Taboo (8 page)

As they were both going to the city morgue, Chris had suggested to Reilly that they meet for something to eat beforehand. Because the GFU lab was situated on the outskirts of the city and the morgue on the opposite side, they’d agreed to meet halfway, in a small, laidback bistro off Grafton Street, where the food was good and, more importantly, quick.

Although he was keen to hear what she had to say about the case, he was also intrigued by her. Smart, focused and extremely driven, from what he’d seen so far, she was a terrific asset to the investigative team.

‘Kennedy was right, you know,’ he said, toying with his spaghetti. ‘There
is
something a bit warped about eating before an autopsy.’

‘You think so?’ Reilly was sitting across from him at the tiny round table, munching her way through a cheeseburger about the same size as her head. Since leaving the lab she had changed into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and let her hair hang loose around her face. He’d only ever seen her wear it in a severe ponytail and the transformation was startling. Right then, she looked about eighteen years old. ‘Sorry,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘I know I shouldn’t talk with my mouth full, but I’m absolutely starving.’

He laughed. ‘The morgue doesn’t affect your appetite then?’

‘Not the gruesome stuff if that’s what you’re referring to,’ she replied, wiping a blob of ketchup off the side of her mouth. ‘What bothers me is that these guys have died suddenly, and usually violently. I want to know how that happened, who did it, why they did it.’

Chris reached for his water. ‘Which I take it, is the reason you went into forensics in the first place?’

She didn’t reply immediately. He though he saw a faint shadow cross her face but the look was gone before he could pinpoint it.

‘Pretty much,’ was all she said. ‘What about you? How’d you make detective so fast?’

‘So fast?’

‘Sure. What are you – thirty, thirty-three?’

‘Thirty-nine, actually,’ he corrected.

‘Wow. You must work out a lot.’

He shrugged, secretly pleased that she thought that.
‘Whenever I get the time. But there hasn’t been much of that lately.’ He wasn’t about to tell her that these days he’d been feeling so worn down he barely had the energy to lift the kettle, let alone a couple of hundred-pound weights. ‘So how are you finding life in Ireland?’

‘So far so good.’
She sipped at her drink. ‘My dad grew up here; his family emigrated to the States when he was thirteen.’

‘Ah. With a first name like Reilly, I thought there might have been some Irish connection.’

‘It was my dad’s mom’s maiden name so I guess I’m kinda named after her,’ she told him.

‘Does your dad get back much?’

Her expression closed. ‘He actually moved back here a couple of years ago … but there’s no other family left now.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Chris could see this was a subject she didn’t want to linger on. Yet it certainly explained why she’d left the bright lights of the West Coast to come and work in dreary old Dublin. ‘I’d imagine this is a big change from California,’ he said, picking up his glass again. ‘Whereabouts are you from?’

‘Marin County, San Francisco Bay area.’

He gulped his water.
‘Never been there. I hear it’s a great city though. You must find things very different over here – like the weather for starters.’

‘Yeah, that is kind of hard to get used to,’ she admitted. ‘And I really miss the seafood. The shrimp you serve here is mostly frozen and very pricey. We get some great stuff back
home, you can buy it fresh at the harbor, right off the boat.’

A waiter arrived to clear their plates and they were silent for a moment before Reilly spoke again. ‘What I really miss most, though, is the waves,’ she said, dreamily.

‘What? You surf too?’

‘All Californians surf,’ she replied with a smile. ‘You learn before you can walk.
This Californian especially.’

‘Never tried it.’

‘You should, there’s no feeling like it.’ Her voice softened, and a faraway look came into her eyes. ‘Riding the waves, feeling them crash over you … it’s like there’s nothing but you and the surf – it’s awesome.’ Her love was clear in her voice.

‘I’m sure it must be.’

‘I know there’s a place up north somewhere that has some good surf, but I haven’t had time to check it out.’

He nodded. ‘Maybe when things quieten down a bit here you might get the chance.’

‘Do things
ever
quieten down around here? I must admit I expected Dublin to be a sleepy little place, not exactly a hotbed of serious crime.’

‘Sign of the times, I suppose,’ he replied. ‘Though to be truthful, I’m glad we’ve got someone like you around.’

She cocked an eyebrow. ‘You must be the only one.’

‘Don’t think like that. It’s nothing personal. I suppose some people, guys like Kennedy for instance,’ he added, ‘are just used to doing things the old-fashioned way. Things have changed so much in this country over the last ten years, you wouldn’t believe it.’

‘Well, I’m glad it’s not just me.’

‘Definitely not.
Give them a bit more time to get used to you.’

‘Good, ‘
cos I’ve pretty much had it with the dumb blond jokes by now,’ she said rolling her eyes good-naturedly.

‘I don’t blame you, and I’d say you really appreciated that red swimsuit too,’ he added, his tone delicate.

‘You heard about that?’

‘Yep.
Sometimes it’s like being back in school around here. But you did the right thing by not reacting to it. It’s exactly what those lads want.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, they got the size just about right so at least I could use it – unlike the cheerleading costume.’

Chris nearly spat out his drink. ‘What? When the hell did that happen?’

‘Second week on the job.’

‘Idiots.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Reilly. I hope you know we’re not all like that.’

‘No need to apologize.’ Her eyes danced with humour. ‘The way things were going I thought I’d end up getting a brand new wardrobe for free. Anyway, that’s peanuts compared to the stuff we got thrown at us at the Academy,’ she added, telling him about the time fellow trainees had planted a cadaver in her dorm room.

They chatted some more about their respective careers, though Chris suspected that Reilly was skimming over the impressive credentials that helped her attain such a position in the force. But when he tried to probe again into her reasons for taking a job in a place that could only be described as a sleepy backwater compared to what she was used to, she again became distinctly closed.

‘I just needed a change, that’s all,’ she said, before deftly changing the subject. ‘So how long have you and Kennedy been working together?’

‘In Serious Crime? Nearly three years now.’
OK,
he thought.
Obviously certain things are off limits.
And despite this, or perhaps because of it, he found himself become more and more intrigued.

All too soon it was time to leave and Chris
signaled for the bill.

‘Let me get that,’ Reilly insisted, forcibly.

‘No, I asked you out … I mean, I asked you to come and—’
Nice one, Chris
, he remonstrated with himself, completely bewildered as to what the protocol was for this kind of thing. Emma would be proud of him – not.

‘Seriously, it’s mine,’ she said, leaving a couple of twenties. Chris relented, unwilling to embarrass himself any further.

‘Well, I’ll get the next one then,’ he muttered, and was he imagining it, or was there a hint of a smile playing about her lips?

‘Do you want to get a taxi?’ he asked as they got up and left the table, ‘or we can walk? It’s not that far.’

‘Let’s walk then, it’s not often I see the outside of the lab – might as well make the most of it.’ He held the door of the restaurant open for her. ‘I have to tell you though,’ she added, referring to next item on their agenda, ‘I’m looking forward to this. It’ll be my first time down here on official business – Gorman usually does these.’ She laughed lightly. ‘He usually prefers to keep me where he can see me.’

And as Chris followed Reilly down Grafton Street, he decided that a woman who actually looked forward to visiting the city morgue was a very rare creature indeed.

‘Could they make this place any more depressing?’ he wondered aloud after he and Reilly signed in beneath the dreary fluorescent lights. He looked around at the
gray walls, the gray floors, the institutional desks and chairs. Despite being housed in a brand new building, the autopsy suite still felt dank and gloomy. 

She chuckled as they headed through the heavy double doors to the observation room. ‘What – you think this would be more fun if the walls were painted in delicate pastels and we had some classical music playing? Believe me,’ she continued, ‘these places are the same the world over.’

When they stepped into the observation room they found that apart from the pathologist and her staff, they seemed to be the only observers that evening, although given that it was an alleged suicide, that wasn’t unusual.

Minutes later, they were both suited up and awaiting Karen Thompson’s appearance inside the cold and sterile autopsy room.

Chris shivered – although he was used to being around bodies, he always found it damn near impossible
not
to be affected by the smell of the place. And his stomach – which thanks to the bright idea to eat beforehand was still filled with undigested pasta – instinctively began to churn.

He struggled not to retch as the smell washed over him. The morgue had its own unique odour that clung mercilessly to clothes, hair, skin, everything, and, despite the protective gear they’d been given, the stench of the place was unavoidable.

Karen Thompson, dressed in surgical greens and wearing heavy-duty rubber boots, entered the room and nodded briefly at them before confidently heading toward the utility area at the other end.

‘Let’s begin, shall we?’ she said, moving to the head of the autopsy table and addressing two mortuary attendants. The
men, each clad in plastic overalls and using surgical gloves, duly unzipped and removed the polythene body bag before deftly lifting the stiff remains of Jim Redmond back onto the white marble table.

At the head of the table there was a short hose attached to a water tap and at the bottom, a swivel tap fixed to a large sink unit. The autopsy table briefly reminded Chris of a holiday he and his
ex Melanie had taken in Cairo a few years back, the large marble slab reminiscent of the ones used by the Ancient Egyptians when preparing bodies for mummification. He still recalled word-for-word the Egyptian tour guide’s gruesome description of the process: ‘First, they suck out the brains through the nose, then remove the organs and the entrails, before draining the blood away at the end of table …’ Now it was poor Jim Redmond’s blood draining away and his organs being handled in a similar manner to those ancients, he thought, solemnly.

Another attendant put up a selection of X-rays, backlit for viewing, and Karen put on a pair of surgical latex gloves before switching on her Dictaphone. Close by, a forensic photographer stood ready to record the proceedings for posterity.

‘Case number 1386, postmortem of James Redmond,’ the doctor began, her tone clipped and efficient as she spoke into the mouthpiece. ‘Subject is a well-nourished white male, mid-fifties, with slight receding dark hair, blue eyes and weighing approximately eighty-eight kilos. Height is one hundred and seventy-two centimeters.’

She paused briefly, and moved along the side of the table. ‘Time of death was estimated
as 9.25 a.m. on Friday, 25th February. Cause of death is due to lack of oxygen.’

She paused, carefully examined Redmond’s neck and returned to her Dictaphone. ‘Inflammation and V-shaped ligature compression marks on the neck indicate that death occurred by hanging. The characteristics of these marks would seem to confirm that the manner of death – as pronounced by the attending physician at the scene – is in fact suicide.’

Reilly was tight-lipped. She seemed disappointed by Karen’s clearly stated verdict.

Chris, on the other hand, was relieved. Maybe her hunch was incorrect – there was nothing on the body to support anything but suicide, nothing to add to the strange coincidences that seemed to link it to the Ryan murders. The idea was a positive one – he and Kennedy really didn’t want another casualty to add to their growing list of homicides, whatever intuition Reilly might have.

As they stood watching the ME continue her external examination, Chris gradually began to feel the onset of fatigue. He loosened his shoulders and tried to concentrate on the doctor’s movements, his mind struggling to focus.

It had been a long day – a very long day, in fact – and the recent developments in the investigation had taken a lot out of him. So, of course it was natural for him to be dead on his feet at this stage – who wouldn’t be tired? This was simply weariness, he reassured himself, good old-fashioned weariness, and nothing to do with the similar bouts of tiredness he’d been experiencing
for the last few weeks, nor the persistent throbbing in his joints.