White Bones (21 page)

“I was hoping to see you,” he said. He sounded very drunk.

“I’m sorry, Paul. I don’t know how long I’m going to be. We’ve made an arrest in the Meagher’s Farm murder.”

“You have? That’s great news. Great, great. Who is it?”

“Somebody you’ve heard of, but I can’t tell you yet.”

“I’m proud of you, pet. Really proud of you. Listen, I can – I can wait up for you if you like.”

“Don’t bother, really. I probably won’t be back until the morning.”

“All right, then,” he said. He sounded as disappointed as a small boy.

“What is it, Paul? Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Only everything, that’s all. It can wait till tomorrow.”

“Tell me now.”

“No, love, forget it. It would take the rest of the night.”

“Paul – ”

“I’ve made a total mess of everything, that’s all. I’m practically bankrupt, I’ve got Dave MacSweeny threatening to cut my mebs off, I’ve got two other villains after me for gambling debts. My only kid’s dead and now I’ve lost you, too.”

“Paul – ”

He was sobbing. “I tried to make everything work out, pet. I did everything I could think of. But all I ended up doing was making everything worse.”

Katie didn’t know what to say to him. She still didn’t trust him, and she knew that she would never love him again, not the way she used to, but she still felt responsible for him, in the same way that she always felt responsible for everybody.

“Go home, love,” she told him. “Have a good night’s sleep and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Of course there was no Francis Justice at 134 Green Road, Mallow, and never had been. The street was crowded with squad cars and blue flashing lights but the poor old lady who lived at No. 134 had never heard of anybody called Francis Justice, and neither had the woman next door with the quilted dressing-gown and the curlers and the wrestler’s forearms, who insisted in leaning over the fence and giving her opinion about everything.

“You couldn’t catch the clap, you lot.”

“Is that an invitation, love?”

They drove back to the city. Liam sat in the back of the car with Katie, his head lolling back, staring out of the window and saying nothing at all. As they were driving in past Murphy’s Brewery in Blackpool, Katie said, “What do you think?”

“What do I think about what?”

“Do you think that Tómas Ó Conaill could have murdered Fiona Kelly?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask yourself
why
, wouldn’t you? I know he’s got an evil reputation; and he definitely believes in banshees and merrows and all that fanciful shite; but I don’t think that he would seriously try to raise up Mor-Rianagh, do you? If he wants something, he steals it. He doesn’t have to ask fucking witches for it.”

“How do we know what he wants? He may want to be a billionaire, for all we know. He may want to be the next High King of Munster.”

“That’s true. Or he may be nothing more than an out-
and-out
sexual psychopath, who gets his rocks off from cutting the flesh off of living women.”

“Jesus, Liam.”

“I know. It’s hard to get your mind round it, isn’t it? But there always has to be a ‘why?’ Sometimes we can’t believe why. Sometimes it seems so ridiculous that you have to laugh. I’ll bet you don’t remember that fellow from Mayfield who crushed his wife’s neck in the folding legs of her ironing-board? He seriously believed that she was trying to turn him into a rat.”

“I read about it, yes.”

“It was ridiculous, it was psychotic, but it was still a reason. What you have to ask Tómas Ó Conaill is, why did you it? Not ‘if’, not ‘how’, but ‘
why
?’”

They drove across the Christy Ring Bridge. The filthy waters of the Lee glittered on either side of them like an oil-slick, and the lights from the Opera House flickered on and off. Katie said, “Listen, Liam, be honest with me. You’ve never resented my promotion, have you?”

“It wasn’t my decision, was it? It was never up to me.”

“I know. But it sounds a little like you’re questioning my judgement.”

“I question everything, detective superintendent. I question the going-down of the sun and the coming-up of the moon. I never believe a word that anybody says and I particularly don’t believe a word that anybody in authority tells me.”

“You’re a good detective, Liam.”

“Thank you. The feeling is mutual.”

She questioned Tómas Ó Conaill from 2:30 am until well after five. He remained hunched over the table, his voice rarely rising over the hoarsest of whispers, and he kept his eyes fixed on her unblinkingly, those deep-set eyes that looked as if he had no eyes.

Jimmy O’Rourke stayed with her for an hour, and then Patrick O’Sullivan came to replace him. Ó Conaill had been advised that he could call any solicitor he wanted, but he was content to have the duty solicitor, a young man called Desmond O’Keeffe with thick glasses and a crop of red spots on his forehead.

Ó Conaill smoked incessantly, until the bare, gray-painted interview room was filled with a surrealistic haze.

“Where did you get the car, Tómas?”

“I’ve told you twenty times, witch. I never saw the fucking car before in my life.”

“The engine was still warm when you were arrested. Don’t tell me you hadn’t been driving it.”

“I had not.”

“I’ll bet you money that your fingerprints are all over the steering-wheel.”

“They probably are. I’ve told you already that I sat in it, like, to see what it felt like. But no more than that.”

“You really expect us to believe that?”

“You can believe whatever you wish. I didn’t murder any girl.”

Katie took out a color photograph of Fiona Kelly and held it in front of his face. He didn’t blink, didn’t even focus on it.

“I want to know where you were on Thursday afternoon.”

“I was over in Dripsey, seeing a man about some horses.”

“Which man?”

“Cootie, everybody calls him. I don’t know his real name.”

“How did you get to Dripsey?”

“I went with my cousin Ger and my second son Tadgh. Ger drove us in his what d’ye-call-it. His Land Cruiser.”

“We’ll check that, of course. Where were you on Friday?”

“A whole lot of us went to Mallow to see about some felt roofing.”

Katie kept the photograph of Fiona Kelly hovering in front of him. “Have you ever heard of Mor-Rioghain?”

For the first time, Tómas blinked. “Of course I have.”

“Tell me, then.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me about Mor-Rioghain. Who she is, what she can do for you.”

Desmond O’Keeffe tapped his ballpen on the table. “Sorry… I don’t see the relevance of this.”

Katie said, “You’re here to protect Mr Ó Conaill’s rights, Mr O’Keeffe, not to second-guess the lines of our inquiry.”

“All the same,” Desmond O’Keeffe protested, flushing very red.

“I don’t mind answering,” said Tómas Ó Conaill. “I didn’t do nothing to nobody; as the witch here very well knows.
Mor-Rioghain
is a
bean-sidhe
, a banshee, which means a woman of the fairy.”

“You believe in the fairies?”

“I believe in Mor-Rioghain, and why not? Didn’t I hear her myself the night before my poor father died, moaning and keening at the back door?”

“I thought that banshees only cried for five particular families.”

“They do,” he agreed, and he counted them off on his fingers. “The O’Neills, the O’Briens, the O’Connors, the O’Gradys and the Kavanaghs. But my father was an O’Grady by marriage.”

“Do you believe that Mor-Rioghain can be called up out of the fairy world if you offer her a human sacrifice?”

Tómas Ó Conaill shrugged, and flicked ash into the
overcrowded
ashtray.

“Have you heard about the eleven women’s skeletons which were found up at Knocknadeenly?”

“I have, yes. I saw it on the telly.”

“One of our experts thinks that somebody may have been trying to make a sacrifice to Mor-Rioghain. If you kill thirteen women and take the flesh off their bones, so that she can feed on it, apparently Mor-Rioghain will reward you by giving you whatever you want.”

“I know of that, yes.”

“It looks as if our 1915 murderer was interrupted before he could give her all of the sacrifices she demands. It wouldn’t have occurred to you, by any chance, that if you killed just two more women, you could call on Mor-Rioghain and ask her to make you rich? Easier than winning the Lotto.”

“You shouldn’t make mock of the
sidhe
, Detective
Superintendent
Witch.”

“I’m asking you straight out, Tómas. Did you kill Fiona Kelly?”

“The answer to that is no, I didn’t. And if I was minded to call on Mor-Rioghain, there’s only one thing that I’d ask her for, and that’s to make you blind and lame.”

“You’re all heart, Tómas.”

A few minutes later, Liam knocked on the door of the interview room and beckoned Katie to come outside. “Interview suspended at 5:09 am,” she said, and left Tómas Ó Conaill lighting yet another cigarette.

Liam held up a note from the technical department. “They’ve made a preliminary check on the car. Ó Conaill’s left his dabs all over the doors, the door-handles, the steering-wheel, the gearshift, the handbrake, the radio controls, the keys, the trunk, everywhere. There’s a perfect thumbprint on the
rearview
mirror where he must have adjusted it to suit his
driving-position
.”

“Anybody else’s prints?”

“Fiona Kelly’s, on the passenger door-handle, which backs up your witness’s story that she willingly accepted a lift.”

“Nobody else’s?”

“One or two random prints around the filler-cap, which probably came from a garage attendant. But nothing consistent with anybody else having driven the car, apart from Ó Conaill.”

“How about the bloodstains?”

“O positive. Same group as Fiona Kelly. They haven’t had the DNA back yet.”

“Any results from the cottage?”

“Footprints, yes. Size 10 boots the same as we found at Meagher’s Farm. But fingerprints, no, and this is the odd part. They found a partial palm-print on the front door-handle, but none of Ó Conaill’s fingerprints inside. Plenty of other prints, but not his. Not yet, anyway.”

“None at all?”

Liam shook his head.

“Why would he take such trouble not to leave any prints in the cottage if he was going to cover the car with them? Especially since the car still had Fiona Kelly’s blood in it.”

“You surprised him, didn’t you? He was probably intending to drive off and never go back there.”

“All the same… it doesn’t really add up, does it?”

“There’s only one way to find out, and that’s to ask him.”

“What about his alibis?”

“His family all say that he went to see this Cootie fellow on Thursday and drove to Mallow on Friday. But then they would, wouldn’t they? His mother looks as if she eats blocks of pre-stressed concrete for breakfast. And you should see his sister. The words ‘red’ and ‘brick’ and ‘shitter’ came to mind, I can tell you.”

“What about their vehicles? Anything?”

“We searched the whole lot of them, seven in all. Two
brand-new
Jeep Cherokees, a top-of-the-range BMW, one Winnebago Chieftain and three caravans. We took the door-trim out of the cars and we even pulled up the caravan floors. Nothing at all, except twenty-eight bottles of Paddy’s and some women’s designer clothing that looks as if it was lifted from Brown Thomas.”

“All right, thanks, Liam.”

She went back into the interview room. Tómas Ó Conaill didn’t even raise his eyes to look at her. She sat down and laid the forensic report on the table between them.

“I want you to tell me where you got the car from,” she said.

“I’ve already told you, witch. I found it in the yard in front of the house. I might have touched it but touching isn’t a crime, the last I heard.”

“Your fingerprints were plastered all over it. Your fingerprints and nobody else’s, except for the girl you murdered.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that I didn’t murder any girl.”

“You stole the car, though, didn’t you?”

Tómas Ó Conaill was silent for a very long time. Then he took out another cigarette and lit it, and blew smoke out of his nostrils like two long tusks. “I drove it,” he admitted. “But I didn’t steal it. I found it, and all I did was to lend a borrow of it.”

“You
found
it?”

“Yes, found it.”

“Do you think that I was born yesterday?”

He stared her dead in the eyes. “No, witch, I don’t think you were. You may look young and you may look pretty but you have the hag’s face on you.”

“So where did you
find
this car, Tómas?”

“It was halfway in a ditch by the side of the road about a mile north of Curraghnalaght crossroads. Not locked, with the keys still in it.”

“Parked, in other words?”

“Not parked, dumped. Obviously dumped. There was nobody for miles.”

“When exactly was this?”

“Yesterday evening, around nine, I’d say.”

“Why didn’t you report it to the Garda?”

Tómas said nothing, but gave her an amused shake of his serpentine hair.

“So you found this car abandoned and you decided to steal it?”

“Not steal, I told you, borrow. My own car had gearbox trouble and I needed to get over to Cork for some spares.”

“You were simply going to use this dumped car to drive to Coachford and then take it back?”

“That was my first intention, yes.”

“All right,” said Katie. “Supposing I believe this fantastical story, which I don’t for a minute. What were you doing in the cottage up at Sheehan’s Nurseries? It’s not exactly on the way from Curraghnalaght to Cork, is it? In fact, that track doesn’t go anywhere at all.”

“I found a piece of paper in the glovebox and it had the name of Sheehan’s Nurseries on it, and a bit of a map.”

“Oh, really? Do you still have this piece of paper in your possession?”

“I don’t know.” He poked in his pockets, but all he could find was a packet of Rizla cigarette-papers. “No. I probably dropped it somewhere.”