pieces into a specimen bag hanging at the sides of the table — “The Moon Behind the Hill,” that was the tune. Donavan stopped humming. Minogue turned back toward the pathologist.
Water still trickled from the hose at rest by Shaughnessy’s elbow. Donavan was finished the external? Patrick Leyne Shaughnessy would shortly be sawn and eviscerated.
The music gave way to a too-chatty presenter with a strong Ulster accent extolling the virtues of Clare music in general. An impertinence, Minogue decided.
Malone murmured by his shoulder now.
“Spots of blood from around the lid of the hatchback,” he said. “They’re in being typed.”
The click of more instruments being laid on the stainless steel brought Malone’s glance to the table. He bit his lip, looked back at Minogue.
“Clobbered in the open doorway, the boot, what do you think?”
“Well it looks like he didn’t react,” he said. “But there’s a spray pattern to sort out still, to be sure.”
“He knew the guy, then,” Malone went on “Or the fella ran up, got his first one in?”
The whirr always reminded Minogue of the dentist. Malone’s blink lasted too long. Minogue eyed at the saw that the assistant was readying. Donavan leaned over his clipboard, staring at the schematic of the back of the body.
“Say he’d been drinking,” said Malone. “Closing time, you know? After hours even. A session maybe, buying rounds of drink and all. All hail-fella-well-met until they’re outside. Say he’s been blathering away with the few jars on him. Money talk. Fellas go out with him. ‘Give us a lift there, will you… ’”
“Easy done, all right,” Minogue said.
Malone eyed the body for several moments.
“Well-to-do, you know,” he said. “Lots of stuff, like. The watch, the clothes. You know the Yanks, the way they are, the way they look. Maybe Shaughnessy’s pulling tenners out of his wallet all night. So it’s a local. I say we’re going to find two fellas, two drinking partners. They wait their chance, wallop him, follow through — maybe in a panic, or pissed — finish the job. Then they decide to hide the body back up in Dublin. Where it belongs, to their way of thinking?”
Minogue thought of the American tourists he’d first seen as a kid. He’d been mesmerized by the diver’s watches, those expanding metal watchbands, the tanned, hairy forearms. Perfume, the jaws always going on them. And now? He’d seen video cameras the size of paperbacks, outdoor gear and packsacks with pockets and straps for everything. Still the big, capped teeth, the ready smiles, the ponderous way a lot of them walked. All overweight? Swaggering? How they seemed to occupy that part of the path or the space where they stopped to look around.
Maybe Mr. Patrick Leyne Shaughnessy had seriously pissed off some unemployed, restless, and angry young fellas, men very goddamned fed up of hearing about a booming economy, fed up of watching tourists pulling endless amounts of cash out of their wallets.
Donavan was looking over. He pointed to Shaughnessy’s head.
“This abrasion up here by the right side of the temple,” he said. “That starts at the cheekbone in actual fact.”
Minogue stepped back to the table. Malone, his face tight, followed.
“Falling, you could guess,” Donavan added
Minogue couldn’t see any difference in colors where the skin was scuffed. Hanlon maneuvred around him. Lots of blows says rage, drunken; panic: the basics here.
“How many times was he hit?” he asked Donavan.
“Well now. You have the base of the skull fractured, with bits of it up here. See those little bits on the X ray there on the right?”
Donavan picked up a scalpel and examined the blade.
“We have corresponding scrapes here on the right side of the head as he went down. I would hazard a guess that the first blow sent him to the ground. Defenseless, maybe even mortal. An iron bar?”
Hanlon leaned over the side of the table and snapped three pictures. What hitchhiker would be walking around with an iron bar handy?
“So other blows landed after he went down. Here’s a pattern on the side of the face that backs that up.”
Minogue followed Donavan’s finger. Kevin helped to turn the head.
“But, thing is, there’d be more to it — a collateral fracture even — if he was hit on cement now,” Donavan went on. “Or a roadway. I don’t see, I don’t recognize, gravel or tar here yet.”
Minogue’s mind slipped away again. Shaughnessy opening the boot lid: he’d have heard someone step up behind him? A word, a shout? He hadn’t raised his arm to fend off the blow. Drunk? He looked at the board. Shaughnessy was a hundred eighty-three centimeters. That was just over six feet. Hit hard the first time, Shaughnessy would have gone forward and down at the same time. The spots of blood on the underside of the hatchback looked like the outer edge of a spray pattern, fair enough. It could also be from clumsy, strained efforts to shove Shaughnessy into the boot. Eighty-nine point something kilos, about two hundred pounds: over fourteen stone? Well that’d take lifting. For an instant Minogue saw a pack of teenagers flailing at Shaughnessy.
He looked down at his notebook.
“Can I take photocopies with me today, Pierce?”
“ ’Course you can.”
Donavan looked under his eyebrow from Minogue to Malone and back. Minogue glanced over at his colleague. Malone’s jaw was slack, his tongue was working slowly against the inside of the cheek.
“We’ll go in now,” said Donavan. “Kevin?”
Minogue nodded toward the door. Malone followed him over.
“Follow up on the newspaper thing now instead of waiting,” Minogue said. “Get this fella, the photographer again. O’Hagan, is it?”
Malone nodded.
“If Shaughnessy was on the society pages there’ll be other pictures somewhere. Pinch these photographers if you get waltzed around. Call in uniforms, even. Get Eilis to have the warrants express if we need them. I’d be thinking there’d be other pictures of the same crowd or the same do somewhere in their files.”
“Contact proofs,” said Malone. “That’s what they do first, right?”
“That’s it. And then do a check with the lab again.”
Malone looked up at the clock.
“No great hurry back now,” said Minogue. “But you’re buying dinner today.”
Kevin drew up jars from a cart he had wheeled over and placed six of them beside Shaughnessy’s left arm. Donavan switched on the saw for a test. Minogue became aware of a new ache at the base of his neck. He kept his gaze on the jars. Kevin placed the roll of labels by Donavan’s clipboard and began writing in Shaughnessy’s name and the date. Minogue forced himself to look over Shaughnessy again.
Donavan’s gloves looked very tight. Maybe they were some new type of plastic or rubber. He should really put on glasses himself. The saw might throw up bits of… He watched Donavan draw the scalpel up from Shaughnessy’s pubic hair. The radio began to play a reel. Donavan finished the Y with a sharp flourish. There was a flute and a harp, airy sounds that reminded him of a windy May morning. Kathleen was off tomorrow. Phone Iseult and…
The tissue parted by the rib cage as though it had been unzipped. Minogue held his breath again. It took an effort to keep his feet planted now. He let his eyes out of focus. He was already there, just in time: that turn in the lane by Tully, that sliver of sea off Bray.
Donavan turned the diagram around. Minogue recalled the deft slicing of the liver, the pathologist’s unwavering hand as he held the sample for the jars.
“I can’t tell,” said Donavan. “But it wasn’t more than a couple of hours before the systems shut down. A sizable meal, call it. Do Americans have big appetites?”
Irony? Minogue didn’t know. He squeezed the back of his neck. He looked around the conference room and tried another mouthful of tea. Pretty poor. He eyed his notebook next to the stain from the cup. His writing had definitely changed after Donavan had opened the skull. He remembered fighting against the noise of the saw, wandering through the woods by Carrigologan, stepping around the stones and the long grass in Tully. “Drink?” he had written under INTERNAL.
