Crossing The Line

by Catriona King

  “They already have in some places, apparently.”

  Liam gawped “Frick me! Bring back the good old days when prisons were all like Kilmainham.”

  Kilmainham Gaol was a former prison in Kilmainham, Dublin built in seventeen-ninety-six and famed for its harsh conditions and brutal punishments, most famously the executions of the leaders of Ireland’s nineteen-sixteen Easter Rising. It was decommissioned as a jail in nineteen-twenty-four and converted into a museum and site of historical importance.

  As Craig leant against the wall taking a breather, the D.C.I. asked him a question.

  “Where’s the handset to go with the SIM, do you think?”

  Craig shook his head. “Not up there. They’re harder to conceal so my guess is the prisoners move them around to stop the guards finding them. But the SIM tells us something.”

  “It’ll tell The Boy a whole lot more.”

  ‘The Boy’ was Liam’s affectionate name for Davy Walsh, the team’s thirty-year-old senior analyst, mainly because he’d known him since he was a shy, stammering twenty-three-year-old recruit to the team and still thought of him as a kid.

  Craig nodded.“Yes, but we can already deduce something before then.”

  The D.C.I. was tempted to slag him about his use of the Sherlock Holmesian‘ deduce’, but decided that he was too tired to be bothered and nodded him on.

  “Like what?”

  “That Smyth was friendly with someone in here who has a mobile handset, and that’s a man that we need to find.”

  Liam considered for a moment and then countered with, “Or… there could be several cons in here friendly enough to share a phone regularly, and that could tell us even more.”

  Craig raised an eyebrow at what the words implied. Could Derek Smyth have been part of a gang? He decided that now wasn’t the time to ponder it because he was starving, so they gathered their stuff and headed off for an early lunch.

  ****

  UK Ulster Force (UKUF) Headquarters. Garvan’s Bookmakers. East Belfast.

  It had been a good night’s work as far as Rory McCrae was concerned. Derek ‘Decker’ Smyth was dead and a message had been sent to the others loud and clear - cross your own and you’ll suffer. And the more of Smyth’s cronies that went the same way as him then the louder he would cheer.

  The smug UKUF boss swung his feet up onto his desk and barked out an order.

  “GET IN HERE WI’ THAT TEA!” Adding in a mutter, “Do I have tee do everythin’ around here my bloody self?”

  If that had been the reality instead of merely the Loyalist’s egocentric perception then he would have ended Derek Smyth personally instead of just giving the order from behind his desk. But then rank had its privileges and all that guff and he had done his time as a foot soldier, working for a far worse boss than him.

  If Rory McCrae had known that the killing he’d just been part of was going to bring that boss back kicking down his door then he wouldn’t have felt smug at all.

  ****

  Northern Ireland’s Science Labs. Saintfield Road, Belfast. 3 p.m.

  John Winter didn’t mind working on a Sunday, which was just as well considering that he had no choice. Prison case equalled Law Department scrutiny equalled endless official phone calls, and he wasn’t the sort of boss who would hand off that sort of harassment to his troops.

  He glanced up from the file that he’d been reading to the clock on his desk and realised that it was long past lunchtime, so he groped around in his desk drawer for the roll he’d bought at a garage on his way back from Armagh. Two mouthfuls in he realised that it was inedible and binned it; making do instead with some freshly brewed coffee and picturing what his wife and daughter might have had for their lunch at home.

  Natalie, his wife of four years, loved food, especially when someone else made it, but if driven to cook by the absence of a servant such as him or her mother, or if the opening hours of her favourite Chinese takeaway didn’t fit with her hunger clock, then she would and actually could produce a decent meal. Of course, all culinary efforts nowadays had to take account of their toddler daughter Kit, so beans, spaghetti and mashed potatoes had replaced spare ribs and fish with all their nasty bones as the current staples. As a consequence John had rediscovered his love of school-dinner cuisine, and a bowl of champ drowned in butter had become his default gorge.

  The mental images made the pathologist feel so hungry that he gazed dolefully into the metal bin beside his desk, wondering whether he’d been hasty in casting his rubbery chicken-salad bap aside, and calculating the chances of removing enough of the pencil sharpenings now coating its base to manage an uncontaminated bite. Deciding that it was a lost cause and that any further time spent thinking about food would see him heading for the nearest burger bar and regretting it later, he drank another few mouthfuls of coffee and then took himself to the dissection room to take his second look of the day at their guest who, as Des had only called at one-thirty to say his CSIs had completed their work on him, must have flown from Armagh to arrive there so soon.

  Derek Smyth didn’t look any healthier than he had done at Mahon Prison that morning but he did look considerably grubbier. Every inch of the man’s clothing and skin surfaces were now covered in grey fingerprint dust, something that was normally removed by the pathology technicians before he began his post-mortems but actually the pathologist was quite pleased hadn’t been this time.

  It told John immediately that the dusting had been a waste of time, not outlining a single visible fingerprint whorl on Smyth’s face, neck, hands or clothes. Along with the fact that there were no breaches in his clothing that could have been caused by a bullet, knife or any other weapon, the lack of prints would have definitively ruled out an attacker as causing the man’s death had that possibility not already been removed by Smyth’s locked cell door.

  Ten minutes later the medic had completed most of the preparatory work usually done by his technicians, and Derek Smyth lay on the steel post-mortem table with his face, neck and hands now only slightly grubby and his body devoid of clothes. There was something strangely cathartic to the pathologist about removing the materials mankind used to cover itself with for warmth, modesty, status or style; we come into this world naked after all and there are no fashions in shrouds, despite the state of some of the catwalk outfits seen during Fashion Week.

  But for John the catharsis was mainly about grounding himself, something that he liked to do occasionally. The problem with being the boss was that by the time he usually began a dissection the body had inevitably been stripped of personal items and clothing and washed clean, leaving him presented with an anonymous, spotless body zipped into a black plastic bag. The dead person completely depersonalised, their anonymity removing somehow the very rationale for their death, and if he couldn’t see who they had been in life then how could he aid in the hunt for whoever had caused their end? It reduced cause of death to a summary of anatomical damage and the weapon that might have caused it, without any sense of the reason why. Why? Why had someone chosen to do this to this particular person? Why?

  That question was the reason he’d opted to focus on forensic pathology instead of staring at biopsy slides down a microscope and spending his day writing reports. Such and such patient has cancer, TB, atheroma; even though he never met the people that the samples belonged to he couldn’t avoid picturing their faces when their consultants read out his words, mostly bad news. He had toyed with trying to use warm, kind language to soften the information and the eventual blow slightly but science had forbidden it, so after his training years he’d had quite enough of being a conveyor of gloom.

  Now he had no bad news to break, his patients already dead and their relatives primed by the police before they came to view their bodies. It had been the right choice of specialty for him but now rank had almost taken him too far from its core apart from moments at crime-scenes, so he was glad for once to spend more time with the unsanitised reality of death.

 
John began his scrutiny of Derek Smyth slowly and worked his way methodically through his body’s systems for an hour, examining each crevice and fold and junction for signs of irregularities and injections, even lifting the man’s tongue and shining a light across the surface of his eyes and inner cheeks. It might have seemed excessive to an outside viewer but he’d seen murderously administered heroin overdoses missed because no-one had checked; injected via a nail-bed, a toe-web, the tongue’s attachment to the floor or the mouth, or even once straight through a pupil into an eye, the only sign on post-mortem a miniscule puncture that had told the difference between a verdict of accidental overdose and homicide.

  At the end of the time the medic sat down on a stool, satisfied that he had his answer. He was just readying himself to close-up the body when he heard heavy footsteps in the corridor and then a hard knock on the door. Knowing exactly who it was he yelled, “Come in,you two”, using the seconds that it took Craig and Liam to enter to cover his charge respectfully with a sheet.

  When Craig entered alone, Liam opting to remain in the corridor in the hope that it would serve as a hint that an office would be a more fitting, and more importantly a damn sight warmer place to talk, the pathologist quickly stripped off his bloodied gloves and apron and waved his friend back out the door.

  “Let’s go to my room. It’s freezing in here.”

  Craig talked as they walked the short distance. “You’ve finished the PM already?”

  “All but the chemical analysis, yes.”

  The detective was impressed, but mostly at how fast Des’ team must have done their work. He had the sense not to say that as John unlocked his office door and entered, continuing with, “But that’s going to be no small thing in this case.”

  While he changed from his clogs back into his street shoes he motioned the policemen to make fresh coffee, a grin widening his face when he saw that they’d brought cakes. He was halfway through his second Danish pastry when Craig decided that he’d had long enough to eat.

  “Cause of death, John?”

  The reply was muffled by a mouthful of apricot jam.

  “No shots, knives, injections and it wasn’t natural.”

  He took another bite of the pastry, prompting Liam to squint proprietarily at the three remaining in the bag and seize two for himself, asking huffily, “Do you not get fed at home, Doc?”

  “I haven’t been home since before eight, remember. I was called down to Armagh first thing.”

  To anyone else it would have sounded like a sound reason for eating two pastries, but there was no reasoning with Liam where food was concerned.

  Craig ignored the culinary debate and asked another question.

  “Any chance it was suicide?”

  John shook his head, “Well...he chose a very painful way to do it if he did.” The action had sent strands of mid-brown hair flying across his glasses and prompted another snippy observation from Liam, who was still huffing about the cakes.

  “You need a haircut.”

  “I’m growing it, and a moustache. Natalie wants me to.”

  “If Natalie told you to jump off a cliff would you do that too?”

  It was the sort of question that his mum had asked, to teach her children not to be easily led, and now he used it with his own kids all the time.

  John’s reply wouldn’t have impressed anyone’s mother.

  “If it got me more sex I would. Long hair and a moustache does.”

  Craig brought him back to the case. “Suicide, John?”

  “I very much doubt it. Only in so much as Smyth voluntarily swallowed whatever killed him. There were no signs that it had been forced down.”

  Craig nodded in agreement; they’d seen nothing to suggest that Derek Smyth had suffered violence when he’d died.

  The pathologist continued. “OK, so Smyth died from something that he ingested, but I seriously doubt that he knew what was in it or intended to kill himself.”

  “We can’t say that yet.”

  John shrugged. “Just my thoughts. The rest is your job.”

  “Do you know if Des’ team found any prints?”

  The medic shook his head. “Not on the body. There weren’t any visible when Smyth arrived here, and he was covered in fingerprint dust so they would have showed.”

  “So maybe in the cell then?”

  John shrugged again and took a sip of coffee, “You’d have to ask Des that.” He wiped his hands with a piece of paper towel and sat back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. “Those Danishes really hit the spot. Thanks for bringing them.”

  Liam grumbled noisily. “They’re bad for your arteries. I wouldn’t have thought a doctor like you would have taken that risk.”

  Craig laughed. “Ignore him, John. He wanted to eat them all before we arrived. OK, so, if it was something Smyth swallowed, what are we talking? Overdose?”

  A sceptical glance from the medic made Craig’s eyes widen.

  “Not overdose? You’re thinking poison? Seriously?”

  He had decided not to mention the bag of tablets they’d found until he’d got the medic’s view on everything.

  John linked his hands above his head and stretched hard before replying; hunching over a dissection table was murder on the back.

  “OK… so... at the moment I’m only going to stick my neck out as far as saying that, given the obvious agony Smyth died in, it was either poison or a severe allergic reaction to something. What goes against the second is the absence of swelling or urticaria.”

  Liam made a face. “What?”

  “Hives or a rash due to the release of histamine. They’re seen in allergic responses.”

  The D.C.I. gave a disapproving grunt. “Why didn’t you just say hives then? I don’t know why doctors need to make things more complicated than they are.”

  Craig sighed. “Because they have their own language just like we have ours, and do you really want to have to explain every term we use? Or every acronym like PACE? You’d be there all bloody day.”

  PACE: The Police and Criminal Evidence Act, a legislative framework for the powers of police officers to combat crime.

  John chuckled. “At least your acronyms stand for something official. When I was training doctors used to write comments about patients’ personalities and habits in shorthand in their notes. Like ROH by two.”

  “Which meant?”

  “ROH stands for alcohol, so it basically means that whatever amount your patient tells you they drink don’t believe it and double it instead.”

  Liam thought of how many times he’d told his GP he only drank five pints a week when he actually drank ten, but the truth in John’s words didn’t stop him becoming indignant.

  “You can’t write that!”

  The pathologist shrugged.

  “People mostly downplay how much they drink and accuracy is important for a diagnosis. Anyway, there were a lot worse ones than that, and nope, I’m not telling you what they were. They’re banned now anyway. Anyway, getting back to Mister Smyth’s absent hives. There weren’t any signs of allergic response so I’m leaning towards poisoning, but I’ll need Des to analyse the stomach contents before I can say for sure.”

  He’d been watching Craig as he spoke and the detective’s slight relaxation on the word “poisoning” made him smile.

  “You’ve found something to back up a poisoning diagnosis, haven’t you?”

  The detective conceded the point with a nod, not bothering to ask him how he knew; John had been able to read him since they’d been at school. Well, on some things anyway. He didn’t seem to have a clue that he’d just got married, and Natalie, a surgeon who worked in the same hospital as Katy, had seen her every day at work until they’d gone on holiday and had completely missed her pregnancy! Even though she was now so large it would have stared even a non-medic in the face! Unless of course it was one of those strange rituals of politeness; don’t ask someone if they’re pregnant in case they’ve just got fat or you’ll in
sult them. Anyway, Natalie’s opportunities to ask had ended now because Katy had just brought her maternity leave forward, although he imagined that when she saw ‘Doctor Stevens –Maternity Leave’ written on the staff Rota the penny would definitely drop.

  The unobservant surgeon’s husband repeated his question with emphasis, breaking through Craig’s thoughts.

  “Did you find something to back up a poisoning diagnosis, Marc?”

  Craig noticed both men staring at him curiously, oddly Liam less so than John. Although not so odd if he’d known that his deputy had worked out that Katy was pregnant four months earlier and since then had consistently put even the smallest sign that his boss was suffering brain fog down to that.

  “What? Oh, right. Yes, we found a bag of tablets in Smyth’s cell.”

  John’s eyes lit up. “Do you have them with you? I might be able to identify what they are if I could see.”

  Craig nodded his deputy to hand over the bag.

  “We were going to drop them up for Des to analyse tomorrow, but you can take a look through the plastic.”

  Liam chipped in helpfully. “They’re blue, so I thought maybe Viagra?”

  It earned him a knowing look from both men, but no questions were asked.

  The pathologist took the evidence bag and held it up to the light, angling the small plastic bag this way and that. When he carried it across the room to a small microscope the movement panicked Craig.

  “You can’t open it! We could lose any prints there might be on the freezer bag inside.”

  “Calm down, man. I’m not opening it.”

  True to his word John squeezed the bags as flat as he could without crushing the tablets, so that they dispersed inside, isolating one. Then he slid it, plastic coverings and all, under the microscope, adjusting the lens and staring down the eyepiece for a full minute before he returned to his seat with a smile.