“Please,” she croaked.
He sat down next to her, balancing the flashlight on the arm of his chair. She could only see him as dark outline. “It’s strange, that,” he said. “How people who are being mistreated are always so polite. You’d think they’d get angry, wouldn’t you? You think they’d rant and rage. You’d think they’d blaspheme, and rail against God. But they never do. They always say ‘please’ and ‘thank-you’. On the other hand, maybe I’m just lucky. Maybe I only ever abduct the meek and the courteous.”
“I just want to go home,” sobbed Siobhan.
The man put his hand out and caressed her prickly scalp. “Of course you want to go home. But the sad thing is that you can’t. You have another destiny to fulfill. I’ve arranged a meeting for you – a rendezvous with Auntie Agony. She’s going to take you into her arms and give you the most exquisite pain you’ve ever known.”
“Please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything.”
“I know, I know. But that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to open up the door for me – the door that was sealed so many hundreds of years ago. You’re the one, Siobhan. The last of the thirteen, a seamstress with hair as red as any fire. I am going to hurt you. I’m afraid. I’m going to hurt you very much. But it’s part of the ritual. It’s the point of the ritual. And it will give you an experience that hardly anybody is privileged to enjoy. It will take you beyond yourself, to a place where you will understand that pain can be an end in itself, even more glorious than death.”
“I just want to go home,” wept Siobhan. “Please, please, I just want to go home.”
“Would you like a painkiller, to begin with?” He sniffed, and stood up. “I think I’ve got some Disprin in the bathroom.”
“I want to go home.”
Without warning, the man tilted her chair right back so that she was sitting with her head against the floor, looking upward. She let out a mewl of helplessness and fear. Her wrists were already lashed tightly to the arms of the chair. Now he produced a length of nylon washing-line and tied her ankles, pulling the knots so tight that she felt as if he were cutting her feet off.
“You’re cold, that’s good. Cold will help to numb the pain a little. But as you warm up again… well, that’s when you’ll really start to feel it.”
“I don’t – I can’t – I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it! Please let me go! Please let me go!”
He caressed her bare knees. “You’re a fashion student, Siobhan. Did you ever dream of being famous? Well, believe me, this is going to make you famous. Your name will forever be associated with one of the most greatest mythic events of the millennium. Whenever people think of the re-emergence of Mor-Rioghain, which they surely will, for centuries to come, they will immediately think of Siobhan Buckley, too.”
Siobhan lay on her back, her eyes blurred with tears, her nose clogged up with phlegm. The man was silent for a while, and she wondered if he’d gone away. But then she heard something like a case snapping shut; and a cough. Then – without any warning at all – she felt a terrible cold sliding sensation down the side of her right calf, all the way from her knee to her ankle. It happened again, exactly along the same line, much deeper, actually touching the bone, and this time she felt a flood of warmth and sticky wetness.
She tried to cry out “Ahh,” but her throat was flooded with saliva. “Ahhgghlllghhh.”
“Very good, Siobhan,” he said, making a deep sideways incision directly below her right knee, so that she could feel him cutting through her tendons. In fact, she could actually feel the tendons shrivel, as their tension was released. “Very restrained, under the circumstances.”
“AaaAAAAAAAAHHHH!” she screamed, as he continued the incision into her upper calf muscle.
“Do you want me to stop for a while?” he asked her. He coughed again, and said, “Pardon me. It’s really much better to get it over with, all at once.”
She was shaking with pain. “Don’t,” was all she could manage to say. “Don’t.”
“I’ll carry on, then. And do feel free to scream if you want to. It’s supposed to be cathartic.”
Siobhan squeezed her eyes tight and said a prayer to the Sacred Mother to protect her, to take her away from this place, to ease the agonizing pain in her leg. The man sliced through the left side of her calf and she could feel her flesh opening up and the cold draft blowing against her naked muscle. She prayed to Jesus the Savior. She prayed to have her sins forgiven and her soul allowed into heaven.
But when she opened her eyes again she was still in hell. The man was still bent over her, cutting through her Achilles tendon and the extensor muscles around her ankles, and humming.
43
Katie called the Regional Hospital while her coffee was percolating. Paul’s condition was stable and “giving no immediate cause for concern.” He was breathing without the aid of a ventilator, but he was still deeply unconscious and so far he had shown no signs of response to any external stimuli. Outside the kitchen window it was raining hard, and water was gushing from the blocked guttering over the garage. The nurse said that Paul would be taken for a CAT scan later in the morning to see if he had suffered any physical brain damage.
As she hung up the phone, Katie said a silent prayer to St Teresa of Ávila, the patron saint of the sick and the afflicted. The same prayer she had said for her mother, before she died. “God makes us suffer, and we worldlings do not understand why, but He chastises us for His own good purpose.”
At 8:47 there was a toot outside the house and she looked out to see an unmarked squad car waiting for her. She shut Sergeant in the kitchen, put on her navy-blue squall jacket, and hurried outside.
“Nice soft day,” the driver remarked, as they drove away. He was a gray-haired garda called Patrick Logan: friendly, reliable, unambitious, and close to retirement.
“Damn it,” said Katie.
“What is it? Forgotten something? Want me to go back?”
“No… I meant to leave the keys of my husband’s car under one of the flowerpots. I was going to call the garage this morning to come and take a look at it.”
“That Pajero? What’s wrong with it?”
“Won’t start, that’s all. It was only serviced about a month ago, and it was running all right until yesterday morning.”
“My son could take a look at that for you. He runs a mobile breakdown service. He’d charge you a lot less than your garage.”
“That would be great, if he could. That’s my husband’s pride and joy, that thing.”
“How is your husband, by the way?”
“Still unconscious. I’m just praying that there isn’t any permanent brain damage.”
“Please God,” said Patrick Logan. Then, after driving in silence for a while, “And how are you?”
“Okay,” said Katie. “I’m okay, thanks for asking.”
“You’re not going to take a couple of days’ rest?”
“Why should I?”
“Well, if you don’t mind me being frank – ”
“For God’s sake, be frank.”
“There’s some of your fellow officers who think that perhaps you push yourself a little too hard. Because you’re a woman, d’you know, and you seem to think you have to prove yourself.”
“I see. Some of my fellow officers think that, do they?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t want to speak out of turn. But sometimes it’s better to know what’s going on behind your back before you get stabbed in it.”
“As a matter of fact, Patrick, I’m quite aware that most of my colleagues think I push myself too hard. Even more to the point, they think that I push them too hard. But I wasn’t promoted to detective superintendent because I hung around in the back bar at Counihan’s all day, pretending that I was keeping my ear to the ground. I work hard because it’s necessary and not because I feel the need to prove myself to my fellow officers or anybody else.”
“No, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”
“Not a problem, ma’am.”
There was a message waiting for her from Gerard O’Brien. He had called yesterday evening at 5:00 pm, as she had asked him to, but of course she had been at the Regional Hospital by then. He said, “Hallo? Katie? Gerard. I know you’ve made an arrest already, but this new research material I’ve got from Germany is very, very exciting. I definitely think it could help us to solve this Knocknadeenly business. I could come round to Anglesea Street if you like. Better still, why don’t I buy you some lunch?”
Katie had a moment’s thought and then she called Lucy at Jury’s Inn. The phone rang for a long time before Lucy answered, and she sounded groggy.
“Lucy? It’s Katie Maguire.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep very well last night. Night terrors.”
“You weren’t the only one. Listen – I just wanted to let you know that Paul’s still unconscious but he seems to be reasonably stable. As long as there’s no brain damage, the doctor says that he’s got a very fair chance.”
“That’s good news.”
“Also, I wanted to ask if you were free for lunch today? There’s somebody I’d like you to meet – Professor Gerard O’Brien from Cork University. He’s been helping us look into the 1915 killings, and he says he has some exciting new research material from Germany. His words, I hasten to add, but he’s done well for us so far.”
“I don’t know, Katie… I don’t usually like to tread on another academic’s toes.”
“You wouldn’t be. And who knows, the two of you together might come up with something that really cracks this whole case wide open.”
“I’m not sure.”
“Lucy, I’d really like to see you – mainly to thank you for yesterday, but I also want to hear more about this Jack Callwood character. Besides, you’d be doing me a personal favor. To put it diplomatically, Gerard O’Brien is a little sweet on me.”
“I see. You need a bodyguard.”
“I was thinking of ‘chaperone’, but bodyguard will do. Why don’t you meet us at Isaac’s in MacCurtain Street at about one o’clock?”
“All right. You’ve twisted my arm.”
Shortly after 10:00 am, Patrick Goggin knocked on the door of her office. She was busy going through the detailed technical reports on the cottage where Fiona Kelly had been killed, and she wasn’t particularly happy to see him.
He sniffed, sharply. “That’s a very attractive perfume you’re wearing, superintendent.”
“Thank you. But I’m afraid I’m up to my eyes this morning.”
“Of course,” he swallowed. “But I just wanted to tell you that I’ve had a response from the Ministry of Defence in London relating to the disappearance of Irish women around north Cork in 1915–16.”
“And?”
“They say that they’ve made a thorough search of the Public Records Office at Kew and it appears that all the daily dispatches relating to the period in question were destroyed by enemy action during World War Two. Whatever happened to them, they’re missing, and nobody can find them.”
“How convenient. Do you believe them?”
“I don’t have any choice, do I?”
“You don’t think they’re deliberately being obstructive?”
“They may be. But, I don’t know. Jack Devitt has made it his life’s work to publicize British atrocities in Ireland. As often as not I think he’s justified in what he says, especially when it comes to the Black and Tans and the Irish Volunteers. But personally I find it very difficult to believe that a British commanding officer would officially order the systematic abduction and the murdering of eleven young women, don’t you?”
Katie sat back. “I have to say that I’m inclined to agree with you. Especially since the women were sacrificed in an ancient Celtic ritual. The Brits never gave a frig for Celtic rituals – in fact they did their best to stamp them out. And the raising-up of Mor-Rioghain, that’s a particularly obscure ritual that very few Irish know about, let alone Brits. But… if the Ministry of Defence can’t or won’t produce the dispatches, it’s not going to make things any easier, is it?”
“It isn’t, no. That’s why I’m relying on you to find out what really happened to those women. If Jack Devitt’s right, and they were kidnapped and murdered by British soldiers, then I need to know for sure. He may have even more evidence than he’s telling us; and we can’t do a whitewash until we know exactly what it is we’re supposed to be whitewashing.”
Katie dropped her ballpen onto the papers in front of her. “I can only tell you, Mr Goggin, that we’re doing our best. So far we’ve located and DNA-tested eleven people who thought they might be related to the victims, and seven of them have proved positive – so I think it’s reasonably safe to assume that the skeletons that were found at Knocknadeenly were those of the eleven women who were abducted between 1915 and 1916.
“Some of the relatives have hand-me-down stories of ‘the day that Great Auntie Betty disappeared’, but unfortunately none of them throw any light on how the women were taken, or who took them. Mary O’Donovan’s great-great-grand-niece did mention a scare story that she had told her about a ‘demon Tommy’, who was supposed to have been preying on young women around St Luke’s Cross and Montenotte. But it could have been nothing more than a warning to stop local girls from flirting with British soldiers.”
“I could really do without this,” said Patrick Goggin, pulling tiredly at his cheeks as if they were Plasticine.
“Well, that makes two of us, Mr Goggin. But I’m having lunch with my two experts in Celtic mythology today and maybe they’ll come up with some bright ideas.”
“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to come and have a drink with me.”
Siobhan’s eyes flickered open. Almost at once she was overwhelmed by a tide of pain that swept her away like a broken doll in a heavy sea. She felt the floor rising and falling and tilting beneath her, and the walls rushing towards her and then rushing away again. She vomited, not that she had much left to vomit, only some tinned tomato soup that the man had given her, and a few strings of phlegm.
The pain was so overwhelming that she couldn’t think what she was doing here or what had happened to her, or even who she was. All she could think about was pain, and why the room wouldn’t stay level.
The man was standing close to her, although she couldn’t see anything more than a dark, distorted shadow. “You’re awake?” he asked her.
She didn’t answer, so he knelt down beside her and peeled back one of her fluttering, wincing eyelids with his thumb. “You’re awake? You’ve done very well, Siobhan. How are you feeling?”
She retched again; and then again; and he stood well away until she had finished. Then he said, “I’m going to leave you to rest now. See if you can get some more sleep. I’ll be back in a while to feed you. Would you like something to drink before I go?”
She nodded. She was hurting so much that she couldn’t even cry. The man left her for a while and then came back with a large glass of water. He cupped his hand behind her white, red-tufted head, and helped her to take three or four swallows. Almost immediately she retched again, and water splashed over her legs.
She sat with her head hanging down, her eyes clenched shut, while the pain continued to wash her from one side of the room to the other.
“I’ll be back later,” the man said, gently. “Then we can really discover some pain together.”
He closed the door behind him. Siobhan sat limply in her chair while the floor heaved beneath her like a raft. “Mama…” she whispered. “Mama, please help me.”
Gradually she opened her eyes. Her legs looked different, and at first she couldn’t understand why. Then she realized that she was looking at bones, not skin. Two cream-colored thighbones, and two kneecaps th
at were still joined to her legs by gristle and fragments of flesh. The seat-cushion beneath her was soaked in blood.
She was in such a state of clinical shock that she didn’t fully understand that the thighbones were hers. They reminded her of the skeleton that used to be dangling in the corner of the biology lab at school. She closed her eyes again. The bones frightened her, and she needed to sleep.
Outside the window, the rain began to clear, and the sun came out, so that a wide rainbow gleamed over Lough Mahon and Passage West, where the ships sailed out of Cork on their way to the ocean.
44
Lucy arrived ten minutes late, wearing a black leather jacket and a thick rollneck sweater of fluffy black angora, and tight black jeans. A large silver cross swung around her neck, studded with dark purple gemstones.
Gerard stood up and knocked his glass of water over. The waitress rushed over to do some frantic mopping with a tea-towel while Katie said, “Gerard, this is Professor Lucy Quinn… Lucy, this is Professor Gerard O’Brien.”
“Very pleased to meet you,” said Gerard. Lucy was at least four inches taller than he was, and he found himself addressing her bosom. “Katie’s been telling me how you saved her from drowning. I’m very impressed.”
Lucy sat down. “Anybody would have done the same.”
“Anybody who could swim like Flipper,” Katie put in. “How about a drink?”
Isaac’s was always noisy at lunchtime. It was a modern, starkly-decorated restaurant that was popular with young Cork businessmen and tourists and middle-aged ladies who had finished their shopping. With the same self-protective instincts as Eamonn Collins, Katie had chosen a table in the alcove right at the back, so that she could see everybody who came in.
“Katie tells me that your university funded your trip here specially,” Gerard remarked, with his mouth full of soda-bread. “I wish Cork was so generous. They won’t even send me to Wales to look at Celtic stone-circles.”
White Bones: 1 (Katie Maguire) Page 24
