First Death In Dublin City (Thomas Bishop Book 1) (9 page)

The rain didn’t let up that evening, and so the park was badly waterlogged when Tommy arrived. He parked his car at the Garda Rowing Club so that it wouldn’t be broken into, it was just a two minute walk to the park entrance. With him were Peter Hayes, who knew the park well as a local like Tommy, Anne who had insisted on coming along, and Morris who liked all things park related.

Islandbridge, was the most beautiful part of the city in Tommy’s opinion. It was where the Liffey began to meander its way to the sea, and moved so slowly as to almost be classed as stagnant. The river was rich with wildlife, and along the banks was located ten or so rowing clubs; many of them so old as to have been founded when Ireland was part of the British Empire.

The greenery however didn’t end with the river banks however, for just north there were the war memorial gardens, and just south was the Phoenix Park. There Tommy and the two others would find the camp they were looking for. From his glovebox Tommy had taken three torches, and after having handed one to each of the other two, they proceeded into the park.

The road was waterlogged, with a stream running over their shoes. Luckily Tommy had recommended that they each wear wellies, and so they didn’t feel the cold, muddy water, as the plodded up the road. They had also dressed down considerably; Tommy was wearing a grey hoodie and waders, and the other two were dressed similarly. Anne had even brought a whistle, afraid of being assaulted or something. Tommy told her that in the Phoenix Park at night whistling would do nothing more than attract more rapists.

They swung right when they reached a turn in front of an old decrepit hospital and a row of Victorian streetlamps. A car whistled by and swerved, beeping at the three walkers and covering them in mud. The other two complained but Tommy was happy, they would fit in better where they were going.

It took them ten minutes to reach the Furry Glen, and along the way they were approached twice by smiling men in cars; obviously there was a market out there for grey roadside blobs. The Glen came into view soon enough, identifiable for the hundreds of tents along the bank of the lake, among the trees, and on the grass.

Two images popped into Tommy’s head upon seeing the arrangement. The first was a photo he had seen once of the City of God in Rio de Janeiro, one of the world’s largest slums, where the locals sometimes sleep in hammocks between shanty houses, and the second image was of a renaissance painting Tommy had seen several times, Heironymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. It displayed man in all its depravity, and on rainy nights like this, it shared a certain likeness to the Furry Glen.

Renowned for its night time combination of seclusion and depravity for generations, the Glen had even featured in an old red light district Dublin anthem. Though Tommy was almost certain that particular song was written later than it made out, it still underlined the fact that the Furry Glen wasn’t a creation of the bailout generation. The irony was that, as a heavily wooded area, with a small lake and about twenty different small walkways, it should be paradise on earth for anyone who wanted to escape the city. Right now, according to the Simon Community representative Tommy talked to earlier, it was home for a hundred or so homeless who were too doped or drunk to even get into the wet hostels around the city.

They lay in hammocks strewn between trees, sleeping bags against trees and tents on any bit of clear ground they could find. Usually there would be fires, but with the heavy rain there was no way one would light so everyone was left to shiver while they slept in pools of wet mud. No one, no matter how deluded, would imagine that this was a camping trip or school sleep out. The Glen was silent except for the occasional scuffle, two or three residents who spoke a constant monologue, and a painful, lonely wail of a baby in pain. A weight of despair hung over the beautiful woodland.

‘There’s a baby down here.’ Said Anne.

‘Yup, and children too.’ Said Peter. ‘If you start intervening in the families however, there won’t be a quicker way to end up getting the cold shoulder. I don’t think whoever the parents are will appreciate members of the state that has ignored them until now coming down to their shantytown to tell them they’re bad parents.’

‘But, the kid might die in this weather?’ Protested Anne.

‘You’ll leave it.’ Said Tommy, and that was the end of it.

They began their descent, deciding to talk to only those who were awake, ignoring those asleep or unconscious, believing that waking someone who managed to sleep in this rain would hardly endear them to the community.

The first person they tried was not at all interested in talking to them, the second was an old woman who just gave them a monologue of her childhood in an industrial school, and it took twenty minutes before Tommy could distract her enough to leave. After the second woman, Tommy received a call from Claire Clancy, who was continuing the pattern of calling every three hours to check up on the case. Tommy, again, told her to ring the head of the NCBI, and that he couldn’t help her; to which she just whimpered in response.

After finally extracting himself from the phone call with Claire, Tommy moved onto his third attempt. Anne was at his side, Peter had gone on interviewing others in the park. Stepping over a sleeping body between two trees, they came upon a young man staring coldly at the ground.

‘Excuse me.’ Said Tommy. And the man’s glazed eyes shifted up from the wet ground to Tommy, who got down on his hunkers before him.

‘Whatcha want?’ Asked the man, his voice slurred. In filthy hands he carried a can of cider, or at least that’s what the can said. Given that, a meter away, Tommy could smell the contents, it was almost certain that what had once been cider had finally become something entirely stronger.

‘My name’s Detective Inspector Thomas Bishop, I need some..’ Began Tommy.

‘Fuck off, pig.’ Said the young man.

‘I need your help.’ Said Tommy.

The young man spat at him.

‘I could bring you in for that.’ Said Tommy, wiping away the phlegm from his knee.

‘Go ahead, oink, oink.’ Said the slurred man.

Tommy took from his pocket a cigarette, not that he smoked himself.

‘A fag for the name of someone who stays in Glenauling.’ Said Tommy.

The kid spat at him again. ‘I ain’t saying shit, and neither is anyone else.’

Tommy grimaced, got up and turned away from the hopeless case, but not before he threw the cigarette at him. The kid murmured some kind of thanks, and named Tommy ‘Michael’ for some reason. The baby continued to wail.

##

Over his bedside lamp Tommy had placed a white lampshade, and now every time at night, when sleep evaded him, the lampshade would be knocked over by his lunging hand searching for the switch he never could find in the dark.

The room was lit up by an awful colour from the environmentally friendly bulb, and as it heated up it hardly held the darkness at bay. The knocking, the bumping of the lampshade, it acted as a signal, and in she came – Tommy could hear her, creeping along in the dark recesses of his room where the light couldn’t reach. She stayed there, huddled in the corner, her breath so out of synch – rasp in, rasp out, rasp in, rasp out.

She stood there, pressed into the dark, until Tommy could almost see the outline of her face – he inhaled, about to speak, but something caught in his throat. Then, she was on the move, climbed a series of white presses by the old wardrobe. She was perched there, white teeth carving a beacon into the night. Tommy could hear her keds sliding against the white wood.

Tommy knew it was insanity, the dark road that led to the end even quicker than the morphine, yet he reached out regardless.

‘Please.’ He said. ‘Please.’

Never before had he wanted something so badly, and he felt the pressure build behind his eyes. He arose and went to her, but of course the shelves were nought but shelves, and he of course was nothing but alone. There was no one in his room, no one in his bed; seven billion people on the planet and Tommy knew only lonely despair.

Upon this occasion he didn’t waste any time with Huzzar, nor did he try reason with himself on the benefits of sobriety – upon this occasion he was efficient in his set up. And so it was that ten minutes later he was pricking his arm with the only cure for lonely hallucinations Tommy knew.

While Anne bought her breakfast at the counter, Tommy read the newspaper headlines. They were almost all to do with the case. Even the tabloids such as the
Daily Mail
, whose usual remit was reporting on all things Islamic, had pushed Amy’s death to the front page.

THE MONSTER IN OUR MIDST

ONE DAY ON AND CHILD KILLER STILL LOOSE

TRAGEDY FOR CLANCY FAMILY JUST BEGINNING AS KILLER CONTINUES TO ELUDE CAPTURE

Were among the more sensationalist. Tommy had of course handled cases like this before, labelled ‘hot potatoes’ among the Gardaí. He knew that the Irish media in full frenzy was like a crazed animal; with an obsession with tragedy that went beyond voyeurism to full blown fetishism. Therefore, the tabloids having fourteen pages of coverage devoted solely to the Clancy case was in no way a surprise – it had all the elements of a perfect Irish storm – an innocent female dead, the grieving families being from South Dublin, and smallest sense of smug superiority among the public that
their
daughter wouldn’t be such easy prey for whatever creature had done this. One flick through their pages told Tommy all he needed to know about their ‘coverage’.

The only paper who ran with a story Tommy didn’t know was the
Independent
, and still the story concerned Amy indirectly.

OVER 16,500 SIGN PETITION FOR THE CREATION OF IRISH VERSION OF ‘SARAH’S LAW’ IN 48 HOURS

And beneath which was imposed one of the photos of Amy that Tommy carried in his wallet: Her crouched beside a collie that was lovingly rubbing up against her side while she hugged her side. Man’s best friend, and after just over a week of combing through Amy’s life, Tommy began to think that the dog was Amy’s only friend. In one of her rambling phone calls Claire Clancy had tearfully told Tommy that Amy would occasionally talk to the dog, full blown conversations. She wanted to know what it meant. Tommy had wanted to tell her that the only reason she probably did that was because Amy didn’t know a human who would listen to her; but instead he had let it slide.

He reached out to peruse the copy of the
Independent
, but then his phone rang out, and he answered the number he didn’t know.

‘Detective Bishop, who is this?’ Asked Tommy.

‘Orlaith.’ Said the female voice on the other end.

‘What can I do for you?’ Asked Tommy.

‘I have a report for you.’ Said Orlaith.

‘No, can’t be, I’m only dealing with the Amy Clancy case at the moment. You must be looking for someone else.’ Said Tommy.

‘Numbnuts, I have the Amy Clancy report for you.’ Said Orlaith.

‘Wait, really?’ Asked Tommy.

‘You sound shocked.’ Said Orlaith.

‘Well, ok. In Marino again?’ Asked Tommy.

Orlaith answered to the affirmative, then hung up. Tommy hadn’t expected the autopsy to be completed at least until next week, so for it to have been done over the weekend was fantastic. Overtime was a rarity nowadays, and even though the coroner had the imperative of voters waiting on finding out how their loved one’s died, so the powers that be usually didn’t allow the back log to grow too big, they still had a considerable waiting list. Suspicious deaths got precedence, so Tommy had thought it would take a week before Amy was opened up, with another two weeks for the tox screens. Instead overtime had been granted for Orlaith to do the autopsy, and for the lab technician to run tests on all the various samples taken from Amy’s body and the crime scene; on a weekend no less. Obviously the case being obsessively followed by the general public had its benefits.

‘Anne. C’mere.’ Shouted Tommy over to the counter.

‘Yeah, just a second.’ She shouted back, and after paying for her roll, she walked over and began to hungrily stuff the food into her mouth.

‘We’ve to go to Marino.’ Said Tommy.

‘Marino, what for?’ Said Anne, and Tommy was reminded of why kids were always told to eat with their mouths closed.

‘Autopsy.’ Said Tommy.

‘Jesus, that was quick.’ Said Anne.

‘I know, now let’s go, we can call the Clancy’s on the way and tell them to be ready for us.’ Said Tommy.

‘Alright, I’m driving though, you don’t look like someone I can trust with a box of safety matches, let alone a car. Why do you always look so shit?’ Anne walked around the front of the car and stuck the key into the lock.

‘Oh, I just haven’t been sleeping since Amy’s body turned up.’ Said Tommy/.

‘No, no, no. I haven’t been sleeping either, but two nights without sleep leaves me with bags under my eyes; you have a bit more than bags. Shit Tommy, you’ve got a fucking species living under yours, you look like a member of O’Connell Street’s walking dead.’ Said Anne, as she twisted the key and pulled out from the kerb.

‘What are you suggesting?’ Asked Tommy, suspicious about what she may have heard.

‘Well, now Tommy, tell me if this isn’t my place. But you really look like you’ve been drinking.’ Said Anne.

Tommy laughed inside; Anne O’Mahony was mothering him.

‘Um, yeah, drinking.’ Said Tommy awkwardly.

‘Well, do you think I have a problem?’ Asked Anne, then realised her mistake. ‘Or, do you think you have a problem I should say?’

‘I have too many, alcohol acts more as a solution however, so no AA for me.’ Said Tommy.

‘Just, if it’s impacting on your job…’ Began Anne.

‘Just fucking drive.’ Said Tommy, cutting her off mid-lecture, as he was beginning to get irritated.

‘Alright, Alright.’ Said she, obviously hurt after being snapped at, still, Tommy was not in any mood for platitudes given the weight of the morphine hangover weighing heavily upon his brain. When next he got clean, and found himself awake at three in the morning reminiscing about the liquid, he’d have to remember just how painful the come down was.

Tommy and Anne both had a copy of the report in their hands, and were, to quote Orlaith ‘perusing at their leasure’. Tommy finished first, and so began the question round.

‘Operative cause of death?’ Asked Tommy.

‘Blood loss from the upper torso area.’ Said Orlaith.

‘State of victim with regards to nutrition?’

‘No dehydration, she was given water regularly. She however had not had any food in her system, and it seems hadn’t eaten in days.’

‘Any signs of restraints?’

‘None.’

‘Drugs then?’

‘Yes, crudely administered amounts of both diazepam and Flunitrazepam.’ Said Orlaith.

Tommy, from his history as an addict who had more than once wanted to go into a dreamless sleep, knew both these drugs well; however Anne was confused and spoke up.

‘English please?’ She said.

‘Diazepam is the chemical name for the drug commonly traded as Valium; an anxiety suppressor, it’s used as a sedative for patients in acute distress or those with sleeping problems. Flunitrazepam is the chemical name for the drug traded either as rohypnol in Europe or ruphalin in the US. Its primary medical purpose, due to the fact that it will make a patient go unconscious and forget everything that occurred while under the effects of the drug, is as a low-level anaesthetic. However, due to its unusual capacity to both incapacitate a user as well as wipe their memory, Flunitrazepam has become associated with a more sinister use than surgery..’

‘Date rape.’ Said Anne.

‘Precisely.’ Orlaith got up and stretched her legs.

‘So, was Amy raped?’ Anne asked, with a look of disgust on her face.

‘No, I was right. No sign of any sexual contact at all.’ Said Orlaith.

Tommy nodded.

‘So, how do you think it happened?’ He asked.

‘Assailant strikes her with a blow to the forehead with a brick or some such object. Victim, hungry and probably drugged, falls to the ground, where the assailant proceeds to stab the victim repeatedly with a weapon in the style of either a hammer or fork. At least thirty different entries, though the fact that each stab is on the same part of the body perhaps hides repeat entries; the number could be as high as eighty.’

‘He stabbed her eighty fucking times?’ Asked Tommy.

‘Possibly.’ Said Orlaith.

‘This was personal.’ Said Tommy.

‘Usually such violence is associated with a deep hatred or anger, yes.’ Said Orlaith.

Tommy brushed his hand through his hair, and saw as a snow of dead skin cells and loose hair fell down in front of him – fucking dehydration. If he were to keep up the morphine, shaving his head would be the next move; he of course would not be keeping up the habit.

Hopefully.

‘We need to visit the Clancy’s.’ Said Tommy, getting up.

‘Oh, then Tommy, finally.’ Orlaith said as they got up. ‘Amy showed no defensive wounds.’ Orlaith said, as a cryptic answer to the unasked question. Tommy nodded on his way out to show he had understood.

##

The Clancy house in Rathmines was becoming something of a home away from home for Tommy lately, but he had rarely seen it in so sombre a mood. The couches had been moved out of the living room and all that was there was a large oak table over which was draped was a beautiful cotton tablecloth: set for the open casket. There were already approximately thirty or forty people in the house, and upon entering Tommy was reminded of one of his favourite childhood poems, one that had made his stomach jump every time he had read it after the death of his father; one that reminded him still of saying goodbye to Rebecca. The words echoed through his mind’s eye as he passed grandparents standing open mouthed with shock in the Clancy hallway.

At the door I met my father crying, he had always taken funerals in his stride.

Tommy had never taken funerals in his stride, not his dad’s and not Rebecca’s. In the living room he came upon the Clancy’s, Claire and Gary. Claire was silently weeping, tears carving pathways through her expensive foundation like a river through rock, while Gary just stared at his cup of tea growing cold.

As my mother held my hand in hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

Next to Gary sat his soon-to-be stepson, gently rocking from side. The boy, aged nineteen, was severely autistic; or so Tommy had been told. He was the only one in the entire house that didn’t seem at all to be sad over what had happened; instead he smiled about some joke no one seemed to get. From anything anybody said about him, however, Tommy believed him to be very independent, for the severity of the condition. He could even drive.

‘Gary, Claire, will you come with us?’ Asked Anne, in a soothing voice.

They led the two into the conservatory, where no one would be there to listen to their conversation, the rest would have to wait to hear the entire story.

I sat all morning in the college sick bay counting bells knelling classes to a close.

‘Ok, you guys. We’ve just gotten the autopsy report back on Amy. Now, some Gardaí think it’s good practice to cushion the truth a little, to lie a little, to those left behind after homicide. I disagree, I believe that from the off those left behind should know everything that occurred, because only then can grief be alleviated properly.’ Said Tommy.

‘Have you ever had to grieve Inspector?’ Asked Claire, in a hushed voice.

‘Twice; my father and my best friend. Though I’m told that the grief of losing a child is incomparable to anything else.’ Tommy took the report from Anne’s bag an opened it up.

‘May I?’ He asked.

‘Go ahead.’ Said Gary tearfully.

‘Amy was killed by the loss of blood from stab wounds to her chest. She was, however incapacitated when the stabbing took place, so she wouldn’t have felt pain.’ Said Tommy.

‘No pain at all?’ Asked Gary.

‘She had been incapacitated by a blow to the head, so the pain of that, perhaps, she briefly felt, before becoming unconscious.’ Said Tommy.

‘Cunt.’ Said Claire, voice brimming with rage. Everyone looked at her, briefly shocked, then looked away when they realised that they shouldn’t in fact be shocked.

‘When will the body arrive?’ Asked Gary.

‘She’s being taken to the funeral home as we speak, they should have her back in the house by midnight.’ Said Anne.

‘Thank you detectives.’ Said Gary; a broken man nodding his thanks.

##

Tommy’s car hugged the kerb on Kildare Street, sitting waiting in a row of taxi drivers. Every so often in front of him a large ministerial car would pull out of the gates of Leinster House, but he knew that Jennifer was afforded no such treatment. Backbenchers were expected to make their own way to and from the House; not that Tommy felt too sorry on that behalf however, Jennifer was paid handsomely in expenses for her travels, something most workers did not have the luxury of enjoying.

He saw her from a mile away, seeing as, even with the umbrella she carried to block out the rain also obscuring her face, her blonde hair was recognisable beyond a doubt, especially among the crowds of suited men that left the building with her. She was wearing a tight black suit, that lit up her body perfectly. Tanned skin and shocking white teeth, expensively straightened. Jennifer Costello was almost as tall as Tommy’s six foot, and with the heels she almost always wore, she towered over almost all her comrades. Long legs clad in what Tommy liked to think of as ‘Mrs Robinson’ tights. He felt his pulse quicken upon seeing her with his eyes, bedecked out so beautifully. He pressed down and unlocked the door of his Mondeo upon her reaching his car. She went first to the back seat and deposited in her suitcase, then came to the front seat and sat in.