“I’ll be there.”
At the Howard Clinic, I gave Mr. Morgan’s name at the security barrier. We drove up through some pretty landscaped gardens and parked near the first white circular tower. It reminded me of the rotunda in Rowan House, and I wondered if all three towers were modeled on it. The towers rose one behind the other, and you could see the turrets of Rowan House overlooking it all. The castle looked like a fabrication, like a Hollywood set, with the modern bungalow in front an actors’ trailer. Drifts of fog were blowing in again, like smoke from a machine; north and east, the city lights were cloaked in a shimmering grey blanket; the horns in the bay blared their clarion call.
The Howard Clinic had tasteful canvases and an atrium with an indoor fountain and an aquarium and glass elevators and all the other stuff upscale private hospitals had to make the patients, whom they thought of as customers, feel they were really getting their money’s worth. You felt like asking where the bar was; at least, I did. I passed a portrait of Dr. John Howard with dark hair and a pipe in his mouth and took the elevator to the sixth level, where Morgan’s offices were. All the other suites were dark; a light was on in his. He was sitting in the waiting room, and I sat down opposite him.
“Sorry if this is a bit cloak-and-dagger. I’d just prefer if word didn’t get out that I spoke to you,” he said in a soft, musical Northern accent, Donegal or rural Derry.
“I am working for Sandra Howard,” I said.
“Yes. Well. I still…this is not something she necessarily might like to be brought to public attention. So I’ll trust to your discretion.”
Mr. James Morgan, Consultant Cardiologist, was in his late thirties, with boyish blond hair thinning on top and deep pink farmboy cheeks; he wore a grey slacks and navy blazer combination, a striped shirt and matching tie and black tassel loafers. I had the sense he’d been wearing the same clothes for twenty years, and would go on wearing them another thirty, and would never notice what color or style they were. He had a manila file on his lap. He looked excited.
“Go on. About Dr. Richard O’Connor.”
“Yes. First of all, the fact that he was diabetic…but this appears nowhere on the records. Even though he worked here, he had never received treatment at this hospital. I wasn’t even aware of it until tonight, when Martha called.”
“You two had never discussed her father’s death?”
“She never brought it up. Except to say, you know, thanks for doing your best. Anyway, he was admitted…it was a bank holiday.”
“You were a junior then?”
“That’s right. There was no consultant on duty.”
“Even in a private clinic?”
“Don’t get me started. Dr. O’Connor collapsed while playing rugby. Seven-a-side, I think. Myocardial infarction, was my assumption. He was sweating profusely, I remember he stank of booze, his heart was racing, his breathing was shallow, he was passing in and out of consciousness. There was difficulty getting hold of his wife. And the friend who admitted him made no mention of diabetes. He said it must have been a heart attack. Repeated it several times.”
“And…”
“And the symptoms seemed to back him up: we put him on an ECG, gave him nitro on an IV, oxygen, all the standard stuff, but he fell into a coma and died within a couple of hours. His wife, Sandra O’Connor as she was, she never showed up, it seems she was in the countryside, no signal on her phone.”
“And in your judgment, if you had known he had had an overdose of insulin…”
“If I had known he was a diabetic, I would have looked out for hypoglycemia, dextrose could have been administered at a gradual rate, and he might have survived. No guarantee he would have, he went pretty fast. But he didn’t have a bracelet, no one around knew him, we didn’t have his records.”
“So? The friend didn’t know he was diabetic. That’s common enough, surely, especially among men.”
“You don’t understand. The friend…the friend was Denis Finnegan.”
I felt as if space and time had fallen away in the brightly lit waiting room, as if I had known this lilting country-voiced doctor all my life, and had been waiting for him to say what he had just said.
“All right,” I said. “But he didn’t necessarily know Dr. O’Connor well, did he? I mean, what kind of rugby did they play together?”
“They coached Castlehill College. Rock had for years, Dr. Rock, he was famous. And Finnegan had started back in the eighties, when he taught at the school. I was a boarder there, so were all my brothers. Rugby may be a religion around here, but Castlehill Rugby…that’s Opus Dei, you might say. No offense if you’re-”
“None taken. And I’m not. But Denis Finnegan is a solicitor, not a teacher.”
“Aye, but he was what you might call a late vocation. He taught for about five years.”
“At Castlehill. In the eighties.”
The same time Sandra was there. They knew each other
“Absolutely. And Rock was coaching even though he was a full-time doctor, they’d bring past pupils back if they could give the team something extra. Finnegan was a useful little hooker, well, I guess he was little in his schooldays. Nearly made the grade, played with Shane Howard at Seafield back in the day. So basically he must have known, it wasn’t some guy you met up with for Saturday-morning sevens; they were lifelong friends.”
“You didn’t know. I mean, did your brothers know?”
“It’s not something you’d let the pupils in on. But a close colleague? Hard to believe he wouldn’t know.”
I was reaching for a thought, but it felt like I was opening a door into a blizzard: every time I looked out, the door slammed in my face, and the sound it made was
“So did Finnegan coach into the nineties there?”
“Coaching up until a couple of years back, he worked on scrummaging, front-row maneuvers, rucks and mauls through the phases, with all sides, even the S.”
“Even the S. Even the senior cup team David Brady played on?”
“I’d say he’d’ve coached all the teams young Brady played on. God that’s right, David Brady.”
I had a flash of the e-mail address David Brady had sent Emily Howard’s sex film to: “[email protected].” Rugby jargon. I was out in the blizzard now, and though the buffeting winds were chill, at least I had some idea where I was going.
“So what should we do?” said Morgan. “Should we call the Guards? I mean, this could be manslaughter at least, maybe even murder.”
Morgan’s pager went off.
“Let me hang on to it for a while,” I said. “Or not,” as I quickly saw a frown of suspicion in Morgan’s face. “I know, I’m working for the Howards, but believe me, I’m not above the law, and nor are they; the Guards wouldn’t tolerate me for five seconds if I tried to help my clients cheat justice. I just…I’m working the case, and now I feel it’s beginning to come together, and I don’t want to jump before I’m ready.”
Morgan looked at me through his clear farmboy’s eyes, as if I’d just asked him if I could operate on one of his patients.
“I’m going to ring the Guards.”
“Why not leave it till the morning? They probably won’t get to it before then anyway: nighttime Dublin, lot on their plates. Call them first thing. And remember, Finnegan may well say he didn’t know about O’Connor’s diabetes, and he may well be telling the truth, and even if he isn’t, there’s not a lot the Guards can do if he insists he is.”
Morgan considered this. And then his pager went off again, and he sprang to his feet.
“Fair enough. The morning. You’ll be ready to jump by then, will you?”
One way or another, I thought, one way or another.
But I wasn’t ready yet.
In the car park, Tommy said he’d remembered something else.
“When Brock Taylor worked for your oul’ fella?”
