild who wasn’t even really that. Paula sank down beside her father, dull with worry, trying to process it all. ‘It worked, though, the paddles?’
‘For now. You can see her if you want, I had to take the wee one out.’
Paula looked again at her child, sleeping in innocence, red curls over her face. It wasn’t right. She’d promised she’d give Maggie as much time as possible with that innocence. Before she had to know the legacy she’d been born to, her missing grandmother and all the lies and pain in between. But what did she have now? One grandmother, dying maybe, and a father who wasn’t her father, who would likely be in jail until she was in secondary school. ‘Has he gone back inside?’ she asked.
PJ shook his head. ‘They let him stay. He’s in there with her.’
Paula rose, and went to the door. An officer was stationed outside; she recognised the prison guard uniform. He nodded, and she went in.
Aidan was sitting by his mother’s bed, his shackled hands holding one of hers. He was rubbing gently at the skin, which pillowed up and didn’t spring back. Pat had gotten old, somehow. Paula looked at her first – grey, breathing with a machine, shrunk away even since Paula had last seen her, a mere thr
ee days ago. Her own breath caught in her lungs, tears catching in her eyes at the sight. Oh, Pat. Then she raised her gaze to Aidan.
Prison came off him like a bad smell. He looked like a criminal. That same sallow, unlit skin she’d seen in other men, watchful eyes, a puffiness and a starving thinness all at once. His hands, that she’d once loved to kiss, smeared with ink and newsprint, were yellow with nicotine – he’d been smoking too much – and scuffed, the nails cracked. Unloved hands. No one had touched him with care for quite some time, you could tell.
He cleared his throat, not looking away from his mother. ‘Maguire.’
‘Is she – is she OK?’
He shrugged. ‘She’s still here. Good you made it, though.’
‘I was . . . I thought it was you. They said there’d been an accident, down there. They must have got confused. I came right away.’ He turned and she saw his eye – a mess of green bruises, oozing red, like some burst exotic fruit. She couldn’t stop the smothered yelp that came out. ‘Jesus.’
He touched it wearily. ‘Par for the course, Maguire. He’s got mates inside, Conlon. Lots of mates.’
She stepped closer. They hadn’t been in the same room for months now, and all his little gestures were rushing back at her, the way he cocked his head, always listening for stories, the way he drummed his fingers that meant he wanted to smoke, the way he unconsciously rubbed the front of his head. He kept trying to do it, and the clank of the cuffs pulled him back each time. She’d missed him so much it almost made her stagger on her feet. She said, ‘I thought maybe you’d – that you’d been hurt.’ That she’d lost him. She’d lost him months before, of course.
‘And you rushed back for me.’ His voice flat.
‘Of course I did, Aidan, I – it’s you didn’t want me to visit. I’d have come. You know that.’
He made an impatient gesture. ‘Why? What’s the point? You’ve your whole life ahead of you, a whole world you can live in that isn’t this shitting town and all its fucked-up history. Why don’t you leave, Maguire? Why don’t you just bloody leave Ballyterrin?’
Blood Tide Page 25
