You'll Get Yours, page 30
What in the name of God did that mean? A sudden surge of sobriety swept through her. Even as she shivered from the icy rain, she felt an important, more insidious chill up her spine.
This wasn’t Frank. Her sodden brain struggled to understand who this man was and what he might want with her.
“Did...did Frank send you?” She forced the words out of her mouth in a desperate attempt at hope, but it was an almost incomprehensible slur.
“No,” he chortled. “God did.”
A little gasp escaped her. She was frozen with fear.
“But...He...God...?”
They were the last words she spoke.
SIXTH DAY
CHAPTER 33
THE RAIN HAD TAPERED off around dawn, and the sun was attempting to shine from beyond gray clouds that congested the sky. There was a chill in the air.
Traffic had been averted from Foyle Street, causing early-morning commuters no amount of frustration. One of the first responders, a PC McGillicutty, had called the incident in to his station, Strand Road.
After hearing the details, the SIO had called Nix at Twilight Road, who had contacted their own crime scene management team. They had arrived swiftly, blocked off the street with police tape, set up four PVC frames around the bus shelter, secured the frames to each other with tie-down straps, then attached black privacy screens to them with hooks. Now no passing thrill seekers could see what lie beyond. Or sat.
They had carried in battery-generated spotlights and arranged the tripods in the corners of the privacy shelter. They were turned off now, but the moment forensics or the pathologist or the detectives arrived, they would be switched on.
Across the street was the Ulsterbus station. Behind the bus shelter was the Chinese restaurant, the cafe, the bookies, the comic shop, the hair salon and a few derelict storefronts that were boarded up, bright posters pasted up long ago now faded and peeling, some graffiti, NOBODY WANTS WAR and ABORTION ACCESS NOW. Down the street was the Guildhall and the city center, Kebabalicious and the Top-Yer-Trolley. Around the pub on the corner was Shipquay Gate and the city walls. And the cannons that lined the battlements of the walls, atop one of which Lily Feagins had sat.
If the privacy screen hadn’t been erected and you were sitting at the bus shelter waiting for the 4 or 5, you could see the Peace Bridge stretching across the River Foyle, the bridge’s two sloping pillars seeming to represent the coming together of the city’s two communities.
Now lodged in the stuffy darkness of the privacy screens, the body had been deposited on the dark purple plastic bench, leaning back against the glass wall. Her head would have been obscuring the bus schedule in its frame there, except that gravity had caused it to slump to her chest.
She had been a middle-aged woman with glossy straight blue-black hair with a blunted fringe. Her eyes had been kholed, the eyeliner thick, but it had smudged and run down her face, looking like trails of soot. If you had glanced at her quickly, you might have mistaken her for Claudia Winkleman, the presenter of Strictly Come Dancing. Not now, obviously, with her bloated pale face, eyes bugging out of their sockets, an odd glossy sheen to her cheeks and tiny cuts on her lips.
She wore silver stud earrings. Her handbag sat next to her, an olive Hermès Kelly tote bag. She was in her stocking feet, her nude tights riddled with ladders, the soles covered with grime. But that was not all she had on.
D’Arcy’s Renault Clio arrived with a screech of tires and the squeal from a constable darting out of the way. She flicked off the ignition and eyed the black screens around the bus shelter with trepidation, pulling out her sanitizing wipes and getting to work. She had just pulled a new pair of latex gloves from her handbag when in the rear-view mirror she saw her boss’ Ford Fiesta pull up behind her.
McLaughlin dragged himself out of the car, one of the drawstrings of his wrinkled anorak trailing on the still-damp asphalt. His face was grim as he approached her car. D’Arcy got out and nodded a good morning.
“Sir.”
“How can this be possible?” McLaughlin moaned, indicating the black screens. They hurried across the street, nodding at the uniformed coppers gravely standing guard, and D’Arcy pulled up the cordon as high as she could so that McLaughlin could safely maneuver his bulk under it. Now his voice was tinged with anger as they approached the crime scene. “The hell we’re going to catch. I flimmin told Nix better safe than sorry. High level of protection, I said, not mid. Bastard budget cuts. Pencil pushers! Not coppers!”
He was so angry he was struggling to pull the latex gloves over his thick and trembling fingers.
“Bastard gloves and all!”
“Who do we think, sir...?” D’Arcy wondered.
Gerarda McGinty?
Roisin Obi?
It couldn’t somehow be Veronica Skelly, could it...?
“I don’t know what the bloody hell to think!” McLaughlin said sharply, still trying to maneuver his fingers into the gloves. “Except heads are going to roll. Ours. The press is going to crucify us! The poor soul, whoever is in there. We had it in our power to protect her. And we failed.”
“Sir, let me help you—”
“I don’t need your— There, I’ve got it.”
D’Arcy shifted her weight impatiently.
“And odd location, sir,” she said. “A simple bus shelter on the pavement. Not as...theatrical as on top of a cannon on the city walls. I wonder—”
There was a snap as McLaughlin’s second glove was finally secured. “Right. Let’s see who we’ve failed...”
Just as he was pulling open the screen, PC McGillicutty rushed up to them.
“Inspector,” he said. “My partner and I were first responders. Found by a woman who was catching an early bus to Dublin at the depot there.” He nodded at the ambulance across the way. “Your woman’s in shock.”
McLaughlin blew air out of his mouth. “We’ll give the poor dear time to calm down, interview her later.”
“Sir. And there was a handbag sitting on the pavement next to the victim, so I opened it and got her ID.”
D’Arcy stiffened. “Constable!” she chastised. “Your duties as first responder are to preserve the integrity of the scene and minimize contamination, not go rooting through the—”
McLaughlin touched D’Arcy’s forearm as the eagerness on the PC’s face dissolved. His head shot down in shame.
“D’Arcy,” McLaughlin warned, though he understood why tensions would be high. “Let’s just hear who your woman is.”
The copper shuffled before them, then said, unable to meet D’Arcy’s eye, said, “The deceased is a Margaret McGuff,” the copper said.
The detectives were taken aback.
“A who?” McLaughlin asked.
“Aye.” The copper nodded, understanding. “She’s called Margaret McGuff.”
“God bless us and save us!” McLaughlin roared. “Who the bloody hell is Margaret McGuff?”
“Not one of them Sparklers anyway, inspector.”
“Sparklettes,” D’Arcy corrected.
PC McGillicutty shrugged.
Although a bit relieved, they still had another corpse.
“Thank you, lad,” McLaughlin said, dismissing him. The copper hurried off. “Well, that’s something, at least.”
“Mistaken identity, sir?” D’Arcy wondered.
“Or something else entirely.”
They entered the dark space. McLaughlin effed and blinded as he sought to find a switch to one of the spotlights. The secured area was bathed in light, the full horror of the scene revealed to their disbelieving eyes.
“Sir!” D’Arcy gasped. She almost grasped her superior’s elbow in her surprise. “But...it’s exactly the same MO.”
“Aye.” McLaughlin got down on his haunches before the seat of the bus shelter for a better look. D’Arcy hovered close behind him, her eyes narrowing beneath her glasses.
The perp had left the victim’s tights on, but had dressed her in an identical pair of bra and knickers, black with frills and little red bows. It was obvious, now that they knew what they were looking for, that they didn’t fit correctly. The woman’s breasts threatened to spill out of the bra that was a cup size too small, the knickers were baggy around the waist and were bunched up slightly in the crotch.
McLaughlin reached out and lifted the chin of the bowed head. The woman’s thick black hair flopped back. They tensed at the sight of the thumb lodged between the bloodless lips. McLaughlin ran his eyes over the corpse’s neck.
“Looks like she’s been strangled and all,” he said. “And look at her lips. There’s a bit of blood there. Can you see it, D’Arcy? The flesh of the upper lip has been—”
He jerked back as the screen behind them shifted and Lyons burst into the cubby.
“Is it—?”
“A Margaret McGuff,” D’Arcy preempted him.
“Who the hell...?”
“Haven’t a clue,” McLaughlin said, still examining the woman’s face, trying to get a read on her. “That’s for us to find out.”
“But...the knickers, the thumb,” Lyons said. “How can this not be...?”
D’Arcy turned around. Lyons hadn’t even had time to arrange his quiff after he’d gotten the call. A thick mass of black bangs hung over his forehead, and he had to keep brushing the hair out of his eyes to see. And he wanted to see. What the mad bastard had done to this new victim.
“That,” McLaughlin said, “is also for us to find out.”
Lyons ran his eyes up and down the corpse.
“It’s like déjà vu,” he said. “Except...”
“Do you mean the wee cuts on the lips?”
“Could she have been punched in the mouth, sir?” D’Arcy asked.
They shivered.
“Aye, there’s that and all,” Lyons said. “But...”
McLaughlin and D’Arcy stiffened. Was there something not the same about the crime scene?
“What is it, son?” McLaughlin wanted to know. He let the head drop softly. “Have we missed something?”
“Lift her head up again, boss,” Lyons said. “It’s the light shining on the face that did it, maybe. Or not...”
McLaughlin did as instructed and felt his heart beating under his breastplate. D’Arcy held her breath.
“What do you see, Lyons?” she asked.
“Turn her head slightly to the right, boss,” Lyons instructed. “toward the light. Aye, I see it now. Look around her mouth, around her chin. Don’t you see it and all?”
D’Arcy adjusted her glasses, leaned closer. She and McLaughlin examined the face more closely, and then they saw it. There seemed to be a sheen, a shiny veneer over the lower half of the face, slathered across the lips that held the thumb in place, over the whole of the chin and reaching up to the lower part of the cheeks.
“What is that, sir?” D’Arcy asked.
McLaughlin dare not touch. He poked his head forward and inhaled deeply.
“It smells like...strawberries,” he decided.
D’Arcy stifled a gasp as Lyons stared, flipping his bangs across his head.
“Could it be...lip gloss?” she asked. “Strawberry lip gloss?”
McLaughlin let the head drop and stood up, scowling.
“Is he taking the piss?” he seethed. “As if the poor woman’s dignity hadn’t been stripped from her enough already! The knickers, the thumb, and now this...frankly preposterous lip gloss! Strawberry, of all flavors, fragrances, whatever the hell you call them! He’s taking the piss, I tell you!”
“Would this be considered an escalation of sorts, boss?” Lyons wondered. “What do you think?”
“Shall I tell you what I think?” McLaughlin asked with a sorrowful look at the woman’s body before him. He ground his jaw and roared, “It’s a further degradation to an already demeaned woman!”
They all jumped.
“Out! Out!” Dr. Keedy yelled as he thrust aside the screen. He was bundled from head to toe in white. “Where are your protective suits, for the love of God?”
“But...!” McLaughlin said. “We arrived before forensics had—”
“They’re here now!” Keedy exclaimed, plopping his case on the pavement before the bus stop, eyes shooting all over the victim. He didn’t turn around as he demanded coldly, “Get out of here now, and don’t come back until you are properly suited up!”
Suitably chastised, they slipped out onto the cold, damp street.
“Flimmin bleedin amateurs!” they heard from inside.
As D’Arcy and Lyons looked to their boss for instructions on how best to proceed, McLaughlin tugged off his gloves and his eyes swept the vicinity, the parking lot across the street, the road next to it. Sometimes perps got a thrill out of watching the police in action as they uncovered their crimes. But there was no sign of an unmarked white van...
CHAPTER 34
MCLAUGHLIN HAD BEEN called to DCI Nix’s office, paperwork about the handover of the case from Strand Road to their own station, so D’Arcy and Lyons went to interview the victim’s husband, Frank McGuff.
Perched on the uncomfortable cheap sofa, D’Arcy bestowed awkward little pats on Frank McGuff’s shuddering shoulders. Comforting the relatives of murder victims didn’t come easy to her, especially those old enough to be her mammy or daddy. She was only too aware she didn’t have the life’s experience to understand the pain and grief of hearing a person you’d been married to for the better part of your life, the person you’d had children with, raised and seen off, all that life’s history shared, had just been taken away from you. The man’s head was buried in his large hands under a shock of brown hair, and tortured moans were filling the flowery living room that had presumably been designed by the deceased and not the mini-cab driver.
Among the porcelain cats and framed landscapes, the only signs that a male lived there were the Derry FC scarf hung on the wall and a pile of mechanics magazines sitting on the coffee table.
Sitting in an armchair opposite, Lyons cleared his throat.
“We realize it’s difficult, Mr. McGuff,” he said, “but the first twenty-four hours of the investigation are the most important. It’s the worst time, I know, to be badgering you with questions, but it’s a necessary evil.”
“Give Mr. McGuff a few more minutes,” D’Arcy warned.
The sobs continued.
“Shall I make you a cup of tea?” Lyons asked. “Would you like that, sir?”
“I don’t want no bloody tea,” McGuff moaned through his fingers. “I want my Margaret back. My dear, lovely Mags.”
D’Arcy and Lyons exchanged a grimace over the man’s bowed head.
“But, aye, I understand,” McGuff said, his voice breaking. He lifted his head and looked at them with red-rimmed eyes. “Ask your questions. And then, please, leave me be to grieve on my own. I’ve, dear Lord, I’ve got to ring the wains and all. Let them know their mammy’s been...been...” His eyes shot to a family photo given pride of place atop the mantelpiece of the fireplace. Five smiling children, teens at the time the photo was taken, surrounded their parents. It had been taken on a beach somewhere, maybe Spain, and the sun was shining brightly. Margaret McGuff in her blunted bangs and kholed eyes looked stylish, Frank himself, his arm wrapped around her, happy and proud. The sobs began anew.
D’Arcy reached into her pocket and handed him a tissue.
He snatched it and ran it over his cheeks. “Thanks for that.”
His large body shuddered as he fought to control himself, confront their questions. His attitude seemed to be the sooner he answered the quicker he would be rid of them.
“Ask away,” he said with a snivel. He brought the tissue to his nose and gave it a quick wipe, then crumpled the tissue in a trembling hand.
“When did you last see Margaret?” D’Arcy asked.
“Last night,” McGuff said. “She and the girls, she’s the manager at Xpressions, you know, the hair salon on Queen Street, next to the Thai massage, they get together once a month for a girl’s night out. A different pub or club they go to every month. But last night, they all called off for one reason or another, I don’t know, one was ill, another...I wasn’t paying Mags any mind as she told me.” His voice broke again. “Had I known it was one of the last conversations we’d be having...” He was threatening to break into sobs again. “I told her not to go. A woman her age, going out by herself. I ask you! Didn’t listen to reason, but. Said she had been looking forward to it. It was nineties night at Glitterz, that club on Ferryquay Street opposite the War Memorial.”
D’Arcy and Lyons shared a look. From that location, you went down Shipquay Street, through the city walls at Shipquay Gate and came out onto Guildhall Square. It was just around the corner to Foyle Street and the bus shelter where Margaret McGuff’s body had been found. Dumped?
“And Mags was mad for 90s music. Me and all, for that matter. The music of our youth, you see. So there was no stopping her. Always was bloody stubborn, my Mags. So off she went. About nine o’clock it must have been.”
“And did you hear nothing more from her that evening?”
“I was watching Top Gear here on the telly, having a few tins of lager. It was on CatchUp, so episode after episode. You know what it’s like, you lose track of time. And when I looked at my watch, I saw it was past one and she still wasn’t home. Even when she and the girls go out on the lash, she’s usually home by midnight. We’re no spring chickens anymore, so we’re not.” There was an uncomfortable pause as McGuff realized he wouldn’t be celebrating another birthday with his wife. “I tried ringing her, but the phone went straight to voice mail.”
D’Arcy, who had since inched a more professional distance away from him on the sofa, nodded and said, “We found her phone, and the battery on it was...er, no more.”
“S-so...she couldn’t have rung me if she’d...she’d encountered any...” The tears threatened to well anew.
“There was nothing you could have done, sir,” D’Arcy said, a little touch on his hand.
“So you were here at home all night long?” Lyons asked. “I’m sorry, but you know we need to ask. Ticking all the boxes, like.”
