“For the Blood is the Life”
—advertising slogan for Clarke’s Blood Mixture,
The Times (London), Monday, October 3, 1887.
I suppose that I was lucky to get the interview at all.
I stood on the steps of Teach Cluain Meala, a tall and narrow Georgian building, situated in Dublin’s busy Harcourt Street, and gazed curiously at the polished brass plate outside the door. AVERTY ENTERPRISES, it read. The name was known not only in Ireland but also throughout the world as one of the biggest international entertainment promotion companies. Averty Enterprises had been on the credits of enough Broadway “Hit Musicals” and television variety shows for it to be immediately recognizable—a sort of entertainment brand name.
Standing there, I had a feeling, not for the first time, of irritation that I had even bothered to waste my time making the journey into central Dublin from Chapelizod in answer to the letter that had summoned me. The letter arrived for me on the previous day, with its embossed company notepaper and its few typed lines, politely requesting me to attend an interview with the managing director to discuss the prospect of a position within the company. I felt it was some silly mistake, for what would an entertainment agency want with a doctor of medicine such as I?
The letter had been sent to me care of the College of Physicians, for as a Fellow of the College, I was entitled to have my mail forwarded from there. The truth being that I was not in practice at that time, having just returned from Africa. I was seeking a position because I could not afford to buy a partnership in a general practice, especially in Dublin where life was pretty expensive. A rural practice was not something I even contemplated.
It was my sister Étain, in whose house I was temporarily living at Chapelizod, who had insisted that I should respond to the letter. Étain knew all about the entertainments business. She was a semiprofessional singer and told me that a company such as Averty Enterprises did not make mistakes.
“Turn down an offer to work for Averty Enterprises? You must be out of your skull!” she had jeered. Although Étain was a few years younger than I was, after our parents died in a traffic accident, it was she who worked to keep a home together. I had been in my final year at medical school. I had felt that I still owed something to her for going round the pubs and clubs and singing to earn a living for the both of us. She was not a great singer, but had a nice, easy voice. She was a balladeer rather than a “pop” singer. Poor Étain. She had made a bad marriage to an irresponsible and impecunious youth named Art Moledy, who had disappeared to America within a year. She became very ill after that and nearly died. I had felt protective toward Étain from then on and took heed of her advice. On this occasion I wasn’t so sure that she was right. Surely an entertainments company would need a medical doctor like an opera singer with laryngitis?
But there I was, standing on the steps of the company head office, and decided that I might as well go through with the meeting. I set my shoulders determinedly and marched up the steps to the brightly painted door. In a small hallway beyond, a burly uniformed security guard gazed sourly at me.
“I have an appointment,” I stammered as his six feet six inches of height towered threateningly over me.
His eyes narrowed, and he testily demanded, “Got your letter?”
I scrabbled into my pocket and brought forth the letter.
The security man stared at it as if trying to find some fault with it.
“Up the stairs, first right,” he eventually ordered in a laconic manner.
Up the stairs, first right led me to a door marked RECEPTION. A bored but pretty-looking girl sat behind a desk on which there was a small telephone exchange, an intercom unit, and a computer. She was doodling with noughts and crosses in a notebook and started nervously as I entered and presented my letter to her. She read it carefully, then, without a word to me, reached for the intercom.
“Dr. Sheehan is in reception, sir.”
A muffled voice squawked unintelligibly from the box. The girl regarded me coolly. “Up the stairs, first left,” she ordered.
I climbed another flight of stairs, came to an unmarked door, and tapped gently. A male voice boomed, “Enter!” I did so.
“Dr. Joseph Sheehan?” The man was beefy, red-faced, over-weight, and oozed bon diable. He rose from a massive desk and looked every inch a theatrical entrepreneur, even down to the garish grey-blue suit with the broad stripe. Gold chains jangled from one wrist and his multicolored silk tie would have lit a darkened room. He pumped my arm like a man determined to get water from a dried-up well. Unhealthy beads of sweat shimmered on his forehead.
“Are you Mr. Ronayne?” I asked. That had been the signature on my letter.
“Sit down, Doctor. I am Ronayne, director of Averty Enterprises. Sit down.”
I obeyed. He pulled a sheaf of papers out of a folder and glanced at them. I noted his wheezing breath and wondered whether I should suggest he try an inhaler for the condition. I waited patiently as he peered at the papers.
“Surely there has been some mistake?” I finally ventured after a while. “I am a medical doctor. I know nothing about the entertainment world.”
He reluctantly brought his gaze away from the papers and stared dourly at me for a moment.
“Mistake?” he seemed puzzled.
“You cannot be looking for a full-time medical doctor for your company, and that is the position that I am looking for,” I added.
“There is no mistake. Let me ask you a few questions—just to confirm some facts. You have just returned to Dublin, right? You’ve been abroad. You did your training here and are a . . . a . . .” He referred to the papers. “You are a Licentiate of the College of Surgeons and Fellow of the College of Physicians, right?”
I wasn’t sure whether the staccato barks were meant as statements or questions. I decided that the word “right?” at the end made them into questions.
“Right,” I confirmed.
“For the last three years you have been working in Africa with Médicins Sans Frontières, right?”
“Right,” I echoed dutifully.
“Pretty tough work in Africa, I suppose? Famine, malnutrition, and all that, right?”
“Right,” I echoed back, then relented. “It was pretty tough. But how did you know that I was back in Dublin looking for a new position? Your letter was addressed to me at the College of Physicians, but they aren’t supposed to hand out personal information.”
He made a dismissive gesture with his hand.
“We have our contacts, Doctor Sheehan. I suppose that you have had to deal with HIV, AIDS, and all that sort of thing?”
“Oh yes,” I said, a trifle bitter by the memory of the suffering that I had seen. “And all that sort of thing.”
“I gather that you were working at the Wambiba Hospital specializing in AIDS screening?”
“For a time. I was specializing in blood diseases. Why does all this interest you?”
Ronayne sat back and placed his hands together across his ample stomach. He stared at his desk for a moment. His eyes seemed to focus on a fly that was crawling across the papers in front of him and, for a while, he seemed oblivious to everything else. My sharp cough caused him to jerk up and he refocused on me.
“We do need an in-house doctor. Full-time. We are a big business. Right? We deal with lots of clients. Big names. We need someone who is discreet. Right? We were informed that you had finished your contract abroad and had returned to Dublin. You need a position. Right? We are prepared to offer you that position. The position of chief medical officer to our company. It may mean some travel, to visit our clients abroad, but in principle you will be based in Dublin. We have a small medical facility at Clontarf.”
He mentioned an annual salary that was extraordinarily generous, adding, “This doesn’t exclude you taking on any private patients so long as it doesn’t interfere with your first priority, which is company business.”
I was intrigued. It sounded too good to be true.
“What does the work entail?”
“You run the medical facility and we send you our clients for medical checks. We want to know that they are in good health. Right? So we need a thorough examination, blood tests and so on—can’t be too careful about druggies and people with AIDS and so on—we have a worldwide reputation to think of. We have to insure all our clients. Your confidential reports come to us. Then we fix up insurance and so on.”
“It seems straightforward enough,” I agreed. The idea was beginning to appeal to me the more I thought about the financial remuneration and the possibilities it offered. “But who are your clients?” I resisted the temptation to add: “. . . and so on.” It was a manner of punctuation that came as naturally to him as other people say “er” and “ah.”
“Pop singers, members of bands, groups, and so on. You know the sort of thing. We send groups all over the world. Insurance is crucial, and the insurance companies can wheedle out of anything unless we apply the small print. Right? If we claim someone is healthy, and an accident happens, and it can be proved that they are not healthy, we wind up with egg all over our faces and out of pocket. Understand what I mean?”
It was easy enough to follow.
“What about laboratory backup? If you want all the screening tests to be done, you need a technician and laboratory equipment.”
Ronny sat back and shook his head.
“You will have the facilities but, as we need to be discreet, it will be up to you to see all the tests through yourself. That is why we give you full-time employment and a generous salary. Of course, you will have a nurse receptionist, but the rest must be confidential. You might be seeing only two or three clients a week, or even fewer. Therefore, you will have plenty of time to conclude each test yourself. If you want to see the laboratory before making a final decision, I can drive you up to Clontarf right away.”
I sat and reflected for a moment.
“Is there a problem?” he prompted, anxiously. “Your dossier says that you were doing all your own testing in Africa.”
“There is no problem in that respect,” I assured him. “Let me look at the laboratory, then I’ll give you my answer.”
It was a formality. I had already made up my mind to accept, but I didn’t want him to see that I was so eager.
FOR A WHOLE WEEK I had nothing to do but laze about my well-equipped office and laboratory, which was tucked on the end of Marino Crescent, facing onto the sea. Bríd, the nurse receptionist, was competent, a married middle-aged woman, and a reassuring fixture. Averty Enterprises certainly did not stint on equipment. Some hospitals would have given the collective right arms of their surgery staff to possess many of the diagnostic machines that were at my disposal.
It was Bríd who injected a note of drama in an otherwise hum-drum day by telling me about old Dr. Hennessey, who had been my predecessor. He had taken it into his head to go midnight bathing off the Bull Wall at Clontarf, and his body had never been recovered. He had gone insane, she thought, for the day he decided to take his midnight dip in the turbulent sea, he had been mumbling about blood being life, or some such phrase.
Toward the end of the week I began thinking seriously about pursuing the idea of a private practice. Ronayne had assured me that the company would not object to my having private patients if it did not interfere with work for the company. What work? I had a whole week of nothing else to do but familiarize myself with the laboratory and its equipment. Bríd’s only strenuous occupation seemed to be reading copies of Ireland’s Own or telling me tales of the eccentricities of old Dr. Hennessey. I discussed the prospects of building up a private practice with her, and she offered to organize the appropriate listings and advertisements to promote it.
It was not until the following week that the first couple of clients were sent by Ronayne. Bríd showed them into my consulting room with a disapproving look.
They were young girls, fresh out of convent school, gawky yet trying to be sophisticated. They were not more than seventeen or eighteen years old.
I tried to put them at ease while I went through the medical checks.
“And what do you do in show business?” I asked gravely.
They giggled.
“Oh,” said one of the two, a broad-faced redhead with a fast West Cork accent, “we aren’t in showbiz yet.”
“We are too!” corrected her blond companion in a snappish tone. She was a thin-faced girl with the harsh tones of south Dublin. She positively reeked with some cheap perfume. Her articulation was punctuated by a certain four-lettered Anglo-Saxon expletive, which she pronounced to rhyme with the word “book.” “We are going to be backing singers, and Mr. Ronayne has promised us a season in England. That’s why we need this insurance thing. He’s sending us to some seaside place—Whitby, I think he said.”
“It’s our first contract,” confessed the redhead.
I busied myself with the tests, wondering if their singing voices were any better than their speaking voices, for I could not honestly say that I picked up any discernible talent there. The stench of the blonde’s cheap perfume lingered for two days.
I was able to let Ronayne have my typed reports on the following day.
He was on the telephone after lunch.
“Excellent reports,” he breezed. “I just wanted to check that you did carry out all the specified blood tests. Right?”
“I would have thought the reports were specific,” I replied coldly.
He was conciliatory.
“Right. But these are your first reports. I thought I would just check, right? It’s all very important for the insurance and so on.”
“Right!” I returned. “But it’s down in black and white. All the required tests have been made. You have two healthy girls on your hands. Though I can’t vouch for their singing voices.”
“Oh?” He seemed sharply interested.
“To be honest, I thought that their voices were pretty unmusical. But, of course, you don’t pay me for that opinion. You obviously know your own business.”
“Right!” He sounded vaguely amused.
I began to think that I had little appreciation of modern music as, over the next several weeks, a succession of people came through the consulting rooms for examination. They were mainly young girls, though a few androgynous youths paraded before me. Most of them were healthy enough, although I found some with various ailments. Drugs have become a problem in Dublin in recent years. A couple of youths tested HIV positive while another girl confessed that she was a diabetic. Ronayne always seemed pleased when I was able to give a clean bill of health for his potential performers.
Thanks to Bríd’s management I even began to squeeze in some private patients, and life was looking decidedly good.
When I went back to Chapelizod in the evenings I would talk things over with Étain. I could see that she was a little envious of the stage-struck youths who, thanks to Averty Enterprises, were setting off on various world tours.
“Aren’t you meeting any real stars yet?” She mentioned the names of some well-known singers who were reputedly handled by Averty Enterprises. I shook my head. The would-be talents I described were of no interest to her except to stir her envy.
“From what you say,” she sniffed coldly, “I could easily get Averty Enterprises to represent me.”
I had to admit that she was right. Judging by the so-called talent I had seen, Étain could have been one of their more professional singers. As I have already mentioned, she had been quite a hit on the pub-and-club circuit. Since she had been on her own, after her husband left, her singing was the only thing that really interested her. She was still in her late twenties, still young enough to make the grade in the music business. I noticed that she was quiet for a few days, but I didn’t think any more about it.
Then, one morning, much to my surprise, Bríd showed her into my consulting room.
“A Miss Étain Moledy to see you.” Bríd made it clear that she did not realize that we were related.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed in astonishment after Bríd had closed the door.
Étain smiled brightly.
“I’m here for a medical examination, big brother,” she replied calmly.
“What?” I nearly exploded, trying to keep my voice low and wondering if she were joking.
“Your famous Mr. Ronayne has sent me.”
I stared at her.
She continued in an unconcerned tone: “I went to audition for him. He likes my voice and thinks I have a great talent. He wants to send me on a tour of Australia. It all boils down to his medical examiner giving me a clean bill of health for the insurance, and you are the medical examiner for the company.”
“This isn’t ethical,” I protested. “I am your brother. Does Ronayne know . . . ?”
I glanced nervously to the door beyond which my nurse receptionist sat.
“Of course not,” Étain snapped. “I used my married name and called myself ‘miss.’ ” Ronayne won’t know. He contacted you at the College of Physicians, so he doesn’t even know you live in Chapelizod. And you use that goddamn mobile phone, so he wouldn’t even associate my phone number with you. In other words, it’s up to you. Are you going to blow the whistle on me?”
Of course, I wasn’t. I have already said that I felt responsible for Étain, especially after the sad experience with her husband, Art Moledy.
“Is this singing deal what you really want?” I asked.
She smiled eagerly at me and nodded rapidly.
“You know it is. It could lead to good things. Yes, it is what I really want.”
I knew Étain, If she had set her heart on something, then there was nothing that I could do to dissuade her.
Ronayne was pleased at the report I sent in. I wished Étain well.
It was a day later that there was a discreet knock at my consulting room door. Bríd showed in two men whose soft hats and raincoats gave them the appearance of refugees from a movie set of a 1940s detective thriller. Indeed, so stereotyped were they that, at first, I thought they were clients of Averty Enterprises. But Bríd coughed hollowly and said, “Two gentlemen,” she made clear that she was dubious over the use of the word, “from the Gardaí.”
It was only after one of them showed me his warrant card that I realized that she was not joking, and they were, indeed, members of the Garda Siochána, the Irish police.
“I am Detective Halloran,” said the one who had showed me his identification. “Dublin Metropolitan Division.” He was a stocky man with gloomy features. He did not bother to introduce his colleague, who had simply entered the room, then lounged with his back against the wall by the door, hands in pockets. His jowls worked rhythmically as he masticated chewing gum.
“How can I help you?” I asked.
“Not sure that you can, Doctor,” Halloran confessed in a voice that showed he contemplated the worst in life. He fished into his bulky raincoat and withdrew a faded photograph. “Recognize her?” He pushed the print across my desk and seated himself opposite.
I frowned as I stared at a young girl in school uniform.
“I don’t think . . .” Then I peered closer. “Does she have red hair, by any chance?”
There was a long sigh as if Detective Halloran had just been told that he was going to face the rest of his life in loneliness and penury.
“She does,” he intoned mournfully.
It was the red-haired Cork girl who had been one of my first two clients from Averty Enterprises.
“I did a medical examination for her,” I offered.
“When was that?”
“About a month ago.”
“Why?”
“Do you mean, why did I examine her?”
He raised his eyes to the ceiling as if it were perfectly obvious what he meant by the question.
I told him the story. He sighed moodily. He had apparently known all along my part in the story and was seeking my official corroboration.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Her body is missing.”
“Her body?” I was startled. “Do you mean,” I tried to rephrase the question so that it made sense, “that the girl has gone missing?”
“I do not,” the detective protested as if anguished by the suggestion that his use of language was inaccurate. “She died a fortnight ago.”
I was shocked and showed it.
“Died? But she was an exceptionally healthy young girl. Was there some sort of accident?”
“The girl died of”—Halloran checked his notebook—“died of virulent anemia in the Bon Secours Hospital.”
“You must be joking,” I said.
He was not joking, and he reproved me in a carefully phrased sentence for suggesting as much.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a paper, and thrust it at me. It was a death certificate. The certificate confirmed what the detective had already told me. The cause of death was massive blood loss.
“Her parents came up from Cork to collect the body. When they reached the hospital it was missing.” He paused and corrected himself gently. “The body, that is. It had been removed from the morgue.”
I stared blankly at him.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do we, Doctor. At the moment we are following up every lead we can. We checked all the burials from the hospital. No one was buried in error for someone else. The only logical explanation we can come up with is that the body was removed for use in an anatomy school.”
“Are you suggesting body-snatching in this day and age?” I grimaced with dark humor. “Come on! Burke and Hare are a hundred and fifty years out-of-date.”
“Perhaps a simple case of mistaken identity of the body,” he suggested smoothly.
“Then you would be left with the body that she was mistaken for,” I pointed out logically. “Do the hospital administrators agree with that?”
“They do not. They say it is not possible with their system of checks. But they are most likely covering their backs,” he added cynically. “However, the fact is that you are correct, we can’t trace any likely form of substitution. The body has simply vanished.”
“Things like that don’t happen,” I insisted. “You just can’t mislay a body these days.”
Halloran gazed at me with moody speculation.
“I don’t suppose you ever carry out anatomy experiments here?” There was a hopeful note in his voice.
“You are perfectly welcome to search in case I have the odd body tucked away,” I replied sarcastically. “We keep the choice cuts in the ’fridge.”
Halloran took that as a negative and began to rise. I held up a hand to stay him.
“What really intrigues me is how this girl could die of anemia? That would mean a massive blood loss. Death certificates just give the cause of death not the reasons behind the cause. When she was here, the test showed that she was absolutely normal. I don’t understand it.”
“Well, perhaps if we found the body we might be able to help you,” said the detective heavily. “My job is just to find the body. Then we can find out what she died of.”
“Have you consulted her friend?”
“Her friend?” His eyes were suddenly bright upon me. “She had a friend?”
I went to my files, looked up the notes, and gave the name and address of the blond girl. He noted them down.
“I thought that both girls were supposed to be on tour in England as backing singers with some pop group . . .”
Halloran frowned.
“First I’ve heard of it. The redhead was found not far from here, in Artane. That’s why she was taken to the Bon Secours Hospital. Mr. Ronayne didn’t mention anything about her going on a tour. I’ll look into it. Thanks for all your help, Doctor.”
That afternoon I was busy with more clients; a sad-looking bass player who was going to America to join some band playing in a casino on the Pequod American Indian reservation in upstate New York. The Native Americans were, by all accounts, amassing large fortunes from old treaty rights by running nontaxable gambling casinos. I suppose it was about time they managed to get those treaties working for them.
When I reached home in the evening I found my sister, Étain, in the hall with a suitcase packed. She was beaming with joy.
“I’m glad that you came home before I left. I tried to raise you on your mobile, but you had it switched off. I was going to leave a note.”
“Before you left? Where are you going?”
“It’s come through quicker than I thought,” she announced. “A singing tour in Australia. A car is calling for me any moment and taking me to the airport. There’s another group who are joining me, and we are picking them up along the way.”
I was dumbstruck.
“Are you off to Australia now?” I demanded. “So soon?”
“It’ll only be for three months, Joe,” she said. “I know what you did to help me get this job. You know, the medical thing. I appreciate it. I really do.”
I shrugged.
“I knew you wanted the job. What’s the point in raking up Art Moledy and his problems? But look after yourself. Check with a doctor in Australia when you can.”
She leaned forward and gave me a quick peck on the cheek.
A car horn sounded outside.
She was suddenly very excited.
“That’s the car. I must go. I’ll send you a card. Look after the place while I’m gone.”
“Shouldn’t I come with you to the airport?” I asked.
“The car will take me there. And we don’t want Ronayne, if he is there, to realize that Doctor Joe Sheehan and Miss Étain Moledy are related, do we? At least not until after the tour.”
Then she was gone.
I just caught a glimpse of a large black Mercedes drawing away into the evening dusk.
I kept myself busy for a week. The private practice was building up nicely even though I hardly had any clients from Averty Enterprises during that time. There was plenty of time to pursue my own work.
There were no further calls from Detective Halloran, and I wondered if they ever solved the mystery of the disappearing body.
Thinking about it did prompt me to telephone the hospital and speak to the medical examiner who had signed the death certificate.
I explained who I was and that I had made an examination of the girl only weeks before for insurance purposes. I pointed out that there had been no sign of her being anything other than a normal, healthy eighteen-year-old.
“You saw my certificate.” The pathologist was clearly irritated. “It was the worst case of anemia I’ve seen. Not a red corpuscle in her entire body. I can’t believe anyone in that condition was healthy just a week or so beforehand. I can only report what I found.”
He hung up with a petulant grunt before I realized that he had impugned my professional ability. I decided to let the matter drop.
IT WAS ABOUT THREE O’CLOCK in the morning when my mobile telephone buzzed.
It was Ronayne. I have never heard a man in such a state of distress as he was.
“I need your help, Doctor. Need it desperately and right away. Where are you? My car will be round to collect you as soon as it can get there.”
“Are you ill?” I asked curiously, trying to shake the sleep from my head.
“No, not me. Not me.”
“Then . . . ?”
“It is the chairman of our company. Right? He is ill.”
“Chairman? Doesn’t he have his own physician? And if it is that urgent, then the emergency services . . . ?”I began to protest.
He interrupted me with a snarl. “May I remind you that you are the company doctor? Right? Give me your address now!”
A large black Mercedes slid to a halt outside the house, and, clutching my medical bag, I climbed in. Ronayne was in the back. He looked pale and nervous. To be truthful, I was rather grateful that he was so preoccupied. Otherwise, he might have realized the Chapelizod connection with Étain.
“You best tell me something about the patient,” I invited as the car purred off into the night.
“Mister Averty? What can I tell you?”
“Mister Averty?” I was surprised. I had not realized that there was an Averty still controlling the company which I knew had been formed back in the music hall days. “What are the symptoms? What is the problem?”
“I think that you’d best wait until you see him for yourself.”
We drove across north Dublin to Artane. Artane used to be a sleepy village north of Clontarf in Coolcock barony. Now it is just part of the sprawling mess of north Dublin suburbs. We turned into the secluded grounds of Artane Lodge. It had once been the lodge of Artane Castle, which had been the seat of the O’Donnellans, where Archbishop Allen was done to death in 1533. The gaunt castle had been pulled down to make way for Artane House and Lodge. To my surprise the house was in total darkness. It did not seem to bother Ronayne, who drew out a key and let himself into the darkened building.
“Isn’t there any domestic help?” I protested, as Ronayne led the way hurriedly across the echoing hall and through the house. He did not reply nor even wait to turn on a light. Taking a small pocket torch from his coat, he lit the way for me. Surely someone of Averty’s wealth was able to have a whole army to look after his needs? Again to my surprise, instead of heading up the winding staircase to where, presumably, the bedrooms were situated, Ronayne opened a small side door and began to climb down into the musty cellars of the house.
The main cellar was lit with a dim, flickering light.
I stood at the foot of the stairs and could not begin to comprehend the sight that met my eyes.
Two large spluttering candles lit the cellar, but the smell of the place was . . . well, I have been in many a plague graveyard in Africa, with putrid rotting corpses By comparison to this cellar, they smelled sweet.
There was a man’s body stretched out on a slab in the middle of the cellar. He was clothed in evening dress, a white tie and starched shirt and waistcoat. Even lying there, pale and lifeless, the body seemed to emanate a charisma that commanded attention from his apparently lifeless form. At first I thought he was old, for he had white hair and a long white moustache. His face was etched in sharp features, the nose thin and high-bridged, with strangely arched nostrils. The bushy eyebrows met over the nose. The forehead was high-domed, the lips thin, red, and almost cruel.
“What’s the meaning of this?” I asked in distaste as I stared at the candles placed at the foot and head of the apparition as it lay on what appeared to be the top of a stone sarcophagus.
Ronayne made a gesture of dismissal with one hand.
“Mister Averty is an eccentric gentleman,” he muttered. “We must respect his wishes.”
“Nonsense!” I replied. “If the man is ill, he should be in bed. Who has placed him here in these damp, vile conditions? This is outrageous!”
“Just examine him, please, Doctor. Please! I do not think we have much time.”
Reluctantly, I went to the side of the man.
The body was icy cold. There was no pulse in spite of the redness of the lips.
“He is already dead,” I announced brutally. “And by the feel of him, he has been dead some hours.”
“He cannot die,” Ronayne’s voice held a frantic quality. “See what you can do, Doctor. Please!”
“We all have to die sometime,” I replied, somewhat testy at his presumption.
“But he cannot die,” insisted Ronayne in a wailing tone.” He is the Master.”
It was then that I began to worry for my employer’s mental health. Perhaps Ronayne was having a breakdown or else he was in some curious state of shock. Nevertheless, my first duty was to ensure that the figure of the man in evening dress was beyond my assistance. I would see to Ronayne later. Turning back to the body on the slab, I drew out a syringe from my bag and stabbed the needle into the dead man’s skin. There was no reaction. It did not even cause a spot of blood nor stimulate the nerve that I had aimed for. I then cautiously drew out a blood sample and, as carefully as I could, put it in a small phial in my case. It was pale like no blood I had seen before. There were no signs of animation anywhere on the body. The man was clearly dead.
I half turned to get my notepad.
As I turned back I realized, with a tingling disgust, that the skin of the corpse around the mouth was sliding away from the teeth. To my horror, the entire flesh had suddenly taken on a strange consistency, like melting wax. It was slipping from the body. No, not slipping—it was actually rotting, bubbling and dispersing before my eyes. I could only stand there in frozen horror watching as the body began to decompose and wither in front of me.
“What in hell is happening?” I whispered, the skin at the nape of my neck tingling in my horror.
The smell that arose was vile. I began to choke on the fumes.
Soon all that was left was a pile of molding dust among the remains of the now-sodden evening clothes. Even the skeleton had vanished. Where the right hand had lain was a great golden signet ring set with a jewel and a crest. Automatically, I picked up the ring. I do not know what prompted me to do so. I turned it around in my fingers, still staring at the remains that had, a moment before, been a body.
My eye then caught something on the ring. A name inscribed in old fashioned Gaelic lettering. “Abhartach.” I realized that the phonetics would be “Averty.” But it was the Gaelic form of the name that stirred a distant memory.
I swallowed hard. Then my rational mind took a grip of my confused emotions, and I wheeled round to Ronayne.
“Is this some kind of joke?” I demanded angrily. “If so, it is a joke in bad taste.”
Ronayne was staring at the slab as if he could not believe what he had seen.
“It is not possible,” he moaned over and over again. “He cannot die.”
“You’ve got some explaining to do, Ronayne,” I went on coldly. “I don’t like being made a fool of. Are you responsible for this charade?”
He turned to me. There was terror in his eyes. If he was acting, then he was brilliant. I tried to make myself believe that this was some bizarre charade.
“It is not possible!” he almost screamed. “I did everything I could to protect him; to protect the Master. What has gone wrong?”
I backed off from his wild staring eyes. My first thought returned. Ronayne had gone mad. Stark-staring mad!
“You’d better calm down,” I coaxed, reaching out a placating hand.
His eyes suddenly fell on the ring I still held in my hand, and he seemed to crumple before me.
“My family has served him down the generations. From the time he was lord of Doire and Ciannachta, when even the Uí Néill would tremble before him. We have served him before the High King Laoghaire converted to Christianity. He was the Neamh-Mhairbh! He cannot die.”
It took me some time to translate the Old Irish. Neamh-mhairbh—UnDead! I had a cold feeling come over me, as I remembered the legend of Abhartach of Derry. He had been an evil prince who was supposedly slain by his people, was buried but did not die. Every time he was buried, he rose from the grave to feed on the blood of the living. I chuckled nervously. It was some practical joke.
“What are we to do?” Ronayne was crying. “He protected us. He must not die. He cannot die!”
Ronayne, I realized, was without doubt in the middle of some nervous breakdown for no one sane could act like this. I began to back away, thinking to use my mobile phone to call an ambulance.
It was then that I heard a sound like the sharp intake of breath. There was a smell of cheap perfume, which seemed strangely familiar. It reminded me of something. There was a swish of a skirt behind me. I turned.
I recognized her at once, in spite of the new whiteness of her skin and the curious staring eyes and redness of the lips. It was the blond girl from south Dublin.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, totally bewildered.
She appeared to shuffle forward. She did not walk normally but had a lurching gait. Her hands were reaching out like claws toward me. Her mouth was opened, showing the teeth, teeth that seemed so white and sharp against red lips, lips that were so red. She gave a chuckle. I have never heard a laugh like it. The lips curled back showing gums and displaying the large white canines. Then she lunged forward toward me.
A silver crucifix was thrust before my face, and I heard a scream of pain. The scream came from the blond girl. Her face was distorted in a fearful expression; she was cowering back away from me, eyes wide on the religious symbol.
Ronayne was holding the crucifix up before me.
“Take this, Doctor,” he muttered, suddenly very calm. “Get out of here—quickly. These new sisters often do not differentiate between those who must remain in life to help them and those who are their natural sustenance. Be careful. There are more about. The car will take you wherever you want to go. Get out now!”
“I don’t understand any of this,” I protested, my eyes unable to leave the cowering blond girl.
“Go now!” Ronayne almost screamed. “Leave!”
Protesting somewhat halfheartedly as I did so, I took the crucifix from him. The blond girl’s eyes seemed fixed on it as if something caused them to become attached to the sacred symbol.
“Better you don’t understand!” Ronayne called after me.
I hurried up the stairs and back the way that I had come. The car was waiting there outside the main door, and the driver did not even bother to ask me where I was going. We raced back along the road to Chapelizod.
Could what I had witnessed have been real? That was the question hammering in my mind. Was I having some hallucination? Was I drawing on some forgotten childhood fantasy? Some nightmare? The legend of Abhartach—Averty—was one that had scared many a young child, a legend well-known in folklore. I squeezed my hand in agitation and found something hard in my palm, something that I still held. It was the gold signet ring and those awesome Gaelic letters—Abhartach. A two-thousand-year-old legend?
Something made me lean forward and call to the driver. “Stop! Turn back and take me to my consulting rooms at Clontarf.”
He turned the car without a word, and in a few moments it slid to a halt outside my office in Marino Crescent.
I went in and switched on the light.
I took out the sample of blood that I had taken from the corpse before it had degenerated. It was still normal and had not decomposed like the body. Perhaps removing it from the body had preserved it? I worked quickly. I began to go through every blood test I knew. I found its composition curious. A strange mixture that defied analysis. It seemed to combine all the qualities of A, B, and O blood groups and yet was like none of them at all. It was as I was making the final tests that I discovered that the blood was contaminated by a virus. I had seen the strain of virus many times before, the virulent sort that gives hepatitis B and can be fatal. The toxicity that I was observing was enough to kill an ox, let alone a man.
I put the samples carefully in the office refrigerator, making sure that I labeled them POISON. As I stood up I was aware that I was exhausted. I realized that it was long past dawn and, just as I became aware of the time, I heard a key turning in the outside door of the offices. It was Bríd. She was surprised to see me. I made an excuse about working through the night on some samples and told her to cancel all my appointments and take the day off herself. There was no way I could work that day. Then I asked her to call a taxi and went home to Chapelizod. Even in my fatigued state, my mind was still working. If what I suspected was reality, then I had no words to express my horror. It could not be true. Yet what other explanation was there for what I had seen? And the sample of contagious blood—that was certainly real enough.
If it were true, then it meant that I had to accept what I had previously dismissed as ancient legends, quaint old folklore, and old stories to scare children with. Dún Droch Fhola, the castle of evil blood, in the Kerry mountains. The Deamhan Fhola, the bloodsucking demons of western Ireland. The great vampire himself—Abhartach. If this were true, then the world must be in deadly danger. But who would believe me? To whom could I turn with such a tale?
I took out the heavy gold signet ring and stared at it as if it would provide the answer.
It was genuine enough. No one, unless they had money to burn, could have such a priceless trinket made up just to sustain a joke. No one.
I fell into my bed. Sleep overcame me immediately.
About midafternoon there came a telephone call. To my surprise it was Ronayne. He seemed calmer, more like his old self.
“You will forget everything that you saw last night, Sheehan,” he said in a confidential manner. “Everything. It was just a joke. Right? A joke in very bad taste. You know what people in showbiz are like.”
“I know what I saw,” I replied, feeling that I was confirming the truth. “I want an explanation. I don’t believe it was a joke.”
“Believe that no one will believe you. No one,” his voice snapped back sharply.
I felt impotent. He was right.
“It’s not a thing I want to spread around, Ronayne,” I said. “Just for my own peace of mind, however, I should like to know the truth.”
He hesitated for a moment. Then his voice was matter-of-fact.
“I suppose you are entitled to that truth since you cannot use it without looking a fool. Between ourselves, then, I shall not deny what happened. You are intelligent enough to work it all out. The company was a means of supplying young girls for his nourishment, the Master’s nourishment. Something went wrong. He is dead. They are now UnDead. He is gone, but they will live forever.”
Having my fears confirmed as reality did not help my nerves. Foolishly, I could only say, “You are mad!” and switched off the phone. Then I lay back, still exhausted yet trying to figure out the implications of the test results. It was thus that I fell back into a troubled sleep.
I was awakened by a sound at the front door.
I shook my head to clear my thoughts and saw that it was already evening and dark.
I went to the top of the stairs, my befuddled mind trying to remember the events of the last twenty-four hours.
“Who’s there?” I called nervously into the darkness of the hall.
“It’s only me!” Étain”s cheerful voice came up the stairs. “Don’t tell me that you were in bed at this hour?”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Étain,” I cried, hurrying down the stairs. “What the devil are you doing back so soon. I thought that you were going to be in Australia for months.”
“Australia? It’s a long story.” She turned to me and smiled. It was then that the streetlight outside our house flickered on abruptly and shone through the glass panels of the front door, flooding the hall with a shadowy pale light. I had never seen her lips so red, blood red and thin. The teeth so white and sharp. The skin so pale.
A cold horror seized me. Suddenly, it all became clear.
“You killed him?” I whispered aghast. “It was you who contaminated his blood and killed him.”
“Droch Fhola! Bad blood! Ironic, isn’t it? The victim becoming the slayer. You passed me as medically fit, in spite of the hepatitis. You knew all about it. You knew that Art Moledy had infected me and made me a carrier. Yet you didn’t mention it in your report to Ronayne. You gave me a clean bill of health.”
I held my head in my hands.
It was true. Art Moledy had been a carrier of the viral infection, which produced malignant hepatitis B. Étain had been ill with it for a long time and near death. She had recovered but, in turn, she had become a carrier. That was why she had shunned most male friends after Moledy. Moledy had disappeared, leaving her to fend for herself. I knew all about it; knew that was why Étain had seized the opportunity that I had presented to get herself passed as fit for Averty Enterprises to endorse her on the singing tour. And I had done so willingly.
What was it Ronayne had said? The company was just a front to supply the Master with fresh blood for his nourishment. I had been like some glorified food inspector and had passed young girls as fit to be consumed.
I had passed my own sister to him.
She was smiling, as if she had followed the process of my thoughts.
“Oh yes. I was forced to go to him. He drank long and deep . . . and died. He died because of my contaminated blood, and now I am UnDead. Only fresh blood can sustain me. The great Neamh-Mhairbh is dead and I am now Neamh-Mhairbh. Bloody ironic, isn’t it?”
She burst into a peal of terrible laughter, which ended abruptly.
She was staring at me. My own sister. Staring deliberately at the pulsating artery in my neck.
I realized that the crucifix was still in my jacket pocket. But my jacket was in the bedroom. She was only a few feet away from me, smiling speculatively with those awesome canine teeth. I would have no chance at all.