‘Jesus, no!’ Brogan said, the risk of someone their end bungling the break too great. ‘No, tell them not to do a thing, and we’ll head straight down there.’ But as soon as she said it, she had another, alternative vision of the whole thing going pear-shaped and this Scully vanishing without trace before they even got there. ‘No, no – wait,’ she said, waving a hand at Cassidy. ‘Find out the address, then tell Leahy to get someone out there pronto to keep an eye on the place till we arrive. We’ll meet them there. C’mon, Maura, Donagh, fingers out, let’s get going…’
They were all long gone, the incident room empty and hushed except for the occasional hum of the fan from a hard drive, when Mulcahy next raised his head from the files. It was one of the civilian secretaries, rapping politely on the door jamb, a phone held out towards him in her other hand.
‘There’s a call for Inspector Brogan. When I told the gentleman you were the only one here, he insisted on talking to you.’
Mulcahy took the phone from her.
‘Hello?’
The voice that boomed from the other end of the line was a bizarre blend of pomposity and brogue, such a voice as linguists might use to demonstrate the effect of advanced education on vocal chords trained to bellow messages from one godforsaken bog to another in the remotest west of Ireland. Mulcahy recognised it instantly as that of Dr Frank Geraghty, director of the Technical Bureau, the Gardai’s inhouse forensic science facility. He was a bear of a man with a penchant for baggy tweed three-pieces in bilious shades of green and a gaze so penetrating it could cut you in two.
‘It is you, Mulcahy, you big sleeveen! When in God’s name did you make it back onto these sainted shores? And why didn’t you call me? I’d have organised a reception committee, then shipped you straight back whence you came. You were doing a great job for us over there, last I heard!’
‘Frank, how are you doing?’ Mulcahy said, holding the phone a good bit further away from his ear. ‘How’s it going over there in Technical?’
As ever, Geraghty ignored the side of the conversation that was not his own.
‘Jesus Christ, man, what are you doing lurking in Brogan’s inner sanctum?’
Mulcahy groaned. He’d spent enough time hanging around courtrooms or attending conferences with the father of Irish forensics to know what was expected of him.
‘I’ve never been anywhere near her sanctum, your honour.’
‘Ah, ye dirty brat,’ Geraghty guffawed. ‘To be honest, I’m not entirely sure she has one, anyway. A mite too imperious for my tastes, the lovely inspector. She’s certainly never wanted to indulge my more frolicsome side. But, to get back to my question, if you have been foolish enough to chuck Old Castille for the Old Sod, why aren’t you back on crack alley? What on earth are you doing consorting with Brogan?’
Mulcahy spent a couple of minutes explaining the situation, amassing a large number of crude comments along the way. Geraghty was not one to waste words on subtlety.
‘Ah well, I don’t suppose she’ll mind me telling you. I’ll be emailing through the results in a minute, but I thought she’d want to know the basics straight from the horse’s mouth. Not that she’ll be any happier with them. The main thrust is that we found no physical evidence of sexual congress. Or nothing, should I say, to support a charge of rape in the traditional sense, anyway. Clearly, the medics will have to come back with a view on that, from the internal exams, but, on the basis of our analysis of the swabs taken externally there was nothing. No semen traces, no pubic hair, not even foreign skin cells so far as we’ve been able to establish. She was clean as a whistle – which, I have to say, is most unusual. Normally anything as vigorous as sex, even if it’s just masturbation, leaves some physical evidence behind. At least, I’ve certainly never seen a case where it didn’t.’
‘But you’re not saying she wasn’t raped?’
‘No, Mulcahy, what I’m saying is that, from the materials presented to me, and within the limits of my brief, I could find no evidence of anyone engaging in sexual activity with the girl. But it is possible that when this freak tortured her, or whatever he thought he was doing to her, he could have burned off whatever trace evidence there might have been externally. The doctors that treated her must’ve come to some conclusions about it.’
‘Not much good to us, if we’ve got no forensic back-up.’
‘Oh, there’s no shortage of forensic evidence, Mulcahy – just none to show the foul wretch had sex with her. That may be unusual, but it’s not impossible in the circumstances.’ There was a faint wheeze at the other end of the line as Geraghty drew breath. ‘One curiosity did emerge, which you will probably want to pass on to Brogan post haste. She asked us to venture an opinion on what might have been used to burn the girl and, judging from the photos, we told her it was probably a heated flat metal surface. Sure enough, when we examined the swabs there were metallic flakes amid the residue and so I ran a check on them. Damn me to heaven if they didn’t have a high percentage of gold in them. Not your good-quality, eighteen-carat stuff, now, but more the sort you’d find in gold plate. The thing is, it had definitely been subjected to intense heat… But all that’ll be in the report. I’d have to venture that whatever he burned her with must have had some form of gold-plating on it. Maybe a ceremonial dagger or the like – though obviously it’s not my place to speculate. To be honest, it’s so unusual we’ll have to run more tests. Perhaps he swiped it from Mummy’s best cutlery set, but it’s not exactly your standard attack weapon, anyway.’
It must’ve been the twentieth file he’d pulled up and sifted through that morning, but it was proving just as much a dead end as the others. Some young gouger had pulled a Stanley knife on an ex-girlfriend and forced her to give him a blowjob by the communal rubbish bins round the back of a block of flats out in Artane. Then he’d slashed her face and walked away, leaving her screaming, puking and drenched in her own blood. Asked why he’d done it, he said he’d been drinking and, anyway, hadn’t she asked for it by getting pregnant with another fella? He was charged, convicted and was doing a three-year stretch in Portlaoise. All of which made a kind of sense to the Garda in Mulcahy. It’s how things were in the world: some people were irredeemable shits.
What still didn’t make any sense at all to him was what had happened to Jesica Salazar. Less than ever since he’d spoken to Frank Geraghty. A kid gets raped and tortured half to death yet there’s no forensic evidence of sex? How the hell could that be? The idea that anyone could get their rocks off by causing that amount of pain was alien enough to Mulcahy. All he knew for certain was that, compared to this, Drugs was a walk in the park. At least there you knew what you were up against most of the time: ruthless greed, abject addiction and heartless exploitation. It was a trade, no matter how evil, and it worked according to its own set of rules.
Mulcahy shook the thought from his head and realised he’d forgotten to call Brogan and pass on Geraghty’s message. He dialled the number, got put through to her voicemail and left a message. That was it, then. He grabbed his jacket, squeezing the pockets to check his smokes and lighter were there, and strode out into the empty incident room. Passing the whiteboard, he saw someone had pinned up the two CCTV images of Jesica emerging from the nightclub, one head-and-shoulders, one full-length shot. Such a beautiful girl. Her clothes, though minimal, looked expensive – and why not? Her father was one of the wealthiest men in Spain. What she was doing at a Dublin language school for four weeks, Mulcahy couldn’t begin to imagine. He always thought that kind of wealth brought nothing but privilege: private tutors, finishing schools and so on. Then he remembered the photos he’d seen of her father, in newspapers and magazines. A hawkish face, a thin, spare frame: more like a hermit than a politician. More like a grandfather than a father? He thought of what Martinez had told him about Salazar, and wondered what the man must now be feeling. For all his wealth and power, he hadn’t been able to prevent this random intrusion of tragedy into his daughter’s life.
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nbsp; Mulcahy moved a step nearer to the close-up photo of Jesica: her gleaming hair and teeth, the cross and chain glittering against her white top. Gold on the swabs? That must be it, he thought, recalling how she’d touched the red weal on her neck in the hospital. At some stage the attacker had pulled the chain from her neck. Maybe he tried to choke her with it. Mulcahy imagined a hand gripping the chain, twisting it, breaking it. Had some of the gold flaked off on his hand?
Mulcahy rubbed a hand across his face, massaging his tired eyes with forefinger and thumb. Nothing about this case made any sense. He patted his jacket pocket, feeling for the cigarette pack again, his subconscious reminding him that he’d been on his way out for a smoke. He looked out the window, to where the sunlight picked out the red and black gable end of the Bleeding Horse pub. Make that a pint as well, he thought, looking at his watch. Might as well be lunchtime. He fished his phone out – Liam was probably gasping for one himself by now.
Siobhan was making progress. After only five phone calls to St Vincent’s Hospital she’d tracked down someone who had been on duty over the weekend and was able and willing to confirm that, yes, a Spanish student had been treated in Emergency, and subsequently admitted to the hospital, on Sunday morning. No names or clinical details, of course: patient confidentiality and all that, especially where journalists were concerned. Still, on the back of this information she was able to phone Dundrum Garda Station and put the details to them, to see what the reaction would be. The note of panic in the voice of the Garda who answered the phone, and the speed with which she’d been passed on to his unhelpful sergeant, bolstered her belief that Consodine’s lead was solid and she was on to something. But what?
Siobhan had a quick word with Paddy Griffin, gave him a rough idea of what she had discovered and got his okay to spread a few euro around, if necessary. Grabbing her keys, she took the lift down to the basement car park and folded down the black cloth roof of her beloved, if ancient, red Alfa Spider. Then she was off, bursting up the ramp towards the bright blue sky, and out on to the quays. She could have just as easily taken a taxi on expenses and that way made use of the bus lanes. But a beautiful cloudless day like this offered too good an opportunity to put the top down, feel the sun on her face, the wind in her hair and any other cliché you might throw at her. She loved them all. The traffic crawled at its usual stop-start pace, but she made good time on a cut-through she knew in Ballsbridge and was soon zipping across the junction at Nutley Lane, and parking in the stunted multi-storey car park that defaced the southern reaches of the hospital grounds. Walking out of it she had a flashback to – what, twenty-five years before? – when her dad had been taken into this hospital. Her, ten or eleven, no more, leading him up the concrete steps, holding his hand, chattering words of comfort, when all the time it was him who was really consoling her, calming her, encouraging her not to be afraid, and to take good care of her mother.
Back then the hospital buildings had been widely spaced, the grounds landscaped with health-promoting shrubbery and lawns. And, even if they were never beautiful, those square-edged sixties buildings had radiated – at least it seemed then – a kind of benign medicinal authority. Nowadays, though, the boom years had allowed for all sorts of add-ons and extensions to eat up the healing green spaces. Inside, the corridors were much as she recalled them, but without the spectral glow of memory. Walls rubbed down to the plaster by too many passing bodies. The floors too footworn now to hold the glossy wax polish that had squeaked beneath the nurses’ plimsolls as they took her dad off to his ward. She shivered at the thought: her lovely dad, walking away, waving back to her, the light streaming in from the far end of the corridor eating away at his outline until he was just a stick.
‘Jaysus, you’re going soft already, and you’ve only been there a couple of days. They’ll have you carrying a handbag next.’
Mulcahy looked up from his Irish Times to see Detective Sergeant Liam Ford grinning down at him. He’d been so absorbed in the crossword he hadn’t noticed him coming in. Not easy as, at six-foot-four, eighteen stone and always kitted out in the same brown leather bomber jacket, jeans and knackered Nikes, you could normally spot Liam Ford from half a mile off. In his mid-thirties now, some of the muscle was running to fat and the long hair made him look more like an ageing rocker than a Drugs cop. But that was the general idea, and while he was too noticeable ever to excel in the area of discreet surveillance, put him in a small room with a suspect and he came into his own.
‘It’s only the Simplex crossword,’ Mulcahy objected.
‘The what?’
‘The easy one, you ignorant git. Don’t you ever read the paper?’
‘Not that one, I don’t. The Sun or the Herald’ll do me. I like to be able to understand what I’m reading.’
Mulcahy smiled at the accent. Over a decade in Dublin and he still sounded like he was straight out of Cork. Ford pointed at Mulcahy’s partially consumed pint of Guinness on the bar.
‘Another one?’
‘Go on, then.’
He called the order to the barman, then dragged up a stool.
‘How’s it going? Anything I should know about?’ asked Mulcahy, laying his paper aside.
‘Not a lot. Everybody’s a bit on edge with this freeze still on. We’re under too much feckin’ pressure. Seems like every second desk in the place is empty. Ludicrous, it is.’
Ford broke off to hand the barman a note for the two pints, and took a long gulp while he waited for the change. By the time the glass hit the bar again it was half empty.
‘How about yourself? You’re being very cagey about what’s going on over there. What in Jesus’s name would Sex Crimes be needing you for anyway?’
Mulcahy tapped a finger against his nose. ‘Nothing that would interest you, Liam. And nothing they couldn’t be getting on with all by themselves, either. At the moment, I’m a total waste of space over there.’
Ford looked at him like he had two heads. ‘Well, you’ve got to get yourself the hell out of there then, don’t you.’
‘Yeah, I guess. But it’s not as simple as that.’
Ford leaned an elbow on to the bar and lowered his voice. ‘But maybe it is, boss. Look, a fella I know from Southern Region got a whisper yesterday that HR are going to force Tommy Dowling to throw in the towel. You heard about him, yeah?’
Mulcahy nodded. Dowling was head of the Southern Region Drugs Squad. He’d got shot in the liver a few months back, when a raid on a house in Youghal went badly wrong.
‘The latest medical didn’t go well,’ Ford said. ‘Looks like he’s never going to be match fit again, so they’re making him an offer – full pension and appropriate compensation to be agreed. Word is he’ll be gone within the month. I reckon you just have to put in for it, and it’s yours. Murtagh would be mad not to take you on. I know it might not be exactly what you want, but it would get you back in the groove at least.’
Far from being dismissive of the opportunity, Mulcahy was feeling like a drowning man who’d just been thrown a lifebelt. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘As sure as I can be.’
‘Who else would be up for it? Who’s covering for Dowling now?’
Ford was grinning from ear to ear, getting up some real enthusiasm for the idea.
‘That’s just the thing. The DI who’s been holding the fort, Sean McCarthy, reckons he’s a dead cert for it, but word is that Murtagh hasn’t been impressed by his performance. He’s not popular with the lads, and there’ve been a couple of bad fuck-ups. But the main thing is, it’s a detective superintendent’s post. No way does McCarthy have the legs for that, especially not if you put your hat in the ring. I reckon it’s got you written all over it.’
Mulcahy tried to damp down the excitement rising inside him. Other opportunities he’d got wind of in the past six months had shrivelled up and died in the face of the recruitment freeze. But they couldn’t let a Regional job like that go unfilled – and it would suit him down to the groun
d, even more than Ford realised. Donal Murtagh, the Southern Region chief superintendent, was probably the man he’d collaborated most closely with on intelligence while he was in Madrid. For years they’d battled to combat drug smuggling along Ireland’s vulnerable south coast. He had huge respect for him and they’d always got on well.
‘Thanks, Liam. Maybe I’ll give Murtagh a call.’
‘You make sure you do.’ Ford grinned again. ‘The lads down there would love it if you came on board. There’s lots of ’em remember you from way back.’
‘Only one fly in the ointment.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’d have to live in bloody Cork.’
Ford let out a big guffaw before knocking back the rest of his pint. ‘You should be so bloody lucky. They don’t call it the Pearl of the South for nothing.’
‘They don’t call it the pearl of anywhere, as far as I recall.’
Mulcahy signalled the barman to give Ford another pint and tried to stop thinking about just how ideal this job would be. Even the move to Cork would be interesting, as the south coast was the absolute frontline when it came to drug smuggling. Ford, meanwhile, chatted heatedly for a while about his own gig at the National Drugs Unit in Dublin Castle, finishing off with an amusing tale of a well-known small-time dealer who’d been hit by a car while trying to evade arrest.
‘Three cracked ribs, a broken collarbone, and his jaw’s smashed in so many bits it had to be wired shut. He’s not going to be talking to anybody for while. Or going anywhere either, except for the infirmary – we found fifty-three wraps of coke in the lining of his jacket.’
Mulcahy was still laughing when he heard a loud foreign accent behind him. He turned on his stool to see a portly black man in his forties standing at the counter, ordering a coffee and a sandwich. His voice was full of the rounded vowels of Africa, but what was even more striking was that he was a priest. The gleaming white collar encircling his neck stood out in sharp contrast to both his skin colour and his well-tailored charcoal-grey suit.
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