Darkhouse

by Alex Barclay

  ‘Obviously not that hard,’ she shouted, ‘if Katie got in.’ She let the thought hang there. ‘Oh my God,’ she said suddenly. ‘What was she doing there? What happened to her? Did she fall? Did—’

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ said Brady gently. ‘The State Pathologist—’

  ‘—Dr Lara McClatchie will carry out a post-mortem on the body later today,’ finished Martha. ‘I know the rest of that sentence,’ she sobbed. ‘I hear it on the news. And I think, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that poor family” and now, look at this! I’m the poor family. I’m the poor family.’ Suddenly she jumped up from the sofa and bolted into the hall, grabbing one of Katie’s jackets from the coat stand. She yanked open the front door and staggered into the night. ‘I have to go to her,’ she said desperately. The men were stunned, but O’Connor managed to rush after her. He didn’t need to. Martha was kneeling face down in her garden, hugging Katie’s jacket to her, the drizzling rain falling gently onto her nightdress.

  From nine the following morning, people from the village started to make the trip to the forest, parking their cars where the road had been blocked off and walking as close as they could get to the activity further up the hill. O’Connor had assigned one of the more sombre young guards from Waterford to stand at the cordon, accepting whatever bunches of flowers and teddy bears they wanted to lay near the scene. Once the collection had built up, cameramen and photographers edged forward to get the best shot.

  Richie stood with his back to the station door, rubbing his face furiously. He had stayed with the body most of the night until he was relieved by a guard from Waterford. He turned when he heard footsteps behind him and saw a brunette standing in the doorway. He was taken aback by her height; she was at least six foot. He instinctively looked at her feet. She was wearing flats – khaki trainers with black stripes. He looked back at her face. She was outdoors attractive, with a healthy sallow complexion, thick eyebrows, full lips and no makeup. Her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail.

  ‘We’re not really open,’ said Richie. ‘But if it’s an emergency—’

  She frowned. ‘Hmm. I think it’s gone beyond an emergency,’ she said, her accent West Brit. ‘I’m here about the suspicious—’

  Frank had been trying to move out from behind the counter, but was too slow.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, nodding towards Richie. ‘Good morning, Dr McClatchie. I’m Frank Deegan, the sergeant here.’ He shook her hand, then turned to Richie, ‘This is the State Pathologist. This is Garda Richie Bates.’

  Richie blushed. ‘I’ve—’

  ‘Only ever seen me on TV. I don’t look the same in real life apparently.’ She smiled.

  ‘Uh, yeah.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said.

  ‘You’re very welcome, if that’s the right way of putting it,’ said Frank. ‘Let me bring you up to the scene.’

  ‘Please, call me Lara.’

  Frank guided her outside, past her old black Citroën and into the Ford Focus. He filled her in on the drive. Two news vans had arrived since he had left earlier, their reporters and cameramen loitering outside. Frank drove past and pulled up behind the Technical Bureau van. The first thing they were hit with when they stepped out of the car was the smell of vomit.

  ‘Someone always throws up at the scene,’ said Lara. One of the forensic scientists sidled up to her.

  ‘Actually, that was Alan,’ he said, referring to one of his colleagues, ‘it had nothing to do with the body. He was just on the piss last night.’

  She stifled a laugh, then glanced past him into the van. ‘Can I get my gear?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Over her black trousers and jacket, she pulled on the standard issue XL white suit, which was great for her height, but she’d never want to hit the full width, like some of the chunkier guards. Next came the shoe covers, then gloves and finally she pulled up the hood on the suit to stop her hair getting caught in the branches on the walk through.

  ‘Do you have a bag somewhere?’ asked Frank.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘just this little plastic one in case I need to take anything.’ She held it up. ‘My job is done at the morgue, really.’

  They walked up to the blue and white crime scene tape. The guard there wrote down her name, Frank’s name and the time.

  ‘Who are these other people?’ she asked, looking around her.

  The guard pointed to each one distractedly. ‘They’re a couple of the guys down from the Waterford squad, that’s, uh…actually, that guy’s my cousin, he works with the paper.’ Lara stared at him. Frank led her to the body along the path mapped out with tape, then went straight back to talk to the guard at the entrance.

  Close to the body, another guard was pointing to a footprint while someone called out, ‘That’s fresh. It’s the Mountcannon guard’s print. When himself and the sergeant got here. I wouldn’t worry about it. They said there were none at the scene already.’

  ‘Hello, Alan,’ said Lara to the forensics guy. ‘How was last night?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me,’ he said.

  She looked around. ‘This is dreadful.’

  ‘The crime? Or the fuckwits – excuse my language – stomping around the scene?’ He looked calm, but she knew better.

  ‘Both,’ she said.

  Alan nodded past her. ‘Your man over there’s a journalist, by the way, and he’s got a little camera. So remember not to smile.’

  She twinkled her brown eyes at him. ‘That’s my crime scene smile. Only for the initiated. It’s like your measured fury. So no-one on the news looks at you and thinks: “suspect”; no-one looks at me and thinks “silly woman doing man’s job.”

  Frank watched as Dr McClatchie crouched down beside the body, then stood up and walked slowly around it. Everyone watched her as if after each move, there was a chance she would turn around and say, ‘Right, everyone. The killer is, and you’ll find him—’

  The fact they all knew for definite that there was a killer was not a shock, just another depressing reality for them to face. Frank knew most of the men there had never seen a dead body before. The only bodies he had seen were suicides, the most recent one a fifteen-year-old boy who hanged himself in a neighbour’s barn. Frank had found him – seconds after the boy’s mother had.

  Part of him wanted to stop the whole world from revolving, but more urgently, to stop what was playing out in front of him. The violation of Katie’s privacy was almost unbearable. But he knew that the real violation had happened weeks ago. This part was something that made sense, that had to happen, that was done for the benefit of the victim.

  People shuffled back from the body as Dr McClatchie moved in closer. Two forensic scientists hunkered down beside her. The photographer followed. Piece by piece, they removed the branches and leaves that covered Katie’s torso, stopping to photograph and video each new layer. After two hours, the body was fully revealed and they all stood up stiffly and stepped back.

  Frank watched as bags were tied around the head, hands and feet of the body which was then zipped into a plastic sheath and carried away on a stretcher.

  ‘Any ideas as to cause of death?’ said O’Connor, walking over to Dr McClatchie.

  ‘That, I’ll tell you after I carry out the post-mortem.’ She looked around. ‘Can someone give me a lift back to my car?’

  Duke leaned against the van. The man parked in front of him sat with the window open, listening to the frenzied commentary of a Gaelic football match.

  ‘Come on to fuck, Din, you can get the result later,’ shouted his friend.

  Duke watched them walk towards the entrance to Dromlin woods, bows held low by their side. A large woman in an orange jacket was sitting at a picnic table, a pile of papers in front of her. She smiled at them and handed them pens. When they finished writing, they nodded and she pointed the way. Duke waited. More men arrived and went through the same routine. Some groups walked right through.

  ‘Hi,’ he said to the woman.
‘Din’s gone in ahead with my bow. Can you give me a quick run-through of what’s happenin’?’

  ‘Fourteen by two 3D big game,’ she said. ‘There’s a good twenty of you so far. You’re a friend of Din’s?’

  ‘From the United States,’ said Duke, smiling.

  ‘He’s a great man for the GAA,’ said the woman.

  ‘Sure is,’ said Duke. He had no idea what she meant. He filled out a form and walked into the woods. Groups of archers stood by the trees, adjusting their bows. A man in a waxed jacket was putting up danger signs in the distance.

  ‘They should have had them up hours ago,’ said one man. ‘We haven’t even got the place to ourselves. They’re lettin’ in any Tom, Dick and Harry and we’ll have to wait at some of those targets for them to pass. It’ll take ages.’

  ‘I’m in no rush,’ said a second man, adjusting his compound bow. ‘I’m going for a slash.’ He lay down the bow beside his friend, who was too distracted by the signs to notice Duke grab, quickly and quietly, first the quiver, then the cool, smooth wood of the compound bow. In seconds he appeared through a clearing in the trees, within metres of the van. He put the equipment in the back, then sped away, briefly on the wrong side of the road.

  The post-mortem room in Waterford Regional Hospital was the same size as a school classroom, with steel units running the length of one wall. Frank and O’Connor stood awkwardly by the sink, with masks dangling from their hands. Lara glanced over. It was like a Western, each one waiting for the other to draw. She was dressed in blue theatre scrubs, a long-sleeved green paper gown to her ankles and a green plastic apron. She didn’t wear a mask. She pulled on latex gloves, rubbed in a scented hand cream, then pulled on another pair of gloves. The men were watching her intensely.

  ‘I don’t mind the smell,’ she explained, ‘I just don’t want it on my hands when I’m eating my lunch. So I double bag.’ She turned and walked towards Katie’s body, laid out on one of the two stainless steel tables in the room, beside a tray of instruments. The men followed her, but stood at a distance. O’Connor was the first by a fraction of a second to put on his mask. Out of nowhere, the deep voice of Johnny Cash filled the room. Lara had slipped four CDs into the stereo on shuffle through two bluegrass compilations, a Hank Williams and a Johnny Cash.

  ‘I go through phases,’ she said to the surprised men. ‘Never thought I’d hit country, though.’

  Then she barely spoke a word, as they watched her and a technician, a photographer, a ballistics and a fingerprint expert go to work.

  ‘Hmm, what have we here?’ she said, holding up a small dark fragment she had plucked from a head wound. The ballistics guy held open a plastic bag, she dropped it in and turned back to the body. ‘Here’s more,’ she said, removing a second and a third piece.

  O’Connor stepped forward. ‘What do you think it is?’

  ‘No idea,’ she said. ‘And I probably never will until I’m sitting in court giving my evidence.’ She looked up at the men. ‘You’re the ones who get all the news back from the lab. No-one tells me anything.’ She walked around O’Connor and he stood back beside Frank, where they shifted on their feet until finally, four hours later, Lara pulled off her gloves and led the men over to the sink. Superintendent Brady had just arrived and been let in by the guard standing outside the door. He flinched at the smell, covered his mouth with his hand and crossed the room towards them. He seemed to look around for the source of the music.

  ‘The man in black himself,’ he said.

  Lara nodded and smiled.

  ‘OK,’ she said. The three men huddled in front of her. She looked down at them and they edged back. ‘There is evidence of blunt force trauma to the head. She’s been struck several times, obviously with something heavy. There is also evidence of strangulation, damage to the larynx, fracture of the Adam’s apple. There’s been maggot activity on the scalp wound. When flies come to a corpse – which they would probably have done within hours – they look for the juiciest places to lay their eggs: this includes all the orifices, eyes, nostrils, ears, mouth, penis, vagina, anus. But, if there are wounds, that’s where they’ll head first. Excuse the pun. This explains what I was saying about the scalp. There was also evidence of maggot activity around the arms and hands, which could indicate the presence of defensive injuries.’

  ‘So, the cause of death?’ asked Brady.

  ‘I would say she was strangled and was then beaten about the head. When you’re strangled you don’t die instantly. She may have lain there gurgling which could have alarmed her attacker, who may have grabbed whatever was close by to finish the job. In this case, there were jagged marks, so I would say a rock.’

  ‘And time of death?’ said Brady.

  ‘It’s hard to say. The closest I could say based on the condition of the body is that it is consistent with the time of her disappearance.’

  D.I. O’Connor was frowning.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t be more specific than that,’ she said. ‘Time of death would be much more accurate if the body was found within days, but when weeks are involved, it becomes much more difficult.’

  ‘So, this guy could have held her somewhere, then killed her at a later stage?’

  ‘If you’re asking me whether or not the body was moved, I would say nothing points to it, but after that, it’s down to whatever trace evidence is found.’

  ‘What about sexual assault?’ said Brady.

  ‘I would say there’s circumstantial evidence,’ said Lara, ‘based on the fact that her underclothing and jeans were removed. Obviously, that would be highly suggestive of an attempted sexual assault but, I can’t commit to anything more definite.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Frank gently.

  ‘What happens in decomposition is the genital area becomes very swollen…’ The men all dropped eye contact with her. She continued, ‘…and you can get rupture of the tissue in that area, which has happened in this case. It muddies the waters. Our only hope is the results from the vaginal and anal swabs. If the attacker used a condom, we have nothing.’

  ‘What about the scene? The top half of her body covered up like that?’ said O’Connor.

  ‘I work with what I see from a body. Anything else, you can call in a profiler.’ She smiled.

  ‘That is something I never want to hear again as long as I live,’ said Joe, stroking Anna’s face as she lay on the couch. She knew what he meant – the strangled scream from Shaun’s throat. They had stayed with him all night until he eventually fell asleep. He hadn’t come upstairs since then. Joe kept stroking until Anna’s eyes grew heavy and her breathing slowed. He kissed her warm forehead, then let her head rest gently onto a cushion. He grabbed a torch from a drawer by the front door, slipped out quietly and headed for the forest.

  Oran Butler sat on the sofa with his feet up on the coffee table. He was scooping baked beans into his mouth from the plate he held under his chin. Richie came out from the kitchen.

  ‘You’re fucking gross, Butler,’ he said. ‘The place is a mess. Would you not just…’

  Oran held up a hand to silence him. ‘I’m wrecked. Don’t start.’

  They had both trained as guards together and now shared a flat on the Waterford Road a ten-minute drive from the village. Oran was one of six guards who worked in the Drug Unit out of Waterford city.

  ‘What’s the story with work?’ said Richie.

  ‘Ah, same old, same old. Trying to track down the usual. Friday week will be a big one. A raid on the Healy Carpet Warehouse in the Carroll Industrial Estate, surprise the fuckers. O’Connor’s wetting himself. This could be his big moment.’

  He leaned down and pulled open a can of beer, raising it in a toast. He looked at Richie’s glass. ‘Mineral water. Sad enough.’

  ‘Shut up, coppernob,’ said Richie.

  ‘Original and observant,’ said Oran. ‘Call me freckle face while you’re at it.’

  He drank from his can, shaking it at Richie and smiling.

 
Joe could have driven further up the hill and crossed through to where the body was found, but he didn’t want to miss anything. The light from the torch was weak; a pale, hazy glow that barely lit his way. He had to raise his knees high over the thick briars and imagined that whoever had brought Katie here would have had a struggle, whether she had been alive or dead. Fifteen minutes later he found the tattered remains of blue and white garda tape flapping from a tree and, twenty metres away, another length trailing from the base of a trunk. He looked around carefully, shining the faded light across the ground, picking up the place where the body had clearly lain. He walked slowly towards it, then stepped backwards and crouched down, setting the torch beside him. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a pen, using it to lift some of the leaves that were scattered on the forest floor. He stopped to examine something closer, taking it gently between his thumb and forefinger, bringing it in front of the light. It was a dull reddish brown, a papery 5mm-long cylinder that tapered at one end and was broken away at the other. He knew what it was, but he wasn’t quite sure what it meant.

  FOURTEEN

  Stinger’s Creek, North Central Texas, 1984

  ‘Out of sight, out of mind!’ laughed Uncle Bill when he saw Duke standing on the back porch looking for him. Duke tried to follow the voice.

  ‘I’m up here!’ Bill gave him a broad wave.

  ‘You got me,’ said Duke, smiling. ‘New camo clothes?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Bill. ‘Last gear was faded near white. Can’t have those deer pickin’ me out like a fool. And I’ve got myself a new Baker tree stand,’ he said, patting the side. ‘High and mighty,’ he laughed. ‘They won’t know what hit ’em.’

  ‘You got plans?’ asked Duke.

  ‘Yup. Couple weeks’ time I’m drivin’ down to Uvalde for the opening day of deer season.’

  He climbed down and slapped Duke’s back.

  ‘Need to make sure everythin’ is in fine workin’ order before I set out. How’s your mama?’