White Bones

by Graham Masterton

  Katie tugged on a tight plastic glove and accepted one of the bones. It had been pierced at the upper end, where it would have fitted into the hip socket, and a short length of greasy twine had been tied through the hole. On the end of the twine dangled a small doll-like figure, apparently fashioned out of twisted gray rags, with six or seven rusted nails and hooks pushed into it. Every thighbone had been pierced in the same way; and every one had a tiny rag doll tied onto it.

  “What do you make of this, Liam?” Katie asked him. “Ever see anything like this before?”

  Liam peered at the little figure closely, and shook his head. “Never. It looks like one of your voodoo effigies, doesn’t it, the ones you stick pins in to get your revenge on people.”

  “Voodoo? In Knocknadeenly?”

  The scene-of-crimes officer took the thighbone and went back to work. Katie said, “I don’t know what happened here, Liam, but it was seriously strange.”

  At that moment, John came over and said, “What about a drink, superintendent?”

  She would have done anything for a double vodka, but she said, “Tea, thank you. No milk, no sugar.”

  “And you, inspector?”

  “Three sugars, please. And unstirred, if you don’t mind. I’m very partial to the sludge at the bottom.”

  Gradually, the weather began to clear from the west, and the farm was illuminated by a watery gray sunlight. Katie went into the house to talk to John’s mother. She was sitting in the living-room with a pond-green cardigan draped around her shoulders, watching Fair City and stroking the dog. A large photograph of a white-haired man who looked almost exactly like an older John was standing on the table next to her, along with an empty tea-cup and a crowded ashtray.

  “I’m going to have to ask you some questions, Mrs Meagher.”

  “Oh, yes?” said John’s mother, without taking her eyes off the television.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “You’ll be after taking off your raincoat.”

  “I will, of course.” Katie took off her coat and folded it over the back of a wooden chair that was standing behind the door. Underneath she wore a smart gray suit and a coppery-colored blouse that almost matched her hair. She sat down opposite Mrs Meagher but Mrs Meagher still kept her attention focused on her soap opera. The living-room smelled of damp and food and lavender furniture-polish.

  “So far we’ve discovered the remains of eight people, and it looks as though there may be more.”

  “God rest their souls.”

  “You wouldn’t have any idea who might have buried them there?”

  “Well, it must have been somebody, mustn’t it? They weren’t after burying themselves.”

  “No, Mrs Meagher, I’d be very surprised if they did. But I’d be interested to know if you were ever aware that your late husband was doing any work in the old feedstore.”

  “He was always in and out of there. The cattle needed feeding, didn’t they?”

  “Of course. But what I meant was – were you ever aware that he was doing anything unusual in there? Like construction work, or digging?”

  “Sacred heart of Jesus, you’re not suggesting for a moment that my Michael buried these poor folk, are you?”

  “I’m just trying to get some idea of how they got there, and when.”

  “I’m sure I don’t have a clue. It would have taken a lot of work, wouldn’t it, to bury so many people, and Michael would never have had the time for anything like that. He always said that he worked harder than two horses and a brown donkey.”

  “Did he take any interest in politics?”

  “I know what you’re saying. He read An Phoblacht but he never had the time for anything like that, either. Not the meetings. It was all I could do to get him to Mass on Sunday.”

  “Did he have any special friends that you know of?”

  “One or two fellows he met in The Roundy House in Ballyhooly. He used to play the accordion with them sometimes, on a Thursday night. That was the only time he was ever away from the farm, on a Thursday night. But it was feeble old fellows they were, couldn’t have killed a fly, let alone find the strength to bury the poor creature afterwards.”

  “Did anybody strange ever come to visit him? Anybody you didn’t know yourself?”

  Mrs Meagher shook her head. “Michael liked his family around him but he wasn’t one for entertaining. Whenever that fat good-for-nothing priest Father Morrissey came visiting and I gave him a piece of cake or a ham sandwich, Michael used to say that he felt like cutting his belly open to get it back, to think of all the hard work that every mouthful had cost him.”

  “I see. Was he a difficult man, Michael, would you say? I don’t mean to speak ill of him.”

  Mrs Meagher sniffed sharply. “He had his opinions and he didn’t care for eejits. But, no – tut – he wasn’t any more difficult than any other man.” As if all men were quite impossible.

  “Did he ever have any long-running arguments with anybody?”

  “What? He hardly spoke a single word to anyone from one day’s end to the next, leave alone argue.”

  “One more thing. Did you ever hear any stories about people going missing anywhere in the area? Not necessarily recently, but at any time?”

  “People going missing?” Mrs Meagher took her attention away from the television for the first time. “No, I never heard of anybody going missing. Of course, when I was a girl my mother was always telling us tales about folk who had been taken by the fairies, off to the Invisible Kingdom, but that was just to frighten us into eating our potatoes.”

  Katie smiled and nodded. Then she said, “One more thing. Have you ever seen anything like this before?” She reached into her pocket and took out a sealed plastic evidence bag, with one of the little gray rag dolls in it.

  “What’s that, then?”

  “You’ve never seen anything like it before?”

  “That’s not a very good toy for a child, now, is it? Full of hooks and all.”

  “I don’t think it’s a toy, Mrs Meagher. To be quite honest with you, I don’t know what it is. But I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention it to anyone.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Well, just in case anybody asks. Anybody from the newspapers or the TV.”

  Mrs Meagher picked up a half-empty pack of Carroll’s cigarettes, and offered one to Katie. “No? Well, I shouldn’t either, with my chest. The doctor says I’ve got a shadow on my lung.”

  “Why don’t you give them up?”

  She lit her cigarette and blew out a long stream of smoke. “Give them up? Why in God’s name would I try to do something when I know for sure that I’d never be able to do it?”

  3

  By the time it grew dark, the technical team had uncovered eleven human skulls and most of the skeletons that went with them – as well as nineteen thighbones pierced and hung with little gray dolls. The excavation had been photographed at every stage, and the position of every bone precisely marked with little white flags and logged on computer. At first light tomorrow, they would begin the careful process of bagging and removing the remains and taking them to the pathology department at Cork University Hospital. There they would be examined by Dr Owen Reidy, the State Pathologist, who was flying down from Dublin bringing his black bag and his famous bad temper.

  Liam came over as Katie left the house. “Well?” he asked her, chafing his hands together.

  “Nothing. It’s hard to believe that John Meagher’s father had anything to do with this. But someone managed to excavate a hole in the floor of his feedstore and bury eleven skeletons in it, not to mention drilling their thighbones and decorating them with little dollies, and how they did that without Michael Meagher being aware of it, I can’t imagine. As Mrs Meagher says, he was in and out of there every single day, fetching and carrying feed.”

  “So, it stands to reason. He must have known what was going on.”

  “And what do we deduce from that? That he conspi
red with an execution squad?”

  “I don’t think these were executions,” said Liam. “With executions it’s almost always phutt! in the back of the head, after all. And what about all these dollies? What execution squad would bother to dismember their victims and drill holes in their thighbones? They’d have the graves dug and the bodies thrown in and they’d be off. But even if this was an execution, and John’s father did bury the bodies, we can’t necessarily assume that he did it willingly. He might have been warned to keep his mouth shut or else the same thing would happen to him.”

  Katie took out a handkerchief and wiped her nose. “I don’t know. I think we’re going to have to look somewhere else for the answer to this.”

  “Well, let’s keep an open mind about our Michael Meagher. Like I said, there’s something about these out-of-the-way farms that puts me in mind of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The rain, the mud, and nobody to tell your woes to but the pigs and the cows. It’s not good for a man’s sanity to be speaking nothing but Piggish and Cattle-onian all day.”

  Katie checked her watch. “We’ve done all we can for tonight. General briefing at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, sharp. Meanwhile, can you get Patrick started on a comprehensive check of missing persons in the North Cork district for the past ten years? Tell him to pay special attention to people who went missing in groups, and anybody who was cycling or hitch-hiking or backpacking. They’re always the most vulnerable.

  “Have Jimmy talk to his Traveler friends… they might know something.”

  “And me?”

  “You know what I’m going to ask you to do. Go and have a drink with Eugene Ó Béara.”

  “You don’t think he’s really going to tell me anything, do you?”

  “If the Provos had a hand in this, no. But you might persuade him to confirm that they didn’t, which would save me a whole lot of time and aggravation and a few hundred euros of wasted budget.”

  4

  It was nearly 10 o’clock when she finally got home, turning into the gates of their bungalow in Cobh, and parking her Mondeo next to Paul’s Pajero 4x4. The rain was falling from the west as soft as thistledown. Paul still hadn’t drawn the curtains, and as she walked up the drive she could see him in the living-room, pacing up and down and talking on the phone. She tapped on the window with her doorkey, and he lifted his whiskey tumbler in salute.

  She let herself in and was immediately pounced on by Sergeant, her black Labrador, his tail pattering furiously against the radiator like a bodhrán drum.

  “Hallo, boy, how are you? Did your daddy take you for a walk yet?”

  “Haven’t had the time, pet,” called Paul. “I’ve been talking to Dave MacSweeny all evening, trying to sort out this Youghal contract. I’ll take him out in a minute.”

  “Poor creature. He’ll be ready to burst.”

  Katie pried off her shoes and hung up her coat and went through to the living-room. It was brightly-lit by a crystal chandelier, with mock-Regency furniture, all pink cushions and white and gilt. The walls were hung with gilt-framed reproductions, seascapes mostly, with yachts tilting against the wind. One corner of the room was dominated by an enormous Sony widescreen television, with a barometer on top of it in the shape of a ship’s wheel. In the opposite corner stood a large copper vase, filled with pink-dyed pampas grass.

  Paul said, “Okay, Dave. Grand. I’ll talk to you first thing tomorrow. That’s right. You have my word on that.”

  Katie opened up the white Regency-style sideboard and took out a bottle of Smirnoff Black Label. She poured herself a large drink in a cut-crystal glass and then went over to draw the curtains. Sergeant followed her, sniffing intently at her feet.

  Paul wrapped his arms around her waist and gave her a kiss on the back of the neck. “Well, now. How’s everything? I saw you on the TV news at eight o’clock. You looked gorgeous. If I wasn’t married to you already I would have called the TV station and asked for your phone number.”

  She turned and kissed him back. “I’d have had you arrested for harassment.”

  Paul Maguire was a short, pillowy man, only two or three inches taller than she was, with a chubby face and dark-brown curly hair that came down over the collar of his bright green shirt in the 1980s style that used to be called a “mullet.” His eyes were bright blue and slightly-bulging and he always looked eager to please. He hadn’t always been overweight. When she had married him seven-and-a-half years ago he had taken a 15-inch collar and a 30-inch waist and had regularly played football for the Glanmire Gaelic Athletic Association.

  But five years ago his construction business had suffered one serious loss after another; and his confidence had taken a beating from which he hadn’t yet recovered. These days he spent most of his time trying to make quick, profitable fixes – wheeling and dealing in anything from used Toyotas to cut-price building supplies. There were too many late nights, too many pub lunches with men in wide-shouldered Gentleman’s Quarters suits who said they could get him something for next-to-nothing.

  “Did you eat, in the end?” Katie asked him.

  “I had a ham-and-cheese toastie at O’Leary’s. And a packet of dry-roasted.”

  “That’s not eating, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. I don’t have much of an appetite, if you must know.”

  “The whiskey’s killed it, that’s why.”

  “Come on, now, Katie, you know what pressure I’ve been under, working this deal out with Dave MacSweeny.”

  “I wouldn’t mention Dave MacSweeny and a decent man on the same day. I don’t know why you have anything to do with him.”

  “He went inside just the once, and what was that for? Receiving a stolen church piano. Not exactly Al Capone, is he?”

  “He’s still a chancer.”

  She went through to the kitchen, with Sergeant still pursuing her feet. Paul followed her as she opened the breadbin and took out a cut bran loaf. “This is always the way, isn’t it? I’m married to the only female detective superintendent in the whole of Ireland, so no matter what I do I have to conduct myself like a saint.”

  “Not a saint, Paul. Just a law-abiding citizen who doesn’t have any dealings with people who hijack JCBs from public roadworks and smuggle cigarettes through the quays and steal lorryloads of car tires from Hi-Q Motors.”

  Paul watched her in frustration as she cut herself a thick slice of red cheddar and started to slice up some tomatoes. “I’m doing my best, Katie. You know that. But I can’t check the credentials of everybody I do business with, can I? They wouldn’t give me the time of day if I did. It’s bad enough you being a cop.”

  Katie sprinkled salt on her sandwich and cut it into quarters. “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that my being a cop is precisely why they do business with you? Who’s going to touch you, garda or villain, when you’re Mr Detective Superintendent Kathleen Maguire?”

  Paul was about to say something else, but he stopped himself. He followed Katie back into the living-room, stumbling over Sergeant as he did so. “Would you ever hump off, you maniac?”

  Katie sat down and took a large bite of sandwich, using the remote to switch on the television. Paul sat beside her and said, “Anyway, forget about Dave MacSweeny. How was your day? What’s all these skeletons about? They said on the news there was nearly a dozen.”

  Katie’s mouth was full of sandwich, but with eerie timing her own face suddenly appeared on the screen, standing in the afternoon gloom up at Meagher’s Farm, and she turned the volume up. “We can’t tell yet how long these people have been buried here, or how they died. We’re not excluding any possibility at all. We could be looking at a mass execution or a series of individual murders or even death by natural causes. First of all the remains have to be examined by the State Pathologist, and as soon as he’s given us some indication of the time and cause of death, you can be sure that we’ll be pursuing our enquiries with the utmost rigor.”

  “There,” said Katie. “Now you
know as much as I do.”

  “That’s it? You don’t have any clues at all?”

  “Nothing. It could have been an innocent family who died of typhus, and who were buried on the farm because they couldn’t afford the funerals. Or it could have been eleven fellows who upset somebody nasty in the Cork criminal fraternity.”

  “I hope you’re not making a point.”

  “No, Paul. I’m very tired, that’s all. Now how about you taking Sergeant out to do his business, so that we can go to bed and get some sleep?”

  While Paul put on his raincoat and took Sergeant for his run, Katie went through to the small room at the back of the house where she kept her desk and her PC. They still called it The Nursery, although they had stripped off the pale blue wallpaper, and the sole reminder of little Seamus was a small color photograph taken on his first and only birthday.

  She took her nickel-plated Smith & Wesson .38 revolver out of the flat TJS holster on her hip and locked it in the top drawer of her desk. Then she sat for a long time staring at her reflection in the gray screen of her computer. When she was young she used to sit on the window-seat at night, looking out of the window, and imagine that there was a ghostly girl looking back at her out of the darkness. She even used to talk to her reflection, sometimes. Who are you, and what are you doing, floating in the night, and why do you look so sad?

  She didn’t fully understand why, but today’s discovery up at Meagher’s Farm had given her a feeling of deep disquiet… as if something terrible was about to happen. The last time she had felt anything like this was late last spring, when the coastguard had discovered the body of a Romanian woman, washed up on the beach at Carrigadda Bay, in her multi-colored dress. During the course of the next few weeks, all along the coastline as far as Kinsale, they had discovered thirty-seven more. Each woman had paid £2,000 to be smuggled illegally into Ireland, but they had been thrown into the sea a hundred yards offshore, with all of their belongings, and none of them could swim.