Dublin Dead

by Gerard O'Donovan

  ‘It’s okay, Siobhan. It’s not a problem. It’s what you do. I just didn’t want to be a part of it. The book’s fine, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, okay, great.’ She sounded more surprised than relieved.

  ‘And thanks for letting me know. I appreciate that.’

  ‘I’m just sorry I didn’t get to you first,’ she said. ‘The book’s not even out until next week, but the TV slot came up out of the blue and I didn’t want to pass it up. I’ll get the lads to send you a copy, yeah?’

  ‘That’d be grand,’ he said, not meaning it, but there was no need to be rude about it now. She’d made the effort, after all.

  ‘Look, while I’m on … ’ She hesitated, then seemed to think better of it. ‘Ah, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No, go on. What is it?’ He couldn’t have admitted it even to himself, but he knew what he was hoping she’d say; wanted her to be the first to say it. But that wasn’t to be.

  ‘Okay, it’s only just occurred to me this minute, I swear,’ she said, all business. ‘I need a contact, somebody in your area of expertise. The international side, I mean, not drugs. I’m trying to help a woman whose daughter’s gone missing, over in England, she thinks.’

  Mulcahy tried to follow the sudden switch into work mode, but it wasn’t really working for him. ‘Have you tried Missing Persons, up in the Park?’

  ‘Ah, come on, Mulcahy,’ she laughed softly. ‘Surely you can do better than that? I mean, this girl Gemma’s mother reported her missing over a week ago and all they’ll say is that they’re doing everything they can.’

  ‘They probably are.’ Mulcahy felt obliged to say something in their defence, but the truth was, Missing Persons were always swamped with more cases than they could handle, especially since the recent cuts had hacked staff numbers to the bone.

  ‘Don’t suppose they can do much if she’s out of the jurisdiction,’ he continued. ‘Did you say you’re not even sure England’s where she went missing?’

  ‘Well, not entirely, but the mother thinks the girl went there with a boyfriend of hers. To Bristol, we think.’

  ‘And what does the boyfriend have to say about it? Did they ever get to Bristol, I mean?’

  ‘That’s just it. The guy came back in a box. Suicide. Threw himself off the Clifton Suspension Bridge. That’s how I heard about the girl. It might be the story you saw my byline on.’

  Mulcahy grunted, noncommittal, said nothing.

  ‘The whole thing’s fucked up, anyway,’ she continued. ‘The first I heard of this girl was earlier today at the funeral. The mother is convinced she was with him. Daughter’s been missing since then. You can appreciate why she’s worried, right? Any ideas on who might help me out with this, on the British side I mean?’

  Mulcahy scratched his ear. ‘Not off the top of my head, but look, let me have a think about it and get back to you tomorrow. Is this the best number to get you on?’

  ‘Yeah, that hasn’t changed. Thanks, Mulcahy. Talk tomorrow.’

  The line went dead. She was gone, and something inside him already felt empty. Mulcahy shook his head to get rid of the feeling, but it wouldn’t shift, perhaps because it wasn’t in his head, but buried deeper inside him. He sat there staring blankly at the phone in his hand. When he eventually resurfaced, it was the time that startled him. Shit. Another ten minutes gone by. He stabbed at the phone, scrolled to Orla’s number.

  ‘Hiya. Look, sorry, I’m just parking the car. I’ll be with you in a second … ’

  Tuesday

  6

  Siobhan had flown out of Dublin many times for work and holidays, but she’d rarely seen the city reveal itself in such beauty as it did that morning. Below was the usual patchwork of green fields, grey industrial estates, endless ranks of close-packed houses and trailing black ribbons of road; only now the entire scene was bathed in the shimmering pink sheen of a cloudless dawn. She watched the world fall away, feeling the engines’ immense power pulling her up into the crystal-clear air. The plane banked sharply and the sea rose to meet her, bringing with it the wide sweep of the bay as the curving city met glinting steel-grey water all the way round from Howth to Killiney. Then they were level again, and as soon as the safety-belt sign was turned off she stretched out on the empty seats beside her and slept. Fifty minutes later a steward woke her as they began the descent into Bristol.

  Sergeant Walker told her to take a taxi straight to the Clifton Suspension Bridge, that she would meet her by the toll booth on the Clifton side. On the road in from the airport, Siobhan kept catching glimpses of the bridge, high above the city, gleaming creamy white in the soft light, like a fragment of antique lace stretched between distant cliffs. The Asian cab driver kept up a constant patter about how nice a city Bristol was to visit, but the traffic was terrible, housing too expensive and the local authority utterly incompetent. She might as well have been in a taxi at home, even if the swear words ‘politician’ and ‘banker’ never once passed his lips.

  She tuned out, taking in the form and feel of this city so unknown to her, forgot all about the bridge until the taxi began a straining climb up through narrow, twisting streets and then, all of a sudden, there it was again, almost on the same level as she was, arcing out across the gorge, more beautiful than she’d ever have guessed a bridge could be. The taxi looped round a sloping area of grass and trees, and drew up short of the toll booths where cars were queuing to cross. As she got out and paid, Siobhan saw a tall, trim black woman approaching confidently, her hand outstretched.

  ‘Hi, it is Siobhan, isn’t it? I saw your photo online. I’m Andrea Walker.’

  Siobhan had encountered her fair share of women detectives in the Garda Siochana, but she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of black officers, of either gender, she’d come across in Dublin. Or, for that matter, cops who were as good-looking as Walker, with her lean figure, high cheekbones and a pearl-grey trouser suit that enhanced her long limbs.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me dragging you out here,’ Walker said. ‘I thought if we came to the bridge first, you’d get a better sense of it all.’

  ‘I’m glad you did,’ Siobhan said, shaking Walker’s hand warmly. She turned to take in the vista spread before them. The taxi had come up some pretty precipitous streets on the way, but she hadn’t been prepared for the sense of great height she was experiencing now. Off to her left, the ground dropped away vertiginously, revealing a sprawl of grey city spreading out along one bank of the curving river below, a busy motorway folding it in like a cradling elbow along the distant western edge. Beyond that again was a ring of low, sparsely populated hills.

  ‘This is stunning.’ Siobhan walked further out and looked across the bridge towards the steep, tree-covered slopes on the far side. It was impossible not to admire the structure as much as its setting. The huge brick towers at either end, like the great, white, wrought-iron suspension chains that hung from them, were so solid and reassuring, their arches like stout legs planted on the massive brick piers either side of the gorge, braced to take the strain of the two-lane roadway that hung between them.

  ‘I’ve only seen it in photographs,’ she continued. ‘They don’t do it justice, do they? It looks so much more impressive in real life.’

  Walker smiled indulgently, strolling alongside her. ‘Especially on a sunny day like today. I suppose I get used to it, living here – you know, when you see it plastered on every second sign and business card, not to mention all the tourist tat. Personally, I’d love the bridge a lot more if people would stop chucking themselves off it.’

  ‘Yes, well, when you put it like that, I guess you would.’ Siobhan smiled, liking the sergeant’s abruptness. ‘I suppose we’d better get down to business.’

  ‘Yeah, let’s.’ Walker turned and pointed towards a terrace of elegant Georgian villas snaking down the road on the rim of the gorge, their first-floor balconies covered by black and white striped metal canopies. ‘One row behind there,’ she continued, her
finger pointing over the roofs, ‘is a backstreet called Westfield Place, where we found the car. It more or less confirms what we suspected – that Mr Horgan came here to jump. It’s surprising how many cars turn up there; sometimes we don’t hear about them for months, until one of the residents complains. But in this case the hire company had reported it stolen.’

  ‘Are there that many suicides?’ Siobhan asked, surprised.

  ‘Nothing like as many since they put the barriers on the bridge ten years ago. But every couple of months or so some bloke will still get over. Nearly always males these days.’ She glanced at Siobhan to emphasise the point. ‘But Mr Horgan was a bit unusual for us.’

  ‘Unusual?’ It was one of those words that, when used by officials, always got Siobhan’s antennae tingling. ‘I wasn’t aware there was anything unusual about it.’

  ‘No, not like that. Unusual, yes, but not suspicious. I only mean the fact that he went in the water. It had us confused for a while.’

  Siobhan looked at the bridge, then at the river below and turned her palms up at Walker. ‘I’m a bit that way myself – confused, I mean.’

  Walker laughed. ‘C’mon, let me show you. It’s easier.’

  She steered Siobhan across the road, a hand placed in the small of her back, dodging the traffic at the toll machines. On this side of the road, the view opened out into one of almost rustic tranquillity. No sense of the city behind them now. Just the gorge, all green wooded slopes on the far bank, all sheer scrub-covered cliffs on this side, and between them the toffee-brown river winding away into the distance. Walker followed the footpath round the tower, on the side of which a prominent embossed metal sign announced, ‘Samaritans care,’ with a phone number underneath. Siobhan looked around, wondered if there’d been a phone box, too, in the days before mobiles. She strode over to where Walker was waiting by the stone wall edging the pier. Siobhan rested her arms on the parapet, stood on her toes and peered over the edge, her eyes instantly swimming at the near-vertical drop to the bottom, where a surge of heavy traffic was screaming along the riverside road below.

  ‘Jesus, I wasn’t expecting that,’ she said, stepping back. ‘I thought you said there was a barrier.’

  ‘On the bridge itself, yes.’ Walker pointed out across the span, where a network of thin steel wires stretched up above the Victorian ironwork of the bridge, discouraging anyone with thoughts of climbing over it. ‘But not here on the piers.’

  Siobhan risked another look, this time keeping her body pressed tight against the wall. Hundreds of feet below, out beyond the traffic, the river was so still and narrow it seemed not to flow at all but ooze from the vast mudbanks shelving down on either side. ‘That really is creepy,’ she said, shaking her head to dispel the dizziness it induced.‘How far down is it?’

  ‘About two hundred and fifty feet to the road,’ Walker said. ‘A bit more to the water, depending on the time of day. The Avon has a big tidal range, a difference of at least thirty feet between high and low tide. That’s why you see those mudbanks now, but in a few hours’ time they’ll be completely submerged again. It’s another thing that helped us place your guy.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Like I said, Mr Horgan’s case was a slightly unusual one for us. Nobody saw him go over. When his body was washed up at Nelson Point, a couple of miles downriver, we knew he had to have come off a bridge because of the injuries he sustained. Virtually every bone in his body was … ’ She hesitated, then came back at it from another direction. ‘You know, hitting the water from this height is like smashing into a brick wall at speed. People think they’ll drown, but it’s the sudden stop that kills them.’

  Walker let out a long breath and rubbed her eyes like she was about to explain something even she found complex. ‘It’s almost impossible to get over those wires without attracting attention. Even then you need to be a bit of a gymnast. The CCTV on the bridge is good, and there are guys on duty in the toll booths at either end, but the thing is, generally, if you don’t go over the wires, you don’t go in the water. The only other option is to jump from one of the piers, but as you can see, there’s no water below us here. And you’d be amazed how off-putting that can be. Before they get here, people imagine a nice clean end in water, and instead they’re faced with rocks, bushes, concrete and cars.’

  Siobhan glanced back at the Samaritans sign, then over the wall again, cautiously. She noticed now the trees, scrub and rocky outcrops on the cliff face beneath her. Most of all, she took in the significance of the roadway running noisily below. The river was at least thirty or forty feet further out than it at first appeared to be and, directly underneath the brick pier, the road was covered by a wide, grassed-over concrete canopy. To prevent suicides from falling on road users, Siobhan imagined, and causing death and havoc down there, too.

  She smiled wanly. ‘So, what – Horgan jumped from the other side?’

  It looked like the water ran right underneath there.

  But Walker shook her head again. ‘It’s deceptive, isn’t it, but that’s even further back from the water. See the railway line running along the bottom over there? And there’s a footpath outside that again.’

  Siobhan squinted, adjusting her eyes to the perspective, stomach turning at the thought of the leap, the falling body, and saw that Walker was right.

  ‘So what did happen?’

  ‘That’s just it. We’re only guessing, but we reckon that he must have actually jumped from exactly where we’re standing now. There was some temporary scaffolding blocking the CCTV camera here that week, so we could have missed him that way. We think he must have hit that shoulder of rock sticking out down there.’ She leant out over the wall, pointing, and Siobhan had no choice but to look over again, determined not to let the vertigo get the better of her.

  ‘The guys reckon if he hit it at just the right angle, it could’ve sent him spinning out over the road and into the river. It’s, like, a million to one and the only place where the angles would work. Even at that, he’d have to have done it at high tide, and there was one, around eleven p.m. that Saturday. Otherwise he’d have landed in the mud on the bank and been visible there for hours. His body would have been spotted by someone for sure.’

  ‘Jesus, are you serious? Is it even possible?’

  ‘There’s no other explanation for it,’ Walker said. ‘The dates and tides work. And if you look hard at that spot on the rock, you can see a patch of discoloration, a smear maybe, that could be some tissue deposits, but we haven’t been able to organise a climber to go down and get a sample. Suicides don’t come high on the list of priorities where resources are concerned, I’m sorry to say.’

  The thought of someone hanging on a rope above that void, scraping bits of human flesh off a rock made Siobhan’s stomach squirm again.

  ‘So you’re saying there’s definitely nothing suspicious about his death?’

  Walker gave her a confidently affirmative smile. ‘Nothing at all. Everything adds up: the injuries, where the body was found, all that. Matches the pathologist’s report, which says the body featured the kinds of injuries – blunt-force trauma, tissue abrasion and multiple minor fractures – consistent with precisely this kind of fall.’

  Walker looked out over the wall again, down along the river to where it disappeared behind a distant bluff. ‘The balance of probability always pointed to him jumping from here, but with no eyewitness or CCTV to confirm it, we couldn’t be certain. They get jumpers off the Severn Crossing, too, a few miles up the Bristol Channel, and if the tides are right, the bodies float back up this way sometimes. Finding Mr Horgan’s car here was the last piece in the jigsaw. It pretty much clinches it.’

  7

  Sweeney was already at her desk, looking buffed and fresh from the gym, when Mulcahy got in to the office at an hour even he considered early. She was deeply involved in a phone conversation, which he took to be personal, his unexpected appearance eliciting an embarrassed grin and a waggle of her
fingers as he walked past her and into his office. He’d heard rumours of a boyfriend, currently out on the west coast of America, Santa Barbara or somewhere, working in the kind of IT job it was no longer possible to find at home in Ireland. It had to be getting on for midnight out there, he reckoned.

  Mulcahy switched his computer on, struggling to shake off the torpor of a bad night’s sleep as he waited for the screen to boot up, the coffee refusing to have any reviving effect on him despite the extra shot he’d had them put in it. Things hadn’t gone well with Orla the night before. He’d been twenty minutes late, not ten, and he’d had to spend at least half that time again apologising for leaving her waiting alone in the restaurant. He couldn’t blame her: the place had been absolutely heaving with couples and gangs out for a good night. Sitting on her own at the table, she’d looked as solitary as a lighthouse when he’d walked in.

  It hadn’t helped, either, that he’d been more than a little unsettled by Siobhan Fallon’s call. Orla had guessed something was up almost from the start. Some instinct in her awakened, she had switched from hurt at his lateness to concern over his inattention, more than once asking if he was okay, if there was anything wrong. Not exactly a recipe for romance. They’d struggled to keep the conversation going over dinner, and it had stalled into complete silence in his car. Then, when he dropped her off at her house in Dalkey, she’d hit him with the big one. She wanted to take a step back, she said, take things a little more slowly. She wasn’t sure they were as compatible as she’d first thought. She’d given him a long, meaningful look then, and he got the impression he was supposed to be arguing the toss with her, making a case for togetherness. But all he felt was tiredness. Or was it numbness? And right at that moment, in the dark outside her house, the only honest emotion he felt was that she was right. It probably wouldn’t hurt to pull back a bit, and if it did, they’d know they shouldn’t be apart. Then he’d driven home, thinking not of Orla but of Siobhan Fallon, the entire way.