'All right. You've twisted my arm.'
Shortly after 10:00A.M., Patrick Goggin knocked on the door of her office. She was busy going through the detailed technical reports on the cottage where Fiona Kelly had been killed, and she wasn't particularly happy to see him.
He sniffed, sharply. 'That's a very attractive perfume you're wearing, Superintendent.'
'Thank you. But I'm afraid I'm up to my eyes this morning.'
'Of course,' he swallowed. 'But I just wanted to tell you that I've had a response from the Ministry of Defense in London relating to the disappearance of Irish women around North Cork between 1915 and '16.'
'And?'
'They say that they've made a thorough search of the Public Records Office at Kew and it appears that all the daily dispatches relating to the period in question were destroyed by enemy action during World War II. Whatever happened to them, they're missing, and nobody can find them.'
'How convenient. Do you believe them?'
'I don't have any choice, do I?'
'You don't think they're deliberately being obstructive?'
'They may be. But I don't know. Jack Devitt has made it his life's work to publicize British atrocities in Ireland. As often as not I think he's justified in what he says, especially when it comes to the Black and Tans and the Irish Volunteers. But personally I find it very difficult to believe that a British commanding officer would officially order the systematic abduction and the murdering of eleven young women, don't you?'
Katie sat back. 'I have to say that I'm inclined to agree with you. Especially since the women were sacrificed in an ancient Celtic ritual. The Brits never gave a fig for Celtic rituals-in fact they did their best to stamp them out. And the raising up of Mor-Rioghain, that's a particularly obscure ritual that very few
'It isn't, no. That's why I'm relying on you to find out what really happened to those women. If Jack Devitt's right, and they
Katie dropped her ball pen onto the papers in front of her. 'I can only tell you, Mr. Goggin, that we're doing our best. So far we've located and DNA-tested eleven people who thought they might be related to the victims, and seven of them have proved positive-so I think it's reasonably safe to assume that the skeletons that were found at Knocknadeenly were those of the eleven women who were abducted between 1915 and 1916.
'Some of the relatives have hand-me-down stories of 'the day that Great Auntie Betty disappeared,' but unfortunately none of them throw any light on how the women were taken, or who took them. Mary O'Donovan's great-great-grandniece did mention a scare story that she had told her about a 'demon Tommy,' who was supposed to have been preying on young women around St. Luke's Cross and Montenotte. But it could have been nothing more than a warning to stop local girls from flirting with British soldiers.'
'I could really do without this,' said Patrick Goggin, pulling tiredly at his cheeks as if they were Plasticine.
'Well, that makes two of us, Mr. Goggin. But I'm having lunch with my two experts in Celtic mythology today and maybe they'll come up with some bright ideas.'
'Oh.' He looked disappointed. 'I was going to ask you if you wanted to come and have a drink with me.'
Siobhan's eyes flickered open. Almost at once she was overwhelmed by a tide of pain that swept her away like a broken doll in a heavy sea. She felt the floor rising and falling and tilting beneath her, and the walls rushing toward her and then rushing away again. She vomited, not that she had much left to vomit, only some tinned tomato soup that the man had given her, and a few strings of phlegm.
The pain was so overwhelming that she couldn't think what she was doing here or what had happened to her, or even who she was. All she could think about was pain, and why the room wouldn't stay level.
The man was standing close to her, although she couldn't see anything more than a dark, distorted shadow. 'You're awake?' he asked her.
She didn't answer, so he knelt down beside her and peeled back one of her fluttering, wincing eyelids with his thumb. 'You're awake? You've done very well, Siobhan. How are you feeling?'
She retched again, and then again, and he stood well away until she had finished. Then he said, 'I'm going to leave you to rest now. See if you can get some more sleep. I'll be back in a while to feed you. Would you like something to drink before I go?'
She nodded. She was hurting so much that she couldn't even cry. The man left her for a while and then came back with a large glass of water. He cupped his hand behind her white, red-tufted head, and helped her to take three or four swallows. Almost immediately she retched again, and water splashed over her legs.
She sat with her head hanging down, her eyes clenched shut, while the pain continued to wash her from one side of the room to the other.
'I'll be back later,' the man said, gently. 'Then we can really discover some pain together.'
He closed the door behind him. Siobhan sat limply in her chair while the floor heaved beneath her like a raft. 'Mama?' she whispered. 'Mama, please help me.'
Gradually she opened her eyes. Her legs looked different, and at first she couldn't understand why. Then she realized that she was looking at bones, not skin. Two cream-colored thighbones, and two kneecaps that were still joined to her legs by gristle and fragments of flesh. The seat cushion beneath her was soaked in blood.
She was in such a state of clinical shock that she didn't fully understand that the thighbones were hers. They reminded her of the skeleton that used to be dangling in the corner of the biology lab at school. She closed her eyes
