A Terrible Beauty

Patrick Goggin had a scrawny throat in which his Adam's apple rose and fell as he spoke, as if he were trying to regurgitate something unpleasant that he had eaten for breakfast. "Do you yet have any idea at all who might have abducted those women? Even an informed guess will do. There's another summit meeting at Stormont next week and the last thing we need is Sinn Féin making an issue out of something that happened more than eighty years ago."

Katie shook her head. "I'm afraid we haven't made much progress. I'm working closely with Dr. Reidy, the state pathologist, and also with an expert in Celtic mythology, Dr. Gerard O'Brien. But, you know, these things take time."

"Haven't you even got a theory about it? If the Crown forces really did order those women to be abducted and murdered, it's going to cause all manner of ructions. The Taoiseach is going to have to ask for an apology from the British government, and some form of compensation for their families, and the whole peace process is going to be knocked back months, or even years. Or evendecades,for the love of God."

Katie said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Goggin, but this is a very complex criminal investigation and I can't cut any corners for the sake of politics. I don't know who murdered those women and the chances are that I never will. As for the latest murder, we have a suspect in custody on the basis of very strong forensic evidence and that's all I can tell you."

Patrick Goggin rubbed his forehead with his fingertips, as if he had a headache. "I don't think you quite understand the position, Detective Superintendent. We have to know for certain who murdered those women in 1915, and if itwasa British soldier, acting on official orders, we have to find a way-well, let me put this the only way I can-we have to find a way of showing that itwasn't. A rogue officer, we can deal with that, politically. A psychopath who dressed up in British Army uniform, that would be even better. I'm sure that I can count on you to come up with some kind of evidence that will exonerate the British army of any direct culpability."

Katie said, coldly, "Evidence is evidence, sir. Facts are facts. If the British Army murdered these women deliberately, then I'm certainly not going to pretend that they didn't."

Dermot lifted his hand and said, "Katie-"

But Katie said, "No, sir. I need to know what happened to those eleven women because it has a direct relevance to the Fiona Kelly murder case. They may have died eighty years ago, but they still deserve our respect, and our conscientious efforts to find out how they really died. They were women, sir. They were living, breathing women."

"Holy Mother of Jesus," said Patrick Goggin. "Now we have feminist solidarity rearing its ugly head. An Garda Síochána is the guardian of the nation's interests, Detective Superintendent, not the front line of the PC brigade."

"With all respect, sir-" Katie began, but Dermot, behind Patrick Goggin's back, shook his head and mouthed the word "no." She knew what he was telling her. It wasn't worth it. Politicians come and go, but police personnel stay on for years and years-hopefully to collect their pensions, and cook their favorite recipes in peace.

"Yes?" said Patrick Goggin. "You were saying?"

"I was simply saying that we'll do everything we can to find out who abducted those women, sir, and how they died. And when we have…we'll let you know. Of course. And as soon as we possibly can."

Patrick Goggin smiled. "That's what I wanted to hear. That'sexactlywhat I wanted to hear." He took out his wallet and produced a card. "There," he said. "That's my private number. If you want to discuss this case any further, or any other Garda business…well"-and here he raised one eyebrow and gave her an extraordinary cherubic smile-"you will let me know, won't you?"

He shook Katie's hand and gave Dermot a mock garda salute. Then he left Katie's office and walked along the corridor with squeaking rubber shoes.

He hadn't reached the top of the stairs before Dermot burst into an explosion of laughter, and Katie shook her head in amazement.

"Hefanciesyou!" said Dermot. "After all that, he only fecking fancies you!"

It was teeming with a fine, chilly rain when they arrived at Meagher's Farm at Knocknadeenly. Mr. and Mrs. Kelly climbed out of the back of the car and stood looking around at the drab farm buildings and the churned-up mud and the naked poplar trees as if they couldn't believe that anywhere so dreary could exist outside a movie set.

"Jesus," said Mr. Kelly. "What a place to die."

"Actually, Fiona didn't die here," said Katie, gently. She opened a large golf umbrella so that she and Mrs. Kelly could shelter under it. "She was killed quite a few miles away, and her remains were brought here for a very special reason. We're fairly convinced that it was part of a pagan ritual."

"Jesus," Mr. Kelly repeated. He seemed overwhelmed.

Lucy Quinn had been waiting in the front passenger seat for a while, her eyes concealed behind her purple-lensed spectacles, but at last she decided to get out. She was wearing a black raincoat, a black cashmere scarf, and long black-leather boots. Her bright red lipstick was the only spot of color in the whole gray morning, like the little girl's coat inSchindler's List.

"I want to thank you for allowing me to bring Professor Quinn along," Katie told the Kellys.

"Not at all," said Mr. Kelly. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. "Anybody who can help…you know."

At that moment, John Meagher came out of the farmhouse, wearing a tweed cap and a tweed jacket with the collar turned up against the rain. He came up to Mr. and Mrs. Kelly and shook their hands in silence.

Katie said, "John-this is Professor Lucy Quinn from UC Berkeley. She's something of an expert in ancient rituals."

"You know what happened here?" John asked.

"Yes," said Lucy. "What can I say? It's a tragedy."

John looked tired and he sounded as if he were going down with a very bad cold. "This is the last thing I need. I've had a hell of a year and now this. I tried to sell three milk cows yesterday and nobody wanted to touch them. The local farmers seem to think I'm in league with Satan. They practically cross themselves whenever I walk into the pub."

"Do you mind if I see the place where you discovered the first eleven women?" asked Lucy.

Katie turned to Mr. and Mrs. Kelly. "You can wait here for a while if you want to. Then we'll walk to the place where they found Fiona."

Both Mr. and Mrs. Kelly were in tears. "That's all right. You do whatever you have to do."

Katie followed John and Lucy to the back of the farmhouse, where the feed store had already been completely demolished, and brick foundations laid. Lucy circled around the foundations for a while, stepping long-legged over the rubble, and then she stopped, and frowned, and looked left and right, as if she could sense a disturbance in the air. In the distance, a flock of hooded crows rose over the trees, not cawing, but circling, and eventually settling back on the branches.

"This is where the bones were found? All mixed up?"

"That's right."

"I doubt if this was where their bodies were originally laid out, after they were killed. I would guess that their bodies were originally spread out in the same place where Fiona Kelly was found. When the birds and the animals had eaten their flesh, their bones were buried here to conceal the evidence."

They trudged up the deeply furrowed field, with the Kellys close behind them, to look at the place where John had discovered Fiona's remains. The drizzle was so intense that they could barely see the farmhouse, or Iollan's Wood behind them.

"I think we could observe a minute's silence here," Katie suggested, and the four of them stood in the field with the rain sifting down, and remembered Fiona, and all children who die before their parents. Katie crossed herself.

Lucy said, "From a mythological point of view, this spot is very important. Every doorway to the Invisible Kingdom is hidden beneath a copse, or a small wood. This is because the roots of the trees wriggle deep into the ground and the branches reach high into the sky, so that they form a natural connection between the real world and the world of the fairies."

"They call this Iollan's Wood," said Katie.

"Well, yes, that fits in. Iollan was one of the greatest of the Fianna, the ancient warriors who could visit the Invisible Kingdom whenever they wanted to. Iollan even had a fairy mistress, called Fair Breast, and a very jealous mistress she was, too."

"I hate to put a damper on this," Mr. Kelly interrupted, "but my daughter died here. I don't think I really want to hear about fairies."

Lucy took off her sunglasses. "When the Irish speak of 'fairies,' Mr Kelly, most people think of cheerful little leprechauns out ofFinian's Rainbow. But Irish fairies are something different altogether. They strangle babies in the middle of the night. They can turn men into dogs. They'll dance in the road in front of you when you're driving, so that you don't see that bridge parapet or that on-coming truck, and when you do, it's far too late."

"My daughter was killed by a psychopath, Professor Quinn, not a fairy."

"Are you a religious man, Mr. Kelly?" Lucy asked him.

"Yes, I am."

"Do you believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost?"

"Yes, I do."

"So you subscribe to the idea that there's another world, beyond this one?"

"Yes, in that sense, I guess I do."

Lucy walked around him, and in an unexpectedly intimate gesture, began to rub his shoulders. "You need to relax more, Mr. Kelly. You should open your mind to other realities. If you believe in heaven and hell, why can't you believe in the Invisible Kingdom?"

Mrs. Kelly looked anxious, and took hold of her husband's hand.

Lucy said, "The answer to your daughter's death lies right here. She was sacrificed to the witch Mor-Rioghain by somebody who thought that they could summon the witch from the land of the fairies and ask her for anything their heart desired. Somebody who truly believed that it was possible."

"Whoever it was-they must have been out of their mind."

"Do you think you're out of your mind, because you get down on your knees every Sunday and pray to a divine being that you've never heard, and never seen, and for whose existence you have absolutely no proof whatsoever?"

Mr. Kelly pulled Lucy's hands away from his shoulders. "I came here to mourn my daughter, Professor Quinn. I didn't expect to have a lecture on comparative mythology."

"I'm sorry," said Lucy. "I'm really sorry. I just thought that I could help you to understand why your daughter died. It wasn't a meaningless act of sadism. It was done for a purpose, no matter how cruel and inexplicable that purpose might seem."

"I think you could leave us alone for a while, if you don't mind."

"Of course. I'm really sorry."

Mr. Kelly turned away. Katie took Lucy's arm and led her back down the field, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Kelly standing in the rain on the angled, plowed ridge where Fiona's body had been discovered. As they neared the farmyard, Lucy said, "I hope I didn't upset them too much. I only wanted them to understand that Fiona didn't die for no reason at all."

"I don't think they're very receptive to ancient Celtic rituals at the moment," said Katie.

Inside the farmhouse, John Meagher was waiting for them. "Can I offer you a cup of tea?" he asked them. "My mother's baked some fresh scones if you're hungry."

He took their raincoats and hung them up on pegs in the hallway. In the kitchen, Katie could hear his mother coughing and clattering plates. They went through to the living room where a turf fire was sullenly smoldering in the grate. "Please, sit down."

Katie sat on the sofa and John sat quite close to her. She could smell peaty soil and aftershave on his sweater. Lucy sat close to the fire, holding her hands out and rubbing them briskly. "I never knew that there was anyplace socold, and sodamp."

"You came to Ireland specifically to look into these murders?" John asked her.

"Oh, yes. My department head was really enthusiastic when I told him about it, and the university has given me very generous expenses. You don't very often get the chance to investigate a ritual sacrifice in the flesh, if you know what I mean. Most of the time you're dealing with illegible medieval inscriptions or crumbling old sixteenth-century documents. This is totally different. This is living, breathing mythology."

John turned to Katie and said, "I saw you on television this afternoon. You've made an arrest."

"That's right. The evidence is pretty convincing all right."

"So I'm not a suspect any longer?"

Katie laughed. "Did I ever say you were?"

"It's your job, isn't it, to suspect everybody?"

"I never suspectedyou."

"Why not? It's my farm, isn't it? Who else would have found it easier to lay that poor girl's body out in the field like that?"

She looked at him very hard. He needed a haircut and a shave. His black hair was curling over his collar, the stubble on his chin was like coal dust. His cornflower-blue eyes seemed to be telling her things, telling her secrets. She willed him to look away but he wouldn't look away and in the end Lucy said, "Well…" as if she had interrupted a deeply intimate moment.

Katie said, "We're still waiting for the results of some of our forensic tests, but I'm ninety-nine percent certain that we've got the right man."

Mr. and Mrs. Kelly came into the farmhouse and John cleared a heap of newspapers off the sofa for them. His mother came coughing out of the kitchen with a tea tray and platefuls of scones and slices of rich fruit brack. Mrs. Kelly said, "I wish you'd known Fiona. She was such an interesting girl. So romantic, soadventurous. She was never afraid of anything."

Mr. Kelly said, "This Tómas Ó Conaill character…does he have any kind of record?"

"I'm afraid yes. We've only ever managed to have him convicted for theft and intimidation, but he's extremely violent. He almost killed a girl last year and it wouldn't surprise me at all if he was responsible for a few other murders that we don't even know about. He's a Traveler, you see, and it's extremely difficult to get other Travelers to give evidence against him, even though most of them detest him. There's also the problem of correct identification. We know him as Tómas but his real name might not be. Even the Traveler children call themselves by all kinds of different names. It's a defense system."

"But you seriously think Tómas Ó Conaill killed Fiona because he believes in this-witch?"

Katie nodded. "That's why experts like Professor Quinn can be so useful to us. They can give us an insight into what his motive was. Otherwise, her death looks completely inexplicable."

"How long before he goes on trial?"

"Not for months yet. We still have to finish our investigation and send a book of evidence to the prosecutor's office. But I'll keep in touch with you, and let you know when he's going to go to court. In my experience it's a very important part of the grieving process, seeing a murderer convicted for what he did."

Mr. Kelly said, "I want to thank you for what you're doing. I'm sorry if I lost my temper back there. You've been very understanding, both of you."

Katie took hold of his hand. "I'm going to make sure that Ó Conaill is punished for what he did to your daughter, Mr. Kelly. I'm not just determined, I'm passionate about it."

They talked for a little while longer. They finished their tea but the scones remained untouched. As they left the farmhouse, John came up to Katie and said, "Do you think we could talk? I don't mean now, but maybe tomorrow or the day after."

"What is it?" she asked him.

"Nothing special. It's just that-well, I think I need somebody to talk to."

She hesitated for a moment. The rain fell softly between them, as if they were being draped in fine wet veils. "All right," she said at last. "I'll be at home tomorrow, lunchtime, in Cobh. Look, here's my address. Call me before you come. It'll only be leek-and-potato soup and soda bread, if you don't mind that."

"Thanks. I don't mean to be a pain the rear end, but-"

"Everybody needs somebody to talk to, once in a while," she told him, and walked back to join Lucy Quinn and the Kellys by the car.

40

Katie dropped Mr. and Mrs. Kelly off at the Country Club Hotel, a sprawling custard-yellow collection of buildings on the high cliffs that overlooked the river.

"I'll send a car for you tomorrow morning," she told them. "You can come into my office and I'll be able to show you exactly how much progress we've been able to make."

"Thank you again for everything," said Mr. Kelly. His voice was harsh with grief. Katie was tempted to tell him that she knew how agonizing it was to lose your only child, but she decided that it wouldn't help. The Kellys had enough pain to deal with, without having to feel sorry forher,too.

"You want me to run you back to your hotel?" she asked Lucy.

"I was hoping we could maybe have a drink. There's one or two things I wouldn't mind discussing with you."

"All right. But I can't be very long."

She drove up the steep slope of Military Hill until they reached the Ambassador Hotel. It was a fine Victorian building in pale orange brick, with cast-iron pillars and arches, overlooking the higgledy-piggledy nineteenth-century houses that clustered on the hills of north Cork, with all their hundreds and hundreds of chimney pots.

"Some building," said Lucy, as she climbed out of the car.

"This used to be a British army hospital," Katie explained. "And these streets around here-this is where they filmed a lot ofAngela's Ashes.Apparently they thought that Cork looked more like Limerick than Limerick."

"Sounds like indisputable Irish logic to me."

They went inside the hushed, deeply carpeted bar. Lucy ordered a vodka tonic while Katie kept to a sparkling Ballygowan water. They sat together on one of the floral couches. Lucy tried to wipe some of the mud off her boots with a paper coaster. "I should have invested in a pair of rubbers, shouldn't I?"

"You've seen the murder scene, anyway," said Katie. "Are you convinced now that Tómas Ó Conaill was trying to raise Mor-Rioghain?"

"Absolutely. One hundred percent. That locale has everything that the sacrificial ritual requires."

"God, it's such a sad waste of life."

"Not if you believe in Mor-Rioghain it isn't."

"Youdon't believe in her?"

"Who knows? There are so many powers in this world that we don't understand. So many unexplained mysteries."

"I just want to solve this one."

Lucy crossed her long, long legs and leaned closer. Her teeth were almost perfect and there was a small beauty spot on her left cheekbone. "This really means a whole lot to you, this case, doesn't it? Not just Fiona Kelly. The other women, too."

"Yes. They were all killed and forgotten and they never even got a Christian burial. Even when a murderer's dead I don't think that he should be allowed to get away with it."

"I didn't realize-"

"What?"

Lucy's eyes were very bright. "I've never met anybody so passionate about anything before, that's all."

Katie didn't know what to say. She had never met anybody like Lucy before-a woman who seemed to be so friendly and open, and yet who gave her the feeling that she was hiding the Lucy that she really was, and hiding her very deeply. All the same, she found her easy to be with, and she enjoyed her sexiness. Jimmy the barman had walked past their couch more than half a dozen times since they had first sat down, and given them a wink.

Katie's cell phone warbled. "Detective Superintendent Maguire."

"Katie! Thank Christ! It's Paul! I'm glad I caught you, pet! Listen, my car won't start and I'm supposed to be having a lunch meeting at South's in twenty minutes with the fellow from the bank, regarding this building development. I called for a hackney but they can't get here in less than half an hour. I was wondering…"

Katie looked at her watch. "You want a lift? All right. I just have to run Professor Quinn back to Jury's Inn."

Lucy said, "Is everything okay?"

"It is, of course. My husband's car won't start so I'll have to drive out to Cobh and pick him up. Perhaps we can have that drink later."

"I could come with you. We can talk on the way."

"If you really don't mind-"

"Of course I don't mind. I'm a stranger in a strange land, and I could use some company, apart from anything else."

• • •

They drove eastward on the wide dual carriageway toward Cobh, the windshield wipers intermittently clearing away the misty rain.

Lucy said, "If I'm really excited about this case, I hope you don't think that I'm being ghoulish. This is only the second time I've come across a contemporary ritual sacrifice."

"What was the first?"

"The first?"

"The first ritual sacrifice. Before this one."

"That-oh,that. A farmer in Minnesota sacrificed his whole family to the Wendigo. That's a kind of weird creature that's supposed to live in the woods. It's similar to the Irish banshee because it only appears when people are about to die."

"What did the farmer do?"

"You really want to know? He threw his wife and their three children one by one into the grinding machine that he used for pig food. Alive. The coroner reckoned that they were still conscious even when they were minced right up to their waist. His defense tried to plead insanity but I was brought in as an expert witness, and I showed that everything he had done was in strict accordance with Native American stories about the Wendigo. You're insane when you kill people for no reason whatsoever. But you're not insane if you're scrupulously observing some specific mythological ritual with the express intention of gaining some advantage out of it. In this case, the farmer was almost bankrupt and he believed that the Wendigo would kill his creditors for him. Wacky? For sure. Disturbed, yes. But not clinically insane. He was convicted on murder two and given life imprisonment."

"So you don't think that Tómas Ó Conaill is insane?"

"Hard to tell for sure, without meeting him. But it took a whole lot of pretty obscure mythological knowledge to do what he did, as well as determination, and physical stamina, too. Think how hard it must have been to scrape the flesh off the legs and arms of a living girl, then completely dismember her, and drive her out to the middle of a field so that you can spread her out in the special pattern that Mor-Rioghain is supposed to insist on. Your perpetrator is completely rational, if you ask me, Katie. He's calm and methodical and the only thing that makes him different from any other calm and methodical person is that he's an absolute believer in Celtic mythology. He wastotallyconvinced that Mor-Rioghain would reappear and give him everything that he deserves."

Katie left the dual carriageway and drove up the ramp toward Cobh, overtaking a tractor. "What do you think about John Meagher?" she wanted to know.

"John Meagher? I'm not entirely sure. He's your typical depressed farmer but have you ever met a farmer whowasn'tdepressed? It kind of goes with the territory, doesn't it? The hours, the weather, the isolation. But there's something else about John Meagher. Another dimension."

Katie said, "He inherited the farm when his father died. He says that he feels responsible for carrying on the family business, but if you ask me he's not cut out for it at all. He's practically bankrupt."

"Was he ever a suspect?"

"Not really. He was working on the farm when Fiona Kelly went missing. His dairy girl testified to that."

"Well…it's quite possible that the man who abducted Fiona Kelly may not have been the same man who murdered her. Quite a few ritual killers work with partners, or in groups. You know, like witches' covens, or pedophile rings."

"I can't see a cultured man like John Meagher working in partnership with a scumbag like Tómas Ó Conaill."

"All the same, if his farm is failing…"

"You mean he might have wanted to ask Mor-Rioghain to save his business?"

"I don't know. I'm only speculating. But I definitely think there's something creepy about him, him and that mother of his. He reminds me of Norman Bates."

"Oh, stop. I think he's charming."

"I know what I'm talking about, Katie. I've interviewed hundreds of people who believe in everything from UFOs to giant monsters. They're always the same-charming, rational, you name it-but after a while you gradually begin to understand that there's a very important screw loose."

They crossed the stone bridge that took them onto Great Island, past a bleak ruined keep with crows flapping around it. It looked like the landscape on an ill-starred Tarot card. Katie said, "I think that John is simply an ordinary decent man who's trying extremely hard to take care of his widowed mother and to keep up his family honor. If he's guilty of anything, it's biting off more than he could chew."

"You're probably right. But Siobhan Buckley's still missing, isn't she? And Tómas Ó Conaill couldn't have taken her."

"We don't have any evidence that she was abducted for a sacrifice. Personally, I have a feeling that she'll show up. Her mother said that she wasn't upset about her parents breaking up, but a lot of the time kids never tell you how they really feel."

"Well, I hope to God you're right."

• • •

Paul was standing outside the house waiting for them. His Pajero was parked close to the herbaceous border with its hood raised.

"I don't know what the fuck's wrong with it. It was running perfectly yesterday. I'll have to call the garage when I get back. Meanwhile, I'm going to be late."

He climbed into the back of the car. "Lucy, this is my husband Paul. Paul, this is Professor Lucy Quinn."

"Well, well. I'm overwhelmed to meet you," said Paul, giving her his best cheesy grin. "Katie was telling me all about you last night."

"I hope she was flattering."

"You don't need flattering, Professor. You look like the kind of woman who knowsexactlywhat effect she has on people."

"God, you smoothie," laughed Katie, as she turned the Mondeo around in the driveway. "Don't take any notice of him, Lucy. Blarney's his middle name."

"Come on, pet, can we get a move on? I can't afford to keep the bank waiting."

They drove back over the stone bridge to the mainland and rejoined the dual carriageway toward Cork City. Traffic was heavy for the time of day, and for the first three kilometers they were stuck behind a slow-moving farm truck, which was trying to overtake an even slower mechanical digger. Paul began to tut with impatience.

"We'll be all right," Katie reassured him. "It won't take us more than another five minutes."

"Can't you use your blue light?"

"To take my husband to a lunch appointment?"

"You used it when you were late for the dentist."

"That was a genuine emergency. I had an abscess."

As they approached the city center, the traffic began to thin out, and as they drove alongside the quays, Katie was able to speed up. Paul said, "That's better…I shouldn't be more than ten minutes late."

At that instant, however, there was a heavy bang at the back of the car, and Katie found herself struggling with a steering wheel that seemed determined to wrench itself out of her hands. Oh, God, blowout, she thought. The Mondeo's tires screamed on the road surface, and the car started to slide wildly to the right.

"What thehell-?" shouted Paul.

Katie twisted the wheel into the skid, and the car straightened up. But then there was another bang, and another, and Katie saw the Range Rover looming in the rearview mirror. "Jesus, they're hitting us on purpose!"

She jammed her foot on the brakes, but the Range Rover slammed into them yet again, and this time it locked its front bumper right up against the Mondeo's trunk, and rammed them onto the sidewalk, so that they burst right through the chainlink fence that separated the road from the open quays.

"Oh, my God," said Lucy.

Katie kept her foot pressed hard on the brake pedal but the Mondeo was no match for the Range Rover's weight and power. It forced the Mondeo along the quay, nearer and nearer to the edge, its tires shrieking in unholy chorus and black smoke billowing out from under its wheel arches.

"For Christ's sake!" Paul screamed. "They're pushing us into the water!"

Katie spun the wheel hard and yanked on the parking brake, so that the Mondeo skidded around in a 180-degree turn. The Range Rover surged forward and hit their offside passenger door with a deafening smash. It ricocheted sideways, stopped, tilted, and then toppled off the edge of the quay and disappeared.

Katie didn't even see it go: she was wrestling to bring the Mondeo under control. It skittered around in another half circle, and just when she thought she had caught it, one of the rear wheels went over the quay. There was a crunch, as the exhaust pipe was crushed, and for one long horrible moment they rocked and swayed, right on the very edge."Get out!"Katie shouted."Quick as you can, before we go over!"

Paul opened the rear passenger door, but as he did so the car shuddered and let out a harsh metallic groan, and slid backward off the quay into the river.

Immediately, the interior was flooded, and Katie was slapped in the face with filthy, freezing-cold water. Paul called out,"Jesus!"followed by a sharp gargling noise. Katie tried to turn around and see what was happening to him, but her seat belt was tightly jammed across her chest. Lucy released her own seat belt and managed to open her door. The river water was rushing into the car faster and faster, right over Katie's shoulders, even though-when she looked up-she could still see the gray sky through the windshield, and the edge of the quay, and the faces of people looking over.

Lucy forced her door wider and struggled out. One of her boots kicked against Katie's arm as she swam away. The Mondeo turned slightly, and then sank. Water filled the whole of the passenger compartment, and Katie hardly had time to take a breath before the car dropped slowly down into a peatish-tinted gloom.

She tugged at her seat belt buckle but it was jammed tight. She cursed herself for not carrying a craft knife in the car, as she had always promised herself that she would, after seeing a young mother burned alive in an accident out on the North Ring. She jabbed the release button again and again, until she broke her fingernail. She tried twisting and jiggling, but still the seat belt wouldn't release her.

Oh, Christ,she thought.I'm going to drown.Her head throbbed and her lungs ached so much that she was almost tempted to take a deep breath of river water. Strangely, she wasn't panicky. She felt that she simply wanted to get it over with, without anyone suffering.

Paul must have drowned almost at once.How ironic, she thought.Just when I've decided that I can't live with him, I'm going to die with him.

It was then that she saw a dark shadow flicker across the windshield. The next thing she knew there was a sharp rapping on her side window. She turned, and through the brown, particle-filled water, she saw Lucy, her eyes wide, her face colorless.

Lucy opened the Mondeo's door. Katie pointed to the seat belt buckle and Lucy nodded. Katie saw the glint of a knife, and Lucy cut through her harness in two quick strokes. Then she took hold of Katie's arms and pulled her out of the driving seat. She kicked up for the surface, supporting Katie all the way, like an angel carrying her up to heaven. As they appeared beside the quay, there were shouts and whoops and applause, and Katie saw to her amazement that the whole quay was already crowded with people and cars. Lucy swam to the side with her, and helped her onto the rusted iron ladder.

"Paul," Katie coughed. "Did you see what happened to Paul?"

"I'll go look," said Lucy. Two men came halfway down the ladder, took hold of Katie under her arms, and lifted her bodily onto the quay, with water pouring from her sodden coat.

"Are you all right, girl?" one of them called to Lucy, but Lucy, without another word, turned and dived under the water again.

"My husband's still down there," said Katie.

"Sacred name of Jesus."

Farther along the quay, three men who looked like merchant seamen had taken a small boat out, and one of them was repeatedly diving where the Range Rover had gone down. Its roof was still visible under the water, like a submerged coffin. A squad car arrived, and then another, closely followed by an ambulance. Detective Garda Patrick O'Sullivan was in the second car, and he came over to Katie immediately.

"My God, are you all right?"

"We were rammed, deliberately rammed. That Range Rover went into us, tried to force us over the quay. Paul's still down there."

"They're sending the divers. Look-hold on-I'll get you a blanket."

Katie stood shivering on the edge of the quay. Over three minutes had gone by and there was still no sign of Lucy or Paul. One of the gardaí dived into the river, but almost at the same moment as he hit the water, Lucy reappeared, supporting Paul. Paul's face was so blue that it looked as if it had been painted for a Hindu festival.

The garda helped to bring Paul over to the ladder, and he was heaved up onto the quay. His eyes were closed and his arms and legs were floppy. The paramedics got to work on him right away, emptying the water out of his lungs and giving him expired-air respiration. Katie stood well back, but in her head she was repeating the mantra,please Holy Mother don't let him be dead, please don't let him be dead.

Lucy came up to her, still panting and spitting out river water. Katie took hold of her hands. "You're freezing! Patrick, will you fetch a blanket for Professor Quinn, too?"

"How's your husband?" coughed Lucy.

"I don't know yet. I don't even know if he's breathing."

One of the gardaí brought a heavy gray blanket and draped it around Lucy's shoulders. Lucy put her arm around Katie's waist and held her close, and they both shivered in unison.

Katie said, "You saved my life, Lucy. You were amazing."

"College swimming champion, two years running."

"Well, thanks be to God."

"How about the people in the other car?"

"They're still trying to bring them up."

"Who were they? Why were they trying to push us into the river?"

Katie ran her fingers through her wet, stringy hair. "I think Paul knows the answer to that."

One of the paramedics came over, a small freckly girl with dark red ringlets. "He's breathing unassisted, Superintendent, and his heart rate's as good as you could expect. He's still unconscious, though. How long was he under the water?"

"Five minutes, not much more."

"We're taking him to the Regional. You ought to come along with us, both of you. You're going to need a checkup and inoculation against infectious hepatitis."

"I'm fine, thank you," said Lucy. "I just want to get back to my hotel."

"We'd really like to make sure that you haven't suffered any injuries," the paramedic insisted. "And hepatitis can be fatal if you're not inoculated."

"I don't need a doctor and I don't need a jab in the ass, thank you," Lucy retorted. "I need a brandy and a hot shower, that's all."

The paramedic was about to argue, but Katie said, "Professor Quinn doesn't have to have a checkup if she doesn't want to. Lucy-I'll ask Patrick to take you back to Jury's. I'll go with Paul to the hospital and I'll talk to you later."

Lucy gave her an unexpected kiss on the forehead. "You're safe, that's all that matters."

Paul's stretcher was lifted into the back of the ambulance. As Katie climbed in after him, she heard shouting down by the quay. One of the passengers in the Range Rover had been brought up, and lifted into the boat. From where Katie was standing, it looked almost certain that he was dead.

41

Katie stayed at the Regional until 11:00P.M. that night but Paul still didn't recover consciousness. The doctor said, "I have to warn you that there may be some brain damage, due to oxygen deprivation. But it won't be possible to assess him properly until he regains consciousness."

"Hewillregain consciousness?"

"Well, again…that's difficult to tell."

"All right," said Katie. She was suddenly beginning to feel light-headed, and unsteady on her feet. "I'll call in tomorrow, if I can. Meanwhile you've got my cell phone number, haven't you, and you can always get me through Anglesea Street."

"Of course. We'll take very good care of him, Katie. Don't you worry."

A young woman garda was waiting outside in a squad car to drive Katie home. She was rosy-cheeked, with fluffy blond hair drawn back in a plait.

"Have I seen you before?" Katie asked her.

"No, ma'am. I've just been transferred up from Bandon."

"Ah, so you're getting some experience of the big bad city."

"Oh, it's great here." The garda smiled. "At least you get a bit of excitement."

They drove in silence for a while, but then Katie said, "What made you join the Garda Síochána?"

"I didn't want to work in a shop. All my friends work in shops. I didn't want to do that."

"Is that all?"

"I wanted to do something to help people."

"Ah, yes. Helping people. I remember that."

"Pardon?"

"Oh, you mustn't pay any attention. I've had a difficult night, to say the least. What's your name?"

"Kathleen, ma'am. Kathleen Kiely. Most people call me Katie."

"Do you want some advice, Katie? Some really good advice?

The garda glanced at Katie apprehensively.

"Never forget that you have limits, Katie. The more you give to people, the more they're going to take."

"Ma'am?"

"I don't expect you to understand what I'm telling you, Katie. But just remember that you're not a saint, or a sister of mercy, or a holy martyr. You don't owe the world everything, because if you think you do, you'll end up with nothing at all."

The garda looked embarrassed, and obviously didn't know what to say.

"One more thing," said Katie, as they crossed the bridge onto Great Island. "Never go swimming in the River Lee with your overcoat on."

Her cell phone rang as she was putting the key into her front door. It was Liam Fennessy. "How's Paul?" he wanted to know.

"It's difficult to say. Very poorly at the moment. He still hasn't regained consciousness."

"I'm sorry about that, Katie. Listen, I'm up at St. Patrick's Morgue. We've just had formal identification of the driver and the passenger in the Range Rover."

Sergeant came bounding up to her as she opened the door and entered the hallway. "Steady, boy! Steady! No-it's all right, Liam. I'm talking to the dog. Was it anybody I know?"

"Oh, yes, it certainly was. Two very good friends of yours, in fact."

"I'm too tired to play guessing games, Liam."

"What if I told you it was Dave MacSweeny and his muscleman Fergal Fitzgerald."

"You're not serious. Dave MacSweeny?"

"No mistake whatsoever. Earring, tattoos, stigmata, and all. That should take a load off your mind now, shouldn't it?"

Katie hung up the raincoat she had borrowed from the Regional. "What are you getting at, Liam?"

"I'm not going to say too much over a cell phone, Katie, but I know that it was Eamonn Collins who had MacSweeny nailed to the cross and I know why he did it. There was only one man in Cork who was rash enough to mess with Geraldine Daley, and there was only one man who thought he could get away with lifting nearly a million quid's worth of building supplies from MacSweeny's yard and selling it on to Charlie Flynn.

"Likewise, there was only one woman in Cork who was in a position to ask Eamonn Collins for a very special favor. Come on, Katie, I've known Dave MacSweeny ever since we were in high babies together. Eamonn Collins had no other business with Dave MacSweeny exceptyourbusiness."

Katie was silent for a moment, and then she said, "What will you do?"

"Nothing. Why should I? If one scumbag decides to crucify another scumbag, and the second scumbag ends up drowned in the river with a third scumbag, who cares?"

"You could report it to Dermot."

"I could of course, but I'm not going to. I have my loyalties, Katie, and my first loyalty is to An Garda Síochána. Whatever I think about it, it would be a public-relations disaster if our first-ever woman detective superintendent was compromised in any way."

"I could report it myself."

"Yes, you could. But what good would that do us? You'd lose your career, and we'd lose one of our best detectives. You should think of your father, too. He'd be heartbroken."

"You can be very creepy at times, Liam."

"Creepy? Hah! I'm perceptive, that's all. Keeping the peace doesn't just mean throwing people in gaol. Keeping the peace means compromising, doing what's practical, and having infinite patience. Eamonn Collins may have something on you now, but you've got plenty on him, haven't you, and your time will come. Anyway-look on the bright side-Charlie Flynn doesn't have to stay in Florida any longer. None of the rest of Dave MacSweeny's riffraff is going to have the nerve to threaten old Charlie for money, especially when the goods were nicked in the first place. Dermot can tell the lord mayor that his brother-in-law has been discovered safe and well, and you can take all the credit."

"What's this leading to, Liam?"

"I told you, Katie. Nothing at all."

"You know I went round to see Caitlin."

"Yes, I do."

"I was going to talk to you about this yesterday."

"That's right."

A long, tense pause stretched out between them. "Caitlin thinks you've changed. She feels that you're frustrated at work. That's why you can't keep your temper."

"I have my own feelings about things, Katie. But this is my private life you're talking about here, and what happens between me and Caitlin is frankly none of your business."

"You assaulted her, Liam."

"At least I didn't crucify her."

Katie didn't answer. It was quite clear, the position she was in. She carried the phone over to the sideboard and opened the vodka bottle one-handed, and poured herself a large measure in one of her heavy cut-crystal glasses.

"Any news of Siobhan Buckley?" she asked.

"Not much. Three eyewitnesses saw a white Lexus being driven erratically along the Lower Glanmire Road about five past nine in the morning. That was only shortly after Siobhan Buckley is supposed to have accepted a lift in a white Japanese-type saloon. There was a man and a girl in the Lexus, and the woman in the car behind them got the impression that they were struggling. The car was swerving from side to side. It struck the nearside curb and almost drove head-on into the oncoming traffic."

"Any sight of it after that?"

"None."

"I see. I think I need to talk to Tómas Ó Conaill again."

Liam said, "Listen, Katie…however things are between us, you need some rest. I can talk to Ó Conaill tomorrow. I can also coordinate the search for Siobhan Buckley. You've just suffered a really traumatic experience, and you've got Paul to think of, too."

"Very compassionate of you, Liam. I just wish you'd show the same compassion to Caitlin. She's my friend, remember."

"Katie-"

"I'll be in tomorrow at nine. I want a report on today's accident on my desk waiting for me. I want an assessment of Dave MacSweeny's family and his remaining gang-who they are, where they live, and whether you think they're still likely to be dangerous."

"You're the boss."

Katie switched off her cell phone and put it down on the sideboard. Sergeant roved around her, snuffling and whining. "It's all right, boy. You'll have to do your business in the garden tonight. I don't think I've got the strength for a walk."

She took her drink upstairs to bed. She was too tired even for a shower. She undressed, put on her large blue-and-white-striped nightshirt, and climbed under the thick, chilly duvet. She fell asleep almost at once, with all the lights still on.

• • •

She had the Gray-Dolly nightmare again. She was walking across a wet, gritty yard toward the door of a factory building. High above the factory roof, black smoke was rolling out of tall brick chimneys, and she could hear the clanking of chains and heavy machinery, and despairing screams.

"Paul?"she said, stepping inside the door. "Paul, where are you?"

Around the corner, she heard the shriek of band saws, cutting through bone. She made her way around a huge heap of bloodied sacking, and then she saw the slaughter men in their bloodstained aprons and their strange muslin hats, cutting up lumps of dark maroon meat-legs and arms and partially dismembered torsos.

"Watch out for the Gray-Dolly Man!" somebody whispered, close to her ear. But she continued to walk toward the nearest of the slaughter men, even though she was chilly with fear. "Watch out for the Gray-Gray-Dolly Man!" The slaughter man was sawing up what looked like a woman's leg-Katie could even see the dimples in her knee-and tossing the bloody pieces into a sack.

Katie came right up behind him. "Armed garda," she tried to shout out, but her voice came out distorted and unintelligible, like the voice of somebody profoundly deaf. "Armed garda, you're under arrest."

The slaughter man didn't show any sign that he had heard her, so she cautiously reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder. He stiffened. Then he laid down his butcher's saw and turned around. His face was invisible behind his muslin veil. Her heart stopped, and thumped, and then stopped, and thumped. She felt fear hurrying down her back like wood lice.

Slowly, finger by finger, he tugged off his thick leather glove. He reached up and lifted the veil away from his face.Oh God, she tried to say, but she couldn't.

It was Dave MacSweeny, dead, with his eyes as white as a boiled cod's, his face gray, and filthy brown river water pouring out of the sides of his mouth.

She yelled,"No! Get away from me!"Downstairs, Sergeant heard her and let out a sharp bark. She opened her eyes and for a split second she didn't know where she was. But gradually her bedroom resolved itself, and the bedside lamp was still shining, and the alarm clock said 3:43, and a photograph of Paul was still smiling at her from the side of her dressing table. One eye looking in a slightly different direction, as if he could see something over her shoulder.

She went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. She drank two glasses of water and then she went back to bed, switching off the lights. It took her another twenty minutes to fall asleep, but this time she dreamed only of running along a deserted seashore, running and running, hoping to run so fast that her footprints couldn't keep up with her.

42

Siobhan was woken by a blinding flashlight shining in her eyes. She whimpered in protest and tried to turn her face away. She was half covered by a grubby cellular wool blanket but she was still so cold that she could hardly feel her feet.

"What time is it?" she asked. Her mouth was so dry that she could barely speak.

"It's almost time for you to start on your journey, Siobhan," the man told her. "You've managed to get some shut-eye, that's good. You're going to need all the strength that your soft little body can muster."

"Please," she croaked.

He sat down next to her, balancing the flashlight on the arm of his chair. She could only see him as a dark outline. "It's strange, that," he said. "How people who are being mistreated are always sopolite. You'd think they'd get angry, wouldn't you? You'd think they'd rant and rage. You'd think they'd blaspheme, and rail against God. But they never do. They always say 'please' and 'thank you.' On the other hand, maybe I'm just lucky. Maybe I only ever abduct the meek and the courteous."

"I just want to go home," sobbed Siobhan.

The man put his hand out and caressed her prickly scalp. "Of course you want to go home. But the sad thing is that you can't. You have another destiny to fulfill. I've arranged a meeting for you-a rendezvous with Auntie Agony. She's going to take you into her arms and give you the most exquisite pain you've ever known."

"Please don't hurt me. I'll do anything."

"I know, I know. But that's not why you're here. You're here to open up the door for me-the door that was sealed so many hundreds of years ago. You're the one, Siobhan. The last of the thirteen, a seamstress with hair as red as any fire. Iamgoing to hurt you, I'm afraid. I'm going to hurt you very much. But it's part of the ritual. It's thepointof the ritual. And it will give you an experience that hardly anybody is privileged to enjoy. It will take you beyond yourself, to a place where you will understand that pain can be an end in itself, even more glorious than death."

"I just want to go home," wept Siobhan. "Please, please, I just want to go home."

"Would you like a painkiller, to begin with?" He sniffed, and stood up. "I think I've got some Disprin in the bathroom."

"I want to go home."

Without warning, the man tilted her chair right back so that she was sitting with her head against the floor, looking upward. She let out a mewl of helplessness and fear. Her wrists were already lashed tightly to the arms of the chair. Now he produced a length of nylon washing line and tied her ankles, pulling the knots so tight that she felt as if he were cutting her feet off.

"You're cold, that's good. Cold will help to numb the pain a little. But as you warm up again…well, that's when you'll really start to feel it."

"I don't-I can't-I can't bear it! I can't bear it! Please let me go! Please let me go!"

He caressed her bare knees. "You're a fashion student, Siobhan. Did you ever dream of being famous? Well, believe me,thisis going to make you famous. Your name will forever be associated with one of the greatest mythic events of the millennium. Whenever people think of the reemergence of Mor-Rioghain, which they surely will, for centuries to come, they will immediately think of Siobhan Buckley, too."

Siobhan lay on her back, her eyes blurred with tears, her nose clogged up with phlegm. The man was silent for a while, and she wondered if he'd gone away. But then she heard something like a case snapping shut, and a cough. Then-without any warning at all-she felt a terrible cold sliding sensation down the side of her right calf, all the way from her knee to her ankle. It happened again, exactly along the same line, much deeper, actually touching the bone, and this time she felt a flood of warmth and sticky wetness.

She tried to cry out "Ahh," but her throat was flooded with saliva. "Ahhgghlllghhh."

"Very good, Siobhan," he said, making a deep sideways incision directly below her right knee, so that she could feel him cutting through her tendons. In fact, she could actually feel the tendons shrivel, as their tension was released. "Very restrained, under the circumstances."

"AaaAAAAAAAAHHHH!" she screamed, as he continued the incision into her upper calf muscle.

"Do you want me to stop for a while?" he asked her. He coughed again, and said, "Pardon me. It's really much better to get it over with, all at once."

She was shaking with pain. "Don't" was all she could manage to say. "Don't."

"I'll carry on, then. And do feel free to scream if you want to. It's supposed to be cathartic."

Siobhan squeezed her eyes tight and said a prayer to the Sacred Mother to protect her, to take her away from this place, to ease the agonizing pain in her leg. The man sliced through the left side of her calf and she could feel her flesh opening up and the cold draft blowing against her naked muscle. She prayed to Jesus the Savior. She prayed to have her sins forgiven and her soul allowed into heaven.

But when she opened her eyes again she was still in hell. The man was still bent over her, cutting through her Achilles tendon and the extensor muscles around her ankles, and humming.

43

Katie called the Regional Hospital while her coffee was percolating. Paul's condition was stable and "giving no immediate cause for concern." He was breathing without the aid of a ventilator, but he was still deeply unconscious and so far he had shown no signs of response to any external stimuli. Outside the kitchen window it was raining hard, and water was gushing from the blocked guttering over the garage. The nurse said that Paul would be taken for a CAT scan later in the morning to see if he had suffered any physical brain damage.

As she hung up the phone, Katie said a silent prayer to St. Teresa of Avila, the patron saint of the sick and the afflicted. The same prayer she had said for her mother, before she died. "God makes us suffer, and we worldlings do not understand why, but he chastises us for His own good purpose."

At 8:47 there was a toot outside the house and she looked out to see an unmarked squad car waiting for her. She shut Sergeant in the kitchen, put on her navy-blue squall jacket, and hurried outside.

"Nice soft day," the driver remarked, as they drove away. He was a gray-haired garda called Patrick Logan: friendly, reliable, unambitious, and close to retirement.

"Damn it," said Katie.

"What is it? Forgotten something? Want me to go back?"

"No…I meant to leave the keys of my husband's car under one of the flowerpots. I was going to call the garage this morning to come and take a look at it."

"That Pajero? What's wrong with it?"

"Won't start, that's all. It was only serviced about a month ago, and it was running all right until yesterday morning."

"My son could take a look at that for you. He runs a mobile breakdown service. He'd charge you a lot less than your garage."

"That would be great, if he could. That's my husband's pride and joy, that thing."

"How is your husband, by the way?"

"Still unconscious. I'm just praying that there isn't any permanent brain damage."

"Please God," said Patrick Logan. Then, after driving in silence for a while, "And how areyou?"

"Okay," said Katie. "I'm okay, thanks for asking."

"You're not going to take a couple of days' rest?"

"Why should I?"

"Well, if you don't mind me being frank-"

"For God's sake, be frank."

"There's some of your fellow officers who think that perhaps you push yourself a little too hard. Because you're a woman, d'you know, and you seem to think you have to prove yourself."

"I see. Some of my fellow officers thinkthat, do they?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't want to speak out of turn. But sometimes it's better to know what's going on behind your back before you get stabbed in it."

"As a matter of fact, Patrick, I'm quite aware that most of my colleagues think I push myself too hard. Even more to the point, they think that I pushthemtoo hard. But I wasn't promoted to detective superintendent because I hung around in the back bar at Counihan's all day, pretending that I was keeping my ear to the ground. I work hard because it's necessary and not because I feel the need to prove myself to my fellow officers or anybody else."

"No, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am."

"That's all right, Patrick. I know it was meant well. Look-I shall be home by half past one. If your son can come around then, I'd be very grateful indeed."

"Not a problem, ma'am."

There was a message waiting for her from Gerard O'Brien. He had called yesterday evening at 5:00P.M., as she had asked him to, but of course she had been at the Regional Hospital by then. He said, "Hallo? Katie? Gerard. I know you've made an arrest already, but this new research material I've got from Germany is very, very exciting. I definitely think it could help us to solve this Knocknadeenly business. I could come round to Anglesea Street if you like. Better still, why don't I buy you some lunch?"

Katie had a moment's thought and then she called Lucy at Jury's Inn. The phone rang for a long time before Lucy answered, and she sounded groggy.

"Lucy? It's Katie Maguire."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't sleep very well last night. Night terrors."

"You weren't the only one. Listen-I just wanted to let you know that Paul's still unconscious but he seems to be reasonably stable. As long as there's no brain damage, the doctor says that he's got a very fair chance."

"That's good news."

"Also, I wanted to ask if you were free for lunch today? There's somebody I'd like you to meet-Professor Gerard O'Brien from Cork University. He's been helping us look into the 1915 killings, and he says he has some exciting new research material from Germany.Hiswords, I hasten to add, but he's done well for us so far."

"I don't know, Katie…I don't usually like to tread on another academic's toes."

"You wouldn't be. And who knows, the two of you together might come up with something that really cracks this whole case wide open."

"I'm not sure."

"Lucy, I'd really like to see you-mainly to thank you for yesterday, but I also want to hear more about this Jack Callwood character. Besides, you'd be doing me a personal favor. To put it diplomatically, Gerard O'Brien is a little sweet on me."

"I see. You need a bodyguard."

"I was thinking of 'chaperone,' but bodyguard will do. Why don't you meet us at Isaac's in MacCurtain Street at about one o'clock?"

"All right. You've twisted my arm."

Shortly after 10:00A.M., Patrick Goggin knocked on the door of her office. She was busy going through the detailed technical reports on the cottage where Fiona Kelly had been killed, and she wasn't particularly happy to see him.

He sniffed, sharply. "That's a very attractive perfume you're wearing, Superintendent."

"Thank you. But I'm afraid I'm up to my eyes this morning."

"Of course," he swallowed. "But I just wanted to tell you that I've had a response from the Ministry of Defense in London relating to the disappearance of Irish women around North Cork between 1915 and '16."

"And?"

"They say that they've made a thorough search of the Public Records Office at Kew and it appears that all the daily dispatches relating to the period in question were destroyed by enemy action during World War II. Whatever happened to them, they're missing, and nobody can find them."

"How convenient. Do you believe them?"

"I don't have any choice, do I?"

"You don't think they're deliberately being obstructive?"

"They may be. But I don't know. Jack Devitt has made it his life's work to publicize British atrocities in Ireland. As often as not I think he's justified in what he says, especially when it comes to the Black and Tans and the Irish Volunteers. But personally I find it very difficult to believe that a British commanding officer would officially order the systematic abduction and the murdering of eleven young women, don't you?"

Katie sat back. "I have to say that I'm inclined to agree with you. Especially since the women were sacrificed in an ancient Celtic ritual. The Brits never gave a fig for Celtic rituals-in fact they did their best to stamp them out. And the raising up of Mor-Rioghain, that's a particularly obscure ritual that very fewIrishknow about, let alone Brits. But…if the Ministry of Defense can't or won't produce the dispatches, it's not going to make things any easier, is it?"

"It isn't, no. That's why I'm relying on you to find out what really happened to those women. If Jack Devitt's right, and theywerekidnapped and murdered by British soldiers, then I need to know for sure. He may have even more evidence than he's telling us, and we can't do a whitewash until we know exactly what it is we're supposed to be whitewashing."

Katie dropped her ball pen onto the papers in front of her. "I can only tell you, Mr. Goggin, that we're doing our best. So far we've located and DNA-tested eleven people who thought they might be related to the victims, and seven of them have proved positive-so I think it's reasonably safe to assume that the skeletons that were found at Knocknadeenly were those of the eleven women who were abducted between 1915 and 1916.

"Some of the relatives have hand-me-down stories of 'the day that Great Auntie Betty disappeared,' but unfortunately none of them throw any light on how the women were taken, or who took them. Mary O'Donovan's great-great-grandniece did mention a scare story that she had told her about a 'demon Tommy,' who was supposed to have been preying on young women around St. Luke's Cross and Montenotte. But it could have been nothing more than a warning to stop local girls from flirting with British soldiers."

"I could really do without this," said Patrick Goggin, pulling tiredly at his cheeks as if they were Plasticine.

"Well, that makes two of us, Mr. Goggin. But I'm having lunch with my two experts in Celtic mythology today and maybe they'll come up with some bright ideas."

"Oh." He looked disappointed. "I was going to ask you if you wanted to come and have a drink with me."

Siobhan's eyes flickered open. Almost at once she was overwhelmed by a tide of pain that swept her away like a broken doll in a heavy sea. She felt the floor rising and falling and tilting beneath her, and the walls rushing toward her and then rushing away again. She vomited, not that she had much left to vomit, only some tinned tomato soup that the man had given her, and a few strings of phlegm.

The pain was so overwhelming that she couldn't think what she was doing here or what had happened to her, or even who she was. All she could think about was pain, and why the room wouldn't stay level.

The man was standing close to her, although she couldn't see anything more than a dark, distorted shadow. "You're awake?" he asked her.

She didn't answer, so he knelt down beside her and peeled back one of her fluttering, wincing eyelids with his thumb. "You're awake? You've done very well, Siobhan. How are you feeling?"

She retched again, and then again, and he stood well away until she had finished. Then he said, "I'm going to leave you to rest now. See if you can get some more sleep. I'll be back in a while to feed you. Would you like something to drink before I go?"

She nodded. She was hurting so much that she couldn't even cry. The man left her for a while and then came back with a large glass of water. He cupped his hand behind her white, red-tufted head, and helped her to take three or four swallows. Almost immediately she retched again, and water splashed over her legs.

She sat with her head hanging down, her eyes clenched shut, while the pain continued to wash her from one side of the room to the other.

"I'll be back later," the man said, gently. "Then we can really discover some pain together."

He closed the door behind him. Siobhan sat limply in her chair while the floor heaved beneath her like a raft. "Mama…" she whispered. "Mama, please help me."

Gradually she opened her eyes. Her legs looked different, and at first she couldn't understand why. Then she realized that she was looking at bones, not skin. Two cream-colored thighbones, and two kneecaps that were still joined to her legs by gristle and fragments of flesh. The seat cushion beneath her was soaked in blood.

She was in such a state of clinical shock that she didn't fully understand that the thighbones were hers. They reminded her of the skeleton that used to be dangling in the corner of the biology lab at school. She closed her eyes again. The bones frightened her, and she needed to sleep.

Outside the window, the rain began to clear, and the sun came out, so that a wide rainbow gleamed over Lough Mahon and Passage West, where the ships sailed out of Cork on their way to the ocean.

44

Lucy arrived ten minutes late, wearing a black leather jacket and a thick rollneck sweater of fluffy black angora, and tight black jeans. A large silver cross swung around her neck, studded with dark purple gemstones.

Gerard stood up and knocked his glass of water over. The waitress rushed over to do some frantic mopping with a tea towel while Katie said, "Gerard, this is Professor Lucy Quinn…Lucy, this is Professor Gerard O'Brien."

"Very pleased to meet you," said Gerard. Lucy was at least four inches taller than he was, and he found himself addressing her bosom. "Katie's been telling me how you saved her from drowning. I'm very impressed."

Lucy sat down. "Anybody would have done the same."

"Anybody who could swim like Flipper," Katie put in. "How about a drink?"

Isaac's was always noisy at lunchtime. It was a modern, starkly decorated restaurant that was popular with young Cork businessmen and tourists and middle-aged ladies who had finished their shopping. With the same self-protective instincts as Eamonn Collins, Katie had chosen a table in the alcove right at the back, so that she could see everybody who came in.

"Katie tells me that your university funded your trip here specially," Gerard remarked, with his mouth full of soda bread. "I wish Cork was so generous. They won't even send me to Wales to look at Celtic stone circles."

"Oh, those skeletons at Knocknadeenly were averyrare discovery," said Lucy. "As I was telling Katie, the only other similar case we know about happened in Boston in1911. But what really had my department head all fired up was the fact that somebody was actually trying to complete the ritual-you know,now, today."

"Have you got any more out of Tómas Ó Conaill?" Gerard asked Katie.

"I'm planning to interview him again this afternoon, but I'm still waiting for DNA tests and some other technical evidence."

"What do you know about him? It said in the paper that he was a Traveler."

"He calls himself a Traveler, yes. He's the thirteenth son of a very well-known family of Travelers who spend most of their year in Galway and Donegal. But he had a fight with his father when he was fifteen or sixteen. Blinded him in one eye. After that he went off on his own. He likes to think of himself as the King of All the Travelers, but I don't think you'll find many other Travelers who agree with him."

"How does he know so much about Celtic ritual? Presumably he never went to school."

"No…but he told me once that he was taught to read by a schoolmaster who used to live close to the family's halting site near Claremorris, and that the schoolmaster was also a great supporter of Celtic traditions and the Gaelic language. Tómas Ó Conaill knows everything there is to know about the old superstitions and the old druidic rituals. He seems to believe that he's some kind of chosen descendant of the High Kings of Ireland, and that he possesses supernatural powers.

"Apart from that, he can be very rational at times. He can be charming. He can be amusing. Even-God knows-seductive."

Gerard and Lucy shared a bottle of Chilean white wine. Katie would have given a week's overtime for a double vodka, but she stayed on the mineral water. Their orders arrived: Gerard had chosen a mixed-leaf salad with Clonakilty black pudding, while Lucy had tempura prawns and Katie had grilled monkfish with clapshot-potato and rutabaga mashed together.

"This is very good," said Lucy. "Gerard-Katie said that you had some new research material from Germany.Excitingresearch material, apparently."

Gerard blushed. "Yes, wellIthink it is, anyway. I managed to get in touch with a famous criminal historian in Osnabrück, Dr. Franz Kremer. He's written several books about notorious mass murders in Germany and Belgium and Poland."

Gerard produced a spring-bound notebook filled with rounded, almost childish writing. "I talked to Dr. Kremer on the phone for almost an hour. He said that between the summer of 1913 and the spring of 1914, more than a hundred and twenty women went missing from towns around Münster, in Westphalia. Before their disappearance, several of them were seen talking to a man dressed in a gray Wehrmacht uniform. Nobody knew who he was. No army units in the area reported any of their soldiers unaccounted for. By Christmas, 1913, the local newspapers were calling himDer Graue Geist…the Gray Ghost."

"My God," said Lucy. "I can't believe it." But all Katie could think of was the whisper that she had heard in her dreams."Beware the Gray-Dolly Man,"and of what "Knocknadeenly" meant in English.The Hill of the Gray People.

Gerard forked too much salad into his mouth, and had to spend a moment getting all the leaves under control. At last he said, "By chance-on June 4, 1914-a priest in the town of Drensteinfurt happened to see a man in gray army uniform talking to his cook on the opposite side of the town square. The man and the housekeeper left the square together and the priest followed them around the corner where the man had a motorcar parked. The two of them drove off together and of course the priest couldn't follow them, but when his housekeeper failed to return that evening he informed the police.

"Three days later a gamekeeper found the car in a wood. The area was searched with dogs for any sign of the cook, and after only two or three hours the dogs discovered a clearing in the woods where the soil had been disturbed, although it had been cleverly camouflaged with pine needles and twigs. The police dug up the clearing and discovered the bones of ninety-six women, all fleshless. And here's the cruncher-the thighbones of every one of them had been pierced, and every thighbone hung with a little lace doll full of fishhooks and nails and other assorted ironmongery."

"So," said Lucy. "The Gray Ghost had been trying to raise up Morgana."

"Without much success, by the sound of it," Katie put in. "Ninety-six skeletons, divided by thirteen-that means he tried seven times, and was halfway through his eighth attempt. Why do you think he persisted, if the ritual obviously didn't work?"

"Who says it didn't work?" said Lucy. "For all we know, Morgana may have given him everything he asked for, only he kept coming back for more."

"Well, yes," said Katie, trying not to sound schoolmistressy. "But that's only if you're prepared to accept that witchcraft actually works."

Lucy gave a little shrug. "When it comes to Celtic mythology, Katie, I try to keep a very open mind. Especially when it comes to fairies."

"All right, then," Katie conceded. "What happened next?"

Gerard finished the last slice of black pudding and earnestly wiped the salad dressing from the bottom of his plate with a piece of bread. "The police waited and two days later the man came back to collect his car. He was arrested and taken to Münster police headquarters. The police chief interrogated him for three days but he refused to say anything except that his name was Jan Rufenwald and that he was an engineer from Hamm. He knew nothing about any missing women and he denied owning the car."

"Sounds familiar," said Katie.

"Anyway," Gerard went on, "Jan Rufenwald was supposed to appear in front of the courts in Münster on July5, 1914, but by that time Germany was in a state of turmoil because they were already at war with France and they were only days away from going to war with Britain, and for one reason and another his appearance was delayed. On July 7 he managed to escape from his holding cell at the courtroom and he was never seen again.

"A witness said that he saw a woman in a brown dress leaving the court building by way of a staircase at the back. My doctor friend guesses that Jan Rufenwald had a female accomplice who helped him to escape. Either that, or he got away dressed in women's clothing.

"There was a huge manhunt for him, all over Westphalia. The newspapers called him 'The Monster of Münster,' and they circulated an artist's impression of him as far away as Hannover in the east and the Dutch border to the west. It was then that the police in Recklinghausen said that a man answering Jan Rufenwald's description had been seen around the town in the late summer and autumn of 1912, at a time when over seventy women vanished; and the police in Paderborn recognized him as a 'Willi Hakenmacher' who had been on their wanted list since the winter of 1911, when literally uncountable numbers of women of all ages disappeared without trace. The investigation was disrupted by the war, and eventually discontinued, but contemporary police records suggest that Jan Rufenwald was probably responsible for the murders of at least four hundred women, maybe even more."

Lucy had been listening to all of this intently, and when Gerard had finished she sat back and said, "Incredible. Absolutely incredible."

"You know something about this?" Katie asked her.

"It's extraordinary. It's exactly like the Callwood murders that I was telling you about. I mean, we could be talking about the same guy."

"These were the murders in Boston that you were talking about?"

"That's right. Thirty-one women ended up missing from all over the Boston area. Before they disappeared, several of them were seen by eyewitnesses talking to a man in an army uniform."

Gerard said, "You're right. Thatisextraordinary."

"Think about it-this was well before the days of radio or television or the Internet. You didn't get copycat behavior spreading around the world in a matter of hours."

"Was this fellow ever caught?"

"Almost. He got into a conversation with a young woman called Annette Songer in a grocery store in Dedham, which is a suburb southwest of the city. Annette Songer was a spinster who had something of a reputation for reading people's horoscopes, so she fitted the pattern of women who have to be sacrificed to Mor-Rioghain-'a fortune-teller with no children.' Jack Callwood offered to give her a ride home. She had a lot to carry so she accepted. But as soon as she got into the car he drove off in the opposite direction and refused to turn around. She struggled with him and he hit her several times, breaking her jaw. There was a long report about it inThe Boston Evening Transcript.

"Annette Songer pretended to be unconscious, and when the car stopped and the man got out to open a gate, she climbed out and ran away. She went immediately to the police, but by the time they arrived at the house where the man had been staying, he had gone. The man's landlady said that he had always been quiet and polite and always paid the rent on time, but 'he had a look in his eye which made my heart beat slower.'

"Police searched the house and dug up the garden. They found the bones of at least twenty women, all with little rag dolls in their thighbones.

"They set up one of the biggest dragnets ever seen…just like the manhunt in Germany, from the sounds of it. Remember that there were very few cars on the roads in those days, so it wasn't easy for Callwood to get away. He was spotted in New London, Connecticut, heading west, and then again in Westport. A police roadblock was set up and he had to abandon his car.

"Police tracked him as far as New York, and his picture was published on the front page of every Manhattan newspaper. On May 2 a clerk from the Cunard office on Fifth Avenue came forward and said that a man looking like Jack Callwood had bought a ticket from him on the morning of June 29, to sail to Liverpool, England, on May 1.

"A wireless message was sent to the ship he was sailing on, and the captain ordered a thorough search, but there was no sign of Callwood anywhere on board. Five days later, when the ship was sailing around the southern coast of Ireland, she was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank with the loss of more than a thousand lives."

"My God," said Katie. "The Lusitania."

"Yes," said Lucy.

"So even if he was on board-" Gerard began.

"That's right. Every surviving passenger was accounted for, and Callwood wasn't among them. The New York police even asked the Irish Constabulary in Cork to interview every male survivor, just to make absolutely sure that Callwood hadn't taken on a false identity."

"And he definitely wasn't among them?"

"No. I've seen photographs of every single man who escaped the sinking of the Lusitania. Not one of them even remotely fits the description of Callwood that was given to the Dedham police by Annette Songer, his landlady, and about ten other people who knew him."

Katie slowly shook her head. "Yet less than five months later, the first of eleven women was abducted in North Cork and murdered according to exactly the same ritual that Callwood had been carrying out in Boston."

"And the same ritual Rufenwald had been carrying on in Germany," put in Gerard. "And don't forget-the lace that the dolls were made out of, that was German."

"Rufenwald, Callwood, and then our mystery British soldier," said Katie. "It's hard to believe that they weren't the same man, isn't it?"

They talked some more over coffee. Then Katie looked at her watch and saw that it was almost a quarter of two. "Listen, I have to go. But thank you, both of you. This has been very instructive. I'm going to initiate some more checks with the Boston police and the German police. Gerard-maybe your Dr. Kremer can help you to find some records of where the German victims were discovered, and who they were. Lucy-what would you like to do?"

Lucy was busy refreshing her pale coral lipstick. "I think I need to go back to Knocknadeenly and make a thorough examination of the place where Fiona Kelly's body was found. I need to know what its exact magical significance is… whether it lies on a ley line or not…whether it was once a burial mound or a Druid circle…and if there are any local ghost stories about it."

"That's fine. I'll make sure you get an identity badge. It's still officially a crime scene, so they won't let you in there, otherwise."

"Oh… one thing, before we go," said Gerard. "Another of my contacts in Germany e-mailed me a charming picture of Morgana, or Mor-Rioghain, or whatever you want to call her."

He opened his briefcase and took out a large brown envelope. He passed it over to Katie with a smile. Katie opened it and hesitated. "Go on," Gerard coaxed her. "She won't bite."

She slowly drew out a sheet of paper with a dark etching of Mor-Rioghain on it. The witch of witches was standing in a dark wood, holding up a long staff with a human skull on the top. Her face was smooth and pale and unnervingly perfect, and her lips were slightly parted, as if she were just about to speak. But-like Jack Callwood-there was something in her eyes that made Katie's heart beat slow. Something utterly remorseless. She wore an elaborate hat of black crow feathers, beneath which her hair was a mass of tangled curls, crawling with beetles and clustered with freshly hatched moths. Her decaying robes were pierced with hundreds of hooks and nails and metal pins.

"Sensational, isn't she?" said Lucy.

"You've seen this picture before?"

"Not that particular one, but plenty of others like it. They always say that when the Death Queen arrives at your bedside, you're so mesmerized by her beauty that you forget what she came for."

"Well, then, thank you," said Katie. "Maybe I should have a few hundred copies printed and send them out as Wanted posters."

45

After lunch she drove round to the Regional to spend twenty minutes sitting at Paul's bedside. He looked peaceful and untroubled, as if he were dreaming, and it was hard for her to believe that she couldn't shake his shoulder and wake him up.

"Oh, Paul, you poor dote," she said, holding his hand. "That was always your problem, wasn't it, getting out of your depth? You always thought you could wangle your way out of trouble, but this time you couldn't. Please open up your eyes, Paul. Please get better. I don't want you to spend the rest of your life like this."

There was a theatrical cough behind her, and a knock on the door. It was Jimmy O'Rourke, carrying a bunch of seedless grapes from Supervalu and a sprawling bouquet of mixed flowers.

"Hi, Katie, how're you doing? How's the patient today?"

"Still unconscious, Jimmy. He's going for a brain scan in half an hour."

"These are from everybody. It's a bit stupid, isn't it, bringing grapes to a fellow who's unconscious, but I suppose his visitors can always nibble on them."

"Thanks, Jimmy."

Jimmy dragged up a plywood chair on the opposite side of the bed. "Helookswell," he remarked. "I mean, he's got a good color on him, hasn't he?"

"It's impossible to say yet. It depends if his brain was starved of oxygen while he was under the water."

Jimmy nodded, and then he said cautiously, "Dermot was asking me about what happened. You know-why Dave MacSweeny should have tried to shove you into the river."

"I really don't know, Jimmy. Paul had been doing a few bits of business with Dave MacSweeny but as far as I can tell they got along well enough. Maybe he was trying to killme."

"This wouldn't have anything to do with Dave MacSweeny being crucified, would it?"

Katie shrugged. "It looks as if Eamonn Collins was probably responsible for that, but I doubt if we'll ever be able to prove it."

Jimmy chewed that over for a while, and then he said, "When you think about it, it must have been Paul that Dave MacSweeny was after nailing, not you. He must have been waiting close to your house, ready to follow Paul into the city. He wouldn't have known that Paul's car wasn't going to start and that you were going to come and get him, would he?"

"I suppose not. But if he was really intent on killing Paul, why didn't he simply go to the house and shoot him? Ramming somebody's car into the river isn't exactly a guaranteed way of getting rid of them, is it? Nor discreet, neither."

"Dave MacSweeny was always a lunatic. God knows what he was after."

Katie gave him a quick, prickly look. The way he said it, it sounded as if he knew very well what Dave MacSweeny had been looking for. Revenge, and punishment. Nobody was allowed to take Dave MacSweeny's property without asking him, and nobody could mess around with Dave MacSweeny's girlfriend, even if he regularly beat her up and broke her ribs and treated her like trash. Dave MacSweeny had lost his temper and paid the price for it, but Paul had been rash enough to provoke him.

"I'm not slow, Jimmy, and I'm a Cork girl, born and bred. Idoknow what's going on here, most of the time."

"All right," said Jimmy. "I'm just looking out for you, you know that."

Katie took hold of his hand with his big thick silver rings and squeezed it tight. She knew that Jimmy wasn't just sympathetic because Paul was in a coma, but because of their marriage, and because everything had fallen apart. You couldn't keep any secrets at Anglesea Street.

"Thanks, Jimmy," she said. Only three feet away from them, Paul continued to breathe, his eyes closed, and he even had a smile on his face, as if he were dreaming about Geraldine Daley, or winning on the horses at the Curragh, or who knew what a man like Paul would be dreaming about, to make him smile?

Siobhan opened her eyes and the man was standing by the window, looking out. There was a melancholy expression on his face, as if he were thinking about things that had happened a long time ago, and far away. The pain in Siobhan's legs had subsided to a dull, regular throb, and the room had stopped tilting up and down, and for the first time she could see the man clearly. He was wearing a heavy black sweater and black trousers. He reminded her of a stage magician that her father had once taken her to see, a man who had drawn long strings of scarves from out of his sleeves, and a black rabbit out of a black top hat.

Eventually the man turned away from the window. "Ah, you're awake. Would you like a drink of water? Or maybe a little something to eat?"

"Please…I want to go home now."

"Ah…if only you could. But sometimes destiny has other things in mind for us."

"Please. I don't want to die."

"Don't be in such a hurry. Death has its attractions, you know. Tonight you're going to experience the greatest pain that any human being is capable of suffering, and by tomorrow night you will be begging me to die,begging."

Siobhan said nothing, but closed her eyes again, and prayed to be somewhere else, or somebody else, anywhere and anybody, except here, and her.Please dearest Virgin save me, save me, take me away.

The man said, "I like you very much, Siobhan. Out of all the girls I've known, I think you have the greatest grace. The greatest radiance. They should make you a saint, you know. Saint Siobhan of the Fiery Red Hair. I shall have your hair woven into a locket, and I shall wear it always, for the rest of my life, against my chest, as a tribute to your ineffable composure."

"Why?" asked Siobhan, without opening her eyes.

"Why? Because you, Siobhan, are the chosen one. The thirteenth, and the last. You are thekey."

"Why?" Siobhan repeated.

"Because you have the hair, Siobhan, and the skills that the ritual calls for. Because you are very, very,verybeautiful, and you embody everything mystical and magical and mythological that makes Ireland the land it is, where the world of fairies is only a shimmer away from the world of men and women."

"Why?"

He hesitated, confused. "I'm sorry. I don't know what it is that you're asking me."

She opened her eyes and stared at him, and there was a wild look on her face that made him involuntarily jerk up his right hand, as if to protect himself. "Why do you have to hurt me like this?" she demanded, and her voice was unnervingly coarse, like Regan's, inThe Exorcist.

"Siobhan, Siobhan, you wouldn't understand, even if I tried to explain it to you. It's the only possible way that I can get what I need. Believe me, if there was any alternative at all-"

Tears began to slide down Siobhan's cheeks. "I feel sorry for you," she said. "I feel desperately sorry for you."

"You feelsorryfor me? Why?"

"Because, when you die, you're going to go to hell, for ever and ever. And you're going to feel like I'm feeling now, worse, and it won't ever end. Never."

The man said nothing for a while, but then he reached out and touched one of her tears with his fingertip. "The true spirit of Catholic sainthood," he said. "I may very well go to hell, Siobhan, but there's no doubt at all where you're going."

46

John Meagher's Land Rover was already waiting in the driveway when Katie arrived back home. She climbed out of her borrowed Opel Omega into the lashing rain, and hurried toward the porch. John got out and followed her. He was wearing a long black raincoat and she could see that he had taken the trouble to dress up in a shirt and necktie.

"I'm sorry if I'm late," she said. "I was visiting my husband in the hospital."

"I read about it in the papers. Is he going to be all right?"

She opened the front door and let him in. "They don't know yet. Technically he drowned."

"I'm sorry."

She hung up her coat and then she went through to the kitchen and let Sergeant out. Sergeant rushed out and did his usual overexcited dance and hurled himself up and down, but John laid the flat of his hand on the top of Sergeant's head, between his ears, and said, "Sssh, boy. Sssh. Time enough for prancing about in heaven, believe me."

Sergeant immediately calmed down, and whined in his throat, and slunk off back to the kitchen.

"Well," said Katie. "Who are you? The Mongrel-Whisperer?"

"My father taught me. When I was a kid I was terrified of dogs so he trained me to control them. It's an authority thing. If the dog knows that you won't tolerate any kind of stupid behavior, he'll behave himself."

"Let me take your coat."

Katie approached him and lifted his raincoat from his shoulders. For a moment they were close enough to kiss, if they had wanted to. He looked into her eyes and she looked back into his. "Do you know something?" he said. "The first time I saw you-when we discovered those bones-"

"What? I have to heat the soup up."

"I don't know. Maybe it's stupid. I felt that I'd met you before someplace."

"That's not stupid. Our identification experts will tell you that. There are certain facial characteristics that particular types of people have in common. I reminded you of someone else, that's all. I just hope that it was someone you liked."

"Well…it must have been."

They went through to the sitting room. "Do you want a drink?" Katie asked him. "I can't join you, I'm afraid. But I have some cans of Murphy's in the fridge. Or some wine, if you'd rather."

"Sure, a Murphy's would be good."

When she came back from the kitchen, John was standing in the far corner of the room, looking through the books on her bookshelf. "I wouldn't have had you down as somebody who liked Maeve Binchy," he said, putting back a well-thumbed copy ofTara Road.

"I'm an escapist," she admitted.

"Well, I can't say that I blame you, in your line of work. You must get to see some pretty sickening stuff, I'll bet."

"It's not so much that. It's seeing people at their worst, that's what gets to you, in the end. It's seeing how violent and stupid people can be. Sometimes it isn't easy to keep your faith in humanity."

John raised his beer glass. "Ah, well. Here's to faith."

Katie sat down on the end of the sofa. "You said you had something you wanted to say to me."

John nodded. "I've tried talking to my mother about it but you've seen what she's like, bless her. And Gabriel, well…he's not exactly the sharpest tool in the box. The trouble is, I wonder if I'm losing it. I mean, can youtellwhen you're losing it?"

"I don't exactly know what you mean."

"It's that farm. It's really grinding me down. Day after day, week after week, month after month. It's milking and plowing and digging and fence mending and getting soaked to the skin and all I can hear in the middle of the night is the rain beating against the windows and my mother snoring like a walrus. You don't know what I'd give to go out in the evening and meet my friends at Salvatore's and fill my face withlinguine pescatora.

Katie couldn't help smiling; but John said, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't whine. I chose to come here and do it, but I genuinely think that I'm losing my marbles."

"Sit down," said Katie. "Have some more Murphy's, it's good for what you're suffering from."

John sat on the far end of the sofa, next to the pink-dyed pampas grass. Sergeant came back from the kitchen and stared at him balefully for a while, but then he made a squeaky sound in his throat and trotted to his bed.

John said, "I saw something."

He hesitated for so long that Katie said, "Go on. What was it?"

"I'm not entirely sure. I was putting the tractor back in the shed when I thought I saw somebody standing in the field up by the woods, in the place where I found that young girl's body."

"Did you call the garda on duty?"

John shook his head. "He was right down by the front gate. It just seemed easier to go up the field myself. I thought it was probably somebody taking a short cut. Some of the young kids on the estate do that sometimes, to get to the main road."

"And?"

"I climbed over the fence and walked up the field. The sun was just going down behind the trees and it was shining right in my eyes. But when I got nearer I could see that it was a woman, wearing a long gray coat, with a gray shawl around her shoulders, or a pashmina, something like that."

He paused again, and then he said, "I called out to her. Like, 'excuse me, but nobody's allowed in this field at the moment.' And it was then that she disappeared."

"You mean she walked away?"

"No. She literally disappeared. She faded. Very gradually, so that I could still see the faint outline of her when I was only twenty or thirty yards away. But by the time I reached the place where she had been standing, she had completely vanished. No trace of her. No footprints, nothing."

"What did you do?"

"What could I do? There was nobody there."

"You didn't tell the garda on duty?"

"What was the point? He would have thought that I was off my head. That's what I'm saying. Maybe Iamout of my head."

"So why did you decide to tell me?"

"Because I couldn't keep it to myself and I couldn't think of anybody else to tell. My mother thinks there's something strange about me because I don't eat mashed potatoes with my knife."

Katie looked at John for a long time without saying anything. The way she saw it, there were several possible explanations. One, he was simply trying to attract her attention, because he liked her, and this was the only way he could think of doing it. Or two, he had seen nothing more ghostly than the setting sun, shining on the early-evening mist. Or three, he was suffering from delusions, brought on by isolation and depression and stress.

"What doyouthink it was?" she asked him.

"I don't have any idea. I guess it could have been a mirage or an optical illusion."

"But you don't think it was?"

"No. I was looking at it for far too long and it was far too-I don't know,substantial. It wasn't just a trick of the light or a puff of smoke."

"Nobody could have simply lain down in one of the furrows so that you couldn't see them?"

"I told you. She didn't fall over, or drop down, or anything like that. Shefaded."

Katie had another long think. Then she said, "Can I show you something?"

"Sure, if it explains what I saw."

She went to the front door, but as she did so the doorbell chimed. She opened it up and there was a young man in oil-stained blue coveralls with a Maxol badge on his pocket. He had curly fair hair and a smudge of oil on his upturned nose and there was no mistaking that he was Patrick Logan's son.

"Superintendent Maguire? Declan Logan. My father called me to look at your car so."

"That's great. Thanks for coming. I don't have any idea what's wrong with it but my husband couldn't get it started."

"My dad said that your husband was in the hospital. I'm sorry to hear about that."

"Thanks. Look-here are the keys."

Katie went outside, and Sergeant followed her, intently sniffing at Declan's trainers. His bright yellow Transit van was parked by the front gate, with Declan Logan Auto Doctor emblazoned in red on the side. Katie went to her car and took out the picture of Mor-Rioghain that Gerard had given her.

"Come on, Sergeant," she called. "You're being a pest."

"Oh, he's grand," said Declan, slapping Sergeant's flanks. "I like dogs."

Katie went back into the sitting room. "Would you like another beer?" she asked John.

"I'm okay, thanks. You have to keep your wits about you when you're operating farm machinery. Especially when you're going nuts, like me."

"Here," said Katie, sliding the drawing of Mor-Rioghain out of the envelope. "Does this look anything like the woman you saw?"

John studied the picture intently. Then he nodded. "It could have been. Obviously she wasn't so distinct. But, yes."

He handed the picture back. Outside, they could hear Paul's Pajero whinnying as Declan tried to start it up. Katie opened her mouth to say something, but suddenly the air in the sitting room became strangelycompressed, like an airplane at high altitude. There was a deep creaking sound, and Katie immediately knew what was happening. She threw herself across the sofa and dragged John onto the carpet, just as the windows exploded with an earsplitting bang, and the curtains flew up in a blizzard of glittering glass.

Clouds of thick black smoke rolled in through the window, so that Katie could barely see from one side of the room to the other. Thousands of cushion feathers drifted down on top of them, as well as shreds of burning Dralon and fragments of sponge rubber.

John struggled to sit up. He said, "What the hell was that?" but then he realized that he was deafened, and he couldn't even hear what he was saying.

"Bomb," Katie shouted at him. "Don't get up. Stay where you are. There might be another."

"Bomb?I didn't think that happened in the Republic."

"Just stay where you are."

She stood up. The smoke was clearing, and through the frameless window she could see Paul's Pajero blazing in the middle of the driveway. Declan's van was parked right next to it, connected by jump leads. The Pajero's roof had been blown upward into an extraordinary question-mark shape. The driver's door was lying in the herbaceous border by the front gates, and Declan was lying next to it, with his hand still clutching the handle. Katie could see blood.

She heaved aside a tipped-over armchair and ran out into the rain. John followed her. The air was pungent with the smell of wet laurels and exploded Semtex.

"Told you to stay where you were," snapped Katie.

"Look at him-this guy needs medical attention, and he needs it right now."

Katie rang Anglesea Street and called for an ambulance, a fire pump, and the bomb-disposal unit, as well as Liam Fennessy and Jimmy O'Rourke and eight other gardaí, no matter where they were or what they were doing.

"Stay well away from the car," she warned John, but he was already skirting around it. He crossed the lawn, which was scorched with streaks of black, and knelt down next to Declan in the flower bed.

Declan was quaking like a man suffering from an epileptic fit. His hair was cinder-black and sticking up on end. His face was blackened, too, and when John gently lifted his head, his right eye slid glutinously out of its socket and dangled on his cheek. But the worst blast damage was on his left side. His left arm was missing, so that his shoulder bone was gleaming through the bloody shreds of his sleeve, and his left leg had been blown just above the knee. Katie saw his leg, right in the middle of the road, with his neatly tied Adidas trainer still on it.

Blood was jetting out of Declan's femoral artery and darkening the soil beneath his leg. Without any hesitation, John pulled off his belt, tore back the tatters of Declan's overalls, and lashed the belt around his thigh, pulling it so tight that the blood stopped spurting almost at once. "Get me a towel," he told Katie. "We've got to stop his arm from bleeding, too. And blankets, to keep him warm. He's in serious shock."

Katie ran into the house and stripped blankets off her bed. When she came back out John had stripped off his coat and was using his bundled-up shirt as a pad to press against Declan's shoulder. Rain dripped from his hair and ran down his bare, muscular back.

"Here," she said, and gave him two bath towels. Then she covered Declan with blankets, and knelt over him to keep the rain off his mutilated face. The Pajero's tires were burning now, with a malevolent hissing noise, and there was a stench of rubber that made her eyes water and went right down her throat.

"How long before the ambulance gets here?" John asked her.

"They're very quick, mostly. But it depends where they're coming from."

"He won't make it unless we can treat him for shock."

"He'd be dead already if it wasn't for you."

"I did two years' training at San Francisco General Hospital. I was going to be a doctor."

They waited in the herbaceous border for another ten minutes, and then they heard the ambulance siren coming from Fota Island. Even before the ambulance appeared, they heard squad car sirens as well, five or six of them, and a fire pump.

Katie looked at John through the rain. Declan was still shuddering, and occasionally he let out a quick, surprised gasp. Then the ambulance pulled into the driveway, and the doors were opened up. A young paramedic laid a hand on her shoulder and said, "You're grand, Superintendent. We'll take it from here."

A garda gave her a hand and helped her up, and it was only then that she realized that she was shuddering, too, and that the tarmac drive, when she tried to walk across it, had turned to water.

47

After an hour Jimmy O'Rourke came into the sitting room, brushing the rain from his shoulders. "We've checked everywhere. Garage, shed. All through the house. There's no more booby traps that we can find."

"Does it look like the kind of device that Dave MacSweeny might have planted?"

"Well, let's put it this way, it doesn't look as if it was very professional. The bomb boys think they wired about half a pound of Semtex to the self-starter, but the connection may have been faulty. It was only when Declan put the jump leads on it that there was enough current to bridge the gap."

"God, I don't know how I'm going to break the news to Patrick."

Jimmy laid a hand on her shoulder. "I'll do it if you like. Patrick and I go back a very long way."

"No, you're all right. It's my job. And besides, I was the one who asked Declan to take a look at Paul's car, and it should have occurred to me that there was some good reason why it wouldn't start. That was what Dave MacSweeny was doing here yesterday. He wasn't waiting to follow us. He couldn't even have known that I was going to give Paul a lift. He was hanging around, the bastard, waiting to hear his bomb go off."

"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 smoldering, 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 tellmeto 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 formonths."

Katie took a deep breath. "I'm fine. I'll survive. Did we get the rest of those technical reports yet, from the cottage?" She turned to Liam.

"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 cell phone 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 youbelievein 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, haven'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 not 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 ball pen. "I'll have to interrupt here, Detective Superintendent. My client has admitted that he may have strayed into the bedroom, but that was onlyafterthe 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 offense. 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 floor mop. "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."

"Whereshe was killed, yes, but notwhen. 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 cooperation."

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, 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 to know about it."

"All right," she said, steering one-handed toward 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 green.

"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 cell phone onto the seat beside her, and waved her hand in acknowledgment 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 was right, and the legend of Mor-Rioghaindiddemand 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 feed store, 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 aPsychofactor 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.

Dr. O'Keeney came into the waiting room. He was a tall, rangy man with bulging eyes like Buster Keaton and hands that flapped around at the bottoms of his sleeves as if they didn't belong to him. He smelled of antiseptic and smoke.

"We've had the results of Paul's tests, Katie, and I have to be honest and tell you here and now that they're not very encouraging."

Katie felt cold. She had been right on the point of standing up, but now she remained seated, although she kept her back rigidly straight. Dr. O'Keeney had a largewart close to the side of his nose. She had always wondered why people didn't have warts removed, especially doctors.

"Paul's brain was deprived of oxygen for long enough to cause a considerable amount of damage. His disability isn't life-threatening, I have to tell you, but it is very unlikely that he will recover consciousness, and he is likely to remain in a vegetative state for the remainder of his life."

"He won't wake up?Ever?"

Dr. O'Keeney shook his head. "I don't know what's happening inside of his head, Katie, what thoughts he might be having, what dreams. But I don't think they could possibly be worse than the sort of existence that he would have to suffer if he were to come out of his coma, and try to live in the waking world. He would be unable to speak, unable to feed himself, doubly incontinent, but always conscious of his predicament."

"So what can I do?"

"Nothing, I'm afraid. I do have several other coma cases here, where parents and children sit with their afflicted loved ones, and talk to them every day, and play them their favorite music. It's always very well publicized when somebody recovers, but in my experience this very rarely happens. You'll have to face up to something very grim, Katie. To all intents and purposes, the Paul you knew died in the back of that car."

"What if he's aware?"

"He's not, I assure you."

"How can you be certain? You just said yourself that you didn't know what thoughts he was having."

"Katie, barring a miracle from God, he's lost to you forever. I'm very sorry."

She went alone into Paul's room and stood beside him. He looked deeply peaceful, as if he were simply sleeping after a long day's betting on the horses at Fairyhouse and too much Guinness. She knew now that her life had changed forever, and that the dreams she had harbored when she was young were never to be. She felt as if her dreams had been a curse on everybody who came into contact with her, even her dog.

She didn't kiss him, couldn't. What was the point? Instead she walked out through the swing doors and into the parking lot where it was raining in torrents and ran to her car. She started the engine, then she turned it off again. Then she picked up her cell phone and dialed Jury's Inn.

"Lucy? Lucy, it's Katie Maguire. Do you mind if we meet?"

49

As she pulled away from the Y-junction at Victoria Cross, a pickup truck came right through the lights opposite The Crow's Nest pub and collided with her nearside passenger door. The truck wasn't going fast, but the noise was tremendous, and Katie's car was pushed sideways across the road so that her rear offside bumper was hit by a hackney coming in the opposite direction.

She climbed out into the pouring rain. The pickup's wheel arch had become entangled with hers, and when the driver tried to reverse there was a crackling, groaning sound of metal and plastic.

Turning up her collar, she walked around to the driver's door and held up her badge.

"Oh feck," said the driver. He was a young man with a shaven head and earrings and a donkey jacket with orange fluorescent patches on it.

"You went right through a red light without stopping," Katie told him. "I want your name and address and the name of your insurance company."

"I'm sorry, my girlfriend's having a baby and I was trying to get home quick."

"I don't care if the hounds of hell are after you, you could have killed somebody, driving like that."

She called the traffic department at Anglesea Street and then ordered the pickup driver to pull in by the side of the road. Her car was still drivable, even though the tire chafed against the twisted wheel arch with a chuffing sound like maracas. By the time a squad car had arrived and she had redirected two miles of congested traffic, she was soaked through, and trembling with cold.

"Not your week, Superintendent," said Garda Nial O'Gorman, climbing out of the squad car and putting on his cap.

Lucy was waiting for her in the bar, at a table by the window, working on her laptop. She was wearing a fluffy white rollneck sweater and black leather trousers. "My God," she said, when Katie walked in. "What happened to you?"

"Minor car accident, that's all. Nobody hurt, nothing to worry about."

"You're drenched. Do you want a drink?"

"I'm still on duty, but I'll have a coffee maybe."

She sat down. Through the window she could see the lights of Western Road and the glossy black river, sliding by. "What are you working on?" she asked, nodding at the laptop. "Are you making any progress with this Mor-Rioghain thing?"

"A little," said Lucy. "I went up to Knocknadeenly again this morning and had a look at the site by the wood. There's no doubt that it's the sort of place that would have had great magical significance in druidic times. There are Celtic stone markers at Ballynahina to the south, at Tullig to the west, at Rathfilode Cave to the east, and at the megalithic tomb at Kilgallan to the north. If you draw lines from each of these locations, they converge precisely on Knocknadeenly, practically down to the meter. Then of course we have Iollan's Wood, which is a natural gateway through to the Invisible Kingdom."

Katie was trying to listen, but Lucy's voice was beginning to echo, and she felt as if she were not really there, and were looking at Lucy through the eyeholes in a mask.

Lucy said, "I've already found two early poems by a local filí which mention Mor-Rioghain in the context of Knocknadeenly. One of them talks about 'the frantic death-dancing of thirteen woman on the hill of the gray people,' and it also mentions 'the woman with living hair who comes from the land beyond the land.'"

She hesitated, and said, "Katie-are you all right? You're looking very white."

"I'm grand. Cold, I think, that's all. And tired. I had some bad news about Paul this afternoon."

Lucy took hold of her hand. "Tell me," she said.

"It seems as if he's never going to-" She stopped, and puckered her lips. She couldn't make her throat work.

"Take your time. It seems as if he's never going to what?"

"The doctor said that-" She waved her hand, trying to pull herself together, trying to explain herself. But then she couldn't stop the tears from running down her cheeks and she couldn't stop herself from sobbing.

The waiter came up with her coffee, but Lucy said, "That's all right, forget it, this lady's kind of upset. Come on, Katie, you come up to my room with me and lie down for a while. You're shaking like a leaf."

Lucy helped her up from her chair and led her across the bar and she didn't resist. Just at the moment, after everything that had happened, she had no more resistance left. Even her pride and her natural determination and her strict Templemore training couldn't protect her from grief.

They walked upstairs to Lucy's first-floor room and Lucy held her hand all the way. Room 223 was plain but it was warm and comfortable, with beige walls and a double bed with a rust-colored bedspread. Lucy drew the curtains and then she pulled down the covers.

"Here," she said, and helped Katie out of her sodden coat. "God, even your blouse is wet. Listen-why don't you let me run you a bath, that'll warm you up."

"You don't have to go to any trouble."

"What are friends for? You'd do the same for me, wouldn't you?"

"All right, a bath would be very welcome, thanks."

Lucy brought Katie a white toweling robe from the bathroom and then started running the water. Katie sat on the side of the bed and undressed very slowly. She felt aching, exhausted, and disoriented, as if she had tumbled down six flights of stairs and knocked her head at the bottom.

"I hope you like Chanel No 5 bath foam," Lucy called out. "It does wonders for the skin."

"I usually use whatever's on special offer at Dunnes Stores."

"There," said Lucy, coming out of the bathroom. "You have a good long relaxing soak and I'll hang your blouse on the air conditioner."

Katie climbed into the bath and sat there for a long time staring at nothing at all. She wanted to empty her mind of everything. Of struggling to escape from her car, as it sank backward into the river. Of Declan, shuddering in the flower bed with half of his leg missing. Of Sergeant, a Daliesque nightmare hanging in the trees. Of Paul, on his long dark journey to the end of his life. Of little Seamus, cold as ice.

"Everything okay?" said Lucy.

"Fine, thank you, yes. This bath smells gorgeous."

"You know what my mother used to say to me? She said, sometimes you just have to admit to yourself that you've had enough, you know? Sometimes you just have to say, I can't cope, I can't fight this anymore. I have to give in."

Katie nodded, even though Lucy couldn't see her. She picked up the facecloth from the side of the tub and it was then that she really started to cry. It hit her so unexpectedly that she couldn't believe she was doing it, and she was actually cross with herself for sobbing. But the crosser she got, the more she cried, until she was leaning forward with her nose almost touching the bubbles, her mouth dragged down, her throat aching with self-pity.

Lucy tapped gently at the door. "Katie? Are you all right?"

Again, Katie nodded, but she couldn't speak.

"Katie? You're not crying, are you?"

Lucy hesitated for a moment and then she opened the door. "Oh, Katie," she said. She knelt down beside the bath, rolled up the sleeves of her sweater, and put her arms around Katie's shoulders. "Katie, you poor darling. Everybody expects you to be so strong, don't they? They forget that you're human, like all the rest of us."

She kissed Katie on the cheek, twice, in the way that a mother would kiss a weeping child. Then she said, "You relax. I'm going to wash your hair for you and massage your back and you'll feel ten times better, I promise you."

Katie sat without saying a word as Lucy unhooked the shower attachment and wet her hair. She worked shampoo into her scalp with a strong circular movement and the feeling was so soothing that Katie found herself closing her eyes.

"I always wash my hair whenever I'm feeling tired or depressed or hungover," said Lucy. "I wash my hair and then I sit down and eat a whole bar of chocolate. Like, if nobody else is going to pamper me, then why not pamper myself?"

She rinsed Katie's hair and then she took a handful of body shampoo and started to massage her neck muscles and her back.

"That's wonderful," said Katie. "Where did you learn to do that?"

"My boyfriend used to work for Gold's Gym. He taught me massage and reflexology and all kinds of tricks that you can do to relax yourself."

With her thumbs, she located all of the knots of tension down Katie's spine, and loosened them. "I could do with more of this," said Katie.

"You really areincrediblytense," Lucy told her. "It's like your whole body is wound up tight, like a clock spring."

"Do you still see him?"

"Who?"

"The boyfriend who taught you how to massage people."

Lucy shook her head. "I'm afraid I've never been very lucky with men. Either I frighten them, or else they see me as some kind of challenge. I guess it's the penalty you pay for being tall and well educated."

"Better than being small and bossy, like me."

"It's your job to be bossy, isn't it?"

"It's not my job to be obnoxious."

Lucy massaged her neck and her upper back. Katie kept her eyes closed and she could almost feel her stress dissolving into the bathwater. Then, without any hesitation, Lucy squirted more body shampoo into her hand and started to massage her breasts.

Katie thought,Holy Mary, what's she doing?She opened her eyes and stared at Lucy but Lucy looked completely calm, as if this was a natural part of the massage. She gave Katie a friendly little smile and Katie thought that if she tried to pull her hands away she would look like a prude. This was a woman, massaging her, that's all, and even if she hadn't been expecting her to touch her breasts, it didn't seem to be intended as a sexual advance.

Lucy squeezed and caressed her shampoo-slippery breasts and Katie dared herself to close her eyes again, and relax, and simply enjoy what Lucy was doing. Lucy came from California, after all, and she knew that American women were much more at ease with nudity than most convent-educated Irish women. God, if only Sister Brigid could see me now.

"You should do this yourself, at least once a week," said Lucy. "It helps to firm your breasts and stimulate your breast tissue, and of course it's important to check for lumps."

Katie said nothing. The sensation of having her breasts massaged was beginning to arouse her, especially when Lucy pulled gently at her nipples and rolled them between her fingers. It had been a long time since anybody had touched her as lovingly as this, as if they really cared about her. She began to think that if she allowed Lucy to carry on, she might even be able to reach an orgasm, simply from having her breasts caressed.

But then Lucy said, "Come on, now, you don't want to get cold," and kissed her on the forehead. She pulled the plug and helped Katie to climb out of the bath and wrap a towel around herself.

When Katie was dry, Lucy poured them both a whiskey from the minibar and they lay side by side on the bed, talking. Katie felt as if she could lie there forever.

"You know, I don't think I've ever had a really close woman friend," said Lucy. "I guess it's because I getso-o-obored by women's conversation. All they want to talk about is their repulsive children, or their husbands' careers in accounting, or how to make a tantalizing casserole out of leftover turkey."

Katie smiled. She felt warm now, and much more peaceful, and she realized that while Lucy's massage had been disturbingly intimate, it must have been the kind of hands-on sisterly gesture that California women considered to be perfectly natural. Just because Sister Boniface at Our Lady of Lourdes would have been scandalized.

She said, "I used to have some wonderful friends at school, but most of them are married now, with seven kids. One of them's a teacher at a special school in Kilkenny, and one went to Dublin to sing in a choir, but the rest of them fell pregnant as soon as they'd finished their leaving certs, or even before."

She turned to Lucy. "Did you ever think about getting married?"

Lucy shook her head.

"Children?"

"One day, maybe, if things work out the way I want them to."

"Do you know, I'm not sure what I'm going to do now, with Paul in a coma. I'm still going to be married, aren't I? But how can you be married to somebody who's never going to wake up?"

Lucy touched her bare shoulder. "He's gone, Katie. You're going to have to get used to the idea."

"I suppose so. But it's hard."

They lay in silence for a long time. Katie closed her eyes and felt that she could easily drift off to sleep. But after a while Lucy said, "This guy Tómas Ó Conaill. Do you really think that you're going to get a conviction?

Katie opened her eyes and blinked at her.

"You have a whole lot of evidence, don't you? The fingerprints, the footprints."

Katie said, "Well, you're right. The circumstantial evidence is very strong, and Ó Conaill's got a bad reputation, but still-I don't know-something doesn't quite fit. He said that Mor-Rioghain could only be raised by a witch, a woman. Yet our eyewitness report suggests that Fiona Kelly was almost certainly abducted by a man, and Dr. Reidy says that the physical strength required to kill her and cut her up would have been way beyond a woman's capabilities. Not only that, I've been reading through the FBI profiles, and it's extremely rare for a lone woman to be a serial killer, and almost unheard-of for a woman to be a serial killer with any kind of mythical or fantasy motive."

"So you think itcouldhave been a partnership?"

"It's a possibility. Especially since we still haven't been able to find Siobhan Buckley, and Mor-Rioghain needs one more sacrifice before she can make her appearance."

"You're beginning to sound as ifyoubelieve in Mor-Rioghain."

"I'm simply trying to think like our killer, that's all. Or killers.Theybelieve she exists, and because of that, I have to believe in her, too."

"And do you have any suspicions about who they might be?"

"John Meagher told me that he actually saw Mor-Rioghain. Or a figure of some kind, anyway, standing in the field where he found Fiona's body."

"You're kidding me."

"He swore it. He said he saw it as plain as the nose on his face."

"He's probably hallucinating. It must have been a hell of a shock, finding Fiona's body like that."

"All right. But when you think about it, John Meagher has a very compelling motive for wanting to raise up a spirit like Mor-Rioghain-a spirit who can help people to solve all of their problems. He hates farming, he's gradually going bankrupt. And his mother…well, she may not be a real witch but she certainly looks like one. And she might very well have known about the bones buried under the feed store. After all, she's been living at Meagher's Farm ever since she was nineteen years old."

"Do you have any material evidence that the Meaghers could have been involved?"

"None. We searched the fields, the outbuildings, the farmhouse. We even dug up the floor of the piggery."

"In that case, maybe you can get them to confess? Always presuming they did it, of course."

"Easier said than done. If they did it together, mother and son, it's going to be very difficult to break that kind of a relationship. I had to deal with a father-and-daughter situation a couple of years ago, in Carrigaline. The father got together with the daughter and crushed his wife's head under his tractor, with the daughter actually holding her mother down. I knew they'd done it, and they knew that I knew that they'd done it, but I could never get either of them to admit it, and they're still free today. Jesus, I saw them shopping in Roches Stores."

"Maybe I can help you," said Lucy, propping herself up on one elbow. "After all, I know just about everything there is to know about Mor-Rioghain, and how she's summoned up, and the rituals that have to be performed to persuade her to help you. If you and I can talk to the Meaghers together… well, there's a possibility that we could get them to slip up, isn't there?"

Katie shook her head. "I think you've been watching too many American cop shows."

"Unh-hunh. I hardly ever watch TV. I did a two-year postgraduate course in business psychology at UC Santa Cruz. I was trained to ask people the kind of questions that show them up for what they really are. Ambitious, boastful, deceitful, whatever. Whoever killed Fiona Kelly must have been supremely confident that he or she was going to get away with it, and when somebody's as confident as that they'reveryprone to making mistakes. They think that everybody else is stupid, that's why, so they don't bother to work on their stories."

Katie thought about that for a moment and then said, "All right. Why don't you and I take a trip up to Knocknadeenly tomorrow morning-say around ten?"

Lucy laid her hand on Katie's shoulder. "The main thing is-are you feeling better?"

"Thanks to you, yes."

"So what are you going to do now?"

Katie looked into her rain-gray eyes and she could almost have loved her. "I'm going home now, I suppose."

"I don't know why you don't close your eyes for an hour. It's only seven."

"No, I have to get back."

Lucy leaned over her, and stroked her hair, and traced a pattern around her eyebrows with her fingertips, and touched her lips. "Close your eyes. It'll do you good, I promise you. In the gym, they always make you take a short sleep, after a massage. Otherwise you walk out feeling like your brains have turned into scrambled eggs."

"It's only seven?"

"Six fifty-five, as a matter of fact."

There was no question that Katie felt overwhelmingly drowsy. She felt almost like Dorothy, wandering through the field of poppies inThe Wizard of Oz. The hotel room was warm and her toweling bathrobe was warm and there was Lucy lying next to her, shushing her and stroking her and touching her ears. She had never even allowed Paul to touch her ears, because they were sensitive, but Lucy tenderly ran her fingers around them as if they were winter roses, and she was coaxing the scent from their petals.

"I should go," she said, trying to raise her head.

Lucy gently pushed her back down onto the pillow. "An hour won't do you any harm. And you'll feel much better afterward, I promise you."

"You'll wake me up, though, at eight?"

Lucy kissed her on the lips. It was totally chaste, but somehow it made Katie feel as if she had discovered a whole new dimension, a mirror world, where everything was still familiar, but everything was back to front. It was alarming, in a way, but it was also strangely alluring.

"I'll wake you up, I promise you."

Katie lay still for two or three minutes with her eyes still open, but then it seemed as if it was impossible not to close them for a while-only for a minute. When she was a detective sergeant, sitting in a squad car watching a house all night, she had developed the capability of sleeping for three or four minutes at a time, and she knew that she could still do that now.

"You're warm enough?" asked Lucy, drawing the bed-cover over her.

"Myumh."

"You're comfortable?"

"Mmh."

"You're fast asleep?"

Silence.

Lucy sat in a chair beside the bed and watched Katie sleep for nearly an hour. She was just about to get up and take another whiskey from the minibar when Katie's cell phone rang. She picked it up from the coffee table and said, "What?"

"This is a message from Eircell. You have one new message in your mailbox. To listen to your message, press 1."

She pressed 1. It was Gerard O'Brien, and he sounded worried.

"Katie? It's Gerard again. Listen, Katie, I really need to talk to you very urgently. I don't want to tell you too much over the phone, but I think I've found out who Callwood was, and what happened to him; and I've also found out some very worrying information that might affect the way you decide to pursue this investigation, which is about the discreetest way I can think of to put it."

He paused, and then he said, "Call me back as soon as you can. I'll try leaving a message with Liam Fennessy, too."

Lucy kept the cell phone pressed against her ear. After a while, the Eircell voice said,"To erase your message, press 7."

She looked down at Katie, who was now deeply sleeping with her mouth open and one hand intermittently jittering on the pillow next to her as if she were trying to catch the smallest of dusty-gray moths.

50

Liam was about to leave his office when his telephone rang.

"Inspector Fennessy? It's the switchboard here. Is Superintendent Maguire there with you?"

"I haven't seen her all afternoon. Have you tried her mobile?"

"I have but she isn't answering. It's Professor O'Brien, he says he has something important to tell her but he can't seem to find her."

"Is he on the phone now? Put him on."

There was a sharp crackle, and then Gerard said, "Is that Inspector Fennessy? I've been trying to locate Superintendent Maguire."

"Anything I can help you with?"

"It's to do with these murders. I really have to talk to her urgently. I've tried her cell phone, I've tried calling her up at Meagher's Farm-"

"Professor, I'm assigned to this case, too. If you've found out anything critical-"

"Critical? It's absolutelycataclysmic. I'm waiting on some final bits and pieces of information from America, but when I get it, I think we may be able to solve the 1915 murdersandthe Fiona Kelly murder, too. And change the face of modern history, besides."

"Listen, Professor, I don't actually know where Katie is, right at this moment, but I expect that I'll be hearing from her sometime this evening. Why don't you tell me what it is that you've found out, and then I can pass it on to Katie when she calls me."

"Well, ah-I think I'd better try to talk to Katie first. I'm not sure she'd be-"

"We're talking about a murder inquiry, Professor O'Brien. If you have material evidence that could help to bring somebody to justice, then you ought to tell me about it, and you ought to tell me as soon as possible."

There was a long pause, and then Gerard said, "All right, then. But this is not a thing that I can explain to you over the phone."

"I'll come to see you, then. Where are you now?"

"I'm at home. Number 45 Perrott Avenue, up at the back of the university."

"Give me twenty minutes. There's one or two things I have to sort out first."

"All right, then. But if you do hear from Katie in the meantime, you'll let her know?"

"I will, of course."

• • •

He met Jimmy O'Rourke in the lobby. "Fancy an old beer, sir, before you go?" Jimmy asked him, blowing out cigarette smoke.

"Just a quick one. Have you seen Katie anywhere?"

"She went home, I think. Did you hear about her accident?"

"I did, yes. Christ. That must have been the end to a perfect day."

"She needs to take a week off, if you ask me."

Outside it was clattering with rain. Liam pulled on his overcoat and buttoned it up to the neck. "I always thought this job was too much for a woman. If Katie's not careful she'll be cracking up."

"I'd be careful, if I were you," said Jimmy. "She's a whole lot tougher than she looks."

"We'll see," said Liam. "Where do you want to go? O'Flaherty's?"

Katie was dreaming that she was walking through a slaughterhouse. Cattle carcasses were heaped on every side, and the whole building reeked of blood. Above her she could see a filthy skylight, clotted with fallen leaves, onto which the rain was ceaselessly pattering. Somewhere, music was playing, echoing and indistinct, as if a radio had fallen down the bottom of a well.The Fields of Athenry.

What are you doing here?somebody whispered, close to her ear.This is a place of death. This is where the Gray-Dolly Man lives, and cuts up people for his own purposes. Women and children, innocent and guilty. He cuts off their arms and legs and saws their screaming heads in half.

She turned a corner and found herself in another part of the slaughterhouse. The floor was glistening with rainwater and strewn with indescribable pieces of flesh and fragments of bone. Not far away a tall man in a strange five-cornered hat was standing at a metal table, feeding carcasses into a band saw. The saw let out a fierce, intermittent scream, and blood and bone was flying everywhere.

Cautiously, she approached him. She lifted her hand to touch him on the shoulder, but as she did so he slowly turned around. She was so shocked that she almost lost her balance. His face was not a face at all, but a mass of crawling beetles.

"Your turn next," he whispered, between lips that literally dripped with insects. "Your turn next, and you'd better believe it."

It was almost ten o'clock now and Gerard was growing irritable. He drew back the sitting-room curtains and peered down the street. It was raining like the Great Flood tonight and he was beginning to suspect that Inspector Fennessy might have decided that he would rather sit at home in front of the TV than visit a professor of Celtic mythology in a large, damp-smelling Victorian apartment that was crowded with books andNational Geographics and empty Bulmer's cider bottles. That was all right by him. He preferred to talk to Katie in any case. He just wished Inspector Fennessy could have had the common courtesy to call him and say so.

Gerard was wearing a partially unraveled sweater of thick green wool that he had bought on a walking holiday in Kerry, and a pair of baggy beige corduroy trousers. In his tiny study, the only light came from his computer, which he had switched on so that he could show Liam Fennessy what he had discovered.

He tried ringing Katie again. But her cell phone rang and rang, and then he was answered by the Eircell answering service. "If you want to rerecord your message…"

That was the limit. Katie couldn't be found and Liam Fennessy couldn't be bothered to turn up. Gerard believed that he had discovered one of the most dramatic secrets of the twentieth century and when it came down to it, nobody cared. He went back to his study to switch off his computer. He would take his golf umbrella, walk down to Reidy's Vault Bar in the Western Road, and console himself with a few pints of cider.

Just as he had clicked the computer off, however, his doorbell shrilled. He gave an old-womanly cluck of exasperation and went over to the intercom by the front door. "Inspector Fennessy?"

"It is, yes."Liam's voice was distorted and barely audible, as if he were standing too far away from the intercom. "It's raining buckets out here. Are you going to be after letting me in?"

"You're very late. You said twenty minutes. I was just about to go out."

"I'm sorry, but I'm here now."

Pressing the entry buzzer, Gerard went back to the study and switched on his computer again. While it booted itself up, he blew his nose on a tiny fragment of crumpled Kleenex. He had really wanted to tell Katie what he had discovered, and Katie alone. He had even rehearsed what he was going to say to her, and he knew how impressed she would have been. Perhaps then she would have looked beyond his plumpness and his combed-over hair and seen what he was really like inside: a man who had all the romance of a mythological hero from the days of Tara and Aileach and Cruachan. All the same, he supposed that it would still be fairly dramatic to tell Inspector Fennessy. "What I am about to reveal to you, Inspector, will change the way that historians think about the twentieth century forever."

There was a sharp knock at the door of his apartment, and then another. He called out, "All right-I'm coming!" and drew back the chain.

Before he could open it properly, the door was kicked with such force that it hit him on the side of the face and he fell back against the door of his coat cupboard. He said, "What-?" but before he could say anything else a man in a black coat and black balaclava stormed in through the door, seized his sweater, and threw him across the floor, knocking over his coffee table and all his empty Bulmer's bottles.

Gerard tried to stumble to his feet but the man grabbed his sweater yet again, lifting him almost off his feet, and slamming him against the door frame that led to his kitchenette. He felt his shoulder crack, and an indescribable pain in the small of his back.

"What are you doing?" Gerard shrilled at him. "For God's sake, you're hurting me!"

The man said nothing, but twisted one of his arms behind his back and pressed him against the wall beside his study door.

"The gardaí are coming!" gasped Gerard. "I just called them and they'll be here at any minute."

"Shut up," the man ordered him, calmly.

"I'm telling you the truth, I've got an appointment with Inspector Liam Fennessy. That's why I let you in. I thought you were him."

"And what were you going to tell him?"

"Nothing. Just some research I've been doing, that's all."

"Oh, yes? And what have you managed to find out?"

"Nothing-nothing important. For God's sake, you're hurting me."

"Something about those bones up at Knocknadeenly, was it? Something about Fiona Kelly?"

"I'm not telling you. You can do whatever you like, I-"

The man gripped Gerard between the legs and twisted. Gerard let out a cry of agony that sounded more like a tortured dog than a man. The man twisted him again, even more fiercely, and this time Gerard babbled out, "I found out who killed all those women! That's all!"

"And what about Fiona Kelly? Did you find out who killed Fiona Kelly?"

Gerard shook his head. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and if the man hadn't been holding him up he would have collapsed on the carpet.

"I'm asking you again. Did you find out who killed Fiona Kelly?"

"I don't know, I swear to God. The gardaí still think it was Tómas Ó Conaill but if it wasn't Tómas Ó Conaill then I don't know who it was."

"You'd better be telling me the truth."

The man released his grip, and Gerard crouched his way over to the sofa and lay down with his knees drawn up under him, coughing.

The man went into his study. All around Gerard's computer, his desk was heaped with books and magazines and spring-bound notebooks. The man picked up a notebook on top of the heap and said, "What's this? Does this have anything to do with it?"

"Gaelic legends," Gerard coughed, miserably "Preparation for a lecture on Friday. Nothing to do with-Knocknadeenly."

The man tossed the notebook aside and swept the papers onto the floor. Then he lifted up Gerard's computer and threw it against the wall. The monitor imploded with a dull bang and a shower of glass. The man stamped on the drive unit, denting the case and breaking the plastic inlets. Then he came back into the sitting room.

"Up, come on."

"What?"

"You heard me. Up!"

One-handed, he heaved Gerard off the sofa. He jostled him out of his front door, along the landing, and down the high Victorian stairs. Gerard did everything he could to resist, flapping his arms and trying to make his legs turn to jelly, but the man was frighteningly powerful, and when his legs collapsed beneath him the man simply picked him up by the scruff of his Kerry sweater and made him dance along like a puppet.

"Where are we going?" Gerard panted, as the man forced him along the corridor that led to the back door.

"Shut up."

He opened the back door and pushed Gerard out into the narrow courtyard at the back of the house. It used to be part of a larger garden but now it was all tarmacked over and Gerard used it to park his old red Nissan. Through the teeming rain, Gerard saw a large white car parked only inches away from his.

"Where are you taking me? You can't do this…this is abduction!"

"No it isn't," the man assured him.

"You can't take me away against my will!"

"I don't intend to. Now, shut up."

The man pulled Gerard to the back of the car. He unlocked the trunk and took out a length of nylon washing line. Then he kicked the back of Gerard's calves, so that Gerard dropped to the ground like a knackered cow.

"What do you want? Who are you? I haven't done anything to anyone."

The man said nothing. He bent over Gerard and deftly tied his wrists together. He cut the washing line with a craft knife, and then he looped Gerard's wrists over the car's towing hook.

"What the hell are you doing to me?" Gerard protested. "If you think you're going to drag me along the road-"

"I'm not," said the man. "So shut up."

"Look, I don't know what this is all about, but if there's something else that you're after…"

"Shut up," the man repeated. He took the rest of the washing line and tied it to Gerard's ankles. Then he knotted it tightly around a sign sayingResidents Parking Only.

Gerard lay on the ground and looked up at him, so terrified that he could hardly breathe.

"What are you going to do to me? Are you going toleaveme here?"

"Some of you, I expect."

"What are you going to do to me?"

The man stood over him for a while, and Gerard could see the raindrops sparkling all around his head, caught in the streetlights so that they looked like an endless shower of tiny meteorites.

"Help!" Gerard called, but he was so frightened that his throat closed up and he could only manage a hoarse whisper. "Somebody help me!"

The man went back around the car and climbed into the driver's seat. There was a moment's pause and then he started the engine.

"Help!"Gerard screamed."Holy Mary Mother of God somebody help me!"

The engine revved. Gerard twisted and grunted and struggled, trying to lift his wrists over the towing hook at the back of the car. If only he could stretch himself another inch, he was sure that he could get himself free. This man was trying to scare him, that was all, trying to warn him off. Somebody must have alerted him that he was asking questions about Jack Callwood, and that he was getting very close to the truth. It hadn't occurred to him before that the British government might have intelligence officers in the Irish Republic to make sure that nobody tried to look under any stones that they didn't want looked under, particularly from their colonial days, and the days of the Black and Tans and the Irish Volunteers.

"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 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 minibar?"

"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 meananything. 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."

"Mythologyisa kind of therapy, in a way. It's the way we understand our place in the world. There are no merrows andbean-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 beenthatcritical. 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 evensmelledempty.

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 cell phone 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 Powers 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 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 cell phone 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 her damaged Omega. She climbed in, brushed the rain from her shoulders, and checked herself in the sun visor 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 cell phone to call for backup. 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. 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 ball pen 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 amid a heap of litter over seven feet away, next to a loose, bloody tangle of knotted cord.

"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 cell phone 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 farther than the wall between 45 Perrott Street and the house next door, where they shuffled together like the scruffy punters in a Black-pool 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 Thisby 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.

Before he left, he bent down and picked up the notebook that was lying on the study floor. The first few pages were packed with hand-scribbled notes, mostly in Gaelic. He was about to toss it down again when his eye was caught by the word "íobairt," underlined five times. It was the Gaelic word for "sacrifice."

Jimmy picked up Gerard's leather armchair and sat down. He skimmed through the first few pages and realized that they were comments about Badhbh the Death Queen and Macha and Mor-Rioghain and how thirteen ritual killings could be used to call Mor-Rioghain out of the Invisible Kingdom. Jimmy's Gaelic wasn't as good as it should have been, considering that every garda was required to be reasonably fluent, and that eleven-year-old Jimmy O'Rourke had come second in Gaelic studies at Scoil Oilibhéir at Ballyvolane. All the same, he was able to understand most of it.

Gerard had written: "Several authoritative sources suggest that 'once Mor-Rioghain appears, it is necessary for the summoner to offer her a living woman as a final sacrifice to seal the bargain between them. This living sacrifice would have to be the wife of a chieftain, or the most influential woman in her community.' The reason for this apparently being that once she materialized in the mortal world, Mor-Rioghain did not want to have her influence challenged by any mortal woman.

"'The living sacrifice has to be tied and blindfolded. Her stomach has to be cut open, ready for Mor-Rioghain to step through from the Invisible Kingdom, so that when the witch conducting the sacrifice has recited the sacred texts, and Mor-Rioghain has made her appearance, she can drag out the victim's intestines and drape them around her shoulders as a cloak of her absolute authority.'"

"Yuck," said Jimmy, out loud. He flicked through the next few pages, recognizing words like "mort" for murder and "cloigionn" for skull, but there didn't appear to be anything particularly new in Gerard's notes. He had already taken out his cigarette packet when he reached a page that was written in English.

"I have talked to two different heads of department but the British Public Records Office in Kewinsist that they have no information about the disappearances of the eleven Irishwomen between 1915-1916!! But I contacted my old friend John Roberts at the Imperial War Museum and he was able to put me on to the relatives of the late Colonel Herbert Corcoran in Nantwich. Major Corcoran (as he then was) was attached to the Crown forces in Cork between 1914 and 1917, and was considered something of a spy hero in the style of William Stephenson ('A Man Called Intrepid').

"Major Corcoran had a Cork accent which assisted him in infiltrating the republican movement with considerable success. It was his information that led to the ambush of the First Cork Brigade at Dripsey in 1916 and the killing of nine IRA men. In the 1920s he wrote two books of memoirs,War of Whispers and Undercover in Ireland, although these were drastically censored by the British War Office, and amounted to little more than Boys' Own-type adventures. In fact he also wrote three fictitious stories for Magnet and Boys' Own, based on his adventures in Ireland.

"His family sent me these pages with the caveat that, in later years, Colonel Corcoran had become obsessive about his time in Ireland and was constantly writing rambling letters to the newspapers about it. In his last job at the War Office before he retired he was affectionately known as 'Crackers' Corcoran."

Jimmy turned the page, and there they were: curled-up fax-paper copies of Colonel Corcoran's diaries, stapled in a thick bunch to the back cover of Gerard's notebook.

Colonel Corcoran had written: "I pen these pages knowing that they will probably never be seen for a hundred years to come. However I feel that this story should be recorded in the interests of military history and of humanity.

"While I was operating as a senior intelligence officer in County Cork in the summer of 1916, I was contacted by Brigadier Sir Ronald French at the War Office. He informed me that the local commanding officer in Cork, Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Wilson, had been instructed to find and arrest a man who had been masquerading as a British officer in order to abduct Irishwomen.

"It appeared that this man had been offering women rides in his motorcar, after which they had never been seen again.

"After seven Irishwomen had disappeared, I was told to assist Lieutenant Colonel Wilson to apprehend the perpetrator at whatever cost, not for the sake of justice alone, but to ward off a very dangerous political situation, since the Irish republicans were accusing the British of taking and murdering their womenfolk in retaliation for several bomb attacks on military garrisons in Cork City.

"After the tenth abduction, I set up an ambush at Dillon's Cross, with Mrs. Margaret Morrissey, the wife of Sergeant Kevin Morrissey of the Signal Corps, bravely volunteering to act as a 'Judas goat.' The abductor approached her but as soon as he realized that she had an English accent he took to his heels. We almost succeeded in catching him, but our vehicle became bogged down in thick mud at Ballyvolane and we lost him over the fields. Two months later, however, after an eleventh abduction, I set up another ambush with an Irishwoman who worked in the garrison laundry, Kathleen Murphy. When we challenged him, the fellow escaped over a wall in York Hill but we had three army bloodhounds with us which followed his scent to a second-floor room in a boardinghouse in Wellington Road, where we arrested him.

"To begin with, he claimed that his name was Jan Vermeeling, and that he was a Dutch merchant seaman. However we discovered papers and letters under the floorboards of his room in the names of John or Jack Callwood, Jan Rufenwald and a birth certificate in the name of Dieter Hartmann, from Münster, in Westphalia. To my astonishment we also found a ticket that showed that he had arrived in Ireland from New York on the ill-fated Lusitania, and so must have been one of her seven hundred and sixty-five survivors. Yet when I checked the manifest of all the Lusitania survivors, and their photographs, Dieter Hartmann (or whatever his real name happened to be) did not appear to be among them.

"The answer to this conundrum, however, was in Dieter Hartmann's wardrobe. Apart from a British army uniform and a tweed jacket and several men's shirts, we found three women's dresses, as well as bodices and lace petticoats. At first we assumed that he was cohabiting with a woman companion, but then it occurred to me to look again at the photographs of those who had been rescued when the Lusitania was torpedoed. My intuition proved to be correct: among the survivors was a woman called Miss Mary Chaplain, described in the original list of survivors as a retired teacher from White Plains, New York. The face in the photograph, however, was of a much younger person than any retired teacher would have been, and on closer examination I realized that 'Miss Mary Chaplain' was in fact Dieter Hartmann in women's clothing and a wig.

"Under intensive interrogation, Hartmann eventually admitted that he had taken on the identity of 'Miss Mary Chaplain' to avoid detection on board the Lusitania. He confessed that he was wanted for questioning by the Massachusetts police and he was afraid that a wireless message might be sent to the Lusitania's captain to detain him. His fear was well founded because there had been a thorough search of the vessel in mid-Atlantic, although as 'Miss Mary Chaplain' he evaded discovery. He claimed that there had been some 'misunderstandings' between him and the Massachusetts police concerning the disappearance of several women.

"I contacted my superiors at the War Office and informed them that we had successfully arrested the man we believed to be responsible for abducting the eleven Irishwomen. I told them that I believed him to be Dieter Hartmann, although I also gave them his several aliases-Jan Rufenwald, John Callwood, and Mary Chaplain. I was satisfied that I would be able to send him for trial to the Cork County courts.

"Almost by return, however, I received a coded wireless message ordering me to execute Dieter Hartmann summarily and to 'eliminate' all evidence of his existence. I was to tell Colonel Wilson and all of the other officers and men who had assisted me that my investigation was now concluded and that they were not to speak of it again, in the interests of national security.