47
7.00 pm
Merrion Hospital, Sandymount, Dublin
The Merrion Hospital was built in 1954 on a green field site and brought together a number of decaying inner-city hospitals that had served Dublin over the centuries. It was a centre of excellence where only the highest calibre of medical talent was appointed to consultant level. It was also a teaching hospital where medical students and young doctors trained and there was an associated school of nursing. It pioneered techniques in surgery, liver transplantation, oncology and diagnostic radiology. On Wednesday, 19th February 1997, the hospital was in the middle of a fund-raising campaign to build a new intensive care unit. On that day the ICU of the Merrion Hospital was located on the top of the five-floored building.
When you entered the main hospital entrance, the wards were to the right or left of a wide central dividing corridor with lifts to all floors located in the middle right of the bottom corridor. A stairwell connected to all levels from middle left. There were fire escapes at the back of the main building. The revamped Accident and Emergency department, a relatively recent addition, was located to the left and end of the main original building and connected to it via a narrow corridor. Off that same corridor were radiology services where X-rays and other forms of diagnostic imaging were carried out. Patients entering through Accident and Emergency could be evaluated radiologically, if necessary, before transferring to the wards, saving unnecessary time-wasting and making for an easier 'traffic' flow for those seriously ill or injured.
The ICU on Black Wednesday shouldn't really have been in use at all, it had originally been a storage level. Indeed, on that day, there actually were no formally structured intensive care facilities. The original ICU had been demolished and hospital plans included a new, high-tech, state-of-the-art ICU and recovery room incorporated into the wing currently being built. For a six-month period in 1997 the ICU of the Merrion Hospital was located in converted storage rooms and could only be reached by lift, the stairwell to that floor having been sealed off as part of the ongoing building works.
On the evening of Wednesday, 19th February 1997, a Special Branch officer armed with a Garda issue Smith & Wesson revolver and UZI sub-machine-gun sat a lonely vigil facing the lift. No one could get past and along the corridor behind without being seen. Not only seen, but stopped, identity checked and searched, these strict instructions coming directly from Commissioner Quinlan himself. Detective Sergeant Kate Hamilton was to be guarded at all times, he'd ordered.
Behind the armed officer stretched a thirty-yard corridor. At exactly halfway and to the left, overlooking the back of the building and with a view of the on-going building works, was the current intensive care unit, a twenty foot by twenty foot four-bedded room, each bed surrounded by medical technology. There were monitors for heart tracings, ventilators for artificially breathing those deemed too weak or unwell to breathe spontaneously, IV lines awaiting use and separate screens on which blood pressure levels or respiratory rates could be read immediately. There were tubes for every bodily function, tubes connecting oxygen, other tubes to drain body fluids, tubes running into bottle flasks to collect all body fluids. Whatever fluid drained, it was collected, measured and recorded.
Directly opposite the ICU was another, two-bedded room, the current recovery room. It had once been a store room for
all the IV fluids used throughout the hospital: normal saline, glucose, Hartmans, Crystalloid, the like.
Once you entered ICU as a patient you either left via recovery or the mortuary. Further along the corridor, and again in a converted storage room to the right, was the nurses' station. This was a small room, no more than twelve feet square with a desk, telephone and alarm connections to all monitors in both ICU and recovery. A little further along again, towards the closed-off stairwell entrance, was a small room for making tea, coffee and light snacks. There was also a portable TV.
On Black Wednesday, as well as the armed Special Branch officer guarding the lift, there were two nurses on duty, a senior sister, trained in intensive care, and a staff nurse. There was one other girl wearing a nurse's uniform but who also carried an official Garda-issue loaded handgun. She was part of the Special Branch, one of its few female officers. The ICU and recovery room had been cleared of all other patients and only Kate Hamilton occupied a bed.
She was stable and out of danger. Her collapsed lung had re-expanded almost fully and the drains would be removed the next morning but her IV lines would remain up until then, doctor's orders. She was in pain but not as much as the previous evening, she was exhausted, sleeping fitfully, the image of Dean Lynch still haunting her. Those eyes, those hate filled eyes.
At seven o'clock exactly, as Tom Dalzell kicked off for England in the big soccer international only half a mile away, Dean Lynch sat in Donnie's 'wee gem' in the hospital car park. On his knees rested an A4 pad on which he had scribbled names, a list he was preparing. The names were in order of priority of how he would deal with them.
Dean Lynch was planning to settle all scores.
First there was Detective Sergeant Kate Hamilton.
'Her first, definitely,' he muttered in the dark. 'Then it'll be that little bitch on the check-out in the Centra supermarket on Baggot Street.' This unwitting girl had the
misfortune to short change him one day and then call the manager when he complained. She'd made a show of him in front of the whole shop. 'Her definitely. Next.'
Then Breda Mullan. 'That bitch, she's another definite. She's annoyed me a few times. Well, she'll live to regret that. No, she'll
die
to regret that.' He smiled to himself at the thought of that little change in emphasis.
'Then that stupid bastard Donnie with his "wee gem". Yes, him too. I'll wrap that chain around his neck and pull on it till his eyes pop out.'
He stopped and thought for a minute, looking out at the lights of the hospital in front of him, noticing in particular those burning brightly on the fifth floor where his first potential victim lay.
'That's where I'm headed,' he whispered to himself. 'I'm just biding my time, waiting for the right moment. I know when to make my move. They'll know all about it, when it's too late and it's all over. I know all about hospitals, especially big hospitals like this one. I've worked in so many, I know them like the back of my hand.' Lynch had the Merrion hospital assessed to the last detail. He knew many of the staff there wouldn't know each other with doctors coming and going every six months as they changed specialities in training. Sometimes doctors left and locum doctors filled in for a few weeks or longer. The regular staff would just get to know somebody and next they were gone. A face might be recognised one day and the following day it could be a different face inside the same white coat. He knew all about hospitals, and he knew this one in particular, he had trained there. He'd performed his first operation there when he first considered wielding a scalpel, opening his first body in its theatre.
He looked up at the lights again. I'm coming back. They don't know it yet, but I'm coming back.
Only this time he was hoping the flesh wouldn't yield, he was hoping she'd put up a fight, sort of make his journey worthwhile.
I'm hoping to make a killing. Tonight. He laughed in the dark at that little gem.
I'm hoping to make a killing. Tonight.
He looked out the window again. Up there, on the fifth floor. See yah later, Detective Sergeant Hamilton.
He turned back to his notepad. Now, who else will I add?
In the dark he smiled his thin smile as he thought of a name and a face. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a Garda squad car pull up outside the hospital entrance and a familiar-looking figure go inside. He couldn't make him out exactly, not that it mattered, he was well prepared, his plan rehearsed to the finest detail.
There's nothing like careful planning. Meticulous, exact, precise planning. I've never yet had a well-planned operation go wrong. Like the time I strangled the orphanage pet black labrador. Jet his name was, as in jet black. Oh, how she doted on that dog. That bitch who tormented me all my days there, and all my nights since, the tormentress of all my dreams. She terrorised me as a child and came back to haunt me as a man. But I sorted her out once, I got Jet. And I pinned the blame on somebody else and she bought it. In the darkness of the car he relived the memory, savouring again the moments.
He'd saved a few biscuits from the little bit of tea he used to get every night. But he was so hungry in those days, so hungry all the time that he couldn't hold back from nibbling and then finally eating them. Until one particular day.
He'd been put in the dark room again. Dragged, screaming and kicking, and locked inside again for hours despite all his pleadings and begging and crying. She had left him for hours, more hours than usual and more than he could cope with. When she finally let him out she stood watching and smiling, stroking Jet's neck.
So he had saved his biscuits. This time he didn't eat them, despite the hunger that gnawed at his empty belly every day. And a week later, when he'd been forgotten about, he struck.
He lured Jet into the garden shed at the back of the
orphanage and let him nibble on a few broken pieces first. He stroked Jet's neck, just the way she did, gently and caressingly. In the darkness and quiet of the car Lynch could almost hear Jet's breathing, could almost feel the warmth of his breath, the wetness of his tongue on his hand as he nibbled the biscuits. And then, slowly and casually, not so fast to frighten and scare him off, but slowly and deliberately he slipped his hands around Jet's neck. And choked him to death, holding tight until all struggles ceased.
Just like he'd done to Mary Dwyer.
Then he brushed Jet's coat with a pair of gloves and left the gloves back inside Danny Rogers' bedside locker. Danny Rogers used to torture him too. He was tall where Lynch was small, he was strong where Lynch was weak. But Lynch was smart, a lot smarter than Danny Rogers.
And when his black-haired bitch with the white face and long thin bony hands finally found the gloves, boy, did Danny Rogers suffer. In front of the whole orphanage. And all the time Lynch managed to keep a straight face and a surprised look, appearing unruffled, as he watched the blood run down Danny Rogers' legs from the thrashing. That was the beauty of careful planning. You could do something and pin it on somebody else. Like he'd done to Tom Morgan.
It'll be easy, easy to reach her. Careful planning, that's all it takes.
He watched as an ambulance pulled up outside the Accident and Emergency department. It was time to make his move, it was time to go. Hey ho, hey ho, it's off to work I
go.
He looked up at the brightly lit fifth-floor area. I'm coming. Look out. I'm coming.
7.20 pm
'There's an armed officer on every floor patrolling constantly. The stairwell at the end of the corridor is sealed off
at the next level down. It's been checked a hundred times. No one can get up that way, definitely.'
Jack McGrath was being briefed on the security surrounding Kate Hamilton. Noel Dunne's comments had worried him. He'd been worried enough before Dunne spoke, he was even more worried after. Dunne was rarely wrong. He didn't often offer advice but he hadn't been short with it on the hospital murder hunt, as if he knew the mind of Dean Lynch. But after doing three postmortems on his victims, Noel Dunne knew this was no ordinary murder investigation, he knew the Gardai were chasing a very dangerous and cunning foe, a will o' the wisp, a puff of smoke. Now you see me, now you don't. And right now they didn't.
And that worried Jack McGrath, who had been there from the beginning and had seen the first body, scalpel firmly embedded in the neck. Then he had lost his partner and best friend in the force.
'There's another fifteen plainclothes officers mingling among hospital visitors all the time. The lift and stairwell at each level is guarded. He'd need to be Houdini to try and get past all this.'
McGrath stroked his moustache and walked along the corridor to where Kate Hamilton lay. She tried a weak smile when he came in but he shushed her quiet. 'I'm just checking everything.' She nodded and let her head slip back on the pillow. McGrath walked up and down the corridor twice, checking that the spare doors were well and truly locked and the rooms inside well and truly empty. Finally satisfied he made his way back to Kate Hamilton and slipped something down between the sheets to her hand. 'That'll keep you warm during the night,' he whispered in her ear.
She reached down, felt and acknowledged with a tired nod. 'I'm exhausted, Jack. I'm going to try and get some sleep.' From further down the corridor the commentary on the big match reached her ears. 'Who's winning?'
'England, one nil. I just got a glimpse of it as I looked in.
The girls say it's a great match, they're kicking the lard out of one another already.'
Hamilton tried to smile, then lay back, sighing deeply. She didn't see McGrath's brow furrow. He was still uneasy.
He walked down the corridor. 'I'm going to watch the match down in the canteen. I'll stay in the hospital a while longer.'
The officer at the lift nodded.
7.45 pm
When the ball finally did hit the back of the Irish net a mini riot broke out on the terraces of East Stand. The Gardai on duty were under strict instructions: at the first sign of trouble, go in and go in hard, which is what they did. Riot shields and visors protecting, batons flailing, the rowdy element was first segregated, then cornered and finally bludgeoned into submission. All the TV crews caught the action and there was no disguising the delight of some of the riot squad as they lashed into the Union Jacks.