A Terrible Beauty

She took Sergeant with her along the road to the newspaper shop. It was a sparkling morning, even though it must have rained heavily during the night, and she could see a large white cruise ship anchored in the harbor.

She bought theSunday Timesand theIrish News of the World. She opened theTimesas she walked back home, and immediately she slowed and stopped, while Sergeant bounded around her, wagging his tail and urging her to carry on.

The headline on page three readBritish Soldiers 'Murdered Eleven Irish Women.'There was a photograph of Katie standing over the excavations at Meagher's Farm, and another photograph of Jack Devitt, the white-haired writer whom Katie had met with Eugene O Beara in The Crow Bar.

The story said that 'The eighty-six-year-old mystery of eleven young Cork women who disappeared without trace between 1915 and 1916 may have been solved yesterday by the well-known republican author Jack Devitt. He claims to have proof that they were murdered by British soldiers in revenge for a Fenian bomb attack.

'Eleven women's skeletons were uncovered last week during building work at a farm at Knocknadeenly. An examination by State Pathologist Dr. Owen Reidy showed that all of their flesh had been scraped from their bones before they were buried, possibly to hamper identification.'

Katie read on, the paper flapping in the morning breeze. Sergeant was growing impatient and started to bark at her. But she read the article right to the end, and then she stood where she was, lost in thought.

TheTimessaid that Jack Devitt had been given access to private letters and police reports showing that before they went missing, three of the eleven women had been seen by reliable witnesses talking to a young British officer with a moustache, and two of them had been seen climbing into a car with him. 'It was never discovered whether the officer was acting on official orders or if he was carrying out a personal vendetta. However, the investigation was pursued no further and no British officers were ever questioned by police or military police. Three months after the last disappearance (Mary Ahern, on the morning of Good Friday, 1916) the case was officially declared to be closed.'

Katie could understand that Eugene O Beara and Jack Devitt would want to make as much political hay out of the case as they possibly could, but it was obvious that neither they nor theTimesknew that the skeletons had been ritualistically decorated. If these were the same women, it was entirely possible that theyhadbeen murdered by a British officer, but why would a British officer drill holes in their thighbones and hang them with rag dolls? Perhaps it had some religious or political meaning. During the Indian Mutiny, British soldiers had sewn condemned Muslims into pig skins before hanging them, because Muslims considered that pigs were unclean. But if this had been done for a similar reason, to insult and intimidate the Irish, why had all these women been killed in a way that had no significance that anybody knew about, and then buried in secret?

She walked home. Paul was still lying on the couch in the living room, his head tipped back, snoring in a coarse, steady rasp. She stood watching him and then she went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee.

She called Dermot O'Driscoll. 'Sorry,' he said, chewing in her ear. 'I've got a mouthful of scone.'

'I read theTimes.'

'Yes, and what do you think?'

'I still think that there are dozens of questions left unanswered-even if Jack Devitt's evidence turns out to be authentic.'

'Well, that's as may be, but the commissioner called me this morning and said that the minister of justice wants us to drop the investigation completely.'

'What about Professor O'Brien's research?'

'That, too. The minister wants no further action of any kind and absolutely no comments to the media. Things between Dublin and London are touchy enough as they are without taking eighty-year-old skeletons out of the closet.'

'But, sir-'

'Drop it, Katie. There's no future in it. How are you getting along with Charlie Flynn?'

'I, ah-I think I may be getting somewhere.'

'Good. The sooner you find out what happened to him the better. Perhaps city hall will give my head some peace.'

22

John Meagher was driving up toward the farmhouse on Tuesday afternoon when he saw scores of crows flapping over the top field, close to Iollan's Wood. He parked his Land Rover and went to investigate, climbing over the low stone wall and taking a shortcut across the dark, crumbly furrows.

The crows had obviously found something to eat-a dead fox or a rabbit-because they were wheeling and diving and cawing, and squabbling among themselves. They were so preoccupied that many of them didn't even notice him as he approached, and continued to flap and quarrel over their feast. A few of them resentfully hopped away, but they didn't go far.

There were so many crows that at first he couldn't understand what he was looking at. But as he came nearer he gradually realized that they were tearing at a radically dismembered human body.

He felt as if the entire field had suddenly tilted beneath his feet. He stumbled, and stopped. But then he stepped closer, as close as he dared, and stared at the apparition in front of him in total horror.

All of the body's bones had been entirely stripped of flesh, except a few scarlet rags around the joints. Each bone had then been pushed upright into the soil to form a kind of picket fence. On the far side of the fence, the skull was perched on a small cairn of lesser bones, shoulder bones and toe bones and finger bones. On each side of the skull stood the body's thighbones, and the top of each thighbone had been drilled right through and a small linen doll tied onto it with string.

Inside this compound lay a heap of human offal. John recognized the gristly-looking heart, the sacklike lungs, and the half-deflated stomach-as well as pieces of raw flesh that were still identifiable as calf muscles and forearms. Even as he stood staring at it, panting in ever-increasing nausea, one of the crows snatched up an ear in