White Bones (40 page)

“My curiosity about the affair was once again aroused, and through old friends in Naval Intelligence I managed to obtain the records of the wireless signals that were sent to the
Lusitania
prior to her sinking. At the subsequent board of inquiry, the
Lusitania
’s captain, William Turner, was blamed for ignoring the Admiralty’s directives for evading German submarines. He said that he had slowed down because of patchy fog off the southern coast of Ireland, and that he had not understood that he was supposed to steer a zig-zag course unless a U-boat was actually sighted.

“But here in the top-secret Admiralty files was the handwritten record of a wireless message which had
ordered
him to slow down, and that he take a particular heading close to the Old Head of Kinsale. It was here that U-boats habitually lurked, waiting for British merchant-ships, and he was intercepted by the German submarine U-20, under the command of Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger.

“On further investigation, which took me many months, and in which I naturally had to be extremely circumspect, I discovered from records at the War Office that a telephone call was made to the German Embassy in Dublin on the night of May 4, 1915, to the effect that Jan Rufenwald, alias Jack Callwood, was traveling on board the
Lusitania
to Liverpool. When the liner passed the southern coast of Ireland, they would have an opportunity to exact their revenge on the worst mass-murderer that Germany had ever known.

“Of course, I have no absolute proof. But even at the time, rumor was rife that the British intelligence services colluded in the sinking of the
Lusitania
as a way of provoking outrage against Germany in the United States (which had previously shown little interest in the war in Europe and had even been protesting against the British blockade of German ports.)

“My personal belief is that it was British intelligence who advised the Germans of the presence on board the
Lusitania
of Dieter Hartmann, and that the
Lusitania
was specifically instructed to slow down to a speed at which she would present herself as an easy target to U-20. In a war which had already cost hundreds of thousands of lives, a further 1,195 were of very little consequence compared with the benefits of bringing the United States into the conflict on the Allied side.

“
That
is why I was ordered to dispose of him so secretly. If it ever emerged that the War Office had used him as a bait to encourage the Germans to sink the
Lusitania
, the damage to Anglo-American relations would have never have recovered.”

There was a cautious knock at the door, and Detective Garda Patrick O’Sullivan appeared, red-faced, looking as if he had just eaten a rather large Irish breakfast.

“Jesus, the state of that fellow downstairs. No fecking arms. Jesus.”

“All right, Patrick,” said Jimmy. “Liam’s called out the technical team. Any idea where superintendent Maguire has got herself to?”

“Not a clue. I wouldn’t blame her if she was drowning her sorrows.”

Katie followed John up the angled field, her shoes clogged with mud. The rain was lashing down slantwise now, and she was completely soaked and shuddering with cold. John turned back and looked at her, but there was nothing she could do to help him, not yet. What was most important now was their survival.

“Move it, will you?” Lucy snapped at them.

“For God’s sake,” Katie protested.

“There is no God, Katie. You should have realized that by now.”

“You’re crazy. You really think this is going to happen? You really think that Mor-Rioghain is going to appear?”

“Shut up. Everything’s ready. Thirteen sacrifices, it’s all been done, everything.”

“You’re crazy.”

“And
you’re
not crazy? Going to Mass every Sunday, and eating a biscuit, and thinking that it’s Jesus you’re eating?”

“Mor-Rioghain is a
myth
. Nothing but a fairy-story.”

“And Jesus isn’t?”

Lucy looked wilder than Katie had ever seen her before. Her blonde hair was brushed up in spikes, and she was wearing her long black leather coat, which was rolling with raindrops, and her knee-length black leather boots. She was walking beside them, with Katie’s nickel-plated gun in her right hand and a four-inch butchers’ boning-knife in the other, and Katie was in no doubt at all that she was prepared to use both of them. She had forced Katie to hand over her weapon by sticking the point of the knife into John Meagher’s ear, lancing his
eardrum
. Blood was still dripping from his earlobe and into his shirt-collar.

They reached the crest of the field by Iollan’s Wood, where John had found the remains of Fiona Kelly. Katie dreaded to think what they would see there, and her stomach started to spasm. She gagged up a mouthful of half-chewed breakfast, and had to stop.

“Come
on
, will you?” Lucy shouted at her, hoarsely. “We can’t waste any more time! Mor-Rioghain has waited too long already.”

They trod over the last thick furrows, their feet almost disappearing into the saturated soil, and there spread out in the mud in front of them in reds and grays and fatty yellows was a disassembled human body. Katie had seen Fiona Kelly’s rermains, but this was still difficult to take in, especially since she was badly scared now, and had no control over what was going to happen to her.

“Siobhan Buckley,” said Lucy, stalking around the remains in satisfaction. “Pretty girl, sensitive, artistic. Just what
Mor-Rioghain
was looking for.”

In the same way that Fiona Kelly’s remains had been arranged, Siobhan Buckley’s ribs were stuck into the ground in a circle and her fleshless skull was perched on top of her pelvis. Her intestines were heaped into the middle like a knot of large pale snakes. Her liver lay shining in a puddle next to her deflated lungs. The rain was pelting down so hard that even the crows were discouraged from coming down to peck at them.

There, too, were her thighbones, with holes drilled through them, and little gray dollies dangling from them.

“She made me help her,” said John, with almost overwhelming self-disgust. “She said she’d kill my mother if I didn’t, but then she did anyway.”

“I never thought that I would see this day,” said Lucy, pacing from side to side and making a curious ducking movement with her head every time she turned. “I never thought I would ever see this happen. Mor-Rioghain, the great and terrible Morgana, summoned through from the other side!”

Katie and John stayed where they were. John’s fists were clenched tight and his face was very white.

“My colleagues will be wondering where I am,” Katie called out. “I was supposed to interview Tómas Ó Conaill again at twelve. If I don’t show up, and they can’t get in touch with me by telephone, they’re going to come looking for me.”

“Let them come looking for you,” said Lucy, still pacing from side to side. “By the time they find you, there won’t be very much left of you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know, do you? When Mor-Rioghain comes through from the other side, she needs a fourteenth sacrifice, a living woman, the strongest woman in the tribe. You were perfect, right from the very beginning. It was always going to be you.”

Katie said, “What do you mean, ‘right from the very beginning’?”

“Right from the moment I saw you on the television nightly news, when you first discovered all of those women’s bones. I heard you talking about ritual murder, and I knew at once what kind of ritual it was, because I could see one of the thighbones in the background, with a dolly hanging from it.”

“You told me your university sent you.”

“University? I’ve never been to any university. I was living in Boston when I first saw you, working as a window-dresser. Haltmann’s Stores, at Downtown Crossing.”

“So how did you know so much about Mor-Rioghain?”

“She’s my reason for living, Katie. She has been for years. I studied Jack Callwood’s sacrifices in endless detail, trying to locate the exact spot where he laid the bodies out, and how many women he had managed to kill. I went out almost every weekend, but I was beginning to think that I would never find what I was looking for. His house in Boston had long since been demolished and there was no way of finding the magical place where he had buried the bones. But there you were, like an angel from heaven, if there were angels, and if there was a heaven. There you were, talking to me on my television, showing me the very place where Mor-Rioghain could be summoned, and telling me how many more women I would have to sacrifice to summon her.”

“You’re sick. You’re totally deranged.”

“Well, hah, I’d agree with you, if Mor-Rioghain didn’t exist. But when Jack Callwood was Jan Rufenwald, in Germany, he managed to summon Morgana three times, so he said, and each time she gave him wealth, and property, and the company of some of Germany’s most desirable women. I first found out about him when I was seventeen years old, and ever since then I’ve
known
that I would summon Mor-Rioghain myself one day, and today’s the day.”

“So what do
you
want from Mor-Rioghain? Don’t tell me you cut up those poor girls just for money, or houses, or men.”

Lucy stopped pacing and stared at Katie and Katie had never seen an expression like that on anybody’s face, man or woman, ever. She was alight with triumph.

“Mor-Rioghain will give me
myself
. That’s something that I’ve never had. Mor-Rioghain will give me
me
.”

Katie smeared the rain away from her eyes with the back of her hand. She didn’t understand this at all, but she knew that she had to think of a way of getting them away from here. Even though it was raining so hard, the smell around Siobhan Buckley’s body was sickening, a metallic mixture of blood and peat and feces, and the proximity of actual grisly death made Katie feel even more afraid.

“Take off your clothes,” Lucy ordered her. “You have to be ready for the sacrifice.”

“No, I won’t,” said Katie.

Lucy came back around bloody remains and held the
boning-knife
up to Katie’s face. “Take off your clothes or so help me I’ll stick this in your eyes.”

Katie unbuttoned her sodden green blouse, and peeled it off. Lucy stayed where she was, very close to her, the gun held high, the knife pointing directly at Katie’s face. It suddenly occurred to Katie that Lucy must have always carried this knife. How else had she managed to cut so deftly through Katie’s seatbelt when her car was sinking in the Lee?

She took off her skirt and stepped out of it. “Underwear now,” Lucy insisted. Katie hesitated but Lucy prodded the knife at her. She unfastened her bra and then pulled down her Marks & Spencer panties. The rain ran down her naked back and gave her goosebumps all over.

“Kneel,” said Lucy.

“If you so much as lay one finger on me – ” Katie began, but Lucy screamed, “
Kneel
!” and so she knelt, her knees sinking into the mud.

Lucy took a black scarf out of her coat pocket and handed it to John. “What do you want me to do with this?” he asked her, his voice sounding tight and terrified.

“Blindfold her, tightly, so that she can’t see anything at all. Even Mor-Rioghain’s living sacrifice is not allowed to set eyes on the great one when she appears.”

John did as he was told. Then Lucy gave him a length of nylon cord and said, “Tie her hands behind her back.”

“I’m not too good with knots.”

“Just tie her, will you?”

It took John a few fumbling minutes before he was able to fasten Katie’s wrists. All the time he kept mumbling under his breath, “I’m sorry, Katie, I’m sorry. I’m so damned sorry.”

When he had finished, Lucy said, “Step away. This is the time for the summoning to begin.”

It had grown even darker than ever, and the rain was drifting across the field from Iollan’s Wood like the winding-sheets that the
bean-nighe
washes. John took one step back, and then another. “Turn around,” Lucy told him, and so he did. With three quick paces she approached him from behind, put her right arm around him and sliced the boning-knife across his Adam’s apple.

Jimmy O’Rourke turned to the last few pages of Gerard’s notebook. Outside he and Patrick O’Sullivan could hear police and ambulance sirens approaching from the Western Road. Patrick took out a cigarette, too, and lit it, and took a look around. “Wasn’t too tidy, was he? Look at the state of this place. Dirty dinner-plate under the couch.”

“He was an academic, Patrick. Very learned fellow. Academics aren’t interested in dirty dinner-plates.”

Patrick picked up a heap of
Examiner
s and found a
dogeared
copy of
Playboy
. “Interested in dirty books, though, I’d say.”

“Can’t fault the chap’s research, though. This is going to cause one hell of a bloody great political row, I can tell you. Wouldn’t be surprised if it starts a war.”

“I thought you weren’t bothered with all of this guff.”

“Well, I am now, boy. There could be some promotion in this.”

He finished reading the final few paragraphs of Colonel Corcoran’s diary, and then he came to some slanted, hastily scribbled notes which Gerard had written at the very end. “Had reply to my email to UC Berkeley re Prof Quinn’s research papers!! She published her first study
Celtic Legends
in 1962!! Odd!!”

Jimmy put down the notebook and frowned. “He says here that Professor Quinn published her first paper in 1962. Nineteen sixty-two? That would make her at least sixty-five years old, wouldn’t it?”

“I thought you checked her out yourself.”

“Yes, but I only checked that she
existed
. I didn’t ask if she was a pensioner.”

“Have you heard from Katie yet?”

“No, but she’s due back at lunch to talk to that Tómas Ó Conaill again.”

“Due back from where?”