A Terrible Beauty

onions and interleaved them in a casserole dish with fresh marjoram, before adding pork chops and chicken stock and putting them into the oven.

Paul, watching television and playing with Sergeant's ears, said, 'That smells good, pet. I'm starving.'

'Sorry. It won't be ready till eight.'

She sat down next to him and looked at him for a while without saying anything. His cheekbones were still covered with rainbow-colored bruises, and his split lip had a black crusty scab, but the swellings around his eyes had gone down.

'What are you going to do, Paul?' she asked him.

'What am I going to do about what?'

'Dave MacSweeny and his building materials, of course. I'm really worried that something's going to happen to you.'

He poured himself another whiskey. 'Can't you give me some Garda protection?' he asked, wryly.

'Seriously, I wish I could. But if I asked for police protection I'd have to explain why.'

'You're a guard. Why can'tyouprotect me?'

'I've been trying to, believe me. But I can't watch you twenty-four hours of the day, can I? And there's no knowing what Dave MacSweeny will do next.'

'What are you suggesting, then? That I do a Charlie Flynn and run off to Florida?'

'You could get out of Cork for a while.'

'What good would that do? I couldn't stay away forever, and what would I do for money? Anyway, I'm a Corkman. I was born here and brought up here and this is my home, and I'm not going to be frightened away by some waste of space like Dave MacSweeny. I'll think of something. Something will turn up.'

'Something like what?'

'I was talking to Ricky Deasy today. He wants me to invest in a housing project out near Carrigaline.'

'How can you afford to invest in a housing project when you have to raise six hundred and fifty thousand euros to pay back Winthrop Developments?'

'I can't. But the land that Ricky Deasy wants to build on doesn't have planning permission, not at the moment.'

'That doesn't sound like much of an investment to me.'

'No - but it's going dirt-cheap as agricultural land and there could be a hefty EU subsidy for anyone who takes it on to farm it.'

'You've lost me, Paul. You're thinking of taking upfarming?'

'Of course not. But Ricky's uncle is the deputy chairman of An Bord Pleanala and once we've bought the land we could see about fixing a change of use. You know, a little sweetener for Jimmy's uncle and a couple of the other board members.'

'Paul, you're desperate! You're just digging yourself in deeper and deeper!'

He put down his drink and took hold of her hand. 'I have to do something big, Katie. I have to do something dramatic. Otherwise I'mnevergoing to get myself out of this mess, ever; and I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life watching my back for Dave MacSweeny.'

Katie reached up and stroked his bruised and swollen cheek. 'Tell me a joke,' she said.

'What?'

'Tell me a joke, the way you used to, when we first went out together.'

'I'm fighting for my very life here, Katie. This isn't any time to be telling jokes.'

'I know. But just for me.'

He looked into her eyes as if he were looking for evidence that she wasn't mocking him. Then he said, 'There was this Kerryman who spent an hour staring at a carton of orange-juice because it said 'concentrate.''

Katie gave him the faintest of smiles and kissed him. He still smelled the same as always, too much Boss after shave. But it was strangely reassuring, as if the past hadn't completely disappeared; as if yesterday were still lying in the chest-of-drawers upstairs, sleeping in the tissue-paper that Seamus' baby-clothes were wrapped in.

39

When she came into her office at 8:35 the next morning, Dermot O'Driscoll was waiting for her, along with a thin, serious-faced man in a dark business suit. Even Dermot looked tidier than usual: he had crammed his shirttails into his waistband and even made an attempt to straighten his livid green necktie.

'Katie, this is Patrick Goggin from the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin.'

Katie held out her hand and Patrick Goggin gave her a soft, recessive handshake.

Dermot said, 'Apparently we're having some trouble with your friend Jack Devitt about these disappearances in 1915.'

'I never said that Jack Devitt was any friend of mine.'

'Figure of speech. Jack Devitt's demanding that the British Ministry of Defense produce documentary evidence to show what happened to those women. Whether they were murdered on official orders, you see, or whether it was a renegade officer who took them, or whether it was just some fellow who was masquerading as a member of the Crown forces. The trouble is, Devitt's got official backing from Sinn Fein. Here in Cork, and in the