Red Light (16 page)

‘We don’t have any substantive proof yet that either of the two men were criminals,’ Katie reminded her. ‘We don’t know
what
they were.’

‘Oh, I’m fully aware of that, ma’am. I’m only theorizing. Our perpetrator probably killed them out of plain old revenge, more like. Maybe they conned her elderly mother out of her manage money, or maybe one of them made her pregnant and left her without any child support but she didn’t know which one. But who knows? I’d lay odds on both of them being bent. There aren’t too many respectable men who go around with boa constrictors tattooed on their mickeys – or if there are, I’ve never met them.’

Katie smiled tiredly and nodded. Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán was beginning to grow on her. More than anything else, she liked any detective who had the imagination to come up with a high-flown theory but the pragmatism to know that most criminals were too stupid to commit offences out of anything but greed or plain viciousness. Perhaps the cleverest thing that this perpetrator had done was to leave them so little forensic evidence that they had to theorize.

The technician beckoned that they could come up, and they climbed the stairs and entered the bedroom.

Because he was so recently dead, the man’s body had only just started to decompose, although his skin already looked mottled. All the same, the room reeked so strongly of stale urine and faeces that it was suffocating. It was that smell that Detective Horgan called Essence of Old Folks’ Home. Katie covered her nose and mouth with her hand. She had remembered her latex gloves, but she wished she had brought her Miracle perfume spray with her. The two technicians were wearing surgical masks and Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán took off her scarf and tied it around her face like a bandit.

The body was lying on the bed with his arms straight down, so that if his hands had still been there they would have been discreetly covering his genitals. A tourniquet had been fastened around his left wrist, with a pink toothbrush to tighten it, but his right wrist had bled out all over the quilt, and the bleeding had been so copious that the quilt was still shiny and wet. Although both stumps were clotted with dried blood, Katie noticed that the left wrist had been cut quite raggedly, with stray shreds of skin, while the right wrist had been cut as sharply and neatly as a log for the fire.

The man was white-skinned, with hairy arms and legs and a wild hairy tangle on his chest. From the way that his body hair was beginning to show signs of grey, Katie guessed his age at mid- to late forties. He had six or seven diagonal weals across his ribcage, like dried brown caterpillars, which indicated that he had been severely beaten at some time in his life, probably with a cane or a metal rod. He also had several silvery scars, some with suture marks, which indicated that he might have been stabbed.

On each of his bony shoulders was tattooed a triumphantly grinning blue skull, surrounded by a star.

His head had been even more spectacularly blown apart than that of the black man on Lower Shandon Street. There was no face, only a crimson cavern with two ears either side of it, at least twenty-five centimetres apart. A triangular flap of skull was still sticking up from the top of his head, but his brains had been sprayed across the quilt and pinkish lumps were still creeping slowly down the white wooden bedhead.

The senior technician leaned close to Katie and peered down into the remains of the man’s head. ‘Good evening to you, ma’am. This unfortunate individual was shot at least three times, I’d say, whereas we now know that the black feller was shot only twice.’

Katie raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask him how he was sure about that, because she knew that he was going to tell her.

‘This afternoon Dr O’Brien sent us over all the ammunition that he had recovered from his remains, so that we could count it and weigh it in conjunction with the ammunition that we dug out of the mattress. In total, six defence discs and twenty-one copper-plated BB pellets, which means we missed three, because there should have been twenty-four.’

‘Defence discs?’ said Katie. ‘That means those new Winchester shotgun shells.’

‘That’s right. The PDX1. And the beauty of the PDX1 is that you can use them in handguns like the Taurus Judge which can take .410 shotgun shells as well as ordinary .45 cartridges. They’re specifically intended for self-defence at very close range. The sort of gun that neurotic Americans like to keep in their bedside tables in case an intruder breaks in.’

‘So … if you can fire these shotgun shells from a handgun—’ said Katie.

‘You’ve got it, ma’am. It’s in my report already … the one I’ll be sending you by lunchtime tomorrow if I ever get finished here. It solves the question of how a woman could have shot your man in the face at point-blank range without standing on the bed to do it. It also solves the question of how your perpetrator could have entered the premises on Lower Shandon Street without being seen to carry a full-length or even a sawn-off shotgun.’

Katie turned to Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán and said, ‘Right. We need to check every firearms dealer in the country to see if they’ve sold any of these particular shotgun shells.’ She turned back to the senior technician and said, ‘They’re made by Winchester, aren’t they, but what did you say they were called?’

‘PDX1 Defender,’ the technician told her, poking around inside the victim’s face with a shiny pair of tweezers. ‘They’re very distinctive because they have a black hull, unlike most shotgun shells. And you see here, inside the victim’s sinus cavities? This grey plastic powder. It’s called Grex. They pack it into the shotgun shell to keep the blast pattern tighter.’

‘Okay, thanks,’ said Katie. ‘We also need to know if any of the dealers have sold a handgun that might be capable of firing these shells, although I’d be surprised if it was acquired legally. Oh – and get in touch with the shooting clubs, too, Lough Bo and Fermoy. You never know, their members are all mad about guns so one of them might have heard something. I’ll have a word myself with Eugene Ó Béara. If anybody knows which guns in Cork happen to be where, he does. Either that, or he knows somebody who knows somebody who does.’

Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán had made a note of all this on her iPhone. With her voice muffled behind her bandit mask, she said, ‘Fine. I’ll get on to it tomorrow as soon as they’re open.’

Katie stood very still for a while, her hand still pressed over her nose and mouth, looking around the bedroom inch by inch. She had already seen the dildoes lying on the bedside rug, and the clock, and the broken lamp. After a while she went slowly over to the dressing table and opened the drawers one after the other. Eyeliner, nail scissors, glittery nail varnish, elastic bands, hairgrips, Nurofen tablets, Durex condoms. Nothing to tell her who might have used this bedroom, even if they probably had used it for prostitution.

Detective O’Donovan came stumping up the stairs, out of breath.

‘I’ve talked to all the neighbours along this row,’ he said, flipping open his notebook. ‘The house is rented, but none of them knows the name of the owner. They’ve suspected for about six months now that it was being used as a knocking shop because there were so many strange men coming and going at all hours of the day and night.

‘The woman next door, Mrs Cooney, she complained one night because of all the screaming going on when her kids were trying to get to sleep. The next morning some feller came around and told her that if she ever complained again he’d pour petrol all over her and put a match to her.’

‘Name of Jesus, why didn’t she report him?’

‘You want her exact words? “I believed that your man would actually burn me alive if he found out that I’d shopped him, while the guards wouldn’t get off their arses until I was nothing but ashes.”’

‘There’s public confidence for you. Could she describe him, this feller?’

‘She thinks he was foreign, because he spoke funny.’

‘Oh well, that’s helpful. The people round here think you’re foreign if you come from Midleton. What did he look like, did she say?’

‘She said he was one skinny malink. In fact, she said he was so thin that the one eye would have done him. But he still made her afraid of her life.’

Katie nodded towards the body lying on the bed. ‘He’s skinny enough, wouldn’t you say? It could have been him.’

‘Well, yes. It could have been. But I don’t think there’s a lot of point in asking Mrs Cooney to take a look at him.’

‘All right,’ said Katie. ‘I don’t think there’s much more I can do here tonight. I’ll look forward to your report in the morning, Bill, and hopefully we’ll have the coroner’s report on our black friend, too.’

As she left the house, Dan Keane came up to her, closely followed by Fionnuala Sweeney and her cameraman.

‘So, what’s the form, detective superintendent?’ asked Dan Keane. ‘We hear another pimp has had his head blown off.’

‘I don’t know who told you that, Dan,’ said Katie. ‘An unidentified male has been found deceased at this address, but so far the cause of death has not been officially established. There is no evidence so far to connect this death with the suspected homicide earlier this week of an unidentified male at an address in Lower Shandon Street.’

‘Oh, there’s a pity,’ said Dan Keane. ‘I had my headline all ready for tomorrow’s paper, “The Headless Whores’ Man”!’

‘So far we have no proof that either victim was connected in any way with prostitution or the sex trade. Sorry. But I’d like to know who gave you that idea.’

‘I’m sure you would, detective superintendent. As usual, however, my sources must remain confidential.’

Fionnuala Sweeney held out her microphone and said, ‘Is there any truth in the suggestion that both victims had their hands cut off, too?’

Katie gave her a tight smile and said, ‘I can’t say anything more at this stage. I’m still waiting for the coroner’s report. Once we’ve fully established the cause of death and the extent of any injuries, we’ll let you know of course. It’s likely that I’ll be holding a media conference late tomorrow afternoon at Anglesea Street.’

Fionnuala Sweeney held up a small piece of notepaper and frowned at it. ‘Do you happen to know what “
Rah-ma-malah-eekah
” means?’ she asked.

‘Where did you hear that?’ said Katie, shielding her eyes from the cameraman’s lights.

‘I can’t reveal my source, I’m afraid. That was told to me in confidence.’

‘Well, that’s helpful. Do
you
know what it means?’

‘No. We tried it out on Google Translate, in every possible language they do, but we came up with nothing at all.’

‘In that case, there’s nothing more that I’m prepared to say to you at this stage,’ Katie told her. ‘The press office will get in touch with you tomorrow.’

‘Are you
sure
you’ve never heard that before?’ Fionnuala Sweeney persisted, but Dan Keane laid a hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Don’t waste your breath, girl. If Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire doesn’t want to give you an answer, Saint Peter will be asking you what good you’ve ever done, before she’ll give you one.’

Katie and Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán walked together to Katie’s car.

‘I think you’re right, and it
was
the perpetrator who tipped off the press,’ said Katie. ‘That girl they found with the body on Lower Shandon Street, the one I call Isabelle, she said that exact same thing to me before they took her off to hospital.’

‘She didn’t give you any idea what it meant?’

‘No, she didn’t, and it was the last thing she said to me. But I met with Father Dominic at Cois Tine this afternoon and he’s sending two African women to talk to her tomorrow, one Nigerian and one Somali. Most of the African immigrants in Cork come from one or other of those two countries, so there’s a fair chance that at least one of them can persuade her to open up.’

Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán was tying her scarf around her head again. ‘I don’t know if you picked up my message yet, but Horgan got no joy from immigration. There’s no trace at all of the girl entering the country, wherever she’s originally from.’

‘Why doesn’t that surprise me one bit?’ said Katie. ‘Listen, I’ll see you in the morning so. We have a meeting with Michael Gerrety and his lawyers in the afternoon. Perhaps
he
might tell us who she is.’

‘Patrick O’Donovan was telling me all about Michael Gerrety,’ said Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán. ‘From what I gather, I’m sure he’ll tell you, yeah.’

‘So this is your little nest, girl,’ said Mairead, opening the last door at the end of the corridor. Zakiyyah peered inside. The buildings on the opposite side of Washington Street faced almost due south, so the room was filled with reflected sunlight from their upstairs windows. It was so narrow, however, that the king-size bed was pushed up against the wall on one side and there was space for only one bedside table, with one pink-frilled table lamp, although there was a reading light clipped to the opposite side of the headboard.

The window was covered with a plastic venetian blind, with alternate lavender and white slats, and the bed was covered in creased purple velveteen, with heaps of cushions in various shades of purple and violet. The corner of the room behind the door was curtained off, presumably to give Zakiyyah somewhere to hang her clothes – not that she had any, now that her suitcase had been taken away from her.

On one wall hung a large poster of a salacious young witch, naked except for a pointed hat and a cloak, her eyes closed in ecstasy as she pushed the handle of her broomstick up inside her. Her black cat was watching her and licking its lips.

On the facing wall there was a framed photograph of Blarney Castle, faded by years of sunlight until it was almost colourless.

‘What do you think, then?’ said Mairead. ‘Home from home. Better than some mud hut in Africa, I’ll bet.’

Mairead was a short, bosomy woman with long lank silver-blonde hair that draped over her shoulders. She had a heart-shaped face and a turned-up nose and she could have been pretty in a plump, waitressy way, except that her cheeks were blotched and puffy and underneath the thick pink gloss her lips were cracked. Her eyes were cornflower-blue, but Zakiyyah saw some indefinable lack of focus in them, as if she had long forgotten who she was and what she was doing here.