by John Brady
“‘The Pigeon on the Gate,’” Donavan said. “Noel Hill?”
“None other,” said Minogue. “You’ll get honorary citizenship to Clare yet.”
He looked back at Shaughnessy’s swollen face. The lividity always reminded him of a bruised apple. He watched Donavan’s hands. The pathologist’s commentary continued in a monotone. A habit, Minogue knew, because Donavan rarely used a tape. The deceased bled profusely from open wounds . . . A lividity pattern indicates he had lain in a position head below horizontal after the injures were sustained . . .
Donavan turned to the clipboard and wrote 5+ beside the head on the schematic. Blood had clotted and glued Shaughnessy’s hair to a plastic shopping bag. Three hours at most to stop that bloodflow in the open air, but probably longer in the tight, airless boot of the Escort. Minogue’s eyes slid out of focus. Hitchhiker, Malone had been speculating. The new Galway Road had you across the River Shannon in little more than an hour. You could be in Galway in less than three. With Shaughnessy dead, the blood draining into the wheel well —
The sneeze surprised even Minogue.
“God between us and all harm,” said Donavan. He lifted the arms one by one, turned them and then began a detailed examination of the hands.
Hanlon stood waiting. His thumb tapped softly, slowly on the back of his camera. Donavan let down each hand in turn and he walked to the x-ray panel. He stared at the x-ray of Shaughnessy’s hands.
“Nothing there yet to indicate resistance,” he said.
He returned to the table and examined the left hand again.
“Nothing,” he said again. He glanced over at Minogue.
“He wasn’t expecting it, Matt.”
Minogue realized that he had been holding his breath. He had been imagining a conversation: a lonely stretch of road, raining maybe. Shaughnessy feeling sorry for some unfortunate hiker with his thumb out. A girl, maybe? The boot lid open to pack in a rucksack or to take one out: From Boston? Really? How about that! Sure, let me put that in the boot — the trunk — . . . Or getting out, most likely: the hitchhiker could even have picked that spot. You can let me off here, I’ve got a better chance on an empty bit of road. Shaughnessy’s opening the lid of the boot, he’s reaching in. What was he hit with?
The squeak from the opening door was Malone. Donavan didn’t look up from the clipboard. Minogue moved to the sink. Malone eyed the body.
“We have a move,” he said. “Fella phoned in from the press. A photographer, says he took pictures at a do. He’s checking now but he’s almost sure Shaughnessy’s picture’s in the paper from ten days ago. A reception of some kind out in Goff’s, the horsey crowd out on the Naas Road.”
Goffs, thought Minogue. High glam: millionaires, film stars, sheiks and princes, pop tarts — any celebrity might show up at these world-renowned bloodstock auctions.
“Name of Noel O’Hagan,” Malone said. “The photographer. He’s a freelancer. He says there were other newspaper fellas there too. It was a kind of a celebrity gig. There should be other pics somewhere handy.”
Malone looked over Minogue’s shoulder at Kevin, Donavan’s assistant, who was letting a stream of water play on the bloodstains by Shaughnessy’s ear.
“And the rented car,” Malone said. “Shaughnessy was number eleven to rent it. It’s a year old, the Escort.”
“What’s the story so far on the contents?” Minogue tried.
“I checked with Eimear again. They’ve inventoried the boot already. Very messed up. The bit of board over the spare wheel and that, well it’s broken. Like, something heavy had been dumped on it.”
“The weight of the body?”
Malone shrugged.
“Eimear says she doesn’t think so. There was something more compact, says she, but right heavy. And there’s a good-sized ding on the bottom of the car. Major, like. A bad road? That’s what left the hole under the boot, it looks like.”
“What’s the situation with prints, might I ask?”
“There’s a crew working through from the boot,” Malone replied. “They’re still at the inside of the car like. There’s no wallet yet. Passport, camera — nothing. There was a fair-sized bag of laundry. All men’s clothes. Guide books, maps, bits of stuff like biscuits, empty Coke cans. He smoked, or someone in the car smoked. Eimear says they see hairs coming from the carpet now too.”
“Are there good prints coming out?”
“Well, yeah, as a matter of fact. A lot, even from the outside. They’ll start the comparison search on Shaughnessy’s this afternoon.”
Donavan was humming. Minogue tried again to pin the name of the tune.
“Ten renters before Shaughnessy,” he murmured.
“That’s the story so far,” said Malone. “Yeah. And then there’d be cleaners, staff borrowing the cars out there.”
Minogue watched Donavan’s assistant wiping pieces of sponge in a circular motion, dropping the pieces into a specimen bag hanging at the sides of the table — “The Moon Behind the Hill,” that was the tune. Donavan stopped humming. Minogue turned back toward the pathologist.
Water still trickled from the hose at rest by Shaughnessy’s elbow. Donavan was finished the external? Patrick Leyne Shaughnessy would shortly be sawn and eviscerated.
The music gave way to a too-chatty presenter with a strong Ulster accent extolling the virtues of Clare music in general. An impertinence, Minogue decided.
Malone murmured by his shoulder now.
“Spots of blood from around the lid of the hatchback,” he said. “They’re in being typed.”
The click of more instruments being laid on the stainless steel brought Malone’s glance to the table. He bit his lip, looked back at Minogue.
“Clobbered in the open doorway, the boot, what do you think?”
“Well it looks like he didn’t react,” he said. “But there’s a spray pattern to sort out still, to be sure.”
“He knew the guy, then,” Malone went on. “Or the fella ran up, got his first one in?”
The whirr always reminded Minogue of the dentist. Malone’s blink lasted too long. Minogue eyed the saw, which the assistant was readying. Donavan leaned over his clipboard, staring at the schematic of the back of the body.
“Say he’d been drinking,” said Malone. “Closing time, you know? After hours even. A session maybe, buying rounds of drink and all. All hail-fella-well-met until they’re outside. Say he’s been blathering away with the few jars on him. Money talk. Fellas go out with him. ‘Give us a lift there, will you…’”
“Easy done, all right,” Minogue said.
Malone eyed the body for several moments.
“Well-to-do, you know,” he said. “Lots of stuff, like. The watch, the clothes. You know the Yanks, the way they are, the way they look. Maybe Shaughnessy’s pulling tenners out of his wallet all night. So it’s a local. I say we’re going to find two fellas, two drinking partners. They wait their chance, wallop him, follow through — maybe in a panic, or pissed — finish the job. Then they decide to hide the body back up in Dublin. Where it belongs, to their way of thinking?”
Minogue thought of the American tourists he’d first seen as a kid. He’d been mesmerized by the diver’s watches, those expanding metal watchbands, the tanned, hairy forearms. Perfume, the jaws always going on them. And now? He’d seen video cameras the size of paperbacks, outdoor gear and packsacks with pockets and straps for everything. Still the big, capped teeth, the ready smiles, the ponderous way a lot of them walked. All overweight? Swaggering? How they seemed to occupy that part of the path or the space where they stopped to look around.
Maybe Mr. Patrick Leyne Shaughnessy had seriously pissed off some unemployed, restless and angry young fellas, men very goddamned fed up of hearing about a booming economy, fed up of watching tourists pulling endless amounts of cash out of their wallets.
Donavan was looking over. He pointed to Shaughnessy’s head.
“This abrasion up here by the right side of the te
mple,” he said. “That starts at the cheekbone in actual fact.”
Minogue stepped back to the table. Malone, his face tight, followed.
“Falling, you could guess,” Donavan added.
Minogue couldn’t see any difference in colours where the skin was scuffed. Hanlon manoeuvred around him. Lots of blows say rage, drunken; panic: the basics here.
“How many times was he hit?” he asked Donavan.
“Well, now. You have the base of the skull fractured, with bits of it up here. See those little bits on the x-ray there on the right?”
Donavan picked up a scalpel and examined the blade.
“We have corresponding scrapes here on the right side of the head as he went down. I would hazard a guess that the first blow sent him to the ground. Defenceless, maybe even mortal. An iron bar?”
Hanlon leaned over the side of the table and snapped three pictures. What hitchhiker would be walking around with an iron bar handy?
“So other blows landed after he went down. Here’s a pattern on the side of the face that backs that up.”
Minogue followed Donavan’s finger. Kevin helped to turn the head.
“But, thing is, there’d be more to it — a collateral fracture even — if he was hit on cement now,” Donavan went on. “Or a roadway. I don’t see, I don’t recognize, gravel or tar here yet.”
Minogue’s mind slipped away again. Shaughnessy opening the boot lid: he’d have heard someone step up behind him? A word, a shout? He hadn’t raised his arm to fend of the blow. Drunk? He looked at the board. Shaughnessy was a hundred eighty-three centimetres. That was just over six feet. Hit hard the first time, Shaughnessy would have gone forward and down at the same time. The spots of blood on the underside of the hatchback looked like the outer edge of a spray pattern, fair enough. It could also be from clumsy, strained efforts to shove Shaughnessy into the boot. Eighty-nine point something kilos, about two hundred pounds: over fourteen stone? Well that’d take lifting. For an instant Minogue saw a pack of teenagers flailing at Shaughnessy.
He looked down at his notebook.
“Can I take photocopies with me today, Pierce?”
“Course you can.”
Donavan looked under his eyebrow from Minogue to Malone and back. Minogue glanced over at his colleague. Malone’s jaw was slack, his tongue was working slowly against the inside of the cheek.
“We’ll go in now,” said Donavan. “Kevin?”
Minogue nodded toward the door. Malone followed him over.
“Follow up on the newspaper thing now instead of waiting,” Minogue said. “Get this fella, the photographer again. O’Hagan, is it?”
Malone nodded.
“If Shaughnessy was on the society pages, there’ll be other pictures somewhere. Pinch these photographers if you get waltzed around. Call in uniforms, even. Get Éilis to have the warrants expressed if we need them. I’d be thinking there’d be other pictures of the same crowd or the same do somewhere in their files.”
“Contact proofs,” said Malone. “That’s what they do first, right?”
“That’s it. And then do a check with the lab again.”
Malone looked up at the clock.
“No great hurry back now,” said Minogue. “But you’re buying dinner today.”
Kevin drew up jars from a cart he had wheeled over and placed six of them beside Shaughnessy’s left arm. Donavan switched on the saw for a test. Minogue became aware of a new ache at the base of his neck. He kept his gaze on the jars. Kevin placed the roll of labels by Donavan’s clipboard and began writing in Shaughnessy’s name and the date. Minogue forced himself to look over Shaughnessy again.
Donavan’s gloves looked very tight. Maybe they were some new type of plastic or rubber. He should really put on glasses himself. The saw might throw up bits of . . . He watched Donavan draw the scalpel up from Shaughnessy’s pubic hair. The radio began to play a reel. Donavan finished the Y with a sharp flourish. There was a flute and a harp, airy sounds that reminded him of a windy May morning. Kathleen was off tomorrow. Phone Iseult and . . .
The tissue parted by the rib cage as though it had been unzipped. Minogue held his breath again. It took an effort to keep his feet planted now. He let his eyes go out of focus. He was already there, just in time: that turn in the lane by Tully that sliver of sea off Bray.
Donavan turned the diagram around. Minogue recalled the deft slicing of the liver, the pathologist’s unwavering hand as he held the sample for the jars.
“I can’t tell,” said Donavan. “But it wasn’t more than a couple of hours before the systems shut down. A sizeable meal, call it. Do Americans have big appetites?”
Irony? Minogue didn’t know. He squeezed the back of his neck. He looked around the conference room and tried another mouthful of tea. Pretty poor. He eyed his notebook next to the stain from the cup. His writing had definitely changed after Donavan had opened the skull. He remembered fighting against the noise of the saw, wandering through the woods by Carrigologan, stepping around the stones and the long grass in Tully. “Drink?” he had written under Internal.
Malone had found out that both of Shaughnessy’s parents would be coming over. Geraldine Shaughnessy, the mother and Leyne’s ex, hadn’t remarried. Leyne himself was already on the plane, someone said. It was O’Riordan, Leyne’s old pal in Ireland, who had identified the body at four in the morning. It had been at the joint request of the mother and father. A representative of Leyne had faxed through the confirmation to Tynan’s office this morning.
“The blood alcohol will be done by three or so, I imagine,” said Donavan. “If you have the queue jumped. As per your routine fashion.”
“Thanks, Pierce,” said Minogue. He looked down at his notes again.
“Do you be over Glencree much still?”
“Most Sundays,” said Minogue. “More, now the autumn is here.”
“Do you suffer company?”
Minogue managed a smile.
“Stop off at the house, can’t you. We’ll take the one car up.”
“Do you hear me arguing? Remember me to Kathleen.”
SIX
Malone jammed second gear as he sped away from lights. He accelerated hard on the motorway.
“You know what gets to me?” he said to Minogue. “Like, really gets to me?”
“Tell me, why don’t you.”
“It’s when they’re finished. I swear to God, man. I can take the face being pulled back down: I can. The brain flopping around on the table even.”
Malone glanced over at the Inspector.
“It’s when they tie up the bag.”
“The bag,” Minogue said.
“With the stuff inside it. The organs, like? They shove things back in, inside the rib cage. Now that’s what really gets me. Know what I’m saying?”
Nowharamsane. Minogue yawned. He’d been counting: seventeen APF officers on the roster. A couple of hundred staff. Cleaners, baggage handlers, drivers. Maintenance, delivery people, bottle-washers. Shop assistants, pilots, stewardesses. Passengers, passengers’ families saying goodbye to passengers. Passengers’ families saying hello to passengers. Sheehy’d need twenty officers to make a dent in this.
“Reminds me of well, you know. The Christmas? A turkey or something. Sick, isn’t it?”
Minogue followed a plane’s approach out over the sea. The plane seemed to hover there over Howth. A holding pattern.
“But you have to hand it to him,” said Malone. “An art. That’s what it is.”
The flaps down, Minogue thought, and the wheels were claws searching for a place to perch. Fifty, sixty tons, were they? Jesus. All in the space of a lifetime, this stuff too. Neither his father nor his mother had been inside a plane.
“And the size of the needle, but,” Malone said and began pulling at an eyebrow.
Minogue shifted to get his notebook out. He had the phone open when it rang. It was Tony O’Leary. The family was flying in from the States very shortly.
“It’s Leyne’s jet they’re coming in on,” said O’Leary. “Boss wants to know how you stand on it.”
Minogue looked out at the broken lines of the motorway rushing by them. As if O’Leary didn’t know.
“Strangely enough, Tony, we were on the way to the airport.”
“He’s tied up until after four. He wants you to represent him.”
“Haven’t you phoned Lawlor? He could do that handy enough.”
“Says will you phone him if you can’t.”
Minogue let a few moments go by.
“The mother and Leyne, is it?”
“That’s it. Probably a few people with them. Justice is sending Declan King.”
Assistant Minister of Justice King was an ex-Guard turned barrister. King had been dubbed King Declan by Kilmartin in disdainful, edgy regard for King’s talents as the Minister’s principal arm-twister for Gardai. An intense pain in the face, Kilmartin avowed.
“And wants you to brief Leyne,” O’Leary added. “Within reason.”
The Nissan leaned in hard on the bend. Minogue realized that he was squeezing the phone hard against his ear.
“Give me a minute there, Tony,” he managed.
He turned to Malone.
“Take it handy for the love of God, man. And pull in after the roundabout. We might be changing the menu here.”
He took his hand off the phone.
“Let me see if I have this right, Tony. The Commissioner of the Gardai wants me to brief Leyne on a murder investigation that’s hardly gotten started?”
“That’s what he wanted.”
O’Leary must have been holding his breath too.
“Leyne is an American, zillionaire frozen food tycoon and I am a Garda Inspector.”
“He says he’ll let you in on the thing soon’s he can.”
“Where do we take him? In town I mean.”
“There’s a press conference set for the Shelbourne Hotel.”
A press conference, Minogue thought. I can’t be running around like an iijit, chaperoning some fella. I have to break this case right away. It’s speed now, at this stage. He knows that.
