White Bones

by Graham Masterton

  “Katie, there is no 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… those women and everybody who drowned when the Lusitania went down. 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.”

  “Killed himself? Or herself?”

  “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 quite who she 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 nor 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.”

  Katie looked at him, not smiling, but feeling that she might at last have made some kind of breakthrough.

  “Thank you, Jimmy,” she said, and took the notebook, and put it down in front of her.

  “Well, then,” he said, obviously embarrassed. “I just wanted to say that I’m glad I saved your life. Otherwise, you know, you’d be dead, like.”

  She put a hold on her calls and took twenty minutes to read Gerard’s notebook and then read it a second time. After the second reading she sat at her desk in silence. Then she put the notebook into her handbag, and closed it. Jimmy was right. Even if “Crackers” Corcoran had been nothing but a wild theorist, there was enough bad blood in the world already.

  At eleven-thirty the following morning she met Eugene Ó Béara and Jack Devitt in The Red Setter, a cramped triangular pub up at Dillon’s Cross. During the whole of her time there, the rest of the clientele stared at her balefully, as if she were a nun who had walked in with dogshit on her shoe.

  They sat in a small booth in the corner. The smoke was so thick it was surprising that nobody called the fire brigade. Even Jack Devitt’s wolfhound was snuffling and coughing.

  Katie said, “We’ve found intelligence records in London that conclusively show that the man who abducted those fifteen women in 1915 and 1916 wasn’t a British soldier at all. He was almost certainly a German from Münster in Westphalia known as Dieter Hartmann, and he wore a British uniform as a disguise. We’re still searching for more information from the German government, and we’ll let you know if we find out any more. I just want you to know that we also have evidence that the Crown Forces in Cork went to extraordinary lengths to find him and arrest him. Once they almost had him, but he managed to escape and after that he was never heard from again.”

  “We can examine this evidence?” asked Jack Devitt, solemnly.

  “Of course, once we’ve finished with it. But you have my word that it’s genuine.”

  “Very well, then, Superintendent Maguire. I knew your father well, and if you give me your word that it’s genuine, then I accept it. Although I have to admit to a certain sense of anti-climax.”

  Katie gave him a tight smile. “Keeping the peace is a never-ending anticlimax.”

  Eugene Ó Béara suddenly let out a loud, staccato laugh, and then – just as abruptly – stopped. “You’re a good woman, Katie Maguire, for a cop.”

  Just before one o’clock, she met Eamonn Collins in his usual seat at Dan Lowery’s. His minder Jerry was having a séance at the opposite table with a bowl of fish chowder.

  “Hallo, Eamonn.”

  “Hallo yourself, Detective Superintendent Maguire. You look very fetching today. I always say that black always becomes a woman, nuns and widows especially.”

  Katie said, “I thought I’d let you know that I’ve decided not to press any charges against you relating to the abduction of Dave MacSweeny. Lack of evidence, as well as the fact that my principal witness is lying on a slab in St Patrick’s Morgue.”

  Eamonn took out a very white handkerchief and blew his nose. “Not to mention the minor embarrassment that it might have caused yourself, of course?”

  “Let’s just say that Dave MacSweeny deserved everything that ever happened to him, and more besides.”

  “So we’re friends again, are we, Katie? Just remember, if you ever need another favor, at any time, you know who to call on.”

  “Actually, I would rather sell my soul to the Devil.”

  “Oh, come now! You know how much you need decent upstanding criminals like me. God knows what state this city would be in, otherwise.”

  Katie stood up. “I’ll have you one day, Eamonn, I swear it, you jumped-up Knocknaheeny gobdaw.”

  Eamonn raised his whiskey-glass, and sang to Katie in a low, husky voice. “‘Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, which I gaze on so fondly today… were to change by tomorrow, and fleet in my arms, like fairy gifts fading away!’”

  She left Dan Lowery’s and was crossing MacCurtain Street when her cellphone rang. It was Sister O’Flynn from the Regional.

  “Mrs Maguire?” It was the first time that anybody had called her “Mrs Maguire” in a very long time. She knew then that it was bad news.

  She pushed open the door of Isaac’s restaurant. John Meagher was waiting in the back, self-consciously holding a large bouquet of lilies. He stood up when he saw her, and pulled out a chair.

  “I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay for lunch. I’ve just heard fro
m the Regional that Paul died about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “I’m sorry, Katie. I really am.”

  She took a deep breath to steady herself. “Well… I suppose it’s for the best. He wouldn’t have wanted to spend the rest of his life like a cabbage.”

  “Why don’t I give you a lift to the hospital?”

  “Would you? I’d like that. I can’t say I really feel like driving.”

  The waitress came up with their menus. “Do you want to know what the specials are?”

  Katie stood up and managed a lopsided smile. “Not today. Some other time.”

  They walked back along MacCurtain Street to John’s Land Rover. The sun was shining but it was raining again, so that the wet pavements were almost blinding.

  “Oh,” said John. “I have something to show you. I was going to wait until after lunch, but – ”

  He opened the Land Rover’s tailgate. In the back there were coils of rope and shovels and blankets. There was also a circular wicker basket, in which, fast asleep with its tongue lolling out, lay a glossy young Irish setter.

  “He’s yours. His name’s Barney.”

  Katie stood in the rain and the sunshine, her fingers tightly pressed against her lips because she was trying not to cry. Behind her, over the tall gray spire of the Evangelical Church, a rainbow appeared, and brightened, and faded, and brightened again.

  We hope you enjoyed this book.

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  1

  At first he thought it was a black plastic garbage bag that some Traveller had tossed into the river, full of dirty nappies or strangled puppies. ‘Shite,’ he said, under his breath.

  He reeled in his line and then he started to wade through the shallows towards it, his rod tilted over his shoulder. As far as he was concerned, the Blackwater was sacred. His father had first brought him here to fish for spring salmon when he was eight years old, and he had been fishing here every year since. It was Ireland’s finest river and you didn’t throw your old rubbish into it.

  ‘Denis!’ called Kieran. ‘Where are you off to, boy? You won’t catch a cold over there, let alone a kelt!’ His voice echoed across the glassy surface of the water, so that it sounded as if he were shouting in a huge concert hall. The wind blew through the trees on the opposite bank and softly applauded him.

  Denis didn’t answer. As he approached the black plastic garbage bag it was becoming increasingly apparent that it wasn’t a black plastic garbage bag at all. When he reached it, he realized that it was a man’s body, dressed head to foot in black. A priest’s soutane, by the look of it.

  ‘Jesus,’ he breathed, and carefully rested his rod on the river­bank.

  The man was lying on his side on a narrow spit of shingle, with his legs half immersed in the water. His hands appeared to be fastened behind his back and his knees and his ankles were tied together. His face was turned away, but Denis could see by his thinning silver hair that he was probably in his late fifties or early sixties. He looked bulky, but Denis remembered that when his father had died, his body had sat in his basement flat in Togher for almost a week before anybody had found him, and how immensely bloated he had become, a pale green Michelin Man.

  ‘Kieran!’ he shouted. ‘Come and take a sconce at this! There’s a dead fella here!’

  Kieran reeled in his line and came splashing through the shallows. He was red-faced, with fiery curls and freckles and close-together eyes so intensely blue that he looked almost mad. He was Denis’s brother-in-law, eight years younger than Denis, and they had nothing at all in common except their devotion to salmon fishing, but as far as Denis was concerned that was perfect. Salmon fishing required intense concentration, and silence.

  Salmon fishing brought a man closer to God than any prayer.

  ‘Holy Mother of God,’ said Kieran, joining Denis beside the body and crossing himself. ‘He’s a priest, I’d say.’ He paused and then he said, ‘He is dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh no, he’s just having forty winks in the river. Of course he’s dead, you eejit.’

  ‘We’d best call the guards,’ said Kieran, taking out his mobile phone. He was about to punch out 112 when he hesitated, his finger poised over the keypad. ‘Hey . . . they won’t think that we killed him, will they?’

  ‘Just call them,’ Denis told him. ‘If we’d have done it, we wouldn’t be hanging around here like a couple of tools, would we?’

  ‘No, you’re right. We’d have hopped off long since.’

  While Kieran called the Garda, Denis circled cautiously around the body, his waders crunching on the shingle. The man’s eyes were open, and he was staring at the water as if he couldn’t understand what he was doing there, but there was absolutely no doubt that he was dead. Denis hunkered down beside him and stared at him intently. He looked familiar, although Denis couldn’t immediately think why. It was those tangled white eyebrows and those broken maroon veins in his cheeks, and most of all that distinctive cleft in the tip of his bulbous nose. His lower lip was split open as if somebody had punched him, very hard.

  ‘The cops are on their way,’ said Kieran, holding up his mobile phone. ‘They said not to mess with anything.’

  ‘Oh, I will, yeah! You should come round this side. He’s starting to hum already.’

  ‘I just had my sandwiches, thanks. Tuna and tomato.’

  The two of them stood beside the body, not really knowing what they ought to do next. It seemed disrespectful to go back to their fishing, even though now and again, out of the corner of his eye, Denis caught the quick flashing of silver in the water. He had hoped to catch his first springer today, and the conditions were perfect.

  ‘Who killed him then, do you think?’ said Kieran. ‘Whoever it was, they gave him a good old lash in the kisser before they did.’

  Denis tilted his head sideways so that he could take another look at the man’s face. ‘Do you know something? I’m sure I reck him. He’s a lot older than when I last saw him, if it’s him, but then he would be, because it was fifteen years ago, at least.’

  ‘So who do you think it is?’

  ‘I think it’s Father Heaney. In fact, I’m almost sure of it. His eyebrows used to be black in those days. I always thought they looked like two of them big black hairy spiders. You know, them tarantulas. He’s not wearing his glasses, but I’d know that gonker anywhere.’

  ‘Where did you know him from?’

  ‘School. He used to teach music. He was a right whacker, and no mistake. There wasn’t a single lesson went by that he wouldn’t give you a smack around the earhole for something and nothing at all. He said I sang like a creaky door.’

  Kieran sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve. ‘Looks like somebody smacked him, for a change.’

  Denis didn’t answer, but standing in the river next to Father Heaney’s dead body with the wind whispering in the trees all around him made him feel as if he had been taken back in time. He could almost hear the school choir singing the ‘Kyrie eleison’ in their sweet, piercing voices, and the sound of stampeding feet along the corridor, and Father Heaney’s voice barking out, ‘Walk, O’Connor! You won’t get to heaven any quicker by running!’

  2

  Katie opened her eyes to see John standing by the bedroom window, one hand dividing the rose-patterned curtains, staring at the fields outside.

  The early morning sunlight illuminated his naked body so that he looked like a painting of a medieval saint, especially since he had grown his dark curly hair longer after he and Katie had first met, and he had a dark crucifix of hair on his chest. He was thinner, too, and much more muscular, from a year and a half of working
on the farm.

  ‘You’re looking very pensive there,’ said Katie, propping herself up on one elbow.

  John turned his head and gave her the faintest of smiles. The sunlight turned his brown eyes into shining agates. ‘I was looking at the spring barley, that’s all.’

  ‘And thinking what, exactly?’

  He let the curtain fall back and came towards the bed. He stood beside her as if he wanted to tell her something important, but when she looked up at him he said nothing at all, but kept on smiling down at her.

  She reached her up and cupped him in her left hand, gently stroking his penis with the tip of her right index finger. ‘This fruit’s beginning to look ripe already,’ she teased him. ‘Why don’t you let me have a taste of it?’

  He grunted in amusement. But then he leaned forward and kissed the top of her head, and sat down next to her. She kept on stroking him for a while, but he gently took hold of her wrist and stopped her.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you, Katie,’ he said. ‘I was going to tell you last night, but we were having such a great time.’

  Katie frowned at him. ‘What is it? Come on, John, you’ve got me worried now. It’s not your mother, is it?’

  ‘No, no. Mam’s fine for now. The doctors even said that she might be able to come home in a week or two.’

  ‘Then what?’

  He was just about to answer her when her mobile phone played the first three bars of ‘The Fields of Athenry’. ‘Hold on a second,’ she said, and reached across to the bedside table to pick it up. ‘Superintendent Maguire here. Who is this?’

  ‘Detective O’Sullivan, ma’am. Sorry to be disturbing you, like. But we were called out to Ballyhooly because these two fisher fellas found a body in the river.’

  ‘What does it look like? Accident or suicide or homicide?’

  ‘Homicide, not a doubt about it. He was all trussed up like a turkey and strangulated.’

  ‘Who’s in charge up there?’