White Bones (11 page)

“Don’t come down,” he told her, in a clogged-up voice. “I’ll stay down here for tonight. Just don’t come down.”

She switched on the landing light and went down the stairs. Sergeant was running in and out of the living-room door, panting excitedly. She went into the living-room and switched on the chandeliers. Paul was lying face-down on the sofa, one arm dangling on the floor. His navy-blue coat was split all the way up the back, revealing the torn white lining. One of his loafers was missing and his curly hair was matted with blood.

“Holy Mother of God,” said Katie, and knelt down beside him.

He opened one eye and blinked at her. There was a deep semi-circular cut around his eyebrow that was already crusted with dried blood, and his cheekbones were crimson.

“What happened to you, Paul? Let me look at you.”

“Sawrigh. Everything’s grand.”

“Paul, for Christ’s sake look at the state of you! What’s happened?”

He lifted his head and it was only then that she could see how badly he was hurt. Both nostrils were clotted with blood and it looked as if his nose had been broken. His lips were swollen and split, and he was obviously missing some teeth. A long string of bloody saliva connected his mouth to the cushion.

“Who did this to you, Paul? Was it Dave MacSweeny?”

“It doesn’t matter, pet. I just need some shleep, that’s all. Some
shleep
.”

“Paul, I want to know who attacked you.”

“Forget it. You’ll only make a bother. The only female detective superintendent in Ireland… she can’t have anyone beating up her husband, now can she?”

“Sit up, Paul. Let me take a good look at you. You’ll be after needing a doctor. Look at that cut. That’s going to take stitches.”

“Will you stop –
fussing
, for Christ’s sake. It’s only a couple of knocks. My father used to beat me up much worse than this when I was a kid.”

Katie stood up. Paul blinked up at her and his face was so pummeled and swollen that it looked twice its normal size. “Paul… I’m not joking about this. Whoever attacked you, I’m going to have them arrested, and charged.”

Paul managed to struggle himself into a sitting position. His left eye was completely bloodshot, like a vampire’s. “Ouch, shit,” he said, pressing his hand against his side. “Broken my fucking ribs.”

“Paul – ”

“Katie… forget it. I made a bags of things, that’s all. What you might call an error of judgement. If you start making a bother… it’s going to be ten times worse. They’ll kill me, the next time, I promise you. In fact, they’re probably going to kill me anyway.”

Katie gently touched his forehead, where his hair was sticky with blood. “God, Paul, you’re such a fool sometimes. Don’t you realize how much I love you? Weren’t we happy once? Wasn’t everything perfect?”

He gave her a wry, puffy smile. “That was then, Katie. This is now.”

“You can’t let them get away with this, Paul. I need to know who did it. It’s my duty to uphold the law.”

“I’m not telling you, Katie. I can’t. They’ll kill me. That’s if
you
don’t kill me first.”

She sat back, and lifted her hand away from his knee. “Why should
I
want to kill you?”

“Well, I’m not much of a husband to you, am I?”

Katie said, “It’s about that girl, isn’t it? That one at the Sarsfield Hotel?”

“God Almighty. Who’d marry a detective?”

“Tell me, Paul. It’s about that girl, isn’t it?”

“It’s partly. But that’s not all of it.”

“Paul, I’m calling an ambulance.”

He snatched at her sleeve. “Leave it, Katie. The last thing they said to me was, ‘We bet your old lady’s going to come looking for us now.’ And what do you think I’d look like, if you did? A man needs his – manhood.”

Katie was silent for a long time. She needed time to think, time to get her balance back. Then she said, “How about a drink? You should really go to hospital, but if you won’t – ”

“It’s not so bad as it looks. They punched me around a bit, and kicked me all right. But you don’t get anywhere at all unless you take chances, do you?”

Katie went across to the sideboard and poured him a large whiskey. Sergeant followed her protectively, and stood beside her when she sat down, panting. “So what does this girl at the Sarsfield Hotel have to do with business?”

Paul shook his head. “I made a mistake, Katie, that’s all.”

“Yes, but who was she? And what did you do?”

“I suppose I was looking for something different. Escape, you might call it. The truth is that I still can’t look at you without thinking about poor little Seamus.”

“You don’t think that
I
don’t blame myself for what happened to Seamus, every minute of every hour of every day?”

“I don’t
blame
you, pet. God wanted Seamus back in Heaven and that was all there was to it. But – I don’t know. I suppose I thought you were magic, and that you’d never let us come to any harm. When Seamus was taken, I realized then that you weren’t magic after all.”

“Paul, I was Seamus’ mother but I’m not yours.”

He dabbed his nose with his fingertips. “Oh, it was my fault, too. If my business hadn’t gone to the wall you wouldn’t have had to work.”

“What are you saying? That Seamus died because I went to work?”

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe you would have paid him more mind.”

“Paul – I’m a career Garda officer. I would have carried on with my job whether we had a baby or not. And for you to suggest that he died because I neglected him – Holy Mother of God, what’s wrong with you?”

Paul didn’t say anything, but lowered his head and sniffed.

“Tell me about this girl,” Katie insisted. The central heating didn’t come on for another three hours and she was trembling with tiredness and cold and exasperation.

“There’s nothing to tell. We went to the Sarsfield and had a few drinks and it’s the old, old story, isn’t it?”

“Who is she?”

“That’s the whole trouble. She’s Dave MacSweeny’s girlfriend.”

“Geraldine Daley? That tart?”

“I’m sorry, Katie. Losing your only son… that’s not exactly an aphrodisiac, is it?”

She slapped him, hard, across the cheek. She didn’t mean to, but she had done it before she could think. He shouted out, “
Jesus
!” and lifted one hand to protect himself. “Jesus, Katie. That fucking
hurt
.”

“You don’t think you deserved it?”

“For what? For trying to get a few minutes’ pleasure out of my life, instead of having to tiptoe on –
eggshells
round you and your everlasting grief? You don’t have the monopoly on sorrow, Katie, believe me… and you don’t have any right to take your misery out on everybody around you. I’m glad I’m not one of your suspects. It’s bad enough being your husband.”

Katie didn’t know what to say. Perhaps Paul was right, and she was dragging her cross around with her wherever she went. Perhaps, on the other hand, he could have put his arms around now and again, in the darkness of the night, and showed her that they could find a way to be happy again.

“Don’t you worry,” said Paul. “I’ll sleep on the couch. At least Sergeant will show me some sympathy.”

A long, long pause. Paul picked a bloody scab out of his nostril and stared at it.

“Has it been going on long?” Katie asked him.

“What?”

“You and Geraldine Daley. Was it just the one night, or have you been making a fool of me for longer than that?”

“What does it matter?”

“It matters because the nature of my job requires me to have a private life that’s free of any scandal whatsoever. And most of all it matters because we’re married, for better or for worse.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation at all, it was, yes, just the one night. Geraldine was sick to the back teeth with Dave because he never takes her anywhere and she’s never allowed to look at other men. He hits her about, too. I guess she wanted to get her own back on him.”

“And what about you? Did you want to get your own back on me? What? For killing Seamus?”

Paul flapped his hand dismissively. Katie was about to say something else, something really hurtful, but then she decided against it. Without a word, she turned around and left Paul sitting on the couch, with Sergeant licking his bloody knuckles.

The next morning it was raining again, that fine misty rain that can soak right through your coat before you know it. She walked into her office to find Professor O’Brien waiting for her with a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums, a folded raincoat and a bright, enthusiastic grin.

“Gerard, what a surprise.”

He stood up and held out the flowers as if they were a conjuring-trick “I hope you like yellow. It reminds me of sunshine. Just what we need on days like these.”

“Thank you,” she said. They looked past their best, and one of them was broken, but she took them anyway. “I’ll – ah – put them in water.”

“You don’t mind me coming here to report to you personally? In person, I mean?”

She felt tired and fractured after last night, and the last thing she needed was a flirtatious conversation with Professor O’Brien, but all the same she managed a smile and sat down behind her desk. At the back of the Garda station the crows were still perched along the roof of the parking-lot. Sometimes one or two of them flew off and circled around, but they always came back, the way that blowflies will never leave a decomposing body alone.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked Professor O’Brien.

“No, thanks all the same. Coffee gives me the jitters. I don’t sleep very well as it is. I was up for most of the night, reading through your file on the Meagher’s Farm case.”

“Oh, yes?” said Katie, prying the plastic lid off her cappuccino. “Did you find out anything interesting?”

He produced a large manila envelope from underneath his folded raincoat, and took out a copy of an ordnance survey map. He spread it out on Katie’s desk and smoothed it with the side of his hand. “The first step I always take when I look into any historical event is to look at a contemporary map, if I can. So many things can change over the years – the roads, the
place-names
, everything. This is the area north of Cork as it was in 1911. This is the road from Cork City to Ballyhooly, and this red outline is Meagher’s Farm. You’ll notice that there wasn’t a farm there, in those days, but there was a small collection of three or four dwellings which was already known as Knocknadeenly. In Gaelic, that’s Cnoc na Daoine Liath.”

“The Hill of the Gray People?”

“That’s right. But ‘Beings’, perhaps, more than ‘people’. It was supposed to be a gateway between the fairy world and the real world – the place where Mor-Rioghain lived whenever she came to Ireland. I think if there was any place in County Cork where anyone would be likely to perform a ritual ceremony, it would be here.”

“Excuse me, Gerard,” asked Katie. “But who was
Mor-Rioghain
?”

“Mor-Rioghain? She was an evil sorceress – a malign fairy. She appears in dozens of different legends all over Europe and Scandinavia. In England she was called Morgan Le Fay and she was supposed to be King Arthur’s wicked half-sister, who was always plotting to kill him. Here in Ireland she was a cousin of the Death Queen Badhbh, or perhaps another side of Badhbh’s personality, and she was supposed to come out of her magic hill, her
sidhe
, in the shape of a wolf-bitch. If you fed her with the flesh of innocent women, she would grant you any wish you wanted.”

“So you think these killings could have been part of what? Some folkloric ceremony?”

“Not a ceremony that I’ve ever come across before, as I told you. But – yes, I believe it’s a distinct possibility.”

“And that’s what you’ve managed to find out?”

“Yes,” he blinked, and sat down. “I mean that’s quite an exciting step forward, isn’t it?”

“It’s a start, I suppose. Do you think there’s any way of finding out if there were any pagan sects around Knocknadeenly at the time? Like, devil-worshippers, anything like that?”

“Anybody who wanted to summon up Mor-Rioghain wouldn’t have been a devil-worshipper. They would have been ordinary folk looking for wealth, and fame, and power… all of the gifts that the fairies can give you.”

“And that was worth murdering eleven women for?”

“I still don’t know why that was done; or what the ritual of the little rag dollies was all about, but I promise you I will. We may not bring a murderer to book, but at least we’ll find out why he did it. That should give you some satisfaction, shouldn’t it?”

Katie frowned at him. “Satisfaction? I suppose so.”

“Look,” said Professor O’Brien, “perhaps we could discuss this over lunch.”

“I’m sorry, not today. I have two other important cases I’m dealing with. Not to mention the disappearance of Charlie Flynn.”

“They do a great open sandwich at Morrison’s Island Hotel. Tuna, or Cajun chicken. I go there twice a week at least.”

“Gerard, I’m sorry. I’m really too busy. But thank you for coming in; and for all of your information.”

Professor O’Brien gave her a bashful smile and then he said, “I think you’re a very striking-looking woman, superintendent. I hope you don’t object to my saying that.”

Katie smiled. “No, of course not. It’s very flattering. But – ”

She nearly said “ –
I’m married, Gerard
,” but she didn’t, because that simply wasn’t the reason that she was turning him down. Instead, she said, “I’m sorry. I’ve got far too much on my plate already.”

Professor O’Brien had a noisy wrestling-match with his map. “I understand. But I’ll keep on digging. You never know, you see – the Crown Forces may have murdered these women and then hung these dollies on their thighbones to make it look like a ritual sacrifice, even when it wasn’t.”

“That’s another possibility, yes.”

Professor O’Brien shook her hand, ducking his head forward as if he was going to try to give her a kiss on the cheek, but then thinking better of it.

“I was engaged once,” he volunteered. “Mairie, her name was. She looked very similar to you. Or, rather, you look very similar to her.”