Broken Angels (Katie Maguire) (20 page)

The living-room door was still wide open, but Katie had no latex gloves with her so she didn’t touch the Regency-style handle. Instead, she reached up and pushed the door shut with the heel of her hand. She just wanted to make sure that nothing had been dropped behind it.

And there – as the door swung back – was the message. It had been scrawled on the wallpaper in letters over six inches high, in dark green felt-tip marker.

GOD SAYS KEEP AWAY!

It was beginning to grow light outside when the surgeon came into the relatives’ room. Katie stood up and said, ‘How is she?’

The surgeon was Indian, with a hooked nose and protuberant eyes. If he hadn’t been wearing pale green scrubs, Katie could easily have mistaken him for the owner of the Bombay Palace restaurant in Cook Street. He laid his hand on top of hers and said, ‘Your sister is out of immediate danger, detective superintendent. She will survive.’

‘Thank God,’ said Katie. ‘When can I see her?’

‘You can see her as soon as she has been taken back to ITU and we have made her comfortable. But before you do, I must advise you that she has suffered some very serious injuries. As you know, she was struck on the back of the head with some kind of blunt instrument. Three times, with considerable force. I would say that it was probably a hammer, because it has left a circular impression.’

‘How bad is it?’

The surgeon shrugged. ‘All three blows gave her depressed fractures of the cranium, with intracranial bleeding and brain contusions. We have stemmed the bleeding and relieved the pressure, but it is too early at this stage to say if she has suffered any permanent impairment to her mental faculties. We will have to wait until she regains consciousness before we can make any kind of meaningful assessment.’

‘Thank you, Doctor...’

‘Hahq is my name, detective superintendent. Not doctor but mister.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Please, no problem. You need to give all of your attention now to your sister. I hope that she makes a speedy and full recovery.’

The surgeon left the relatives’ room, and as he did so John appeared with two plastic cups of coffee and two packets of ginger biscuits. He was wearing a battered brown leather jacket and jeans and he was unshaven. He had arrived at the hospital only thirty-five minutes after Siobhán had been admitted, and he had stayed there with Katie all night. They had tried to sleep, but Katie had been too fretful to close her eyes.

‘Siobhán’s out of danger, apparently,’ Katie told him. ‘They’re taking her back to intensive care and then we can see her.’

‘That’s good news,’ said John. ‘Well – cautiously good news, anyhow.’

‘O God, I hope so. The trouble is, I’m beginning to wonder if she was attacked by somebody who mistook her for me.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘It makes much more sense, doesn’t it? Siobhán doesn’t have an enemy in the world. She gets on people’s nerves, I’ll give you that. She gets on
my
nerves when she behaves like a Stella. But I can’t see her upsetting anybody enough to hit her on the head with a hammer.’

John said, ‘I don’t think they were after
either
of you. It’s much more likely that it was a burglary gone wrong. Like I’ve been telling you all night, Siobhán probably came back and interrupted some scumbag ransacking your stuff. Or maybe she was home already and they broke in without realizing that there was anybody in.’

‘But, John, there was no sign of forced entry – only that broken light bulb in the porch. And think about it. If Siobhán had come home and found a burglar in the house, she would have challenged him, wouldn’t she?’

‘Well, either that, or tried to run away.’

‘But if she had tried to run away, she would have headed for the front door, wouldn’t she? And if she had challenged him, he would have started to hit her with his hammer when she was facing him, so she would have had defensive bruises on her hands and her arms.

‘No – it looks to me as if the perpetrator walked into the living room while Siobhán’s back was turned and hit her before she even knew that he was there. She didn’t struggle, she didn’t turn around. She never even saw who hit her.’

‘And that’s why you think he mistook her for you?’

‘Yes, I do. If her back was turned, he didn’t see
her
face any more than she saw his. Siobhán and I are both around the same height. We both have red hair, even if they are different shades. She wasn’t wearing those huge hoop earrings like she usually does. If the perpetrator was a hired hit man, he might never have seen me in person, and he could have been relying on somebody’s description.’

John sat down. Katie sat down next to him and he took hold of her hands. ‘So, go on. Who do you think could have ordered a hit on you?’ he asked her.

‘Mother of God, John – it could have been any number of people. There’s this Lithuanian lowlife, Evaldas Rauba. He’s threatened me two or three times. I put his brother behind bars last year for smuggling in air pistols that had been converted to shoot nine-millimetre rounds – complete with silencers. Rauna stopped me in the street and said he was going to cut off my head and piss down my neck.’

John grimaced. ‘You know some real charmers, don’t you?’

Katie said, ‘The only thing that doesn’t really fit is why Rauba should send anybody to kill me with a hammer. Those Lithuanians have more guns than we do.’

‘And why would a hit man take the time to write on your wall? “GOD SAYS KEEP AWAY!” I mean, what’s all that about? God says keep away from what? God says keep away from the Lithuanians? And where does God come into it, anyhow?’

Katie suddenly had a mental picture of Monsignor Kelly, and the hard-eyed way in which he had stared at her before he returned to the football match at Sunday’s Well.

No
, she thought.
He’s an arrogant, sanctimonious, devious little bastard, but I can’t believe that he would actually pay somebody to kill me. Not one of the vicars general
.

Even so, Monsignor Kelly had given her the strong impression that he had a secret that he was desperate to hide. Was it so devastating that it was worth him breaking the First Commandment to protect it? It was unthinkable, but all the same she had to think it.

A plump, freckly nurse came bustling into the visitors’ room and said, ‘Katie? Katie Maguire? You can come and see your sister now.’

They followed her along the corridor and into the lift.

‘She’s not awake yet?’ asked Katie, as they rose up to the fourth floor.

‘Not yet, no. But her vital signs are good. Pulse, respiration, blood pressure. She’ll be going for another CT scan this afternoon.’

She led them into Siobhán’s room, which had a view towards the airport and the countryside beyond. Thick clouds were resting on the hilltops as if a dirty grey quilt had been laid on top of them, and it was just beginning to rain. The only sounds in the room were the hissing of Siobhán’s oxygen and the
meep-meep-meep
of her heart monitor, and the pattering of rain against the window.

Siobhán’s head was bandaged. Both of her eyes were swollen and crimson, as if she had been punched in the face. Katie pulled up a chair and sat down next to her, taking hold of her hand.

‘Oh, Siobhán, you poor baby. Who could have done this to you?’

John cleared his throat and said, ‘With any luck she might be able to tell us herself, when she wakes up.’

‘
When
she wakes up. But who knows when that’s going to be? I want to find the gowl right now.’

John was silent for a moment, but then he said, ‘Maybe this isn’t the right moment to bring this up, darling, but I do have to make some travel plans, and I have to make them real soon.’

Katie wasn’t really listening and she didn’t answer. John waited, and then he added, ‘I also have to give the letting agency a definite decision on the apartment we’ll be renting. Later today, if possible. It’s directly opposite Russian Hill Park, but I’ve beaten them down to a very reasonable price, only two thousand three hundred a month.’

He paused again, but when Katie still didn’t answer him he said, ‘I guess you could always join me later, if you still have unfinished business here in Cork.’

Katie turned around. Unshaven, with his hair all messed up, he looked even more macho and attractive than ever, as if he had been in a fight, and conclusively won.

‘When were you thinking of actually going?’ she asked him.

‘End of next month. Even that’s pushing it. My friends want me to start working for them a.s.a.p. I was hoping you might be able to persuade An Garda Síochána to waive your period of notice.’

‘The end of next month? But that’s only, what, six weeks away! I can’t leave Siobhán until she’s better, can I? And I’m certainly not going until I catch whoever it was who hurt her.’

‘Of course. I understand.’

Katie stood up and put her arms around his waist. ‘John... I love you. I want to be with you more than anything else in the world. You know that.’

He nodded and kissed her on the forehead, but there was something distracted in the way he did it, as if he was already beginning to accept that they could never be together.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘why don’t I take you to Jury’s and buy you a decent breakfast?’

‘I couldn’t eat it, John. I’m sorry. I’ll stay here with Siobhán for now and maybe we can meet up for lunch.’

‘Okay,’ he said, and kissed her again, on the lips this time, but it was more like a goodbye kiss.

She was still sitting beside Siobhán’s bed when her mobile phone rang. It was Detective O’Donovan, calling from Anglesea Street.

‘Sorry to hear about your sister, ma’am. How is she?’

‘Serious but stable, thanks, Patrick. She still hasn’t regained consciousness, so it’s early days yet.’

‘Well, we’ll be saying a prayer for her so. You think they were after attacking you, rather than her?’

‘I think they could well have been, yes. There must be at least a dozen villains who would pay good money to see me laid out.’

Detective O’Donovan said, ‘The reason I’m calling is I got back the first of Father Heaney’s notebooks, translated. I should have the other two by the middle of next week.’

‘That was quick. Who did it?’

‘Stephen Keenan, he’s one of the Latin teachers from the Presentation Brothers College. He owed me a favour, like, so he said that he’d do it for free.’

‘A Latin teacher owed you a favour?’

‘It’s a long story, but it involved one of his sons and a small quantity of illegal vegetation. I said I’d turn a blind eye.’

‘All right. So tell me about this notebook.’

‘I haven’t read it all, like. But you’d think that Father Heaney was on the illegal vegetation, too. He keeps on about talking to angels, and sending messages to heaven, and how to communicate with God.’

‘But that’s what priests do all the time, isn’t it? They communicate with God by praying.’

‘Well, that’s right, but when you pray it’s only hit or miss if you get an answer back, isn’t it? You can pray and pray until you’re black in the face, but you never know if God’s listening to you or not, do you? I mean, He may be listening to you, but when He hears what it is you’re asking Him for, He could be saying, “Fat chance of that, boy.”‘

Katie was beginning to get a headache, and she rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. ‘I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, Patrick. What’s so different about the way that Father Heaney communicated with God?’

‘Like I said, I haven’t read all of it yet, and there’s still two more books to come. But he keeps on talking about meeting God in person. Actually
seeing
Him, face to face. He says that there’s a link between earth and heaven, a physical link, and there’s a way to open it up. “
We can hear His voice with our own ears, and touch His hand with ours. The truth is that God is real
.”‘

Katie said, ‘I think you’re right, Patrick – he must have been smoking something. I mean, why should a priest need physical evidence that God is real? I thought priests had faith. Otherwise they couldn’t be priests, could they?’

‘Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it, like? What if God
is
real, like really real, and not just imaginary real?’

‘Don’t start getting all metaphysical on me, Patrick. I haven’t slept all night. If you can make me another copy of that translation, I’ll come into the office later today and pick it up.’

‘Right you are, ma’am. But I’ll tell you something else that Father Heaney says. He says, “
To call on God, we have to use the language that they speak in heaven, and call on him with the voices of angels
.”‘

‘And that means what, exactly?’

‘Feck knows, to tell you the truth.’

John called just after eleven. He sounded as if he was walking along a busy street. He told her that he would have to cancel lunch because he had to show a prospective buyer around the farm, but he could meet her early in the evening.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m not hungry anyway.’

‘How’s Siobhán?’ he asked her.

‘No better, but no worse. I haven’t upset you, have I?’

‘No, honey, of course not. But we do need to talk.’

‘Yes,’ she said. They both knew what they had to discuss.

She sat beside Siobhán until the hospital porters came to take her away for another CT scan. By the time she left the hospital it had stopped raining, but the sky was still grey and oppressive and she felt like a character in some depressing black and white art movie. She drove back to the office, feeling exhausted and jittery from too much coffee.

She took off her raincoat and sat down to check her emails. She had only just switched on her computer when Detective O’Donovan knocked at her office door, holding up a copy of Father Heaney’s translated journal.

‘Here’s the book, ma’am,’ he said. ‘And we’ve made some progress with the van, too, the one that Mrs Rooney saw by Grindell’s farm.’

‘Have we found it?’

‘No, not yet, but...’ he took a memory stick out of his breast pocket and held it up ‘...it was caught on CCTV at six twenty-seven that morning driving northwards out of the city centre, up Summerhill. That’s less than an hour before Mrs Rooney saw the fellow in the dunce’s cap dumping Father Heaney’s body in the river.