by Jo Spain
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean she was stabbed somewhere, bled out and was brought here afterwards. This body was arranged post-mortem. There would be far more blood if she’d been stabbed here. That’s why I let you in so quickly.’
‘Are you serious? Somebody brought her here and crucified a dead body?’
‘Yes.’
Tom took a deep breath. He was relieved that the woman had not suffered the crucifixion while alive, but that begged a question.
‘Why?’
Emmet shook his head. ‘Mine is not to reason why, but to give you the clues regarding the how. It looks like someone wanted to make a statement.’
Tom wasn’t listening. He was staring at the blood on the woman’s chin. It looked as though she’d been punched in the mouth. But . . .
‘God Almighty!’
Emmet jumped. ‘What?’
Tom was staring into the woman’s mouth, his eyes bulging.
‘Her tongue. It’s been cut out.’
Chapter 4
Tom gave the members of the pathology team a rundown as soon as they arrived. He left them to get on with their work and made his way back to the car with Ray.
The first of the press had arrived. The two officers ignored the reporters’ scattergun questions as they got into the car, slamming the doors on the outside world. Headquarters would deal with media inquiries, and Tom didn’t envy them the task.
‘That Ellie is a looker, isn’t she?’ Ray said casually, retrieving a towel from the backseat.
‘Why do you have a towel in your car?’ Tom asked, distracted.
‘Went for a beach run last night. I used it to dry off the sweat and rain so I wouldn’t get cold on the drive home.’
‘You make me sick.’
Tom rubbed at the condensation on the passenger window, then instantly regretted it. One of the rebuked reporters was staring bug-eyed at the car, and now he could be seen. The inspector sighed and turned towards Ray, his back to the window.
‘Do you think she’s single?’
This was their routine. When they walked away from a crime scene, they talked about anything and everything other than what they’d seen. It was a five-minute hiatus, their way of postponing the inevitable. It also meant Ray didn’t have to discuss the incongruity of being a murder detective with an aversion to gore. Others might find it hilarious. Ray found it humiliating.
‘I suspected you had a thing for her, but really?’ Tom responded. ‘Do you think the start of an investigation like this is the time to start courting? I don’t know how you could have been eyeing her up, anyway – against that backdrop. It must say something about you psychologically.’
Ray glared at his superior officer. ‘Courting? Oh, sorry, is this the eighteenth century calling?’ He placed his hand to his ear, pretending it was a phone. ‘It’s for you. They want their turn of phrase back. I just wondered if she’s single. You know, for the future.’ Ray shook his head in exasperation.
No one would ever describe him as a Romeo. The demands of his job left little time to meet anyone, but he was in his mid-thirties now and single didn’t feel as good as it used to, especially as invitations to old friends’ weddings arrived with alarming frequency these days.
Within twenty minutes, the head of the NBCI, DCS Sean McGuinness, arrived. Tom watched as the chief’s car sped towards the growing band of reporters, causing them to jump to either side of the oncoming vehicle.
As the big grey-haired man emerged, Tom could tell from his gesticulations that he was blaming the pouring rain and sodden ground for the car’s failure to slow down.
It took McGuinness a few seconds to spot Tom and Ray. He took long strides over to the car and banged forcefully on the roof before yanking open the driver’s door. The young guard who had arrived with him caught up and tried to put an umbrella over his superior’s head.
McGuinness flapped him away. ‘Really? You think an umbrella will make much difference?’ he roared, pointing to the open heavens.
The young officer scurried off, red-faced, but not so far as to be outside shouting distance.
‘Staying nice and warm, are we, gentlemen?’ the chief barked at them in his thick Kerry accent, as his dripping head poked into the car.
‘Have we a mini-bar in here? Are ye having Irish coffees? No? Then get the hell out!’ He roared this last part.
Ray put a hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh.
‘Mind you don’t get sick in there, youngster; news of your sterling performance has spread.’
Now Ray hung his head, mortified, not only by the other man’s sarcasm but also because he had just realized Ellie Byrne would be bagging his regurgitated breakfast.
Tom took pity on his junior and decided to run interference.
Reluctantly, he got out of the warm car. ‘Nice to see you too, sir.’
Tom was just less than six foot, but the chief soared over him. He had height and width. His size and strength, even at sixty, abetted by his loud and dramatic personality, gave him an intimidating air. Tom knew it to be a front. Sean McGuinness was an old friend and, beneath the brashness, he was thoughtful, kind and good-hearted.
McGuinness’s tone was discreet now, conscious of the watching reporters.
‘I’m just wondering how a woman managed to get herself murdered in Garda Headquarters’ back garden.’
His words implied that Tom’s team should have been camped out in the park, ensuring no embarrassing murders were being committed.
The chief sucked air into his cheeks and then released it slowly. Running his hands through his shaggy grey hair, he wiped away the rain that threatened to blind him as it ran down his forehead.
‘This is like manna from heaven for the press. Between the gang murders and budget cuts and internal politics . . . I don’t know how we will cope.’
Tom nodded sympathetically. McGuinness would retire in a couple of years, and the path to his job lay open for Tom – yet he couldn’t bear the thought of it. He couldn’t stand the idea of having to stress about how to run a whole department on little or nothing and deal with growing crime levels, not to mention the media constantly editorializing on the police’s failings.
‘Did you hear?’ McGuinness leaned towards him conspiratorially. ‘On Tuesday a guard in Donegal had to get a home burglary victim to collect him from the station to investigate. Have you ever heard the likes? They only have one car in the station and it was out.’ McGuinness shook his head. ‘Anyway. That’s not important now. This woman —’ he gestured at the trees ‘— we won’t let internal problems beat us on this one, eh, Tom?’
*
When they arrived at the hollow, two pathology assistants were examining the nails in the woman’s hands, working out how to prise them from the tree with the hands still intact. McGuinness took in the scene and instantly spun round to escape it.
‘Blessed Virgin, Mother of the Divine!’ He made the sign of the cross, a reaction appropriate to a man of his generation, albeit inappropriate given the victim’s circumstances.
Tom could hear Emmet yelling after them, ‘This isn’t a bloody tourist trail!’
‘My God, Tom. What if a child had run down here and seen that?’
Ellie was walking towards them with plastic evidence bags destined for the lab.
‘Anything?’ Tom asked.
She shrugged. ‘It’s a public area. Any or none of this could be relevant. You do know what this place is known for, don’t you?’
Tom looked at McGuinness, and they both shook their heads.
Ellie raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s a notorious rent boy run. This is where they bring their customers.’
‘You’re joking,’ Tom choked. ‘How do you know that?’
‘I thought everyone knew that. But, you know, we are stationed just a mile or two up the road.’
The Technical Bureau was located in Garda Headquarters, which sat just inside the North Circular Road entrance to the park – its ‘
back garden’.
‘So, there’s no doubt she would have been found quickly,’ Tom said.
Sean McGuinness shook his head. ‘Barbaric. That’s the only word for this. We’re dealing with an animal. And speaking of . . . no one is to talk to that pack of rabid dogs at the cordon. We’ll do a press conference later when we’ve established some facts.’
Chapter 5
By the time they arrived at the garda station in Blanchardstown village, an incident room had been designated. As head of the murder squad, Tom was generally based in Harcourt Street on Dublin’s south side, but the place tended to be overrun with activity on any given day. When possible, he moved his team to the station closest to their most recent crime scene. Conveniently for him, Blanchardstown was near his home and a location to which he was accustomed.
He was gingerly sipping an insipid black liquid when Ray came in carrying two polystyrene cups from the Bistro, their favourite restaurant in the village.
‘Oh. You’ve already got coffee.’
‘That’s stretching it.’ Tom extended his hand gratefully for the fresh cup. In his book, instant coffee was an affront to humanity. If you weren’t willing to grind good quality beans and preheat the milk, then you were as well getting your caffeine from a can of Coke.
‘More instructions from the chief?’ Ray indicated the phone in Tom’s other hand.
‘Yes. He wants this solved in time for the evening news.’
Before the hour was out the room was full. Those detectives who had visited the crime scene that morning were joined by four more team members and by the station’s sergeant, Ian Kelly – affectionately nicknamed ‘Hairy’ by his friends, a tribute to his completely bald head.
Ian began arranging the photos sent over by the crime scene unit. The shots captured every gruesome detail of the woman’s injuries. Even the seasoned detectives in the room found the images repellant.
‘Okay, let’s start,’ Tom said. ‘It’s our job to discover this woman’s story. Who is she? Who did this to her? Why?’
Tom paused. He was conscious that the men and women in the room were desperate for the Christmas break. It had been a long and punishing year.
‘You are the most talented detectives in the force. You know this. That’s why you’re in the murder squad. We’re going to have our work cut out for us here, but I couldn’t ask for a better team.’
‘There’s no one else to ask for,’ Ray snorted.
The others laughed.
The inspector smiled. ‘It’s true. This is going to take over our lives for the foreseeable, but at least McGuinness has moved our ongoing cases sideways. This is top priority.’
He looked at Michael as he said this, and thought of his young wife at home, mourning the loss of her baby. Should he be here at all?
Michael caught his superior’s appraising look. He needed to be here so badly he couldn’t put it into words.
This was awful, but it was someone else’s awful. It wasn’t his loss. It wasn’t the pain that racked him every night as Anne lay on the far side of their bed, her stomach empty, aching for a baby that was no more.
His colleagues knew of their loss. They didn’t know the couple had been trying for a baby for five years now and that this was the first time they’d progressed beyond the magic twelve-week mark. Eighteen weeks and it still ended up as a bloody tragedy.
Michael’s face must have betrayed his desperation because Tom held his gaze only briefly before moving on.
‘All right. What do we have?’
Ray stood up awkwardly. Being the centre of attention always made him nervous.
At that moment, the meeting-room door opened and a young guard came in wheeling a trolley of food.
‘My apologies, Ray,’ Tom said. ‘I had lunch sent for. It will be a long day.’
The detective sergeant wanted to get his piece over with, but the rest of the team looked grateful. A couple had been glancing anxiously at the clock, wondering if their stomachs were going to start rumbling.
Even better, Tom had ordered the sandwiches and drinks from the Bistro.
Satisfied that everyone in the team had food to hand, and waiting until Ray had taken a particularly large bite of his sandwich, the inspector called the room to order.
His deputy almost choked. The rest of the team, with no onus on them to speak, chewed happily and watched, amused, as Ray attempted to swallow the mouthful.
That would distract him from the nerves, Tom thought.
What an infuriating old git, Ray thought.
‘Okay,’ he eventually managed, taking a deep breath. ‘The good news is the pathology office have bumped this above everything else and they’re performing the autopsy today. From their preliminary examination, they’ve noted the victim’s estimated age at mid to late seventies. They’re already suggesting the six stab wounds she received may have come from a regular kitchen knife. They won’t confirm that yet. The same weapon was likely used to cut out her tongue. She was alive for that, but they believe she was already dead when the words were gouged into her chest and she was crucified.’
The detectives who hadn’t been at the scene that morning gasped at the tongue news and, to a man and woman, their eyes flew back to the photos on the wall, searching for visual proof of the heinous act. Those with less strong stomachs discreetly placed sandwiches back on paper plates.
Ray cleared his throat again. ‘Approximate time of death is yesterday, Thursday morning, 11 a.m. They haven’t found anything as of yet on her body to indicate DNA from her attacker. There are no broken fingernails, nothing to demonstrate she defended herself. More on that in a bit. The Tech Bureau has a lot of material from the scene to go through but they’re not sure any of it will be relevant.’
Ray looked down at his notes. ‘The pathologist says it looks like she was hit on the back of the head with a blunt object. There are no noticeable fibres in the head wound so he suspects some kind of metal implement, maybe aluminium.’
The room collectively winced, imagining the cracking sound the weapon would have made as it connected with the elderly woman’s head.
‘The perpetrator took a risk because a more forceful blow would have caused internal bleeding and could have killed her. Pathology found patterned ligature marks on her arms and legs, which indicate she was tied up at some point, maybe to a chair. So, if she regained consciousness that may explain the absence of defensive wounds on the body. They also found some lacerations to her right hand, caused by glass fragments.’
Ray wiped the sheen of perspiration from his brow. He could run ten kilometres and hardly break a sweat, but standing in front of a room of people to talk was a pressure like no other.
‘They can’t confirm exactly when she was brought to the park. The cold weather complicates their calculations. By the time we got to her, all night, obviously. Pathology suggests she was moved there on Thursday evening.
‘Finally, as you know, pathologists don’t theorize lightly, but our guy is willing to speculate that the first stab wound to the heart, perhaps in combination with the mutilation of the tongue, caused a myocardial infarction – a heart attack. That’s probably what actually killed her, but he won’t have confirmation until he does the full post-mortem.’
The room was silent.
Ray nodded at Tom, who stood up.
‘Okay, folks. Here’s our problem. We don’t know who she is, why she was murdered, where she was murdered, or by whom. So, absolutely nothing, basically. This one is a standing start, I’m afraid.
‘Our victim’s identity is a priority. We’ll do a press conference this afternoon and appeal for witnesses. The body was left in the Phoenix Park; there must be someone who saw something. And I want that anonymous caller—’
‘Sir, what is the writing about?’ Michael interjected.
‘There’s clearly a religious subtext, with the crucifixion,’ Laura offered.
‘Maybe there’s some kind of satanic element?’ Ian speculated. ‘
I can’t recall anything like that happening before in Ireland, though. Don’t the satanists use an upside-down crucifix?’ Ian cocked his head slightly to the left as he looked at the picture of the dead woman, as though imagining her upside down.
Laura stared at him, appalled.
‘Why was she left in the park?’ asked one of the other detectives, Bridget. ‘That wooded area is a bit off the beaten track but is still accessible. He could have brought her up to the Dublin Mountains and she might never have been found.’
‘He wanted her found,’ Tom answered. ‘We’ve been told the area is a rent boy haunt, so it’s out of the way but in use. Whoever hung her there must have worked fast, but the killer still risked being caught. What I’m wondering is why the tongue? What is the murderer telling us – that he’s silenced her for ever? That she was a liar?’
‘Does there have to be a reason for torture?’ Michael asked. ‘He could have cut her tongue out to stop her screaming.’
Tom shook his head, unable to rationalize the cruel act.
The inspector brought the meeting to an end by giving the team designated tasks. As the officers filed from the room, he turned to Ray.
‘What time did it start raining yesterday?’
‘About three. It was steady all day. I know, I was out running in it.’
Tom sighed. With rain, the park could have been deserted on Thursday evening, especially off road.
‘Let’s get a photofit ready in case nothing turns up in missing persons,’ he said.
‘I presume it will be us two telling the family?’
‘Yes. If we can find any,’ Tom grimaced.
What would be worse? he wondered.
To tell a family, or there to be no family?
Chapter 6
Tom looked at the number and address he’d written down. ‘Are you sure? The anonymous caller rang from his landline?’
‘Of course we’re sure. Anyone could have tracked it down. We told your detective that.’ The subtext being, don’t waste our time with such elementary procedural queries.