A Terrible Beauty

by Graham Masterton

  "I'll come to see you, then. Where are you now?"

  "I'm at home. Number 45 Perrott Avenue, up at the back of the university."

  "Give me twenty minutes. There's one or two things I have to sort out first."

  "All right, then. But if you do hear from Katie in the meantime, you'll let her know?"

  "I will, of course."

  • • •

  He met Jimmy O'Rourke in the lobby. "Fancy an old beer, sir, before you go?" Jimmy asked him, blowing out cigarette smoke.

  "Just a quick one. Have you seen Katie anywhere?"

  "She went home, I think. Did you hear about her accident?"

  "I did, yes. Christ. That must have been the end to a perfect day."

  "She needs to take a week off, if you ask me."

  Outside it was clattering with rain. Liam pulled on his overcoat and buttoned it up to the neck. "I always thought this job was too much for a woman. If Katie's not careful she'll be cracking up."

  "I'd be careful, if I were you," said Jimmy. "She's a whole lot tougher than she looks."

  "We'll see," said Liam. "Where do you want to go? O'Flaherty's?"

  Katie was dreaming that she was walking through a slaughterhouse. Cattle carcasses were heaped on every side, and the whole building reeked of blood. Above her she could see a filthy skylight, clotted with fallen leaves, onto which the rain was ceaselessly pattering. Somewhere, music was playing, echoing and indistinct, as if a radio had fallen down the bottom of a well.The Fields of Athenry.

  What are you doing here?somebody whispered, close to her ear.This is a place of death. This is where the Gray-Dolly Man lives, and cuts up people for his own purposes. Women and children, innocent and guilty. He cuts off their arms and legs and saws their screaming heads in half.

  She turned a corner and found herself in another part of the slaughterhouse. The floor was glistening with rainwater and strewn with indescribable pieces of flesh and fragments of bone. Not far away a tall man in a strange five-cornered hat was standing at a metal table, feeding carcasses into a band saw. The saw let out a fierce, intermittent scream, and blood and bone was flying everywhere.

  Cautiously, she approached him. She lifted her hand to touch him on the shoulder, but as she did so he slowly turned around. She was so shocked that she almost lost her balance. His face was not a face at all, but a mass of crawling beetles.

  "Your turn next," he whispered, between lips that literally dripped with insects. "Your turn next, and you'd better believe it."

  It was almost ten o'clock now and Gerard was growing irritable. He drew back the sitting-room curtains and peered down the street. It was raining like the Great Flood tonight and he was beginning to suspect that Inspector Fennessy might have decided that he would rather sit at home in front of the TV than visit a professor of Celtic mythology in a large, damp-smelling Victorian apartment that was crowded with books andNational Geographics and empty Bulmer's cider bottles. That was all right by him. He preferred to talk to Katie in any case. He just wished Inspector Fennessy could have had the common courtesy to call him and say so.

  Gerard was wearing a partially unraveled sweater of thick green wool that he had bought on a walking holiday in Kerry, and a pair of baggy beige corduroy trousers. In his tiny study, the only light came from his computer, which he had switched on so that he could show Liam Fennessy what he had discovered.

  He tried ringing Katie again. But her cell phone rang and rang, and then he was answered by the Eircell answering service. "If you want to rerecord your message "

  That was the limit. Katie couldn't be found and Liam Fennessy couldn't be bothered to turn up. Gerard believed that he had discovered one of the most dramatic secrets of the twentieth century and when it came down to it, nobody cared. He went back to his study to switch off his computer. He would take his golf umbrella, walk down to Reidy's Vault Bar in the Western Road, and console himself with a few pints of cider.

  Just as he had clicked the computer off, however, his doorbell shrilled. He gave an old-womanly cluck of exasperation and went over to the intercom by the front door. "Inspector Fennessy?"

  "It is, yes."Liam's voice was distorted and barely audible, as if he were standing too far away from the intercom. "It's raining buckets out here. Are you going to be after letting me in?"

  "You're very late. You said twenty minutes. I was just about to go out."

  "I'm sorry, but I'm here now."

  Pressing the entry buzzer, Gerard went back to the study and switched on his computer again. While it booted itself up, he blew his nose on a tiny fragment of crumpled Kleenex. He had really wanted to tell Katie what he had discovered, and Katie alone. He had even rehearsed what he was going to say to her, and he knew how impressed she would have been. Perhaps then she would have looked beyond his plumpness and his combed-over hair and seen what he was really like inside: a man who had all the romance of a mythological hero from the days of Tara and Aileach and Cruachan. All the same, he supposed that it would still be fairly dramatic to tell Inspector Fennessy. "What I am about to reveal to you, Inspector, will change the way that historians think about the twentieth century forever."

  There was a sharp knock at the door of his apartment, and then another. He called out, "All right-I'm coming!" and drew back the chain.

  Before he could open it properly, the door was kicked with such force that it hit him on the side of the face and he fell back against the door of his coat cupboard. He said, "What-?" but before he could say anything else a man in a black coat and black balaclava stormed in through the door, seized his sweater, and threw him across the floor, knocking over his coffee table and all his empty Bulmer's bottles.

  Gerard tried to stumble to his feet but the man grabbed his sweater yet again, lifting him almost off his feet, and slamming him against the door frame that led to his kitchenette. He felt his shoulder crack, and an indescribable pain in the small of his back.

  "What are you doing?" Gerard shrilled at him. "For God's sake, you're hurting me!"

  The man said nothing, but twisted one of his arms behind his back and pressed him against the wall beside his study door.

  "The gardaí are coming!" gasped Gerard. "I just called them and they'll be here at any minute."

  "Shut up," the man ordered him, calmly.

  "I'm telling you the truth, I've got an appointment with Inspector Liam Fennessy. That's why I let you in. I thought you were him."

  "And what were you going to tell him?"

  "Nothing. Just some research I've been doing, that's all."

  "Oh, yes? And what have you managed to find out?"

  "Nothing-nothing important. For God's sake, you're hurting me."

  "Something about those bones up at Knocknadeenly, was it? Something about Fiona Kelly?"

  "I'm not telling you. You can do whatever you like, I-"

  The man gripped Gerard between the legs and twisted. Gerard let out a cry of agony that sounded more like a tortured dog than a man. The man twisted him again, even more fiercely, and this time Gerard babbled out, "I found out who killed all those women! That's all!"

  "And what about Fiona Kelly? Did you find out who killed Fiona Kelly?"

  Gerard shook his head. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and if the man hadn't been holding him up he would have collapsed on the carpet.

  "I'm asking you again. Did you find out who killed Fiona Kelly?"

  "I don't know, I swear to God. The gardaí still think it was Tómas Ó Conaill but if it wasn't Tómas Ó Conaill then I don't know who it was."

  "You'd better be telling me the truth."

  The man released his grip, and Gerard crouched his way over to the sofa and lay down with his knees drawn up under him, coughing.

  The man went into his study. All around Gerard's computer, his desk was heaped with books and magazines and spring-bound notebooks. The man picked up a notebook on top of the heap and said, "What's this? Does this have anything to do with it?"

  "Gaelic legends
," Gerard coughed, miserably "Preparation for a lecture on Friday. Nothing to do with-Knocknadeenly."

  The man tossed the notebook aside and swept the papers onto the floor. Then he lifted up Gerard's computer and threw it against the wall. The monitor imploded with a dull bang and a shower of glass. The man stamped on the drive unit, denting the case and breaking the plastic inlets. Then he came back into the sitting room.

  "Up, come on."

  "What?"

  "You heard me. Up!"

  One-handed, he heaved Gerard off the sofa. He jostled him out of his front door, along the landing, and down the high Victorian stairs. Gerard did everything he could to resist, flapping his arms and trying to make his legs turn to jelly, but the man was frighteningly powerful, and when his legs collapsed beneath him the man simply picked him up by the scruff of his Kerry sweater and made him dance along like a puppet.

  "Where are we going?" Gerard panted, as the man forced him along the corridor that led to the back door.

  "Shut up."

  He opened the back door and pushed Gerard out into the narrow courtyard at the back of the house. It used to be part of a larger garden but now it was all tarmacked over and Gerard used it to park his old red Nissan. Through the teeming rain, Gerard saw a large white car parked only inches away from his.

  "Where are you taking me? You can't do this this is abduction!"

  "No it isn't," the man assured him.

  "You can't take me away against my will!"

  "I don't intend to. Now, shut up."

  The man pulled Gerard to the back of the car. He unlocked the trunk and took out a length of nylon washing line. Then he kicked the back of Gerard's calves, so that Gerard dropped to the ground like a knackered cow.

  "What do you want? Who are you? I haven't done anything to anyone."

  The man said nothing. He bent over Gerard and deftly tied his wrists together. He cut the washing line with a craft knife, and then he looped Gerard's wrists over the car's towing hook.

  "What the hell are you doing to me?" Gerard protested. "If you think you're going to drag me along the road-"

  "I'm not," said the man. "So shut up."

  "Look, I don't know what this is all about, but if there's something else that you're after "

  "Shut up," the man repeated. He took the rest of the washing line and tied it to Gerard's ankles. Then he knotted it tightly around a sign sayingResidents Parking Only.

  Gerard lay on the ground and looked up at him, so terrified that he could hardly breathe.

  "What are you going to do to me? Are you going toleaveme here?"

  "Some of you, I expect."

  "What are you going to do to me?"

  The man stood over him for a while, and Gerard could see the raindrops sparkling all around his head, caught in the streetlights so that they looked like an endless shower of tiny meteorites.

  "Help!" Gerard called, but he was so frightened that his throat closed up and he could only manage a hoarse whisper. "Somebody help me!"

  The man went back around the car and climbed into the driver's seat. There was a moment's pause and then he started the engine.

  "Help!"Gerard screamed."Holy Mary Mother of God somebody help me!"

  The engine revved. Gerard twisted and grunted and struggled, trying to lift his wrists over the towing hook at the back of the car. If only he could stretch himself another inch, he was sure that he could get himself free. This man was trying to scare him, that was all, trying to warn him off. Somebody must have alerted him that he was asking questions about Jack Callwood, and that he was getting very close to the truth. It hadn't occurred to him before that the British government might have intelligence officers in the Irish Republic to make sure that nobody tried to look under any stones that they didn't want looked under, particularly from their colonial days, and the days of the Black and Tans and the Irish Volunteers.

  "All right!" Gerard shrieked out. "I promise you, I won't say anything to anybody! Not a word! Ever!"

  The engine revving died down. Gerard lay back in relief, with the rain falling directly in his face and almost blinding him. "Just let me up, will you? Untie me and let me up. I won't say anything, I swear to God. I swear on my mother's grave."

  Without warning, the car was revved up again. The man threw it into gear and drove off, tearing every muscle in Gerard's body with a sound like ripping linen and pulling both of his arms off.

  Gerard instantly stopped shouting. He realized that something appalling had happened to him but he didn't want to know what. He lay on the wet tarmac with blood pumping with horrible regularity from each of his arm sockets. He felt no pain at all. In fact, he felt oddly relieved, glad that the worst was over. He heard the car stop, and the driver's door slam, but he didn't see the man walk back and stand over him, because his eyes were closed.

  The man said, "Some things aren't meant to be found out, Professor. It wasn't your fault but there you are."

  For some reason, Gerard couldn't think of a prayer. All he could remember was W. H. Auden's poem about the iceberg knocking in the cupboard, and the desert sighing in the bed, and the "crack in the teacup that opens a lane to the land of the dead."

  51

  It took Katie almost five minutes to wake up properly. When she finally managed to lift her head, she felt as if her dead mother had stuffed her knitting in her mouth. Lucy was sitting in the armchair, watching a documentary on the Lusitania on the Discovery channel with the volume turned down.

  "What time is it?" she asked, thickly.

  "Half past nine."

  Katie sat up and dry washed her face with her hands. "Jesus! I thought I asked you to wake me at eight."

  "I tried, believe me, but you were dead to the world. Do you want me to make you a cup of coffee?"

  "No-no thanks. Is there anything fizzy in that minibar?"

  "Sure. Here."

  Katie popped open the miniature can of Diet Coke and drank it in four quick swallows. Lucy stood up and said, "How do you feel?"

  "Terrible."

  "That's because you haven't relaxed in ages. Not really relaxed."

  "I can't relax. I've got too much to do."

  Lucy sat down on the bed beside her, and stroked her hair. "I used to be just like you sometimes, all nerves, all stressed out, never allowing myself to rest. But that's because I was never focused. I couldn't decide what to do with my life. It was only when I narrowed my vision down to one single objective that I began to understand myself. You have to say, 'this is what I want and I'll do anything to achieve it.' And I meananything. If you can do that, you'll find this tremendous inner calm, I promise you."

  "I have to check in with Anglesea Street."

  "Katie-you don't actually have to do anything but relax."

  Katie turned her head and looked into her eyes. "I can't. Not yet. But I promise you that I will, as soon as this case is complete. We could go down to West Cork together if you like, and I can show you Baltimore and Cape Clear. It's beautiful down there."

  Lucy leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead. "That sounds wonderful."

  "Well, it'll be a way of paying you back, for everything you've done for me. You saved my life when I was drowning in the river, and now you've saved me from going to pieces."

  "You don't have to pay me back."

  Katie went to the dressing table, where she brushed out her hair. She hadn't dried it properly after her bath, and it stuck out wildly. "Look at me," she said. "I look madder than Tómas Ó Conaill."

  "Wet it again and I'll blow-dry it for you."

  "You should have been a therapist, instead of a professor of mythology."

  "Mythologyisa kind of therapy, in a way. It's the way we understand our place in the world. There are no merrows andbean-sidhes,Katie. Not really. There's only us."

  • • •

  Liam didn't reach Perrott Street until 10:47. He climbed out of his car and hurried to Gerard's front door, his collar turned up against the pelting ra
in. He pressed the doorbell and waited. Then he pressed it again. Fuck it. The stupid bastard hadn't even had the patience to wait an extra twenty minutes. Well, whatever Gerard had wanted to tell him, it couldn't have beenthatcritical. It was Liam's guess that he had probably been exaggerating its urgency so that he could persuade Katie to come round to see him. He didn't entirely blame him. When Katie had first been stationed at Anglesea Street, Liam had been attracted to her, too.

  He ran back to his car and splashed straight into a pothole full of water, soaking his sock.