Taboo

by Casey Hill

  ‘His bite mark,’ Julius muttered, the penny finally dropping.

  ‘Exactly. Now, a forensic dentist would have to give us specifics, but when time is of the essence and the cops are sure their attacker was the one eating the cheeseburger, we can at least confirm that it’s a guy with a long, narrow face.’

  Rory shook his head in wonderment. ‘I would never have thought of that,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well,’ the department’s new specialist forensic investigator said with a smile, ‘by the time I’m finished with you guys, there’s nothing in this world you won’t think of.’

  2

  At Harcourt Street station, Chris Delaney was putting the finishing touches to a written report when it happened again.

  At first he tried to ignore it, putting the faint but all-too-familiar tingle in the joints of his first two fingers down to repetitive strain or sheer tiredness – he hadn’t been to bed in over twenty-eight hours so it was only to be expected that his joints would be fatigued. He shook his hand to try and shake the pain, carefully turned the page on his report, put it neatly on the pile of finished papers, and picked up his pen again.

  But then, as if to prove him wrong, the throbbing surged from his fingers through his left arm and upper body, almost sending him into spasm. Dropping the pen, Chris winced as the aching overwhelmed him, and when Pete Kennedy approached his desk, he struggled to remain impassive.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ his fellow detective asked, eyebrows raised.

  He tried to ride it out. ‘Nothing, just got cramp – from all this bloody writing, probably,’ he said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Writing?’ Kennedy sniffed, unconvinced. ‘From all that pumping iron if you ask me. I don’t know why the hell you bother.’

  Although Kennedy was a towering six-footer and well able to carry some additional weight, he still had a bit of a paunch, something he had no interest in doing anything about. Chris, on the other hand, enjoyed his regular workouts at the gym. It helped him cope with the demands of the job and he welcomed the physical endurance aspect too.

  Based out of the Serious Crime Unit, he and Kennedy spent the majority of their time working city homicide. For a country that barely ten years ago reported one incident of murder every few months, the newer, affluent, and decidedly more bloodthirsty citizens of Ireland seemed intent on making up for lost time. And as resources in their division were gradually becoming more and more stretched, things seemed to be getting progressively worse. Their latest case was an especially puzzling one.

  A week earlier, a headless and dismembered male torso was found floating in the city’s Royal Canal by a man out walking his dog. The Sub-Aqua sSquad had spent hours in the murky, heavily polluted waters searching for remaining body parts and forensic evidence but so far had found nothing. Until they did, it was virtually impossible to identify the victim.

  Following recent, similar episodic killings associated with sections of Ireland’s growing ethnic communities, it was tempting for the authorities to explain it away as yet another ritualistic killing, and while the murder certainly bore some of the hallmarks – such as dismemberment – Chris wasn’t convinced. Some more sensationalist sections of the Irish media were only too eager to pin the incident on immigrants, but for him there was nothing definitive in the evidence so far that pointed the finger at any particular group. Not until they found the head, at any rate.

  He swiveled round in his chair and looked at his watch. ‘Well, seeing as all’s quiet at the moment,’ he said to Kennedy, ‘I might head home for a few hours this morning – try and grab some sleep.’

  He stacked his papers in a neat pile and put the pen away in his drawer, the thought of a couple of hours sleep sounding tempting. Not that it would make a blind bit of difference to his now almost continuous fatigue. Maybe he should pick up some of those multivitamin things on the way home – seeing that he hadn’t been eating properly, something like that might make the difference. And if it didn’t, well, then he’d have to think about getting himself checked out properly. He ruffled his dark hair in a desperate attempt to rouse himself. Not to mention organize a bloody long-overdue haircut.

  ‘Detectives?’

  Chris was already slipping his jacket on when one of the uniforms put his head around the door, his tone agitated.

  ‘What’s up?’ Kennedy growled from the depths of a bacon sandwich.

  ‘O’Brien wants you both next door for a briefing – right away,’ the uniform told them. ‘And he looks pissed off.’

  Chris and Kennedy exchanged looks. So much for sleep.

  ‘What’s it about?’ Kennedy asked as they followed the younger man down the hallway toward the Inspector’s office.

  The uniform shrugged. ‘Not a clue.’

  Kennedy looked at Chris and winked. ‘Let me guess – the Sub-Aqua Squad finally found that poor bastard’s flute.’

  O’Brien’s office was a mess of papers, boxes of files stacked against the walls, folders strewn all across his desk. But the Inspector himself was sharp, his round, red face and flyaway gray hair notwithstanding.

  ‘I wish it was something on the floater,’ he muttered. ‘But it’s something else entirely.’ His expression was grim. ‘Double shooting, possible homicide/suicide south of the city, in Dalkey. One male, one female, both pronounced dead at the scene.’

  ‘Domestic?’

  ‘Unlikely. They’re only kids, college kids, the girl barely in her twenties, apparently.’ He ran his fingers through his hair, messing it up even more.

  ‘Shit.’ Kennedy shook his head.

  ‘Too bloody right.’ The Inspector leaned back in his chair, looking like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders .

  ‘In Dalkey, you said?’ Chris was taken aback at the victims’ age and profile. Dalkey was a decidedly upmarket part of the city and shootings were an unusual occurrence.

  ‘Maybe they stumbled across Daddy’s hunting gun?’ Kennedy said, evidently on a similar train of thought.

  ‘Could be. I don’t know what the weapon of choice was; to be honest, I don’t know that much at all,’ O’Brien replied. ‘There’s a unit from Blackrock already down there; they were first on the scene and as far as I know the Technical Bur—’ He paused mid-sentence, and rolled his eyes. ‘Sorry, I mean the GFU should be there by now too. It will take a bit of getting used to, that one, although at least it rolls off the tongue a bit easier. Anyway, I need you two to get over there and see what you can make of it.’ He shook his head. ‘First the gangs, then the foreigners, and now we have posh kids shooting one another too – I’m telling you, this country’s gone mad altogether.’

  Chris steered the unmarked Ford toward a vacant parking space and looked up at the modern apartment block. Limestone walls, aluminum balconies, well-tended gardens, sea views … Whoever owned this place had money.

  ‘That’s a hell of a vista,’ he observed. Even in winter, the view out across Dublin Bay was spectacular, the rolling gray waves stacking up one by one, as though impatient to crash against the shore.

  ‘Hell of a turnout,’ Kennedy said, indicating the mass of vehicles parked outside. ‘I wonder, would there be the same interest if the crime scene was on Sheriff Street?’

  ‘Guess not, but there are some pretty powerful neighbors around here who need reassuring things are under control,’ Chris replied, looking up the hill in the direction of Killiney, Dublin’s own Beverly Hills.

  ‘So, I wonder what kind of mood Miss America will be in today?’ Kennedy mumbled, nodding toward Reilly Steel’s GFU van. He lit a cigarette and leaned on the bonnet of the car, admiring the surroundings. Chris climbed from the car, trying not to groan at the ache in his legs. ‘No point rushing in if she’s still there. What do you make of her?’ Kennedy asked.

  Chris shrugged. ‘Too early to say.’

  ‘Oh come on – don’t give me that. An FBI-trained crime tech brought over here to bring us country bumpkins up to date and you don’t h
ave an opinion?’

  It was true that eyebrows had been raised at the appointment and when a photograph of the blond, blue-eyed American had been passed around, there had been some sceptical comments. But far from being a wide-eyed bimbo, the latest addition to the force had trained at the FBI facility at Quantico and had expert knowledge and considerable field experience, as well as valuable exposure to the workings of the institution’s state-of-the-art crime lab. Steel had also apparently worked with some of the best forensic investigators in the world and was held in high regard by her peers. How the hell she had been lured to Dublin, Chris didn’t know, but either way, he was glad to have someone with her credentials on board.

  He waved a hand as Kennedy’s smoke drifted toward him. ‘I reckon the head brass knew what they were doing when they brought her in – the old Technical Bureau was thirty years behind the times and we need all the help we can get.’

  Up until then, they’d had little to do with the American. She tended to stay in the lab, apparently preferring working on the evidence than working the scene – something Chris could certainly relate to. But today Steel had had no choice but to attend as Jack Gorman, the field investigator their unit normally worked with, was away on a Caribbean cruise with his wife – some big anniversary celebration apparently.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said, starting toward the building.

  His partner stubbed his cigarette out on the ground and heaved himself up off the bonnet.

  Going inside, they headed for the fourth floor, Kennedy huffing and puffing all the way. A uniformed officer guarding the scene directed them to the bedroom where the shooting had taken place.

  ‘Ah, hell,’ Kennedy whispered as he entered the room.

  The place was beautiful; a neutral color scheme, beige carpet and white walls, light-colored bed linen, and tall bay windows opening out to a stunning view of the bay – in fact everything was idyllic except for the crimson blood splattered across the bed and up the wall.

  The victims lay together on the bed, both fully naked. The girl’s eyes were closed, her dark hair fanned out prettily on the pillow, looking for all the world as though she was having a post-coital nap – apart from the gaping hole low in her chest and half the contents of her companion’s head sprayed across her cheek.

  They were achingly young, in their early-twenties at the most. Chris’s stomach turned over. Their boss was right – what kind of country was it that a kid barely out of his teens could get his hands on a gun? And a posh kid at that. Judging by his lightly tanned skin and toned rugby-player physique, he suspected that the boyfriend wasn’t some malnourished scumbag the girl had taken up with to piss off her well-to-do parents. And he had one of those stylized oriental tattoos on his upper right arm, not the Celtic cross favored by the working classes.

  His eyes quickly scanned the area. The murder weapon lay on the sheets – a 9 mm. It must have fallen out of the shooter’s hand.

  He briefly exchanged nods with state pathologist, who was conducting her preliminary examination of the bodies before their removal to the morgue. He gave an involuntary shiver. Sometimes Karen Thompson unsettled him more than the victims did. A serious woman with oversized dark eyes, Roman nose, and an exceptionally long neck, Chris figured she was perfectly suited for the strain of medicine where the absence of a bedside manner was a good thing. Briefly noting the arrival of the detectives, she resumed her examination of the bodies.

  Several uniforms were busy around the apartment, some taking notes, most simply observing and helping guard the scene – a crime like this always drew a crowd. The GFU crew, dressed head to toe in white dust suits, were wandering around the area; dusting for prints on surfaces, gathering material and trace evidence, bagging everything as they went.

  One of the forensics squatted low against the bed as he pointed and flashed his camera at the victims. And although he hadn’t yet spotted Reilly Steel, Chris knew she had to be somewhere amongst the mix.

  ‘Christ,’ Kennedy muttered. ‘What age were these two – fifteen?’

  ‘College students according to Reilly, so they’ve got to be older than that.’

  ‘But not by much. Fucking hell.’

  Although in the course of their work they came across young victims on a regular basis, they were usually junkies or fledgling gang members who’d come from such troubled backgrounds it was almost impossible to imagine them ending up any other way. These kids, though – healthy, educated, middle class – could just as easily have been Kennedy’s own son or daughter and for those reasons alone, it made it different.

  ‘What the hell was he thinking?’

  ‘Where the hell did he get the gun is what I want to know,’ Chris ruminated.

  Illegal weapons were increasingly finding their way out of the hands of paramilitaries and onto the city streets and, while any criminal worth his salt would know how to get hold of a gun at short notice, it should be a different story for a middle-class college kid.

  He turned to the uniformed officer standing in the bedroom doorway. ‘Who was first on the scene?’

  ‘A unit from Blackrock,’ the man replied, indicating a group of officers gathered in the living room – one of them decidedly shaky-looking. ‘Young Fitzgerald is not long out of training,’ he added with a slight shake of the head. ‘Talk about throwing him in at the deep end.’

  Chris cursed inwardly. He’d spotted Fitzgerald as soon as he’d stepped into the living room – he looked as young as the victims, he’d probably only just started shaving.

  He stepped into the living room. Like the bedroom, it had tall French windows opening out onto a balcony with a sea view. A massive plasma TV screen filled one wall and a deep fireplace dominated the other. The whole place smelled of money. Chris wondered if there had been a robbery of some kind, but judging by the valuable objects scattered around the place, they obviously hadn’t taken much.

  He called the rookie over, who marched up to the two detectives, snapped to attention and straightened his uniform.

  ‘Officer Fitzgerald,’ Kennedy began, ‘take your time and tell us what you can remember.’

  Somewhat surprisingly, the younger cop was calm and articulate as he outlined what had happened when he first reached the apartment. ‘The 999 was logged at 6.03 a.m. from this building, apparently by another resident who’d heard a gunshot coming from the apartment,’ he informed the detectives.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Our unit responded quickly,’ he continued, ‘and arrived at the scene at precisely 6.18 a.m.’

  ‘Six-eighteen a.m. precisely?’ Chris echoed, amused by the young man’s certainty.

  ‘Precisely, sir. I checked my watch just to be sure.’

  The detectives exchanged a surreptitious look. ‘All right. And then?’

  ‘Well, at first we were ordered not to penetrate the building in case the perpetrator was still at large.’

  Despite himself, Chris was tickled by the younger officer’s terminology – it was something the training colleges instilled with vigour into new recruits. Personally, he wasn’t a fan of this ‘Robocop’ talk and whenever he gave a radio or TV statement, he purposely spoke in layman’s terms so the public could be assured that if they did come forward with information, someone in the force might actually be capable of understanding them.

  ‘Then, at 6.45, we got word that the building was secure and they gave us the OK to go in,’ Fitzgerald continued. ‘So in we went.’

  ‘Please tell me you didn’t use the lift to get up here,’ Kennedy remarked.

  Looking faintly hurt, Fitzgerald shook his head. ‘Of course not. The perpetrator may have used the elevators, so we made sure we entered via the stairs in order to avoid contaminating evidence.’ He paused. ‘I might be new, but I’m not stupid, Detective,’ he added, pointedly.

  Chris had begun to draw the exact same conclusion. ‘So this is how you found them.’

  ‘Yes, sir. It was obvious as soon as we arrived that both victims
were dead, so we called it in as a homicide and possible suicide and made sure not to touch a thing until the forensic people got here.’ He added the last part with emphasis, looking directly at Kennedy.

  The kid could stand up for himself. Chris was impressed.

  ‘Did you find out who called in the 999?’ Chris asked.

  Fitzgerald nodded and flipped open a black notebook. ‘The woman living in the apartment next door, a Mrs Maura McKenna. Now, she doesn’t remember everything exactly as it happened.’ He sounded vaguely disappointed that his only witness wasn’t up to his own high standards. ‘According to her statement, she was fast asleep in bed when she heard a sound that quote – nearly lifted her out of her skin – unquote,’ he said, reading from the notebook. ‘The second shot came soon after, although she’s unable to remember exactly how soon, but she believes it could have been four or five minutes. Then she rang 999.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘She was also able to give us a possible ID on one of the victims. The girl living here is – or rather, was – Clare Ryan. She’s a student at UCD. The old lady said that the girl’s parents bought this apartment for her a couple of years back, when she first started at university. She doesn’t know anything about a boyfriend, though.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘That’s it, sir,’ the younger man said in conclusion.

  ‘Thanks, we’ll have a chat with the neighbor later,’ Chris said, dismissing him.

  Just a quick scan of the room confirmed that the dead girl was indeed Clare Ryan – there was a long white sideboard in the living room dotted with framed photographs of a smiling brunette. Chris picked up a photo, taken on a beach somewhere – Thailand, maybe? The sand was pure white, the sea azure. The girl’s happy grin and lively eyes were a sad and stark contrast to the pale, lifeless cadaver in the bedroom.

  ‘Any photos of the guy?’ He looked up from his reverie and saw Kennedy watching him.