‘Hey, Dukey!’ she said. ‘You wanna ride home?’
He shrugged.
‘Hey, hey. Look at me. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothin’.’
‘Nothin’,’ she mocked. ‘What is it?’
‘Aw, I was supposed to meet Donnie is all. No big deal.’
‘Hop in,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you wherever.’
‘Just leave me at the store.’
‘Well, that’s not very far, is it?’
‘Then I’ll walk.’
‘Oh, hop in for cryin’ out loud.’
She leaned into him as she drove, turning her head towards him when she had something to say. He stared ahead and kept a hand lightly on the steering wheel.
Donnie stirred his milkshake with a stripey green and white straw.
‘You’re funny,’ said Linda Willard, pushing his arm.
‘So’re you,’ said Donnie.
Linda poked at her fries, using her free hand to tuck her shiny red hair behind her ear.
‘So what kinda music do you like?’ she said.
‘Dunno,’ said Donnie. ‘Don’t have a stereo or nothin’. Don’t even have a radio. My daddy has the TV on all day…’ He shrugged.
‘So what do you do? I mean, apart from hangin’ out with Pukey Dukey?’
‘Aw, he hates bein’ called that,’ said Donnie. ‘That was all Ashley Ames’s fault. I like Duke. We get along just fine.’
Duke watched their smiling faces through the diner window, then frowned and turned for home.
Two hours later, Linda Willard was riding her red bicycle out of town when she saw Duke Rawlins waving to her from the roadside.
‘Linda,’ he called. ‘Come over here a minute, will ya?’
‘Sure,’ said Linda, putting her foot to the ground to stop. ‘My brakes are shot,’ she said, smiling.
‘Donnie told me all about you,’ said Duke.
‘He did?’ She blushed.
‘Yeah,’ said Duke. ‘Know what he said?’
‘What?’ said Linda, leaning over the handlebars, her eyes bright.
‘He said that you and him were down by the creek the other day and that you—’
Duke leaned over and whispered the last part slowly into her ear. Her eyes went wide. It was disgusting. She didn’t even know anyone could do that. All she knew was that she never wanted to lay eyes on Donnie Riggs again.
THIRTEEN
‘That’s it,’ said Frank as Richie leaned his hand against a tree, his head bowed, a string of saliva hanging from his lip. He spat it away and waited until the nausea passed. But he heaved again and vomited for the third time. He wiped away the water streaming from his eyes. Four feet away lay the bloated body of Katie Lawson, naked from the waist down. Only her face and legs were fully exposed, the skin a grotesque greenish black and covered with large blisters. Her upper half was hidden under a mess of soil and leaves, her pink hoodie turned a filthy brown. Apart from her clothes, she was recognisable only by her long dark hair, which was fanned out above her and had already begun to detach from her head. Her features were completely distorted, her skin slipping away from the bone.
‘That could be animals, maggots; God knows what injuries are under there,’ said Frank. ‘You know, I would have thought she’d just been out for a walk, maybe fallen and banged her head, but for the…’ he nodded towards her jeans and underpants, twisted and discarded at her feet, a pink trainer still caught at one end.
‘It’s a terrible business,’ said Dr Cabot, the local GP, edging backwards, holding a blue and white checked handkerchief over his mouth. His job was done, the strange task of confirming the death of the decomposed. Frank made the sign of the cross. ‘You’d have to believe in the soul at a time like this,’ he said, his voice catching, ‘because a body like that – well, that’s just not little Katie.’
Joe sat in Danaher’s beside Mick Harrington as the shaken man brought his second glass of whisky to his lips. He watched Mick’s chest rise and fall. Ed asked nothing when he brought over the drinks. Joe wanted to run. He didn’t want to be polite and wait for Mick’s shock to ease, he wanted, bizarrely, to get to the most important crime scene he would never see. But he sat in silence. He had too much time to think what could have happened to Katie. For a moment, he imagined her like an angel, lying on her back in a white robe, a small smile on her peaceful face. Then a flood of darker images swept that away and filled his mind with all the evil he’d ever seen. He thought of the woods, her lifeless body hanging by a rope from the limb of a tree. He thought of her face, damaged and broken, her eyes opaque and staring. Then she was wrapped in plastic or buried or posed…He looked around the bar and wished that he was anyone else but who he was – a person who had lost forever the chance to view the world as good.
Frank held out his hand and felt the beginnings of misty rain.
‘We need to get the body covered straightaway,’ he said. ‘Have you got anything?’
‘Just the couple of rain jackets in the car,’ said Richie.
‘Run,’ said Frank, reaching back to unzip the stiff, folded hood from the collar of his dark green anorak. He pulled the cords tight and tied them under his chin. It was the last thing he did before standing utterly still, staring ahead, his feet rooted to the ground. Every movement he made could compromise the scene. He had failed to protect Katie Lawson once before, he wasn’t about the make the same mistake again.
As Richie pulled the jackets from the boot of the car, he was lit from behind by a pair of headlights speeding his way. He spun around as the car crunched to a stop in the gravel. D.I. O’Connor got out with a black notebook in his hand, followed by Superintendent Brady. O’Connor motioned for Richie to turn the blinding beam of his torch away from them.
‘It’s definitely her,’ said Brady.
‘Yes,’ said Richie. ‘It’s getting wet. I need to cover her up.’
‘We’ve brought the white tent,’ said O’Connor. ‘Grab it there. But take one of those jackets for yourself.’
Richie ran for O’Connor’s car. He took the tent from the boot and jogged back towards the trees. The men followed, shining a torch ahead of them through the trees. They arrived at the scene, nodded at Frank, then took a brief look at the body before they set up the tent.
‘We’ll need to put a call in to the Technical Bureau,’ said Brady.
The Garda Technical Bureau, based at the Phoenix Park in Dublin, never opened earlier than nine a.m., regardless of what foul crime was uncovered during the night. In eight and a half hours, someone there would pick up a message from the machine about a suspicious death in Waterford and a team would be gathered together. The State Pathologist, who could at that stage have heard about the body on the news, would then get a call from the Technical Bureau to come to the scene.
Brady looked at Frank. ‘Let’s get this preserved.’
‘Richie, you stay here,’ said O’Connor. ‘Frank, myself and Superintendent Brady will talk to Martha Lawson, before anyone else gets to her.’
Frank did a double-take at O’Connor’s rimless glasses.
‘OK,’ said O’Connor, handing Richie the black notebook. He pulled a pen from the pocket of his padded blue
