Careful not to disturb anything, she crouched into the confined space, noticing the victim’s face first. Dark eyebrows. A wisp of black hair on a smooth forehead. No sign of trauma. Eyes closed, the feather-fine skin of the lids already blistering with the beginnings of putrefaction. A silver stud in one ear. Had she lost the other one? This, more than anything, touched Lottie. No matter how many victims of crime she came across or how many bodies she viewed, it was the little things that made them human.
‘Strangled?’ asked Boyd, hunching down beside her. He too had donned protective gear. ‘Better wait for the pathologist,’ he said.
‘Fuck that,’ Lottie said and swept a dark tendril of hair from the victim’s forehead. ‘Dear God, she’s no more than a child.’
‘Eighteen to mid twenties, I’d estimate,’ Boyd said soberly.
A sudden shout made them both jump.
‘Get out of my crime scene!’
Jim McGlynn, head of the SOCO team, stood at the tent entrance, glaring at them.
‘Nice to see you too,’ Lottie said, and realised she’d only ever seen McGlynn in his crime-scene outfit.
‘Out now, the pair of you.’
‘We’ve not touched a thing!’ Lottie said defensively.
‘You should know better, Detective Inspector.’ He brushed past her and began setting up his equipment.
Boyd scurried away. Lottie inched back against the tent wall, allowing the technical guru to get on with his job. McGlynn ignored her as he worked. She kept her mouth firmly shut, just in case. When he finished photographing he began slowly sweeping away the gauze of clay from the victim’s chest. The collar of a blue garment appeared.
The click of high heels out on the road alerted Lottie to the arrival of Jane Dore. The state pathologist dressed quickly in her protective garments and pulled off her four-inch heels. Sliding her feet into a pair of moccasin slippers, she covered them with overshoes. Lottie moved to one side, towering above the other woman. They exchanged greetings as the pathologist joined McGlynn.
‘Young female. No fissures or ligature marks,’ Dore declared, running her fingers along the victim’s throat, having first assessed the scene.
McGlynn was methodically brushing the rest of the clay from the corpse. Gradually the entire body appeared. From her vantage point, Lottie noted that the clothing was made from cheesecloth. Undone buttons revealed braless breasts with blue veins like a road map.
A small mound protruded from below the ribcage.
She felt her mouth drop open. ‘She was pregnant.’
The suffocating air instantly chilled around them. Lottie felt her clammy skin rise in goose bumps.
‘It might just be decomposition,’ Jane cautioned.
‘I don’t think so,’ Lottie said, and she knew Jane didn’t think so either. ‘How long has she been dead?’
‘Hard to say. Decomposition is slower when the body’s not exposed to the elements. But it’s been unusually hot. Two days. Maybe. Rigor mortis has left the body, so I’d say more than forty-eight hours. I’ll know more when I get her to the Dead House.’
The Dead House, where the state pathologist performed her post-mortems, was the mortuary attached to Tullamore Hospital, forty kilometres from Ragmullin.
‘Was she killed here?’
‘First I need to determine cause of death, Inspector,’ Jane said formally. ‘But looking at the soil and the location, I doubt this is where she was killed.’
‘Keep me informed.’
‘Of course.’
Walking out of the tent into the blazing sunshine, Lottie hurriedly removed her outer clothing, dumped it in a brown evidence bag and called Maria Lynch over.
‘Get uniforms to carry out door-to-door enquiries. Someone must have seen the body being buried.’ She glanced up at the shaded apartment windows. ‘Be thorough, and I want those contract workers in the station as soon as possible for statements.’
‘Yes, Inspector,’ Lynch said, and busied herself giving orders to the assembled guards.
‘See if Barrett’s Pub has working CCTV,’ Lottie said drily, eyeing the broken camera dangling by its wires. ‘And Kirby, get someone to search those wheelie bins.’ She pointed to the commercial-sized bins lining the alley, the stench of rotting rubbish mingling with the smell from the tent.
Kirby nodded.
‘First forty-eight hours are crucial,’ Lottie said, ‘and I believe we’ve already lost those.’
Eight
Back at the station, Lottie joined Boyd in Interview Room 1. It was as claustrophobic as she remembered. No windows. No air con. So much for architects. And the renovations were still unfinished.
There would be plenty of people to interview in this case and it could take days. She wanted to start with the men working on the site.
Andri Petrovci was currently sitting at the table secured to the floor with bolts, his large fingers clenched in fists and his brown eyes drooping. Fatigue or fear?
‘So, Mr Petrovci, where are you from?’ Lottie asked. She wanted to get started straight away.
‘I from Kosovo.’ A deep, penetrating voice.
‘How long have you been in Ireland?’
‘I come to work,’ he said. ‘Maybe a year, maybe more.’
‘You’ve been in Ragmullin all that time?’
‘Yes. No.’
‘You seem unsure,’ Lottie said.
‘I arrive. I work in Dublin. Then I come to Ragmullin.’
Lottie smiled as he struggled with the pronunciation of her town. She struggled with her town full stop, no matter what you called it.
‘Why Ragmullin?’
‘Job. Water main work.’
‘Where do you live now?’ This was going to take forever.
‘Hill Point. Small room.’
Lottie knew the estate. Hill Point consisted of a series of apartment blocks, constructed in a crescent, skirting the canal and railway. A few shops, a crèche and a doctors’ surgery. A low-market complex trying to be upmarket and failing miserably. She focused on Andri Petrovci.
‘The body of the girl you discovered, do you know anything about her?’
‘No.’
‘Tell me about the trench you were digging. When did this work start?’
‘Three days ago, we lay pipes. Filled it in… how you say… temporary. Today we come back to fix.’
‘Fix?’
‘Put back road. Understand?’
‘I think so,’ Lottie said.
‘So no one was working on that site since Friday?’ Boyd asked.
‘We do different street, then come back. Traffic… management?’
‘Can you tell us anything else?’
‘I know nothing,’ Petrovci said, lowering his head.
Further probing questions revealed little of interest to the investigation. Lottie felt a familiar growth of frustration swelling in her chest.
‘Will you consent to having a sample of DNA taken? Just to rule you in or out of our investigation.’ It was probably a useless exercise, she thought. He had already contaminated the body.
He looked defensive. ‘Why? I do nothing wrong.’
‘It’s just procedure. Nothing whatsoever to worry about.’
‘I not know. Later. Okay?’
‘I’d prefer to get it out of the way, Mr Petrovci.’
‘I not see reason for this. But okay.’
Lottie instructed Boyd to arrange the buccal test, a simple swab to determine DNA for analysis. Boyd nodded and read Petrovci back his statement.
‘You’re free to go. For now,’ Lottie said. ‘We have your contact details and we may need to talk to you again.’