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‘She’s very pretty,’ said Katie.

‘I think she’s gorgeous,’ said Detective Horgan, leaning over Katie’s desk. ‘I’m just praying that she’s not the perpetrator, that’s all, because if she’s not, I’m fixing up a jag with her, for definite.’

Katie couldn’t help smiling. ‘That’s the trouble with this job. Some of the worst scumbags are really attractive. I have to admit that Michael Gerrety is a fine-looking man, and a right charmer, too. Butter wouldn’t melt. But when I think what he gets up to, and how he treats women, he makes my skin creep.’

Detective Ryan held up two more photographs. ‘Here’s a couple more images taken from the AIB Bank on the north side of the river on the corner of Bridge Street. They’re not very good quality because of the way the sun’s shining into the camera, but you can see the purple suit feller crossing the bridge and turning left along Camden Place, and the young woman following not too far behind him.’

Katie opened her desk drawer and took out a large magnifying glass. She held it over one of the pictures of the young woman as she was walking past Debenham’s storefront. She was wearing a very striking necklace of beads and triangular white shapes and what looked as if they might be animal claws.

‘What do you make of that?’ she asked, passing it across for Detectives Ryan and Horgan to take a look.

‘Those are tropical seashells, those conical things,’ said Detective Ryan. ‘
Conus berdulinus
.’ He blushed even redder than usual, and added, ‘I used to keep tropical fish. Well, until they all died from the fin rot.’

‘At a guess, I’d say that necklace came from Africa,’ said Detective Horgan. ‘I mean, apart from the tropical seashells, you don’t find a lot of animals with claws that size in Ireland.’

‘Well, I agree with you,’ said Katie. She could never quite tell if he was serious or not. ‘But Africa is quite a big place and I’d like to know what specific part of Africa it came from, and whether it has any special significance. You know, tribal or religious. There’s something about these two killings that’s quite ritualistic. The hands cut off, the faces obliterated. Dr O’Brien thinks that the perpetrator is not just punishing her victims but making some kind of a point.’

‘Just because our suspect is black and she’s wearing an African necklace, that doesn’t necessarily mean that these homicides are in any way ethnic,’ said Detective Ryan. ‘Like, the first victim may have been African, but if Horgan’s right, then the second was Romanian.’

‘Of course,’ said Katie. ‘I’m not jumping to any conclusions. Until we have more evidence, I’m not even saying for certain that the perpetrator is African, or a woman. But I’m going to show these pictures to the two African women from Cois Tine that Father Dominic sent to talk to young Isabelle. One’s Nigerian and the other one’s Somali. Maybe one of them can tell me if this necklace has any special meaning. Who knows, one of them might even recognize her.

She sat back and sorted through the CCTV images again. ‘Good work, Ryan. I’m really beginning to think we may be getting somewhere now.’ She held up one of the pictures and said, ‘This is the best full-face picture of her, wouldn’t you say? If you can enhance it as much as possible, we’ll send it out to all units tonight. What’s the time? I’ll talk to the press office. We should even be able to get it on the Six One news.’

She turned to Detective Horgan and said, ‘Well done to you, too. If that does turn out to be Mânios Dumitrescu, I’ll treat you to a glass of champagne at Suas to celebrate. In fact, I’ll buy you a bottle.’

She rang Father Dominic at Cois Tine, but his secretary said he had left the office and wouldn’t be back until later the next morning. Next, she tried ringing Dr O’Brien’s mobile number to find out when he expected to arrive at Anglesea Street, but his phone was dead. She thought she might as well call it a day and go home. Before she did that, however, she went along the corridor to Inspector Fennessy’s office to see what progress he was making with the Ringaskiddy drugs case.

Inspector Fennessy was sitting at his desk in his shirtsleeves, surrounded by files and papers, his hair sticking up on end so that he looked like a harassed James Joyce after yet another scathing review of
Finnegans Wake
.

‘What’s the story, Liam?’

‘Oh, I’m getting there, I reckon. Three out of the five of them have admitted involvement, but there’s conflicting evidence between the customs officers and the drugs unit as to what the actual quantities were. At the moment I’m nearly a kilo adrift. It might be down to some gom who didn’t know how to use a weighing scale, or some of the stuff might have accidentally gone “missing” in inverted commas.’

‘Well, let me know if you can’t reconcile the figures. I don’t want us having to admit to the judge that we don’t know where a hundred thousand euros’ worth of heroin has mysteriously disappeared to.’

Inspector Fennessy took off his glasses and tiredly pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Don’t worry … I’ll find it, wherever it’s gone. I’m just hoping it’s incompetence rather than corruption.’

‘How’s things with Caitlin?’ Katie asked him.

He put his glasses back on but didn’t look at her. ‘We’re having a bit of a break from each other, as a matter of fact.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. How long for?’

‘I don’t know yet. Until she decides that she can forgive me, I suppose, or until she decides that she can’t stand the sight of me any longer.’

‘You talked to the psychiatrist, didn’t you? Did she help at all?’

‘Yes and no. She told me that I definitely wasn’t bipolar. I almost wish I was. You can take medication for that. No, she said I simply take all of my workaday stress out on Caitlin, even though I love her. Or maybe it’s
because
I love her, and expect her to understand how I’m feeling, and get frustrated and angry when she doesn’t. I don’t know …’

‘Well … good luck,’ said Katie.

Fennessy tossed a file across his desk and opened up another one. ‘Thanks,’ he said. Katie stood and watched him for a while, wishing she could think of something to say that would console him, or at least make him feel that his life wasn’t all pressure and disappointment, but for the most part her life was like that, too. Pressure and disappointment were part of the job description, along with boredom and fear and thanklessness.

She was crossing the reception area on her way to the car park when Dr O’Brien came bursting in through the front door, dishevelled and hot, with a large tan canvas bag slung around his shoulders.

‘I’m so glad I caught you,’ he said. ‘I’m always forgetting to charge my phone. You couldn’t possibly lend me twenty euros for the taxi, could you? I’ve been stuck in the hospital all day and I couldn’t get out to the ATM.

Katie opened her bag and gave him two ten euro notes. He pushed his way out of the door and then returned a few seconds later, looking even more flustered than before.

‘Sorry about that. So sorry about that. Do you want the change?’

‘Pay me back when you’ve been to the cash machine. What do you have there? Is it going to take long?’ She checked her wristwatch. ‘The thing is, I’ve pretty much finished for the day.’

‘Oh yes, I’m sorry I’m a little late. I had to wait for the results of some blood tests. I’ll try and keep it short and sweet. But I really think you’ll be interested to know what I’ve found out so far.’

‘All right. Let’s go up to the canteen. You look as if you could do with something to cool you down a bit.’

They went up to the canteen and sat by the window. It was sunny outside and down below in the car park a young mechanic in a white T-shirt and jeans was washing a Toyota patrol car. Dr O’Brien wrestled himself free from his canvas shoulder-bag and ordered himself an iced tea.

‘You’re not having anything?’ he asked Katie, but all Katie could think of was getting this over with and going home. She knew how critical these autopsies were. It could well give her all the answers she was looking for. In spite of that, she was feeling flushed and tired and tense. All she really wanted was to go home and change and take Barney for his evening walk, and then relax with John in front of the television. Sometimes she secretly agreed with all of those chauvinistic officers who had told her that women aren’t cut out for police work.

Dr O’Brien opened his bag and took out photographs and X-rays and a sheaf of untidy notes.

The first pictures he slid across the table were close-ups of the severed left wrist of the African victim who had been found in Lower Shandon Street, the one named as Mawakiya, the Singer.

‘You’ll notice that this was a very crude amputation, with several ragged hesitation marks on the skin of the upper side of his wrist. It looks as if the person who did it was either inexperienced or reluctant, or perhaps both.’

‘Can you tell what was used to do the cutting?’ asked Katie.

‘Oh yes. If you look at these very fine serrations on the protruding ends of the radius and the ulna, you can see that the cutting was almost certainly done with a small hand-held hacksaw. A junior hacksaw, they call it. The first few cuts were extremely hesitant, hardly ripping through the skin, and it would appear that the cutter didn’t know exactly where the bones were. Once the ligaments had all been cut through, however, the last four or five strokes were very much vigorous, as if the cutter was gaining confidence – although it’s equally possible that he simply wanted to finish the amputation as quickly as possible.’

‘You say “
he
”. You don’t think that a woman did this?’

‘No, I don’t. This is by no means conclusive, but judging from the angle of the cut and the hesitation marks, I would say that the victim cut off his own hand.’

‘Mother of God. Are you serious?’

‘Look at the way it was severed. The cutting was done from right to left, at a sharp diagonal, almost forty-five degrees. I’m not ruling out the possibility that somebody else cut this hand off, but it would have been quite awkward for them to cut it at that angle. Another person would have been more likely to have cut straight across the wrist, at ninety degrees. You might also have expected some bruising on the forearm where they held it firm, or where the victim was secured with ropes or a belt to prevent him from struggling, but no – there was no bruising at all to speak of.’

Dr O’Brien sipped his iced tea and watched as Katie held up the photographs to examine them more closely. She laid one of them flat on the table and placed her own forearm on top of it, using the back of a dinner knife to simulate sawing her own hand off. She had to agree with him that the angle made it more than likely that Mawakiya had cut through his wrist himself.

‘You could be right,’ she told him. ‘But why on earth would he have done it? And
both
of his hands were amputated. He couldn’t have cut off the other one, too.’

Dr O’Brien rummaged in his canvas bag and produced more photographs, this time of Mawakiya’s right forearm.

‘Of course, yes. Once he had lost his left hand, whoever cut it off, it would have been impossible for him to amputate his right. He may not even have been conscious. But the amputation of his right hand further confirms my suspicion that he cut off his left hand himself. See here – the right wrist has been cut through at a right angle, directly across from right to left. Our victim couldn’t have done this himself, even if he had amputated his right hand first, before his left. He would have had to stand next to himself to do it, if you understand what I mean. Also, there are no hesitation marks, and the cutter has gone clean through the ligaments with hardly any abrasions to the radius or ulna or the metatarsals. Whoever severed his right hand had a fair idea of what they were doing. Not a surgeon, I’d say, but somebody who had cut a hand off before, or at least seen it done by somebody else.’

‘Any bruising on his right wrist?’

Dr O’Brien shook his head. ‘Like I say, he could well have been unconscious after losing his left hand. Shock, loss of blood.’

‘Maybe the perpetrator had already shot him in the face.’

‘Your technicians’ report doesn’t bear that out. The left side of the mattress was soaked, which meant that there was considerable loss of blood
after
the amputation of his right hand. His heart was still pumping.’

Katie sat back. Down in the car park, the young mechanic washing the patrol car had finished now. Before he turned off the hosepipe, though, he turned it on himself, and splashed himself in the face, and soaked his white T-shirt. He looked up at her, and she immediately looked away.

‘Detective Horgan told me that you had some idea of our victims’ nationalities.’

‘Yes,’ said Dr O’Brien. ‘They both have tattoos, of course. Our African friend carries this extensive tattoo on his body, all the way from his genitalia to his sternum, but because of the colours and the composition of the inks used I suspect that it was done in Europe rather than his native country. It may even have been done here in Ireland. Detective Horgan told me that he has already identified the shoulder tattoos on our other victim, but our African friend’s may prove more problematical, since it looks like a one-off.’

‘But you still think you have a good idea where he came from?’

‘Oh yes. Among other things, he had a considerable quantity of partially digested food in his stomach. Cassava fufu.’

‘I see. And what exactly is cassava fufu when it’s at home?’

‘It’s mostly at home in Nigeria. Fufu is a very characteristic Nigerian dish. You mix cassava powder with warm water and roll it into into a small ball. Then you dip it into a soup or a sauce and swallow it whole. Chewing it is a no-no. It’s also made out of yams and plantain and semolina. You could say that it’s the African equivalent of mashed potato.’

‘That doesn’t conclusively prove that that our victim was Nigerian,’ said Katie. ‘Just before I died I might have had chow mein for lunch at the Golden Chopsticks, but that wouldn’t be proof that I was Chinese.’

‘True,’ said Dr O’Brien, ‘although you don’t find too many Chinese with hair your colour, do you? Or eyes as green as yours. Or freckles.’