‘Detective. This is Mr Berry. He … reported the discovery.’
Claire nodded at the young female guard who was stationed outside the apartment and stretched out her hand towards the figure on the ground.
‘Mr Berry, I’m Detective Sergeant Claire Boyle.’
The young man took his face from his hands and stared up at her, two brown eyes staring out of one the whitest faces she had ever seen. No doubt the ‘discovery’, as the young Guard had put it, had added to his pallor, but even leaving that aside, the man looked as though daylight and fresh air were strangers to him. He sat awkwardly on the floor, spindly legs bent at an awkward angle, pinstripe suit and large, polished shoes doing nothing to hide the fact that he was young and terrified.
Claire thought about bending down to his level, decided against it and smiled instead. After a moment he blinked, levered himself up off the floor and returned her handshake limply. His face was as white as his glistening shirt cuff, she noticed. Lives with his mammy, she decided.
‘We’ll need to have a chat with you about what happened.’
The young man looked at her again, his blank stare leading Claire to wonder if he needed a doctor rather than a guard. And then he blinked again, a nervous tick that seemed to allow him the space to gather his thoughts.
‘I’m just, like, the estate agent?’
‘Mmm.’
Technically she was supposed to pack him off to the station at this stage. But she hadn’t actually asked him for a statement yet so she made use of her old friend, the non-committal pause to see what else he could come up with.
‘We, like, let this place?’
Ow, that accent. Claire wondered just when the memo had been sent out to every Irish person under the age of thirty that they had to end every sentence with a question mark.
‘I was just checking. To see why the rent hadn’t been paid. I mean we have a key, it’s totally okay for us to let ourselves in …’
The young man’s face crumpled. He was even younger than she first thought, Claire guessed, maybe closer to twenty-three. She reached out again and patted him awkwardly on the shoulder.
‘We’re going to have to take an official statement from you, is that okay?’
He nodded, tears streaming down his face.
Claire turned and winked at Flynn who was staring at the carpet as if a clue to the crime had been mashed in along with the chow mein.
‘Detective Flynn will show you down to the car …’
Flynn looked up and gestured at the man to follow him. Claire watched as the two departed, Flynn’s erect figure dwarfed by the loping gait and sagging shoulders of the young estate agent. Usually at this stage people were beginning to realise the seriousness of the situation they had come across, might even manage a brave ‘this has nothing to do with me, you know!’ but this poor fecker couldn’t even manage a line ripped off CSI. He just seemed … empty. Broken by what he had seen. By whatever lay behind the door of number 123. The young Guard, Siobhan O’Doheny Claire thought her name was, had once again taken up a position outside the apartment. Claire jerked her head in the direction of the door.
‘Dr Sheehy inside?’
O’Doheny nodded.
‘Grand.’
She ducked under the tape and pushed open the apartment door, which swung smoothly on its hinges, opening silently onto a small empty entrance hall. The place looked like it had been furnished by a computer. Bare magnolia walls, a clean laminate wooden floor. There was just one element ruining the clean lines though. The smell that was prickling against her nostrils.
Moving slowly as if afraid to disturb the very atoms in the air around her, she walked through the entrance space and into what she assumed was the main living room. Three white-suited members of the Garda Technical Bureau were deep in conversation with the tall, dark-haired Deputy State Patholo-gist. Dr Helen Sheehy looked up at Claire, nodded briefly and continued her conversation. Claire had attended enough crime scenes to interpret the signal. Come in, have a look, don’t mess with anything. That was an instruction she would be happy to follow.
With five of them in the sitting room, the space was almost comically overcrowded. As had been the case with the hallway, there was no personal touch, no sign that anyone other than the carpet fitters had ever been inside. The furniture was scant, one brown leather sofa, one long low coffee table which contained neither books nor magazines. A letter from a telephone company offering cheaper bills lay on top of the dusty mantel-piece. Claire walked over, looked at the address. ‘To the Occupant’, printed in bold black letters. Her nostrils flared and she swallowed. She didn’t think the current occupant cared much about high speed broadband.
A huge window dominated one side of the room and Claire walked over to it. It had been left slightly ajar and she breathed in deeply, aware that the stench of decay would only get stronger the further she moved into the apartment. Claire knew the odour well. It was unmistakable, and for most people would have been nauseating. But Claire knew she was in no danger of having her stomach turned. The inconsistencies of pregnancy hormones meant that, although a bag of curried chips brought home by Matt could send her running to the loo, she was still able to visit a crime scene without fear of contaminating it. It was a mental thing, she was in work mode now. The pregnancy just wasn’t part of it. But that didn’t mean she was going to enjoy it, and she treated herself to one more lungful of air before she turned, and walked slowly and carefully across the floor.
The full force of the smell hit her nostrils as soon as she opened the door. Instinctively, she took shallower breaths, opening her lungs only as much as was necessary. The curtains in the room were partially closed and she blinked for a moment as her eyes got used to the gloom. And then looked at the figure that was lying on the bed.
It was an expression of horror. Maybe a prayer. This person certainly needed someone to pray for her. There had been no dignity in this death. Claire moved closer to the bed. The woman’s body was sprawled awkwardly on top of the covers, the cream duvet and sheet rumpled beneath her. She lay on her side, her body twisted almost in an S-shape, as if she had been flung there, discarded. One hand was trapped under her cheek, the other draped loosely across her stomach. She was wearing jeans and a white vest top, which had been torn off one shoulder, leaving her bra exposed. Claire moved closer. The underwear looked expensive, in contrast to the thin T-shirt and – the angle of the body meant that Claire could see the label at the waist – the high-street jeans. The same label could be seen on a thin blue cardigan that was lying on the ground beside the bed. Already Claire felt she was starting to get a feel for this woman. A supermarket T-shirt and a designer bra. A woman who didn’t have much money, but spent what she had on the things she considered important. Sometimes a decent bra could make you feel more feminine, remind you of who you were no matter what outer clothes you were wearing. Even a Garda uniform. Claire looked at the body again. The woman had been a size 12–14, she reckoned. An average size. An ordinary size. But this was no ordinary way to die.
Claire noted flashes of colour against the cream bedclothes and greying mottled skin. Ruby-red nails on the fingers and toes. A scab of brown blood high on the right cheekbone. Brown and green bruising at the top of each arm. A large purple mark on the left shin.
‘You’ll want a look at this.’
Her heart thumping in her chest, Claire just about managed not to swear out loud. Helen Sheehy was standing in the bedroom door, a plastic evidence bag in her hand.
‘We found her wallet in her jeans. Probably confirms the identity, but then again you might have guessed that already?’
‘Yeah.’
Her heart rate returning to normal, Claire took the bag and scanned its contents. Bank cards, a social welfare ID, a library ticket from Dolphins Barn library. The name Miriam Twohy written on each item. But Dr Sheehy was right, Claire had already guessed who they’d found. There weren’t that many missing women in Dublin and it was all too much of a coincidence: her age, the area, the stage of decomposition. She stared at the body again. She wasn’t a pathology expert, but she had seen enough dead bodies to know that Miriam had been lying there for at least a week, if not more. It was also obvious that the heating had been turned off in the apartment, otherwise the discovery would have been far more unpleasant.
What bothered her was the ease of identification. The killer hadn’t bothered to hide his victim’s name. It had been an arrogant move, leaving the wallet so prominently displayed. He clearly didn’t want, or didn’t feel he needed to buy himself time. He was either stupid, or confident. That was a far more worrying prospect.
A photograph peeped out from behind one of the ID cards and, turning the bag around in her hand, Claire could see it was a picture of a baby girl. She wasn’t a particularly pretty child. Her cheeks were red and there was an unmistakable glisten under the right nostril, but someone adored her. Someone, presumably Miriam Twohy herself, loved her enough to take this picture, cut it to size, insert it in a wallet and carry it around with her. Miriam had loved this baby. And now Miriam was dead.
She was about to hand the bag back to the pathologist when she noticed another piece of paper, lighter and flimsier than the rest. She walked over to the bedroom window and held the bag up to the light. The item was a receipt, one of the old-fashioned ones, printed on what looked almost like newspaper. There were no details of the items purchased, just a date, a time and then a line of figures written in lilac. She looked closer.
€4.50
€3.95
€1.80
Another line showed that twenty euro had been handed over, and change received. Claire exhaled. That might give them something. The date, as far as she could remember, was the day Miriam Twohy had disappeared. It wasn’t much. But it was something for them to follow.
She walked back to the head of the bed and finally allowed her gaze to fall fully onto the woman’s face. Long dark hair, a slightly beaky nose. God love you. Her eyelids were closed. That at least was a mercy.
‘We’ll be removing her shortly.’
‘Grand.’
Claire gave Helen Sheehy a half grimace, an acknowledgement of the difficult task that lay ahead. It was time for her to leave. Quigley would want an update as soon as possible. But as she reached the bedroom door she paused, and turned towards the body again. Who did this to you? And, almost by instinct, another prayer. Dear Jesus, let me find him.