A Terrible Beauty

its beak and went flying off with it, hotly pursued by three or four other crows, all of them screeching in fury.

He walked back down the field, stiff-legged. Gabriel and the boy Finbar were still digging the foundations of the new boiler house. Gabriel looked up as he approached, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

'What's wrong, John?'

'There's been-some sort of an accident.'

'Accident? Where?'

'Up by Iollan's Wood. You see where those crows are. Stay here-don't go up there, whatever you do, and don't let the boy go up there, either. Or anybody else.'

Gabriel could see by the expression on his face that something was seriously wrong. 'What is it-somebody dead?'

John nodded, and then he abruptly turned around, and leaned against the wall, and gawked up his lunch, potato-and-leek soup and soda bread. Gabriel and the boy stood solemnly watching him, and didn't say anything until he had wiped his mouth, and spat, and spat again.

'You want me to call the guards?' asked Gabriel.

'That's okay. I've got that woman detective's number. You just keep an eye on things.'

He called Katie on his cell phone. She took a long time to answer, and when she did the signal was very poor.

'Superintendent?' he shouted, with his finger in his ear. 'It's John Meagher, from Meagher's Farm.'

'Sorry can't-back in a-'

'It's John Meagher. I've found another body. Another skeleton.'

'Another skeleton? Same place? Under the feed store?'

'No?in the top field. This one's new.'

'Sorry, where did you say?I'm just-Jack Lynch Tunnel-'

There was a short crackling pause, and then she came back more clearly.'Sorry about that, I'm just on my way to the south infirmary. Where did you say the skeleton was?'

'It's in the top field, up by the woods. But this isn't the same as the others. The rest of the body? all the flesh? it's all still here. By the looks of it, it hasn't been here longer than a few hours.'

'All right. I'm on my way. Don't go near it again, will you? There could be footprints or other evidence.'

'I wouldn't go near it again if you paid me.'

Liam Fennessy pushed aside the blue PVC sheeting and came inside. He took a long look at the skull and the bones and the glistening viscera and then he shook his head and said, 'Jesus.'

'Dr. Reidy's flying back down this evening,' said Katie. She pushed another Richie's mint into her mouth. 'He wants to see the remainsin situ.'

'It's a woman, yes?'

Katie nodded. 'We've found part of her external genitalia and one of her breasts. We've found her scalp, too. Long natural-blond hair. Apart from that there are large sections of flesh from her back still intact, and her skin looks quite firm. Without second-guessing Dr. Reidy, I'd say we're looking at a girl in her early twenties. The skin's quite suntanned, too. Either she's a local girl who's recently been on holiday or else she's a tourist from somewhere warm.'

'I'm checking on missing persons inquiries,' put in Jimmy O'Rourke, with an unlit cigarette waggling between his lips. 'If she was a tourist or a backpacker, though, it could be difficult to find out who she was?a lot of them go away for months before their families start wondering where they are.'

'Any identifying marks?' asked Liam. 'Any tattoos, studs, or earrings?'

'No tattoos, no studs, and unfortunately the crows made off with the ears. But we have the skull, and we have part of the nose, and most of the facial muscles. It shouldn't be too difficult to build up an identifiable MRI image.'

Liam hunkered down in front of one of the thighbones, and flicked the little rag doll.

'Those, of course, are the really baffling part,' said Katie. 'As far as we're aware nobody knew about those dolls except us.'

'And the two fellows who found the skeletons,' put in Liam. 'And farmer John Meagher himself. And his mother.'

'You don't seriously think that John Meagher committed a copycat murder on his own farm?'

'I don't seriously think anything at the moment. But so far we haven't come across any folk legends that mention rag dollies tied to women's thighbones, have we? So it's fair to assume that whoever did this knew about the dollies from the first lot of bones.

He took off his James Joyce spectacles and peered at the thighbone even more closely.

'This hole was drilled with an electric drill, by the look of it. The others were all drilled with a brace and bit.'

'I've already confiscated three electric drills from the farmhouse toolshed,' said Katie. 'I've taken all the drill bits, too. Two complete sets of specialist bits, only two of them missing, plus a tobacco tin containing eleven