‘Yes, he has. But I think teenagers are more resilient than us adults.’ She hoped he wouldn’t ask about Chloe and Katie. She didn’t want to talk about her children and their problems; she just wanted to bury herself in work. She’d taken enough leave as it was.
She hoped Sean and the girls would be okay without her around all day. But she couldn’t stay at home any longer; the last few months had slowly eroded the edges of her resilience. There was only so much advising, washing and cooking she could do. At least she’d got the kids out of the habit of eating junk food and takeaways. Today she wanted to ease back into office life gently. Get her feet safely under the table. Take it in her stride.
‘Body found on Bridge Street.’ Detective Sergeant Larry Kirby thrust his head around the door, his bulk following a second later. His plaid shirt was rolled to the elbows, and pearls of perspiration trickled down his wide forehead. He pushed back his mop of bushy hair and stopped when he saw Lottie.
‘Jesus, boss. Welcome back,’ he panted.
‘Sandals?’ Lottie stared at his white-socked toes.
‘Gout,’ Kirby said.
‘But white socks with sandals?’
‘Missed you too, boss.’
‘Where’s Lynch?’ Lottie asked. Detective Maria Lynch was the other core member of her team.
‘At the scene. The guys working on the new water main unearthed the body of a female.’
‘First day back and you’re welcomed with a body.’ Boyd smirked as he followed Kirby out of the door.
Lottie sighed. Taking a handful of the carefully filed folders from the drawer, she scattered them over the desk and spilled a few pens from the mug on top of them. Now she felt more at home.
She picked up her bag and popped her mobile inside, catching sight of the envelope from her earlier visitors. That would have to wait.
She marched out behind her detectives. She had work to do.
* * *
Tar oozed from the ground. The morning heat burned bare arms and brought freckles out on pale faces. Having come through the worst winter since records began, Lottie thought they were possibly on the brink of the hottest summer yet. She stepped out of the air-conditioned car and the humidity swamped her. Putting on her sunglasses, she was glad she’d applied sunblock to her fair skin.
‘Got your sunscreen on?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’ Boyd locked the car and fell into step beside her.
She glanced sideways at him. Was he being offhand with her? He’d put on his sunglasses, so she couldn’t read his eyes. Their personal history had a habit of interfering with their mutual civility. Maybe it was because now that she was back at work, he was no longer acting detective inspector, and was once again only a detective sergeant.
As they approached the outer cordon, uniformed gardaí redirected traffic back down the one-way street, succeeding in generating tailbacks throughout the town. Tempers rose as quickly as the sun in the sky, and Lottie’s blouse was already saturated. She stole another look at Boyd in his cool cotton shirt and navy trousers. He hadn’t even loosened his tie. How did he succeed in looking so chilled? She shook her head. It was beyond her.
The road narrowed. Vehicles caught up in the traffic jam before the diversions had been put in place attempted to reverse, creating further gridlock. The fact that a body had been found did nothing to calm tempers.
They ducked under the crime-scene tape on Bridge Street, a narrow tributary road snaking past the football stadium, over the river, around the shopping centre, narrowing where it linked to the main thoroughfare. Traffic lights blinked at the end. To the left, Barrett’s Pub, with boarded-up windows and weather-beaten paintwork, and a cul-de-sac. Apartments on the right, products of the boom years, some with timber planks covering windows. Had she sleep-walked through the good times? No wealth had come her way. Looking up at the dusty three-storey block, she thought perhaps she was better off. But these apartments offered her an immediate problem: numerous people to interview. Door-to-door enquiries could take days.
She glanced around for CCTV. A broken camera hung by its wires from the wall above the back door of the pub.
Detective Maria Lynch, long fair hair swishing in a ponytail, was busy inside the inner cordon, where a partly excavated trench lined the cul-de-sac. Three men in hi-vis singlets, safety helmets askew, smoked cigarettes in a group at the corner. Uniformed gardaí were taking notes. Lottie looked away from the group, realising that Lynch had approached her and was speaking.
‘… young woman.’
‘What?’ Lottie tried to focus.
Lynch continued reading from her notebook. ‘We’re waiting for the scene-of-crime officers to arrive before the body can be fully excavated. The state pathologist has been notified.’ She closed the notebook. ‘With this traffic, God knows how long it will take her to arrive.’
Lottie made her way towards the temporary tent erected over the trench. Standing outside it, she could smell decay and decomposition.
‘It’s too hot to leave a dead body here for any length of time,’ she said, carefully picking her way across abandoned tools.
‘Too warm for the live ones,’ said Boyd, peering over the edge of the trench from a vantage point on the road. ‘Fucking hell.’
‘What?’ said Lottie and Lynch together.
‘My shoes,’ he said, extracting a foot from the sticky tar. He stepped on to a large stone poking out of the ground.
Lottie was impatient for the SOCOs to arrive. She wanted to see what they were dealing with. She glanced again at the group of men at the corner. One of them excused himself, stepped to the side and lit another cigarette.
‘Who is he?’ she asked, indicating the man.
Lynch consulted her notes. ‘Andri Petrovci. He unearthed the body. Almost killed her a second time with his jackhammer. He just missed the head by a few inches. A flash of colour in the clay stopped him.’
Lottie averted her eyes as Petrovci caught her staring. She couldn’t help but notice that his face was riddled with old scar tissue, running from his left ear lobe to his bottom lip.
Turning her attention back to the tent, she said, ‘I’m going in closer to have a look.’ She pulled protective gloves from her bag. Marching towards the tent, she glanced over her shoulder at Petrovci standing on the corner, and shuddered. She wondered how a pair of eyes could hold so much pain.
* * *
Light gleamed through the tent opening when Lottie pulled back the flap. Lynch had provided her with the requisite protective clothing, which she had pulled on along with the gloves, a mask over her nose and mouth, and covers on her shoes. Steel plates had been laid so as to preserve the already contaminated scene.