A Terrible Beauty

'I came into the yard and saw that the door was open. There wasn't a sign of anybody so I knocked to see if everything was all right.'

'Very public-spirited of you, I'm sure. Do you want to explain where you were going?'

'I was taking a walk, that's all.'

'Just taking a walk, were you? In the dark, up a track that doesn't go to anywhere at all?'

'There's no law against a fellow taking a walk, is there?'

'There's a law against stealing cars and there's a law against breaking and entering other people's property.'

'I didn't take anything. I've been leading the life of a saint these days, Katie, I can swear to that.'

'Detective Superintendent Maguire to you, Tomas,' Katie retorted. She switched on her personal radio. 'Charlie Six to Charlie Alpha. I need urgent backup at Sheehan's Nurseries. That's about a mile and a half up thefifthturning on the left on the Blarney road, past The Angler's Rest. I have one male suspect to bring in.'

'Suspect, is it?' said Tomas O Conaill. 'Can you kindly tell me what I'm suspected of?'

'I don't know yet, Tomas. Perhaps you can tell me.'

'I haven't took nothing and I haven't laid a finger on nobody, God be my witness.'

'You won't mind answering a few questions, though, will you?'

'I've got nothing to say, Katie. I'm as innocent as a newborn child.'

It was almost twenty minutes before she saw Jimmy O'Rourke's headlights dipping and bouncing along the track, followed by a squad car. All the time that they were waiting, Tomas O Conaill talked loquaciously to Katie about where he and his family had been traveling over the past three years, all the way around Roscommon and Longford and Sligo, and how he had been making money from buying and selling horses and secondhand cars, as well as laying tarmac and mending old ladies' leaky roofs. 'All good honest work these days, Katie, I can promise you that.'

'Detective Superintendent Maguire.'

'Oh, come on now, Katie. I'm just trying to be sociable. We've known each other long enough, haven't we?'

'Yes, ever since you cut the baby out of that poor young girl in Mayfield.'

'I was acquitted of that, you'll remember.'

'Nobody was brave enough to give evidence, you mean. ButIknow you did it andyouknow you did it and that's good enough for me.'

'That baby was a child of the devil and if itwasme that did it, which I can assure you it wasn't, then I would have been doing the world the greatest favor since Jesus Christ.'

'Oh, yes. The spawn of Satan. A very colorful defense, I seem to remember.'

'If you don't believe in Satan, Katie, then how can you say that you believe in God?'

It was then that Jimmy's car turned into the yard, followed closely by the patrol car. Quietly and quickly, as if he were trying to pass on a last piece of crucial information, Tomas O Conaill said, 'Let me tell you something, Katie-there are powers on this earth that most people don't even have an inkling of. There are all kinds of demons and witches just itching to be raised up. You can laugh all you like, but they're there all right, and the only thing that keeps them where they belong is people like me.'

'Do you see me laughing?' asked Katie.

29

While Tomas O Conaill sat in the back of the squad car under the beefy custodianship of Garda Pat O'Malley, Katie and Jimmy O'Rourke took a look around the cottage. It smelled of damp and decay, but it had obviously been used quite recently. There was a packet of Barry's Tea in the kitchen, and a bottle of rancid orange juice in the refrigerator, as well as a tub of Calvita processed cheese with green fur on it.

In the living room, Katie picked up a copy of theEvening Echodated three weeks ago, as well as two screwed-up Mars Bar wrappers. In the smaller bedroom, there was a single bed with pink blankets and a bronze-colored satin quilt on it. It had been neatly made up, but when Katie lifted the blankets it was clear from the twisted wrinkles in the sheets that somebody had been sleeping in it.

'Beds,' she said. 'Always a feast for forensics. Hair, skin, dandruff, blood, you name it.'

They went into the larger bedroom. Katie reached around the door and switched on the light and it was then that she knew at once that she had found what she was looking for. The room was papered with dull brown roses, most of them diseased with damp. An old-fashioned iron bed stood on the opposite side of the room, without mattress or blankets, so that its diamond-shaped springs were exposed. Underneath it were spread three or four thicknesses of newspaper, copies of theIrish Examiner, and they were soaked in dark brown blood. Beside the bed, on a cheap veneered nightstand, stood an Anglepoise reading lamp.

Apart from the bed and the nightstand, the room was empty. But the feeling of horror it contained was overwhelming, almost deafening, like a scream so loud that the human ear couldn't hear it.

'Holy Mother of God,' said Jimmy.

Katie stood and stared into the room for a long time without saying anything. She didn't want to imagine what had happened here, but she couldn't help it. She had seen Fiona's skeleton, reconstructed on Dr. Reidy's autopsy table, and she had seen her flesh, and her hair, and her heaped intestines.

One of the gardai came in and said, 'Anything I can do, Superintendent?'

'Yes, Kieran. I want the technical team up here right away. Apart from that I need at least ten more guards