Too Close to Breathe by Olivia Kiernan

Author:Olivia Kiernan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

VICKY, MY NEURO consultant, waves the light in front of my eyes. First the left. Pause. Then the right. Pause. She clicks the penlight off, slots it into her pocket. Unconscious movements. Performed many times daily. Her index finger is upright before me. I fix my vision to it, follow the movement as she passes it in front of my face, drawing a crucifix in the air before me. A medical benediction.

“Prussian blue. Have you heard of it?”

“Prussian blue? Hmm. I dunno. Why do you ask?” She has turned, is making notes.

“An interest.”

She looks up, her mouth pinched at one side. “An interest?” She shakes her head. Laughs.

“Oh, all right then. A case. Don’t worry, I won’t quote you,” I say.

She stands, directs me to do likewise. She raises both my arms with her fingertips until they are straight, outstretched, shoulder level. I know this test. Have performed it many times. I close my eyes.

She pats me on the hand.

“Sit,” she commands, and continues to fill in her notes. After a while, she signs her name to the bottom of my file.

“Firstly, you continue to show a clean slate. No indications of trauma or pathology. Your scar is healing nicely, although I know it still pains you. I can only say that it will get easier. The knife went through a minor cutaneous sensory nerve branch and it’s regenerating, which may go to explain some of the burning sensations and tingling you’ve been feeling. Worst-case scenario, eighteen months. Otherwise, you’re good.”

I can’t help the smile. Part happiness, part cynicism. My physicality is not the lasting problem.

“Thanks, Doc,” I reply.

Eleanor Costello is knocking on the inside of my skull. Peter Costello was a mess. No phone was found with his body, not that he could have been making calls to me. He’d been in the water for near on two months. The fact that he’s been missing almost as long corroborates Abigail’s estimations. On the morning that his remains were found, there had been a spring tide, causing exceptionally low water levels in the Liffey. Costello’s dark head had been spotted, bobbing about like a seaweed-clad buoy, by an early-morning walker.

Initially, the walker hadn’t thought much of it, but as the water leveled, the ghostly shape of Peter’s face flashed in the grim depths. And from there, the walker had contacted the guards. At first, like Eleanor’s death, it appeared to be suicide.

There’s no way of knowing whether Peter Costello was dead or alive when he hit the riverbed—forensics can only give us so much—but the opening call of the autopsy was murder. The injuries on his body indicated foul play. There were numerous stab wounds along his sides and the insides of his thighs. If he hadn’t drowned, he would have bled to death.

In short, his remains were in a state but, to be honest, not in the state he should have been in for so long in the water. The cold start to the winter months was for once working in our favor.

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