White Bones

by Graham Masterton

  “All right!” Gerard shrieked out. “I promise you I won’t say anything to anybody! Not a word! Ever!”

  The engine-revving died down. Gerard lay back in relief, with the rain falling directly in his face and almost blinding him. “Just let me up, will you? Untie me and let me up. I won’t say anything, I swear to God. I swear on my mother’s grave.”

  Without warning, the car was revved up again. The man threw it into gear and drove off, tearing every muscle in Gerard’s body with a sound like ripping linen and pulling both of his arms off.

  Gerard instantly stopped shouting. He realized that something appalling had happened to him but he didn’t want to know what. He lay on the wet tarmac with blood pumping with horrible regularity from his each of his arm-sockets. He felt no pain at all. In fact, he felt oddly relieved, glad that the worst was over. He heard the car stop, and the driver’s door slam, but he didn’t see the man walk back and stand over him, because his eyes were closed.

  The man said, “Some things aren’t meant to be found out, professor. It wasn’t your fault, but there you are.”

  For some reason, Gerard couldn’t think of a prayer. All he could remember was W.H. Auden’s poem about the iceberg knocking in the cupboard, and the desert sighing in the bed, and the “crack in the teacup that opens… a lane to the land of the dead.”

  51

  It took Katie almost five minutes to wake up properly. When she finally managed to lift her head, she felt as if her dead mother had stuffed her knitting in her mouth. Lucy was sitting in the armchair, watching a documentary on the Lusitania on the Discovery channel with the volume turned down.

  “What time is it?” she asked, thickly.

  “Half-past nine.”

  Katie sat up and dry-washed her face with her hands. “Jesus! I thought I asked you to wake me at eight.”

  “I tried, believe me, but you were dead to the world. Do you want me to make you a cup of coffee?”

  “No – no thanks. Is there anything fizzy in that mini-bar?”

  “Sure. Here.”

  Katie popped open the miniature can of Diet Coke and drank it in four quick swallows. Lucy stood up and said, “How do you feel?”

  “Terrible.”

  “That’s because you haven’t relaxed in ages. Not really relaxed.”

  “I can’t relax. I’ve got too much to do.”

  Lucy sat down on the bed beside her, and stroked her hair. “I used to be just like you sometimes, all nerves, all stressed out, never allowing myself to rest. But that’s because I was never focused. I couldn’t decide what to do with my life. It was only when I narrowed my vision down to one single objective that I began to understand myself. You have to say, ‘This is what I want and I’ll do anything to achieve it.’ And I mean anything. If you can do that, you’ll find this tremendous inner calm, I promise you.”

  “I have to check in with Anglesea Street.”

  “Katie – you don’t actually have to do anything but relax.”

  Katie turned her head and looked into her eyes. “I can’t. Not yet. But I promise you that I will, as soon as this case is complete. We could go down to West Cork together if you like, and I can show you Baltimore and Cape Clear. It’s beautiful down there.”

  Lucy leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “That sounds wonderful.”

  “Well, it’ll be a way of paying you back, for everything you’ve done for me. You saved my life when I was drowning in the river, and now you’ve saved me from going to pieces.”

  “You don’t have to pay me back.”

  Katie went to the dressing-table, where she brushed out her hair. She hadn’t dried it properly after her bath, and it stuck out wildly. “Look at me,” she said. “I look madder than Tómas Ó Conaill.”

  “Wet it again and I’ll blow-dry it for you.”

  “You should have been a therapist, instead of a professor of mythology.”

  “Mythology is a kind of therapy, in a way. It’s the way we understand our place in the world. There are no merrows and bean-sidhes, Katie. Not really. There’s only us.”

  Liam didn’t reach Perrott Street until 10:47. He climbed out of his car and hurried to Gerard’s front door, his collar turned up against the pelting rain. He pressed the doorbell and waited. Then he pressed it again. Fuck it. The stupid bastard hadn’t even had the patience to wait an extra twenty minutes. Well, whatever Gerard had wanted to tell him, it couldn’t have been that critical. It was Liam’s guess that he had probably been exaggerating its urgency so that he could persuade Katie to come round to see him. He didn’t entirely blame him. When Katie had first been stationed at Anglesea Street, Liam had been attracted to her, too.

  He ran back to his car and splashed straight into a pothole full of water, soaking his sock.

  It was still raining when Katie arrived home, and the house was in darkness. Paul’s burned-out Pajero had been towed away and the sitting-room window had been boarded up with plywood. She let herself in and switched on the lights. The house was cold and it even smelled empty.

  She went into the sitting-room and poured herself a large vodka. Then she tried her message-recorder. Jimmy O’Rourke said, “I’ve been trying your mobile but it seems to be switched off. We might have a lead on the Siobhan Buckley case. A woman remembers seeing a man and a girl answering Siobhan’s description in a large white car up by the traffic lights by Mayfield shopping center. She said it looked as if they were arguing, and the girl was crying. I’m going to set up a new search tomorrow morning, concentrating on Mayfield and Glanmire and maybe up as far as Knockraha. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Then Liam, sounding as if he had taken drink. “Katie… I couldn’t get you on your cellphone so I just wanted you to know that lover-boy Gerard O’Brien was trying to get in touch with you. He said he had some very important new information so I went round to meet him at his house. I was only a few minutes late but the silly bastard had gone out. I reckon it’s you he wants to meet, if you want to know the truth.”

  She rang the Regional and talked to the sister on Paul’s ward. “There’s no change at all, I’m afraid.”

  No change at all? she thought, sitting on the chilly sofa by the empty black hearth. She could still picture Paul pacing up and down with his glass of Power’s in his hand as he blethered to all of his dodgy builder friends, and Sergeant resting his head on her knee so that she could fondle his floppy ears.

  After a while she went into the kitchen and made herself two slices of toasted cheese, with Mitchelstown cheddar and lots of cayenne pepper. She ate them standing up, and sucked her fingers when she had finished, because that’s what you can do, when you’re alone.

  52

  The next morning it was still raining and the sky was a grim greenish-gray, like corroded zinc. It was so dark that Katie had to switch on the overhead lights in her office. On the roof of the car park opposite, the crows sat bedraggled and even more sinister-looking than ever, and she was sure that there were more of them. She hung up her raincoat and then she sat down with a cup of cappuccino to read through her mail and her paperwork.

  Dermot O’Driscoll came in, with his bright red necktie askew. “There you are, thank God. I’ve had Patrick Goggin panicking since eight o’clock this morning like a washerwoman with her knickers on fire. He says there’s a meeting at Stormont at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon and he needs to be able to report some positive progress.”

  Katie didn’t look up. “Sir – this is a very difficult and complicated investigation. There are very few written records; there are no living witnesses; and even if I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Tómas Ó Conaill murdered Fiona Kelly, it won’t throw any more light on what the British did in 1915.”

  “Politics are bad for my digestion,” Dermot grumbled. “I couldn’t even face a second sausage this morning.”

  Katie said, “Gerard O’Brien may have some more information. He called me yesterday afternoon to say that he had some
new research for me to look at.”

  “Have you got in touch with him yet?”

  “I’m going up to Knocknadeenly first, to talk to the Meaghers again.”

  “Look, call him. The sooner I get Patrick Goggin off my back, the sooner I can get back to a normal diet.”

  “All right.” Katie punched out Gerard’s number while Dermot waited in the doorway, slowly rubbing his stomach as if to calm it down. Gerard’s number rang and rang, but Gerard didn’t pick up. Katie called Jimmy O’Rourke instead.

  “Jimmy? Where are you now?”

  “Dennehy’s Cross, stuck in traffic.”

  “Listen, on your way in, can you call at 45 Perrott Street and see if Professor Gerard O’Brien is at home? If he’s not there, try his office at the university.”

  “I’m very pushed for time, superintendent.”

  “I realize that, Jimmy. But this is important.”

  Katie switched the phone off. “Sorry,” she told Dermot. “Just for the moment, that’s the best I can do.”

  “Well, try to get me something by the end of the day. I don’t want my dinner ruined as well. By the way, how’s your Paul getting along?”

  “No better. No worse.”

  Dermot nodded and said, “We’re all thinking of you, Katie. You know that.”

  She left Anglesea Street at 10:22. She tried to call Lucy to tell her that she was running late, but all she could hear on Lucy’s cellphone was a thick crackling noise. With her coat-collar turned up against the rain, she hurried to the bronze Vectra that she had been allocated in place of the damaged Omega. She climbed in, brushed the rain from her shoulders and checked herself in the sun-vizor mirror. She looked almost as bedraggled as one of the crows.

  Cork Corporation had started new main drainage works at the corner of Patrick’s Bridge so she had to wait for almost five minutes with pneumatic drills clattering in her ears and Father Mathew the hero of temperance staring at her balefully from his plinth in the middle of the road. As she drove up Summerhill the rain started to hammer down so hard that she had to switch her windshield wipers to full speed. Buses passed through the spray like ghostly illuminated boats.

  She reached Knocknadeenly at 10:57. The garda on duty at the gate was sitting in his squad car with the windows steamed up, having a cigarette, but when she drew up beside him he climbed out and came across, still breathing smoke.

  “Nice soft day, superintendent,” he remarked.

  “Everything okay? Has Professor Quinn arrived here yet?”

  “About twenty minutes ago. Nobody else.”

  “All right, then, Padraig. What time do you go off duty?”

  “Not for another two hours yet. If it doesn’t stop raining soon I’ll have to go home by canoe.”

  Katie drove slowly up the driveway, with her windshield wipers still flapping hysterically in front of her. She turned her car around in the muddy forecourt in front of Meagher’s Farm and climbed out. A blue Ford tractor was parked next to John Meagher’s Land Rover with its engine running, but there was no sign of anybody around. She walked across to the farmhouse and into the porch. The front door was open and the house was filled with the strong crusty aroma of baking bread. She knocked and called out, “John? Mrs Meagher? Anyone at home?”

  Nobody answered, and the rain continued to pour down out of the sky as if it was determined to drown her.

  Katie opened the farmhouse door a little wider, and stepped into the hallway. There were old coats hanging on pegs, and muddy boots tangled together. “John?” she said. “Lucy?” But still there was no reply. Only the giggling of Teletubbies, in the sitting-room.

  She looked into the kitchen. It was gloomy but reasonably tidy, apart from a mixing bowl with a tea-towel over it, and a floury bread-board, and a rolling-pin. Katie hesitated for a moment, and then she went through to the sitting-room.

  The Teletubbies were rolling on their backs and kicking their legs in the air. Mrs Meagher was sitting in the tall armchair facing the television, her gray wiry hair barely visible over the back of it. Katie could see one arm dangling down the side of the chair, in a hand-knitted olive-green sweater, with orange flecks in it. A burned-out cigarette had fallen onto the carpet.

  “Mrs Meagher?” she said. “Mrs Meagher? It’s Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire. Do you know where John is?”

  Mrs Meagher didn’t answer. The Teletubbies called out, “Eh-oh!” and went scampering off behind their improbably green hill. Cautiously, Katie walked around the side of her chair. Mrs Meagher was staring at her with milky eyes, her mouth hanging open to reveal her tobacco-stained teeth. Her throat was cut from side to side and the front of her sweater and her pleated skirt were drenched in blood. Drops of blood were still creeping down her shins and into her slippers.

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Katie. She stood staring at Mrs Meagher for a moment and then she had to turn away.

  Her hands shaking, she took out her cellphone to call for back-up. As she started to punch out the number, however, John Meagher stepped into the sitting-room and barked, “Don’t!”

  53

  Jimmy O’Rourke parked his car outside 45 Perrott Street and heaved himself out of his car. Personally, he thought that this part of their investigation was a total waste of time. He didn’t give a monkey’s who had killed those eleven women in 1915, and if it had been up to him, he would have dropped the case into the “pending for all eternity” file, even if Sinn Féin were acting the maggot about it. All that mattered was who had killed Fiona Kelly, and Jimmy believed, like Katie, that Tómas Ó Conaill had at least been a party to it.

  He went to Gerard’s front door and rang the bell. No answer. He rang again. Still no answer. He walked round to the side of the house and peered up at Gerard’s window, his hand held up to shield his face from the rain. Gerard was out, no doubt about it, and that meant that he would have to go looking for him at the university. He said, “Shit,” under his breath. He had plenty of other things to do this morning, like interviewing seven Romanian so-called asylum-seekers who had broken into a mini-cab office in MacCurtain Street and made off with €132.75 from the petty-cash box.

  Jimmy was just about to leave when a bedraggled black Labrador came around the corner of the house, carrying something in its mouth.

  “Here boy,” said Jimmy.

  The Labrador looked guilty, and dropped its trophy onto the pavement. At first glance Jimmy thought it was somebody’s lost gardening glove, but when he took a closer look he realized that it was a man’s hand.

  “Here boy, where did you find that, boy?”

  The dog loped off. Jimmy walked over to the hand and hunkered down next to it. He took out his ballpen and poked it but he didn’t try to pick it up. There was a cheap gold ring on the hand’s third finger, with a black onyx in it.

  Jimmy walked around the back of the house, into the driveway. There were twenty or thirty crows flapping and hopping around, and when Jimmy appeared they flustered off into the sky. It was then that he saw Gerard O’Brien’s body lying on the ground, with wet strands of black hair sticking to his face like a veil. His arms were lying amidst a heap of litter over seven feet away, still tied together by the wrists.

  “Holy Mary,” said Jimmy. He leaned over Gerard to make absolutely sure that he was dead, and then he stepped away. “Who the feck did this to you?”

  He took out his cellphone and tried to call Katie, but he couldn’t get through, so he called Liam Fennessy instead. “Inspector? I’m at 45 Perrott Street. I’ve found Professor O’Brien, or what’s left of him. That’s right, somebody’s done for him, practically torn the poor bastard apart. Yes, 45 Perrott Street.”

  Liam sounded out of breath. “I’m away from the station at the moment, Jimmy, but I’ll send Patrick O’Sullivan and Brian Dockery, and the technical team. When you say they’ve torn him apart –?”

  “Somebody’s ripped his arms off. Looks like they must have tied him to the back of a car.”

  “You’
re codding me.”

  “I’m not. I’m serious. Professor O’Brien on one side of the car park, arms on the other.”

  “I’ll have to get back to you, hold on.”

  Jimmy wiped the rain from his face. The crows kept circling back, but they came no further than the wall between 45 Perrott Street and the house next door, where they shuffled together like the scruffy punters in a Blackpool betting shop. Jimmy tried the back door and found that it was still unlocked. He unholstered his Smith & Wesson revolver and shouldered his way inside. The stairway was dark and smelled of frying mince. Jimmy paused at every turn in the stairs, keeping his gun held high, and listening. By the time he reached Gerard’s flat, however, it was obvious that his killer must have been long gone. Somebody downstairs was playing Days Like This by Van Morrison and from upstairs came the clatter of somebody running a bath.

  Jimmy nudged open the broken door of Gerard’s flat and went inside. He checked the sitting-room and the kitchen and the bathroom but there was nobody there. He went into the study and found papers strewn all over the floor and the smashed computer, and the chair tipped over.

  He tried calling Katie again, but he still couldn’t get through. There was nothing much he could do now, until the technical team got here. He poked around the study, picking up one or two papers, but most of them were lecture-notes on Celtic mythology. He decided to go outside for a smoke.