“It wasn’t. As far most gardaí are concerned, women officers are there to direct traffic, comfort grieving widows and go out for sandwiches – and if they’re not too ugly, to have their bottoms pinched at every opportunity.”
“Somehow I can’t imagine you putting up with that.”
“I didn’t, and I don’t. But I was lucky, too. At the time when I applied to become a detective, there was very strong pressure from the Commissioner’s office to promote more women to the upper ranks. Not only that, I had a chief superintendent who happened to be a close friend of my father’s. Then about two months after I graduated as a detective garda, I solved a double murder in Knockraha, two women drowned in a well, mother and daughter. All I did was overhear a drunken conversation in a pub, but I still got the credit for it.”
“You’re very modest.”
“Well, I try to be efficient, John, as well as modest.”
John laughed. “How’s your tea? Are you sure it’s not too strong?”
“It’s fine. It’s hot, that’s all.”
Mrs Meagher shuffled out of the kitchen, leaving them alone. They sat and smiled each other for a while, then John said, “What happens now?”
“About the skeletons, you mean? We’ve commissioned somebody from the university to see if he can find out how and why they were killed, but there’s not much else we can do.”
“It was a ritual killing though, wasn’t it?”
“Ritualistic, yes.”
“My grandfather always used to say that this farm was possessed.”
“Possessed? Possessed by what?”
“He never really explained. But he always used to say that if you knew where to look for it, and you knew how to get it, and you were prepared to pay the price, you could have anything your heart desired.”
“That’s interesting. Professor O’Brien at the university said that this farm was called the Hill of the Gray People because a witch called Mor-Rioghain was supposed to have used it as a way through from the underworld. Mor-Rioghain would give you anything you wanted, so long as you fed her on the bodies of young women.”
“That’s a pretty gruesome story.”
Katie sipped her tea. “I don’t take it seriously, not for a single moment.”
“Of course not. But, you never know… eighty years ago, somebody might have believed it.”
“That’s one of the possibilities that Professor O’Brien is going to be looking into.”
John offered her a shortbread biscuit. “Go on, spoil yourself… they’re all home-made. My mother still bakes enough for half the population of Ireland.”
Katie accepted, and snapped the biscuit in half. “How about you? How are you coping with the farm?”
“Not as well as I thought I was going to. Everybody back in California said they envied me because I was really getting back to nature. But, I don’t know. There’s Californian nature, like orange groves and grapes and sunshine, and then there’s Knocknadeenly nature. Which is mainly mud.”
“You’re managing all right, though, aren’t you?”
John shook his head. “Not too well, to tell you the truth. The economics don’t really work out. Cattle-feed costs almost as much as caviar, but the price of milk is so low that it’s cheaper to pour it down the drain than it is to bottle it. The plastic trays I pack my chickens in cost more than the chickens. Apart from that I need a new differential for my tractor and a new diesel generator, and two-thirds of my winter wheat has gone rotten in the rain. I sold my business in the States for a very good profit, but at this rate I calculate that I’m going to be pretty close to bankruptcy by the beginning of July.”
“Why don’t you cut your losses?”
“Family pressure. I’m the head of the Meagher family now, and what would they think if I sold Meagher’s Farm to some developer?”
“That’s it? Family pressure?”
“Well, pride, too. I’m not the kind of guy who likes to admit defeat.”
Katie smiled. “That’s one thing that you and I have in common, then. Blind stubbornness in the face of overwhelming adversity.”
John looked at her for a long time, his chin resting on his hand. She looked directly back at him, and for some reason neither of them felt any particular need to talk. Katie hadn’t felt so immediately comfortable with anyone for a long time, and it was obvious that he felt comfortable with her, too.
“So what do you do when you’re not being a detective superintendent?”
“I don’t get much time to do anything. But I like to cook, and take my dog for a walk on the beach.”
“You’re married.”
She twisted her wedding-band. “Yes, well.”
“No children?”
She shook her head. She was still smiling but her smile was a little tighter. John must have realized that he had touched a sensitive spot because he raised his hand in a gesture that meant, okay, I won’t ask you any more.
After a while, Mrs Meagher came back in, still coughing, and looking for her cigarettes.
“I’d better get back,” said Katie, checking her watch.
“Sure… and I’ve got three hectares of red potatoes to plow up.”
They walked outside together and it was raining again. “Thanks for the tea,” said Katie. “You won’t forget, will you, if you find anything unusual…”
John nodded. He opened her car door for her, and stood watching her while she fastened her seatbelt. As she drove down toward the gates of Meagher’s Farm, she glanced in her rear-view mirror and he was still standing there with his hands in his pockets, and she thought that she had never seen any man look so alone.
18
That afternoon, around half-past three, she had a telephone call from a man with a thick northside accent.
“Are you the one who’s after investigating where Charlie Flynn’s gone missing?”
“That’s right. Why? Do you know where he is?”
“I might.”
“Well, either you do or you don’t. Which is it?”
“Why don’t you meet me and we can talk it over. St Finbarr’s Cathedral, in half-an-hour. Make sure you come by yourself.”
“I know you, don’t I?”
“I should hope so, by now. I’ll see you at four.”
She drove to St Finbarr’s. It was only four o’clock but the afternoon was already gloomy. She parked on a double yellow line outside the cathedral gates and walked in through the graveyard. Beneath the dripping trees, under crosses and obelisks and weeping cherubim, some of Cork’s most prominent families lay silently at rest.
A young priest came galloping through the graveyard and called out, “Forgot my umbrella!” as if he needed to explain why he was in such a hurry.
Katie walked in through the main entrance, her heels echoing on the tiled floor, past the sculptures of the wise and foolish virgins gathered on either side of Christ the Bridegroom.
The interior of the cathedral was echoing and dim, with high columns of Bath stone and walls lined with red Cork marble. Hardly any light penetrated the stained-glass windows, and Katie had to pause for a moment to allow her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.
Slowly, she approached the altar. She genuflected and crossed herself, and then she sat in one of the pews on the right-hand side, and bowed her head. In front of her, a middle-aged woman was praying in an endless, desperate whisper.
After a few minutes, she heard rubbery-soled shoes approaching from behind her. Somebody came and sat in the pew right behind her, and she could smell cigarette-breath and Gucci aftershave.
“Good to see you again, Katie,” said the same northside accent she had heard on the phone. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Dave MacSweeny,” she said, without turning around. “I thought I recognized you on the phone. What do you want?”
“I told you… I know where Charlie Flynn is hiding himself. I know why, too.”
“You’ve got some nerve coming to me, after wha
t you did to Paul.”
“Paul took advantage of me. Just like Charlie Flynn.”
“Paul was fooling around with Geraldine, that’s all. And don’t tell me that Geraldine wasn’t just as much to blame as he was.”
“That’s not the point. She’s my woman, at least she was, and he didn’t have the right to be messing with her ever. He should have had more respect. Especially since he did me over for half a million euros’ worth of building materials, him and that Charlie Flynn.”
“What?”
“Charlie Flynn promised Winthrop Developments that he could supply them with breezeblocks and facing bricks and uPVC window-frames and God knows what else, for a very special price. The trouble was, he couldn’t. So he came to your husband cap-in-hand asking for help and your husband sold him six hundred and fifty thousand euros’ worth of building materials and pocketed twenty thousand euros of commission. Which would have been grand for all concerned… except that those building materials were actually worth more than a million, and they didn’t belong to your husband, they belonged to me, and I was left neck-deep in shite trying to explain to Erin Estates why I couldn’t meet my contract.
“Me and my friends called on Charlie to ask him what was going on, but he was long gone by then. Florida… look, here’s some Polaroids.” He passed over four or five photographs of a fat-bellied gingery man in red flowery swimming-trunks. “Charlie by the pool in Kissimmee. Charlie on the beach at St Petersburg. Looks cheerful, doesn’t he? Put on weight, hasn’t he? That’s what happened to Charlie. He cheated me, and now he’s afraid to come back.”
“And Paul?”
“That’s why I wanted to see you today, Katie. That’s why I wanted to see you here, on holy ground. Besides, they don’t have security cameras. I felt very betrayed when your Paul went off with Geraldine. Well, how did you feel? We were both betrayed, weren’t we? But, you know, a fuck’s nothing more than a fuck, is it, and you can always wash yourself afterward. But now I find out that Paul’s made off with my property, almost a million euros’ worth, and you can’t wash that away.”
“So what are you saying?” asked Katie. She felt angry and officious, but at the same time she felt highly alarmed, too. She had seen so many other Garda detectives compromised by men like Dave MacSweeny, their careers ruined for the sake of a housing loan or a new BMW or a holiday in Gran Canaria, and she didn’t want the same thing to happen to her. Her father would never forgive her, and more than anything else she had joined An Garda Síochána to win his approval.
Dave MacSweeny was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’m a very accommodating person, Katie. I don’t want any trouble and I know that you don’t want any trouble, either. All I’m asking is that Paul brings my building materials back to the yard at Blackpool, all of them, not one brick missing, and we’ll forget this ever happened. I’ll give him three days, which is fair considering the amount of materials he took.”
“And if he doesn’t? Or can’t?”
“You’d look lovely in black.”
Katie turned around; but Dave MacSweeny was already walking back up the aisle, his rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the tiles. Big, wide-shouldered, in a long black raincoat, one silver hoop earring glinting in the dim cathedral light.
She stayed there for a while, and said a novena to St Martha, promising to light a candle every Tuesday, just like her mother used to. Then she stood up, and crossed herself again, and left St Finbarr’s with her head bowed, like somebody leaving a funeral.
19
He came again that night, with his case of instruments. She was delirious now, and no longer knew where she was or what was happening to her. Both her legs were scraped of almost every scrap of flesh, and the bones shone like strange musical instruments carved out of ivory. Her face was a death-mask, gleaming and gray, with two dark hollows for eyes.
“Mom,” she whispered.
He leaned over her and stroked her forehead. “Don’t worry, Fiona. This will soon be over.”
“Mom, my legs hurt. They hurt so bad, mom.”
“Ssh, you mustn’t complain. You ought to be grateful that you’re sacrificing your body for such a momentous purpose.”
She suddenly opened her eyes and stared at him. “Who are you?” she demanded, in a dry, hoarse voice, almost a squeak.
“Don’t say you don’t recognize me. I’m your friend. I’m your very best friend.”
“No, you’re not. What are you doing in my bedroom?”
He touched one finger to his lips and smiled at her indulgently. “Ssh. We don’t want to wake up the rest of the house, do we?”
“I don’t know who you are. What are you doing here?”
He sat down on the edge of the bed-frame and opened his instrument-case. “I’ve come here to take you on the next stage of your journey.”
“My legs hurt. They really, really hurt.”
“Of course they do. But no matter how bad it is, you know, any pain can always be relieved by an even greater pain.”
“I have to get up. I have to meet my mother.”
“First things first.”
He took a length of nylon cord and tied it in a slip-knot around the top of her left arm.
“What are you doing? What’s that for? I have to meet my mother.”
“You will meet her, one day. I promise.”
He pulled the cord tight, grunting with the effort. She let out a high, breathy sound, but it couldn’t be called a scream. He pulled the cord tighter still, until it almost disappeared into her arm, and it was then that her eyes rolled upward so that only the whites were staring at him, like a broken doll.
He picked a scalpel, and started to cut a circle around her upper arm. Blood welled out of the incision and poured into her armpit. He started to hum Bom Dia, Amigo, but then, as his work grew more difficult, he fell silent, and he frowned in concentration. The only sound now was the quick dripping of blood onto the newspapers under the bed.
Paul didn’t come home until 2:35 in the morning but Katie was waiting for him. She was sitting in the living-room in her green-and-white satin dressing-gown with Sergeant lying by her feet, watching Vincent Price in The Abominable Dr Phibes.
Paul stood in the doorway, swaying slightly. His bruises had started to turn red and yellow, so that he looked like a small boy who had been playing clowns with his mummy’s make-up.
“What?” he said, at last.
Katie used the remote to switch off the sound. “You’re asking me ‘what?’ I’ll tell you what. I had a very unpleasant meeting today with a friend of yours.”
Paul let out a barking, sardonic laugh. “That can’t be right. You know as well as I do, I don’t have any friends. Not any more.”
“This particular friend was Dave MacSweeny. Apparently, it’s not just your messing around with Geraldine Daley that’s bothering him. He urgently wants to find out what’s happened to one million euros’ worth of his building materials.”
“Building materials? How should I know?”
“Because you sold them to Charlie Flynn for six hundred and fifty thousand, that’s why, and took twenty thousand for yourself.”
“Listen, pet. None of that stuff even belonged to Dave MacSweeny. He lifted the whole lot from a housing development up in Kilmallock.”
“And you think that excuses you from selling it on to Charlie Flynn?”
“It was already stolen, pet. You can’t steal something twice.”
“Jesus, Paul, you’re certifiable, you are.”
Paul came into the living-room and plonked himself down on the couch. “Charlie Flynn needed the stuff and I needed the money. How do you think I paid off this year’s prelim tax?”
“Paul – you took property that you knew to be stolen and you sold it illegally. What kind of position do you think that puts me in? By rights I should arrest you. What do you think this is going to do to my career?”
“You don’t have to tell anybody.”
Katie shook her h
ead in disbelief. “To think I used to boast to my mother that you were the sharpest guy I’d ever met. How can I not tell anybody? I’m supposed to be heading up the search for Charlie Flynn and now I know where he is, and why he’s gone there, and that directly involves you. Worse than that, Dave MacSweeny wants his building materials back and if he doesn’t get them he’s going to kill you.”
“Well, arrest him, then. He stole the stuff in the first place.”
“For God’s sake, Paul, if I arrest him I have to arrest him for a reason, and that reason is now in Charlie Flynn’s building-yard, thanks to you. There’s no way that you can get out of this, and there’s no way that I’m going to get through it without having to resign.”
Paul stared at her blearily. “Resign? You don’t have to resign! Why do you have to resign?”
“Can you imagine the headlines? Top Woman Detective Is Married to Million-Euro Brick Thief. Who’s going to believe that you were dealing in stolen property without my knowing anything about it?”
Paul didn’t answer. Instead, he got up from the couch and went over to the drinks cabinet, and poured himself an absurdly large whiskey.
“What good do you think that’s going to do?” she asked him.
“I don’t think it’s going to do any good whatsoever, but at least I won’t be conscious to know that it isn’t.”
Katie stood up, came around the couch and put her arms around his waist.
“Paul,” she said.
He stroked her hair, but his eyes were focused on nothing at all. “I know, love,” he told her. “I know.” But he didn’t know, not any more, and Katie knew then that he had given up trying.
He had been working for nearly three-and-a-half hours now, and his hands were trembling with effort. He had removed all of the flesh from her upper arm, and now he was using a hooked scalpel to scrape away the muscle between the bones of her forearm. Her fingers would be the most complicated, cutting the last red shreds away from the metacarpals and the phalanges.
She was still alive, but her breathing was very shallow, and he doubted that she would survive until the morning. As soon as she died, he would have to cut open her abdomen and start stripping her skeleton as quickly as he could, so that her flesh was still fresh.
White Bones Page 10
