A Terrible Beauty

Rioghain's spirit out of the underworld so that he can ask her for a favor.'

'That would mean that he intends to murder another twelve women, I suppose?'

'I don't know. Maybe the first eleven women still count as part of the sacrifice. They were found in the same location, after all. Maybe he thinks that he only needs to kill one more.'

'Even one more would be one too many.'

'Of course. But I just can't get a handle on this. We have so much forensic evidence and yet I still don't know who I'm really looking for.'

Her father reached out and held her hand. His fingers were so cold that he felt as if he were already dead. 'Do you know what you need to do?' he told her. 'You need to forgetwhoyou're looking for and think aboutwhatyou're looking for. You're not a forensic psychologist or a profiler, that's not your job. Nobody can second-guess a psychopath, in any case. Forget about hunches and feelings and bad omens. Concentrate on what you know. The facts, the evidence, the eyewitness reports.'

'I only have one eyewitness and I wouldn't call him particularly reliable.'

'Eyewitness reports never are. You remember that triple shooting in Togher? One man said that the gunman was short with red hair, another said that he was tall with a heavy moustache, and a third swore blind that he was a woman. But between the three of them I got enough evidence to find out who did it.'

Katie said, 'Fiona Kelly was last seen climbing into a dark-colored Mercedes outside The Angler's Rest on the way to Blarney. A dark-colored Mercedes with only one headlight. Only one man saw this happen-a drinker in the pub's front bar-and he'd had a fair few pints. It was a very gloomy afternoon and the rear of the vehicle was heavily coated in mud so that he couldn't see the registration plate.'

'He didn't see the driver at all?'

Katie shook her head. 'The car pulled in about twenty-five meters diagonally opposite the pub window, so the witness could only see a three-quarter rear view of it.'

'Draw it for me.'

'What?'

'Here?use the telephone pad. Show me where the pub stands, show me where the car stopped, show me where the girl was.'

'What good will that do?'

'Trust me, just do it.'

Katie drew a square to represent The Angler's Rest, then two lines going off at forty-five degrees to the north-east, to represent the road to Blarney. Opposite The Angler's Rest she penciled a small black rectangle, which was the car, and finished off with a small stick figure, Fiona Kelly.

Her father studied it for a while, and then he said, 'This is more or less accurate, yes?'

'As near as I can get it.'

'So where was your witness sitting?'

'Here, at the left-hand window, with a diagonal view across the road.'

'Near enough to be able to identify the make of car?'

'I would say so, yes.'

'But how did he know it had only one headlight?'

'What?'

'The car would have driven past the front of the pub without your witness being able to see the front of it. And then it stopped to pick up your victim, just far enough up the road so that he could only see the rear end of it, and very quickly drove off northeastward. So how did he know it had only one headlight?'

'I don't know. But why would he say there was only one headlight if there wasn't? He must have been able to see it.'

'Remember what they taught you at Templemore. There's no such thing as 'must have been' in any good detective's vocabulary. Either the front of the Mercedes was visible from the pub window or it wasn't, and from what you've just told me, I think it would be worth going to have another word with this eyewitness of yours. You may be wasting your time?but, I don't know. I have a feeling about it.'

'And you're tellingmenot to rely on hunches?'

Although it was already growing dark, she drove out to The Angler's Rest again. There were only five people in the bar, four men and a middle-aged woman with crow-black hair and a screaming laugh, but it was warm and welcoming and there was a good strong fire burning in the grate.

Ricky Looney was sitting on his usual stool with a half-finished pint in front of him.

'Buy you a drink, Ricky?' Katie asked him.

'Beamish, if you don't mind. But I can't tell you anything more than what I told you already.'

'That's all right. I just wanted to see if you could picture what happened in your mind's eye.'

'Picture it, like? You mean draw it? I was never any good at the drawing.'

'No, you don't have to draw it. All you have to do is close your eyes and try toseeit, as if you were watching a film.'

Ricky Looney looked hesitant, but when she urged him, 'Go on, give it a try,' he squeezed his eyes tight shut and clenched his face into a concentrated grimace.