A Terrible Beauty

34

As she drove home, she met Paul walking Sergeant along the road, about a half a mile from the house. It was starting to rain so she stopped and gave them a lift. Sergeant jumped around on the backseat, panting furiously from his walk, and occasionally slobbering her on the back of the neck. Paul looked hungover and distracted. He hadn't combed his hair and he was wearing his old gray jogging bottoms with the white emulsion paint on them.

'So you've caught your ritual murderer, then,' he said, not looking at her.

'We're making a media announcement this afternoon at three o'clock.'

'Am I allowed to know who he is?'

'As long as you don't tell anybody else.'

'I see. Married all these years and you still don't trust me.'

'Of course I trust you. Sergeant, for God's sake, stop licking me! It's Tomas O Conaill.'

'Tomas O Conaill, that psychopath. That doesn't come as much of a surprise. Has he confessed?'

'He's denying it one hundred percent. Despite the fact that I arrested him next to a Mercedes car with Fiona Kelly's blood in the boot and his own fingerprints all over it.'

'Any idea what his motive was? Or did he just do it for the hell of it?'

'I don't know. Gerard O'Brien thinks that he was making a human sacrifice-trying to raise up the spirit of Mor-Rioghain, thebean-sidhe. Presumably he was tired of selling used cars and tarmacking driveways and wanted to get rich the easy way. By magic.'

'Jesus. I didn't think that evenhewould be as mad as that.'

'I don't know. We all like to think that we can get rich by magic, don't we? The Lotto, or the horses, or the football pools.'

'Or selling off a million euros' worth of building materials that don't belong to us,' Paul put in.

'I didn't say that.'

'You would have done, if I hadn't said it first.'

They said nothing as they parked outside the house and went inside. It was raining hard now, and the sitting room was so gloomy that Katie switched on the chandelier. Sergeant went to his bowl in the kitchen and noisily lapped up water. Paul poured himself a whiskey.

'You want one?'

'God, no. It's only ten o'clock. I'm going to take a shower.'

'Listen, when you called last night?I didn't mean to sound so down.'

'You've got every right to be down. Life hasn't been very good to you lately, has it? Even if most of your problemshavebeen your own fault.'

Paul sat down. 'Maybe Tomas O Conaill isn't so mad after all.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well?think of the things that we could ask this Mor-Rioghain for, ifwecould raise her up.'

'Such as?'

He swilled whiskey around in the bottom of his glass, around and around, and then swallowed it. 'For a start, we could ask for Seamus back.'

'What?'

'That would make things better between us, wouldn't it? I mean if Seamus hadn't-'

He stopped when he saw the look on Katie's face. Without another word she left the sitting room and went upstairs. She stripped off her jacket, took off her holster, and unbuttoned her blouse. She strewed the rest of her clothes across the pink-and-white quilt, and then she went into the en suite bathroom and turned on the shower. She stared at her face in the mirror over the washbasin and she looked like somebody in shock.

We could ask for Seamus back. Holy Mother of God, how could he have said it?

She took a deep breath and stepped into the shower cabinet. She stood for a long time with her forehead pressed against the tiles and the water coursing down the back of her neck.

We could ask for Seamus back.

She was still in the shower when Paul came rapping on the frosted glass door. 'Are you all right, pet?'

'I'm fine. I'll be out in a minute.'

'Listen?I didn't mean to upset you. I'm sorry. I've had things on my mind, that's all.'

'I can't hear you.'

He opened the shower cabinet door. 'I've been having some more trouble about these building materials.'

'What kind of trouble?'

'A fellow I didn't know from Adam came up to me in the pub yesterday evening and said that I had forty-