White Bones: 1 (Katie Maguire)

by Graham Masterton

  John turned to Katie and said, “I saw you on television this afternoon. You’ve made an arrest.”

  “That’s right. The evidence is pretty convincing all right.”

  “So I’m not a suspect any longer?”

  Katie laughed. “Did I ever say you were?”

  “It’s your job, isn’t it, to suspect everybody?”

  “I never suspected you.”

  “Why not? It’s my farm, isn’t it? Who else would have found it easier to lay that poor girl’s body out in the field like that?”

  She looked at him very hard. He needed a haircut and a shave. His black hair was curling over his collar and the stubble on his chin was like coal-dust. His chocolate-brown eyes seemed to be telling her things, telling her secrets. She willed him to look away but he wouldn’t look away and in the end Lucy said, “Well…” as if she had interrupted a deeply intimate moment.

  Katie said, “We’re still waiting for the results of some of our forensic tests, but I’m ninety-nine percent certain that we’ve got the right man.”

  Mr and Mrs Kelly came into the farmhouse and John cleared a heap of newspapers off the sofa for them. His mother came coughing out of the kitchen with a tea-tray and platefuls of scones and slices of rich fruit brack. Mrs Kelly said, “I wish you’d known Fiona. She was such an interesting girl. So romantic, so adventurous. She was never afraid of anything.”

  Mr Kelly said, “This Tómas Ó Conaill character… does he have any kind of record?”

  “I’m afraid yes. We’ve only ever managed to have him convicted for theft and intimidation, but he’s extremely violent. He almost killed a girl last year and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he was responsible for a few other murders that we don’t even know about. He’s a Traveler, you see, and it’s extremely difficult to get other Travelers to give evidence against him, even though most of them detest him. There’s also the problem of correct identification. We know him as Tómas but his real name might not be. Even the Traveler children call themselves by all kinds of different names. It’s a defense system.”

  “But you seriously think Tómas Ó Conaill killed Fiona because he believes in this – witch?”

  Katie nodded. “That’s why experts like Professor Quinn can be so useful to us. They can give us an insight into what his motive was. Otherwise, her death looks completely inexplicable.”

  “How long before he goes on trial?”

  “Not for months yet. We still have to finish our investigation and send a file to the prosecutor’s office. But I’ll keep in touch with you, and let you know when he’s going to go to court. In my experience it’s a very important part of the grieving process, seeing a murderer convicted for what he did.”

  Mr Kelly said, “I want to thank you for what you’re doing. I’m sorry if I lost my temper back there. You’ve been very understanding, both of you.”

  Katie took hold of his hand. “I’m going to make sure that Ó Conaill is punished for what he did to your daughter, Mr Kelly. I’m not just determined, I’m passionate about it.”

  They talked for a little while longer. They finished their tea, but the scones remained untouched. As they left the farmhouse, John came up to Katie and said, “Do you think we could talk? I don’t mean now, but maybe tomorrow or the day after.”

  “What is it?” she asked him.

  “Nothing special. It’s just that – well, I think I need somebody to talk to.”

  She hesitated for a moment. The rain fell softly between them, as if they were being draped in fine wet veils. “All right,” she said at last. “I’ll be at home tomorrow lunchtime, in Cobh. Look, here’s my address. Call me before you come. It’ll only be leek-and-potato soup and soda bread, if you don’t mind that.”

  “Thanks. I don’t mean to be a pain the rear end, but – ”

  “Everybody needs somebody to talk to, once in a while,” she told him, and walked back to join Lucy Quinn and the Kellys by the car.

  40

  Katie dropped Mr and Mrs Kelly off at the Country Club Hotel, a sprawling custard-yellow collection of buildings on the high cliffs that overlooked the river.

  “I’ll send a car for you tomorrow morning,” she told them. “You can come into my office and I’ll be able to show you exactly how much progress we’ve been able to make.”

  “Thank you again for everything,” said Mr Kelly. His voice was harsh with grief. Katie was tempted to tell him that she knew how agonizing it was to lose your only child, but she decided that it wouldn’t help. The Kellys had enough pain to deal with, without having to feel sorry for her, too.

  “You want me to run you back to your hotel?” she asked Lucy.

  “I was hoping we could maybe have a drink. There’s one or two things I wouldn’t mind discussing with you.”

  “All right. But I can’t be very long.”

  She drove up the steep slope of Military Hill until they reached the Ambassador Hotel. It was a fine Victorian building in pale orange brick, with cast-iron pillars and arches, overlooking the higgledy-piggledy nineteenth-century houses that clustered on the hills of north Cork, with all their hundreds and hundreds of chimney-pots.

  “Some building,” said Lucy, as she climbed out of the car.

  “This used to be a British Army hospital,” Katie explained. “And these streets around here – this is where they filmed a lot of Angela’s Ashes. Apparently they thought that Cork looked more like Limerick than Limerick.”

  “Sounds like indisputable Irish logic to me.”

  They went inside the hushed, deeply-carpeted bar. Lucy ordered a vodka-tonic while Katie kept to a sparkling Ballygowan water. They sat together on one of the floral couches. Lucy tried to wipe some of the mud off her boots with a paper coaster. “I should have invested in a pair of rubbers, shouldn’t I?”

  “You’ve seen the murder scene, anyway,” said Katie. “Are you convinced now that Tómas Ó Conaill was trying to raise Mor-Rioghain?”

  “Absolutely. One hundred percent. That locale has everything that the sacrificial ritual requires.”

  “God, it’s such a sad waste of life.”

  “Not if you believe in Mor-Rioghain it isn’t.”

  “You don’t believe in her?”

  “Who knows? There are so many powers in this world that we don’t understand. So many unexplained mysteries.”

  “I just want to solve this one.”

  Lucy crossed her long, long legs and leaned closer. Her teeth were almost perfect and there was a small beauty spot on her left cheekbone. “This really means a whole lot to you, this case, doesn’t it? Not just Fiona Kelly. The other women, too.”

  “Yes. They were all killed and forgotten and they never even got a Christian burial. Even when a murderer’s dead I don’t think that he should be allowed to get away with it.”

  “I didn’t realize – ”

  “What?”

  Lucy’s eyes were very bright. “I’ve never met anybody so passionate about anything before, that’s all.”

  Katie didn’t know what to say. She had never met anybody like Lucy before – a woman who seemed to be so friendly and open, and yet who gave her the feeling that she was hiding the Lucy that she really was, and hiding her very deeply. All the same, she found her easy to be with, and she enjoyed her sexiness. Jimmy the barman had walked past their couch more than half-a-dozen times since they had first sat down, and given them a wink.

  Katie’s cellphone warbled. “Detective Superintendent Maguire.”

  “Katie! Thank Christ! It’s Paul! I’m glad I caught you, pet! Listen, my car won’t start and I’m supposed to be having a lunch meeting at South’s in twenty minutes with the fellow from the bank, regarding this building development. I called for a hackney but they can’t get here in less than half-an-hour. I was wondering…”

  Katie looked at her watch. “You want a lift? All right. I just have to run Professor Quinn back to Jury’s Inn.”

  Lucy said, “Is everything okay?”
/>
  “It is, of course. My husband’s car won’t start so I’ll have to drive out to Cobh and pick him up. Perhaps we can have that drink later.”

  “I could come with you. We can talk on the way.”

  “If you really don’t mind – ”

  “Of course I don’t mind. I’m a stranger in a strange land, and I could use some company, apart from anything else.”

  They drove eastward on the wide dual carriageway toward Cobh, the windshield wipers intermittently clearing away the misty rain.

  Lucy said, “If I’m really excited about this case, I hope you don’t think that I’m being ghoulish. This is only the second time I’ve come across a contemporary ritual sacrifice.”

  “What was the first?”

  “The first?”

  “The first ritual sacrifice. Before this one.”

  “That – oh, that. A farmer in Minnesota sacrificed his whole family to the Wendigo. That’s a kind of weird creature that’s supposed to live in the woods. It’s similar to the Irish banshee because it only appears when people are about to die.”

  “What did the farmer do?”

  “You really want to know? He threw his wife and their three children one by one into the grinding machine that he used for pig-food. Alive. The coroner reckoned that they were still conscious even when they were minced right up to their waist. His defense tried to plead insanity but I was brought in as an expert witness, and I showed that everything that he had done was in strict accordance with Native American stories about the Wendigo. You’re insane when you kill people for no reason whatsoever. But you’re not insane if you’re scrupulously observing some specific mythological ritual with the express intention of gaining some advantage out of it. In this case, the farmer was almost bankrupt and he believed that the Wendigo would kill his creditors for him. Wacky? For sure. Disturbed, yes. But not clinically insane. He was convicted on murder two and given life imprisonment.”

  “So you don’t think that Tómas Ó Conaill is insane?”

  “Hard to tell for sure, without meeting him. But it took a whole lot of pretty obscure mythological knowledge to do what he did; as well as determination; and physical stamina, too. Think how hard it must have been to scrape the flesh off the legs and arms of a living girl; and then completely dismember her, and drive her out to the middle of a field so that you can spread her out in the special pattern that Mor-Rioghain is supposed to insist on. Your perpetrator is completely rational, if you ask me, Katie. He’s calm and methodical and the only thing that makes him different from any other calm and methodical person is that he’s an absolute believer in Celtic mythology. He was totally convinced that Mor-Rioghain would reappear and give him everything that he deserves.”

  Katie left the dual carriageway and drove up the ramp toward Cobh, overtaking a tractor. “What do you think about John Meagher?” she wanted to know.

  “John Meagher? I’m not entirely sure. He’s your typical depressed farmer but have you ever met a farmer who wasn’t depressed? It kind of goes with the territory, doesn’t it? The hours, the weather, the isolation. But there’s something else about John Meagher. Another dimension.”

  Katie said, “He inherited the farm when his father died. He says that he feels responsible for carrying on the family business, but if you ask me he’s not cut out for it at all. He’s practically bankrupt.”

  “Was he ever a suspect?”

  “Not really. He was working on the farm when Fiona Kelly went missing. His dairy girl testified to that.”

  “Well… it’s quite possible that the man who abducted Fiona Kelly may not have been the same man who murdered her. Quite a few ritual killers work with partners, or in groups. You know, like witches’ covens, or pedophile rings.”

  “I can’t see a cultured man like John Meagher working in partnership with a scumbag like Tómas Ó Conaill.”

  “All the same, if his farm is failing…”

  “You mean he might have wanted to ask Mor-Rioghain to save his business?”

  “I don’t know. I’m only speculating. But I definitely think there’s something creepy about him, him and that mother of his. He reminds me of Norman Bates.”

  “Oh, stop. I think he’s charming.”

  “I know what I’m talking about, Katie. I’ve interviewed hundreds of people who believe in everything from UFOs to giant monsters. They’re always the same – charming, rational, you name it – but after a while you gradually begin to understand that there’s a very important screw loose.”

  They crossed the stone bridge that took them onto Great Island, past a bleak ruined keep with crows flapping around it. It looked like the landscape in an ill-starred Tarot card. Katie said, “I think that John is simply an ordinary decent man who’s trying extremely hard to take care of his widowed mother and to keep up his family honor. If he’s guilty of anything, it’s biting off more than he could chew.”

  “You’re probably right. But Siobhan Buckley’s still missing, isn’t she? And Tómas Ó Conaill couldn’t have taken her.”

  “We don’t have any evidence that she was abducted for a sacrifice. Personally, I have a feeling that she’ll show up. Her mother said that she wasn’t upset about her parents breaking up, but a lot of the time kids never tell you how they really feel.”

  “Well, I hope to God you’re right.”

  Paul was standing outside the house waiting for them. His Pajero was parked close to the herbaceous border with its hood raised.

  “I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with it. It was running perfectly yesterday. I’ll have to call the garage when I get back. Meanwhile, I’m going to be late.”

  He climbed into the back of the car. “Lucy, this is my husband Paul. Paul, this is Professor Lucy Quinn.”

  “Well, well. I’m overwhelmed to meet you,” said Paul, giving her his best cheesy grin. “Katie was telling me all about you last night.”

  “I hope she was flattering.”

  “You don’t need flattering, professor. You look like the kind of woman who knows exactly what effect she has on people.”

  “God, you smoothie,” laughed Katie, as she turned the Mondeo around in the driveway. “Don’t take any notice of him, Lucy. Blarney’s his middle name.”

  “Come on, pet, can we get a move on? I can’t afford to keep the bank waiting.”

  They drove back over the stone bridge to the mainland and rejoined the dual carriageway toward Cork City. Traffic was heavy for the time of day, and for the first three kilometers they were stuck behind a slow-moving farm truck, which was trying to overtake an even slower mechanical digger. Paul began to tut with impatience.

  “We’ll be all right,” Katie reassured him. “It won’t take us more than another five minutes.”

  “Can’t you use your blue light?”

  “To take my husband to a lunch appointment?”

  “You used it when you were late for the dentist.”

  “That was a genuine emergency. I had an abscess.”

  As they approached the city center, the traffic began to thin out, and as they drove alongside the quays, Katie was able to speed up. Paul said, “That’s better… I shouldn’t be more than ten minutes late.”

  At that instant, however, there was a heavy bang at the back of the car, and Katie found herself struggling with a steering-wheel that seemed determined to wrench itself out of her hands. Oh God, blow-out, she thought. The Mondeo’s tires screamed on the road-surface, and the car started to slide wildly to the right.

  “What the hell –?” shouted Paul.

  Katie twisted the wheel into the skid, and the car straightened up. But then there was another bang, and another, and Katie saw the Range Rover looming in the rear-view mirror. “Jesus, they’re hitting us on purpose!”

  She jammed her foot on the brakes, but the Range Rover slammed into them yet again, and this time it locked its front bumper right up against the Mondeo’s trunk, and rammed them onto the sidewalk, so that they burst right throug
h the chainlink fence that seperated the road from the open quays.

  “Oh my God,” said Lucy.

  Katie kept her foot pressed hard on the brake-pedal but the Mondeo was no match for the Range Rover’s weight and power. It forced the Mondeo along the quay, nearer and nearer to the edge, its tires shrieking in unholy chorus and black smoke billowing out from under its wheel-arches.

  “For Christ’s sake!” Paul screamed. “They’re pushing us into the water!”

  Katie spun the wheel hard and yanked on the parking-brake, so that the Mondeo skidded around in a 180-degree turn. The Range Rover surged forward and hit their offside passenger door with a deafening smash. It ricocheted sideways, stopped, tilted, and then toppled off the edge of the quay and disappeared.

  Katie didn’t even see it go: she was wrestling to bring the Mondeo under control. It skittered around in another half-circle, and just when she thought she had caught it, one of the rear wheels went over the quay. There was a crunch, as the exhaust-pipe was crushed, and for one long horrible moment they rocked and swayed, right on the very edge. “Get out!” Katie shouted. “Quick as you can, before we go over!”

  Paul opened the rear passenger door, but as he did so the car shuddered and let out a harsh metallic groan, and slid backwards off the quay into the river.

  Immediately, the interior was flooded, and Katie was slapped in the face with filthy, freezing-cold water. Paul called out, “Jesus!” followed by a sharp gargling noise. Katie tried to turn around and see what was happening to him, but her seatbelt was tightly jammed across her chest. Lucy released her own seatbelt and managed to open her door. The river-water was rushing into the car faster and faster, right over Katie’s shoulders, even though – when she looked up – she could still see the gray sky through the windshield, and the edge of the quay, and the faces of people looking over.