White Bones (22 page)

“Very convenient.”

“I thought that if I went up to Sheehan’s Nurseries, I might be able to find out who the car belonged to, and maybe there might be a reward in it for taking it back.”

“Oh, I believe you, Tómas, I really do.”

“You don’t have any cause not to. I swear to God it’s the truth.”

“I don’t think so. I think the truth is that you used a false name and address to rent that Mercedes, and then you used it to pick up the first innocent girl you could find. You took her up to Sheehan’s Nurseries where you tied her up to the bed and you cold-bloodedly mutilated, tortured and killed her. Then you drove her poor butchered remains to Meagher’s Farm and arranged them in the field, as a sacrifice to Mor-Rioghain.”

Tómas Ó Conaill shook his head and kept on shaking it. “You’re a witch, Detective Superintendent Witch. You’re nothing better than a
bean-nighe
, you’re death’s own washerwoman, washing the blood out of dying people’s clothing. I’m innocent of any murder and that’s my final word.”

Katie leaned forward and looked directly into his deep-set eyes. “I will see you locked up for this, Tómas. And long after I’m retired, and I’m sitting at home in the evening, by the fire, I want to have the warm, satisfying feeling of knowing that you’re still inside the Bridewell, and that you’ll stay inside until the day you breathe your very last breath.”

Siobhan was in such a rush to catch the bus that she forgot to pick up her fashion folder with all her preparatory sketches in it. She was halfway down Wellington Road when she realized that she had left it behind and she had to run back to the house, her big knitted bag swinging from her shoulder. She unlocked the front door and panted up the stairs to her bedsit, snatching her folder from the table, and clattering downstairs again.

By the time she reached St Luke’s Cross, the bus was just leaving. She frantically waved at the driver, but he pulled away from the curb in front of the newsagent’s without even seeing her, and the bus was off down Summerhill in a big black cloud of diesel smoke, leaving her behind. There was no use running after it. She was going to be late for her design class now, and Mrs Griffin would greet her with her usual sarcasm, and make a show of her in front of the rest of the students, because she was almost always late, and even if she managed to finish her project, she would still feel hot and humiliated.

One arm swinging, she started to walk at a furious pace down the long steep gradient toward Cork, past the gray Victorian spire of St Luke’s Church, and the higgledy-piggledy tenement buildings that were stacked up on either side of Summerhill with their damp walled gardens and their rusting cast-iron gates. The low November sun shone into her eyes like a migraine. At this time of the morning, traffic was teeming into the city from the north side and the noise was deafening.

Siobhan had furiously-flaming hair, wavy and almost uncontrollable, which she brushed back every morning and tied with a knotted scarf. She was pretty in a pre-Raphaelite way, like her mother, and like her mother she had deathly white skin and sapphire-blue eyes and whenever she was embarrassed her cheeks caught alight.

Ever since she was a little girl she had wanted to design dresses. In nursery school she had drawn pictures of ladies in glittering ballgowns, and when she was eleven she had won an
Evening Echo
competition for the best party dress design for teenagers. Her father had always been skeptical, and told her to think about training for a “proper job,” like working on the checkout at Dunnes Stores, but her mother had encouraged her and protected her and believed in her. She was old enough now to realize that her mother saw her as the girl that
she
had always wanted to be – talented, free, independent, and acknowledged – not pregnant at 17 and exhausted at 23.

She was less than halfway down Summerhill when a large white car drew into the curb beside her and the passenger window came down.

“Hallo, there! You look like you could use a lift.”

Siobhan bent down and peered into the darkness of the car’s interior. She could see a man’s silhouette, a man with tiny
dark-lensed
sunglasses. There was a strong smell of leather upholstery and expensive aftershave.

“No, you’re grand. I don’t have far to go.”

“You look as if you’re in a hurry, that’s all.”

“It’s all right, thanks.”

“Suit yourself. I’ve got a few minutes to spare before my first appointment, that’s all. I can take you anywhere you need to go.”

She hesitated. She had never accepted a lift from anyone she didn’t know, but it wasn’t as if this was two o’clock in the morning, with nobody else around. The pavements were crowded with walkers just like her, making their way down the hill to the city, and the roads were full of buses and cars.

“All right,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat and tucking her portfolio down beside her. “I’m going to the Crawford College of Art and Design. Do you know where that is?”

“Oh, yes,” said the man, and smoothly pulled out into the traffic. “I thought you might be an art student, from that colorful red coat of yours.”

“I designed it myself. I’m studying fashion.”

They stopped at the traffic lights at the bottom of Summerhill. The man turned to her and she could see her own white face reflected in his sunglasses. “Such extraordinary hair,” he remarked. “The true Celtic fire.”

“I used to hate it.”

“How could you? It’s like a
cohullen druith
.”

Siobhan gave him an awkward smile. She didn’t have the faintest idea what a
cohullen druith
was.

“It’s a scarlet cap, made of feathers,” said the man, as if he knew what she was thinking. “It’s worn by the Irish mermaids, the merrows, to help them swim through the water. The merrows are strikingly beautiful, like you, and very promiscuous in their relations with mortal men. Not that I’m suggesting, of course – ” he paused in what he was saying as he released the
parking-brake
and drove away from the lights.

They crossed the river and drove along Merchants’ Quay. When they reached the next set of traffic lights the man said, “The merrows have to take off their caps when they come on land, and hide them. Any man who happens to find one has complete power over her, because she can’t return to the sea without it.”

“I think we learned something about that at school,” said Siobhan. She was beginning to feel very uneasy. The man had stopped in the right-hand lane, as if he intended to double back across the river, over Patrick’s Bridge, instead of straight ahead toward Sharman Crawford Street, where she wanted to go.

“I could walk from here,” she told him.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“It isn’t far now, honestly.”

The man turned to her and grinned, showing his teeth. “What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Siobhan, why?”

“Let me tell you something, Siobhan, every journey is an adventure. When you take that first step out of your house in the morning, you never know where fate is going to take you.”

“I think I can walk from here,” she told him, in sudden urgency, and tugged at the door-handle. The lights changed to green and the man turned right, over the river, and up to MacCurtain Street, which would take them back eastward.

“Please, stop. I want to get out.”

“Impossible, I’m afraid. This is one of those journeys that, once begun, has to continue right to the very end. No dawdling, no diversions. Keep right on to the end of the road, as the song goes.”

“Really, stop, please. I want to get out.”

The man ignored her. Already flustered, Siobhan began to hyperventilate. They had to stop at the pedestrian crossing just outside the Everyman Theater, and she beat on the window with her fists, trying to attract the attention of the van-driver who had drawn up next to them.

“
Help me
!” she screamed. “
Help me
!”

But the van-driver was talking on his cellphone, and he obviously thought that Siobhan was simply fooling around. He gave her a wink and a nod of his head, and then the lights changed and they were off again, past Summerhill, past the railway station, and out along the road which ran close beside the wide glassy waters of the River Lee.

The man drove very fast, with only one hand on the wheel. Siobhan wrestled with the door-handle again, but he reached across and snatched her wrist, gripping it painfully tight. “You can’t get
out
, Siobhan, so I wouldn’t even attempt it. Sit back and enjoy the rollercoaster. This is an adventure, darling… much more exciting than going to college and designing coats! You can design a coat any day. A coat, for Christ’s sake! But how often do you come face to face with fate?”

“
Let me out
!” she shrieked. She kicked and struggled and her cheeks were hectic with panic. “
Let me out
!
Let me out
!”

The man wrenched the steering-wheel first to one side and then the other. The car slewed across the road, narrowly missing an oncoming truck. There was a shrill chorus of protesting tires and a cacophony of car-horns.

“You want to die so soon?” the man demanded, and there was an extraordinary note of triumph in his voice.

“Please stop. Please let me out.”

He wrenched the wheel again, and this time the car hit the nearside curb and one of its hubcaps flew off, and bounded into the bushes.

“
What do you want
?” Siobhan screamed at him. “
What do you want
?”

The man steered them deftly across the Skew Bridge – left, then right, tires howling, across the railway. “What do you think? I want everything that you can give me, my darling Siobhan, and a little bit more besides.” He lifted her hand up and crushed it triumphantly between his fingers.

She took three or four shuddering breaths, like somebody stepping waist-deep into cold water. She was trying to stay calm, trying to stay calm. Her mother had always said to her that no matter how threatening men could be, she should never lose control of herself, never get hysterical. They wanted to you to go off the edge. It gave them an excuse for raging back at you, for hitting you. Her father used to hit her mother, every Sunday morning, after Mass, with monotonous regularity, and she never heard her mother even so much as say “Don’t, Tom, don’t.”

The man said, “I could introduce you to all kinds of pleasures… all kinds of sensations… feelings that you never could have imagined. I could give you such ecstasy, Siobhan, you’d be begging me for more. But there’s so little time for that, these days. Everything’s hurry, hurry, hurry, isn’t it, and far too many years have rolled by already.”

“I won’t let you hurt me,” said Siobhan, trying to be defiant.

“Excuse me, you don’t have any say in the matter. If I want to hurt you, I will.”

“I want you to let me out of the car.”

“What? So that you can call the cops and have me collared? I don’t think so, my darling. This is much too important. I need only one more life, and then I can have everything I’ve ever wanted. The day is nearly with us, Siobhan. The greatest day ever in romantic history. And all of the glory will be yours. Well, most of it. Some of it, anyway. A little.”

They passed Tivoli Docks, with its tall triangular cranes reflected in the river, and then he turned up the long, steep hill toward Mayfield. Siobhan began to slump down in her seat, lower and lower, as if she were trying to hide.

“You mustn’t be scared,” the man told her. “The only thing to be scared about is to die a nonentity. And that certainly won’t happen to you.”

“I’m late,” said Siobhan. “I’m late for my fashion class. They’ll be wondering where I am.”

The man released her wrist and ran his fingers deep into her wiry, coppery hair, tugging at her roots, massaging her scalp. “This is a different path, Siobhan. This is a different way to go. When you woke up this morning you thought that your life was going to be just the same as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. But, believe me, it isn’t.”

He took his fingers out of her hair and sniffed at them. “It’s strange, isn’t it, that redheads smell so different from the rest of us? Like foxes, I suppose.”

After a while, as they approached the crossroads at Ballyvolane, he reached down and groped beneath his seat as if he had dropped something. When he sat up again, he was holding a brand-new claw-hammer, with the price-sticker still on the handle. Siobhan glimpsed something shining, but she didn’t understand what he was going to do until he swung his arm back as far as he could and knocked her dead center in the middle of the forehead.

When she woke up she was naked. Her head was thumping from the hammer-blow and her vision was blurred. She didn’t have any idea where she was, although it looked like an upstairs apartment, because there was a window opposite, and she could make out the fuzzy tops of fir trees, and a distant skyline, with clouds, and the sun shining behind it.

She tried to stand up, but then she realized that she was tied to the armchair that she was sitting in, her wrists and ankles tightly bound with nylon cord. She was freezing cold. The room was bare, with a green-flecked linoleum floor and an empty cast-iron fireplace, and the cream-colored wallpaper was stained with damp and peeling away from the walls.

There was a damp-rippled picture of Jesus on the opposite wall, surrounded by baby animals. He was smiling at her beatifically, with one hand raised. She licked her lips. Her mouth was dry and she could barely summon the strength to breathe in. “
Help
,” she called out, in a pathetic whisper. “Help.”

She slept. Several hours must have passed by because when she opened her eyes again the sky had softened to a pale nostalgic blue and the sun had hidden itself behind the right-hand side of the window-frame, so that it illuminated nothing more than the picture of Jesus. She was so stiff that she felt that if somebody were to cut her free, and she tried to stand up, her arms and legs would snap off.