White Bones: 1 (Katie Maguire)

by Graham Masterton

  “And when it didn’t, he lost his temper, and rammed you into the river?”

  “It’s the most likely scenario, isn’t it? Pity Dave MacSweeny isn’t around to tell us whether it’s true.”

  Jimmy turned to John, who was wearing one of Paul’s shirts, and a thick brown Aran sweater. “John… the paramedics asked me to tell you that you probably saved Declan’s life. He’s critical, but they think he’s going to pull through.”

  “John was a medical student in San Francisco,” Katie explained.

  “Well, that was God looking out for Declan, I’d say.”

  John said, “It wasn’t any big deal. In any case, I quit after two years. I guess I wasn’t really cut out for it. It gets to you, after a while, all that blood and guts. I was more interested in alternative healing, you know. Aromatherapy, reflexology, herbal medicines, that kind of thing.”

  “Witchcraft?” asked Jimmy, making a potion-stirring gesture. “Eye of toad and bollock of bat?”

  John gave him a wry smile, but didn’t reply.

  Liam came in. “Superintendent? Can I see you for a moment?”

  “Of course.”

  “Outside, if that’s all right. There’s something I have to show you.”

  Katie followed him into the front garden. The burned-out wreckage of Paul’s Pajero was still smouldering, but the fire was out. Officers from the technical bureau were examining the ignition mechanism, and others were taking photographs of the blast-pattern. Three bomb-disposal experts from Collins Barracks were standing around smoking and shuffling their feet. Liam led Katie to the side of the garden, toward the laurel bushes.

  “We didn’t see him at first. I hope this isn’t going to upset you too much.”

  “What is it?” asked Katie, and there was something in Liam’s expression that gave her a sudden surge of chilly dread.

  Liam pulled one of the bushes aside, and said, “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  At first Katie couldn’t understand what she was looking at. Halfway up one of the silver-birch trees that stood behind the laurels was a tangle of red-and-yellow ropes, with thinner strings hanging from it, and large lumps of glistening maroon with bubbles of white all around them. It was only when she saw Sergeant’s head on top of the tangle, and one of his legs dangling down between the thinner strings, that she realized she was looking at the blown-apart body of her dog.

  “Oh my God,” she said. She turned away and walked stiff-legged across the driveway, while Liam let the bushes rustle back. He came after her and stood beside her, ignoring the rain that speckled his glasses.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her, and held out his hand.

  “It’s not your fault.” She thought that she sounded like somebody else altogether – somebody on the edge of cracking up. “I should have followed the proper security procedure.”

  “This is nothing to do with procedure. You’ve had Sergeant for how many years?”

  “Eight,” she said, and then cleared her throat. “He was eight.”

  She felt like walking out of the front gate and walking and walking and never coming back, but she knew that she couldn’t. She had to follow this through to the end, if only to redeem herself for what had happened here today. Liam said, “Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off? I can cover for you.”

  “I’ll be fine. And besides, I’ve got too much to do. I have to interview Tómas Ó Conaill again.”

  “You’d tell me to take the rest of the afternoon off, if something like this happened to me.”

  “I’m too busy, Liam. I’ll take some time off when Tómas Ó Conaill is convicted.”

  “Will you look at yourself? You’re white. Even your lips are white.”

  “In that case I’d better put some lipstick on.”

  She went back into the house. Liam followed her. She sat on the sofa with her hands pressed against her ears and her eyes tight shut. She felt as if she wanted to block out the whole world. If only she could be deaf and blind for long enough, she could open her eyes and find that Paul was out of his coma and Sergeant was still alive and that nobody had been murdered or mutilated or drowned.

  John frowned at Liam and mouthed, “What’s happened?”

  Liam said, “Her dog got caught in the blast. We’ve just found it.” To Katie he said, “Would you like a drink? Brandy maybe?”

  Katie shook her head.

  “Listen,” said Liam, “I’ll have them take Sergeant away as soon as I can, and I’ll make sure that they treat him with respect.”

  She opened her eyes. It was no good trying to deny what had happened. “Thank you,” she sniffed. John passed her a box of Kleenex.

  “He wouldn’t have known what hit him, believe me. He wouldn’t have suffered.”

  “I know that, yes. But he was such a mad, friendly dog, you know? He didn’t deserve to die like that.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want that drink?”

  “If I take a drink I won’t be able to go back on duty.”

  “You’ve had a bad shock,” said John. “Maybe you should give yourself the rest of the day to get over it. I had a neighbor in San Francisco whose dog got hit by a truck and she was depressed for months.”

  Katie took a deep breath. “I’m fine. I’ll survive. Did we get the rest of those technical reports yet, from the cottage?”

  “They came in about half-an-hour before. I haven’t had time to look at them in detail, but it seems that there are very few fingerprints, and none of them match Ó Conaill’s. Some of the footprints in the blood are his, so he was obviously lying when he said that he had never been into the bedroom. But the lab says that he only trod on the blood after it was congealed. The other prints were made when it was still fresh.”

  Katie said, “I still believe Tómas Ó Conaill did it, or had a hand in it, at least. But it’s certainly beginning to look as if he wasn’t alone. That makes me even more worried about Siobhan Buckley.”

  “No news on her, I’m afraid.”

  John’s cellphone rang and he went out to the hall to answer it. When he came back he said, “Is it all right if I go now? I’ve just heard from Gabe that one of my cows has gone into labor. I’ll come down to the Garda station if you want to talk to me again.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll want you for a witness statement about what happened here today, but it’s not desperate.”

  “Listen,” said John, “I’m so sorry about your dog. I really am.”

  Katie accompanied him out to his Land Rover. The force of the bomb had cracked the driver’s side window and two triangular pieces of shrapnel had penetrated the bodywork, narrowly missing the fuel tank. “So much for my no-claims bonus,” he remarked.

  Katie said, “About that other thing… the figure you saw up by Iollan’s Wood.”

  “Maybe I was hallucinating.”

  “Tell me something… do you believe in things like that? Ghosts, or fairies, or spirits from the other side?”

  “I don’t know. I can only tell you what I saw. I mean, plenty of other people in Ireland claim that they’ve seen apparitions, don’t they? Did you see that TV program about leprechauns? Somebody’s keeping a twenty-four video watch on a magic tree in County Laois, hoping to see real live little people.”

  “If you could conjure up Mor-Rioghain, what would you wish for?”

  “Me? A couple of million dollars I guess, like most people would. And a long vacation someplace warm and sunny. And a beautiful, intelligent woman to take with me. How about you?”

  “I don’t know. It’s no good trying to put the clock back, is it?”

  48

  Tómas Ó Conaill was supremely calm, so self-possessed that Katie found him as threatening as dark afternoon, before a thunderstorm. He was wearing a faded black denim shirt which was open to reveal the Celtic chain that was tattooed around his throat and the herringbone pattern of black hair on his death-white chest. In his left hand he held a packet of Player’s untipped cigarettes, which
he constantly rotated, over and over, until Katie felt like snatching it away from him. But she knew that was what he was challenging her to do; and so she kept her temper, and didn’t.

  He smelled strongly of male sweat, and Ritchie’s clove sweeties. He had a new lawyer this afternoon, a smooth gray-haired fellow in a shiny gray suit from Coughlan Fitzgerald & O’Regan, one of the grander firms of solicitors in South Mall. Before Katie could even open her mouth he announced himself as Michael Kidney and didn’t stop interrupting Katie’s interrogation all the way through.

  Katie said, “Tómas, there were several footprints in the blood on the bedroom floor and they were identified by our technical people as yours.”

  “Then I must have wandered into the bedroom, mustn’t I?”

  “Wandered? You didn’t just wander. You had Fiona Kelly imprisoned in that bedroom and you murdered her there, didn’t you?”

  Michael Kidney lifted his expensive ballpen. “I’ll have to interrupt here, detective superintendent. My client has admitted that he may have strayed into the bedroom; but that was only after the event, long after the murderer had left; and he was quite unaware what had happened there.”

  “The bedroom was plastered with blood. Only a gowl couldn’t have been aware what had happened there.”

  “Being a gowl, as far as I know, is not a criminal offence. If it was, then half of the male population of Ireland would be languishing behind bars.”

  “Tómas,” said Katie, leaning forward across the table. “Tómas, listen to me. I think you know what happened to Fiona, but I’m also prepared to believe that you didn’t do it entirely on your own. There was somebody else involved with you, wasn’t there? You may have known all about the ritual for raising Mor-Rioghain, but there was somebody else with you who did the killing, wasn’t there? I know you have a reputation, Tómas. But this wasn’t your doing, was it? Not the actual murdering.”

  “I swear on the Holy Bible that I never murdered nobody and I swear on the Holy Bible that I never helped nobody to murder nobody, neither.”

  “You swore that you never went into the bedroom, but you did.”

  “I might have done, yes. But there was nobody there and as I say I never murdered nobody. I swear.”

  “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “What?”

  Michael Kidney immediately raised his hand. “Superintendent, my client is innocent, and he doesn’t have to implicate anybody else to prove it. It’s your job to discover who committed this murder, not his.”

  “I simply asked him the name of his friend. The one who actually murdered Fiona.”

  Tómas shook his dreadlocks like a filthy floormop. “I’ve done nothing but tell you the truth, Katie. I never murdered nobody and I don’t have no murdering friend.”

  Michael Kidney sat back, took off his glasses, and started to polish them with the end of his necktie. “Seems like an impasse, detective superintendent. And I have to say that your evidence is very insubstantial.”

  “Insubstantial? We can prove that Tómas drove the car in which the dead girl’s body was taken to Knocknadeenly, and we can prove that he was present in the room where she was killed.”

  “Where she was killed, yes, but not when. You can’t inconclusively establish that he committed murder, and you don’t even have a credible motive. All this talk of fairies and witches. You’re not seriously going to accuse my client of black magic?”

  “We have sufficient evidence to prepare a file for the Director of Public Prosecutions, no matter what his motive was. I’m just giving him the opportunity to make things easier for himself, by giving us a little co-operation.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Michael Kidney said, “I heard that you lost your dog today. I want you to know how sorry we all are. Everybody at Coughlan Fitzgerald.”

  Katie took in a sharp, involuntary breath. “Thank you,” she said. Then she turned to Tómas Ó Conaill again and she knew instantly from the look in his eyes that Tómas had sensed her distress.

  “I love dogs myself, Katie,” he told her, in the softest of voices. “I had a grand black Labrador once, who died. He was mostly Labrador, anyway. It was almost as bad as losing a friend.”

  Katie said, “A young art student called Siobhan Buckley was abducted from Summerhill two-and-a-half days ago and we still haven’t been able to find her. A witness saw her accepting a lift in a car, just like Fiona Kelly. If you know anything about this – if you had an accomplice when you took Fiona Kelly – I need to know who he is, Tómas, and I need to know where to locate him, and very fast. Because if you know where she is, and something bad happens to her, I swear to God that I’ll have you in prison for the rest of your life.”

  Tómas took out a cigarette, and lit it, and blew out voluminous quantities of smoke. “I’ve told you, Katie. I had no accomplice, and I don’t know nothing. But if it helps, let me tell you this.”

  “Tómas – ” Michael Kidney warned him.

  “No, Michael,” said Tómas. “I’ve done nothing particularly wrong and if it helps Katie with her investigation, then why not? I’ll confess it now. Bless me, dearest Katie, for I have sinned. I didn’t find the Mercedes where I said I found it. I saw it in the driveway of the old garden center and there was nobody around and the keys were still in it and I admit to you freely that I was thinking of robbing it. I didn’t actually rob it because you turned up, didn’t you, like the baddest of bad pennies. But I did look around the cottage and I did see that something fiercely horrible must have happened there, and I was ready to go away when you shouted ‘Armed Garda’ at me and I was caught.

  “But if this is something to do with the raising-up of Mor-Rioghain, let me advise you of this, if you didn’t know it already. Mor-Rioghain can only be summoned by a witch, and only a witch can speak the final words which will set Mor-Rioghain free. So if it’s a man who took Fiona Kelly and murdered her for the purpose of bringing Mor-Rioghain through from the other side, then he wasn’t working alone, as you rightly guess. He must have been working along with a woman.”

  “My client didn’t say that,” put in Michael Kidney, crossly. “You can’t accept any of that as part of his interview.”

  “Shut your gob, Mr Kidney,” said Tómas Ó Conaill, placidly. “What I’m doing now is helping Katie to find the fellow that she’s really looking for, because when she finds the fellow that she’s really looking for, she’ll know that it wasn’t me who laid a finger on Fiona Kelly or nobody else.”

  “So you think that I should be looking for a man and a woman, together?” asked Katie.

  Tómas Ó Conaill lifted his cigarette as if to say it, that’s it, you’ve got it.

  Katie stood up. “Mr Kidney… I think we’ll need to talk to Mr Ó Conaill again in the morning.”

  “I’m not sure that’s going to be convenient.”

  “Then make it convenient, if you don’t mind; or send somebody else.”

  “All right, superintendent. No need to get upset.”

  Gerard O’Brien called her just as she was driving out of Anglesea Street.

  “Katie, I think we need to have a talk.”

  “Gerard, can’t it wait until tomorrow? I’m on my way to the Regional to see Paul.”

  “I’ve been on the internet all afternoon. I’ve come up with something. I don’t know exactly what it means, but I think you ought know about it.”

  “All right,” she said, steering one-handed towards Sullivan’s Quay, with the gray afternoon light reflected in the river. “Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

  “It’s difficult to tell you everything on the phone. Perhaps you could meet me for a coffee later on; or even dinner.”

  “Gerard, I really appreciate it, but this investigation is taking up all of my time, and a number of things have been getting on top of me, and I’d really – ”

  Somebody blew their car-horn at her, and she suddenly realized that the lights at the junction of George’s Quay had changed to g
reen.

  “Gerard,” she said, “I can’t talk now. Give me an hour and I’ll call you right back.”

  “I called the university,” he said, and then his voice broke up into a crackle.

  She dropped her cellphone onto the seat beside her, and waved her hand in acknowledgement to the car behind her. She drove to the Regional Hospital past St Finbarr’s Cathedral. A few spots of rain spattered onto her windshield, and already it was beginning to grow dark.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about her interview with Tómas Ó Conaill. All of the circumstantial evidence indicated that he had at least been a party to Fiona Kelly’s murder; even if he hadn’t actually dissected her himself. But what if he were right, and the legend of Mor-Rioghain did demand a female witch to summon her up from the Invisible Kingdom? Who was the most likely candidate for that?

  The only person she could picture was John Meagher’s mother, coughing her way from room to room. It was hard to imagine that John alone was capable of killing anybody, even though he was depressed and lonely and financially strapped. But if his mother was acquainted with the ritual, and if his mother had always been aware of the skeletons that were buried under the feedstore, she would have known how to finish the sacrifice, how to add two more victims to the toll of eleven, and bring Mor-Rioghain out of the darkness.

  John thought that he had seen an apparition by Iollan’s Wood; a ghostly wraith that could have been Mor-Rioghain. In the mental state that he was in, his mother could have led him to believe that he had actually seen her, even though it had probably been nothing more than a twist of evening mist, or smoke, or the last of the sunlight falling between the trees.

  Katie decided that she would go up to Meagher’s Farm again tomorrow morning and talk to John and his mother, separately, and see if she couldn’t push this line of thinking a little further. There might be a Psycho factor behind these sacrifices: a mother exerting her influence over her favorite son, in order to give him the strength and the confidence that he hadn’t been born with.