Preserve the Dead by Brian McGilloway

Author:Brian McGilloway [McGilloway, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472113191
Publisher: Constable & Robinson
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-six

‘A hatchet, apparently,’ Tony Clarke announced to those assembled in the incident room in Strand Road, an hour later. The pathologist, Martin Kerrigan, had been called to the site at Sheriff’s Mountain and, while still working on the body there, had suggested a hatchet to be the most likely implement responsible for the blow to Duffy’s head.

‘A hatchet?’ Burns repeated. ‘Who the hell kills with a hatchet?’

‘Whoever killed the cremated body in our coffin,’ Fleming said. ‘Kerrigan figured the nick on the metal skull plate may have been made by a hatchet too. Again to the head, obviously.’

‘Where are you on that?’ Burns asked.

‘No further,’ Fleming said. ‘DS Black was with you all day and I was staking out a bank waiting for Ciaran Duffy to appear. As you told me to.’

Lucy was aware that all eyes in the room had turned towards her, not least Tara’s. All eyes but one, she realized. Her mother stared fixedly at Burns in a way that suggested she had not been as fully aware of the afternoon’s division of labour as Burns had claimed.

‘Beaumont are filtering the patient list for us,’ Lucy said. ‘We know the victim had both skull and leg injuries. They’re trying to match both as a starting point. There are a thousand patients to go through otherwise, and we’ve not the bodies to work through a list that length.’

‘There can’t be many with both skull and leg injuries,’ Burns conceded.

‘They might not have been suffered at the same time,’ Tara said, suddenly. ‘Filtering like that might miss someone out.’

‘See what it brings up. Chase them again,’ Burns said. ‘What was the story with Ciaran Duffy?’

‘We believe he was responsible for the body swap,’ Fleming said. ‘He deposited five grand in his account a few days ago, so our assumption is that he was paid to get rid of whoever was actually in the coffin.’

‘Why would someone go to that effort?’ Mickey asked. ‘Why not just dump the body? Or burn it, like Duffy himself, in a car?’

‘Whoever tried to burn Duffy knew we were onto him by this stage; there was no need to hide his death. We have to assume, on the other hand, that whoever was put in the coffin and cremated was someone they didn’t want us to know about.’

‘Duffy was found in Terry Haynes’s car, the same car used to dump Krawiec’s body, Krawiec was last known to be in the company of Aaron Moore, whose prints you found at a house burglary along with Krawiec’s,’ Wilson said. ‘Have I got all this so far?’

‘So far, ma’am,’ Burns said, smiling.

‘So, what about Terry Haynes? Are you any closer to locating him?’ Wilson asked, directed this time to Burns.

‘Nothing yet, ma’am,’ he conceded.

‘And Aaron Moore?’

‘We called at his flat, but there was no one home. We spoke to some of the neighbours, but no one has seen him for the past few weeks,’ Tara said.

‘His flat? He’s not homeless then?’

‘He may as well be,’ Mickey answered, then added a differential, ‘ma’am.

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