“There must have been major damage to the small and large intestines?”
Joker nodded. “I lost about two feet of tubing, and I had to wear a colostomy bag for a year. But it’s fine now. No problems at all.”
The doctor closed up the gown. “It’s good work,” he said admiringly. “You know, of course, that you shouldn’t be drinking?”
“How did you know I was?” asked Joker.
“The first blood sample we took from you would have lost you your driving licence if you’d been at the wheel of a car.”
Joker laughed. “Hell’s bells, Doc, I haven’t touched the hard stuff for at least twenty-four hours!”
The doctor looked serious. “You shouldn’t put your digestive system under that sort of pressure.”
Joker held up his bandaged wrists. “Doc, the booze is the least of my problems.”
The doctor smiled and stood up, brushing the creases out of his white coat. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Do you feel well enough to answer some questions? From the FBI?”
“They’re here?”
“There are two FBI agents outside. I wanted to check on your progress first.”
“And?”
“You seem to be strong enough.”
Joker smiled. “Send them in then, Doc. Let’s see what they want.”
The doctor left the room and a few minutes later two men entered. One was small and overweight, with dark, slicked-back hair, and a shiny suit. The other was taller and fair-haired and carrying a large envelope and a portable cellular phone. They both flashed badges so quickly that all he could see was a blur of metal. “FBI,” said the taller of the two.
“Do you have names?” Joker asked.
“Don Clutesi,” said the smaller man. Joker spotted the antenna of a cellular phone sticking out of his right jacket pocket.
“Howard. Cole Howard,” said the man with the envelope.
“From?” said Joker.
“I work out of the Bureau’s Phoenix office, Special Agent Clutesi is with the Counter-Terrorism Division in New York.”
Joker nodded. The fact that the FBI and not the city’s Homicide Division were handling his interrogations suggested that they knew that this was more than a murder case. And Clutesi’s presence meant that they knew the IRA was involved.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions,” said Howard. He turned to the uniformed cop and suggested that he go out and get a cup of coffee. The cop accepted the offer, eagerly. Clutesi went and stood with his back to the door, a small notepad in his hand.
“Am I under arrest?” asked Joker, pointing to the chain around his waist.
“Not at this point, no,” said Howard. He held up his right hand, the finger and thumb an inch apart. “But you’re about this far away from being arrested for murder, and then you become part of the process and there’s nothing we can do to help you,” he said.
“Ah. So you’re the Samaritans now,” said Joker. He wasn’t in the least intimidated by the men or the badges. He knew that a large part of interrogation was game-playing and that if it suited the FBI he’d be in a cell somewhere awaiting trial. They clearly wanted something from him, and he had a good idea what it was.
“Not exactly,” said Howard, coldly. He pulled over the chair in which the cop had been sitting and sat down, crossing his legs and looking at Joker with cold blue eyes. “Would you like to tell me what happened?”
Joker was still lying on his back, and he felt at a disadvantage to the two FBI agents. He had to squint down his chest to see Howard, and Clutesi was over to his left. It was as if the two men had moved so that he couldn’t see them both at the same time. He slowly raised himself into a sitting position, trying to conceal the pain. “I was being held by two members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army,” he said simply. Howard and Clutesi were stunned by his lack of guile.
“You know who they are?” asked Howard. He tapped the envelope against his leg and in a flash of intuition Joker knew that it contained photographs of Bailey and Hennessy. The FBI agents were clearly on their trail and must have known that they were at the house on Chesapeake Bay. They had probably assumed that Joker had seen Bailey and Hennessy, but it had obviously come as a shock to discover that he knew who they were.
“Mary Hennessy and Matthew Bailey,” Joker said.
“They tortured you?”
“Yes,” said Joker.
“The girl in the cellar, did you kill her?”
Joker didn’t answer. They hadn’t cautioned him but without the protection of the Colonel it wouldn’t take much for them to put him in a windowless cell and throw away the key.
“The man outside the house,” continued Howard. “He’d been shot twice in the chest. Do you know who he is?”
“I think he’s an MI5 agent. The British security service. I don’t know his name.”
Howard and Clutesi looked at each other in astonishment. “Who the hell are you, Mr O’Brien?” asked Howard. “For a start, is O’Brien your real name?”
Joker looked levelly at Howard, who was obviously the more senior of the two agents. “I think we’re going to have to talk some sort of deal before I go any further,” he said softly.
Howard’s eyes hardened. “We’re not talking any deals, Mr O’Brien. This is a criminal investigation, nothing else.”
Joker smiled. “Oh dear,” he said. “I think I just wet myself.”
“This isn’t funny, O’Brien,” said Howard.
Joker looked at Howard, his face hard. “I know it’s not funny, Agent Howard,” he said, raising his bandaged wrists. “I was the one they took down into the basement, don’t forget that. She tortured me, she pulled me apart with knives and shears, then they tried to burn me alive.”
“She?” queried Howard. “Mary Hennessy did that to you?”
Joker nodded. “Everything but the bullet in the shoulder,” he said.
“Why? Why was she torturing you?”
Joker smiled. “I suppose it was because I didn’t tell her what she wanted to know when she asked me nicely.”
Howard ignored Joker’s baiting. “What did she want to know?”
“What are you after, Agent Howard?” said Joker.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re obviously not here because of what happened to me. You’re after Hennessy and Bailey, right?” Howard nodded, almost imperceptibly. “So we’re on the same side here.”
Howard shook his head. “I’m not the one who’s been leaving a trail of corpses,” he said.
Joker sneered. “One was a girl who was going to kill me while I was strung up by the arms, the other was a guy who came at me with a gun. There isn’t a court in the country who wouldn’t see either as self-defence.”
Howard raised one eyebrow. “And what about the two men you killed in New York. They were bound and gagged when you shot them in the back of the head.”
“What?” said Joker, confused. “What the hell are you talking about? They were alive when I left them.”
“So what are you saying, that someone else slipped in and finished them off for you?”
Joker frowned and rubbed his temples with the ends of his fingers like a mind-reader trying to guess a playing card. It could have only been the men from MI5. They wanted him free and clear on Hennessy’s trail, but Joker had no idea that they’d gone as far as to commit murder. He looked up. “I took their gun, the P228. If they were shot, it wasn’t from that gun.”
“But who’s to say you didn’t have two guns?” asked Howard. “You shot them with your own weapon and then dumped it, keeping theirs. That’s what I’d do. What about you, Don?”
The agent by the door nodded. “Makes sense,” he said. “Thing of it is, though, is that the gun they found on him wasn’t a P228. It was a Smith amp; Wesson model 411.”
“That was her gun,” said Joker. “I don’t know what they did with the P228. I never saw it again once they took it off me.” A thought suddenly struck him. “The gun that the MI5 agent had. Compare that with the bullets in New York. You might get a match there.”
“We might,” agreed Howard. “So, what did Mary Hennessy want from you?”
“She wanted to know how I’d managed to find her.”