White Bones Read online

  He thought that he would enjoy baring her face most of all, opening the nose, peeling away the fatty tissue underneath the cheeks, and discovering the skull beneath the skin.

  20

  Katie knew what a risk she was taking, but she had lain awake all night and she hadn’t been able to think of any other way out of it, apart from going straight into Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll’s office and handing over her gun and her badge and resigning from the Garda on the spot.

  She met Eamonn Collins at Dan Lowery’s pub at eleven o’clock the next morning, before the lunchtime rush. “Foxy” was dressed as dapper as ever, in a dark green blazer and a camel waistcoat and a Hermes necktie with stirrups on it. His minder Jerry was hunched in the opposite corner, cramming down a bowlful of French fries with so much tomato ketchup that it looked as if his fingers were smothered in blood.

  Katie didn’t even take off her raincoat. “I need a favor,” she said.

  “A favor?” said Eamonn. “What kind of a favor could a fellow like me possibly do for a lady like yourself?”

  “I have a little problem which I can’t deal with in the usual way. There’s no evidence, you see, and not much chance of finding any.”

  “All right. This is nothing to do with those skeletons, is it?”

  Katie shook her head. “This is somebody who took something that didn’t belong to him.”

  “I see. A transgression which you know for a fact but which you couldn’t prove in court, is that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  Eamonn sat back and systematically cracked his knuckles. “What do you want me to do about it? And dare I ask what I might expect in return?”

  “I want you to pay a visit to the party involved and tell him to soften his cough, that’s all.”

  “That doesn’t sound too onerous. Who is it?”

  “Dave MacSweeny. He helped himself to some building materials up at Mallow, but somebody else helped himself to the very same building materials and sold them on, and Dave MacSweeny’s a little unhappy about it.”

  “Well, he would be. Dave MacSweeny’s not exactly a forgiving sort of fellow. Who was the somebody else who relieved him of his ill-gotten gains?”

  “That doesn’t concern you.”

  Eamonn stared at her with his dead gray eyes. “It concerns you, though, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s beside the point.” Katie wished her heart would stop banging so hard.

  Eamonn had a long think. At the next table, Jerry was noisily sucking his fingers clean. After a while, Eamonn leaned forward and said, “All right, you’re on. I’ll have a quiet word in Dave MacSweeny’s ear myself. Is there anything specific you want me to say to him?”

  “Just tell him to develop amnesia about the building materials and whoever it was that took them. If you like, you can tell him that Charlie Flynn sent you.”

  “Charlie Flynn? You surprise me. I thought that Charlie Flynn would have been gently floating out to sea by now, or sinking in a bog on Little Island.”

  “No, Charlie’s still with us.”

  “All right, then. How forceful do you want me to be?”

  “Emphatic, that’ll do.”

  “No problem at all. I can be emphatic.”

  “You’ll be wanting something in return. I can have the dealing charges against Billy Phelan reduced to possession.”

  Eamonn said, “Hm. That’s not much of a bargain.”

  “Okay,” said Katie. “I’ll see if I can drop the charges altogether.”

  “That’s better. And maybe your people could leave my fellows alone for a while – stopping them and searching them wherever they go. They even stopped Jimmy Twomey when he was coming out of Mass with his grandma.”

  “I can probably ease off you for a month or so. But any more than that and my chief superintendent’s going to start asking awkward questions.”

  “Well, awkward questions. We can’t have those, can we?”

  Katie left Dan Lowery’s and stepped out into dazzling, colorless sunshine. She felt nervous and sick, and she was almost tempted to go back and tell Eamonn Collins to forget that she had ever talked to him. But it was too late now. She was committed.

  She drove back to Garda headquarters and somehow the city looked different – as if scene-shifters had been at work during the night, changing the bridges around, and altering the streets, and re-arranging the quays. And of course it was different, because she had changed her life forever, and there was no going back to the day before yesterday.

  21

  The phone rang at 7:05 on Sunday morning. Katie reached across to the nightstand and pulled the receiver back under the covers. “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Dermot O’Driscoll here, Katie. Have you seen the Sunday papers yet?”

  “I’ve only just woken up.”

  “Well, get yourself out of bed and buy yourself a copy of the Sunday Times. Page three, you won’t miss it. Then call me here at home.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She took Sergeant with her along the road to the newspaper shop. It was a sparkling morning, even though it must have rained heavily during the night, and she could see a large white cruise ship anchored in the harbor.

  She bought the Sunday Times and the Irish News of the World. She opened the Times as she walked back home, and immediately she slowed and stopped, while Sergeant bounded around her, wagging his tail and urging her to carry on.

  The headline on page 3 read: British Soldiers ‘Murdered Eleven Irish Women’. There was a photograph of Katie standing over the excavations at Meagher’s Farm, and another photograph of Jack Devitt, the white-haired writer whom Katie had met with Eugene Ó Béara in The Crow Bar.

  The story said that “The 86-year-old mystery of eleven young Cork women who disappeared without trace between 1915 and 1916 may have been solved yesterday by the well-known republican author Jack Devitt. He claims to have proof that they were murdered by British soldiers in revenge for a Fenian bomb attack.

  “Eleven women’s skeletons were uncovered last week during building work at a farm at Knocknadeenly. An examination by State Pathologist Dr Owen Reidy showed that all of their flesh had been scraped from their bones before they were buried, possibly to hamper identification.”

  Katie read on, the paper flapping in the morning breeze. Sergeant was growing impatient and started to bark at her. But she read the article right to the end, and then she stood where she was, lost in thought.

  The Times said that Jack Devitt had been given access to private letters and police reports showing that before they went missing, three of the eleven women had been seen by reliable witnesses talking to a young British officer with a moustache, and two of them had been seen climbing into a car with him. “It was never discovered whether the officer was acting on official orders or if he was carrying out a personal vendetta. However, the investigation was pursued no further and no British officers were ever questioned by police or military police. Three months after the last disappearance (Mary Ahern, on the morning of Good Friday, 1916) the case was officially declared to be closed.”

  Katie could understand that Eugene Ó Béara and Jack Devitt would want to make as much political hay out of the case as they possibly could, but it was obvious that neither they nor the Times knew that the skeletons had been ritualistically decorated. If these were the same women, it was entirely possible that they had been murdered by a British officer, but why would a British officer drill holes in their thighbones and hang them with rag dolls? Perhaps it had some religious or political meaning. During the Indian Mutiny, British soldiers had sewn condemned Muslims into pig-skins before hanging them, because Muslims considered that pigs were unclean. But if this had been done for a similar reason, to insult and intimidate the Irish, why had all these women been killed in a way that had no significance that anybody knew about, and then buried in secret?

  She walked home. Paul was still lying on the couch in the living-room, his head tipped back, snoring
in a coarse, steady rasp. She stood watching him and then she went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee.

  She called Dermot O’Driscoll. “Sorry,” he said, chewing in her ear. “I’ve got a mouthful of scone.”

  “I read the Times.”

  “Yes, and what do you think?”

  “I still think that there are dozens of questions left unanswered – even if Jack Devitt’s evidence turns out to be authentic.”

  “Well, that’s as may be, but the Commissioner called me this morning and said that the Minister of Justice wants us to drop the investigation completely.”

  “What about Professor O’Brien’s research?”

  “That too. The minister wants no further action of any kind and absolutely no comments to the media. Things between Dublin and London are touchy enough as they are without taking eighty-year-old skeletons out of the closet.”

  “But, sir – ”

  “Drop it, Katie. There’s no future in it. How are you getting along with Charlie Flynn?”

  “I, ah – I think I may be getting somewhere.”

  “Good. The sooner you find out what happened to him the better. Perhaps City Hall will give my head some peace.”

  22

  John Meagher was driving up toward the farmhouse on Tuesday afternoon when he saw scores of crows flapping over the top field, close to Iollan’s Wood. He parked his Land Rover and went to investigate, climbing over the low stone wall and taking a shortcut across the dark, crumbly furrows.

  The crows had obviously found something to eat – a dead fox or a rabbit – because they were wheeling and diving and cawing, and squabbling amongst themselves. They were so preoccupied that many of them didn’t even notice him as he approached, and continued to flap and quarrel over their feast. A few of them resentfully hopped away, but they didn’t go far.

  There were so many crows that at first he couldn’t understand what he was looking at. But as he came nearer he gradually realized that they were tearing at a radically-dismembered human body.

  He felt as if the entire field had suddenly tilted beneath his feet. He stumbled, and stopped. But then he stepped closer, as close as he dared, and stared at the apparition in front of him in total horror.

  All of the body’s bones had been entirely stripped of flesh, except a few scarlet rags around the joints. Each bone had then been pushed upright into the soil to form a kind of picket fence. On the far side of the fence, the skull was perched on a small cairn of lesser bones, shoulder-bones and toe-bones and finger-bones. On each side of the skull stood the body’s thighbones, and the top of each thighbone had been drilled right through and a small linen doll tied onto it with string.

  Inside this compound lay a heap of human offal. John recognized the sacklike lungs and the half-deflated stomach – as well as pieces of raw flesh that were still identifiable as calf-muscles and forearms. Even as he stood staring at it, panting in ever-increasing nausea, one of the crows snatched up an ear in its beak and went flying off with it, hotly pursued by three or four other crows, all of them screeching in fury.

  He walked back down the field, stiff-legged. Gabriel and the boy Finbar were still digging the foundations of the new boiler-house. Gabriel looked up as he approached, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  “What’s wrong, John?”

  “There’s been – some sort of an accident.”

  “Accident? Where?”

  “Up by Iollan’s Wood. You see where those crows are. Stay here – don’t go up there, whatever you do, and don’t let the boy go up there, either. Or anybody else.”

  Gabriel could see by the expression on his face that something was seriously wrong. “What is it – somebody dead?”

  John nodded, and then he abruptly turned around, and leaned against the wall, and gawked up his lunch, potato-and-leek soup and soda bread. Gabriel and the boy stood solemnly watching him, and didn’t say anything until he had wiped his mouth, and spat, and spat again.

  “You want me to call the guards?” asked Gabriel.

  “That’s okay. I’ve got that woman detective’s number. You just keep an eye on things.”

  He called Katie on his cellphone. She took a long time to answer, and when she did the signal was very poor.

  “Superintendent?” he shouted, with his finger in his ear. “It’s John Meagher, from Meagher’s Farm.”

  “Sorry can’t – back in a – ”

  “It’s John Meagher. I’ve found another body. Another skeleton.”

  “Another skeleton? Same place? Under the feedstore?”

  “No… in the top field. This one’s new.”

  “Sorry, where did you say? I’m just – Jack Lynch Tunnel – ”

  There was a short crackling pause, and then she came back more clearly. “Sorry about that, I’m just on my way to the South Infirmary. Where did you say the skeleton was?”

  “It’s in the top field, up by the woods. But this isn’t the same as the others. The rest of the body… all the flesh… it’s all still here. By the looks of it, it hasn’t been here longer than a few hours.”

  “All right. I’m on my way. Don’t go near it again, will you? There could be footprints or other evidence.”

  “I wouldn’t go near it again if you paid me.”

  Liam Fennessy pushed aside the blue PVC sheeting and came inside. He took a long look at the skull and the bones and the glistening viscera and then he shook his head and said, “Jesus.”

  “Dr Reidy’s flying back down this evening,” said Katie. She pushed another Ritchie’s mint into her mouth. “He wants to see the remains in situ.”

  “It’s a woman, yes?”

  Katie nodded. “We’ve found part of her external genitalia and one of her breasts. We’ve found her scalp, too. Long natural-blonde hair. Apart from that there are large sections of flesh from her back still intact, and her skin looks quite firm. Without second-guessing Dr Reidy, I’d say we’re looking at a girl in her early twenties. The skin’s quite suntanned, too. Either she’s a local girl who’s recently been on holiday or else she’s a tourist from somewhere warm.”

  “I’m checking on missing persons inquiries,” put in Jimmy O’Rourke, with an unlit cigarette waggling between his lips. “If she was a tourist or a backpacker, though, it could be difficult to find out who she was… a lot of them go away for months before their families start wondering where they are.”

  “Any identifying marks?” asked Liam. “Any tattoos, studs, or earrings?”

  “No tattoos, no studs, and unfortunately the crows made off with the ears. But we have the skull, and we have part of the nose, and most of the facial muscles. It shouldn’t be too difficult to build up an identifiable MRI image.”

  Liam hunkered down in front of one of the thighbones, and flicked the little rag doll.

  “Those, of course, are the really baffling part,” said Katie. “As far as we’re aware nobody knew about those dolls except us.”

  “And the two fellows who found the skeletons,” put in Liam. “And farmer John Meagher himself. And his mother.”

  “You don’t seriously think that John Meagher committed a copycat murder on his own farm?”

  “I don’t seriously think anything at the moment. But so far we haven’t come across any folk legends that mention rag dollies tied to women’s thighbones, have we? So it’s fair to assume that whoever did this knew about the dollies from the first lot of bones.”

  He took off his James Joyce spectacles and peered at the thighbone even more closely.

  “This hole was drilled with an electric drill, by the look of it. The others were all drilled with a brace-and-bit.”

  “I’ve already confiscated three electric drills from the farmhouse toolshed,” said Katie. “I’ve taken all the drill-bits, too. Two complete sets of specialist bits, only two of them missing, plus a tobacco-tin containing eleven assorted bits. Oh – and three balls of twine, too.”

  “And you don’t think that John
Meagher had anything to do with this?”

  “I’m just being thorough, Liam, that’s all.”

  “How about footprints? This is ideal for footprints, a freshly-plowed field.”

  “We’re taking casts. But considering the way the body was arranged, there seem to be surprisingly few.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  “Initiate a house-to-house, and pub-to-pub, and knock on the door of every bed-and-breakfast in a ten-mile radius. You’re asking about a suntanned girl with long blonde hair.”

  “And you?”

  “I have to talk to Dermot. Then I have to give a statement to the press.”

  Liam stood up. “The rag dollies are the key to this. If we can find out what they mean, I think we’ll know what happened here, and why, and who did it.”

  Jimmy O’Rourke came over and said, “Take a look at this, superintendent.”

  He led Katie around the right-hand side of the garden of bones, and pointed to a large section of flesh that had been cut from the victim’s hip, buttock and upper thigh. It looked almost like a boned leg of beef from a supermarket display cabinet.

  “See there… there’s a deep indentation around the upper thigh… really, really deep. The last time I ever saw anything like that was when a fellow caught his arm in a printing-machine in Douglas. His workmates tied a tourniquet around his upper arm to stop him from bleeding to death.”

  “So what do you deduce from that?” asked Katie.

  “I’m not sure. But why would anybody tie a tourniquet around the leg of a dead body?”

  “You mean that this woman might have had her leg amputated while she was still alive?”

  “Well, not amputated, no. Look at all these bones, they’re all intact. They haven’t been sawn through, any of them.”