Raw Bone

by Scott Thornley

  MacNeice pulled the latex gloves out of his jacket pocket. “I do.”

  “Oh come now,” Richardson said, knowing that MacNeice did not like to touch the dead. “Disassociate, detective. She won’t mind.”

  As the coroner held the head and shoulders, MacNeice took the lower back and buttocks. “On two,” Richardson said, and they moved her onto her side. There was an ominous squishing sound that made Aziz gulp.

  “Yes, a bit wodgy that,” Richardson said. “It’s her internal organs. Her lungs have liquefied, and everything else has turned to aspic—that’s “jelly” to you, Mac. It’s all being held together by this rather lovely skin.”

  MacNeice leaned closer, surveying her from her armpit to her calves.

  “What do you see?”

  “It looks like there’s a very faint spiralling.”

  “She may have been wrapped up in that nylon rope.” Richardson moved her hands like she was winding it around her. “I’ll know more when I get her on the table.”

  “Have you looked at her teeth?” MacNeice asked.

  “I have and they’re like the rest of her, undamaged, unaltered.” On her own, Richardson eased the body down onto its back. “If you’ll give me three days, I’ll complete the post-mortem—but don’t get your hopes up. What time hasn’t done, the water has.” She laid a hand gently on the cold shoulder.

  “How old do you think she was, and do you have any idea how long she was down there?” Aziz asked.

  Richardson stared at the face. “Mid- to late-twenties. And I’m guessing three months.” She closed her bag and stood up.

  Aziz turned to MacNeice, taking out her camera. “I’ll shoot those knots around her ankles, the bruising on her neck, and the anchor—anything else?”

  “Her hands and face.”

  MacNeice followed Richardson outside. “Thank you for coming, Mary. Call me if you discover anything new.”

  “Of course.” Richardson glanced once at the bay, then walked off to her car.

  The Winston’s men rolled the stainless steel gurney across the gravel and stopped next to the tent. Several minutes later they emerged, the body inside a black plastic bag that was strapped down and covered neatly with a deep burgundy blanket. Her exit from Cootes Paradise was much more dignified than her entrance.

  As MacNeice and Aziz walked toward the Chevy, Vertesi came running down the hill, the sides of his unbuttoned overcoat flapping behind him. MacNeice said, “Here’s a question for you, Aziz: What’s wodgy?”

  “I knew you’d ask. It’s ancient English slang … I’m not sure, but I think it means ‘bulgy’ or ‘lumpy.’ ”

  “Here’s another one for you … ”

  “Remember, Mac, I’m not really a Brit. I only lived there a while.”

  “Can you recall any missing persons reports from three or four months ago that fit this woman’s description?”

  “Nothing remotely close … only a couple of teens, I think.”

  Vertesi came to a stop in front of them, his olive skin flushed almost rosy. “Man, I should’ve been doing that earlier when I was freezing—it feels good to run.” He told them he’d spoken to the residents of several houses; no one remembered anything. But he’d found out there were often boat parties in the small bay, which got loud and out of hand. “I don’t understand why someone would dump her here—why not in the middle of the bay, or a mile or two out in the lake?”

  “Good question.”

  They stood together, looking out at the water. The largest of the ice slabs was nudging the west shore; the others drifted aimlessly out in the bay. On the gravel, the pieces that had encased the dead woman’s hand now looked like dirty Styrofoam.

  A quiet rain began to fall, and within a minute or so the city disappeared as the surface of the bay came alive, dancing in the downpour.

  “I’ll finish up here,” Vertesi said, buttoning up his overcoat. “No sense all of us getting soaked. I’ll see you at Division.”

  Beside him in the passenger seat, Aziz reviewed the images on her point-and-shoot as he drove. When she was done, she said, “I’ve got some shots of her face that Ryan can retouch. Once he fixes the discoloration and replaces her hair with something like its original colour, we’ll be able to circulate them to see if we can get an ID. Maybe he can help with the knots too. I’ve got several good shots of those.” She glanced at MacNeice, then back at the images on the screen. “Is your intuition speaking to you?”

  “No, though I’m certain those knots are whispering something. When firefighters and marine unit cops can’t recognize them, that’s interesting. Thugs tie thuggish knots—this was craftsmanship. I think the person who tied them didn’t think about it either: that knot came as naturally to him as tying his shoes.”

  When they got back, Ryan was alone in the cubicle where he had become a permanent fixture, serving the computer research needs of every homicide detective in the city. Though currently assigned to Swetsky and Williams on the double murder of an elderly couple in their home on Mud Street, he had a reputation for saying yes to every request. On the fabric wall above his computer was a little sign that looked like a ’60s Jefferson Airplane poster in hot pink, electric blue, and black, with psychedelic lettering that hadn’t been seen in his lifetime: “TAKE ON MORE.”

  “Ryan, find out everything you can about the knots Aziz has shots of. What they’re called and especially who uses them. And we need multiple prints of a decent portrait of the deceased woman as quick as you can manage,” MacNeice said, taking off his coat.

  He walked over to the empty whiteboard. “Someone from somewhere else tied those knots. Just to get things going, let’s imagine he arrived on a lake freighter; he has time to kill, he rents a boat and takes a woman for a ride in late November or early December. He comes back, she doesn’t.”

  Tap, tap, tap—Ryan’s fast fingers hammered out a bebop rhythm that continued for a minute and then paused. “Constrictor knots,” he said, “once common in the UK, not often used today because they’re very difficult to untie. Oystermen used constrictor knots for binding sacks of oysters and cockles, either to keep them from falling out of the sack or being stolen.” Ryan printed photos of the knots from the camera and his online source and compared them, then nodded—a dead match.

  The images of the woman and anchor followed; he passed the lot to MacNeice, who taped them to the whiteboard. He always found this first posting difficult. The young woman was beyond shame now, but she was exposed—naked and taped to a whiteboard—next to the exotic knots and the anchor that had held her on the bottom of a brown-water bay for months.

  “We can begin by checking boat rentals from the local marinas,” Aziz said.

  MacNeice nodded. “Let’s also check out the Royal Dundurn Yacht Club. Aziz, does she look like she’s from Dundurn?”

  “Do I?” Aziz asked, smiling up at him.

  “Not what I meant,” said MacNeice. “She just looks to me slightly out of place, or maybe time.”

  “Meaning, anyone her age from around here would probably have a tattoo of a butterfly, a bluebird or a dolphin, painted fingernails and toenails, piercings and a bikini wax job.”

  “Exactly. Maybe she’s from somewhere tattoos and piercings aren’t the fashion.”

  “You mean Mennonite or Mormon communities?”

  MacNeice shrugged and continued to study the face.

  By day’s end MacNeice and Aziz had shown Ryan’s retouched photographs of the woman, the anchor and a foot-long piece of the nylon line at every marina in the area. Only one person, the owner of Dockyards Marine Supply, could recall an anchor being sold in late November. The sale was notable because most pleasure craft were out of the water for the winter.

  He agreed to pull the receipt records by the next day but cautioned Aziz that pick-n-go sales were often paid for in cash, so the only record might be the inventory or a clerk’s memory. As far as the nylon line was concerned, every marina sold the same nylon line, “like chewing g
um at the corner store,” the owner said.

  Vertesi had headed for the yacht club. As he walked toward its entrance, he became certain that whatever the attraction of the Royal Dundurn Yacht Club was, it wasn’t the building. The wide and low white aluminum facade, with its white picket fence perched on top—an attempt to mask the facility’s heating and air conditioning units—would double quite nicely as an industrial facility for the manufacture of fast food placemats. Nonetheless, out front there was a proper nautical flag mast, while the marina and Dundurn Bay lay beyond. And, of course, the power of the name to inspire association not just with the city’s yacht set but the very Age of Sail had to be a strong draw.

  When he presented a photo of the dead woman to Melody Chapman, the young facility manager, she tilted her head this way and that, as if the tumblers of recognition might fall into place with a little agitation, but in the end she shook her head. “With the economy being so bad though, some members do rent out their boats for cash.” She glanced through the window as if she might catch one doing so at the moment. “We frown on it, but the best we can do is insist that those renters are not allowed to use the facilities—not even the washrooms—unless they’re coming into the Nautical Pub for lunch.”

  “Is it okay if I walk around and see if anyone else might have noticed something?” Vertesi asked.

  “Of course,” Chapman said, “though not that many people are around yet. You have to be pretty committed to go out on the water this early in the year.”

  She was right, the place was deserted. Then Vertesi spotted Ernie Reese, the club’s ancient gas jockey, checking the pumps. Reese looked at the photo for a long moment but then shook his head, saying he’d never seen her. Vertesi asked him if there were boats at the RDYC that would take runs into Cootes Paradise Bay across the way, especially late in the season.

  The old man looked out to the far shoreline, rubbed his chin and delivered a response that identified him as a born and bred Brightside north-ender. “Strictly speaking, eh—no fuckin’ way—unless you’re talking a tin outboard or one of them dinghies or inflatables that’ll take ya anywheres, not in style eh, but shit. Mind—we don’t see mucha that in here, eh.”

  Chapter 3

  After sending Aziz back to Division, MacNeice decided to make a final stop in the north end. Somewhat wearily, he climbed the stairs to the Block and Tackle Bar, overlooking the bay at the corner of Bay and Burlington Street. Built in the 1880s, the BTB was originally a roadhouse where lake sailors and merchantmen could have a pint and a room for two dollars a night.

  It smelled of spilt beer and suffered a music mix that a banner proclaimed as “Where Authentic Celtic Meets New-World Country.” Judging by the customers—none of whom looked like sailors, Celtic, country or otherwise—they were more likely lured in by a sign declaring, “The lowest on-tap price-per-pint in the fair city of Dundurn.”

  The owner, William Terence Byrne—also known as BTB—was standing on the porch with his arms crossed. After MacNeice introduced himself, Byrne led him into his back office, a crowded little affair that boasted more cases of Guinness than functioning office space. There was, however, a roll-top desk with three chairs. As the owner shoved the paperwork from the desk onto one of the cases, he eyed the detective. “I know you from the TV. You’re DS MacNeice, if I’m right.”

  MacNeice nodded and put the manila envelope containing the photo of the dead woman on the desk, resting his hand on top of it. He asked about the bar and the rooms for let upstairs.

  “Well, as you can see,” Byrne said, “it’s a humble but authentic Irish pub, and some of them fellers takes rooms from time to time when their women chuck ’em out.” He glanced at the envelope. “If you got somethin’ on one of my roomers in that envelope, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. I’ve never thought they could do anything to get arrested, let alone warrant a visit from the murder squad. Hell, halfa them boys don’t have teeth and the other half can’t see for Jesus, and all of them are deef, so far as I know—you heard how loud the music is in there. And they like it that way. It gets turned down at eleven because of the neighbours and the six rooms upstairs, which I keep clean and tidy.”

  MacNeice enjoyed the brogue. “How long have you been here?”

  “You mean here at BTB, in Dundurn or Canada?”

  “All three.”

  Byrne cracked open the case beside him and pulled out a tall, slim can of Guinness stout. “You want one, or you can’t, I suppose, ’cause yer on duty.”

  “Correct.”

  He popped the can. “I’ve been in Canada since 2006. I sold the family farm when me ma died, twelve hectares near Dublin. Made a small fortune … well, not in North American terms, no.” He took a long swig of the dark liquid and licked the caramel foam off his lip. MacNeice noticed the downturned lines on either side of his mouth, how they contrasted with the laugh lines heading toward his temples. “Truth be told, I was had by a developer who wanted to do a working-class housing estate. But then, call it the ‘luck of,’ I got out just at the right time, ’cause the economy tanked. The developer decamped to Majorca just ahead of a lynching by the buyers he’d defaulted on.”

  “So why here?” MacNeice asked, as he continued to study the man. Judging by the yellow stains on the inside of his middle and forefingers, he was a right-handed heavy smoker—which would explain why he’d been standing on the porch without a jacket, even though there was a red down-filled coat on the back of the door. Shorter than medium height, he was too slender for his own good, with the pinkish complexion of someone whose body was close to mutiny due to decades of abuse. If his body wasn’t speaking to him, Byrne’s eyes should have—the whites were almost yellow and that wasn’t a trick of the lighting.

  “Well, I could have gone to America or Australia, but to my mind they’re both full of macho men or fundamentalist Christians. So I chose Canada.” He said he landed in Dundurn and then bought the bar, which was a dump. But he’d been slowly investing in it, hoping that the rumour of Dundurn’s turnaround would soon come true. He took another drink, wiping his mouth with his hand. Then he leaned to tap the edge of the envelope. “Okay, your turn, detective.”

  “Fair enough.” MacNeice picked up the envelope. “The woman whose photo I’m about to show you died, we believe, about three months ago, in late November or early to mid-December. I want to know if she may have been to your bar, or possibly rented a room upstairs.”

  “You sayin’ she was a tramp and this is a flophouse?” He squared his shoulders in mock offence.

  MacNeice put the photocopy on the desk in front of Byrne. “Not at all. I believe she may have been passing through, off a ship or off the highway.”

  Byrne’s shoulders relaxed and he picked the photo up, studying it closely. “She’s pretty—well, she was pretty,” he said, meeting MacNeice’s eyes. “What happened to her?”

  “All I’m prepared to say at the moment is that her death is suspicious.”

  Byrne put the photocopy on the desk and ran the fingers of his right hand tenderly over her face.

  “So you do recognize her.”

  “Me, ah, no, I can’t say I’ve ever seen her before. No. She was pretty, that’s all. It’s a shame.” He cleared his throat, then cleared it again and looked at MacNeice. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “Yes, you can give me the desk register for the rooms upstairs for November and December of last year. I assume you do keep records?”

  “Yeah, well of course, I gotta keep records like I gotta keep the kitchen clean.” He put his hands on both thighs as if he was about to stand, but then didn’t.

  MacNeice picked up the photograph and held it in front of Byrne again. “You’re quite sure you’ve never seen this woman?”

  “I haven’t seen her before.” He picked up the can of stout.

  “I’ll need your written consent to remove the records from the premises, or I can come back with a warrant for them.”

  Byrne began shoving pap
ers around on the desk and then opened the drawers before he stood to look about the clutter as if for an answer. “The registers are somewhere in here … so, if it’s all the same to you, come back tomorrow with a warrant like, and I’ll give ’em to ya. Is that okay with you?”

  “It is.” MacNeice put the photocopy in the envelope and stood up. “Not that I’m accusing you of anything, but if those records are missing, or if they’ve been altered even in the slightest, I will be prepared to have you charged with tampering, and trust me, you won’t want that to happen.”

  At the door MacNeice hesitated, then took out his cellphone. “I’ll take your cellphone number in case I have to call.” He held the phone up, waiting.

  Byrne gave him the number.

  MacNeice punched it in and pressed the green button. A moment later, Byrne’s phone rang.

  “Just checkin’ on me, I see, detective,” said Byrne.

  MacNeice met the man’s eyes. “I’ll be here with the warrant at eight tomorrow morning.”

  Walking back to the Chevy, MacNeice thought about Byrne’s response to the photograph. While it may have been an absent-minded gesture, or just part of the man’s theatrics, he hadn’t reacted the way one would if the face meant nothing. Glancing back at the BTB, MacNeice couldn’t picture that young woman walking in there for a beer, let alone to rent a room. But, in the absence of evidence, one is left with intuition: a hand’s gentle passage across a photograph of a beautiful face would suffice for the moment.

  In the Chevy MacNeice took a deep breath and took out the photograph. Ryan had done an admirable job. Though black and white, he’d recreated the porcelain skin of her face and the gentle curve of her cheekbones framed by her hair. She looked like she’d just closed her eyes and was about to open them and smile. MacNeice put the photo back in the envelope. He called Ryan and asked him to find the residential address for Byrne. It turned out that Byrne owned a small cottage just a few blocks south of the bar.

  MacNeice called Deputy Chief Wallace to fill him in and to ask for a warrant for the records, another to search the bar and Byrne’s residence, and wiretaps on Byrne’s cellphone and the land lines of the bar and home. And, while he was at it, unmarked surveillance on the bar.