“Did I tell you I’m going to be a grandfather?”
“You did indeed mention it. Ye’re all fired up and ready?”
“We’ll have to get the clautheens out of the attic, I told Kathleen.”
Donavan clipped the X rays on the panel.
“How well you kept them,” he said. “Up beside your Communion money?”
Donavan had eyebrows like a damned haystack, Minogue decided. Hirsute, that was the word. Donavan waved at the X rays and tugged at his beard for several moments. Then he tapped one with his knuckles.
“There,” he said. “There’s sure to be brain damage. The skull is fractured here. And here. You can see actual bone fragments there. Look.”
A male, Minogue thought. Rage, strength. He tugged the cuffs further down on his wrists. Was the elastic tighter on these new ones? The assistants wheeled in the body from the cooler room. Hanlon placed spools of film on the bottom shelf of a cabinet over the sink and closed the door. One of the wheels on the trolley squeaked. It caught and spun and squeaked again.
“I’ll be wanting to see how many separate impressions we can see in that area,” said Donavan. “How many times he was hit.”
Minogue’s nose felt ticklish again. He heard the assistant grunt as he lifted the top end of the bag. He retrieved the clipboard and tested his Biro again.
The trolley was being pushed to the wall now. The white plastic bag lay like a pupa on the table. The decay had been slowed by confinement in the car, but the heat had bloated the body. The seal on the zip still reminded Minogue of a tag at a sale. He looked around at the shelves and the cabinets, the clock. The second hand crawling, stopping almost if you looked at it directly. Christ. Half-eleven. The sharp click of instruments being laid on the table seemed very loud. The squeak of Donavan’s crepe soles on the terrazzo slowed.
“Good,” Donavan said.
Minogue moved back to let Hanlon prepare for a set of photos. Donavan wheeled over a cabinet with four drawers. On top lay a clipboard with a schematic diagram of the body. Donavan had written “Patrick Shaughnessy.” Another clipboard had a sheet of graph paper topmost. Donavan eyed at the clock and scribbled the time on the graph paper. He nodded at the assistant.
“Cut the seal, Kevin. And thank you.”
Minogue listened to the high-pitched wirps of the flash recharging. Hanlon took seven, eight photos of the back of Shaughnessy’s head. He took the ruler from beside the head and replaced it with the others on the table. Donavan stood to the far side of the table. His eyes remained fixed on Shaughnessy’s neck.
“Good,” said Hanlon.
The assistants rolled the body over. Minogue glanced over at the tagged bags of Shaughnessy’s clothes in the corner. The long-sleeved polo shirt might even be a wool blend. The green khaki-style trousers and the jacket were outdoorsy, were they not. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Was it himself, he wondered, or had the light gone dim a little. Radio Na Gaeltachta continued to play faintly from an aged transistor radio jammed between specimen jars over the sinks. A subdued conversation with odd episodes of forced humor between the interviewer and his guest, a poet now deceased, gave way to a spirited tune on a concertina. Minogue concentrated on the meandering notes. Why did a concertina always sound like it was about to fly out of control.
“‘The Pigeon on the Gate,’” Donavan said. “Noel Hill?”
“None other,” said Minogue. “You’ll get honorary citizenship to Clare yet.”
He looked back at Shaughnessy’s swollen face The lividity always reminded him of a bruised apple. He watched Donavan’s hands. The pathologist’s commentary continued in a monotone. A habit, Minogue knew, because Donavan rarely used a tape. The deceased bled profusely from open wounds… A lividity pattern indicates he had lain in a position head below horizontal after the injuries were sustained…
Donavan turned to the clipboard and wrote 5+ beside the head on the schematic. Blood had clotted and glued Shaughnessy’s hair to a plastic shopping bag. Three hours at most to stop that blood flow in the open air, but probably longer in the tight, airless boot of the Escort. Minogue’s eyes slid out of focus. Hitchhiker, Malone had been speculating The new Galway Road had you across the River Shannon in little more than an hour. You could be in Galway in less than three. With Shaughnessy dead, the blood draining into the wheel well -
The sneeze surprised even Minogue.
“God between us and all harm,” said Donavan. He lifted the arms one by one, turned them and then began a detailed examination of the hands.
Hanlon stood waiting. His thumb tapped softly, slowly on the back of his camera. Donavan let down each hand in turn and he walked to the X ray panel. He stared at the X ray of Shaughnessy’s hands.
“Nothing there yet to indicate resistance,” he said.
He returned to the table and examined the left hand again.
“Nothing,” he said again. He glanced over at Minogue.
“He wasn’t expecting it, Matt.”
Minogue realized that he had been holding his breath. He had been imagining a conversation: a lonely stretch of road, raining maybe. Shaughnessy feeling sorry for some unfortunate hiker with his thumb out. A girl, maybe? The boot lid open to pack in a rucksack or to take one out: From Boston? Really? How about that? Sure, let me put that in the boot — the trunk — … Or getting out, most likely: the hitchhiker could even have picked that spot You can let me off here, I’ve got a better chance on an empty bit of road. Shaughnessy’s opening the lid of the boot, he’s reaching in. What was he hit with?
The squeak from the opening door was Malone. Donavan didn’t look up from the clipboard. Minogue moved to the sink. Malone eyed the body.
“We have a move,” he said. “Fella phoned in from the press. A photographer, says he took pictures at a do. He’s checking now but he’s almost sure Shaughnessy’s picture’s in the paper from ten days ago. A reception of some kind out in Goff’s, the horsey crowd out on the Naas Road.”
Goffs, thought Minogue. High glam: millionaires, film stars, sheiks and princes, pop tarts — any celebrity might show up at these world-renowned bloodstock auctions
“Name of Noel O’Hagan,” Malone said. “The photographer. He’s a freelancer. He says there were other newspaper fellas there too. It was a kind of a celebrity gig. There should be other pics somewhere handy.”
Malone looked over Minogue’s shoulder at Kevin, Donavan’s assistant, who was letting a stream of water play on the bloodstains by Shaughnessy’s ear.
“And the rented car,” Malone said. “Shaughnessy was number eleven to rent it. It’s a year old, the Escort.”
“What’s the story so far on the contents?” Minogue tried.
“I checked with Eimear again. They’ve inventoried the boot already. Very messed up. The bit of board over the spare wheel and that, well it’s broken. Like, something heavy had been dumped on it.”
“The weight of the body?”
Malone shrugged.
“Eimear says she doesn’t think so. There was something more compact, says she, but right heavy. And there’s a good-sized ding on the bottom of the car. Major, like. A bad road? That’s what left the hole under the boot, it looks like.”
“What’s the situation with prints, might I ask?”
“There’s a crew working through from the boot,” Malone replied. “They’re still at the inside of the car like. There’s no wallet yet. Passport, camera — nothing. There was a fair-sized bag of laundry. All man’s clothes. Guidebooks, maps, bits of stuff like biscuits, empty Coke cans. He smoked, or someone in the car smoked. Eimear says they see hairs coming from the carpet now too.”
“Are there good prints coming out?”
“Well yeah, as a matter of fact. A lot, even from the outside. They’ll start the comparison search on Shaughnessy’s this afternoon.”
Donavan was humming. Minogue tried again to pin the name of the tune.
“Ten renters before Shaughnessy,” he murmured.
“That’s the story so far,” said Malone “Yeah. And then there’d be cleaners, staff borrowing the cars out there.”
Minogue watched Donavan’s assistant wiping pieces of sponge on the body in a circular motion, dropping the
