Buried Angels

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘I like to think of the house as a work of art,’ she said. ‘As I said, I designed it myself, though my husband likes to think he had some input. See that hideous mahogany wardrobe?’ Aaron nodded. ‘He insisted it had to be in our room. It was his mother’s. Can you imagine waking up every morning to see your mother-in-law’s old wardrobe?’

  ‘I suppose it is a bit weird,’ he said.

  She eyed him and noticed a smile at the corner of his lips.

  ‘More than a bit,’ she laughed.

  ‘Why keep it if you hate it?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ But she did. She kept it to let Kevin think he’d won a victory over her.

  ‘It’s very big.’

  ‘It’s handy for spare sheets and pillows.’ She was sorry now that she’d mentioned it. ‘There’s an en suite, with gold-plated taps. Do you need to measure in there?’

  ‘Er, I’ll have a look.’

  When he went inside, Marianne smoothed out the creases in her blouse. A glance in the mirror told her the outline of her red lacy camisole was visible. Good.

  She sat on the bed, crossed her legs and waited.

  When he came out of the bathroom, she patted the bed. ‘Sit for a moment, Aaron. I’m tired from all this traipsing around the house.’

  ‘I’d better get going, Mrs O’Keeffe. I have to go back to the office. It’s—’

  ‘Shh. Sit.’

  She was surprised when he did as she asked. The cologne was more pungent now that he was closer. She reached out and took his hand in hers. He jumped up.

  ‘I really have to go. I’m sorry if I gave the wrong impression. This is my job and—’

  She rose and pulled him by the hand towards her, then kissed him on the lips, blocking his words.

  He tugged his hand free. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

  She stifled his words with another kiss, crushing his mouth with her own and pushing him back on the bed. Heat convulsed her body and she cast off all her inhibitions. This was what she wanted. A hot man writhing beneath her.

  Suddenly he wasn’t moving. Lifting her mouth from his, she stared into his open eyes. Was he dead?

  She fell backwards as he shoved her away and leapt from the bed, rushing from the room. She heard his feet on the stairs, the snap of the lock and the soft thump of the door as he pulled it shut behind him.

  ‘Fuck.’

  Aaron Frost walked in circles for miles around the town, going as far as the Dublin bridge and back round towards the Railway Bridge. He was rattled, though not because of the O’Keeffe woman. Creepy bitch. Who did she think he was? No, he had a lot of other more important things on his mind and he didn’t want to go back to the office.

  Like a child, he kicked stones into the murky green water of the canal and watched the ripples spread through the slime. The reeds rustled and he thought he saw a rat scamper up on the opposite bank. He shivered and continued walking.

  He should go home, change his clothes, then he’d go and meet them and tell them to forget about everything. His phone pinged and he checked the message.

  DID YOU SEE THE NEWS TODAY?

  No, he hadn’t. He tapped into the news app, went into the regional category and scrolled down. A torso had been found on the Ragmullin railway tracks. The Dublin side of town. The opposite end to where he was walking. Still, he looked around frantically.

  Slipping the phone into his pocket, he continued walking. Faster now. Kicking up pebbles as he went. Something in the news report raised goose bumps on his skin. No, it had nothing to do with what he’d found out.

  His phone pinged again.

  DID YOU READ IT?

  All capitals. Why? He typed back.

  Yes. Nothing to do with me.

  ARE YOU SURE?

  Yes. Fuck off.

  THE DEAD HAVE BEEN WOKEN.

  What type of shit was that? He loosened his tie as if that could keep the feeling of dread from choking him to death. Frantically he looked all around, twisting his head like an idiot. No one, only himself on the path, and ducks and rats and fish in the water. Why then did he feel like someone was watching him?

  Fuck this, he thought, and broke into a run.

  Fourteen

  Lottie missed having Boyd in the office; his presence had a calming effect on everyone. They could do with his organisational skills too, she thought as she eyed the mess on Kirby’s desk.

  ‘Right so, until we get word from the state pathologist, we don’t know what we’re dealing with. Because the body had been dismembered and frozen, it’s a suspicious death.’

  McKeown wandered in with an ice pop in his hand.

  ‘You could have got one for everyone,’ Kirby moaned.

  ‘Piss off.’ McKeown plonked himself at Boyd’s desk now that Lynch had reclaimed her own.

  ‘Can we take our meeting into the incident room, where we can be serious?’ Lynch said.

  ‘We will,’ Lottie said, ‘when we have more details. What’s the latest?’

  ‘Irish Rail have been on to us,’ Lynch said. ‘They want to know when they can get trains moving again.’

  ‘Not until we’re sure there are no more body parts along the tracks. Have the train drivers been interviewed?’

  ‘There were two trains this morning. The 6.05 and the 7.55. Neither driver noticed anything on the tracks, but the cab’s high up and the torso was lying between two sleepers, so that’s not telling us anything.’ Lynch checked her notes. ‘I also contacted yesterday’s train drivers. No one saw anything.’

  ‘When was the last train yesterday evening?’

  ‘Arrived into Ragmullin on its way to Sligo at 8.20 p.m. Driver has been interviewed. He reports seeing nothing either.’

  ‘I called in the air support unit,’ Kirby said. ‘No drones, but the helicopter should be in the air already.’

  ‘Good. We also need to establish how the body came to be placed or dropped on the tracks, and when. Tell the pilot to scan the canal too.’ Lottie scratched her forehead, trying to think on her feet. Literally. She could still feel the emotion of the weekend funeral weighing her down. ‘Who interviewed the two boys? What are their names?’

  Kirby flicked through the pages of his notebook but McKeown had the answer after one tap on his device.

  ‘Jack Sheridan and Gavin Robinson. They’ve given statements. All the details are here.’

  Lottie groaned. She sensed the animosity in the air as if it was a tangible object. There was going to be trouble between those two detectives.

  ‘Print them out for me.’ She preferred working with paper. ‘I’ll give the boys a shout later.’ Leaning against the timber-framed wall, she heard a creak and hoped it wasn’t her knees. ‘And I want regular updates from the air crew.’

  McKeown’s iPad pinged. ‘That was quick,’ he said.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘The helicopter crew spotted something in the water. Two hundred metres down the canal from where the torso was found.’

  ‘Who’s going to call Irish Rail?’ Lynch said.

  ‘You do it. There’s to be no resumption of trains for now. Let’s go.’

  Lottie picked up her bag, slid her phone into her jeans pocket. She knew it was a universal cliché, but all she could think was that the case had taken another grisly turn.

  Walking along the bank as quickly as the undergrowth allowed, Lottie glanced over her shoulder to make sure Kirby was keeping up with her.

  ‘What do you think is going on?’ she said.

  ‘I can’t understand why the torso was dumped on the tracks where it could be easily found.’

  ‘If they were disposing of it at night-time, they might have thought they were further away from town.’

  ‘They didn’t bank on two kids with a drone, did they?’

  Lottie reached the location and looked up at the helicopter hovering overhead, its rotors swishing the reeds back and forth. McKeown was already there and radioed the air crew to continue searching. With a last twirl in th
e sky it headed back along the canal.

  She peered into the tangled mess in the centre of the water. ‘Is that a leg?’

  ‘Looks like it.’ McKeown said. ‘Whatever it was wrapped in has disintegrated. The skin is bleached from the water. It’s hard to know how long it’s been there.’

  ‘Where’s McGlynn?’

  ‘Still at the site of the torso.’

  ‘I thought it had been moved to the mortuary.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s scanning the area for evidence.’

  ‘We’ll need divers to retrieve this body part,’ Lottie said.

  ‘I can go in.’ McKeown sounded like an over-eager schoolboy wanting to please the teacher. ‘But we still need divers to search further, in case there are more remains in there. It’s very black and mucky.’

  ‘Don’t go in,’ Lynch said. ‘Wait for the divers with the proper equipment. You’ll catch Weil’s disease.’

  Lottie eyed Lynch and McKeown and wondered how a rapport had sprung up between them so quickly.

  ‘Get a cordon erected immediately, otherwise we’ll have Cynthia fecking Rhodes sniffing around.’ She glanced over her shoulder as if the mention of the reporter might cause her to appear. But she knew there was no chance of that. Following a recent scoop, Cynthia had secured a slot on primetime television, a step up from her two-minute reports on the news. No doubt a new Rottweiler would be sent to Ragmullin shortly.

  ‘Right so,’ McKeown said. He began unwinding a roll of garda tape. As Lynch assisted him, Lottie stood with Kirby and stared at the portion of leg protruding from the stagnant water.

  ‘It looks like a child’s,’ she said softly and blew out a troubled breath.

  ‘Yes, it does.’ Kirby sat on the bank and took off his shoes and socks.

  ‘You can’t go in there. Like Lynch said, it’s—’

  ‘We can’t leave it any longer. Someone has to take it out.’ He shrugged his arms out of his jacket and rolled his trousers up to the knees.

  ‘It’s deeper than that. Wait for the divers,’ Lottie said, though she knew where Kirby was coming from. It wasn’t right to leave part of a child in such a mire.

  ‘I’m going in.’

  She watched as Kirby waded into the foul water. The reeds rustled as he moved, and a dark shape swam away from the body part and crossed to the other bank. Something licked her ankles. She squirmed. It was just the wiry reeds rustling about her feet in the soft breeze.

  She moved back a step. ‘McKeown, tell SOCOs to hurry up with the tarpaulin.’

  ‘Should I have put gloves on?’ Kirby shouted.

  ‘Doesn’t matter now. Just get it out of there. Hurry up. You’ll catch a cold … or something.’

  She held her breath as the water reached Kirby’s chest. He paused, then carefully lifted the body part and waded back towards the bank. Springing into action, she instructed the arriving SOCOs where to lay the plastic sheeting and watched helplessly as one of the forensic officers took charge of the leg, laying it reverently on the plastic. A lump formed in her throat. Goddammit, she thought. Ever since Boyd’s diagnosis, she’d found it hard to control her emotions. She shook herself back into professional mode.

  ‘Someone, fetch a towel for Kirby.’

  ‘I’m fucking freezing,’ he said.

  McKeown shrugged. ‘You should have thought of that before you decided on a Superman impression.’

  Lynch sniggered.

  ‘Thank you, Kirby,’ Lottie said.

  The SOCO opened a large steel case and handed Kirby a black towel and a forensic boiler suit to change into.

  ‘I’ve a set of clothes in the car, thanks.’

  Lottie stared at the leg. It had been cut off at the knee, the toenails on the little foot blackened and bruised. The threads of a sock remained around the ankle, with frayed pink nylon ribbon that might once have been tied in a neat bow.

  She felt her heart contract and her throat tighten. The sight of the remnants of the child’s sock caused her more heartache and nausea than the smell of decay and the imprint of rodent teeth on the hardened flesh.

  ‘It belongs to a little girl,’ she said.

  Rushing towards the bushes, she did her best not to throw up. She breathed in through her nose and out again, blinking furiously. Through the bushes she could see the railway tracks running parallel to the canal. The waterway led to Dublin in one direction and Sligo in the other. She knew little about it but was aware that there were different depths along the route.

  ‘Do you think there are lock gates close by?’ she said as she returned to the small, silent crowd.

  ‘Five miles that way,’ the SOCO said, pointing east.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Kirby said as he unfurled one sopping trouser leg.

  ‘That maybe the body parts were dumped in a lock chamber and were released when the lock was opened.’

  ‘Still doesn’t account for how the torso and hand came to be on the railway,’ McKeown said.

  ‘I know. I haven’t thought that far.’ Typical of McKeown, she thought, skewering her attempt to put logic into an illogical scenario. ‘Radio the air support crew. Tell them to fly over the locks to check them out.’

  As McKeown did as he was asked, Lottie noticed Lynch bending over at the edge of the plastic sheeting, staring at the little leg and foot.

  ‘You okay, Lynch?’

  The detective shook her head. ‘Not really. Who would do this to a poor little child?’

  At last Lottie could breathe normally. ‘Whoever it is, I intend to find them before they can do it to someone else’s child.’

  Fifteen

  Jack Sheridan filled a glass of water from the tap and sipped, but still his chest shuddered. What he and Gavin had found had resulted in a day off school, but it wasn’t worth the trauma gurgling in his stomach. He sipped some more, trying to slow down the awful churning.

  ‘Jack? What in God’s name were you doing mitching from school?’

  The sound of his dad’s voice caught him by surprise. He dropped the glass into the sink and water splashed everywhere. His dad was off work on sick leave, though Jack wasn’t sure what was wrong with him. It was usually his mother who doled out the punishments, especially when she was stressed after a long shift at the hospital.

  His little sister Maggie crawled between his legs and took up residence under the table, scooping crumbs into her mouth. His nine-year-old brother Tyrone sat on a chair, his head bowed. After Jack had made his statement at the garda station, his mother had decided to pick Tyrone up from school and bring them both home.

  ‘I wasn’t mitching,’ Jack said. ‘Me and Gavin were flying the drone before school.’

  ‘But you’re not in school now, are you?’

  ‘I had to go to the garda station. The police wanted to ask me questions.’

  ‘Right,’ his dad said, his voice softening. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You’ll be fine in time, but I knew that drone was going to cause trouble. You’re too young for it. Where did you put it?’ His father began going through his school bag, throwing books and pens on the floor. ‘I don’t care how much it cost; it’s going in the bin.’

  ‘It’s not there, Dad. The detectives kept it. They said it’s evidence or something.’ Jack wanted to cry, to run, to puke, but he also didn’t want his dad to see him as a weakling.

  ‘Leave him alone, Charlie. He’s had an awful shock. Go up to your room, Jack. I’ll bring you a cup of hot tea in a minute.’ Jack’s mother came in from the clothes line and threw the laundry basket under the table. Maggie shrieked. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mags. Did I scare you? What are you doing down there?’ She picked up the two-year-old and plucked sticky crumbs from her hair.

  ‘I don’t want tea,’ Jack said.

  ‘Of course you do. With sugar for the shock.’

  Jack knew that was a load of shite. Sugary tea was just to give him something else to think about. He stuffed his books back into his
bag and made to leave the kitchen. No one listened to him any more. Only Gavin. He was sure Gavin’s mother wasn’t making him drink sugary tea that he didn’t want.

  ‘Stop dragging your bag,’ his father said. ‘You’re scratching the wooden floor. It took me two weeks to get that shine on it.’

  Sometimes Jack thought his dad cared more about the floor than he did about him.

  As they made their way towards the cordoned-off area near the bridge where the car was parked, Lottie pointed to a house across the fields. ‘Have all the homeowners in the locality been interviewed?’

  Kirby followed the line of her hand, his feet squelching in his shoes. ‘It’s ongoing. That’s where Jack Sheridan lives. One of the boys who found the torso. I interviewed him at the station this morning with his mother.’

  ‘Has a family liaison officer been assigned?’

  ‘The mother said they were fine, didn’t need anyone. We’re stretched, so I didn’t argue.’

  ‘Hope it doesn’t come back to bite us. Superintendent Farrell will have a field day.’ Lottie wondered how Farrell would cope with all the media attention. Better than she herself would, probably. ‘Let’s visit them.’

  ‘You’re hardly going to wade across the canal, are you?’

  ‘I’ll admit I’m a bit of a maverick, Kirby, but I’m not that bad yet. We’ll get the car and then drive up to the house. Okay with you?’

  ‘I need to change out of this suit first.’

  By the time they got to the car, Kirby was puffing and panting. He sat into the back and tore off his rancid clothes, changing into baggy jeans and a white shirt. He found a pair of runners and some rolled-up socks in the boot and pulled them on, then bundled himself into the driver’s seat and took a cigar from the dashboard.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Lottie said.

  He drove the car away from the cordoned off area and eventually he turned onto a narrow road running alongside the canal, with grass growing up the centre.

  ‘Do you know where you’re going?’