A Terrible Beauty

the river. On the western side of the city the waters of the Lee were much clearer, and they slid over a wide, glassy weir. On the opposite bank, on a high hill, stood the gray Victorian spires of Our Lady's Hospital, once a lunatic asylum, the building with the longest frontage in Europe.

Children scampered and screamed around the gardens, and a snappy breeze was blowing through the willow trees, so that they glittered in the sunshine. Katie tied a green silk scarf around her head to keep her ears warm.

'Does me good to get out,' said Professor O'Brien. 'I seem to spend my life in front of a computer screen these days.' He was quite young, only about thirty-four or thirty-five, although he was balding on top and he had combed his hair over to try and hide it. He was small, too, with little pink hands that peeked out from the cuffs of his brown corduroy overcoat like pigs' trotters-what the Cork people callcrubeens.

Katie said, 'Gerard-I want you to think of this as an active murder investigation, rather than just an academic exercise. It may be eighty years since these women were killed, but they were real women and they were murdered for some very specific reason.'

'Do you really think that it was anything to do with the British army, taking their revenge?'

'It's a possibility. After all, the Crown forces burned most of the city of Cork down to the ground, out of revenge. But it's these little rag dollies that don't make any sense.'

'Well, I can't say offhand that I've ever come across anything like them,' said Professor O'Brien. 'They don't seem to relate to any particular culture or any particular period. Before we were converted to Christianity, we used to have dozens of different gods, and all kinds of extraordinary ceremonies to appease them. But I've never found any mention of human sacrifice, or dismemberment, and I've never seen these particular dolls before.'

He held up the plastic evidence bag and peered at the doll more closely, wrinkling up his nose in concentration. 'I suppose you could say that there's a passing resemblance to the little cotton figures that some people used to hang on their doorposts when one of their children was sick. They did that so that the Death Queen Badhbh would take away the little figure instead of the person lying inside. But those effigies were invariably sewn out of a remnant of the sick child's clothing, and filled with clippings from its hair and fingernails, so that when Queen Badhbh came sniffing for them in the darkness, she would mistakenly think it was them.'

'No hooks or nails or screws?'

Dr. O'Brien shook his head. 'That does sound more like a voodoo ritual, doesn't it? There were some witches in Denmark, in the seventeenth century, who used to bang magic nails into copies of their victims' heads, to give them splitting headaches, and there's some evidence that Danish sailors could have brought that practice to Cork.'

Katie stopped and looked across the river. Three swans were swimming against the current, almost invisible in the diamond dazzle from the sun. Three white S's.

'I'd appreciate it if you kept me closely in touch with what you're doing,' she said. 'If you need any help of any kind?maybe a car to take you out to visit Meagher's Farm, anything at all, just let me know.'

'Of course. This is one of the most interesting things I've been asked to do for a long time. Exciting, even.'

'Well, then,' said Katie, and held out her hand.

The breeze lifted a long strand of Dr. Kelly's hair high from the top of his head. 'There's one thing,' he said.

'Yes?'

'When I've had the chance to go through the file and check up a few preliminary facts?do you think that you and I could talk about this investigation over dinner?'

'Overdinner?'

He gave her a sly, schoolboyish grin. 'Nothing like mixing business with a little pleasure. Have you ever been to that French restaurant in Phoenix Street?'

She squeezed his littlecrubeenhand. 'Let's just see how it goes, shall we?'

'Of course.'

She walked back to the parking lot and he stood by the river and watched her go. She turned back once and he gave her a stiff-armed wave, like a semaphore signal. She didn't know why, but when she unlocked her car she felt quite shocked. Not so much at Gerard O'Brien for asking her out, but at herself, for not having conclusively said no.

'Holy Mother of God,' she said to herself, in her rearview mirror. 'You're notflattered, are you?'

14

Fiona was sleeping fitfully when the door banged open and he switched on the overhead light.

She didn't say a word as he approached the bed and peered into her face. She was still in too much pain, even though she had managed during the day to get used to it, the way that anybody can get used to anything, like the roar of traffic, or loud rock music, or the constant rattling of an air conditioner.

'Are you ready for the next adventure?'

'I don't care what you do. Just do it and get it over with.'

'You don't mean that.'

'I don't have any choice, do I? You're going to do it anyhow.'

'Well, you're right about that.'

He opened his case of surgical instruments. 'It's been a great day today, hasn't it? I went to Blarney and the sun was shining and it was so warm.'

'I didn't notice.'