Authors: Graham Masterton
‘Only codding you, Bartley,’ said Conor, giving Katie a quick, cautionary look. In spite of his smiling and his over-familiarity, there was nothing pleasant or forgiving about Bartley Doran, and now Katie had seen how quickly he could turn.
Bartley limped back to the dogfight arena. ‘Right, let’s get this show started, shall we? Dylan – you want to put the bait in the ring, boy?’
Katie moved close to Conor and said, under her breath, ‘Mother of God. I know what’s going to happen and I don’t really want to watch.’
Bartley turned around and beckoned them to come closer. ‘C’mere!’ he called them, over the ceaseless barking of the three fighting dogs. ‘Ye’ll like this, I promise ye!’
Dylan handed the leash of his bull mastiff to the young man sitting beside him. He walked around the ring to where the poodle was tethered, and untied it. Then he picked it up and threw it bodily into the middle of the ring, as carelessly as a baggage handler throwing a bag. It fell on to its side, rolled over, and then scrambled unsteadily back on to its feet, still shivering.
The three fighting dogs went berserk. Their barking rose to a harsh and frenzied yammer, more like pneumatic drills than dogs, and they strained at their leads so hard that the two young men who were holding them were pulled unwillingly on to their feet. Terrified, the poodle backed away to the opposite side of the ring, limping like Bartley, and Katie could see that one of its legs was sticking out at an awkward angle, and was probably fractured. When it reached the wooden crates it tried to jump up, but the crates were too high and it could manage only an awkward series of ineffectual little hops.
‘Oh Jesus Christ,’ said Katie. It was taking every ounce of her self-discipline not to take out her gun and stop this horror immediately.
Bartley raised his left arm in the air. He kept it raised for four or five seconds, for dramatic effect, and then he shouted ‘Let ’em go, lads!’ and brought it down as if he were starting a race.
The three young men unclipped the fighting dogs’ collars. The dogs instantly stopped barking and shot across the ring. The poodle made a last desperate effort to jump over the crates, but it couldn’t summon up enough strength, and the fighting dogs tore into it as if they hadn’t been fed for days. Katie guessed that Bartley had starved them on purpose, just for this.
One of the bull mastiffs bit into the side of the poodle’s neck, while the Staffie crunched into its spine. The other bull mastiff went for its belly, tearing away curls of brown hair and triangular flaps of skin. The poodle screamed like a badly injured child, and so the first bull mastiff clamped its jaws into its face, shaking its head violently from side to side. It ripped off the poodle’s nose and most of the flesh from its cheek, and dragged out its left eye on a string of optic nerve.
Bartley whacked his blackthorn stick on top of the crates in delight. ‘What do ye think of that, then? There’s a sight for sore eyes, wouldn’t you say? There’s a fecking sight for sore eyes!’
The three young men were whooping and laughing and whistling to the fighting dogs to encourage them. ‘Come on, Tyson, bite his fecking head off!’
Blood was spraying around the dogs as if they were being attacked by a swarm of angry red wasps. Their assault on the poodle was relentless, and Katie had to close her eyes. Even with her eyes closed, though, she could still hear snapping and wrenching noises, and the sound of the fighting dogs snarling and guzzling and growling as they ripped the poodle apart. But still, somehow, the poodle kept on screaming.
Conor put his arm around her shoulders and spoke quietly into her ear. ‘I know how much this disgusts you, Sinéad, but Bartley has his eye on you and you have to look like you’re enjoying it.’
Katie knew that he was right. She opened her eyes and looked across at Bartley and gave him a thumbs-up and grinned. Bartley had obviously been watching her, because his expression changed from suspicious to satisfied, and he lifted his stick in acknowledgement.
The poodle made one last effort to escape from its tormentors. Half-blind, with its sides hanging in shreds, it twisted itself free from them and managed to hump its way to the middle of the ring. Its belly had been torn open and it was dragging its glistening intestines through the sawdust. Again, Katie felt an almost irresistible urge to pull out her revolver, if only to shoot the poodle and save it any more agony.
Conor must have sensed her despair, because he squeezed her arm. She knew that he adored dogs, too, and that it was just as painful for him to witness this baiting as it was for her.
The poodle stood still, ruined, with its head bowed and one ear hanging loose. The three fighting dogs jumped on it again, and it dropped sideways on to the floor. All Katie could see after that was their wrestling blood-spattered bodies and their stumpy tails sticking up as if they were sexually excited.
Bartley let them ravage the poodle for a minute or two longer, but then he pushed aside one of the crates and limped into the ring. ‘That’s enough, now!’ he shouted at them. ‘Fecking get off out of it! Ye’ve had your fill of fun, ye greedy bastards!’
The fighting dogs took no notice of him, so he lifted his blackthorn stick and started to beat them on their backs, so hard that they were yowling in pain and backing away from him.
‘Come on, lads,’ Bartley said to the three young men. ‘Get their leads on and lock them back up in their cages.’
He turned to Katie and Conor and said, ‘They didn’t do bad at all, did they? Except they shouldn’t have let up like that and give the bait a chance to get away. When they’re in a real fight, that could be fecking fatal, I tell ye. Still – a couple more sessions like this and they’ll be up to gameness, I’d say.’
The three young men clipped the dogs’ leashes back on and dragged them away. After they had gone, Bartley took Katie and Conor back outside. As they left the barn, Katie looked back at the grisly remains of the poodle and wished that she were able to take a photograph of it. Even if she never managed to arrest Bartley for handling stolen animals and dog fighting, a least the ISPCA could try to prosecute him for cruelty.
Conor zipped up his windcheater and said, ‘Thanks for the show, Bartley. That was ten times better than anything that’s been on the telly.’
‘True that,’ said Katie. ‘Made my hair stand on end, I’ll tell you, and I’m a professional stylist.’ She couldn’t think of anything to say that was stupider than that.
‘Like, most people are far too fecking soft on their dogs,’ said Bartley, as he accompanied them back to their car. ‘The Lord specifically created dogs for the service of man, and that’s all there is to it. Why, even the Lord’s name is “dog” spelled backwards. Dogs are for sniffing out rats and racing and fighting and guiding blind feckers across the road. They’re not for eating you out of house and home and then dossing down on your couch and farting like the Uillean pipes.’
‘Well, we’re heading into Cashel now to fetch your grade for you,’ said Conor. ‘It won’t take us long. I’m pure pleased to have found a Great Dane as fine as that one. Who’d you get him from, by the way? I wouldn’t mind seeing if they have any more as good as that.’
Katie took out her iPhone and held it up in front of her face so that she could pretend to primp her hair, as if she wasn’t at all interested in how Bartley was going to answer that question. But having that one question answered was the only reason they had driven all the way up here to Ballyknock, and braved a face-to-face meeting with Guzz Eye McManus, and witnessed Bartley’s gruesome dog baiting. She was so tense waiting to hear what Bartley was going to say that she stopped tweaking her hair and held her breath.
‘Oh, sure, yeah,’ said Bartley. ‘Ye have only to ask him and he’ll find ye whatever breed you want. He doesn’t come cheap, mind, and he doesn’t expect ye to be asking him any nosey-parker questions about where he gets them from, the dogs.’
‘Maybe I know him already,’ said Conor.
‘Well, happen ye do, but he doesn’t advertise himself on the interweb or anything like that.’
‘So?’ said Conor.
‘So, like, what?’
‘So what’s his name?’
‘Oh. Didn’t I say? Lorcan Fitzgerald. That’s your man.’
‘So how can I contact him, this Lorcan Fitzgerald?’
‘Hold on,’ said Bartley, taking his mobile phone out of his pocket. ‘I have a number for him here. What you do is, you ring this number and tell him who you are and what you’re after, and if he likes the sound of you, he’ll ring you back.’
‘And if he doesn’t like the sound of you?’
‘Then he won’t ring you back. Simple as that.’
*
They drove back down the narrow claustrophobic lane to Palmer’s Hill and then into the town of Cashel. Neither of them spoke for a while, although Conor reached across and laid his hand on top of Katie’s hand, just for a moment. It was almost like a benediction.
They parked outside the large grey AIB Bank in Cashel’s Main Street, but before they climbed out of the car, Katie said, ‘Holy Mother of God, Conor. I’ve seen some vile things done to innocent animals in my life, but
that
.’
‘I know, it’s beyond horrible, but it’s happening all the time,’ Conor told her. ‘These dog fighters go to animal shelters and make out they want to adopt a dog, or a cat. Either that, or they’ll look online for people advertising unwanted animals “free to good home”. Of course all they really want them for is bait.’
Katie said, ‘That Bartley. I swear to God I could have shot him.’
‘I know. But I think you showed amazing restraint. Jesus, you even managed to
smile
at the fellow, and that must have taken some effort. The problem is, he trains dogs for dog fighting because it makes him a fortune, all tax-free, and he knows he’s going to get away with it. Like you told me yourself, the Garda don’t have the time or the budget to go chasing after people like him who are mistreating dogs. And what we saw today, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. If a bait animal is fit enough to fight back, Bartley will wrap its snout with duct tape, so that it can’t bite one of his precious fighting dogs. Either that, or he’ll yank out all of its teeth with a pair of pliers. No anaesthetic. And even if it manages to survive a baiting, he’ll throw it to his dogs to kill afterwards.’
‘I don’t think I want to hear any more. Let’s go in and get those two scumbags their money.’
They went into the bank and Katie asked to see the manager. He was young and bald and bespectacled and very obliging. She showed him her ID, and he confirmed it by ringing Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin at Anglesea Street and the manager of AIB in South Mall, where the Cork Garda and Katie herself both had accounts. Within less than twenty minutes, Katie and Conor walked out of the bank with four thousand euros in cash in a Tesco bag.
Katie saw a maroon-painted pub on the opposite side of the street, Pat Fox’s Bar. She really could have done with a drink right then, but she knew that they were pressed for time, and even as ‘Sinéad’, she didn’t think it was a good idea to go back to Bartley Doran and Guzz Eye McManus with vodka on her breath.
Before they got into the car, though, she said, ‘Don’t forget the Peggy’s Legs. You don’t want those Pavee kids letting our tyres down.’
They crossed the road, went into SuperValu and bought twelve Peggy’s Legs – sticks of hard caramel-flavoured rock with the slogan
Peggy’s Leg that never wore a garter
on the label.
‘I used to love them when I was a kid but I’ve almost forgotten what they taste like,’ said Conor, as they drove back along Palmer’s Hill. ‘I should have bought a few for myself.’
‘Just as well you didn’t,’ said Katie. ‘They’re murder on the teeth.’
*
While they had been away in Cashel, Bartley had dosed up the Great Dane with Zylkene tranquilliser tablets. It was so dopey that it could barely walk, and it took all three of Bartley’s young assistants to heave its huge haunches into the back of their Mercedes. Once it was inside, it sprawled out on the seats and fell asleep.
‘I gave him double the recommended dose,’ said Bartley, as he fastidiously counted his money, licking his thumb every now and then as he turned over the new €100 notes. ‘He’s a hell of a big beast, though, and you’ve a way to go back to Carrigahorig, haven’t ye, an hour and a half at least. Make sure ye give him plenty of water when he wakes up. He’ll be dehydrated, like, and confused, too. I don’t suppose he’ll feel like shagging much for a day or two, till his head’s cleared.’
They left Bartley’s place and drove back to the Ballyknock Halting Site. The children ran over as soon as they saw them, and Conor called out, ‘
All-a-bah!
’ again and tossed the Peggy’s Legs into the air. Normally, Katie would have been amused to see the children scrambling after them, because it reminded her so much of her own childhood, playing rats-and-rabbits and shadows in the alley at the back of her parents’ house, but she was still tense and sick to her stomach after watching the poodle being torn apart.
Guzz Eye McManus took his commission without even bothering to count it, as if it were a long-overdue debt that Conor was giving him, and if it were short, Conor would live to regret it.
‘You have the Great Dane then, Mr O’Dea?’ he said, puffing at the stub of his cigar. From the way that he called Conor ‘Mr O’Dea’, Katie guessed that he had checked up on the Mercedes’ number plate while they were away.
‘He’s in the back of the car, Guzz. Dreaming about bones, probably.’
‘Make sure you fetch him back to Bartley within three weeks so. He’s going to need at least a month to train him up.’
Still Katie said nothing, but between them, Bartley and The Guzz had given her a rough idea of when the next dogfight was going to be held.
When they left Ballyknock, Katie told Conor to drive northwards for a while, as if they were really going back to Carrigahorig. She kept turning around in her seat to make sure that they weren’t being followed by one of Guzz Eye McManus’s men, but the road behind them was empty, and when they reached the intersection with the M8 at Garranmore, they joined the motorway and headed south.