A Terrible Beauty

Tomas O Conaill. If anybody was capable of killing and dismembering eleven people, it was him.

As she sipped her cappuccino, she glanced out of the window toward the new multistory car park at the back of the Garda station, and saw over a dozen crows clustered along the top of it.

She stood up and went to the window and stared at them. She had never been seriously superstitious, although she never walked under ladders. But all these crows on the car park roof strengthened her conviction that something bad was about to happen.

She sat down again. Next to her computer terminal stood a framed photograph of herself and Paul, on their wedding day, four years ago. She had never noticed before that Paul's right eye seemed to be looking one way, while the left eye was looking another. She reached out and touched the photograph with her fingertips and whispered, 'Sorry.'

At 7:35A.M. there was a rap at her open door and Chief Superintendent Dermot O'Driscoll came in, eating a piece of toast. He was a huge, sprawling man with a high white wave of hair and a pinkish-gray face like a joint of corned beef. His hairy white belly bulged out between his shirt buttons. He heaved himself into one of Katie's chairs and said, 'Well, Kathleen? How's tricks? I hope you realize that the eyes of the world are on us.'

'I sawSky Newsthis morning, yes. But until I get Dr. Reidy's analysis-'

'All right. It's just that the media are getting very impatient for fresh developments. And I've already had two calls fromDublin this morning, asking for progress reports.'

Katie liked Dermot, and trusted him. After she was unexpectedly promoted to detective superintendent, he had protected her from some very rancid criticism, especially from some of the male detectives who had been passed over. But she didn't care much what the press thought about her, unless they got their facts ass-about-face, and she was too impatient to get results to share his constant concern about 'presentation.'

'I'm sure we can handle it here, sir,' she told him. 'We have all the manpower and all the facilities we need. But I think there's more to this case than meets the eye and the last thing I want to do is jump to any lurid conclusions for the sake of amusing the media.'

'So where are we so far?'

Katie held up the file that Detective Garda O'Sullivan had left for her. 'In the past ten years, over four hundred and fifty people have gone missing without trace in theNorth Cork area, although never more than three together at any one time, and that was in 1997 near Fermoy. Even when eleven people or more have gone missing in a short space of time, there hasn't been any kind of connection or consistency between them. Summer, 1995: A forty-five-year-oldWaterford man disappeared from the bridge over the River Bride near Bridebridge. The next day a thirteen-year-old English girl vanished from her parents' caravan at Shanballymore. The same evening, a thirty- three-year-old electrician failed to return home to his family in Castletownroche. Eight other people went missing in the next two days. That's eleven in total. But they didn't have anything in common-not sex, or appearance, or age, or financial background, or even where they were last sighted, and none of them gave any evidence of being distressed or upset before they left.'

'What about revenge killings, or executions?'

'Far too soon to tell. It could have been political, it could have been criminal. We really don't know. Liam's talking to Eugene O Beara but I'm not especially hopeful.'

'How about Eamonn Collins?'

'I'll talk to him myself, later today.'

'You said yourself it could have been a natural disaster-an epidemic?'

'Patrick O'Sullivan's looking into that?going back over hospital and doctors' records for the Mallow and Fermoy and Mitchelstown area. But eleven people?that's a lot of people to die at once and nobody to notice it. And of course we've got these mysterious little dolls.'

'Do you have any ideas whatthey'reall about?'

'None at all. They suggest some kind of folk ritual, don't they? But none of us have ever come across any ritual like this before.'

'Any other leads?'

'Jimmy's been talking to some of his contacts in the Traveling community. Apparently Tomas O Conaill's been seen in the area.'

'O Conaill? That piece of work. I thought he was up north these days. Ireland 's answer to Charles Manson.'

'Well, he may be nothing to do with any of this, but I want to be sure. Apart from that, I'd like at least twenty guards so that we can make house-to-house inquiries around the Knocknadeenly area, and make a thorough search of the whole of Meagher Farm.'

'And what should I be after telling the media?'

'You can tell them we're on top of it.'

'Well, Katie, they may want something a little more exciting than that.'

'This isn't entertainment, sir, with all due respect.'

'Katie-come on, now. Diplomacy. You know as well as I do that if you want their assistance, you'll have to give the media fellows something to keep their salivatory juices flowing. You're a story in yourself, don't forget.'

'I don't want to release anything about the dolls, not yet. Not till we know what their significance is.'

'Fair enough. But whatcanyou release?'

'I'll tell them we're trying some secret new techniques to establish the victims' identities.'

'That's good. I like that. And what secret new techniques might these be?'