A Terrible Beauty

he started the engine.

'Help!'Gerard screamed.'Holy Mary Mother of God somebody help me!'

The engine revved. Gerard twisted and grunted and struggled, trying to lift his wrists over the towing hook at the back of the car. If only he could stretch himself another inch, he was sure that he could get himself free. This man was trying to scare him, that was all, trying to warn him off. Somebody must have alerted him that he was asking questions about Jack Callwood, and that he was getting very close to the truth. It hadn't occurred to him before that the British government might have intelligence officers in the Irish Republic to make sure that nobody tried to look under any stones that they didn't want looked under, particularly from their colonial days, and the days of the Black and Tans and the Irish Volunteers.

'All right!' Gerard shrieked out. 'I promise you, I won't say anything to anybody! Not a word! Ever!'

The engine revving died down. Gerard lay back in relief, with the rain falling directly in his face and almost blinding him. 'Just let me up, will you? Untie me and let me up. I won't say anything, I swear to God. I swear on my mother's grave.'

Without warning, the car was revved up again. The man threw it into gear and drove off, tearing every muscle in Gerard's body with a sound like ripping linen and pulling both of his arms off.

Gerard instantly stopped shouting. He realized that something appalling had happened to him but he didn't want to know what. He lay on the wet tarmac with blood pumping with horrible regularity from each of his arm sockets. He felt no pain at all. In fact, he felt oddly relieved, glad that the worst was over. He heard the car stop, and the driver's door slam, but he didn't see the man walk back and stand over him, because his eyes were closed.

The man said, 'Some things aren't meant to be found out, Professor. It wasn't your fault but there you are.'

For some reason, Gerard couldn't think of a prayer. All he could remember was W. H. Auden's poem about the iceberg knocking in the cupboard, and the desert sighing in the bed, and the 'crack in the teacup that opens?a lane to the land of the dead.'

51

It took Katie almost five minutes to wake up properly. When she finally managed to lift her head, she felt as if her dead mother had stuffed her knitting in her mouth. Lucy was sitting in the armchair, watching a documentary on the Lusitania on the Discovery channel with the volume turned down.

'What time is it?' she asked, thickly.

'Half past nine.'

Katie sat up and dry washed her face with her hands. 'Jesus! I thought I asked you to wake me at eight.'

'I tried, believe me, but you were dead to the world. Do you want me to make you a cup of coffee?'

'No-no thanks. Is there anything fizzy in that minibar?'

'Sure. Here.'

Katie popped open the miniature can of Diet Coke and drank it in four quick swallows. Lucy stood up and said, 'How do you feel?'

'Terrible.'

'That's because you haven't relaxed in ages. Not really relaxed.'

'I can't relax. I've got too much to do.'

Lucy sat down on the bed beside her, and stroked her hair. 'I used to be just like you sometimes, all nerves, all stressed out, never allowing myself to rest. But that's because I was never focused. I couldn't decide what to do with my life. It was only when I narrowed my vision down to one single objective that I began to understand myself. You have to say, 'this is what I want and I'll do anything to achieve it.' And I meananything. If you can do that, you'll find this tremendous inner calm, I promise you.'

'I have to check in with Anglesea Street.'

'Katie-you don't actually have to do anything but relax.'

Katie turned her head and looked into her eyes. 'I can't. Not yet. But I promise you that I will, as soon as this case is complete. We could go down to West Cork together if you like, and I can show you Baltimore and Cape Clear. It's beautiful down there.'

Lucy leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead. 'That sounds wonderful.'

'Well, it'll be a way of paying you back, for everything you've done for me. You saved my life when I was drowning in the river, and now you've saved me from going to pieces.'

'You don't have to pay me back.'

Katie went to the dressing table, where she brushed out her hair. She hadn't dried it properly after her bath, and it stuck out wildly. 'Look at me,' she said. 'I look madder than Tomas O Conaill.'

'Wet it again and I'll blow-dry it for you.'

'You should have been a therapist, instead of a professor of mythology.'

'Mythologyisa kind of therapy, in a way. It's the way we understand our place in the world. There are no merrows andbean-sidhes,Katie. Not really. There's only us.'

?   ?   ?

Liam didn't reach Perrott Street until 10:47. He climbed out of his car and hurried to Gerard's front door, his collar turned up against the pelting rain. He pressed the doorbell and waited. Then he pressed it again. Fuck it. The