‘… that’s why they call it the sweet science. You have to get in your opponent’s head. It’s never been about who hits the hardest …’ I heard McCrabban muttering to Lawson as we crossed the courtyard.
Payne bent down and took the blanket from the dead woman’s body.
She was face down, her head was half smashed in. She was wearing a rather chic black leather jacket and underneath that a black wool sweater, a white blouse with a green cotton scarf. Black skirt, black tights, a single slip-on court shoe and thin black leather gloves completed the ensemble.
‘Where’s the jacket from?’ I asked.
‘The label said “Dolce & Gabbana – Milano”. Never heard of them,’ Payne said.
‘Me neither,’ I confessed. ‘But things ain’t cheap in Milan, are they?’
I looked at the shoe. It had a half inch heel on it, so it wasn’t completely impractical, but there was something about it I didn’t like.
‘How come both her shoes didn’t come off? Those are slip-ons, right? Wouldn’t the impact smack both of them off?’
‘Not necessarily. The force shook one shoe off, but not the other. That’s not so uncommon if she belly-flopped. More proof it was a suicide, actually. If she’d changed her mind she might have tried to land feet first.’
‘Death would have been instantaneous?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely. She busted open like an egg. She wouldn’t have felt a thing.’
‘No sign of foul play?’
‘There’s no blood trail anywhere. We searched with the UV, so I’m fairly confident in saying that this is where she jumped and the body has not been moved.’
‘What else?’
‘Tox report off already. Medical Examiner will have to tell you about sexual activity.’
‘Fibres, hairs?’
‘Everything we found is off to the lab, nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘Signs of domestic abuse, drugs, anything like that?’
‘No, but again the ME will give you a fuller picture.’
‘Time of death?’
‘Tough to estimate body cooling because of the low ambient temperature, but one of my men inserted a rectal thermometer when we first got here and it gave a reading of 27 degrees.’
I did the calculation in my head. A dead body normally lost about 1.5 degrees centigrade per hour from a base level of 37 degrees centigrade. A loss of 10 degrees would put death at roughly around midnight, or just a little after.
‘So death about twelve o’clock?’
‘Aye.’
I sighed and looked at the dead girl. ‘So what do you reckon, Frank?’ I asked.
‘She topped herself. Why, I don’t know. That’s for you to find out, if you can.’
‘If we can,’ I agreed.
‘How many suicides do you get a year, Duffy?’ he asked.
‘A few,’ I conceded.
‘You ever find out why they do it?’
‘The last three suicides we dealt with were all peelers. Blew their brains out with their side arms. Of course we had to write them all up as “death by accidental discharge of a firearm”.’
‘Pressure from the union?’ Payne asked.
‘Aye and from upstairs. Suicide invalidates life-insurance policies and it’s bad for morale.’
‘That it is,’ Payne agreed.
I looked up at the keep roof. ‘If you were going to kill yourself, would you jump from here, Frank?’
‘It’s the tallest building in Carrick that the general public has access to,’ he said.
‘And she would have been certain to die?’
‘Doing a bit of mental arithmetic … after 90 feet of free fall, your maximum velocity at the pavement would be about 76 feet per second, uhm, that’s about 52 mph. Maybe take off one mile an hour for wind resistance because she was belly-flopping … A person weighing a hundred pounds hitting the ground at, say, 50 mph would experience a force of about a ton exerted on their body for about a tenth of a second. That’s certain death, I think.’
‘I expect you’re right.’
‘Aye, Duffy, she knew what she was doing and she picked a good spot to do it. Away from prying eyes or people trying to talk her out of it.’
‘No chance she fell from the wheel-well of a passing plane?’
‘No. She would have sprayed all over the courtyard.’
‘Lovely image. Anything else you can tell me, Frank?’
‘Do you want to know the victim’s name?’
‘You know her name?’
‘Follow me,’ he said and led us back to the overhang and a portable table and chairs where her bag and effects had been laid out. He handed me a set of latex gloves. I put them on and he gave me an evidence bag which contained a purse. Inside were a couple of credit cards, a driving licence and a photo ID for the Financial Times.
‘Lily Emma Bigelow,’ I read off the ID and, shocked, handed it to Lawson.
‘Jesus!’ he said, stunned. ‘We met her, didn’t we, boss? Your woman from yesterday!’
I explained the context in which we had met Lily Bigelow to McCrabban and Chief Inspector Payne.
‘She didn’t seem depressed to me,’ Lawson said.
‘Or me,’ I agreed.
‘She was very good looking,’ Lawson added.
‘Not any more,’ Payne said with a malicious cackle that turned into a coughing fit so severe it almost made you believe in karma. When he’d recovered he said goodbye and he was followed out of the castle by the rest of the forensic team.
Lily’s bag contained nothing else of note. A few tissues, a pencil. I put the evidence carefully back in the bags and we walked up the steps to the battlements to survey the crime scene. No new insight from up here.
‘No notebook among her effects,’ I said to Lawson and McCrabban.
‘Probably back in her hotel room,’ Lawson said.
‘We’ll have to check for that. That’s probably where she left the suicide note, if this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment job.’
‘She was English?’ Crabbie asked.
‘She was. A journalist with that delegation visiting Carrick. Speaking of which … Shit! We’ll need to question all of them before they leave town. Where’s my head today? Lawson, run up to the Coast Road Hotel and tell the manager that no one’s to leave until they’ve given a statement about their whereabouts last night.’
‘And their knowledge of the whereabouts of Lily Bigelow?’
‘Yeah, that too. For as much of yesterday as they can remember. Take as many reservists as you need to write down statements. On my authority. We’ll need to get all the statements now. If they’re all going back to Finland we might not get another chance.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And make sure no one goes into her hotel room until I get there.’
‘Of course, sir,’ he said, and scurried out of the castle.
I sat down on the cold steps and looked at McCrabban ‘Is someone coming to take the body away, or is she just going to lie there all morning?’ I asked him.
‘I’ll go see, Sean,’ he said.
He came back a minute later. ‘They’ll be here in half an hour to take her up to Belfast for autopsy,’ he said.
I stared down at the body again. There was something not quite right about this crime scene, something that I was missing, but try as I might, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Had Beth’s departure frazzled me, or was it just thirteen long years of this exhausting profession in this exhausting land?
The snow was getting heavier. Crabbie’s lips were turning blue.
‘I’ll watch over the body until they come for her. You best run along, mate.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Log the evidence. Secure the CC footage. Find that bloody trainee detective constable whose name I’ve forgotten. Later we’ll search Lily’s room for a note. Women are more likely to leave a note than men in cases like this. And then help Lawson get those statements in. Make sure no one leav
es the Coast Road Hotel until we get statements from them. Statements and phone numbers and addresses, even if they’re in bloody Finland. Notification of the family, if you get the time. The FT will have her next of kin on file, no doubt. Oh, and can you send someone with a Land Rover to wait for me outside? I had to get a taxi here, my car’s banjaxed.’
‘What happened?’ McCrabban asked.
‘Battery.’
He nodded sadly. ‘It’s not your day is it? Broken-down car, girlfriend leaving you.’
I coughed a nasty smoker’s cough and sputtered, ‘At least I’ve got my health.’
McCrabban smiled. ‘I’ll send a Land Rover and we’ll see you later.’
He turned to go and then looked back at me. He didn’t say anything.
‘What?’
‘I know what you’re thinking about,’ he said.
‘What am I thinking about, Crabbie?’
‘You’re thinking about the Lizzie Fitzpatrick case.’
I nodded. ‘I was, earlier.’
‘We can talk about it or not talk about it. It’s entirely up to you, Sean.’
‘If it’s not a suicide we may need to talk, but I think it is a suicide, isn’t it?’
‘Looks that way,’ he agreed. He brushed the snow off his lapel. ‘I’ll head off, then,’ he said.
When Crabbie had gone, I rummaged in my inside pocket for that old roach I knew was in there. About an inch left in the spliff which would be good enough. I lit it and drew in the Turkish black.
There’s something inherently cinematic about snow falling in an enclosed space. And this was snow falling into the enclosed space of the courtyard of an 800-year-old castle. Snow tumbling from an early February sky on to the covered form of a beautiful, dead English girl who had jumped to her death. Poor lass. I looked at the thin little blanket covering Lily’s body. Her feet were sticking out, one foot in the little black shoe, one foot bare.
There was, I thought, surprisingly little blood around the body. Payne was surely right, though. She didn’t die from internal bleeding. Death would have been instantaneous.
Snow was accumulating on the blanket folds.
And then, quite suddenly, I was crying.
Sobbing for all the lost daughters and missing girls.
‘Shit,’ I said and let the joint drop to the flagstones with a hiss. It lay there in the courtyard with all the other rubbish from our presence this morning. Snow drifting down on to cigarette ends, latex gloves, plastic coffee cups, yellow photographic film wrappers, dog shit from the K9 unit.
I stood up and came down the steps and walked over to the body.
‘Why did you do it, honey? You had it all going for you …’
I lifted the blanket to look at her. Her dark hair, her pretty face smashed on the left side and strangely untouched on the right. Her arms were by her sides. Her left eye was open: no longer emerald it was blind, bloodshot but transfigured by the Mystery. A snowflake drifted on to her lip, another into her half-opened mouth. Strange that she hadn’t put her hands up to protect her face. Even the most determined suicide generally protected their face – it was instinct, you just couldn’t help it. But maybe that’s why she had jumped at night. In the dark she wouldn’t have seen the ground coming.
Yes. That had to be it. Because this couldn’t be anything else but suicide.
I let the blanket fall again and checked that no one was looking. ‘Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen,’ I said quickly and made the sign of the cross. If she was Catholic it would help, and if she wasn’t, it wouldn’t do any harm.
I saw the men arrive from the Belfast morgue. I waved to them. They were young guys whom I didn’t know.
‘This the stiff?’ one of them asked, a greasy-haired character with long sideburns that he probably thought made him look like Elvis.
‘This is the victim, yes. Her name was Lily Bigelow. I knew her. So, you know, be careful with her, OK?’
‘We always are, boss, always are,’ the young man lied, and to feel better about things, I chose to believe him.
6: THE ONE SHOE
I nodded to WPC Warren, still protecting the crime scene, and walked down to the car park, where a Land Rover was waiting for me.
‘I’m Constable Stewart, sir. Your lift, sir,’ a chubby young constable said, while attempting to hide a cigarette behind his back.
‘Thanks,’ I said getting into the passenger’s side.
Stewart tossed the ciggie, missed first gear twice but eventually got us going up along the seafront towards the Coast Road Hotel.
‘This is you, sir,’ he said, pulling up in front of the Coast Road. I was about to get out when a sudden thought hit me.
‘Jesus!’ I said and jumped back into the Land Rover’s cab.
‘Sir?’
‘Back to the castle, son, and step on it and stick the bloody siren on!’
‘Sir?’
‘No, shift over, I’ll drive.’
We swapped seats and I put the siren on and got the Land Rover up to 70 mph on the short run back to Carrick Castle. I parked it right outside and ran past WPC Warren into the courtyard.
The men from the morgue had just loaded Lily’s body on to a gurney, but hadn’t begun wheeling her outside to their van just yet. I lifted the blanket and looked at her feet. One shoe was still on, the other off and inside an evidence bag. I examined the shoe in the bag and the one remaining on her foot.
‘I knew something was up with those bloody shoes. Look!’ I said pointing at her feet.
‘What’s the matter?’ Elvis Sideburns asked.
‘She’s put her left shoe on her right foot!’ I said, showing them the shoe in the bag.
‘She wasn’t thinking straight. She was topping herself,’ Elvis Sideburns said.
‘Aye,’ his mate agreed.
I looked at Stewart.
He shrugged. ‘Your mind’s not in the right place when you’re killing yourself is it, sir?’ he said.
‘Go and relieve WPC Warren at the gate and tell her to come over here. And don’t let anyone leave the castle without my say so,’ I said.
Warren arrived a minute later.
‘Sir?’ she asked.
I explained the situation to her. ‘You ever put the wrong shoes on the wrong feet?’ I asked her.
‘Never,’ she said.
‘Aha!’ I said and looked triumphantly at Elvis and his mate.
She looked up at the top of the keep. ‘How did she get up there?’ she asked.
‘Only way up is the spiral staircase.’
Warren bit her lip.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘If I had to walk up to the top of the keep in heels like these, I probably would have taken my shoes off,’ she said.
‘To climb up the stairs? The heels aren’t that big.’
‘I’ve been up that staircase. You can’t climb it in any kind of dress-shoe heels. So you take them off. Stands to reason. That trip step thing they have. You’d take your heels off.’
‘So she takes them off for the staircase and then when she puts them on again she puts them on the wrong feet? I don’t buy that,’ I said.
‘Maybe she kept them off until she walked across the keep roof and then she put them on before she jumped. She wanted to her look her best, didn’t she? I’d wear me good shoes if I was topping myself,’ Elvis said.
‘Who asked you? Come on Warren, follow me up the stairs.’ We walked back up the spiral staircase on to the keep roof, where the snow had made conditions quite treacherous.
‘What do you think now, Constable Warren?’
‘Where did she jump from?’ Warren asked.
‘Just here,’ I said. ‘Don’t go near the edge. It’s very slippy. We don’t need another calamity today.’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ Warren said. ‘It’s possible that she kept her shoes off, held them in her hand and just slipped them on before she jumped. She sat there on the
edge with her legs dangling over the side thinking about it … I really don’t know.’
‘And could she have put them on the wrong feet?’
‘I don’t know.’
I began to have doubts myself. How could anyone else have put Lily’s shoes on, apart from Lily herself?
‘I suppose it was dark. And if she didn’t actually walk in the shoes … and she was in a highly emotional state, wasn’t she?’ I muttered, as much to myself as to WPC Warren.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Take your shoes off and put them on the wrong feet and tell me what it feels like.’
WPC Warren put her shoes on the wrong feet.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘They feel different, sir, but if your mind was disordered …’
I sat down on the roof and tucked my coat underneath me. I closed my eyes, took my DMs off and put them on the wrong feet. I stood up and walked around for a bit. It was an odd sensation but perhaps not as odd as I’d been expecting. Was that good or bad? Did I want this to be a murder?
‘Why put the shoes on at all? Why not just toss them over?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, sir … How did one of the shoes come off?’ Warren asked.
‘Forensic says the force of the impact blasted one shoe off, but the way she landed the other one stayed on,’ I explained.
Warren nodded. I opened my notebook. ‘Just to be clear, Warren, you think it’s possible that she could have mistaken one shoe for the other in the dark?’
‘Uhm … I suppose so, yes it’s possible. If she wasn’t walking in them.’
I nodded and let the information sink in.
‘Because if someone else put those shoes on Lily Bigelow’s feet, well, then this is probably a murder.’
I looked at her for a good ten seconds, but she didn’t answer. ‘You’re the expert on women’s feet and women’s shoes up here.’
‘I don’t know, sir … I suppose, yes, the most likely explanation is that she took the shoes off to come up the stairs and kept them off until just before she jumped and didn’t notice or didn’t care.’
‘All right. Fair enough,’ I said – my voice a curious mixture of relief and disappointment.
Rain Dogs Page 8
