A Terrible Beauty

by Graham Masterton

  "To begin with, he claimed that his name was Jan Vermeeling, and that he was a Dutch merchant seaman. However we discovered papers and letters under the floorboards of his room in the names of John or Jack Callwood, Jan Rufenwald and a birth certificate in the name of Dieter Hartmann, from Münster, in Westphalia. To my astonishment we also found a ticket that showed that he had arrived in Ireland from New York on the ill-fated Lusitania, and so must have been one of her seven hundred and sixty-five survivors. Yet when I checked the manifest of all the Lusitania survivors, and their photographs, Dieter Hartmann (or whatever his real name happened to be) did not appear to be among them.

  "The answer to this conundrum, however, was in Dieter Hartmann's wardrobe. Apart from a British army uniform and a tweed jacket and several men's shirts, we found three women's dresses, as well as bodices and lace petticoats. At first we assumed that he was cohabiting with a woman companion, but then it occurred to me to look again at the photographs of those who had been rescued when the Lusitania was torpedoed. My intuition proved to be correct: among the survivors was a woman called Miss Mary Chaplain, described in the original list of survivors as a retired teacher from White Plains, New York. The face in the photograph, however, was of a much younger person than any retired teacher would have been, and on closer examination I realized that 'Miss Mary Chaplain' was in fact Dieter Hartmann in women's clothing and a wig.

  "Under intensive interrogation, Hartmann eventually admitted that he had taken on the identity of 'Miss Mary Chaplain' to avoid detection on board the Lusitania. He confessed that he was wanted for questioning by the Massachusetts police and he was afraid that a wireless message might be sent to the Lusitania's captain to detain him. His fear was well founded because there had been a thorough search of the vessel in mid-Atlantic, although as 'Miss Mary Chaplain' he evaded discovery. He claimed that there had been some 'misunderstandings' between him and the Massachusetts police concerning the disappearance of several women.

  "I contacted my superiors at the War Office and informed them that we had successfully arrested the man we believed to be responsible for abducting the eleven Irishwomen. I told them that I believed him to be Dieter Hartmann, although I also gave them his several aliases-Jan Rufenwald, John Callwood, and Mary Chaplain. I was satisfied that I would be able to send him for trial to the Cork County courts.

  "Almost by return, however, I received a coded wireless message ordering me to execute Dieter Hartmann summarily and to 'eliminate' all evidence of his existence. I was to tell Colonel Wilson and all of the other officers and men who had assisted me that my investigation was now concluded and that they were not to speak of it again, in the interests of national security.

  "With three NCOs I took Dieter Hartmann that same evening to a bog close to Glanmire, where he was made to kneel and shot once in the back of the head with a service revolver. He was buried very deep in the bog and we left no marker.

  "I wondered for many years afterward why I should have been ordered to execute Dieter Hartmann so expeditiously and so secretly. After all, he was a German, and in my estimation at the time it would have been matchless propaganda for the Crown forces if we were credited with catching the man who had abducted and presumably murdered so many Irishwomen-not that we ever found their remains."

  Jimmy lit up his cigarette and blew smoke out of his nostrils. Katie would love this stuff, and it would mean that they could wind up their own investigation, too, thank God.

  Colonel Corcoran had written: "I thought no more about Dieter Hartmann until 1923, when I received a copy in the post of a rather sensational American magazine called True Crime Monthly.It had been sent to me without any attached comment whatsoever by Lieutenant Colonel Wilson, who was now working for a merchant bank in New York. The magazine carried an article about the notorious ritual murders of scores of women in Massachusetts. The man suspected to be responsible was 'Jack Callwood'-believed to be one of Germany's worst mass murderers, 'Jan Rufenwald.' The article said that Jack Callwood had booked passage on the Lusitania to escape from the United States and had almost certainly drowned with the other one thousand one hundred ninety-five victims-'so even if he escaped the electric chair, natural justice caught up with him.' But of course Colonel Wilson and I knew full well that Callwood had survived, and that it wasn't natural justice that had caught up with him-but us.

  "My curiosity about the affair was once again aroused, and through old friends in naval intelligence I managed to obtain the records of the wireless signals that were sent to the Lusitania prior to her sinking. At the subsequent board of inquiry, the Lusitania's captain, William Turner, was blamed for ignoring the Admiralty's directives for evading German submarines. He said that he had slowed down because of patchy fog off the southern coast of Ireland, and that he had not understood that he was supposed to steer a zigzag course unless a U-boat was actually sighted.

  "But here in the top-secret Admiralty files was the handwritten record of a wireless message which hadorderedhim to slow down and take a particular heading close to the Old Head of Kinsale. It was here that U-boats habitually lurked, waiting for British merchant ships, and he was intercepted by the German submarine U-20, under the command of Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger.

  "On further investigation, which took me many months, and in which I naturally had to be extremely circumspect, I discovered from records at the War Office that a telephone message was made to the German Embassy in Dublin on the night of May 4, 1915, to the effect that Jan Rufenwald, alias Jack Callwood, was traveling on board the Lusitania to Liverpool. When the liner passed the southern coast of Ireland, they would have an opportunity to exact their revenge on the worst mass murderer that Germany had ever known.

  "Of course I have no absolute proof. But even at the time, rumor was rife that the British intelligence services colluded in the sinking of the Lusitania as a way of provoking outrage against Germany in the United States (which had previously shown little interest in the war in Europe and had even been protesting against the British blockade of German ports).

  "My personal belief is that it was British intelligence who advised the Germans of the presence on board the Lusitania of Dieter Hartmann, and that the Lusitania was specifically instructed to slow down to a speed at which she would present herself as an easy target to U-20. In a war which had already cost hundreds of thousands of lives, a further one thousand one hundred ninety-five were of very little consequence compared with the benefits of bringing the United States into the conflict on the Allied side.

  "That is why I was ordered to dispose of him so secretly. If it ever emerged that the War Office had used him as a bait to encourage the Germans to sink the Lusitania, the damage to Anglo-American relations would never have recovered."

  There was a cautious knock at the door, and Detective Garda Patrick O'Sullivan appeared, red-faced, looking as if he had just eaten a rather large Irish breakfast.

  "Jesus, the state of that fellow downstairs. No fecking arms. Jesus."

  "All right, Patrick," said Jimmy. "Liam's called out the technical team. Any idea where Superintendent Maguire has got herself to?"

  "Not a clue. I wouldn't blame her if she was drowning her sorrows."

  54

  Katie followed John up the angled field, her shoes clogged with mud. The rain was lashing down slantwise now, and she was completely soaked and shuddering with cold. John turned back and looked at her, but there was nothing she could do to help him, not yet. What was most important now was their survival.

  "Move it, will you?" Lucy snapped at them.

  "For God's sake," Katie protested.

  "There is no God, Katie. You should have realized that by now."

  "You're crazy. You really think this is going to happen? You really think that Mor-Rioghain is going to appear?"

  "Shut up. Everything's ready. Thirteen sacrifices, it's all been done, everything."

  "You're crazy."

  "And you're not crazy? Going to mass every Sunday
, and eating a biscuit, and thinking that it's Jesus you're eating?"

  "Mor-Rioghain is a myth. Nothing but a fairy story."

  "And Jesus isn't?"

  Lucy looked wilder than Katie had ever seen her before. Her blond hair was brushed up in spikes, and she was wearing her long black leather coat, which was rolling with raindrops, and her knee-length black-leather boots. She was walking beside them, with Katie's nickel-plated gun in her right hand and a four-inch butcher's boning knife in the other, and Katie was in no doubt at all that she was prepared to use both of them. She had forced Katie to hand over her weapon by sticking the point of the knife into John Meagher's ear, lancing his eardrum. Blood was still dripping from his earlobe and into his shirt collar.

  They reached the crest of the field by Iollan's Wood, where John had found the remains of Fiona Kelly. Katie dreaded to think what they would see there, and her stomach started to spasm. She gagged up a mouthful of half-chewed breakfast, and had to stop.

  "Comeon, will you?" Lucy shouted at her, hoarsely. "We can't waste any more time! Mor-Rioghain has waited too long already."

  They trod over the last thick furrows, their feet almost disappearing into the saturated soil, and there spread out in the mud in front of them in reds and grays and fatty yellows was a disassembled human body. Katie had seen Fiona Kelly's remains, but this was still difficult to take in, especially since she was badly scared now, and had no control over what was going to happen to her.

  "Siobhan Buckley," said Lucy, stalking around the remains in satisfaction. "Pretty girl, sensitive, artistic. Just what Mor-Rioghain was looking for."

  In the same way that Fiona Kelly's remains had been arranged, Siobhan Buckley's ribs were stuck into the ground in a circle and her fleshless skull was perched on top of her pelvis. Her intestines were heaped into the middle like a knot of large pale snakes. Her liver lay shining in a puddle next to her deflated lungs. The rain was pelting down so hard that even the crows were discouraged from coming down to peck at them.

  There, too, were her thighbones, with holes drilled through them, and little gray dollies dangling from them.

  "She made me help her," said John, with almost overwhelming self-disgust. "She said she'd kill my mother if I didn't, but then she did anyway."

  "I never thought that I would see this day," said Lucy, pacing from side to side and making a curious ducking movement with her head every time she turned. "I never thought I would ever see this happen. Mor-Rioghain, the great and terrible Morgana, summoned through from the other side!"

  Katie and John stayed where they were. John's fists were clenched tight and his face was very white.

  "My colleagues will be wondering where I am," Katie called out. "I was supposed to interview Tómas Ó Conaill again at twelve. If I don't show up, and they can't get in touch with me by telephone, they're going to come looking for me."

  "Let them come looking for you," said Lucy, still pacing from side to side. "By the time they find you, there won't be very much left of you."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You don't know, do you? When Mor-Rioghain comes through from the other side, she needs a fourteenth sacrifice, a living woman, the strongest woman in the tribe. You were perfect, right from the very beginning. It was always going to be you."

  Katie said, "What do you mean, 'right from the very beginning'?"

  "Right from the moment I saw you on the television nightly news, when you first discovered all of those women's bones. I heard you talking about ritual murder, and I knew at once what kind of ritual it was, because I could see one of the thighbones in the background, with a dolly hanging from it."

  "You told me your university sent you."

  "University? I've never been to any university. I was living in Boston when I first saw you, working as a window dresser. Haltmann's Stores, at Downtown Crossing."

  "So how did you know so much about Mor-Rioghain?"

  "She's my reason for living, Katie. She has been for years. I studied Jack Callwood's sacrifices in endless detail, trying to locate the exact spot where he laid the bodies out, and how many women he had managed to kill. I went out almost every weekend, but I was beginning to think that I would never find what I was looking for. His house in Boston had long since been demolished and there was no way of finding the magical place where he had buried the bones. But there you were, like an angel from heaven, if there were angels, and if there was a heaven. There you were, talking to me on my television, showing me the very place where Mor-Rioghain could be summoned, and telling me how many more women I would have to sacrifice to summon her."

  "You're sick. You're totally deranged."

  "Well, hah, I'd agree with you, if Mor-Rioghain didn't exist. But when Jack Callwood was Jan Rufenwald, in Germany, he managed to summon Morgana three times, so he said, and each time she gave him wealth, and property, and the company of some of Germany's most desirable women. I first found out about him when I was seventeen years old, and ever since then I'veknownthat I would summon Mor-Rioghain myself one day, and today's the day."

  "So what do you want from Mor-Rioghain? Don't tell me you cut up those poor girls just for money, or houses, or men."

  Lucy stopped pacing and stared at Katie and Katie had never seen an expression like that on anybody's face, man or woman, ever. She was alight with triumph.

  "Mor-Rioghain will give me myself. That's something that I've never had. Mor-Rioghain will give meme."

  Katie smeared the rain away from her eyes with the back of her hand. She didn't understand this at all, but she knew that she had to think of a way of getting them away from here. Even though it was raining so hard, the smell around Siobhan Buckley's body was sickening, a metallic mixture of blood and peat and feces, and the proximity of actual grisly death made Katie feel even more afraid.

  "Take off your clothes," Lucy ordered her. "You have to be ready for the sacrifice."

  "No, I won't," said Katie.

  Lucy came back around the bloody remains and held the boning knife up to Katie's face. "Take off your clothes or so help me I'll stick this in your eyes."

  Katie unbuttoned her sodden green blouse, and peeled it off. Lucy stayed where she was, very close to her, the gun held high, the knife pointing directly at Katie's face. It suddenly occurred to Katie that Lucy must have always carried this knife. How else had she managed to cut so deftly through Katie's seat belt when her car was sinking in the Lee?

  She took off her skirt and stepped out of it. "Underwear now," Lucy insisted. Katie hesitated but Lucy prodded the knife at her. She unfastened her bra and then pulled down her Marks & Spencer panties. The rain ran down her naked back and gave her goose bumps all over.

  "Kneel," said Lucy.

  "If you so much as lay one finger on me-" Katie began, but Lucy screamed, "Kneel!"and so she knelt, her knees sinking into the mud.

  Lucy took a black scarf out of her coat pocket and handed it to John. "What do you want me to do with this?" he asked her, his voice sounding tight and terrified.

  "Blindfold her, tightly, so that she can't see anything at all. Even Mor-Rioghain's living sacrifice is not allowed to set eyes on the great one when she appears."

  John did as he was told. Then Lucy gave him a length of nylon cord and said, "Tie her hands behind her back."

  "I'm not too good with knots."

  "Just tie her, will you?"

  It took John a few fumbling minutes before he was able to fasten Katie's wrists. All the time he kept mumbling under his breath, "I'm sorry, Katie, I'm sorry. I'm so damned sorry."

  When he had finished, Lucy said, "Step away. This is the time for the summoning to begin."

  It had grown even darker than ever, and the rain was drifting across the field from Iollan's Wood like the winding sheets that the bean-nighe washes. John took one step back, and then another. "Turn around," Lucy told him, and so he did. With three quick paces she approached him from behind, put her right arm around him, and sliced the boning knife a
cross his Adam's apple.

  55

  Jimmy O'Rourke turned to the last few pages of Gerard's notebook. Outside he and Patrick O'Sullivan could hear police and ambulance sirens approaching from the Western Road. Patrick took out a cigarette, too, and lit it, and took a look around. "Wasn't too tidy, was he? Look at the state of this place. Dirty dinner plate under the couch."

  "He was an academic, Patrick. Very learned fellow. Academics aren't interested in dirty dinner plates."