by Derek Fee
‘I move in every kind of circle,’ McDevitt said. ‘You wanted to know whether David Grant was in the BDSM world.’
Davidson picked up his whiskey. ‘If you say so.’
McDevitt sipped his whiskey. ‘We’re being fed the line that he died while performing a particularly dangerous sex act. Something in my gut tells me that we’re being fed bullshit. I need to know whether my gut is still operating properly.’
‘Although Grant was only a City Councillor, he was a personality,’ Davidson said picking his words carefully. ‘We’re just stitching up some of the details. Like was he part of the BDSM scene, or was he simply someone who tried gasping and didn’t do it properly?’
‘I heard from another little bird that there are some pretty interesting photographs of the scene. The Chronicle would pay good money if they could get their hands on even one photo.’
Davidson downed his whiskey. ‘Thanks for the drink.’
‘I find out things, Pete. Just like the old days. If you share with me, I’ll share with you.’
‘I’ll pass the word along,’ Davidson said. ‘This time I don’t think that any of your little birds will be carrying warrant cards.’
Stephanie Reid was just about as tired as she had ever been and that was saying something. She had been on her feet since she had entered the Royal Victoria at eight in the morning, and it was now almost exactly twelve hours later. It appeared that there was an epidemic of unexplained deaths in Belfast. She had already dealt with six corpses most of whom had died suddenly, but the reasons had lurked deep within their bodies. Right now she was looking forward to a hot bath and a glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc accompanied by the music of James Taylor. She sighed as she watched her assistant wheel in yet another body.
‘The last one,’ he said sheepishly.
She contemplated telling him to take the corpse back and she would autopsy it tomorrow, but who knew what tomorrow would bring. She walked to the trolley and picked up the tag attached to the corpse’s toe. ‘Brian Malone, age twenty-six, massive heart attack’ she read. Age twenty-six and massive heart attack didn’t usually go together. The assistant removed the cotton sheet from the body and displayed the corpse. It was immediately apparent to Reid that Brian Malone was not your typical heart-attack victim. In life he had been reasonably fit. The body was lithe, and he sported a six-pack that most men would have been proud of. It just showed that even the fit could harbour a small defect within their physiology that would be their undoing. ‘Get him on the table,’ she said heading for the sinks in the corner of the room. It was now her task to find the defect that had led to the death of an otherwise healthy man. This was the aspect of her job that she loved the most. In some ways it was similar to the job that Wilson did. He searched among the evidence to find the motive and the murderer. She dissected bodies looking for clues of frailty that had led to death. Her spirits lifted appreciably when she thought of the man she dreamt about consistently. Although she told herself many times that the pursuit was futile, she still harboured somewhere within her the hope that someday the situation would turn in her favour. The loss of Wilson’s unborn child had the potential to create fissures between him and Kate McCann. The thought flashed through her head and she despised herself for it. If a man came to her, she wanted it to be because he desired her. She walked slowly to the table where Brian Malone lay and picked up a scalpel. ‘Now let’s find what genetic flaw caused the Grim Reaper to come looking for you.’
Moira McElvaney enjoyed the evening at the cinema followed by dinner and a bout of lovemaking with her lover Brendan Guilfoyle. They had been together for almost nine months and Brendan’s one-year sabbatical at Queen’s University was coming to an end. That meant decision time was approaching, and Moira had decided that she would concentrate on enjoying the now and put off the decision that she dreaded until the last possible moment. In three short months, Brendan would be returning to his job as Professor of Forensic Psychology at Harvard University. He had already asked her to go with him, but she hadn’t replied. She liked the idea that he told her continually that he loved her. That wasn’t the problem. She had already loved one man and he had responded by beating and humiliating her. He had justified his action by calling it love. Love was a many-splendoured thing. It could be used to justify both care and incredible cruelty. She was certainly over Michael Regan, but that didn’t mean she didn’t wake up in the middle of the night running a hot sweat thinking of the beatings she received at his hands. At least she had been instrumental in putting the bastard where he belonged – behind bars. Too many women hung on hoping wife beating was a phase, only to find that it was a way of life. The current situation with Brendan was different. He was an intelligent and articulate man. He could hold his own in any company and had embraced Belfast with enthusiasm to the point where his normal Bostonian accent had taken on a distinctly Northern Irish twang. But what she liked most about Brendan was that he was fun. You could never be depressed in his company, and she could feel herself lighter when she was with him. Maybe that was love, but the spectre of her failed marriage always haunted her. Then there was her job in the PSNI and Wilson. While she might have wondered if what she felt for Brendan was love, she had no doubt about her feelings for her job. Her heart lifted every morning when she woke and realised that another day full of challenges was waiting for her. She fell into police work rather than chose it as a profession, but it had turned out to be the perfect fit. The thought of giving up her job for a life with Brendan filled her with a kind of weird dread. Almost as much dread as never seeing Brendan again. And then there was Wilson. She had been initially attracted to her boss. Who wouldn’t? He might have been the perfect man if it wasn’t for the fact that he was alleged to have slept with every female police officer his own age, and quite a few considerably younger. She had been disappointed when she discovered that he already had a lover, but since then their relationship had changed, and she saw him now as more of a mentor than a potential lover. He was her teacher, and she felt she had so much more to learn from him. Leaving with Brendan would cut that learning short. She was mulling through these thoughts when she realised that Brendan was no longer in bed with her. She slipped out from beneath the duvet, and making the minimum amount of noise made her way into the living room where she saw Brendan hunched over her laptop. She snuck up behind him.
‘I hope you’ve got some clothes on,’ Brendan said without looking up. ‘Otherwise you’re giving the guy across the way a peek.’
‘What the ...’ She leaned over Brendan’s shoulder and saw that he was examining the photos that Reid had taken of David Grant. She tried to hit the power off button of the computer, but Brendan blocked her. ‘You have no right.’ She started.
‘I’m expecting an email from Harvard.’ Brendan cradled her head in his arm over his shoulder. ‘And given the time difference I thought I’d check up now. You didn’t turn off the laptop and guess what popped up when I hit the button.’ He turned and saw that she was naked. ‘Want to discuss this or should we head back to bed?’ He smiled.
‘I’ll throw on a robe.’ She turned and headed back to the bedroom.
‘That’s what I call an ass,’ Brendan said admiring the view.
She gave him the middle finger as she entered the bedroom.
‘Interesting,’ Brendan said as they sat and flicked through the photos. ‘A gasper.’
‘Maybe,’ Moira said. ‘The pathologist doesn’t like the look of it.’
‘The guy I read about in the paper?’
‘That’s him.’
‘What does the ME think is wrong?’ he asked.
‘We don’t call them MEs here. You’re supposed to be the bloody expert. What do you think is wrong?’
He blew the photos up to the full magnitude and went through them one by one. ‘I’ve seen a few of these in the States. Hell of a way to die. Did you look at the scene yet?’
‘This only came up today. We haven’t had a chance yet. I
’m going there tomorrow.’
‘Your ME might have something, but that’ll depend on what you find at the scene. If the guy is a real kink, there’ll be other stuff around.’
‘Stuff?’
‘Sex toys, magazines, more paraphernalia. The kind of things that you keep under your bed and you don’t want your mom to find out about.’
She made a note to look under Brendan’s bed the next time she visited his flat. ‘But do you see anything out of place?’
‘The position of the chair isn’t quite right, but that kind of thing can happen. No,’ he flicked through the photos again, ‘it looks like the guy was trying to get off by asphyxiating himself.’
‘Fat lot of use you are.’ She slapped him on the head.
He stood up and grabbed her around the waist. ‘Who the hell can concentrate on a crime scene when there’s a woman with an ass like yours around?’
‘What about your precious email?’
‘To hell with the email,’ he said picking her up and heading for the bedroom.
CHAPTER 13
Wilson parked his car in his appointed slot at the station. Despite the end of the ‘Troubles’, the station still had the air of a fortress. The powers that be had made an effort to get rid of some of the fortifications in an attempt to soften the image of the PSNI, but the project foundered when their budget ran out. Or so they said. In a way, Wilson was glad, as there was no way his car could be interfered with behind a six-foot, thick wall of concrete. He had spent the previous evening finding out what was at the bottom of a bottle of Jameson. There hadn’t been any solution in the booze and his head was pounding. He’d found the bedroom door locked, and managed to stagger to the third bedroom where he fell into a comatose sleep. Kate was gone when he woke and there was no sign of Helen. He drank four cups of coffee before he felt human enough to pilot a motor vehicle. Had he been stopped, he was in no doubt that he would have been proven over the limit.
The Desk Sergeant’s brow creased as he saw Wilson enter the reception area of the station. ‘Boss,’ he said. ‘Canteen is serving that muck they call coffee. I could have one sent up.’
Wilson ignored the remark and headed straight to the squad room. He didn’t see the Desk Sergeant pick up the telephone to inform the boss of the station, Chief Superintendent Spence, that Wilson was on the premises.
Wilson pushed in the door of the squad room.
‘Morning, Boss,’ Eric Taylor looked up from his desk. ‘How did the Police College go? The female members of the class wet themselves, as usual.’
‘No, I’ve ascended into the old fart club. Time flies, or hadn’t that fact got through to you.’
‘You’re a cynic, Boss,’ Taylor said.
‘Where are the rest of them?’ He nodded at the empty desks.
‘The DS and Harry have gone to Grant’s house. Peter was working late last night. He called in to say that he’d be late.’
Wilson could have kicked himself. He should have called Moira. He needed to see the scene himself.
‘A wee piece of news from Peter that’ll interest you,’ Taylor said. ‘Jock McDevitt’s back in town, he’s returned to the Chronicle, on the crime beat.’
‘That should stir things up a bit. Jock’s not known for abiding by the niceties.’
Wilson’s office was at the end of the room. It was cordoned off from the rest of the room by a glass partition into which a glass door had been inserted. He looked around the small space. Maybe it was just a little too early for the pipe and slippers. This is the place that his dead wife referred to as ‘the womb’. He realised that he seldom thought of Susan these days. It was the same with his father. He had adored his father, but the memories fade. You think about the departed only when they force themselves into your memory through something they said, or regularly did. Like the word ‘womb’, it was used so often that he associated it with his departed wife. But the dead were dead, and he would leave them like that. Grandparents, father, wife, they no longer existed except in his memory, and then only fleetingly. He looked at the computer on his desk. It was time to wrestle with the contents of his inbox. He switched on his computer, and waited as the machine warmed up. Then, reluctantly, he pointed the curser at the email icon, and pushed the left-hand button on the mouse. The screen instantly filled with a continuous stream of unread emails. So this was the technology that was going to make humans redundant. He looked at the bottom of the screen – ‘123 unread emails’ stared back at him. Given his normal rate of dealing with emails, he reckoned it would take him a week to get rid of that lot. There was only one solution. He selected all the unread emails and pushed the delete key. He was working on the premise that any urgent unanswered emails would be followed up on. The rest were nonessential. Wilson had just finished his cleaning operation when his phone rang.
‘I heard you were in the house.’ Chief Superintendent Donald Spence’s voice was friendly but businesslike. ‘My office, five minutes.’
Wilson knocked on CSU Spence’s office door exactly five minutes later. Spence was Wilson’s boss and sole supporter for the past five years. The two men stood shoulder to shoulder in all of Wilson’s trials with the hierarchy of the PSNI.
‘You look buggered,’ Spence said, as soon as Wilson entered his office. ‘I’d offer you the hair of the dog but it’s too early in the day. What’s the problem?’
Wilson took the seat directly across from his superior. ‘Nothing for you to concern yourself with.’
‘That’s what they pay me for, to help people solve their problems. When you get to my exalted level—that is if you ever get to my exalted level—you’ll find that aside from lots of administration, there’s no real work to do. So I have to stick my nose into everybody’s business.’
Spence’s secretary entered carrying a tray containing two coffee cups, a milk jug and a sugar bowl.
‘I hope they’re strong,’ Spence said as she deposited the tray on his desk.
‘The usual,’ she said and departed.
Spence passed a cup to Wilson. ‘I suggest that you take it black.’
Wilson took the cup and sipped the dark liquid. It was at least ten times better than the crap they served in the canteen. ‘I’ve already had a barrelful.’
‘This is you after a barrelful. I’m glad I didn’t wake up next to you. You’re a sad case, man.’
‘Kate hasn’t quite got over the miscarriage.’ Wilson sipped the coffee.
Spence remained silent.
‘At the moment I’m wondering whether she ever will,’ Wilson continued.
‘Time is a great healer.’ Spence was staring into his coffee cup. ‘We’ve all been down roads like the one you’re going down at the moment. All things do pass.’
Wilson drained his cup. ‘And that’s your idea of help.’
‘It’s all I’ve got for the moment.’
‘How’s the run in to retirement?’ Wilson asked trying to get off the subject of his problem.
‘Six months to go, that is if you don’t fuck up so badly in the meantime that it costs me my pension.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Wilson said leaning forward. He brought Spence up to date on the phone call from Reid, the autopsy and his meeting the previous day with Moira.
‘Christ, I was hoping that the McIver and Cummerford trials would keep you busy until I clear this desk for the final time. Have you any idea what’ll happen when the Press get a whiff of murder and sex? It’s the perfect combination. They’re almost in a feeding frenzy on the sexual aspect alone.’
‘It might get worse than that,’ Wilson said. ‘Jock McDevitt is back in town. Apparently, the Chronicle dragged him back using a trail of peanuts so he can cover the Cummerford and McIver trials.’
‘Just what we don’t need. What’s your initial impression on David Grant’s death?’
‘I’ll know more by the end of the day. But from what I saw and heard at the autopsy, I would be inclined to believe that he was murdered.’
‘McDevitt will have every tout in Belfast in his pocket. That means that he’ll know pretty soon that we’re up to something. Don’t count on having much in terms of a period of grace.’
‘I don’t know whether it’s this city or you, but you do attract murder like honey attracts bees. I need to be completely informed on this one.’
‘Yes, Boss.’ Wilson stood up to leave. ‘Let’s just hope that for once Professor Reid has got it wrong.’
CHAPTER 14
Stephanie Reid woke late. The previous evening, she had taken a hot bath and finished a half a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc as she lay soaking. She had a slight headache but nothing a Solpadeine wouldn’t cure. The details of the last autopsy came back to her slowly. Brian Malone, twenty-six, heart attack. Body of an athlete, fantastic shape, should have lasted another sixty to seventy years, bar an accident or cancer. At first, she had believed she was looking at a case of sudden death syndrome. After all, marathon runners and professional athletes had simply dropped out of their standing, and that footballer who collapsed at White Heart Lane probably wouldn’t have made it if a famous heart specialist hadn’t been in the stand and instantly available. She was always pissed off when she couldn’t discover the cause of death and as far as she was concerned there was no obvious reason why Brian Malone’s heart should suddenly stop beating. Maybe the toxicity screens she’d ordered would lead to some conclusion. She needed coffee and maybe a few more headache tablets. Thinking about her work wasn’t possible in this condition. She slipped out of bed, and after a short visit to the bathroom made her way to the kitchen, first for the tablets and then the coffee. Ten minutes later, the pills were taking effect, and she was enjoying a large coffee with a croissant she had heated in the oven. She had thought about calling Wilson the previous evening to discuss the Malone autopsy but changed her mind. She was wondering whether she was turning every autopsy into a possible murder scenario so that she could be in constant contact with him. That was ridiculous. She was a professional. She wasn’t about to change her mind on David Grant’s death but she would have to think again about Malone. Then it clicked with her. The mark on the side of Malone’s head, it was almost exactly the same mark she had noticed on the side of Grant’s head. Perhaps it was a coincidence. But how much of a coincidence was it that two relatively young men had died on the same night and that both had a mark on the same spot on their temples? She finished her coffee and made her way back to the bedroom. She needed to get to the Royal as soon as possible. She would review the autopsy. After all, she’d been out on her feet when she carried it out. Perhaps she should have waited until today when she would have been fresh. If the marks matched, she would have to inform Wilson.