Oak and Stone

by Dave Duggan

  ‘Detective Slevin is not one of our “usual” police officers.’

  ‘Is that so? In what way exactly?’

  I had no idea who Dr. Rankin was, but I was sure that like me, she was there for a specific reason. I just didn’t know what it was. I was also confident she had been properly briefed on my CV.

  ‘Well, here I am, the only police officer dining with the Chief Constable. Unless you’re a police officer.’

  Dr Rankin smiled.

  ‘No. I’m a biochemist.’

  Then she reached across and touched the CC’s forearm, drawing her attention to a piece of rocket dangling from her lower lip. The CC took her napkin, tidied her mouth and smiled a gleaming smile. Dr Rankin nodded approval. If I was asked about the status of their relationship I would say ‘close’.

  ‘Dr Rankin led an afternoon session on the narcotic effects of plant feeds. Was that one of yours?’

  I was saved by the arrival of the fourth member of our dinner party, a tall, prematurely balding man, aged about 30, whose domed head echoed his gently rounded belly.

  ‘Ah, Professor De Lorenzo,’ said the CC and we all stood up. Handshakes and introductions passed swiftly and Professor Frankie De Lorenzo, from the US National Academy for the Advancement of Forensic Science, sat beside me.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. I had trouble with the shower faucet. I turned it right and it got hot. Turned it right some more and it got cold. Then I turned it left and ice chunks came out. Further left and it was burning tar. It took me ten minutes of TV channel surfing to ignore it and let it settle to comfortably tepid.’

  ‘We’re glad you could join us. How’s the jet lag?’ asked the CC.

  ‘Fine. Never seems to bother me. Must be the Sicilian mountain blood. I’m always oxygenated.’

  ‘I saw you swimming this morning. That helps too, no doubt,’ said Dr Rankin.

  I thought of my dream and my sense of being submerged.

  The Professor turned to me, so I had a good view of his mauve t-shirt. The letters PRE and VE were scrunched across his chest. The dress code for the evening was smart casual and, in his case, the emphasis was on ‘casual’.

  ‘Are you a swimmer, Detective Slevin?’

  ‘No, can’t swim a stroke. I like the firm ground.’

  ‘I heard you go against the tide sometimes.’ As I expected, he had been briefed too. ‘You got yourself blown up recently, I understand.’

  ‘Not quite true. The victim was a very unfortunate woman. Me and a colleague … well, he was injured. I was unscathed.’

  ‘Did you know the woman?’ asked Dr. Rankin.

  My eyes caught the look on the CC’s face telling me my role and how I was to play it. The circumspect maverick, the rough-diamond protégée, not entirely dependable, but charmed. And charming enough to boost her status with her friend, her international guest and the rest of the room. My colleagues had, by now, read the pecking order that put me at the top table, while news of my lunch date with a senior IS official was likely to be top of the gossip menu.

  ‘Investigations are underway. I’m not directly involved, as you can understand. It very soon emerged that we were dealing with a gang-land crime, so the Organised Crime Team are on it. The woman seems to have been East European. There’s no final identification as yet. Prostitution, trafficking, forced labour perhaps – all of these are involved. It’s complex.’

  ‘And not much for your forensics people to work on, I hear. She was blown to shreds,’ said the Professor.

  I saw Dr Rankin put down her fork and sit back in the banquette.

  ‘Still,’ the Professor continued, ‘There’s always something, if you can get it early enough. And keep it viable.’

  That confirmed the lettering across his chest as PRESERVE, the mantra of all forensic work, Karen Lavery often told me. Thinking about her brought Amy to mind and I shifted my chair to try to locate her in the room, but, without getting up and fully turning around, I could only manage to see the groups either side of us and she wasn’t among them.

  ‘Well, this salmon won’t be swimming against the tide any more,’ said the Professor. ‘From the lake outside, you reckon?’

  The CC shook her head and laughed.

  ‘Not likely. Farmed somewhere, under lock and key in cages.’

  ‘Put there by PS(N),’ Dr Rankin quipped drily.

  ‘Put there for PS(N) and their guests, who are well-pleased by it,’ said the Professor.

  An awkward lull mired the conversation. It was my turn to perform.

  ‘We have a big myth involving a salmon. Several in fact. And they’re echoed around the world. A young hero gains his wisdom from the Salmon of Knowledge.’

  Dr Rankin grew interested again and leaned forward, but the story was really for the Professor.

  ‘A salmon, cooking on a spit, grows a heat blister and a boy, Fionn, sticks his thumb to it, to burst it. He burns his thumb, of course, and, in a reflex, sticks his thumb into his mouth to ease it. His master sees his visage change, as the Light of the Ages infuses the boy. It was the flesh of the Salmon of Knowledge he had tasted.’

  ‘Nice,’ said the Professor. ‘Looking round this table, I’d say there’s been plenty of thumb-sucking going on. I don’t think I got much wisdom from my Mama’s pasta sauce, hearty and filling though it was.’

  ‘Well, whatever the source of your knowledge, you carry it very lightly. Your keynote this morning was delightful and inspiring,’ said the CC.

  ‘Why, thank you, Ma’am.’

  ‘Oh, yes it was,’ added Dr Rankin. ‘But I’m still not clear what you believe, never mind what I believe. Was Ophelia’s death an accident or suicide? Or was she pushed?’

  I remembered the session then. It came straight after the coffee break. My nerves were still jangling after my time with Amy. I was half-asleep and slightly unsettled by everything the Professor said. He’d used the drowning of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a case study on forensics.

  Dr Rankin grew enthusiastic.

  ‘I loved the way you explained the weeds and the flowers. Forensically and yet it was like, I don’t know, an apothecary, an old herbalist’s chest.’

  ‘Pansies, rosemary, violets and daisies, yeh, they’re all in it. Shakespeare could paint the pictures, you bet. Still, her brother, Laertes, gets it right when he says, “Too much of water has thou, poor Ophelia”.’

  ‘I loved the way you sneaked that story up on us. Forgive me, the police officers here, but I don’t see a PS(N) audience as a rich terrain for literary analysis. Of course, you just said a woman called Ophelia was found dead in a river, drowned, no other marks on her, some people said she fell in, then you threw in lines from the play, like witness accounts …’

  ‘... some in favour of the idea of suicide,’ said the CC.

  ‘... only then did it dawn on me, you were on about Ophelia, the tragic lover in Hamlet. Brilliant.’

  The two women were having fun and the Professor was lapping up the admiration. I felt like a bit player, one of Shakespeare’s extras, guarding my fears with the rusty halberd of my memories. I set to finish my salmon and rocket salad, then sat back to wait for the main course, but the Professor drew me in.

  ‘You’re very kind. Like I said, there is no evidence of a push or a struggle. What do you say, Detective Slevin? Surely Ophelia, mad though she may have been, would have resisted?’

  ‘Depends on what was pushing her.’

  A soon as I said it, I knew how crazy it sounded. The CC stared at me, this time with a purplish moue of disappointment. Dr. Rankin’s clear brow furrowed and she said,

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you, Detective Slevin.’

  I was saved by the waiters who came to lift our platters. They promptly returned with even larger dinner platters, bearing generous portions of roast beef, which they placed before us
, then neatly filled the spaces on the table with three types of potato – lyonnaise, roast and baby-boiled – serving spoons, a wine-rich gravy in a boat my Auntie Maisie would covet, more serving spoons and dishes of cauliflower, runner beans and broccoli, still steaming and each sporting a dab of butter that careered about like a skier. Everyone took a glass of the Italian red.

  The Professor beamed his delight.

  ‘Mama De Lorenzo couldn’t have done any better, except maybe pasta for the potatoes. Spuds, eh? Are they a set of 3 options?’

  The CC laughed.

  ‘No, all three are mandatory with us.’

  ‘I get enough of those into me, no amount of jet-lag is gonna keep me from snoring.’

  We all filled our plates and began to eat. I sensed I was calming down. But Dr Rankin didn’t want to leave Ophelia in the water.

  ‘No vegetarians at this table I see,’ she began. ‘I’m very much a scientist, as you are Professor. But Detective Slevin, was that some sort of “mythological” response to the Ophelia story? You reckon she was pushed? What do you think happened Ophelia, Detective Slevin?’

  I knew the play, Hamlet. I read everything in prison, including Shakespeare.

  ‘A young woman is seen in a state of distress over a period of time. It is known that she has been jilted, in a very high-profile manner, by a young man who may have broken promises to her. She is found dead, drowned in a low river, shrouded in flowers and weeds. It is said that she was hanging garlands from a tree when a branch broke. She fell in and succumbed to the water. Did anyone find this branch? Perhaps it was swept away. Did anyone check if there was evidence of recent breakages?’

  ‘There was no “police investigation”,’ said Dr Rankin. ‘There was no “police”. It was obvious what happened.’

  ‘Yes, it was obvious, especially as the Queen told it, the most powerful woman in the case,’ said Professor De Lorenzo. ‘Ophelia, singing, fell into the brook and drowned.’

  I almost told him to shut up. The table went quiet. This was my chance to move away from watery deaths. I lifted my glass.

  ‘A small toast. To Western Artisan Beef and Freshveg!’

  ‘Who are they?’ asked the CC.

  ‘The companies who provided the dinner.’

  We laughed and lightly clinked our glasses. The mood became upbeat and convivial, in tune with the lively atmosphere on the tables behind me. What my colleagues made of me clinking wine glasses with the CC, her friend and the keynote speaker, I couldn’t guess. If I put myself in their seats, I would feel jealousy, confusion, resentment, unease and a conviction that something smelled rotten. And it wasn’t the excellent beef.

  ‘Very good detective work,’ said the Professor, crooking a finger at one of the waiters permanently stationed nearby to serve the CC’s table.

  ‘Anyone else, apart from me, for more beef?’

  We declined and I began to feel calm again. Perhaps we could talk about food. But Dr Rankin wanted second helpings of my speculations.

  ‘You’re right, Detective Slevin. We only believe the Queen, maybe, only because she is The Queen. What, or who, pushed Ophelia into the water?’ said Dr Rankin.

  A vision of my mother, in sodden clothes, stood before me. I didn’t intend to clatter my cutlery as I put it down, but the sound stilled our table and, as far as I could tell, with my back to the hubbub, it brought a pause to the feasting and talking at tables nearby. I sensed people nudging each other and eyeing the CC’s table. What? A row? When it had all seemed so lovey-dovey, so happy foursome, so date-night jolly.

  The Professor slowly mopped up the last of his gravy with a sludge of lyonnaise, mashed baby-boiled and roast potatoes. He swirled his fork in the food-sludge, moving the mess about until it gained the consistency of tidal muck.

  ‘That’s always a big question,’ he said. ‘The question of agency. The “who?” question. The big one. So we call them whodunnits not whathappenits or whyits.’

  The CC came in then.

  ‘Cui bono?’

  All four of us knew the Latin, even as she translated.

  ‘We have to ask “who benefits?” If anybody.’

  ‘But nobody benefits from Ophelia’s drowning. Her father’s dead. Her brother is devastated. That’s it. God, by the end, they’re all dead. Even the Queen.’ said Dr Rankin.

  ‘As a result of a genuine accident in the King’s foolish game of poisoning, while setting young men to play with swords. Bring out weapons and someone’s going to get it,’ I said.

  I thought of Dalzell and his manipulations. I thought of Hammy, my boss, who said I was at the centre of the vortex: the murder of Todd Anderson, the woman blown up in the field, the whole rushing stream of it all.

  The Professor spooned the last of his meat, spuds and gravy into his mouth. He silently set his fork upon his plate. Almost immediately, the waiters advanced and began to clear our table. The four of us sat back in silence, digesting. I took the chance to turn round and gaze across the room. Every table was alive with conversation and gesture. There was more animation among my colleagues than I’d ever witnessed at work. I saw the young officer from Vice throw his head back in laughter, then point a finger at a woman opposite. He didn’t seem the slightest bit callow.

  I saw Amy, radiant as an imp in a plain black dress, who’s open neck showed the porcelain skin I’d licked earlier. She was at a table of eight, listening intently to the woman beside her, who was using a knife to sight a distant target. A shooting colleague I guessed, recounting an incident or describing a gun she’d used. Amy nodded, asked brief questions and made inquiring gestures with her piano-player’s fingers. Her dinner partner took the knife again and sighted across herself, illustrating features on the weapon. She raised it to her eye once more, as if aiming a rifle. It was aiming, directly across the room, at me.

  When I turned back to the table, the Professor announced he was ready to eat some more.

  ‘Whatta you say you use your skills again, Detective Slevin? You got the source of the beef and vegetables. What you got for dessert then?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know if I could manage a dessert,’ said the CC. ‘And it might be getting near time for me to leave, in order to let everyone loosen up a little. There’s a comedian planned, well, an after-dinner speaker.’

  A young woman tapped the microphone at the front of the room and asked for our attention. She was one of what Hammy calls the ‘Young Levitators’, capable and ambitious new officers, effortlessly rising through the ranks. She confirmed there was an after-dinner speaker, followed by a number of options, including a sing-song, a quiz or a quiet drink in the Devenish Bar, which she designated the ‘chill zone’.

  ‘The Devilish Bar sounds about right for me,’ said the Professor. No one corrected him.

  He alone ordered profiteroles, which arrived heaped in a mountain cairn, beside a glacier of ice-cream. We all had coffees.

  ‘Tell me about this case you’re working on,’ said the Professor. ‘The Anderson case.’

  I looked at the CC and she stared back at me in a manner I read as giving me permission to speak, while advising me to be circumspect.

  ‘It’s still a live case, an on-going investigation,’ I began.

  ‘Of course. Anything on the forensic side?’ asked the Professor.

  ‘No. Dead ends. Blood tissues, clothing, fabrics – nothing. We found a shoe in a chiller, proving the body had been stored there. Beyond that. Nothing.’

  ‘The investigation is complex. And slow,’ said the CC.

  ‘It’s a disappointment to me. To us. We may even have made mistakes, noting the advice on your t-shirt,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not sure you could say we made mistakes, Detective Slevin. At any rate, this is where we are. Not very far,’ said the CC.

  ‘How did he die? Is it a murder?’ asked Dr Rankin.

&nb
sp; ‘Shot in the back of the head.’

  ‘Oh, God. Not an accident or a suicide then.’

  ‘I’m not ruling anything out.’

  ‘That seems a bit far-fetched, Detective Slevin?’ said Dr. Rankin. ‘Your speculations involving Ophelia, well, that’s a play and a fiction. Entertaining as they were, you’d hardly apply them in a real life situation. Surely it must be about the evidence?’

  ‘The thing is, Dr Rankin,’ I said, trying to keep an edge out of my voice. ‘Put some evidence in front of two people and you get two different views on it. Bring in a third person and you’ll get another view.’

  The Professor backed me up.

  ‘He’s right. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been an expert witness, for either side, when it became obvious to me that the lawyer testing my evidence was more concerned with victory than with truth. Have you got any leads? Suspects? Murder weapon? Ballistics?’

  I had to assume the CC had full details of the current state of our investigations, so I was careful when I touched on the matter that caused me the most anxiety.

  ‘My colleague, DC Hetherington, is following up on the bullet, trying to link it to a known gun. We’re pulling the latest findings together with our boss, eh, with Detective Inspector Hamilton, as soon as possible.’

  ‘Good luck there. Bullets and guns! Cheez! You think a unique match would be easy. One bullet, one gun. Not nowadays. I’m going to Dublin tomorrow afternoon, to visit a colleague at the Forensics Lab there. I’ll give him your name and ask him to contact you. He’s doing good work.’

  ‘Thank you, Professor. Hetherington is speaking to them at present,’ I lied. I had no intention of linking myself or Hetherington to the Forensics Lab in Dublin.

  ‘Thank you indeed, Professor,’ added the CC, wrapping up. ‘For your assistance on this matter, for your brilliant keynote speech this morning and for your entertaining post-script tonight. Thank you for making time to be at our conference. I’m going to skip the quiz and the sing-song and get out just ahead of the after-dinner speaker. I’d hate to cramp his style by sitting here, a target he couldn’t lampoon.’