Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 4, April 1980

“Just a cup of tea. Sure its that tired I am I could sleep where I’m standin’,” Shay interrupted. “Anyway, I have to be on duty half seven in the morning.”

Later, warm in their big old brass bed, he told Maura how Condon had been persuaded, at last, to allow a doctor inside to check on the children and Miss Costelloe. Surprisingly, he had let her be exchanged for another hostage.

“She’s well over sixty, he was probably afraid she might die on him.” Maura remarked.

“Ummm,” Kelly said, hoping she’d forget about the woman for the present. “Would you believe who volunteered to take her place? Declan. Declan Fogarty himself.”

“No! Not Declan. You shouldn’t have let him, him bein’ blind and all!” Maura exclaimed. “And Mannix?”

“Sure that Arne wouldn’t let him in with the dog o’course. He’s scared of Alsatians, says he. So, Mannix can come home with me, says I, but Declan shook his head. So I took him over to one of the police cars and he locked the dog inside out of the wet.”

“How’s old Mis Costelloe?”

Shay paused before answering, hating to mouth the answer he would have to give. “She died on the way to the hospital,” he said, at last.

“Oh, no.” Her voice was small and lost. “She was Aunt Mae’s best—”

“Hush, love.” Kelly gathered his wife into his arms mentally cursing a society that could breed creatures like Arne Condon and the boy who had killed Aunt Mae. Reaching for a tissue from the bedside table, he dried Maura’s tears, hoping nothing terrible would happen to the children just when she was getting back to her old self after having come to grips with the knowledge that they could never have a family of their own. “Don’t you want to hear about Sandra?” he asked, changing the subject. “Condon holds her in front of himself like a shield everytime he comes to the window. And you should see that brave, little one, not a tear out of her that I’ve seen.”

“She’s all heart, that Sandra. You should see her coming along the corridor pushing the walking frame. And the weight of those calipers. And there she is every day when I come, twisting her little body to move the useless legs from one side to the other, calling ‘hello, Maura’ and pushing the frame, twist, push, gaining a few inches at a time.” For the past six months Maura Kelly had been a voluntary escort on one of the buses that took the children home from the Clinic. Two afternoons a week she fastened them to the seats, comforted tears, kept the retarded from scratching or pulling hair.

“It’s Mary Murray whose worst. Cryin’ most of the time, her mother’s under sedation at St. Vincents, she collapsed after President O’Malley told about Condon’s threat to shoot a child every hour. Stevie. Well, you know Stevie.”

“Yes, my happy little vegetable. And he’s such a beautiful child, always smiling. Oh, God! How can anyone be such a monster. Sandra is epileptic, you know — so many spina bifidas are. What if she has a fit?”

“Yvonne is with her.”

“Yes.” For awhile they lay quiet listening to the rain patter against the windows, Shay thinking of how to phrase what he had in mind.

“Maura, I think there’s a way to free the hostages. Declan and I made a sort of plan before he — before he became a hostage.”

“You know you’ll be suspended again.”

“I will o’course. You’ll have to help. Get a list of all the out patients in the immediate neighborhood and—”

It was past five before all was quiet in the back bedroom of Georgian house on Tritonville Road in Sandymount, two miles from Dublin City Center.

“Condon, your demands have all been met. You will have everything you asked for,” Superintendent Foley spoke into the loud hailer. It was then two minutes before the twelve o’clock deadline, word had just come over the radio that everything was ready — almost. Now, it was up to him somehow to avert tragedy. “A Boeing 727 with crew are waiting on a runway. The petrol tanks are full. Ryan and Slattery have been released and are now speeding towards the airport. A limousine is here, you can see it over there at the end of the street with a motorcycle escort waiting to take you to the—”

“So what’s all the chat for?” Condon interrupted, voice slightly muffled through the partially opened window. “Let’s get goin’!”

“That’s it. There’s a slight hitch. The money isn’t ready, won’t be for another hour. At one o’clock you’ll have it all. One million pounds! But it’ll take until one!!”

“Never mind one o’clock. I said twelve. I meant twelve. It’s twelve o’clock now. This kid’s dead!” Condon shouted. Sweat beaded Foley’s brow as he saw the gun slide into view over Sandra’s harness and press against her ribs. He wished he could see the expression on Condon’s face through the breath blurred glass.