For the first time, Tomas blinked. 'Of course I have.'
'Tell me, then.'
'Tell you what?'
'Tell me about Mor-Rioghain. Who she is, what she can do for you.'
Desmond O'Keeffe tapped his ball pen on the table. 'Sorry?I don't see the relevance of this.'
Katie said, 'You're here to protect Mr. O Conaill's rights, Mr. O'Keeffe, not to second-guess the lines of our inquiry.'
'All the same,' Desmond O'Keeffe protested, flushing very red.
'I don't mind answering,' said Tomas O Conaill. 'I didn't do nothing to nobody, as the witch here very well knows. Mor-Rioghain is a
'You believe in the fairies?'
'I believe in Mor-Rioghain, and why not? Didn't I hear her myself the night before my poor father died, moaning and keening at the back door?'
'I thought that banshees only cried for five particular families.'
'They do,' he agreed, and he counted them off on his fingers. 'The O'Neills, the O'Briens, the O'Connors, the O'Gradys, and the Kavanaghs. But my father was an O'Grady by marriage.'
'Do you believe that Mor-Rioghain can be called up out of the fairy world if you offer her a human sacrifice?'
Tomas O Conaill shrugged, and flicked ash into the overcrowded ashtray.
'Have you heard about the eleven women's skeletons which were found up at Knocknadeenly?'
'I have, yes. I saw it on the telly.'
'One of our experts thinks that somebody may have been trying to make a sacrifice to Mor-Rioghain. If you kill thirteen women and take the flesh off their bones, so that she can feed on it, apparently Mor-Rioghain will reward you by giving you whatever you want.'
'I know of that, yes.''
It looks as if our 1915 murderer was interrupted before he could give her all of the sacrifices she demands. It wouldn't have occurred to you, by any chance, that if you killed just two more women, you could call on Mor- Rioghain and ask her to make you rich? Easier than winning the Lotto.'
'You shouldn't make mock of the
'I'm asking you straight out, Tomas. Did you kill Fiona Kelly?'
'The answer to that is no, I didn't. And if I was minded to call on Mor-Rioghain, there's only one thing that I'd ask her for, and that's to make you blind and lame.'
'You're all heart, Tomas.'
A few minutes later, Liam knocked on the door of the interview room and beckoned Katie to come outside. 'Interview suspended at 5:09A.M.,' she said, and left Tomas O Conaill lighting yet another cigarette.
Liam held up a note from the technical department. 'They've made a preliminary check on the car. O Conaill's left his dabs all over the doors, the door handles, the steering wheel, the gearshift, the hand brake, the radio controls, the keys, the trunk, everywhere. There's a perfect thumbprint on the rearview mirror where he must have adjusted it to suit his driving position.'
'Anybody else's prints?'
'Fiona Kelly's, on the passenger door handle, which backs up your witness's story that she willingly accepted a lift.'
'Nobody else's?'
'One or two random prints around the filler cap, which probably came from a garage attendant. But nothing consistent with anybody else having driven the car, apart from O Conaill.'
'How about the bloodstains?'
'O positive. Same group as Fiona Kelly. They haven't had the DNA back yet.'
'Any results from the cottage?'
'Footprints, yes. Size ten boots the same as we found at Meagher's Farm. But fingerprints, no, and this is the odd part. They found a partial palm print on the front door handle, but none of O Conaill's fingerprints inside. Plenty of other prints, but not his. Not yet, anyway.'
'None at all?'
Liam shook his head.
'Why would he take such trouble not to leave any prints in the cottage if he was going to cover the car with them? Especially since the car still had Fiona Kelly's blood in it.'
'You surprised him, didn't you? He was probably intending to drive off and never go back there.'
'All the same?it doesn't really add up, does it?'
'There's only one way to find out, and that's to ask him.'
'What about his alibis?'
