She shook her head. “It is beyond my capabilities to state how long he was frozen for.”
“So you’re not able to determine a time of death?”
“I am afraid that I am not able to determine a time or date of death. Although I will continue to work on the problem.”
“Poisoned, frozen, chopped up, dumped,” McCrabban said sadly, writing it down in his notebook.
“Yes,” Laura said, yawning. I gave her a smile. Was she already bored by death? Is that what happened to all pathos in the end? Or was she just bored by us? By me?
“The rosary pea. That is interesting,” McCrabban said, still writing in his book.
“Our killer is not stupid,” Laura said. “He’s got a little bit of education.”
“Which more or less rules out the local paramilitaries,” McCrabban muttered.
“They’re not that bright?” Laura asked.
“Poison is far too elaborate for them. Too elaborate for everybody really around here. I mean what’s the point? You can get guns anywhere in Northern Ireland,” I said.
McCrabban nodded. “The last poisoning I remember was in 1977,” he said.
“What happened then?” Laura asked.
“Wife poisoned her husband with weedkiller in his tea. Open and shut case,” McCrabban said.
“So what do you think we’re looking at here, then? A loner, someone unaffiliated with the paramilitaries?” I asked him.
“Could be,” McCrabban agreed.
“Do us a favour, mate, call up a few garden centres and ask about rosary pea and get cracking on ‘No Sacrifice Too Great’, will ya?”
Crabbie wasn’t dense. He could read between the lines. He could see that I wanted to talk to Laura in private.
“You’ll walk back to the station, will you, Sean?” he asked.
“Aye, I’ll walk, I could do with the exercise.”
“Fair enough,” he said and turned to Laura. “Nice to see you again, Dr Cathcart.”
“You too, Detective McCrabban,” Laura said.
When he’d gone I walked to her and took off her mask.
“What?” Laura asked.
“Tell me,” I said.
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me what’s going on,” I said.
She shook her head. “Ugh, Sean, I don’t have time for this, today.”
“Time for what exactly?”
“The games. The drama,” she said.
“There’s no drama. I just want to know what’s going on.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What’s going on with us?”
“Nothing’s going on,” she said.
But her voice quavered.
Outside I could hear Crabbie start up the Land Rover.
I waited for a beat or two.
“All right, let’s go to my office,” she said.
“Okay.”
We walked the corridor and went into her office. It was the same dull beige with the same Irish watercolours on the wall. She sat in her leather chair and let down her reddish hair. She looked pale, fragile, beautiful.
The seconds crawled.
“It’s not a big deal,” she began.
I closed my eyes and leaned back in the patient chair.
“I’ve been offered a temporary teaching position at the University of Edinburgh,” she said, her voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a coal mine.
“Congratulations,” I replied automatically.
“Don’t be unpleasant, Sean.”
“I wasn’t.”
“It’s in the medical school. First year class on basic anatomy with a cadaver. To be honest, I need the break, from, from—”
“Me?”
“From all this …”
It didn’t have to be about me. Anybody with any brains was getting out. The destination wasn’t important. England, Scotland, Canada, America, Australia … the great thing was to go.
“Of course.”
She explained why it was an exciting challenge and why it didn’t necessarily mean the end of us.
I nodded, smiled and was happy for her.
I completely understood. She would leave Northern Ireland and she would never come back. I mean, who tries to get back on board the
Furthermore her sisters were out of high school and her parents were in the process of moving abroad. The only thing keeping Laura here were her ties to this shitty job and to me and both of those were severable.
“When are thinking of heading?” I asked.
“Monday.”
“So soon?”
“I signed a lease on an apartment. I need to get furniture.”
“What about your house in Straid?”
“My mum will look after it.”
“What about the hospital? Who’s covering for you here?”
“The other doctors can pick up the slack in the clinic and I’ve asked one of my old teachers to do my autopsy work in the interim. Dr Hagan. He’s coming out of retirement to do me this favour. Very experienced. He worked for Scotland Yard for years and he taught at the Royal Free. He says he’ll be happy to cover me for a few months. He’ll be much better at this kind of work than me.”
“I doubt that.”
She smiled.
And then there was silence. I could hear a kid crying all the way back at Reception.
“Will you have dinner with me this weekend?”
“I’ll be very busy. Packing and all that.”
“I will.”
I got up. I blinked and looked at her. Her gaze was steady. Resolved. Even relaxed. “Bye, Laura.”
“Bye, Sean. It’s only for a term. Ten weeks,” she said. She wanted to add something else, but her mouth trembled for a moment and then closed.
I nodded and to avoid a scene left it there. I gave her a little nod as I left the office and half slammed her door. “Heart of Glass” by Blondie was my exit music from the hospital reception.
I went out into the car park and said “Shite! Shite! Shite!” before lighting a fag. I tried to think of a curse but Irish articulacy had clearly declined since the days of Wilde and Yeats, Synge and Shaw. Three ‘shites’ and a ciggie, that was what we could come up with in these diminished times.
I walked over the railway bridge.
A stiff sea breeze was sending foam over the cars on the Belfast Road and there were white caps from here to Scotland. On the Scotch Quarter, outside the Gospel Hall, a wild-haired American evangelist with a walking stick was entertaining a crowd of pensioners with the promise that the end was nigh and the dying earth was in its final
