A Terrible Beauty

by Graham Masterton

  Patrick picked up a heap of Examiners and found a dogeared copy of Playboy. "Interested in dirty books, though, I'd say."

  "Can't fault the chap's research, though. This is going to cause one hell of a bloody great political row, I can tell you. Wouldn't be surprised if it starts a war."

  "I thought you weren't bothered with all of this guff."

  "Well, I am now, boy. There could be some promotion in this."

  He finished reading the final few paragraphs of Colonel Corcoran's diary, and then he came to some slanted, hastily scribbled notes which Gerard had written at the very end. "Had reply to my E-mail to UC Berkeley re: Prof. Quinn's research papers!! She published her first study,Celtic Legends, in 1962!! Odd!!"

  Jimmy put down the notebook and frowned. "He says here that Professor Quinn published her first paper in1962. Nineteen sixty-two? That would make her at least sixty-five years old, wouldn't it?"

  "I thought you checked her out yourself."

  "Yes, but I only checked that she existed. I didn't ask if she was a pensioner."

  "Have you heard from Katie yet?"

  "No, but she's due back at lunch to talk to that Tómas Ó Conaill again."

  "Due back from where?"

  "She went out to Knocknadeenly with Professor Quinn. She wanted to talk to the Meaghers again."

  "Katie's taken Lucy Quinn with her to Knocknadeenly?"

  "That's right. She mentioned it this morning."

  "Have you tried her cell phone?"

  "I can't get through. The mountains screw up the signal, especially in this weather. She said she wouldn't be later than twelve so."

  Jimmy picked up Gerard's notebook again. Why had Gerard needed to talk to Katie so urgently, and why had somebody come to Gerard's flat, smashed up his computer, and pulled him apart? Maybe that somebody hadn't wanted him to tell Katie what he had discovered. But if that was the case, why hadn't he taken his notebook, with all his research in it? Unless that somebody could read no Gaelic, and hadn't realized from the first few pages what it was all about.

  He tried Katie's cell phone number again. Now the signal said that the phone was out of service. He tried Liam Fennessy instead.

  "Inspector? Jimmy O'Rourke here. Are you anywhere near Knocknadeenly?"

  "Not far. I'm just on my way back from Rathcormac. Assault with a deadly leg of pale ham. Fellow knocked his poor old father's teeth out."

  "I've been trying to contact Katie Maguire. She's up at the Meagher farm with that Professor Lucy Quinn, supposed to be talking to John Meagher and his mother. Trouble is I can't get a signal, and, well-"

  "What?"

  "I've been looking through Gerard O'Brien's research papers here, and there's kind of a cryptic note about Lucy Quinn, like she may not be exactly who she says she is."

  "So who exactly is she?"

  "I don't know, but it might be an idea to call up at the Meaghers' and make sure that everything's okay."

  "All right, then. I'll be down with you in Perrott Street in twenty minutes or so. You've got everything under control, then?"

  Oh, yes, thought Jimmy. I've got a dead university professor with no arms and a notebook containing the most explosive political secret of the twentieth century. Everything's well under control, boy.

  Liam arrived at the entrance to Meagher's Farm and tooted his horn. The garda on duty came hurrying through the rain and Liam wound his window down. "Is Detective Superintendent Maguire still here?"

  The garda nodded. "She's been here about forty-five minutes, sir."

  "Okay, thanks."

  He drove up to the farm buildings. Katie's car was parked outside, as well as a tractor with its engine idling. He climbed out of his car and puddle-hopped over to the front door. The door was half ajar, and so he knocked at it and called out, "Superintendent? Anybody home?"

  Katie knelt in the mud with the rain dripping from her nose and her nipples and sliding down her spine. She could hear Lucy on the far side of Siobhan Buckley's remains, chanting and humming. "Come to me, Mor-Rioghain. Come to me, you queen of death and darkness. Come and see what I have to offer you. Come and feast off flesh and pain."

  Katie didn't know what had happened to John, even though he lay only a few feet away from her, his shirt dark with blood. All she could think of was: supposing I got up and tried to run, how far would I get, tied up and blindfolded? But what else can I do? I can't just kneel here and wait for her to cut my stomach open.

  "Come to me, Mor-Rioghain, mistress of misery. Come to me, enchantress. I will give you freedom again. I will give you substance and shape. I will set you back where you belong, on a mortal throne, in a mortal kingdom."

  Katie was sure that she heard a kind of cackling hiss, like a tortured cat. It was difficult to tell, because of the splattering sound of the rain falling on the field, and the sighing and creaking of the trees in Iollan's Wood, but it went on and on, and if anything it was growing louder.

  "Come to me, Mor-Rioghain. I can feel your presence close by. Come to me, sister of disaster, bringer of woe, you who walk by night through cemeteries and sepulchers."

  Katie thought: this is madness. There is no Mor-Rioghain. There is no Invisible Kingdom. How can she sacrifice me to somebody who doesn't exist? Yet she continued to strain her ears to hear the cat-hiss, and she thought she could detect another sound, too-a very low-frequency throbbing, like a large unlit tanker making its way up the River Lee in the middle of the night.

  "Mor-Rioghain, listen to me! Mor-Rioghain, bring me your magic! I will serve you Mor-Rioghain forever and ever!"

  Lucy's voice grew higher and harsher, and behind her blindfold Katie suddenly thought:this doesn't sound like the Lucy I know. This doesn't even sound like a woman. More like a beast.

  "Mor-Rioghain! Queen of the night! Empress of every decay! Come to me, Mor-Rioghain, I have given you everything you ever demanded!Come to me, damn and curse you, Mor-Rioghain! Come to me! Come to me!"

  Katie heard a deafening bang, and an echo that came from the woods, and a further echo. She threw herself sideways into the mud because she recognized it instantly. Not a witch, or abean-sidhe, but a gunshot.

  "Armed garda!" shouted Liam. "Drop the gun and put up your hands!"

  Lying on the ground, she closed her eyes behind her blindfold and whispered, "Mary Mother of God, thank you. Mary Mother of God thank you, thank you."

  She heard Liam squelching toward her. He bent over her and eased the blindfold away from her eyes, one handed. With his other hand he was keeping his gun leveled at Lucy.

  "Are you all right, Katie?"

  She blinked against the lashing rain. "I'm grand, Liam. Thank you. I'm grand." She was too relieved to be embarrassed by her nakedness.

  "You can't stop Mor-Rioghain now!" Lucy screamed. "This has taken years, and years, and so much blood! You can't stop Mor-Rioghain now!"

  Liam yanked at the cord that bound Katie's wrists, and after three sharp tugs she was free. Muddy all over, she climbed to her feet and picked up her clothes. It was only when she went to retrieve her blouse that she saw John lying in a deep furrow with his throat cut.

  "You can't stop this now!" Lucy was croaking, and she was staggering around and around in hysterical fury. "You-cannot-stop-this-now-not-after-everything!Don't you understand?Don't you fucking understand?I have to be me! I have to be me!I have to know what I am!"

  Katie knelt down beside John and felt his pulse. The boning knife had cut his larynx but it had missed his carotid artery, and although his breathing was very shallow he was still alive. She took out her handkerchief, folded it into a pad, and pressed it against his throat. Then she said, "Liam, quick, give me your phone. We have to get the paramedics up here."

  Lucy kept on spinning around, her arms flailing. Liam threw his phone to Katie and then he approached Lucy with his gun held in both hands. "Keep still! Don't move! Stop going round and round for feck's sake! Put your hands on top of your head and kneel on the ground!"

  Lucy
abruptly stopped spinning, and lifted her head, and gave Katie that mad wide-eyed stare that she had given her before.

  "Do you hear something, Katie?" she said. "Do you hear something, coming through the woods? The door's open, Katie. The door's open! Mor-Rioghain is rushing our way!"

  "Will you ever put your fecking hands on top of your head!" Liam roared at her.

  Katie slowly lowered Liam's cell phone. She could hear something, she swore it. That cackling hiss, that ground-quivering rumbling sound. And there was afeeling, too, an indescribable feeling that something huge and terrible was coming closer and closer.

  "She has to have a living sacrifice, Katie, and if it can't be you then it'll have to be another strong woman, won't it? And who can you think of who's stronger than me?"

  "Lucy! Calm down! Calm down! Do what Liam tells you! Put your hands on your head and kneel on the ground!"

  "Too late, Katie darling! Mor-Rioghain's coming!"

  With that, Lucy wrestled herself out of her black leather coat and threw it aside. Then she pulled off her black poloneck sweater, and her black lacy bra. Her breasts were big, and dark-nippled, and veined with blue.

  "Kneel down!"Liam yelled at her.

  "You don't understand anything!" Lucy screamed back at him. "You don't understand anything at all!"

  Then, suddenly, she stiffened, and stood still, as if she had heard what she was waiting for, and she smiled a waxy-looking smile.

  "Mor-Rioghain," she breathed. Behind her, the branches of Iollan's Wood were thrashing from side to side like the arms of drowning bathers. Katie swore that the temperature was dropping, and that the rain was even colder, and when she looked up the sky was crowded with silent, wheeling crows.

  Raising her voice against the rain, Lucy said, "All my life I never knew what I was, or understood myself. And then I found out about Mor-Rioghain-that she could give you everything you ever wanted. Other people get everything they want, other people understand themselves. Why not me?"

  The wind was rising. The wet leaves of autumn were being lifted from the floor of the woods, and there was a death rattle of bracken stalks, like a thousand old people with bronchitis. Soil began to fly from the furrows in a black blizzard.

  "You can't haveanythingat the price of somebody else's life!" Katie shouted. "You can't!"

  Lucy unbuckled the belt of her tight black leather trousers. "Who are you to judge me?" she shrieked. "Who are you to judge? If I can't have you as a sacrifice, then I'll sacrifice myself, and ask for Mor-Rioghain to give me my life back!"

  She forced her trousers down to her knees. She wasn't wearing any underwear, and when Katie saw her she slowly raised her hand to her mouth, and stared at her, and simply couldn't believe what she was looking at.

  Lucy had a fully-developed penis, and testicles, and curly black pubic hair.

  "Christ," said Liam.

  Something happened then, but Katie didn't mention it in her report, and neither did Liam, and they never spoke about it again, even to each other. But they both felt as if the world had gone blind, as if the atmospheric pressure had dropped so much that nobody could breathe. Lucy picked up her boning knife and what was Liam going to do? Shoot her?

  Katie felt as if a huge dark presence swept over them, or perhaps it was only a katabatic gust of wind. But Lucy threw her head back and stuck the boning knife into her chest, right up to the handle, and drew it downward, not hurrying, as if she were relishing the way she was opening herself up. For a long, calm moment she stood in the rain with her intestines sliding out of her, all down her thighs, and her face was as strange and pale and beautiful as the face of Mor-Rioghain herself.

  "Now, Mor-Rioghain, you have your sacrifice!" she cried, even though her voice was shaking with pain. "Come through, O pitiless one, and take my offerings! Come through, maker of widows and orphans, carrier of grief and shadows!I call you once, I call you twice-"

  Katie thought,God, this is the final summoning. Mor-Rioghain's coming-she's actually coming through!

  She stumbled toward Lucy through the muddy furrows. She fell to her knees once, but she managed to pick herself up again. Liam shouted,"Katie! No! For Christ's sake!"

  But Katie picked her shining revolver out of the mud, raised it double-handed, and fired it almost point-blank at Lucy's face. Lucy pitched backward in a spray of blood, and a slap of an echo came back from the trees.

  Almost at once there was a loud sucking noise, like closing a car window at high speed, and a sudden increase in pressure that made Katie's ears pop. The soil beneath her feet physicallyrippled, a shock-wave of earth that ran all the way back to Iollan's Wood. The trees dipped and thrashed as if something wild were tearing at their roots, and then they were suddenly still.

  Katie stood where she was, panting. A small ghost of gunsmoke hurried off into the woods. Liam cautiously came up to her, still pointing his revolver at Lucy's bloody white body.

  "It's all right, Liam. She's completely dead."

  Liam looked around him. The wind had died down already, although the rain continued to fall across the fields.

  "You only fecking topped her," he said, in disbelief.

  "I didn't have any choice."

  "Jesus Mary and Joseph she was past saving already." He peered at the body. "Itwas past saving already."

  "You don't know that. She was going to ask Mor-Rioghain to bring her back to life."

  "Katie, thereisno Mor-Rioghain. Did you see any Mor-Rioghain? There was wind all right, but it was only a squall."

  "You're probably right. But I wasn't prepared to chance it. And I wasn't going to let down any of those thirteen women, not now, not after everything they suffered. Lucy's dead, Mor-Rioghain's back where she belongs, in the Invisible Kingdom, even if you don't believe in her. Those women have got their justice now. That's all that matters."

  Liam holstered his gun. Katie looked away. The duty garda was running up toward them, up the field, like the back marker in a marathon, plodding on, plodding on, even though he's never going to win.

  56

  "Hermaphrodite?" said Dermot Driscoll, putting down his half-eaten cheese-and-pickle sandwich onto his blotter.

  "Yes, sir. It appears so. We've sent to America for any medical records."

  It had stopped raining and the sun was glittering on the drops of water that clung to Dermot's office window.

  "So what do you think we tell the media?"

  "I don't think it's going to pay to complicate things, sir. Let's say that a disturbed individual tried to copy the ritual murders from 1915 and 1916, and killed himself to escape being arrested and charged."

  "Killedhimself? Orherself?"

  "We don't know yet, sir. We know that she wasn't Professor Lucy Quinn. She's a seventy-six-year-old living in retirement in Mill Valley, just outside San Francisco. But quitewhoshe was we're still not sure. Not everybody in this world has an identity, do they? I think that was Lucy's problem. She was neither a man or a woman, and from the way she talked, she had never had anybody to help her come to terms with it. Not even God. That's why she went looking for somebody magical like Mor-Rioghain."

  "And poor old Gerard O'Brien found out about her, and suffered the consequences?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "How's John Meagher?"

  "He'll live, but he won't be singing opera for a while. And I don't think he'll ever be farming again, I shouldn't wonder."

  "Horrible case, Katie. Gives me the shudders. Do you think you can play it down, when you talk to the press? You know, forget about the witch bit?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "As for Tómas Ó Conaill well, I think we can forget about any charges against him. Never pays to upset the Travelers' support people."

  "No, sir."

  • • •

  Katie left Dermot's office and walked along the corridor. Jimmy O'Rourke was waiting for her, with his hands behind his back, looking serious.

  "You saved my life, Jimmy. You don't have to look quite so miserable
."

  "I've given up smoking. It's playing havoc with my equilibrium."

  She went into her office and sat down. "Was there anything special?" she asked. "I've got a hell of a lot to do."

  From behind his back, Jimmy produced Gerard's notebook. "I should have put this in as evidence, but I had a bit of a think about it and I decided not to. Not right away, like. There's things in here that could possibly cause some very bad blood, and in my opinion there's enough bad blood in the world already. If you think I'm wrong, then I'm ready to be reprimanded. I know gardaí aren't supposed to think. Well, not to philosophize, anyway. But I thought you ought to have the chance to read it first. Seeing as I respect your opinion, like."