A Terrible Beauty

"With three NCOs I took Dieter Hartmann that same evening to a bog close to Glanmire, where he was made to kneel and shot once in the back of the head with a service revolver. He was buried very deep in the bog and we left no marker.

"I wondered for many years afterward why I should have been ordered to execute Dieter Hartmann so expeditiously and so secretly. After all, he was a German, and in my estimation at the time it would have been matchless propaganda for the Crown forces if we were credited with catching the man who had abducted and presumably murdered so many Irishwomen-not that we ever found their remains."

Jimmy lit up his cigarette and blew smoke out of his nostrils. Katie would love this stuff, and it would mean that they could wind up their own investigation, too, thank God.

Colonel Corcoran had written: "I thought no more about Dieter Hartmann until 1923, when I received a copy in the post of a rather sensational American magazine called True Crime Monthly.It had been sent to me without any attached comment whatsoever by Lieutenant Colonel Wilson, who was now working for a merchant bank in New York. The magazine carried an article about the notorious ritual murders of scores of women in Massachusetts. The man suspected to be responsible was 'Jack Callwood'-believed to be one of Germany's worst mass murderers, 'Jan Rufenwald.' The article said that Jack Callwood had booked passage on the Lusitania to escape from the United States and had almost certainly drowned with the other one thousand one hundred ninety-five victims-'so even if he escaped the electric chair, natural justice caught up with him.' But of course Colonel Wilson and I knew full well that Callwood had survived, and that it wasn't natural justice that had caught up with him-but us.

"My curiosity about the affair was once again aroused, and through old friends in naval intelligence I managed to obtain the records of the wireless signals that were sent to the Lusitania prior to her sinking. At the subsequent board of inquiry, the Lusitania's captain, William Turner, was blamed for ignoring the Admiralty's directives for evading German submarines. He said that he had slowed down because of patchy fog off the southern coast of Ireland, and that he had not understood that he was supposed to steer a zigzag course unless a U-boat was actually sighted.

"But here in the top-secret Admiralty files was the handwritten record of a wireless message which hadorderedhim to slow down and take a particular heading close to the Old Head of Kinsale. It was here that U-boats habitually lurked, waiting for British merchant ships, and he was intercepted by the German submarine U-20, under the command of Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger.

"On further investigation, which took me many months, and in which I naturally had to be extremely circumspect, I discovered from records at the War Office that a telephone message was made to the German Embassy in Dublin on the night of May 4, 1915, to the effect that Jan Rufenwald, alias Jack Callwood, was traveling on board the Lusitania to Liverpool. When the liner passed the southern coast of Ireland, they would have an opportunity to exact their revenge on the worst mass murderer that Germany had ever known.

"Of course I have no absolute proof. But even at the time, rumor was rife that the British intelligence services colluded in the sinking of the Lusitania as a way of provoking outrage against Germany in the United States (which had previously shown little interest in the war in Europe and had even been protesting against the British blockade of German ports).

"My personal belief is that it was British intelligence who advised the Germans of the presence on board the Lusitania of Dieter Hartmann, and that the Lusitania was specifically instructed to slow down to a speed at which she would present herself as an easy target to U-20. In a war which had already cost hundreds of thousands of lives, a further one thousand one hundred ninety-five were of very little consequence compared with the benefits of bringing the United States into the conflict on the Allied side.

"That is why I was ordered to dispose of him so secretly. If it ever emerged that the War Office had used him as a bait to encourage the Germans to sink the Lusitania, the damage to Anglo-American relations would never have recovered."

There was a cautious knock at the door, and Detective Garda Patrick O'Sullivan appeared, red-faced, looking as if he had just eaten a rather large Irish breakfast.

"Jesus, the state of that fellow downstairs. No fecking arms. Jesus."

"All right, Patrick," said Jimmy. "Liam's called out the technical team. Any idea where Superintendent Maguire has got herself to?"

"Not a clue. I wouldn't blame her if she was drowning her sorrows."

54

Katie followed John up the angled field, her shoes clogged with mud. The rain was lashing down slantwise now, and she was completely soaked and shuddering with cold. John turned back and looked at her, but there was nothing she could do to help him, not yet. What was most important now was their survival.

"Move it, will you?" Lucy snapped at them.

"For God's sake," Katie protested.

"There is no God, Katie. You should have realized that by now."

"You're crazy. You really think this is going to happen? You really think that Mor-Rioghain is going to appear?"

"Shut up. Everything's ready. Thirteen sacrifices, it's all been done, everything."

"You're crazy."

"And you're not crazy? Going to mass every Sunday, and eating a biscuit, and thinking that it's Jesus you're eating?"

"Mor-Rioghain is a myth. Nothing but a fairy story."

"And Jesus isn't?"

Lucy looked wilder than Katie had ever seen her before. Her blond hair was brushed up in spikes, and she was wearing her long black leather coat, which was rolling with raindrops, and her knee-length black-leather boots. She was walking beside them, with Katie's nickel-plated gun in her right hand and a four-inch butcher's boning knife in the other, and Katie was in no doubt at all that she was prepared to use both of them. She had forced Katie to hand over her weapon by sticking the point of the knife into John Meagher's ear, lancing his eardrum. Blood was still dripping from his earlobe and into his shirt collar.

They reached the crest of the field by Iollan's Wood, where John had found the remains of Fiona Kelly. Katie dreaded to think what they would see there, and her stomach started to spasm. She gagged up a mouthful of half-chewed breakfast, and had to stop.

"Comeon, will you?" Lucy shouted at her, hoarsely. "We can't waste any more time! Mor-Rioghain has waited too long already."

They trod over the last thick furrows, their feet almost disappearing into the saturated soil, and there spread out in the mud in front of them in reds and grays and fatty yellows was a disassembled human body. Katie had seen Fiona Kelly's remains, but this was still difficult to take in, especially since she was badly scared now, and had no control over what was going to happen to her.

"Siobhan Buckley," said Lucy, stalking around the remains in satisfaction. "Pretty girl, sensitive, artistic. Just what Mor-Rioghain was looking for."

In the same way that Fiona Kelly's remains had been arranged, Siobhan Buckley's ribs were stuck into the ground in a circle and her fleshless skull was perched on top of her pelvis. Her intestines were heaped into the middle like a knot of large pale snakes. Her liver lay shining in a puddle next to her deflated lungs. The rain was pelting down so hard that even the crows were discouraged from coming down to peck at them.

There, too, were her thighbones, with holes drilled through them, and little gray dollies dangling from them.

"She made me help her," said John, with almost overwhelming self-disgust. "She said she'd kill my mother if I didn't, but then she did anyway."

"I never thought that I would see this day," said Lucy, pacing from side to side and making a curious ducking movement with her head every time she turned. "I never thought I would ever see this happen. Mor-Rioghain, the great and terrible Morgana, summoned through from the other side!"

Katie and John stayed where they were. John's fists were clenched tight and his face was very white.

"My colleagues will be wondering where I am," Katie called out. "I was supposed to interview Tómas Ó Conaill again at twelve. If I don't show up, and they can't get in touch with me by telephone, they're going to come looking for me."

"Let them come looking for you," said Lucy, still pacing from side to side. "By the time they find you, there won't be very much left of you."

"What are you talking about?"

"You don't know, do you? When Mor-Rioghain comes through from the other side, she needs a fourteenth sacrifice, a living woman, the strongest woman in the tribe. You were perfect, right from the very beginning. It was always going to be you."

Katie said, "What do you mean, 'right from the very beginning'?"

"Right from the moment I saw you on the television nightly news, when you first discovered all of those women's bones. I heard you talking about ritual murder, and I knew at once what kind of ritual it was, because I could see one of the thighbones in the background, with a dolly hanging from it."

"You told me your university sent you."

"University? I've never been to any university. I was living in Boston when I first saw you, working as a window dresser. Haltmann's Stores, at Downtown Crossing."

"So how did you know so much about Mor-Rioghain?"

"She's my reason for living, Katie. She has been for years. I studied Jack Callwood's sacrifices in endless detail, trying to locate the exact spot where he laid the bodies out, and how many women he had managed to kill. I went out almost every weekend, but I was beginning to think that I would never find what I was looking for. His house in Boston had long since been demolished and there was no way of finding the magical place where he had buried the bones. But there you were, like an angel from heaven, if there were angels, and if there was a heaven. There you were, talking to me on my television, showing me the very place where Mor-Rioghain could be summoned, and telling me how many more women I would have to sacrifice to summon her."

"You're sick. You're totally deranged."

"Well, hah, I'd agree with you, if Mor-Rioghain didn't exist. But when Jack Callwood was Jan Rufenwald, in Germany, he managed to summon Morgana three times, so he said, and each time she gave him wealth, and property, and the company of some of Germany's most desirable women. I first found out about him when I was seventeen years old, and ever since then I'veknownthat I would summon Mor-Rioghain myself one day, and today's the day."

"So what do you want from Mor-Rioghain? Don't tell me you cut up those poor girls just for money, or houses, or men."

Lucy stopped pacing and stared at Katie and Katie had never seen an expression like that on anybody's face, man or woman, ever. She was alight with triumph.

"Mor-Rioghain will give me myself. That's something that I've never had. Mor-Rioghain will give meme."

Katie smeared the rain away from her eyes with the back of her hand. She didn't understand this at all, but she knew that she had to think of a way of getting them away from here. Even though it was raining so hard, the smell around Siobhan Buckley's body was sickening, a metallic mixture of blood and peat and feces, and the proximity of actual grisly death made Katie feel even more afraid.

"Take off your clothes," Lucy ordered her. "You have to be ready for the sacrifice."

"No, I won't," said Katie.

Lucy came back around the bloody remains and held the boning knife up to Katie's face. "Take off your clothes or so help me I'll stick this in your eyes."

Katie unbuttoned her sodden green blouse, and peeled it off. Lucy stayed where she was, very close to her, the gun held high, the knife pointing directly at Katie's face. It suddenly occurred to Katie that Lucy must have always carried this knife. How else had she managed to cut so deftly through Katie's seat belt when her car was sinking in the Lee?

She took off her skirt and stepped out of it. "Underwear now," Lucy insisted. Katie hesitated but Lucy prodded the knife at her. She unfastened her bra and then pulled down her Marks & Spencer panties. The rain ran down her naked back and gave her goose bumps all over.

"Kneel," said Lucy.

"If you so much as lay one finger on me-" Katie began, but Lucy screamed, "Kneel!"and so she knelt, her knees sinking into the mud.

Lucy took a black scarf out of her coat pocket and handed it to John. "What do you want me to do with this?" he asked her, his voice sounding tight and terrified.

"Blindfold her, tightly, so that she can't see anything at all. Even Mor-Rioghain's living sacrifice is not allowed to set eyes on the great one when she appears."

John did as he was told. Then Lucy gave him a length of nylon cord and said, "Tie her hands behind her back."

"I'm not too good with knots."

"Just tie her, will you?"

It took John a few fumbling minutes before he was able to fasten Katie's wrists. All the time he kept mumbling under his breath, "I'm sorry, Katie, I'm sorry. I'm so damned sorry."

When he had finished, Lucy said, "Step away. This is the time for the summoning to begin."

It had grown even darker than ever, and the rain was drifting across the field from Iollan's Wood like the winding sheets that the bean-nighe washes. John took one step back, and then another. "Turn around," Lucy told him, and so he did. With three quick paces she approached him from behind, put her right arm around him, and sliced the boning knife across his Adam's apple.

55

Jimmy O'Rourke turned to the last few pages of Gerard's notebook. Outside he and Patrick O'Sullivan could hear police and ambulance sirens approaching from the Western Road. Patrick took out a cigarette, too, and lit it, and took a look around. "Wasn't too tidy, was he? Look at the state of this place. Dirty dinner plate under the couch."

"He was an academic, Patrick. Very learned fellow. Academics aren't interested in dirty dinner plates."

Patrick picked up a heap of Examiners and found a dogeared copy of Playboy. "Interested in dirty books, though, I'd say."

"Can't fault the chap's research, though. This is going to cause one hell of a bloody great political row, I can tell you. Wouldn't be surprised if it starts a war."

"I thought you weren't bothered with all of this guff."

"Well, I am now, boy. There could be some promotion in this."

He finished reading the final few paragraphs of Colonel Corcoran's diary, and then he came to some slanted, hastily scribbled notes which Gerard had written at the very end. "Had reply to my E-mail to UC Berkeley re: Prof. Quinn's research papers!! She published her first study,Celtic Legends, in 1962!! Odd!!"

Jimmy put down the notebook and frowned. "He says here that Professor Quinn published her first paper in1962. Nineteen sixty-two? That would make her at least sixty-five years old, wouldn't it?"

"I thought you checked her out yourself."

"Yes, but I only checked that she existed. I didn't ask if she was a pensioner."

"Have you heard from Katie yet?"

"No, but she's due back at lunch to talk to that Tómas Ó Conaill again."

"Due back from where?"

"She went out to Knocknadeenly with Professor Quinn. She wanted to talk to the Meaghers again."

"Katie's taken Lucy Quinn with her to Knocknadeenly?"

"That's right. She mentioned it this morning."

"Have you tried her cell phone?"

"I can't get through. The mountains screw up the signal, especially in this weather. She said she wouldn't be later than twelve so."

Jimmy picked up Gerard's notebook again. Why had Gerard needed to talk to Katie so urgently, and why had somebody come to Gerard's flat, smashed up his computer, and pulled him apart? Maybe that somebody hadn't wanted him to tell Katie what he had discovered. But if that was the case, why hadn't he taken his notebook, with all his research in it? Unless that somebody could read no Gaelic, and hadn't realized from the first few pages what it was all about.

He tried Katie's cell phone number again. Now the signal said that the phone was out of service. He tried Liam Fennessy instead.

"Inspector? Jimmy O'Rourke here. Are you anywhere near Knocknadeenly?"

"Not far. I'm just on my way back from Rathcormac. Assault with a deadly leg of pale ham. Fellow knocked his poor old father's teeth out."

"I've been trying to contact Katie Maguire. She's up at the Meagher farm with that Professor Lucy Quinn, supposed to be talking to John Meagher and his mother. Trouble is I can't get a signal, and, well-"

"What?"

"I've been looking through Gerard O'Brien's research papers here, and there's kind of a cryptic note about Lucy Quinn, like she may not be exactly who she says she is."

"So who exactly is she?"

"I don't know, but it might be an idea to call up at the Meaghers' and make sure that everything's okay."

"All right, then. I'll be down with you in Perrott Street in twenty minutes or so. You've got everything under control, then?"

Oh, yes, thought Jimmy. I've got a dead university professor with no arms and a notebook containing the most explosive political secret of the twentieth century. Everything's well under control, boy.

Liam arrived at the entrance to Meagher's Farm and tooted his horn. The garda on duty came hurrying through the rain and Liam wound his window down. "Is Detective Superintendent Maguire still here?"

The garda nodded. "She's been here about forty-five minutes, sir."

"Okay, thanks."

He drove up to the farm buildings. Katie's car was parked outside, as well as a tractor with its engine idling. He climbed out of his car and puddle-hopped over to the front door. The door was half ajar, and so he knocked at it and called out, "Superintendent? Anybody home?"

Katie knelt in the mud with the rain dripping from her nose and her nipples and sliding down her spine. She could hear Lucy on the far side of Siobhan Buckley's remains, chanting and humming. "Come to me, Mor-Rioghain. Come to me, you queen of death and darkness. Come and see what I have to offer you. Come and feast off flesh and pain."

Katie didn't know what had happened to John, even though he lay only a few feet away from her, his shirt dark with blood. All she could think of was: supposing I got up and tried to run, how far would I get, tied up and blindfolded? But what else can I do? I can't just kneel here and wait for her to cut my stomach open.

"Come to me, Mor-Rioghain, mistress of misery. Come to me, enchantress. I will give you freedom again. I will give you substance and shape. I will set you back where you belong, on a mortal throne, in a mortal kingdom."

Katie was sure that she heard a kind of cackling hiss, like a tortured cat. It was difficult to tell, because of the splattering sound of the rain falling on the field, and the sighing and creaking of the trees in Iollan's Wood, but it went on and on, and if anything it was growing louder.

"Come to me, Mor-Rioghain. I can feel your presence close by. Come to me, sister of disaster, bringer of woe, you who walk by night through cemeteries and sepulchers."

Katie thought: this is madness. There is no Mor-Rioghain. There is no Invisible Kingdom. How can she sacrifice me to somebody who doesn't exist? Yet she continued to strain her ears to hear the cat-hiss, and she thought she could detect another sound, too-a very low-frequency throbbing, like a large unlit tanker making its way up the River Lee in the middle of the night.

"Mor-Rioghain, listen to me! Mor-Rioghain, bring me your magic! I will serve you Mor-Rioghain forever and ever!"

Lucy's voice grew higher and harsher, and behind her blindfold Katie suddenly thought:this doesn't sound like the Lucy I know. This doesn't even sound like a woman. More like a beast.

"Mor-Rioghain! Queen of the night! Empress of every decay! Come to me, Mor-Rioghain, I have given you everything you ever demanded!Come to me, damn and curse you, Mor-Rioghain! Come to me! Come to me!"

Katie heard a deafening bang, and an echo that came from the woods, and a further echo. She threw herself sideways into the mud because she recognized it instantly. Not a witch, or abean-sidhe, but a gunshot.

"Armed garda!" shouted Liam. "Drop the gun and put up your hands!"

Lying on the ground, she closed her eyes behind her blindfold and whispered, "Mary Mother of God, thank you. Mary Mother of God thank you, thank you."

She heard Liam squelching toward her. He bent over her and eased the blindfold away from her eyes, one handed. With his other hand he was keeping his gun leveled at Lucy.

"Are you all right, Katie?"

She blinked against the lashing rain. "I'm grand, Liam. Thank you. I'm grand." She was too relieved to be embarrassed by her nakedness.

"You can't stop Mor-Rioghain now!" Lucy screamed. "This has taken years, and years, and so much blood! You can't stop Mor-Rioghain now!"

Liam yanked at the cord that bound Katie's wrists, and after three sharp tugs she was free. Muddy all over, she climbed to her feet and picked up her clothes. It was only when she went to retrieve her blouse that she saw John lying in a deep furrow with his throat cut.

"You can't stop this now!" Lucy was croaking, and she was staggering around and around in hysterical fury. "You-cannot-stop-this-now-not-after-everything!Don't you understand?Don't you fucking understand?I have to be me! I have to be me!I have to know what I am!"

Katie knelt down beside John and felt his pulse. The boning knife had cut his larynx but it had missed his carotid artery, and although his breathing was very shallow he was still alive. She took out her handkerchief, folded it into a pad, and pressed it against his throat. Then she said, "Liam, quick, give me your phone. We have to get the paramedics up here."

Lucy kept on spinning around, her arms flailing. Liam threw his phone to Katie and then he approached Lucy with his gun held in both hands. "Keep still! Don't move! Stop going round and round for feck's sake! Put your hands on top of your head and kneel on the ground!"

Lucy abruptly stopped spinning, and lifted her head, and gave Katie that mad wide-eyed stare that she had given her before.

"Do you hear something, Katie?" she said. "Do you hear something, coming through the woods? The door's open, Katie. The door's open! Mor-Rioghain is rushing our way!"

"Will you ever put your fecking hands on top of your head!" Liam roared at her.

Katie slowly lowered Liam's cell phone. She could hear something, she swore it. That cackling hiss, that ground-quivering rumbling sound. And there was afeeling, too, an indescribable feeling that something huge and terrible was coming closer and closer.

"She has to have a living sacrifice, Katie, and if it can't be you then it'll have to be another strong woman, won't it? And who can you think of who's stronger than me?"

"Lucy! Calm down! Calm down! Do what Liam tells you! Put your hands on your head and kneel on the ground!"

"Too late, Katie darling! Mor-Rioghain's coming!"

With that, Lucy wrestled herself out of her black leather coat and threw it aside. Then she pulled off her black poloneck sweater, and her black lacy bra. Her breasts were big, and dark-nippled, and veined with blue.

"Kneel down!"Liam yelled at her.

"You don't understand anything!" Lucy screamed back at him. "You don't understand anything at all!"

Then, suddenly, she stiffened, and stood still, as if she had heard what she was waiting for, and she smiled a waxy-looking smile.

"Mor-Rioghain," she breathed. Behind her, the branches of Iollan's Wood were thrashing from side to side like the arms of drowning bathers. Katie swore that the temperature was dropping, and that the rain was even colder, and when she looked up the sky was crowded with silent, wheeling crows.

Raising her voice against the rain, Lucy said, "All my life I never knew what I was, or understood myself. And then I found out about Mor-Rioghain-that she could give you everything you ever wanted. Other people get everything they want, other people understand themselves. Why not me?"

The wind was rising. The wet leaves of autumn were being lifted from the floor of the woods, and there was a death rattle of bracken stalks, like a thousand old people with bronchitis. Soil began to fly from the furrows in a black blizzard.

"You can't haveanythingat the price of somebody else's life!" Katie shouted. "You can't!"

Lucy unbuckled the belt of her tight black leather trousers. "Who are you to judge me?" she shrieked. "Who are you to judge? If I can't have you as a sacrifice, then I'll sacrifice myself, and ask for Mor-Rioghain to give me my life back!"

She forced her trousers down to her knees. She wasn't wearing any underwear, and when Katie saw her she slowly raised her hand to her mouth, and stared at her, and simply couldn't believe what she was looking at.

Lucy had a fully-developed penis, and testicles, and curly black pubic hair.

"Christ," said Liam.

Something happened then, but Katie didn't mention it in her report, and neither did Liam, and they never spoke about it again, even to each other. But they both felt as if the world had gone blind, as if the atmospheric pressure had dropped so much that nobody could breathe. Lucy picked up her boning knife and what was Liam going to do? Shoot her?

Katie felt as if a huge dark presence swept over them, or perhaps it was only a katabatic gust of wind. But Lucy threw her head back and stuck the boning knife into her chest, right up to the handle, and drew it downward, not hurrying, as if she were relishing the way she was opening herself up. For a long, calm moment she stood in the rain with her intestines sliding out of her, all down her thighs, and her face was as strange and pale and beautiful as the face of Mor-Rioghain herself.

"Now, Mor-Rioghain, you have your sacrifice!" she cried, even though her voice was shaking with pain. "Come through, O pitiless one, and take my offerings! Come through, maker of widows and orphans, carrier of grief and shadows!I call you once, I call you twice-"

Katie thought,God, this is the final summoning. Mor-Rioghain's coming-she's actually coming through!

She stumbled toward Lucy through the muddy furrows. She fell to her knees once, but she managed to pick herself up again. Liam shouted,"Katie! No! For Christ's sake!"

But Katie picked her shining revolver out of the mud, raised it double-handed, and fired it almost point-blank at Lucy's face. Lucy pitched backward in a spray of blood, and a slap of an echo came back from the trees.

Almost at once there was a loud sucking noise, like closing a car window at high speed, and a sudden increase in pressure that made Katie's ears pop. The soil beneath her feet physicallyrippled, a shock-wave of earth that ran all the way back to Iollan's Wood. The trees dipped and thrashed as if something wild were tearing at their roots, and then they were suddenly still.

Katie stood where she was, panting. A small ghost of gunsmoke hurried off into the woods. Liam cautiously came up to her, still pointing his revolver at Lucy's bloody white body.

"It's all right, Liam. She's completely dead."

Liam looked around him. The wind had died down already, although the rain continued to fall across the fields.

"You only fecking topped her," he said, in disbelief.

"I didn't have any choice."

"Jesus Mary and Joseph she was past saving already." He peered at the body. "Itwas past saving already."

"You don't know that. She was going to ask Mor-Rioghain to bring her back to life."

"Katie, thereisno Mor-Rioghain. Did you see any Mor-Rioghain? There was wind all right, but it was only a squall."

"You're probably right. But I wasn't prepared to chance it. And I wasn't going to let down any of those thirteen women, not now, not after everything they suffered. Lucy's dead, Mor-Rioghain's back where she belongs, in the Invisible Kingdom, even if you don't believe in her. Those women have got their justice now. That's all that matters."

Liam holstered his gun. Katie looked away. The duty garda was running up toward them, up the field, like the back marker in a marathon, plodding on, plodding on, even though he's never going to win.

56

"Hermaphrodite?" said Dermot Driscoll, putting down his half-eaten cheese-and-pickle sandwich onto his blotter.

"Yes, sir. It appears so. We've sent to America for any medical records."

It had stopped raining and the sun was glittering on the drops of water that clung to Dermot's office window.

"So…what do you think we tell the media?"

"I don't think it's going to pay to complicate things, sir. Let's say that a disturbed individual tried to copy the ritual murders from 1915 and 1916, and killed himself to escape being arrested and charged."

"Killedhimself? Orherself?"

"We don't know yet, sir. We know that she wasn't Professor Lucy Quinn. She's a seventy-six-year-old living in retirement in Mill Valley, just outside San Francisco. But quitewhoshe was we're still not sure. Not everybody in this world has an identity, do they? I think that was Lucy's problem. She was neither a man or a woman, and from the way she talked, she had never had anybody to help her come to terms with it. Not even God. That's why she went looking for somebody magical like Mor-Rioghain."

"And poor old Gerard O'Brien found out about her, and suffered the consequences?"

"Yes, sir."

"How's John Meagher?"

"He'll live, but he won't be singing opera for a while. And I don't think he'll ever be farming again, I shouldn't wonder."

"Horrible case, Katie. Gives me the shudders. Do you think you can play it down, when you talk to the press? You know, forget about the witch bit?"

"Yes, sir."

"As for Tómas Ó Conaill…well, I think we can forget about any charges against him. Never pays to upset the Travelers' support people."

"No, sir."

• • •

Katie left Dermot's office and walked along the corridor. Jimmy O'Rourke was waiting for her, with his hands behind his back, looking serious.

"You saved my life, Jimmy. You don't have to look quite so miserable."

"I've given up smoking. It's playing havoc with my equilibrium."

She went into her office and sat down. "Was there anything special?" she asked. "I've got a hell of a lot to do."

From behind his back, Jimmy produced Gerard's notebook. "I should have put this in as evidence, but I had a bit of a think about it and I decided not to. Not right away, like. There's things in here that could possibly cause some very bad blood, and in my opinion there's enough bad blood in the world already. If you think I'm wrong, then I'm ready to be reprimanded. I know gardaí aren't supposed to think. Well, not to philosophize, anyway. But I thought you ought to have the chance to read it first. Seeing as I respect your opinion, like."

Katie looked at him, not smiling, but feeling that she might at last have made some kind of breakthrough.

"Thank you, Jimmy," she said, and took the notebook, and put it down in front of her.

"Well, then," he said, obviously embarrassed. "I just wanted to say that I'm glad I saved your life. Otherwise, you know, you'd be dead, like."

She put a hold on her calls and took twenty minutes to read Gerard's notebook and then read it a second time. After the second reading she sat at her desk in silence. Then she put the notebook into her handbag, and closed it. Jimmy was right. Even if "Crackers" Corcoran had been nothing but a wild theorist, there was enough bad blood in the world already.

• • •

At eleven-thirty the following morning she met Eugene Ó Béara and Jack Devitt in the Red Setter, a cramped triangular pub up at Dillon's Cross. During the whole of her time there, the rest of the clientele stared at her balefully, as if she were a nun who had walked in with dog shit on her shoe.

They sat in a small booth in the corner. The smoke was so thick it was surprising that nobody called the fire brigade. Even Jack Devitt's wolfhound was snuffling and coughing.

Katie said, "We've found intelligence records in London that conclusively show that the man who abducted those fifteen women in 1915 and 1916 wasn't a British soldier at all. He was almost certainly a German from Münster in Westphalia known as Dieter Hartmann, and he wore a British uniform as a disguise. We're still searching for more information from the German government, and we'll let you know if we find out any more. I just want you to know that we also have evidence that the Crown forces in Cork went to extraordinary lengths to find him and arrest him. Once they almost had him, but he managed to escape and after that he was never heard from again."

"We can examine this evidence?" asked Jack Devitt, solemnly.

"Of course, once we've finished with it. But you have my word that it's genuine."

"Very well, then, Superintendent Maguire. I knew your father well, and if you give me your word that it's genuine, then I accept it. Although I have to admit to a certain sense of anticlimax."

Katie gave him a tight smile. "Keeping the peace is a never-ending anticlimax."

Eugene Ó Béara suddenly let out a loud, staccato laugh, and then-just as abruptly-stopped. "You're a good woman, Katie Maguire, for a cop."

Just before one o'clock, she met Eamonn Collins in his usual seat at Dan Lowery's. His minder Jerry was having a séance at the opposite table with a bowl of fish chowder.

"Hallo, Eamonn."

"Hallo yourself, Detective Superintendent Maguire. You look very fetching today. I always say that black always becomes a woman, nuns and widows especially."

Katie said, "I thought I'd let you know that I've decided not to press any charges against you relating to the crucifixion of Dave MacSweeny. Lack of evidence, as well as the fact that my principal witness is lying on a slab in St. Patrick's Morgue."

Eamonn took out a very white handkerchief and blew his nose. "Not to mention the minor embarrassment that it might have caused yourself, of course?"

"Let's just say that Dave MacSweeny deserved everything that ever happened to him, and more besides."

"So we're friends again, are we, Katie? Just remember, if you ever need another favor, at any time, you know who to call on."

"Actually, I would rather sell my soul to the devil."

"Oh, come now! You know how much you need decent upstanding criminals like me. God knows what state this city would be in, otherwise."

Katie stood up. "I'll have you one day, Eamonn, I swear it, you jumped-up Knocknaheeny gobdaw."

Eamonn raised his whiskey glass, and sang to Katie in a low, husky voice. "'Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, which I gaze on so fondly today…were to change by tomorrow, and fleet in my arms, like fairy gifts fading away!'"

She left Dan Lowery's and was crossing MacCurtain Street when her cell phone rang. It was Sister O'Flynn from the Regional.

"Mrs. Maguire?" It was the first time that anybody had called her "Mrs. Maguire" in a very long time. She knew then that it was bad news.

She pushed open the door of Isaac's restaurant. John Meagher was waiting in the back, self-consciously holding a large bouquet of lilies. He stood up when he saw her, and pulled out a chair.

"I'm afraid I won't be able to stay for lunch. I've just heard from the Regional that Paul died about fifteen minutes ago."

"I'm sorry, Katie. I really am."

She took a deep breath to steady herself. "Well…I suppose it's for the best. He wouldn't have wanted to spend the rest of his life like a cabbage."

"Why don't I give you a lift to the hospital?"

"Would you? I'd like that. I can't say I really feel like driving."

The waitress came up with their menus. "Do you want to know what the specials are?"

Katie stood up and managed a lopsided smile. "Not today. Some other time."

They walked back along MacCurtain Street to John's Land Rover. The sun was shining but it was raining again, so that the wet pavements were almost blinding.

"Oh," said John. "I have something to show you. I was going to wait until after lunch, but-"

He opened the Land Rover's tailgate. In the back there were coils of rope and shovels and blankets. There was also a circular wicker basket, in which, fast asleep with its tongue lolling out, lay a glossy young Irish setter.

"He's yours. His name's Barney."

Katie stood in the rain and the sunshine, her fingers tightly pressed against her lips because she was trying not to cry. Behind her, over the tall gray spire of the Evangelical Church, a rainbow appeared, and brightened, and faded, and brightened again.