White Bones (16 page)

“Taking a day off, so I understand.”

“What about the rest of the staff? One of the tour guides? A visitor? In the name of Jesus, a sixteen-stone man with his face painted bright pink? And those nailers make enough of a racket, don’t they?”

“Nobody saw a thing, superintendent. Nobody heard anything, neither.”

Katie thought: that doesn’t really surprise me, if Eamonn Collins had anything to do with it.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll have to make an appeal through the media. Somebody must have seen something – even if it was only a van parked here.”

“A van?”

“Had to be. They wouldn’t have driven through the city with a fellow painted bright pink sitting in the back of their car, would they? And they would have needed a compressor for the nailer.”

Katie turned and looked at Dave MacSweeny again. He had opened his eyes now, and was staring up at the ceiling, as if he were praying to be released. He still said nothing, but bright pink tears began to run down his cheeks and drip onto his shirt.

It took the fire and rescue team over an hour to free Dave MacSweeny from the wall. The nails turned out to be too hard and too deeply-embedded for bolt-cutters so the fire-fighters had to hack away the stone all around them with hammers and chisels and then cut them with a grinding wheel. Katie stood out on the catwalk, covering her ears as metal screeched against metal.

At last they lowered Dave MacSweeny to the floor of the cell and brought in a stretcher. As the paramedics carried him out, Katie bent over him and said, “Dave? Can you hear me, Dave?”

He stared at her but he didn’t speak.

“Dave, do you know who did this to you, Dave?”

He gave her an almost imperceptible nod.

“Who was it, Dave? Are you going to tell me?”

One corner of his mouth quivered in the beginnings of a smile.

“I’m sorry, superintendent,” put in one of the paramedics, “we really need to get him to the hospital.”

“All right.” Katie stood up straight, and let them carry Dave MacSweeny away. She turned, and caught Liam looking at her with a slight frown on his face, as if there were something he couldn’t quite work out.

“What’s the problem?”

“Nothing. I was just trying to work out why anybody would have gone to all the trouble of dolling him up to look like a waxwork and then nailing him to the wall like that. They obviously weren’t intent on
killing
him, were they, because somebody was bound to notice him there before too long. So what do you think? Somebody was trying to teach him a lesson?”

“Probably. You know what a cute hoor he is. He could have upset any one of dozens of people.”

“But why do this to him – right here in the Gaol? They were taking a hell of a chance, after all. Why didn’t they just go round to his house and nail him to his kitchen table? Far less risky, just as much of a punishment.”

“I can’t guess, Liam. Who knows what goes on in the heads of people who do things like that? Perhaps they were trying to show us that even if
we
couldn’t put him in prison,
they
could, whenever they felt like it.”

Liam opened her car door for her, and the lights-on alarm began to beep. “I think they didn’t do it simply to punish
him
– they did it to show somebody else, too. Maybe as a warning.”

“You’re absolutely right, of course. All we have to find out who was warning who about what.”

“I’ll take care of this one. I know you’ve got your hands full with that body up at Meagher’s Farm. I just thought you ought to see it, that’s all.”

“Thanks,” said Katie. “As if I wasn’t feeling queasy enough already.”

She called Eamonn Collins on her cellphone. A woman answered, with a nasal Dublin accent. In the background, Katie could hear Andy Williams singing
Moon River
.

“Is Eamonn home?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Katie Maguire.”

“And who’s Katie Maguire may I ask?”

“Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire, that’s who.”

“All right. There’s no need to eat the head off me.”

Eamonn came to the phone. “Good evening to you,
superintendent
. How can I help you?”

“I think you’ve already helped me more than enough, thanks. What the hell did you think you were playing at? I wanted you to have a quiet word in Dave MacSweeny’s ear, not make a public spectacle of him.”

“Well, to be truthful, it started off as a quiet word, but then he began to be argumentative. Called my mother a name, you see; and I couldn’t have that.”

“So you decided to take him to the City Gaol and nail him to the wall? Holy Mother of God, Eamonn, there’s going to be a full investigation and the whole thing’s going to be plastered all over the papers. And don’t tell me that Dave MacSweeny’s not going to let everyone know who did it, and why.”

“Oh, I don’t think he’ll be doing that, superintendent. He was given a fair word of warning, as well as his punishment. I’d be very surprised if he gave you any more trouble after this.”

“I hope to God you’re right, Eamonn, otherwise I’ll be going down for this, and I’ll make sure that you’ll be coming down with me.”

“Oh, superintendent! ‘Some flow’rets of Eden ye still inherit, but the trail of the serpent is over them all.’”

“I know,” said Katie. “Thomas Moore.”

There were crumpled bags under Dr Reidy’s eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in a week, and he reeked of tobacco. Without a word he held out a large jar of Vick’s Vapor Rub and Katie dipped her finger into it and smeared it thickly on her upper lip. It made her eyes water and her nose drip, but that was preferable to the alternative.

Dr Reidy led Katie through to a small side-room, on the other side of the corridor from the main pathology lab, and there, on two stainless-steel autopsy tables, was all that was left of the woman whose remains had been found at Meagher’s Farm.

Her skeleton had been reassembled on the left-hand table, and on the right-hand table Dr Reidy had done his best to reshape her skin and flesh and viscera into a semblance of the girl that she had originally been. It was a slack, shapeless parody of a human being, blotchy and bruised and clotted with blood, more like an empty nightdress-case than a woman, but all the same Katie was surprised how successfully Dr Reidy had been able to reconstruct her. She walked up to the table and stood staring at the cadaver for a long, long time. Dr Reidy carried on sorting out his instruments and did nothing to disturb her.

“Cause of death?” she asked, at last.

“Surgical shock, more than likely, caused by diminution of the fluid element in the blood.”

“That means that he was cutting the flesh off her while she was still alive?”

Dr Reidy nodded. “I’m sorry to say that it probably does. Judging from the condition of the tissues, it appears that the flesh was removed from both arms and both legs before death supervened. That explains the deep contusions around the biceps and the upper thighs. Your man applied tourniquets to prevent her from bleeding to death for as long as he possibly could.”

“No way to tell if she was anesthetized or not?”

“There was some aspirin residue in the stomach, but so far there’s no trace of any other painkillers or anesthetics.”

“Do you think a surgeon might have done this?”

“No, definitely not. The flesh was removed quite skillfully, I’d say, but this isn’t the work of anybody with professional surgical training. We’re talking about a talented butcher, most likely.”

Katie peered closely at the girl’s face. Part of her right cheek was missing, and she had nothing but dark holes for eyes. Dr Reidy said, “We’ve got most of her internal organs, but her heart’s missing. I can’t tell if that was deliberate or not.”

“Probably the crows took it.”

“Nobody’s claimed her yet, I gather?”

Katie shook her head.

“Well, not to worry. With what we have here, Dr Lambert should be able to produce a very acceptable likeness. So far I can tell you that she was approximately 5ft 10ins tall,
well-nourished
and physically fit, and that she probably weighed around 145 pounds, although I haven’t got all of her. She was blonde, aged between 21 to 24, and I suspect from the quality of her dentistry that she was American. Her teeth, in fact, are virtually perfect.”

“Anything else?”

“There are bruises on her wrists and ankles which indicate that she was handcuffed, and if you can find the handcuffs, I should be able to give you a positive identification. There are also some deep diamond-shaped impressions on her buttocks. It’s my guess that she was forced to lie for some considerable time on a bed without a mattress. Again – if and when you find the bed, I can almost certainly give you a positive ID, plus a DNA match. It was an older-style bed, I’d say – and, of course, she would have been bleeding so much that it would have been almost impossible for the perpetrator to remove every tiny fleck of blood.

“Something more – there are no traces of adhesive around her mouth, nor any bruising that might have been consistent with her being tightly gagged – although, as you can see, the skin around the mouth and lips was very severely traumatized when her face was skinned. There are no fragments of latex or tennis-ball flock in between her teeth, either, so she probably didn’t have a ball forced into her mouth to keep her quiet.”

“She wasn’t gagged? And she had the flesh cut off her arms and legs with nothing but a few aspirin to deaden the pain? God, she must have screamed.”

“She probably did,” said Dr Reidy, unblinking.

“That means that she must have been held somewhere isolated – in a place where nobody could hear her. Either that, or somewhere soundproof, like a cellar.”

“That would be my opinion.”

“How about the holes in the thighbones?”

“They were both drilled with a number 8 steel masonry bit. Brand-new, by the clean way it drilled through, and there are traces of thin oil, too. We’ve found some microscopic fragments of metal so we should be able to identify that, too.”

“All right,” said Katie. “You’ve got all the forensic evidence… all I have to do is find this monster and make an arrest.”

Dr Reidy draped two sheets over the autopsy tables. “That’s right, superintendent. I’d say you’ve got your work cut out for you, wouldn’t you?”

Jimmy O’Rourke knocked on her office door at 4:45 pm and said, “Boss? The Meagher’s Farm victim. We think we know who she is.” He held out an emailed attachment with a color photograph on it. Katie took it and held it under her desklamp.

It was datelined 6:00 pm the previous day, from the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department, 1745 Mission Drive, Solvang, California, and it was addressed to Garda headquarters in Phoenix Park. “We have received an urgent inquiry from Mr and Mrs Donald F. Kelly of Paseo Delicias, Solvang, regarding the whereabouts of their daughter Fiona Kelly who is currently undertaking a three-week solo backpacking tour of Co. Limerick, Co. Kerry and Co. Cork, in the Republic of Ireland. Ms Kelly arranged to contact her parents by telephone every two–three days in order to reassure them that she was safe. However – ”

Katie looked at the photograph. A young, bright,
blonde-haired
girl standing on a white-painted verandah, laughing.

“Fiona is 22 years old, 5ft 10ins tall, weighs 147 lbs. She is likely to be wearing blue jeans and a navy-blue windcheater with turquoise panels on the front. She is carrying a navy-blue Nike backpack.”

“Oh, shit,” said Katie.

At 9:25 pm, Katie spoke on the phone with Chief Deputy Fred Olguin of the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department.

“I have to warn you that we’re investigating a murder here. A young blonde girl who may be American.”

“I see. I’m real sorry to hear that. Naturally I won’t say anything to the Kellys yet awhile. But they’re pretty upset. It seems like Fiona always made a point of calling them, almost every afternoon.”

“I need a list of every location from which Fiona called her parents since she her arrival. Failing that, the telephone numbers.”

“I’ll get you all of that information, ma’am. Don’t you worry about that.”

The list came by e-mail only twenty minutes later, along with a map on which Mr and Mrs Kelly had been carefully tracing their daughter’s progress by marking red crosses on a map of the Irish Republic.

Katie asked Liam to call customs officers at Shannon and the Garda stations in Limerick, Killarney and Bandon. Within an hour she had built up a reasonably detailed picture of most of Fiona’s movements from the moment she had stepped off the plane from Los Angeles.

At 7:50 Dermot O’Driscoll came in with a blacky ham sandwich in one hand and a mug of tea in the other and asked how she was getting on. She nodded toward the map and the photograph of Fiona pinned up next to it. “I’ve got a really bad feeling this is our victim.”

“American, then? Not Irish.”

“Irish by ancestry.”

Gardaí called that evening at seven different bed-
and-breakfasts
where Fiona had stopped for the night, and interviewed every landlady. Almost every one of them said she was “very sweet, very friendly, and very trusting.” Mrs Rooney from The Atlantic Hotel in Dingle said, “She was so innocent I have to say that I was feared for her. Hitch-hiking isn’t safe like it used to be when I was young.”

The last call Fiona had made to her parents was from The Golden Shamrock bed-and-breakfast in Ballyvourney, near Macroom, which was less than an hour’s drive west of Cork City.

Just before 8:00 am the following morning, Garda John Buckley from Macroom talked to Denis Hennessy, who ran a newsagent’s and confectionery on the main Cork road. He had been tying up the previous days’ unsold newspapers when he saw Fiona hitch-hiking just outside his shop. “You wouldn’t forget her, you know? She looked like one of those girls in
Bay Watch
.” A dirty pale-blue pick-up had stopped for her, with the name
C & J O’Donoghue Builders
painted on the back.