Authors: Tana French
I’m itching to look up Cueball Lanigan’s boys on the system, but I’m not gonna do it: I’d feel like a twat taking the gang thing that seriously, plus the search would be logged for anyone to find, just like we found the search someone ran on Aislinn last autumn. Instead I go through the statements from the door-to-door again, properly this time, looking for the little things that need following up. I’m not finding them – Gaffney went to town with the highlighter pen on one woman’s statement that she heard the guy in Number 15 roaring about killing someone a week or two back, but seeing as Number 15 has three teenagers, I figure we don’t need to break out the waterboarding equipment just yet. Steve cross-checks Aislinn’s phone records against her phone, and comes up with no discrepancies: no one’s been deleting texts or call logs, not Aislinn and not our guy. No calls or texts from unidentified numbers, either; every number is in her contacts list – and we’ll track down the contacts to make sure they are who the phone says they are – or else comes back to some customer service department. That has its good side – it’s a nice punch in the face for Steve’s cute little fantasy about an Aislinn-and-Daddy reunion – but I’d give a lot for just one text from an unregistered mobile saying
Meet me for a shag by the heroin stash at 8.
Every investigation nets you plenty of nothing. You need that – it’s the only way you can narrow down your focus – and normally it feels good, slashing the dead ends off your whiteboard, leaving the live stuff to leap out at you big and bold. This time, though, there’s no slashing going on, just little bits of useless nothing splatting onto my desk like spitballs from some joker I can’t catch. That soaring buzz is turning to edginess, making me shift and knee-jiggle and rub away imaginary itches against the back of my chair. I need something, anything, that’ll zap away Steve’s great big fluffy cloud of if-based babble and leave me with the stuff solid enough to stand on. Incident Room C looks empty to the point of ridiculous, the half-dozen of us dotted around a room that would take thirty easily, the high ceiling and the shining rows of desks shrinking us to dollhouse size. I’m starting to wonder if Breslin was taking the piss out of us, getting the luxury suite for a two-cent case that would have fit in that ex-locker-room shithole with space left over.
At two o’clock we send Gaffney out for pizza, and Stanton pulls up one of the sob radio shows on his phone for lunchtime light relief. Sure enough, they’ve got a big segment about Aislinn, leading into a general outrage-fest about how the country is getting more dangerous for decent law-abiding citizens and the Guards don’t give a damn, complete with phone-ins from old ones who were mugged and left to die in pools of their own blood while uniforms stepped over them looking for a politician’s hole to lick. They even have Crowley on, being profound about how our cavalier attitude towards Aislinn’s murder and our oppressive bullying of geniuses like himself are both symbolic of the sickness of our society ‘on an almost mythic level’, whatever he thinks that means. For a minute there, while we all crease ourselves laughing, we forget what we think of each other.
‘My cousin went out with him for a while,’ Meehan says.
‘Your cousin’s got shite taste,’ Reilly tells him.
‘She does, yeah. She dumped him because he wouldn’t wear johnnies. He said they were a feminist conspiracy to suppress masculine energy.’
Everyone cracks up again. ‘Fucking beautiful,’ Stanton says, reaching to grab another slice. ‘I’m going to see if I can get away with that.’
‘Not a chance,’ I say. ‘If even someone thick enough to shag Crowley didn’t fall for it – no offence to your cousin, Meehan—’
‘Nah, you’re grand. She is thick. She lent the little bollix three grand so he could self-publish his autobiography.’ That sets everyone off again. ‘Never got a penny of it back.’
‘What’d he call it?’ Kellegher asks. ‘
Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye
?’
‘
Free Willy
,’ I say. That gets a laugh with a startled edge, like half the floaters didn’t think I was able for it.
‘Here we go,’ Steve says, swiping at his phone. ‘
Truth’s Martyr
, by Louis Crowley— No, listen; there’s a review. Five stars. “A searing, towering dissection of one man’s odyssey to reveal the hidden shadows of Irish justice. If you care at all about truth . . .” Jaysus, it’s longer than the book.’
‘Anyone want to put money on who wrote that?’ Stanton says.
‘How do you reveal a hidden shadow?’ Kellegher wants to know.
‘You lot are just part of the conspiracy,’ Meehan tells us all. ‘I bet you go around trying to put johnnies on poor unsuspecting fellas on the street.’
Reilly beckons to him. ‘C’mere till I stick one on you.’
‘It’d take three of yours.’
‘Here,’ Stanton says, throwing a greasy paper napkin at Meehan. ‘Suppress your masculine energy with that.’ Meehan slaps the napkin away and it goes into Kellegher’s coffee, and all of them start telling me that I need to write up the rest for harassment and creating a hostile workplace environment and wearing crap ties and farting in the unmarked cars. For that minute, the incident room feels like a good place.
‘I’m sure many Guards are fine people,’ Crowley tells us, from Stanton’s phone. ‘But when one of them practically assaults me, simply because I want to keep you informed on what they’re doing about this beautiful young woman’s death, then I think we all have to ask ourselves why she – or he, of course – is so desperate to control what we’re allowed to hear. After all—’
Underneath the solemn voice, he’s obviously creaming his chinos with delight: his story is taking on a life of its own, parallel to reality and getting a lot more traction. Reilly is grinning. ‘That’ll do,’ I say. The laugh has worn off; Crowley is giving me the sick. ‘Yous aren’t a shower of schoolkids. Get some work done.’ Stanton switches off the radio and they all turn back to their computers, throwing each other sideways glances and eyebrow-lifts about what a bitch I am, and the incident room goes back to normal.
The only bit of actual something that comes in is the pathologist’s report. Cooper hates most people, but he likes me – probably out of pure contrariness, but you take what you can get – so he rings me when he finishes writing up the post-mortem, instead of making me wait for his report.
‘Detective Conway,’ he says. ‘I was sorry to miss you at the crime scene yesterday.’
Which is my cue to apologise for not making it in time. ‘We were sorry to miss you,’ I say, snapping my fingers at Steve to get his attention. ‘We got caught up in roadworks. I appreciate you ringing me, Dr Cooper.’
‘The pleasure is mine. I trust the investigation is progressing well?’
‘Not too bad. We’ve got a good suspect. I could do with a bit more hard evidence and a bit less if-then-maybe.’ Steve makes a face at me. ‘Any chance you can help me out there?’
‘I think I can promise you a minimum of
if-then-maybe
,’ Cooper says, with delicate disdain, like I used bad language. ‘It is hardly my stock in trade.’
‘That’ll be a nice change,’ I say, making a face right back at Steve. Cooper makes a small crunchy noise that could be a laugh.
‘As far as hard evidence goes, the vast majority of the post-mortem examination provided no unexpected information. The victim was in good health, showed no signs of injuries received prior to Saturday night, had not had recent sexual intercourse, was not pregnant and had never borne a child.’ Cooper takes a pause and clears his throat: with that out of the way, we’re getting to the good stuff. ‘As I suggested at the scene, she suffered two sets of injuries: one to the face, and one to the back of the skull. The pattern of the facial injuries is consistent with a punch. The salient fact about this punch is the degree of damage it inflicted: the victim’s jawbone was fractured, and two of her lower left incisors were broken almost out of their sockets. Considerable force was required. I think we can safely say that the blow was inflicted by a man of above average strength and fitness.’
I mouth
Strong guy
at Steve. He raises his eyebrows at me:
That sound like Rory to you?
‘Those injuries, however,’ Cooper says, ‘would not have been life-threatening. The fatal injury was to the right rear of the skull. This injury is linear, approximately two and a half inches long, and made by an object with a sharp right-angled edge, consistent with the fireplace surround on which the victim was found. The blow caused a severe skull fracture leading to an extradural haematoma. In the absence of immediate medical attention, the increasing pressure on the brain resulted in death.’
‘The victim took the punch, went over backwards and hit her head on the fireplace surround,’ I say. ‘How long would it have taken her to die?’
‘Impossible to say. An extradural haematoma can cause death within minutes, or within hours. Given the severity of the injury, I would have expected this one to progress fairly rapidly; precisely how rapidly, however, there is no way to know. One possible indicator, however, may lie in the second injury to the right rear of the skull.’
‘Whoa,’ I say. ‘Second injury?’ Steve’s eyebrows go up. I kick my chair closer to him, switch on speakerphone and put a finger to my lips. Cooper hasn’t made up his mind about Steve yet; one wrong word out of him could end the conversation right there. I feel a weird, idiotic twitch of triumph, like the bad kid seeing her golden little brother in the doghouse while she gets the pats on the head for once. I slap it down.
‘Restrain your excitement, Detective,’ Cooper says. ‘This second injury is minor – a slight contusion. Apart from that, it is practically identical to the first: linear, two inches long, made by an object with a right-angled edge. The two injuries are parallel, lying approximately a quarter of an inch apart, which explains why the second was not immediately obvious at the scene.’ He sounds miffed at the thing for hiding out on him.
I say, ‘So after the victim went down, either she lifted her head and then dropped it again, or else the killer did.’
‘Mmm,’ Cooper says. Steve is scribbling something in his notebook. ‘Either is possible. The killer could certainly have lifted her head to check for signs of life, or she could have attempted to get up but been unable to do more than raise her head. I would expect the initial injury to cause unconsciousness – there was some intraparenchymal bleeding, which generally has immediate neurological consequences – but it is plausible that she briefly regained consciousness before death.’
Steve passes me his notebook. Steve is about the only cop I know who has legible writing – nice writing, full of definite, old-fashioned loops and dashes; I think he practises in his spare time. The page says,
Or: first a push – then the punch when she’s down?
I ask, ‘Could the injuries have come the other way round? The killer initially pushed our victim, rather than punching her; she went over backwards, hit her head on the fireplace, but not hard. Then when she was down and stunned, he went after her and punched her in the face?’
‘Ah,’ Cooper says, enjoying that. ‘Ah-ha. Interesting. And possible; certainly possible. Impressive, Detective Conway.’
‘That’s why they pay me the big bucks,’ I say. Steve mouths
Hey!
and points at his chest. I turn up my palm and grin at him:
Nothing I can do, man, hate that.
‘Hmm,’ Cooper says, and I hear pages flicking. ‘In light of this new theory, I must revise my estimate of the killer’s strength.
If
the punch occurred when the victim’s head was already lying on the stone surround – rather than when she was free-standing, so to speak – it would have required considerably less force to inflict these injuries. Some strength would still be needed, but any healthy adult of normal muscular development could have done it.’
I’m giving Steve the eyebrows right back: that does sound like Rory Fallon. ‘Sorry to make you rewrite your report,’ I say. Cooper handwrites; none of us have the nads to invite him into the twenty-first century, so we get floaters to type up his reports.
‘I would forgive worse sins for the pleasure of hearing an alternative theory that fits the facts so neatly,’ Cooper says. ‘The rewritten report will be with you as soon as possible. I wish you the best of luck in finding hard evidence,’ and he hangs up.
Me and Steve look at each other.
‘That’s not manslaughter,’ he says.
‘Nope. Not if that’s how it went down.’ People get knocked down all the time, get up and hit back; no one expects that to kill. But if you punch someone in the face while the back of her head is up against a sharp stone edge, it takes some cojones to claim you thought she’d get up and walk away.
‘And Breslin likes it being manslaughter.’
His voice has dipped low. He’s right: Breslin jumped straight on the manslaughter scenario. Maybe because that’s a better fit with Rory Fallon, and Breslin wants this to be Rory, just to make everyone’s life simpler; maybe because he knows well that it isn’t, but he thinks we’re more likely to bite on the manslaughter story. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Let’s see what he thinks of the murder version.’
‘Do you see Rory Fallon doing that?’ Steve asks. ‘One wild swing, yeah. But going after her like that?’
‘Whoever did this was raging,’ I say. ‘He snapped. We already knew that. And we’re not looking for King Kong. Rory could’ve done it, no problem.’