"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?"
&nb
sp; "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 c
ould 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."
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