Where She Lies

by Michael Scanlon

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘Debra Anne Burke. I’m an analyst here.’

  ‘Debra Anne. I need the results of a blood sample taken from the body of a murder victim in Cross Beg, Co. Galway.’

  ‘I heard about that case. Young girl. Terrible.’

  ‘Yes. It is terrible. Could you give them to me, the results?’

  She paused, then: ‘Um, I don’t know. Morgan is the senior analyst. I think it’s best if you wait for him, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t really have time,’ Beck said, keeping his voice calm. ‘The superintendent here is waiting on them.’

  ‘The superintendent?’

  ‘Yes, the superintendent.’

  ‘Um, well. Let me see. I’m right at my computer… Referred by Dr Gumbell. I can… There, I have the file right here. Yes, it’s been processed, just finished in the last half hour. Yes, it’s here.’

  Beck turned his eyes heavenward. ‘And what does it say?’

  ‘The system did not return a match. DNA was extracted from the sample, but it will be some time before we have full results. However, it’s O-positive, by the way, the sample. The victim’s blood was O-negative, which is fairly rare. The O-positive, on the other hand, is fairly common.’

  ‘No match,’ Beck repeated, the flicker of hope that there might be a result extinguished. ‘Okay, thank you, Debra Anne.’ He hung up.

  Beck stood and walked across to Claire’s desk.

  ‘Do me a favour. Tell Darren Murphy to go home. There was no match. I’m not surprised, as far as he’s concerned anyway. It’s not his blood.’

  Thirty-One

  Back at his desk, Beck dialled Nina Sokolov’s number. It rang for a long time before it was answered. ‘Da,’ she said in Russian, sounding like she had just woken up and wasn’t happy about it. Beck told her he was a policeman and did not speak or understand Russian. She said in English, ‘Policeman,’ and Beck immediately heard the suspicion in her voice. ‘I work nights,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry. Did I wake you?’

  ‘Yes. You did. I leave my bloody phone on.’

  ‘I’m very sorry. I believe you reported an assault recently. I need to speak with you about that.’

  ‘Why? I already talk to policemans. Everything okay now. Thank you. No problems. Everything okay now. Thank you.’

  ‘Ms Sokolov. I need to speak with you. Just a few questions. It won’t take long.’

  ‘I speak now. I talk with you now. I work later. No come to police station.’

  ‘I could come to you, at a time that’s convenient – tomorrow, maybe.’

  ‘No, no. Now. I speak now. Or I no speak. Please.’

  Beck took a slow breath. ‘Okay, Nina, we can talk now.’

  He could hear a fumbling sound, followed by the clicking of a lighter as she lit a cigarette. The sound of a deep inhale. Beck suddenly felt like a cigarette himself.

  ‘It happened at night, Nina. Eleven o’clock. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. Eleven o’clock. I was going to work. I was late for my shift.’

  ‘Did you see your attacker?’

  ‘No see. He have mask. I punch him in the balls. Motherfucker. Then I run off. I brown belt karate. Train for something happens like this. It happens before to me. In Moscow. I was raped.’

  Her bluntness took Beck by surprise, made him a little uncomfortable. ‘This time, Nina, were you injured?’

  The sound of an exhale. ‘Nyet. No. Nothing. Mark to my arm, and a little to my neck, that is all.’

  ‘Did he try to strangle you?’

  ‘Motherfucker put hand to my neck, yes. And arm, yes. I think he want to drag me from bridge. Maybe he like to strangle me. He no strangle me. Russians tough peoples. Tougher than this motherfucker, yes.’

  ‘His build, Nina, what did he look like?’

  ‘He big fucker. Six foot, maybe more.’

  ‘Thin?’

  ‘Tin, what’s this?’

  ‘Thin, his build – slim, thin, you know? Or fat?’

  ‘Yes, I see. I mean no. He build wide. How you say? Like shite house wall.’

  Beck grinned. ‘But you didn’t make a statement. Why not, Nina?’

  ‘Why not? Why, why not? No statement. Anyway, it okay now, I don’t use that bridge no more.’

  ‘Yes, but others do. We need to catch him.’

  ‘You catch him then, yes. No need me. Your job, yes. Not mine. You catch him, yes. Motherfucker.’

  Beck paused. He wasn’t going to get any further here.

  Then the line went dead.

  Beck replaced the phone onto its cradle. He got up and went into the public office, stood in the doorway. Dempsey was leaning on the counter, filling in a form.

  ‘Was there CCTV?’ Beck asked. ‘Of the attack on the Russian girl, Nina, from the bridge.’

  Dempsey turned; he had the same sheepish look as before.

  ‘Did you even go to the scene, Dempsey?’

  ‘She didn’t make a statement, so there was no point. That’s what we thought at the time.’

  ‘Can you do that now, first chance you get? Check for CCTV. And get it to me as soon as you can.’

  Dempsey nodded.

  ‘And Dempsey, just something to think about. If you ever come across a person with, say, a hatchet sticking out of the back of their head, which is something, by the way, that can only happen if someone else puts it there, what do you do then? Wait until they decide to make a statement before you act? No. I don’t think so either.’

  He left Dempsey to ponder that.

  Thirty-Two

  The crows stood on the rooftops and the disused old chimney stacks of the buildings along Main Street. Darkness was falling, and their time to roost had come. They were restless, cawing incessantly and baring their open beaks at one another. They sensed things that people could not. And something was not right.

  Were they trying to tell him something?

  Beck made his way quickly along the street.

  ‘Mr Beck.’

  He turned. For a moment he didn’t recognise the figure wrapped up in a bubble jacket and a woolly hat pulled down over her ears. Melanie McBride was standing at the side of the street, just inside the doorway to an old office building. On the wall next to her was an unpolished bronze plaque inscribed with ‘GRATTAN SOLICITORS AND COMMISSIONERS FOR OATHS, FIRST FLOOR’.

  Beck stopped. There was a musty smell, tinged with something like vinegar, and it was hard to tell if it came from Melanie or the hallway behind her; a single light bulb was hanging from the ceiling, throwing her into shadow.

  ‘Hello, Melanie.’

  ‘We’re going to have a gathering. Soon. In memory of Tanya.’

  ‘In the wood?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I see,’ Beck said, wondering why she was telling him this.

  ‘Yes, in the wood, when this is all over. We have a special place, by the water’s edge. I couldn’t really talk, the other day, when you visited the school. My mother and everything.’

  ‘Is there something you want to say now? If you want to speak to me, your mother should really be present.’

  ‘Mr Sweetman, the English and Geography teacher at St Malachi’s College. You should talk to him, that’s all I’m saying. He always seemed very friendly with Tanya. I mean, very friendly.’

  Melanie moved past him onto the street and quickly walked away. With it went that musty smell. It reminded him of methamphetamine. Beck hoped it wasn’t.

  He continued, his thoughts all rattling around inside him like an old threshing machine. More than once he was tempted to disappear into one of the pubs he passed. They offered such a simple, uncomplicated solution, even if one that was strictly transitory and always came with consequences.

  He walked on. The forty-eight-hour window on the investigation had now closed.

  Tanya’s image would not leave his mind. Whatever the circumstances, she was a child, a child who had been abused and ultimately, killed
. He knew he was too far into this to let go now. This had become his investigation.

  * * *

  Beck sat in the back garden, on the sturdy metal bench by the open kitchen door, smoking a cigarette. Mrs Claxton had told him the bench was an antique, over a hundred years old. It was dark now, and in the backs of houses along the next street over, lights were appearing in windows and curtains were being pulled shut. Each window, he knew, held its own story.

  He thought of Natalia, imagining her voice on the night air. She had been ringing him lately. He knew it was her, even if the number had been blocked. He had not answered. He might have, had the phone rung long enough for him to convince himself that it was a good idea to do so. But it never did ring long enough for that, so he guessed she grappled with a dilemma similar to his own.

  That last time he and Natalia had met was in Bewley’s on Grafton Street, the busiest coffee shop in Dublin, the maxim being that when there was something to hide – like an illicit relationship, for example – it was always best to do it in plain sight as a means of avoiding arousing suspicion. That had been her idea, but he didn’t care. She was going to give her marriage another try, she’d told him. She didn’t want to break up with Jim. Their youngest child – she had three, she reminded him – was still in his early teens and needed her. When she told him, she misread his reaction. ‘It’ll be okay,’ she said. ‘You’ll get over me. It’ll just take time.’ The truth was, Beck was relieved. His interest was only so strong as to the degree of her unavailability. If she was to leave her husband and come to him, his interest, he knew, would evaporate. And that, even Beck had to admit, was pretty messed up. Now that she was definitely unavailable, he wanted her again, more than ever. Seemingly, if the unanswered anonymous calls were anything to go by, so did she.

  The wind stirred; the sky was pitch black. He took a last pull on his cigarette and flicked the end away, watching it tumble through the air before spiralling down to earth again. It landed somewhere in the grass. He could see its faint glow quickly fading before disappearing completely.

  He could hear a sound wafting through the house and out into the night air. It was the croaking noise of the front doorbell. He stood, walked back in to answer it.

  She was clutching a casserole dish, the smell of perfume and hairspray mixed with beef, vegetables and tangy sauce.

  ‘Hi.’ A big smile, well-cared-for teeth but a couple of gaps towards the back where she thought no one could see them.

  ‘Mrs Claxton,’ he said, surprised.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my calling. I made far too much of this… Okay, the truth is, I made extra with the idea of bringing you some over. Can I come in?’

  He moved aside.

  She passed him, into the hall, and he followed her into the kitchen. She set the dish down onto the cooker and turned, both hands behind her, resting on the oven handle.

  ‘Mr Beck. I want to apologise for the other evening. I think you might have got the wrong impression of me.’

  Beck smiled. He thought of situations he’d been in during his illicit relationship with Natalia. ‘Don’t worry about it. You’re talking to the master of regretful behaviour.’

  She was silent, her expression thoughtful. ‘I didn’t say I regretted it, did I?’ She looked into his eyes, then laughed, leaving him to wonder if she’d been serious or not. ‘I won’t delay, I’m meeting a couple of friends later. I can collect the dish tomorrow. I’ll leave it to you.’ She passed him on her way out again. ‘Enjoy.’

  A moment later, the front door closed. Beck went to the cooker, placed a hand onto the casserole dish lid to see if it was still hot. It was. He picked it up, along with a fork from the worktop by the cooker, and went to the table, sat down and removed the lid, began eating straight out of the dish.

  * * *

  Sleep came instantly, carrying him down, way down, into the subterranean labyrinth of his subconscious. Where they waited for him, greeting Beck with their shrill yelps and laughter. The Old Duffer, that mocking, vile inner demon, a caricature of every horror movie character Beck had ever seen. A small fat man, as Beck imagined him. With small eyes. The human equivalent of a mole. Pacing the floor, back and forth, biding his time. Others shimmied about; the faces that had gone before. There were so many, stretching back along the corridors of his mind, a macabre line-up of the dead. Some he would never forget, like the face of the victim in his first murder investigation. In life she had been beautiful, they said. But he had never seen her in life. She was smiling at him now, a portion of her head missing. She seemed unperturbed about it, one eye dangling from its socket on a sinewy string of muscle. Her husband had done that to her. What did he use again? A jigsaw? Yes, that was it. He had taken a jigsaw to his wife’s head, the mother of his children. Merely killing her had not been enough.

  Beck could hear what sounded like flowing water, and he wondered where and what it was. He stared past the line-up of the dead into the darkness. The sound was coming from below. He looked down, and as he watched, he saw movement, like the darkness itself was shifting, undulating, and he realised he was looking at water, flowing water, and Tanya Frazzali’s body was floating in it, staring at him as she floated past, her pale dead skin stark against the black water. The sounds of the Old Duffer grew louder, scurrying about below. There was a sloshing sound as he entered the water too. He was laughing. Beck went to the water’s edge. He could see himself in three-dimensional form, pacing back and forth, too afraid to enter. He didn’t want Tanya to be taken, not by him. And then a new sound, louder than anything else. He froze, transfixed. It was that noise again: click, click, click. The turning of the revolver chamber. But what was it doing here? Now, at this time?

  Beck woke with a start, his breathing rapid and shallow. He could hear the howling wind and the rain outside the windows like a furious animal. The whole room seemed to shake with the violence of the storm. He felt something press against his back, could feel it begin to wrap itself around him, begin to try and crush him. He pushed it away and sat upright. Mrs Claxton smiled at him. He saw her neck, long and thin, extending from her body. With a sense of revulsion, he realised she had the body of a snake. She flicked out a forked tongue that touched his face, and though it was fleeting, he could still feel its scorching heat like an ember from the fires of hell.

  His eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright, his body bathed in warm, clammy sweat. Beck fumbled about for the bedside light in panic, pressed it, then flopped back onto the bed, the reptilian image of Mrs Claxton vivid in his mind. His breathing slowed and he was soothed by the relief of knowing that it had all been a nightmare.

  Thirty-Three

  A pale, bleary-eyed face stared back at Beck as he looked in the bathroom mirror the next morning. Cold turkey was a necessary evil in avoiding the permanency of a hopelessly drunken state; in other words, the misery-go-round world of the chronic alcoholic. One day he might give in to that, that attraction of rolling in the gutter, but right now he had no desire to. He hoped he never would. In the kitchen he drank a mug of instant coffee and ate the thick crust from a loaf of bread – all that was left. The living room had been warmed by the timer-controlled central heating and he sat in an armchair by the empty fireplace, scrolled through the contacts list of his mobile phone, stopped when he found the name he wanted and pressed ‘call’.

  The phone was answered on the fifth ring.

  ‘Beck.’ The voice was surprised and had the expected agitation of a busy person preparing for a busy day.

  ‘Assistant Commissioner Sullivan, thank you for taking my call.’

  ‘I was tempted not to, but…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you know what time it is, Beck?’

  ‘Sorry, sir, I apologise. I wasn’t going to call, to tell the truth.’

  ‘And I wasn’t going to answer, to tell the truth. Someone was supposed to contact you. In due course. Did they?’

  Beck thought: Due course? What does that mean? An
hour, a day, a month, a year, what? ‘No, they didn’t.’

  ‘Righteo, then. They will do.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘I thought you knew. That’s why you rang… Beck, why did you ring?’

  ‘Something. I thought of something.’

  ‘Something? What, Beck, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘The revolver.’

  ‘Yes, what about it?’

  ‘Before I went in. I heard it.’

  Silence.

  ‘That came to you just now, did it?’

  ‘Well… last night, actually. Yes, it did.’

  ‘And…’

  ‘You’re not surprised, are you? You knew already?’

  ‘I know it now.’

  ‘What? Because I told you?’

  ‘Spare me, Beck. They’re looking into it again. That’s how I know.’

  Silence.

  ‘Someone will be in touch, Beck. Okay?’

  The line went dead.

  Thirty-Four

  ‘Inspector Andy Mahony, Technical Bureau.’ The inspector, a small thin man with epaulettes that appeared oversized and heavy on such narrow, round shoulders, stood at the top of the Ops Room, hands on hips, attempting to portray a sense of presence that wasn’t there. ‘We found nothing of evidential value, despite conducting a thorough search of the area… I have to say, matters weren’t helped by it being such an open and isolated crime scene.’ He glanced at O’Reilly next to him. ‘Nor by the absence of a crime scene tent. And the ground up there is very porous. Footprints or tracks, anything like that, will simply disappear because it quickly reverts back to its natural contour.’ The technical officer paused, looked at the floor and up again. He didn’t add anything further.

  ‘For the record,’ O’Reilly said, his tone peremptory. ‘We didn’t have a crime scene tent because Ballinasloe took ours and haven’t given it back yet. Moving on. We’re spinning in the mud here. We need this investigation to move forward. Yesterday’ – he paused as a self-congratulatory smiled crossed his face – ‘from information received, I was able to coordinate an important drugs raid on a grow house in Sligo town. You may have heard about it. Fifty thousand euro worth of cannabis plants taken off the market. It coincided with a search of Darren Murphy’s house here in Cross Beg. Unfortunately, that yielded nothing. Negative. We were surprised at that.’