McConigle moves closer. ‘What are they?’ She peers at the two circular brown marks on Anna’s neck which Hawthorne is pointing out.
‘I saw a set just like this after a death-in-custody case when I worked in Northern Ireland,’ he says. ‘Care to venture a guess?’
‘A vampire?’ McConigle jokes.
Sexton is fixated by the marks. He steps forward, staring at them. ‘It’s a bloody Taser,’ he tells McConigle. ‘Someone used a stun gun on her.’
39
Sexton uses queasiness as an excuse to escape the autopsy early. He has to get away, but not because he’s revolted by the body on the slab. If some psychopath had used a Taser on Anna, the weapon would have hijacked her body’s central nervous system and, with a zap of electricity, flooded her nerve endings with a pulse to override the brain’s signals, completely disabling her muscle control. Could it have had anything to do with what Lucy told him about hiring a hitman? Someone used an overwhelming force to disable Anna, and now she’s dead. He needs to meet the one person who might be able to tell him exactly how Lucy came to crash her car.
After phoning Foxy to get Tim McMenamy’s number, he makes a hasty arrangement on the phone to meet the lorry driver Lucy smashed into. If anyone can tell him if Lucy had a death wish, or was just an inexperienced driver, it will be him. Something else has occurred to Sexton that he wants to rule in or out. Perhaps Lucy hired a hitman because she had failed in her first suicide bid. Perhaps his target was his own client, Lucy, and his job to make sure she died. Perhaps this is the reason for the car crash. It’s a long shot, but if it is the case, whatever McMenamy witnessed will be crucial. And Sexton has no other leads.
Parking up in Dublin Port, he watches the small, wiry man in his forties with a shock of frizzy hair, and a neck brace that doesn’t impede him in jumping from the cabin of an 18-wheeler like he is Frankie Dettori on one of his flying dismounts. Tim McMenamy is wearing faded jeans, steel-capped boots and a hoodie with a tight-necked T-shirt underneath. When he climbs into the passenger seat of Sexton’s squad car, the support on his neck doesn’t prevent him twisting to face Sexton either.
‘Drive,’ McMenamy states as he pulls the door shut.
‘What’s wrong with here?’ Sexton asks, looking around.
‘The guys are trying to kip,’ McMenamy says. ‘You’ll make them nervous.’
Sexton surveys the containers on the vehicles. ‘I’m hardly Customs and Excise.’
‘Nah, it’s not that,’ McMenamy says, nodding his head to the left.
Sexton looks past him and sees a middle-aged woman in a very short red skirt and pair of white stilettos mincing off towards a Portaloo. He guns the engine and steers back out on to the quays, driving to a spot where he can pull in next to the Liffey.
McMenamy has lit a roll-up in the meantime and is puffing away. Sexton pops his e-fag in his mouth and inhales the tobacco smoke, making the passenger guffaw. ‘Like I told you on the phone, you’re lucky you got me at all,’ he tells Sexton. ‘I’m on my way to the Chunnel.’
‘Truck not badly damaged in the crash then,’ Sexton answers.
‘It’d take a tank.’
‘I need to know exactly what you saw the night of the crash,’ Sexton explains. ‘Was she driving erratically, or did the car suddenly spin out of control?’
‘Where do you want me to start? She was on the wrong side of the bloody road for one. I just came around the corner and she was there, no lights on or anything,’ McMenamy says, straightening his back and reaching into his bum pocket to take out a set of battered cards, all with solicitors’ names and numbers on them. They all have some variation of ‘specializes in personal injuries – no win, no fee’ along the bottom. ‘Do I need any of them for this? They’ve all been in touch.’
Sexton shakes his head. ‘I just wanted to chat before things get too formal, find out how you’re doing, but clearly there’s not a bother.’
‘Life goes on. I still have to pay the bills … Doesn’t mean I’m not in agony … going to need injections for the pain.’
‘You should see Lucy.’
‘Who?’
‘The kid you crashed into,’ Sexton says flatly.
‘Am I supposed to feel sorry for her? She could have killed someone.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s a pity she didn’t,’ Sexton says with conviction.
‘What does that mean?’ McMenamy asks.
‘Maybe she’d be better off dead.’
McMenamy shrugs. ‘Shit happens.’
Sexton pushes his door open and paces around to the passenger door, which he pulls open. Grabbing McMenamy by the neck brace, he reefs him out and slams him against the side of the car. He picks the cigarette from the trucker’s mouth and flicks it away, holding him under the chin so his face is twisted against the force.
McMenamy groans.
‘“Shit happens,” is that all you can say?’ Sexton hisses. ‘She’s fourteen years old and she can’t walk, talk or wipe her own arse any more. You make me sick.’
McMenamy knees him in the balls and Sexton winces, hunching over. McMenamy repositions the brace. ‘It’s not about the money. I don’t want anyone’s blood money. I’m going to donate anything I get to charity, if you must know.’
Sexton’s grip loosens.
McMenamy jabs a finger into Sexton’s chest. ‘You want to know why? I had a six-year-old kid once, Leah. I could tell you about her mother, but that’s a whole other story. All you need to know is that for six years it was just me and her – a team, a family.’ He starts to cough to stop his voice wobbling. ‘She was never any trouble … ate like a bird … tiny little portions would fill her … Full of energy she was, always dancing and playing. We were in the park on her last day. Her ball flew over the railings and on to the road. I told her I’d get it, but she squeezed out between the rails. She was mown down by a drunk driver. Three months my angel spent in intensive care before they made me turn the life support off. They told me from day one there was no brain-stem activity but I just wanted to keep her warm for as long as I could before they put her in the ground.
‘The driver was a woman, married to some rich businessman, someone told me. She staggered out of the car in a fur coat, looked at my baby lying in front of the car and said, “I’ll pay you whatever you want not to call the Gardaí.” I can still smell the drink from her.’
He makes a gagging noise, and then continues to talk through the tears and snot as he wipes them on the back of his sleeve. ‘It didn’t make any difference that I didn’t take Lady Muck up on her offer. The case never went to court. Nobody ever told me that the case had stopped, let alone why. My baby’s life was worth nothing, as far as the system was concerned.
‘You want to know why I’m still driving the truck? I got to keep going so I don’t start thinking. That girl – Lucy – she was too young to be behind a wheel. She was wearing too much make-up and was dressed like a tart. She thought rules were for the rest of us. And yeah, she stank of drink too. Like I already said, it was a miracle the only person she hurt was herself.’
Sexton exhales. ‘Lucy didn’t kill your daughter, mate. It’s touch and go as to whether she will make it too.’
‘She could have killed someone.’
‘Maybe she wanted to kill herself,’ Sexton says.
‘Wearing those clothes? In that car? Not on your Nelly. She was just a spoilt little rich kid showing off in front of her pal. Well, I’m not letting her get away with it.’
Sexton tilts his head. ‘A pal? Was someone else in the car?’
‘Yeah, there was a girl in the passenger seat.’
‘Can you describe her?’
‘That’s easy. She was bald as an egg.’
Melissa. Sexton draws a deep breath. ‘Where did she go?’
McMenamy looks confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Lucy was the only one taken to the hospital. Are you sure you saw the other girl?’
‘Yeah, I looked in on t
hem. They were both unconscious, but looked like they were OK. I left them to try and get help because I couldn’t get a signal on the phone. It took me a few minutes to flag down a car – nobody wanted to stop – but when a motorist eventually did, we had to drive for ten minutes before we could get the phone to work. I didn’t go back to the scene. The controller told me to wait where I was for the ambulance.’
‘Melissa must have legged it then …’ Sexton says. ‘Back to the wood.’
40
Sexton glances at a text from McConigle as he arrives back at the station. He’s five minutes late for a case conference she organized for after Anna’s autopsy. He knows he will have to tell her that Melissa and Lucy were together in the car on the night of the crash. But Lucy’s blinked message he still wants to keep to himself. The kid’s in enough trouble. She and he have a lot in common. The force is full of people who can’t think outside the box, the P.C. brigade who think all ‘t’s’ have to be crossed and all ‘i’s’ dotted. It’s bullshit. Sitting in front of a complete stranger telling her intimate details about yourself, because she has certain qualifications, and you fucked up, is not natural. Neither is prosecuting a kid who fucked up. It’s what kids do. It’s what human beings do.
But Sexton is worried about Lucy more since talking to McMenamy. Why would Melissa have fled from the car after the crash? Why would she go to the wood and take her own life, having survived the smash? But if someone brought her there, it meant the investigation should be ratcheted up to a full-scale murder inquiry. It’s the only explanation for her fleeing the scene and not waiting to see if Lucy, who was so badly hurt, had survived. What, or who, had Melissa been running from? Did she have the same marks on her neck as Anna? And were the girls being chased when Lucy crashed?
Sexton stops in his tracks to watch the chief’s son, Rory, being helped out of the back of a squad car by a uniform, who does not let go of the top of his arm as he walks Rory inside.
‘What’s that about?’ Sexton asks Foxy once he gets inside. ‘Skateboarding on the pavement, was he?’
Foxy is behind the public counter. ‘The father of one of the kids affected by the suicide spate rang to say Rory had arrived on his doorstep, inveigled his way in and taken some of her possessions. Rory denied taking anything when we found him nearby.’
‘Which kid?’ Sexton asks.
‘Lucy something or other,’ Foxy says. He looks at Sexton from under his eyebrows. ‘The chief is addressing the conference upstairs, by the way.’
Sexton checks him out to see if he means what he thinks he means, registers his expression and then hurries for the stairs. If the chief is sitting in, it means he’s going to allocate more resources, which must mean there’s been a big development.
Upstairs in the detective unit, twenty-odd officers have gathered in front of the chief, who is in mid-flight.
‘As a result, the Minister has asked me to widen the investigation, and that’s what I intend doing …’
Out of breath, Sexton nudges the arm of an officer standing alongside, whispering, ‘What’s this about?’
‘They think there might be something more sinister about the kids’ deaths.’
‘What?’
Sexton strains to see the chief. He notices Rory in the door of his mother’s office, watching through the glass, and Jo is there too – her back to them – speaking on the phone.
‘Good of you to join us, Sexton,’ the chief says, deadpan. ‘As I was saying, Melissa Brockle’s parents made a criminal complaint that their daughter was being bullied. They noticed that clothing Melissa was wearing at the time of her death was covered with animal hairs, and they sent it for analysis, because Melissa would have had no reason to be around animals. She was, apparently, allergic to dogs and cats. The lab the Brockles contracted also noted the presence of some minute blood stains on her clothing, missed at the time of her death, or she’d have been given a PM. As the blood did not correlate with any injury on the body, although she had suffered some bruising around her ribs …’ – From the crash probably, Sexton realizes – ‘We’ve been in touch with Melissa’s parents, who are adamant this is information of significance. The Justice Minister wants us to rigorously pursue it in case there is something else involved in these deaths, in case we are talking about some kind of cult ritual.’
‘Yeah, ’cos it’s his constituency,’ someone shouts.
‘That’s your cynical mind,’ the chief says with a grin. ‘In any event, we now have two members of the Cabinet taking an active interest in this case between Sexton’s report for the Minister of Children, and now this. We need to find out if there is some sinister aspect to what is starting to look like a suicide club,’ he adds. ‘McConigle, if you’d like to take over from here.’
McConigle walks over to the chief and turns to face the team, looking grave. She crosses her arms. ‘If there is a reason why these children have been taking their own lives, we need to find it. If someone has been using force – mental or physical – or influence of any kind to overpower them, or overwhelm them, it is going to give the parents some answers, where now they have none …’ She becomes distracted by the sound of her phone, which has trilled to life.
‘Sorry, I’ve got to take this. It’s the Prof, probably with some toxicology results.’
As she puts the phone to her ear, the officers start to discuss Monday’s football match.
Sexton doesn’t take his eyes off McConigle. The Prof has come up with something of interest. He can see it in the way her back has tensed.
‘What does it mean?’ he lip-reads her saying over the din. After a pause, she nods and thanks the pathologist, ends the call and sticks the phone in the back pocket of her jeans. Her expression changes as she tries to get the lads’ attention, but their spirits are too high now. Then McConigle shouts, ‘Oi!’, which gets their attention.
‘There was a case in Canada that I think we can learn from.’ She paces over to her desk and riffles through some paperwork until she finds what she’s looking for. ‘It’s an extract from a blog by the father of a seventeen-year-old girl – Rehtaeh Parsons – from Nova Scotia, who took her own life in April,’ she says, glancing from a sheet of paper to the assembled. ‘The kid was gang-raped by four teenage boys at a house party. The boys photographed her being raped and vomiting while it happened, and posted the images on Facebook. The rapist can be seen giving the thumbs up to the camera at the time. The victim was bullied, called a slut, and her life made unbearable as a result.’
Sexton crosses his arms as he listens.
‘Her father has an online blog which I think makes some important points. He says about the boys: “Why is it they didn’t just think they would get away with it; they knew they would get away with it? They took photos of it. They posted it on their Facebook walls. They emailed it to God knows who. They shared it with the world as if it was a funny animation.
‘“How is it possible for someone to leave a digital trail like that, yet the Royal Canadian Mounted Police don’t have evidence of a crime? What were they looking for, if photos and bragging weren’t enough?
‘“Numerous people were emailed that photo …”’
McConigle looks up. ‘The point I’m making is that teenagers today, whether in Nova Scotia or here, are digital freaks. We need to shift our focus from a search for fingerprints, footprints, fibre, DNA to IP addresses. We’re looking for someone in cyberspace, in the ether. Every kid nowadays has a Facebook page. That’s how they communicate and how we’re going to crack this case. Any questions?’
Sexton’s finger springs up. ‘What kind of animal did Melissa come into contact with?’
McConigle looks at the chief. She doesn’t appear to know yet either.
‘Oh,’ the chief says, taken unawares. ‘It was a deer, I think. Why?’
Sexton shrugs. ‘Just wondered.’
41
Sexton makes his way to Jo’s office. He needs to breathe. Rory’s face distracts him from the r
evelation that’s left him spinning as he enters the room – that deer in Eric’s bloody back yard! The teen is engaged in some serious eye wiggling to indicate there’s something on his mind that he doesn’t want to tell Sexton in front of Jo.
‘What is it, kid?’ Sexton asks him.
‘What’s going on?’ Jo asks.
‘Rory’s just back from a visit to one of the girls linked to the suicide circle,’ Foxy says, arriving in behind them.
‘He what!’ Jo gasps.
‘Actually, Lucy’s not one of them,’ Rory states. ‘Lucy crashed. You have to hang yourself in the wood to be in the club, it’s kind of a rule …’
‘Jesus,’ Jo says, putting her head in her hands.
‘Did you talk to Lucy?’ Sexton asks. ‘Did you ask her questions? Did she blink back?’
Jo pads her way towards them using the edge of her desk as a guide, and reaches out. Her hand lands on Rory’s dread-locks. She moves it to his back and says, ‘Come on, we’re going home. Now.’
‘Hang on,’ Sexton pleads. ‘I need to find out what Rory knows. Go on. Good lad,’ he coaxes.
‘Lucy was out cold,’ Rory says. ‘She could be dying, for all I know, and if she is, it’s because you didn’t get her out of there when you had the chance.’
‘I don’t believe this,’ Jo says, pushing him on both shoulders.
‘Mum,’ Rory moans, resisting.
‘Go and wait for me in Dad’s car,’ Jo tells him. ‘And as for you,’ she tells Sexton, ‘I’ll deal with you later.’
Rory zips down his hoodie and pulls out a handbag, which he tosses over to Sexton as he heads for the door.
‘It’s Lucy’s,’ he says with a grin. ‘And her journal’s in it.’
Sexton studies the bag from arm’s length and looks from it to Rory. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘I pinched it from her bedroom,’ Rory replies.
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