If I Never See You Again

by Niamh O'Connor

  For a very brief time – twenty-four hours, to be precise – she actually thought they would sort everything out and get back together. The day Harry was born, Dan had taken him in his arms and asked her to forgive him and to allow him home. Jo agreed, only to have Jeanie pay an unexpected visit to the hospital. After she’d gone, Jo remembered looking at the card on the bouquet of flowers she had brought, wondering why Jeanie had signed them from Dan too. As she waited for Dan’s visit that night, Jo had written her sense of panic off as postnatal paranoia: her hormones were all over the place, after all, and there were plenty of men called Dan. Then Dan had come in, a big blue teddy under his arm, and Jo had made a joke of the card. The moment she’d glimpsed his reaction, she realized Jeanie had not called to see her out of the goodness of her heart at all. That was how she’d found out her husband was seeing someone else – from a congratulations card on a bunch of bloody carnations signed off by his girlfriend with a string of kisses.

  And now, just as things seemed set in stone, life was taking another twist and he was coming home after all, she this time having managed to foist her pride out of the equation, and giving her back everything she wanted – her family. So why couldn’t she shake the hole in the bottom of her stomach, stop feeling that it was all too late?

  She reached up and adjusted the pots and pans hanging from the Sally rack they’d bought together in that car-boot sale so he wouldn’t start bashing his head into them, like the old days.

  Pressing the nib of the pen against the top left-hand corner of the page, she tried to focus on her case. Nothing could happen between her and Dan until she’d sorted the business of what she’d done with Rita Nulty’s money. She would have to tell the truth, no matter how unpalatable. But what did any of it matter when three victims were dead and a fourth battling for his life? Dan’s adherence to procedure was keeping her from doing the only thing that mattered – finding who was responsible.

  Harry let out another cry, and Jo pushed the pen and paper aside. She turned out the lights as she made her way down the hall. The inquiry was a complete bloody waste of energy. She wasn’t wasting another second on it.

  Wednesday

  20

  Next morning, the only one running late for Rita Nulty’s post mortem was Jo herself. Jeanie had rung while she was banging on Rory’s bedroom door to get him up and into the shower. As Jo listened to the message she’d left, saying that Dan intended to hear her appeal before lunch, she chose her best lace bra and matching French knickers. She lost a good quarter of an hour ironing her best suit, a tailored navy pinstripe, and fitted white blouse, and another twenty dropping Rory directly outside the school gates. And so as to catch up on the murder inquiry before the hearing, she’d detoured to Swords garda station, losing the guts of another hour. She’d called to see the officer who’d headed up the investigation into the death of the victim Mac had mentioned, the case where the page of the Bible was found at the scene. As it turned out, the dead man had a history of psychiatric illness, had made several previous attempts to set himself alight and was a fanatical born-again Christian. After rooting the original file out of her briefcase to establish how she’d missed this information first time round, she’d discovered from the numbering that there were pages missing. I’m going to bloody well kill Mac, Jo thought, as she sped back down the Malahide Road towards the morgue in Marino.

  Backed up in the traffic at the Griffith Avenue crossroads, she rang Gerry in Justice but got straight through to his answering machine. She left a message reminding him of a case in which an accused man had got a suspended sentence from the courts after being found guilty of perpetrating an aggravated rape on a twelve-year-old schoolgirl. ‘The judge accepted the defence’s case – that the child’s school uniform constituted an act of provocation,’ Jo said, signing off. ‘Separate Legal Representation, Gerry. Call me.’

  Jo steered to the back of the fire-brigade training grounds, past shells of buildings called ‘toy shop’ and ‘fireworks factory’ that were burned out regularly for the exercises, and pulled up beside three Portakabins ring-fenced at the back of the grounds, which looked more like a used-car sales lot than the city’s morgue. Two of the prefabs were used by the state pathologist for admin purposes; the third was where autopsies were carried out. Jo sighed as she parked the car. The use of the premises had been ‘temporary’ for the best part of a decade, but if the families of the victims whose lives had been cut short by violence could see just where they’d ended up, there’d be uproar. In Jo’s eyes, it was typical of the Justice department’s ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude to victims.

  The team was waiting for Jo in a squad car outside. Mac and Sexton were tucking into full Irish breakfast rolls, but Foxy had declined all food offers, even a cup of tea. The morgue’s ‘canteen’, as it was jokingly referred to by staff, consisted of a toaster and a kettle on top of a photocopier in the crammed admin cabin. ‘On The Run’ logos on the wrappers on the food told Jo they’d picked up breakfast in a garage up the road.

  ‘How’d you get on? Was it our man?’ Mac asked, as she climbed into the passenger seat.

  Sexton, behind the wheel, turned sideways, waiting for Jo to answer.

  Jo was not amused. ‘A bloody wild-goose chase, as you already bloody well know, Mac,’ she said, twisting back to face him ‘And you can wipe that smile off your face while you’re at it. You’re off the case.’

  Mac looked around for some support, realized none was coming, opened the door and banged it shut after him. He stormed off, firing his breakfast roll at some wheelie bins as he left.

  Jo pulled the door shut. Foxy unplugged a coffee from the carton tray balancing between the front seats and leaned forwards to hand it over to her. ‘I need to talk to you about what happened when I called to Rita Nulty’s mother yesterday,’ he said.

  ‘Why? What happened?’ Jo asked intently.

  Sexton pointed through the windscreen to a young man with a neat trimmed beard in a white coat who was waving them into the post-mortem Portakabin.

  ‘You can fill me in later,’ Jo said, taking the coffee from Foxy and holding it clear of her best clothes as she climbed out.

  After gowning up in white Tyvek jump suits and skimming the area under their nostrils with scented Vaseline, they filed into the neutral grey cabin. The space measured thirty feet by forty-five, and contained five fridges, each of which could hold three bodies. A shore in the ground drained the sluices slicking in through a grid. Three stainless-steel slabs on wheels gave the business of death a conveyor-belt feel, though, in actuality, only one post mortem was carried out at a time.

  Standing over Rita Nulty’s remains was Professor Michael Hawthorne, the white-haired state pathologist who’d been the country’s foremost expert on murder and suspicious death for the last twenty years.

  Jo had already briefed him on the circumstances of death over the phone. It was Hawthorne’s job to tell her the probable time that Rita died, the age of the injuries, whether they were inflicted ante or post mortem, and how she died. Jo was also hoping for a description of the weapon used, the interval between wounds received and death, and drug or alcohol content in the blood. She had lost count of the number of PMs she’d attended. They were never easy – the smell was the worst part – but skipping them was a cop-out. Questions always came up when you were there witnessing it for yourself that would never have sprung to mind otherwise.

  After the PM, Rita’s face would be ‘naturalized’ to ease her family’s distress and in order to be able to obtain a more ‘lifelike’ photograph for the records. Her hair would be cleaned and combed, her face washed, the lips coloured with carmine in alcohol and a little rouge applied. The lividity stains would be powdered over with talc. Eyes were only fixed open when a body hadn’t been ID’d, so that posthumous photographs could be released to the public.

  But, right now, Rita appeared to be the last thing on Professor Hawthorne’s mind. He was scrolling agitatedly on a mobile
phone which, based on his comments, had just alerted him to the details of a hit and run he was expected to attend at the first opportunity. ‘Bloody waste of bloody time . . .’ he grumbled. ‘I mean, what do they think I’m going to do – rule out drowning, a knife in the back or bloody poison in a clear-cut road death? As if resources aren’t stretched to the limit as it is! You know what my main function will be when I arrive there? To pat the hands of the gardaí and say, “There there, everything will be all right!” I’ve had the country’s biggest drug lord in a fridge over there since Monday, and it’ll be Thursday at the earliest before I can get to him.’

  He flicked a switch on the wall and the enfant terrible of Irish radio, Gerry Ryan, started ranting in the background about how the only thing bullies understood was a smack of the fist.

  ‘This one doesn’t exactly require rocket science either,’ Foxy said, leaning back as he pointed to the laceration just right of Rita’s breastbone.

  Jo nudged him in the ribs. Hawthorne was very easily wound up, and Foxy knew it.

  ‘Actually, the X-rays showed us that the knife fell short of the heart,’ Hawthorne replied, hooking his index finger into the wound and poking around, nodding to himself in satisfaction.

  Jo raised an eyebrow. A similar wound had been referred to in Stuart Ball’s autopsy report. She stared at Hawthorne’s fingers as they probed.

  ‘Cause of death: a sudden catastrophic drop in blood pressure caused by this’ – he pointed to the stump of Rita’s arm – ‘not this, I’m afraid,’ he finished, indicating a stab wound under Rita’s right breast. ‘The good news is, she would have passed out before death, and the level of adrenaline produced by the shock – probably from the point in time when she realized what was going to happen – would also have minimized the pain.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Foxy muttered, and ran for the door.

  Jo sighed, still watching Hawthorne. He turned to a tray of implements and reached for the scalpel then sliced through Rita’s chest like butter, making a wide V shape that tailed down her torso into the leg of a Y. He peeled and clamped back the layers, like meat. The sound of the ribs separating was like a creaking door. With a slippery scoop, Hawthorne manoeuvred out the glossy stomach, sliding it into a kidney-shaped dish and snipping it free then opening it with scissors, squeezing the contents out into the tray.

  The stink hit all of them at the same time – sickly-sweet, like a bag of rubbish left in the sun combined with raw sewage. ‘Looks like her last meal was sausages,’ Hawthorne declared.

  Sexton made his excuses and, looking grey and sick, also left.

  ‘Any defensive wounds?’ Jo asked, conscious that she was the only one asking questions now that it was just her left in the room with Hawthorne and his bearded assistant, who was working quietly in the background.

  ‘Absolutely none,’ Hawthorne said, re-examining the wrists. ‘Not so much as a bruise.’

  ‘How did the killer keep her still?’ she asked.

  ‘This is the interesting bit,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I managed to fast-track the blood tests because of your concerns over links to previous killings – of course, if we had our own toxicology unit, that wouldn’t be an issue. Bloody disgrace that we have to send them to Beaumount for preliminary screening, then the lab in Celbridge. Bloody weeks it takes! Pointless . . .’

  The assistant coughed, and handed Hawthorne a sheet of headed paper listing the blood-test results.

  ‘Yes, I was just getting to that . . . the bloods showed up the presence of myrrh and gall.’

  He stared at Jo’s blank face. ‘You Catholics should be ashamed of yourselves. Like bloody sheep, practising blind faith, with no interest in the actual history.’

  ‘Myrrh and gall,’ Jo prompted. ‘I don’t quite see –’

  Hawthorne paused, then sighed in irritation. ‘A combination commonplace in the Roman empire, and specifically during crucifixions. Don’t you remember John Wayne as the Roman centurion at the foot of the crucifix: “Truly this was the son of God”?’

  Jo clenched her fists. She did remember, and she understood exactly why it was important.

  ‘The sponge passed to your King of Kings,’ Hawthorne continued, ‘was believed to have been soaked in myrrh and gall, which was used as an early form of pain relief. That’s what your killer was using on the victim. I expect he didn’t want her to pass out on him. By deadening the pain, he made the whole experience last longer for her, I’m afraid.’

  21

  By mid-morning, Jo was back in the station, sitting straight-backed, knees and ankles pressed tightly together, hands clasping the note she’d managed to scribble in the car park outside five minutes earlier. She was a lot happier with her account of the reason why she had taken the money from Rita Nulty’s body than she’d have been if she’d spent hours poring over it the night before, because it was truthful: ‘So no one else would’. But one glance at the set-up was making her palms clammy. First, Dan had arranged to meet her in a non-entity of a room at the back of the barracks normalcly used as a dumping ground for old filing cabinets. I didn’t even merit the conference room, she thought. Second, a sheet of A4 paper had been stuck to the door outside and read: ‘Hearing in Progress’. Handwritten as an afterthought, not worth typing, she concluded. And last, but not least, he’d made sure his arse wasn’t going to be left hanging out afterwards by bringing witnesses – the in-house expert in law, a cop with a night degree named Brown but known by the rest of them as ‘Brown Tongue’ because he was like Dan’s shadow, and Jeanie, ostensibly to take minutes and studiously avoiding Jo’s eye. Jo wondered how she felt about the new living arrangements; Dan was due to move back home at the weekend.

  Leafing through her file, Jo tried not to check Dan out. He was dressed in full uniform and perched on the middle of a wide table, which he’d managed to have propped on some sort of temporary dais, giving him a height advantage – as if he needed it.

  ‘We’re here in a formal capacity . . .’ he began, speaking exaggeratedly slowly, pausing until Jeanie’s pen stopped darting ‘. . . to give Detective . . . Inspector . . . Jo Birmingham the opportunity to appeal my decision to replace her as head of the Rita Nulty murder.’

  Jo felt her heart rate quicken. He’s laying on the formalities a bit thick, she thought.

  ‘Now, the original situation has changed somewhat in that we did have a witness . . . who was prepared to claim Detective Inspector Birmingham had removed a sum of money from the crime scene . . .’ He poured himself a glass of water from a decanter, looked up to see if Jo wanted one and, when she gave a stiff nod, swiped Brown Tongue’s empty glass, filled it for her and handed it over the table. ‘Am I going too fast, Jeanie?’

  Jeanie put her pen down and poured herself a glass of water.

  ‘You can insert the date and location of the scene when you’re typing this up. But the witness has now withdrawn his statement and suggests he must have made an error in judgement.’

  Jo swallowed hard and put down her drink. Foxy, you beauty, she thought. Now at last she was in with a chance.

  ‘Now, however, we have some concerns about Mrs Nulty’s whereabouts,’ Dan went on.

  Jo sat forward.

  ‘Although she’s not formally a missing person, we have been unable to contact her today, and her neighbours say she did not return home last night, and it’s highly unusual for her to go away without telling them first. Detective Sergeant John Foxe yesterday forced entry and established that nothing seemed out of order; however it seems unlikely that she’d leave of her own volition before her daughter’s funeral, so that inquiry is also ongoing.’

  Jo opened her mouth to speak, but Dan was still in full flow. ‘However, until what happened to the missing cash . . . can be explained, the charges against Detective Inspector Birmingham remain in place. Until that time, I am going to recommend that Detective Inspector Gavin Sexton should take over the investigation into the recent murder cases. I understand he agrees with Detective Inspector B
irmingham’s assertion that the cases are linked.’

  Jo stood up quickly. Foxy had just given her the perfect get-out clause, so why did Dan seem so dead set on persecuting her? So much for any prospect of reconciliation. ‘Write this down, Jeanie,’ she said. ‘My reputation has been grievously impugned by the spurious allegations made against me in this sham of a hearing. As these allegations can no longer be substantiated, the suggestion that there should be any onus on me to prove what happened afterwards is untenable. Rita Nulty’s mother’s whereabouts are unknown. She’s now the only one who can corroborate my version of events, which is, in any event, no longer necessary, as Detective Sergeant John Foxe has withdrawn his statement. If I am removed from heading up this inquiry as Chief Superintendent Mason suggests, every one of my colleagues out there is going to believe the accusations against me have been substantiated. That is not just tantamount to constructive dismissal, it’s slander and, make no mistake, I will sue.’ She paused. ‘Have you got that?’

  Dan looked at her, stony-faced, then tilted his head towards Brown Tongue, who nodded slowly.

  She tucked her paperwork under her arm and walked towards the door.

  ‘I heard you threw Mac off the team,’ Dan called after her. ‘I’ve told Merrigan he’s the replacement.’

  Jo kept going. She may have won herself the right to hold on to this case but, in her head, she was drawing yet another line under her marriage.

  22

  Jo was still talking herself down as she queued up for food in a greasy spoon in Smithfield, where she’d hastily arranged to meet the team for a working lunch. Only when she finally slid the tray loaded with plates of fried eggs and chips on to a pine table where Sexton, Foxy and Merrigan were sitting did she finally manage a smile, because the lads had struck up a little round of applause.