White Bones (20 page)

“Tómas Ó Conaill,” she said. “I haven’t seen
you
in a very long time.”

“Who’s that?” he asked, in a hoarse, whispery voice. “That looks like Detective Sergeant Katie Maguire.”

“Detective superintendent these days. You should read the papers.”

“Papers, you say? A fellow like me never has the time to read the papers. You know how hard I have to work to make ends meet.”

“This your car?”

He turned his head and frowned at it in mock-surprise. “Never seen it before in my life.”

Katie took two steps backward and opened the Mercedes’ door. It chimed softly at her to remind her that the sidelights were still on. “The keys are still in it,” she said. “You don’t expect me to believe that somebody just left it here.”

“It’s a bit of a mystery to me, too. I was just strolling along the track here when I saw the car stood in the yard with its lights on.”

Katie switched the Mercedes’ main beams on. She walked around to the front of the car and saw that the offside headlight wasn’t working.

“What were you doing inside the house?” she asked.

“I came into the yard and saw that the door was open. There wasn’t a sign of anybody so I knocked to see if everything was all right.”

“Very public-spirited of you, I’m sure. Do you want to explain where you were going?”

“I was taking a walk, that’s all.”

“Just taking a walk, were you? In the dark, up a track that doesn’t go to anywhere at all?”

“There’s no law against a fellow taking a walk, is there?”

“There’s a law against stealing cars and there’s a law against breaking and entering other people’s property.”

“I didn’t take anything. I’ve been leading the life of a saint these days, Katie, I can swear to that.”

“Detective Superintendent Maguire to you, Tómas,” Katie retorted. She switched on her personal radio. “Charlie Six to Charlie Alpha. I need urgent back-up at Sheehan’s Nurseries. That’s about a mile-and-a-half up the
fifth
turning on the left on the Blarney road, past The Angler’s Rest. I have one male suspect to bring in.”

“Suspect, is it?” said Tómas Ó Conaill. “Can you kindly tell me what I’m suspected of?”

“I don’t know yet, Tómas. Perhaps you can tell me.”

“I haven’t took nothing and I haven’t laid a finger on nobody, God be my witness.”

“You won’t mind answering a few questions, though, will you?”

“I’ve got nothing to say, Katie. I’m as innocent as a
newborn
child.”

It was almost twenty minutes before she saw Jimmy O’Rourke’s headlights dipping and bouncing along the track, followed by a squad car. All the time that they were waiting, Tómas Ó Conaill talked loquaciously to Katie about where he and his family had been traveling over the past three years, all the way around Roscommon and Longford and Sligo; and how he had been making money from buying and selling horses and second-hand cars, as well as laying tarmac and mending old ladies’ leaky roofs. “All good honest work these days, Katie, I can promise you that.”

“Detective Superintendent Maguire.”

“Oh, come on now, Katie. I’m just trying to be sociable. We’ve known each other long enough, haven’t we?”

“Yes, ever since you cut the baby out of that poor young girl in Mayfield.”

“I was acquitted of that, you’ll remember.”

“Nobody was brave enough to give evidence, you mean. But
I
know you did it and you know
you
did it and that’s good enough for me.”

“That baby was a child of the devil and if it
was
me that did it, which I can assure you it wasn’t, then I would have been doing the world the greatest favor since Jesus Christ.”

“Oh, yes. The spawn of Satan. A very colorful defense, I seem to remember.”

“If you don’t believe in Satan, Katie, then how can you say that you believe in God?”

It was then that Jimmy’s car turned into the yard, followed closely by the patrol car. Quietly and quickly, as if he were trying to pass on a last piece of crucial information, Tómas Ó Conaill said, “Let me tell you something, Katie – there are powers on this earth that most people don’t even have an inkling of. There are all kinds of demons and witches just itching to be raised up. You can laugh all you like, but they’re there all right, and the only thing that keeps them where they belong is people like me.”

“Do you see me laughing?” asked Katie.

While Tómas Ó Conaill sat in the back of the squad car under the beefy custodianship of Garda Pat O’Malley, Katie and Jimmy O’Rourke took a look around the cottage. It smelled of damp and decay, but it had obviously been used quite recently. There was a packet of Barry’s Tea in the kitchen, and a bottle of rancid orange-juice in the refrigerator, as well as a tub of Calvita processed cheese with green fur on it.

In the living-room, Katie picked up a copy of the
Evening Echo
dated three weeks ago, as well as two screwed-up Mars Bar wrappers. In the smaller bedroom, there was a single bed with pink blankets and a bronze-colored satin quilt on it. It had been neatly made-up, but when Katie lifted the blankets it was clear from the twisted wrinkles in the sheets that somebody had been sleeping in it.

“Beds,” she said. “Always a feast for forensics. Hair, skin, dandruff, blood, you name it.”

They went into the larger bedroom. Katie reached around the door and switched on the light and it was then that she knew at once that she had found what she was looking for. The room was papered with dull brown roses, most of them diseased with damp. An old-fashioned iron bed stood on the opposite side of the room, without mattress or blankets, so that its diamond-shaped springs were exposed. Underneath it were spread three or four thicknesses of newspaper, copies of the
Irish Examiner
, and they were soaked in dark brown blood. Beside the bed, on a cheap veneered nightstand, stood an Anglepoise reading-lamp.

Apart from the bed and the nightstand, the room was empty. But the feeling of horror it contained was overwhelming, almost deafening, like a scream so loud that the human ear couldn’t hear it.

“Holy Mother of God,” said Jimmy.

Katie stood and stared into the room for a long time without saying anything. She didn’t want to imagine what had happened here, but she couldn’t help it. She had seen Fiona’s skeleton, reconstructed on Dr Reidy’s autopsy table; and she had seen her flesh, and her hair, and her heaped intestines.

One of the gardaí came in and said, “Anything I can do, superintendent?”

“Yes, Kieran. I want the technical team up here right away. Apart from that I need at least ten more guards and I want the track sealed off from both directions. And floodlights. And I don’t want the media to know anything.
Nothing
. Not just yet.”

“Yes, superintendent.”

Katie didn’t venture any further into the bedroom. Apart from the fact that there was a pattern of bloody footprints on the linoleum-covered floor, which she didn’t want to disturb, the smell of dried blood was like rotten lamb, and there was a chill in the air which made her feel that if she stepped inside, she would never get warm again, ever.

“What was it brought you out here?” asked Jimmy.

“Divine guidance. Apart from that, my father reminded me to think.”

Katie went back outside and took a look at the car. Her breath smoked and there were blue lights flashing and radios squawking. She laid a hand on the bonnet and it was still warm, which meant that Tómas Ó Conaill had probably driven it here. Inside, she found a half-empty bag of dessert mints, a folded roadmap, an empty pint bottle of Bulmer’s Cider and a box of Kleenex tissues. There were three cigarette stubs in the ashtray, Winfield, an economy brand, only €4.00 for twenty.

The seats were upholstered in camel-colored woven vinyl. The passenger seat had a curved bloodstain on it, as if somebody had been sitting in their own blood, and there were crusty drops of dried blood in the passenger foot-well.

She went to the back of the car and opened the trunk. It was thickly lined with newspapers, like the floor underneath the bed. The newspapers weren’t heavily stained with blood, but there were three or four dark brown runnels, and a pattern of seven drops.

Jimmy stood beside her, smoking. He didn’t say a word. After a few moments she slammed the trunk shut, and walked across to the patrol car. She climbed into the back seat, right next to Tómas Ó Conaill, and looked him steadily in the eye.

“You have a very grave look on your face, Katie,” he told her, but he still had that same sly smile on his face, almost flirting with her.

“I need you to tell me where you were on Thursday afternoon last.”

“Thursday? I’d have to think about that. Why?”

“You’re going to need a very convincing story, that’s why. I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder.”

His eyes gradually narrowed. “
Murder
? What murder is this? I didn’t have nothing to do with no murder.”

“What’s all that blood in the bedroom, then? Don’t tell me you’ve been slaughtering a pig.”

“I don’t know nothing about no blood. I never even went inside the bedroom.”

“You’re lying to me, Tomás.”

“I’m not at all, I’m telling you the God’s honest truth. I found the front door open and all I did was take a look around to see if there was anything lying about that nobody had a use for. I never got as far as the bedroom and I swear had nothing to do with any murder.”

“Oh, right. Just like you didn’t have anything to do with cutting a pregnant girl’s stomach open with a chisel? Or hitting a sixty-five-year-old man over the head with a lump hammer because you thought he was cheating you over one of your horses?”

“You should be careful what you say to me,” Tómas Ó Conaill warned her. He was still smiling but his mood had turned sour, like milk in a thunderstorm. “I was walking up here totally innocent and all I did was take a look inside. I didn’t take nothing and I didn’t hurt nobody.”

Katie said, “Tómas Ó Conaill, I am arresting you for the murder of Fiona Kelly. You are not obliged to say anything but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and used in evidence against you.”

“May the rumbling coach of Dullahan draw up outside your house and may you be drenched in a basinful of blood.”

Katie climbed out of the car. “Jimmy, take him back to headquarters. I’ll come and talk to him when I’ve finished up here.”

Tómas Ó Conaill leaned across the back seat and said, in the thickest of whispers, “You’re a witch, Katie, and you know what we do to witches. I didn’t murder nobody and you will never prove that I did.”

Jimmy slammed the door on him and turned to Katie with a shake of his head. “What a header. I just hope that we’ve got enough forensic to put him away.”

“Who else would have killed a girl like that? He’s got a smooth tongue on him when he wants to, but my God he’s vicious as a mad dog.”

“Don’t you worry, superintendent. We’ve got him this time, I’d say.”

Katie said, “I’ll be applying for a search-warrant right away. As soon as we’ve got the okay, I want you to go to Ó Conaill’s halting site in Tower and go through every caravan and every vehicle with a fine-tooth comb. Take Pat O’Sullivan and Mick Dockery with you, and as many guards as you think you need. Talk to Ó Conaill’s family, too. Ask them where he was that Thursday afternoon when Fiona Kelly disappeared, and ask them to account for his movements on the night that her body was taken to Meagher’s Farm.”

“You’re wishing, aren’t you? They’ll only tell me to go and have carnal associations with my grannie.”

“I’m sure they will. But we have to try, don’t we? Remember the Maguire motto.”

“What’s that, then?”

“Don’t take shite from anyone.”

“All right. But I hope you sign for my overtime.”

Dermot O’Driscoll came into her office with a sugary jam doughnut and a very satisfied smile.

“You’ve excelled yourself, Katie. No doubt about it. I’d like to put out a media release in time for the morning papers.”

“I’d rather hold off for a while, if you don’t mind, sir.”

“You don’t have any doubts that it’s Ó Conaill, surely? You practically caught the bastard in the act.”

“All the same, I’d feel happier if we waited for forensics, if that’s all right with you. Fingerprints and footprints especially. Ó Conaill swears blind that all he did was sit in the car… he never drove it.”

“Oh, stop! If he didn’t drive it, how did he get there?”

“Walked, that’s what he says.”

“
Walked
?” Dermot exploded, with his mouth full of doughnut. “Well, there’s nothing like a ritual murderer with a sense of humor.”

“You’re probably right. But if we can’t find any evidence that he
did
drive the car, we’re going to have to do a radical rethink, aren’t we? I’m not saying for a moment that it would necessarily prove him innocent. After all, he could have had accomplices who picked Fiona Kelly up for him and drove her back to the cottage. But I don’t want us to go off half-cocked.”

“All right. But see what you can do to hurry those technical fellows up, will you?”

As Dermot left, loudly smacking the sugar from his hands, Detective Garda Patrick O’Sullivan came into her office. “The Merc was registered to O’Mahony’s Auto Rentals, of Mallow. They rented it out ten days ago to a man called Francis Justice, who gave his address as Green Road, Mallow.”

“How did he pay the deposit?”

“Cash.”

“In that case, we’d better go and have talk with Mr Justice, hadn’t we? Did the car rental company give you a description?”

“The girl who took the booking is on holiday in Tenerife.”

“Then call her up. And talk to Inspector Ahern at Mallow. We’re going to need some back-up.”

It was nearly eleven o’clock before they were ready to drive to Mallow. Katie called Paul on her cellphone and she could hear laughing and music in the background. A pound to a penny he was in Counihan’s, with some of his more unsavory friends.