by Arlene Hunt
‘Are you okay, Simmons?’
‘I can’t look at dead bodies,’ Cora said after a moment. ‘I know people laugh about it and I know I’m supposed to be objective, and believe me I’m trying, but—’
‘It’s okay.’
‘I don’t know how you can sit there and watch her cut people up like that. There’s something so … They’re people, you know? They’re still people.’
Roxy nodded. There was no shame in not wanting to watch an autopsy. There was nothing pleasant about reducing a human being to organs and cavities.
‘It gets easier,’ she said after a while. ‘Honestly.’
‘I don’t want it to get easier,’ Cora replied, giving her a strange look. ‘I don’t ever want to be okay with cutting people up.’
‘Right.’
Edwina appeared at the door. Along the way she had ditched the scrubs and was now back wearing her casual clothes, though Edwina’s version of casual was Roxy’s version of dolled up to the nines. Roxy hoped she didn’t notice how upset Cora looked, and was surprised to find she cared.
‘Come with me.’
They followed the pathologist to her office on the next floor. It was a square room, neat and tidy, devoid of anything that might be remotely personal: no photos, no plants, no quirky mugs saying You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps.
‘Take a seat,’ Edwina said, taking her own chair behind her desk. She put her glasses on.
They sat.
‘We have a little dilemma,’ Edwina said without preamble.
‘What kind of dilemma?’ Roxy asked.
‘Andrea Colgan was pregnant.’
Cora gasped. ‘Oh my God, that’s terrible.’
‘How long?’ Roxy wanted to know.
‘By my estimate, the gestational age of the foetus is roughly eleven weeks.’ Edwina linked her fingers together and tilted her head back slightly. ‘As I said, a dilemma.’
‘Ah,’ Roxy said.
Cora looked confused. Edwina noticed.
‘Officer Simmons, I suspect you have a question.’
‘I don’t understand, what’s the problem?’
‘The problem is the foetus: do we take DNA from it or not?’
‘What? That’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t you take DNA?’
‘During the first trimester, a foetus is considered the biological property of the mother; only after twelve weeks can it be considered an individual, legally speaking. There was a referendum held about it a number of years ago.’
‘Hold on a second,’ Cora said. ‘Andrea Colgan was beaten to death and her baby died as a direct result of that. There are two victims here, so this is a double homicide.’
‘Foetus,’ Edwina corrected. ‘And technically it isn’t. The law is quite clear on the subject. Before twelve weeks, legal precedent holds that the contents of Andrea Colgan’s uterus belong to her and her alone. There is no other victim.’
‘So you’re telling me we can’t charge this fucker with killing a baby because we’re out by a few days? We can’t tell her family she was pregnant because of a week?’ Cora’s voice rose alarmingly. ‘What if you’re wrong, what if the baby – oh, sorry – what if the foetus is actually twelve weeks, does that magically make it human?’
‘Legally it changes things,’ Edwina said with a shrug. ‘It would have personhood from that point. We wouldn’t need a court order to extract DNA, for a start.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Cora snapped. ‘She was alive until her mother was killed. Her death deserves to be investigated.’
Roxy was astounded to see there were tears in her colleague’s eyes. What on earth was going on? And why was Cora using the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’?
‘You’re taking this personally, Officer Simmons, when you need to be objective.’ Edwina sighed. ‘Look, I am not an ob-gyn. My estimate is eleven weeks based on foetal development. If it makes you more comfortable, I will allow another opinion.’
‘There’s that word again. God forbid we consider a little baby to be a human.’
‘Officer Simmons,’ Roxy said, ‘I think you should go outside and get some air.’
Cora practically ran out of the office.
When she was gone, Roxy glanced at Edwina, embarrassed and confused by the display.
‘I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what has got into her today.’
‘Never apologise for the behaviour of a colleague,’ Edwina said, switching on her computer. ‘Now, since you left before the autopsy was complete, perhaps you’d like to hear the rest of my findings.’
‘Yes, I’d also like a copy of your report.’
‘Of course.’ Edwina began to type. ‘Tell me, how are you enjoying your new position?’
‘Oh.’ Roxy leaned back in her chair and gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘It’s been a laugh a minute so far.’
Chapter Thirteen
The wolf returned to his lair before dark. He was so excited by his plan he almost forget to check his various security systems, and was halfway to his bedroom on the second floor when he remembered.
He left his bag on the stairs and went back down. He checked the basement first, testing the tension of the thin wires he had stretched along the tiny hall leading to the garden door. Next he went to the wrought-iron conservatory off the kitchen, taking care not to step into the path of the shotgun aimed squarely at the conservatory door. The door opened outwards, should anyone wish to try it. And should they try, little would remain of their head.
Satisfied the boundaries were in order, he returned to the main hall and double-checked the bolts on the front door. The house was large, uncommonly so, a classical detached two-storey-with-basement Victorian. It had belonged to his parents, both deceased.
It had never been a happy home; certainly the wolf had little memory of joyous occasions. His parents were dour people, snarled up in a bitter, loveless marriage; a life spent sniping at each other when they weren’t avoiding each other like the plague. Despite this, the wolf did not feel hard done by. Their benign neglect of him, their lack of interest in their only child, had been freeing in many way, a gift of sorts. There was nobody to watch over him, no one to demand he go to school, eat at regular hours. A smattering of guilt on his mother’s side meant he had a healthy weekly allowance, and he used it to buy junk food, video games and electronic equipment. With no one to force him into hateful activities, the wolf spent hours alone in his room, surfing the Web, playing games with like-minded souls across the globe. He was not lonely.
He was never lonely. His bedroom was his fiefdom, and he was king.
Then he hit puberty.
Suddenly everything changed.
Almost overnight he became dissatisfied. His games seemed childish; his room felt claustrophobic. Hormones, exacerbated by a diet of junk and pop, ran wild through his body. Daily he seemed to widen. His skin developed acne and hair began to sprout where there had been no hair before. His voice was untrustworthy, low one minute, cracking into a semi-shriek the next. His clothes became too tight, too short, and he was too embarrassed to ask his mother to take him shopping for more. Conscious of how he looked, he stopped going out during daylight hours, suddenly aware that people noticed him now, and not just people, other kids.
Boys were cruel. They called him names like Fatso and Fuckface; sometimes they held their noses as he walked by, pretending they were gagging, making grunting noises like he was a pig. He would ignore them and speed up, but he hated the way his thighs rubbed together and was in constant fear that he might trip and fall in front of them.
But as much as he hated and feared the boys, it was the girls who struck dumb terror into his heart.
There was something other-worldly about girls; they were a mystery to him, with their perfumed heat and sly glances. He had never noticed them much before, never had any need of them, but now, all of sudden, they infiltrated his nights and his waking hours. He saw them everywhere and found himself transfixed by their glossy hair,
bright shiny lips and coltish legs. He hated them, yet he yearned for them. He wanted them to notice him, to speak to him, but even the idea of making a connection terrified him.
Most of all, he wanted to touch them.
Alone in his room he became obsessed with porn, favouring hentai, a strange brand of Japanese cartoon porn, where young women were raped by tentacled monsters and strange alien beings. The women were frequently bound, often gagged. Their pathetic struggles against the monsters exited him, thrilled him.
Gave him ideas.
Yet his inner world might never have broken through into reality had it not been for the ‘the incident’.
Afterwards he would tell himself that none of it was his fault; his mission was preordained, it had to be.
The incident happened late summer, early autumn; that much he was sure of.
His father, a penny-pincher if ever there was one, saw that the gutters were clogged from falling leaves and decided they needed cleaning before winter set in. Instead of calling in a professional, Richard Williams took a notion that he would do the job himself, and fetched the extra-length ladder from the basement.
The fall did not kill him. The dry fountain had broken his trajectory. But he was in a coma for weeks, and then rehab. When he came home, he was unable to walk without assistance and spent his days forgetful and weepy, sometimes angry.
By the second month, the wolf’s mother had had enough. She claimed mental exhaustion and left, packing more bags than she might need for two weeks. She kissed the wolf goodbye and told him to be good.
Good?
Three days later, Celine arrived.
The wolf had not known she was coming until he heard the rusty rasp of the doorbell and wandered down to answer it.
‘Hello,’ she said, smiling, her pink frosted lipstick glistening in the morning light. ‘I’m Celine. Aren’t you going to ask me in?’
In that single moment, the wolf fell hopelessly in love.
Chapter Fourteen
Dominic Travers was numb with grief.
He pushed open the glass doors of the morgue and walked around the corner to where the taxi he had overpaid still waited, the driver reading his phone with one hand, vaping with the other.
He thought about calling Lillian, and rejected the idea instantly. There would be time for that; there would be time to deal with her. Right now he had information and he needed to act on it.
Noel Furlong was at large.
Unbeknownst to Andrea, Dominic had had Furlong vetted thoroughly when he started seeing her first, so now he knew his friends, his place of work, and his family, even the name of his coke dealer. The prick would not be able to stay hidden for long. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to start applying pressure where it counted.
He yanked open the door of the taxi, startling the driver.
‘Rathmines,’ he said.
‘You got it.’
Travers made a number of calls as they drove, talking in a low voice to people who listened and said little. When he was finished, he hung up and stared through the tinted windows, unseeing. He had no interest in his surroundings; he wasn’t capable of interest. All he could think about was the last time he’d seen Andrea alive.
They’d met for lunch at White’s, a high-end restaurant near Andrea’s work. Andrea had arrived late and didn’t apologise. This surprised him, because it was rude, and his daughter was not a rude person. Throughout the meal she hardly spoke and seemed distracted, checking her phone with increasing regularity; she refused a glass of wine, which was unusual for her, and barely touched her food, which was not. When he asked about Noel, she waved the question away and told him it was over between them.
Privately he was delighted to hear it, although he said he was sorry.
When he asked for the bill, she reached across the table and took his left hand in hers.
‘Do you remember when I came to live with you?’
‘Sure,’ he said. He’d collected her from a sobbing Justine and loaded her into the back of his car, his face grim, oblivious to Justine’s pleas. Andrea had a version of the truth, of course: her mother was sick and needed time to get well.
Afterwards, when Lillian was clean again, it was too late to change things back. That was how he saw it.
That was how he chose to see it.
‘I was terrified of you for the longest time.’ She traced her thumb over the scars on the back of his hand.
‘Why?’
She smiled, more to herself than to him.
‘I don’t know. I was little and you were …’
‘Big.’
‘And hairy, like a monster.’ When she lifted her face and smiled at him, he thought it was the saddest smile he had ever seen.
‘Kiddo, is everything all right? Is this guy Furlong bothering you? If that little shit has done anything, you tell me and I’ll—’
She withdrew her hand.
‘Forget about Noel, please, Dad. I have.’
‘You can talk to me, you know, about anything.’
‘I know.’ She looked away. ‘Isn’t it funny how easy it is to mistake a book by its cover?’
Later, outside the restaurant, he’d offered to share a taxi with her and she had refused, telling him she’d rather walk and get some air. He remembered now how he’d kissed the top of her head and said goodbye. It was the last time he would ever see her alive, standing by the side of a busy street, staring at her phone.
If he’d known that, he would never have left her.
‘Buddy?’
The driver was watching him in the rear-view mirror.
‘What?’
‘I said we’re here. Would you like me to park in—’
‘Pull over on the left.’
He was out of the taxi before it came to a stop. With his coat flapping behind him, he ran across the road, trotted through the arched doors of the red-brick corner building and up the stone steps.
There was something church-like about libraries, he thought, passing through the next set of doors; something about the manufactured silence, the smell of bodies and aged paper.
He went straight to the central desk, where a dainty woman in a colourful dress was scanning barcodes with a hand-held machine.
‘I’m looking for Caroline Furlong.’
‘Oh, she’s not back from lunch yet.’
‘Where did she go?’
Her smile faltered a little.
‘She won’t be long if you’d like to …’
He turned on his heel and walked away.
He checked the nearby cafés, entering the Swan shopping centre last. It was surprisingly busy. Pockets of teenagers stood about talking, shouting and throwing McDonald’s fries at each other’s heads. A boy of about fifteen bumped into him as he swept past, turned to say something and swallowed his words whole when their eyes met.
He spotted Caroline Furlong, Noel’s older sister, in the café two doors down from a discount bookshop and checked her photo from the one he had on file on his phone. She was older and plainer in person, flicking through a gossip magazine, eating some kind of sticky-looking cake with her fingers. She wore glasses. Her phone lay on the table beside her coffee cup. It had a snazzy orange cover.
He entered the café, walked to her table and stood over her. After a moment she glanced up, puzzled.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Where’s Noel?’
‘Who?’
His hand twitched at the stupidity of her reply. He wanted to slap her as hard as he could. He wanted to knock the glasses right off her face and grind them to paste under his heel.
‘Where is he?’
‘How should I know? He’s probably at work.’
‘He’s not.’
Behind the thick lenses, her eyes grew wary.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because if he was, I wouldn’t be here.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Andrea is dead.’
There
wasn’t a single flicker of emotion on her face, good or bad. That angered him.
‘Do you know who I’m talking about?’
‘His girlfriend – his ex-girlfriend.’
Pointed, like she had thoughts about that. He picked her phone up and shoved it under her chin.
‘Call him.’
‘No, I don’t think I will.’
With his other hand he grabbed her upper arm, squeezing it so hard she yelped in pain.
‘Call him.’
‘You’re hurting me.’
‘Make the fucking call.’
Two women at the next table abruptly got up and moved away, but an old man sitting on the other side was watching the exchange. He got unsteadily to his feet and waved his walking stick threateningly.
‘You leave that lady alone.’
‘Stay out of it.’
‘I’m going to call the police.’ He patted his pockets, searching for his phone. ‘I’m going to call them right now.’
Travers tightened his grip. Caroline gasped, her pupils blooming with pain.
‘Call him or I’ll snap your arm like a twig.’
His fingers kneaded the limb, angling expertly between muscle and tendon. She was thin, not fleshy; he knew what he was doing. She’d be black and blue the next day. He knew she was terrified; he could practically smell the fear pumping from her pores.
But she still shook her head.
Disgusted, he let go. She fell back, clutching her arm. Beads of sweat stood out on her face.
‘I’ll find him.’ He leaned down, pushed his face close to hers. ‘And I’ll remember your lack of cooperation when I do, you can trust me on that.’
He turned and began to leave.
‘You stay away from him,’ she screamed after him. ‘Do you hear me: don’t you touch him.’
Outside the shopping centre, Travers waved for the car, got in and made another call.
‘Your offer still stands?’ he asked. ‘All resources, yes, thank you.’ He hung up.
How easy it is to mistake a book by its cover.
Curious. Mistake, not judge.
He mulled the line over and over again.
Mistake.
