any innocent driver wasn't going to bring her all the way.'
'So he took her off to Knocknadeenly and tied her up and killed her.'
'It looks like it, doesn't it? And he took her somewhere very isolated. A cottage or a barn. A cottage is my guess. He couldn't have tortured her and cut her up all in one night, so he would have needed somewhere to rest, and sleep, and make himself something to eat. A two-bedroom cottage, probably. Get onto the letting agents in Cork and Mallow and Fermoy.'
'Anything else?'
'Yes. I want a twenty-four-hour guard on Meagher's Farm. And I want at least half a dozen squad cars out tomorrow morning, and have them knock at every door in Ballyhooly and Glanworth and Killavullen and Castletownroche. I want them to drive up and down every single side road and stop at every single farmhouse and bungalow and outbuilding, no exceptions.
'Whoever did this, I want him found, Patrick, and very quickly.'
Patrick scribbled in his notebook with a blunt HB pencil, then clapped it shut and said, 'Right. Sorry. What was that first thing you wanted me do?'
There was a message waiting for her when she arrived back at Anglesea Street. A virtual bouquet of red roses on her computer screen, with the message, 'I'm sorry, Katie. I'm such a gom sometimes. All my love, Paul.'
She looked at it for a moment, and then she deleted it. She wished he hadn't bothered. It would be so much easier not to love him if he didn't keep giving her glimpses of what he had been like when they first got married.
26
Dr. Reidy called Katie just after 10:30 on Wednesday morning and said, 'Our victim is Fiona Kelly, not an ounce of a doubt.'
'You're absolutely sure?'
'Oh, yes. The dental records match exactly.'
'All right, then. Anything more?'
'Not at the moment. I'm going to Hayfield Manor to have a belated breakfast. I find it hard to dissect when I'm hungry. By the way, what was the name of that Italian restaurant you recommended? I thought I might go there tonight.'
'Florentino's, halfway down Carey's Lane.'
Katie put the phone down. Fiona's parents were due to fly to Ireland this afternoon, although Katie had warned Chief Deputy Olguin that even if the body was Fiona, there was no question of them being allowed to see her. She remembered seeing Seamus, in his little white casket. Her darling boy had looked so perfect that she almost expected him to open his eyes and smile at her.
Just before lunch, Jimmy O'Rourke came into Katie's office with full-size photographs of more than twenty complete and partial footprints from the field where Fiona's body had been found. They had been made by a new pair of men's rubber boots, size ten. She sent five detective gardai to call at every shoe shop and men's outfitters in Cork, and before 5:00P.M. they returned with a pair of Primark boots, which were exclusive to Penney's, a large low-cost department store in Patrick Street. Penney's had sold twenty-seven pairs of this particular boot since they had gone on sale on October 12. Eleven customers could be traced through their credit or debit card records, but the remainder of the boots had been bought for cash. They were only ?9.99, after all.
Katie sent her team back out to interview all eleven identifiable customers, but she had very little hope that the killer was among them. Not unless he actually
By 10:35P.M., the technical officers were back with information about a tire track they had found in the muddy verge by the entrance to Meagher's Farm. It had been a dry night when Fiona's body had been arranged in the field, so there were no distinctive tracks on the asphalt that led up to the farm buildings. But the perpetrator had probably been driving without lights, and had turned into the farm gates a little too sharply, leaving a triangular impression sixty-six millimeter's long and thirty-seven millimeter's wide. The tread had been checked against the database in Dublin, and it had been matched to a ContiTouring Contact CH95 all-season steel-belted radial, size 215/55R16. Among many other vehicles, this was the tire normally fitted to Mercedes-Benz E-series sedans.
The search of cottages and farmhouses in the Knocknadeenly area had so far proved fruitless, although one garda discovered an illegal still and more than seven hundred bottles of poteen in a shed in Ballynoe; and another came across a borrowed CAT earthmover hidden under bales of hay in Templemichael. The poteen was confiscated and a low-loader was sent out to repossess the earthmover, but no arrests were made. Katie needed all the public cooperation she could get.
She didn't get home until the early hours of Thursday morning. As she took off her coat she heard screams and shouting from the bedroom. Paul must have fallen asleep in front of the television again. She went into the kitchen and switched on the light. Sergeant looked up from his basket resentfully, and yawned.
She made herself a mug of tea and sat at the kitchen table to drink it. Her mind was too crowded to think of going to bed just yet. It had been a week now since Fiona had been abducted, and her murderer could have left Ireland the day after he laid her body out in Meagher's field. Yet somehow she felt as if he were still very close, as if he had unfinished business. It was only a feeling, nothing more, and it was probably brought on by exhaustion, and because she desperately needed to believe that she was going to find him.
At last, at 2:36A.M., she drained the last dregs of her tea into the sink, switched off the light, and went upstairs. Sergeant settled down in his basket with a grunt of relief.
27
She didn't reach Garda headquarters until 10:25 the next morning. She had set her alarm for 7:30A.M. but when it beeped she was deeply involved in a dream about her mother. In her dream it was a warm day in August, with blue skies and rolling Atlantic clouds, and she was sitting in the garden telling her mother that she was expecting a baby. The birds twittered, the leaves gossiped in the breeze. Her mother frowned and said, 'Another baby, or the one who died?'
