A Terrible Beauty

'You'll never get away with this. My father will find you and when he does I swear to God he'll kill you with his bare hands.'

He laughed. 'Your father will never know who did this to you, ever. Even on his deathbed he will still be wondering who it was, and why he ever let you come to Ireland on your own. His torture will be far worse than yours.'

'Oh God,' gasped Fiona. She was suddenly overwhelmed by another wave of pain, and went into shock. Her head fell back onto the bedsprings, and her face turned as white as wax. He stood watching her for a while, quite impassive, and then he went out to the living room and pulled the mustard-colored throw off the couch. He came back and draped it over her to keep her warm.

After all, he couldn't have her dying.

13

Chief Superintendent O'Driscoll looked up from his desk and said, 'Ah, Katie.' He picked up a green cardboard folder and handed it to her. 'I'd like you to take over the Flynn investigation. Sergeant Ahern has been going around in ever-decreasing circles and I'm afraid that he's going to disappear up his own rear end, which is probably what happened to Charlie Flynn.'

Charlie Flynn was a well-known Cork businessman who had gone missing in the first week of October. His car had been found by the side of the road near Midleton, about ten miles east of the city, but there had been no sign at all of Charlie Flynn-not a footprint, not a bloodstain, nothing. He was the lord mayor's brother-in-law, and so Chief Superintendent O'Driscoll was under persistent pressure from city hall to find out what had happened to him.

'What about our eleven skeletons?' asked Katie, opening the folder and flicking through the black-and-white photographs at the front. An empty black Mercedes, with its door wide open, from several different angles.

'The Meagher Farm case? We're going to have to close it down, of course-as an active file, anyway. I was thinking of passing the information over to Professor Gerard O'Brien at the university?he's your man when it comes to folklore.'

'But what happened at Meagher Farm, that wasn't just folklore, sir. Eleven women were murdered.'

'Of course they were. But what's the point in pursuing their killer when he's almost certainly deceased? Don't you worry, Katie-even if the murderer never had to answer to an earthly court, he'll have had to stand before God. There's nothing more that you and I can do about it.'

'I'd just like two or three more days on it, sir. The way those women were killed-it was so unusual that I think we need to find out what happened.'

Dermot O'Driscoll shook his head, so that his jowls wobbled. 'Sorry, Katie, it's out of the question. Apart from the Flynn case, I want you to go over to the south infirmary and have another chat with Mary Leahy. Detective Garda Dockery went to see her last night and he thinks that she may be ready to tell us who shot her Kenny.'

Katie pursed her lips but she knew that there was little point in arguing. 'All right,' she said. 'But let me take the Meagher folder over to Professor O'Brien myself. I'd like to talk to him about it.'

'You can, of course. But do try to make some progress with this Flynn investigation. It's making us look like a bunch of culchies.'

Dermot O'Driscoll had once worked for the Criminal Assets Bureau in Dublin, and he was especially sensitive to any gibes that he was now in charge of a rural police force. His old colleagues at Phoenix Park had even sent him a model of a tractor with a blue light on it.

On the way out, Katie met Sergeant O'Rourke. 'I think I have something for you, Superintendent. Photocopies of theCork Examinerfrom the summer of 1915 to the spring of 1916.'

'Come through to my office,' said Katie. She spread the photocopies out on her desk, and put on her small steel-rimmed reading glasses. Jimmy had circled a dozen stories in red marker. Mysterious Disappearance Of Rathcormac Woman. No Trace Of Whitechurch Girl After Three Weeks. Mrs. Mary O'Donovan Missing For Nine Days.

There was a leader column, too, in which the newspaper's editor spoke of 'the local community's grave concern at the spiriting away of seven young women, all of whom were of spotless reputation and character. We hesitate to point a finger without evidence of any kind, not even a single body having been discovered, but we would remind our readers of the words of Bacon, who wrote that 'a man who studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.''

'What do you think he's trying to suggest here?' asked Katie. 'That the women were taken as an act of retaliation?'

'It seems like it, I'd say. But he doesn't name any names.'

'Well, that's what Jack Devitt was telling us, too. Maybe this newspaper editor had a good idea of who was abducting these women, but couldn't say it openly, for fear of a libel action, or worse.'

'I don't see how we can ever find out who it was. Not after eighty years.'

'Well, maybe Professor O'Brien can come up with something. The chief superintendent's closed the case and we're passing it over to him.'

'Oh. You won't want to be talking to Tomas O Conaill, then?'

'You'vefoundO Conaill? Where?'

'I had a tip-off late last night that he and his family have a Winnebago and three mobile homes parked on a derelict farm about a mile outside of Tower, on the Blarney road.'

'Well, no?I don't suppose I need to talk to him now. But do me a favor, Jimmy, and keep a sharp eye on him, will you?'

'Oh, yes. I've told the fellows up at Blarney Garda Station, too, so that they know where to look for absconding road-drills and runaway tarmac spreaders, and any other property that goes for a walk.'

It was so sunny that morning that Professor O'Brien suggested they take a walk through Lee Fields, alongside