Buried Angels

by Patricia Gibney

  Walsh leaned on the clear glass counter and stroked his stubbled jaw with his hand. ‘He has been a bit distracted the last few months. I put it down to the house. You know he inherited a house from his aunt, Patsy Cole. Annoying she was too. Had me deliver meat every week, and nine times out of ten she’d tell me it wasn’t what she’d ordered. Always looking for a bargain, that woman. Broke my heart, so she did.’

  ‘Why would the house cause him to be distracted?’ Though with her own preoccupation over Farranstown House during the last year, she understood how Jeff might have become sidetracked.

  ‘First off, Faye wanted him to sell it. She got him to believe it was his decision. That’s women for you. No offence. She even went and got it valued. And you’d think in today’s market they’d make a fortune out of it, but no. Too much work needed to be done to bring it up to scratch, according to anyone who viewed it. Jeff decided to take it off the market and renovate it. I told him it would take a long time to do that. But he said it wasn’t like they were out on the street waiting for it. Wasting money on rent, though. You know they’re renting that apartment and—’

  ‘Mr Walsh, Faye said Jeff was working late yesterday. Was he driving somewhere for you?’ Lottie had the impression that Derry would prattle on all day long if she let him.

  ‘Yes. He had to go to Dublin to pick up an order. Drove my van. Dropped it with the meat back here, must have been around nine but I wouldn’t swear to it on a stack of bibles, if that’s what you’re asking. No idea what he did after that.’

  ‘Do you know anything more about Jeff’s family or the house?’

  ‘I’m not one to gossip.’ He picked up a knife and ran it along a steel sharpener that hung from his hip on a leather scabbard. ‘Ask Jeff.’

  ‘I will when I find him. You sure you have no idea where he might be this morning?’

  ‘Isn’t that what I told you?’

  ‘I think so,’ Lottie said with half a smile. It disappeared as an image of the frozen torso crept into her mind. ‘Do you have freezers on site here?’

  ‘I do. In this weather, sure the meat would be cooked before I got it out on display.’

  ‘Can I see them?’

  ‘Sorry. Health and safety. I can’t let you go beyond the counter.’

  ‘What if I had a warrant?’

  ‘Ah, now that would be different,’ Walsh said, dropping his eyes, his face suddenly shaded. ‘But I don’t know why you need to see my freezers.’ With the hem of his apron, he wiped an imaginary spot from the glass counter.

  She couldn’t read his expression, but what he was doing must surely be breaking one of his regs. ‘Just a mad notion. I’m prone to them from time to time.’

  ‘Not so mad at all from what I’ve heard about you,’ he said. ‘You have a strong reputation for solving crimes in and around Ragmullin. You must be dealing with the frozen dismembered body investigation.’ He winked. ‘Detective Inspector Parker, I can guarantee you, my freezers only hold animal meat. Nothing human.’

  ‘I’ll come back with a warrant.’

  ‘Do that. Are you going to get one for every butcher in town? The judge will love you,’ he chuckled.

  She needed to think it through. Why was she harassing this happy-looking butcher? But she knew why. Jeff Cole worked here, and a skull with a hole in its forehead had been found in his house. A house that had belonged to his aunt. A house that, if you believed what Derry Walsh had not said, harboured a secret. She had to get back to the station to arrange a warrant and investigate the house further. She needed to locate Jeff and she’d have to talk to Faye again.

  At the door, she turned. ‘Thanks for your help.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want a half-pound of rashers and sausages? On the house, if you like.’

  ‘Not now, but I’ll be back.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, and when you locate Jeff, tell him he’s just about on his last chance.’

  Thirty-One

  Karen Tierney had been glad to have the day off and to be out of the office. Working at A2Z Insurance was a pain at the best of times, but recently Kevin O’Keeffe was being a total ass. There was only so much moaning a girl could take. She’d planned to catch the one o’clock train to meet her friend Maxine in Dublin for the afternoon, but when she arrived at the station she discovered the frigging trains were not running because of the body found on the tracks. Such bad luck, and the bus would take forever to get there. If she’d known about the trains, she could have got an earlier bus.

  As she stood in the angry bus queue, she chewed her Nicorette gum and plucked a loose stud out of her gel nail. Damn. Now she’d have to get them redone. She turned her phone over in her hand and tapped up Instagram to see what was trending. At that moment the bus appeared at the top of the hill and the queue compacted as everyone surged forward. Someone nudged her shoulder and she dropped the phone on the tarmac.

  ‘Fuck’s sake!’ she yelled. ‘Take it easy.’

  She dropped to her knees, scrabbling about for the battery, which had flown out. The screen was smashed too. Damn, she’d have to buy a new phone. As she knelt there, surveying the damage, she saw something odd. Straight across the tarmac, in the first line of parked vehicles. Something, drip, drip, dripping from the boot of a car. Had a bottle smashed in a bag of shopping? She hoped there was nothing valuable in there, because it was surely destroyed. Her mind flashed to her job, and she tried to think if car insurance covered damaged goods left by the owner in the car.

  As the bus stopped, the crowd surged once more. She shoved the remnants of her phone into her fake Michael Kors bag and found her ticket. The driver stamped it and she made her way to the seat behind him. She tried to see out through the dirty window. The car was bugging her. Maybe if she did something now, she could help avert an insurance claim.

  The bus filled up, and the air brakes gushed as the driver put the vehicle in gear and swung it out on the road.

  Karen jumped up. ‘Sorry! Hey! Can you stop? I forgot something.’

  ‘If you get off, I’m not waiting for you.’

  ‘That’s fine.’ What was she thinking? This was madness.

  The door screeched open and she stepped outside. She waited as the bus headed up the hill towards the bridge before making her way over to the car. As she approached the rear of the dark green Honda Civic, she did indeed feel a little mad. Glancing around to see if anyone was watching her, she stuck her bag under her arm, crouched down and stared at the small pool of liquid on the ground. She dipped her finger into it, hoping to God it wasn’t oil, or she would definitely need her nails redone.

  She raised her finger to her face to see the substance more clearly.

  It wasn’t oil.

  It was blood.

  Thirty-Two

  Lottie rang Kirby to get the name of the place where Faye worked. It was on Main Street, but before she could head there, McGlynn was on the phone demanding her presence at Church View.

  She parked down the road from the house and approached the front gate. Her eye was drawn to the post in the grass, but before she could investigate, McGlynn bustled to the front door.

  ‘You took your time. Come on. Get suited up.’

  ‘Not sure there’s a need. I walked through the whole house yesterday without one. My DNA and fingerprints are on file for comparisons.’

  ‘Put it on anyway. We can eliminate you later.’ McGlynn turned away from the door and disappeared into the narrow dark hallway.

  To placate him, she quickly suited up, then signed in and went in search of him.

  ‘In here,’ he called, his voice muffled behind his mask.

  The stench of cats seemed more pronounced today, but she was sure nothing feline had remained in the house when it was locked and sealed last night.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  McGlynn was on his knees, enlarging the hole from where the skull had allegedly fallen.

  ‘Oh, there you are.’ He got up and set off pas
t her towards the stairs. ‘Follow me.’

  Lottie shook her head and fell in behind him. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Give me a chance and I’ll show you.’

  He stopped at the bathroom door. A technician was on his knees inside, sweeping softly at a skirting board with a short-handled brush.

  ‘Give us a minute,’ McGlynn told him.

  The technician dipped his head towards Lottie as he passed her on the way out.

  ‘I’m turning off the lights. Just to let you know. Come in, woman. Shut the door.’

  Lottie sighed, her breath coming back at her from the mask. She closed the door behind her. A sheet of forensic tarp hung from the window, blocking out the daylight.

  ‘Is that luminol?’ she asked, knowing exactly what McGlynn was using.

  He nodded. ‘Now, look at this.’

  She felt her mouth hang open.

  ‘Aye,’ McGlynn said, acknowledging her astonishment. ‘It’s had a good scrubbing with bleach, but there’s still some left behind. Not visible to the naked eye, of course.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus. What happened in here?’

  ‘A bloodbath?’ McGlynn suggested. ‘Someone was hacked to death right here.’

  ‘Not a dismemberment after death, then?’

  ‘From what’s left, I’d say there was way too much blood spatter. I found my forensic heaven down behind the skirting boards.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘There are traces in the living room and kitchen also. Just so you know. Haven’t got to the rest yet.’

  ‘Recent murder?’

  ‘Offering you an educated guess, I doubt it. It’s probably linked to the skull, possibly the torso.’

  Lottie felt her face turn pale and was glad of her mask. ‘Someone went on living in this house after a butchery occurred. That’s too barbaric to contemplate.’ As she said the words, her thoughts returned to Jeff’s job and Derry Walsh’s reluctance to let her look in his freezers.

  ‘The guy who inherited this house, he’s a butcher.’

  ‘Might be clever to have a word with him.’

  ‘I need to locate him first.’ Lottie opened the door and stepped out onto the landing, thinking that Jeff was too young to be involved if this was connected to the torso. He would only have been around nine years old in 1997. ‘Thanks, Jim. Keep me informed of anything else you find.’

  ‘Sure will.’

  She tried to recall everything from the PM on the torso. Blue paint. Fibres. ‘Jim, take samples of all the carpets in the house, and any other fabrics. We need to test them against fibres found on the torso. And see if there’s anything with blue paint.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Has anyone found freezers anywhere?’

  ‘Not so far, but we haven’t got to the garden or the shed yet.’

  ‘Can I have a look?’

  ‘Only if you bring one of my team with you and touch nothing.’

  The back garden was more overgrown than the front. Lottie stepped tentatively along green-mossed slabs to the shed. It was unlocked.

  She pulled the door open and depressed the grimy switch on the wall. A light bulb flickered to life, casting a yellow hue inside. There wasn’t much to see, which disappointed her. A free-standing wooden unit that served as a cupboard and workbench. A few long-handled tools – a rake, shovel and the like. An old lawnmower, not used in years by the looks of the garden.

  Nothing hung on the walls. Three paint cans, magnolia shade, stood just inside the door. She opened the cupboard. More paint cans, and brushes that had been put away with paint stuck to the bristles. She moved the cans around with the tip of her finger. Empty. Nothing behind them.

  ‘No hacksaws or axes?’ McGlynn loomed in the doorway behind her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll go through the place,’ he said.

  As she stood to leave, her head touched the light bulb, causing it to sway. The beam of light caught a corner of the ceiling.

  She stopped. ‘Have you got a torch?’

  McGlynn passed her one. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Give me a chance,’ she said, echoing his mantra. ‘Thought I spotted something lodged up here.’

  She scanned the area, spiders fleeing in the light. She brushed away cobwebs and stepped in closer.

  ‘I can see a blade,’ she said, her heart racing. ‘Holy shit. It’s an axe.’

  ‘Not unusual to find one in a shed,’ McGlynn said.

  ‘But why is it hidden away up here?’ Lottie stood to one side while a technician took photographs.

  The camera flashed. She knew why the axe had been hidden. ‘I can see bloodstains on the blade.’

  Thirty-Three

  Lottie left McGlynn and his team fussing over the best way to remove the axe from its hiding place without disturbing evidence. She didn’t know if they’d find anything else that could have been used as a weapon, but the hairs on her arms were standing erect, giving her goose bumps, and she had to leave them to it.

  As she drove into town, she mulled over the weird smelly house. It had to be linked to the body parts they’d found. The place was a crime scene, but which crime? Hopefully Jane could match the skull to the torso, narrowing their investigation somewhat.

  With no one able to locate Jeff Cole, she rang Sewn, where Faye worked. The supervisor told her that Faye wasn’t in. She tried the young woman’s mobile again. Nothing. It was dead. Then she tried Jeff’s. It rang out. A trickle of foreboding wetted the back of her neck. She did not welcome the feeling at all.

  She headed along Main Street before turning left, the cathedral imposing its shadow over the bonnet of the car. Before she reached the station, the radio burst into life and a squad car roared past her.

  ‘Shit.’

  She swerved the car around the excuse for a roundabout at the cathedral and sped back the way she had come, following the squad car.

  It was heading for the railway station.

  Sam McKeown lifted his tired eyes from the missing persons list he was studying. He was seeing double. He’d found nothing of interest. No one he could link to the body parts on the railway line and in the canal.

  ‘A mother or father has to have reported a missing child,’ he said.

  Lynch raised her head then lowered it again without commenting.

  ‘What do you think?’ He probed for a reaction.

  ‘Maybe the child wasn’t missing. Maybe the mother or father killed her. Then they wouldn’t report her missing, would they?’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ McKeown said. He began sifting through the mounds of files on his desk.

  ‘Did I say something intelligent?’

  ‘I think you just might have.’ He picked up a photocopied page and strolled over to Lynch’s desk. ‘Here, I found this earlier.’

  ‘What is it?’ Lynch folded her arms.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about this morning, but I’m not that long at the station so I don’t want to rock the boat.’

  ‘Have it your own way.’

  ‘Right. See this?’

  ‘I’m not blind.’

  ‘Jesus.’ He snapped the page from the desk.

  ‘Wait. What is it?

  ‘A copy of a page from the local newspaper. The inspector said to check local papers around the date found attached to the torso. I printed off a few articles and then forgot about them. Until now.’

  ‘Okay. Why the mad flurry now?’

  ‘This is dated April 1997 and it’s about a mother and her two daughters who were brutally murdered in their Ragmullin home. Says here it was classed as familicide.’

  ‘Before my time in the guards,’ Lynch said. ‘You could look at the murder file, but if the family are dead, what’s that to do with the body?’

  ‘The father and a third child were never found. The thinking at the time, per this article, was that the father murdered his family and then disappeared, kidnapping his own son. What if he then went on to kill and dismember th
e son?’

  Lynch unfolded her arms and yawned. ‘Our torso is female. You’d better keep trawling the missing persons files, McKeown.’

  He folded up the page and went back to his desk. ‘For a minute there I thought I’d found the answer to everything.’

  Thirty-Four

  A group of young women were huddled by the bus stop.

  ‘Which of you is Karen Tierney?’ Lottie said as she approached.

  Diamond-studded nails twinkled in the sunlight as a hand was raised tentatively. ‘Me.’

  ‘Can I have a word?’

  She led the young woman away from those who appeared to be comforting her and made her stand with her back to the guards who were hurriedly unrolling tape around the green Honda.

  ‘Tell me everything. From the start.’

  ‘I can’t remember it all.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘Er … I wanted to get the train, but they’re not running today. You know, after the body was found yesterday. Of course you know that. Sorry.’ She swiped at her eyes and stopped with her hand mid-air as if she’d only just remembered the blood dried on her fingers. ‘So I had to get the bus …’ She faltered.

  ‘Go on, Karen.’

  ‘It’s awful. I can’t stop shaking.’

  ‘It’s the shock. We don’t yet know what you’ve found. It might be nothing.’ But Lottie knew it wasn’t nothing. Uniforms had run the registration number. She knew who owned the car.

  Karen was talking again. ‘You see, I broke my phone. Waiting for the bus. Someone nudged me and it flew straight—’

  ‘Okay, Karen, just give me the details, as quickly as you can.’

  Karen bit her lip and Lottie thought she was about to clam up, but the young woman lowered her voice and said, ‘I saw liquid dripping from the boot. Thought it might be a bottle of Coke or something spilling. I was thinking of an insurance claim. I work in insurance, you know. A2Z. I notice things. Bit of a hazard, if I’m to be honest. Can’t even go to a nightclub without warning people not to slip on spilled drink.’