Unti Lucy Black Novel #3 Read online

  “Can you remember when exactly?”

  “What month is this?” the woman asked, as those around her cackled with laughter.

  “It’s the summer, sure the bloody sun’s beating down,” Sammy said.

  “Before Easter,” the woman said. “Earlier maybe. Not for ages.”

  “Thank you.” Lucy smiled. “If you hear anything about it, will you try to get in touch with us?”

  She offered the woman her card, but she didn’t take it.

  “Like I have a phone, love,” she said, joining the others in laughter. However, the girl in the red sneakers reached across and took the card from her.

  Sammy swallowed a mouthful of cider and passed the bottle to the girl next to him. “We’ll let someone know if we see him.”

  “The fella in the bin? Was he sleeping in there?” the woman asked, her laughter fit passed. “Is that what happened?”

  “We don’t know,” Lucy said.

  The girl in the red sneakers snorted derisively. “Of course he wasn’t.”

  Lucy examined her a little more closely. “Why do you say that?”

  “Sure why would you sleep in a bin in this heat?” the young girl said. “You’d be baked.” She lifted the cider bottle to her mouth and gulped down a mouthful while trickles spilled from the corners of her mouth.

  Lucy nodded agreement. The girl watched her and smiled.

  “I could be a cop,” the girl said, offering the bottle out to Lucy. “If I wanted.”

  “No, thanks,” she said, to the proffered drink. “And I’ve no doubt you could have been.”

  “Could be, I said,” the girl corrected her, sharply.

  Chapter Twelve

  LUCY DIDN’T SPEAK as they got back into the car.

  “What’s up?” Fleming asked as she started the engine.

  “I don’t get it,” she said, aware that she needed to tread carefully in the conversation with Fleming. “I understand alcoholism is a disease; I get that, I do. And I have every sympathy for someone struggling with it. But I don’t see the appeal in . . . in that,” she said, nodding toward the museum. “Sitting there, drinking all day.”

  Fleming said nothing and, for a moment, Lucy was worried she had offended him.

  “Like, that girl? With the red shoes. Why would she choose to spend her days like that?”

  “Street drinkers are a special breed,” Fleming said. “To everyone else they’re the lowest of the low, and they know that. There’s only one place they can go where they won’t be judged. Among others like themselves.”

  “But she must have a home—­” Lucy began.

  “That question you asked; why would she choose? Over there’s the one place she’ll not be made to think of an answer to that. The other drinkers all know what they are. There’s no denial. And they’ll accept her so long as she sticks to whatever rules they operate by. That’s a home by somebody’s definition. Or an approximation of one at least.”

  Lucy wasn’t convinced but thought better than to pursue the discussion. She was relieved when her phone rang as they made their way down the Strand Road toward a second spot where the homeless congregated in a local car park. It was Burns.

  “Any luck on a name?” he asked, without preamble.

  “Possibly,” Fleming said. “Kamil Krawiec. We’ve been asking round and no one has seen him in a while. We got a picture of him.”

  “Great,” Burns said. “The PM is being done at the minute. Can you take the picture up to the hospital, see if they can compare it with him on the slab and get a positive ID?”

  THE PATHOLOGIST, MARTIN Kerrigan, was finishing up when Lucy and Fleming arrived at the morgue. The remains of the man lay on the metal table while Kerrigan’s new assistant sewed him back up as best she could, considering the damage that had been done. Kerrigan was studying her sewing technique.

  “This is Caroline O’Kane,” Kerrigan said, when they came in. “Caroline; Tom Fleming, an old friend and veteran officer, and . . . ?”

  “Lucy Black,” Lucy offered.

  “Ah!” Kerrigan said. “You’re younger than I’d imagined.”

  Lucy resisted the temptation to ask him how he’d heard of her, or indeed why he’d imagined her to be older than she was. He smiled lightly as he regarded her, as if daring her to do so.

  “So, you’re here about the binman?”

  “Sort of,” Fleming said. “The Chief Super asked us to bring this up to you.” He handed Kerrigan the photocopy of Krawiec’s driver’s license.

  “The features are a little difficult to distinguish,” Kerrigan said. “And I’m not talking about on the photocopy. Try your best.”

  Lucy and Fleming approached the table. Lucy tried hard not to look lower than the dead man’s face, but could still see, from her peripheral vision, not just the dark stitched Y on his chest, but the livid injuries of his whole body. She noticed his arm sat out at an angle and that his four fingers were missing from his left hand.

  Fleming crouched beside the body, staring at the face, which lay sideways, as if looking toward the door in expectation of someone’s arrival. He studied the image in the photocopy that Kerrigan held toward him. As Lucy approached, she noticed that one of the eyes hung loose from its socket.

  “Could be him,” Fleming said.

  Kerrigan moved up and angled the head. “Yes, I’d say it’s him all right. You can imagine how he should have looked when his head was . . . well, the right shape.”

  “Did he die in the bin lorry?” Lucy asked, moving away from the body.

  “Ah, that’s the question. Indications are that he was crushed to death by the compactor. Part of his sternum entered his heart, as well as significant cranial damage to the back of the skull.”

  Lucy understood now why the head had been angled the way it had.

  “But . . . ?” Fleming said.

  “But . . . there are also indications that he was severely beaten in the hours prior to his death. I suspect he would have died anyway from those injuries. In the end, the compactor could have been an act of mercy.”

  Fleming shook his head. “Only you, Martin. Euthanized by a bin lorry.”

  Kerrigan laughed. “There are significant injuries over his body, including to his skull. The older injuries show vital reaction consistent with the man having lived for over twelve or fourteen hours after receiving them before he died.”

  “So someone beat him almost to death.”

  “Essentially.”

  “He couldn’t have been hit by a car? Fallen down a set of stairs?” Fleming asked.

  “Only if the point of impact with the car was in over seventy different spots on his body all at the same time. He also has defense wounds on his hands.” He lifted the right hand and held out the palm. A series of red scars slashed across it.

  “Those are different again. They’ve healed quite a bit already, so I’d say he probably gained those a few days before his death. Possibly he got into a fight with someone who pulled a blade on him. Having said that, it must have been a very fine blade, considering the width of the cuts. I don’t see any other lacerations of that type anywhere else but his hands, so far as I can tell. The beating came between forty-­eight and seventy-­two hours later.”

  “Could he have climbed into the bin unaided, bearing the injuries which you say he had from the beating?” Lucy asked.

  “She is a bright one,” Kerrigan said. “No, he probably couldn’t have. I’d say both his fibulas were shattered deliberately before death. He’d not have been able to stand up.”

  “Shattered?”

  “Various impact points. Small, about yay big.” He made a circle with his gloved hand. “Increased pressure to the lower edge.” He mimed someone swinging something, made a tocking sound with his tongue to mimic impact.

  “A hammer?”


  “Ball-­peen, considering some of the other circular impacts on the body.”

  “So someone beat him . . .”

  “Looking at the legs, I’d go for kneecapped him first, then beat him.”

  “Then dumped him in a bin.”

  Kerrigan nodded. “Leaving him to die. Or be crushed in the compactor when the rubbish was emptied.”

  “Either way, he was murdered,” the assistant, Caroline O’Kane, offered.

  “That’s not for us to say,” Kerrigan said, correcting her. “We simply examine and report. It’s up to the good officers here to make conclusions such as murder.”

  “He was murdered,” Fleming said to the woman, frowning at Kerrigan.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “AND NOW,” KERRIGAN continued. “For the dead man who didn’t drown himself. That one’s yours, DS Black, is that right?”

  “He is,” Lucy said. “Apparently.”

  “Well, the good news is that he was much easier to identify. After I unglued the mouth again, we were able to compare with dental records for Mr. Stuart Carlisle. They are one and the same person.”

  They heard a knocking at the door and a young uniform entered. “DS Black? I was told to drop this up with you.”

  He held a small parcel in his hand. He smiled sheepishly at them, then glanced at the table where Kamil Krawiec lay, his eyeball now touching the metal surface.

  “Jesus,” the uniform said, his face contorting. Despite himself he kept staring, then suddenly retched, as if to vomit.

  “In the sink,” Kerrigan shouted. “Or you’ll have to clean up yourself.”

  Lucy went across to the man and took the parcel from him. “Thanks,” she said.

  The man wiped his mouth with his hand, as if in attempt to stop himself being sick.

  “Some things you just can’t unsee, Constable,” Kerrigan called as the man turned and left.

  “Will I get him some water?” Caroline offered.

  “Leave him,” Kerrigan said. “He’ll be fine. What’s the special delivery?”

  Lucy unwrapped it and pulled out a small curved square of metal, about the size of a credit card. “From All Hallows Crematorium. Taken from Stuart Carlisle’s coffin.”

  “Now that’s interesting,” Kerrigan said. “Can I see it?” He took the piece and brought it across to the light above Kamil Krawiec. “What’s this?” he asked Caroline.

  “A surgical plate,” the woman said. “Skull, maybe?”

  “Why?”

  “The curvature?”

  “Perfect,” Kerrigan said. “And this came from Carlisle’s coffin?” he asked, turning to Lucy.

  Lucy nodded. “As did these.” She held out her hand. A second plate, longer and much narrower than the first, with four holes in it, rested next to four long metal pins and four shorter ones.

  “Someone else was cremated in his place,” Kerrigan said, hooting with laughter. “That’s quite brilliant, in its own way. The perfect crime.”

  “Not quite,” Fleming said. “The only perfect crime is the one that no one knew even happened.”

  “Perhaps,” Kerrigan said. “But someone obviously had a body to get rid of. Cremate it in someone else’s coffin, and no one will ever find it.”

  “But you have to dump the body originally in the coffin first. So someone will find that. We did.”

  “That was bad luck,” Kerrigan said. “Or good luck, from your point of view. Once Carlisle’s body went in the river, it should never have resurfaced. Embalming would have slowed the decomposition inside him right down. The organs are punctured, there’s no gas build up; the body should have sunk like a stone. They can’t throw in the unembalmed body they needed to get rid of, because that will come back up at some stage, once it fills with gas.”

  “Then why did Carlisle come back up?”

  “The embalming job might not have been a great one. And the heat, of course. The heat in the water would have been like a greenhouse for whatever bacteria were working inside him. It just took a little bit of gas and up he popped.”

  “He was snagged on a tree branch,” Lucy said.

  Kerrigan nodded. “Had he not come back up, you’d never have been the wiser. Or if they’d thrown him into the river in the winter.”

  “That doesn’t bring us any closer to who actually was in the coffin,” Fleming said.

  “Of course it does,” Kerrigan countered. “We know that whoever it was had had surgery for a skull injury and, judging from the collection in DS Black’s hand, a broken leg, too, I think.”

  “So we just phone every hospital and ask for anyone who’s had skull and leg surgery, then start whittling them down?” Fleming said. “That should only be a few thousand for Ireland.”

  Kerrigan had been examining the skull plate. He smiled, then handed it to Caroline. “Let me see the leg plate.”

  Lucy handed it to him and he glanced at it, turning it over, then lay it to one side. “Oh ye of little faith. Luckily, the cranial plate was manufactured in the US.”

  “That is lucky,” Lucy said dryly. “Their population is so much smaller than ours. It will be, quite literally, like finding one of these in a haystack,” she added, holding aloft one of the pins.

  “Very good. I like that,” Kerrigan said. “Now, you see, here, plates have no markings on them. In the more litigious USA, every surgical implant has to have a logo and batch number, so that if it’s faulty, you can trace back to the supplier. So, while that leg plate has no identifying markings on it, and is of no use to you, the cranial plate, on the other hand, has a logo and, if I’m not mistaken, a serial number that will tell you the batch from which it came. Get the batch number, contact the implant company, and they’ll be able to tell you which hospital the batch went to and when. It won’t identify the individual patient, but it will give you a place and approximate year of treatment. Your haystack has just become so much smaller.”

  All this time, Caroline had remained quiet, studying the cranial plate, examining it through the magnifying glass positioned above the table. At first, Lucy thought she was looking for the markings Kerrigan had mentioned.

  “I think this one was murdered, too,” she offered suddenly.

  Kerrigan rolled his eyes. “As I’ve told you, Caroline, that’s not our call to make.”

  Caroline straightened and offered him the plate. “There’s a small nick in the side. It looks to be wider at the top than the bottom. Like something cut into it. The metal’s shiny at the cut, so it looks like it’s a recent thing.”

  Kerrigan took the plate and moved across to study it under the glass as she had done. Lucy wondered how he would react to having missed it himself. She was pleasantly surprised when he glanced up at Caroline, smiling. “Indeed! Well done, you. It looks like the edge of something cut into the side of the plate.”

  “Something?”

  “As Caroline said,” Kerrigan replied. “The cut’s wider at the upper edge than the lower. My bet would be a hatchet or axe. To the head,” he concluded.

  Chapter Fourteen

  USING THE MAGNIFYING glass, Kerrigan managed to retrieve the logo and batch number of the plate. The logo was the letter U with two snakes, one wrapped around each of the main letter’s uprights.

  “That’s the symbol for doctors, isn’t it?” Lucy asked. “The serpents wrapped around something.”

  “Nearly,” Kerrigan said. “You’re thinking of the caduceus, the staff of Hermes, the messenger of the gods, in Greek myth. The two snakes were entwined to represent peace. It’s often used as a symbol of medicine. God knows why, because there’s absolutely no connection between the two. Maybe it’s their way of saying, ‘Don’t blame us, we’re only the messengers,’ when you’re imparting bad news.” He chuckled softly at his own comment. “What they should actually use, which this company seem to have realized, i
s the staff of Asclepius, which has a single snake entwined around a staff. Asclepius was a Greek doctor about whom Homer wrote. The Greeks eventually worshipped him as the god of healing.”

  Lucy glanced at Caroline, who raised both eyebrows. Welcome to my world, she mouthed.

  Lucy smiled sympathetically. She was beginning to appreciate being partnered with Tom Fleming. There were days he barely spoke, but better that than being lectured to all day.

  “USS stands for United Surgical Ser­vices,” Kerrigan said, angling the plate against the light as he examined it through the magnifier. “The batch number is—­” He glanced around to see that both Lucy and Fleming were standing watching him.

  “Are you planning on remembering it, or are you going to write it down?” he asked, looking from one to the other.

  “Sorry,” Lucy said, pulling out her notebook.

  “Serial 8756943–132,” Kerrigan said. “They should be able to trace that to a batch and tell you where it went and when. After that, it will be up to you to identify the recipient.”

  LUCY DROPPED FLEMING home, then cut across to Tesco to get some groceries. The house was empty of food, a fact she’d realized when, the previous night, Dermot had made tea for her, Jenny, and Fiona and been able to provide a variety of biscuits with it. Lucy doubted if she’d have been able to provide sugar if someone had called to visit her unexpectedly. Or indeed, even tea. Then again, generally ­people didn’t visit her, unexpectedly or otherwise.

  She was making her way to the car, still debating with herself whether she’d been wise to buy two family-­size tubs of ice cream, when her phone rang. Initially, she thought it was work but, when she pulled it out, she did not recognize the number on the screen.

  “Lucy?” A female voice.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Jenny. From across the street.”

  “Hey, Jenny.”

  “Look, I’m really sorry about this. I told Fiona last night that we were planning on going swimming this evening if she wanted to come along. I wanted to make it sound casual, like we were already planning on doing it anyway, so as not to put her under too much pressure. The thing is, she’s said yes. I know you’ve probably other things on, so don’t worry of it doesn’t suit. I can tell her you had to cancel at the last minute, but I thought I’d check if you wanted to come? I understand if it doesn’t suit, honestly. I really appreciated you calling over. I know it was a bit, you know . . .” she gabbled nervously.