Blood Sisters (2 page)

‘Do we know who she was, the deceased?’ asked Katie.

‘She hasn’t been formally identified yet, but apparently she was Sister Bridget Healy, late of the Bon Sauveur Convent at Saint Luke’s Cross.’

‘That name rings a bell,’ said Katie. ‘Why does that name ring a bell?’

‘I have no idea at all, ma’am,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke. ‘I don’t generally have much to do with nuns.’

Katie stood up. ‘I think I’ll go up there myself, just to get a sense of this. Why don’t you come with me?’

‘Of course,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke. Then, ‘There’s something about this that’s making your nostrils twitch, isn’t there, ma’am?’

‘Whenever I hear “suspicious death” and “convent” in the same sentence, Francis, I always catch the reek of something rotten. Maybe I’m wrong in this case, but I’d like to go up there and have a sniff around.’

‘Whatever you say, ma’am. Here.’ Detective Inspector O’Rourke handed her the folder that he had brought in. He had been appointed here to Anglesea Street Garda station only seven weeks ago, and Katie was beginning to trust him and rely on him. He was short and stocky, with chestnut hair that was shaved short at the sides, so that his crimson ears stuck out, but wavy on top. His face was round, with a blob of a nose, and he had very pale-green eyes, with eyebrows that appeared to be permanently raised, as if he were pleasantly surprised at something that he had just found out. He looked more like somebody’s good-natured uncle than a Garda inspector, but Katie had soon come to realize that he was astute, and a good judge of character, and extremely tough-minded.

She had met his wife, Maeve, too, and she seemed to be equally tough-minded. Katie would have found it difficult to pick the odds between them if it came to a domestic fight.

He tapped the folder with his finger. ‘Eight per cent less immigrants were successfully prosecuted over the last six months,’ he told her. ‘Thirteen per cent less illegal immigrants were deported. Just thought you’d like to have confirmation that we’re fighting a losing battle.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ said Katie. ‘Anyway, we’re having a meeting with Nasc tomorrow afternoon about immigrant crime and we can discuss it then. There’s still too many saintly do-gooders who think that expelling an immigrant for rape or robbery is the same as transportation to Australia back in the famine days. ‘The Fields of Athenry’ and all that.’

Detective Inspector O’Rourke pulled a face. ‘Myself, I can’t see much of a parallel between Michael stealing Trevelyan’s corn to feed his starving children and Bootaan stabbing a pregnant woman in broad daylight because she wouldn’t hand over her moby.’

Katie went over to the coat stand and took down her dark-maroon duffel coat. She wondered for a moment if she ought to go back to the toilet, but her stomach seemed to have settled now. She had been taking vitamin B6 capsules and drinking ginger tea, and she certainly wasn’t suffering as much sickness as she had with Seamus, God rest his tiny soul.

* * *

Montenotte was on the steep north side of the city and on clear days the Mount Hill Nursing Home enjoyed a panoramic view of the River Lee below and the city centre and the hazy green hills beyond it. This morning was foggy and cold as a graveyard, but the fog was gilded with sunlight and Katie expected that it would soon evaporate.

The nursing home had been converted from a convent built in the 1880s for the care of the poor and the elderly. Its grey-painted frontage was over eighty metres long and three storeys high, with dormer windows in its dark slate roof. Two Garda patrol cars were parked outside, as well as a white van from the Technical Bureau and an ambulance.

As they turned into the car park from the Middle Glanmire Road, Katie was relieved to see no TV vans and no reporters’ vehicles that she recognized. She wasn’t in the mood for fielding questions about the suspicious death of an elderly sister from the Bon Sauveur.

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán was waiting for Katie and Detective Inspector O’Rourke on the front steps. She had grown her blonde hair longer and pinned it up into a pleat, and she was wearing a short-belted navy-blue cashmere overcoat. She was puffy-eyed and wearing no make-up, but she still looked pretty.

‘There’s not much to see here, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Just an old dead woman and a whole lot of other old folks who’ll soon be going upstairs after her.’

‘Your coat’s only massive, Kyna,’ said Katie, laying a hand on her shoulder. ‘I could do with a coat like that myself.’

‘Oh, thanks. It’s only Marks and Spencer’s but they were knocking off thirty-five euros and how could I say no to that, like?’

‘Have you talked to the staff yet?’

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán took out her notebook. ‘I’ve had a word with the manager, Noel Pardoe, and Nevina Cormack, who’s the director of nursing. Also Dr McNally, who was first called when Sister Bridget was found, but he’s had to leave to see a patient. He’s given me his mobile number, though, in case.’

She pushed open the heavy, varnished oak doors that led into the care home’s vestibule and Katie and Detective Inspector O’Rourke followed her inside. A flustered-looking man in a sagging brown tweed jacket was standing by the reception desk, talking to the iron-haired receptionist. He was bulky and untidy, with his tie crooked and his white shirt gaping to show his belly. His hair was the colour and texture of Shredded Wheat and his skin was still faintly orange from a summer holiday suntan.

‘Mr Pardoe, this is Detective Superintendent Maguire and this is Detective Inspector O’Rourke,’ said Kyna.

Noel Pardoe held out a pudgy hand with a gold signet ring. ‘Well, well. Detective Superintendent, is it? I wouldn’t have thought that Sister Bridget’s passing was sufficiently mysterious to bring out the top brass.’

Katie ignored his hand and gave him the briefest of smiles. ‘Every suspicious death merits my attention, Mr Pardoe, even if I don’t always show up in person.’

‘Of course. I didn’t mean to suggest that you wouldn’t be giving this matter your fullest attention. I’m quite sure you will. But in spite of the one unusual aspect of Sister Bridget’s demise...’

‘You mean the figurine?’

‘Well, yes, the figurine,’ said Noel Pardoe, licking his lips as if the word “figurine” actually tasted unpleasant. ‘Regardless of that, you have to understand that our nursing staff give our guests the most meticulous care and attention, and it would surprise me hugely to discover that Sister Bridget passed away from anything other than natural causes. She had a weak heart, and liver problems, as I explained to your sergeant here, and none of us expected her to be with us on this Earth for very much longer, God bless her.’

Katie said, ‘Let’s leave the cause of death to the coroner, shall we? I’d like to see her now, if I may.’

‘Of course. Not a problem. Your technical people are up there now.’

‘I’d also like a word with your director of nursing after.’

‘Yes, of course. I’ll tell Nevina that you’re here.’

He led them across the vestibule to the lift. The four of them crowded into it and stood facing each other in awkward silence as it took them up to the third storey. They walked in single file along the corridor and Noel Pardoe’s left shoe creaked on the parquet flooring like a duck quacking.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ he said, as if he couldn’t get away fast enough. ‘I’ll see you downstairs after, when you’re finished.’

Sister Bridget’s room overlooked the gardens at the back of the nursing home, with a view of rusty-coloured trees and a rockery where a painted statue of the Virgin stood with the Infant Jesus in her arms. Katie thought she looked as if she were waiting for a bus.

Bill Phinner, the chief forensic officer, was standing beside the high, hospital-type bed, while a young female technician was down on her hands and knees with a small hand-held vacuum cleaner, taking samples from the mottled-green carpet. Another technician was dusting the bedside cabinet for fingerprints. Bill Phinner was lean, with swept-back grey hair, and was almost as hollow-cheeked and cadaverous as the victims he was called to examine.

‘Good morning to you, ma’am,’ he said to Katie, without looking at her.

‘What’s the story, Bill?’ said Katie. The room was uncomfortably hot and she unfastened the toggles of her duffel coat.

Against the left-hand wall stood a tall mahogany cabinet crowded with books, most of them Bibles or lives of the saints, as well as a variety of religious ornaments and statuettes. The most outstanding was a monstrance – a stand supporting a gilded metal sunburst with a circular crystal in the middle to display a communion wafer, the body of Christ. There was also a purple crystal rosary and a plaster figure of Saint Francis with his arms outspread, surrounded by birds and rabbits. One of the rabbits had its head broken off.

On top of the folded-up blankets at the foot of the bed, sealed in a vinyl evidence bag, lay the pale-blue figurine of the Virgin that the doctor had removed from Sister Bridget. She was staring up through the plastic with a serene expression on her medicine-pink face.

Katie approached the bed and looked down at Sister Bridget. She was a hawk-like woman with a large curved nose, a sharply pointed chin and a tightly pinched-in mouth. Her hooded eyes were half-open, as if she were still dozing, but Katie could see that the whites of her eyes were spotted with lesions that looked like tiny red tadpoles.

‘Petechial haemorrhages of the conjunctiva,’ Bill intoned in his dry, abrasive voice. ‘I’d say that she was smothered with her own pillow.’

‘So, not natural causes?’

‘Oh, not a chance. Asphyxiation, no doubt of it.’

‘And what about the figurine?’

‘It’s the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A good-quality resin and stone statuette, hand-painted, twenty-five point five centimetres high, suitable for use both indoors and out. It has a maker’s mark on the base – Pilgrim Fine Editions – so we may be able to trace where it was purchased. I’d say it easily cost close to three hundred euros, maybe more.’

‘Any prints on it?’

‘A few smudgy partials, but when we take it back to the lab there’s a good chance that we can enhance them.’

‘And when was it inserted?’ asked Katie. ‘Before or after she was suffocated?’

Bill lifted up Sister Bridget’s ankle-length brushed-cotton nightgown. She was skeletally thin, with patches of dry skin and purple blotches that were consistent with liver disease. Her left breast was smudged with a large crimson bruise, half-moon shaped, as if her assailant had forced her down on to the bed with the heel of a hand. There were even more bruises on her stomach and the insides of her skinny thighs. Her grey-haired vagina was gaping and between her legs her nightgown was stained with a wide brown patch of dried blood.

The technician who had been collecting particles from the carpet switched off her vacuum cleaner and stood up, so that apart from the crinkly sound of her oversized Tyvek suit, the bedroom was silent. Bill continued to hold up Sister Bridget’s nightgown for a few moments and then carefully and respectfully covered her up again. He didn’t have to say anything. Katie knew that if Sister Bridget had bled when she was assaulted, her heart had still been beating.

They went back down to the vestibule, where Noel Pardoe was waiting with Nevina Cormack. The director of nursing was a short woman with thick-rimmed spectacles and a severe black bob with streaks of grey in it, cut high at the back of her neck. She was wearing a nubbly grey cardigan which looked as if she had knitted it herself, and as she came forward to introduce herself, Katie could smell a strong musky perfume that didn’t seem to sit with her skin type at all.

‘I’m sorry to confirm that Sister Bridget was deliberately suffocated,’ said Katie.

‘Oh. So she
didn’t
pass from natural causes?’ asked Nevina. ‘She wasn’t at all well, you know.’

‘No, I’m afraid not. She was physically assaulted and then asphyxiated with her pillow.’

Nevina crossed herself. ‘That’s awful!. I can’t imagine who might have done such a thing! I told your sergeant here that she had no visitors this morning and we saw nobody suspicious at all around the premises.’

‘Was Sister Bridget well liked here?’ Katie asked her.

‘Oh yes. Absolutely. She had her ways, of course. Most elderly people do. But she wasn’t
dis
liked, let me say that.’

‘Please, she’s gone now,’ said Katie. ‘No matter what you say about her, you can’t hurt her, and if we’re going to find out who killed her, it’s very important that you tell me the truth.’

Nevina glanced across at Noel. He made a face at her and shrugged, as if to say that she ought to be candid.

‘To be honest with you,’ she said, ‘she
was
inclined to be a little
haughty
.’

‘Haughty?’

‘Well, a lot of the time she forgot that she wasn’t running the Bon Sauveur Convent any more, and she seemed to believe that she was in charge of the whole nursing home. Our nurses were very patient with her, but she expected them to wait on her hand and foot, like, and never gave them a single word of thanks. There was one of our gentleman residents, too, and they were always arguing because she kept sitting in his chair in the TV room.’

‘We’ll have to have a word this gentleman,’ said Katie. ‘But it doesn’t sound as if anyone here bore enough of a grudge against Sister Bridget to suffocate her.’

‘We try to encourage a family atmosphere here,’ said Nevina. ‘Like I say, many of the residents do have their ways, and some of them are not aware of where they are, or even
who
they are, God protect them. But I certainly can’t see any of them doing what was done to Sister Bridget.’

She stood there twitchily for a moment, squeezing and unsqueezing her fists. ‘If that’s all, then?’ she said. ‘It’ll be lunchtime soon and I have so much to be getting on with.’

‘Oh yes, please, carry on,’ Katie told her. ‘We may need to talk to you again, but that’ll do for the moment. We’ll be removing Sister Bridget’s body in a short while and taking her to the University Hospital for an autopsy. We’ll keep in touch with you so that you can inform any relatives or friends she may have had.’