Free The Irish Cairn Murder by Dicey Deere Page A

Enough of your games! I want forty thousand pounds now! Or—” He raised the penknife in a menacing gesture. “Or I will cut your life to pieces! They will know about Dakin. And what you are.” His narrow, pale eyes glared at her. “You have an hour.” He stepped away. “I haven’t much time. A bank check will have to do. After I cash it, I will send you the Cloverleaf.” He gave a short laugh. “You’ll have to trust me.”
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    From the cluster of trees, he watched her flee, blundering and tripping across the field. Liar that she was! He hadn’t even had a chance to lay out the brutal facts, to spit out what he knew. He frowned, thinking of what she’d said about him stealing the penknife from Sylvester Hall. Because of course he hadn’t stolen it. She knew that very well! Was she deviously clever? Apparently. For all the good it would do her!
    Damn her! The money. He looked at his watch. An hour. After that, if she didn’t come, he would show no mercy.
    He picked up his suede hat, slapped it against his leg, and leaned back against the oak.

20
    A t Glasshill Hospital, Inspector O’Hare looked bitterly down at the unconscious man in the high, white bed. A bulky bandage slanted across his temple and was wound around his head; his face bore blue bruises; his eyes were closed, the lids a faint lavender. His lips were so pale they looked bloodless. Unconscious, blast it! Informative as a piece of wood. What a cock-up!
    â€œI’m sorry, Inspector,” Head Nurse Huddleson, a buxom woman in her fifties, said apologetically at his elbow. “Mr. Brannigan became conscious. And the way he was talking, agitated, garbled, and so frightening, what with every other word being ‘kill.’ So when I called and spoke to your Sergeant Bryson on the phone—”
    â€œYes, I see.” O’Hare wanted to lean down and shake the unconscious man awake. The trip from Ballynagh to Glasshill, thirty miles away, had been a time waster. The Tuesday traffic, ordinarily light, had been stalled because of an accident. If he’d used the police car instead of his Honda, he could’ve sirened his way through, blast it! Sergeant Bryson was still too much a novice to be sent to interview the injured man. So he’d had no choice.
    â€œI only thought,” Nurse Huddleson began, but stopped short at a moan from the bandaged man. Brannigan’s eyes
were closed, but the lids were twitching. Two deep lines formed between his brows. He jerked his head from side to side, his lips moved and he began to mutter.
    â€œThere, you see!” Nurse Huddleson was triumphant.
    O’Hare slipped his notebook from his pocket and found his pen. The mutter was turning into words, at first indistinguishable, then clearly, “The old woman lied to me! Trapped, penniless … There were keys in a green marble ashtray on the dashboard. ‘You push the button to make it open.’”
    Brannigan moved his head more violently from side to side. Suddenly he cried out, arched his back, and raised up, throwing his head back. “It was a thunderclap!” A heave, and he was half out of the bed, arms flailing, eyes open and staring.
    â€œAldrich!” Nurse Huddleson grasped at the flailing arms, “Nurse Aldrich! Dr. Conners!” O’Hare lunged forward and heaved Brannigan’s body back onto the bed, and heard behind him a “Christ!” and swift footsteps; a white-coated arm reached past, held up a hypodermic, and plunged it into Tom Brannigan’s upper arm. Brannigan’s arched body collapsed, his staring eyes closed. He breathed evenly.
    â€œWell, now.” O’Hare straightened his police jacket and picked up his notebook from the floor.
    Dr Conners, a young man with tired eyes, accompanied him out through the main hall. “It’ll be at least a week, maybe longer,” Conners said, “before we’ll see the