Blood Sisters (30 page)

‘I knew it was Sister Mona as soon as I heard about it on the news,’ she said. ‘And then when Sister Barbara was found, mutilated as she was, I was absolutely certain.’

‘Go on,’ Katie coaxed her. ‘Certain of what?’

‘I was certain that somebody was taking their revenge on the sisters of the Bon Sauveur, and that more might be killed.’

‘And why did you think that?’

‘Because of the abuse that was inflicted on Sister Bridget, and the way that Sister Mona and Sister Barbara were tortured. It could only have been done by somebody who knew each of them intimately.’

‘Why?’

Mother O’Dwyer was highly agitated now. She stood up and went to the window. Outside, she could see the blue nylon tent and the reservists digging up the gardens. She lifted her hand as if to bless them, or as if she were commanding them to stop. Katie stayed where she was and waited for her to answer.

‘As you probably know, Detective Superintendent, many sisters are devoted to one particular saint and see in that saint’s experience their own path to divine ecstasy. Some see their way to Jesus in the miracles that their chosen saint might have worked. Some see it in their martyrdom. Some see it in both, for many martyred saints worked miracles before they went to meet their maker.’

Again, she was silent for a long while, and then she said, ‘Sister Bridget was passionate about the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She believed that if she lived as the Blessed Virgin had lived, with a pure and forgiving heart, she would eventually reach God.’

‘All right...’ said Katie. ‘So, what you’re suggesting is that whoever suffocated her and then used the figurine of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to violate her, there was a strong possibility that they knew that.’

‘Exactly. As for Sister Mona, her spiritual ideal was Saint Gemma Galgani, known as the Lover of the Cross.’

Katie shook her head. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to enlighten me there. Who was Saint Gemma Galgani?’

‘Just a simple girl who worked in the kitchen of a wealthy Italian family about the beginning of the twentieth century. But because of her great love of Jesus she would often pause in her work to contemplate the large crucifix that hung on the kitchen wall. It aroused such a passion in her that it made her heart beat faster, and one day she cried out, ‘Let me come to you, I am thirsting for you!’

‘I see,’ said Katie. ‘And then what?’

Mother O’Dwyer turned away from the window. ‘The Corpus on the cross came to life, and His right hand detached from the cross, and with a loving look in His eyes He beckoned Gemma to come to Him. Gemma rushed over to the crucifix and flew up in the air so that Jesus could embrace her. He pressed her lips against the wound in His side, so that she could drink His blood, and all the time she remained floating in the air – “as if resting on a cloud”, according to her biographer.’

‘So she
flew
, this Saint Gemma? And her killer made sure that Sister Mona flew, too.’

‘That was what convinced me more than anything,’ said Mother O’Dwyer. ‘If Sister Bridget had been the only one, I would have certainly had my suspicions. But then there was Sister Mona, and now what was done to Sister Barbara really confirms it.’

‘We’ve given out hardly any details about Sister Barbara except that her hands and feet were mutilated.’

‘That was enough. Sister Barbara was devoted to Saint Anastasia, who was a healer and an exorcist. She was martyred in the third century under the persecution of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. She was tortured by having her fingers and toes cut off and her breasts burned with red-hot irons, but she refused to deny her faith. Some legends say that she was beheaded, others that she was drowned.’

Katie didn’t say anything immediately. Although the Garda press office had released some details of Sister Barbara’s condition when her body was found in the fountain, they had held back the information that her breasts had been branded. So Mother O’Dwyer’s suspicions about the murderer could very well be correct, and he or she was somebody who had known all three nuns intimately.

‘What I want to know is, why didn’t you tell us any of this before?’ Katie asked her. ‘I’m not saying that it could have prevented Sister Barbara from being abducted, but it could have helped us a great deal in narrowing down our list of possible suspects.’

‘I’ve
told
you!’ snapped Mother O’Dwyer, as if Katie had forced her into giving so much away. ‘I was afraid. I shall confess my cowardice, and I shall beg the Lord for absolution, but I was afraid, sorely afraid – and I wanted to protect the good name of the Bon Sauveurs, and the diocese.’

‘What were you so afraid of, Mother?’ Katie asked as gently as she could.

Mother O’Dwyer’s eyes were crowded with tears. ‘It was the way we treated the young mothers that we took into Saint Margaret’s, and their babies, too. At the time, we sincerely believed that we were doing right by those girls, showing them how sinful they had been and guiding them back to the path of righteousness. We believed that we were doing our best for the children, too, even though they had been conceived in acts of immorality and were born invested with their mothers’ shame. If we hadn’t been so strict with those children, Satan would have claimed them for his own – which, of course, they were.’

‘What about the children you sent for adoption?’ asked Katie. ‘I thought you believed that they belonged to God and that was why you could take them away from their natural mothers and give them to somebody else.’

‘Some of the children behaved well and grew up healthy; it was clear that God had smiled upon them and accepted them. It was those children we sent for adoption, so that they could be raised in a God-fearing family and not be tainted by the sinfulness of their conception.’

‘I don’t understand why you were so afraid to speak out,’ said Katie. ‘All this happened nearly thirty years ago. Times were different then, as you say, and you thought that you were doing the right thing by those girls and their babies. Who knows what might have happened to them if Satan had kept them in his clutches.’

‘I’m not a fool, Detective Superintendent,’ Mother O’Dwyer retorted. ‘I don’t appreciate sarcasm, either. I am quite aware of how the world has changed and how our treatment of those girls is regarded these days. What was considered to be a righteous Christian upbringing in the 1970s is now considered to be cruelty. What our priests believed was the selfless giving of affection to children who had known no love at home is now considered to be paedophilia.

‘I am telling you this in the strictest confidence. There were seven sisters who were known among us to be the most devout, but they were also the strongest disciplinarians. If a young mother was wilful, or blasphemous, she would be chastised, or made to stay up all night praying for forgiveness. If a child misbehaved or was disobedient, it went without food. I admit that there were casualties from that, from sickness mostly, or malnutrition.

‘Sister Bridget and Sister Mona and Sister Barbara were three of those seven. You can only imagine what the media would do to the Bon Sauveurs if this were to come out. That is why I said nothing. That is why I told your detective an untruth about recognizing Sister Mona. If this became public knowledge, it would mean the end of the congregation as we know it.’

Katie waited while she tugged a tissue out of a box, took off her glasses, and wiped her eyes. Instead of looking like a diminutive Darth Vader, she now looked like a small, miserable child who had inexplicably grown old before her time.

‘We’ve found the bones, mother,’ said Katie. ‘There’s no point in trying to protect the Bon Sauveurs now. The evidence is there for everybody to see.’

‘I mustn’t say any more,’ said Mother O’Dwyer. ‘I’ll have to talk to my legal advisers first. I don’t even know why I told you all of that.’

‘You told me all of that because in spite of everything you have a heart,’ said Katie.

Mother O’Dwyer gave her a quick, twisted smile and then she opened a drawer in her desk and took out a notepad and a black address book. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting the names of the other four sisters from the Sacred Seven.’

‘Is that what you used to call them? The Sacred Seven?’

‘That is what they called themselves, although they thought that none of the other sisters knew. Here, I’ll write them down for you, along with their last known addresses. I don’t know for certain if all, or any, of them are still alive, to tell you the truth.’

Katie waited while she wrote down the names and addresses. Outside in the garden she saw one of the reservists holding up a bone that she had found in her riddle, and Bill walking towards her.

‘What I’ve told you today, you won’t be disclosing it to the media, will you?’ said Mother O’Dwyer, as she tore out the sheet of paper from her notebook and handed it over.

‘Do you really think it will make any difference if I do?’ Katie asked her. ‘It might help to save the lives of these other four, if they’re still with us.’

Mother O’Dwyer remained at her desk, looking defeated. ‘It’s a disaster, isn’t it? How can an act of charity that you did in the past turn out to be a crime in the future?’

Katie stood up. ‘There’s only one person who knows the answer to that, Mother, and you know Him very much better than I do.’

Katie went to find Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, who was still in a side room in the convent with Sister Caoilainn, systematically checking the records of all the mothers and babies who had been taken in by Saint Margaret’s Mother and Baby Home before it had been closed.

The room was gloomy and smelled of oak panelling and old books. At the far end there was a stained-glass window with an image of Jesus on it, holding up a lamp. Sister Caoilainn was sitting underneath it, a large pasty-faced woman with a dark moustache. She was biting her thumbnail and looking bored.

‘Could you excuse us for a moment, please, Sister?’ asked Katie. ‘I need to have a word with Sergeant Ni Nuallán here.’

Sister Caoilainn stood up and bustled out of the room, making it plain from her upturned nose what she thought about being ordered around by the Garda. When she had gone, Katie closed the door and passed Detective Sergeant Nuallán the list of sisters that Mother O’Dwyer had given her. Very briefly, she explained who they were and what Mother O’Dwyer had told her about them.

‘You can leave these records for a while. It’s urgent that we locate these four women, if they’re still alive, and put them under immediate protection. If you can go back to the station and organize that with Superintendent Pearse.’

‘Right, I’ll do that,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘I’ll come back to these records after, though. If what Mother O’Dwyer has told you is true, our offender could well be one of these young women. There’s not just lists of names here, there’s a whole rake of correspondence with adoption agencies in America, and daily reports on the young girls’ behaviour. Some of them protested when their children were taken away from them for adoption. Some of them self-harmed and attempted suicide, and others actually attacked the sisters. One of them set fire to a rubbish bin and nearly burned the whole convent down.’

‘What a can of worms,’ said Katie. ‘Listen, I’ll leave it with you for now. I have to pay a visit to the Begleys.’

‘The Begleys? I don’t envy you that. Dooley said they were in bits.’

‘Well, there’s more to it than meets the eye. It turns out that Roisin’s suicide note was probably a forgery.’

‘You’re codding!’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Do we know who might have done it?’

‘I’m dreading finding out, if you must know.’

‘You don’t think... Jesus.’

‘I’m thinking nothing at all at the moment, not until I talk to the Begleys. I promised anyway that I’d call by to give them my sympathies and let them know how our investigation was coming along. This is going to make it all rather awkward, to say the least, but I think I’m probably the best person to be doing it. I’ll be back at the station no later than five, I should have thought. Inspector O’Rourke’s on his way back from Dublin and apparently he has something of great moment to tell me.’

‘I, ah... ’Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán began.

‘What is it, Kyna?’

‘No, it’s nothing at all. No bother.’

‘Go on, tell me.’

‘No, like I say, it’s nothing. I’ll get back to Anglesea Street directly and start looking for these four old sisters.’

‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ Katie asked her.

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán shook her head. ‘Nothing wrong at all. If anything, it’s all too right.’

She lifted her blue wool jacket from the back of her chair and shrugged it on, then she scruffed up her short blonde hair. Katie waited for a moment, but it was obvious that whatever she might have had on her mind, Kyna wasn’t going to tell her what it was. Not yet, anyway.

* * *

The Begleys lived in a modern new-build house on Montenotte Road, on the steep northern slope that overlooked the River Lee. It was white and angular, with a swimming pool in front of it and a balcony that gave them a panoramic view of the city.

Montenotte Road was walled and narrow, with cars parked in it, and it took a seven-point turn for Katie to manoeuvre into the Begleys’ driveway. She pulled up behind Jim Begley’s red Range Rover Sport and climbed out. The house was lit up inside and she could see a huge plasma TV flickering in one of the downstairs rooms. The swimming pool was empty, with a few dry leaves scurrying around in it. A chilly breeze was blowing from the south-west and Katie shivered.

She walked up the steps to the white-painted front door and pressed the doorbell. It played the opening bars of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’. She waited, rubbing her hands together to keep warm, and just as she was about to press the bell again she heard footsteps and the light in the hallway was switched on. The door was opened by Aileen Begley, who blinked at her and said, ‘Yes?’

Katie produced her badge. ‘Detective Superintendent Maguire, from Garda headquarters at Anglesea Street. I think Detective Dooley told you that I’d be calling around to see you. This is not a bad time, is it?’