A Terrible Beauty

He picked a scalpel, and started to cut a circle around her upper arm. Blood welled out of the incision and poured into her armpit. He started to humBom Dia, Amigo, but then, as his work grew more difficult, he fell silent, and he frowned in concentration. The only sound now was the quick dripping of blood onto the newspapers under the bed.

Paul didn't come home until 2:35 in the morning but Katie was waiting for him. She was sitting in the living room in her green-and-white satin dressing gown with Sergeant lying by her feet, watching Vincent Price inThe Abominable Dr. Phibes.

Paul stood in the doorway, swaying slightly. His bruises had started to turn red and yellow, so that he looked like a small boy who had been playing clowns with his mummy's makeup.

'What?' he said, at last.

Katie used the remote to switch off the sound. 'You're asking me 'what'? I'll tell you what. I had a very unpleasant meeting today with a friend of yours.'

Paul let out a barking, sardonic laugh. 'That can't be right. You know as well as I do, I don't have any friends. Not anymore.'

'This particular friend was Dave MacSweeny. Apparently, it's not just your messing around with Geraldine Daley that's bothering him. He urgently wants to find out what's happened to one million euros' worth of his building materials.'

'Building materials? How should I know?'

'Because you sold them to Charlie Flynn for six hundred and fifty thousand, that's why, and took twenty thousand for yourself.'

'Listen, pet. None of that stuff even belonged to Dave MacSweeny. He lifted the whole lot from a housing development up in Kilmallock.'

'And you think that excuses you from selling it on to Charlie Flynn?'

'It was already stolen, pet. You can't steal something twice.'

'Jesus, Paul, you're certifiable, you are.'

Paul came into the living room and plonked himself down on the couch. 'Charlie Flynn needed the stuff and I needed the money. How do you think I paid off this year's prelim tax?'

'Paul-you took property that you knew to be stolen and you sold it illegally. What kind of position do you think that puts me in? By rights I should arrest you. What do you think this is going to do to my career?'

'You don't have to tell anybody.'

Katie shook her head in disbelief. 'To think I used to boast to my mother that you were the sharpest guy I'd ever met. How can I not tell anybody? I'm supposed to be heading up the search for Charlie Flynn and now I know where he is, and why he's gone there, and that directly involves you. Worse than that, Dave MacSweeny wants his building materials back and if he doesn't get them he's going to kill you.'

'Well, arresthim, then. He stole the stuff in the first place.'

'For God's sake, Paul, if I arrest him I have to arrest him for a reason, and that reason is now in Charlie Flynn's building yard, thanks to you. There's no way that you can get out of this, and there's no way that I'm going to get through it without having to resign.'

Paul stared at her blearily. 'Resign? You don't have to resign! Why do you have to resign?'

'Can you imagine the headlines? Top Woman Detective Is Married To Million-Euro Brick Thief. Who's going to believe that you were dealing in stolen property without my knowing anything about it?'

Paul didn't answer. Instead, he got up from the couch and went over to the drinks cabinet, and poured himself an absurdly large whiskey.

'What good do you think that's going to do?' she asked him.

'I don't think it's going to do any good whatsoever, but at least I won't be conscious to know that it isn't.'

Katie stood up, came around the couch, and put her arms around his waist.

'Paul,' she said.

He stroked her hair, but his eyes were focused on nothing at all. 'I know, love,' he told her. 'I know.' But he didn't know, not anymore, and Katie knew then that he had given up trying.

He had been working for nearly three and a half hours now, and his hands were trembling with effort. He had removed all of the flesh from her upper arm, and now he was using a hooked scalpel to scrape away the muscle between the bones of her forearm. Her fingers would be the most complicated, cutting the last red shreds away from the metacarpals and the phalanges.

She was still alive, but her breathing was very shallow, and he doubted that she would survive until the morning. As soon as she died, he would have to cut open her abdomen and start stripping her skeleton as quickly as he could, so that her flesh was still fresh.

He thought that he would enjoy baring her face most of all, opening the nose, peeling away the fatty tissue underneath the cheeks, and discovering the skull beneath the skin.

20

Katie knew what a risk she was taking, but she had lain awake all night and she hadn't been able to think of any other way out of it, apart from going straight into Chief Superintendent O'Driscoll's office and handing over her gun and her badge and resigning from the Garda on the spot.

She met Eamonn Collins at Dan Lowery's pub at eleven o'clock the next morning, before the lunchtime rush.